Had a nice little trip to Austin over the weekend. We stayed downtown. Basically, we spent 2 full days walking the city and checking out various food and beverage joints. I bought a couple tickets to a food and wine 5 course meal through the Austin Food and Wine Festival at a newer joint called Canje. I has super excited for this dinner, as this Caribbean themed joint had recently opened to a lot of fan fare from local writers. It ended up being 11 different tasting plates of food and there were definitely some highs and lows to the meal. We loved a tilefish ceviche and some braised wild boar. A jerk-seasoned ribeye was too spicy for me (and I love heat). The meal included 3 desserts which were very underwhelming. I am used to these types of dinners being narrated by a chef, or sommelier, to describe the pairings, but that was lacking. At the end of our meal, a gentleman stopped by and asked for the highs and lows and I gave him my honest feedback. Turns out he was the Executive Chef. We ended up chatting for about 20 minutes about his concept, the food, the industry and the city of Austin. I was surprised with how gracious he received our feedback, as higher end chefs can be a bit arrogant. He gave us some great info on the city and the restaurant scene and made some solid recommendations.
The only BBQ joint we could squeeze in was Coopers. They used to be consistently on the top 10 lists of Texas BBQ joints, but recently fell off due to the amount of solid new players in the marketplace. We tried their beef ribs, pork ribs, and brisket. Beef ribs were off the charts wonderful. Pork ribs and brisket were average.
The music scene was tough to navigate without buying tickets ahead of time. Tough to get in the bigger joints, and most of the smaller joints didn't start music until about the time large groups of UT college students flooded the streets. We ended up finding a small dive bar near our hotel that had live music on Saturday afternoon. Staff was super fun and we watched 2 different solo artists. First guy did a lot of looping, which isn't my cup of tea, but he was hilarious. Second guy was dang good on the guitar and sounded like Willie Nelson, even though he was probably around 25 years old. Had a great time watching him tear it up for a few hours. The best part was the people watching. Austin is proud to be the weird city in Texas, and boy is that town eccentric. One thing I loved was despite an incredibly broad spectrum of people everywhere we went, everyone was so friendly.
Highlight was spending Friday night in the East Austin area. Lazarus Brewing was legit, and packed from 4-10. We stopped before and after our meal at Canje. I was told later that East Austin is where all the locals hang out to get away from the tourists downtown. The most sobering moment was late Friday night walking by a small group of protesters. There was a young man on a bull horn who spoke for an hour non-stop on what it is like to be a minority in this country. He couldn't have been more than 25 years old, but man he put forth a strong and moving narrative.
Forgot one little tidbit. The dive bar we went for music could have almost been a replica of the bar in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I told our bartender this and he laughed. Then, we stopped and looked at me seriously asking "Which one of those clowns do you think I am like?" Seriously, it was so surreal. My wife even caught it before I mentioned anything and she asked me "so where is the Danny Devito clone?"
Was he wearing a t-shirt that was too tight in the biceps and showing you his sweet karate moves?
Maybe...
Was trying to compute what one would do for two days in Austin, MN, and then why one would seek BBQ there, and then had to recalibrate my context for what was actually happening on your trip. Thanks for sharing, sounds like a good time there!
well, there IS a bbq place in Spamtown (I can't vouch for it, since I've never been).
Two days might be over-long for that trip as a vacation.... 🙂
East Austin - were you over by Elkton? Did you try The Port? I would have tried their Smoked Brisket Sandwich
We ended up about 12-14 blocks east of I-35 on 6th street. Lazarus Brewing and Canje restaurant was as far as we got. The only BBQ we hit was Coopers downtown. Can't wait to get down there again and explore some more.
I don't understand why MLB would announce the Gold Glove winners on a Sunday night. It's almost like they don't want anyone to notice.
AFL report:
Saturday--Scottsdale 11, Peoria 7.
Matt Wallner was 1-for-5 with a double and two RBIs.
Andrew Bechtold was 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, two runs, and two RBIs.
Kody Funderburk struck out six in four innings, giving up two runs on four hits and no walks.
Evan Sisk pitched a perfect inning and struck out one.
No games Sunday.
Andrew Bechtold is batting .234/.345/.319 in 47 at-bats.
Michael Helman is batting .256/.347/.302 in 43 at-bats.
Matt Wallner is batting .244/.352/.533 with four home runs in 45 at-bats.
Zach Featherstone has an ERA of 9.82 and a WHIP of 2.45 with 11 strikeouts in 7.1 innings.
Kody Funderburk has an ERA of 7.36 and a WHIP of 2.11 with 19 strikeouts in 14.2 innings.
Cody Laweryson has an ERA of 1.54 and a WHIP of 0.86 with 16 strikeouts in 11.2 innings.
Evan Sisk has an ERA of 9.82 and a WHIP of 1.77 with 9 strikeouts in 7.1 innings.
Scottsdale is 8-14, in second place in the AFL East, four games behind Mesa. The season ends of November 19, with the championship game to be played November 20.
The @Twins have launched their new tech accelerator, announcing 10 startups from the sports technology and entertainment sectors as the inaugural cohort for the team’s 13-week program this off-season. https://t.co/KHivVHA1Tg
Why? Techstars did the same thing w/ Target for retail/supply chain setups. Minneapolis has quite a few sport centered late stage startups already in the area to grab mentors from.
I don't see what the benefit is to the Twins. I am cynical that this will cause real innovation in the "make fan experience nicer" arena or in the "make the Twins more money" arena. Seems a hand wave over here to distract from the "invest deeper into gambling" over there.
BUT I'M MOST LIKELY WRONG as my life has led me from extreme programming tech advocate to becoming entirely cynical about the value-to-humanity of these endeavors. 🙂
Gambling Twins NFTs.
I'm with you there on a lot of that. Techstars has a pretty good track record, so I'm sure the Twins will make some money on this w/ their part of the companies ownership.
Fascinating, and somewhat dispiriting. I wonder what Radcliffe's situation is now, given the apparent disagreement over this scout's continued utility to the organization. Also, while the legal reasoning seems clear (to this lay person), it's still shitty of the organization not to have invited him to compete for a new, domestic scouting position.
Also the Twins had a scout in Sweden and in South Africa? I'm guessing it was someone's side hustle and not a full-time gig.
I volunteer for the Tahiti scout position.
Don’t look now, but Cher and the Osmond Brothers have arrived and it just got white people funky up in here ... pic.twitter.com/bf5N9IyjjH
What would it look like of the wolves were throwing games? It would have to look pretty similar to this.
how do you get two 24 seconds violations to start overtime? Its so Wolvesian.
Urp.
A metallurgist pleaded guilty to fraud after she spent decades faking the results of strength tests on steel that was being used to make U.S. Navy submarines https://t.co/sVkLeoaNmd (via AP)
Had a nice little trip to Austin over the weekend. We stayed downtown. Basically, we spent 2 full days walking the city and checking out various food and beverage joints. I bought a couple tickets to a food and wine 5 course meal through the Austin Food and Wine Festival at a newer joint called Canje. I has super excited for this dinner, as this Caribbean themed joint had recently opened to a lot of fan fare from local writers. It ended up being 11 different tasting plates of food and there were definitely some highs and lows to the meal. We loved a tilefish ceviche and some braised wild boar. A jerk-seasoned ribeye was too spicy for me (and I love heat). The meal included 3 desserts which were very underwhelming. I am used to these types of dinners being narrated by a chef, or sommelier, to describe the pairings, but that was lacking. At the end of our meal, a gentleman stopped by and asked for the highs and lows and I gave him my honest feedback. Turns out he was the Executive Chef. We ended up chatting for about 20 minutes about his concept, the food, the industry and the city of Austin. I was surprised with how gracious he received our feedback, as higher end chefs can be a bit arrogant. He gave us some great info on the city and the restaurant scene and made some solid recommendations.
The only BBQ joint we could squeeze in was Coopers. They used to be consistently on the top 10 lists of Texas BBQ joints, but recently fell off due to the amount of solid new players in the marketplace. We tried their beef ribs, pork ribs, and brisket. Beef ribs were off the charts wonderful. Pork ribs and brisket were average.
The music scene was tough to navigate without buying tickets ahead of time. Tough to get in the bigger joints, and most of the smaller joints didn't start music until about the time large groups of UT college students flooded the streets. We ended up finding a small dive bar near our hotel that had live music on Saturday afternoon. Staff was super fun and we watched 2 different solo artists. First guy did a lot of looping, which isn't my cup of tea, but he was hilarious. Second guy was dang good on the guitar and sounded like Willie Nelson, even though he was probably around 25 years old. Had a great time watching him tear it up for a few hours. The best part was the people watching. Austin is proud to be the weird city in Texas, and boy is that town eccentric. One thing I loved was despite an incredibly broad spectrum of people everywhere we went, everyone was so friendly.
Highlight was spending Friday night in the East Austin area. Lazarus Brewing was legit, and packed from 4-10. We stopped before and after our meal at Canje. I was told later that East Austin is where all the locals hang out to get away from the tourists downtown. The most sobering moment was late Friday night walking by a small group of protesters. There was a young man on a bull horn who spoke for an hour non-stop on what it is like to be a minority in this country. He couldn't have been more than 25 years old, but man he put forth a strong and moving narrative.
Forgot one little tidbit. The dive bar we went for music could have almost been a replica of the bar in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I told our bartender this and he laughed. Then, we stopped and looked at me seriously asking "Which one of those clowns do you think I am like?" Seriously, it was so surreal. My wife even caught it before I mentioned anything and she asked me "so where is the Danny Devito clone?"
Was he wearing a t-shirt that was too tight in the biceps and showing you his sweet karate moves?
Maybe...
Was trying to compute what one would do for two days in Austin, MN, and then why one would seek BBQ there, and then had to recalibrate my context for what was actually happening on your trip. Thanks for sharing, sounds like a good time there!
well, there IS a bbq place in Spamtown (I can't vouch for it, since I've never been).
Two days might be over-long for that trip as a vacation.... 🙂
East Austin - were you over by Elkton? Did you try The Port? I would have tried their Smoked Brisket Sandwich
We ended up about 12-14 blocks east of I-35 on 6th street. Lazarus Brewing and Canje restaurant was as far as we got. The only BBQ we hit was Coopers downtown. Can't wait to get down there again and explore some more.
I don't understand why MLB would announce the Gold Glove winners on a Sunday night. It's almost like they don't want anyone to notice.
AFL report:
Saturday--Scottsdale 11, Peoria 7.
Matt Wallner was 1-for-5 with a double and two RBIs.
Andrew Bechtold was 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, two runs, and two RBIs.
Kody Funderburk struck out six in four innings, giving up two runs on four hits and no walks.
Evan Sisk pitched a perfect inning and struck out one.
No games Sunday.
Andrew Bechtold is batting .234/.345/.319 in 47 at-bats.
Michael Helman is batting .256/.347/.302 in 43 at-bats.
Matt Wallner is batting .244/.352/.533 with four home runs in 45 at-bats.
Zach Featherstone has an ERA of 9.82 and a WHIP of 2.45 with 11 strikeouts in 7.1 innings.
Kody Funderburk has an ERA of 7.36 and a WHIP of 2.11 with 19 strikeouts in 14.2 innings.
Cody Laweryson has an ERA of 1.54 and a WHIP of 0.86 with 16 strikeouts in 11.2 innings.
Evan Sisk has an ERA of 9.82 and a WHIP of 1.77 with 9 strikeouts in 7.1 innings.
Scottsdale is 8-14, in second place in the AFL East, four games behind Mesa. The season ends of November 19, with the championship game to be played November 20.
This very confuses me.
Why? Techstars did the same thing w/ Target for retail/supply chain setups. Minneapolis has quite a few sport centered late stage startups already in the area to grab mentors from.
I don't see what the benefit is to the Twins. I am cynical that this will cause real innovation in the "make fan experience nicer" arena or in the "make the Twins more money" arena. Seems a hand wave over here to distract from the "invest deeper into gambling" over there.
BUT I'M MOST LIKELY WRONG as my life has led me from extreme programming tech advocate to becoming entirely cynical about the value-to-humanity of these endeavors. 🙂
Gambling Twins NFTs.
I'm with you there on a lot of that. Techstars has a pretty good track record, so I'm sure the Twins will make some money on this w/ their part of the companies ownership.
Makes sense!
Here's a little peek under the hood of the Falvine scouting strategy.
Fascinating, and somewhat dispiriting. I wonder what Radcliffe's situation is now, given the apparent disagreement over this scout's continued utility to the organization. Also, while the legal reasoning seems clear (to this lay person), it's still shitty of the organization not to have invited him to compete for a new, domestic scouting position.
Also the Twins had a scout in Sweden and in South Africa? I'm guessing it was someone's side hustle and not a full-time gig.
I volunteer for the Tahiti scout position.
Great! Now Stevie's blind AND deaf.
And now so am I
Give this man a dollar.
On the bright side, "that which does not kill us makes us stronger. "
Hmmm. Wonder where a guy could pick up one of those sweet jumpsuits.
Twins bring San Diego closer to home and hire Jayce Tingler.
Seems like a good hire. Mike Bell's absence seems to be missed (rightfully so) especially early in the season.
saw the side comment and tried to think of who the Padre's closer was
yep
Well, I’m a bit surprised. I didn’t expect Tingler to stay in San Diego, but I sure didn’t expect him to wind up in Minneapolis.
Oh, no! Not...The Tingler!
Same old Wolves
Somehow just got dumber
Haha, just the way they drew it up
this game…
so. many. stupid. turnovers.
What would it look like of the wolves were throwing games? It would have to look pretty similar to this.
how do you get two 24 seconds violations to start overtime? Its so Wolvesian.
Urp.
NY Times link