Overtired 255

[00:00:00] Brett: Hey everybody. You’re listening to Overtired. You’re here with your very tired cohost. Me Brett Terpstra and Christina Warren. How are you, Christina?

[00:00:14] Christina: I’m also very tired. Uh, my insomnia, um, as reared its head again. So even though we’re recording this at like 7:00 AM, I got like two hours of sleep. So

[00:00:28] Brett: I like how you said insomnia with a Z. Like it was in Zambia.

[00:00:33] Christina: Yeah, exactly.

[00:00:34] Brett: Oh, Matt. Two hours of sleep for, is that too, like more than one night in a row or is that just one night?

[00:00:41] Christina: Uh, this is like more than one night. I mean, this was only two hours of sleep, like, so I went to, I fell asleep at like 5:00 AM and, um, so, but I. I don’t know the last time that I got like, as a stained, like [00:01:00] more than maybe like four hours at a time. It’s been days.

[00:01:04] Brett: yeah. That’ll wear you down. Hardcore.

[00:01:07] Christina: Yeah. I’m glad it’s the weekend.

[00:01:08] Brett: I, yeah, I hope you get some sleep. I’ll I’ll tell you again at the end of the show, but,

[00:01:14] Christina: Yeah.

[00:01:14] Brett: but yeah, like that, like I’ve had over the last couple of weeks of a few nights of bad sleep, but, uh, once I got through last, week’s kind of more intense manic episode. Uh, I got four, four nights in a row.

[00:01:30] Good. Eight hours sleep. And then last couple of nights have been more like five or six hours, but not nearly as bad as two to four hours a night for multiple days.

[00:01:41] Christina: Yeah.

[00:01:43] Mental Health Corner

[00:01:43] Brett: Yeah. So how’s your mental health?

[00:01:47] Christina: Well, the tiredness, you know, although I had this whole discussion. Shrink last week about the difference between, uh, being tired, being fatigued, being, uh, there’s like a, uh, [00:02:00] another, uh, thing like exhausted. I think there was there all these different types of, of sleep things. And we were trying to figure out like, which one I have. so he wrote me a script, um, for, uh, we’re going to try some sort of sleep medication and see if that helps

[00:02:17] Brett: so here’s the thing is the, I think they’re called Z class, like a Lunesta. And I can’t remember the other one. Um, like I took those for years and they do help me with sleep, but they fucked my memory.

[00:02:33] Christina: Yeah.

[00:02:34] Brett: I don’t have great memory as an ADHD person anyway, but this was like, I was forgetting yesterday entirely.

[00:02:41] I couldn’t keep track of things. Five minutes later. Uh, it was, it was scary. Like I thought it was early onset Alzheimer’s because, uh, you can only take those first so long before they destroy your memory. So be careful.

[00:02:55] Christina: Yeah.

[00:02:56] I will. There’s also like, whatever, I can’t remember which one I’m going to be [00:03:00] taking. Um, I may be testing it out. It’s, it’s, there’s a new one. That’s really experimental. That is incredibly expensive, like incredibly expensive that you often have to like appeal to your insurance companies and whatnot to let you take.

[00:03:15] Um, and, and it’s, uh, I mean, I can’t remember how much a month it would have cost, but it it’s something insane. So I’m not starting with that. I’m starting with one that is apparently. Apparently they’ve done stuff. They’ve done tests with it, where they take people who’ve been on it. They wake them up after a couple of hours and then put them on like a driving course test and they can still drive and it’s supposed to be good.

[00:03:40] But Yeah.

[00:03:41] if it has any sort of memory issues, then that’s a no-go for me, because I, I have a really good memory and I can’t lose.

[00:03:48] Brett: There are a bunch of, uh, like sleep meds that don’t have those Z class effects. So hopefully, hopefully your doctor’s aware of those side effects. [00:04:00] Um, I was on like it’s, I was on something that was also given to me in rehab, uh, for sleep. And that went back on it like 20 years later and it still worked great.

[00:04:15] It had very few side effects. Uh, I don’t know why it wasn’t just given to me to begin with. Um, I can’t remember the name of it, but I have the, I have the benefit of my current bipolar medication. Also just knocks me out unless if I’m already manic, it just makes me a little bit tired. But in normal circumstances, like 15 minutes, I’m out, down.

[00:04:41] Christina: that’s good.

[00:04:43] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, sleep is good.

[00:04:46] Christina: I mean, that’s sort of the Genesis of the whole show, right?

[00:04:49] Brett: should do a podcast about that.

[00:04:51] Christina: we honestly, we should, I think that, that, uh, it could, and, and, and it could last for like seven years or something. So however many years [00:05:00] we’ve been doing this off and on

[00:05:01] Brett: But you know, us, it, it, it, would, it would, come and go.

[00:05:04] Christina: it would come and go.

[00:05:05] There’ll be like periods of time where we’d be really productive and then periods of time where we’d be like, wait, do we have a podcast? Yeah.

[00:05:11] Brett: long have we been doing season two now? I feel like we have only missed maybe two weeks out of the last, how many?

[00:05:19] Christina: At least a year.

[00:05:20] Brett: Yeah. God, we’re like we’re back.

[00:05:23] Christina: We are, we are like, we’ve been like work insistent. I think we’re for season two, then we maybe ever.

[00:05:30] Brett: Yeah, for sure. This is, this is our longest stretch. Well, we’re we have regular sponsors now.

[00:05:37] Christina: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:05:37] So, and, and, uh, yeah, so we like, we, we take it, not that we didn’t take it seriously before. Cause we did. And there was a period of time when, even when we didn’t have regular sponsors, we were still doing it, but we’re like back on like the, the committed, like train.

[00:05:52] Brett: we’re not getting rich, but

[00:05:54] Christina: No,

[00:05:54] Brett: get a little bit, we get a little bit for our efforts and it’s okay.

[00:05:59] Christina: it is it’s [00:06:00] good.

[00:06:00] Uh, and it was nice like before, um, you know, you, uh, you got all, uh, like a tech money. Rich. It was a nice, it was, it was, it was nice for you, so

[00:06:11] Brett: Yeah. It was actually a notable income. When, when we first started getting paid, let’s see, a year ago we were talking about, uh, Dawson’s Creek and, uh, uh, Taylor swift theme park. Is that? Yeah. Has it already been a year since.

[00:06:30] Christina: Oh, my God. It’s been a year since the, the, the, the, the adorable gay kid who did the very, very in-depth tailors with the impart a YouTube video.

[00:06:38] Brett: here’s what blows me away is I am completely time blind. Uh, like I thought that episode was maybe a couple months ago.

[00:06:51] Christina: Yeah.

[00:06:52] Brett: I find I’ve been living with my girlfriend for like five years.

[00:06:58] Christina: Yeah. I was going to say, you guys [00:07:00] have been together a really long time, which is awesome.

[00:07:02] Brett: But if, if, if I didn’t, if I wasn’t constantly told that I would think I moved in here a year ago. Like I have no concept of time, which is a common ADHD symptom.

[00:07:12] Christina: It is an, it’s a weird one because I have so many of the common ADHD symptoms. That’s strangely not one of them. However, pandemic ha. Fucked with everybody’s time since, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like there’s, I think that even if you have like, you’re completely neuro-typical I think that everybody’s time, uh, like a concept of time and, and so many other things have been just completely fucked up because of the last 20 months or whatever it is.

[00:07:43] So, uh, like, um, yeah, cause it’s been over a year because I’m trying to think back. I was like, yeah. Cause I think that it was yeah, like, yeah, again, I was like thinking like August, September, because I can see where I was sitting kind of in the same spot in my office, [00:08:00] you know, this time last year, but so much stuff has changed, but so much hasn’t changed.

[00:08:05] You know what I mean? Like the pandemic has been just a mind fuck on so many levels, so,

[00:08:10] Brett: I found our first episode, since we came back, it was, uh, August of 2020.

[00:08:17] Christina: yup.

[00:08:18] Brett: So just over a year

[00:08:19] Christina: just over a year Yeah.

[00:08:21] Brett: happy anniversary

[00:08:22] Christina: Happy anniversary. This is good. Does season two.

[00:08:26] Exactly know, I mean, but kind of like a renewed vigor cause before, um, two, it had been almost a year since we’d recorded before.

[00:08:34] Brett: We had like one episode randomly and, uh, yeah, we had, we had one episode in June of 2019, so it had been over a year.

[00:08:43] Christina: It’s been over a year. Exactly. So, so yeah. So happy anniversary to, to us bringing the show back consistently.

[00:08:50] On the perils of success

[00:08:50] Brett: Yeah. All right. So I like last week we talked, I, I was coming off of a manic binge [00:09:00] and, uh, I had stayed up, excuse me. I had stayed up for a couple of nights and I had pulled off like some mad website magic at work. I had built this, uh, ver it was very good. It went over very well. Like I had done great work.

[00:09:18] Uh, I got complaints from coworkers who were like, you can’t set a precedent that we stay up all night and I’m like, oh God, no, I didn’t. I didn’t mean to do that because. I w I, like, I was not happy about it. The only reason I mentioned it at all was to explain why it was such a wreck in a zoom meeting. Um, but I didn’t mean to like, make other people feel like they had to stay up all night.

[00:09:44] Cause I wouldn’t push that on anybody. So, you know, I took that lesson. I, I I’ll deal with, if, if that happens again, I I’ll be more upfront with my manager and tell them what’s going on instead of like saying it in a zoom meeting, [00:10:00] but then. This week I’m like, I think I’m still a little manic, but not like sleepless manic.

[00:10:08] Um, but, uh, so Victor was out sick. I don’t know. Is that too personal? Should I not say that on our podcast,

[00:10:15] Christina: No, I think that’s okay.

[00:10:16] Brett: Victor, Victor had, uh, had to go get COVID tested, but, um, that’s medical information. I shouldn’t share that. Um, and then Aaron was also out for like the whole month and our manager says, Hey, we need to have a, we had, I’ll just say we had to meet this goal by Friday.

[00:10:37] And it, it was a goal for the entire team to publish a certain amount of content by Friday. The team right now is just me. And so I figure let’s just do it. Let’s, let’s refocus our energy. Let’s get this done and I kick ass at it. And I finished [00:11:00] all of it by the end of Wednesday and I hand it over and I mark off the JIRA tickets and immediately it dawns on me that I just set a precedent that I could get up a significant amount of work done in like a third of the time.

[00:11:22] It should have taken me and I should have slow walked it and I should have turned it in on Friday as requests. I was immediately, that was immediately validated when the next day they said, great job. Here’s twice as much more since you can clearly do this really well. And in addition to that, we need you to train new employees to do things as well as you do them.

[00:11:46] And like, once I hit depression, that precedent is going to be completely UN unattainable. So I have, I have screwed future me [00:12:00] pretty hard here.

[00:12:01] Christina: you have. It is not insurmountable. Do not do it again.

[00:12:06] Brett: Yeah,

[00:12:07] Christina: You honestly, by, by making it seem like it was a fluke is How is how you fix it. That, that, and that’s the only thing you can do because otherwise, unfortunately, and we’ve talked about this before, this is like the corporate America trap. And I don’t even want to say corporate America.

[00:12:21] I think even like startups, I think like just any job, this is a natural thing where. You think you’ll be rewarded for stuff like that. You won’t be like people who always are like, oh, I’ll if I work really hard and if I make this? like really terrible deadline, that is unfair work, I’ll be rewarded with more headcount or more resources.

[00:12:43] No, you won’t. So that means that next time you have an opportunity, like where you have one of these crazy deadlines, you have to walk it, you have to slow walk at meaning. Even if you’re done on Wednesday, you then just spend Thursday and, you know, [00:13:00] time period on Friday, literally doing nothing.

[00:13:03] And then you turn it in on Friday.

[00:13:05] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, no, I, it dawned on me immediately that that’s what I should do.

[00:13:11] Christina: Yep.

[00:13:11] Brett: So, yeah, in the future, I will be, uh, I will be working at a normal human pace and, and not doing impossible things cause you’re right. Like it just be in immediately becomes the new norm and you immediately get more work. And when you don’t finish that work, then you actually end up looking bad.

[00:13:30] Christina: exactly. They said it as the new standard, because I’ve run into this problem myself. I don’t have like the manic tendencies, but I’ve done. I’ve had the same thing where like I made the impossible happen and, and I, and it took me years to kind of figure this out. It’d be like, oh, I’m not going to be rewarded for this actually.

[00:13:46] Like, I’m not going to be rewarded for this. And, um, and you have to, and, and it feels weird, especially if you’re somebody who, you know, kind of takes pride in what you’re doing and, and wants to like, I’m a pleaser [00:14:00] and you want to get things done. It, it feels weird to me. Like instinctually kind of go after that, but you have to, because there, you’re not going to get those extra resources.

[00:14:12] You’re just not, that’s not how, unfortunately how the world works. And, um, this is going to wind up being like, ultimately it could be bad.

[00:14:21] because if you can’t keep that pace up, even if you, for you, and if you don’t have the th th the cyclical kind of, you know, things coming, um, that becomes the new expectation and you just can’t let that happen.

[00:14:32] I think you can make this seem like this is a one-off and, and, and it was kind of a fluke, but honestly, as, as weird, and, and as pseudo guilty as you’ll feel, you just have to, when this sort of thing happens in the future, you just have to find a way to not turn it in and just wait, you know,

[00:14:53] Brett: Yeah. I, I proactively went ahead and scheduled myself a week off at the end of October, [00:15:00] or like, mid-October, I figured if they’re not, like I thought I would turn this shit in, uh, early, and then they’d be like, great job, you know, enjoy the rest of the week. Uh, Nope. Obviously that’s not what happens. So I just said, you know what, I’m just going to make my own reward.

[00:15:17] I have unlimited time off. Here you go. I took my time.

[00:15:21] Christina: No, I agree. Yeah. I think that’s actually a really smart thing. If you have a unlimited PTO, which is a scam, but if you have that, uh, take it and, and even if you don’t have unlimited PTO, um, you know, like if, if, because I have, I don’t have unlimited, but I have, um, like there’s only a certain amount that rolls over.

[00:15:40] So if I don’t take. my time.

[00:15:43] by the end of the year. Uh, and I haven’t taken the other stuff, which I never take all my time. So I usually have like, I’m, I’m stuck at this weird thing where in December I have to calculate how many hours of vacation I have to take. Otherwise I’ll lose. And in some cases what’s happened is that I’m [00:16:00] like, well, I’m still going to take meetings and work, but I’m technically taking the days off, you know, in the system so that I don’t lose them, but I’ll still show up at the meetings or whatever, but I’ll be less engaged.

[00:16:09] Um, but Yeah.

[00:16:11] like just make sure you take that time, you know?

[00:16:14] Brett: I just figured out the, uh, episode title over productive.

[00:16:19] Christina: Oh my God. That’s really funny. That’s good.

[00:16:22] Brett: Ah, it’s all right. All right. Let’s

[00:16:25] The Pop Culture Segment with Ted Lasso

[00:16:25] Christina: No, I like it. It’s no, it’s good. I like it. I like it. Um, I was, I was talking to a friend, uh, yesterday about the new Ted lasso, which I haven’t seen yet. Um, and, uh, and they were saying, um, that they had, they had a hot take about, uh, a music choice in, in a recent episode, not the most recent one.

[00:16:43] And, and they, they ended it by being like, uh, thank you for, uh, for, for listening to my Ted talk. And I giggled. I was like, that’s okay. That’s, that’s a dad joke, but that’s actually very funny.

[00:16:54] Brett: The soundtrack of Ted lasso always impresses me. Not because it’s like [00:17:00] blatantly here’s music you like, because it’s really well selected. Uh, well mixed. And like, there are times that I like it’ll Dawn on me halfway through a scene that this soundtrack is perfect for it, but I didn’t notice it until that point.

[00:17:16] Christina: Yeah, I agree with that. Um, and I don’t know if she’s involved with the music stuff, but I know that bill Lawrence cause his wife, uh, Christa Miller has like really good music taste. And she did a lot of the music picks on scrubs and scrubs had incredible music and a lot of people gave Zach Braff credit for that.

[00:17:33] And he, you know, had had some input, but, um, it was, it was actually his wife who is also an actress and has acted in a number of his series who had a bigger role in picking a lot of the, The tunes because she has really good music taste. And I don’t know if she’s involved in any of the music selection for Ted lasso, but I would not be surprised.

[00:17:54] So,

[00:17:55] Brett: last episode, you said you haven’t seen it?

[00:17:57] Christina: uh, the one that came out like six hours ago

[00:17:59] Brett: [00:18:00] Oh, no, no, no, no. The trippy one, the long, strange trip through London.

[00:18:06] Christina: Yeah.

[00:18:06] Brett: The soundtrack of that was amazing. I loved it. Everything about it fit the mood of the episode. And the episode was so weird. Like I love the episode. I kind of wanted like a standard Ted lasso in addition to it, like, I would’ve, I would’ve watched it as an extra, but it was still, it was very well done.

[00:18:25] Christina: it was, Yeah. I liked it. I liked the beard kind of a, I think they call those like bottle episodes, you know, whereas

[00:18:31] Brett: Character studies.

[00:18:33] Christina: Yeah.

[00:18:33] You know, it’s all, it’s all, you know, just his stuff and it was, it was interesting. I wonder if. And this is me thinking too much about the business side of this stuff, but, but, but it’s, but that’s also very interesting to me.

[00:18:46] Um, they gave it an extra, they gave it like a couple extra episodes, I think, for the order than what they had last time. So that’s why they had the Christmas episode, which aired weirdly in like August. Um, but I also wonder if this [00:19:00] is one of those things where, especially for that actor, who’s really good, who they haven’t given a ton of time to, if they were like, okay, Hey, we’re going to give you your own episode where it’s just going to be you and a couple of the like, you know, bit background players.

[00:19:15] Exactly. And everybody else will get a week off basically. Right. So everybody else is going to get paid, but they get kind of a week off because we got this extra episode order. I wonder if that’s how that happened.

[00:19:26] Brett: Yeah. Who knows

[00:19:27] Christina: I mean, I liked it either way, but, but uh, I mean I’m with you. I would

[00:19:31] Brett: man? No spoilers, but those pants

[00:19:34] Christina: The past were really good. Um, the Emmys were on Sunday. Uh, no one watched them. Um, but, uh, but Ted lasso did like completely clean up at the Emmy’s, which was great.

[00:19:45] Brett: makes sense to me.

[00:19:46] Christina: Me too. me.

[00:19:47] too, but Brett Goldstein. Um, who’s Roy Kent one, um, the, uh, um, uh, um, Hannah what’s her face, um, uh, I can’t think of [00:20:00] the character’s first name right now.

[00:20:01] Uh, but, but, uh, um, she won for, uh, for best actress in a comedy, which was a very competitive category. Uh, and, um, w which was pretty great. Obviously, Jason Sudeikis won at won best comedy, so it, it, it cleaned up, which I was very, very happy about.

[00:20:20] Brett: Speaking of cleaning up. Well, not my best transition, but yeah, no, that was such a horrible segue. I, I got gotta, I’m going to put off the sponsor, read for another, another segment because I got to come up with a better segue. That just was not up to my standard.

[00:20:41] Christina: This wasn’t up to Bret standards and, and honestly that’s been kind of like a, a trademark of how good we are. Yeah. And I see, I see, uh, what the, who the sponsor is right now, and I see where you were going, but that didn’t quite work.

[00:20:54] Is there a name for that thing where there’s a camera in your face and you totally freeze?

[00:20:54] Brett: Nope. It was too much of a walk. So I, so I’m doing virtual Maxik, I’m a [00:21:00] speaker at virtual max doc. I think we talked about that.

[00:21:02] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. we talked about like, we talked, I think that.

[00:21:05] uh, cause you’re going to talk about button.

[00:21:06] Brett: Yeah. And I got all this new equipment for video recording at work, and I decided I would use my new setup to create my Mac stock talk. And in the process, like train myself on all this new heart.

[00:21:21] Christina: Right.

[00:21:22] Brett: It is hard. So a like, I’m, I’m pretty good at it. I’m pretty comfortable podcasting talking a whole different story.

[00:21:30] When I have a camera pointed at my face. Oh, it’s like when I first sat down to podcasts, as soon as the mic was in front of my face, I would get like frozen. And I worked through that. I’m good at that now, but it repeated when it was a camera, like, and I’m good behind the camera. I have a lot of experience filming.

[00:21:50] I’ve just not an, I don’t have experience being an on-camera personality that and figuring out like this [00:22:00] camera has it. Doesn’t once you hook up the HDMR out, the autofocus falls asleep.

[00:22:08] Christina: Oh, that sucks.

[00:22:10] Brett: unless if it’s recording, it has great autofocus with a whole bunch of different. But as soon as you hook it up to HTMI out and start capturing your computer, it stops autofocusing.

[00:22:22] And like, I, I don’t know yet how to solve it, but for just sitting, talking head stuff, I figured out how to just lock it.

[00:22:32] Christina: And this is, this is the El Gato, right?

[00:22:35] Brett: It’s no, no, no, no, no, no. It’s the, the Lumix, the Panasonic Lumix G seven,

[00:22:41] Christina: oh, got it. Okay. there, there, has to be a second. I don’t know on the Panasonics, but there has to be a setting. I would, I would search, um, I would,

[00:22:51] Brett: there,

[00:22:51] Christina: I would look at Twitch streamers. Yeah. I was going to say, I would try to figure out what Twitch streamers have done, because they’re the ones who you want to

[00:22:58] Brett: Yeah. If you, [00:23:00] if you look through YouTube for a continuous auto-focus while streaming with the , like you can find some tips. None of them are perfect. This is not as good as streaming camera. As the reviews led me to believe.

[00:23:16] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think that that’s the weird thing because there are, depending on, I mean, that’s one of the reasons I got the Sony, um, is, uh, Because those do work really well. At least the one that I have, and I think most of them in general, like the autofocus and it has really good. Autofocus where it actually, like you can set, like what figure you want it to track.

[00:23:41] And even if I moved behind something, like it’ll automatically, you know, focus in and, and, and, and change like the, the focal point and it could be Boca. So like, if I go behind my mic or whatever, it’s funny, um, it, you know, it’ll, it’ll sometimes like focus in on it’ll struggle a little bit, but, um, uh, the Sonys work well, but yeah.

[00:23:59] Um, I, I [00:24:00] would like figure out like, whatever, like the YouTubers are doing, but yeah, cause that’s, that’s going to be a challenge

[00:24:05] Brett: I figure out how to return this and try a different brand. Or I ask Oracle if I can sell it use and just buy my own camera. But.

[00:24:17] Christina: Yeah, no, I mean, that, that’s an option too. I would say if that this doesn’t seem like it’s going to be ideal for you. I would definitely say if, if the El Gato face camera, whatever is not sufficient, I would highly recommend a Sony camera. Uh, you could get like, um, cause you don’t need a 4k one, so you could get either a used or even like, like a new, um, like a, an a like, uh, like, like 5,000 series.

[00:24:40] And it would be very, very good and it would have you know, good autofocus stuff plus, um, you can, you know, um, like I use a cam link, but I think the Sony software now at this point even has a thing where you could just connect it over USB and, and like

[00:24:56] Brett: like cam link circle.

[00:24:58] Christina: Uh, Kelly’s are awesome. Yeah, exactly. I’m just [00:25:00] saying, I think that the now, because of the pandemic and stuff, uh, a number of the companies, Sony and Canon both, um, you know, had to introduce that stuff.

[00:25:07] I’m sure that Canon stuff is good too. I just, for this sort of stuff, I’ve had a lot of success with the Sony’s.

[00:25:14] Brett: So like the first day I sat down and I got my script all exported and into the pad caster and I had everything set up and I got it rolling. And I recorded a half an hour of video with a couple of retakes. At the end of the day, I finally looked at my dailies, like I didn’t, until that point and realized I didn’t turn the microphone on, on the

[00:25:38] Christina: Oh God.

[00:25:39] Brett: So I had a whole bunch of video with zero audio and I was done. Like I was too tired to like record. So the next day.

[00:25:48] Christina: at that point, you’re just pissed

[00:25:49] Brett: Yeah, the morale was, it was too much of a hit. So the next day I sit down fresh. I make sure everything’s working. I record a five minute test segment. Double-check my, my output. [00:26:00] And I get rolling.

[00:26:02] But the combination of just feeling like, oh my God, I’ve already done this. And, uh, and just being overall tired by about halfway through it, it became impossible for me to make like happy facial expressions. And like my face just went dead pen and I could not make myself smile. I could not like, I can’t imagine being an actor who has to just repeatedly do takes of a scene.

[00:26:31] Like I, I get so tired of it. I’m not, I’m not, I need practice. I, I can get better at this. I’m sure I can.

[00:26:39] Christina: No, you’re going to do great in, in, Yeah,

[00:26:40] You’re going to get practiced, but I’m actually really proud of you for figuring out that this is a difficult thing and like a different skill set, because there are so many people that I work with who it, it, it took, you know, some of the pandemic 17. Who honestly, sometimes they would.

[00:26:57] And I would hear them kind of make comments about [00:27:00] me, um, either see my face or, or, or behind my back and in ways that were, there were kind of like, I’m not, I’m not gonna lie. I kind of like half nagging, half kind of, kind of shitty, to be honest, where they would kind of make assumptions about how easy all the on-camera stuff that I do is.

[00:27:15] And I’m like, because most of the people that I work with are very, very good public speakers and it’s different speaking in public versus speaking on camera. It just is like, I’m a better on camera speaker than I am a live speaker, although I’ve gotten good at being live. Uh, I I’m, I just have more experience being on camera.

[00:27:34] So even if I’m live on camera, I’m better at that for a weird reason than I am in front of a crowd, but there, there are different experiences and people who would be really good in one context or would like you have experience with the audio would just be very awkward and not great. And.

[00:27:52] Brett: It’s weird too, because like, I’m actually a pretty good public speaker. Like I I’ve spoken on stage at [00:28:00] Macworld multiple or yeah. Macworld and max stock. And like I can in front of a crowd I’m okay. It’s when I’m in front of just the camera and nobody else is there that I freeze and I jump same with podcasting.

[00:28:15] Like, I don’t know if I get getting my head, like how many people are going to see this and then it, like, I get perfectionist about it. I think when I’m, when I’m talking about like right now, uh, like I can make mistakes, I can backtrack on stuff. I want my video though, to not be full of stutters and pauses and, and backtracking.

[00:28:37] So that gets in my head. And then I get scared to say anything.

[00:28:44] Christina: No in practice will do it for me. And obviously you. Do this, because it’s just not the way, uh, the world works. But for me, I have to say it was incredibly useful because I’m, I’m in an interesting situation where it’s [00:29:00] weird. I in live things, I will have my ums and setters and stuff like that. But if I see a camera on, I’m usually pretty good, even more than just a microphone or even being with somebody I’m usually like my mind goes into a certain frame and I’m usually much better about that stuff.

[00:29:16] Whether I have a script or not. Although a lot of times for things like this, I do try to have a script and try to do to teleprompter and whatnot. And I think it’s because of all the live TV hits I used to do, because that was a terrifying, especially when I started doing it. And B I early on, uh, mashville was very briefly, we had like a kind of a short-term contract with them, the PR agency.

[00:29:42] Because this was right when mashville was starting to kind of grow this before we raised money, but it was when the company was starting to grow. This was like 2011. I want to say. And, you know, hired like its own CTO and took all of our ad sales in house and was really making a push to be like, okay, we’re doing this thing.

[00:29:59] Like, [00:30:00] this is not just like, uh, you know, a teenager in Scotland’s blog anymore. Like this is a real fucking business. And I had just moved to New York and we had this, this Edelman contract. And so they brought some of us in for media training and they continue to do media training. But at That point it was then done by like the in-house people who are not like the 30 year vets, like one of the guys who did my media training used to be the comms person for Mario Cuomo, the, the, you know, um, deceased father, but, but you know, former, like three-time governor of New York, uh, you know, father of a, of Chris and. one. who just got impeached and Yeah,

[00:30:42] that one, you know, it was, but he, he was like his comms guy and, and then worked at Edelman for a long time. And I, it was honestly the most instructive thing in one of the most instructive days I’ve ever had in my life where they gave us a, a lot of really good, like as a [00:31:00] group, a lot of really good.

[00:31:02] I guess tips on how to be interviewed. And that was interesting because in that case, they were basically like telling us how to avoid answering difficult questions and how to phrase things the right way and whatnot. The reason that was so useful, not that I get asked that stuff that often, and although it is sometimes useful and in Microsoft contexts now, but because it’s a journalist, I then knew the tells to pick up on when people would want to evade questions.

[00:31:26] One would want to use weasel words and sentences. So I could reverse engineer how to interview people. And I was like, oh my God, you don’t even know what you’ve done. You’ve actually just made your job more difficult because now I know exactly what to listen for. And I would use it all the time. I could like totally pick up on the cues and be like, oh, okay, well, I know what they’re saying here, so I can rephrase this.

[00:31:44] Or I can come at this from a different angle and get them off their guard and get them to say stuff they don’t want to say. But then the most useful thing, because it was, I, I just moved to New York. And, um, I might’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again. So for [00:32:00] context, I lived in Atlanta my entire life, and I’ve been trying to break into the CNN on air rocket, and I hadn’t made any traction, which look fair.

[00:32:09] Right? Like they, there are lots of people, especially then, you know, I was, I was young and, and, you know, Mashable was hardly super well known at the time. It’s not like I was expecting to get punditry spots on TV. However, it would have been nice. But, uh, I, you know, I lived in Atlanta my whole life where CNN is, and I’d really wanted to break into that racket.

[00:32:30] Didn’t happen literally my second day in New York. I get a phone call from a four oh four number and it was CNN in Atlanta and they wanted somebody to talk about, uh, some sort of apple story. There was some sort of privacy thing going on and they needed somebody to talk about it. And I said, well, you know, I’m not in Atlanta anymore, but I am in New York.

[00:32:49] And they said, Okay.

[00:32:50] cool. So we’ll send a car, we’ll take you down to the state, to the studio and you’ll do your hit. I’d never done live TV before. So I do my hit. They were really impressed. And, and [00:33:00] I joked, I was like, if I knew I had to move, you know, uh, 800 miles away to talk via, you know, satellite to someone in Atlanta.

[00:33:07] Cause at the time they still had most of the anchors in Atlanta at this point, all the anchors are in New York, but at the time they still had a lot of the anchors in Atlanta. If I was like, if I knew this, you know, I, I would’ve moved ages ago, but the, that I did the hit, it went really well. And then they liked me so much.

[00:33:22] They called me back that same day to come back and do a segment on a different program. And then they called me back twice more that week. And so it was a week later, I’m in this, this, you know, day long media training thing. And we got a thing from Anderson Cooper and they wanted me to come on for prime time.

[00:33:43] And that was a big deal. Right? Like I went on like, you know, like Anderson Cooper, prime time, 8:00 PM. And so. In that case, like I had to buy a shirt from J crew because at the time CNN was in the time Warner center. Well, because I was wearing like, it was a nice hoodie, but I was [00:34:00] wearing a hoodie. I didn’t know I was going to be on TV that day.

[00:34:02] And, and they, the, the requests literally came in that day that they were doing the training. And so, uh, let’s say it was funny cause there was a J crew in the time Warner center, which is where CNN was at the time. Now they’re in, in Columbus circle now they’re on another location. Uh, but uh, I had to run into J crew and I like found a shirt that I thought was going to fit.

[00:34:19] And I was like, Hey, I need to wear this out. Cause I’m about to go on CNN. And, and, and the, the staff, they were, they couldn’t have been nicer, but it was really, it was really funny, but what they did, and this was the most helpful thing. And I don’t know if this will help you or not. It might be something that makes you go crazy.

[00:34:34] But it was so useful. We did mock interviews and they recorded me and then they played it back. And actually, even when we were doing the just test interview stuff, they would stop me every time I would pause or say, um, or anything. And they would interrupt me immediately, but they also recorded me and then made me watch back and would pause every time I did something that wasn’t right and pointed it out to me.[00:35:00]

[00:35:00] And it was incredibly painful, but it was the best fucking like experience I’ve ever had. I got so much out of

[00:35:07] Brett: There’s an episode of community where Pierce is trying to teach. What’s her name? The black woman. I’m trying to teach her surely trying to teach Shirley public speaking. And he, every time she says, um, I can’t remember what he does, but he does something like just uncomfortably mean. And it sounds a lot like what you’re describing, but if it’s effective, then it’s the only time in community that Pierce did something.

[00:35:35] Right.

[00:35:36] Christina: No, it totally is. And it’s funny because I’ve seen that episode. I know what you’re talking about and no, I mean, it is, and it, but it was incredibly, incredibly effective. And for me, somebody who tries to think about things, analytically like you do, it was just like, okay, now I can know how to hack this.

[00:35:52] Like, like my approach then becomes, okay, how can I make this better? But for whatever reason, I got into the sense and you know, [00:36:00] you’re the same way. Like we’re, we’re good public speakers and, and we, you know, can build up energy and people and whatnot. But I kind of go into this weird mode now where if I see a kid.

[00:36:11] A, my energy can come up, be I have like a different way of speaking and pasting. Like I know what to do. And I have like a different approach. Part of that though. A lot of that came from not just that first, you know, in, in, in depth, like hands-on media training thing, although that was really helpful. A lot of it was practice because I would know.

[00:36:31] After I did the hit usually, but went well over it. Didn’t and I would watch myself over and over and over and over again. And I still do. And I’m usually like completely aware of exactly how much I fucked up or didn’t fuck up. And, and that can be painful. But I spiced to say, I went on too long about this, but it’s as to say, you’ll get there and it just takes practice.

[00:36:51] And the one only thing I would say to you is don’t be too precious and too hard on yourself about having everything be perfect. [00:37:00] Obviously you want the sound to be good and you want your slide timing to be right. But people aren’t expecting you to be like a professional Ted talk speaker. Uh, Hey, that’s a callback.

[00:37:11] Um, you know what I mean? Like these, this is your audience, you know what it is, don’t beat yourself up over it. You’ll get there with time. It’s just one of those things. Like any other skill, it takes practice. There are some people who are more naturally inclined at it than others, but nobody is good at this, or as perfect added out of the gate, not a single.

[00:37:30] Brett: Okay. So I have two options for segway here, option a speaking of stage fright. You know, what else is crippling

[00:37:41] Christina: I love

[00:37:41] Brett: or option B speaking of overcoming things, you know, what’s great to overcome a or B

[00:37:48] Christina: Let’s do B actually.

[00:37:50] Brett: speaking of overcoming things. Um, you know, what else is great to overcome as credit card debt?

[00:37:57] Christina: Yeah.

[00:37:57] Brett: yeah.

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[00:39:17] So they know we sent you loan amounts will be determined based on your credit income and certain other information provided in your loan application. Again, go to upstart.com/ Overtired. Speaking of spending money, how is that? We have like that again, that could go into two different topics. We could talk about, uh, I iPhones, or we could talk about laptops.

[00:39:41] Christina’s new laptop

[00:39:41] Christina: talk about laptops.

[00:39:42] because I talked about my iPhone decisions on rocket for like 20 minutes. And I don’t think anybody cares that I found a way to convince myself to get the iPhone today, even though there’s absolutely no reason to upgrade it. The TLDR is, uh, basically [00:40:00] it will cost me. I will make $40 by buying the iPhone this year.

[00:40:04] So I’m getting the iPhone. That’s the only reason I’m getting it.

[00:40:07] Brett: Fair enough. That was short. I, I, before we get into the laptop, I will just say I haven’t even watched the keynote and I have no idea what the new iPhone, what, what, I don’t know, what’s new. And I, I find, I don’t really care. Like I just got the 12 plus and I got, I jumped from the 10 to the 12 max pro

[00:40:29] Christina: you, you don’t need it. I I’ve said this to other people and I stand by this even though, so there were some camera improvements, but none that I feel are in any way worth, if you have a 12 plus going like higher, or even if you have an 11, I think for most people, I don’t think there’s any, any reason.

[00:40:47] And then the other thing is that they have, uh, at least on the pro models, they have a promotion, which is obviously like the higher refresh rate and it’s variable, uh, which is cool. But again, like, I do not think in any [00:41:00] stretch that it is one of those like necessary things. Even at this point, the way apple Is doing, like the way they’re encouraging people to buy from carriers.

[00:41:09] Like the default, which is how apple encourages people to buy this stuff. They kind of hide the, the iPhone upgrade plan from you actually. Um, at least in the U S they default at sea, like 30 months, which means like they’re expecting people to keep their phones for two and a half years. So you’re, you’re completely good.

[00:41:27] Do you watch the keynote if you want to? Uh, it it’s a

[00:41:31] Brett: there any Mac stuff in the keynote or was it all just an

[00:41:34] Christina: it was all iPhone?

[00:41:36] Brett: Fair enough. I’ll skip.

[00:41:38] Christina: Yeah.

[00:41:39] Brett: If there was anything truly groundbreaking or important, I would have heard about it on Twitter, but I did

[00:41:43] Christina: I was going to say you, what have you, but I haven’t. And we would have talked about it, but no, there’s, I mean, and, and I’m not like saying that it’s like, I’m not.

[00:41:49] criticizing, like the stuff seems cool, but it’s just, it’s not one of those necessary things. I think we’ve kind of reached that point now where every couple of years you might have some really big groundbreaking incremental, like [00:42:00] things.

[00:42:01] This is definitely an S year, even though they didn’t call it the 12th.

[00:42:06] Brett: Okay. Okay. So you got that. We talked to before about this, like a modular upgradable laptop and you got yours. Tell me

[00:42:16] Christina: Yeah. Oh my God. I love it. It’s so good. So I got the framework, Cory, Doctorow actually got his the same day I got mine and he just wrote a thing in for his blog. Uh, I’ll find the link. Um, cause it was number one on hacker news for like a really long time. Um, but he, uh, he just got his and he really, uh, liked, uh, likes it too.

[00:42:36] So I have to say, is it perfect? There’s no perfect device, but I’m so impressed that this small company managed to do what I haven’t seen. Small companies let alone bigger, like better finance companies achieve very often, which is every promise they made for their 1.0 [00:43:00] they’ve delivered, which is astounding because when, so, so for, uh, for people who are facing.

[00:43:06] With what this is, it’s it.

[00:43:07] I think It’s at a frame.work I believe is the URL. Um, but this is a, um, an Intel, uh, laptop. So it’s x86. So windows or Linux or whatever, um, that is, uh, thin and light and aluminum, but rather than being the traditional, like everything is glued together. It’s not upgradable, it’s not repairable.

[00:43:30] You actually can replace basically any component on it. And in fact, it comes with a screwdriver. Uh, I got the DIY kit, meaning that you could pick and choose what components you wanted. And if you wanted to like, bring your own Ram or hard drive or whatever SSE or whatever, or if you wanted to, you know, um, uh, buy stuff from them.

[00:43:49] It’s, uh, they also had these, these ports, which, because it uses a Thunderbolt, uh, for all that they don’t have the certification yet. So they can’t technically claim that they support Thunderbolt port, but they do, uh, [00:44:00] it’ll, it’ll get the certifications in. Um, it will say that now they just can say USB for, um, we’re basically you have these, these plugs that are kind of adapters, um, you know, kind of dongles, I guess you could say, which kind of go in, in the back of, or the bottom of the laptop that could have other output things.

[00:44:17] So like I have USBA I have USBC, I have one, that’s an SSD, uh, like an external SSD kind of like a Samsung, um, uh, T uh, drive. I have, uh, you could get one that’s, uh, you know, um, micro SD card slot. Um, they have the, I guess like the, the 3d. You know, printing diagram, if you want to make your own. And they’re open to people creating their own modules, but all the components they’re making are repairable and upgradable.

[00:44:46] So like the screen you can take apart really easily. Um, this, the CPU is, um, uh, kind of a custom design, but it is designed in a way that says you could actually take the CPU out of this thing and replace it [00:45:00] with like a different model. Right. Um, they

[00:45:03] Brett: old days of PC building.

[00:45:06] Christina: completely, but, but in a laptop. And then what’s incredible about it is that it is actually very thin and light.

[00:45:11] Like when I showed it to my friend who works at the eff, she, when I told her about this, cause, cause she works with Corey and I was like, Corey got this too. And he really liked it. Um, she was expecting, um, the it to be like bulkier and bigger than it was. It’s not going to be as perfectly like thin and as like a, a Mac book or the, the Dell XPS, which I bought and I’m returning.

[00:45:34] But it’s really close and, and it’s a lot better made and it seems like, you know, a lot more finished than you would expect with something like this. So when this company announced that they were doing this, um, a number of months ago, I was like, I really like the idea, but I kind of had a I’ll believe it when I see it sort of approach.

[00:45:56] And then I placed an order and, and they’ve been doing the orders [00:46:00] in batches because they want to be able to, you know, they don’t have infinite amount of money and it’s harder for them to get certain components and certain things. So they’ve been taking orders in batches. And so I ordered at the end of July and they said, you’ll get it.

[00:46:12] You know, in August I got at the end of August, exactly as promised, there were a couple of revisions that they needed to make based on feedback that they got from users. And so, like, there was a piece of tape inside the box, along with instructions on how to add that to the trackpad mechanism to a D D clamp down a cable, a little bit to, to prevent something that, that had been an issue.

[00:46:34] They’ve made some other kind of small refinements to. Um, and, and then there are instructions on their website really well done showing you how to put everything together. Everything went off without a hitch. The only issue I had. And it was interesting. Corey had this problem too, and they actually posted a video, uh, on Twitter to help him out.

[00:46:53] And, and they’ve said they’re going to update their documentation. And also, um, stock up on some extra parts of people have this [00:47:00] issue. Is that the way that the wifi and Bluetooth antenna stuff works? The connector types, it’s, it’s a, it’s a common standard connector type. I can’t think of what it’s called.

[00:47:09] They, they use them on regular PCs, but basically, um, you have like this, uh, this IM two card that will plug into the laptop, but there are these antenna cables that come from, um, you know, uh, at this point I think you’re usually kind of like mounted in, uh, like the screen chassis or whatever that kind of come down and that they clamp in and they connect in a weird way.

[00:47:29] They’ve got these like, uh, uh, metal rivets that have to plug onto the very tiny little. Uh, I guess, uh, you know, uh, tops of, of this card and in my case, I just couldn’t get the rivets to say on. And it was one of those things where if you do it too many times, if you do it the wrong way, I saw this on, on their, um, um, discourse where their forums of stuff for people like, cause this is a common part.

[00:47:57] And this happens to people in PC building too. [00:48:00] Like if you do it too much or whatever, you could either break something off or, or, you know, like. You could, you, you could mess things up. And so you would, you would either need to manually kind of solar it on or, or get another cable to try it, to try it again.

[00:48:13] And for whatever reason, I was just having a really hard time keeping it on. And then the length of the cables was just a little bit too long. So once I would get it on, I try to insert it in the slot. It would come undone again. And I’m like, okay, how am I going to get this aligned correctly? And, um, you know, snapped ins cause they’re like little buttons at the top of like, like, uh, uh, buttons in the sense of like, uh, like, like a, like a Jean button or something, you know what I mean?

[00:48:37] Like, like it’s got, got a rivet basically. Um, but they posted a video kind of showing how to do that. They’ve taken the feedback about how they can make that process better. That was the only thing I had an issue with. I was able to get that done. Everything else. It couldn’t have been easier setting up.

[00:48:53] Um, uh, the support from the company is really, really good, and it meets every [00:49:00] promise they made from the fact that they deliver everything and that everything was like, well manufactured and like, well laid out that there was good documentation that the quality of everything is good. Like, I can’t say enough good things about this laptop.

[00:49:12] Um, it’s one of those things that you could get it fully built if you didn’t want to go through the wifi, you know, bullshit. But, um, I it’s, it’s fun to build things yourself, even the fully built ones come with, uh, um, a screwdriver and, and it’s, it’s just a standard kind of a Philip, you know, smaller sized Phillips had all the screws and stuff are capacitive.

[00:49:32] They even have extra screws. Like when you open it up, you know, in case you lose stuff, um, I think things are well highlighted.

[00:49:39] Brett: anything that comes with screws should come with extra screws.

[00:49:43] Christina: I agree. And the fact that they’re captive. Was really great. And so I just, I really, I can’t say enough good things about this laptop and just the whole experience with the company. I have to say, like they have far exceeded my [00:50:00] expectations. Um, Linus from Linus tech tips actually invested in them and a friend of mine actually reached out and was like, do you do you know them?

[00:50:08] I kind of want to invest. And I’m like, I kinda want to work there. Um, uh, I’m trying to get, uh, the CEO on I’m on a podcast so I could talk to him about all this stuff. Cause I just, I genuinely just am really impressed. So I love it. And um, the, the reviews from other people who’ve been good. Like I really hope this is the sort of thing.

[00:50:32] Like, I don’t think this is going to obviously become like the next big, like, uh, major hardware company. No. And, and, and as you have concerns about how they scale and about how they’ll be able to kind of keep this up, but I have to say. I’ve seen so many companies a bigger than this, um, try to approach this kind of like module or repairable thing and fail.

[00:50:53] And B you know, upstart companies come out with a cool hardware idea and not even be able to get out the door and not [00:51:00] even be able to meet the minimum expectations. Right. So the fact that they’ve already met them, I’m like, even if this is ultimately not successful, right. Even if this company doesn’t become like massively profitable or whatever, the fact that this out of the gate has.

[00:51:14] And that, for the most part, the components they’ve used are standard box standard components and are things that like, they’re making them available to people and they’re making schematics available to repair centers. Like they’re, they’re really, you know, um, like walking the walk when it comes to, uh, the stuff that they support I think is incredibly, incredibly impressive.

[00:51:35] And so, um, I, I love it. And if somebody is looking for a windows laptop, that’s a, a good windows, laptop, oral Linux laptop is, um, the Linux support on this is really good. In fact, they worked with some of the distro people and got them early access to hardware so that they could make sure that like the districts were supporting stuff, which is a very nice touch.

[00:51:56] Um, if, uh, if you’re in the market for something like [00:52:00] that, uh, I think that it, this is definitely one to look at. Uh, they, they don’t have AMD processors and they don’t have discreet graphics for this model. They might in the future, but the specs, it was it’s identical to the Dell that I got, except the Dell screen is a little bit higher resolution.

[00:52:17] Uh, and, and I, I, I much prefer it. So, um, I, I absolutely love it. And if that’s something you’re interested in, um, I definitely suggest checking.

[00:52:28] Brett: I it’s very, it’s tempting. Like it sounds so good. What you’re describing, the only reason I would need a Linux machine, like I don’t need a windows machine. The only reason that we’d need a Linux machine is because I’ve been hitting the limitations of running a Synology software and I’ve considered just setting up a server to do all of the, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff I have my Synology doing that.

[00:52:54] Doesn’t actually require a NAS at all,

[00:52:57] Christina: Yeah.

[00:52:58] Brett: like running Docker, for example,[00:53:00]

[00:53:00] Christina: same. Right. And, and that’s one of those things and, and I, I you’re

[00:53:04] Brett: don’t need a, I don’t need a laptop. I would just end up running it headless anyway.

[00:53:08] Christina: that’s true, although what’s interesting about this As you could, and there are people who have just completely like disconnected the screen and, and, and run it like headless in that regard. I

[00:53:18] Brett: As a rack server.

[00:53:20] Christina: Yeah,

[00:53:20] I mean, you could, I mean, like it, there there’d be nothing kind of stopping you if that’s what you wanted to do.

[00:53:25] Uh, you could probably find something to be more efficient and, and, and you getting a nook or something. I didn’t tell him look would probably be the way to go for that. But if you did want a laptop for whatever reason, I mean, I don’t know. I like to play with toys. This just, it was such a cool idea that I was just like, I have to, I have to try this.

[00:53:45] And after I, I was interested when I first saw it, uh, months ago, I, we might’ve even mentioned it, I think on the, I don’t know if we’d mentioned on the show and I know I mentioned that sweater. And then when, um, some of the reviews from people came out, I was like, [00:54:00] okay, you know what, I’m going to buy this.

[00:54:03] I’m going to use my credit card. That gives me the two year warranty. So on top of, you know, the manufacturer warranty, so I’m going to get, you know, a little extra stuff also, you know, I have a credit card. So if something goes wrong, You know, they, they will take care of me again, kind of a callback to our sponsor, because that is one of the benefits of, of having good credit.

[00:54:22] Is that your credit card companies, uh, protections on this stuff is usually gonna be better than your banks. So, uh, I, um, I was just, um, I gave it a shot and I’m honestly shocked because I’ve never seen a first gen, especially from like a new hardware company. I’ve never seen them actually deliver on the.

[00:54:42] Brett: I’m currently running. I have a 2012 Mac mini. I have an M one Mac mini. I have a, a MacBook pro and a Synology. And I have done have spent all this time with, uh, persistent team sessions [00:55:00] and, uh, sync like VIM setups and making it so that I can basically run all four of these things at once from like one screen.

[00:55:11] Like I don’t have any space to add. Any, any more computers right now, but it really is like, I love what you’re describing. It sounds amazing.

[00:55:21] Christina: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I hope that, you know, like this, like I, I hope that they have other products in the pipeline and who knows. Cause honestly, I mean, you know, they’re doing laptops, but this would be a cool concept for like some sort of server like stuff. You know what I mean? Like, even though the nook is, is pretty good, like I would love to see them take this approach to, you know, the smaller form factor space, for instance,

[00:55:44] Brett: Yeah, man, we got through this episode and you know, how many things we actually have to link in the show notes

[00:55:51] Christina: like for

[00:55:52] Brett: four things and

[00:55:54] Christina: but. I know we’re almost done, but I just do, I did want to.

[00:55:56] hear about, uh, cause you, you put in there, I talked forever [00:56:00] about my laptop and talk real quickly. If you have time about, um, getting L the M one and returning your Mac book.

[00:56:06] Brett: yeah. So like I, when I got my M one Mac mini, I weaned myself off of my, uh, like 2019 MacBook pro and cause Al was still running this like 2012 MacBook pro with an even older Mac book air. Um, Maybe not 2012, maybe like 2014. But anyway, like her, her stuff was outdated. She was running into some hardware problems.

[00:56:32] Keyboards were breaking. And I, I thought this is a great time to upgrade her. So I handed her a MacBook pro like a 16 inch with a two terabyte hard drive and 32 gigabytes of Ram like power machine. Right. And she got, she got started on it and I started running into trouble. Was she okay? There were, there were multiple things happening.

[00:56:59] [00:57:00] She was running into some, some problems that like the logic board had to replace be replacing that MacBook pro it was. Beach balling, randomly and stuff. Um, she got all that fixed. There were still some quirks. And I, meanwhile, I ran into this bug where if I compiled a universal binary on my M one for mark, it exhibited this impossible to fix a legacy WebKit bug, and I could no longer print or create PDFs.

[00:57:32] But if I compiled the exact same code as universal binary honoring and tell machine, it worked fine on all machines. Um, so I kind of needed, uh, an Intel development machine. So I bought an MacBook air for L, which is a far more ideal machine for what she does.

[00:57:52] Christina: I was going to say for her it’s it’s

[00:57:54] Brett: Yeah, it’s, it’s better. It was a step up. And, and I took back my, my Intel Mac book [00:58:00] pro, and it’s also nice to have a laptop when you’re recording videos.

[00:58:05] So you can set up like a studio and, and, uh, hookup have your like, machine right there anyway, like multiple benefits to me getting my Intel machine back. Um, um, I’m super happy, El super happy. And thanks to my great credit. I now have an apple card. Um, Matt upstart is getting their money’s worth today, but

[00:58:26] Christina: They really are. But, so, yeah, so you’re able to get the 3% cash

[00:58:30] Brett: 3% cash back and I can do like one month or yearly payments, uh, no interest. And so it was easy. I pay, like, I don’t remember what my monthly cost is, but yeah, with no interest, totally affordable. I can just add hardware. It’s a whole new world.

[00:58:49] Christina: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. Yeah, I do the, um, I forgot, I somehow messed up and didn’t do it on my iMac that I bought last year, but all the other stuff I buy I do on the free, [00:59:00] like no interest thing for how, whatever period they give me, because I have a pretty high limit on that card. Um, although initially they gave me an insulting and

[00:59:10] Brett: mine’s pretty insulting, but it’ll do

[00:59:13] Christina: yeah, no, mine was like, not even enough for one apple product.

[00:59:16] It was like $750. It was, it was,

[00:59:19] Brett: mine’s not that

[00:59:20] Christina: I know. I was going to say, and so like after a couple of months,

[00:59:23] Brett: off the bat.

[00:59:24] Christina: right? So after a couple of months I texted them, uh, through the customer service thing and I was like, Hey, can I get a limit increase? And they were like, here you go. Now it’s $10,000. Okay, thank you.

[00:59:33] That’s actually more in line with, with my other credit cards are thank you. I appreciate this because I was when it happened. Well, at first I couldn’t even get it to accept. This was when apple card verse launched. I couldn’t even get it to accept my, um, ID. Like when I tried it kept trying to scan my ID and it didn’t work.

[00:59:50] I was like, well, this is the most frustrating, you know, credit card application process process I’ve ever had. It’s honestly worse than like the usual thing, which is like, you know, you enter in your data and then they [01:00:00] come back and in a couple of minutes and there was a period of time when I didn’t have any credit, but now I have quite good credit.

[01:00:06] I don’t have a lot of cards, but thanks to American express, I have quite good credit now. And so when I got that low of an amount, I was like, are you serious? Um, but no, they came back. But Yeah. like at this point I always just do the monthly payment thing. Cause why not? Like I could, I could afford to pay it off every month, but if they’re going to give me no interest, like why bother, you know,

[01:00:31] Brett: Yeah. I mean, if you were to do it, if you bought like three large pieces of hardware or I have the same deal with my Amazon card, I can do like six to 12 months, no interest. Um, but you get a few large purchases like that and suddenly the. Suddenly, you’ve got 500 bucks coming out every month and, uh, and it adds up in here.

[01:00:53] It’ll hurt you in the long run. So you still have to pay attention, like

[01:00:55] Christina: Oh, no, you have to pay

[01:00:56] Brett: you have to be able to afford it upfront and then choose to pay it

[01:00:59] Christina: [01:01:00] no, no. I agree. Which is always my thing. Cause because I didn’t have credit cards for a really long time. So historically I’ve just always gone into things. The idea of like, I have to be able to pay this off either immediately or what I do is I don’t, I don’t carry a balance on my credit cards unless it’s, it’s free interest.

[01:01:16] I just don’t carry a balance on them. So, you know, I pay off my bill every single month. So, uh, for me, it’s just kinda one of those things where like, oh, you want, you want to let me, you know, pay off my AirPods max over six months. That’s fine. So in your case, I mean, honestly, like, I don’t know how you feel about this, but I’ve, I’ve had this weird kind of, uh, um, like epiphany about credit cards that used to be like, not super into them.

[01:01:42] And now I’m like, if they’re going to give me a really good interest rate, like zero and like, my money will actually be more valuable if I’m

[01:01:52] Brett: Turning interest on it at the

[01:01:54] Christina: That’s what I’m saying. Exactly. It’s like my money. I can, I can have it invested in my four and my socks and my other [01:02:00] stuff, you know, even in my savings account, uh, which is like almost nothing but whatever.

[01:02:05] Like my money is going to be more valuable to me, uh, over time. rather than, you know, paying it all up at once. So take advantage of the fact that many people don’t. Do that and can fall into problems, which I understand. But if you go into it with your eyes open, I think that’s good. So I’m also, I’m kind of relieved for you.

[01:02:26] I think like having a, uh, Intel machine again. I think it’s probably, um,

[01:02:32] Brett: Well, look, I love my M one Mac mini.

[01:02:34] Christina: It’s great.

[01:02:35] Brett: most purposes, it’s an amazing machine. I love not having fan noise. It’s super fast. I only ate it. Like I max it out at 16 gigs of Ram, but I rarely hit the ceiling on that. Like, it’s great. But, um, I have enjoyed having zero credit card balance so much that I literally, as soon as a charge shows up on my card, I make a payment.

[01:02:59] [01:03:00] Like I pay my credit cards like four times a month just, uh, cause I like getting the points. I like getting, I like getting the benefits, but you know, like I could afford to pay it out of pocket right then. So I just like funnel it through the credit card to get the perks.

[01:03:15] Christina: Well that’s exactly. That’s that? That was awesome. Another thing that I came, um, uh, like my epiphany around, I was like, oh, I can make this work for me. There was actually there’s an app. Let me find it. Um, I just, uh, tried it out. It has, uh, some of the stuff they do is free. And then there is like a yearly, you know, thing that may or may not be worth it.

[01:03:33] Brett: Nerd wallet.

[01:03:35] Christina: no NerdWallet is, is fine, but this is actually different. This is called, let me find it. This is called card point card pointers, and it’s an iOS app. And with the reason I mentioned it is because iOS 15, you know, finally allows actual safari extensions in iOS, like full extension.

[01:03:52] And, um, uh, the way that, uh, card pointers, um, works is that if you’re on a website to [01:04:00] make a payment or to buy something, you add what credit cards you have with it, it looks at your perks and then it will tell you which card you should use to earn the most points.

[01:04:08] Brett: Nice. Yeah. That’s yeah, I should use that. That would be handy for me. I also need to talk to you about crypto. Can we talk about crypto next episode?

[01:04:18] Christina: Let’s definitely talk about crypto next episode. It crashed hardcore today.

[01:04:22] Brett: it crashed two days ago. I lost like $70, but it recovered.

[01:04:28] Christina: Yeah. I mean, I, the way I look at it is like, at this point, I would just say like, hold, uh, China has just basically made all crypto illegal and So, stuff is crashing hardcore, but

[01:04:41] Brett: yeah, So,

[01:04:42] Christina: it’ll come back, but we’ll

[01:04:43] Brett: I just ha I have general questions about, like, if you were going to invest in crypto, how would you, I have questions, but we’ll get that. That’s a whole episode.

[01:04:52] Christina: Yeah, well, that’s a whole

[01:04:53] Brett: We’ll annoy people with crypto talk.

[01:04:56] Christina: Yes.

[01:04:57] Brett: All right. Great, Great, great, chatting with [01:05:00] you.

[01:05:00] Christina: great chatting with you.

[01:05:01] too. And, uh, uh, happy, uh, sad that like you were too productive at work, but, but happy you’re taking time off also happy that, you know, you’ve, you’ve learned your lesson.

[01:05:12] because, um,

[01:05:14] Brett: lesson.

[01:05:15] Christina: never try as Homer Simpson would say

[01:05:19] Brett: Yup. All right, Christina. Seriously, get some sleep.

[01:05:23] thank you, Brett. get some sleep.