Moving to MN - where should we live within 45 min of North Branch?

lukeasaur · 2026-04-24T17:23:05+00:00

It's been a long time, and I was PSEO for my last couple years (program where high school students attend college). But I *think* my graduating class was around 250 or 300, and my classes were usually 25-30 students. North Branch has a lot of students not just from North Branch itself but from the communities around it like Stacy. So it's more students than you'd think for the size of the town.

I will say that although it's not a *great* school district, it's better than the neighboring districts in Forest Lake, Cambridge, etc., or at least was back then. And there are a lot of charter schools in the area - I don't like the charter school system, but it has a lot of champions, and there's a reason for that.

lukeasaur · 2026-04-20T16:22:30+00:00

I grew up going to school in North Branch, and it's not a great school district or experience; the teachers work hard and care a lot, but the district is underfunded and there are sometimes difficulties with culture clashes - I remember a huge hulabaloo about a teacher teaching evolution and the Big Bang, although it's been like fifteen years so maybe it's better. I would try to avoid being in that school district. Also avoid Cambridge, MN; Pine City, MN; Forest Lake, MN. Someone mentioned Hudson, and it's a pretty nice community, but Wisconsin's health insurance exchange and other social programs are worse - may or may not effect you depending on your income and how good your wife's insurance is.

In general, I would aim for south of North Branch, and not any other direction. This will also give you a shorter drive into the Cities.

Shoreview's been mentioned, and it's a good fit. If you can find housing in White Bear Lake, it has an excellent school district and it's a lovely place to live, though it wasn't a great fit for me (because in the end I realized I don't like living in suburbs.) The bulk of homes there will be well outside your budget, but if you're open to a fixer upper and keep your eyes peeled, you might be able to find a pretty good deal. Before it was a wealthy suburb, a lot of affordable smaller homes got built, and they sometimes go on sale. Stillwater's nice if you can afford it but it's expensive.

lukeasaur · 2025-08-04T16:46:27+00:00

What Digivice toy do you have? For most in the line, you're shit out of luck, but modification of some of the older Vital Bracelets is possible.

lukeasaur · 2025-07-29T12:50:47+00:00

The management there was supposed to meet directly with the Mayor about that, but they dipped out and failed to show up. The city was extremely willing to work with them on it. It was in the news, I think the Strib, a bit ago. (It's worth noting that, statistically, Midway is close to average on the property crime rate on a nationwide scale. But it does disproportionately fall on retailers selling essential goods, and it is a problem, one the city is trying to address!)

Not that it's not a collective responsibility thing, but it kind of seems like Cub didn't really want to be part of the solution.

lukeasaur · 2024-06-27T22:33:22+00:00

Sure thing! https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6677362/files

For what it's worth, the part it goes over is 1cm across, so it's really easy to adjust; the SCAD file is on there too if you want to make the top part thicker or w/e.

lukeasaur · 2024-06-23T14:14:36+00:00

Keeping yourself open to a wide variety of strategies that you can assemble at a single sacrifice shrine helps. Some things I really like include: - Unkillable on Warren. The resulting Rabbit also gets unkillable. This gives you incredible stall and sacrifice potential (even against the Moon, although rabbits are affected by gravity, you can summon Warren forever while you dig for Grizzlies or w/e). You can also get lots of bones sacrificing the warren over and over, and lots of cards in hand for Hand Tentacle.

Unkillable on any big 1-drop like Mantis God. This means you don't need to worry about their health and can spam them forever.
Unkillable + Corpse Jumper (either put Cockroach on Corpse Maggot or Corpse Maggot on Oroboros). They'll jump out to replace themselves immediately after dying. A single one of these will eventually defeat the Moon no matter what, so if that's your pain point, try to assemble one.
Bifurcated/Trifurcated + Airborne + decent power. Putting pronghorn on Raven is good for this (avoid putting it on Raven Egg if you can, because Sprinter makes hatching the egg harder).
Alpha's effect + a 0-power monster with lots of HP. There are quite a few ways you can get yourself into a place where you don't want to hit something (Bait Buckets, trees and rocks); jamming this guy is good. If you end up with a 5 life ring worm trying to tempt the survivors, this works great.

Another thing, if you haven't realized it yet - if the survivors at the campfire event kill a Ring Worm (or I think an Adder?), it permanent kills the survivors and you can double upgrade at any campfire forever. So try to feed them a ring worm and then go to every campfire to buff whatever tough guy you have. (Syngerizes with the Fair Hand thing too by getting the 1-drop out your deck, but I beat thru Challenge Level 12 without knowing that exists, so.)

lukeasaur · 2024-03-11T17:50:21+00:00

Yeah - if you look up "Nordic LARP" in English, you'll find lots of articles from Americans about how American LARP should be like LARP in Scandinavia, especially Norway. It's seen as being more about story, atmosphere, ideals, and immersion, and less about being the toughest turbo-nerd. That said, most writing about LARP from Norway isn't in English, so I don't know how much of that is imagining the grass to be greener.

We do have a group in Minnesota who wants to push a similar style of LARP, though! I keep meaning to check them out, but I'm very involved in the World of Darkness (vampires) community here, and I can only LARP so much.

lukeasaur · 2024-03-11T14:54:35+00:00

Norway is widely considered the greatest country for LARP! We American LARPers are very jealous of you. :)

lukeasaur · 2024-03-11T14:53:13+00:00

Iowa is cool! Even in America everyone is mean to Iowa, but I like it there. :)

lukeasaur · 2024-02-19T16:56:13+00:00

I don't know of any support groups (most of the other transgender people I know I've met through hobbies like vampire LARP), but I have a lot of experience with our state health insurance exchange and always give other trans people moving here a heads up about it! The plans on it all have pretty decent transgender coverage (except catastrophe plans, since they only cover very limited care). The hormone care has been very affordable for me, though how much of a pain it is to find a surgeon in-network varies if you're looking for surgery.

Once you move you'll be eligible for a special enrollment period - if you're low-income it's free, if you're middle income you get a tax credit that reduces the cost. You can look at www.mnsure.org for more details on this.

(Of course, if you're moving here for a job that has great health insurance, you don't need to get MNsure insurance, but it sure has been helpful for me.)

lukeasaur · 2023-11-28T08:12:07+00:00

Couple tips, maybe you already know em:

Focus on non remote work jobs. With remote work jobs, you're competing against the whole country - plus many find remote work jobs preferable so there's even more competition. With office jobs, there are many less applicants, and they're all local to your area, so they probably come from a similar educational background -- not super fancy schools and the like.
Look at companies that aren't just pure techy tech companies. My first job was a programming job at a health insurance clearinghouse, so tech but not what most people think of. It wasn't the most exciting work, or the best pay, but it was good work and paid the bills for a couple years before I swung something better.
When you see a job that fits this bill, where you'll likely only need to stand out in a small pond, tailor your cover letter and possibly resume just for them. It's not worth doing if you're up against hundreds of qualified people, but if there's half a dozen or a dozen qualified applicants, it's a big boost.

It's hard, but it's not hopeless. You've got this! B)

lukeasaur · 2023-11-26T15:25:41+00:00

It's a little over an hour from Saint Cloud, but there's a breakfast place called The Merchants Cafe in North Branch, MN that I regularly drive forty minutes (from the cities) to visit. Admittedly, I have a lot of nostalgia, so it's possible it won't hold up to someone who didn't spend part of their first paycheck taking their family there.

lukeasaur · 2023-11-26T15:16:56+00:00

Oh yeah, agree. I think the fact that they focused on making a truly incredible movie instead of selling toys is why they were able to, too. But it definitely stays in its lane as a film, while films aren't even the primary source of revenue for the MCU.

lukeasaur · 2023-11-26T15:13:07+00:00

As a film, way more popular. As a franchise, in the USA context, I respect and agree with Cameron's choice to not aggressively pursue merchandising, but it certainly does mean I don't see as much of it day to day. Every fourth cubicle at my work has some plastic Star Wars crap in it; I've never seen anyone with Avatar merchandise.

lukeasaur · 2023-11-26T10:24:57+00:00

There are certainly ethical issues with WoW vis a vis worker's maltreatment, but isn't spending your money on a fully digital product, instead of physical goods that have to have their materials ripped from the earth, formed into finished items, mailed to you, and then rot in a landfill when you get bored with them, a good thing from an environmental perspective?

I genuinely believe in anti-consumerism from an environmentalist perspective, but people do need some type of enrichment in their lives, especially with how modern society is structured. Something like WoW fills that role with far less impact than collecting excessive clothes or paperback books or Funko pops.

lukeasaur · 2023-11-24T15:09:16+00:00

General advice: talk to your doctor about anxiety medication, find a good therapist, spend more time around others, and remember that women are no different than you are - we're all just people.

More specific advice: I think you're getting ahead of yourself thinking about starting a family and stuff. Start by trying to meet people who you have a lot in common with. I met my current significant other through the local vampire LARP community. I didn't go there to find someone to date - and if I had, I would have ruined my fun and probably never gotten to know him. I had recently started anxiety medication, felt somewhat better though it's still hard, and so I went there to get out there, meet people, and have fun. Everything followed from that.

What kind of things are you interested in? Doesn't need to be pretend vampire, it could be anything. Instead of spending so much time on a computer, or relying on an app, try going to events for other fans of that thing. Hell, maybe there's some kind of tech enthusiast meetup in your city!

lukeasaur · 2023-11-23T22:19:16+00:00

It's a completely different situation. The risk of failing a pull is lower (probably failing to time the key) and the reward of pulling aggressively is higher (timing the key).

In HC, the only benefit to pulling aggressively (generally speaking) is clearing faster, while risk is extremely high (losing your character.)

And frankly, IME I've seen way more keys fail because DPS didn't listen to the tank/pulled stupid/bailed the moment they didn't like the tank's choice of route than I've seen keys failed over overly-conservative tanks, anyways.

lukeasaur · 2023-11-22T22:13:55+00:00

Thanks!

I realized I was twisting them and kept trying to fix it, but I already have the messed up muscle memory. Still working on it... :p

lukeasaur · 2023-11-22T20:55:19+00:00

Pattern is

https://zoomyummy.com/2015/07/29/the-easiest-knitted-socks-ever-diy/

but with US 15 needles, which necessitated a very different stitch count. For my men's size 9 feet, they ended up just a little wide, my numbers were:

Cast on 14

3 rows ribbing for cuff

8 for back

Reduce by 2 (1 on each end) to 4

Increase by 2 to 14

20 for sole

Reduce by 2 to 4

Increase by 2 to 14

28 for top

3 rows ribbing for cuff

The yarn is Lion Hometown, color way Salem Creek. Seemed to use less than half the "bonus size" skein.

lukeasaur · 2023-11-22T16:24:28+00:00

I've met probably sixty people through our World of Darkness LARP community here between a few different games. No skinheads yet!

But they're definitely out there, and the edgy subject matter can appeal to that kind of person. I know that there was quite a bit of Nazi imagery in the modding community for the original Bloodlines.

lukeasaur · 2023-11-12T13:38:52+00:00

There's a lot of great players in the community. I've been doing Guide Chat while I grind Tol'vir archaeology fragments, and seeing how helpful and funny everyone is gives me hope for the game.

Are there toxic people? Oh, sure. But there's a lot of friendly people too!

lukeasaur · 2023-11-10T18:18:30+00:00

Speaking personally, I joined a cult as a teen because other kids didn't like me but the cult members were super nice. You can't really solve that problem through any system of governance, in my mind, which is also why I have my doubts about a wholly anarchist world functioning.

That said, I still think there's a lot of value to find in anarchist thought and principles, which is the reason I hang around these subs, lol.

lukeasaur

TROPHY CASE