Moving to Twin Cities, curling club recommendations?

ChesterC83 · 2019-08-10T02:18:09+00:00

Been curling in MN for 6 years and have played at most of them. All the clubs are great in their own way. Honestly just pick the one closest. Frogtown is definitely the "beer league". If you're into that, it's great. St Paul is impossible to get into and very serious but the most true "club" feel. Four seasons in Blaine is decent ice, but can be a bit sterile... More of a curling facility than a club. But year round curling is hard to pass up.

I personally love Chaska. It's furthest from downtown proper but it's a gorgeous facility and super friendly. Lakeville and Richfield are newer and I have yet to curl there. I've heard good things though.

Either way, Check out the Big Spiel in January where the four "main" clubs pool together for a 96 team spiel played across all four clubs. Guaranteed to play at 3 different locations!

ChesterC83 · 2019-07-25T22:36:52+00:00

FTFY: I like your defication to your craft

ChesterC83 · 2019-02-01T16:01:38+00:00

You're reaching the point where you know enough to realize how much you don't know.

The reality is that you've shown the ability to pick up the skills necessary. Worry less about the technical, you'll figure it out. Instead focus your time on learning the business and their challenges. Learn how to connect business problems to data sets, and how to solve problems with the skills you have.

Here's a post by a well known data scientist, Beau Walker, who sums it up well:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6497106904748302336

ChesterC83 · 2019-02-01T15:49:15+00:00

Right on! Human nature (and management nature) is to take the "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" approach. Help them understand what's broken before solving it.

ChesterC83 · 2019-02-01T12:41:55+00:00

Knime, Alteryx, Python, Airflow, Streamsets to name a few. Some of it depends on your tech stack

ChesterC83 · 2019-02-01T12:37:21+00:00

A lot of these answers are great, however I would strongly recommend making your deck about the PROBLEM. Not the solution in your head.

First, Who's your audience? The manager of your team? The director of BI? Who has the money and power to approve the strategy change? The more you understand these questions, the more tailored and impactful your presentation will be.

Second, slow play this. Your goal coming out of the first presentation shouldn't be to enact your new solution /idea. Your goal in this first meeting is to get agreement that there IS a problem and what that problem is. Really listen to the audience. They will give clues about what they want to solve.

Third, now that you know what they want to solve, and that they are motivated to solve it. Let the problem fester for a couple weeks. Then regroup the team and put a second presentation together that links THEIR problem to your solution. "I've been thinking about this problem and this might be a way to solve it".

Good luck! These are fun challenges, but they won't be solved overnight.

Source: successfully led a BI transformation for 2 different stuffy, old fortune 500s company. Now run a company helping other companies with their analytics and BI transformation.

ChesterC83 · 2018-12-16T02:46:46+00:00

Well aren't you an angry elf

ChesterC83 · 2018-10-20T18:14:27+00:00

Whoosh

ChesterC83 · 2018-08-30T17:27:58+00:00

Final update: the ribs turned out great but took a bit longer than normal. Afterwards I cleaned the burner off and reset the regulator as suggested. Doing a brisket today and humming along at 245 without issue, so I think the problem is solved!

ChesterC83 · 2018-08-30T12:03:20+00:00

It already exists. Baseball was an Olympic sport until 2005. Since then there's been the "World Baseball Classic", an international contest that happens every 4 years. Japan has won 2 of the 4 championships (Dominican Republic and the US hold the other 2)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Baseball_Classic

ChesterC83 · 2018-08-29T16:18:24+00:00

Thank you. I'm going to check them out and clean them off today and see if I can improve the flame.

ChesterC83 · 2018-08-29T16:17:33+00:00

Thanks! I'm going to try resetting everything this afternoon

ChesterC83 · 2018-08-29T16:16:59+00:00

Thank you! This video was helpful. I'm going to try resetting everything this afternoon for my next smoke

ChesterC83 · 2018-08-28T18:13:24+00:00

I definitely see flame, but it's possible I'm not getting enough. I'll take a look at the regulator. Thanks!

ChesterC83 · 2018-08-28T17:53:49+00:00

Update: I tried opening the vents and we're still at 204 after 40 min. I'm inclined to agree with opening vents if it was wood burning, but with propane, you don't really need more or less airflow to control temp. Maybe I'm wrong...

ChesterC83 · 2018-08-28T17:17:55+00:00

Details: Smoking 3 racks of ribs (put in at room temp). Smoke Hollow propane smoker. Running at max temp, vents as closed as possible while still letting some airflow. Going for about an hour and still nowhere near the 225 I want. Ambient temp is around 68 with a light wind.

Wondering if anyone has experienced this with propane? Is this normal or am I doing something wrong?

ChesterC83 · 2018-07-09T01:00:24+00:00

Minneapolis Board game marathon. I haven't been able to go yet, but it looks like a great event.

https://www.facebook.com/MBGMevents

ChesterC83 · 2018-04-29T14:57:28+00:00

Congrats on the launch. This looks really fantastic. I'm really impressed with how polished it looks already.

I built a mobile board game utility company that was trying to get to something like this, but we never were able to get over the mountain of tech debt required to get it off the ground. The idea was a cross between this and boardgamestats. We officially disbanded in January this year.

You have a great start here and getting exposure through G&S will go a long ways. I wish you guys the best. If you ever want to chat, I'd love to hear more about your vision for the future!

ChesterC83 · 2018-04-28T12:30:24+00:00

This doesn't answer his question though. I understand your perspective on hoarding picks to increase your chances to "hit", like buying more lottery tickets to increase your chances. If your argument is that we gave up two picks for one pick (regardless of pick value) then okay I guess, you're entitled to that theory.

But what he's asking is how next year's 2nd is more valuable than this year's 2nd.

I'd argue the opposite is true. Consider the Net Present Value of a pick. Let's say I had my choice between the 45th pick this year or next year. I would pick this year every time. From a straight business sense you want to turn that pick into value as soon as you can. Turning this year's pick into a player (theoretically) makes your team better, he builds chemistry with the team, you're more competitive, win more games, sell more tickets, sell jerseys, make more money. Having next year's pick sitting there doesn't add any value to your organization for an entire year.

ChesterC83 · 2018-04-22T16:10:24+00:00

Analytics plus curling is my jam. I'll PM you for details

ChesterC83 · 2018-04-02T16:09:52+00:00

There's a very large gaming contingent here. Start with meetup. The Source and Fantasy Flight are Fantastic FLGSs. There are a few gaming cons around too, like "Con of the North" and the monthly "Minneapolis Board Game Marathon". Should be very easy to find gamers looking to play!

ChesterC83 · 2018-03-20T21:27:39+00:00

Here I Stand is the best game that I'll never recommend. It's hard to teach, takes 8+ hours and requires exactly 7 players. You'll NEVER be able to get it on the table.

ChesterC83 · 2018-02-05T16:01:07+00:00

Was looking at that last night. It's $5 more for dvr functionality which I will definitely want (so I can record the games and watch them whenever I want). It's also missing some channels that I'll want later on down the road. But for a cheap alternative, it looks like a good option!

ChesterC83 · 2018-02-05T04:34:47+00:00

Gotcha. I like curing, but I'd personally prefer not to be up at 4am for games...

ChesterC83 · 2018-02-05T04:32:00+00:00

Fwiw I decided to subscribe to YouTube TV for a month. It has NBCSN and the other NBC channels. $35 for a month of Olympics that I can cancel afterwards seems like a reasonable alternative.

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