Politics, Money, and Tacos

[00:00:00] Introduction and Jeff’s Absence

[00:00:00]

[00:00:03] Brett: Welcome back to Overtired, couple weeks off, uh, it’s gonna be a little sporadic through the summer, but, uh, I’m Bret Terpstra, I am here with Christina Warren, Jeff is out this week, right before we recorded, he tweaked his back and now he is laying down and does not want to podcast laying down, uh, I guess, I get that.

[00:00:26] Brett: Um, Christina, how are you?

[00:00:29] Christina: I’m good. I’m good. I’m, I’m very, I, I feel for Jeff. Cause like, I know like back pain is like one of the worst things ever. So, um, and, and you know that, um, very well too. So, um, I, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m fine, but I’m, I am, uh, worried about our comrade.

[00:00:46] Discussing Back Pain and Sciatica

[00:00:46] Brett: Have you ever had sciatica?

[00:00:49] Christina: yes, I have, but usually what I get, um, cause I have, I have scoliosis, so my back pain is usually different, but I have had sciatica before. Not often though.

[00:00:58] Brett: Yeah, I have [00:01:00] minor scoliosis. I always hated those checks in gym class. But, um, yes, sciatica wrecked me for like two weeks the first time I had it. Um, and I thought it was just lower back pain, but it’s actually in my, in your like upper thigh. Um, and the solution was massage. I went to like a sports therapist who massaged And it took 15 minutes and she basically fixed my sciatica with like a deep tissue massage.

[00:01:33] Brett: But that’s, that’s, that’s irrelevant because that’s probably not what Jeff did in his paddle boat, uh, over the weekend. Um, happy 4th of July. I guess, happy treason day.

[00:01:47] Christina: God, I don’t even know, man. Like I, I’m so, okay.

[00:01:52] Political Anxiety and Mental Health

[00:01:52] Christina: So we’re not even getting into the mental health corner yet, and this isn’t even really a mental health corner thing, but it’s kind of a, [00:02:00] except it kind of is. So I feel kind of like an asshole for saying this, but at the same time, this is genuinely like a protective thing that I need to do, like for my mental health and for other things.

[00:02:12] Christina: But I, I can’t be bothered to be upset or care or get too like mad about this election that Biden is absolutely going to lose. Like, I’m, I’m so, I’m, I’m, I’m so upset by the prospect of another four years of Trump, don’t get me wrong, but like, I just don’t have the energy to either, to, to be engaged, outraged, or like, even like, I don’t even want to think about it.

[00:02:40] Christina: You know what I mean? Right.

[00:02:41] Brett: Yeah, I do. I know exactly what you mean. Um, like I have already lost hope and project 2025 is scary as shit. Um, and I can’t spend all day thinking about it. Um, what I have done is focus more [00:03:00] on local, um, politics and grassroots efforts, um, that really have nothing to do with. The presidential election, because like you said, it’s almost a lock.

[00:03:12] Brett: Um, I, I, I will not go so far as to make a prediction, but in my, in my opinion, it is, it’s a lock for Trump and, and we are fucked and the Supreme Court is just, you know, Decision after decision that are, it’s the most activist court in history and I just can’t spend all day thinking about this. I limit myself to like 20 minutes of like news slash outrage a day and then I just move on.

[00:03:43] Brett: Focus on things I can actually control and change and not lose hope. Because there’s no hope out there right now. It’s fucking, it’s fucked up.

[00:03:55] Christina: No, that, that, that’s totally, I’m, I’m, I’m in a very similar thing because, [00:04:00] yeah, it’s, it’s so upsetting to think about, um, on so many levels. And it’s not that I’m wanting to be like, head in the sand, I don’t care. It’s, it’s almost kind of the inverse. It’s like, no, I care so much, but I know there’s nothing that I can do.

[00:04:12] Christina: And, That’s exactly what it is. That’s exactly what it is. And, and honestly, it’s one of those things where I, you know, um, it, I don’t know if this is, if this is how people become apathetic, maybe it is. I, it feels different. It feels like usually people don’t go through the sorts of trauma that we as a society collectively have gone through since 2016, right?

[00:04:32] Christina: With, you know, first Trump thing and then pandemic and everything else. But, um, because we were just so polarized because things are so bad because it’s just. Thing on top of thing on top of thing, the Supreme Court. You know, you think about like, when you think about like the ultimate like bad decisions, I mean, obviously, you know, people can be understandably upset about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and saying she should have left before she did, which maybe is true.

[00:04:57] Christina: But at the same time, even if she had like [00:05:00] left with plenty of time, I, I don’t, I’m not convinced that, that Obama ever would have been able to get. The, um, you know, confirmation at the time, right? Like, I think that we were just kind of fucked because they weren’t playing hardball enough. Like, everybody just assumed, okay, well, 2016’s a lock, so we don’t have to push and, and have these Supreme Court appointments when they needed to really have them, you know, in, in 2016 when there was plenty of time, right?

[00:05:24] Christina: When you would still potentially have a fucked court, but it wouldn’t be to the level that it is now. And it’s just like, that more than. Even like the election and other things are the things that are going to have these, you know, like carry on ramifications that are so upsetting. Exactly. Right. Because that’s the real thing.

[00:05:41] Christina: Like, like the, the, the Supreme court stuff that, you know, like the, you know, the stuff that they, you know, keep rolling back. Um, and not even just on women’s rights, but on, on so many other levels, like it’s so disturbing and it’s so upsetting on so many, you know, issues that it’s like, that’s the thing that, you know, Yeah, we’ll have 30 plus [00:06:00] that, that we can’t unravel, right?

[00:06:01] Christina: That even if we had a good candidate to run right now, which we don’t, um, like what’s going to happen, right? Because the, the, unfortunately the age of the justices that you need to get out, um, are, it doesn’t align, right?

[00:06:16] Brett: I mean, there’s the option to expand the Supreme Court,

[00:06:20] Christina: yeah, but not

[00:06:21] Brett: its own lasting repercussions,

[00:06:23] Christina: totally, but, but, but that’s not going to happen when we, when there’s, unless you have a super majority. in both houses. You won’t ever get that pass. And even then, that’s not even a guarantee, because there’s, that’s a risk, right? Like, so, okay, we, we, we expand the court for three more seats.

[00:06:38] Christina: Great. Um, what does that mean, like, when powers shift again? Like, there’s, there’s very valid reasons why, why that sort of thing has not happened before. And it’s, I don’t know. Yeah. Um, yeah, but yeah,

[00:06:55] Brett: absolutely a mental health corner. We have begun the mental health

[00:06:59] Christina: We’ve begun the mental [00:07:00] health corner. Yeah. So that’s, I’ll just kind of start and kind of finish.

[00:07:02] Christina: Like I I’m, I’m doing okay. Um, I had some stressful stuff, um, uh, last week, um, uh, work related, um, that I was able to get through, but it was, it was, it was a lot.

[00:07:13] Conference Experiences and AI

[00:07:13] Christina: I went to a conference in San Francisco. It was a really good event, but the lead up to the event, there was just a lot of stuff that was involved with it that came in, um, pretty hot, even hotter than usual.

[00:07:22] Christina: And as, as. Um, much as like, ADHD is a superpower for, um, like tight deadlines, um, there are some things that, like, there just aren’t enough man, man hours for, and that, you know, can just be too much, but, but things, things went well, but, um, I was, uh, it was like the, the event ended on, um, Thursday, like the day of the debate, and I was, I was in a bar, I was in the hotel bar, like, all day.

[00:07:49] Christina: While the debate was happening and like they, they had it on one of the TVs, but not even all of them and just watching, just even silence, like with, you know, without even any captions or [00:08:00] anything on, I was just like, filled with dread and I was like, okay, you know what? Executive decision. I’m not fucking with this.

[00:08:06] Christina: I’m not opening Twitter. I’m not engaging. I caught up the next day and it was exactly as bad as I, I anticipated it would be. But I’m very glad I didn’t watch it in real time. Go on.

[00:08:16] Brett: I’m just going to interject this. Um, in a poll, only 65 percent of respondents thought that Trump won the debate. I don’t understand how anyone doesn’t think Trump won the debate.

[00:08:30] Christina: No, this is a Nixon Kennedy situation, right?

[00:08:34] Brett: fact checking aside, but

[00:08:36] Christina: Right, but, but who cared? Well, that was, that was the interesting thing from the polls, right? Was that I think anybody with eyes knew that, that, uh, you know, or, or any, so any level of cognition, um, greater than Joe Biden’s, which would, you know, I’m sorry that’s, but I had to, it’s right there.

[00:08:53] Christina: But like anybody with like, uh, you know, just like a monochrome of any sort of cognition or, or any ability, I think knew he [00:09:00] won, but. Like the, the big thing is like that it didn’t, at least from what the initial polls I saw was, it was like, it didn’t change anybody’s opinions. Right. Like undecideds were still undecided.

[00:09:11] Christina: And, and it’s so partisan at this point. Right. But, but the problem is, is that it’s, you know, and this is why there’s so many calls from inside the house being like, we got to replace them. And it’s like, it’s too late guys. Like that, that, that ship sailed. And a lot of people were trying to call for that months ago when they were, you know, pilloried and, and, and really attacked, um, by the establishment, by the way.

[00:09:32] Christina: Some of the same people who are now like, man, we got to fix this. It’s like, yeah, kind of fucked. Um, but like, the, the, the worry is, is that people just aren’t going to show up to vote because,

[00:09:44] Brett: because who gives a fuck anymore?

[00:09:46] Christina: right. And also, what is it like?

[00:09:50] Brett: That said, that said, I will absolutely show up to vote, and I will vote blue all the way down the ticket. Um, like, that’s [00:10:00] just, I think, I honestly think a majority in Congress would be More effective than like it, like they could stop Trump from causing some damage, although project 2025, basically. Gives all power to the executive branch and Congress can’t really stop basically populating all of government with, um, sycophants.

[00:10:31] Brett: Yeah. It’s going to be a mess. Sorry. I didn’t mean to derail your,

[00:10:35] Christina: No, it’s okay.

[00:10:36] Brett: conferences have you been to this year?

[00:10:38] Christina: A bunch, but this was just this, yeah, but this was just like a, a last minute kind of ask. And, um, but it was good. It was, it was, it was an AI conference. Um, the AI Engineer World’s Fair, it was kind of a crappy name, but actually a really good event. And, um, uh, I think it was a good mix of people, um, who, you know, varying levels of, of how much [00:11:00] they have awareness about, you know, what’s happening with generative AI and, and, you know, All those things.

[00:11:04] Christina: Um, you know, some people are really actively involved. Some people, you know, are more, you know, peripheral. Some people kind of in between. Um, I, despite not having any sort of like CS, you know, like a traditional CS background and certainly not in, into the level of stuff that, you know, like the really good AI people are, are there for, like, I can’t do the low level shit, but I’ve been getting more and more into, you know, various APIs and, and playing with various models and stuff over the last, you know, couple of years.

[00:11:33] Christina: And,

[00:11:33] Brett: Has there been any good, has there been any good hackathon around, Generative AI. I haven’t seen news about one.

[00:11:44] Christina: That I don’t know. Um, but that’s a good question. I bet there probably have been some, but I don’t know. But yeah, cause that would be a

[00:11:50] Brett: could be pretty cool to see. Um, we at Oracle are, my team is doing a huge push on this AI hub [00:12:00] where we’re interfacing with all of the other teams at Oracle that are working with AI and they’re Well, like Oracle has its own, like, kind of LLM and, and generative AI service that obviously is inferior because it’s Oracle.

[00:12:16] Brett: Um, but the teams that are making use of it are doing some really cool shit. Like, um, there’s one that uses drones to examine, um, construction projects. And reports failures. Uh, um, what are they called? Uh, potential failures. Like it can analyze, like say a beam is rusting, like it can pick that up and it can process the data and give you a full report on like, how many years will this last?

[00:12:52] Brett: What is the extent of the damage? And it all, it uses AI. To process all of the images from the drone and it’s [00:13:00] cool and there’s there’s yeah I’ve done I’ve done five or six myself now and every time I’m like man, this is actually a Reason I give people a lot of shit about generative AI for the average person Who’s sending me emails written by AI that drive me nuts.

[00:13:23] Brett: Um, I don’t know, people, people don’t give the second prompt to like make this sound, make this sound less like AI. Um, but when it comes to like industry and practical uses, it, it blows my mind and I would love to see a hackathon around it.

[00:13:45] Christina: Yeah. I think that like when I was doing some kind of cursory searches while you were saying that, I think like some individual companies have been kind of doing things, but I don’t know of any like big ones, like more broader, like kind of community things. But, [00:14:00] um,

[00:14:01] Brett: I should push for an Oracle. Hackathon, that could be really good on my, my yearly review.

[00:14:08] Christina: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s how you get a promotion or like a raise or whatever. That’s how you show value. Try to get that off the ground and then, you know, write that up in your, in your,

[00:14:17] Brett: Oracle doesn’t give raises anymore. I’m, I’m convin I won’t know what compensation I get until September, but I guarantee you there will be no raise. Which means, basically, our Pay is decreasing because it’s not keeping up with costs of living and

[00:14:37] Christina: Right.

[00:14:38] Brett: so they’re basically paying us less every year by not giving us even, like, a 5 percent raise.

[00:14:46] Brett: They give me, like, a bonus that amounts to, like, 1%. of my yearly salary and it, it means nothing. It literally means nothing. Um, no, what’s [00:15:00] going to save me is my first year at Oracle. My bonus was, uh, 100, 000

[00:15:10] Christina: RSUs.

[00:15:10] Brett: RSUs. And they vest yearly. So this year I’ll get a quarter of that. And Oracle stock is great right now. Um, and you know, I’ll take it.

[00:15:22] Christina: Mm hmm.

[00:15:23] Brett: That’s a good bonus. That’s like a four year bonus they gave me.

[00:15:27] Christina: No, I mean, that’s amazing. No, when I joined Microsoft, um, my sign on amount of stock was, was actually really insulting in retrospect, but I didn’t know that and I didn’t know what to ask for and, and all of that. But because when I joined the company, the stock was like 65 at the time or something.

[00:15:45] Christina: By the time, like the initial, I think it was a four year period or whatever, by the time it all vested, like, because it was one of those things where like, you know, annually, That the stock at that point had like 4X’d, so it wound up being like the total value that [00:16:00] I got out of it, you know, wound up being still not enough, but, um, but, but, but a lot better, you know, and, and I had,

[00:16:08] Brett: Not as insulting as it was initially.

[00:16:10] Christina: Exactly. And I’ve had a couple of special stock awards, um, that, you know, things they try to give you for retention and, and stuff like that in, in addition to like whatever, you know, I get as part of like my yearly compensation. Um, and one year, um, when they issued it, the, the stock was like 256 or something like that.

[00:16:29] Christina: Which at the time was kind of like a high. And so I was like, okay, well, I don’t know if this is going to be like a thing that pays off or not. And at some point, like there were certain best periods where like, I, I would like be underwater, you know, with, with that amount.

[00:16:39] Christina: But now, because the stock is like 460 or something like that, like even that, like the, the hard thing is going to be, and this is why I think like a lot of people like calling like for like, they really like employees especially, but like, I think a lot of people like they want the stock to split because it’s like getting close.

[00:16:55] Christina: Yeah. Like as we’re recording this,

[00:16:56] Brett: 460 a share?

[00:16:58] Christina: 468. [00:17:00] Yeah. 468. Yeah. And when I got in,

[00:17:03] Brett: need a new job.

[00:17:04] Christina: yeah, when I, well, I wish that we could split because if they split the stock, it would still

[00:17:09] Brett: that mean? What does that mean?

[00:17:11] Christina: okay, so a stock split basically means that they will, um, uh, divide the number of available shares, um, in, in half. And so if you owned, so basically, um, to, to have a bigger offering so that you could have bring more people into it.

[00:17:26] Christina: But what it also essentially does is that if you bought in, so like, let’s say like you bought in at 65, um, And now it is 468. If the stocks split and, and it became 234 a share, um, your number of, of outstanding shares would be doubled, but your cost average, if you, if you bought in like at 65 or whatever, would still potentially have more room for a run up.

[00:17:54] Christina: See what I’m saying?

[00:17:55] Brett: I, I don’t because I’m really bad at this kind of thing. I’m gonna [00:18:00] take your word for it.

[00:18:01] Christina: Okay, so the idea would just be your total number of shares would double, so your value would be the same. But at that point, you have

[00:18:08] Brett: Gotcha. Okay.

[00:18:09] Christina: another run up, right? So whereas, you know, so, so, okay, so usually what happens, like, like Nvidia split a few weeks ago and, um, and, and so Nvidia had been, uh, and they’re one of the most valuable companies in the world right now, but like their stock had gone super, super high and it split a few weeks ago.

[00:18:26] Christina: So what that does is that A allows. people who would otherwise not be able to buy in because it was too high to get in. But B, it means that there’s another opportunity, like if there’s another run up, right? So if it’s 127 right now, but let’s say it has like another rally and it goes to like 175 by the end of the year, then that means that people who, you know, owned it earlier could potentially like double their, their returns or not double, but like have, have, have higher returns.

[00:18:56] Christina: Because they’re, they’re, the number of shares would be higher.

[00:18:59] Brett: That, [00:19:00] okay. You’re making sense to me. I get this. I get this. I get this one concept. Um, this is now a money corner.

[00:19:10] Financial Talk and 401k Loans

[00:19:10] Brett: Um, so I just this week, um, took out a loan against my 401k. And I did a bunch of research before I did this, but I was able to take out enough money to pay off all my outstanding loans. Um, and at, uh, about 10%, Uh, interest rate, but on a 401k loan, you pay the interest to yourself because it’s your money.

[00:19:41] Brett: Um, and so that sounds great to me. You’re not earning interest on all of the money you’ve withdrawn. But when I did, when I did my own number crunching to see like what I was going to lose in interest versus what I was [00:20:00] going to. Gain in the, in the total based on the extra interest I was paying in. Um, it, it just, it made good sense to me.

[00:20:10] Brett: So I paid off all my other loans and came out with enough money for home improvement projects. Um, and now, and now my only loan is paid back to myself. So do you know, what do you know about 401k loans? I’m just kind of putting it out there.

[00:20:28] Christina: I don’t know a lot about them except that I know that there are sometimes like penalties that can be involved. Um, like, like you can take them off for certain purposes and you can get them back for certain things. Like, so I know that there are ways that you can do it that could be more beneficial. I think usually, because I think usually the problem is like, like, because the interest rate, like the 10 percent or whatever, like that’s not that much, like that’s better than a credit card.

[00:20:51] Christina: That’s, that’s probably going to be about the same.

[00:20:53] Brett: was better than, it was, it was, uh, point, point three better [00:21:00] than my, my lowest interest rate. So it is my lowest interest rate loan. And you’re right. If you wanted to take out I think it’s 50 percent of your, of the value of your 401k. Then there are penalties unless it meets certain criteria. Um, it has, it’s like, I think it’s called a hardship loan and you have to provide paperwork that there is like you lost your job, whatever.

[00:21:26] Brett: Um, but for the amount I took out, there are no tax penalties. There are no. Additional deductions made. Uh, so I took out basically the smallest amount you can take out without penalties. Which honestly, like I didn’t start building a, I had, when I left AOL, I had like, I think 30k in my retirement fund and I rolled it over and then over the [00:22:00] course of seven years as an in, as an unsuccessful indie developer, um, I basically withdrew most of it with penalties and paid all the tax penalties on it and by the end I had like in it, which I rolled over into, um, Oracle.

[00:22:20] Brett: And since then I have been putting in like 15 percent of my paycheck and 6 percent of that is matched and add in my RSU value. And I actually. It’s not a great retirement fund. Like, honestly, and I’ve said this before, but I could afford a pretty nice car to live in at this point. Um, except I think San Francisco outlawed living in cars.

[00:22:49] Brett: Um, but where I live, you could still live in a car and that’s my retirement plan. Me, me and Al living in, I don’t know, like, uh, it would probably [00:23:00] be a Nissan, like a higher end Nissan, nothing fancy, nothing fancy. Anyway, anyway,

[00:23:08] Christina: I mean, look, you at least have a house. Like that’s the, that’s the real thing. Like you have like, at least like, you

[00:23:14] Brett: L has a

[00:23:15] Christina: well, L has a house, but you know, but like one of you has a house,

[00:23:18] Brett: right? Right. Yeah. Even though, even though I basically pay the mortgage on it, my name is not on it at this point. Maybe I should change that. Maybe I would be more comfortable. Like right now I invest all the money for home improvement projects comes from me. But, if we broke up, there’s no legal reason she would have to,

[00:23:44] Christina: Right. I

[00:23:45] Brett: like, we have, we have agreements, about, like, if, if worse comes to worse, uh, uh, upon the sale of this house, you will be compensated for the investments you made in it.

[00:23:56] Brett: But it’s not illegally binding. [00:24:00] Like, I trust El. I love El to death. Um, but I have no, like, legally binding, um, stake in, in this property.

[00:24:09] Christina: mean, maybe that, maybe that should change, right? And it’s not because, like you said, like you don’t, there’s lack of trust or lack of love with them or anything, right? But it might make you feel more comfortable about how you go about things and, and also feel like, you know, like makes the investment feel maybe even like more real.

[00:24:27] Christina: You know what I mean?

[00:24:28] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Like, I get a little queasy dropping ten grand on new windows. Um, Like watching my, like, I have, I have my own savings and I like to keep it at a certain point. Like I feel like it gives me a sense of like wellbeing and comfort to have at X number of dollars in my savings account.

[00:24:51] Brett: And in this case, in my Apple savings account, because holy shit, that is the best return rate out there right now. Um, but, [00:25:00] uh, anytime that gets, uh, like you take 10 grand out of it, And feel less mentally okay. Okay. It’s a mental health corner again. Money is mental health. Like, this is all mental health. Um, uh, comfort and, uh, stability and all of these things are heavily related to money, which is heavily related to privilege, obviously.

[00:25:27] Brett: But, um, yeah, money is mental health.

[00:25:32] Christina: I, yes,

[00:25:33] Brett: And, and I have been broke. I have been destitute. I’ve been homeless. Like, I understand the psychological ramifications of not knowing if you can afford groceries. Um, and that is a place I never want to be again. Um, I want to hedge my bets all the time. I want a job at GitHub, but, um, I, [00:26:00] I don’t trust that I, I don’t trust that my job at Oracle will last forever.

[00:26:06] Brett: But anyway, yep, this is still mental health. I feel like, I feel like I’ve done my mental health corner.

[00:26:12] Christina: this is a weird one, but I feel like we both were able to get like our mental health corner like out of the way. It was kind of like a good like joint one. Like that was, that was, that was kind of weird. Like we’ve been doing this podcast for so long that we were able to do. Kind of a, a back and forth, like kind of, kind of shared like mental health corner, all about like politics and money.

[00:26:31] Christina: The, the two things that everybody wants to think about, but that genuinely are mental health, right? They genuinely are. These are things that, at least for me, those are definitely two things that

[00:26:39] Brett: The highest, the highest source of conflict in couples, politics and money.

[00:26:45] Christina: totally. Totally.

[00:26:47] Brett: Um, are we a couple? We’re kind of a couple. We’re a podcast. We’re like podcast couple.

[00:26:53] Christina: totally. You’re, you’re, you’re definitely like my, my, my pod spouse for sure.

[00:26:56] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So do you want [00:27:00] to do a quick sponsor break and then move on?

[00:27:03] Christina: Yeah. Let’s do that. All right.

[00:27:06] ExpressVPN Sponsorship

[00:27:06] Christina: This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. All right, going online without ExpressVPN is like leaving your laptop unattended at the coffee shop while you run to the bathroom. Most of the time, in fact, almost all the time, you’re probably going to be fine. But what if one day you come out of the bathroom and your laptop is gone?

[00:27:24] Christina: Side note, this happened to me once, although not at a coffee shop. It was, I left my laptop. At my office and I came back in the next day and it was gone and it was a pretty terrible feeling. So even though 99 percent of the time you’re going to be fine, ExpressVPN is a great thing to add to your arsenal, uh, when you’re going online because everybody does need a VPN of some sort.

[00:27:47] Christina: When I’m at a hotel, for instance, having a VPN is a really good thing to have in your arsenal, whether you’re using it because you want to protect yourself. Um, if you’re, on weird wifi networks, say you’re in an airport or you’re at a hotel, or maybe you’re on some sort [00:28:00] of like, you know, like conference wifi, that’s a little bit sketch and you’re like, Hey, um, I know that most of the websites that I visit are encrypted, and that’s great.

[00:28:07] Christina: So I’m not really worried about sending my passwords across, you know, in plain text. But I don’t know if I really like the fact that somebody is going to be logging everything that I’m doing while I’m on this network. A VPN, especially if you’re using a service like ExpressVPN where they don’t log, is really good because You’re not going to, A, have your information sold by data brokers, but B, um, you don’t need to worry about kind of people spying on what sort of activities or what sort of traffic is taking place on your network, because they’re not able to see it.

[00:28:37] Christina: So, I think that ExpressVPN is a great VPN. I’ve used it for a really long time. One, um, it is very secure, so it would take a A hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to get past ExpressVPN’s encryption. So it is encrypted in addition to, various other, uh, provisions they have placed.

[00:28:55] Christina: Um, the other thing is that it’s really, really easy to use. You can get it, [00:29:00] um, up and running with just a click of a button to get protected. But the thing that I really appreciate about it is that it works. on all sorts of devices. So phones, laptops, tablets, you can even get it running on like a fire TV sticks and things like that.

[00:29:14] Christina: So this is one of those services where a lot of times, some VPN services work better than others on multiple types of devices. ExpressVPN works everywhere. Really big fan of that. Um, I actually was at a hotel a few weeks ago that was being weird. Um, about the fact that I was running a BitTorrent daemon in the background and it didn’t want me to connect on their network.

[00:29:35] Christina: So basically I had to stop the daemon, connect to the network, connect to ExpressVPN, and then I was able to load, you know, my protocol again and the the hotel Wi Fi couldn’t tell me what to do with it. With my information because it couldn’t see it, which is pretty great. So big fan of using VPNs for lots of reasons, including getting around onerous hotel wifi restrictions.

[00:29:58] Christina: Secure your online data [00:30:00] today by visiting expressvpn. com slash Overtired. That’s E X P R E S S VPN. com slash Overtired. And you can get an extra three months free. That is expressvpn. com slash Overtired.

[00:30:16] A Little More About VPNs

[00:30:16] Brett: Nice job, Christina. So, side note, like, they made this, the notes for the read were all about online security, which Like, as you cleverly worked into the read, is not the primary use of VPNs anymore. Like, so much of the web is encrypted

[00:30:41] Christina: All of it is.

[00:30:43] Brett: and VPN, if you’re worried about your passwords, don’t. Like, just, it’s, most, I think all browsers will warn you now before entering a password on a non SSL encrypted site.[00:31:00]

[00:31:00] Brett: Like, every, every browser has something in place, whether it’s a little lock bar or an actual pop up that says, Hey,

[00:31:07] Christina: Yeah. No.

[00:31:07] Brett: want to think twice about this.

[00:31:09] Christina: Exactly. They’re like, are you really, really sure? Are you positive? And people who, cause there’s still a contingent of people who are like, very much, I will never encrypt my, my website. And this is just a scam from the certificate authorities. And it’s like, no, there, there’s nothing wrong with SSL, but that isn’t the only reason why you use a VPN because

[00:31:25] Brett: Right, exactly. Exactly. And, and I, I like what, I like where you took that read. I appreciate that.

[00:31:32] Reviewing Sonos Ace Headphones

[00:31:32] Brett: Let’s talk about the Sonos Ace headphones.

[00:31:36] Christina: Yeah. Because we both got them.

[00:31:38] Brett: Our, our friend of the show, Brian Guffey got us a great deal on, on some Sonos Ace headphones, and I jumped on it because I am always looking for comfortable over the ear headphones. My ear canals just do not work for. I have bought multiple [00:32:00] iterations of, uh, AirPods that sound okay, but don’t fit my ears.

[00:32:07] Brett: Or like, the one in my right ear always falls out no matter what cup size I choose for it. Um, so over the years, like, the only way to go for me. And Like, these headphones we’re using for these Sonys we use for the podcast, they’re comfy. I can wear them for, uh, two hours about before my ears start hurting.

[00:32:29] Brett: I wanted a really good pair for, uh, watching TV, watching movies, and music listening. And so I jumped on this deal, and honestly, at the price you and I paid, they are fantastic headphones.

[00:32:45] Christina: there, there are no brainers. They’re, they’re fantastic. Where it gets hard is that the MSRP is 450, which granted, it, it’s not that difficult for people to, you know, find certain sales or get discount codes if you, a lot of corporations [00:33:00] even will have some sort of, you know, like, like Sonos, you know, discount, um, uh, like, like, I know that, that.

[00:33:06] Christina: Microsoft sends it by extension, GitHub does. But 450 is a lot of money for a pair of headphones. Um, and so at that price point you’re going up against, uh, Bose, Sony, and Apple, uh, the the Apple, um, the AirPods Max are 550. Um, I, you know, I don’t recommend anybody buy those right now because, unless the, the sale is really good because the, um, the rumors are that a new version with, with the USB C will be coming out.

[00:33:34] Christina: Apparently they’re not going to be making many other changes, but, but that will be coming out. But the thing is, is that if you already have AirPods Max, I don’t, even if you were very deeply embedded in the Sonos ecosystem, I don’t think that you need to buy these headphones. If you are somebody who is looking for a pair, like you, like, like you are Brett, of like good over ear, um, you know, noise canceling headphones.

[00:33:58] Christina: They are very, very comfortable. [00:34:00] They

[00:34:00] Brett: The noise canceling, the noise canceling is insanely good.

[00:34:04] Christina: It’s very good. It’s very, very good. Um, I used them last week on a plane and so I was able to give them like a real test. Like I actually left my AirPods at home and I just took the Sonos with me, which I thought was like a really good travel test to kind of compare, like, okay, how do these compare against these things that I’ve, I’ve worn?

[00:34:20] Christina: Um, and, um, and really, really well, like the, I would say that the noise canceling is, is right up there, um, against, you know, uh, you know, Sony and Bose, who are kind of like the leader in that and then the transparency mode, um, where you can kind of hear background things coming in to, it’s pretty good, it’s not as good as on the AirPods Max, but it’s, it’s, or, or even the AirPods Pro 2, but it’s really, really solid, um, but the big thing for me is like, I, I don’t know what your experience has been like.

[00:34:51] Christina: Incredibly comfortable. Like

[00:34:53] Brett: Incredibly comfortable. And the, like, I don’t, I don’t have like the Sony or the AirPods [00:35:00] max to compare to, but the audio quality is the best I have in, and I own eight pairs of over the ear headphones of in various price ranges. Um, and the Sonos Ace. Trumps them all. Uh, they, it, it’s a, it’s a really good pair of headphones.

[00:35:24] Brett: Like you said, like it’s a competitive market and I’m sure it depends. Like, like I said at the beginning, at the price you and

[00:35:34] Christina: at the price that we got them at, it’s, it’s a no brainer. It’s amazing. It’s, it’s harder at MSRP. And the only reason I say that is that I feel like if you already have things in the Sonos ecosystem, because right now how I think that a lot of people envisioned how these would work would be that you would be able to wirelessly tune into any of your, your Sonos.

[00:35:56] Christina: Speaker zones that are happening throughout your house. And if [00:36:00] that were the case at this price point at 450, that would be, I think, for a lot of people, like a kind of a no brainer, right? Because like, okay, I could, I could tune into, you know, this room where this thing is happening, or maybe this room where I have my turntable connected or something else.

[00:36:13] Christina: Um, but that’s not the case. How it works right now is that they only work with. The Sonos ARC soundbar, although it apparently is going to be coming to some of the less expensive soundbars later this year. Um, and so anything that’s connected to that soundbar, so anything that’s connected to your TV, your video game consoles, you know, if you have, if you had a turntable connected to that or whatever, like that would all work, um, over, over Bluetooth and not over wireless, but that’s the only one that has the, the audio switching feature with right now.

[00:36:42] Christina: Um, and so for, for the Sonos aspect of it, like. It’s hard for me to kind of say it. I guess it depends on how deeply embedded into the ecosystem you are. But I think that the real thing is that it’s like, if you’re, if you’re in that market for like a premium pair of noise [00:37:00] canceling headphones for travel and you take the Sonos part out of it, I think they’re really good.

[00:37:05] Christina: But as you said, it is a competitive space. Um, I, I think Apple, if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, there are some things about AirPods that are just. better just because of the things they do with the H1 chip. I don’t think that the headphones are better overall. In fact, I’m annoyed by many aspects of things with AirPods Max, but the things that it does really well, like, you know, seamlessly switching between devices and, and some of the, the other stuff.

[00:37:29] Christina: is just, no one matches that. So if you have a lot of things in the Apple ecosystem, and you already have AirPods Max, I don’t think you need to look at these. But for most people who aren’t in that class, I definitely think they’re worth looking into, especially if you can get them on sale. But I will say the hard thing is the Sony’s, I haven’t used the Lea’s Bose, although they’re apparently incredible, but like the Sony’s XM5s are very frequently on sale.

[00:37:53] Christina: And so it’s hard to Kind of pit the two against one another, just MSRP. [00:38:00] Having said that, yeah, I mean, for a first round of headphones, I think they’ve done a really, really good job. And certainly, if you can get like a good deal on them, they’re really, really good.

[00:38:09] Brett: So I can tie this into a secondary topic, but it fascinates me that headphones are not. A quote unquote mature tech where, uh, where like new iterations are actually significantly better.

[00:38:29] New iPhone 15 and Switching Carriers

[00:38:29] Brett: Um, if you look at iPhones, like, okay, so I just yesterday, Got an iPhone 15 Max Pro, and that was an upgrade from the iPhone 12 that I used for years, and I just never saw a reason to upgrade.

[00:38:49] Brett: Uh, the cameras got better over time, uh, some features got better over time, but not enough to be like, I’m gonna trash this iPhone 12 that I already [00:39:00] have paid off and it’s been a trusty companion. Um, finally. Uh, I don’t even, like the buttons got less responsive, uh, battery life wore down, uh, so I finally upgraded to an iPhone 15 and switched my cell service from Verizon to Visible and now I pay a total.

[00:39:27] Brett: Of 250 a year for using Verizon Towers. And yeah, it’s insanely cheap. And, and I pay 40 a month as part of a loan for this new iPhone. But I was paying 120 a month to Verizon after paying off my phone. And like that, the cost differences. I, I’m getting a whole year for what I would pay Verizon in two months.

[00:39:56] Brett: Um, so anyway, like, I hope [00:40:00] someday again, Mint will sponsor this show. Uh, but basically any of those little, I don’t know what they’re called, baby bells. Um, That, that use, you know, T Mobile or Verizon towers and give you the same coverage, uh, for a fraction of the price. But anyway, the point of this is the iPhone 15, uh, is impressive.

[00:40:28] Brett: I love that I can shoot any photo and it takes depth information.

[00:40:34] Exploring iPhone Camera Features

[00:40:34] Brett: In every, I mean, you can turn this off, but in every photo and you can turn any regular photo into a portrait and like, and fuzz the background, uh, or change the focus of any portrait mode. Like that’s cool. That’s, that’s not worth a thousand dollars, but it’s cool.

[00:40:58] Brett: I, I dig, I dig that. I [00:41:00] dig. There are a few. The camera is very cool.

[00:41:04] Christina: Yeah. The camera’s really good. And, and the, the Apple, the Apple intelligence stuff, um, is

[00:41:10] Brett: Oh, I haven’t used that at

[00:41:11] Christina: well, they don’t, it’s not available for anybody yet,

[00:41:13] Brett: Is it in the Oh, it’s not in the beta?

[00:41:15] Christina: No. But when it does come out, they’ve said that like basically the lowest level of phones that will be able to support it will be like the 15 and, and uh, like the 15 pro.

[00:41:26] Christina: So, um, so you’ll actually be able to, to use that stuff.

[00:41:32] The Evolution of iPhones

[00:41:32] Brett: People on Macedon were razzing me about not waiting for the announcement. Um, but honestly, like I am always two or three, even four years behind, like I used to always have to have the new phone. I would be at this store the day it came out and I always had to have the latest thing. And I got on like the Verizon edge plan.

[00:41:56] Brett: So I could always trade in my phone at any time. [00:42:00] And I just. I don’t, I think iPhones became mature tech and

[00:42:06] Christina: agree with that.

[00:42:07] Brett: the benefits, the improvements were incremental enough. I mean, Apple, all companies right now in the mobile phone industry are struggling to give people a reason to discard their old phone.

[00:42:24] Brett: They’re no longer as discardable as they used to be. Uh, we’ve hit like, uh, A point where an iPhone 12 is still good in 2024. It’s a great phone.

[00:42:38] Christina: It is a great phone. I, I still have an iPhone 12 that I use, um, uh, sometimes as like a continuity camera thing, like that, that I, that I just use, you know, as, as a webcam instead of using something else. Um, and, and it’s great for that, but yeah, you’re right. Like we’ve kind of reached that point where like phones are for a lot of people, even enthusiasts good enough.

[00:42:56] Christina: Like I still buy one every year. I think the only year I didn’t [00:43:00] get a new phone in. 15 years or so it was, was the iPhone, um, 13. And that was because it was going to take them a long time to get it to me in the color I wanted. And by the time that happened, I was like, I don’t actually want the phone because there aren’t any real changes and, and I, I don’t need it.

[00:43:16] Christina: Um, uh, and, and honestly, I could probably wait longer than that with other things, but I’m part of like, like you, I was either part of like the Verizon, like, like edge upgrade program, or I do like the Apple, you know, early upgrade thing and whatnot, but yeah, you’re not wrong. It’s pretty mature tech.

[00:43:31] Bluetooth and Headphone Technology

[00:43:31] Christina: And the thing is, headphones, a lot of it is mature, but what’s gotten better, especially if you haven’t been in the game for a long time, is that the noise cancelling has significantly improved, even in the last five or six years.

[00:43:44] Christina: Like, it’s really, really good now. Um, there are still, you know, issues around Bluetooth, but like, they’re, they’re still able to do things, you know, with

[00:43:54] Brett: But is that, is that a Bluetooth problem or is it a headphone hardware problem? [00:44:00] Like

[00:44:00] Christina: both, but, but it is a Bluetooth

[00:44:01] Brett: just seems a little buggy.

[00:44:03] Christina: Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, it’s both, right? Like it’s, it’s a Bluetooth problem insofar as, um, the, the Bluetooth standard remains buggy and a problem and, and, you know, an issue when you’re trying to do certain things. And so the solution is either to fortify the standard and make Bluetooth better for everybody, uh, which, you know, is complicated and takes a long time or to do things like what Apple did, which is basically just creating their own custom chips to offload some of the things that the Bluetooth, you know, can’t do.

[00:44:32] Christina: Um, Or, you know, like, and I think Sonos, um, people were expecting them to use like, why just have like, like Wi Fi, like wireless headphones? Like why, why can’t I just connect them, you know, to my existing speaker sets? The issue with that is actually a power one. Um, the, the processor power, uh, Um, I think it was the CEO of Sonos, but I’m not sure it was.

[00:44:54] Christina: Someone high up said to the Verge, you know the basically the, the power that, um, even [00:45:00] in the latest headphones that are put out, like the, you know, the chips that are in them are not as powerful as what they’ve got on their speakers. And, um, Not to mention, you know, the, the fact that you still have to struggle with, okay, well, like, how do we balance, you know, like good battery life and battery sizes with making sure that these things are going to be lightweight on your head and like, won’t, you know, be too heavy and, and make that whole part of it bad.

[00:45:19] Christina: It’s like, there are a lot of things you have to balance. Um, but, um, And you, there, there are like ebbs and flows where there are some years where it’s like, yeah, there really haven’t been any, there have not been any improvements. And then you have eras where you’re like, Oh, actually things have improved a whole lot.

[00:45:36] Christina: So, um, yeah, but I’m, but I’m, but, but I totally understand what you’re saying. Sorry, go on.

[00:45:42] Bone Conductor Headphones

[00:45:42] Brett: no, the other solution I have for, um, my ear canals not working for earbuds is bone conductor headphones.

[00:45:50] Christina: Yeah. How, yeah. How do you like this?

[00:45:51] Brett: Oh my God. They’re. Amazing. Like it doesn’t have the richness of sound that a good, like a high [00:46:00] quality over the ear headphone has, but for like watching TV, watching movies, um, so Elle, my big, like, even my 32 inch TV is overwhelming, um, for, uh, over stimulating for them.

[00:46:18] Brett: And I generally, we watch, if we’re watching together, we watch on an iPad. Um, it’s a small enough screen that it doesn’t, of course, they’re usually knitting. Anyway, and they just look up when, when there’s no vocals, but there’s audio that clearly indicates something’s happening visually. That’s when they look up to keep track.

[00:46:42] Brett: Um, it always impresses me how they can do both at once, but when, when I’m watching alone, I usually need to keep it quiet. Um, and so I have a pair of Bluetooth bone conductor headphones that connect to my TV [00:47:00] and. I can’t believe, like, I’ll ask Elle, can you hear what’s happening right now? Because they feel like they’re like open back headphones.

[00:47:12] Brett: And it’s, it fascinates me that I can have volume up and Elle can’t hear a thing. Like, it’s just conducting through my jaw and sounding really good. Um, I take them on walks. I have them connected to multiple devices, but the reason I bring it up is because Interestingly, they connect to every device they’ve ever connected to.

[00:47:35] Brett: When I turn them on, I hear connected, connected, connected, and like it’s connecting to all these devices and whatever device is playing, they switch to. Um, it gets, it’s buggy as hell, because I’ll be watching TV and it’ll say, Disconnected. But the TV, like the sound doesn’t stop, so it disconnected from some [00:48:00] other device, and it’s, it’s disconcerting, like it works, but honestly, Bluetooth is just weird to me.

[00:48:09] Brett: Uh, it seems, it honestly seems like we could have, like we could do better. I

[00:48:15] Christina: Yeah, we could, I think the problem is, is it’s like, how do you make a standard? Right. Cause that’s, cause the thing is like, Bluetooth sucks, but. At the same time, like, it’s backward compatible with a lot of things, like, even if things, like, you know, like, multipoint, you know, only work for certain versions and, like, they’ve got to support, you know, a whole range of, of devices, you know, from, like, you know, old video game consoles to cars that people own.

[00:48:37] Christina: You know, we’ll not be able to in many cases ever update anything with Bluetooth in, you know, to, you know, older phones, to all kinds of other devices. Like it’s, it’s a hard thing to make a standard like Bluetooth, um, that’s been around for as many years as it has and improve it. Um, but I agree with you.

[00:48:54] Christina: We could have something better.

[00:48:55] Brett: mean, USB, USB finally is good. [00:49:00] Like, by, USB C is a great protocol. It’s a great physical adapter.

[00:49:05] Christina: Yeah. But it’s also really confusing. It’s, it’s finally good, but it’s also like, what, what, what version of US, what USB C cable do you need? Right? Like there’s like, that’s still kind of a cluster.

[00:49:16] Brett: Yeah. I, the iPhone 15 has a USB C charger, um, which means that all of my little charging stations around the house, which are all lightning, um, all, all USB A to lightning setups. Now I need, um, Either USB A to USB C cables, or I need to replace the hubs with USB C hubs. So that’s going to take a little getting used to, but honestly, I mean, it’s the same when we went from 32 pin connectors, like everyone complained cause they had to replace all their, all their, um, adapters and everything.

[00:49:56] Christina: this is much easier because we already have a bunch of USB C things, right? Like, at this [00:50:00] point, like, I, I even, like, when I got my iPhone 15, um, Pro Max or whatever, um, in September, I also bought, even though I didn’t need them, because I literally just bought them. Bought a second pair because I lost one pair, um, left them in a hotel and they were taken, which fine, my bad on that.

[00:50:18] Christina: But I’d lost a pair of Airpods, um, Pro 2s, which are really, really good. And I had to buy a replacement pair because I needed them. And I was like, I can’t go This long without them. I didn’t know that they were going to come out with the USB C version. Um, like a month and a half later. And so I was able to rationalize buying them for myself by, uh, giving them to, uh, my colleague and friend who I was on a trip with.

[00:50:43] Christina: And I was like, Erin doesn’t have AirPods and she needs AirPods. And, and, and I also, they were like 50 off, um, uh, through Amazon. Um, like the first, Week that they were like out, but one of the

[00:50:56] Brett: very generous of you.

[00:50:57] Christina: yes, but my, my, my [00:51:00] real selfish aspect of that was a, I do genuinely like to just like gift people things, you know, and, and so giving Aaron the, the, um, AirPods was great, but the bigger thing I was like, this will make the transition that much easier for me because now the only lightning thing that I use with any regularity.

[00:51:18] Christina: Other than my, you know, um, Apple mouse and, and uh, Magic, you know, keyboard and Magic trackpad, or whatever, which, you know, I, I, I don’t, um, travel with those, so that’s not a big deal, will be my AirPods Max. That will be the only lightning thing that I really have. Everything else will be USB C. So I was, you know, uh, You know, incrementally I’d already kind of upgraded and switched a lot of things over.

[00:51:39] Christina: So you’ll probably find that too. Um, I know for my parents, my mom has the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but my dad has an iPhone 14 plus. And so they are split. And so each of their cars I have, you know, kind of set things up. A, I’ve tried to get them more into using wireless charging since they both can. And [00:52:00] B, so I bought a number of, uh, the Belkin MagSafe 2, Um, uh, uh, pads, because they’re cheaper than, um, the, um, uh, Apple ones, but they are the exact same.

[00:52:11] Christina: They’re the same, you know, charging speed or whatever. Um, and then, um, making sure that each of their cars, like, has, like, a lightning and a USB C. But then, you know, I try to switch my mom over to kind of, like, teachers, like, okay, this is, you know, it’s going to be a little bit annoying, but Two of your, you know, two pairs of your AirPods use one, you know, way to charge.

[00:52:30] Christina: One, one of them uses another, but it’s the same as your phone. It’s going to be a few years until everybody’s switched over, but it’ll be nice. Like in, in a couple of years, everything will switch over.

[00:52:41] Brett: there are cables that have, they’re USB C cables, but attached to the end is a little dongle, you can slip over it to make it lightning. Um, which, so basically you have one cable that can do both, and that’s, cause L’s on an iPhone [00:53:00] 13, uh, which is still lightning. So yeah, we have this, I have this little, um, charging station that like, I snaked a cable under our couch and brought it out to this just little, um, hub so that we don’t have cables running across, across the floor and we can charge all our devices from the couch.

[00:53:19] Brett: Um, and having, now we have to have both USB C and, Lightning cables in what is a very small hub. Uh, but it is doable, but I like this idea of a cable that one cable that can do both cause we rarely need to charge at the same time. Okay. So we’re at an hour approximately. How much do you have a, an extra 20 minutes?

[00:53:45] Christina: I do.

[00:53:46] Brett: Okay, because I have two more topics I want to hit before we get to Graptitude.

[00:53:51] Christina: got it.

[00:53:53] A Memorable Trip to Minneapolis

[00:53:53] Brett: first of all, and I should have mentioned this earlier, I saw Jeff this last weekend and together we [00:54:00] went to Palmers, uh, in Minneapolis and saw Erin Dawson, friend of the show, previous guest, co worker of mine, we saw her Black Metal Band play and I I had heard some of her solo recordings before, and I had told her, this is good, it’s just, it’s not my, it’s not my thing.

[00:54:23] Brett: But when I saw, her band is called Genital Shame, and when I saw them play, I was blown away. It was so good, and she is a Fucking goddess of like metal guitar and it was, I was ecstatic. I, I loved it so much. It was so good. Um, and I, I bought a t shirt. I have a genital shame, shame t shirt. I will be supporting and her, her, her band, cause she’s, she is genital shame and she plays with A backing band.

[00:54:57] Brett: Um, and the backing band [00:55:00] is actually another band in their own right, I think in Milwaukee. Um, but I got to meet all of them and they were super cool, uh, the drummer especially was obviously ADHD as well. 90 percent of drummers seem to be. Um, and like we, we clicked and we had so much fun and it was such a great night.

[00:55:24] Brett: It was such a great trip. And on that trip, I went to this place called Awamni. And if you’re in Minneapolis for any reason, get a reservation and go to Awamni. It’s not expensive. Um, it’s, uh, uh, it’s native. Uh, Cuisine. So, it’s run by Native peoples, like First Nation peoples, and, um, and they only serve, they only use ingredients that are native to the area.

[00:55:55] Brett: So, there’s no beef, there’s no wheat. Uh, it’s basically a [00:56:00] gluten free menu. Um, the meat they serve is like bison and duck. Uh, and, uh, Elk maybe? Um, I don’t eat meat, so I just had a mushroom taco on a corn tortilla that blew my fucking mind. Like, I cr I was crying at the table. I had a corn, uh, taco, and a mushroom taco, and it, like I, and a, a stout beer, and I got out of there for like a total of 40, and I’m sitting at the table, I went by myself, I couldn’t find anyone to have dinner with, so I went by myself, I’m alone at a table, tearing up, because I am so blown away, it was so, like, I was thinking lately, um, about happiness, about am I happy, and I feel like everyone does this, but Pretty regularly, but I was like, when am I happiest?

[00:56:59] Brett: And [00:57:00] it’s always around food. I think, I think I might be a foodie because like this, this meal was just pure joy for me. And I swear, I, I have no hesitation saying anyone living or visiting Minneapolis really needs to go to a Omni. It’s so good.

[00:57:22] Christina: Okay. Well, I, I, I put that on the list if I ever, um, go to Minneapolis. Um, but that’s really, really great to know. And also, um, uh, I’m glad that you were able to see Erin’s band and, uh, or Erin, you know, and her backing band, um, and, and see her, her rock so hard. Um, I sent, Sent, we were talking about, about drums I sent you, um, in our group chat, um, uh, videos.

[00:57:46] Christina: But I, I hope both you and Jeff could watch, so we can talk about them in future, uh, episodes. For whatever reason, the YouTube algorithm served me this thing, which was mega death, uh, drummer playing. Uh, I’ve never heard Mr. [00:58:00] Brightside playing that for the same time. And, and, um, and, and is this guy, Dirk? He’s, he’s young, right?

[00:58:06] Christina: So he like, he’s like one of the, the current mega death drummers. He’s not like going way back and whatnot, but he’s very, very good. And he somehow never heard Mr. Brightside. I don’t know how, but never heard that. He

[00:58:17] Brett: great song. Great

[00:58:19] Christina: amazing song, right? And it’s weird because he’s like, he’s like, I think he might even be younger than me.

[00:58:23] Christina: I don’t even know. So like, I don’t know how he missed Mr. Brightside. The song, but he did, he missed it. Um, he’d also never heard, um, um, uh, Paramore, um, uh, Misery Business. And, um, they did a follow up with, with, with him on that, but, uh, this, I guess this drum, you know, online service or whatever, like they have a really good YouTube channel and I don’t know anything about drumming and whatnot, but the, basically how, what they do is they, they play.

[00:58:47] Christina: People like a song they’ve never heard for the first time, but the song, the version that he hears doesn’t have the drum parts in it. All of that has been silenced. So he has to come up on the spot, like, okay, how would I play the drums in this? So he’s writing out, as [00:59:00] he’s listening to the song, he’s writing out like the song structure.

[00:59:02] Christina: And then he can take as much time as he wants. And he’s a pro. So he usually like a real pro, like he, you know, we’ll usually just like jump in like after he’s heard it once and like, you know, put in the drums as, as. He kind of wrote out and then we’ll listen to the final version and it was really, really interesting to see like what he did, um, on, on both of those songs.

[00:59:23] Christina: Um, and, uh, like just as somebody who is not a musician in that way, um, has never played the drums and wouldn’t be able to do that, like, but just watching, like his whole process, freaking Awesome. Like, incredibly cool. Like, incredibly cool. Like, I have to give, like, this, this Dromeo company or whatever, like, kudos.

[00:59:42] Christina: Like, they figured out a really good genres of content for people and they probably do a good job pushing people to using, you know, their, their services or whatever it is that they’re, you know, trying to, trying to, like, shill for. But, um, uh, really cool concept. So, um, I think, I think that you’ll, um, [01:00:00] You’ll like that.

[01:00:01] Brett: I’m looking forward to that. Uh, what was, oh, the other thing I wanted to talk about was, so I’m giving a talk at Backstock.

[01:00:09] The Future of iThoughts

[01:00:09] Brett: Uh, sign up using code ttscoff if you haven’t gotten tickets yet. Um, I’m I wrote my, as I always do, I wrote my whole presentation in a mind map, um, which is just, it’s how I think, it’s how I organize, and I wrote it in iThoughts, which is now discontinued, and that’s very sad, but I think it’ll work for a few years.

[01:00:33] Brett: One of the features it has is Presentation Mode, and you can select nodes, in the map and add a slide for that node. And you can like, you can create, um, basically, builds, like one step at a time, like selecting each node off of a parent and like creating a slide for it. And [01:01:00] then when you go into presentation mode, you go full screen, you dim all non focused.

[01:01:06] Brett: Um, Nodes, and then it like pans around the map and like zooms in on whatever you saved as a slide. And, It is, it’s way cooler than what I would have built in like Keynote. Um, with the right, uh, style for your map, which I have heavily customized, it is just amazing presentation software. Um, if, if you think in mind maps and you just want to go straight from mind map to presentation, uh, I thought can export into, um, PowerPoint format.

[01:01:45] Brett: But it, it kind of sucks at it, um, it doesn’t make anything beautiful or usable out of it. Um, but this presentation mode, uh, slides focusing on specific nodes, so good, [01:02:00] and no other MindMap software that I know of can do this. And I sent an email to Craig yesterday, um, asking if he had considered handing off the code base to anyone else.

[01:02:19] Brett: And I volunteered. To,

[01:02:22] Christina: take it

[01:02:23] Brett: to keep, to take. Yeah. Um, uh, Luke from Hook, mark asked me if I wanted to take over, uh, hook, hook mark, um, as he wanted to retire, and I gave that a lot of thought and decided it wasn’t. Uh, it’s a great app and I use it all the time, but I didn’t want to be responsible for the customer support on something that most people find very confusing.

[01:02:54] Brett: Um, so, so I, I kind of passed on that, but I [01:03:00] thoughts. Dude, if you, if I could be like, I’m Brett Terpstra, I develop Marked, Envy Ultra, and iThoughts. If that came, if all of those came to fruition, I would, I would, I would, I would be a developer to contend with. But anywho, that was, that was a long spiel about iThoughts.

[01:03:20] Brett: I’m sorry. Um,

[01:03:22] Christina: No, I think that’s great. And I mean, honestly, like, if there’s a way, like, I don’t know how much it would cost for you to like, take it on. Like, I don’t know what, you know, like both to, you know, take it onward and also like, what would the cost would be, you know, to, you know, maintain it and all that stuff.

[01:03:38] Christina: But that, that, that could be really cool.

[01:03:43] Brett: I don’t, I don’t know what his current income off it is. It’s probably not selling a lot direct, but like transferring it to a subscription model, you would lose customers.

[01:03:58] Christina: But I mean,

[01:03:59] Brett: would [01:04:00] also get recurring income. And I, I offered him like percentage of future income, uh, uh, versus like buying the code base off him.

[01:04:11] Brett: Um, I don’t have the liquid cash to buy what I think it’s worth. Anyhow, we’ll see what he says. I have no idea. Um, it would be, it would be cool. It would be fun. Do you remember tags? The app?

[01:04:24] Christina: I do remember tags. I loved tags, as I recall.

[01:04:28] Brett: I did inherit that app. Uh, at the time it was right when, um, Apple basically, uh, Sherlocked Open Meta

[01:04:39] Christina: Yeah.

[01:04:40] Brett: and, and made Finder Tags a thing.

[01:04:44] Brett: And the developers of Tags wanted Tags to work with, uh, Apple’s implementation of K, KM user tags, whatever, which was an easy fix. Like, [01:05:00] they gave me the codebase, like, for free, and, um, I was supposed to keep it alive, but at the same time there was an OS upgrade that broke all of the Quartz graphic, uh, uh, API that they were using. Not like rewriting it from, from using open meta tags to finder tags. That’s like a 15 minute job. No problem. Rewriting all of the GUI that, that got real sticky for me. And it kind of, the app died in my hands. Like I watched like a heart slowly beating to death in my hands and I felt pretty bad about that.

[01:05:50] Brett: Um, yeah, back to mental health corner, back to things I feel guilty and sad about.

[01:05:58] Christina: Well, I mean, you did your best. I mean, that’s the thing is, [01:06:00] is that it’s, you know, you, okay. One thing was an easy fix, right? Okay. To get it, get it compatible with this new tagging system that, you know, was, was also kind of obsoleting aspects of the app. But then the other thing is that if there’s this, you know, significant OS update, that’s going to require a bunch of other things going on.

[01:06:17] Christina: And like, sometimes that’s That’s not what you signed up for, right? Like, you’re like, okay, I can inherit this and do this one thing and I can have the best intentions. But, you know, you didn’t sign up to do a full app rewrite and

[01:06:30] Brett: didn’t. I really didn’t. Um, it would be cool to try to revive it, but I, I really just want to get Envy Ultra out the door, and I had a Zoom with Fletcher yesterday, and we actually, the thing that’s been holding us up has been, uh, some store kit issues. Um, there have been like, Minor bugs that we fixed in, well, Fletcher has fixed in the [01:07:00] app itself.

[01:07:01] Brett: But the biggest thing was we just, we couldn’t get it to work, uh, with the subscription model on the app store. Uh, and we’re still on StorKit V1 because we want to be compatible back to pre OS 13. Operating systems. Um, that’s important to Fletcher, less important to me. Uh, but I mean, Fletcher runs old enough hardware that up until like last week when he finally got a new MacBook, like he, he couldn’t even test on the latest version of Xcode, um, cause his machines were so outdated.

[01:07:38] Brett: So it’s important to him to support older operating systems because I think he projects. His unwillingness to upgrade his hardware onto the general Mac community. Whereas like I get the analytics and

[01:07:53] Christina: you’re able to see X number of people are already

[01:07:56] Brett: OS 12, OS 12 is 1%. [01:08:00] Of my user base for Mark. Like it just isn’t like, it’s not worth supporting.

[01:08:05] Brett: Um, and, and so I don’t, I support two operating systems in the rear view mirror, um, and then anything before that, sorry, no longer compatible. I provide older versions for them,

[01:08:18] Christina: No, totally. Which, which, which is great. And, but, but it, but it’s hard and it’s, it’s great to do that. Like when you have an existing product that says, Hey, I’ll, I’ll provide an older version, not gonna get buck 'cause it’s not gonna get the latest updates, but you can still use this version of Mark back to whatever.

[01:08:32] Christina: It’s harder when, I guess when you have a net new thing coming out and you’re, you’re looking at, okay, well how far back do we wanna go versus, you know, what do we not wanna do? Like, I, I like, you know, um. A number of apps, I mean, not, not, not, not a ton of them have made this decision, but an increasing number of apps are even making the decision, like, we’re not going to compile for Intel, right?

[01:08:54] Christina: Like, even if we’re not using anything that would Make the, even if there’s nothing [01:09:00] about this app that

[01:09:01] Brett: that’s, that would be ARM specific.

[01:09:03] Christina: right, right. We’re just not going to bother with it because the latest, you know, APIs and other things, it’s not worth it. And it’s just, you know, an additional maintenance challenge. Right. And so I could see like, if I were building like a brand new app today, um, depending on who my target audience was, I might just be like, fuck it.

[01:09:20] Christina: I’m not bothering with Intel. Um, I think for an app like, um, Um, uh, you know, Envy Ultra, I don’t think that’s, uh, something you can do, right? Because a lot of, a lot of your core base are going to be people who are going to still have older machines. Um, but how far back you want to go also, you know, is, is, is an open question.

[01:09:41] Brett: I mean, we, we started NB Ultra so many years ago that it’s still in Objective C. So trying to incorporate, uh, new Swift libraries into it takes, it takes some extra work. Um, it is, um, It, the code [01:10:00] base is already outdated is what I’m saying. Um, so we have, we have, we have plans for a rewrite for a V2, um, but we are selling on subscription, which means we don’t have to go through the whole rigmarole of releasing a new version and demanding upgrade pricing and everything.

[01:10:18] Brett: Um, yeah, so anyhow, anyhow, anyhow. Okay. That was a fun, I am talking so much.

[01:10:26] Grapptitude: iTerm2 and Home Assistant

[01:10:26] Brett: Let’s do Graptitude and let, let’s you start.

[01:10:29] Christina: Sure. Okay. So, my Graptitude this week is iTerm2, um, which is, uh, an app I’m sure we’ve mentioned on previous Graptitudes, but this is one that, despite the fact that this has been my, you know, uh, basically default, like, terminal emulator for, I don’t even know how long, right? Like, I, I don’t even know. I have it in my dock on all of my machines.

[01:10:51] Christina: It is one of the very first things I install on any new Mac. There’s nothing wrong with Terminal. app at all, but like iTerm2 is just fucking better.

[01:10:59] Brett: and [01:11:00] Warp. Warp is a good app, but it’s really just trying to keep up with iTerm.

[01:11:06] Christina: Yeah.

[01:11:07] Brett: And iTerm is free.

[01:11:10] Christina: iTerm is free in every sense of the word, right? Like it’s actually, um, Like, completely open source, like, I think, like, uh, GPL, like, V3, I think, even, like, and it’s

[01:11:21] Brett: vibrant, with a vibrant community around it.

[01:11:25] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is actually kind of one of the reasons that I, that I wanted to, to, uh, bring it up. So, um, about a month ago, um, uh, I turned to introduce like a pretty big update, um, that had been in the works for, like, Some of the features have been in the works for years, but basically version 3. 5 came out and the one of the, I guess, kind of main, like, kind of like headline features was the fact that as an option, there was a new AI feature that was not enabled by default.

[01:11:52] Christina: That if you wanted to go into your settings, you could add in, um, an open AI key, yeah, an open AI API key. And you could [01:12:00] basically, um, use, um, uh, Basically, like, kind of have kind of like a way to chat with your terminals. So, to bring in some features that are very similar, um, to some of the things that, um, you can do with, with Warp

[01:12:12] Christina: so, so like there’s, there’s a fig which basically had like, you know, kind of like a, you know, generative AI kind of terminal, you know, Uh, you know, um, uh, command line thing.

[01:12:21] Christina: There, there’s warp there. Like a lot of these tools that are adding these things in, um, so that, uh, the GitHub CLI, um, uh, has a, has a co pilot component. Um, it, it built into that now, um, that started out as a different extension. So you can basically use natural language in your terminal and, and get really good things back.

[01:12:38] Christina: And this is a useful, uh, like case for, uh, for generative AI because like, Terminal man pages are really, really great with this. Like, like, I don’t have to think about like what, how, what’s the process of writing an FFmpeg script to do this or to do something else or use ImageMagick. Like, there are a lot of services that are really great just to be able to talk to your, um, [01:13:00] terminal about that.

[01:13:00] Christina: And, um, so iTerm2 introduced this feature. I thought they did it in a pretty great way. It was certainly not installed by default and, and, you know, nothing was, was at risk. Um, Some very vocal members of the community, who I don’t even know how much these people actually used the application, to be honest, looking at some of the things, lost their shit.

[01:13:22] Christina: Like, when, like, I, I, I get it. Maybe you don’t like AI stuff. Fine. That’s, that, that’s fine. Keep in mind, this is free software in every sense of the word. It is both open source and it is actually free as in gratis. That, you know, the, the, this guy who’s built this app that so many of us rely on, like.

[01:13:36] Christina: Doesn’t, like, make direct money off of, um, you know, basically, you know, gets support contracts, or, you know, it’s from people like Brett and myself who are, uh, now donating, um, to, uh, to the cause. But people lost their fucking shit and were really gross and were saying, like, really negative things about the dev.

[01:13:56] Christina: And, and it was ridiculous. And, and he was like, look, These [01:14:00] issues have been here, like I’ve been working on some of these features for like over two years, like this isn’t, wasn’t hidden from anybody, like You know, people were going to these ridiculous like links to the agreements. Oh, you’re in the inshittification of everything I’m like, you don’t even fucking know what the word means Like I get that everybody wants to say that everything’s been inshittified and I’m like, this is not an example of that, right?

[01:14:19] Christina: Like Cory Dockrow would not agree with that. It’s really not. Um,

[01:14:23] Brett: Or, or, uh, what’s his name with the Rot Economy? Uh, Edzeetron. Like, this does not apply. None of this applies.

[01:14:30] Christina: not, not even remotely. Um, so what, what the developer did because of the backlash came forward and was like, fine, I’ll rip the feature out. I will release it as a separate plugin that you can install and enable. And once you have it installed and you put in your open AI, you know, API key, um, then you can, you know, put in kind of your prompt and, and you can, you know, choose your model and, and that’s fine.

[01:14:53] Christina: Um, I actually think the feature is pretty cool. And it’s, it’s one of those things where you can write in natural language, but you can also kind [01:15:00] of have a preview of like what things would look like if you wanted your terminal to do it, um, you know, for you, which obviously most people aren’t going to trust, but it’s, you know, it’ll show you what needs to happen and, and you can talk in like natural language through a chat menu, like with, with your terminal, which I think is pretty fucking cool.

[01:15:19] Christina: Um, but even, even without the AI stuff, um, I just, uh, what, what that whole drama kind of, um, highlighted for me, I was like, Oh, I get a tremendous amount of value from this app and I don’t pay for it. So I do now. I’m, I’m one of his GitHub sponsors. Um, and so I’m, I’m in the, the credits, um, of the app when you go to, you know, the about page.

[01:15:45] Christina: Um, and, uh,

[01:15:46] Brett: You can see both Christina and my name and a small screenshot of the, of the about page. I, I can’t believe there are only enough sponsors that can fit on an about[01:16:00]

[01:16:00] Christina: I agree.

[01:16:01] Brett: Like so many, so many more people. Yeah. So many more people should be paying for this. Um, have you seen what Warp did with AI? I’m going to drop a link.

[01:16:11] Brett: Um, it like, It’s, it’s very similar, but it’s literally on the command line. It will recognize whether you’re typing a command or you’re typing in natural language. And you can just at the command line, ask it. You know, I want to see a Git log sorted in this way with these, um, these fields, and it will write the prompt for you, or yeah, it’ll write the command for you.

[01:16:40] Brett: And it’s, I think it’s really well done, but I do appreciate, um, the kind of chat dialogue version that, that iTerm has, where you can kind of, and you can, if it gives you a command, like you said, you have the option to insert it directly into your terminal. Or you have the option to edit [01:17:00] it in place, and yeah.

[01:17:02] Brett: Anyhow, good choice, good pick.

[01:17:06] Christina: hmm It’s a great app and honestly like I’m giving a 10 a month like kind of recurring donation right now But and and I don’t know how long I’ll continue to do that But like I figure I do at least for a while because I’ve gotten tons of value of this app, you know for free over However long I’ve been using it

[01:17:24] Brett: 10 bucks for about a year now. So I’ve, I’ve, I’ve donated over a hundred dollars to this term. I mean, it’s where I live.

[01:17:34] Christina: Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to say, I increasingly do, and like, this is, like, I know that there’s some terminal apps, like Alacrity is apparently like a little bit faster at certain things, and Kiting and other things, and like, that’s great, but like, iTerm2 is like a fucking great Mac app, and it is, like, I think like, is the gold standard that everybody else holds themselves to.

[01:17:51] Brett: well, everyone, like I said, everyone’s just trying to catch up. It’s like I term the, every version that comes out [01:18:00] new features that everyone else is eventually going to try to copy.

[01:18:04] Christina: Totally, totally. They have it first. And I mean, um, I will say, um, I feel like this is okay to share, um, because it’s been several years. Well, it’s been a number of years, probably five years now since this has been the case. But, you know, Windows Terminal, which is one of my favorite apps on Windows, um, for a lot of reasons.

[01:18:22] Christina: I love the people who work on that and it’s open source and it’s one of my favorite projects from people at Microsoft. But I talked to that team when Windows Terminal launched and like they told me very clearly their kind of bellwether of like what they want to, you know, achieve was iTerm2.

[01:18:37] Christina: And that to me, like that’s how, that’s why I knew I was like, okay, this is why this is like, these are cool ass people. And like, why this is a project to pay attention to, because if that’s what they’re looking at, you know, it’s going to get as inspiration. Like to me, that’s That’s the right way to do it, right?

[01:18:53] Christina: Like, you know, like maybe have more, be like, okay, the people who are going to be building this thing are, are people who will [01:19:00] understand why, you know, a well designed terminal is important. So yeah. Um,

[01:19:05] Brett: I’m sure you’ve noticed this. Have you seen that you can focus the output of any command just by clicking it with the mouse?

[01:19:13] Christina: Yes.

[01:19:14] Brett: Like it used to be, you could hit command, shift A and select the full output output of the last command. Now you can scroll through your unlimited history, click any output, and it will focus it and, and like dim everything else and you can copy and re and reproduce commands and edit previous commands.

[01:19:35] Brett: It’s so good. Anyhow, yes, I term, I term two, which is on version 3.

[01:19:41] Christina: Yes, exactly.

[01:19:43] Brett: I term two 3. 5. Um, my pick is, and I’ve been a home assistant. Like I want to talk about home assistant. Um, I’ve been using Indigo for Years, a decade, um, to work with all of my [01:20:00] Insteon and ZigBee and Z Wave devices. Um, and, and I, I like Insta, uh, I like Indigo.

[01:20:07] Brett: Um, the web interface and the Python interface are pretty fantastic, but. I wanted to integrate better with things like Hue, um, and, and all of the other more Apple focused devices I have around my house that Indigo can’t. Uh, like my Govee lighting, um, which is You know, you can use it with Alexa, but there’s no way you’re going to get it to work with the Home app.

[01:20:37] Brett: Um, so I’ve been meaning to install Home Assistant. I, I was going to do it on Raspberry Pi that I still haven’t even unpacked. And then I noticed that there was a Synology package. For Home Assistant Core. And so I installed that and the setup was so good. Uh, it detected all of the devices on my [01:21:00] network and I could just click it.

[01:21:02] Brett: Uh, added a few options for each kind of device, assign it to a room. It’s Apple TV setup was fantastic. And

[01:21:10] Christina: Home Assistant’s

[01:21:11] Brett: can control, control my Apple TV through home control. Um, I’m very impressed with it as a free project. Again, I feel like we’re on an open source kick today, but Home Assistant, I don’t know if it’s full OSS, uh, but it is, it is free and it’s, it’s pretty fucking good.

[01:21:33] Christina: And they’ve got a really, really, really vibrant community. Um, they have like, almost 70, 000 stars on GitHub, and they’re very active, um, with a lot of, with lots of people. Um, uh, we, um, they’re, they’re part of our maintainer program, and they’ve been, you know, part of, um, some of the, you know, various events and things that we’ve had.

[01:21:51] Christina: So I’ve been able to interact with some members of their core team over the years, and they’re really, really great. Like, I, I think that just what, what Home [01:22:00] Assistant is doing, you know, um, is fantastic because it’s making it easy for all of these different things to work together. Um, like, these standards that we claim, you know, that for the better, for more than a decade at this point, like we’ve been promised like, oh, this stuff will make sense.

[01:22:16] Christina: And, and they’re now like matter has been supposed to be the savior, you know, for the last few years. But like the matter support is, is garbage and, and getting things to work across different things is kind of annoying. And like, yeah, there’ve been things like Homebridge and other stuff, which is, which is great.

[01:22:32] Christina: But no, but like Home Assistant is

[01:22:33] Brett: Great, great, but flaky

[01:22:35] Christina: but very flaky, to be

[01:22:37] Brett: And I had such high hopes for Matter, and they’re not panning out, and yeah.

[01:22:42] Christina: Totally. Uh, but I don’t even fuck with it. Like for my limited, um, smart home stuff in it, I don’t have a ton of it, but the stuff that I do have, I’ve been using similar to you, like Home Assistant running on a Synology package. Um, but then also just knowing that like, you can like run them on basically any type of [01:23:00] device that’s out there.

[01:23:01] Christina: Um, and, and the community is really, really good.

[01:23:05] Brett: All right. That was a fun Graptitude.

[01:23:08] Christina: it was.

[01:23:09] Brett: I wonder what Jeff would have picked. Um, anyhow, we’re at, we’re at almost an hour thirty, minus edits. Um, Christina, it’s been a lot of fun.

[01:23:22] Christina: It’s been a great time, Brett. Get some sleep.

[01:23:24] Brett: Get some sleep.