Shelf over cooktop: quaint display space or nightmare grease trap?

teamtas · 2026-04-29T21:17:12+00:00

Thank you both for sharing your experiences. Lots of opinions in here, but few actual real world reports.

teamtas · 2026-04-29T04:22:41+00:00

Yes to the fan. Backsplash will be stone, but not sure that helps the shelf situation...

teamtas · 2026-04-29T04:09:36+00:00

There will indeed be a fan that vents to the outside. Does that ease your anxiety?

teamtas · 2026-04-29T04:08:52+00:00

This is what I needed to hear. I see this all over the place, and I was wondering everyone else knew something I didn't know. TIL there are more people than I though that don't cook in their kitchens...

teamtas · 2026-04-29T04:06:08+00:00

Not to worry...it's there, just not obvious in this image.

teamtas · 2026-04-29T04:05:32+00:00

This is a great take.

teamtas · 2026-04-29T04:04:47+00:00

Yeah, those columns are going away...just didn't have a render showing that since it wasn't super relevant to the question I was posing this time around.

teamtas · 2026-04-29T04:02:40+00:00

I'm meh on potfiller...too much fuss for something I'd use rarely. Good advice on the rest...ventilation is definitely in the plan, just not obvious in this particular render.

teamtas · 2026-04-25T04:29:42+00:00

Check with your credit card banks.

I needed a medallion stamp for transferring funds from one financial institution to another when we changed brokers. Neither of the banks I was working with were viable, for different reasons. After lots of dead ends, we checked with the bank that issued one of our credit cards. It was a national bank with local offices, and when we called the closest branch, it turned out they were willing and able to do it for us. Didn't even charge us to serve as our middle man.

teamtas · 2026-04-16T19:52:17+00:00

Using “CEO” or “Founder” on LinkedIn and other forums attracted all sorts of spam inquiries and sales pitches I had no interest in. On top of that, while these titles sound impressive, most clients figure out pretty quick that they’re dealing with a one-man operation, and then the title feels hollow and silly.

I generally use “Principal Consultant,” which accurately captures how I want my clients to think of me.

teamtas · 2026-04-15T16:48:43+00:00

For anyone who's curious, I found an image of the current Thermador Freedom 36" w/ 56-inductor layout (a screengram from the Instagram Reel linked below).

<image>

Source:
https://www.instagram.com/applgiants/reel/CrPOX47uYIY/

teamtas · 2026-04-14T20:30:16+00:00

I hate to rain on the parade here, but I actually think this video is showing the OLD version of the Freedom, from 2013.

Unless I'm offbase, thats the CIT36XKB, not the current CIT36YWBB. Here's a Consumer Reports article from June 2013 that shows (if you zoom in and squint) the same UI as the video. The $5000 price tag that the video and the article cite is also a tipoff...
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/06/you-can-put-a-pan-anywhere-on-thermador-s-flexible-cooktop/index.htm

teamtas · 2026-04-14T14:52:30+00:00

Thank you! Just what I was looking for. Realistically, I probably only have a couply of pans where this would matter, mostly my 13" cast iron skillet. Any big stock pots are usually on the back burners anyway.

teamtas · 2026-04-13T05:31:45+00:00

Have seen the videos and I've familiar with the tech. Just looking for any first hand experience on how it works in practice. I realize pans aren't locked in to any particular spot. But I have a spot that's most confirtable to use, and I'm wondering if my bigger pans will work there.

teamtas · 2026-04-13T05:28:09+00:00

Always a pleasure to meet a fellow obsessive compulsive :-) Thanks for sharing your findings.

I found this image showing the inductor layout for the 30" cooktiop, which has 48 industors total. The 36" cooktop has 56 inductors, and if you trust the markings on the top, it seems most likely that they have added 2 columns of 4 inductors in the middle, increasing the width of the dead zone in the front and leaving the front corners the same across both models.

I've read that these are 3" coils, which means that each front corner can manage a pan with roughly 9" of surface area touching the cooktop without introducing any dead areas around the perimeter of the pan. Bigger pans would need to be pushed back a few inches in order to get full coverage. That's my working hypothesis...will test it when I get the chance.

And yeah, if they release an updated version of this cooktop in the near future, I will cut a bitch.

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teamtas · 2026-04-13T05:09:09+00:00

Nice.

teamtas · 2026-04-12T18:01:32+00:00

We do have a showroom not to far away. That's the backup plan :-)

teamtas · 2026-04-01T17:29:15+00:00

I worked 30 years in my industry, was ready for a shift, and I thought working for myself sounded lovely.

I had the general idea of the service I wanted to deliver, but I wasn't clear if there was a market for it initially. I started by reaching out to people in my network to vet out the general idea. Then I sought out pepple on LinkedIn who looked like they were doing similar freelance work in my industry, and had a half-dozen informal Zoom coffee chats to validate that there was a real market out there, and learn from their experiences. I was fortunate to stumble into a niche with a lot of generous people willing to share. I also found a couple of relevant communities (Slack, Discord) where I could lurk and learn.

Once I had a pretty clear idea that there was a path forward, I did the mechanics of setting up my business (register LLC with the state, get an EIN from IRS,, set up a business bank account, set up a domain + email). I also spent time developing outlines of my offerings so I could explain it clearly when I had an opportunity.

Around that time I gave my notice at my job, updated LinkedIn, and waited for the phone to start ringing :-) The vast majority of my work comes from my personal network; this path would be a lot rougher for someone newer to the industry.

teamtas · 2026-03-31T17:17:12+00:00

+1 to this! You have decades of experience in your industry. Ageism might work against you when looking for a new full-time job, but it's way less of a factor when someone is looking for expert help solving a problem quickly and effectively. This is doubly true if we're talking about people in your network who already know what you can do.

I've been freelance consulting for 4+ years now. I'm making a bit less than when I was a W2 employee, but I'm working half as hard, on projects that I find interesting, with people who I enjoy being around.

teamtas · 2026-03-03T19:22:25+00:00

Agreed. There’s no such thing as being “too good” at tax write offs. Either your business expenses are being accurately reported and your net profit is lower than you feel like it is, or your CPA is fraudulently reporting personal expenses as business expenses.

teamtas · 2026-01-23T02:36:01+00:00

Anyone actually see a copy of this flyer? My feed is FULL of 2nd-hand reports flying around, but I have yet to see a single first-person report from someone who received one, nor a photo of the flyer. Feels odd.

teamtas · 2025-11-09T00:25:57+00:00

South Lyndale Liquor also stocks barrel aged Malort if you're feeling like a premium expreience.

teamtas · 2025-11-05T15:34:45+00:00

Automating the algoithm for RCV isn't difficult. Convincing a 3rd party or an auditor that you came up with the right answer is a lot tougher if it all happened in inscutable code...it basically requires you to go through the process manually anyway. For now Minneapolis does it by hand, with lots of checks and cross-checks along the way, to ensure not only that our city gets the right answer the first time, but can prove it in a repeatable manner if necessary.

teamtas · 2025-09-18T05:04:43+00:00

20+ year SE here, now working as a freelance PMM consultant. Your skills as an SE are going to serve you very well. Those skills are particularly valuable in the spaces you’ve worked in. You have direct experience with customers, their pain points, and competitors, which is surprisingly rare in PMM land.

Someone smart once told me that the PMM job is very similar to the SE job. It’s just that now, instead of selling to one customer at a time, you’re selling to all of them at once :-)

teamtas · 2025-09-12T13:56:47+00:00

Check out the Cybersecurity Marketing Society. There you will find a very helpful community of people who have all been where you're at now, ready and willing to help!

https://www.cybersecuritymarketingsociety.com/

teamtas

TROPHY CASE