Seriously Though

[00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired.

[00:00:04] Brett: Welcome to Overtired. I am Brett Terpstra. I am here with, as always, Jeffrey Severances, Gunzel. And Christina Warren. Uh, Jeff, how’s it going?

[00:00:18] Jeffrey: I’m trying to match your brightness. I’m, I gotta do some stretches.

[00:00:22] Brett: during the countdown, before we start recording, I’m like, all right, I’m gonna, I’m gonna put on a new face, I’m gonna come out bright, I’m gonna come out hard. And, uh, and I just decided to go for it. I am not actually feeling that, but, uh, Christina, how are you?

[00:00:37] Christina: Well, okay. Yes. Similar to Jeff. I’m like trying to kind of like, find the energy. He’s like, Hey, I’m so glad to be here. This is, and like, and I can totally do that, but I was like, that doesn’t sound like Fred. Okay. So, no, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, um, no, I’m doing pretty well. Um, there’s, Well, we’ll talk about it, but no, in general I’m doing pretty well.

[00:00:56] Um, I, uh, I had, you know, the last week or so off, which was nice. And, um, now I don’t know about YouTube, but it’s like, just kinda like winding down before the end of the year. Um, so there’s a lot of meetings and projects and stuff, but it’s, you know, just kind of trying to get, get things squared away before, before the holidays.

[00:01:14] So I’m doing pretty well.

[00:01:16] Jeffrey: time off

[00:01:18] Brett: Yeah.

[00:01:19] Christina: indeed.

[00:01:21] Jeffrey: Sounds like a wild few weeks before

[00:01:22] Brett: Well, so we all had last week off. It was, uh, I, we just needed, we needed a week off. We did. It was

[00:01:29] Jeffrey: the whole podcast break on the beach,

[00:01:33] Brett: you serious?

[00:01:33] Jeffrey: No, I’m joking,

[00:01:34] Christina: Damn. I was, I’m

[00:01:35] Jeffrey: don’t have to record the podcast this week. I’m going to the beach.

[00:01:39] Brett: So I found, I found the, the style of music I want, uh, for the mental health corner. And I posted it in our discord. Let me just send you real quick. Um, copy link, and I’m gonna drop this in our chat and you guys can just hear this so that it puts you in the mood, uh, for, for what’s about to happen.

[00:02:06] Jeffrey: It depends on my mental health status.

[00:02:11] oh shoot. It went to a, oh, can you hear that? Sorry. But it actually, it went to a, I’m in Chrome so I’m not signed in, which it means I got this big ad and I was like, wow. Banging. Na na. Yeah. No, I’m doing pretty good. I was kind of depressed.

[00:02:27] Brett: it’s uh, it’s EMBAs and Cassinet.

[00:02:30] Jeffrey: I remember you sent me that

[00:02:31] Brett: Just with the cast and nets going. Um, can I tell you before we head into the mental health corner, I, uh, I did a guest spot, Rosemary was sick for, uh, automators with uh, David Sparks and he brought me in to fill in for Rosemary. And I went ahead and just told anyone who’s listening, cuz I’m used to, you know, our relatively modest listener numbers.

[00:03:04] I’m like, anyone who’s listening who wants into the n b ultra beta just, you know, drop me an email and. Holy shit. They have a lot of listeners, because I have, I have spent the last, I have spent the last five days just constantly fielding emails. Thank God for text expander and like, just like pu push pushing people towards like the private email, beta list, um, beta email list.

[00:03:33] But man, I, it, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating to me that some shows have so much more appeal than we do. I feel like we’re very appealing. I just, I don’t understand why, why we don’t have that kind of audience.

[00:03:51] Jeffrey: Yeah, well it’s a very different kind of show. I mean, I feel like having listened to that show quite a long time, David established a sort of formula that um, is always met pretty precisely. And I think that as having been someone who listened for like a year or so, it was a phase in which I just wanted to hear people talk about that sort of thing.

[00:04:16] It was Mac Power users in this case. Right. Um, And the thing that can, that, that is interesting to me about podcasts, and this is in no way a critique of David Sparks or either of those shows. Um, is that like, how long can you do the formula before you feel like, oh, I just cycled through for the 50th time.

[00:04:39] Go to this app, go to this app, go to this app, go to this app, go to this type of thing,

[00:04:43] Brett: Yeah. Like, I mean the, his listenership is crazy.

[00:04:47] Christina: Yeah,

[00:04:48] Jeffrey: Well, Rosemary though, is, is someone who just brings things fresh every time. I feel like once Automators started going, it felt like with Rosemary, there’s just no end to what she can contribute, you know? Cuz she’s, I think she’s more actively like developing and playing and, you know, um, and so I think that’s a, that was a great call as a, as a cohos.

[00:05:12] Brett: would say that David bringing Rosemary on was equivalent to us bringing Jeff on

[00:05:19] Jeffrey: And it got you just as many new listeners, namely my friend Daniel

[00:05:26] Brett: Hi Dan

[00:05:28] Jeffrey: Um, well and another thing that’s interesting about that podcast to me is I think of it cuz I do still listen once in a while I kind of, I always check out to see what the topic is, although I have not looked to see that you were there. Um, listening to his podcast is almost like listening to the classic rock station where you’re like, I don’t really need this stuff anymore.

[00:05:46] But it’s kind of fun to hear this song once in a while.

[00:05:49] Christina: It, it, it, it, it’s nice.

[00:05:51] Brett: Play. Play Me the Hits.

[00:05:52] Christina: Yeah, exactly.

[00:05:53] Jeffrey: Play me the hits.

[00:05:54] Christina: it’s also, it’s like a, it’s like, it’s like comfort. It’s like comfort tv, you know what I

[00:05:58] Jeffrey: Yeah, totally.

[00:05:59] Christina: Like, just have it on the background. You’re like, even if I already know a lot of this stuff, and even if I’m not necessarily learning, um, maybe I am like, like a grant listens to old Car Talk episodes all the time.

[00:06:09] And like, that’s a show that has, you know, hasn’t been on the, uh, air, I don’t know how long, but they still, you know, re-release, um, episodes on, on npr, I think, uh, or maybe it’s just in their app, but, you know, um, one of the, one of the guys, one of the brothers passed away a few years ago and, and before that even they’d like retired.

[00:06:28] But like, that’s another example of a thing like that, you know, he can like listen to an old episode from like the nineties, you know, and still enjoy the banter and the trying to figure out what’s wrong with the car and, and all that stuff, you know? And I, I feel like that’s, that’s kind of similar with what you’re

[00:06:42] Brett: didn’t, didn’t cl click or clack. Didn’t one of them die?

[00:06:46] Christina: Yes, that’s what I said. Yeah. One of them died. Um, uh, and they’d stopped before that because I think he had, um, Alzheimer’s or

[00:06:53] Brett: Oh, that’s sad.

[00:06:54] Christina: It’s very sad. Yeah,

[00:06:55] Jeffrey: also, like, um, also like classic rock stations accidental tech podcast, which is one that I, I used to listen to Faith. Now when I put it on, it’s again like classic rock. I’m waiting for Van Halen to come on. And Van Halen in this case is John Syracuse. Like I just . I want to hear

[00:07:13] Brett: When are we gonna get Syracuse on

[00:07:15] Christina: we do. No, we do, we need to have him on, like, honestly, and, and this would be one where I would just be happy to just like sit back and let the man talk because,

[00:07:22] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:23] Christina: know what I mean? Like,

[00:07:24] Jeffrey: the man critique

[00:07:25] Christina: yes.

[00:07:28] Brett: we’ll just, we’ll come up, we’ll come up with a prompt. We’ll just, we’ll, we’ll throw out a prompt and just let 'em go.

[00:07:34] Jeffrey: I’m a huge fan.

[00:07:35] Brett: I do that with Christina all the

[00:07:37] Jeffrey: a fantastic mind and, and delightful to listen to. Yeah.

[00:07:42] Brett: All right. So, uh,

Mental Health Corner

[00:07:44] Jeffrey: Oh, are we supposed to be playing our Mabas for Mental Health Corner?

[00:07:47] Brett: we’re just gonna have to imagine it for now, unless someone un, unless whoever’s editing this episode feels like in interjecting, we’re just gonna roll into imagine in your head. Fifties martini music, MABAS casts. Um, I’m not even gonna try to hum it. You, you know what I’m talking about.

[00:08:11] You know, you know, the genre, um, who, who, who wants to, who wants to do a mental health check-in?

[00:08:18] Jeffrey: Hmm.

[00:08:20] Brett: All right. Fine. I will.

[00:08:21] Christina: Okay.

[00:08:22] Brett: It has been over six weeks now since I had a manic episode, and I think that’s a good thing. Um, I, overall, I am, I haven’t been manic in a while, but I also, I feel like I’m finding that new stable that I’ve been talking about. Um, I’m not, I’m not suffering from most symptoms of depression.

[00:08:49] Um, I’m functioning at a higher level than, than I usually am in periods. Term stable. Um, and, and this feels like I might be finding a new normal. It’s still not the like, uh, energy level that I really would like to think normal could be for me. Um, I really am missing that like manic energy right now. I really, really want it, like to the point where I’m tempted to like go off my stimulants for a few days and

[00:09:26] Jeffrey: No way

[00:09:27] Brett: Start 'em back up just to like trigger. Yeah. But I’m, I’m being smart. I’m being smart. I’m not doing that. But, um, I’m, I, there’s still, there are still things I need to figure out before I can consider this sustainable because my, my personality will try to train, wreck this pretty quickly, um, and, and try to get back to a creative space that I feel like I’m lacking.

[00:09:54] So that’s kinda where I’m at. I’m, I’m doing all right. Uh, my, my, the leader of my group at work got, they call it rift reduction in force.

[00:10:08] Jeffrey: Rift.

[00:10:09] Brett: she got Rift, uh, taken away from us, um, and left us in kind of a lurch and, and because it was a rift, they can’t just replace her job position. So now we’re all reporting to one level higher, and it’s a new guy they brought in from Microsoft and none of us know him yet.

[00:10:32] And, uh, we have a whole bunch of, everything’s very uncertain. Like we don’t know what the situation’s gonna be. We don’t know if what we’re doing now is going to continue.

[00:10:44] Jeffrey: many management changes does that make for you in just a little over a year? I think.

[00:10:48] Brett: Uh, 3, 3, 3 major management shifts in the year I’ve been at Oracle. Um, and I guess this is just kind of par for the course. I haven’t been in corporate America for a long time, but.

[00:11:02] Christina: Uh, it’s a lot, but I’m trying to think. I mean, I think I had five one year, so. Five or six. But that was, that was a crazy, like, that was a ridiculous situation, um, in all those cases. And so, and I, I’m not like defending it in any way. So three is a lot, three major ones. And, and in those cases, I was at least still in the same team.

[00:11:25] Like, we didn’t have, like,

[00:11:26] Brett: Yeah.

[00:11:27] Christina: well, one time I did get reorged, but, but, but like, I was still, even then, I was still like in the same group. Whereas it seems like you’ve had a, a different reporting structure and some other different things happen.

[00:11:38] Brett: The interesting thing has been that I have stayed in the same group the whole time, but every, everyone else in the group has moved. So my, I’m, I’m in the same group, but with all new people,

[00:11:50] Christina: what I mean. Yeah. So, so, so, so it’s, it’s effectively the same thing. Whereas with

[00:11:55] Brett: Yeah. It’s.

[00:11:55] Christina: there were some changes, but for the most part it wasn’t like I had like a new, you know, like I had new colleagues, you know what I mean? So,

[00:12:04] Jeffrey: Wow, man. Corporate gigs.

[00:12:08] Brett: Right.

[00:12:09] Christina: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s a whole other, uh, it’s a whole other universe. It’s, it’s hard to kind of explain, like, if you haven’t worked in it, then going into it for people who haven’t had that, especially, you know, someone like you, Jeff, who like you’ve worked in, in journalism, which even corporate journalism is still different than like, uh, corporate jobs, I think in most cases.

[00:12:28] Like, maybe it’s different if you worked at like a very, like, buttoned up organization,

[00:12:33] Jeffrey: for me it’s, I have some of that experience cause I’m kind of like a special teams guy, , you know, and those are the ones that get the managers swept out, you know, switched out

[00:12:41] Christina: Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah. But, but, but,

[00:12:43] Jeffrey: not barely at all. I’ve had that experience once.

[00:12:46] Christina: but you’ve also, because you’re special teams, you’re kind of like, you know, that you’re kind of like the get in, get out kind of guy, right? Like that’s kind of like part of the gig, right? Is that it’s, you know, you go in or, or you’re working on your thing and, and you know, it can change around you.

[00:12:59] Um, At least, at least that, that’s how I felt about it. It’s like the uncertainty or the chaos is kind of like a feature, not a bug in some

[00:13:08] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:09] Christina: Whereas in theory, I think in, in corporate life, although the number of reorgs that big companies have, it’s crazy. You think that you’re doing it for the stability and then you kind of realize once you’re in it, oh no, there’s not, like there’s, people wonder sometimes, like how w with really large organizations, and, and I’m going to be generalizing here, but I think this is probably true, uh, largely, but, but it is still a generalization.

[00:13:36] Like people wonder, like, why does it take big companies so long to introduce new things or to do stuff? And this is why, because when you. You know, a hundred thousand people or whatever in an organization, you’re going to have a natural attrition of talent. You’re going to have new people coming in and out with different strategies who want to do their own way of doing things and have their brilliant idea of wanting to restructure stuff.

[00:13:57] And every time you have a reorganization, and then people have to like get back up to speed and figure out what they’re doing. And like, that takes time. And like that, that leads to delays and, and stuff getting released. Like that’s, that’s why historically, I mean not, not always, but historically why larger companies are slower to respond to things than smaller ones because they’re just, you know, so much like it when you’re trying to turn something like that.

[00:14:23] Especially if you do it multiple times, you have a lot of people who are just kind of getting paid to sit around and not really know what they’re doing.

[00:14:28] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Right, right, right. uh, Brett, you brought that up as part of your mental health check-in, is that, I can’t remember how it, how we got into it.

[00:14:39] Brett: Yeah, well, so my mental health right now is very much wrapped in, wrapped up in this stress of being required, like we’re on two week sprints now, where we have to produce new content every two weeks and. Like that is hugely taxing on my mental health because I just, I, I, it’s, it’s very laborious to me.

[00:15:03] Jeffrey: how do those kinds of posts perform?

[00:15:05] Brett: I mean, we, we have a ton of like tutorial content that is useful and evergreen, but ultimately not high traffic properties.

[00:15:18] Uh, it’s a whole, a whole ecosystem of tutorial content. That’s great. If you’re searching for the exact term that it’s about, uh, you’ll find it, but it’s not exactly like announce it on the social channels and it’s people swarming to read it.

[00:15:35] Christina: right? No. And, and that’s not really the goal. I mean, I think usually the goal of that content is one, yes, if you can get your SEO good enough with some of your keywords, people can find it and you can cut down on support costs. But usually the bigger thing is like when you have, um, partners, uh, and meaning like sales teams and ecosystems trying to find solutions for people and, and, and they’re trying to integrate stuff, like, it’s useful to have those examples and that tutorial stuff there when people are trying to figure things out.

[00:16:01] Cuz the people who are, you know, really trying to implement stuff, or maybe they’re, again, consultants, it’s really common. They go in, they go out of something and they’re like, okay, I need to implement this. All right, what does your documentation say? And, and that’s, um, going to, in some ways maybe save the, the, the partner teams from having to create one off content that doesn’t live anywhere else or have any longer standing purpose.

[00:16:26] Brett: have I told you what Warp is doing? The terminal warp?

[00:16:30] Jeffrey: yeah, yeah. You are, you’re writing for them,

[00:16:32] Brett: Yeah.

[00:16:32] Jeffrey: I just watched a long tutorial

[00:16:34] Christina: I love

[00:16:34] Jeffrey: kind of fell in love.

[00:16:36] Brett: they’re, they’re creating content. They’re doing like the SEO research to figure out what people.

[00:16:44] Jeffrey: And just for the listeners out there, that search engine Occultism,

[00:16:47] Brett: exactly. Seo. Um, they’re, they’re figuring out exactly what, what terminal users are trying to figure out, and they’re building content around that. And it’s not even warp specific like the content they’re building. It, it, it very clearly answers the question. For example, how do I do recursive change mod, uh, and how do I use the change mod command recursively?

[00:17:14] And any search for that is gonna wind up on this Terminus page they’ve created, which then links to warp and it’s great content. They’re doing a really good job of creating good content. Like that’s what anyone, that’s the content is king philosophy,

[00:17:31] Christina: No, it works. That’s the digital lotion approach. Like, that’s what, uh, which I guess really was the slice host approach, um, which was, you know, creating really good tutorials that were genuinely great, whether you’re using digital lotion or not. And then that bolts an affinity, builds brand awareness.

[00:17:47] You see the site a number of times and you’re going, Hey, I need a V Ps. Who am I gonna try? I imagine that the similar thing will happen with Warp. Hey, I, I’m looking at a new terminal tool, you know, maybe, maybe this isn’t enough. What should I try? Oh, well, you know what? This, this, this warp stuff has been really useful.

[00:18:01] Let me give that a shot.

[00:18:03] Brett: Yeah. I think it’s really smart.

[00:18:05] Jeffrey: And like, I mean, a really, my like, small example is setup, started doing, you know, how do you clean install, you know, when there’s a new operating system then there you are. I, I was wondering if you two probably understand this better than me, but in terms of seo, so if a, if a, if a company that’s making a terminal, that’s the main thing they’re doing right?

[00:18:22] Um, is also posting on all this stuff that is Unix based or whatever else. Does the fact that they at the top level are a terminal site, give them extra SEO juice when then they have things about change modification and stuff like that? I don’t, how does that occultism work in that case?

[00:18:39] Christina: I have no idea.

[00:18:40] Brett: It’s fucking black magic to

[00:18:41] Jeffrey: I know, man, Danny Sullivan’s here with

[00:18:44] Christina: Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna say Danny Sullivan would know, uh, I think he’s, I think he went to Google, actually, but, uh, but yeah, no, he would know. I have no idea. Although I do know that that’s something like Microsoft struggled with a lot and um, GitHub I think does a better job. And Microsoft had a whole team where they have a whole team involved, but how good they were, I think depends on what product they’re working at.

[00:19:05] But we had things where then this was sort of embarrassing. Like I remember one time like, maybe I shouldn’t say this. Nah, fuck it, I’ll say it. Um, we were. You know, writing, you know, um, cause we helped a lot with documentation and Azure stuff and, and a guy on our team, Thomas, who he’s no longer a developer advocate, but he still works at Microsoft.

[00:19:21] He’s on one of the product teams. He was an mvp, uh, when we hired him. And MVPs are basically like, they’re kind of like community members who are maybe given early access to things. What they, they help out in the community and, and they, you know, um, uh, are kind of like our, our superfans uh, developers. Um, Google has, has a program to, GitHub has one, most, most companies have these sorts of programs.

[00:19:47] And his blog, because he continued blogging after he got the job, would often rank higher than the official documentation when you would be searching for how to do something in Azure. Like, it was crazy that his blog would rank naturally higher in, in SERP than the freaking docs would. And I was, and I, I, like, I was trying to, I, I like.

[00:20:08] We were, we were talking about the problems with that one time, and I wasn’t on the SEO team, but I kind of like went off on it. I was in a group meeting and I was like, you cannot say that the SEO team has it together. When Thomas’s blog ranks higher consistently, it’s like clearly,

[00:20:21] Jeffrey: Hm.

[00:20:21] Brett: the authority score for my personal blog is insane. Like if I write about a topic for a company I’m working for, my post will show up ahead in Google and in duck dot go. Um, there’s something like I have built a trust score. I don’t understand how all of these scores work, but like my, my blog, if it matches the right keywords, I can rank higher than major corporations and it’s kind of nuts.

[00:20:55] Christina: That’s cool.

[00:20:57] Jeffrey: We’ve seen it happen when, uh, we’ve been working together and trying to solve some problem, and you search something and you’re

[00:21:02] Christina: and then you find like Brett’s

[00:21:03] Jeffrey: I wrote about this

[00:21:05] Christina: oh yeah, I wrote about this. Here’s where it is. I

[00:21:07] Jeffrey: it’s also kind of what happened to you by going on automators, right? Like it, it, that’s a much more direct, kind of mechanical version of what happens with seo, but it’s just like that authority score.

[00:21:17] I forgot about that. I remember back in the day, uh, we were always like, I, when I worked at a magazine, Always shooting to get like a, a laughing squid, uh, link or like, you know,

[00:21:27] Christina: Oh yeah.

[00:21:28] Jeffrey: maybe obviously

[00:21:29] Christina: the Holy Grail. Yeah. The holy Grail was, is always, was always, um, if you could get a, um, a Drudge Report link.

[00:21:37] Brett: Sure.

[00:21:38] Jeffrey: Oh yeah, I got those. Hell

[00:21:40] Christina: yeah. Those, those,

[00:21:41] Jeffrey: a major source of traffic from my blog,

[00:21:43] Christina: yeah. Are you fucking kidding me? If you can get a Drudge, drudge link, like

[00:21:47] Brett: Do you remember

[00:21:48] Christina: wow. Yes. Uh, R

[00:21:51] Jeffrey: I had a falling out with Dig when I was a magazine editor. I realized that they were try, I realized, and this was just so naive of me, but I realized that in our conversations to talk about how we might use dig, and this was already in like third generation dig in like 2011 or something.

[00:22:07] Maybe it was second generation dig, but it took me a long time to realize that the, what they were suggesting was that I’d pay them to show up higher in their results. Which like, I was so naive about it that I was like, I refused to do this. I like got super punk rock. I’m like, fuck no man, I trust dig links,

[00:22:24] It was a very ugly argument.

[00:22:26] Christina: funny.

[00:22:26] Jeffrey: But, or like Buzzfeed was like that before they got super scammy, uh, you know, like ad wise. Um, that, that used to really matter, man.

[00:22:35] Brett: have either of you ever been fire balled?

[00:22:37] Jeffrey: When Gruber gets you.

[00:22:39] Christina: your site goes down.

[00:22:40] Jeffrey: Yeah, no, I was never writing on that stuff.

[00:22:42] Brett: had, I’ve had a couple of blogs crashed by Fireballs.

[00:22:47] Christina: personal blog, um, stuff that you’ve written about, You know, um, for, for two or Mashable or Gizmoto have been linked, but never my personal stuff, which thank God, although that would’ve, that would’ve always been a goal, right? Like, that would’ve been great, but Yeah. But being Fireball or like, uh, what was it slash out effect that I think that was the

[00:23:05] Jeffrey: Oh slash Jesus.

[00:23:06] Christina: effect.

[00:23:06] And now it’s like the Hacker News, you know, thing or, yeah,

[00:23:10] Brett: Yeah. But I, I have found in general, blogs are more resilient these days. Getting a Hacker News link will rarely

[00:23:18] Jeffrey: Although I will

[00:23:19] Brett: a blog.

[00:23:20] Jeffrey: that it is so mu, it is very much common that you go to one of the top hacker news things and you go to that blog and there’s a paragraph just like, sorry, wasn’t expecting that traffic things are a little crazy right now.

[00:23:32] Christina: Yeah. There’s like, I’m sorry, this is just a static page because I didn’t know. Stop yelling at me. Nerds.

[00:23:39] Jeffrey: I did the right her thing. I made a static page. Uh, yeah. That is good stuff. Anyone else wanna mental health?

[00:23:46] Christina: Um, I kind of wanna talk about this, but I kind of don’t. It’s sort of, um, my, my mother-in-law’s, uh, health is not, um, good right now at all. And, um, and so, um, grant is really struggling with that, and I’m really trying to be supportive, but, um, I’m sure I’ll have like more things to say about that, um, as things progress.

[00:24:09] But, uh, that’s, that’s kind of been like a, a topic. It is a hard thing. And, um, uh, you know, she’s been in declining health for a while, but, you know, she, I think everybody is now realizing, you know, that, that, that the end is, is coming and, and it, that’s difficult.

[00:24:25] Brett: Let’s talk about your mental health in this though. Do you find it, do you find it difficult to be supportive of someone else in a situation that doesn’t maybe directly affect you, like it’s not your mom? Uh, so you have empathy or, or sympathy, uh, for Grant. Do you find it difficult to be the, I I’m asking not because of any judgment on you, because I do personally myself find it difficult to be a really good partner in situations like

[00:24:59] Christina: Yeah, no, I, no, I struggle cuz I don’t know exactly what to do. Right? Like, there’s a feeling of of helplessness of of, of not knowing exactly what to do because my instinct always is to try to solve a solution and, and fix things. And there’s not much I can do here. Right? Like we are, you know, 2,500, we’re 3000 miles away.

[00:25:20] And, um, you know, he, he has a flight out that he’s going to go see her. I, I really pushed him to go see her. I’m, I’m glad that I did like, book him a flight for Thanksgiving. He wasn’t going to go. And I was just like, no, you’re going. And, and I went to Atlanta and he went to Jacksonville. Um, and, and he saw his mom and, and that was really good.

[00:25:39] And he’s, he’s flying. Next week. And I think his, his flight is, is for two weeks. And, um, I’ll probably join him for, for a day or, or, or or two. Um, but I won’t be there the whole time. Um, but, and, and obviously I’ve, and I’ve told him like, look, if, if something, you know, changes suddenly, you know, we’re on a plane as soon as that needs to happen.

[00:26:01] And, and I’ll be there like regardless. But yeah, I, I, I, I struggle because in this case, their relationship is, is better than the relationship that he had when he, when, when, when his dad died. That was really difficult. And, and, um, I wasn’t as good of a partner as, as I think he needed me to be. But I was as good of a partner as I, as I could be at that time.

[00:26:24] But I, I really didn’t know what to do in that time. Cause I, I’d met his dad twice and he and his dad had a really complicated relationship and I wanted to be supportive, but. I didn’t know how to be in, in the way that would be useful to him. I think I can be more helpful here because I know his mom, I love his mom.

[00:26:41] And, um, this is, um, it, it’s just, it’s a different situ. He and his mom have a different relationship. It’s just a little bit different scenario. But yeah, like you, I still struggle. I don’t know exactly what to do and like, you know, um, what, you know, like, yeah, it, it’s, it’s, it’s a challenge because like I, I know, um, how to be supportive, like with my mom.

[00:27:06] Like when, when her parents died and when her sister died, like I, I knew what to do. Um, even though, you know, I, I didn’t know what to do, but I knew how to be supportive. I knew me. Just being there was, was enough support. But in a situation like this, there is a lot of uncertainty and then confusion and then you don’t wanna make it about you because it’s not about you, but you wanna be supportive.

[00:27:30] But then, you know, there’s also. You know, the, the, the grief that even though she’s not my mom, you know, you go through as well. So it’s just, it’s, it’s a, it’s a struggle.

[00:27:39] Brett: Yeah, because it’s not a lack of empathy. Like you feel it, I can see it in your face right now. You’re feeling this and you’re, and you’re relating it to all of your own personal experiences. But I, yeah, I, I hear what you are saying. I would say in my experience, Jeff is way better than the two of us

[00:27:59] Christina: I agree.

[00:28:00] Brett: at, at this kind of

[00:28:02] Christina: I totally

[00:28:02] Jeffrey: am not. I am not,

[00:28:04] Brett: Jeff, Jeff. Jeff Will, when Jeff knows that something is up for either of us, he will check in just randomly.

[00:28:12] Christina: you do it so well. Like, like, okay. Like I’m in a situation right now, which is very different from grants, but I’m also kind of struggling with, and, and I’m, I’m, the way I’m handling that I think is the right way, but I don’t know, is, is, is a friend of mine’s father, um, Right before Thanksgiving, went into the hospital, um, completely unexpected and turned out that he had some sort of, um, autoimmune thing and, um, he’s not gonna make it.

[00:28:38] And, and, uh, is completely unexpected. And, um, and she’s, she’s younger than me, so like, this is a total shock. And I, I don’t even know what to, and, and she and I like, were friends with like, not super close, right? So like, I don’t even know what to say to this. It’s, it’s similar. Um, a a girl I worked with very closely for years, her husband died unexpectedly over the summer while she was, while the f whole family was on vacation, he had like a, it was awful, awful right before her, her, um, her youngest, uh, second birthday, like, just fucking terrible.

[00:29:11] Like, I, I cannot imagine a worse scenario in my life. Right? And, and I reached out to her a lot and, and donated money and have continued to check in and, and, and share things with her and talk. But like, I don’t even know what to, but what do you even say? What do you even do? Like, how do you even be like a person there and, and, and, and it’s, you know, you, you wanna be supportive, but for me, I’m just like, I, you know, I want people to know that I care that I’m there for them, but like, what do you even say?

[00:29:40] What do you even, or should you say anything? You know, like, I don’t

[00:29:44] Jeffrey: I, my, um, I, two years ago or so, I found my mom nearly dead on her bedroom floor. Uh, and she had been unconscious for like three days and was in a coma for like two weeks. And, um, and I’m an only child and she’s single, so it was just really me there. I mean, she has tons of siblings, Catholic family and everything, but like, this isn’t necessarily even super helpful, but I’ll say that, like with the two things that I realized being on the other side of things, I, I hadn’t been in something so dire before, you know?

[00:30:20] Um, it was not clear she was gonna live and all this stuff. And, uh, and she’s fine now. Um, But anyway, people that texted me or called me and left a message and said, there is no pressure to respond. I just wanna say, I’m thinking of you, da, da, da. Right? Like that line, no pressure to respond. You don’t need to respond, I just want you to know whatever.

[00:30:42] Like, there were two different kinds of people really, that, that, that message me or phone or called me One, were the people that said that. And the other were people that just got a little too involved, you know? Um, wanted to relate my story to their story, wanted to, you know, whatever. And I’m, I was just, my brain was just

[00:31:00] Christina: not there. Absolutely.

[00:31:01] Jeffrey: I don’t wanna talk right now, , and I’m not, this is not this, this trauma is not an invitation for yours.

[00:31:07] Christina: Exactly. Well, no. Well, well, no. Well, that, well, that, that’s always the thing. Right? And, and I actually, it’s funny you say that. I said that exactly to Samantha. I was like, you like when her husband died? I was like, you do not need to respond to me. I just want you to know I’m thinking of you. But, but, sorry, sorry.

[00:31:20] Go on. So,

[00:31:20] Jeffrey: No, I think that’s powerful. And then the other one is, is fucking GrubHub cards. Uh, Uber Eats cards, whatever, like I know do. So I, even just recently, we had a little medical thing in our family and there were a couple people that just sent us those cards and man eaten off of a card. Um, somehow, even though you don’t really give a shit that you’re spending money, right, in a certain sense, but it’s just such a nice, easy thing that feels like way more than you’d think it would.

[00:31:47] You know, I would’ve never guessed until I had that experience. And so now I try to like, you know, throw, throw a card their way, get some people to put money on it, whatever that, and just saying, you don’t need to respond, but I’m thinking of

[00:31:59] Brett: I do better with people going through grief. I have had enough people reach out to me and help me with grief that I actually have learned how to appropriately help someone with grief. And in exactly the way you’re talking about, like, not making it my own, but like offering like, Hey, I, I, I know what you’re going through.

[00:32:22] Here’s, uh, a book or a GrubHub guard or et cetera. And, and then I’m gonna leave you alone and, and if you wanna reach out, I’m here for you. It’s when people are going through, uh, end of life stuff, when people are going through major medical situations with loved ones that I’m not as good. . Like, I don’t, I don’t know how to be there for them without being in the way.

[00:32:52] And it, it’s, it’s, it’s tough for me. I don’t know why.

[00:32:56] Jeffrey: I feel like it’s the same, it’s the same advice. Like

[00:32:59] Christina: Yeah, that’s

[00:33:00] Jeffrey: I ha having been only on the side of my mom, like basically I didn’t know if she was gonna be a vegetable or whate, whatever. Like, I, I was realizing constantly like, wow, this doesn’t feel like I thought it would, this doesn’t feel like, I assume people feel when they’re going through this, you know, you, you still feel just enough like yourself that again, a thing, like a meal card or just a note like, Hey, I’m just thinking of you really pops through.

[00:33:25] Christina: Oh no, it is because, cause it is, well, I mean, if anything like, like for instance like with Grant’s mom Grant is a little bit different. Like I feel like I can, I can probably help. Or do do the right things, you know, to, to my friend who, you know is, is losing her father. Like, that’s awful. Um, but, but I feel like I can be supportive in the right way.

[00:33:45] Is there, it’s, it’s difficult when it’s like your partner because it, it, it, it just, it it is,

[00:33:51] Jeffrey: God, totally. Yeah. And I don’t mean to be addressing it

[00:33:53] Christina: Oh no. Oh, I know, I know you don’t. I know, I know you are. I’m just saying like, for me, I think I struggle with that. But to your point, like it is still grief, right? Like, because when you’re watching someone decline, you know what’s coming.

[00:34:05] And even if they get better, it’s still grieving for like, you’re still going through that process because you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Right? Like

[00:34:13] Brett: sense.

[00:34:14] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.

[00:34:15] Brett: can’t send them teardrop soup until someone has passed.

[00:34:19] Christina: it Exactly. Right. That’s the thing,

[00:34:20] Brett: Or Tear soup. Tear soup. That’s the book. Mike Rose sent me that book, uh, tear Soup. Um, and when I was grieving for, when I lost my pit bull and because honestly pet deaths have, like, I’ve lost a lot of friends, I’ve lost family.

[00:34:40] Like a lot of people in my life have died, but nothing has ever hit me as hard as the pets I’ve lost. Um, cuz I don’t have kids. So I’ve ne I’ve never, I’ve never, I’ve never come close to dealing with the loss of a child that I can’t imagine.

[00:34:56] Christina: No, I think that that would look on the scale. That has to probably be, I, I don’t even know. Right. Like

[00:35:02] Brett: I can’t even fathom. Uh, but like, but, but Mike sent me tear soup and that. I, I cried when I read it and immediately was nothing but grateful. And now when I have friends in grief over any of, of any kind, I, I go, go to Amazon and I ordered them tier soup.

[00:35:28] Christina: Yeah, no, and I used your advice, I’ve actually sent that to a couple of people and for, for, for Pets and I, and it, and it’s, uh, it’s such a good book and it, it’s wonderful. Um, but yeah, but that’s the thing, right? Yeah. You can’t send something like that until laughter the person is gone. But you can send them, like when they’re in the hospital.

[00:35:45] The, the GrubHub thing, that was a great reminder. We, Samantha, that helped a lot with, with her was like, there was a meal train and there was some other things, and there was like a GoFundMe, because again, it was completely unexpected. 39 years old, you don’t expect somebody to be on vacation with their family drop dead, like fucking horrific out of the country.

[00:36:05] So that was a whole thing

[00:36:06] Jeffrey: Oh my

[00:36:06] Christina: don’t, so I, I, I can’t even imagine, honestly, like I, we didn’t talk about it here because it was, I a, I didn’t wanna, it was not about me and I didn’t wanna make it about me, but it did impact like my mental health a lot over the summer just because, you know, like I loved her so much, but I can’t even imagine being in another country.

[00:36:24] Um, they’re in Turks and Caicos with two, um, small children, losing my spouse and then having to figure out like, how, how do you get the body out? How do you, like, what do you do? Like, I mean, you know what I mean? Like, they’re just

[00:36:34] Brett: technical considerations. Yeah.

[00:36:36] Christina: They’re, I mean, like, honestly, like you, you gotta call the consulate, I’m sure.

[00:36:39] I’m sure that they’re pro like weird covid thing. Just, I, I don’t even wanna imagine. Um, and, and the fact that she also was having to raise two little boys at the same time, still be mom, like I just strong. So, yeah. So, you know, ha, the, the, the meals she said really helped. And then we sent her like an edible arrangement for the funeral because I didn’t know if like they wanted, uh, you know, flowers or not, or, and I couldn’t get information from the funeral home to really like find out like what the deal was going to be.

[00:37:08] And I, I didn’t wanna bug her to ask too many details. So instead I was just like, okay, we’ll send an edible arrangement to the house after the funeral. Um, and, and, and she loved it. And, um, you know, we, we did some other things, but it was just like, you know, you just, you feel just, but, but that, I, I, I think that’s good advice.

[00:37:28] Um, I’m gonna send, uh, my friend who, who’s, you know, what their family is going through right now. I’m gonna send her a hundred dollars, um, uh, GrubHub card right now, actually. That’s, that’s

[00:37:38] Brett: Good call.

[00:37:39] Christina: Yeah.

[00:37:40] Jeffrey: Because it’s funny, right? Because I think that, I know that I assume when somebody’s going through something, like even just what you described Christina, with your friend out of the country, like I assume that they’re on some special plane of grief, um, that I can’t access. But in fact, they’re dealing with just one bullshit decision after another.

[00:37:58] Right? And in that sense, it’s a lot easier to imagine your meal card cutting through that than cutting through some high state of,

[00:38:05] Christina: Well, that’s

[00:38:05] Jeffrey: of

[00:38:05] Christina: the thing. Well, that’s the thing. When you don’t have to make the decision, when you don’t have to make the decision about who, who food is coming from or, or anything like that. Right. Like, you know, when you don’t have to, you just, you know, go forward. Yeah.

[00:38:17] Brett: why people bring casseroles to wakes,

[00:38:20] Christina: totally.

[00:38:20] Jeffrey: Well, and it also, I know for me, with my mom, like it meant that I did eat,

[00:38:24] Christina: Yeah, well

[00:38:25] Jeffrey: I was, I was living in that hospital ICU for like a week and I would just be like, ah, fuck it. I’ll go get a bag of chips in the vending machine later, but instead I could get Thai food delivered. It made a huge differe.

[00:38:37] Brett: Um, Jeff, I wanna hear from you before I do a terrible sponsor break.

[00:38:43] Jeffrey: That’s a good way to set it up. That’s why we have all the listeners and the money, um,

[00:38:48] Christina: is why we have all the money.

[00:38:49] Jeffrey: Yeah. Uh, I am, I’m doing really good today. Uh, I, um, I don’t have a lot to sort of report coherently, um, publicly , but like, just that, you know, just picking up actually on, um, the job thing we were talking about for so long, I, I’m pretty close to having an end date to my project that has been going for almost five years.

[00:39:19] Um, sometime in the spring, most likely. And, uh, I’ll be 48 and. I know I don’t wanna go back to an office, which I guess is easier now than it used to be to not go back to an office. But I also have thought a lot about how projects that I’ve built, that I’ve worked on, that are sort of trauma facing, they do this work around juvenile justice, um, are, are, are sort of almost really ought to be a relic of my past as, as weird as that may sound because it was a different me that needed to always do trauma facing work.

[00:39:57] Um, and I think I was a little past that even when I started this project, but I didn’t realize it yet. And I’ve just had a lot happen over the last few years that’s caused just a ton of growth and sort of reconciliation with hard things. And I actually feel like what’s complicated about deciding what’s next is that I don’t think there’s a direct pathway out of what I have been doing.

[00:40:24] To whatever it is that I want to do, because I don’t want to do, I want to have a season of not doing trauma facing work in my life. A season in my life of not doing that. Um, I’ve never had such a season . Uh, well, from the time I stopped being a drummer in a punk rock band in 1998,

[00:40:42] Brett: when, when you immediately went into fucking journalism

[00:40:45] Jeffrey: no, I, not even that, I went straight to like, activism and aid work in Iraq and, you know, journalism didn’t even come for another like five years.

[00:40:54] Um, and so I’m just, I’ve kind of realized in therapy and elsewhere that it’s like, oh, you know, I’ve kind of settled that part of me. Maybe I shouldn’t just build something up that kind of forces me into a sort of trauma, um, hunter gatherer phase.

[00:41:10] Brett: Yeah. How do you, how do you redefine like that? Is, that, is the, you I know, is someone who, who puts themselves into trauma facing situations, uh, to document them, to aid in and remedying them. Like, I, I don’t, I don’t know how you redefine

[00:41:37] Jeffrey: Me neither. That’s why it’s, that’s why it’s sitting here in Mental Health Corner

[00:41:41] Brett: yeah. Right.

[00:41:44] Jeffrey: I’m not stressed about it at all. I’m, I’m actually just really grateful to have that awareness cuz um, you know, I’m also in just a weird point in time where it’s like jobs I would’ve gotten in the past aren’t really available to me in the same way, um, that they used to be.

[00:42:01] Uh, and it’s, it’s nothing like what it’s like for women. And I would say that I’m reaching a point as a man that if I could be hired in journalism, it would be by other men, um, of my age or older who are absolutely not the cohort I want to be working. Um, ever again, . I’m just like, I hated that about journalism.

[00:42:24] I hated it. All these men who failed up and became managers and hired more men that, that they liked and, and thought they were radical when they hired a woman. Um, you know, that’s just a scene that, I mean, I’m not even saying I’m welcome in that scenario anymore, but

[00:42:43] Brett: Yeah.

[00:42:44] Jeffrey: Anyway, let’s tune in next year to see what happens to Jeff Um, I don’t know if I could get paid a lot of money to just work on old machines in my garage. That’d be fucking fine. I’ve, I’ve done

[00:42:57] Christina: I, I mean, totally.

[00:42:58] Brett: is, is there a way? Is, is there a profession

[00:43:03] Christina: Can you make a YouTube channel?

[00:43:04] Jeffrey: I’ve thought about the YouTube channel, but you know, those people, they don’t end up happy.

[00:43:08] Christina: I know. I’m

[00:43:08] Jeffrey: You, you will end up serving the, serving the channel. That’s what I worry about.

[00:43:13] Brett: the most when we were kids? I’m willing to bet you guys when they asked you what, what you want it to be when you grow up. You said things like fireman, uh, astronaut, like we had weird aspirations. Unrealistic. Do you know what the most common Gen Z response is? Yes,

[00:43:34] Christina: YouTuber.

[00:43:36] Brett: YouTuber.

[00:43:37] Jeffrey: Hey, look, I, I actually would love, so the , there is a whole genre of YouTube channel that’s just literally no narration tool restoration. And there are people that do that work that get 4 million hits a video,

[00:43:52] Brett: Jesus.

[00:43:52] Christina: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:53] Jeffrey: saying anything. I mean,

[00:43:55] Brett: do. You do, you know the, like a YouTube, when you watch your favorite YouTuber and they do a sponsor break, do you have any idea how much they get paid for that sponsor break?

[00:44:08] Jeffrey: Oh. So the ones that don’t get cut out when you have premium, like that kind of situation.

[00:44:13] Brett: the ones that are,

[00:44:14] Christina: varies.

[00:44:15] Brett: the ones that are part of the actual YouTube itself, they’re five digits plus. Like I, we don’t get that kind of money for our sponsor spots and like you get a YouTube channel with even, you know, 250,000 subscribers, you can make bank on those sponsor spots. It’s crazy to me.

[00:44:42] Jeffrey: You know what drives my, my boys nuts is if I help them with something and they’re like, oh, thanks. As I’m leaving, I go, Hey, don’t forget to match that subscribe button. pisses them off so much.

[00:44:54] Brett: Remember to turn on alerts. Um,

[00:44:56] Jeffrey: right.

[00:44:57] Brett: do you mind if I take a, a

[00:44:59] Jeffrey: No sponsor it.

Sponsor: Rocket Money

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[00:46:34] Jeffrey: I wanna point out that you’ve somehow found a way to segue Mental Health Corner every episode into you working out your weird fetishes

[00:46:42] Brett: I feel, I, I, I feel like it’s part of my mental health situation to just really to shine shed light. Right? Like

[00:46:53] Jeffrey: Yeah. You’re a voice for the voiceless. Yeah. You’re a voice for the voiceless. It’s really amazing. Light and dark corners, brother

Podcast Swap: Best Advice Show

[00:47:00] Brett: I would also like to tell everyone about another podcast that we, we love, uh, we love them because they’re also talking about us. This is a promo swap.

[00:47:11] Jeffrey: It doesn’t take much for us to love you.

[00:47:15] Brett: The best advice show is your reminder that there are weird, delightful, and effective ways to make your life slightly and sometimes profoundly better. And, Very short episode of the show, A different contributor offers to take, offers, their take on making life more joyful, helpful, and livable. And it’s likely gonna be something you can try out today if you want.

[00:47:41] What I love about the show is you can get in and get out. You can learn a tangible, actionable nugget of advice and then get on with your day. The host, Zach Rosen, talks to well-known people like Happiness Guru, Gretchen Rubin, and filmmaker Mike Mills, but also his friends and his daughter and his listeners.

[00:48:02] The best advice show available wherever you listen to Overtired. What, what? Uh, out of the, you, you added three topics. Jeff, I wanna talk about these common passwords.

Your Shitty Passwords Are Safe Here

[00:48:13] Jeffrey: Yeah, let’s do that cuz the other two kind of go together. So this is funny cuz Nord VPN is sometimes a sponsor and this is a list gathered, uh, with financing from Nord Pass.

[00:48:24] Brett: set us up.

[00:48:24] Jeffrey: So basically Nord um, Nord Pass released a two top 200 most common passwords. You can find a link in the show notes. Um, and it’s actually something where they worked with independent researchers who specialize in cybersecurity incidents.

[00:48:41] Basically there’s a database of all the password leaks and they analyze those. Um, in this case it was a three terabyte database, um, of all of these leaks that they analyzed to come up with the top 200 passwords. Now I’ll get us just past the past the cruft. I mean, right off the bat you’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

[00:49:04] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You’ve got Quarty. That’s just that row on your your deal, right? Here’s something I love, which is that in the 22 spot, I love you,

[00:49:15] Brett: So I, down at the bottom, they have like different breakdowns for fashion brands, artists video games, swear words fascinates me because 21,223,000, some passwords were just, fuck,

[00:49:33] Christina: yeah,

[00:49:34] Brett: their password was just,

[00:49:35] Christina: well, well, well fuck you. Is is number 56 on this year’s list with 1,000,560 2037. And I have to say, I, I think that I, not for any current passwords, uh, cuz I used password manager and I don’t even know most my passwords, but fuck off has definitely been a password that I’ve used before.

[00:49:54] Jeffrey: You’re just not in the mood for that shit right now.

[00:49:56] Christina: Well, because, because, and often, oftentimes, oftentimes we’d be like, for, you know, a service that they make, you sign up for a pa, sign up for an account and you don’t want to, and you’re like, I’m never gonna use this again. Be like, fuck off.

[00:50:06] Jeffrey: yes, yes,

[00:50:07] Brett: sure. But let me just put it out there. If you add some spaces and some extra words, if you wrote, fuck, write the hell off with spaces between each word, you would reduce the crack ability of the password

[00:50:20] Christina: yeah. Oh yeah, I, I If it was go space, fuck space yourself. Um, explanation Mark. Um, uh, that would be like, uh, a very difficult to crack password.

[00:50:32] Jeffrey: you know, yeah. Fuck, you may not be that simple, but I would like to, uh, I would like to point you to number 1 31. Fuck you, one.

[00:50:39] Christina: See that? I saw that. I, I appreciate this. Also weirdly, in, in, in the top and the top list. MySpace one. Who the fuck is still using MySpace?

[00:50:48] Brett: exactly what Better password than a dead social media

[00:50:53] Jeffrey: Oh my God. Um, okay, so Brett’s talking about on the homepage for this top 200, you can look at like movies. They have these special, uh, lists. So, uh, and you had cuss words, swear words,

[00:51:06] Brett: What is Leon? I don’t even know what Leon is.

[00:51:10] Jeffrey: in the movie thing. Well, that’s like, well, hold on, go back to swear words because I learned that mist is German for like, well, it said it might be German for dang, but, which isn’t really exciting.

[00:51:19] But, um, you got putta in there, like it’s a little international, uh, the list, but it’s mostly swears we know in English.

[00:51:28] Brett: Because if you do it in a foreign language, it’s less Crackable

[00:51:31] Jeffrey: um, okay. Christ Christina. I’m at the art, the top 10 artists, and Taylor Swift is not in that top 10.

[00:51:38] Christina: Okay, good. That’s because swifties know better Swifties know

[00:51:41] Jeffrey: right. That’s, that’s the point. Yeah.

[00:51:44] Brett: Metallica and Eminem are

[00:51:47] Christina: Uh,

[00:51:47] Jeffrey: Metallica comes in after the Eagles fucking boomers.

[00:51:51] Christina: after Eagles? Yeah, I was. That’s an awful lot of fucking, um, now, now what’s interesting, pink, pink they have is the artist. I think that’s just the color because a, any true pink fan would use the

[00:52:02] Jeffrey: Yeah, that makes no sense. Who, what fucking service is allowing you to use U2

[00:52:08] Christina: Thank

[00:52:08] Brett: Yeah, exactly. How do you,

[00:52:10] Jeffrey: That makes no

[00:52:11] Brett: with a two character

[00:52:13] Jeffrey: I’m calling bullshit on that one.

[00:52:14] Christina: Yeah. Also

[00:52:15] Brett: million.

[00:52:17] Christina: Yeah. Is it, are we sure that’s just not in the password? There are a couple of other, um, two letter ones in cars. VW is number four. Like there’s no way,

[00:52:24] Jeffrey: yeah, yeah,

[00:52:25] Christina: letting you have like a two letter password.

[00:52:28] Jeffrey: I wonder if they’re just cutting off numbers, uh, for

[00:52:31] Christina: what I’m thinking. That that’s what it has to be. That’s what it has to be.

[00:52:35] Jeffrey: I’m really sad that X X X has such a weak showing at number 200.

[00:52:40] Christina: Honestly. Honestly. Uh, g uh, yeah. This has to be just like them cutting stuff off. Cause like, GTA is, is, um, number five on video

[00:52:49] Jeffrey: Right. Okay. Right, right,

[00:52:50] Christina: million whatnot. And like I, I could see somebody being like, GTA password or gta, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 or whatever for their grant theft point. Oh online, um, login, which, you know, fair.

[00:53:03] Um, I have to say I don’t reuse passwords and I use a password manager and al and half for a long time. But there are some things where I. I don’t care if this gets leaked because I don’t have any payment information or anything else to it, where sometimes I will use a very obvious, very bad password just because I’m like, I, I, I don’t care enough to even open up the

[00:53:22] Jeffrey: Are you one of the, are you one of the 840,000 people using Justin

[00:53:27] Christina: Ooh, yeah.

[00:53:29] Brett: even, even in cases where I don’t care, like I’m not going to use this service in correlation with anything else. And if

[00:53:38] Christina: agree. Yeah.

[00:53:40] Brett: even in those situations, I will use a three word phrase with spaces. I, I love that spaces are loud and passwords cuz I can just type

[00:53:52] Christina: Well, some passwords,

[00:53:55] Brett: Mo most, most passwords will allow you to use a space,

[00:53:59] Christina: I don’t know. I, I, I, I, I, I run into so many ex uh, uh, um, exceptions with that for certain

[00:54:04] Brett: If, if I run into an exception, I’ll use an underscore, but but a three word phrase and I will, and, and on services that I really don’t care about, I will reuse a password and

[00:54:17] Christina: I was, I was gonna say, do you reuse the thing cuz? Cuz at that point,

[00:54:20] Brett: shortcut to insert that password. Like it’s, it’s built, it’s hard coded into my key bindings to like just insert this fucking generic password that if this service got compromised and this password is compromised anywhere else it was used, I also wouldn’t care.

[00:54:40] Christina: Yeah, I, um, I used to use, uh, for, um, uh, this was for a shared password service, I think it was called Pass pack. This, that was one of the early enterprise focus, like password manager things. Um, we, you had to have like a, a phrase to get into it, like that’s what they required you to do. And I had a Simpsons quote, and I won’t say which one.

[00:54:58] Um, uh, I, cause I don’t think I’ve used it anywhere else, but I’m not opening myself up for that sort of opsec and there are only a hundred million Simpsons quotes you could use. But I found that was

[00:55:08] Brett: doctor said my nose wouldn’t bleed if I just cut my fingers out of there.

[00:55:12] Christina: Exactly,

[00:55:13] Jeffrey: is showing.

[00:55:14] Christina: And exactly. And so, but, but that was, I was thinking, I was like, you know, if I had to come up with like something and keep a list of it, obviously still have a, a list of my past phrases, but I was like, that would probably be one of the, one of the best ones I could do. Just because it, you know, I’ve spent my, literally my entire life I’ve spent quoting The Simpsons, so,

[00:55:35] Jeffrey: What about, okay, so two things. I want to read my, two of my very favorites, and I know we need to move on, but I also wanna say, do you remember back in the day when you could, um, log into a service by adding your username and password to the url? Did you ever do that?

[00:55:48] Brett: Yeah.

[00:55:49] Jeffrey: It would be like you, it would be like you, Colin.

[00:55:52] Brett: basic authentication. You can still do that with

[00:55:54] Jeffrey: can you,

[00:55:55] Brett: a lot, most services that have moved on to like token authentication. Uh, no longer accept basic auth, but anything that does still accept basic auth. Even if you ping a 1.0 version of their api, you can still put username, colon password into the URL and log into it

[00:56:17] Jeffrey: Wow. The, we’ve

[00:56:19] Christina: That’s so bad though. Like

[00:56:21] Jeffrey: Okay.

[00:56:22] Christina: and when and when we think about it, like that’s literally like one of the worst things you could possibly

[00:56:26] Jeffrey: Oh my God. It’s just, it’s horrible. Cause it also means someone’s emailing

[00:56:29] Brett: non SSL URLs

[00:56:31] Christina: saying. With

[00:56:32] Jeffrey: right, right,

[00:56:32] Christina: you, you’re literally passing in, in plain text. You’re pa I was like, oh my god.

[00:56:36] Jeffrey: yeah. It’s, it’s like the days before you could treat sexually transmitted diseases. Um, so, okay, my two favorites before we move on. Uh, right here at number 1 52, let me in all one word. That’s a good one. And then last year’s number 1 46 Trust. No. One t r u s t N O. Number one. That should have been n zero number one though, really?

Harditude

[00:57:02] Jeffrey: I mean, if we were really going for it. All right. It’s gratitude time. Yeah. And we’re, we’re switching it up today.

[00:57:09] Brett: Yeah, this is what we call it attitude. Har.

[00:57:13] Christina: attitude. Which, which I kind of love cuz it’s like, it, it, it ki

[00:57:17] Jeffrey: it’s like attitude. There was a band called Attitude, attitude,

[00:57:21] Christina: Attitude

[00:57:22] Jeffrey: uh, hardware,

[00:57:24] Christina: that makes us

[00:57:24] Brett: hardware, a hardware week of gratitude. We’re gonna talk about some of our favorite hardware for the week. Uh, I feel like, Christina, you’re ready to go with this.

[00:57:35] Christina: Yep. Yep. Okay. So, um, this is a keyboard that I was not expecting to buy last week, but I did, uh, a cuz it was on sale for Black Friday. And b because it turns out I work with the, the, the designer, um, which was wild to me. I was talking to her. and I didn’t realize. So, um, are, are either of you familiar with the Olivia, um, uh, keycaps, um, um, uh, series?

[00:58:01] Like the, the, the, the, the theme? So if, if you search G m k Olivia, it’s like one of the most loved, um, keycaps sets, um, that’s come out. And there, there are a million copies of it. Um, and, uh, it, uh, hasn’t been run, I don’t think, since, since 2018, um, or, or, or 2019. Um, so, but, but it’s, it’s, it’s a rose gold theme set anyway.

[00:58:24] Um, I work with Olivia at GitHub. Olivia works at

[00:58:28] Jeffrey: Really?

[00:58:29] Christina: Yeah. And I found this out when we were talking about something unrelated, but she, we were bonding over Rose gold, and she was like, do you have a rose gold keyboard? I was like, I do. And I showed her like a key cap set or whatever that I have. And then I was like, I, I wanted, you know, uh, more of these, but it’s hard to get.

[00:58:42] She was like, yeah, it’s gonna be come, you know, coming. Um, there’s gonna be another release in, in, in blah, blah, blah. And I just figured she was really into the keyboard community. And then I realized that one of the, one of the, there was a, a themed Olivia keyboard that, um, uh, notion Keys came out with, um, last year.

[00:58:59] Um, and it was, um, 50% off for, um, uh, black Friday. And, um, I, uh, I was, and I asked my friend Helen, I was like, should I buy this? Um, because it’s, it’s 50% off. She’s like, well, you know, Olivia works at, um, novel Keys. Sorry, not Ocean Keys, novel keys. She’s like, she was like, well, you know, Olivia works at GitHub.

[00:59:21] And I was like, Wait, what? I’m talking to her right now. And I went back to Olivia and I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You’re the Olivia. She was like, yeah. I was like, so I was literally wearing the bandt to the concert, talking to the band, and didn’t even know

[00:59:33] Jeffrey: Oh, that’s

[00:59:34] Christina: Um, she, she’s also the main developer behind Via, which is like the, the keyboard customization, um, software for, for Q M K, the, the firmware.

[00:59:42] Anyway, she’s badass. We’re best friends now, but I bought, because it was 50% off, I bought, um, an NK 65 Olivia edition key word. So, you know, uh, in, in, in, in homage to, uh, my, uh, my new best friend and, um, it’s also, uh, I, I needed to, uh, lube the, um, the stabilizers, um, uh, on, on the, uh, space bar and, and the inner, uh, uh, But, um, the, the, the keys themselves, even though it was a preassembled one, like, and I would’ve been happy to assemble it myself, but, uh, in, in this case, it was actually cheaper to get the keyboard than it would be to buy, um, an aftermarket set of the keys.

[01:00:19] Um, but I, but I, I bought, um, uh, the Olivia edition keyboard and I really like it. So that’s, that’s, uh, my, my, my, um, um, attitude and also like, uh, just a hilarious story that I found out that I like

[01:00:34] Jeffrey: That’s amazing.

[01:00:34] Christina: yeah, I, I, I still can’t believe it, that I’m like, I was like, I’m, I’m literally like, I had no idea. Like, you would’ve thought that I was like trying to like, like suck up to her or something.

[01:00:46] I had no clue

[01:00:46] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.

[01:00:48] Christina: I, I was like, wait, because Olivia, in my mind, I, there was no way in my mind that I was like, oh yeah, she person who designed that. The, the, the key cap series Olivia is, is Olivia. No. Yeah, same person. She’s great.

[01:01:01] Jeffrey: another, you live in Capitol Hill, right?

[01:01:02] Christina: I do.

[01:01:04] Jeffrey: Yeah. Uh, here’s another story from Capitol Hill, um, in 1992, uh, my friend Marty, she was at a bar and she was drinking with a friend whose other friend showed up, and the three of them were sitting at a table and, um, and, and she asked the guy that had joined them like, well, oh, what do you do?

[01:01:22] And he is like, oh, I’m a bass player. She’s like, oh, cool. I’m a bass player too. Da da. Keeps going, keeps going. It was Jeff Ament, the bass player of Pearl Jam , who she had no idea what he even looked like. She said, I’m a bass player too. That’s cool. I’m in a band too.

[01:01:35] Christina: Oh my God. I bet he loved that though.

[01:01:38] Jeffrey: bet he did. Yeah, you got it.

[01:01:39] I mean, you gotta, it’s like perfect. Uh, just an innocent awesome. Just like, yeah. He wasn’t like, I’m a bass player. You might’ve heard of me. I’m the guy in the, I Was he hearing the hat? I never asked her. Like, cuz there’s no excuse for, for missing it if he was wearing the big floppy fat Albert hat. Where the fuck he wore?

[01:01:56] Anyway, that you reminded me of that. And it comes from your neighborhood. Um,

[01:02:00] Christina: it.

[01:02:01] Jeffrey: All right, Brett, you want to go?

[01:02:03] Brett: Sure. I, uh, I’m gonna talk about the Wave XLR from El Gado. Um, so I, I use a, uh, sure SM seven B microphone, which is why my voice has this wonderful timber to it. Um, but in order to use it previously, I have run it through a cloud lifter and then through a, uh, scarlet solo, uh,

[01:02:33] Jeffrey: two preamps.

[01:02:34] Brett: Sure. And, and then a second, uh, cutoff switch for a microphone mute, uh, as a cough button.

[01:02:44] And, and I have, I have multiple versions of that. So ultimately 500 plus dollars worth of hardware. Uh, just use this microphone. And then from, as we, uh, as mentioned previously on the show, we, uh, David Sparks, uh, mentioned that he was using the Wave XLR and I decided it’s 150 bucks. I’m gonna give it a shot.

[01:03:12] It’s, it’s one big dial that has

[01:03:15] Jeffrey: I was gonna say I love that. Yeah.

[01:03:19] Brett: is it Watts? I don’t even know what the, the unit is, but 75 decibels. Um, I’m gonna fuck

[01:03:28] Jeffrey: 75. What? Its.

[01:03:30] Brett: what its, uh, is enough to power the SM seven B on its own. And you can control the mix in your headphones, the headphones volume, and the microphone gain all from one big dial, uh, right there on your, on your, on your desk.

[01:03:49] And it has a capacitive, uh, mute button. So I can just tap the top of this thing and, and it serves as a cough button. Uh, so like literally all I have to do is flail for it, . If, if I need to silence it, I just flail for it.

[01:04:08] Jeffrey: you don’t hear a cough, but you hear as you try to

[01:04:11] Brett: no, I just, it, it’s pretty easy to hit. I keep it right in the middle of my desk and I am very impressed with it.

[01:04:18] It is $150 gadget that has. Uh, replace over $500 worth of gear that I am now going to see what I can get for on the used gear market. But, uh, yeah, this is a great little, great little box. And even without the drivers, without the software, like it does exactly what I’ve just said, it would, uh, but with the software that that El Gado provides, you can also patch in multiple audio sources and mix and, and match all of your, uh, different inputs and it will interface very nicely with a stream deck and, and the stream deck plus, which, oh my God, that’s what I want for Christmas.

[01:05:06] If anyone wants to get me a Christmas present, send me a stream deck. Plus with the four

[01:05:11] Christina: Yeah, I want that too. I want that too. I, I, um, because I have the, the, the, the stream deck, um, um, uh, the big one

[01:05:19] Brett: the XL.

[01:05:20] Christina: the xl and I didn’t get the mark too because it was just the face plates, even though it looks great. But now the stream deck plus I’m like, oh man, I want this. I have almost the entire el gado like kit of stuff.

[01:05:30] I’ve got their lights. I’ve got like the, the, the, um, the, the cam link 4k. I’ve got like the, yeah. Um,

[01:05:36] Brett: lights.

[01:05:37] Christina: I’ve got, I’ve got like everything, but I, I, I don’t have the Excel, um, um, r because I, um, uh, the, the wave Excel or whatever it is because I have the task cam thing that I’m using now. Didn’t you used to have a road caster?

[01:05:51] Brett: Uh, no, I’ve never had the road caster. I, I would be curious again, if someone wants to send it to me, great. But no, I’ve never, I’ve never had the road caster.

[01:06:02] Christina: Okay, so eventually when I finally set up all my stuff, which I will be doing hopefully over Christmas, I have, because it’s been sitting here for months, I

[01:06:10] Brett: Oh man.

[01:06:11] Jeffrey: Oh shit.

[01:06:13] Christina: this off on camera. So I have the task cam MixCast four, which is basically their version of the broadcaster. Now, the road caster, they did just come out with a new version, which I think is better, but when I bought mine, the task can was both cheaper and had features that the roader

[01:06:28] Jeffrey: you start dropping beats

[01:06:30] Christina: I mean, I hope

[01:06:31] Jeffrey: all those little

[01:06:31] Christina: So, but, but in, in, in my defense, I needed to spend like a certain amount of money, um, that like the comp, like the Microsoft gave me every year for certain things. I needed to spend it before I left. So I had like $1,500 that I had to blow through. So I got that and I got, um, uh, uh, the, um, uh, at four and I got, um, two, no, I got three El Gado, um, or not, not Elga four, um, uh, three Ergotron arms.

[01:06:57] So I was just like, bam, there we go. But if I hadn’t, then I would’ve been, I’m really glad to, I’m really glad to know that the Wave XL R works with, um, the, uh, SM seven B because a lot of sub $200 preamp things don’t, so that’s, that’s

[01:07:16] Brett: this is the most powerful preamp I’ve ever seen in a sub $500, uh, mixer or, uh, audio interface.

[01:07:26] Christina: That’s awesome. Yeah.

[01:07:28] Brett: all the amperage you

[01:07:29] Christina: Yeah. When you were telling us about it, at first I was confused because I, I was confusing it with them, their microphone. I was like, why would you replace your seven B with this? But, okay, so that, that, that’s why, that’s why I asked, oh, you’re, you’re selling that? I was make money for that.

[01:07:42] You’re like, no, I’m gonna keep it. I was like, okay, well that’s weird. Um, so but now, no, now, now, now it makes sense. And, and, um, I, I, I, I got them confused, but El Gado man, like I even have their, their green screen, which I’m gonna have to get installed at some point, cuz I got like the, the one I can mount on the wall and like pull it down.

[01:07:59] Like, I, I love their stuff.

[01:08:02] Jeffrey: Well, my, uh, attitude is actually. El Gato and it’s, it’s not even like necessarily gratitude, it’s just for anyone who’s considering upgrading from the like, medium size one to the xl. I did that last year. I still don’t feel more than 15 at a time. It looks like the, sorry. Yeah, I’m talking about the stream deck xl, which has like, what, 28?

[01:08:24] Christina: It was too big for me. I didn’t need it. I would’ve.

[01:08:28] Jeffrey: it looks so sad. Like I have one for when I’m on Zooms and it just looks like I bought a house that’s way too big for me and then went back on tour,

[01:08:35] Christina: Yeah, totally.

[01:08:36] Jeffrey: the early rockstar move. Um, so just to anybody who’s wondering really just game it out. Cuz other than the fact that the form factor is fucking awesome on this thing, uh, I don’t need it.

[01:08:48] Christina: Yeah. I would say for people, if you don’t know, we’ve talked about this before and actually this is good gratitude. So this, this kind of takes us back. If you are not sure if you, um, would benefit from a steam deck. Stream deck, sorry. The steam deck is also great, but if you do not know, uh, if you would benefit from a stream deck, El Gado sells a stream deck app in the app store that has the same functionality.

[01:09:10] It doesn’t have the tactile buttons obviously, but has the same functionality. I think it’s like $30 for a year subscription. I think you can also do it monthly. What I’d recommend doing is. that app out and, and doing the subscription, you know, for a month or a year or whatever. As, as a test, see if you get benefit out of it.

[01:09:29] If you do, if it’s something you realize, oh, I’m gonna benefit from this, then go ahead and buy a physical one. Um, you can also use the two together, which is really useful and they can kind of sync. So if

[01:09:41] Jeffrey: You can use the little one and the big one together.

[01:09:43] Brett: I use, I use, I have a 15 key one and I have a six key mini, and I use the 15 key one to determine what displays on the six key mini. Uh, so I have like pages of buttons on my 15 key, and I, I can just press a button on that and it will change what’s displayed on the mini, which is front, like the, the 15 keys to the left of my keyboard on a keyboard tray.

[01:10:11] But the mini is front and center on the top of my desk. And, uh, so like, say I’m in a Zoom meeting, I just hit the zoom button on the 15 key and all of my buttons on my mini change to buttons for muting my microphone, turning video on and off, leaving the meeting sharing screen and like very context sensitive

[01:10:34] Jeffrey: It also, it allows you to be super chaotic. You just start hitting all those buttons, you know,

[01:10:39] Brett: Yeah.

[01:10:41] Jeffrey: Awesome. Well, good to see y’all again.

[01:10:44] Christina: Yes. Good

[01:10:45] Brett: I’m late for therapy as we speak.

[01:10:47] Christina: Oh, man. Well,

[01:10:48] Brett: My, my therapy, my therapy session started 12 minutes ago and I sent an email saying, Hey, I got a meeting running long. I will be there. Charge me for the full hour. I’ll get there when I get there,

[01:11:01] Christina: Well, thank you for, for, for, uh, for, for missing therapy for us. Uh, hopefully we were a good pregame and, uh, yeah,

[01:11:10] Brett: Right on.

[01:11:11] Jeffrey: Get some sleep

[01:11:12] Christina: get some

[01:11:12] Brett: some sleep.

[01:11:14] Outro: The.