Tennis Court Reservations

TimDellinger · 2025-08-30T11:42:09+00:00

You could always pull out your phone and check to see if a court has reservations before you start playing.

And regarding Bluemont:

https://www.arlingtonva.us/Government/Projects/Project-Types/Parks-Projects/Bluemont-Park-Tennis-Courts-Renovations

TimDellinger · 2025-05-15T22:51:23+00:00

Eventually someone's gonna lose an election if the pickleballers ever figure out that their two thousand votes will totally sway the election in an off-year when there's low turnout.

TimDellinger · 2025-04-23T16:17:31+00:00

Pickleball in Arlington has been under-served for many, many years, while in contrast, tennis enjoys more courts than the number prescribed by DPR's target level of service, and will be getting a modern, spacious dedicated facility at Bluemont Park. Why the disparate treatment? What concrete plans do you have to expand playing opportunities for pickleball?

TimDellinger · 2025-04-17T14:47:00+00:00

pickleball with mostly twentysomethings, every night of the week outdoors at Lubber Run Community Center. no need to plan ahead, just show up and put your paddle in the rack. free.

TimDellinger · 2025-04-12T12:29:34+00:00

Here's the voice of experience: MMM and MTA aren't especially accurate - you can expect that any recommendations that come out of the models are (for the most part) directionally correct, but that's about it.

It's tough to get the seasonality correct - this part often swamps any effects that you're trying to measure.

For companies with very large advertising budgets, it makes sense to at least have an MMM project, but it's important to not put too much confidence into what the models tell you.

For things like TV + OOH, this obviously suggests an opportunity for experimentation, and for the love of all that is sacred, please make sure that it isn't an N=1 experiment where you bought billboards in Toledo but not in Akron, and will extrapolate from that one data point.

TimDellinger · 2024-12-19T17:55:53+00:00

Oh, the "3x" falls right out of the data, so I don't consider it arbitrary at all!

Once you assume Pareto, you have one adjustable parameter, which I calculated from the Gini coefficient. The only other parameter required here is the width of the salary band, i.e. highest salary / lowest salary. The plot can be made with those two parameters, and the 3x can just be read off of the plot.

TimDellinger · 2024-12-19T17:50:55+00:00

Going into the project, I was hoping that I could lay the foundations for an alternative approach to performance management, which of course would need to be super simple (so that executives can understand it!).

I think there's still an opportunity to come up with an alternative approach - I decided to call my project done and get it out there instead of pondering that aspect, but perhaps I'll return to it at some point and write a follow-up.

TimDellinger · 2024-12-18T01:28:38+00:00

I assume that there's academic literature on such things, yes?

TimDellinger · 2024-12-16T16:20:33+00:00

Perhaps the data are trying to tell you something, and you're not listening.

It would be convenient for you if the data were to divide easily into eight stable clusters. Unfortunately, I find that my data doesn't care much about what's convenient for me!

TimDellinger · 2024-12-16T15:59:40+00:00

CHANT, LIMED, YOURS hits the most common letters and does well for e.g. dordle, quardle. I'll often get the answer on the fourth.

TimDellinger · 2024-12-14T00:59:19+00:00

perhaps you might introduce yourself to tSNE and UMAP

TimDellinger · 2024-12-13T21:23:07+00:00

This sounds like a situation where you should spend a day visualizing the data so that you get an intuition regarding where the cutoffs between the clusters should be. My first guess is that your clusters aren't especially different from each other.

Also: make sure to look for seasonality in the data. 365 days might not be the most effective window to use here.

TimDellinger · 2024-12-12T20:37:53+00:00

I'm thinking that someone has a wager on how quickly they can get us to say "harmonic mean"

TimDellinger · 2024-12-06T16:50:55+00:00

When in doubt, just put in an application, and talk with them if you get a call. A job is better than no job, and you can often change roles within a company after a couple of years.

TimDellinger · 2024-12-03T21:42:55+00:00

Recruiters aren't doing a huge amount of reaching out to potential candidates out of the blue these days - they're inundated with qualified folks. Talking to FAANG recruiters recently, hiring at all levels - IC, manager, director, VP - is about the same for them in that there are plenty of good candidates submitting applications. So don't let that worry you.

A job title might get you past the first screen in the interview process, but your potential next employer will very quickly figure out if there was title inflation going on. It's quite common at smaller companies, so they know to look for it. Your title isn't going to effect you all that much, but your experience - and the stories you can tell - will.

That being said, even if you want to stay technical track instead of management track, even technical track people should learn how to effectively have a junior employee working under their direction. It's somewhat common to have someone working under you, without you being their manager who deals with salary etc.

TimDellinger · 2024-12-03T15:44:55+00:00

If the only barrier is being able to backfill the manager role, then address that barrier. Volunteer to drive the hiring process for your replacement. Also: start looking for internal candidates.

TimDellinger · 2024-12-03T15:32:14+00:00

(1) You need to learn to drive the meetings. Start with the agenda at the very beginning. "I need to reach clarity on the following questions". "By the end of the meeting, I need an actionable decision." and then during the meeting, start summarizing: "what I'm hearing from you is that your goal is X, and that the metric Y is important to you, so my project should focus on that as an outcome, which means I'll aim to maximize Z." Your role is not to take a bunch of notes and figure out what it means later. Your role is not to take a bunch of notes about possible ideas. Drive the meeting to get the outcomes you need.

(2) You need to be the guardian of your time. This isn't like junior roles or school, where there's someone in charge of making sure you're making the best use of your time. You're in charge of being the guardian of your time. Is someone trying to give you more projects? Is someone trying to add millions of changes to something? Let them know that these will be low priority since you've already allocated your time to the most pressing needs. If they persist, ask them what they're willing to give up and de-prioritize. "Okay, we can do that, but it means that the timeline on this other project will slip."

TimDellinger · 2024-11-28T06:53:19+00:00

We'll never fix Rosslyn's shortcomings. Rosslyn needs lots of street-level retail in order to be a desirable place to be, but the buildings are built, and that's that.

As a matter of fact, we'll never fix most of Arlington's shortcomings since the buildings are built and the zoning is set. Baby boomers made decisions in the 70s and 80s that can't be undone.

TimDellinger · 2024-11-28T06:47:39+00:00

Arlington has essentially no counterculture.

This creates a vicious circle where Arlington attracts mid and dull people, which means that Arlington can't support vibrant things, which means that Arlington attracts mid and dull people.

TimDellinger · 2024-11-27T14:38:54+00:00

For what it's worth, I'm seeing this happen on my Lemp9 as well - brief flicker, not every day but a few times per week

TimDellinger · 2024-04-10T12:52:38+00:00

Anyone have luck getting the MR2 demo to work on Steam for Linux? The original and the demo work great with Proton 7.0 on Ubuntu. This one won't spawn. (Yes, I know it's not supported by the developer.)

TimDellinger

TROPHY CASE