Quinn Chrest

I finally deactivated my account and uninstalled Tik Tok. I needed to get out of that time sucking void and try to spend my time more productively.

Speaking of more winter sports, I got my dad to come down over easter and treated him to a Wild game vs the Vegas Golden Knights! Heidi and Lance joined us and we had a great time with a great view of the rink. It unfortunately did not end in a Wild win but it was a great game all the way through. Vegas is a tough team so the fact that we held them off till overtime was good to see. The final score was 2-1 with Vegas putting the nail in the coffin after scoring a cross-rink goal after the Wild pulled their goalie with 1:30 left on the clock.

Thank you to @jthingelstad for inviting me along for my first Minnesota United game at Allianz Stadium! Had a great time watching my first professional soccer game (sort of, it was a friendlies match) against St Patrick’s of Ireland. The athleticism of professional soccer players is truly amazing! GO LOONS!

You can find Jamie’s post about the game here which includes some cool pics.

Made it out to Red Lodge, MT with friends from my hometown area to try snowboarding for the first time! I have to say snowboarding is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn. It was a humbling experience after talking up a big game the week prior but man I didn’t know what was in store for me. Even though my body was sore from head to toe I had a ton of fun and plan on going again. I’ve caught somewhat of a winter sports bug after getting into hockey, trying ice skating, and now this. May need to invest in some gear and hit up Afton Alps here in Minnesota next season.

Having a good time out at Red Lodge! Second day and I’m extremely sore but determined to get this snowboarding down.

Had an awesome day out with some great company yesterday! Met up with the Thingelstad’s and went for a nice walk around Lake Harriet. Super weird going for that long of a walk this time of year with just a shirt and jeans but with the temps in the 60’s you gotta take advantage of it! @tthing asked me about memes and that sparked a discussion about the origin of the word meme from Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene. @jthingelstad did a much better job explaining the core ideology of the book than I can regurgitate back to you guys now but the topics covered definitely scratched an itch of the deep thinker inside of me so I think I better check it out. Thought I almost hurt myself after running with Tyler and Mazie. They said they were going to run ahead but I didn’t know running ahead was going to mean a full-blown sprint. My calves were not ready for that 0 to 100 😂. I would say must be nice to be young still but I don’t think I’m old enough to be allowed to say that.

After a bit, we sat down in the living room where I pet dinosaurs, watched pod racing while sitting on Tatooine, played mini golf on the coffee table, and studied the Mars rover. I understand this is a pretty farfetched but this all happened while wearing the Apple Vision Pro! Jamie ran me through various demos and I gotta say this is one of the coolest pieces of tech I’ve ever had the opportunity to use. Looking forward to how this will revolutionize the wearable tech world. Excited to see Apple build on this and improve it as well as competitors getting involved.

Joined the Thingelstad’s for a delicious dinner at Pajarito’s in Edina. We enjoyed tacos, queso fundido, brussel sprouts, and of course, don’t forget the chips and salsa. The brussel sprouts were super good! After dinner, they were off to see Dune Part Two. Jamie spoke of his love for the series over dinner so he was really looking forward to it. Go check out his blog post at thingelstad.com on his thoughts after seeing it!

Met up with some friends from college afterward to celebrate Chells birthday! We went bowling at Memory Lanes near downtown. Had a ton of fun catching up over a couple beers and throwing a bowling ball. It had been a while since the last time I went bowling so it took a while to de rust but it was a good time had by all.

Last weekend I got out with my Aunt Heidi to the 2024 Winter Beer Dabbler! It’s a giant event held at the Minnesota Fair Grounds were a ton a brewery’s showed up to give out samples of their best beers. Had a blast trying some new stuff and my favorite by far was Drekkar’s blueberry cobbler beer that was very thick and tasty! They also had stunt guys doing jumps on ATV’s, Snowmobiles, and Motocross Bikes. Managed to capture some cool mid air action pics!

Killing two birds with one stone this evening. I’ve wanted to look into other frameworks that can easily implement web API’s and learn Python. Django! That is the answer! So far I’ve worked through the first two tutorials and I have to say I’m really enjoying it. I feel like the last two years of experience I have accrued working with Restful API’s makes Django feel really easy to pick up. Don’t really know what my end goal is but a lot of roadblocks to ideas I’ve had is not knowing what to use to set up a back end of sorts to handle requests and interact with a database. Oh and did I mention that it is already preconfigured to use SQLite! So no need to worry about the database aspect either. Going to keep working through the tutorials and see if I can think of some ideas for apps to utilize this project. Would probably be a good thing for me to work through handling user logins and dealing with auth tokens.

Got down to the Mall of America to try Kura!! It’s a conveyor belt sushi place where the food rotates around the restaurant and you pay for what you take. When you are done eating the food you slide the empty plate down a shoot and grab more! It was really good just kind of spendy.

I hit my first 10 min mile today!!! Freaking dying after though 🤣

My first Wild game was amazing! Got some new found respect for the sport of hockey. Would love to go again. Thank you to my cousin Jamie for inviting me along!

Been on the weight loss journey for a couple years now and the worst thing is fighting off the hunger. I will say if you plan on going the route of caloric deficit being hungry is just something that you are going to have to be ok with. I wouldn’t say you are starving but it is good to get in tune with your body and try to differentiate between hunger wants and needs. The difference between I am bored and I want to eat something versus I need to eat lunch.

The idea that I had in the beginning was to eat low-calorie options so I could eat more. This tactic is flawed in that just because you get to eat more doesn’t mean you will stay full. So I have pivoted into eating food that has a high amount of satiation. Usually upping the amount of protein and fiber in your diet will help you feel fuller longer, but I have found the secret that I don’t hear often. POTATOES!! I have never had anything I meal prepped keep me fuller longer than the potato-based meals I started making. This is not hidden knowledge though. If you google the most satiating foods you will find that potatoes are at the top of the list, and they beat out protein by a pretty decent margin. This is due to a lot of factors but I won’t go into too much detail. The basics are it’s a complex carbohydrate, a good amount of fiber, and it’s high in volume and low in calories. All factors make potatoes more filling and take your body longer to break down.

Meals I have prepped to be more potato-focused are a taco-baked potato bowl and a sweet and spicy sweet potato bowl. For the taco baked potato bowl, I prepared taco meat using ground turkey and added bell peppers, garlic, onion, and black beans served over a bed of cut-up baked potato, and topping with salsa. The sweet and spicy sweet potato bowl is made with ground beef, bell pepper, onion, and garlic simmered in a sauce mixture of Bachan’s Original Japanese BBQ Sauce, hoisin, siracha, and apple cider vinegar, served over a bed of cut up baked sweet potato. These recipes have allowed me to meal prep lunches that fit into the 500-550 calorie range which is great for my 2000 daily goal.

I’ll update you all if I come up with some new ideas, but I’ll finish this by saying SCREW CHICKEN AND RICE GIVE ME POTATOES!

Went out to Broken Clock brewery with Heidi. They opened up a kitchen and had fresh tamales and some pablano potato soup. Great food and beer!

I made some homemade beef stir fry for dinner tonight and Rosalin says “This is so pretty you should take a picture”! Turned out pretty good 👍

Having some fun learning Kotlin in Android Studio. Spent a bit of time working on a step tracker app the last couple of days. Got navigation between a few different fragments working and a SQLite database working. The plan is to have a view for looking at all records logged, a screen to add steps, and a graph view to look at progress over time. Also might add achievements and maybe goal tracking. Pretty excited about my progress so far!

The Vikings did not play well last night… We are in a weird situation with not really having a quarterback but still had a fun time with Brandon and Cody! Would go again!

SKOL Vikings!!!

Out for a walk and tried to snap a pic of the Lignite railroad sign. Might be a bit hard to read…

I like the Black and White as recommended by @jthingelstad

Made it through security! Minot bound in an hour for Christmas. Now to find a cocktail bar and read a book.

Some app ideas that I’ve shied away from in the past involve some simple database tables but I didn’t want to pay to deploy one or worry about hosting one locally that is open on the network. For some reason, I didn’t know SQLite existed. For those of you who also have been under a rock like me, SQLite is a database engine that is self-contained within an application stored as a data file. Found out it’s popular in mobile development with IOS and Android applications. Giving the SQLite3 node package a go on a step tracking/logging application I want to build.