Overtired 267

[00:00:00] Christina: You’re listening to overtired. I’m Christina Warren. He’s Brett Terpstra and Brett. What? We’ve got to like another special guest.

[00:00:11] Brett: I it’s a, it’s a repeat guest. I liked him so much. The first time around. I thought I’d bring him back. We have, uh, Victor grunted Jr. With us today. Hi

[00:00:20] Christina: Ooh.

[00:00:22] Victor: Good to hear. Y’all.

[00:00:23] Brett: Yeah. Um, so I had Victor and Aaron on, uh, what was it? Two weeks ago? A couple of weeks ago. Yeah. So since then I pulled my, my whole leg job title shenanigans. And, uh, I don’t know if Victor listened to the last episode yet or

[00:00:41] Victor: I

[00:00:41] Brett: not, but I, uh, I had a good conversation with Aaron about, uh, my, how guilty I feel and how I don’t want to screw anyone over a good conversation there.

[00:00:53] Uh, I’ll tell you a little bit about it after we go to like mental health corner and whatnot, but how are you Christina?[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Christina: I’m pretty good. I’m pretty good. I’m officially in vacation mode, which is nice. Although, ironically, I’m recording this from my office at Microsoft, because I had to come in today to record a video like my last year, but it was like a completely half-assed video. I mean, it was good, but like I was writing the script, like in the Uber on the way to the office, like it was one of those sorts of things because I’m off, like I’m not getting paid for today.

[00:01:23] Well, I mean, I guess I am technically, but

[00:01:25] Brett: Your

[00:01:25] Christina: you know, well, well, no, but you know what I mean? It’s a vacation day, so it is different. Um, like you, you guys have the unlimited vacation scam. Okay. So, yeah, so I don’t have the unlimited vacation scam. I have like the actual you get paid for certain days, and then they, you know, like will catalog other days is vacation.

[00:01:44] Then you get paid for those, um, sort of thing, uh, which is not a scam. Uh, and especially if you live in the state of California, uh, which I do not, but, um, anyway, I’m technically not working today, but I am working today. So I’m, I’m like, but I’m off for the rest of the year. So I’m just like [00:02:00] very excited.

[00:02:01] Brett: They, uh, they told us at Oracle that, uh, nobody should work between Christmas and new years, uh, that the offices were closed and no one was going to be here. So it was like mandatory vacation, but then there were like, um, Hey, so if you want to take off, you know, a week before or after you just put it on the calendar and kind of like gently nudged us to take some time off.

[00:02:25] Cause we’d met, we’d met our stretch goals for the year were we’re six months into the fiscal year and our team. I already met our stretch goals for content. So they’re basically telling us to just chill out for a little bit. So I took next, I took next week off and the week off between Christmas and new year’s.

[00:02:46] So

[00:02:47] Christina: Hell. Yeah. That’s, that’s very, very good. I like that. They did that. I liked that they’re forcing you to do that. Um, I do not get forced to do that because, uh, instead of what happens in, and I guess it’s, they’re forcing back. I mean, we’re encouraged [00:03:00] make no mistake like we’re and no one’s going to be working.

[00:03:02] It’s like, we’re very much encouraged to take time off, but like, for me more of the forcing function is that only, um, you can only carry over days into the fall and into the next year, like, uh, like up to, up to one year’s.

[00:03:14] worth. So I have, like, I had like close to two years of CEDA vacation, but only one year would go forward.

[00:03:21] So I’m carrying three weeks over into next year because I didn’t take it from this year. But from the period in time, from the year before would have gone away. So I had like 82 outward. Now I actually have more than that had, uh, nineties 98 hours that I had to take. So otherwise I would lose.

[00:03:37] Brett: like Victor and I, we don’t have to, we don’t have to do those mathematical calculations.

[00:03:42] Christina: Which is,

[00:03:43] Brett: we just take time off whenever the fuck we want to. And I have taken my time off. I do not consider this a scam. They are very supportive of like, oh yeah, he’s off

[00:03:52] Christina: I’m not saying Oracle’s a scam. I’m saying the concept of not paying people for vacation as a scam and it

[00:03:56] Brett: understand. We’ve been

[00:03:57] Christina: correct. I’m just saying, cause if you leave the [00:04:00] company, you don’t get paid for those days. That would be remaining.

[00:04:04] Brett: We also like our team due to an ambiguity in our job tickets. Um, we are, we all have to submit, uh, hours, like time sheets. And we can, like, we submit the exact same time every week. Uh, like we’re paid as if we’re salary. It doesn’t, we don’t get approved for overtime, but we still have to submit the time cards, but we can get them, uh, approved in advance.

[00:04:31] So I figure if I always stay a couple months ahead on my time cards, if they fire me, I’ll still be approved to be paid for the next couple months. have no idea if that will work or not.

[00:04:45] Christina: Uh, probably not, but it’s a nice thought.

[00:04:49] Brett: Victor, you got some time off, right?

[00:04:52] Victor: Uh, Yeah. actually I looked at the team calendar and I was Like you know what, practically everyone’s off next week. So I’m just going to take the whole week off [00:05:00] too.

[00:05:00] Brett: Yeah. Like what’s the point?

[00:05:02] Christina: I

[00:05:02] Brett: no one would be there for you to even crack jokes to

[00:05:08] Victor: uh, yeah, which is part of my job function.

[00:05:11] Brett: Christina.

[00:05:12] Christina: joke. You’re the joke guy, team comedian.

[00:05:16] Brett: Our whole team is supposed to be funny. We’ve talked about that. We’re working on it. Uh, Victor’s definitely going to help with that. Um, I got to hook you up with Aaron, Christina to talk about, uh, doing videos for Debra. Cause she’s just getting started on it and uh, she could use your expertise. I think

[00:05:35] Christina: I’d be very happy to help.

[00:05:37] Brett: we all could use your expertise.

[00:05:40] We, we have, we have these strong intentions of, of creating great video content and we all have some background in video and, and YouTube and, and editing and all of that. But doing it in this context is it’s new ground for all of us. I think.

[00:05:59] Christina: [00:06:00] Yeah. And, and, and video’s hard. Like people think that it’s easy and it’s

[00:06:03] Brett: it’s so hard.

[00:06:05] Christina: And, you know, it’s one of those things. The reason is it’s like anything else it’s easy because people are, who are good at it and make it look easy, but it’s, it’s difficult. And, and you’ve got to get the right tone, which you guys will, but I’ll be happy to help out, especially since you’re doing things remotely.

[00:06:18] Like I’m lucky I’m not having to do everything remotely anymore. I have a studio, but it it’s, it’s a whole other thing, but Yeah. I’ll be happy to give a, uh, an OBS and other sorts of insights and, and um, tips

[00:06:30] Brett: and technique and like, just like, I would love to hear about your workflow. Like how, when you sit down to make a video from like script to cut, I’d like to hear like how it goes. W w we’ll we’ll have a, we’ll have an offline conference about that.

[00:06:46] Christina: Awesome.

[00:06:47] Brett: So how’s your mental health?

[00:06:49] Christina: It’s okay. Um, I haven’t been sleeping Well, this week, but again, I think it’s partly a attribute to the whole like half on vacation half, not cause like I worked for. [00:07:00] Okay. So at the end of last week, I took, had to take Thursday and Friday off. And so I wouldn’t lose days. And then I had to work Monday and Tuesday, and then I’ve been off yesterday and today and tomorrow. so my sleep schedule was totally fucked, but, uh, other than that, it’s pretty good. I fly out on Sunday. I will be in Atlanta for 10 days. Um, and, uh, I think, I feel like my mental health is pretty good. How, how how’s yours?

[00:07:24] Brett: Well, so let’s hear from Victor first. Cause I, I, mine might take a minute. Victor, how’s your mental health?

[00:07:32] Victor: Yeah. Mine’s pretty straight forward. I’ve been feeling pretty good. You know, I’ve, uh, taken care of myself, had a, my best friend’s dog died over the weekend. Oh no, I’m so sorry. Yeah. And so I’ve just kind of, you know, you know, sometimes that, I don’t know if it distracts us or what it is, but we just have to kind of step up and put our own shit aside and help them deal with their stuff.

[00:07:53] So that’s been, you know, that’s been mostly what I’ve been dealing with that. [00:08:00] I refinanced my house, so I have a whole bunch of money to play with. And so that feels good. Just like from the security staff, it’s paying crap off and thing, it is the holidays. So, you know, like, okay. Even though that we’re doing a simple holiday and I’m super lucky to get to see my kids on Christmas Eve, so that’s great.

[00:08:17] Yeah. I’m good. What’s that? How old are your kids now? Oh, man. Uh, my oldest is going to turn 20 next month and my youngest yeah. Just became an adult at 18 and he just got his own like fully fledged bank account so he can get a Robin hood account so he can start like, messing about with stocks, which he’s been dying to do.

[00:08:38] So it’s going to be great. Nice, nice east. He’s going to go game stock on everyone. Oh,

[00:08:42] yeah. That’s excellent. That’s excellent. And actually this was not planned, but that is a good segue to our first sponsor. Right. Brett.

[00:08:50] Brett: It would be, yeah, let’s do it. Let’s

[00:08:53] Christina: I was going to say live, let’s do that. And then we’ll come back to your mental health stuff. Do we want.

[00:08:56] Brett: Yeah. That’s perfect.

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[00:10:11] More mental health

[00:10:11] Brett: Perfect. So Victor. Ever read the book tier soup.

[00:10:16] Victor: Uh,

[00:10:17] Brett: Uh, when my, my pit bull AMA, uh, died, Mike Rose sent me a copy of a book called tear soup, and it was so meaningful to me. And like, it’s what I send now when people people’s pets die, like it’s, it’s, it’s about grief it’s and it’s about like humans dying, but it’s super applicable to people who have lost pets that they were close to.

[00:10:50] Um, and it is just like, you can like click the care button on a Facebook post and like, feel like you’re expressing [00:11:00] your, but sending that book, it will mean a lot to whoever it gets it. I highly recommend it. Let me add to your suit to our

[00:11:09] Christina: please add it. Actually, thank you for that. My, uh, my aunt and uncle their, um, their dog who was only two and a half just died suddenly, like, and it was shocking because if his age is, um, uh, uh, um, yellow lab and, uh, I’m, I’m gonna have my mom send that to them. So thank you for that.

[00:11:29] Brett: Yeah, it is. It’s so good. Um, let’s see. So, uh, yeah, I was going to talk about that. And then I was going to say, I have, for like three weeks, I’ve been stable and it has been great. I feel like I might be spending too much time with my girlfriend. Um, I think she might need a break for me because when I’m, when I’m stable, I just want to hang out.

[00:11:55] Like I’m a little puppy and I just want to be like, Hey, what are you up to? What are you doing? What are you doing? Hey, let’s, [00:12:00] let’s hang out. Let’s you want to watch a show? Let’s do this. And I think she needs a little space. So it’s

[00:12:05] Christina: She’s she’s she’s she’s like, all right, bro. Love you. Um, can, can, can we, can I maybe like have some time.

[00:12:12] Brett: Yeah. And she’s pretty good about asking for that when, when she really needs it. Like when it’s at like crisis level, she’s very good at like, I just need not you right now. Um, but when she’s, when she’s in a good place and I’m in a good place, I feel like I might, I might overextend her and she’s too nice to say anything about it.

[00:12:32] But I also, I’ve been waking up earlier every day, so far this week, and I have a feeling I might be going slightly manic, which will make me spend more time in my office. So she’ll get a break. And hopefully with my med changes, I won’t go like full on manic and like lose sleep and everything. So maybe things are good.

[00:12:55] Christina: That would be amazing.

[00:12:57] Brett: Yeah.

[00:12:58] Christina: I hope So

[00:12:59] Brett: [00:13:00] So in reference to, uh, our work shenanigans, I made this realization when I was like going through, like how, how will my actions affect my coworkers and talking with Aaron? And I realized, okay, If I’m in a position to advocate for my coworkers, if I’m in a place to say, this is what they’re really good at, and this is what they deserve recognition for coming from me, coming from a white male, uh, that just sounds like good management.

[00:13:36] Like no matter what I said or how I try to like push credit to other people, that’s just seen as like good qualities for a manager. And fortunately our, our, the, the triumvirate that has focused down to one manager, she’s a woman. And I feel like my white male privilege gets checked a little bit by that, but I’ve just [00:14:00] realized I could accidentally advance in my career just by virtue of being a white male.

[00:14:07] Christina: You you, you just realize.

[00:14:09] Brett: Well, no, I mean, academically, I understood this, but it never was so obvious in practice to me that no matter what I tried to do, it just made me look like I was ready for advancement. I think that’s probably true for Victor too. I just have like three months of seniority on.

[00:14:31] Victor: no, I think you’re absolutely right. Yeah. For myself, I’m just speaking for myself. Yeah, man, that must be so nice.

[00:14:37] Brett: Yeah.

[00:14:38] Christina: Honestly, you can’t relate to that sort of thing. I mean, I’ve been given promotions and stuff without asking before, but I’ve never just by like virtue of just existing been able to like accidentally and, and obviously you, you both work, especially like you both work your butts off, so I’m not like trying to like claim otherwise, but, um, Yeah.

[00:14:55] Brett: Yeah. No offense taken. It’s just true.

[00:14:59] Christina: it is. [00:15:00]

[00:15:00] Brett: And I wanna, like, I want to figure out, especially because like Aaron is a woman in the tech world and I want to make sure that whatever’s good for me is good for my team and good for Aaron. And like, I don’t necessarily know how to do that.

[00:15:24] Christina: So I would say. Uh, offering people opportunities is one of the big ones, because I think one of the biggest kind of unchecked areas of being like, uh, a dude in tech, um, uh, white men specifically, but not exclusively, um, is that a lot of times people will offer you opportunities and we’ll give you, uh, you know, uh, just, you know, uh, allow you to, to, to kind of take projects and run with things or, or let you do things without you even feeling like you have to ask or try.

[00:15:54] It’s just kinda like, Hey, Brett, want to take this on? And, or do you want to give this presentation or do you want to do this? [00:16:00] And, um, those are the things that can lead to advance to advancement. And that leads to people, seeing you as having, you know, like expertise and, and other stuff. So offering that to, um, uh, the other people on your team, um, especially like, like women and people of color, uh, would be in my opinion, like a good thing of.

[00:16:23] Brett: Yeah, well, there’s this, this question of greed where like, I, I want to advance, um, like at what point do I turn something away in favor of someone else? Like when, like I have, I have to figure out where I need to stop being selfish. And I guess like if I saw that someone else was more qualified than me, I would have no problem saying

[00:16:51] Christina: no, totally well, but I also think, and sometimes it’s even in a case where it’s not even like a, I think that’s an easy one. It’s easy when somebody is clearly [00:17:00] more qualified where it’s hard is if somebody isn’t necessarily more qualified, maybe they’re the same, but you’re like, I want to do this And I think at that point, then what it becomes, and this is true for a lot of people.

[00:17:12] Like I have to kind of remind myself of this too. Is that like, okay, how many opportunities have I had and how many opportunities has this person had and who is this going to make a more meaningful, like different stuff.

[00:17:21] Brett: Yeah. That makes sense. Huh?

[00:17:24] Christina: I’ve had, I’ve had to make that decision before, and it’s a, it’s not easy sometimes. Right. And, and, and, and, and, and when I say like, like, who is it going to like a meaningful thing? I don’t mean the bullshit. Like, I was once passed over for a promotion because they were like, oh, well, Dave has a family.

[00:17:42] Right. And, and, and like, and like, that’s fucked up, right? Like, like, I don’t give a shit if Dave has a family, um, if I’m more qualified for the job, then, then I should, I should get the job. But I do mean like, okay, if all things being equal, I’m getting this opportunity to do something. But I have a lot [00:18:00] of other things that have come my way too.

[00:18:01] And maybe somebody on my team, I think, especially if you’re a manager, it’s a little bit, it’s slightly different when you’re, you’re an IC. But I think even then, if you’re wanting to truly like, kind of like trying to, to better things for everyone, you kind of look and go, Hey, this person hasn’t had any opportunities and, and this, this might be a good chance for them to do it.

[00:18:18] Right. You know, it, it. It is that weird thing, like you say it trying to decide how selfish do I want to be, but if you’ve had a lot of opportunities around stuff, and if it’s not something that like, you feel like in your bones, like I was made to do this, and this is a really important thing to me, which a lot of things are not, then it, it, it’s not bad to be like, Hey, maybe you should give it to so-and-so or, or offer them that opportunity.

[00:18:44] The weird thing is that sometimes that isn’t always accepted. And if it isn’t like, if somebody says, no, we’d rather have you do it. Okay. Fair enough. You tried. Right. You can only go. So.

[00:18:54] Brett: W when, when I have a more specific, uh, when, when this comes up [00:19:00] again for me, um, I, you will be among the people that I, I talked to for a guidance, uh, your input as someone who, whose career has followed a similar trajectory. Yeah. I’ll let you know

[00:19:16] Christina: Okay. I

[00:19:16] Brett: now. Everything’s

[00:19:17] Christina: handle all that. No, and, and I think you’ll do it well. I mean, also I will say this, like, don’t let guilt, like don’t, don’t beat yourself up with guilt. You know what I mean?

[00:19:28] Brett: Yeah. I have a hard time with that.

[00:19:31] Christina: I do too, but it’s also like, there’s a certain point where a lot of times, I think, especially, um, in the last year, so a lot of people want to say the right things and are performative about like the ways they would improve things.

[00:19:41] And that’s great that we all want to improve things. Like I’m all about that. But at a certain point, there is a certain thing where it’s like, people are still ultimately going to do the things that are right for them. And I don’t feel like it’s inappropriate expectation for somebody to say, okay, um, I should, I should accept [00:20:00] less.

[00:20:00] Or, or, you know, like, like if somebody said, okay, well you get paid so much more than so many other people. You need to take a pay cut or give your salary to someone else. No, I can advocate and try to get more balanced, but I’m not going to like give up. I’m not going to swap salaries with someone just because of like systemic injustice like that.

[00:20:18] That’s just not the world that we live in. Uh, people who will do that, uh, more power to you. I would like to meet that person genuine.

[00:20:24] Brett: I think I might do that. Like if I felt again, like if someone was. Equally qualified for a promotion, just as an example. Uh, and, and I saw that I had a far better chance than they did simply by virtue of my race, ethnicity, gender. I, I feel like maybe it would just be to assuage my own guilt. I don’t know.

[00:20:49] But

[00:20:49] Christina: And we’ll look, you, you, you’re not putting yourself up for the promotion as one thing, But

[00:20:53] if you’re offered it, are you saying that you would, you would turn down the promotion, you would say no, I want you to give it to this person.

[00:20:58] Brett: I think, I think I [00:21:00] have it in me to do that.

[00:21:01] Christina: Well, I mean, that’s cool. What I, but I wasn’t even talking about that. I was saying like somebody saying, okay, you make this much money. This person makes this much money switch.

[00:21:09] Brett: Yeah. That

[00:21:09] Christina: like that, that, that I’m not, I’m not down with. Right. Um, but if you are saying you would you would, you know, if offered something, but I would also say a lot of cases, these aren’t zero-sum games, you know what I mean?

[00:21:22] Like if you were to turn down that promotion that is in no way a guarantee that someone else will get it in their place, like, that’s not how that works. So you have to take those things into consideration too. Right? Like it’s really noble for people to think that, but like, that’s not actually how that works most of the time.

[00:21:40] Unfortunately.

[00:21:41] Brett: I feel like in a case where they wanted you to switch salaries with somebody, which I don’t think is a real thing,

[00:21:46] Christina: No.

[00:21:47] Brett: if it were, I feel like in the corporate world, you can just make you just add the budget and make the other person make the same

[00:21:57] Christina: No. That’s what I’m saying. That, that this is my point, [00:22:00] right? Is, is that we, we, we live in these sorts of systems with the same thing, goes with promos, right? Like, you know, if, if they are offering you a promo and if, if someone else doesn’t get it, like if it’s, you know, there’s not necessarily like it, a lot of, a lot of the, the, the leveling stuff is, is arbitrary.

[00:22:20] Um, and, and if you were to say, no, I don’t want to take this. That’s not a guarantee that they will actually give it to the person that, that you think is more, you know, um, worthy.

[00:22:31] TV and bad drug dealers

[00:22:31] Brett: Yeah. What a fun game. Hey Victor, what are you watching on TV right now?

[00:22:38] Christina: Oh, my gosh, what am I watching? Well, there’s a hot guy, I guess, would be the only new

[00:22:42] Brett: Oh, has that

[00:22:42] Christina: with. Yeah. It’s almost done. It’s so fricking good.

[00:22:45] I haven’t caught up on the most recent episode, but it’s really good. Um, and I don’t even like Jeremy Renner and I kinda can’t stand Jeremy Renner and yet I like him. I like Hawkeye Hailee Steinfeld. [00:23:00] Isn’t it. She’s amazing. She’s really good. She like, um, uh, originally I think apparently like apple had her, she got out of the contract.

[00:23:10] Clearly. She CA like had her back, but, or whoever her agent is, I’m assuming she’s repped by CA. Um, a TV plus they’re like, oh, well you can’t do anything for any other streamer. And, uh, you know, as you got the Hawkeye offering, clearly they, they like went, you know, like the Asians went and hammered away, like at that clause. And they were like, mm, no, That’s kind of a ridiculous thing. We were talking, you’re not talking like seven year contracts with TV shows where you’re, you know, booked for six months at a time, you know, you’re talking about like six episodes of something.

[00:23:44] Like that’s a little ridiculous to be like, oh, you’re on an apple TV plus show. You can’t ever do a show for Netflix or Amazon or Disney or whoever. Um, but, uh, no, she’s really, really good in it. And, uh, uh, he’s good in it. Like, it’s, it’s good.[00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Brett: That’s alright. Yeah, I gotta get my shit together and start watching that, I guess.

[00:24:05] Christina: I think he would appreciate us. Sorry. Well, yeah, I have, I have seen literally this episode and that’s the thing is that like you see him get progressively, wearier like more tired. Cause he’s, I mean, it’s, it’s a classic, I’m not spoiling anything by saying he’s trying to get home in time for Christmas. So it’s, it’s like planes, trains and automobiles in the Marvel universe.

[00:24:25] Uh, and, and I think Brett you’ll appreciate just as sort of like general exhaustion. Um, and, and, and then the sort of like forced mentoring that happens and whatnot. It’s it’s got a great dynamic. It’s just it’s so well done. Um, yeah. It’s it’s super fun.

[00:24:41] Brett: Cool. I, uh, I finished cowboy bebop

[00:24:46] Christina: Yeah. I tried.

[00:24:48] Brett: right, before, oh man, I loved it. But right before the last episode I read that Netflix had already canceled it,

[00:24:55] Christina: they already canceled it.

[00:24:56] Brett: which so, so the first thing I did after finishing cowboy [00:25:00] bebop was go back and, and watch the first episode of the anime version. And they nailed it like the live action version, nails, everything about the anime version.

[00:25:13] And I don’t understand how fans of the anime version weren’t able to convert to the live or maybe it wasn’t those fans that were the problem.

[00:25:22] Christina: I know. See, well, that’s, that’s part of the problem, right? Is that any more, I’ve got a friend who read all the wheel of time books, right. And Amazon prime has the wheel of time stuff going on right now. And every, like for week after week, he was going through and just getting, getting kind of nasty about how terrible he thought it was, because it was so different or it started veering away from the source material.

[00:25:46] And then he saw some podcast or something and it changed his mind. He realized, oh, I can just enjoy it for what it is. And I’m like, that’s pretty much where it falls now is like, you can either enjoy the thing. Or you can grouse about all the little [00:26:00] nonsense and it’s like, just enjoy the damn thing, you know, or don’t and shut up.

[00:26:04] Brett: I mean, especially in the case of, in the case of cowboy bebop, like I, I went through all the, uh, episode summary, a synopsis of the anime version, and it seems like it’s a one-to-one match with what happens in the live action version. Like they basically just remade. On existing season of cowboy bebop from start to finish.

[00:26:27] And I actually, like, I would have loved to see season two, let them go like off book and just see where it went from there. But it’s a moot point. Netflix has killed it.

[00:26:38] Christina: Yeah. And I have to say, I mean, this is one of those things where like I tried, I really couldn’t get into it.

[00:26:45] And I agree with you Victor. Like, it is hard when you’re at this point, because there is no original IP anymore. Everybody is just remaking and redoing stuff. It’s ridiculous. Um, it’s like, come on and come up with the personal ideas.

[00:26:55] There are a million people who have them, um, You know, you can run into that thing where [00:27:00] people just want to complain or not enjoy it. Uh, in this case, I do feel like the, the showrunner made some mistakes. So he was like, you’re being very vocal about the fact that, oh, we want it to be less. We don’t want it to be that dystopic.

[00:27:10] And I’m like, okay, the whole point is, is dystopia, but whatever. Uh, but, but I, I just personally couldn’t get into it. I’m glad you enjoyed it. But I do, this does bother me about like this, this era of, um, streaming, where all of the decisions are metrics driven. Um, you know what I mean? Like, um, and not, not that ratings didn’t ever before determine whether a show is going to be renewed or canceled.

[00:27:36] It, it quite frankly has always played a major role, but it seems, but at least in like the more traditional age, there was also an element of. You know, how loyal is your fan base? How affluent is the demographic? Uh, does this have a words? Potential? Does an executive just really like the show and it feels like Netflix is almost entirely like they, they look at how many views did it have in the first 24 hours and how many [00:28:00] people have continued to tune in?

[00:28:01] And if you aren’t a hit out of the park, you are screwed because they launch it all at once. And so you never have a chance for shows that start slow, but then become bonafide hits ironically like the office, which, uh, you know, until it left, Netflix was the most popular television show on Netflix. Uh, even though, you know, it had been, you know, it was owned by another company and was in reruns like that, that show did ridiculous numbers, which is why NBC got it for peacock.

[00:28:28] Um, Well, now you’ve got a very app store mentality. Right? Right. It’s whatever it takes off immediately. And I’m saying, but you miss out on things that could be massive bonafide hits. Like there are countless shows that start slow and then become massive cultural phenomenons. And you even see the inverse where a show that didn’t work on TV is huge on Netflix.

[00:28:47] The Netflix will pick it up again, but they won’t use those same things for their own renewals. They’re like, all right, it’s a month after the show came out, the ratings aren’t there. We’re canceling it.

[00:28:58] Imagine the Mandalorian all being [00:29:00] released at once. I don’t think it would have had nearly the audience that it built in the end, you know, no way, great.

[00:29:08] One division at the same thing, you know, which, which did very well at one division was booed. My favorite shows of the year. And, um, and I like the Disney. I liked that apple. I liked that. Um, you know, Amazon to some things I like that they’re doing like the, the week by week thing. I, I feel like we all like to binge watch, but you do miss out on that, like ability to, to see if there’s a grower in there.

[00:29:29] You know, like sometimes it takes more time than, than four weeks or three weeks or however long. It was two weeks. I don’t even, it felt like it was two weeks before they were like, yep. We’re we’re not renewing . It’s like really?

[00:29:43] Brett: So I, um, I’m also watching Dexter right now and it’s on that week by week schedule, uh, that new blood. And I am like, I’m at a point in that. And where I am ready to binge, like the episode ends in, I immediately, [00:30:00] like at first I was okay. Waiting a week. Cause it was, it was, you know, building up. But now man, I want it all at once.

[00:30:06] Christina: No, and I, I hear you, and there are plenty of people who will wait until something ends all the way to go through it. But I don’t know, I’ve kind of enjoyed the process. And the last year was more of the shows that I watch have moved away from Netflix and are, are on that week by week thing where I’ve kind of been like, no, I know that I have a weekly thing to look forward to, you know, like it’s hard, but it’s nice.

[00:30:25] Like, you know, you get to be excited about Sundays again. Um, the, uh, the new sex and the city, um, and just like that, you know, they released two episodes at once, but, but like, I think that the next episode comes out like tonight and like, I’m going to be very excited to be watching that. And, and I’m excited to have those moments again, like Ted lasso.

[00:30:43] Was it similar thing?

[00:30:44] Brett: like waiting every week for Ted lasso was delicious. Like I loved Ted lasso night. That was, that was, it was

[00:30:51] Christina: That was awesome. Yeah.

[00:30:53] Brett: And it’s not the same. Like I can’t, I could, I could go back and binge like Ted lasso from the beginning. And I won’t say I [00:31:00] haven’t, but it’s not the same as that like waiting week to week, that’s actually kind of fun in some cases.

[00:31:06] Christina: It really is it really isn’t as some cases you’re like, I don’t love this show. So, you know, so much that I w I look forward to it. So I would rather watch it all at once. But in some cases, you know, it kind of goes, it can go either way, which is the nice thing, which is like, you’re like, okay, I know how many episodes this is. I, can just wait until it’s all up and watch it. But I’m actually, it’s funny. I watched my parents, uh, even though they’ve had apple TV because they, they use their cable box for their primary thing, even though they have an LG, very expensive LGTB that has the stuff built into it. And they have an Amazon fire stick.

[00:31:40] They have all this stuff, but they don’t know how to use it. So they hadn’t watched Ted lasso or anything else. And so, uh, at Thanksgiving we watched it and it was so funny because I think the first night, I think we watched five or six episodes of the first season. And, and, and, and, and my dad cause like, as hell, he was kind of like hesitant.

[00:31:56] I was like, no, you’re really gonna like this. And I could tell he was kind of hesitant. [00:32:00] And then in the first episode, All right, let’s do another one. And then after each one, they’re like, let’s do another one. Let’s do another one. And, and, uh, you know, it was, it was really great. I was hesitant as well, by the way, with Ted lasso.

[00:32:13] Cause like I’m not a big sports sky and I don’t, you know, I don’t get the jokes or whatever, but like that. Yeah. Anyway, we, and it’s such a great show. The

[00:32:21] Brett: I had to hear idear a lot of the buzz around it before I ever gave it a chance.

[00:32:26] Christina: Yeah.

[00:32:28] Brett: I have to say one thing before we take our sponsor break, I kept telling you I was going to start watching weeds again. And I did. And I’m up to like season six now. I think I’ve just been, it’s been like my background show, but one thing I have realized that I’ve never realized before is exactly how bad a drug dealer Nancy is in that show.

[00:32:53] Christina: she really is The worst. I

[00:32:55] Brett: worst, like the only reason she survives from season to season [00:33:00] is, is her good looks and her sex appeal

[00:33:04] Christina: Oh, yeah.

[00:33:05] Brett: as a drug dealer. She is shit.

[00:33:07] Christina: Yeah. Like it is kind of one of those amazing things. You’re like, how, how, how did you not wind up? You know, like, you know what I mean? It’s like, it’s like, why are you not on orange? Is the new black, you know what I mean? Like,

[00:33:19] Brett: should have been dead or in jail so many times and she keeps letting other people screw her over. Like she lets friends screw over every episode and she never learned, she never learns. And she’s also a horrible mom. Like the worst mom. Yeah.

[00:33:34] Christina: oh yeah, yeah. But it’s such a great show. And now I’m thinking about Justin Kirk, who? I just, I love Justin Kirk and her brother, the guy who

[00:33:41] Brett: Oh yeah, Andy.

[00:33:43] Christina: Eddie. Yeah, He sees the bad.

[00:33:44] Brett: Yeah, he’s in, uh, we’re watching modern family now, too. And he shows up as, uh, Mitchell’s boss.

[00:33:51] Christina: He, um, he’s in an episode of succession this season, which, uh, I, I don’t know. Did either of you watch succession? No. [00:34:00] Okay. It’s it’s my favorite show. Um,

[00:34:02] Brett: hearing about it. I feel like I’m going to have to give it another shot. I watched two episodes and I hated

[00:34:07] Christina: yeah, no, you gave it a try. I mean, it’s a dark comedy and it’s, it’s sort of as a satire, it’s like, it’s like a mellow mellow dromedy I think is what we decided. Um, cause there is definitely some kind of dramatic aspects, but a lot of it is just kind of satire and, and it’s very, you know, dark, you know, kind of know a lot of ways kind of making fun of these bridge BD people, but in other ways, it’s.

[00:34:30] It’s a good, I love it. But, but, um, he was in an episode, he was playing like a, uh, a real like piece of shit, like mega type of a candidate in an episode this season. And, uh, it was, it was great seeing him, uh, Stephen root, um, uh, was, was in the same episode. And I was like, I just want to have a spinoff of just the two of them, because two of my favorite actors,

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[00:35:01] Christina: I did.

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[00:36:33] Home Automation Sucks

[00:36:33] Brett: Um, so let’s see, uh, uh, Victor added some home automation notes to our show notes. And I’m super curious, because that is a long, long standing love of mine is home automation.

[00:36:48] And I will say that it constantly sucks and I keep coming back to it.

[00:36:54] Victor: I remember that that’s a, that’s one of your, you know, one of your things. Cause we, we had an early [00:37:00] discussion years ago, years and years ago now, uh, about X, 10 modules. And you had just created the most. Insane X 10 set up, I think I’d ever heard of. Um, and so since then, of course we’ve had raspberry PI after raspberry PI come out and I’m a big fan of HomeBridge.

[00:37:21] Um, and which has, you know, simplified a lot of things. But then I saw just as I put that on, uh, the document I saw yesterday, Gizmodo had a story about an iOS developer just created the effortless, smart home. We all really want. And basically they’re, they’re going around and like aiming their iPhone at different stuff.

[00:37:41] And it’s showing, oh Yeah.

[00:37:42] you can turn this on. You can turn this off or whatever. And you know, it’s, it’s kind of like augmented reality. Um, I dunno, it is, it’s the kind of effortless, smart stuff that you want, but you know, we’re not going to have for another 10 years, let’s say

[00:37:57] Brett: Yeah.

[00:37:58] Christina: if ever, because [00:38:00] people get so like, addicted, like we could do it now.

[00:38:02] Victor: It’s just like, everybody wants their own standard. And once you’re on like thing, yeah. There is a thing called I think it’s called matter, uh, that, that people are trying to get a, a standard together on, but again, I mean, yeah, it’s W w there’s data is the new oil or whatever, right. And so Google wants to have your, your stuff go in it’s thing.

[00:38:24] Microsoft wants their, you know, everybody wants their thing. Right. I get that. And so it’s the question of whether that standard is going to allow people to keep doing business the way they do business, um, but make interoperability possible. And I don’t know, I haven’t looked at the spec, but God, that’s the.

[00:38:42] Uh, it really is. It’s so funny because you mentioned the Gizmodo post and before you even told me who it was, I knew that it was who wrote it. So I just went and found the post. I was like, yep. This is like, I literally went because their website sucks now. Like the, in terms of being able to browse, like everything that’s come out.

[00:38:58] Like they fucking [00:39:00] geo media, they suck. Um, and so I couldn’t find like the post, like on like the main, like, like website. And so I just, like, I literally like went to his byline because I knew that it was his and I was like, yep, there it is. Yeah. And this is not for like regular, I mean, it’s, it’s using the Yuan, the ultra wide band, you one chip, uh, in, in spending like the iPhone 11 and up, I believe.

[00:39:20] And so, I mean, I’d love to try it, but there’s a lot of other setup that has to happen. But again, I mean, with something like HomeBridge, which again, I, I’m not like it’s an open source project and all that. Uh, I’ve been able to bridge a bunch of really crappy. Uh, wish.com lights that I got. Uh, and I don’t give a crap who knows when I’m turning lights on and off.

[00:39:40] I don’t give it, you know, it’s like, whatever. Um, and so, but it’s been great because Siri doesn’t support any of that crap. Um, and you know, you set it up, you gotta view things every now and again, you make sure everything’s updated and that’s it, it just runs reliably on a raspberry PI.[00:40:00]

[00:40:00] Brett: W w w you running HomeBridge on a raspberry. Nice. I’m running home bridge on a 2012 Mac mini and it’s constant. The node process is constantly failing and I have to like manually go in and reboot it and I need to figure out how to make it more dependable.

[00:40:19] Christina: Yeah. This is just a little pie three actually. That’s uh, yeah, easy peasy.

[00:40:24] Brett: Nice. Uh, for anyone who doesn’t know at HomeBridge is, uh, it’s, it’s a platform that makes home kit accessible to let’s see, how would you explain it?

[00:40:37] Victor: Like other third-party like stuff that isn’t normally a Siri company like home kit compatible, I should say. And, it’ll, what’s great is that it populates on the home app. Uh, so you can actually see things that you wouldn’t have normally been able to see before you won’t have necessarily always full control.

[00:40:51] And it is a little bit like a plugin, you know, marketplace or whatever, where you’ve got a lot of different, there could be five different. [00:41:00] Plugins or solutions for a off-brand wifi light, like the ones that I’ve got. Right. Um, so you have to kind of see and their star ratings and all that kind of thing.

[00:41:09] Again, it’s its own little ecosystem, but for the most part it’s pretty reliable. I’ve heard some things don’t work better than others or whatever. So your, your mileage will vary considerably, but none of this should be this difficult to begin with. Right. I mean,

[00:41:23] Brett: yeah.

[00:41:24] Victor: we should all auto detect and talk and you just be like, Hey, I’m going to bed.

[00:41:29] Turn off all the damn lights and you know

[00:41:31] Brett: things are way better than they used to be. Uh, back when, like when, um, what’s a big B no ZigBee

[00:41:40] Christina: yeah, yeah.

[00:41:41] Brett: Back when the, when it used to be just X 10, then it was X tenant and Stijn, and there was one other big protocol and then things kind of exploded nothing talked to anything else. And you had to, you had to buy into one system and ever since home kit became a [00:42:00] thing, like we’ve had all these different manufacturers that have had at least one, uh, kind of protocol that they can agree on.

[00:42:09] And sure you can get locked into like an Amazon ecosystem or an iOS ecosystem and apps like HomeBridge can, can create, can bridge those systems, but you really only have like two or three major protocols now instead of nine or 10. And, and they can talk to each other. And I have HomeBridge hooked into my indigo controller, which controls all of my, most of my home automation stuff is.

[00:42:39] Home kit compatible or Amazon, or like echo compatible for that matter. Uh, but I can do it all through indigo and indigo has a home bridge plugin, so I can access all of my, uh, like Insteon devices, for example, from both my echo and from [00:43:00] Siri. And it it’s just so much better than it used to be.

[00:43:06] Christina: Which is awesome. I just wish that they would, you know, that it was like easier for normal people to get set up with these things. Like, and I think What the HomeBridge project has done is is really phenomenal for that. But you know what I mean? Like, it still is ridiculous that a lot of people still, they have to rely on, you know, openings up on the button, the box, and then you have, even if they are using one of three standards, like you have to run like 40,000 apps to do that stuff.

[00:43:30] And, and, and it’s like, okay, you know, that’s, it’s just, it’s frustrating because we could solve.

[00:43:38] Brett: My system is complex and fragile, like fragile to a fault. One thing goes wrong and all of a sudden, I can’t turn on my office lights and it’s not, it’s not good. I like it. It’s fun. It’s a fun hobby, but it is not ready for the mainstream.

[00:43:53] Christina: No totally. Which is why most people who have like the really like high-end systems and whatnot, like [00:44:00] there’s, there’s a whole dedicated market. Like a people who are not, you know, like a hobbyist who, people who spend tens of thousands of dollars to do that, and there’s works great, but it costs tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:44:10] And that is sad to me.

[00:44:13] Brett: Yeah. I finally got Z-Wave devices working with my, my home automation system and Z-Wave is super easy to set up. Seems to be more reliable than in Sihon. Um, look, I I’ll probably be expanding my, my home automation using Z-Wave. Uh, partly the devices are just cheaper than buying like home kit compatible stuff.

[00:44:37] Yeah,

[00:44:39] Victor: Wow. Uh, it also, I will say the home, I dunno. Is it called the home app or the home kit app? I don’t think home. Of course. Yeah. Male.

[00:44:49] Brett: Right? Calender.

[00:44:51] Victor: yeah, exactly. So, but the, the home app, like I get how, uh, after trying to set some of these things up, [00:45:00] I get how difficult that is. I, I’m not saying the home app is good.

[00:45:04] It could be a billion times better. Like a lot of apple, like early software. That’s still evolving. Um, this is the larval stage still. But at the same time, it’s like, again, none of that should be that difficult because if Siri were better at parsing language, right, you would be able to say something like, please turn everything off.

[00:45:23] You know, I’m going to bed or whatever. And it could even ask you like, oh, would you like me to turn off the lights off? Because that would be a logical thing. I don’t have to share my day. This is why it kills me. Apple is so strict about like, we’d ever get anything. We don’t know you, your iPhone could be on Mars.

[00:45:38] Who cares? Right. Like, okay, great, please. Like, this is not difficult to just say, Hey, a lot of people go to bed. And when they do, they turn the lights off. Right, right. No, it’s, it’s not that difficult. And it’s also one of those things. It’s like, okay, you, you want to talk about like the privacy and this and that, but also you want to make it, like, you don’t even have any API APIs where [00:46:00] you could still protect stuff and do it locally on the device, right.

[00:46:02] Christina: To control things, right? Like you can at least have the API APIs and have some sort of SDK where people didn’t have to rely solely within your own ecosystem. And you could like maybe make it callable from something else, just a thought, right? Like maybe BB accept that people already have ecosystems full of stuff and don’t want to use your thing.

[00:46:19] And it’s weird. Cause it’s like they will make, you know, um, uh, they will make trade-offs when it seems to affect their adult, their bottom dollar. Right? Like they, they will allow you to have apple music on your echo and they will allow you to, you know, buy Amazon purchases from your apple TV, through your Amazon accounts.

[00:46:36] Um, you know, and, and, and whatnot. But like those other things, it’s like, oh no, I can’t control. No, I can’t tell it was to turn the lights off because God forbid the, a different app that I use, you know, has access to that functionality. Yeah. Yeah. But who knows? Now there could be some enterprising kid.

[00:46:56] Victor: Who’s got some shortcut thing that they’ve made because my, my, my [00:47:00] son and his friends have created some really clever, uh, they made one that was able to get YouTube to play in the background. Even if he didn’t have a premium account. I love this. Oh man. Yeah, they they’ve got some good ones. I’ll have to ask about it.

[00:47:13] Brett: Can you get Siri to, can you get Siri to play music on Spotify instead of apple music?

[00:47:19] Christina: No,

[00:47:20] Brett: No, you can. On, on your echo,

[00:47:24] Christina: I know.

[00:47:25] Brett: Amazon will do it.

[00:47:26] Christina: Amazon will do it. Sonos will do it.

[00:47:28] like everybody else we’ll literally do it except for them. And, and, and, um, it’s, it’s apple has opted not to, to do those things. And then they’re like, oh, well, Spotify doesn’t want to adopt this. And That It’s Like, no, they, the terms you make are so, onerous that they’re like, you know, it’s a pain just like you can’t use a home pod to play Spotify, which, sorry, but it’s bad enough that you can’t have multi users on a home kit, which

[00:47:52] Brett: That

[00:47:52] Christina: Or whole pod on pod, but like you buy this $500 speaker and $350 speaker, sorry. And you’re like, Nope. Can only use [00:48:00] apple music.

[00:48:00] Brett: it’s killing me. Cause like I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m trying to get out of the Amazon ecosystem. Um, and I have a bunch of echoes around the house that I use pretty regularly. And, uh, I would far rather be using Siri, uh, even if it’s not as good in some areas, but if I’m going to spend that kind of money on, if I’m going to put like home pod minis around my house, I want to be able to use Spotify.

[00:48:29] Like that’s a big deal for.

[00:48:31] Christina: Agreed agreed. I mean, and I would say, honestly, I’m a huge Sonos fan for that reason, because you can use it with everything and they are, um, you know, like making, they’re working on their own kind of voice assistant thing, but you can, you know, because it has, and it has, um, airplay to support. So you can even control it through your, you know, home pod and whatnot, but it has, you know, serious support.

[00:48:53] It has, um,

[00:48:55] Brett: Yeah, but I need, I need the home assistant function. Like I’m [00:49:00] not just replacing the speakers. I actually need the home assistant

[00:49:04] Christina: No, I understand that.

[00:49:05] Brett: Doesn’t have an assistant do

[00:49:07] Christina: nobody can use it can use Siri or it can use echo work can use Google and they’re actually working on their own as well. But yeah, no, it can use all those things. So you could talk to it the same way you could talk to any Amazon device, but you could also, um, and they’re working on their own kind of voice assistant thing to use, like, you know, agnostically or you could use Siri or you could use, um, uh, Google play.

[00:49:28] Brett: Alexa can speak pig Latin, can Siri speak pig Latin?

[00:49:32] Christina: I don’t think so.

[00:49:34] Brett: I’m not going to try it right now, but um, oh, I have to turn this up because I literally just told Alexa to speak pig

[00:49:41] Christina: I was going to say, it’s going to start playing like, like it did last

[00:49:44] The gang learns Ruby

[00:49:44] Brett: Yep. It’s it’s happening. Um, I’m covering for it. Um, yeah. Okay. So what, uh, what, what is this note Victor about? Can anyone cook? W what’s the, uh, what’s that prompt for

[00:49:58] Christina: I don’t know, there was nothing else. Can [00:50:00]

[00:50:00] Brett: says, can anyone cook that gang learns Ruby?

[00:50:03] Christina: Oh, oh, well, no. That’s related to our work adventures and learning. I mean, you don’t need to learn a lot of Ruby?

[00:50:10] probably because you already know a thing or two about a thing or two, but, uh, for, for, uh, Erin and I, it’s going to be quite the adventure.

[00:50:16] Brett: It was going to be interesting because, okay, so we have this plan to like multiply our content, start actually doing the tutorials, creating blogs and podcasts, and screencasts out of them. And the first content that, that we were looking at doing, uh, Victor jumped on some new stuff coming from, uh, Golang, uh, like working in NGO, which was going to put us all on pretty even footing.

[00:50:41] Cause I’ve never written a line of go. Um, and somehow that project turned into a Ruby project apparently, which does put me at a significant advantage, but also puts me in a place where I can actually help my, my coworkers get through some tutorials. We won’t all be starting from [00:51:00] scratch, but I was kind of looking forward to learning.

[00:51:04] Victor: Well, we can always go back to that. You know what I mean?

[00:51:06] Brett: I want to learn rust. We should see if they

[00:51:08] Christina: Yeah. I, I was going to say, I want to learn breast personally.

[00:51:13] Brett: Yeah. Um, I also need to get better at node. I have, uh, uh, start with node, but node content is on our list of things that I think we need to flush out for Oracle. So maybe we’ll get to that too. Victor. What, what do you have any languages, any current languages that you are proficient in?

[00:51:34] Victor: Uh, any current languages I’m amp? No, Not really. I mean, I was, I was learning some swift, a Western and I were putting together a, an app for getting stuff done actually. And so we were playing with swift and that, and that, so that was fun, but especially like oh God, this was, uh, over a year ago. Um, and it was just, it was cool to see like the progress that had been made.

[00:51:57] But yeah, I wouldn’t call myself proficient in [00:52:00] swift basically.

[00:52:01] Brett: Um, I want to come back to kittens stuff done in a second, but, um, yeah, like it’s going to be fun. I’m looking forward to this new era we’re ushering in at Oracle dev role of actually having the tech writers, uh, do the tutorials. So we actually know what we’re talking about. Cause we get corrections from people like, Hey, this, this line in this tutorial doesn’t work.

[00:52:26] And we all just scratch our heads and say, Hey, can you tell us what will, because

[00:52:30] Victor: Right.

[00:52:31] Brett: we, we, we haven’t actually done this. It’s it’s going to be, it’s going to be better. Um, what is kitten stuffed on Victor?

[00:52:39] Victor: Oh, gosh, uh, I’ll have a deck on me. Uh that’s anyone could see it anyway, but it’s a, it’s a set of cards that helps you manage time. Um, so if you, if you get easily distracted, it kind of works on the Pomodoro principle of setting a timer. I think about 25 minutes, these are all 30 minute cards. Most of them, um, to do things like email check, social [00:53:00] media, whatever, uh, especially if you, if you’re trying to track your time, which some people find very useful.

[00:53:06] Um, but yeah, it was, I got a V1 version out there. Um, and I still have some people on any to ship them to You So that’s, that’s terrible. I, I did not use the program as well as I should have, frankly, but we’re getting there. We’re getting back on track.

[00:53:20] Brett: You need SSL on your website?

[00:53:22] Victor: Yes, I know, right? Yeah. That’s why he can’t buy anything on there.

[00:53:28] Brett: That’s cool.

[00:53:29] Victor: Informational purposes only use caddy, get a, get a, get a let’s encrypt cert on it, but yes.

[00:53:37] Brett: Who did the, uh, who did the artwork for this?

[00:53:40] Victor: Um, a bunch of different people, actually, that was what was fun, was like going around and, and soliciting, like if I paid all the artists, but like some people were friends of mine, some people were friends of friends.

[00:53:50] Um, and, uh, and then the logo was done by a former student of mine actually said was neat. [00:54:00]

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[00:55:21] Your Mac Apps Fix

[00:55:21] Brett: So, um, I had some after the text expander posts, I thought we could talk about max stuff a little bit.

[00:55:29] Christina: Yeah, let’s do it.

[00:55:31] Brett: down for them.

[00:55:32] Christina: I’m totally down for that. I had the most ridiculously weird bug trying to update my Mac to twelve.one, like, but I did solve it, but it was, it was weird. Did anybody else have a problem updating to twelve.one?

[00:55:45] Brett: Um, no, no. That update went smoothly on my Mac book pro I still haven’t updated my mini two 12 at all.

[00:55:54] Christina: Right. Right. So for me, did we lose Victor? No, no, no. I’m still here. I just, I don’t [00:56:00] do updates no more. Gotcha. Well, so I, my like Mack came with 12 on it, so I, I couldn’t, you know, do anything about it. And I had like, actually some issues. So I needed update. Like I had a crashing bug, like an HTTP three crashing bug and mail.app.

[00:56:13] So like in mail app, it would literally be run for like five minutes and then it would hard crash and that is sort of untenable to use. So I need you to it. And that actually was fixed in the update. But, um, I got this thing where like the, um, uh, this X code tools, CLI tools, there was an update for that, but there was no update for twelve.one, no matter what I did.

[00:56:37] And, um, and I tweeted about it and some other people had the issue too. And their like solution was to go into recovery mode and do that. And then I’m like, I’m not, I’m not going into recovery mode. I know that it’ll leave my stuff away, but I’m not doing a re. Essentially just to get a freaking, you know, system update, like I’m not doing that.

[00:56:56] So, um, someone actually, uh, at [00:57:00] first in my first I saw it on Twitter, but then, um, I, because for whatever reason, my tweet became a Mac, um, a nine to five Mac story, which is funny. Uh, although it was very, it was very cute. They called me Microsoft journalist and senior cloud developer advocate. I’m like, I’m not a Microsoft journalist.

[00:57:17] I’m a, I’m a cloud developer advocate. I’m not, not journalist at Microsoft

[00:57:22] Brett: Close

[00:57:23] Christina: Um, close enough.

[00:57:24] uh, Christina, we’re a bit like that, that like left them, like write a whole post about it. And somebody in the comments was like, oh no, you have to S you have to, um, stop this process of this update brain process.

[00:57:35] And then if you stop, if you forced quit that process and then like, you know, had the system update thing up, then twelve.one would appear, then you would try to start it, but it wouldn’t have any network connection. You’d stop it. You restart the download. Then it went down. Then I was able to finally get it to update.

[00:57:53] So it took forever, but I did get, get my updates. So I’m happy with that. But what, uh, what backs up you want to talk about Brett?

[00:57:59] Brett: [00:58:00] Well, so I got this random tip this morning. Uh, someone was using bunch and they were also using bartender, the menu bar management tool. Yes. Amazing app, uh, which in the current version in version four of bartender, you can have, um, menu items hide, and then when they need to become visible, you can have them do so with a shortcut key.

[00:58:26] Um, so that he was hiding the bunch menu item, and then using the bunch shortcut key to. Open bunch, uh, cause you can do bunch of all with keyboard, but it was revealing itself like on the wrong display. And uh, it wasn’t a bunch issue. It was a bartender issue and the work around is to disable the global shortcut and bunch or whatever, whatever app you you’re trying to do this with.

[00:58:57] And then in bartender [00:59:00] preferences, go to hot keys, add, add a hot key for the menu item, set it to left, click and then just use that because then it makes the menu item visible in the main menu bar before it clicks it. And it’s a perfect workaround. I use it with a couple of other apps, including text expander and uh, it’s, it’s just a good tip to know, I guess.

[00:59:23] Christina: Yeah, I’ve been using that for I’m like I have like control center set up for like, like a command space and, uh,

[00:59:30] Brett: I didn’t even think

[00:59:31] Christina: or, or a command dot rather. And, and like, that’s awesome because then, like, I just have to hit like command dot and like it pulls up control center, which is really useful. And,

[00:59:41] Brett: it were a keyboard navigable.

[00:59:43] Christina: um, yeah, I wish the control center was, but everything else in the way you can set a bartender to do that is which is really useful.

[00:59:50] I also have a hot key. I have, mine is like a control B will like show like the bar underneath, um, a menu bar. Like your, your main thing, because you know, at this point, especially with the [01:00:00] notch, Like you definitely want to

[01:00:01] Brett: just straight control B.

[01:00:04] Christina: Yeah,

[01:00:04] Brett: Oh, that’s, that’s a system-wide Emacs shortcut that I gotten big trouble for. I kept in, in envy ultra, we were trying to come up. We were running out of keyboard shortcuts. And we wanted one in, in envy alt you can use command J and command K to navigate up and down in the notes list.

[01:00:26] Even when the editor is focused, um, where like your up and down arrow would just move around inside the note. So command J K, but those both already had other functions. So we were trying to, uh, come up with an alternative and we, we use control J and control K, but control K is, uh, it’s how you kill to end of line.

[01:00:49] And so we accidentally overrode that and then I was like, well, okay. Even I use control K all the time. Uh, so we change it to control and in control P which is [01:01:00] next in previous, uh, the equivalent of up and down thinking no one actually uses. Control and in control P to navigate while they’re editing immediately heard from people who use control and control P so I currently don’t know what shortcut that’s going to end up being.

[01:01:18] It should be something simple, but overriding control B if you never use it anywhere else, that’s fine for you. But I would never fly as a shortcut for, for an application.

[01:01:32] Christina: Yeah. I was going to say I, um, I don’t use Emacs, so I don’t give a shit, But this

[01:01:37] Brett: But like, so control a and control E

[01:01:40] Christina: I have a bumper sticker that says that.

[01:01:43] Brett: yeah. That you don’t use Emacs.

[01:01:46] Christina: I don’t give a shit.

[01:01:46] Brett: I don’t give a shit I’m like control and control. Every Mac user should know, like that’s beginning of line and end of line. Uh, and it’s better than command left, arrow and command right arrow for a couple of reasons. [01:02:00] Uh, because if a line wraps to multiple lines, But it’s technically one line control.

[01:02:06] He will go to the actual end of line and not just the end of the line on the screen. And, uh, the, and they’re both accessible with just your left hand and it’s it’s, you should use those. I don’t care if you like Emacs or not. I hate EMX myself, but those, those shortcuts and control K to kill to end up lying.

[01:02:27] It’s good stuff

[01:02:31] I could evangelize for, for keyboard shortcuts. And then we could start talking about my key bindings and it could go, this could really go off the rails at this

[01:02:39] Christina: I was going to say we have, well, I mean, we, we should just have a key bindings episode at some point.

[01:02:43] Cause I, I would, I actually wouldn’t even be mad about that. Ooh, text expander, if they wanted to sponsor or keyword by search to like, if, if we wanted to get like a whole bunch of people together, we genuinely could have just like a special episode, just about keyboard shortcuts and key findings.

[01:02:56] Brett: Th that would be really fun to put together. Uh, all the [01:03:00] sponsors, I’ll all the key we get. I know, I know carabiner is, uh, freeware tool, but we could give them a free sponsorship spot.

[01:03:11] Christina: get them. We could give them the free spot. Absolutely. I’m actually, I’m not even, I mean, I’m, I’m shit posting, but I’m not like, this is actually not a bad idea.

[01:03:17] Brett: Um, the other Mac tip I was going to offer is for anyone using , which is available on setup, uh, and also on iOS. But, um, there’s a presentation mode. You can take a big mind map and turn it into slides and the slides can animate so you can present your map and it can like expand and contract like child nodes and focus and hide other nodes.

[01:03:45] And you can create like a step through of a map and it makes a really cool. Uh, alternative to, uh, like a PowerPoint deck and you can add call-outs and notes [01:04:00] and it’s, it’s super cool. And if you are an I thought user and you’ve never explored presentation mode, I would highly recommend checking it out.

[01:04:09] It makes it makes great work presentation. Cause everyone’s sick of PowerPoint point, like, I mean, okay. For like Victor just did a PowerPoint presentation and use what’s it called Victor the suggest style.

[01:04:24] Christina: Yeah. I got to say that’s it’s pretty damn good too. It, is actually, I was going to say that’s actually, I really liked that.

[01:04:29] Brett: Yeah. It, and it looked great. Of course. I refuse to load up PowerPoint on my Mac mini. So I viewed it in keynote and keynote screwed up a bit of the formatting’s.

[01:04:42] Christina: of course it did.

[01:04:43] Brett: Like I, I looked at it, I went to the preview version and I saw what Victor intended it to be, and it looked great. But if you just need to present like the equivalent of a bullet list, but you want to make it look great.

[01:04:57] A mind map presentation is, is [01:05:00] fantastic.

[01:05:01] Christina: Yeah, totally. But if people are not opposed and I have to say, Like I prefer keynote, but I use PowerPoint a lot now for understandable reasons. And if you’re one of those people, a, it has some really good features. Like for instance, it has auto captioning. So if you’re presenting it will auto like use like AI to automatically add captions as you’re speaking.

[01:05:21] So if you’re doing something

[01:05:22] Brett: like speech to text.

[01:05:24] Christina: exactly. W which is actually really great if you’re presenting on like a zoom meeting or a teams meeting or something, and you want to have captions and accessibility, you can do that. It’s really good. Or if you are doing a presentation to an audience that, you know, English is maybe not their first language, um, and, uh, and they help, it helps to, to read things.

[01:05:43] Um, so it has things like that, but also the design ideas, I think it’s called like that feature, like is actually really good. Um,

[01:05:52] Brett: exactly does that do?

[01:05:53] Christina: It basically just has, sorry, you talked about it, Victor. Well, yeah, like, because I was honestly surprised and I was [01:06:00] like, this is one of those things that keynote should have.

[01:06:03] It’s ridiculous that apple didn’t do that. I mean, it it’s anyway. Um, and, and so I, you know, you’ve got your normal thing where you’ve got like title and then you’ve got bullet points on one side and you’ve got your, your photograph here. Right. It took that, and it gave about eight or nine different remixes of that somewhere.

[01:06:22] The image was the background and it put the bullets in the foreground and then, you know, but very like, really interesting variations. Now my presentation in Toto was disjointed because I didn’t stick with one stylistic theme that was on purpose anyway, uh, a stylistic choice, man. Um, but I was just super impressed by how well it was able to take the different graphic assets within certain parameters.

[01:06:46] Like I also threw some curve balls at it and it was like, ah, okay, whatever. But, um, overall it’s really. Yeah. And, and you can even start with like a blank slide because I’m actually doing this right now as we’re talking and it’ll, it’ll literally, like, you can [01:07:00] just, it’ll continue to just kind of like create, you know, design ideas and you can either customize it or use it.

[01:07:04] And some of them are really good. Some of them are, are, are better than others, but, um, if you have a whole bunch of different types, you know, it’ll help you kind of create things even in the same theme, if you want us to do that. So it’s, it’s actually like kinda hot. I’m not gonna lie. Like, it’s, it’s a good way, because for me, one of the, if you have like, uh, a set template that you’re always using for your presentations, that’s the one thing.

[01:07:26] Um, and I’ve had to both create those and use those. And that can be frustrating, but sometimes if you’re just trying to start a presentation, like for me, one of the hardest things to do?

[01:07:34] is like, okay, well, what theme do I want? And, you know, there are only so many that you can do, and this is a good way of having a, an easy way to kind of at least either come up with ideas or just use something.

[01:07:43] If you’re really in a, you know, a hurry, you know, Many of them are not terrible looking. You’re like, okay, now I don’t have to bother through that entire theme process. Thanks to AI.

[01:07:56] Brett: Did I ever tell you guys about text buddy?

[01:07:59] Christina: [01:08:00] Um, I don’t think so.

[01:08:00] Brett: This is another, we should definitely have text buddies sponsor our keyboard key bindings episode,

[01:08:08] Christina: Oh, is this the one where you, where you can select stuff

[01:08:10] Brett: Yeah, it works like a system service kind of, but it has all these built in transformations. So like, like if I have a comment in code and I want to wrap it to multiple lines, I can just select it, hit my shortcut type wrap and then hit return and it will wrap it respecting like comment markers, your hash signs and your double slashes and stuff.

[01:08:33] And it has like, I think at least a hundred different transformations and you can write your own using JavaScript and it’s, what’s he charging for it? Uh, it’s Tyler it’s Tyler Hall.

[01:08:47] Christina: Oh, I love Tyler

[01:08:48] Brett: yeah. He’s he’s awesome. Let’s see, purchase text buddy. For it’s you, you, you can choose whether you pay $5 for the thanks.

[01:08:57] So much license, $10 for the year, two [01:09:00] kind license or $20 for the holy moly license. One time purchase. Anywhere from five to 20 bucks. It’s it’s awesome. It’s really good at,

[01:09:10] Christina: That’s awesome. Okay. I’m buying this now because I’m a huge, huge Tyler fan.

[01:09:13] Brett: yeah, he would have given it to me for free, but I am a huge fan of Taylor and I was amazed at what this could do. So I paid, I don’t remember which level I chose, but I’m sure it was the year two kind or higher. What did I, I just paid for software. I really liked. And immediately was refunded. What was that?

[01:09:34] Um, I don’t remember now. It was, it was software. I was happy to pay for it because I use it all the time and I know the developer and the developer just like sent my money back to me. Your money’s no good here.

[01:09:47] Christina: That’s so funny. I get emails sometimes from people When, I buy things and they know me. They’re like, thank you so much. And I’m like, yeah, happy too. They’re like, that means a lot. Like, and I’m like, uh,

[01:09:57] Brett: When, when people do that, I usually [01:10:00] offer to write them a quote, uh, you know, like, Hey, I

[01:10:04] Christina: Oh, that’s a really good point. That’s a really, really.

[01:10:06] Brett: a, if you need a quote for your homepage, just let me know. That’s, that’s something that me, with my huge 13,000 Twitter followers I can offer, you know, I can do that. Some guy with, with 13,000 Twitter followers said something nice about your product.

[01:10:23] That’s what I can offer the world. That’s what I have.

[01:10:26] Christina: That’s okay. Actually, I really like that. Cause I, I can, that’s actually real currency for a lot of people. Okay, cool.

[01:10:33] Brett: so for you, what do you have a million followers now

[01:10:36] Christina: I’m like a hundred thousand. Um, but,

[01:10:38] Brett: or take.

[01:10:39] Christina: but like, you know, but, but like, but you got like quality followers, right. So, you know, uh, like if you, if I was going for like a dedicated kind of thing, like, so don’t, don’t, don’t sell yourself short there, but um,

[01:10:52] Brett: Those bought detectors. Say I have like 90% real followers.

[01:10:56] Christina: Yeah, mine too. Which, which actually is impressive, but still, [01:11:00] uh, no, but, uh, That’s that’s uh, that’s awesome.

[01:11:03] Okay. I’m buying, um, a text buddy right now.

[01:11:07] Brett: Oh yeah. I’ll, I’ll send you a link. I have a couple, I have a small repository of my own. It actually, they won’t be a much UCU. I wrote a couple to help me with some objective C format, which nobody uses objective C

[01:11:23] Christina: I was going to say, I was like, I don’t actually, but thank you. Like this is, this is a, this is funny.

[01:11:28] Brett: I’m not entirely alone, but the world really has gone swift for.

[01:11:32] Christina: I mean, honestly, we’ll look, it’s been what, seven years, like, you know, eight years, you know, so make sense.

[01:11:40] Brett: That’s how slow I am. No, if I, if I make another Mac app from the ground up, I will do it in swift.

[01:11:48] Christina: No, I mean, that’s the thing. Look, there’s still reasons to use objective C and I would have no way, like trying to pretend otherwise. Cause definitely like, uh,

[01:11:55] Brett: the question is, is there a good reason not to use objective C and at this [01:12:00] point there to me is not a compelling reason not to use objective C.

[01:12:05] Christina: That’s fair. I mean, I think the, the reason to use swift would be if you’re using like, like, like a swift UI, if you were doing some of the other stuff that you isn’t there. Right. So it, it depends on what you’re trying to do.

[01:12:16] Brett: it does. Anyway. God, we’re we’re well over for a midweek episode that we were going to make like a 45 minute episode so that we can get ahead by a week. We really, we really, uh, we met our stretch goal on this one.

[01:12:31] Christina: We didn’t get our stretch goal. I’m proud of us.

[01:12:34] Brett: Thanks for being here, Victor,

[01:12:36] Christina: Happy to,

[01:12:37] Brett: we didn’t let Victor talk very much considering how long

[01:12:40] Christina: very sorry. No, no, no, no, no. I see. Here’s the thing I’m pre editing for you.

[01:12:48] Brett: Oh, I actually have a whole day to edit this episode. So maybe, maybe, maybe I’ll make it really refined. Maybe I’ll this pause right here. [01:13:00] I’ll edit that out. Okay. Anyway,

[01:13:05] Christina: get kind of down to 45 or what you could use. You can just edit and just make it like all of Victor’s comments and then just like cut out us. Like that would be good

[01:13:12] Brett: Uh, you guys get some sleep.

[01:13:15] Christina: Get some sleep bread, get some fleet, Victor,

[01:13:18] Brett: Say it Victor.

[01:13:20] Christina: get some sleep. Both of you.