Yeah, it’s another 2-hour episode. Jay Miller is back to talk retail therapy, keyboards, and Tetris. We threw in the usual grAPPtitude picks, so don’t miss ’em!

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Show Links

• Little Snitch
• Next-gen Ergonomics Moonlander
• Ultimate Hacking Keyboard-The keyboard. For professionals.
• Riser 60
• Model OLED
• Model OLED GB Starts on 2024.1.12
• New NES Tetris Technique: Faster Than Hypertapping!
• CurlyQ
• Shapez
• Adobe Express

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Transcript

401

[00:00:00] Christina:

[00:00:01] Christina: You’re listening to Overtired. I’m Christina Warren, joined as always by Brett Terpstra and Jeff Severins Gunzel. And this week, our special guest is one of our favorite return guests, Mr. Jay Miller. Welcome, everybody.

[00:00:18] Jeff: Timber!

[00:00:18] Brett: Hey.

[00:00:19] Jay: up!

[00:00:20] Jeff: Hi, Jay.

[00:00:21] Jay: Always a pleasure, always a pleasure to be here, uh, and then I’ll go back and listen to it later and go, why the hell did I say the things that I said?

[00:00:29] Christina: this is one of the reasons I do not listen to podcasts that I’ve been on. Like, it’s weird. I will re watch videos that I, that I do a million times to go over in my head every little thing that I did wrong and to assess my My performance and go, okay, you could have done this better, this better, or oh, that was actually a really good performance.

[00:00:47] Christina: Um, podcasts, I don’t because it’s too cringe. And I also don’t want to be reminded of the things that I said that off the cuff of my, my tongue that I was like, oh yeah, that was probably pissing people off. Sorry about that. [00:01:00] Whoops.

[00:01:01] Jay: See, I’m like the exact opposite. I will go back and listen to a podcast because I’m just like, eh, no one cares. Like, no one listens to this. The, I think, um, another podcaster I listened to like said, your audience isn’t real. Until they prove it, they’re not real. So, but like, videos, I refuse to watch myself do anything on video, because I will nitpick the hell out of myself.

[00:01:23] Jay: And then Jeff will be like, Oh, Jade did this video one time. And I’ll go back and I’ll look at it and be

[00:01:27] Jeff: yeah, that happened.

[00:01:28] Jay: like, God, my hair. What was I doing?

[00:01:31] Christina: like, you’re like, what was going on? See, it’s weird. I think that we do them for the same reasons. Like I, I, it, The reason I don’t go back and list a podcast is because they’re not real, whereas it’s my perfectionism nature, uh, that I’m like, oh no, but the video is real, and that will have consequences, so I need to be aware of that.

[00:01:50] Jeff: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

[00:01:53] Ranting about Apple’s Vido Reactions

[00:01:53] Brett: Um, um, um, um, um. Oh, I forgot. I had a, I had like a topic. I had a [00:02:00] topic and then Jay’s has reactions on, on his camera. And it was like, it was popping up random bubbles. And I got distracted, like checking my reaction settings. And I totally lost this topic that was brewing in my mind.

[00:02:14] Christina: Can I can I okay, I gotta rant on that then, because They know that this is a problem. Apple, uh, meaning they. Apple knows that this reaction bullshit is a problem and that it has been a problem since the beta. People have reported it. People internally, uh, according to sources closest to the information, have reported it to very high up people.

[00:02:32] Christina: This is supposed to be fixed. Um,

[00:02:34] Jeff: They’ve gone to Steve Jobs grave.

[00:02:37] Christina: I mean, Steve Jobs would not put up with this. I’m not one of those people who ever

[00:02:41] Jeff: put up with Steve Jobs.

[00:02:42] Christina: Well, I mean, I, but, but I’m one of those people who never wants to invoke the, this wouldn’t have happened under Steve. Cause it’s

[00:02:48] Jeff: Yeah, yeah,

[00:02:48] Christina: False fallacy thing. It’s a bullshit thing to do, but I will say this.

[00:02:51] Christina: This is some sort of like slap sloppy ass like bad program managed bad like product development like bullshit When you have a [00:03:00] feature like this that you highlight and tout Somebody wanted it in the fucking keynote so that they could get promoted. That’s really what it was about they didn’t bother to actually think about the implications about what it would mean test it or do anything with any of the you know feedback and it’s Bad.

[00:03:18] Christina: And, you know, makes people like, like Brett have to check their reaction settings to make sure that his settings are correct so that you’re not, with your fucking therapist, having balloons coming out when you’re talking about the death of someone. Like, genuinely. Like, what the fuck? This is such a bad feature.

[00:03:33] Christina: All right, my rant’s over.

[00:03:34] Jeff: Well,

[00:03:35] Brett: meanwhile, Jeff is cycling through

[00:03:38] Jay: found the button,

[00:03:39] Jeff: Jeff is cycling through all of them. What about death? Uh, hold on. I can do balloons. Um,

[00:03:45] Brett: Well, because the, the, the visual cue that turns on balloons is, uh, like a peace sign. And when I’m talking to my therapist and I am most frustrated, I, I do, like, listeners can’t see this, but I, [00:04:00] like, put my hand on my head in a way that looks like I’m holding up a peace sign. Um, and it’s more of like a look of frustration or like,

[00:04:10] Jeff: a cry for help just a little bit now that I’m watching you do it.

[00:04:12] Brett: and then I’ll be doing that and then all of a sudden balloons will come up and it’s always during like the hardest part of therapy for me, but I figured out how to turn it off.

[00:04:22] Brett: It doesn’t just turn itself back on. So it’s, it’s cool. It should be opt in. Um, it should not be on by default,

[00:04:31] Jay: The stupid thing is it’s based on the application, which is like, okay, cool, so Zoom, gotta turn it off. Okay, Teams, gotta turn it off. Slack, gotta turn it off.

[00:04:40] Christina: see, that’s the bullshit. That, that right there to me is, that’s, that’s terrible design. And like, that’s the sort of thing where like, oh great, yeah, you’re making this available. Great, Apple finally listening, making their Query APIs available to other apps for once. Awesome. But if it’s going to be that way, maybe have a, I don’t know, if it’s part of a video app, have it as a toggle if you’re, if it [00:05:00] doesn’t work well, which, like, I don’t know, is Apple really the best company in AI?

[00:05:04] Christina: Um, hmm, no,

[00:05:07] Brett: It really should only be enabled by default for FaceTime. Like, I can’t imagine any other video circumstance where I would want balloons or fireworks or hearts popping up.

[00:05:21] Christina: Right, right. I mean, especially it’s like, yeah, because basically what they’re saying is, yeah, we want to take our fun little whimsical things we’re doing for your personal conversations and insert them in apps that, other than Discord, are almost universally not going to be used for personal conversations.

[00:05:36] Christina: And even in Discord you’re like, actually, motherfuckers, I, I, I want to control what my video looks like. Because I might be streaming this.

[00:05:44] Jeff: This makes me want, like, a supercut of, like, this thing getting triggered on OnlyFans videos or something. Um, I’m gonna just search Mac OS Reactions Supercut.

[00:05:55] Brett: heh.

[00:05:56] Christina: Yeah,

[00:05:57] Brett: Uh,

[00:05:58] Jeff: Anyway.

[00:05:59] Mental Health Corner Part 1

[00:05:59] Brett: so that [00:06:00] was, that was therapeutic, I think, for everybody. Speaking of therapy Um, hey, what Jay, would you like to kick off the mental health corner?

[00:06:09] Jay: Yeah, so, this is, I guess, uh, a public announcement. Mental Health Corner for me, which is great. Um, so, Jeff gave me the calendar invite for every single Overtired that’s scheduled.

[00:06:25] Christina: amazing.

[00:06:26] Jay: I guess, I don’t know, am I joining the

[00:06:29] Brett: I guess. I

[00:06:30] Jeff: By the end of this year, like, every, it’s just gonna build, we’re gonna have five people, now we have six people, now we have seven people.

[00:06:37] Jay: But, uh, yeah. We could talk about it, but I, uh, yeah, I, I don’t know what’s been going on. I mean, everyone around me has COVID, but I’ve been dodging that bullet. Like, uh, it’s been, it’s been wild. And then, uh, I’ve just been fighting these like really bad headaches and I’ve been depressed as hell. And a lot of that [00:07:00] was.

[00:07:00] Jay: Over the holidays, I took, I took almost all of December off. Um, and then after, you know, talking to some people, there was almost like a question of like, do I take more time off? But I was off for three weeks. We had family coming through. Um, then they left and then they got COVID and I was like, yes, miss that one.

[00:07:17] Jay: Um, unless I’m the problem. And then I got back to work and It was this pure, just like, I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to do this. Um, my retail therapy is out of this world. I didn’t get. A lot of things that I wanted for Christmas, which is fine because we were like on a budget. So, you know, New Year begins, I buy a 3D printer, I buy a whole bunch of, um, I got the Ender, is it Ender 3 V3 KE?

[00:07:51] Jay: It’s like, basically like the, their Ender 3 like slightly better series that can Print [00:08:00] faster than the bed will actually allow it to. Um, so yeah, I feel like I overpaid but not by much. It was like 300. Um,

[00:08:09] Jeff: I have the same printer.

[00:08:11] Jay: oh cool. Yeah, I mean it’s solid. It’s just like

[00:08:14] Jeff: Yeah, I

[00:08:14] Jay: You can you can print up to 500, you know Millimeters per second or something like that and then literally it just throws your print like off the thing and i’m like, okay Maybe I can’t.

[00:08:25] Jay: Um I’ve done that I bought um And, well, I should say my, my employer bought because I have a office allowance and it resets at the beginning of the year. Um, I bought a, a nice ortho linear split keyboard to help fight my arthritis stuff that I’m going through. Um, I don’t necessarily look at the keys while I’m typing, but I have zero confidence in my typing skills.

[00:08:52] Jay: So, like, that’s been fun. Um, and we were, we were kind of waxing poetic about Having to [00:09:00] use your thumbs for multiple buttons that are in a different location now and like Nitpicking it to death of like, should, should the three rows of thumb buttons be space tab return? Should it be return space tab?

[00:09:14] Jay: Should it be command option? And I’m just like, okay, I’m just going to type until I’m comfortable and then go back and fix the discomfort that’s still there.

[00:09:24] Brett: Can we, can we come back to the keyboard conversation? I have like so many, so many things to say, but I don’t want to interrupt the mental health corner. Um. But yeah,

[00:09:34] Christina: have things I want to say about keyboards and I want to hear

[00:09:36] Brett: this

[00:09:36] Jeff: But have you, but have you,

[00:09:37] Brett: keyboard episode. I’m

[00:09:39] Jeff: Jay, have you, have you finished your inventory of retail therapy?

[00:09:43] Jay: Um, bought, I mean, everything else has been kind of like small purchases, uh, you know, you buy a new 3D printer, that means you gotta buy like 100 worth of filament and, you know, you, you use your sister’s college email address to get a [00:10:00] discount on like all the CAD software,

[00:10:02] Christina: Yeah.

[00:10:04] Jay: so

[00:10:04] Christina: good, good, good for you for having a sister who still has like a working, uh, like college email

[00:10:10] Jay: Oh, she’s still in college.

[00:10:11] Christina: Well, I mean, well, good for you for that, too. Like, my, well, my sister never graduated from college, um, uh, and so, uh, that, I, I can’t, I can’t use that. Um, my, my college email lasted a really long time, and then it stopped working, and I’ve, I’ve, low key, I’ve done, I’ve tried to do the math.

[00:10:27] Christina: I’m sorry to be interrupting, um, your mental health slash therapy, um, uh, corner, uh, retail therapy corner. Sorry. Um, but, um, I’ve done the math a few times and it doesn’t quite work out where I’m like, should I just enroll in a community college class to get the discount on stuff? And then I’m like,

[00:10:43] Brett: So here, here’s good for you for actually paying for software, even if it’s with an EDU discount.

[00:10:50] Christina: agreed.

[00:10:51] Brett: Cause you could probably steal that stuff.

[00:10:53] Jay: Yeah. I mean, a lot of

[00:10:55] Christina: make it harder.

[00:10:57] Jay: I’m just lazy. Like, it’s like, I don’t want to, [00:11:00] and, and the free versions, like they have free versions, but it’s like, okay, if you use like Fusion 360, you can have 10 save files. Like what? Like, that’s stupid. Um,

[00:11:12] Brett: Are there cracks out there for subscription apps?

[00:11:15] Christina: There are, but they’re hard. So this has been like, and Autodesk is notorious about like, and this goes back to the 80s, like this goes back their entire time, like they used to make people use fucking dongles, like special dongles, like through

[00:11:29] Jeff: Pro Tools. Like Pro

[00:11:30] Jay: yeah.

[00:11:31] Christina: yeah.

[00:11:31] Brett: my dad was an engineer and he always had AutoCAD. And yeah, I remember

[00:11:35] Christina: So, so they are like the worst about that stuff. Now, are there ways? Yes. Um, no, I don’t know if you’re using, cause I haven’t used any AutoCAD stuff in, in forever. Um, I’m assuming that Fusion 360 or whatever works on a Mac and on Windows. Usually these cracks only work on Windows, but, um, and, and you have to do things.

[00:11:54] Christina: If you do use it on a Mac, you’ve got to use things like, Oh, what’s the, um, what’s your favorite app that like is, is basically like [00:12:00] the, the network blocker. Um.

[00:12:02] Jay: like,

[00:12:03] Brett: Little Snitch.

[00:12:04] Christina: Yes, yes, yeah, like a little snitch, like if you have like certain, you know, like block lists or whatever for it to go out to the servers, you know, you can get certain things working, but, um, I mean, I haven’t looked into the Autodesk stuff, I assume people have things that if you run it just right will crack, but A, I think that now I’m looking at this, I think like Fusion 360 is largely a web thing, so that would be hard,

[00:12:25] Jay: and it sucks.

[00:12:26] Christina: and it sucks.

[00:12:26] Jay: not even good software.

[00:12:28] Christina: Which does not surprise me in the slightest. But I know with things like Adobe, like, you’re stuck with like one version, and you can’t really get updates until people will release, like, an Atomic update. And the problem is, is that Adobe updates Photoshop, like, Every five seconds and now with the AI stuff, like you, you do kind of want to use the latest version.

[00:12:47] Christina: So good for, again, good for you for just like paying for it. Like I, I, um, I get Creative Cloud through work now, but I have at various times over the years also had my own personal subscription. And even when like work [00:13:00] may or may not have offered it because there were, there were, there were politics with, uh, with Microsoft over like who could get a, a subscription and I

[00:13:08] Brett: back to this conversation

[00:13:09] Christina: Yeah, I was going to say, I’m sure you have thoughts on this too. And so they run like 50 percent discounts from time to time. And I’d be like, yeah, I’ll pay the 30 a month or whatever for creative cloud. Because to your point, Jay, I’m lazy. I’m like, yeah, I could probably find a cracked copy. Um, but, uh, it’s, it’s too much effort.

[00:13:26] Christina: And at this point, like I’m not the poor college student or high school student that I was a million years ago. Although in college I could have used education discounts. So anyway.

[00:13:37] Brett: I have a friend who bought a 3D printer, like, uh, maybe five years ago, back when they cost ten grand, um, and he, like, he, money is not an issue, the dude makes almost seven figures as an independent software developer, and it blows me away, um, and so he, he tried all of the CAD software and [00:14:00] everything, and ended up just, I don’t know what the site is, but he used a web based, yeah.

[00:14:05] Brett: Modeling, System.

[00:14:07] Jay: Sounds like Onshape or something like that.

[00:14:10] Brett: maybe. Yeah, I don’t remember, but yeah, he just found that. And I needed, I needed, uh, an inset. I bought, uh, I’m, I’m gonna shut up. It’s your, it’s your mental health corner. I’m gonna shut up.

[00:14:23] Jay: 3D print health corner. Um, well, the, the one that I wound up settling on is like Shapr3D. And the only reason I, yeah, because the fact that it has an iPad app, I was like, you know, Apple Pencil, you’re doing stuff. I’m not doing anything incredibly complicated. Um, And I mean, I think Fusion 360 was like 1, 500 a year, Shaper, like if, if you have to pay for Shaper, it’s like 300.

[00:14:50] Jay: So it’s like, I mean, it’s the, it’s the better bargain. It is, I mean, they’ll be the first to tell you we’re not 3D printing software, we’re like modeling software. So, you know, you’re going to deal with [00:15:00] some things that suck, but at the end of the day, you just learn to work around it. Um, but anyway, all of that, all of that to say, spending money on stuff, um, it didn’t solve the problem.

[00:15:10] Jay: The, the solution to the problem was, uh, as of this episode coming out, I have given notice that I will be leaving my job. So um, I, I have a new thing lined up already, which is good because I’m not the type that’s just like, obviously I just bought a bunch of a printer and a bunch of software and stuff.

[00:15:30] Jay: So I’m like, I don’t, I don’t have like money that’s saved up or anything. Um, but I want to talk about how mentally Destructive, large corporations are with like exit, like early leaving. So I got a bonus when I joined. There was so much confusion. I mean, there was so much confusion around me moving across the country and whether or not I would take a pay cut.

[00:15:54] Jay: Spoiler alert, I took a pay cut, but like I was [00:16:00] told, okay, you get all your bonus upfront. If you stay for a year, you don’t have to pay it back. And then I was like, okay, cool. It sounds fine. So, I get hired on and they’re like, oh, actually we lied, you’re gonna get half your bonus up front and the rest of it after you’ve been there for a year.

[00:16:18] Jay: Okay, cool. So, now that I’m like, wait a minute, I’ve been here for almost two years, if I leave before the two year mark, do I have to give my entire bonus back? Do I have to give a portion of my bonus back? And like, no one can give me a straight answer. Everyone’s like, oh, we don’t know. Some people are like, maybe you won’t have to do anything.

[00:16:40] Jay: And other people are like, you have to pay your whole bonus. And, and I would put it this way. Like, if they came back to me and said, you’re going to have to pay back your entire bonus, I would have to tell them, can I just not quit? Because you literally would bankrupt me. And that, like, there was a part of me that I, I [00:17:00] negotiated the hell out of my new gig because I, I was like, I am terrified of leaving and having this extremely large company send their goons out to be like, Hey, you owe us this money.

[00:17:15] Jay: It’d be a shame if we had to garnish your wages for a year or

[00:17:18] Brett: You could go on the run. It takes corporations so long to do anything. You could keep, you could stay ahead of them. Just, just hop from

[00:17:26] Jay: Tell them I sent an email and that’ll give me six months.

[00:17:30] Brett: So

[00:17:30] Christina: a message.

[00:17:32] Brett: sidetrack for a second. Um, my benefits for my job include, uh, healthcare as almost all do. And, um, there was this option to set up a separate flex spending account for a dependent. And they refer to my partner as a dependent on when I order like cards. It says. L. Newman, Dependent. So I went ahead and put extra money [00:18:00] aside for L.

[00:18:01] Brett: Newman, my dependent. She tries to use it. I assume all year that it’s coming out of this separate dependent account when she uses her card. And then I noticed at the end of the year that nope, that money hasn’t been touched. I go to HR and they’re like, Oh yeah, dependent FSAs are only for children, which I don’t have.

[00:18:24] Jay: me set it up?

[00:18:25] Brett: So on early December, I said. I’m sorry, I didn’t know, like, this was an honest mistake, can I get this money rolled back over into, like, my HSA or my FSA, whatever, um, and it took them three weeks to tell me. Um, that it was my error and they couldn’t do anything about it, but they were changing my benefits for next year, which I had also already signed up for the, the, when I, when I updated my benefits.

[00:18:57] Brett: Yeah. So they’re like, we canceled that for next year, but [00:19:00] that thousand dollars you set aside, I’m afraid that’s gone. So I, I went through like an appeals process and they said, We’re granting you a one time exception. I’m like, no problem. I’ll never make that mistake again.

[00:19:11] Christina: What assholes. Well, I mean, good for you for going through the appeal process because I, I

[00:19:18] Brett: not nothing.

[00:19:19] Christina: no, you’re not wrong, but I’m like the sort of person who, and, and it’s, it’s awful because I spent my mother, I watched my mother spend like my entire life, like fighting with insurance companies over every last cent.

[00:19:30] Christina: And so I know how to advocate for myself and I know how to do those things. But then I just get so lazy, or, or I just get like so frustrated with the thought of even going through it that I would just probably let it go dumbly, and then I’d be mad at myself for like another year. So, good for you for actually going through it, but also fuck them, and like fuck HR genuinely for not making that very clear because they know that.

[00:19:55] Brett: is so slow and they, I hate, I hate working with HR. [00:20:00] Like I’ll ask every manager, every question I have, and I won’t contact HR until I get down to like, well, you’re going to have to go to HR with this. Cause most of the questions, like people who have been there for 10 years can answer. Um.

[00:20:14] Jay: I ask employees at GitHub questions instead of going to HR. Like, I would much rather just ask, like, a different company. Like, hey, how, how do we do this?

[00:20:24] Brett: I have 2, 400 in bills from, they’re paid, uh, but bills from a therapist that isn’t covered, that doesn’t submit to insurance. Um, and I pay them out of my HSA and that’s fine, but we went to submit all of these bills to, Uh, the insurance company to try to get refunded into my HSA.

[00:20:49] Brett: And they responded with like, basically they said, Oh, these are already paid. They’re not our problem. Um, your plan allows this, but we’re paying 0. So, [00:21:00] so if it weren’t for Elle, um, that would be a dead end. I’d be like, fuck it. But Elle is willing to. If we team up like making, this is actually a good mental health corner right here, but making calls to an insurance company is stressful for both of us.

[00:21:19] Brett: Um, sitting on hold, dealing with, uh, customer service over the phone, um, and dealing with things that we don’t understand and we honestly need help on and they are not, their goal is not to give us money. Their goal is to convince us that we don’t need the money. Um, so it’s a stressful call for both of us, but if we team up, even if I’m just sitting next to them on the couch and, and they make the call, um, it like, it’s a teamwork, it’s like, it’s like a, a group process.

[00:21:54] Brett: And then I’m there to answer questions and stuff, but we both need that. Together, [00:22:00] Elle and I make one functioning adult.

[00:22:04] Jay: Yeah, that’s, uh, shout out, shout out to my latest episode of Conduit, where literally it was called, I Wish I Had a Britney, because I was, like, waxing poetic about, like, oh, all of the stuff that I just struggle to do. Like, my partner just Picks it up and runs with it, and we, we kind of share that same load.

[00:22:23] Jay: And Kathy was just like, I wish I had your partner too. And I was like, well, you know,

[00:22:28] Christina: You’re like, sorry, she’s mine.

[00:22:30] Jay: Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:31] Christina: great. She’s really great. Um,

[00:22:33] Brett: thought, I thought this was a, you were going to go into like work, bitch.

[00:22:38] Christina: Ah, yeah. Haha. Wrong Britney. No, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, uh, uh, you know, um, a stable Britney.

[00:22:47] Jay: But

[00:22:47] Christina: I’m, I’m saying that without judgment, by the way. I’m just being honest.

[00:22:51] Jay: But yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s my corner. I’m, I’m hoping that this, uh. This new thing is going to work out. I, you know, the last time I [00:23:00] was here, we did the DevRel episode and, you know, I am sticking true to like the, the modern meme of DevRel, which is like, you never stay at a job more than two years. Um, I am like, yeah, I, I would love to have some stability.

[00:23:15] Jay: And this next role is a big promotion. Like I want to get into management. I want to be a DevRel manager. I want to like, Make cooler advocates out there and get people to stop doing the stupid shit that they do for no reason other than like, oh, but it’s an OKR. Um, but like, I’m hoping that this, this opportunity kind of laid itself out in front of me and they told me all the things that I wanted to hear without me asking them.

[00:23:43] Jay: Um. So yeah, hopefully I’ll be leading a team in the next couple of years and that’ll actually give me a reason to stick around, you know, a single company for a while. Or, you know, I’ll

[00:23:55] Brett: as long as it’s good. Yeah.

[00:23:57] Jay: you know, or I’ll bounce and do something different, I guess.[00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Jeff: you said in the interview? I

[00:24:02] Jay: Ah, you know,

[00:24:03] Brett: I, uh, I, so I’ve talked before about the manager turnover at my job and, um, I’m

[00:24:12] Jeff: the last update was that there are no managers plus

[00:24:14] Christina: And yeah, and then nobody knew you were

[00:24:15] Jay: yeah.

[00:24:16] Brett: So, so yeah. So what they did was instead of. Filling the manager position because it’s untenable for the VP to have a hundred reports and actually, you know, keep everyone working. Um, but they don’t have headcount, they say, um, even though stock prices are real good. Um, they, they made one team of, one member of my team, a team lead with no pay raise.

[00:24:47] Brett: Just made him kind of like a pro temp manager and it is not like I feel bad for the guy He’s into it, but he’s just [00:25:00] taking on a bunch of responsibility And he’s the one who will have to answer for any failures of the team With no pay raise like that that just does not make sense to me

[00:25:11] Jay: absolutely not. That’s, that’s been, that’s where I like draw the line. And luckily everywhere I’ve worked has realized that, that like, hey, we’re going to ask you to take on all of this extra responsibility. And I’m like, okay, well, how is my compensation going to be adjusted for this, this change in role?

[00:25:27] Jay: Or how is my title and my compensation going to be adjusted? Like I, I refuse to. And I mean, you know, we can wax poetic about, you know, when I started at Microsoft, we weren’t an AI company. Like, we did AI things, but, um, we didn’t have a co pilot button on our keyboards. Um, like, the definition and the, the scope of my job, if I read, like, why they hired me, we don’t do that.

[00:25:56] Jay: So I’m like, oh, well, I mean, you’ve put me in a new job [00:26:00] in any way without changing my role or my pay, well, you changed my pay just for the worse, um, so like, why would I want to stay, other than that my team is super dope, like I love my, my little small team, but like, They get it. They’re like, I wouldn’t blame you.

[00:26:17] Jay: Like, so it sucks, but hopefully brighter things or at least, you know, that ADHD, like, oh, hey, here’s a bunch of new knobs to turn and new processes to learn. And, um, it’ll give me something to like super like hyper focus into for a little bit and we’ll see what happens from there.

[00:26:37] Brett: So you’ve got the depression. You’ve had the depression. Is that, is that related to A DHD and are you doing anything about it other than buying a bunch of shit?

[00:26:48] Jay: Um, is it related to ADHD? I don’t think so because it’s, it’s one of those, well, maybe it’s one of those weird situations where like everything in my life [00:27:00] is getting better, but yet mentally I’m challenged, you know, and, you know, see the last time I was on the episode, we talked about, you know, some of those things of just being Being in a different tax bracket, um, has done a number on me, but I’m, I’m making peace with that.

[00:27:17] Jay: And now it’s like, okay, wait, the way things are lined up, I should be able to pay off my house in five years. And if I can do that, like, Before I’m 40, I’ll be debt free, uh, like, cars paid off, houses paid off, all we’ll have is our monthly bills. I can literally do whatever the fuck I want at that point.

[00:27:36] Jay: Like, I can go, you know, teach seals in Alaska Python if I wanted to. Like, it would be fine because the bills are paid. But like, it’s, it’s weird that I’m being challenged at work, I’m learning new things, I’m, I’m in a very healthy [00:28:00] spot. The things that I’m asking for, I’m getting. And it’s not enough, it’s, it’s not doing

[00:28:05] Brett: Yeah. I don’t think, I don’t think that this is related to your career or your paycheck or anything. I think there’s probably like an actual. Like depression, which is, you know, a, uh, a diagnosable thing. So are, do you go to therapy? Do you take medication? Do you do anything?

[00:28:27] Jay: I lost my therapist when I moved, cause he’s not licensed, so, in the state, so now, I haven’t looked for a new one, um, and I definitely haven’t looked for, a new psychiatrist because the last one just I’m still reeling from getting burned for my last psychiatrist. Um, but I, I should, I don’t want to say I should grow up on that, but I probably should make better decisions

[00:28:53] Brett: You should get a Brittany.

[00:28:55] Jay: I should get a Brittany. Yeah.

[00:28:57] Brett: Yeah. That will get you, get you an appointment with a [00:29:00] psychiatrist and take your existing diagnoses. And because I mean, retail therapy, you can afford it. It’s not going to kill you. Um. And it’s not, as you said, effective. Like it didn’t, it didn’t change anything. And the new job and the new, the excitement of like, uh, uh, pay raise and everything didn’t do anything.

[00:29:22] Brett: So I think there’s something else going on.

[00:29:24] Jay: I, I, and I think the, the problem with that is that it’s like, It’s one thing like bleeding into another. Like yeah, you’re right, I could afford the retail therapy, but to, to be transparent, you know, to make six figures and live check to check

[00:29:39] Christina: Mhm.

[00:29:40] Jay: in a, in a state that it is relatively inexpensive to live in.

[00:29:43] Jay: Like it takes 20 to fill up my car. Like, like gas is dirt. Like I don’t, I don’t, I kind of don’t want an electric vehicle just because I don’t want to spend the extra money. Like it would be more expensive. Um, and I know that that’s. Maybe ruthless, but [00:30:00] also, hey, it’s, it’s the reality of it. So it’s like all of these things are happening in a, in a position where like, I, we should be better.

[00:30:08] Jay: I should be better. And I feel like part of it is my fault and I’m like going in, Hey, I’m going to make more money now. And it’s like, okay, but yeah, that’s great. But if the problem isn’t solved, you’re still going to be making more money and still living. Living like you do. So it’s, I don’t know. You’re right.

[00:30:23] Jay: I should definitely talk to someone about it. That’s why, again, I’m glad that uh, Jeff gave me the link to show up every Saturday.

[00:30:32] Brett: Yeah, man, you’re doing, you’re doing so well. Like your career is blossoming. You’re, you’re doing exactly what you want to do. And it sucks that you would have to deal with depression in addition to all that success. So yeah, do something about

[00:30:50] Christina: about it. But I think the encouraging thing there I would say is like, at least for me it’s encouraging, uh, for some people it might not be, but for me it’s encouraging when I can realize that the depression [00:31:00] is not situational, that it’s not based on the things going on in my life, that, hey, this is something that, that I, that I don’t have any control over.

[00:31:06] Christina: This is not like a, you know, everything in my life is going great, so why do I feel like shit? Well, you know, Because something is wrong with my brain and that’s not on me. And so this is a real medical problem and I can talk to somebody and get it fixed. It’s, it’s a lot more difficult in some cases when it’s like, oh, well, all these terrible things are happening.

[00:31:24] Christina: And that’s also making me feel like shit because I can’t control, I can’t control any of that, right? And even though I can’t control my, my, you know, biochemistry and, and make my, you know, like, uh, neurotransmitters, you know, produce endorphins and, and Things like that the right way, serotonin levels, all that shit.

[00:31:40] Christina: Like, I can’t, I can’t physically, you know, make my, my brain work right. I can at least have control of saying, okay, well, I’m going to find a psychiatrist who will listen. I am going to find a therapist. I am going to find someplace to get a solution because I know that there’s a solution to this problem.

[00:31:56] Christina: Whereas if it’s, you know, um, I, I don’t, uh, [00:32:00] make enough money or I’m unemployed or someone has died or, you know, other terrible things are happening. That, you could be at a complete loss for, for how to deal with, so, I don’t know. Plus one with what Brett said, anyway.

[00:32:15] Brett: All right. Uh, do either of you want to go next?

[00:32:20] Jay: Go Jeff. I want to hear from Jeff. I never get to talk to Jeff.

[00:32:26] Jeff: Um, man, let’s see. I had a thought, a couple thoughts coming into this and they’re like, they’ve kind of left me, I mean, to stay on the theme of this episode, which is like the water cooler, like talking about, uh, work and professional stuff. Um, I’m definitely trying to figure out, I, you know, I’m, uh, I work for this, I’m part owner of this research and evaluation collaborative in Minneapolis.

[00:32:53] Jeff: Um, which sounds really dull, but we do really awesome and

[00:32:59] Brett: not sound

[00:32:59] Jay: [00:33:00] I’ll say, pause that.

[00:33:01] Brett: Yeah,

[00:33:01] Jay: Jeff, do you let people work remotely? Because again, house paid off. I, I want to go do

[00:33:09] Jeff: we only work remotely. We had an office, um, before the, uh, pandemic that we really barely used and, uh, ditched it and never went back. Um, and, uh, But anyway, like I, so for, so I’ve been there for 10 years, um, came straight out of journalism into this work and, and have really loved it and have loved, uh, being like a member owner of a cooperative.

[00:33:34] Jeff: Um, there’s nine of us and it’s, uh, we’ve been able to, we’ve, we’ve gone from We literally borrowed our bylaws from grocery co ops in the beginning because there were like three of us and we had two contracts and it was just like, let’s just get it going. Um, and, and now we have, you know, we have professional development budgets and PTO and health insurance and all of the stuff we’ve been able to kind of start creating for ourselves and [00:34:00] for other members who, you know, may eventually come on and employees and stuff.

[00:34:03] Jeff: And that’s been amazing. And I can’t imagine ever. Leaving, I also can’t, I knew this when I left public radio, which was my last journalism job, like I can’t go back to an office. I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand how much time is, is just lost and wasted, uh, on things that would otherwise not even come into your life.

[00:34:23] Jeff: Um, if you were working from home, which most of us do now. Um, but, uh, until last year, I’ve only worked large contracts that are multi year projects and, um, It’s, it’s close to having salary. It’s like a very guaranteed amount of money for, uh, it’s hourly, but it’s a guaranteed, you know, at least baseline of money for, for, you know, two, three years.

[00:34:47] Jeff: And, um, and that my last, the last of my kind of large projects ended, um, last year, and I’m now doing multiple projects that are. smaller, they’re shorter [00:35:00] in, um, in, uh, duration, uh, and they don’t pay, I mean, they don’t pay as much, um, which like even the ones that pay the rate I’m used to getting, it’s like, they’re over so fast that I might have just, I just have a weird balance of income.

[00:35:18] Jeff: That’s making it really hard to budget, especially as we’re sending one kid off to college and paying a bunch for that. Um, and so I have been like super stressed because I, the hardest thing to adjust to in that case, I mean, the, the not being able to budget is really hard, like really hard and frustrating in work.

[00:35:38] Jeff: What’s hard is, um, I do qualitative analysis. I mean, you do a lot of stuff, but, and I do a lot of data work. Like I’ll do a lot of data cleaning in order to, and I’ll build like custom data sets and do records requests when it’s, uh, when it makes sense for a project and all that stuff is slow work. And, um, The projects that I’m on now just don’t have the budget for slow work, and the slow work is how you [00:36:00] do the good work, especially, I mean, the kind of work that I’m really interested in, I work with people that are more trained as evaluators, or a couple of them come from more sort of, um, like health data backgrounds and stuff like that, but I’m, I’m, I come from, I mean, this is what I was in journalism too, is I, I love nothing more than creating journalism.

[00:36:18] Jeff: Gathering up enough data or stories in one area that I feel like I can say something that hasn’t been said, or I can reflect an experience that hasn’t quite been reflected that way, or kind of, um, curate, you know, experiences in a way that is, um, you know, like one goal for me always is not to ever tell people’s stories, if I’m in the position of doing that at all, and I try not to be telling people’s stories, but to work with with people’s stories, like in the case of qualitative data, in a way that, um, That really kind of honors them and their story and, and doesn’t do the thing that journalism does all the time, which is cut them out of the meaning making the second you hang up the phone [00:37:00] or leave their house.

[00:37:01] Jeff: Um, I love doing that kind of work. Uh, and I love creating, you know, databases that didn’t exist, like taking pieces of data, um, or data sources and, and like mashing it together in a way that’s very careful, but ultimately, and ultimately allows me or us to kind of show something that otherwise isn’t. You can’t really see.

[00:37:23] Jeff: I love doing that. That is super slow work. And they’re just, it’s been really frustrating for me because the initial part of my learning process was just to still do the slow work and then realize I had burned through my budget. And I wasn’t even at the point where we’re writing or whatever else. And that’s been really annoying.

[00:37:41] Jeff: Um.

[00:37:42] Brett: Because you paid, you paid me for too much shit.

[00:37:45] Jeff: No, that project, that project was never a problem that no, no, no, no, no, we are talking about the dream days when I was on a project that had like a practically limitless budget. And we could, and what was beautiful about that is you and I, me and [00:38:00] the rest of the team, we built things like we built things to do this work that are benefiting the work I do now.

[00:38:05] Jeff: It was amazing. I had time to be slow time to experiment. Yeah. Too much time to be slow, but that’s okay. Cause that’s like how I build things. If I don’t have a lot of time and I can’t go kind of annoyingly slow, I don’t come out with something. I just come out with the same shit that anyone would have come out with.

[00:38:23] Jeff: And, um, and, uh, so anyway, I’m just really, I’m struggling. There’s a lot of stress for me with both the money part being inconsistent and they’re not being like a guarantee. Like I I’m in a situation right now where it’s like, I got a couple of projects that if they come through, I’m fine. And if they don’t come through, I’m kind of fucked.

[00:38:41] Jeff: And I haven’t been in that situation in a really long time. I had three salaried jobs before I switched to Terraluna. Um, and I’ve had really sweet project budgets ever since then. Um, so that’s just like, you know, everything’s stable in terms of like, you know, why my health insurance doesn’t come through Terraluna, but like health insurance [00:39:00] comes through my wife and that’s stable and our finances are like, basically sit, you know, we have savings, like whatever it’s that stuff is okay.

[00:39:07] Jeff: Um, but I don’t. I start to get kind of mixed up and turn over on myself when I have to do that much sort of context switching while also worrying.

[00:39:19] Brett: Yeah,

[00:39:20] Jeff: um, and I already can kind of get turned around on myself just in how I kind of hold and manage files, even though I have systems that are basically Sound.

[00:39:30] Jeff: I mean, I do everything in text files, which means even if it’s not organized, I can find it extremely easily. And I can, you know what I mean? Like I can, but, um, but yeah, I’m just having a lot of stress around the, the kind of my context being changed so dramatically and it taking me. Six months to figure it out, and the figuring it out being kind of painful.

[00:39:51] Jeff: That’s kind of where, what I’m like, and I’ve just got headaches all the time, and like, I’m not sleeping well, and it’s other things contributing to that, but it’s, [00:40:00] it’s just like a, a time I’m looking forward to get, getting past, basically. Then add into that a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver generally, like , you know, like I feel like when I deliver, it’s always received well and I do feel like I deliver things that are unique and, and come from my very weird set of experiences, both life and professionally.

[00:40:22] Jeff: But man, the under delivering is real. Also something you don’t say in job interviews. But I don’t expect to have, I don’t expect to have any of those. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to me.

[00:40:34] Brett: I feel like, go ahead Jay.

[00:40:36] Jay: I think it’s interesting that, like, one, everybody on this podcast, like, does long, slow projects, and does them well. Like, I mean, Christina, I’m not even going to talk about how you had me in tears, like, just from the last few weeks with Rocket, and, like, The download’s been going on through [00:41:00] multiple employers and like, I see you do stuff with longevity and it’s dope.

[00:41:07] Jay: And I mean, Brett, you’ve been, I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep, I’ve, I have software projects that are like five years old and I’m just like, what is this mess? And you’re, you’re like, Oh, that’s cute. Like, you know, we’re over a decade on how, how Mark’s been around for how long

[00:41:26] Brett: Over a decade. Yeah.

[00:41:27] Jeff: yeah.

[00:41:30] Jay: and even with like some of my work projects, like, I, I like the six month, eight month projects that are like, okay, we’re going to take our time with this, and we’re going to come out and we’re going to swing, and when we swing, it’s going to do numbers that no one has seen come from our team before, and it’s It’s hard when right now everything is being, you know, preached about faster.

[00:41:55] Jay: Like, do this faster. Like, oh, AI is going to make everything faster. It’s the [00:42:00] same work, but better and faster, da da da. Well, it’s the same work, but mid and, you know, five times as fast. So for me, like, I feel like we’re in this position where there’s a lot of just the way that we do things, the way that we tinker, the way that we really invest ourselves in the work that we do.

[00:42:18] Jay: I do feel like it’s getting attacked a little

[00:42:21] Jeff: Mmm. Heh,

[00:42:21] Jay: And

[00:42:22] Jeff: heh heh heh

[00:42:23] Jay: I don’t think that, I definitely don’t think that we’ve been obsoleted because I’ve seen that work. It’s garbage. But like I think I’m waiting for the rest of the world to realize, like, hey, you need someone that is methodical, takes their time on something, has a long standing relationship, has understood why things are, work the way that they do, that goes beyond the knowledge.

[00:42:52] Jay: It’s there. It’s, it’s the experience, it’s the wisdom that comes with it. And I think that’s something that, you know, it’s, I think we’ll get back to it. [00:43:00] And I think when we do, I think everybody, you know, on this show will be slightly happier with the work that they have to do on a regular basis.

[00:43:10] Brett: Yeah, I’m, I’m not looking forward to a day where my job is just basically coming up with chat GPT, uh, prompts.

[00:43:20] Christina: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I, I think that I I think that you’re right, Jay. Like, I think that there will be a natural kind of move back, um, once the, um, I guess the, the fervor and the excitement is, is over a little bit. Right. Like, I think that’s one of those things where people will be like, okay, well, like, you know, we’re, we’re a little bit like, uh, we have a little bit like better understanding now of like what things really are.

[00:43:44] Christina: And so we’re not going to be as, um, um, like gung ho about things the way that we are now. There will be a balance back. And I think that’ll be good. I think that there is probably going to be like a real profound change in some of the things that we do with automation or [00:44:00] AI. Really, that’s what it is.

[00:44:01] Christina: It’s automation, you know, it’s more than it is. actual artificial intelligence. Um, but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to find a balance because, yeah, like I, I don’t mind doing some prompt engineering, um, because that can be fun and a fun challenge. But yeah, I, I wouldn’t want that to be my entire day either.

[00:44:16] Christina: Like that, that’s, that’s depressing. But I also think that there’s like this opportunity, and this is the sort of thing where I think that, uh, especially people who do what you do, um, uh, Jeff, are in a really interesting position because there will be this, like, call for like, you know, the, like, artisanal non GPT, you know, type of, of long form investigations and, and, and data stuff, right?

[00:44:42] Christina: Like, there is going to be, it’s not going to be as big as it was to be very clear, uh, but there is going to be like, uh, uh, I guess like a demand out there for people who have skills that are not in any way the product of automation. And, and, uh, [00:45:00] and there’s going to be almost like a way you can almost sell it.

[00:45:01] Christina: It’s like, Oh, I’m a real writer. I’m writing this for you. You know, like, like this is, this is like grain free and, and organic and, and, you know, fed by whatever, like this is. This is, this is the real writing, right? This is, this isn’t any of that chat GPT, you know, fortified bullshit. Like this is, this is the real stuff.

[00:45:18] Christina: Um, I think that there’s, there’s definitely going to be like a, um, a demand for that. Um, the problem is, is frankly, uh, for some people who are. Never that good to begin with, and some people who were good, to be clear, like it’s not going to be just the, the bad people who get, or not bad, but I guess mid people who get impacted by this.

[00:45:35] Christina: And I’m aware of that, but is that the demand for the really good shit is going to be a lot smaller and that’s, that’s unfortunate. But I do feel like the stuff that you do, Jeff, has real value and I’m, I’m hopeful that that will come back. Not so much in vogue, but the people will be like very clearly aware, like, oh yeah.

[00:45:53] Christina: Like, that’s, that’s what we want to actually pay more money for, because it has more cachet now, even than it did before, [00:46:00] because we can differentiate it as being like, Oh no, see, this wasn’t done with any of, of those fancy tools that, that you don’t know if you can trust or not. This was, this was done by a real reporter and a real

[00:46:09] Jeff: Or, or even like, let our, pay us to let our brains decide how to use things like ChatGBT,

[00:46:15] Christina: I mean, I think that’s the, that’s the ideal thing, I think, honestly.

[00:46:18] Jeff: yeah, that is the ideal thing, because I mean, I certainly work it in at this point in ways that, um, it’s just like, I mean, we don’t have to go into this because we all know this, but it’s just like, it’s so much about how you use it, how you, how you approach it, how you, you know, treat what comes out of it, but like,

[00:46:34] Brett: That’s, that’s the key right there. How you treat what

[00:46:36] Jeff: And I, and I guess to that end, like, I do bring my, you know, decades as a reporter and a decade now as a researcher, like I bring that, I bring all of those, all that skepticism, all that kind of, you know, fact checking instinct, all that stuff to it, right?

[00:46:53] Jeff: And, and that’s something we all probably have as a real advantage over somebody who’s trying to use it for their work and going, [00:47:00] WHAT?! And then maybe gets burned. Um.

[00:47:03] Jay: think that’s the thing that’s going to get lost though. Like, I mean, I spent this entire week working on open telemetry and it’s like, I knew what open telemetry was, but I had never like played around with it. And in the moment I was like, okay. And if, if I do exactly what A, ChadGPT asked me to do, what Copilot asked me to do, because I’m working with a brand new product, it’s not going to work.

[00:47:30] Jay: And it became a challenge of like taking what I know, understanding what I know about like Python as a programming language, what I understand about OpenTelemetry as a concept, and then what I know about like our cloud infrastructure and saying, okay. I can take these pieces and make sense out of them, but When I went back to the PM, the PM was like, Oh, so how was it?

[00:47:56] Jay: I was like, Oh, it was absolutely horrendous. And here are the five reasons [00:48:00] why. And they were like, Oh, well, if you’re a new user, you’re not going to deal with that. And I said, Oh, you will when you’ve invested 15, 000 a month into some product and it’s not working. And you don’t know why it’s not working because there is no prompt for this thing that’s brand new.

[00:48:21] Jay: There is, and like, You know, it’s fun because for us, we get to yell and we get to say, Hey, this big company could pull out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because someone decided, Oh, let’s just stick with, you know, prompt engineering as the solution, instead of saying, let’s work with someone who has foundational knowledge.

[00:48:41] Jay: The foundational knowledge is just going to slowly dwindle, especially as the people who have that knowledge are just like, I’m over this,

[00:48:49] Brett: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a matter. So like there are two types of articles we write for Jeff. I know you need to go soon.

[00:48:56] Jeff: I don’t actually, my and by the way, everybody, my son’s [00:49:00] taking his driver’s test and I thought I had to dig up some documents, but they have been found.

[00:49:04] Christina: Yay!

[00:49:06] Brett: So how long do

[00:49:07] Christina: also, also good luck, um, to him on his driver’s test. Hope he does better

[00:49:10] Jeff: yes! I can go till we’re done.

[00:49:12] Brett: Okay. So, um, I have found in my job, there are two types of, uh, content we can produce. One is in depth experience based, um, conversational style content to. Help developers get into a new ecosystem. The other is SEO content and SEO content. Absolutely. Why not write it with chat GPT? Um, you just got to fit in a bunch of keywords and you can literally tell chat G word, get chat GPT, like use this word a bunch of times, use, use variations of this word a bunch of times, and it’ll do it.

[00:49:54] Brett: And like that SEO

[00:49:55] Jeff: 2006 all over again!

[00:49:58] Brett: I have been sent, I have [00:50:00] been sent SEO content for editing, and I have asked myself, who would write this, and I found out, oh, of course it was AI generated, um,

[00:50:12] Jeff: ever start at, like, um, okay, you are the blood pulsing through Danny Sullivan’s veins. Now write me this text.

[00:50:21] Brett: I, uh, I’m not, but, yeah, like, there, there, I think there will always be a place for those, for people, like, your journalism background, Jeff. Like, I, I feel like that’s a fallback. If, if something goes wrong and you find yourself screwed, you, you are a valuable

[00:50:39] Jeff: am not, that is

[00:50:41] Brett: I think you are.

[00:50:42] Jeff: not a fallback. No one’s knocking on my door. It’s been 10 years. Yeah, it’s not a

[00:50:48] Brett: feel like, I feel like you could show your, your history, your work, like even your Taraluna work, to me, lends you credibility as someone who can speak on, [00:51:00] uh, topics of justice,

[00:51:02] Jeff: I mean, the biggest problem is that, and I’m being completely serious here, I’m not just, uh, this isn’t performative. The biggest problem is that I think that, um, I think that journalism doesn’t need more white guys, uh, uh, who are 40 and over or period. And so, and I think newsrooms are finally,

[00:51:18] Jay: stop them from

[00:51:19] Brett: yeah, exactly.

[00:51:20] Jay: have them, they might as well have the

[00:51:22] Brett: not going to change the demographic of the New York

[00:51:25] Jeff: and I was this guy only once and it was my last job that when I got in I was like, oh, it was down to two people, and it’s me. And I found that out like months in, and it’s public radio which is awful. Well, not awful at this shit for the most part anymore, but Minnesota Public Radio has been.

[00:51:40] Jeff: And I, that did actually make you feel like it. I just don’t even want to like, Yeah, I don’t, I don’t want to, I just don’t want to be part of that because I can’t stand most of the white men I’ve worked with in journalism.

[00:51:53] Brett: Fair

[00:51:53] Jeff: I don’t want to be part of the posse. I mean, I, just a quick aside, like, I, I mean, [00:52:00] truly, I have pictures of my My teams over the years and all this stuff, like I was just, I just found a picture of the editorial team at Utne Reader.

[00:52:07] Jeff: And it’s like, man, we went so long where it could just be a room full of white people and no one ever even fucking, it didn’t occur to them. It occurred to me, but it didn’t, I didn’t change it. I wasn’t hiring anybody, but still I didn’t do anything. Right. Like, and, uh, and so I just, I, I almost don’t. It’s a weird thing to say, because I’m not saying like, obviously I’d be picked.

[00:52:30] Jeff: That’s not the point at all. It’s just like, I’d like to just stay out of the way. Um, and, and at Terra Luna, I can stay out of the way. I’m largely on teams that are mostly not white. Um, and, and that’s been. Like, that’s just been amazing. And, uh, so anyway, it’s an incoherent, uh, response to your thing. But also I just want to really clear, no one’s knocking at my door.

[00:52:52] Jeff: I did have a former, a student, someone, someone who’s in the class I co taught at the U of M where they didn’t know, I didn’t have my high school diploma, [00:53:00] um, on investigative journalism and she’s now at ProPublica. And, and, and it came around to where she called me, uh, and I almost got to hire her for something.

[00:53:09] Jeff: And I was like, it feels good to have a ProPublica journalist come around and be like, hey. Um, anyway, that’s, sorry. I, this is going to be the most like, um, it’s like the mental health part of mental health corner is like whack a mole. It’s like, it pops up. This is all fine. I think it pops up. Then we go over here, pops up, go over here.

[00:53:27] Jeff: So I just took us over here. Sorry. Okay. Okay.

[00:53:31] Brett: Um, before, before Christina and I vie for who goes next, I’m going to sneak in a couple of sponsor spots.

[00:53:39] Sponsor: Green Chef

[00:53:39] Brett: This episode is brought to you by Green Chef. Green Chef is a CCOF certified meal kit company. Green Chef makes eating well easy with plans to fit every lifestyle. Whether you’re keto, paleo, vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, or just looking for more balanced meals, Green Chef offers a range of recipes to suit your [00:54:00] preferences.

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[00:55:25] Brett: That’s greenchef. com slash 60 overtired and use the code 60 overtired for 60 percent off.

[00:55:34] Sponsor: Aroundsquare

[00:55:34] Brett: This episode is also brought to you by Around Square. You know, that experience of learning something new that would have been so useful last week or finding something special that you hadn’t realized you’d been missing all these years.

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[00:57:05] Mental Health Corner Part 2

[00:57:05] Brett: All right. So, Christina, do you have a mental health corner?

[00:57:09] Christina: Yeah, I guess. I mean, um, I don’t have anything really, I guess, that pressing. Um, I’m going through some weird health stuff that I have to go back and get more blood work done on. And that was causing me more distress last week than it is now. Now I think I’ve kind of like calmed down a little bit about it, but that’s always like one of those things when you have like actual like physical health symptoms and you’re like, okay, what the fuck is going on?

[00:57:31] Christina: Um, because then your brain goes into a million different places. Uh, I don’t think that it was helped by the fact that, um, a guy I used to work with, an incredible, incredible editor, Tom Skosha, wrote this amazing thing for New York Magazine about trying to figure out, uh, why his body has been eating itself.

[00:57:48] Christina: And there was no conclusion, which was terrifying. Uh, but also Tom was an incredible writer. And so, uh, reading that was Anyway, it [00:58:00] brought up a lot of feelings for a lot of things. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, I’ve just had some, some health stuff going on, trying to figure out like why I’ve been losing weight and losing hair.

[00:58:08] Christina: And uh, so far my blood work is completely normal. So I’m going back and getting more blood work done. Yay. Love to spend the beginning of the year doing that stuff. Um, but no, but otherwise it’s really, really cold right now and, and kind of gray. And so that isn’t great for Mental health, but at the same time I think I’m doing alright.

[00:58:27] Christina: So, just trying to kind of get back into things. Um, I completely, like, I, I understand, like, the, all to, like, the, the stresses behind, like, all the things you’re trying to do around your job, and trying to figure out, okay, what is, um, my role and, and what is required of me, and is this, this sort of thing that I want to actually doing and things like that.

[00:58:50] Christina: I’m, I’m fortunate that I’m, I’m in a good position right now, but I definitely know what it’s like to go through kind of those stressors of like, okay, is this giant company going to fuck me over? And, [00:59:00] um, you know, uh, there were layoffs in the tech industry this week, which, um,

[00:59:06] Brett: Yeah.

[00:59:06] Jeff: all.

[00:59:07] Christina: I mean, that’s the thing.

[00:59:08] Christina: It’s like, for some of us, not all of us, but some of us, like we left, like Brett and I definitely, like we left doing like more indie, like me journalism, him being like a sole proprietor. Like we went to big tech for the stability and then the stability is gone and we’re like, fuck, I’m like, man, I’m, I’m too late on all this stuff.

[00:59:26] Christina: Like, right. Like I should have gone to tech. Like five or six years before, and frankly, I should do what, what, uh, Jay does and like leave every two years. I would make a lot more money if, um, I didn’t have my perverse sense of both loyalty and fear that like, no one will ever hire me again, which is a real thing that I do actually think I’m like, no one will ever hire me.

[00:59:44] Jeff: Oh, I feel that.

[00:59:45] Christina: Which, which I know is completely irrational, but at the same time it is one of those things that I feel, like,

[00:59:49] Brett: It is irrational. Like, I can, I can validate, you are, uh, extremely hireable. Like, you have a future, but I understand, [01:00:00] like, I, I think that’s true about me too, but, like, I understand that feeling of, like, well, if I don’t keep this job, nobody else will want me.

[01:00:09] Christina: Absolutely.

[01:00:10] Jay: It took people messaging me saying, Hey, I want you to work with me before I did that. And for the record, I’m trying to stay in a company longer than two years. I just I just haven’t been able to yet. Um, I, I am, I get terrified. I’ve been like you and Jeff, like losing sleep, hair falling out. Like it, it is not, I, I know that it is definitely time to go, but I’m like desperately trying to find the right thing.

[01:00:41] Christina: Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s, but I think that’s actually great, like, when you know that it’s time to go someplace. Like, I think that’s actually great. Like, I think the harder thing is actually when you know it’s time to go and you stay anyway. And I’ve done that. Um, uh, frankly, I did that at Microsoft probably my entire last year there.

[01:00:58] Christina: And that was, in [01:01:00] retrospect, like I, I should have taken some jobs from other places that I would not have been happy, but made more money and then, um, made the move to GitHub. Like that’s, that’s what I should have done. So like, I, I really, really, um, am proud of you for recognizing that it’s time to go. And also, even though it’s hard and even though it can be scary, but also finding another place, you know, to go.

[01:01:19] Christina: Um. Because I also know from past experience that even if the place you go isn’t like the ultimate place, like getting out of a situation that you need to get out of is a really good thing. So, um, but sorry, go on.

[01:01:33] Brett: No, I’m, I’m just curious about the losing hair

[01:01:36] Christina: Oh yeah, that I have no idea. Like that is not, I, cause I haven’t been under stress and I’m not really sure. Like my, my stylist was the first one who mentioned it. And then like last week actually,

[01:01:47] Brett: it’s not like clumps falling on the shower.

[01:01:49] Christina: no, it is.

[01:01:50] Brett: Oh, it is. Oh, that’s scary.

[01:01:52] Christina: Yeah, exactly. And that was what started last week. And so I was like, Oh, fuck. Like actually last Saturday.

[01:01:58] Christina: And I was like, [01:02:00] oh fuck. Um, like, like I had like clumps of hair falling out and I was like, this is, this is not good. Like I, like more hair than usual. I’ve been noticing, you know, maybe it had fallen out, but like it wasn’t clumps and then clumps started and I was like, oh, this is a problem. So I immediately went in on Monday and got blood work done and it was completely normal.

[01:02:18] Christina: And so she’s ordered more blood

[01:02:20] Brett: the worst.

[01:02:21] Christina: Yeah.

[01:02:22] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:02:23] Brett: when

[01:02:25] Jeff: terrible, but completely normal isn’t nice.

[01:02:28] Brett: debugging a problem with a customer, the worst thing that can possibly happen is that I can’t replicate the issue because I have no way to solve it then. And like going in and getting perfect blood work. Yeah, that just leads to like, well then what the fuck?

[01:02:45] Christina: No, exactly. And so she’s ordered like a whole, um, a battery of other, uh, labs for me and I don’t know, I’ll have to call I guess tomorrow or not tomorrow, um, uh, Monday and see if they’re open on, on, uh, Martin Luther King Day or [01:03:00] not, I would think they would be, but you never know. Um, so one, one of the benefits that we get from our insurance, although I’ve got to check on this because they changed hospital affiliations, but either they’re, Their system didn’t update it with the insurance company or the insurance company didn’t update it because when I went into, like, after I’d had my appointment and had my blood work done at the one medical office, they were like, did you change your insurance?

[01:03:25] Christina: Cause it’s showing inactive. And I’m like, nope. And everything looked fine. And then they’re like, yeah, well, we just changed hospital affiliations. And I was like, huh? So I contacted the insurance company and I was like, Are you still covering this? They’re like, yeah, that’s still showing, you know, this, this office is still within network.

[01:03:42] Christina: And I was like, okay, but the affiliation you have listed is wrong. They’re like, yeah, well then they have to update it in their system. And I’m like, they say you have to update it in yours. And, and I was like, well, so I guess I just have to wait to see if you approve the claim. And then I have to like.

[01:03:56] Christina: Fight it otherwise. And she was basically like, yeah. [01:04:00] So that’s, that’s fun. Um, the good news is, is that the hospital that they moved to is also covered under my insurance. So in theory it should be fine. It’s just one of those like additional things. But I was going to say like, uh, I don’t know if any of you ever used one medical, but it’s, um, unfortunately Amazon owns it now, but it is.

[01:04:21] Christina: Very useful. It’s kind of like a, if you are in a city that has it and, um, uh, Jay, I think you’re the only one who might be, it basically have a bunch of primary, um, care clinics and you could make like appointments relatively quickly with people. Um, and you could go to providers, um, at any location, but they also have onsite labs.

[01:04:41] Christina: So if you get lab from, Like, order from anyone, you can go there during their lab hours and just get your labs done. And it’s very convenient and very nice. So it’s, it’s a lot, it’s kind of like adding, you know, I, I guess I’ve never had an HMO, but I guess kind of like an HMO type of thing to people [01:05:00] who are.

[01:05:00] Christina: Not on HMOs. So, um, I, I don’t know if their lab will be open on Monday or not, but if they, they are, then I’ll, I’ll go. Otherwise I’ll go on Tuesday. But yeah, I’ll keep you guys updated on, on, on what I find out.

[01:05:15] Brett: yeah, please do. Oh, man. Alright, so, you guys, multiple people on this podcast have mentioned not sleeping well.

[01:05:27] Christina: Mm hmm.

[01:05:28] Brett: Um, Jeff, Jay, how are you sleeping,

[01:05:32] Christina: Oh, I never sleep well.

[01:05:36] Brett: What do you, what do you average per night? What’s your average sleep?

[01:05:39] Christina: I mean, I don’t know because it varies. So, because a lot of times I won’t go to bed until like four or five o’clock in the morning and then I’ll get up at like 830.

[01:05:46] Brett: Holy shit.

[01:05:47] Christina: Yeah.

[01:05:48] Brett: Oh, shit. Oh, so, so you’re dexedrine fueled and, uh, diet coke and dexedrine and that’s how you get through a day?

[01:05:56] Christina: Yeah, basically.

[01:05:58] Brett: Oh, man, I do best [01:06:00] when I have, um, like nine hours of sleep. Um, and for the last month, I guess? I have been an insomniac, not manic. Like, when I’m manic, I get up, I code, I, like, I surf the web, like, I do things.

[01:06:20] Brett: And right now, I just lay in bed awake wishing I was asleep, uh, four hours at a time, and I listen to audiobooks, and Uh, will eventually drift off, but more nights than not, I’ve been getting three to four hours of sleep a night, and it is It’s frustrating. Really dragging me down. Um, I slept the last couple nights, but I’m kind of wondering if this isn’t some kind of more bipolar type one, um, where I’m like hypomanic for an [01:07:00] extended period of time, but like, I’m super tired when I’m manic.

[01:07:04] Jeff: it.

[01:07:05] Brett: When I manic, I can just like for three or four days, I can do anything on zero sleep. Um, and I can just, I can rock everything until like day three when it really catches up with me. But, uh, what’s going on right now is this extended period of insomnia. That’s kind of, it’s driving me nuts. I’m doing Everything I can.

[01:07:30] Brett: I’m doing all the tricks I use to cut Manic episodes short. I’m doing, uh, this, like, mineral, uh, Mintran, it’s called. It’s like mineral tranquilizers, plus melatonin, plus my meds, which generally knock me right the fuck out. And I’m doing, uh, sleeping pills too, like Unisom kind of sleeping pills. And none of it keeps me, like, I’ll fall asleep right away and I’ll [01:08:00] wake up by like midnight.

[01:08:02] Brett: And then I’m just up and I don’t, I don’t know what to do about it. And it’s, it’s really wearing me down last night though. Last night I slept my a good nine hours and that’s why I’m able to do the podcast today. Um, but yeah, that’s wearing me down. However, you may have noticed the, the beautiful color of the lighting behind me

[01:08:27] Jeff: know, it really makes a difference.

[01:08:30] Brett: It does. And I can change it to like all kinds of different,

[01:08:35] Jeff: Blood

[01:08:35] Brett: um, coloration. I can even set it to like flash with sound in the

[01:08:41] Jeff: stop that, please. I didn’t sleep last night, I can’t handle that.

[01:08:47] Brett: um, but I have found that, so I bought a bunch of Govee lighting, G O V E E, and it’s cheaper than trying to buy like hue products or anything.

[01:08:59] Jay: And it’s more [01:09:00] reliable than HomeKit.

[01:09:01] Brett: yeah. Yeah, well, I use, I use it with Alexa and I get a certain amount of automation, but most of it I do through the app, um, where I can, like, I have time settings where I can walk into my office early morning.

[01:09:15] Brett: It’s, it’s a color setting I created called Fire, where all of the lights are red at the bottom, up through yellow, and then white on top. And it creates this like, um, it’s like being in hell, but also very comfortable. Um, and like, and then like noontime it switches into work mode, which is what I have going now, which is basically like daylight blue lighting.

[01:09:42] Brett: And I used to think I just needed my office brighter and brighter. Cause I love, I love, I love designing lighting for a room. And I like to make every room feel the way it’s supposed to feel. And, like, around my house, I have archways that [01:10:00] are all covered in, uh, warm, white Christmas lights. Because those make me feel comfortable.

[01:10:07] Brett: Those make me feel cozy. Um, and I have those all automated on my phone. I can turn them all off and all on at once. Uh, but I never had a room that I could completely control the color. And so you can see behind me, I have like a wall light, uh, on each side, I have a floor lamp and behind my desk, I have wall lighting and like this whole room can just change based on my mood and based on what I need.

[01:10:39] Brett: And it has actually been amazing for my mental health and my productivity. Uh, it costs maybe, I think I spent about 400, uh, putting this whole thing together. And have you ever seen the accountant, the movie, the accountant,

[01:10:57] Jeff: Uh uh.

[01:10:59] Brett: there’s a [01:11:00] scene where Ben Affleck, uh, is like sucking himself up or something. And he turns on some crazy metal, turns on strobe lights, and then starts kneading his shin with a rolling pin.

[01:11:15] Brett: Uh, because it’s all about this sensory overload. He I don’t know exactly, I don’t

[01:11:20] Jeff: Ben Affleck is nuts.

[01:11:22] Jay: Hard,

[01:11:22] Brett: I don’t remember, like, what his particular mental illness was, but he needed this influx of stimulation of both sensory, like, visual, uh, physical, sensory stimulation. And I understand that. Like, as an ADHD guy, um, Sometimes, like a lot of times, I need no sensory input.

[01:11:46] Brett: I need things to be quiet. I need things to be silent, um, just to exist. But then these periods come up almost daily where I need to be overwhelmed. I need to be [01:12:00] oversaturated by stimulation. And these lights, when they’re dancing to the music and I can blast the circle jerks and just have the lights going nuts, uh, it’s, it’s a perfect, like.

[01:12:13] Brett: It’s for my mental health. I love it. I really love it. The other part of my current mental health is, I have been hanging out with and texting with old friends, which is like a mixed bag for me because my friends from high school were a bunch of assholes. And I’m going out to dinner with some of them tonight, and I am not at

[01:12:40] Jeff: of the show. Assholes.

[01:12:42] Brett: Assholes.

[01:12:43] Jeff: of the show’s my asshole

[01:12:45] Brett: I always felt like an outsider with my friends and when we all hang out as like, you know, adults, um, it, I go, I fall right back into that feeling like I don’t fit in, like I’m an outsider. [01:13:00] Um, and these are the people that were the most like me. In high school, we were the kind of outcast, insecure, uh, nerdy, uh, they were all into role playing and it should have been, but I had like religious trauma around that.

[01:13:15] Brett: Um, but like, I just, I don’t, I don’t dig them, but when I got to college, I felt much more accepted and a much more a part of, so I, I’ve been hearing from, um, old, old college friends. Um, I spent last week hanging out with the guy who first introduced me to heroin, but also was

[01:13:42] Jeff: You’re like, what else, what else you got, like, what have you come up with lately?

[01:13:45] Brett: Also was like my closest friend through college.

[01:13:48] Brett: He was the best man at my wedding. Um, he’s a great guy. And, uh, my, one of my ex girlfriends contacted me and like [01:14:00] developed a texting kind of conversation with me. And she’s hanging out with the guy who did all my tattoos. Um, who was like a roommate and a good friend of mine.

[01:14:11] Jeff: This is really like, origin story, uh, people in your life.

[01:14:15] Brett: yeah, exactly, exactly.

[01:14:17] Brett: And it has been, it has actually been really good for me. Um, to, so there’s like two ways it can go, right? You can talk to someone who was important to you in your past and their life is a hot mess and you can feel like. blessed because you avoided whatever they went through. And then you can talk to them and they’re like, full on successful.

[01:14:43] Brett: And like, you can appreciate and, and, uh, empathize, I guess. Like, I consider myself successful in, in what I do and what I am and, and my paycheck and my relationships. And, um, I don’t have to [01:15:00] feel Jealous of old friends so I can be like happy when they succeed. So that’s been a thing. I’ve, I have enjoyed this period of reconnection.

[01:15:12] Brett: Um, it has, well, and I’m supposed to be more social according to my multiple therapists. Like I’m supposed to get out, I’m supposed

[01:15:22] Jeff: Seems like you’ve got a therapist social life. Like, multiple therapists.

[01:15:29] Brett: do have multiple therapists and, and like universally, they want me to, uh, have a social life. And, uh, the easiest way I’ve found to tap into that is to rekindle, uh, relationships that were good for me in the past, uh, even, even once it were bad for me, but have morphed into.

[01:15:52] Brett: Like we’re, we’re grownups now. We’re adults and things are different and we can see where things went wrong. Like this [01:16:00] girl I’m talking to, she thought our relationship was serious and I thought our relationship was casual. And honestly, she was really cool and super hot and I could have been serious about her, but I thought she wanted a casual relationship, so I kept it casual. Shit went down, and apparently, like, I, I, I hurt her, um, and it was unintentional, and, uh, but now we’re reconnecting, and we haven’t talked about the way our relationship went down, we’re just talking about the way things are now, um, but it’s actually pretty heartening that she still wants to talk to me at all, um.

[01:16:48] Brett: Yeah. Holy shit. We’ve been, we’re at an hour 15 and we’re just finishing up Mental Health Corner.

[01:16:55] Jeff: I know, this is a conversation for offline, but I feel like that’s mostly what happens and maybe it’s just time to [01:17:00] not call it The Corner.

[01:17:02] Christina: Yeah.

[01:17:02] Jeff: And it just starts with, how are you doing, and everyone says

[01:17:05] Brett: we, do we need two shows? Do

[01:17:06] Jay: a side

[01:17:07] Brett: separate

[01:17:07] Christina: I was gonna say, I was gonna say maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe we need like, like two shows, like

[01:17:13] Jeff: I think we’re,

[01:17:13] Christina: Health, Mental Health Corner, which is the spinoff of Overtired and like Overtired, which is like us actually talking about like the other things we want to talk

[01:17:21] Jeff: or we just call it Graftitude

[01:17:22] Brett: occasional Taylor Swift.

[01:17:24] Christina: yeah. Or we call it Gratitude.

[01:17:27] Christina: Honestly,

[01:17:27] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

[01:17:28] Brett: Oh my god. Um, so, I guess, Jeff, you have, you have a little time?

[01:17:35] Jeff: I do have time, yeah, I’m good.

[01:17:37] Can we talk about keyboards for a second?

[01:17:37] Brett: Can, can we talk about keyboards for a second?

[01:17:40] Jeff: keyboards.

[01:17:41] Brett: Jay, tell us about your latest keyboard.

[01:17:44] Jay: Okay, so, I preface, I’m not a keyboard nerd. Um. I don’t know. No, I, I, I don’t know key types or any of that stuff. Um, I just know what I got. Um, which was [01:18:00] originally just me being played. So,

[01:18:02] Brett: that keyboard. You just held up, you just held up the, the full Apple USB

[01:18:10] Jay: yeah,

[01:18:10] Brett: Keyboard with the low, the low profile switches. I can’t remember what it was called. It was right before the magic keyboard, but it had the number pad and everything.

[01:18:19] Jay: well, no, this is the, the new, this is the modern one. It’s the, just the traditional magic keyboard, but I have the one with the number

[01:18:26] Christina: Yeah, I used to have one of those.

[01:18:28] Jeff: fella? Same?

[01:18:30] Christina: Because I have the regular one. I used

[01:18:32] Jeff: Everyone hold up your keyboards!

[01:18:34] Christina: used to have the main one, and I can’t see anybody’s stuff right now. I used to have the main one, but what I have had, and I’ve had this for a number of years, is I have this, which is a Logitech

[01:18:42] Brett: that a Logitech? Yeah.

[01:18:43] Christina: which I like better.

[01:18:44] Christina: Because it has USB C, A, um, and, uh, uh, B. Like, I, I like, I like the keys better. Those are the low profile ones I use, but yeah.

[01:18:53] Jeff: You know what? USB is already confusing, but when you say USB C A and B in a

[01:18:58] Christina: I know, I

[01:18:59] Jeff: wait, uh, what are [01:19:00] we talking about? Sorry, anyway.

[01:19:02] Jay: so the, the new keyboard that I got, which it’s, it’s actually downstairs because I was, you know, hanging out downstairs trying to figure out how to type on it, um, is the Moonlander Mark I, which it’s a couple years old, um, It’s uh, the words that I believe they use is an ortho linear split keyboard. Maybe not ortho, maybe not the ortho, I know like it can rise up so it can like move at different angles.

[01:19:29] Jay: Um, but it’s, it’s definitely a solid keyboard. I like the feel of typing on it. Um, I think I have MX Brown switches. I think they’re whatever the tactile, like they don’t make a super loud click, but there is a click. And like, when you press down, there’s a noticeable like engage and disengage, um, to it, which is really cool.

[01:19:55] Jay: But yeah, the, the thing that, I mean, for me, it was, uh, [01:20:00] Again, I had office budget that needed spending, but then also like, you know, my, my fingers hurt. It’s getting cold. Um, I have lots of joint pain. Um, so for me, I was like, all right, whatever I can do that, you know, makes. It makes me able to type longer, um, preserving, I guess, increasing the amount of keystrokes I have in life, which I think Scott Hanselman, like, dubbed that phrase of like, you’re, you have a limited number of keystrokes that you can, you can apply, and the sad thing is you don’t know how many there are, uh, so if I can get some back, like, that would be, that’d be great, but I mean, it’s, I, I have a few of these, I think I have like a, what’s, I forget what it’s called now, it’s one of those super, like, Clacky, like, thocky keyboards, um, uh, it’s the Keychron.

[01:20:54] Jay: Well, no, it’s like a Keychron. Um, I don’t, I don’t have keyboard money. Uh, I don’t [01:21:00] think people who have keyboards have keyboard money. That is like the most expensive hobby I’ve ever seen.

[01:21:05] Christina: Genuinely, yeah, it’s a problem. Like I’ve been, um, I, I came across this, uh, actually because of Charles Tan, who I love, who like sent me this, um, this, um, model OLED keyboard that, um, this, this company, um, has on, on pre order right now, um, which is like a, a take on like the model M and it’s 450 and that’s just for the bare bones.

[01:21:26] Christina: That doesn’t even include keycaps or anything. And yeah, sorry. So go on.

[01:21:31] Jay: all of these keyboards, like they’re so cool. And at one point I was looking at, it was either going to be like this or like the, um, the UHK. And I know Brett like loves the UHK. And I was like, oh man, like if I had to pick between the two, I think the UHK, there was like a little bit more.

[01:21:49] Jay: Like if, if they were going to put it together, cause let’s be real, I’m not doing it. Like, I was like, Oh, if, if I have to get it prebuilt, like I just,

[01:21:56] Christina: part of the fun. Yeah.

[01:21:58] Brett: It really is. Like [01:22:00] once, once you, once you get into, so like, I spent years thinking I was a low profile keyboard guy, um, like those older, like even the Magic Keyboard. Those, that kind of key feel made sense to me, but I lost sensitivity. I, my fir, my index, middle finger, and thumb have no feeling in them.

[01:22:26] Brett: anymore and I don’t know what happened, some kind of nerve damage or something, um, but a low profile keyboard where I can’t feel any tactile response from the switch, um, became almost impossible to type on. So switching to mechanical keyboards was almost a necessity to me, but once you get into them, Yeah, like half the fun is like figuring out which switch you buy, like switch testers, and you test out all the switches and you figure out what’s the perfect one.

[01:22:56] Brett: And then you order, you order a pre prebuilt kil [01:23:00] keyboard, but you order one with hot sw. Hot swappable switches. Uh, so if you ever decide to, you can just swap out all your switches, change all your key keys.

[01:23:09] Jeff: Makes

[01:23:10] Christina: then you get into like lubing all of your switches and uh, uh, and, and, and your, um, um, your, your stabilizers and all that stuff and yeah.

[01:23:19] Brett: So does the moon tent, uh, in the middle? Can you turn it up?

[01:23:25] Jay: So they have like these like nubs that can lock in. So those will allow it to tent a little. So, I mean, the audience can’t see my hands, but it’s more like that.

[01:23:38] Brett: like a 20 degree. Okay. Yeah, that’s

[01:23:40] Jay: there is a. They do have like a extra accessory that is a like much more radical tent that you can add to it. Um, again, for me, I was like, I just want something that’s going to be a little bit more comfortable as I’m typing.

[01:23:57] Jay: The, the splitness of it [01:24:00] is, and like, I’m, I know, I know, like I took typing, like I, I, You know, I, I know the keyboard, but my confidence in it is, is broken. And then with linear keys, it doesn’t matter how well, you know, a QWERTY keyboard, because the keys aren’t staggered. So like I’m, I’m typing stuff at a snail’s pace and. Just being like, I don’t know where the, there’s like certain buttons that are not there. Cause it’s, it’s not a full keyboard, you know, it’s, it’s a keyboard that has multiple modes. So if you want a numpad, there’s a numpad mode that, you know, that you can customize and program and do all these things. And it’s, it’s like the perfect amount of tinker, but like, I, I kind of just want to, I want to get like.

[01:24:48] Jay: Firm on the I can type on this before I’m like, you know, hitting plus by double tapping equals three times is probably not going to be the answer.

[01:24:59] Brett: know what gets [01:25:00] me on any keyboard is, uh, curly and square brackets. I never, I, I’ve gone through typing tutors and tried so hard. So what I ended up doing is assigning one of the extra three thumb keys on my keyboard. Uh, so if I hold that down, then the home row H J K L becomes, uh, parentheses and, and curly brackets.

[01:25:26] Brett: And like, it’s the only way I can, because for me, like typing a curly bracket is like a lot of key backspace, key backspace, key, especially when you’re in an editor that, uh, pairs up. Like you auto, it automatically doubles, like you, you type a left square bracket, it inserts the right square bracket, so you have to like backspace two bracket.

[01:25:49] Brett: Yeah, so that’s the one that gets me, and that’s the one that I’ve been really grateful. I have a customizable keyboard that I can make memorizable [01:26:00] for myself.

[01:26:01] Jay: The one thing I wish that this had, because since it does have those profiles, like they have, they have their own little service where you can, you can see how other people have programmed theirs and you can download their profiles and things like that. I wish that it had app awareness. Because, like, if I’m, if I’m using one of the Several browsers that I’m testing at any given time.

[01:26:26] Jay: Like there are just certain keys that are different. And I would, I would like to have some consistency across the board, but I don’t want to have to sit there and like swap through profiles three or four times and like try to remember color coded combinations of like, Oh, this is the ARC browser profile.

[01:26:45] Jay: Let me. Switch to that, or if I’m using Sigma OS, then it’s like, Oh, let me switch over to that thing and all the keys are different. And it’s, it would be nice if it just did it automatically. I’m, I’m [01:27:00] guessing

[01:27:00] Brett: amount of luck with BetterTouchTool,

[01:27:02] Jay: that’s what I was thinking is I’m, I’m

[01:27:04] Brett: can be app aware.

[01:27:05] Jay: Yeah. Like BetterTouchTool or KeyboardMaestro will probably be the solution that I go with on that.

[01:27:11] Jay: There is one new feature that it had that I don’t. know if anyone’s talked about before. So we know about the hyper key. What about the meh key? Like m m e h. So the hyper key is the hyper key. The meh key is everything but the shift.

[01:27:32] Brett: Huh.

[01:27:35] Jeff: I like it. Evolution.

[01:27:37] Jay: So I was just like, huh, okay, that’s,

[01:27:42] Brett: Control, Command, Alternate, or

[01:27:45] Jeff: some, this is some real good radio. So, so control command and no, that’s not right. Control. No, wait a minute. Wait, my computer’s tenting. My computer’s tenting.

[01:27:57] Brett: ha ha ha ha!

[01:27:59] Jay: [01:28:00] Yeah, because I am in that space where like I have a lot of, you know, customized shortcuts and stuff. And I,

[01:28:05] Brett: but that combination is easy to hit. Like, that’s three fingers.

[01:28:11] Jay: yeah, but it, it, it shifts your hand.

[01:28:14] Brett: It does. Well, it’s easy to hit if you’re using a right hand combo key. If you wanted to hit, like, Control, Command, Option, W, that would be quite the chord to

[01:28:26] Jay: yeah,

[01:28:27] Brett: So like there was, there’s this, when you’re in Photoshop and you want to save when you want to export as a JPEG or like a web format, you hit control option shift S and like that, like I learned that chord, my, my hands just shaped to that chord and I know it’s possible, but hitting control command option S.

[01:28:50] Brett: That would be a different story. And also, much like the hyper key, that’s a combination that no app, like you could make those, you could [01:29:00] customize those combinations and you wouldn’t, you would never override an app’s internal settings. So I can understand. Hyper plus meh would give you two extra keyboards worth of shortcuts.

[01:29:15] Jay: yeah. So it’s, uh, it’s, it’s interesting again, I’ve only had it for, this is like day three. So I’m, I’m still in the, like. Telling my mom like, you know, Hey, I, I ducking love you. And it’s not, it’s not like I’m censoring myself. I’m just.

[01:29:37] Brett: Um, yeah. So, have you ever tried box white switches?

[01:29:43] Jay: No, I’ve, I’ve used, like, most of the stuff that I’ve used are, like, the MX, I think I have, like, MX Blues, MX Reds, and now I’m having MX Browns.

[01:29:53] Jeff: Jay, what do I have to do to put you into these boxed white switches today?

[01:29:57] Jay: Send me a set of them and I will [01:30:00] sit here with my little

[01:30:01] Brett: a, get a key tester. Like, box white has, for me, the perfect amount of click to, like, thud when it bottoms out. I can’t remember, there’s a Specific keyboard nerd term for that, like, feeling at the bottom where it, like, hits. Um, but, like, Box White has been amazing. I was gonna mention, uh, UHK just came out with these risers.

[01:30:27] Jeff: I narrate? Brett has just, Brett has just lifted his fucking weird ass keyboard that looks like he pulled it out of a. Tesla.

[01:30:35] Brett: And you can, like,

[01:30:36] Jay: does look like a Cybertruck, like,

[01:30:38] Brett: any amount of tenting.

[01:30:40] Jeff: this is how you shift.

[01:30:42] Brett: So it can go up to 90 degree tenting. So if you really want to type sideways.

[01:30:46] Jeff: Can we just say, sorry, I

[01:30:48] Brett: I like this, I like this tent right here, which is 30

[01:30:52] Jeff: Can I just say that tenting, which I don’t really want to hear anymore, sounds like, you know, how, how was the, how was the date? It was cool. He was kind of into, he was kind of [01:31:00] into tenting and I guess that’s fine. He said we could do 90 degrees or 30 degrees,

[01:31:04] Brett: Ha ha ha ha

[01:31:06] Jeff: that’s what I, that’s all I’m hearing in this conversation.

[01:31:08] Brett: could refer to camping or erections, I like it, as like a general term.

[01:31:13] Jay: I will definitely say the, uh, the 3D printing world has a ton of mainlander accessories, and again, this keyboard’s been out for a couple of years now. So, um, there are a lot of tent kits. , so Sorry, Jeff, uh, I will, I’ll never look at the, the phrase tent kit again. Um, because of that.

[01:31:39] Jeff: Awesome.

[01:31:41] Brett: Yeah, but honestly, like a programmable keyboard, anyone who’s any nerd deserves a programmable keyboard. And something like BetterTouchTool can make. You know, your Apple keyboard, pretty programmable, but having one like the [01:32:00] UHK where I can load up the agent. And I think the Moonlander has similar software, uh, with like a TNC, like chip in it, and you can.

[01:32:10] Brett: Program every key to do anything you want. You can program layers, you can program key, uh, key combinations. And you can save it to the hardware of the keyboard. Uh, so you don’t need a separate app running. And it’s, honestly, it’s so good.

[01:32:29] Jay: And I mean, it, it solves one of the big problems that I had with. Using like better touch to like, you know, we have one PC in the house. That’s mostly for gaming and You know, okay cool all of my stuff one. I’m already confused because I’m on a PC and I’m like, what do I do? What?

[01:32:50] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:32:51] Jay: but I mean I have I have a couple of Mac Minis, a Mac Studio, a MacBook Air, and [01:33:00] then I’m going to be swapping the Mac Studio for a MacBook Pro soon.

[01:33:03] Jay: And it’s like, having everything sync up, there’s, it’s all, it always deviates. Like there’s always these slight deviations, like for some reason VS Code works on my Mac Studio in Vim mode properly, but like on my MacBook Air, like it just gave up. And I’m like, well. I don’t know, having one piece of hardware with the programming built into it is so nice because now I’m not necessarily trying to program on the software side of the system.

[01:33:32] Jay: It’s like I’m programming the software side on the keyboard and I can take that keyboard, I could, you know, fly to Minnesota and like plug it into Jeff’s computer and like, just, it’s still my keyboard. It’s not like, oh crap, you don’t have like these 15 things, like, hot keying everything.

[01:33:52] Jeff: He was really into hot keying, which is super Whatever, it’s fine! You just gotta deal with it.

[01:33:58] Brett: So, Christina [01:34:00] just linked, uh, the Novelkeys Model OLED, um, which apparently is like an IBM Classic Model M, but with one, with one OLED key.

[01:34:14] Christina: Yeah. And that’ll turn on. I don’t, I can’t remember what the, what the, the mode is called, like the, the, the Soledic mode or whatever the thing is, you know, that like, is that really annoying sound that like some, um, keyboards, uh, can make or that, um, uh, like typewriters, uh, could, could, could

[01:34:30] Brett: yeah. Solenoid?

[01:34:32] Christina: Solenoid.

[01:34:32] Christina: There you go. Thank you. So like that can turn on, like it has a hidden like solenoid in it. So this is from, um, a, um, A company called, um, I think it’s called like PlayKeys or something like PlayKeyboard. And, and they’ve been working on this for a while. I was like looking, um, after Charles sent me this yesterday, I was looking at their interest check or whatever.

[01:34:56] Christina: And this looks like this is a really well designed keyboard. It’s [01:35:00] also 450.

[01:35:02] Brett: Yeah.

[01:35:02] Christina: Um,

[01:35:04] Brett: I would never pay that for a keyboard that wasn’t split. I’ll never buy another keyboard that isn’t split. I love split keyboards so much.

[01:35:11] Christina: But it does look great, and it’s one of those things I’m like, Oh man, this, this does look like a really cool thing. What’s neat about it is that they, they’ve like, found a way to like, you know, um, bend the, um, or curve rather, like the PCB. So, um, it, it’s um, uh, top mounted. So yeah, so it’s got that perfect rise.

[01:35:28] Christina: So it like, it, it is like, just like, like they’ve, they’ve spent a lot of time with the attention to detail on the plates and everything, and it, and it looks really, really good, like, um, their actual photos that they’ve taken. of it. Uh, I’m going to put that in our chat right now so you can see like, look really, really good.

[01:35:44] Christina: Uh, but uh, um, and, and I, I’ve watched a couple of streams of people who were sent early prototypes and were able to kind of like put them together or whatever. I think the OLED key, like, I don’t care about that. Like that seems completely incidental to me, but [01:36:00] the, the, the keyboard itself does look pretty awesome, but I’m just like, I don’t think I can spend that much on a keyboard.

[01:36:06] Jeff: I mean, you

[01:36:07] Brett: Yeah.

[01:36:07] Christina: I mean, I can, but like,

[01:36:09] Brett: a DOS plus a Stream Deck would get you just as far.

[01:36:13] Christina: yeah, I know. But like,

[01:36:14] Jeff: I love this thing, though.

[01:36:16] Christina: I know I was going to say, I freaking love the aesthetic so much. I was like, I was like looking, I was like, Oh, I have some keycaps that would look really good on this. And this would be like a really fun, like,

[01:36:25] Brett: those old IBM keyboards were Even the Apple What was the original Apple

[01:36:31] Christina: uh, the Apple Extended 2.

[01:36:32] Brett: Like those are, those were

[01:36:35] Jeff: We have one of those old IBMs in the house right now with an old, um, computer my boys run Doom on, uh, and, uh, it’s the keyboard I learned Leisure Suit Larry on.

[01:36:47] Christina: it’s the keyboard I learned to type on, right?

[01:36:48] Jeff: It’s the kids I never learned to type, but it’s the keyboard I wrote my school papers on, for sure.

[01:36:53] Christina: Yeah, I mean, it’s totally one of those, you know, we had either the IBM or the Apple ones, either way, like, that’s what I learned to type on, and so that’s what I’ll always associate with [01:37:00] childhood, is, is those type of keyboards, and I’ve looked at getting, um, some over the years, like, I know that there’s like the DOS, uh, keyboard, and, um, and I, I’ve, um, I might have had one of theirs years ago, I don’t know, but I’ve definitely thought about um, their keyboards and, but I don’t know, there’s something about this, especially just because the people who make this, I think, have put like a lot of attention to detail in it and it, it’s, it’s definitely, um, like this is definitely coming from enthusiasts, you know, for enthusiasts sort of thing.

[01:37:29] Christina: Um,

[01:37:30] Brett: happened to the happy hacking keyboard. I keep hearing from people who were obsessed and loved their happy hacking keyboards, but they’re talking about how it’s not made anymore and they can never get a new one. So they’re doing everything they can do. Is it? Did it

[01:37:46] Jeff: He’s super into happy hacking. I’m sorry, this is the only way I can engage in this conversation.

[01:37:51] Christina: I don’t know. I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m looking like they still have like their official website, but I don’t know, um, uh, if they’re still You [01:38:00] know, doing it or not, like, it looks like they’d had a thing like they’d in, like, they’d launched a studio, which has like a little nub on it, like at the freaking, uh, ThinkPad.

[01:38:09] Christina: Yeah, I did, because it’s like a little nipple thing, you know, the little

[01:38:12] Jeff: I never do this. It’s like the only thing

[01:38:13] Jay: The little, the little eraser.

[01:38:17] Brett: inside

[01:38:18] Jeff: He said eraser. You said nub. Nipple. I’ve always said nipple, honestly, and not even to be weird. It’s just what it is. Let’s just call it what it is.

[01:38:28] Christina: but I have no idea. Um, I mean, a lot of, a lot of, um, Keyboard companies have gone under the last couple of years because what happened is there was like the explosion of the hobby, uh, because of the pandemic. And I was definitely one of the people who had been kind of like on the periphery and then got super into it during the pandemic.

[01:38:43] Christina: And I think what happened is that a lot of these, you know, companies run on pretty small margins and there are only a few manufacturers of certain things. And I think that they maybe got ahead of themselves and invested in stock and in other things and be like, Oh yeah, you know, this is going to be this long lasting thing.

[01:38:56] Christina: And it wasn’t. And then it, you know, I think kind of like went [01:39:00] back down to like the more like. natural supply demand curve, which is the people who are really into these things will, um, you know, spend money on, on group buys and, and on specific keyboards, but then normal people will buy Keychrons or Logitechs or whatever.

[01:39:16] Jeff: I like that during the pandemic everyone’s like, Well, I don’t have to work with this keyboard anyhow, might as well get one I can’t use. Sorry,

[01:39:22] Jay: mean, I mean, the nice thing is they return to office and they bring in all these fancy keyboards and they’re like clacking and then finally just someone comes up and like takes their keyboard and throws it out the window. Brett,

[01:39:32] Christina: you know, you work at Google and they’re like, oh, say, okay, so we’re going to make you come into the office, but we’re not going to give you a desk that is actually yours. You’re going to have to share it with someone on the days that you, that you’re not in the office, but you have to sit here.

[01:39:43] Christina: Um, so, uh, you know, someone else is going to get to fart in your chair. Um, but if you leave your keyboard here, like, you know, they could steal it or you have to share a keyboard. You know what I mean? So like, that to me would be genuinely the worst of both

[01:39:55] Jeff: Christine, I call that keeping the seat warm. Oh

[01:39:59] Christina: Here’s

[01:39:59] Jay: how [01:40:00] much was that tent on your keyboard?

[01:40:02] Jeff: my god. Just go to his OnlyFans, you can find all about his tents, he’ll send you private tenting videos, like, it’s a great deal, super cheap sub.

[01:40:11] Christina: this is like your third OnlyFans reference, Chef. Do you want to

[01:40:14] Jeff: I know, isn’t that funny? I got nothing to say,

[01:40:17] Brett: 90 dollars.

[01:40:18] Jay: okay, yeah, because they’re charging 1. 12 for theirs, so I was like, okay. I just wanted to make sure I was in the realm of like,

[01:40:25] Brett: Yeah, no, it’s kind of ridiculous because it’s just basically a piece of machine metal. Um, that I would expect to, if I found it at an ax man, it would be like 5

[01:40:35] Jeff: You just said Axeman to a bunch of people who don’t know what it is, which is an opportunity to tell people what Axeman is, which is the greatest place on Earth.

[01:40:43] Let’s talk about Axeman for a second

[01:40:43] Brett: Okay, Jeff, before we get into Craftitude, let’s talk about Axeman for a second.

[01:40:47] Jeff: Briefly, I’ve been going there since I was five. Can I start? I’ve been going there since I was five, and since there used to be a back then there was a place next to it that was similar called Crazy Louie’s. And, um, Axeman is ostensibly a surplus [01:41:00] store. It is exactly what it is, but it’s all it’s like Tech surplus, it’s weird.

[01:41:04] Jeff: Like here’s, here’s, okay. So here’s a shopping trip to, Axeman. Okay. I come out of it with a paper bag that has one, uh, I picked the Jabba the Hut head out of a bin of Jabba the Hut heads from Jabba the Hut, uh, action figures, like from the Star Wars kit, right? Like, just like the heads, they had a bunch of extra heads.

[01:41:22] Jeff: Um, I had to walk by an iron lung to pick that up, an actual

[01:41:26] Brett: been there for years.

[01:41:27] Jeff: since I was five. And then there’s an entire aisle of just capacitors, transistors, and LEDs. Another aisle that’s just wrecked electronics. Another aisle that’s like, pin up posters and, um, targets for like, BB gun, uh, shooting.

[01:41:43] Jeff: Then you’ve got like, um, there’s a bin of buttons. Uh, there’s a, I mean like, it’s, this isn’t even doing it justice. It’s the most incredible place. And it’s right next to the Turf Club, which is a club where a 7th Street Entry, Sai’s Place, which is the place attached to 1st Avenue. [01:42:00] And bands will regularly post on Instagram, post on Twitter, back when that used to be a thing that bands were on, that, oh my god, I just went to this place, it’s the craziest place I’ve ever been.

[01:42:09] Jeff: Anyway, it’s a complete blast, and you mentioned it, and I have to say it.

[01:42:12] Brett: if you, if you ever find yourself in Minneapolis, it will never be listed on like a tourism registry. But, but you owe it to, there’s, there’s one in St. Paul now too, I think. I think there are two Axe bands, but we used to play Back when I was at the University of Minnesota, we used to play a game called Assassin, um, where you would find elaborate ways to kill.

[01:42:39] Brett: Uh, other people playing the game, and it would just basically be like whatever you’re doing, a sign pops out, like you open your mailbox, and a sign’s there that says, your mailbox is poisoned, you’re dead. And, I would go to Axeman and buy like, solenoid switches. And make, like, cans of jolt that if you pick them up, an alarm would go [01:43:00] off and you would be dead.

[01:43:01] Brett: And, like, it got, yeah, like, it was so much fun and Axe Man fueled so many of the murders I committed in the game of Assassin.

[01:43:12] Jeff: I’m sure it’s fueled real murders too.

[01:43:15] Christina: ha! I was gonna say, it’s probably like, I mean, it does seem like it’d be a very good place, like, if you wanted to commit a crime, like, you know, they’ve got all the materials, you know, to accomplish what you

[01:43:23] Jeff: And the, and it’s fully, it’s fully run and managed by crusty punks. The best I can tell the exact same, who have not aged since I was five, and they’re not gonna snitch

[01:43:33] Christina: Oh, hell no, they’re

[01:43:33] Brett: 80 to begin with.

[01:43:37] Jeff: anyways. Uh, now that I’m, now that I’m actually,

[01:43:41] Christina: name, actually. That’s a great band

[01:43:42] Jeff: yeah, exactly, now, you know, you can picture it, it’s all brown clothes, it’s dirty, they got a pitbull. When the cops are trying to impersonate them, they wear new Carhartts, and that’s how you know. Um, but anyway, yeah, sorry everybody, X Men. Now that I’m actually on Mastodon, I’ll post a couple photos for you, Jay.

[01:43:59] Jay: how’s, how’s [01:44:00] Mastodon treating you?

[01:44:01] Jeff: It’s fine. It’s nice. It’s a nice, easy place for me to be. I mean, I don’t, uh, you know, I’m not in there at a, uh, high scale. Uh, I left my 2, 000 frozen followers on Twitter from when I was in journalism for my, you know, Jay was my first follower on Mastodon. Heh heh heh heh heh.

[01:44:20] Jeff: And I mean, I’m like 21 deep now.

[01:44:23] Jay: I asked him if he

[01:44:23] Jeff: And that’s not just the tenting community.

[01:44:25] Jay: yeah,

[01:44:28] Jeff: All right. Graftitude, for God’s sake, get me out of this hole. Is

[01:44:31] grAPPtitude

[01:44:31] Brett: Let’s do it. Who’s starting? Jay.

[01:44:34] Christina: I was gonna say, we do need to note just at the top, the BB Edit, uh, pick last week is actually out now, so,

[01:44:39] Brett: Yeah, it was out, it was out the day after. I don’t feel too bad about breaking the embargo.

[01:44:44] Christina: no, I think you’re fine, I think it just, uh, just wanted to, uh, be a reminder for people, if you hadn’t checked, BB Edit is out now. Sorry, go on, Jay.

[01:44:50] Brett: sure.

[01:44:50] Jay: downloaded it I haven’t, I haven’t fully tried it yet. But um, So mine, mine is a game. [01:45:00] It’s a really interesting game. It’s called Shapes with a Z. Um, I’m late to the party because Shapes 2, uh, the demo comes out next week. Um, and they’re making it, like, a 3D version of the original. Get the original. It’s like 10 bucks. In the last two days, I have sank probably nine hours into this game.

[01:45:25] Jeff: Steam? This

[01:45:25] Jay: It’s on Steam. Um, The best way to explain it is it is assembly line, like, watch number go up. But it gets really complex really quickly. You take simple shapes like circles and squares, you can split them into four quadrants, you can rotate those splits, you can add color, you can combine colors to make new colors, you can move them around this plane where there are tunnels and Tunneling tunnels, and [01:46:00] your ultimate goal is to send shapes of different patterns into the home base.

[01:46:05] Jeff: Oh my God. This is insane.

[01:46:06] Jay: like, incredibly easy to get started with, and actually, well, I’ll do it afterwards, because if I open that game now, you’ve lost me. So, like, I’ll send a screenshot to every I’ll post it on Mastodon, I think everybody’s there. Um But, like, oh my god, I, I listened to someone talk about it, and then I watched the preview for Shapes 2, and I was like, Alright, this looks cool, but seems kind of intimidating, and then I was like, let me just see what Shapes 1 is about, and I watched a couple of videos, and I was like, This looks really addictive, and then I played it, and then it was 2 in the morning, and I was like, oh shit, like, this is, this is not good, like, it’s, it’s, it’s low speed, it’s, it’s very Tetris y, so, if you need something, it’s something that you can just have running, [01:47:00] so if you gotta like, stop what you’re doing, and like, you’re supposed to be at work, or you’re in a meeting, like, it’s something,

[01:47:07] Jeff: It looks like a good in meeting

[01:47:09] Jay: It’s a definite good in the meeting.

[01:47:11] Jay: Probably not podcasting, because you’re gonna have to think about it a lot. But like, it’s just one of those things that like, wow, I’m mad at myself for not finding this game sooner. Because Like I woke up this morning and was like, ah, I think I figured out how I can get that one piece going. And then immediately like turned it on and like tinkered with it until about 10 minutes before this podcast. So

[01:47:37] Jeff: Awesome.

[01:47:38] Jay: Shapes, it’s definitely a dope game. Check it out.

[01:47:41] Jeff: I will definitely try it after a big deadline this week.

[01:47:44] Jay: Yeah,

[01:47:47] Jeff: Awesome.

[01:47:48] Brett: try that, I think, what was it called? Finite?

[01:47:51] Christina: I did, yeah, it was fun.

[01:47:53] Brett: fun, but once you get to a certain level, I’m on like the third, uh, like [01:48:00] you get like silver, bronze levels, I’m on like silver two now, and it gets so hard that it’s no longer fun, and the beauty of threes is that it’s always the same game, and it’s always, you could, it, I thought it was going to replace threes for me, but man, like it got hard enough that if I need a waiting room game, I’m back to

[01:48:21] Christina: Well, and the thing is for me to, like, I liked it, but it didn’t have, like, for whatever reason, 3 still has that pull for me all these years later, that, like, I just, it’s just a perfect fidget game, and it’s addictive enough that I could pull it in, whereas that game was fun, but, like, I didn’t ever, like, think about it, you know what I mean?

[01:48:37] Christina: Like, I would, I would have had to, like, remember, oh, what was that game?

[01:48:40] Brett: You don’t fall asleep dreaming about ones and threes

[01:48:44] Christina: no, which is like also a Tetris thing, right? Like Tetris is perfect that way. Like, you know, I think that’s like a very common thing. People like dreaming of tetroids. And, uh, speaking of which, um, uh, did you guys see like the 12 year old who beat Tetris?

[01:48:57] Jay: there’s two people that have beaten it now. Fractal [01:49:00] beat it. Oh, sorry. I’m in, I actually observed the competitive NES Tetris scene, so Yeah, the, the first, the first kid like came out of nowhere. No, everyone’s like, who is this? Like, um, Fractal, Fractal has Like, programmed his own, like, Tetris AI bot before and uses it to compete, like, uses it to train to compete at, like, the highest level, so Fractal beating it, people are like, oh, of course he did, like,

[01:49:31] Christina: yeah, to me that’s not, I’m gonna be completely honest, I don’t care. Like, it’s the, it’s the kid. Like, that’s, that’s the one that’s like impressive to me. Because he was born, like, 20 something years after the original NES game came out, you know what I mean? Like, that to me is like far more impressive than, like, I mean, not, not taking it away from Fractal, like, go him, whatnot, but I’m like, you know what you’re doing, like, I,

[01:49:52] Jay: But that’s, that’s the competitive scene, though.

[01:49:54] Christina: Oh, yeah.

[01:49:55] Jay: the best player currently, I think, he’s been the best player for three years now and he’s [01:50:00] 16, like, like, it’s, yeah, I, I, I

[01:50:05] Christina: else has time to do it? I mean, honestly,

[01:50:09] Jay: That’s true.

[01:50:10] Christina: talk, like, genuinely, like, you, you will never in your entire life have the time to dedicate to, like, be perfect at a game as, like, when you’re, you know, in middle school and high school. Like, that’s, that’s the best time.

[01:50:21] Brett: That is, that is the golden spot, yes.

[01:50:23] Jay: There, there’s like a designer that I listened to that was like, Oh yeah, you’re, I’m getting this vibe. And they’re like, okay, let me, let me put the schism between me and that person. Like I could play Tetris every day for the next five years and not be at like 5%, how good they are.

[01:50:45] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:50:46] Jay: Like, like that’s, that’s the level of like skill that.

[01:50:51] Jay: Some of some of these kids have, but I mean, it’s also just fast twitchiness. I’m also going to throw out there that like, hey, we’ve done a [01:51:00] lot in the mental health like space in terms of things that allow you to focus a little bit better. They got a good head start on us. Yeah.

[01:51:13] Christina: For sure, for sure. No, I mean, and that’s the thing, right? And, and, and, uh, yeah, they definitely got like a good head start. It is funny though, um, cause I don’t, I don’t follow a lot of this stuff, but to see like some of the really old school, like from like, you know, the, the guy, uh, uh, I can’t think of his name.

[01:51:28] Christina: He’s very litigious from, uh, um, uh, the King of Kong, um, that asshole, um, you know, people who used to be like really big in like the speed runner community back when, like, it. Was comparatively not that impressive and not that big of a deal, uh, trying to keep up with like this world of, you know, like, uh, 25 and under, you know, like, kids who are just like insanely good and are better than like the, the old guard will ever be or ever were, and watching them kind of come to grapple with that, which I can understand, [01:52:00] I can understand like both sides of that, I can especially understand like seeing people who are way younger than you, like better than you will ever be, like, you.

[01:52:05] Christina: That’s depressing, but at the same time, it is so interesting just to see like how, how much, um, progress we’ve made and things. And also I think just like how instinctually, you know, kids just get stuff now and, and are able to do it. Like some of the, the rock band, um, competitor, uh, stuff. Like, which again, these are kids playing a game that’s been, was dead before they were born.

[01:52:28] Christina: It’s, it’s impressive.

[01:52:31] Jay: Yeah, if you ever want to figure out what level they’re on, just, I put it in the chat, but like, learning about rolling. They literally hold their controller differently than you, like.

[01:52:40] Christina: They hold the controller differently because they figure it out. Okay, this is what you have to do if you want to achieve these things, uh, because they figure out like bugs in the game. It’s unbelievable.

[01:52:50] Jay: Which speaking of, speaking of YouTube videos, um, is everyone like, is this the, the year that YouTube dies with, you know, like Tom [01:53:00] Scott leaving and then Game Theory and everyone else?

[01:53:03] Brett: There are so many creators on YouTube. Their future is guaranteed.

[01:53:08] Jay: is the old guard gone? Like,

[01:53:11] Christina: Maybe, yeah, but like, if the platform is 18 years old, 19 years old, um, that’s, that’s gonna happen. I think the thing with YouTube is it goes in cycles and, and I think if anything it kind of shows that like YouTube fame for the most part is not forever, right? Like you,

[01:53:28] Brett: There are so many different YouTubes. Like, for me, like, I’m on, like, Atheist YouTube. And I’m on, like, Vegan Cooking YouTube. And there are, uh, creators in those spaces that have earned their, you know, million plus subscribers. And, like, these For every interest, there’s a YouTube for you. And I don’t see YouTube itself going anywhere.

[01:53:53] Brett: I see creators falling off. I see. Uh, I don’t, [01:54:00] unlike, unlike Substack, which is undergoing a massive exodus right now, I don’t, people who left YouTube to go to things like Nebula are coming back

[01:54:12] Jay: back, yeah, they’re, they’re

[01:54:13] Brett: like Nebula failed.

[01:54:15] Christina: Yeah. I mean, because the thing is that Nebula, not a bad idea, right? Like it’s an interesting idea, but it’s going to be for a very niche audience. It is like upgrade. It is. It is better. Patreon, right? It is a thing that does not scale. The thing with YouTube and the reason creators will probably never leave it.

[01:54:29] Christina: I mean, and it’s interesting because you see them always try to leave and they always wind it back. Live streaming is the one area where it’s a little bit different, mostly because YouTube doesn’t give a shit about live streaming. And.

[01:54:38] Brett: Twitch does it better,

[01:54:40] Jay: Well,

[01:54:41] Christina: know, Twitch is having massive issues right now too.

[01:54:43] Christina: They just laid off 35 percent of their staff and, um, they, and, and they pull out of South Korea cause they can’t make it work financially. And like live streaming is expensive and making money off of it is hard. But the thing is, is that YouTube, because of its reach and because of how Google has built its system, most creators will make more [01:55:00] money there than they will make anywhere else.

[01:55:02] Christina: And that’s just the reality,

[01:55:04] Jay: I think it’s interesting in that, one, I do think that some regulation is going to cause a rethinking of how YouTube works in terms of monetization. I think money, like, I’ve talked to people who full, like, full time YouTubers, and they’re just like, yeah, the money has dried up. Like, it’s, like, I’m having to work three times as hard to find advertisers.

[01:55:25] Jay: I’m having to work,

[01:55:26] Brett: Well, and a lot of my favorite channels get de monetized, like, they don’t run ads at

[01:55:31] Jay: YouTube ad revenue is, is horri like, horrendously down.

[01:55:35] Brett: you can combine Patreon with your YouTube creation, and that’s what most of the creators I, I watch do.

[01:55:44] Jay: I just think that it was interesting in that the, the 20 teens was a world where people would say, when I grow up, I want to be a YouTuber. I don’t fully know that that’s going to stick around. I

[01:55:59] Brett: [01:56:00] that’s, that’s still an aspiration,

[01:56:01] Christina: I mean, I was going to say all the studies are showing that they want to be a creator. They might not say YouTuber, but like it, whether it’s YouTube or TikTok or, or, you know, Instagram, they’ll go wherever the money is. But yeah,

[01:56:12] Jay: think that they’ll, they’ve learned that like diversification of platforms is, is going to be the most important thing. So now they’ll say, I want to be a content creator. I don’t want to be a YouTuber. Like I want to be a tech. I want to maybe still want to be a TikToker, but like, I don’t know, I don’t know how that works.

[01:56:27] Brett: I’ve actually decided to be a Threads creator,

[01:56:31] Christina: I mean, my God.

[01:56:33] Brett: off, with an offshoot on Blue

[01:56:35] Jay: I’m going to be a master tutor.

[01:56:36] Brett: here.

[01:56:37] Christina: Master tutor. I mean, this is like, this is why it’s disappointing for me that like, of all the, well, I’m still can’t access my Twitter account, which is very upsetting and whatever. But like, um, that my, my biggest following, uh, after that is on, is on Mastodon. And I like Mastodon a lot, but because there is no algorithm by design and whatnot like.

[01:56:56] Christina: You know, it’s hard to grow, and it’s also hard, like, you know, if you ever wanted [01:57:00] to monetize or point people towards other things, like, it’s a, it’s a very specific type of audience that will never grow beyond that group of people. And, and, and that’s, and that’s fine, but like, if

[01:57:10] Brett: a primarily white and highly male audience, as far as I can tell. Super tech nerdy.

[01:57:17] Christina: And ideological, and yeah, and that’s completely fine, um, uh, but, like, there are other people out there and I have other interests too, and it’s sort of, you know, depressing sometimes where I’m like, fuck, you know, the one place we had on the internet that really did combine everyone together was Twitter, and that was ruined for us, um, like, for all the bad things about Twitter, like, that was the ultimate thing, like, everybody was there, of all different types.

[01:57:41] Jay: I have recluse myself back to like discord, like private discords now.

[01:57:46] Christina: Totally. And, and I, and I think that that, I think that we missed something like when we don’t have like the, you know, Omni channel, like the, the, the, you know, the town square, so to speak, because it’s great to have those individual places. But to your point, Brett, like you have, everybody has a [01:58:00] different TikTok.

[01:58:00] Christina: Everybody has a different YouTube. Um, and, and, and you don’t all get to share in those things. Um, and, and then threads is. So bad at real time stuff that it just makes it hard for me to, I don’t get the crack addiction that I got, you know, from Twitter. Like, it’s terrible for live

[01:58:16] Brett: Well, most, most of my

[01:58:18] Jeff: much.

[01:58:19] Brett: Most of my threads stream these days is just people saying, dear algorithm, send me people like such and such. Um, would you, if they list off all of their interests and you’re supposed to

[01:58:32] Jeff: Santa, send me a man.

[01:58:34] Brett: that is all I see all like 90 percent of my stream is just these like, dear algorithm posts from people I’ve never heard of and didn’t intentionally follow.

[01:58:45] Brett: And the algorithm is like. Sharing them, and I guess it works for some people, but it’s like I get no actual social media out of, uh, threads these days.

[01:58:56] Christina: Yeah. Well, I mean, and like, I was, uh, I was there for like the, [01:59:00] um, um, Golden Globes because I couldn’t be Engaging on Twitter, which was very difficult because the Golden Globes were horrible, but also amazing. I mean, it was the biggest train wreck I’ve ever seen a comedian do. And then what’s the best part is, and he’s a

[01:59:13] Brett: Who

[01:59:14] Christina: is the guy I’d never heard of, his name is Joe Coy, and I’ve never fucking heard of him.

[01:59:18] Christina: Um, and, and now he’s just become so butthurt, like he can’t, he can’t own the fact that he bombed. And so he, he, so it’s not, now, he’s like, oh, I was really hurt by the reaction, and now he’s like, I, I got all pissed off, oh, well, they’re a bunch of marshmallows, they can’t take a joke. Yeah. You also were not funny.

[01:59:33] Christina: Like Ricky Gervais, Ricky Gervais literally called them pedophiles. Literally. The last time he hosted he called them pedophiles. And people laughed. So, like, fuck you. You’re bad at

[01:59:44] Brett: can’t take a joke. Anytime someone says you can’t take a joke, it means they fucked up. Like. Because people can’t take a joke. Anyone can take a joke if

[01:59:53] Christina: can take a joke. The reason the Taylor Swift thing went viral, cause A, the joke wasn’t, like, that innocuous or whatever, it was [02:00:00] because her reaction was funnier than his joke. Like, her reaction was hysterical, his joke was poorly done. And the reason it was so bad, he’s like, he’s trying to give explanations.

[02:00:10] Christina: I never even got to practice in front of a teleprompter or anything. Yeah, we can tell.

[02:00:15] Jeff: It must be so hard for a comedian. Yeah,

[02:00:17] Christina: Well,

[02:00:18] Brett: good, good comedians come up from clubs and working their material out in front of an audience until it’s

[02:00:25] Christina: Well, that’s the thing. He, he got the gig like two weeks in advance, and he didn’t have his writer, like the, it wasn’t written, like he didn’t have rehearsal time. And here’s the thing. That sucks. That’s why you don’t take that job. That’s why Ali Wong told him to fuck off. That’s why everybody else told him to fuck off.

[02:00:40] Christina: That’s why you got the job. Because no one knew who you were, and you were the 15th person on the list, and they were all like, well yeah, this idiot will do it. Cause anyone else would’ve, anyone else would’ve gone, oh yeah, no, there’s no way that I can make this work. I mean. The, the live stuff I’ve done, which is never on the level of the Golden Globes, not even close, but like [02:01:00] the rehearsal and the practice and the, the teleprompter stuff you need to do, if you don’t have that, it’s not going to do it right.

[02:01:05] Christina: And the part of the reason is jokes were so bad, weren’t just the jokes were bad, but the delivery was awful because he was reading them off of a teleprompter and had no idea how to do his pacing. And it’s like, that’s on you, but that’s on you, bro. Like you shouldn’t have accepted this gig. Cause They didn’t support you, but also you were bad at what you did.

[02:01:25] Christina: Anyway, that’s why I ran on that, but, but, but, but Threads was awful for that in real time. It was like very not good.

[02:01:32] Jeff: Uh, you guys, I do have to go, uh, and

[02:01:35] Brett: We’ve only been here for two hours.

[02:01:37] Jeff: why I have to go,

[02:01:38] Brett: go?

[02:01:38] Jay: gratitude really

[02:01:39] Jeff: but I don’t, I, I’m going to come back and listen to The Graftitude. I don’t have anything I’m burning to say this week, and so I will save it for next week, but I do want to say, Jay, it has been amazing to have you on and to talk with you, um, and just a real pleasure.

[02:01:51] Jeff: This is the second episode in a row where I, like, bail in the last ten minutes. I gotta go,

[02:01:55] Christina: second episode in a row, we’ve gone

[02:01:56] Brett: in a row we’ve gone for two

[02:01:58] Christina: yeah, exactly. This is on

[02:01:59] Jeff: right, [02:02:00] y’all, I’ll, so I’ll see you

[02:02:01] Brett: is that the season four thing? We’re just a two hour show now? Alright, Jeff, good

[02:02:06] Jeff: Bye.

[02:02:07] Christina: Bye.

[02:02:08] Jay: I’m happy to pass to the next person for gratitude. I just want to throw out there. There is a iOS app for shapes. It’s not good. Just get the, get the desktop app, like, or the desktop game, um, you will, your fingers will thank me later.

[02:02:25] Christina: Okay, sounds good. That’s good

[02:02:27] Brett: Alright, Christina, what you got?

[02:02:28] Christina: Okay, so, um, this is a weird one for me to share, but I shared Canva as a Graftitude pick a while back, and I still really do enjoy Canva, like, for quick and dirty stuff, especially for like YouTube thumbnails, um, or social media posts, like, honestly, it’s really good, and I, I, um, I recommend it, but I tried out just as an experiment this week just because I might be doing a, um, Lunch and Learn, um, with, um, a team at Microsoft to try to help them make their thumbnail game better.[02:03:00]

[02:03:00] Christina: Um, Microsoft will obviously not pay for them to use Canva, but, um, if you have an Adobe Creative, uh, uh, Cloud account, then you have access to Adobe Express, Which I had not played with in a really long time, but Adobe Express, uh, which I think is like express. adobe. com or something, I Um, it’s basically their, it’s basically their knockoff of Canva, but, um, it is pretty good.

[02:03:22] Christina: It’s, um, in some ways that’s actually better than Canva because, um, the way that they do layering and layering management is, is really good. And if you have Creative Cloud, then you can actually do things like, uh, import in PSD files and, and other, um, elements into your designs. Um, it’s all web based, so this is just like a, a web based thing if you’re wanting to, you know, make, um.

[02:03:46] Christina: Either like, uh, you know, do some videos or a flyer or something, you know, to post on Instagram or, or like I said, a YouTube thumbnail. It’s good. It’s also integrates well with, um, Adobe’s, uh, generative AI thing, which can be, um, [02:04:00] uh, pretty, pretty good stuff. And like, uh, and interestingly, their background removal tool.

[02:04:05] Christina: Is better than the one in Photoshop, um, for whatever reason. And, and, and I’ve, I’ve long stood by the fact that like canvas background removal tool is better than like any app you can pay for. Um, I, I, I think that the, the Adobe express one is, is as good. I might try to compare them side by side, but, and I, and I’ve used all of them.

[02:04:24] Christina: And no, the one that’s in Photoshop, the one that’s in, um, uh, uh, what are photo made or maker mater or whatever, uh, the one that’s in like, there are a bunch of. Yeah, Pixelmator, thank you. Um, they’re, they’re like a bunch of third party, you know, Mac apps that claim to be really great at that stuff.

[02:04:41] Brett: there are some that focus only on background removal. There’s, like, apps for

[02:04:46] Christina: yeah, and most of them are not, A, they’re, they have problems with hair and other things, and B, they’re absolutely not better than Canva on its own. Um, like, Canva’s better. Uh, and, and Adobe Express is really good. So, [02:05:00] um, uh, anyway, um, I, if you haven’t, I Their pricing, I think, is basically the same as Canva’s.

[02:05:06] Christina: I would probably, if I didn’t have an Adobe account, would pay for Canva instead. However, if you have an Adobe account through work or personal, the fact that you get it for free makes it really compelling. So, um, I hadn’t ever used this until, uh, Friday. And I actually, I was like, when I was using it, I was like, Oh, this is going to be my Graptitude.

[02:05:30] Christina: Because for people who might need just a quick and dirty, you know, kind of, uh, way to, to, to do graphics, um, this is a, a really good way of, of doing it. And you might already have access.

[02:05:43] Brett: I came up in the late 90s, early 2000 as a graphic designer slash art director. And removing backgrounds used to be this process of intricate past selections, uh, [02:06:00] brushwork, especially dealing with hair. Like, hair was the bane of any Photoshop user’s existence. I went to entire conferences. About removing backgrounds.

[02:06:11] Brett: I remember being in Vegas, uh, learning about new tools in Adobe Photoshop, like 3. remember. Um, but yeah, like it’s amazing what background removal with AI or with a little bit of machine learning behind it can do. Um, fascinating. Also makes me feel like I wasted years of my life.

[02:06:35] Christina: No, it’s like we had to get the training somehow, right? Like,

[02:06:39] Jay: mean, it still can’t do black people.

[02:06:42] Brett: Really? Is that

[02:06:43] Jay: still sucks. I get, my, half of my head gets cropped out every time, like, I have a, I have a green screen.

[02:06:49] Brett: sad,

[02:06:50] Jay: Yeah. I have a green screen that I need to set back up. I haven’t had to do thumbnails in a while, but like, that was the thing that got me to just be like, screw it.

[02:06:57] Jay: I’m getting a green screen.

[02:06:59] Christina: Yeah, [02:07:00] well, see, and for a lot of times, like the ones that I’m talking about, like, I will be removing a green screen from something and which should be theoretically the easiest thing to do, but they will still mess up around hair and other things. And so, and this will be like with consistent lighting, like with like a photo, like, or a screen grab taken from like, you know, a camera that’s been, you know, um.

[02:07:18] Christina: That’s stationary and that has like a, you know, um, a uniform lighting setup. So like the perfect conditions for moving background stuff. And a lot of the apps that claim to do it really well, don’t. Um, Canva does. I would be curious, um. If like Canva, Adobe Express, how they work with, with Black people, if they work any better.

[02:07:40] Christina: I’m not giving them credit to say they will. I’m just curious if, if their models are improved on that. Cause I know that Pixelmator, like didn’t they, didn’t they like have like an image, like on their website, like to try to pretend that they like were good with that. And then it wound up being like not good at all with Black people.

[02:07:57] Jay: So Pixelmators is like decent, which [02:08:00] is high praise because that’s about what I expect these days, but there’s the way that they. It’s like an honest mistake, but it was like an also, like, you obviously didn’t have black people in the room to approve this because it was promoting their video background removal tool.

[02:08:22] Jay: And it was a black person on it and it was good. It’s like,

[02:08:25] Christina: Did it say remove color or

[02:08:27] Jay: to remove. Yeah, it was like so easy to remove color. And I was just like, Oh God, like what’s happening?

[02:08:34] Christina: That’s right.

[02:08:35] Jay: oh man, it’s just those things were just like, please. Please, if you’re going, if you’re going to do something, like, just run it by someone.

[02:08:43] Christina: Right.

[02:08:44] Jay: it, hey, run it by someone that looks like the person that you’re, that you’re featuring on the thing.

[02:08:52] Christina: Um, especially when, like, they very clearly, like, these were, like, um, you know, stock photos or something, you know, it wasn’t like they’d paid, uh, to take those photos, I’m [02:09:00] sure, you know, they found it on some, you know, uh, other sort of site and whatnot, like, it wasn’t something that they commissioned. Yeah. Um, which, To me, makes it worse because, yeah, you’re not, you’re, you’re, you’re going here because you want the, the visibility points, but then you’re not actually like, you don’t have anybody, uh, who works for you to actually give you a go ahead on anything.

[02:09:25] Christina: But, yeah. Um, but no, but Adobe Express, uh, is, is, is my recommendation, especially if you already have access to Adobe stuff, because it’s, it’s good. And, um, for those things that, yeah, yeah, yeah, you should hire a designer. Guess what? Most of us don’t have the budget and most designers don’t want to do your social media posts.

[02:09:41] Christina: So, um, it’s, it’s a good, good choice.

[02:09:45] Brett: Perfect. Alright. So here we are at 2 hours and 10 minutes. Um, and I am, I am But, um, I am going to pick one of my own projects this week. Uh, [02:10:00] CurlyQ is a new thing I’ve just released. Um, if you do any kind of web scraping for, uh, scripting purposes, if you ever need to, like, say, find the largest image on a page, or find out Uh, all external links on a given site, or take a screenshot, or save a print version of a PDF of a site.

[02:10:23] Brett: Uh, CurlyQ is my answer to that. Uh, it can currently only do GET requests. I The next phase is to be able to do post requests, and it does some stuff with JSON handling where it will, um, automatically cycle through different, uh, user agents, um, when, uh, requesting a response, which can save you some trouble with finding the right headers basically to send with, uh, with a JSON request, um, it does not do [02:11:00] extensive.

[02:11:01] Brett: Anything JQ can do, you’re better off piping the response to JQ. It just saves you a little trouble, uh, with the curl setup. But for web scraping, uh, instead of like when you curl a website, you get the raw source of the website. Um. CurlyQ will give you the raw source, plus it’ll split out the head, the body, it’ll show you all of the links on the page, all of the images in the page.

[02:11:28] Brett: You can query by a specific CSS selector to get just an element of any page. And, um, it does, uh, it, it incorporates, um, what did I put in? I forget. Uh, it incorporates a dynamic, uh, web browser, so it can actually load up Chrome or Firefox and save the content of pages like Amazon pages, where half of it is, uh, generated by JavaScript.

[02:11:59] Brett: And if you curl it, [02:12:00] you just get. A bunch of script tags. It can actually load the page and then query it in the same method using CSS selectors, uh, to grab like the price of an Amazon product or, or the related links to a post. And yeah, I’m, it’s been a little obsession of mine over the last week. I, I like pitched it on Macedon.

[02:12:22] Brett: I was like, would anyone want to use this? And I got. Maybe 20, 25 responses that were like, absolutely. Can it do this? Can it do this? Uh, and I put it out. I like, I coded it and I put it out and I got like zero response. I don’t know if everyone’s just like, Oh, this is perfect. I’m just going to use it. I had no complaints.

[02:12:43] Brett: Um, but I would be super curious to get some feedback on like, where should it go next? Uh, like if it’s not the perfect tool for you, what does it need? Um, I’m always looking for that response. Join me on forum. brettterpstra. com and tell [02:13:00] me all about it.

[02:13:02] Jay: I, I say this in the, the most, uh, positive way possible. Brett, you make me want to stop programming. Like, like, I’m, so, so, I will, I will share what I’ve done to Brett over the last, like, three or four months. I’ll just randomly text Brett like, Hey, I have this idea. And my thought is, is if it’s crazy enough that Brett can ideate on it, then maybe it’s worth pursuing.

[02:13:34] Jay: And there have been like three or four times where Brett’s like, This just doesn’t sound like a good idea. And then like an hour later, there’s like a, But you could do this! And add five other things.

[02:13:44] Brett: I do that to Ralph Hoosman too. He like constantly, I’ll like create a tool and he’ll be like. Oh, this sounds perfect. Can it work with this and this? Uh, can I incorporate it to create data graphic, data [02:14:00] graphs from my Markdown notes that I keep in this other application? I’ll be like, that’s not what it was designed for.

[02:14:06] Brett: And then I’ll spend like an hour later. I’d be like, you know what? It probably could. If I just added this capability and then I just do it. So it’s people like you and Ralph that that really actually develop these tools into truly useful tools.

[02:14:22] Jay: Yeah, one of these days, I will have A projects folder that is like a third of what you’ve got. And I will consider that an accomplishment.

[02:14:34] Brett: My, I have a, I have a code folder on my desktop where I keep all of my projects and it has CD, code,

[02:14:46] Brett: this is good radio right here.

[02:14:49] Jay: Nice keyboard clicks.

[02:14:52] Brett: It has 114 folders in it right

[02:14:55] Jay: Oh, there’s no

[02:14:57] Christina: Wow. That’s amazing. All right. I’m [02:15:00] registering for your forum now, Brett. I’m curious, should, for my username, should it be Christina or should I be Film Girl?

[02:15:05] Brett: you should be Film Girl. I appreciate consistency.

[02:15:08] Christina: All right.

[02:15:10] Brett: I’m ttscuff everywhere, and it’s a horrible handle, like, nobody knows the story behind it.

[02:15:16] Christina: Tee

[02:15:16] Brett: a stupid handle. But nobody, nobody will ever steal it from me. And like, anytime a new social media service pops up, even if I don’t plan to use it, I go register ttscuff. And it’s just like, the way to find me everywhere.

[02:15:31] Jay: I’m

[02:15:32] Christina: I, I just, I, I, I try to get Christina when I can places, but, um, uh, but that’s a, that’s a vanity thing. But

[02:15:39] Brett: You got Christina is,

[02:15:41] Christina: I did.

[02:15:43] Jay: going as KJ Miller on everything. It sucks because everyone defaults to KJ and I’m just like, like, no, it’s just, and then I used to tell me like the K is silent and they’re like, really? I was like,

[02:15:58] Brett: So I, I [02:16:00] own the domain. Fuck yeah. Mark down.com. And it used to go to my tool Marke that would like, it was an API that would mark down Fify any webpage for you. But, but it broke. It broke and it’s defunct. I also know, I also own markdown rocks, and I don’t know what to do with these at this point, but I keep renewing them.

[02:16:22] Brett: I

[02:16:22] Christina: I know. I, I do the same

[02:16:24] Brett: 20 a year,

[02:16:25] Christina: I do the same thing. And in fact, I, I actually, one of my, um, uh, things was, was not renewed and I like went back and I like revived it cause I got my thing. It was like, oh, this was, you know, not, we’re not renewed and I’m like, shit. I,

[02:16:39] Brett: maybe someday.

[02:16:41] Christina: and I’m like, I gotta, I’m like, I gotta, um, you know, re uh, redo.

[02:16:45] Christina: Um, I suck ltd.com because I have, I rule, I have, I own I rule inc.com, and I suck ltd.com because I was like, well, if you’re going to be, have horis, then you need to [02:17:00] also be self-effacing.

[02:17:01] Brett: nobody, nobody is going to offer you money for those.

[02:17:04] Christina: Oh, I know.

[02:17:05] Brett: I keep hoping that some of these domains that I’ve held on on to for all this year, all these years will eventually, uh, get someone that’s like, I’ll give you five grand for the domain name. And I’ll be like,

[02:17:16] Christina: I got like 600 bucks for PowerofWe. com, which I bought, um, to make fun of Theranos because, no, not Theranos, WeWork, because WeWork, like, when, when they, they’re aborted S1 and they call themselves the Power of We. And so I bought it and I, and I didn’t, and, and I forgot about it. And then like, I got like a, I did it literally as part of an ad read because when we used to get like, uh, spot on Rocket when we used to get domain sponsors, I would buy a domain name, um, usually like a shit posting one.

[02:17:47] Christina: And, uh, like, I would be like, okay, that’s fine. You know, whatever the cover of the sponsorship will cover it and it’ll be funny. And I forgot about it and I did renew it for probably, you know, more years than I should have, but I was glad I did cause I caught like [02:18:00] 600 bucks for it. Like first I. Didn’t respond to the mail and then they like sent me a follow up where they just like raised the price and I was like, Cool, here you go.

[02:18:08] Christina: That’s great.

[02:18:09] Brett: You got it. All right. Well, that was a hell of an episode, you guys. We lost Jeff along the way. We lost some good people in the process, but,

[02:18:20] Christina: it’s okay.

[02:18:21] Jay: he’s out there tenting somewhere

[02:18:25] Brett: thanks for coming back, Jay. Good to see you. Always a pleasure, Christina.

[02:18:30] Christina: a pleasure.

[02:18:31] Brett: You guys get some sleep.

[02:18:33] Christina: Get

[02:18:33] Jay: Get some sleep, get some sleep, Jeff.