Minneapolis / St. Paul Steem Meetup - An amazing weekend of fun and friends

Intro

I've been following @timcliff for a while now so I saw his post a month or so ago inviting everyone to a meetup in Minneapolis and I was excited because I could actually make it. Years ago I lived in Minneapolis, but today I'm a few hundred miles away and fortunately @mad.dawg and @iamredbar (the friends who introduced me to Steem) live in the area so I was able to stay with them for the weekend.

My connection is first to @mad.dawg, I've known her for nearly 5 years at this point, and I've only gotten to know @iamredbar over the last year that they've been together and since I live out of town we've only met a couple times. I planned to take a Greyhound and the schedule showed an arrival time of 6pm on Saturday, which is right when the meetup started, so instead I planned to come on Friday and make a whole weekend of it.

Now, it was shaping up to be an entire weekend to go to the meetup, catch up with @mad.dawg, and get to know @iamredbar better, with a little exploring Minneapolis thrown in.

And frankly a break from my work was probably the best possible thing for me.

Arrival

First off, my timing--ur, uh, the meetup timing--wasn't exactly ideal since this weekend was actually their anniversary! That was glossed over politely until I had already booked my ticket and everything was in motion, otherwise I probably would have made other plans, but in the end I think I helped make even more of their celebration.

@mad.dawg had contacted a friend of @iamredbar to get him out of the house for a few hours on Friday evening when I first got to town so she could plan a little surprise for him. She had gotten a tank of helium and I helped her blow up about 100 small balloons--some with helium to rise and some with air to settle on the floor--that she literally filled the room with. It was actually pretty cool to see and is the kind of cute romantic stuff I wish we all saw more of.

After @iamredbar got home we made plans to go to the Updown Arcade Bar, which is exactly what it sounds like, basically a Dave & Busters with more adults, more alcohol, and way old school arcade style games with coins, or really metal tokens. And it was packed, which made it even more fun because I thrive in a high energy environment and calling the Updown by that name almost seems to fall short. Even better, they assure me it is much busier in the summer so I can't wait to go back!

The part of this night that is even more poetic now was when @mad.dawg asked me to play DDR. I'd never tried before and thought it would be fun. Then, I realized this requires some gear my brain just does not have. I seriously could not do it. I did not understand the patterns, the timing, or what I was supposed to do. I legitimately tried, but it was clear I couldn't do it. They both thought that it was hilarious and we moved on. This is now even more funny, given the DDR video showing a real pro in action at the meetup. Given my ineptitude, this guy is seriously impressive and blows my mind!

Both @mad.dawg and @iamredbar had to make changes to their work schedule to accommodate the meetup, and that played out with @mad.dawg being scheduled at 6am both Saturday and Sunday mornings so we didn't push too late into the evening, but still had an awesome time.

After getting home, @mad.dawg jumped into the kitchen and demanded that she prepare something for us for breakfast since she wasn't going to be around in the morning. She mixed up some waffle batter and had that ready to go for us in the fridge as she went to bed.

Morning Mall Mischievousness

We started the day on a note that had us later mumbling, "Damn waffle batter..."

You see, on Saturday morning as we stared at the batter beside the waffle iron, we realized that we had no syrup. After briefly feining helplessness, we found eggs in the fridge and decided to make some scrambled eggs instead. Quick, simple, solved.

The mumbling came later that evening when @mad.dawg asked about our breakfast and we explained there was no syrup, and being the real world friend that I am, I poked fun at her for serving waffles with no syrup. And the room went silent after she said, "You know the co-op is a block away and you could have just walked over there and bought some." I laughed and said that I obviously had no idea, but this backfired because now I had pitted @mad.dawg squarely against @iamredbar. As she glared at him with vindictive eyes, I started laughing because he was literally sitting silently in the room, doing nothing wrong, and now she was mad at him because of me. Thankfully, me laughing and pointing out the absurdity of the whole situation helped diffuse the air.

In any case, back to Saturday morning, after enjoying our eggs we headed out first to the mall so we could go to the Apple Store. You see, @iamredbar had decided to get @mad.dawg an iPad Pro for their anniversary and her birthday later this month. For those of you that missed it, this is officially a Pro-style Dating Tip™.

He actually works at the Apple Store so as we were walking through the mall he abruptly grabbed my arm and pulled me into some strange unmarked door that almost had the distinct feeling of platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter. We now walked through an empty hallway of unfinished walls composed of stacked bricks--of two different sizes--which made the whole environment slightly unsettling. Then, as we neared the promised land, he explained a new rule prohibited the peasantry like me from the warmly finished interior of these corporate confines. No worries I said, as I stood firm in the hallway scrolling through my phone. Interestingly, this underground highway is real as I saw--and spoke with--no less than 7 people over the course of about 5 minutes. I go off on this tangent just to point out that there are 'hidden layers' everywhere in the world that we just aren't aware of. The real subtext here is, start opening random doors in malls to see where they lead you and talk to anyone you meet, they are surprisingly friendly.

He had gone in to actually place the order using his employee discount. We then headed through the tunnel back toward daylight, only to walk through the mall and come in the front door of the Apple Store. We queued up in line and since everyone there knows him he was able to expedite the transaction and we were out the door quickly. Gift secured, we set off for our next adventure.

Code and Coffee

We decided to head to Caffetto Cafe to grab some coffee and play around with some code on our laptops. First off, I am a coffee shop connoisseur, having spent thousands of hours in hundreds of coffee shops over the years, and frankly I always say it's my dream to retire owning a coffee shop. This is all to say I get excited visting a new coffee shop, and Caffetto did not disappoint.

Some coffee shops are what I call retail coffee. You have the full spread of randos who roll through, grab some coffee, and continue on with the day. This is not in that category, nowhere near that in fact. The real gems in the world of coffee are those with a tangible identity and a real sense of community and that was obvious and I walked through the door. First off, @iamredbar is a regular so the barista behind the counter was quick to engage and show how she is one of the contributors to the magic of the place. Super welcoming, they both conveyed a real sense of, "Welcome to our home!" and I took it just that way.

After sitting down, the magic was reaffirmed as I settled into the weathered chair set comfortably in a non-uniform way around the deeply warn table, which itself was nestled in next to an adjoining table that plainly said, "Ain't nobody around here need no personal space, we family. Sit down and get cozy." And we did just that.

As you may have noticed from his recent posts, @iamredbar has been playing with Python and writing some scripts around Steem so he showed me some of his work. He shared his struggles getting his environment setup and we both laughed after I explained my own issues with Python2 vs. Python3 vs. Python 3.6 and then pip vs. pip3 and he only confirmed the exact same problems. I showed him some of my work with the steem-js libarary as I've just stared playing around with this myself and we had fun geeking out on Steem for a while.

Then, I showed him my Just my Tags script and I was happy to say he seemed a little blown away by that, it really does make Steemit significantly better and more usable, I don't know how you guys follow your tags around here but this is my answer.

I got to meet some of the Caffetto regulars, including @kommienezuspadt and his son. One of the biggest nuggets of wisdom I took away from this weekend was when he explained he set his son up with a Steem account and got him to start streaming his gaming on @dlive as a way for him to save some money for college--or more realistically, to buy some new games! My son is 11 years old and literally spends every available moment gaming, primarily playing Fortnite lately. In any case, I haven't set him up yet but a new Steem account will soon hit the scene to start streaming the latest and greatest games out there.

Right as I asked if he was ready for another cup of coffee, @iamredbar noted the day was getting away from us so we should head home to prepare for the meetup and the evening ahead.

Davanni's

Since I neglected to take any photos, I'll direct you to this post about the meetup which has some great shots and videos to give you the big picture.

Tim had reserved the entire back room at Davanni's and I immediately saw everyone gathered there as we walked in. It was really nice to have a separate private area for us all, since it was a decent group. We basically all gathered across two tables and settled in to introduce ourselves and share our thoughts about Steem, crypto, and the world in general. Everyone there has been around way longer than my couple of months so I not only learned a quite a bit, I got to share some of those moments of reminicising as they told me of the wild wild west of the earlier years and life before HF 19. To a very large degree, the Steem platform they described looked nothing like the world we live in today, which underscores the fact that we will evolve further into something entirely new, and hopefully more exciting and interesting.

One of the highlights at Davanni's was this moment when @kommienezuspadt realized that @jayna had just posted in the writing contest run by @vermillionfox, his girlfriend. I had a real sense of community just from my interactions online and this moment really brought that point home for me. Given that we're still kind of early in the grand scheme of things, the sort of people who are attracted to Steem are going to be open-minded, typically non-traditional, with a very broad and expansive worldview that allows for so many more possibilities than the traditional 9-to-5 rotation between work and television shows. Pardon the light cynicism, but my point is that pretty consistently everyone I meet around Steem has a mature view of the world that really aligns with my own.

And then there was pizza. Like a whole lot of pizza. Tim said there were a few more RSVPs than people in the room so we could eat well, and we did! As the food wrapped up we moved on to the prizes! There was a big prize, a tablet, as well as a few smaller prizes. And I won!

It's a 2GB USB card that I've now tucked nicely into my wallet for handy storage anytime I might need it. When I started to say that I never win @jayna pointed out the folly of pessimism and she was exactly right, optimism is a far better choice. I've had a rough couple of years and I've said that it was all going to turn in 2018 and I think this is an auspicious sign that there is a tangible shift in the right direction. I think Steem itself is another little gem in my life lately that I don't even know the significance of, so I'm excited to hear how this story plays out.

Dave & Buster's

Dave & Buster's is a literal playground, with games of every type imaginable everywhere. They give you basically a credit card with all your tokens, and man, did we have a lot of tokens, thanks Tim!

For me, the best part were the full size race car games, seriously fun! The trouble with those is that the fun is obvious so the lines are considerable and I'm impatient so that didn't get as much attention as I might have hoped. We ran the whole spectrum, from basketball and skee-ball to traditional arcade style games, and @mad.dawg's favorite, the oversized piano!

We learned we were earning 'tickets' on the games we played that could be exchanged for prizes. As expected, anything remotely cool was eleventy-billion tokens but we found something within our budget.

When we were in the prizes shop I was happy to see Damian, probably the cutest kid in the room, had one of the prizes 'off the shelf' that require some real buying power. I was glad to see that because I felt bad we didn't think to donate our tokens to him like I'm guessing many others did to give him enough for something cool. In any case, there was fun to be had by all!

In the end, everything flew by far quicker than I had expected.

MTG FTW

As things wrapped up, @iamredbar and @mad.dawg invited @treigh-c and @tarotbyfergus back to their place and we all headed that way. Even though it was nearly 10pm, I suggested making coffee and @mad.dawg was an amazing host and was happy to accommodate. I was even more excited to see @treigh-c have a cup as well, so I didn't feel like a total junky. Pfft...there are far worse vices in the world!

After settling in, the conversation turned to Magic the Gathering, a collectible card game (or CCG, staying in line with the header) that I played years ago. Ok, I'm downplaying this. I started playing in 1998, which is twenty years ago, and stopped in 2003, 15 years ago. Earlier in the day while we were at the mall @iamredbar stopped to pick up a new pack of Magic cards and the guy behind the counter introduced me to the term, "cardboard crack" which I hadn't heard before, but describes it perfectly. This game is so much fun, but the problem is that it has now been around for more than 2 decades so there are an infinite number of different cards and combinations between them so you can not only find new ways to play, but you find new reasons to start budgeting to buy those cards that complete some strategy you want to try, or just generally buying new packs to expand your collection. And then this fun little game quickly becomes an expensive, actual hobby.

I laughed and said I'm glad I don't live in town or I'd probably start buying cards today. It seriously was a lot of fun to play and to see the evolution of the game over the years, I'll definitely play the next time I'm in town and if I find anyone locally who plays I might have just been sucked back in. Again, I suppose there are worse vices if that happens.

The Way Back Home

@mad.dawg had to work at 6am again so we had said our goodbyes the night before and the next morning @iamredbar and I got up and actually had the waffles! He walked over to buy some syrup and came back with a cute little bottle about the size of his hand and explained it was the cheapest option in the store. At only $9. I felt bad, but he said it best, "After all the drama around these damn waffles we deserve to eat like kings now!" And we did.

I took an Uber to the bus station and the driver shared a hilarious story with me. He explained he's been driving for Uber a while now and late nights are prime, but the drunken sort you run into at this time of the day will often fall asleep in his car. At first he tried poking them and saying their name, but that was useless so he moved on to loud music, opening the windows in the cold of winter, and even banging on the roof. Nothing worked, until he found the solution.

"POLICE!!!!"

"Man, you wouldn't believe it. This works every single time. Instantly. Haha..."

Oh yeah, I do believe it! This says so much about us as people and the indoctrinated fear of authority and the police state. Or maybe I'm reading far too deeply into this.

The bus station is always an interesting narrative on the entire spectrum of life and I enjoyed watching this story as I waited to board my Greyhound bus. Once I was finally on the bus, I watched somewhat joyously as we drove through the downtown I once lived and worked in. I started to realize we were driving by the office I used to work at and as we got closer I was blown away to see it had been transformed into a hotel. The Embassy Suites has taken over what was once--nearly 20 years ago--a quint, nondescript office building.

Formerly the Plymouth Building, a multimillion-dollar renovation transformed this city landmark into our all-suite hotel. Enjoy a blend of modern amenities and historic details like granite staircases, marble corridors, tall entry doors and oversized guest room windows.

I am definitely going to come back to town and stay here so I can see this transformation firsthand. I am just now starting to admit that I am old, and one of the most obvious forms of that is my continued recollection of the way things used to be and how much they have changed. I'm actually one of the strongest advocates for progress, so I don't hold firmly to the past, but I do reminice somewhat romantically for those simpler times.

Really, the entire city has transformed itself since I lived here, as any active and thriving area should. I'm excited to come back soon and continue my exploration of this city that is so close to my heart.

Conclusory Thoughts

Needless to say, I had an awesome weekend. Spent some time with old friends and made a lot of new ones as well. I got to explore parts of the city I never knew and see the transformation of others I had previously known intimately. It started out by scrolling through my feed here and began with the fun idea of connecting more with Steem and grew into an amazing weekend that was all born in the seed planted by @timcliff so thank you so much once again!

I'm now thankful I took the time to recount all this so that I now have an even clearer memory when I look back on this years down the road and continue reflecting on the way things used to be.