Horror Movies and Heatwaves

Welcome to Overtired

[00:00:00]

Christina: Hello again. You are listening to Overtired. I’m Christina Warren. I’m joined as always by Brett Terpstra. This week we are without our third, uh, Jeff SREs Gonzo, who is uh, uh, having home of jet skis. But, uh, but Brett and I are back doing an old school Overtired. How are you, Brett?

Brett: I don’t know. I don’t know, man. Like he’s like, I got a family thing, and then he sends us pictures of him on a jet ski and I’m like, where are your priorities, man? What about Overtired? Come on,

Christina: exactly, exactly. It’s like we, we, we, we are definitely more fun than,

Brett: then a jet ski. I find that hard to believe.

Jet Ski Adventures and Dubai Memories

Brett: I’ve never been on a jet ski, but

Christina: Oh, they’re great. They’re

Brett: just see them as like an expression of pure joy on water.

Christina: Yeah. I, I went in Dubai of all places, actually, uh, in a manmade lake. And, um, and, and, and at we, we’d called in advance, like before we got there, we were like. Can I [00:01:00] wear like a two piece bathing suit? Right. Because I, I was concerned about that. And, and yes. And they were like, she can wear whatever she wants.

And I was like, okay, well I’ll still keep it like conservative, like more conservative than like my normal bathing suit would be, even though I had like a life vest on or whatever. And then we get there and they only had four jet skis and there were five of us. And, uh, one of my, my colleagues was like, my, one of my best friends actually, he was like, no, she gets her own.

So they had to go back and like, get one for me, but, but they just assumed that I was gonna ride like bitch on someone’s, um, a jet ski. And I was like, no, I, I would like to do this. And, and I did pretty good. Um, one of our colleagues, like he, he’d never been on one before and, and he had the time of his life.

I think he went buying one himself after, after, after it. But yeah, no, it was really fun. So Jeff’s photos, the video rather, that he sent to us, like, um, pure joy and, uh, so we missed you Jeff, but also completely understand.

Comedy Shows and TV Nostalgia

Brett: Before Daniel Tosh got really annoying and awful. Um, [00:02:00] he had a special where he talked about how no one can frown on a jet ski, like you would always smile on a jet ski. It went into like some dark version of a kid’s funeral. But, um, but back then it was funny back then, like Daniel Tosh was like, you know, hitting

Christina: No, totally.

Brett: still, like I was cracking up

Christina: No. I mean,

Brett: bit about the, the midgets in the parade that killed me.

I was dying.

Christina: no, we can’t say that word anymore,

Brett: I know the little people in the parade. Um, but I believe the word he used

Christina: right? No, I I I’m just, I’m just fucking with you. I don’t, I don’t, I mean, like, yeah. Um, but no, I mean that, that, that God Damnit Hass, that’s the name I haven’t thought about in forever. Toss 2.0. Like, that was like, that was like a big show That was, you know.

Brett: It started off pretty good too.

Christina: did. It did. I mean, I did too. 'cause it was, it was this weird thing where you’re like, okay, we can bring the internet to tv and then it just kind of [00:03:00] turns out like, we don’t really need to bring the internet to tv.

Brett: Well, and now what’s her name? Um, the bipolar comedian, um, I forget her name. And she, I forget the name of the show, but she does a show that’s basically all like memes

Christina: It was like after midnight it just got

Brett: Yeah, yeah. It was, it’s after midnight, but it’s at, after like with the, at symbol. They like re re rebranded it. You’re right.

It is the new, it is the new AF at midnight. After midnight.

Christina: At midnight. After midnight, whatever. Yeah. It just, I, I, I think it just got canceled. 'cause I saw it like once or twice. It was not a thing I was ever gonna seek out, to be honest with you. Um, but, um, I mean, I, I like parts of it, but like, I don’t watch terrestrial TV most of the time. And certainly not like late nights.

I might watch clips. I, I caught it a couple times. Um.

Brett: it’s one of those shows where it’s mostly inside jokes between comedians. So if you’re really into the comedy scene and you wanna see like, how comedians relate to each other, that’s, it’s, [00:04:00] it’s a good, like, just kind of, obviously they pre-write their bits, like even on the original at midnight, they, they all, they all got the questions in advance and they rewrote their bits.

Christina: course,

Brett: you gotta, you got a kind of a glimpse into, uh, a rapid fire comedy writing session, if you will.

Christina: Yeah. No, totally. I mean, and, and, um, and I, the reason I think it was just because I saw something on Instagram or whatever, like, oh, this is my final thing, or whatever, so I’m assuming it was canceled, which frankly makes sense. Um, 'cause again, like it’s one of those things like, that would’ve worked. Like, and I would’ve watched it like in the early two thousands, like if it was on tv or if they did like it on like Comedy Central, which I think it originally, you know, Tash 2.0 was on, like, that would’ve been a thing that I would’ve been like up at.

One o’clock in the morning or whatever, um, or at midnight. And I would’ve had on in the background, right? And I would’ve been like, oh, this is really funny. And I’m, I’m really into this. But like, the way that we watch TV like that now just doesn’t exist in that, in that [00:05:00] sphere.

The Paradox of Choice in Entertainment

Christina: Like, like, um, we were talking about this right before we started the show.

Like you, you think, you claim you’ve run out of good movies to watch. You obviously haven’t because there are, you have not watched all the good movies, I promise you. But, but we have like, it’s almost this weird thing like this, this, we’ve talked about this before, but like, you know, the paradox of choice where you have so much that we have access to that there aren’t like these pre curated pockets where you can just turn something on and like, just have that be kind of your.

Your stuff for the day or, or, or, or, or for the week or like for, for whatever, you know, timeframe you’re in. Like when I was, you know, in, in high school and college, it would be like, adult swim would be like the thing that I would always have on like from 10:00 PM Well, it start at 11 I think, and then it moved.

You know, earlier as time went on, but like, that was always a thing. It was like, okay, I know that this block from like this time to this time is gonna be stuff that I, I watch and I would, you know, have like certain shows that I would always like watch on like [00:06:00] MTV or like, you know, again, like Comedy Central or whatever.

Like you just knew you could just have MTV on like in the background all day long and, and do whatever you needed to do. Or if you just wanted to veg in front of the tv, you could do that. And like, they have those, you know, fast channels now that’ll just play marathons of shows, but it’s not programming blocks in the same way.

It’s like, you know, and then, and, and, and then those are annoying to me because the, the ad breaks. I don’t even mind the ads so much. It’s just I don’t like the way they insert them. Like if they inserted them at the normal break points. In those shows, then, like, I wouldn’t be mad, but it’ll happen like mid-sentence and then like, it’ll cut into an ad and then it’ll like go back again.

I’m like, okay, no, no, no, no, no. Like, fuck you. If you’re too incompetent to do ad stuff, then all you’ve reminded me of is the fact that I probably own this show on demand, or I can find this on demand, or I can find like a, a non-ad copy to watch and like now I’m just [00:07:00] thinking about that and so I’m completely like tuned out of watching the Reno 9 1 1, you know, channel or whatever.

It’s

Brett: Yeah. Yep. I, uh, I’m, I’m planning to do some video work for a, a local store. The one L works at actually, and, and the person coordinating the video told me they were thinking of a. Pop-up video, uh, aesthetic for it, and they’re like, did you ever watch VH one? I’m like, yeah, yeah. We’re we’re of the same age.

Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you, you, you, you, yeah. You, well see this is, this is what’s so fucking scary, is that I don’t even know, like how many, like, like people like below 30 know VH one,

Brett: Sure.

Christina: which

Brett: it exist anymore? I don’t even

Christina: I, I don’t even think it does. I mean, if it does, it certainly, I mean, it had stopped like, like other than

Brett: playing like nonstop video. It was like a [00:08:00] radio station. After a while,

Christina: Yeah.

Brett: MTV turned into reality shows and VH one just turned into like an auto dj.

Christina: yeah, no, yeah. MTV is just, is just like, they, they just play like, um, one of those Yeah. Just so one of those game shows, they just like, play like over and over again. Like, that’s all it is. And, and I think that it might have, um, turned into, yeah, I, I guess it still technically exists, but, but they, um, yeah.

'cause I’m, I’m looking this up now. Um. But yeah, like all the MTV channels basically, like, it’s just like ridiculousness now, I think is, is the show that like MTV plays like, like 24 7, um, and then they have like MTV hits and MTV two and whatnot. But like, those are just, you know, kind of like, we’ll, we’ll also go through cycles of things, but like, 'cause VH one went through that weird block where, um, well, I mean Drag Race, um, uh, was, was there, um, and then, and then it moved someplace else.

Um, it, it, drag Race has [00:09:00] started on logo and then moved to VH one 'cause it did really well. Um, and, and like, uh, love, love and Hip hop was, was VH one, but like in the two thousands there was popup video and there was behind the music, and then there were like all the, I love the eighties, I love the nineties, I love the whatever, like all the nostalgia.

Shows, if you remember those. Like where they would basically just like get the comedians, like they basically click kind of like figured out how to do cheap YouTube content before YouTube where they would just get a bunch of people in a room for a day and then just have them riff and then turn like 15 specials out of it, you know?

Um, although that had to have been, I mean, I’m sure they were paid nothing for it, but like I bet that that was really good for people like Michael Lee and Black and, and folks like that because you would get to know them 'cause they would play those things all the time. So you knew those things and you knew those jokes.

And then like, oh, you see these comedians, you’re like, oh, okay. I remember them from, you know, from, from from that show. You know,

Brett: I do.

Christina: I might, I might watch that. I might watch their comedy special. So[00:10:00]

Brett: Yep. All right.

Mental Health Corner

Brett: Should we do a mental health corner?

Christina: we should, we should you wanna go first?

Brett: Sure.

Unemployment and Coding Bliss

Brett: I am still unemployed and I have not been this happy in a long time. Um, I am coding every day and like, really, I’m super excited about the software I have coming out, and it makes me happy. It’s fulfilling, but it’s also at the same time, not draining.

So like, uh, evening will roll around and Elle will be like, Hey, there’s a burlesque show tonight. Or, Hey, a friend of ours band is playing downtown. And I’ll be like, yeah, let’s go. And like historically, by evening, I’m, I’m shot. I don’t, I don’t seek out. Activities. And now I’m like, yeah, let’s do it. Let’s go, let’s socialize, let’s, let’s spend our energy on other people.

And, [00:11:00] um, it’s been, it’s been really good. Uh, here during Pride Month, we’ve been to a couple of, uh, big pride events at, uh, no Name bar, which has become, it’s, it’s Winona’s only gay bar, and it’s not a gay bar. Um, it is just a very like queer friendly bar. That regularly holds like queer dances and, and, and queer burlesque shows.

And, um, it’s been, it’s been really fun. Like, I love that community. I love, um, feeling a part of, even though I’m 46, I can show up and all the kids are like, happy to see me and everyone’s just having a good time and I don’t feel old. Um, I do because I go home at like 10 and I know that they’re all there to shut the bar down.

Um, but uh, but it’s been, [00:12:00] it’s been actually like this whole, being unemployed and working on my own stuff has been super fulfilling and I wanna make it work. That said, I am trying to get unemployment right now and Oracle missed their deadline for responding to my unemployment claim and I’m. Totally. I’m prepared for disappointment on that front.

Um, I don’t know what they’re gonna do. I don’t know if they’re gonna block me from getting unemployment.

Christina: Well, what, what, what do you mean they missed their deadline? Like they, they missed their deadline to, um,

Brett: Minnesota’s unemployment insurance website says that they sent a request to Oracle for confirmation on such and such a date, and they had a due date. It just says due date. And I don’t know if this is legally binding or what, but it said due date was the 20th and today’s the 22nd, and I haven’t heard anything yet.[00:13:00]

Um, so they missed the deadline that that Min Minnesota’s unemployment insurance sent them.

Christina: Okay. So, but so what, but I’m trying to understand though, by them missing the deadline, like, does that mean that that is their deadline to like confirm or deny, or, or what? Because like, because if they don’t respond, I mean, it seems weird that the default response would be that, that you just wouldn’t get unemployment.

Right.

Brett: seem weird. Yes.

Christina: like, like it would seem to me like they would need to, they would basically need to respond if they were to be like, no, we’re, we’re going to, you know, um, like make some sort of claim about why this shouldn’t be paid out.

Brett: Yeah, I should, I should call somebody. Um, yeah, as part of the unemployment application process, you have to sign up to take like, um, these, it’s like a meeting with a, a counselor that teaches you how to get a job [00:14:00] and it’s, I, I know how to get a job. I,

Christina: Yeah. And they make you like, do like, like weekly biweekly calls with them or whatever. But I mean, you know, I

Brett: No, that won’t be a thing I just have to fill out.

It’s mostly

Christina: oh, that’s how it is in, that’s how it is in Washington. Like they would make

Brett: Um, yeah, you, you have to check in, but it’s not, you don’t have to make calls every week. Um, at least that’s my understanding thus far. You do have to continually show evidence that you are actively applying for work. Um, which I can do. I am, I am applying, I’m just not excited about getting a job, and I haven’t found anything since Shopify that actually seemed like a good fit that I would actually enjoy doing.

Um, we’ll see. Anyway. Yeah. Right now my mental health good.

Heatwave Struggles and Power Outages

Brett: Um, I, I had to cancel recording yesterday because we’re in the middle of, uh, severe heat advisory [00:15:00] here in Minnesota. Heat Index is around 115 and. Our power went out for eight hours and, um, I, we were without air conditioning, without fans, without lights.

And this was, it started at like, uh, four, like five five in the evening. Uh, which is four, 4:00 PM is like the hottest part of the day right now. Um, so the house had had the AC running all day up until that point, so it wasn’t unbearable in the house, but power went out because a tree went down on our road and knocked down a power line 'cause it’s all above ground power lines and.

That meant we couldn’t get out of the neighborhood too. We had to drive around through this like 10 mile back road, gravel road way to get back into town. So [00:16:00] we, we ended up like making sure the animals had plenty of water and going to, uh, like a, a neighborhood ice cream social in, uh, in one of the West end neighborhoods.

And, uh, a, a fun band was playing covers in the garage, uh, doing a bunch of like. Just really slow summertime, like classic rock stuff that just, like, it felt really good. Um, and then ice cream kids running everywhere. A bunch of adults from all over town that, like, a lot of people I knew were there. And it was, yeah, it was a pretty magical, pretty magical evening.

And then we got home expecting that, you know, three hours later they would’ve restored the power,

Christina: Right?

Brett: but they hadn’t. And so we went to bed, we stayed up for a while watching TV on an iPad plugged into a power, [00:17:00] like a portable power supply. Um, using my phone to Tether to the 'cause wifi was out too. Um. Like, uh, like the whole, the internet service was down even if my router had been working.

Um, but anyway, we watched TV till like midnight and I went to bed and I ended up trying to sleep in the basement because it was, I don’t do well with hot.

Christina: Yeah. No, I, I, I would,

Brett: rather be cold

Christina: no, I, I, I would’ve, I would’ve absolutely gone to a hotel like that would’ve been like my, like, I’m not even

Brett: If it hadn’t been for the animals, I would’ve found another solution. But I didn’t feel like packing up the animals. And I also didn’t wanna leave them alone with like, uncertain circumstances. Uh, so I slept in the basement and then at 1:00 AM the power came back on, which means that all of my hue bulbs.

Went full on. And, uh, and the stove, which I had been cooking pasta on when the power [00:18:00] went out, the stove was still on and I didn’t realize it at first. So the stove is like on, on 10 heating up and the house is all lit up and I’m stumbling around at one in the morning trying to shut off all the lights, realizing the stove is on, uh, trying to get the AC set up to cool the house back down.

And yeah, so the next day when we were supposed to record, I was pretty, I was pretty wrecked from, uh, trying night in the heat. But yeah, so anyway, that’s me.

Christina: Yeah. No, I mean I, uh, I, I I’m glad that that, um, it came back. Um, and yeah, I totally understand. Yeah. With the animals, that, that would complicate things for sure. When we have heat waves here in Seattle, I. Because we don’t have Central Air, even though our rent is insane, even though this is a, a building that should have had it built into it.

Like it, the building was built in 2016. Um, it was, it, it wasn’t mandated then, but it [00:19:00] should have been like, I think it was only mandated in like 2019 or, or, or 2020. So it was a fairly new period of time where like now they have to actually build AC into the buildings, but they didn’t until then because the city fucking sucks and the state fucking sucks.

Um, and, uh, and everybody’s like, oh, it’s fine. It only gets hot here a couple days out the year. No, no. I’m like, go fuck yourself. Like people, like, like elderly people, like I’ve talked about, I’ve complained about this on the pop before. Like, it, it becomes like a real health hazard. And, um, and so yeah, I, I get a hotel room and it has, it’s been like every other year that I’ve had to do it.

And so we’re coming up on like a summer where it’ll probably have to be one of those things where I have to, you know, get a, a hotel room for a couple of days. Um.

Brett: not gonna get any better, I’ll tell you

Christina: No, it’s certainly not. And like, um, but, but no, I mean, I’m glad that you at least had like a fun thing to do, like for the evening that there was like the block party and you know, all that stuff.

So that was nice. And, and the, the AC had been running all day, so like the house didn’t become like a oven immediately. Um, [00:20:00] and you know, obviously like it happened at the peak time, but, but you know, by the time, like it really would kind of sink in. It’s like, okay, well the sun is set, so, you know, it’s not gonna be as bad, but how annoying to then like, be woken up at like 1:00 AM with all the lights coming on, and then you’re like, oh shit.

There’s, there’s food, like the, the, the, you know, um, the stove was on. Um, but yeah. Um, I’m glad that you figured that out and, and didn’t like, weren’t like asleep and then waking up to, I mean, I guess the smoke alarm would’ve gone off, but,

Brett: I’m glad I have invested so heavily in backup solutions. Um, like I have a, a portable power supply that will last about 16 hours, um, with like a phone, an iPad, and even a laptop plugged into it.

Christina: Oh yeah. Is,

Brett: with a laptop plugged in.

Christina: is, is this one of those, like those giant like anchor things that Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Brett: light built into it

Christina: yeah. The light built into it. It has like the, the, the, the, the, the [00:21:00] plugs that you can just go into. It’s, it’s like, they’re like, they’re like however many thousands of million NPI or whatever. Yeah.

Brett: Yeah. Um, and then I have a bunch of battery packs and all of my electronics are on uninterruptible power supplies, so my, like my Synology shuts itself down. As soon as the power goes out, it does like a nice graceful shutdown. And yeah, I’m, I am prepared for power outages and we have a bunch of like LED lanterns around the house, so no matter what room you’re in, you can light it up and we, we survive.

I don’t like it, but we survive.

Christina: Yeah. No, I mean, which is, which is, which is like good, like, uh, you know, if you, if you, if you’ve got to like, like, again, like if you’ve gotta deal with that stuff at, at least you have options. Um, but yeah, but nobody wants that. But anyway, I’m, I’m glad. I have power back. I’m glad that you have AC back and, uh, uh, sorry for the heat wave.

Um, but also that [00:22:00] makes complete sense why like Jeff, like wanted do the family thing and the family thing happens to include going to the lake and getting them, and, and I mean, that would be a great way to, to, to, you know, miss the heat. So, um, I don’t have any, uh, any qualms against that at all. Um,

Brett: how’s your mental health?

Christina: um, pretty good.

Pretty good. I don’t really have anything massively to, to update on, um, you know, just kind of same old, same old. Um, so, um,

Brett: We’re all kind of, we seem to be in like a, a stasis of sorts. Like all three of us are kind of going through some kind of period of stability where they’re little things like, but they’re normal things that normal people all deal with. None of us have like, we’re not like bipolar manic, we’re not like

Christina: Yeah, I was gonna say.

Brett: We’re.

Christina: Yeah, no, I, I, I was gonna say, I was gonna like, ask you about, about this, like, have you since, since you’ve [00:23:00] left, um, uh, and, and this wouldn’t be correlation of anything to be clear, I’m just mostly curious, but like, has, since, since, um, you, you’ve left your job, have you had any manic incidents?

I.

Brett: No, no. Ever since I switched from Focalin to Vyvanse, um, I’ve had far fewer manic episodes and I’m still dealing with insomnia to some extent, although that’s getting better as well. But the insomnia clearly wasn’t manic behavior like we tested it. Like, um, when we upped my Trazodone, one of the side effects of Trazodone is if you’re already manic, it’ll make you more manic.

So it was a good way to test and see if, if my insomnia was some kind of extended manic episode, and the Trazodone did not make me any more manic, it actually worked. So. [00:24:00] Yeah, I, it’s not, it’s not mania. I haven’t, I haven’t had a bipolar swing for, I, I’ve lost track, but almost a year I think.

Christina: Nice. Nice. Well, that’s good. I, I’m glad that you’ve like, found like the right, like it seems like, like the right medicine, um, thing. So that’s

Brett: Yeah, I don’t, Vyvanse isn’t the perfect A DHD drug. Um, there are other drugs I’ve been on and some that I haven’t tried that are all more like effective for A DHD, but finding the balance when you’re also bipolar, um, that takes some, that takes some digging. And I do think that Vyvanse is the right solution.

Christina: That’s good. That’s really good.

Brett: It’s Espec, especially for I’m A DHD in attentive and. Not hyperactive. [00:25:00] And, uh, Vyvanse is far more, even though it’s the same class as, uh, Adderall,

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Brett: it’s not, it’s better for inattentive than Adderall is.

Christina: Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I, I’m also inattentive and, and I, I, I take dine, which is like Vyvanse, but. I guess it’s the more pure form or whatever. Um, like I think that molecularly, I think they’re very, they’re very, very similar, but, but Vyvanse, uh, I think they did something to, to try to make it so it’s harder to snort or whatever is I think like the primary thing.

Um, and, and also, and, and, and to be honest, I think that most of the rationale that went into a lot of these drugs was that the patents, you know, expired on like the original class of amphetamines. And they’re like, oh no, we have to continue to make money, so let’s, let’s tweak these things just a little bit.

And so, but I just happened to go on now. It just happened to be the one that I was prescribed when I was 15. And so, you know, all these years later, that’s the one that I still take. Um, but I’ve, [00:26:00] I’ve been on Vyvanse, um, a a few times and it’s, it’s, it’s fine. Um, it doesn’t work as well for me as, as you know, the other stuff.

But, but,

Brett: yeah, for sure. It doesn’t work as well as almost anything else. It’s kind of, it’s kind of only a step better than your doctor telling you you have to take Wellbutrin for your A DHD, uh, which is, I guess it works for some people. They prescribe Prozac for A DHD and people that are, um, stimulant averse, uh, which it just, it just, you’re just asking for so many problems that way, but,

Christina: Yeah, I mean I think, I guess, I guess the rationale there and I wouldn’t know, 'cause you know, obviously I’m not a clinician. Um, but I would think that might, might be like, if people are like, okay, you don’t know why people are being inattentive. If you don’t know what the the cause is, then maybe it could be a depressive thing.

Because that does make sense because certainly, like I know that when my depression is worse, like my A DHD is typically worse too, right? Like, like 'cause, 'cause you care less. And so it’s, it’s one of [00:27:00] those things. And so my, I could understand, especially since now especially, um, it, it’s harder sometimes to get people stimulant prescriptions be like, okay, we’ll try this other thing first and see if this does something.

Um, and, and trend, uh, Prozac too. Opre especially is like fast acting and most people notice a difference, like pretty quickly. Um, I was on it, it was, I remember, I mean it was, God, this was 28 years ago now, but I was, I was on it, um, when I was really young and um. I had like a really good response to it at first, and then it stopped working and, and, uh, this became like a frustration with my psychiatrist at the time because, uh, uh, I, as I got angry when she like wouldn’t listen to me, I suppose that she was getting, you know, paid by the drug company, which very much upset her.

It turns out I was right actually, so, fuck you. Um, because I was like, I was like, this was working, but it’s not working anymore. Like, I went from being, everything was great. I was feeling great. I [00:28:00] was able to, and it was helping attentiveness to some extent, right? I was like, everything was like, I was like back to my normal self and then it just stopped and then that was like, almost like worst, like that was almost like the, the worst thing in the world where it’s like you have this thing and it’s great and then it just stops working and, and you don’t know why.

Um, and, and you know, I was going through puberty at the time and so that was, I’m sure didn’t help with, with any of, you know, the, trying to figure out the medication stuff. But yeah, that wound up launching me into like the worst depression that I’ve. One of the worst impressions that I’ve ever been in.

But, um, uh, but yeah, so that’s, that’s like my only weird like wilby trend memory was that like it worked really well and then it stopped working. And obviously everybody is different and I would never tell anybody not to, not to try anything. But, but that’s, that’s the only thing I can conceive of the why people might, you know, go their Prozac first would be like, okay, maybe this is a, maybe it, maybe the anxiety or whatever is a symptom of depression and that’s what

Brett: tried Wellbutrin on [00:29:00] me. It did. It did not go well, and I cannot remember why. I just remember about two weeks later I was like, you gotta get me off

Christina: Yeah.

Brett: isn’t, this isn’t good. Oh no, you have a siren.

Christina: I do have sirens. Sorry about that. I can’t do anything about that. Um. Nope. Sure can’t. All right.

Sponsor Shoutout: Insta 360

Christina: Well, before we get into, I guess kind of, uh, talking about, uh, uh, the movies that, that you’ve watched and not watched, and then we’ll get into like an old school gratitude, I wanna tell you about today’s sponsor, which is Insta 360.

Today’s episode is sponsored by Insta 360, a leader in 360 degree action camera technology. The latest 360 degree camera, the Insta 360 x five launched on April 22nd, and it shoots full 360 degree videos and incredible eight K 30, uh, frames per, uh, second resolution. Since it’s films in all directions at once, you don’t even need to bother with aiming the camera.

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Once again, that is gonna be store dot insta three sixty.com. Use the promo code Overtired. Thank you so much. Insta 360. Um, I know that, uh, Jeff wishes he probably had one of those when he was on the, uh, jet skis. Honestly, like

Brett: like just bouncing

Christina: just bouncing up and down and it would

Brett: an invisible selfie

Christina: Absolutely. It would just look like he had a drone with him.

No, but honestly, action cams are really, really fun for the summer or if you’re going traveling anywhere, like they’re, they’re really fun. So.

Summer Fun and Travel Dreams

Brett: I would love to have fun this summer. I think I’m, I think I’m relegated to going to block parties and hanging out at queer bars.

Christina: Well, I mean, I think that’s fun though, right? Like,

Brett: It is, it is. No, no, no shade on any of that. Uh, it is really enjoyable for me. Um, I do wish I could afford to travel right now. Um, our last trip [00:32:00] to, um, Asheville was so much fun and was like, it was a lot of driving, but, but yeah, like I kinda, I would like to do that again, but this summer that is not in the cards

Christina: No, but I think this summer is like, you’re getting a break. You’re getting to kind of reassess, to figure out like what kind of stuff you wanna work on, what you wanna do. You know, like obviously like the, the timing wasn’t ideal. Um, it never is. But like, you hadn’t been happy at your job anyway. Like this is a nice forced reset.

Like the fact that you said that you’re happiest, you’ve been right. Like you can, you can, you can figure out like a, a vacation once you either decide on, on if you’re gonna be going more all in on the indie stuff. And if that starts, you know, paying off, or if you’re going to be, if you find another, um, you know, uh, either corporate job or, you know, maybe like startup job that, that is more your speed.

So that’s how I would think about, it’d be like, all right, the, the, the vacation will come, like, you know, it might be a little [00:33:00] after summer. It’ll be belated, it’ll be, it’ll be summer somewhere.

Brett: It’s after whatever’s up next.

Christina: Yeah.

Brett: Um, yeah, so as part of my current liberty and freedom, I spend pretty much all my free time watching movies.

Movie Marathon and Horror Genre

Brett: I code according to timing app. I code about 50 hours a week, and like that is way more effort than I ever put into any day job.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Brett: Not just at Oracle, like I in general with a day job, I’ll work, I’ll work four to six hours a day, like actual actually working.

And the rest of it is, is walking the dog or responding to emails, doing all the stuff that you do as part of work. But when you’re just coding, when you don’t have to communicate with anybody and you’re just, you’re just writing code, [00:34:00] um, yeah, you can get a 50 hour work weekend. That’s literally all work.

So anyway, aside from that, I’m watching movies like I’ve been through all my favorite TV series more times than I can count. Like I literally can’t count the number of times I’ve been through Bob’s burgers. Like, I’ve lost track. Uh, same with King of the Hill, um, uh, 30 Rock Parks and Rec Brooklyn Nine, nine.

I’ve seen these all so many times. And like it used to be, those were, those were my comfort shows, and that’s where I would go when I just wanted something that I knew I liked, I didn’t have to search around for, and I could just binge my way through. But I’ve done it all so many times. So I’ve started like, seeking out movies and I watched a lot of good movies and, and I’m still, I’m still finding good movies, but lately I’ve just been watching whatever Hulu tells me [00:35:00] I should, or Netflix.

And, um, like last night I watched, uh, rough Night with Scarlett Johansson and

Christina: Um, uh, uh, Alana Glazer and Paul Downs. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that in the theater and uh, yeah.

Brett: Well, and I realized I had actually seen it before and I finished it anyway. And it’s not, it’s not what I would call a great movie. Uh, what’s her name playing The Australian. She’s from Saturday Night

Christina: Yeah,

Brett: always in the, she was in Ghostbusters, I always forget her name,

Christina: Um, uh, uh, yeah. Uh, Kate McKennan.

Brett: Kate McKennan.

Yes. Um, her Australian character in that is kind of not dead on for an Australian 'cause I don’t know that many Australians, but dead on for like the new age hippie, uh, type without being like over. [00:36:00] She’s not like spacey and crazy. She just has like all these like, oh, I can communicate with animals. Let me, let me handle this violent dog.

Um, and it was okay. Like it was, that’s the thing is like even with a bad movie, I can enjoy it. I watched No Nonas on Hulu with, um, Vince Vaughn. It was about he, like, he opens an Italian restaurant and staffs it with actual Italian grandmothers, uh, AKA Nonas and, and like makes a go of the restaurant scene with no previous restaurant experience.

And it, it was heart touch. It was heartwarming and touching and I actually am gonna watch it again with El even though on, on its face, not actually what I would consider like a movie for the ages in any way.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Brett: [00:37:00] But I, I’m stuck. I, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve gone through, like my friend Chris has a plex and, um, it has probably a thousand movies on it, and I’ve gone through and tried to find everything that I would actually wanna watch.

I think my next phase is to get back into horror, because, like horror as a genre, I always, I always look away from because I think I don’t really need to be scared. Um, that’s not my goal in life. I don’t, I don’t need additional fear. The world is bad enough, but the, a good horror movie is actually like a statement about, about the monsters within us and the monsters around us, and.

It doesn’t matter what the, the actual monster in the movie is. It’s like [00:38:00] a way of like, just like sci-fi takes like a social ill and projects it onto maybe an alien race that you don’t have any preconceived like prejudices towards. And they make it something that you can be like, oh yeah, I can see how that’s wrong.

Star Trek, for example. Um, like sci-fi is really good at that. Horror can be the same way and, and horror can make you look at actual things within yourself and within society in ways that make it easier to, to understand, to gr in, in ways that you’re like personal prejudices blind you to. So I can appreciate good horror.

I just don’t know how to tell the difference between what’s gonna be just, uh, a thriller. Like just something that makes me pee my pants and doesn’t offer anything else, and those really touching horror movies that finish. And you feel like [00:39:00] a better person for having watched it? I don’t, I don’t know how to find those.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, I think if this is, this is, yeah, this is the hard thing. I feel like think services like letterbox, I feel like are good for this and I feel like, um. Potentially to like figure out like, like reading kind of readings, reviews, but Yeah. But unfortunately sometimes, yeah, you just have to like kind of watch and then kind of figure out, okay, is this good or not?

And like, make the determination while you’re watching it, like, do I wanna continue or not?

Brett: Yeah. I do think you can tell in the first 15

Christina: Honestly, I feel like you can, I feel like, I feel like this is an area where like, and I’m usually a fan of like, trying to watch the whole movie. Um, horror is actually weirdly one of those genres where I’m not, like, I’m, I’m kind of like, I will, I will give it like a solid, like 15, 20 and then if I’m not into it, I’m piecing out.

Right? Because it, because it was one thing, like when I was younger and like you only had what was on Blockbuster and what was airing, you know, on. Um, you know, on, on HBO [00:40:00] or, or Cinemax or whatever, and Cinemaxx would air some terrible shit.

Nostalgic DVD Collection Days

Christina: And I saw so many bad movies that way. Um, or you know, like if you bought, you know, DVDs like I did, and, and a lot of times I would just, there was this forum called DVD Talk might still exist, but I doubt it.

That would basically track, they review DVDs and they would track DVD deals. And like the forms there were great, and like, because it was like the.com era where companies were selling stuff for less than they should have. High school me would get like a hundred bucks worth of DVDs, like every week that were probably, you know, $400 retail, right?

But I would just get like all these DVDs and then I worked at Best Buy, so I got things like, you know, basically at cost. So, um, I had like a really, um, like a good source of like, I basically, I hear recommendations from people who’d be like, oh, this is a great movie. And then sometimes I’d be like, this was dog shit.

But sometimes it’d be okay.

The Evolution of Movie Watching

Christina: But I feel like horror is one of those things where like, especially now that we have access to many things like. It used to be one of those things, this was the point of my, my story, my anecdote [00:41:00] is that you would have to watch the whole thing, you know, because you didn’t have a lot of other options.

You’re like, okay, I might as well just finish this. But now you can pretty much tell like, the first 15, 20, is this going to get any better or not?

Brett: Yeah. Right.

Christina: has, has this sucked me in or not? And if the answer is no, then like, Uhuh. Um, and, and, and there might be exceptions where like people tell you after the fact, okay, no, go back, give it another shot.

It really takes, you know, the first whatever.

Brett: about quality. And you can tell even before, like 15 minutes maybe, like the main plot line hasn’t even evolved yet. Maybe it like you’re still in Complete ex Yeah, exactly. You know, you know if the acting is good, you know, if the writing is good, you know, if the editing is good and, and you can tell that in 15 minutes maybe you have this thing that you can relate to where you prefer no i’ll, this is me.

I’m talking about me now. So I prefer to watch a movie at [00:42:00] least halfway through before I bring my partner in on it because. Starting a movie cold where neither of us have seen it leads to such uncomfortable moments of like, Hey, are you enjoying this? Are you still, are you still okay with this? Is this, do you think this is good?

Should we quit? Should we watch something else? And like I, I spent so much time worrying and l does it too. I know. I know they do. Like they worry about what I think. I worry about what they think and it’s so much easier for me to just take a half hour watch the first 30 minutes of a movie I think we might like and like get through so that we can go into it at least saying, I think this is good.

And not have to like base my opinions off of how I feel someone else feels. Do you have that at all with

Christina: Um, not really. I mean, usually I kind of have an idea like if, if, if, you know, we’re gonna like, like it or not, right? Like, [00:43:00] you know, you kind of tell like, who’s the director, who’s the whatever. Does the idea seem okay? Um, but, um, I, I feel like, um, so, so, so that, that, that’s part of it. But like, I, I feel like, what was I gonna say?

Um. Sometimes you just don’t know.

Theater Experiences and Bad Movies

Christina: And, and so that, like anytime you go see a movie in the theater, right, like that, that is the exact same experience you’re describing. And, and then you’re trapped. You’re like, you’re stuck. You’ve gotta actually, like, unless it’s so bad that you, somebody needs to walk out.

Which there have been like, I, you know, like so, such a small number of movies that have been that bad that like, I’ve actually walked out of the theater because at that point it almost was like, okay, well now I just need to see how awful this is just to get

Brett: Right.

Christina: Right? But, but the, the

Brett: I can complain about it later. Yeah.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax

Christina: Grant really enjoys watching truly terrible movies. And so we don’t watch a lot of the same things [00:44:00] because he really, really likes to watch like stuff that like, you know, like the, um, uh, can’t think of their name, but the, the people who were part of, you know, mystery science theater 3000, and they started their own, um, thing where were, they do like commentary over really bad movies and like, but he’s really, really into watching just bad movies, like, on purpose.

And, and I can respect that, but that’s just not really like my thing at this stage in my life. Like, there was a time when I was maybe more into that, like for the, again, like in college, like for the lulls, but like, that’s just not a thing that I actively seek out now. So if it’s really bad or if the commentary track, um, is, is is really funny, then maybe I’ll, I’ll give it a shot.

But like in general, you know, I’m not gonna, I would rather spend 90 minutes not watching dog shit. Um, I. But, but, but he gets enjoyment out of it. He enjoys the humor of how bad those things can be. And so I, I appreciate that. But, um, so I don’t know, I, I, I feel like, um, we have like, [00:45:00] I don’t know. I, I feel like I’m not, I’m not as, I don’t have that, that concern, but I understand why you do.

Right. And, and I understand like if that can take you out of it, like if you, you know, if you’re not sure if riff tracks is what I was trying to think of, but like I, I can understand like if, um, you know, you’re worried about how somebody else is gonna react and whatnot, that would be the case. Um, my recency see stuff like in terms of the last 10 years is not as strong.

But I am, I’m fortunate that I have such like a long backlog of like things that I’ve seen that, like, I usually have like a pretty good sense of being like, okay, will you like this? Will you

Brett: Well, and you remember like directors, you remember actors, you remember every, you remember the, you remember the extended credits on movies. And I don’t,

Christina: no, which is totally true. Most people don’t.

Brett: see a director’s name and not remember whether or not I hated their previous work or not. Um, and, and that would be a boon to be able to remember that stuff.

But thankfully, you know, letterbox and services like that [00:46:00] can help fill in my memory, I guess is Mystery Science Theater streaming anywhere.

Christina: That. I don’t know,

Brett: I might have to dig those up. I might have to do some

Christina: that would be a good one to, to watch. I mean, I know that they, well, I think that they are, they might be on, um, like their own network, um, or something. Um, but again, like, I know like riff racks and they, they might have bought like the, the rights to them. Um, but uh, I know they have like some sort of like, um, subscription service or something.

Um.

Brett: me and my high school friends used to love, that was like the, oh, me and the Nerds we loved, uh, mystery Science Theater. That

Christina: Yeah, no, a lot of people did. Yeah, so, so they have like, they have like a, a, a 5 99 subscription thing, which has like hundreds of riff tracks, movies and shorts and stuff. And I don’t know if that has the mystery Science Theater 3000 stuff or not, but I, I’m sure that those are available like, um, places. [00:47:00] Um,

Brett: Yeah. I’d like to figure that out.

Evil Dead and Streaming Services

Brett: Have you ever watched Evil Dead, any of the Evil Dead

Christina: have, I have.

Brett: I like there’s, it keeps coming up in my mind that I want to go back and watch these again. I haven’t seen them since like the nineties. Um, and I keep finding myself like wanting to, but not really in the mood for it.

I gotta, I think I need to just get started on like the first Evil Dead and maybe then I’ll be able to get back into it. 'cause I know I would love it. I know it’s so campy and so just like over the top that. I feel like it would be a fun, it would be a fun evening. I just can’t get myself to do it. All right.

Christina: All right, so, so just just as an update, there are some classic episodes of MST three K that are on Pluto and some of the other FAST services. Pluto tv. It’s like, it’s [00:48:00] the one that Paramount owns, I think. Um, and so it’s, it’s one of those, so they have like a riff tracks channel and they have a mystery science theater, 3000 channel and um, some other stuff.

Um, so you can watch things that way. But there was a Kickstarter, I guess four years ago. Um, the MST three K people did called, um, I guess to make like a season 14 of that. And so they have their own platform that has, um, all the, um, uh, every available classic episode. Now, what that entails, I don’t know. Um, so there’s 150 of them, so they have their own, um, I guess, uh, uh, platform.

Gizmo Plex.

Brett: Gizmo. Plex. Let me add that to the all one word. Gizmo.

Christina: Gizmo Plex. Yep.

Brett: All right. All right.

Gratitude and Tech Recommendations

Brett: Should we do some gratitude?

Christina: Yeah. Let’s do some gratitude.

Brett: Uh, what, what do you have, uh, what do you have on your list?[00:49:00]

Christina: Okay, so the one that I have on my list, um, and I don’t know if I’ve, if I’ve mentioned this before and if I did then I feel really, really bad. I think about, um, uh, we’ve talked about Cindra, uh, Soha, uh, stuff before. Who, who is great, um, who, uh, does a lot of open source apps and, and also makes apps available for. Uh, you know, across the Apple platforms, and some of them I think are, are on other things too, and most of them are open source.

Some of them are paid for. Um, but, uh, he has a, a really great app called, uh, actions, which is basically like a, a shortcuts app, um, to, um, at basically do additional things in, in, in the Shortcuts app, which is really, really great available on Mac Os, iOS, um, iPad os. And, um, it, it’s, uh, as far as I know it, it’s free.

Um, there are a couple of those, you know, types of, you know, shortcut kind of add-on things, which, which costs money, but, but, but, um, actions is, is free and it’s a really great way to like, uh, as he says, like supercharge your shortcuts with, with powerful actions and features and [00:50:00] whatnot. Well, he, he has a, an add-on with that, um, uh, I guess kind of sorts called AI actions, which is like AI actions for, for the Shortcuts app.

And so, you know, you can have it, um. Using, um, related actions using various models like, you know, like, uh, you know, GPT-4 0.0, you know, or mini, um, Claude 3.5, you know, haiku, whatnot directly from, um, the shortcuts app. And, um, and then on, on the Mac, you can also, um, support other models using, um, things like, like, like Alama, um, and whatnot.

And so, um, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a pretty good app. Um, and, um, I, uh, I enjoy it. I haven’t played around with the newest version of, of macOS yet. I’m not going to until, you know, things, uh, stabilize more because I, um. I think that some of the stuff like doesn’t work well in a vm and I’m just not in a place where my personal machine, I wanna put a beta on it.

I don’t have any reason [00:51:00] to my work machine. I’m definitely not. And then, you know, I, I have an Intel iMac, which I could, but like, most of the stuff that’s gonna be new is, I mean, this is the last year that they’re gonna be, um, supporting that, that this particular iMac. Anyway, RIP, um, I guess I’ll have to put like Linux on it or something.

Um, or, or Windows or whatever, once it’s end of life. But, uh, because it’s still a viable machine actually, but, um, anyways, that stuff wouldn’t be necessarily best optimized on, uh, on it. So I haven’t played around with what some of the new AI stuff like built into the Mac OS is. But since, so I, I don’t, I can’t comment for how good, like Apple’s, you know, on device model has become my. Skeptical opinion is gonna be that it’s still probably pretty dog shit compared to, uh, Gemma three N and, um, llama and, um, let alone like the, the, you know, mainstream frontier models like, you know, Gemini, [00:52:00] um, Claude and, and, and OpenAI. So like, you know, I’m, I’m glad that they’re doing stuff, but I’m not really holding my breath to be like, oh yeah, this will be so good.

And the, the on-device stuff will be just as good as anything else. Like, I fuck off. Like, I, I, I don’t believe that, um, if I’m wrong, I’m happy to be wrong, but they lied to us for a year and I don’t think they deserve any credibility in this space right now. Like, I’m not giving it to them anyway. If other people want to, that’s fine, but like, I’m certainly not.

So, um, I do like the idea of being able to use like AI stuff in your shortcuts in a way that doesn’t, isn’t reliant on, you know, whatever Apple has decided to, to offer to people.

Brett: Yeah. No, that’s cool. Um, side note, um, I will eventually break down and make my node a gratitude pick, but um, my node just introduced a whole bunch of new shortcut actions and That’s awesome. And I feel like [00:53:00] as, as reluctant as I’ve been getting into shortcuts in general, um. I think it’s easier for developers to add shortcut actions these days than it is to add automated actions and why would you at this point,

Christina: no, exactly. Which, which is unfortunate. 'cause I mean, I think that we can all agree that like. Automator is still a lot more powerful. Especially, I mean, obviously on Mac that’s the only place it is, but it’s, it’s a lot more powerful and, and it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s better, it’s more robust, but they haven’t given that any love.

They’re not going to give it any love. It’s kind of a end of life sort of thing. Um, or not, I wouldn’t say end of life they, they’re not gonna call that, but like, keep the lights on

Apple’s iPad vs. Mac Debate

Brett: so I only caught the last half of the keynote. Um, but from what I saw, apple, all of Apple’s announcements regarding [00:54:00] iOS and iPad OS were about making iOS more Mac like, which is a reverse. Which is a reverse from making Mac Os more iPad like,

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Brett: which seems like it’s been the trend.

Christina: Yep.

Brett: it just, are we just equalizing?

Is that what’s happening? What’s going on there?

Christina: I don’t know. So, I mean, if, that’s a good question right now, I personally think that by making the decisions that they’re making with iPad os, which I have not installed yet, but I probably will like, maybe in July, I’m probably gonna put like the, the, the public betas on, I don’t know if I’ll go to the dev betas, but I might do the public betas might be like a week behind.

Um, because that does look like it is a genuine, like, big upgrade, right? Like they’re getting rid of slide over think fuck, rest in piss, like slide over is an abomination and never needed to exist. I hate it. I hate it, I hate it. Um, they’re getting rid of that and they’re getting rid of like the, I guess like the, the traditional split panel thing, but they are allowing you to basically window apps and move them around.

Um, and so it’s, it, [00:55:00] and it is windowing, I think, I think as, as as John Gruber like, like pointed out, right? Like it’s not really multitasking, it’s windowing in like the traditional ma Max sense, which I think is awesome, right? And so, um, and, and honestly they’re keeping stage manager around which. Sucks, but like I can, I can almost even get down with stage manager if, if it’s gonna work the way, I would never use it on a Mac.

But the way I would use it on like a, you know, in, in an iPad, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re including like a, a, a better kind of like, like file kind of, you know, app. Like they’re making, they’re making improvements. Um, but then to your point, they’ve spent the last mid decade plus, you know, close to close to 15 years making the Mac more and more iPad like.

So just give us a fucking touchscreen Mac at this point. Like, honestly, just give us a fucking touchscreen Mac and if you don’t believe in the iPad enough that you don’t think that it can survive. Having a touchscreen, you know, capabilities. I’m not even saying be able to write on the screen. I’m not even going that far.

Right? I’m, but, but like, admit you were wrong and the service actually made sense, right? Like, because clearly you were [00:56:00] wrong and the service made sense. If what you’re doing is, is to your point, kind of equally out the halves, right? And kind of bringing them slowly with parody with one another, except one of them is still going to be shittier than the other because it can’t run, you know, like on sandbox stuff and it has more limitations, but also in some ways, one of them is going to be better than the other because it has those limitations.

And so you don’t have to worry about stuff. And if you just want something to work and to last forever, you can do that, right? Like, I think that, you know, the problem they have with the iPad is that most people don’t need to buy an iPad every, more than every five years. And, and that’s just gonna be a, a, a reality, right?

Like, they try to make it out and be like, oh, make this your, your, you know, what’s the computer? Which is the dumbest fucking ad in the world and they’re never gonna not be made fun of for that. 'cause it, you know. Even they admitted themselves like they were wrong. Right. It’s like, okay. No would, because would Apple rather you buy like an iPad error with like the keyboard and all that stuff?

Or, or, or a MacBook. I bet they make more margin on the MacBook. I bet they make more [00:57:00] ma margin on the MacBook error, honestly. So like, I don’t think they really care. It’s one of those things like, yeah, they make more revenue from the app store, but like that’s because you fucked up on Mac Os App Store.

That’s like, not that, that that’s a new problem that you don’t make enough revenue from that, honestly. But like, I don’t know. I just, I just feel like, um, I’m glad to see the making those changes, but yeah, it does feel kind of like, like whiplash. It’s like, okay, well you told us for this long that these platforms have to be separate, but now we’re making them closer and closer together.

But just enough differences, so, so you choose one over the other and it’s like, I don’t know, maybe just accept that people are never going to use the iPad as a primary computing device. And, and, and, and I look forward to all the, the feedback that people will now come and tell me, well, no, I’ve been using my iPad as my primary computing device and only computing device for blah, blah, blah amount of time.

Congratulations. I’m really happy for you.

Brett: I’ve heard from so many, like YouTube creators that really tried

Christina: Oh, yeah,

Brett: down that path and [00:58:00] have said, you know, fuck it, the, the MAC Mini, the M four Mac Mini is way better than trying to use an iPad for about the same price,

Christina: yes.

Brett: computing experience.

Christina: Yeah. Um, uh, Federico did an interview with Craig, uh, Federer and, and talked about, um, uh, you know, uh, was able to talk about some of this stuff. Um, and so, um, I’ll, I’ll put a, a, a a thing for that in the show notes too, if people wanna read. Um, uh, his, uh, interview, um, for Max stories, uh.

Brett: I would like to read that. I hadn’t seen that, but still like. Federico really went all in

Christina: Yeah.

Brett: iPad as computing device, so I’d be really curious to,

Christina: Yeah, totally. And, and then kind of had to kind of make a push back, right? 'cause at a certain point, you know, uh, like it, it stopped working. And, um, and like, I, I don’t, I’m [00:59:00] not gonna judge anybody who like made that their goal. Like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go all in on this. Like, I mean, I think that’s like a, a, a worthy pursuit.

I, I suppose, um, I’m, I’m, I guess that I’m too pragmatic in these sense, and then I’m like, that would be a fun challenge to do, but I’m not gonna, like, I’m not gonna disrupt my workflow to try to make a paradigm work when a paradigm clearly doesn’t work. You know what I’m saying? Like, like, like, which, which is only way I would sometimes kind of like be a little bit weird about people who’d be like, oh no, I do all my computing on my iPad, and that’s my entire personality.

I’m like, cool. I, I appreciate that and like I’m happy for you to do these things, but at a certain point, if you’re having to make all these workarounds and having to make all these, you know, you know, like have, having to have all these contingencies are you not just it, I feel the same way about people who like, insist on like using like a Linux phone or like super intel, like Lin on the desktop things.

I’m like, okay, I mean, more power to you. I’m happy for you to do this, but like, at a certain point, for me anyway, if I have other options, and granted, not everybody does, but most of the [01:00:00] people who do these things do. If I have other options, why am I continuing to like, you know, basically punish myself?

Because I, I, I, I’m insistent on, on using this. You know, this, this workflow, this system that, that this company has sold me but doesn’t actually exist. And we all know it doesn’t actually exist. And we all know that there are, there are trade offs, right? Like I think if you can do all those things and you don’t have to take an extra device, that’s great.

I think that for Apple, if, if I’m being honest, like, and I’m just, I don’t, I’m sorry I’m rambling here, but I haven’t talked about this sort of stuff in a while. I think that they had to make, there were a lot of concessions and a lot of, frankly, now we can look back with the, you know, power of like a decade where there were a lot of like marketing decisions, um, and, and messaging that was really kind of a cope.

That was really about the fact that Intel’s chips were not good enough and, and were not able to deliver what they wanted. And so they [01:01:00] had to, and yet they weren’t willing and maybe at the time, weren’t able to, you know, do things to iPad OS to, to make it actually Mac like. And so they were kind of at this like precipice.

They were like, okay, we have to create these differentiators and we have to like, sell this mission that, oh no, you can have, you know, this, this, this iPad device and this can be your computer and you can do all these things. That’s so powerful. Um, maybe as kind of a hedge to be like, okay, well if we can’t get our desktop ships done in this time, if we can’t do the software transition, then we have this as kind of a backup way where, where people can do stuff.

But I think like as soon as, as the, the in one series came out, you know, five years ago, as soon as those chips came out and they were so good that it, and then, you know, the, the software transition happened, uh, relatively quickly that it kind of became for a lot of people, like, okay. We don’t have to pretend anymore that we have, um, you know, that these, these powerful devices that have good battery life and, and, and low heat, that Crile software, but whatever, we don’t have to pretend to make that trade off.

We [01:02:00] can actually just use the computer that we always wanted, which is going to be for most people, I think a MacBook Air. Um, I mean, you know, I, you and I both have MacBook Pros and like a Mac Mini is honestly great too for, for a desktop. But like, I think for most people, like a MacBook Air, which is totally silent and very powerful and does everything you need to do, especially now that it comes with 16 gigs of ram.

It’s like this is the machine that you can literally, you know, it’s not much more than, than an iPad, you know, with, with a, with a keyboard and whatnot. And you’re gonna be able to do way more on it. The only thing that you can’t obviously, is have a touch screen, which would be nice. But, you know, I. Then I, but I just feel like we, we all could kind of give up on like that, like collective, like delusional cope of being like, oh no, we, we, the iPad can be perfect for everything.

I am glad though that they, if they’re not gonna give us Mac Os on an iPad, I am glad that they’re at least finally, you know, giving it a proper windowing system and, and doing, um, you know, things like that [01:03:00] because it’s, it’s been sorely, sorely needed. Um, and you know, I’m, I’m, I am. Yeah.

Brett: I bought an iPad Pro like five years

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Brett: um, with the hopes that, not that it would replace my desktop, but that I would be able to do more. Computing on it, and that honestly, it just was not the case. Um, I do not find the iPad to be a viable computing platform, not for the kind of work I

Christina: No, no, no. For the stuff that you and I do, like, I think for a lot of people, like if you’re just doing, you know, kind of like stuff in Google Docs, especially now with the windowing mode, if you’re doing things, you know, in, in, uh, you know, uh,

Brett: writing, if you’re writing, sure. Even then, though, multitasking and, and this is about to get better, but even with Right, like if you’re writing for tech, especially, you need multiple apps, multiple windows. You need, you need copy, [01:04:00] copy paste between all kinds of applications and like the iPad just, it doesn’t fit that bill.

Like, it’s not,

Christina: Well, no it

Brett: paradigm is all wrong for that.

Christina: Yeah. Where, where it was better for me 'cause I’ve had an iPad Pro now, uh, basically since the very first one, which I think was like the 9.7. And then I got like the first 11 inch one, the one in 2018, and then I replaced that one with the, I think it’s the M three, might be the M two, whatever, the one that came out in, in, in 2022 or 2023, and I think it was 2023.

And so I’ve, I’ve had that for a couple of years now. I didn’t get the one that came out last year, the, the, uh, M four one or whatever. Um, I, I thought about it, but it was just gonna be for, for the minor upgrade. It just wasn’t gonna happen. Um, but where it did become useful for me was during the pandemic.

And again, this was all about Intel, really not so much anything else. And that Zoom and Teams, like on my Mac were teams especially, was terrible. And so, you know, I’m now doing like [01:05:00] video meetings all day long and like, you know, again, like teams on, on Mac at the time was like a nightmare because they hadn’t prioritized that at all.

And, and so I was like, okay, well, I. I will have my laptop up and I can be doing things, and then I will literally have like my iPad as like my, you know, video conferencing thing, right? Like that was what I was using things for and that was really good. And the battery life was better and the performance was better.

And like, even with the bullshit multitasking that existed in 2020, which was worse than it is now, and, and now is worse than it will be in a few months, it was still a superior experience to using some of those applications. Right. But, um, that’s just, you know, five years later, like that’s not the case anymore.

So, yeah, like I feel like if you were in a sp there are times when like you can, you can get a lot done and there’s, you know, I’m not, I’m not opposed to saying buy an iPad, but I also feel like it’s one of those things where people are like, oh, it could be my everything machine. And I’m like, eh, again, like unless you

Brett: No. And the surface could

Christina: Yes, yes. The surface really could be because they actually kind of nailed [01:06:00] it, right? Like they actually did sort of nail it and go, no, having this convertible package and having this ability to write on, but also do the real computing and plug it in with a doc and, and do all that stuff, it, it fucking works.

It’s, it’s, it’s good. Like Windows is not, but like the, the device itself is, and if you can make, you know, the, if you can make your, I could be far more productive, like on, on a surface, um, is is it gonna be as good in every way as an iPad? No, but it’s, it’s a much better middle ground than having two different devices.

But I just feel like once the MacBook Air got good, it was like, okay, if you really didn’t need that portable thing, and it’s not about like, it, you know, if you’re gonna have a keyboard with your iPad anyway, in my opinion, you, you might as well just have a MacBook Care. Like, right. Like it,

Brett: 'cause using, using a MacBook or using an iPad with a keyboard, it’s, it’s even, so, okay. I like to make everything as keyboard centric as

Christina: Yep.

Brett: [01:07:00] but the fact is, on a Mac, every once in a while, I still have to reach over and use my track pad.

Christina: Right.

Brett: When you have to go from using your keyboard to reaching up to touch your screen, I find that way more problematic than just moving my hand a little bit to the right,

Christina: Yeah, I would agree with

Brett: of a MacBook Pro to like lower center to use a track pad.

I find the combination of keyboard and touch to be,

Christina: That’s the

Brett: just unworkable for

Christina: Yeah. No,

Brett: I don’t like it at all.

Christina: Yeah, when, when I use my, um, you know, like magic keyboard or whatever with my iPad Pro. Um, and this is also another reason why I haven’t upgraded, because I’d have to replace that keyboard and I’d have to replace the pencil and like, you know, it, it there, that’s expensive, right?

So like, okay, great, I’m gonna add $450 or whatever to my already expensive. But like, okay. But like the, um, the fact that you can use a mouse or the track pad that’s built into the magic keyboard. When I do use my iPad with a [01:08:00] keyboard, I’m not touching it. Like the, this is the irony. They’ve like, like the, the Mac has like, so like, like, you know, anti touchscreen pilled me to the point that like if I’m on like something that even looks like a Mac, I just forget that I can even touch stuff.

Right? Because like that, that, that’s how like. Locked in. I’ve become on that because, but also to your point, I think that it is the, the, the worst of, of both. It’s nice, I think, to have it there, right? Like I, because it can be useful. Like when I used to use a Surface book, which had a great track pad, like a, a Mac quality track pad and had a good keyboard.

And this was the one that was like a little more than the, um, the, the surface. This was the had like the, the hard bottom that had like the GPU core in it. And it had like, you could detach the screen and use that as whatnot, but it had a good touchscreen and I didn’t use it that much. But where I would use it would be like, okay, I’m working on something and then I wanna scroll.

And sometimes it would just frankly be easier to scroll with my fingers to go, you know, up and down than to use a track pad. Even a really good track pad. Like honestly, that like I could just go, you know, or we needed to [01:09:00] zoom in on something, right? Like that was like perfect use cases, which pension zoom and rather than having to do like command plus.

Brett: so while the leap motion was a thing, like I got really used to scrolling by just picking up my fingers and waving them in front of my screen. And that’s kind of the same, it’s the same motion If your screen were closer

Christina: mean, you, I mean,

Brett: the

Christina: it, it’s funny you were like, you were vision probing before the Vision Pro existed is what you were doing.

Brett: Yep. And I’m still not vision probing, but

Christina: Well, no, no, no. One’s Vision Pro. Anyway, let’s, that I rambled enough. Let’s, let’s go to your pick.

Brett: So I, I am certain I’ve talked about this before, but there’s an app for Mac called RegX rx, as in like RegX pharmacy. And there are, there are many regular expression testing applications out there [01:10:00] and none of them have ever come close to RegX RX for me. And I got really bummed because it would not run on my M1 studio.

It was just immediately crash. And I contacted the developer and they were not super responsive, but eventually they said, well, it works on our machine, so. Whatever. And, uh, never got it working. But then I got my M four MacBook Pro and suddenly it worked again and I am back to having RegX RX available and what I love about it, in addition, so it’ll tell you immediately if you’re RegX is invalid, if you have an unfinished like character sequence or a bad escape or uh, missing parentheses, it’ll give you that information in real time.

It’ll show you all of your matches. And each match has a drop on menu where you can see the match groups [01:11:00] within the regular expression and what in your test pattern match them. And, uh, it can copy and paste in multiple languages. So if I’m working in Ruby, I can say, alright, I want to copy this either. Um, search pattern or the entire code to do a search and replace with this pattern to ruby, or it can paste.

I can copy a, a sequence I’m working on in objective C, and I can paste it from objective C and it’ll remove all the double back slashes. It’ll remove the at quote from the string head, uh, string definition, and it will paste, uh, a standard posics regular expression. And then I can copy it out as objective C and it’ll replace all of that with objective C syntax.

And it [01:12:00] doesn’t have a swift capability, but SWIFT is far more standard in string handling than objective C is. So you can actually use like the Ruby export to work with Swift, and it is just. It’s for what I do, it is hands down the best regular expression tester program I’ve ever found.

Christina: And is this the one that’s like, that’s 4 99 in the Mac App store?

Brett: That sounds right. Yes. It has like a pill bottle

Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The reason I was asking is, is, um, so, so it’s $5, which is great 'cause I was looking at my getting this, um, um, and I’ll go ahead and buy it. Um, but, uh, fuck it. But, uh, we, we’ll, we’ll give it a shot. I am a little not happy with like, their initial kind of support response to you about what works for us, whatever.

And it hasn’t been updated in five years, which is [01:13:00] also not great. But, but, um, I love a good, you know, um, uh, RegX tester. I, I use AI for that at this point, for a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah,

Brett: it work well?

Christina: does. And it honestly works incredibly

Brett: I should give that a shot because you’re right, it’s not well maintained and it may never be updated again. Um, and it’s living on borrowed time, but for now, like I, there’s just nothing that can replace it. Like my next best option is expressions,

Christina: I was

Brett: it doesn’t have, it doesn’t have nearly the capabilities that RegX RX has.

It’s so

Christina: That was gonna be my second question was how is this different from expressions, which we’ve talked about before, and which I really like. 'cause it’s a really great visual way to do things, which I think is probably what would be better than this. Right. But, but it seems like this is really good for testing.

Mm-hmm.

Brett: but like RegX Rx will highlight all your square bracket and par parentheses [01:14:00] pairs, um, in different colors for each nested pair. So visually it’s, it’s not as pretty, but it has all the same visual feedback as expressions, and it just has so many more additional features. On top of that, the, the copy from and paste to are definitely my top tier, uh, requests.

Um, and, but then it lets you, you can specify every possible flag that you can use in a pause, regular expression like all your greedy and your line end is, uh, line begin is, is string begin kind of flags. Uh, you can specify all those with a quick dropdown and expressions just. Feels almost crippled compared to RegX rx.

It’s a good app. Um, no, no shade to expressions.

Christina: I totally get that. You’re just saying like that, that, you know, the [01:15:00] way that this works for you is, is, is better and, and I think that’s like completely valid. Um. Um, and, uh, yeah, I, I was just, that was just be one of my questions 'cause I think I’ve, I, I think you’ve maybe even mentioned this maybe before.

Um, and, and like, and I spent $5 on it 'cause support people $5, who cares? That’s a small enough, you know, price to pay. It might be useful, especially based on everything you’re saying. And I don’t use regular expressions nearly as much as you do, but it’s nice to know that there are things like that out there and that it works on your M four at least.

So, you know, um, I, I, I, I.

AI and Regular Expressions

Brett: I spent the last three days refining, uh, critic markup handling in marked, and doing it all in objective C and figuring out all the regular expressions and in what order the regular expressions had to happen, uh, to get solid critic markup, rendering with comments, and with [01:16:00] insertion deletion, substitution handling.

Um, and I will publish this library, um, this critic markup because critic markup, the, the, the GitHub repository currently doesn’t have an objective C or SWIFT implementation of critic markup. And I’m, I’m gonna fix that. I’m gonna, I’m gonna share this library. I’ll make it open source. But anyway, RegX RX has come in really handy

Christina: No, that would, that, that, that would be like the thing that would be really good. And, and, um, since, um.

Brett: And I will say, like, I tried, I tried using AI to fix these regular expressions and it, it messed it up. So I ended up back in RegX Rx doing it myself. So I did try AI

Christina: Yeah. No, which would honestly, which makes sense. I mean, uh, that, that it wouldn’t, because, uh, I, where some of the stuff is weakness is gonna be like, it’s, it’s, it’s okay-ish on Swift, but like objective C stuff, there’s just, there’s not a lot of corpus for it to like learn from. And [01:17:00] I would think with critic markup there would be even less.

Right. So like, you know, maybe you can, you know, you

Brett: Claude, Claude did have a good, Claude knew all of the regular ex, uh, not all of the critic markup syntax. As soon as I said critic markup, it’s like, okay, here are your basic, but then it started adding syntax that doesn’t

Christina: right. Yeah. Sort of hallucinating. Yep.

Brett: Yeah.

Christina: Yeah, no, that’s the thing. Completely. And like, and, and not that you should, because again, if you can do it with a different tool, that’s what you should do. Um, I’m just trying to kind of think through like. In the, in the short term, like how people, if they face these things, could get through it if they didn’t have other tools.

There would be things where you could maybe, like in like your, your prompt, you know, like, uh, your system prompt. You could be like never, you know, create new things, right? Like only use documentation from, you know, this, this file only use, you know, the, the, these rules or whatever. But, and that might get you closer, but, but it might [01:18:00] still create things, right?

Which, which, which to your point is what happens. And like, it, it is good that Claude immediately was able to be like, this is what you’re doing, but it’s not good when it’s like, oh no, but look at all these features, and you’re like, this does not exist. Um,

Brett: this morning I was trying to get a parser to convert Panoc. Metadata into multi markdown metadata. And I copied literally the POC documentation for how POC metadata works. And I pasted it into Cursor. And I said, because it seems so simple, I’m like, why waste my time? I’ll just like cursor do this.

And I gave it the exact documentation and I still, it still messed it up. And I still had to be like, no, look at, look at line 1 24 here. Clearly if you skip a line, then it means that metadata is blank. Not that it’s a blank line. And yeah, it was very [01:19:00] frustrating. Uh, AI only gets you so far.

Christina: true. It’s true. I mean, it’s getting better all the time, but although it only gets you so far. But then I also have this secondary question, which is like, we are now almost, you know, like asking it to do things like we wouldn’t have asked a year ago, right? Like a year ago, you wouldn’t have even thought to be like, oh, hey, let me.

Paste all this documentation to you and have you do this for me and, and even, even think, oh, we can do it for me, right? Like, we wouldn’t even a year ago, we were barely at that point, like the age agentic coding systems were like, just starting to show up. And now we’re like, well, fuck you. You can’t do it correctly.

You know, I’m I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll start my own club, you know, with, with, with, with, with hookers and, and cocaine. Um, but, uh, but like, no, but, um, I mean, I think we’ll get better, but you’re not, you’re not wrong. Like, there are all these edge cases and it’s just funny that we’re finding the edge cases.

I think just because we’re starting to use these tools for like, more than what we use them for before. Like at [01:20:00] least that’s my, my, my take is, is that like, is that we’ve started to adopt these things more quickly than I think even like the skeptics might’ve like, wanted to believe. And I was like, no.

Like, you know, there’s still skeptics of course, but like, but I think people who use them, you’re like, okay. I have this, I have this one positive experience. I’m gonna continue trying things and then when I don’t, that’s when I’ll, I’ll use other tools. But yeah, I mean, uh, we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t use it for everything.

Anyway, continuing to ramble, but

Conclusion and Farewell

Brett: Should we, should we wrap here?

Christina: yeah, we should wrap.

Brett: All right. Well, thank you Christina for showing up when Jeff couldn’t. Thank you for not having a jet ski.

Christina: I know, I know. I’m, I, I’m regretting that I don’t have a jet ski, but, but glad that, glad that Jeff does

Brett: All right. We’ll get some sleep.

Christina: get some sleep. [01:21:00]