What's the quickest way to get a title?

Yeah, seems hard to say if you've hardly every played anyone face to face before.  I wonder how you estimated this.

And NM-Dale is 1700-1900 with a 2k online rating.

I think the difference there is tournament players who don't play online often may have low speed ratings.  If all you ever do is play online and have never been to a tourney (like the OP) I'd think you'd have a blitz rating of 2200+ before you're an OTB master.

Just my impression though.

Don't forget people's estimations of themselves is usually higher than usual.  Most know they aren't master, so reasonably try guessing at 1400-1600 usually because they don't know what players in this level know. 

Q: "So what do you think your rating would be?"

A: "Maybe somewhere around 1500 USCF"

Q: "There's been something on my mind, in this position what are the most critical aspects?"

A (if around 1500): Oh that's easy, how close the pawn is to queening and seizing the long lightsquared diagonal.  A major source of black's counterplay is check, if you get that long diagonal you not only control the queening square but keep the black queen off that infamous perpetual check diagonal.  The first candidate move I see is d6! as it either deflects the black queen away from the critical diagonal or win the queening race.  1.d6,b3 2.d7,Qc6+ 3.Kh2,b2 4.d8=Q and there's no way black can get out of this.  3...Qf3 requires more technique since guarding f2 is critical whenever the black queen threatens it while also keeping the b2 pawn under watch. 

A (if overestimating):  I really don't know, probably the passed pawn. Black has enough tempi to promote right after you. 

You are way overestimating 1500s.

I mean USCF 1500 not chess.com

Meh, when I was 1500 USCF I didn't know much of anything really.  Basically I played games with only two thoughts in mind.

1). Bring all my pieces into the game / give each piece something active to do.

2). Look for tactics.

Wait a minute! That's not all there is to it? Dang, no wonder...............

USCF GM=2600 rating

I'm rated 1737 on chesstempo Blitz tactics.  Based only on this variable their algorithm estimates I'm 1861 FIDE.  I used to be rated over 1900 bullet on chess.com because that's all I played.  I thought I was pretty great at chess with this rating until I played a 10 minute game against a friend of mine and realized I had absolutely no clue how to play if I wasn't making moves in a half of a second.  So I stopped playing such fast time controls for a year or two and when I eventually tried it again I was dumbfounded to notice I was a fraction of the bullet strength I used to be.  Oh well, I wanted to actually understand chess, not master the art of creating threats and winning on time.  If you'll notice as the time controls get higher I do better and better, and my best rating is online. (Then again online rating on this site is so inflated that it's hard to even tell what's going on there.)  I'm under the impression tournaments use very slow time controls, right?  So I think that given all this, if I am not expert strength then I am hopefully at least close.

Also, the few times I've played at a cafe or club I've been told by people I was playing at an expert level, some of the people that said this were either tournament players or former tournament players.

 

d6 isn't legal for either side though or maybe I'm just THAT bad at chess that I can't even see it?

Say what?

Re:  finding chess tournaments

Most tournaments are not listed on the USCF web site.  Try the Louisiana Chess Association web site.  (Find it using google.)

Whoops!  Pawn was supposed to be on d5 not c5 shouldn't have carelessly slapped on those pawns.  Anyway it's fixed now. 

What's the quickest way to get a title?

Bribery.

Looks like d6 just drops a pawn.  Even worse the black queen defends the square in front of your other pawn and defends her own.

Edit: I see now, it's hard to make any progress without it.
Would go with Qb5 in a game without a doubt.

Yeah, that is an incorrect statement. FIDE members are actually national federations. So the USCF is a FIDE member and USCF members can get FIDE ratings by playing in FIDE rated events.

My statement was a bit confusing, yeah...

What I meant to say is more like "As soon as you are a member of USCF you are "registered" with FIDE."

Sorry for the confusion.

Well, I'm just not sure what "registered with FIDE" means. I know it doesn't mean that I've given them any money or filled out an application for membership, because I've never done that and never will. If it means they recognize that I'm a USCF member, then that's OK, I guess.

Not sure about the quickest way to get a title - but surely the easiest way is to marry into one ... Lord - Lady , Duke - Dutchess , King - Queen etc etc

walk into the FIDE Presidents office with an Assualt Rifle, and threaten to shoot him if he doesn't award you both GM and WC titles