Give Yourself a Five

[00:00:00] Welcome and Introductions

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Brett: Hey, welcome to Overtired. Yes, that’s two weeks in a row consecutively. Um, this is Brett Terpstra. I am here with Jeff Severns Guntzel. Christina is out, but in her stead, we have the fabulous Jay Miller. Uh, you can find him at kjaymiller. com. How’s it going, Jay?

[00:00:19] Jeff: It’s good. It’s good. Glad to be back.

[00:00:22] Jay: Hi, Jay.

[00:00:24] Brett: So,

[00:00:25] Jay: I feel like this is four in a row.

[00:00:27] Brett: is it really?

[00:00:28] Jay: I think so.

[00:00:29] Jeff: There’s been a lot. I’ve been excited. I’ve been listening.

[00:00:32] Merlin Episodes and Podcasting Dreams

[00:00:32] Brett: Thanks to, thanks to Jeff and his fill in Merlin episodes, I

[00:00:36] Jay: Yeah, you get who you can.

[00:00:38] Jeff: The Merlin sodes have been, have been good.

[00:00:42] Jay: That was a, that was a blast talking to Merlin. It was really, really lovely.

[00:00:45] Brett: Merlin told us that he would come on anytime, uh, if we could stand him. Um, so yeah, we, there will be more Merlin episodes. Look

[00:00:57] Jay: The funny thing about talking to Merlin [00:01:00] one on one is that I’ve been listening. I mean, probably like all of us, maybe listening to Merlin’s podcasts for like 12 years. Um, and there aren’t many other podcasts that I listen to regularly. I would say I listened to one of his podcasts every week. I don’t usually listen to all of them.

[00:01:14] Jay: And I used to have this dream that I was on some podcast I loved or another, and I just really, really messed it up. And it was just, I’d wake up feeling like such a failure. And the first time Merlin got on, I was like, Oh, this is that dream where I’m like talking to someone that I’ve only really known through podcasts.

[00:01:32] Jay: And it’s got to work. Anyway, it was really nice. It was delightful.

[00:01:35] Brett: Someone, someone said, uh, I like it when you have Merlin on because unlike his other podcasts, he hasn’t gotten comfortable enough to just descend into grievances.

[00:01:49] Jay: That’s funny.

[00:01:50] Mental Health Corner: Jay’s Work Challenges

[00:01:50] Brett: All right, should we, uh, should we kick it off with the Mental Health Corner, our longest running, um, uh, segment?

[00:01:58] Jay: Yes,

[00:01:59] Jeff: Yeah.[00:02:00]

[00:02:00] Brett: Uh, Jay, would you like to go first?

[00:02:02] Jeff: I always feel like when I lead it, it’s the worst. I’m always super long and I guess me muting things as,

[00:02:11] Jay: the guest.

[00:02:12] Jeff: okay, that’s fine. I’ll own it. So, yeah, work has been interesting, uh, as I put in a blog post recently, I have survived yet another layoff, um, that’s the,

[00:02:26] Brett: missed that.

[00:02:27] Jeff: yeah, that’s the second one at this company, and I’ve only been here since February, which is great, um, the third re org, which is, you know, company’s gonna company, I

[00:02:39] Brett: In how long?

[00:02:40] Jeff: since February.

[00:02:41] Brett: Since February. Third reorg since February. That’s even worse than mine.

[00:02:45] Jeff: our entire original department is gone. Our company has no more marketing department.

[00:02:51] Brett: Yeah, that does sound like Oracle.

[00:02:54] Jeff: they’re like, we just don’t need this anymore. Um, but what’s funny is I was, [00:03:00] I, I’m not a movie person, so I don’t have like a great reference other than like Suicide Squad. I, I kind of got called into this Suicide Squad of a team that was like, hey, You have a special set of skills and we’re going to do a thing and we’re not going to let half the company know what we’re doing except for we’re only going to give them snippets of what’s happening behind the scenes.

[00:03:29] Jeff: Um, and you’re responsible for giving those snippets because that’s your superpower here. Um, so do you want to be loved by this team of like 10 people and hated by the other 180 people on in the company? because you’re just not doing the things that we normally do.

[00:03:45] Jay: 10 people are. Yeah.

[00:03:49] Jeff: very senior staff level engineers, architects, like this is, this is all good.

[00:03:54] Jeff: And that’s why I feel like the, the analogy is breaking down a little bit, but I got, I got [00:04:00] asked to be on a special team at work. The team is doing some like not so top secret, secret stuff, but what’s interesting about it is my role on the team is part. API designer, part like project manager, part developer advocate.

[00:04:24] Jeff: So there’s, there’s a lot going on, but it very much reemphasized some of the things that I’ve been working on in a recent blog post, um, or series of blog posts, which are like, what are the valuable skills that engineering. teams or development teams actually need that aren’t coding because I’ve seen a lot of code.

[00:04:52] Jeff: I’ve seen a lot of production level code. They’re not hiring people for their coding skills. That’s obvious. Um, code is bad. [00:05:00] Um, and no matter how big or small the company is, the code just gets bad over time. Um, bad decisions are made for good reasons. Bad decisions are made for bad reasons. The code sucks, so there has to be something else.

[00:05:13] Jeff: And I’m, I’m slowly learning just from people who have worked at companies like Google, who’ve been architects for Google, architects for Microsoft, Shopify, like some of these bigger companies that have seen a lot of success and are doing things differently. Just like picking their brain and really learning a lot, but also having them see The value in good production, like I have to do a weekly demo to the rest of the company of what we’ve been working on every single week.

[00:05:47] Jeff: And often it’s like, Hey, here’s some infrastructure stuff that Jay’s never had to touch before. And then also here’s Jay giving the demo of how to use this. And the resounding response [00:06:00] is like, Jay, your demos are the thing that everyone looks forward to now on the call because all the other ones are like watching bread turn into toast out in the sun.

[00:06:14] Jeff: It’s, it’s just, it’s grueling. So it’s, it’s great to, to be loved and to be like wanted by a team of people who are very, very experienced and often have to re explain things to me because I have no clue what they’re talking about, but then also. Because of this shakeup at work, there’s kind of been this rift in that our current team is under new management.

[00:06:40] Jeff: That new management wants me to stick around because kind of the hope is if this team is successful, then it becomes a new department, and then the people who are there just kind of stay there. So old company wants me, or old team wants me around, new team wants me around. A third team that is like Hey, you probably should actually be over here anyway, because that’s what makes [00:07:00] like logical sense.

[00:07:01] Jeff: We also want you around. And everyone is throwing out like, do you want money? Do you want management? Do you like what do you want? So it’s, you know, safe to say like, aside from feeling kind of overworked and a little stressed out, which is just I feel like a normal thing. I I’m feeling very much wanted and having, having a little bit of survivorship bias, having, you know, these conversations where people are like, you know, what can we do to keep you happy with, you know, the team that you’re on and with the projects that you’re on.

[00:07:40] Jeff: And that’s been really, really blinding of the fact that I just lost. Another half of my existing team and some of the people I worked closest with due to these, this last layoff round. So it’s like, Hey, rose colored glasses, going to put those on [00:08:00] and ignore like the atomic bomb that just went off in our company that mostly impacted my areas.

[00:08:08] Jeff: But also, Hey, this sunset’s looking really nice right now. Um, so yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at.

[00:08:16] Brett: So when I first started at Oracle, they wanted me and, and they gave me a good salary and they gave me a bonus my first year and a raise. And then we went through multiple reorgs and I feel completely unwanted now. Um, I got no raise this year. I got no bonus. I got nothing. Um, and that feels like punishment.

[00:08:40] Brett: Uh, you know, when, you know, inflation is going up and your, your salary isn’t going up, um, that’s basically a pay cut. I’m really jealous that you feel that you literally are that wanted. Um, I wish, I wish.

[00:08:56] Jeff: I think the downside to that though is none of these like only one of them [00:09:00] was like, maybe it comes with a pay increase. And that’s just because to level out, again, you’ve got like, like staff level architects from Google coming in making that kind of money, we kind of have to balance things. But everyone else like, Everyone else is like, hey, we just laid off a bunch of people because we’ve got to save money.

[00:09:20] Jeff: So I’m, I’m also kind of in the camp of like, I feel like as much as they want to promise me more money come time for like, hey, let’s do a review and let’s talk about compensation. That’s going to get left out somehow.

[00:09:32] Brett: Yeah, yeah, and that sucks, um, all this saving money when your stock is doing fine shit. Yeah.

[00:09:40] Jay: oh yeah, there’s this spectrum that’s starting to sort of emerge in my mind and I want you to help me fill it out. So there’s what you’re talking about, which is you survived the layoff. You have a blog post about this too, which I’ll put in the, um, in the show notes, or I put in there. Uh, you survived the layoff and you feel wanted, right?

[00:09:58] Jay: On the other end is you’ve been [00:10:00] laid off and you feel totally unwanted. Another one is you’re Brett and you’re there, you’ve survived layoffs, but you also feel unwanted. What is the one between Brett and you, Jay? Like, is it just, I feel wanted and. But I may die any day?

[00:10:15] Jeff: My team is designated for future layoffs. That’s, that’s like the space in between where things are great. Everybody’s gelling and there hasn’t been a layoff in six months. So, You’re, you’re like, hey, this is good while everybody braces for impact. I talked about this in that blog post of that like being a military veteran and being someone who’s been diagnosed with PTSD like I can, I can honestly say that dealing with layoffs at Elastic, followed by layoffs at Microsoft, followed by two rounds of layoffs at Ivan, like, and, and they don’t, they don’t want to call them layoffs, they want to call them restructuring, but like restructuring comes with like, if [00:11:00] more than three people got laid off at the same time from different departments and I feel like it could be justified as a layoff, um, you know, for the same reason, When those things happen, there’s no good way to do it.

[00:11:14] Jeff: And that’s the problem is that like, in Microsoft’s case, hey, we’re gonna lay off 10, 000 people while also announcing that we’ve had record sales, you know, record revenue generated.

[00:11:27] Brett: The, the in between is that, um, that 1950s, 60s, uh, mentality that no longer exists where you get a good job, you do your job, you, you do everything that’s asked of you, and every year, um. You get an incremental raise and a Christmas bonus and, um, and you’re not worried about layoffs because you’re doing your job.

[00:11:53] Brett: You’re good at your job. And now, like, the reason they gave me for not getting a bonus was I only [00:12:00] scored, um, uh, Uh, there’s like five, it’s like a one to five rating in your review, and a three means adequately performs all duties. And when I started, they told me just always get a three and you’ll get what you need.

[00:12:16] Brett: And like, if you put a five down for anything, then like management gets like uneasy that you’re looking for a promotion or whatever. And the reason they gave me for not

[00:12:26] Jay: I don’t know about this guy.

[00:12:28] Brett: The reason they gave me for not getting a bonus was I only had a three on my review and I like, it’s a self review too.

[00:12:36] Brett: So I just gave myself threes and everything. Cause

[00:12:38] Jay: And it’s a self review. That is capitalism, right? Like

[00:12:42] Jeff: you’ve denied yourself a raise.

[00:12:44] Jay: Yeah,

[00:12:45] Brett: a, it’s a self review that your manager can argue with if he feels that you overranked yourself and rarely will they, uh, up your score for you.

[00:12:54] Jeff: It’s weird in that like Microsoft was the same way except for basically we were told hey don’t [00:13:00] screw over like it was a peer review, so the ruling was you never screw over one of your

[00:13:06] Brett: Sure. Why would

[00:13:07] Jeff: put in the good stuff, you never put in any bad stuff, so there’s no growth whatsoever, there’s no like personal development, but then also at the same time, They’re like, hey, we know that you’re lying.

[00:13:20] Jeff: So therefore we’re going to just throw out this. And it’s like, it’s not even lying. It’s just like, if, if I’m having to basically re interview for my job every six months. give you all the good stuff and turn all the bad stuff into more good stuff, then like I truly am not developing as a human being and our company has a bunch of robots and then that’s when I get bored and I bounce.

[00:13:44] Brett: Well, it’s, it’s bullshit. Like you should, your manager should do your rating and they should be on your side. And, um, this whole, this whole system, you’re right, it does not inspire personal growth. Um, [00:14:00] I will say like not getting any compensation, uh, it feels like they thought that would inspire me to work harder, but it, it absolutely does not.

[00:14:12] Jeff: Yeah, it will make me work harder on everything other than my job.

[00:14:18] Brett: Yeah, exactly. It makes me work harder at looking for a new job.

[00:14:22] Jay: Or it makes you dig into a passion project or something, right? Like, it’s just like, okay, fine. I’m going to go where I, I already know how to feel, uh, satisfied and valuable, but you’re just not the framework in which I could do that.

[00:14:34] Brett: All right. So Jay, does that sum up your mental health corner?

[00:14:38] Jeff: Yeah, no, that’s it for me.

[00:14:40] Brett: All right.

[00:14:40] Mental Health Corner: Brett’s Health Journey

[00:14:40] Brett: Mine is actually not work related. I do actually want to talk about what’s happening at my job in brief later on. But the weird thing for me right now is I feel like I have Both ADHD and bipolar, like under control. Like I’ve got, I’ve got [00:15:00] focus.

[00:15:00] Brett: I’ve got like, uh, when I’m sleeping anyway, like I’ve got, uh, just like steady mood, um, motivation and like, it’s weird. It’s weird to be like both bipolar stable and ADHD attentive at the same time. Um, I have had. Sleep issues ongoing, like this has been going on for months and I’ve talked about it, um, and I tried, I started having lightheadedness, uh, like persistent, not just when I stood up, just like constant lightheadedness that was on the verge of like euphoria, um, like it felt really good, but also made it unsafe to drive, so I figured I should do something about it.

[00:15:48] Brett: Um, so we tried the, the only reason they could come up with was it must be caused by the gabapentin. So I tried to get off the gabapentin, which gabapentin [00:16:00] also acts as an anti anxiety medication. And I went cold turkey off it and had the worst day of anxiety I have ever had. I was absolutely certain I was going to lose my job.

[00:16:11] Brett: I was absolutely certain that everybody hated me. It was a real rough day. Um, so, so I kind of went back on the gabapentin and tapered myself off and tried this drug called DayVigo, which is supposed to help with sleep, but as has been my experience with every other sleep medication, I got no sleep. Um, it did nothing.

[00:16:36] Brett: So I’m currently back on the gabapentin. I am not anxious, and today I am not lightheaded, and I am not convinced that the gabapentin is a problem, which means I have to go in for like pulmonary and brain scans, um, to try to explain the lightheadedness if it comes back. Because, uh, yeah. So I’m, I’m, I’m filling out [00:17:00] forms to try functional medicine.

[00:17:01] Brett: Are you guys familiar with those?

[00:17:04] Jay: I don’t know. Explain.

[00:17:05] Brett: It’s like a cross between western medicine and a more holistic, um, kind of, uh, what’s the word? When they give you a bunch of supplements and recommend electromagnetic therapy.

[00:17:22] Jeff: I was meds, crush them up, dip like acupuncture needles in them and then like, Do that or

[00:17:31] Brett: so, yeah, I, I don’t know yet, um, I wasn’t impressed with the, like, consultation phone call I had, but I’ve got, like, GI issues, I’ve got bipolar and ADHD, and I’ve got, um, sleep issues, and I have specialists for each one of these, but none of the specialists agree with the other specialists, and in my mind, all this shit has to be connected.

[00:17:55] Brett: In some way, there has to be some underlying problem and functional medicine seems to [00:18:00] be the only option I have without going to like fucking acupuncture and stuff. Um, with no, no offense to acupuncturists. I just don’t think it’s going to solve like

[00:18:11] Jeff: I love acupuncture. I’m not using it for those

[00:18:15] Brett: yeah, exactly, exactly, but like, um, what, wellness, the wellness industry, I guess, is like, I don’t have a lot of faith in, um, I think it’s a, uh, mostly a rip off, but functional medicine seems like my only hope for finding, um, connections?

[00:18:35] Brett: And, like, you start with, like, urine samples, saliva sample, fecal sample, and it takes, like, five weeks to analyze all this, and then they come back with, like, a recommendation, I guess, so, I’m gonna give it a shot, we’ll see. Um, last thing in my mental health corner is Uh, health insurance. I, uh, one of my therapists, multiple [00:19:00] therapists, um, does not submit to insurance, so I have to make claims myself using her super bills.

[00:19:08] Brett: And, um, I, I submitted like 20 bills for the year and I got back 20 separate 25 checks for, to cover, they’re supposed to cover 90 percent of like a 280 bill, which they reduced to 20, 250. And then instead of giving me 90 percent of that, they paid me 10 percent of that, which means now I have to like resubmit all these claims.

[00:19:38] Brett: And when you’re resubmitting, they require faxes. So I have to fax in Receipts, which obviously I do online because there’s no fax machines in the world anymore.

[00:19:50] Jay: my god, no, there’s not.

[00:19:52] Brett: and so, like,

[00:19:53] Jay: There’s only super spammy fax services online.

[00:19:57] Brett: And then for, yeah, [00:20:00] I found one that’s free, or like for 2. 90 I could send a 20 page fax. Um,

[00:20:06] Jay: was it?

[00:20:07] Brett: no, I can’t remember, it’s called like FreeFax. com or something. Um, but they also, my last 10 I submitted, they sent back 10 separate envelopes, each one containing a single piece of paper that said, Hey, for how to network claims, contact our partner.

[00:20:25] Brett: Uh, this, and they’ll help you like get your bill reduced or whatever. And I’m like, that’s, you have fully reimbursed me for this provider in the past and something is wrong now. So I spend an hour on the phone with customer service and it

[00:20:43] Jay: The upside

[00:20:44] Brett: and more faxes.

[00:20:46] Jay: the upside is that somewhere there’s an envelope licker who has dodged all the layoffs.

[00:20:53] Brett: right. That’s all, that’s all I got.

[00:20:55] Jeff’s Workshop and Mental Health

[00:20:55] Brett: Jeff, how are you doing?

[00:20:57] Jay: doing pretty good. Um, yeah, I’m [00:21:00] doing good. Uh, I know I’ve, I think I’ve talked about my lathe and my mental health check in, or maybe just my workshop. Um, but I, a new sort of like, Cause I mean, the background is that a really severe manic episode, unlike anything I’d ever had or have had since in October of 21 led me to fill my garage and my driveway with things from, uh, from auctions of closing steel factories.

[00:21:23] Jay: It’s quite a thing. Um, and it took me probably, I mean, it took me until about four months ago to get out from under it, which I obviously wasn’t doing that. Constantly, but when I could, when I could stomach going into my garage and kind of facing sort of the shame and frustration of this self of mine that, that existed for one month, that is of course still me, but like was a little screwed up by brain chemistry and the wrong medication.

[00:21:47] Jay: Um, it took me a long time to get out from under it. Finally, I have a workshop that is just like, it’s exactly what it should be. It’s a lovely place. Everything’s organized. Any tool I want is within reach. All my drawers are labeled. And, um, and I have this lathe. [00:22:00] I, I have this, it is amazing. I have this lathe, this hundred year old lathe I’ve been unmasked on about it a lot.

[00:22:05] Jay: And, um, and I have a machining teacher, a mentor who I learned how to use metal lathes and, and bridgeport mills to machine metal. Five, six, seven years ago. Um, he’s a lovely person. He’s unlike anybody I would have ever imagined a meeting that would teach and mentor and machining. And I finally felt confident having him over, um, because my shop was just a nice place to be.

[00:22:28] Jay: And I, and I wanted his guidance and I wanted him to help me problem solve and all of this stuff. And so it was the first time I had invited somebody into my workshop. Cause I’ve normally just kind of like. People would be over and they’d be like, let’s go look at your workshop. And I have to be like, no, not now for years.

[00:22:41] Jay: And it was just horrible. Um, cause I knew that it was just like, it was like, why is he ashamed of his workshop? And, uh, so I had my, my, uh, teacher over. I served Nepalese, uh, food at the work table, um, on a big old piece of cardboard. where he drew how he had recently [00:23:00] created, uh, built an elevator, like a freight elevator using the mag drill I gave him that I got at an auction.

[00:23:07] Jay: A mag drill is like when you see people breaking into safes in the movies with a giant magnet. That’s what a mag drill is. Uh, he drew a whole, like he drew a whole picture of another thing. And then we just like, we spent like three hours Um, investigating how a thing was put together a hundred years ago so that we could take it apart.

[00:23:24] Jay: And, and the, there is something in that, that is such a calming, um, experience for me to be staring slowly at a thing and going, how do you want to come apart? Like, I see, I see maybe there’s some threads under there. I see there’s like a Woodruff key. I’m just going to use jargon. And, and, and just, and doing that with someone else, um, and then ultimately succeeding in, and then really appreciating what you find underneath, or, or when you realize how it is that they, they devised this, this, you know, this thing and having just [00:24:00] like really like unmitigated joy, like goofy childish joy.

[00:24:03] Jay: Um, he’s a great match for that. And, and so it was awesome. And he’s also happens to be right now building a seven foot beer can that, uh, for a brewery that actually tips and pours beer and then tips back. So he also is just like a lot of fun. Um, so anyway,

[00:24:19] Brett: an Axeman trip for sure.

[00:24:21] Jay: exactly. Um, so that was like, that was a huge milestone for me and so directly related to mental health.

[00:24:27] Jay: Um, and, and so it’s just amazing.

[00:24:31] Brett: am totally like that with code, especially with writing regular expressions. Like I just find the world around me calms down, especially when I’m like looking through someone else’s really good code to figure out how they did it. Um, and, and you, there’s just all these, like, delights along the way and you learn, like, all new, all new functions and, and API calls and, yeah, it’s, it’s really nice.

[00:24:56] Brett: I had a metals teacher in high school [00:25:00] who was, he told me, um, I have to give you an A. I think you’re dumber than a box of rocks. Quote. Dumber than a box of rocks, but I have to give you an A because you, you did everything. Um, I kind of was, I, I, I, I screwed off a lot in his class. Um,

[00:25:19] Jay: cuz it’s shop.

[00:25:20] Brett: Yeah, it’s shop.

[00:25:21] Brett: And like, we were, we were like chasing each other around with like metal files and pouring molten lead down

[00:25:27] Jay: it’s shop.

[00:25:29] Brett: I got the back of my tennis shoe burned off by like molten metal.

[00:25:34] Jay: It’s really a science class about evolution.

[00:25:37] Jeff: So wait, wait, wait a minute. Hold on. So your, your shop teacher said that you, you, you gave yourself a three and was still able to promote you into the next grade.

[00:25:48] Brett: And then in, in college, I took a metals class and again, it, in the review at the end, he told me I was an asshole, but he had to give [00:26:00] me an A and I’m like,

[00:26:01] Jeff: this time, I guess.

[00:26:03] Brett: yeah,

[00:26:03] Jay: only ever got told I

[00:26:04] Brett: this time I was a smartass. I made some cool, I made, I made a, so they brought in a nude model and had her pose and we had to draw one part of her body and then sculpt it in metal.

[00:26:19] Brett: And I chose

[00:26:20] Jay: the knuckle.

[00:26:21] Brett: I chose her hand, which she was leaning against a table, and no one can see this because this is an audio podcast, but she had like her wrist

[00:26:30] Jay: bit like Brett has rigor mortis.

[00:26:32] Brett: yeah, she had her wrist bent, and it was resting on the table, so I sculpted from the elbow down, and I flipped it upside down to make a little table out of her hand, and did the whole thing in like quarter inch steel, Um, and welding that again was a very calming process.

[00:26:51] Brett: It took hours and I just zoned in. I was on a lot of heroin, but I just, I zoned in and it was awesome.

[00:26:59] Jay: So [00:27:00] here’s my question for your shop teacher. Is he listening? Is he, is he listening to the podcast? Um, I assume it was a he. Uh, what, when you have come up in the world of welders and, and machinists, somehow to act like being an asshole. It’s, it’s like, outside the norm, or even not required, or like, an obstacle, like, this is why it took me so long to get into this kind of stuff, is I didn’t wanna, you know, I didn’t wanna be in a community of assholes.

[00:27:29] Brett: Well, so I feel like what happens for me is, Um, especially in high school shop class, I’m, I’m, I’m not being elitist, I’m just, I think I was smarter than most of the class, which meant

[00:27:45] Jay: You’re still smarter

[00:27:46] Brett: was, I was more likely to make, uh, snide remarks, um, more likely to point out contradictions while the teacher was talking.

[00:27:57] Brett: Um, and like, just [00:28:00] that kind of trap that, you know, What do they call them, uh, gifted and talented kids fall into? You have so much potential. If only you would apply yourself. Yeah.

[00:28:09] Jay: You really lack empathy, yep.

[00:28:12] Brett: Um, yeah, yeah. But thanks, Jeff.

[00:28:15] Sponsor Break: 1Password

[00:28:15] Brett: Um, let’s take a quick sponsor break. We have one of our favorite sponsors this week, 1Password, once again, talking about part of their product that none of us actually use.

[00:28:29] Brett: So when they tell us to make this

[00:28:30] Jay: Wait, what a rousing start to the ad read. Can that just be our policy from now on when we’re reading an ad for something? Now we’re going to read you something today we’re really grateful to hear. We have never touched this.

[00:28:41] Brett: it’s, yeah, but like I said, like one password is just, it’s awesome.

[00:28:46] Jay: I’m implementing 1Password across my organization right now. We love it for everything we know

[00:28:51] Brett: Yes. Yes. So that’s our, that’s our rousing, um, promotion of the sponsor. But I’m going to talk about, [00:29:00] uh, extended access management. Uh, so imagine your company’s security like the quad of a college campus. There are nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company owned devices, IT approved apps, and managed employee identities.

[00:29:15] Brett: And then there are the paths that people actually use, the shortcuts worn through the grass that are actual straightest line from point A to B. There are unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps, and non employee identities such as contractors. Most security tools only work on those happy brick paths, but a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts.

[00:29:38] Brett: 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all of these unmanaged devices, apps, and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy, and every app is visible. 1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional [00:30:00] IAM and MDM can’t.

[00:30:01] Brett: It’s security for the way we work today, and it’s now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entrout and in beta for Google Workspace customers. Check it out at 1password. com slash overtired. That’s 1password with the number one dot com slash overtired. Thanks 1password. We’ll continue to talk about, you know, using like end user stuff because we all love it for that.

[00:30:32] Jeff: I mean, I’ve been a mobile device manager before and I’ve had to do IAM things and yeah, this was, this was like, job right out of the military. Like,

[00:30:42] Brett: then you can actually speak to this. I should have let you do the ad

[00:30:46] Jeff: I’ve never used the 1Password bit, but I’ve definitely used some of the other tools that they talk about. And yes, I will say that there was always the like, Hey, why is this app banned? And it’s like, because it’s not on [00:31:00] the one, like, the one of, 20 apps that we allow you to use. And then we see them pull out another phone and go, but here I have this work contract here on my personal phone and I need to get it off of my personal phone and this is the only app that I have.

[00:31:14] Jeff: And it’s like, congratulations, you’ve snitched on yourself. Good job. Um, give me that. Um, now we need to wipe both phones. But

[00:31:24] Brett: so I, I am the, I am the person on the, uh, the, uh, the path that, that is not the brick road. Um, like, I got so fed up with using my work. Authorized laptop because of the limited number of apps I could use and the way that they forced me to work. So I set up a whole little like VPN tunnel on a mini in my basement to make my My Mac studio appear like it was a work authorized app, but without any of the control.

[00:31:59] Jay: give myself a [00:32:00] three.

[00:32:02] Jeff: Brett spends a whole lot of time every day in this one app. That’s

[00:32:09] Brett: Yeah. Um, but it, you know, we do what we have to.

[00:32:13] Work and Developer Relations at Oracle

[00:32:13] Brett: Um, so I, real quick, I want to say that. Um, so my job is, I, I work in developer relations, but for the last three years, I have basically written content for developers, how to articles, and, um, demos for different technologies, and right now they have me producing two minute videos for two minute videos.

[00:32:38] Brett: So, to promote AI solutions at Oracle, and like Jay was talking about earlier, I’m doing demos on technologies I’ve never used, so I have to work with, you know, the creators of the project to figure out what the hell they’re talking about, and then try to like compress all the impressive bits of it into two minutes.

[00:32:57] Brett: And that’s okay, I enjoy the [00:33:00] production, I like that part of my job,

[00:33:01] Jeff: part.

[00:33:02] Brett: but it doesn’t feel like it. Uh, Relationships, um, Developer Relations, so I came up with this scheme. If you will, to build a, an aggregator that finds us everybody on the web, like indie bloggers that have good search engine ranking that are writing about us or about similar technologies on our competitors and doing things like writing how tos and writing overviews and Um, and, and aggregating all of them and then putting together a team that actually develops, like, reaches out and develops relationships with these developers to, um, hopefully get them to write about our technologies.

[00:33:50] Brett: Um, maybe do side by side how tos, like, here’s how you do it on S3, here’s how you do it on Oracle Object Storage. And like, actually [00:34:00] get that content, because right now, all the content we write goes into the Oracle ecosystem. So if you’re not following Oracle already, if you’re just Googling, you’re not really finding these specific solutions.

[00:34:13] Brett: So, This, I, I made a mind map for this proposal and I sent it, they asked for a doc, a Word file or a PowerPoint, and I said, no, I’m going to send you a mind map. And every time I do that, people are like, oh my God, this is so cool. I love seeing it like this. I get, you know, at least three

[00:34:33] Jay: love mind maps!

[00:34:35] Brett: Even if they don’t like making them, they like reading them.

[00:34:38] Brett: Like it’s a great way to present information.

[00:34:41] Jeff: Oracle has their own AI. I mean, this is an amazing tool right, at

[00:34:46] Brett: they have, they have the tools you need to build an LLM, um, they don’t have like their own language model or anything, um, but they do a lot of,

[00:34:58] Jeff: I would take a template [00:35:00] of what they want and take your mind map and just feed it in and go, here. like

[00:35:07] Crafting Personalized Outreach with AI

[00:35:07] Brett: what I want to do is all these, for every AI solution we promote, we have to write a one pager. I want to be able to feed this one pager into a tool that generates the search to find people talking about specifically. The technology in that one pager so I can reach out and then I want ai to summarize what that person is already written so that I can approach them with at least a cursory knowledge of what they’ve already done.

[00:35:35] Brett: Because that’s how you contact a blogger.

[00:35:37] Effective Blogger Engagement Strategies

[00:35:37] Brett: You say hey, I read this article you wrote. I really like point A and point B that you made. I wonder if you’ve heard of This thing that I produce that you might also be interested in. Like, those are the emails, when I get them, those are the ones I pay attention to.

[00:35:53] Brett: Um, the ones that are not just like, Hello, Brett Terpstra, we noticed you’re interested in this broad technology. [00:36:00] Would you like to try our product?

[00:36:02] Jeff: not just that but like also the Like, if Brett comes to me and says, hey, your last blog post was super dope, like, that means something. If someone I’ve never met before says, hey, good blog post, how would you like to write for us now? Like, no, that’s

[00:36:22] Brett: Or, or even worse, how would you like a sponsored article from us on your blog?

[00:36:27] Jeff: yeah, like,

[00:36:28] Brett: cause you showed up in our

[00:36:29] Jay: You’re offering that to me?!

[00:36:32] Building Genuine Connections in Tech

[00:36:32] Jeff: like, I tell people the, the best recruiting tactic that worked on me was Microsoft, in which my boss was. Sponsored me on GitHub for two years. Like, replied to like, tweets that I was doing, replied to some talks that I had given. Like, had a genuine interest in, wow, Jay’s content’s actually pretty cool.

[00:36:56] Jeff: Like, there’s, there’s an investment in this. So that when they reached out and they [00:37:00] said, hey, My team is hiring and I think you would be a good candidate for this. It wasn’t just like, hello stranger I’ve never met before. How would you like a brand new opportunity? It was like, oh no, I actually have some rapport with this person.

[00:37:15] Jeff: Like, I know that they are heavily invested in not just their team’s success, but my personal success in the fact that they’ve been paying me for two years already. Like,

[00:37:28] Brett: Um,

[00:37:28] Jeff: and a wrong way to do this.

[00:37:30] Innovative Projects and Their Impact

[00:37:30] Brett: my most successful project at Oracle, the one that has been the most beneficial to the company is one I did because someone else at Oracle had been following me for years and they knew what I could do, um, and they asked me to come. work for their team and write tools that would convert their entire Confluence wiki into a GitHub.

[00:37:53] Brett: Well, in this case, a Oracle has some GitHub clone, uh, but basically into Markdown [00:38:00] files that they could turn into a repository of information. And I built this and their writing team was spending two hours per page to convert these and then clean them up. And I made it into you could do an entire hundred pages in 30 seconds.

[00:38:22] Brett: And like I took care of all the requests and saved them, according to their estimate, thousands of hours. However, I did not include this in my self review because technically I was doing it in my off hours and it wasn’t authorized by my manager. So I figured maybe I shouldn’t mention that I had put, you know, hours into this project and saved the company thousands of man hours, man and woman hours.

[00:38:49] Brett: and non binary. Um, but, uh, I, I got a letter of commendation from them. I, I requested like, if I saved you this much time, [00:39:00] write me a glowing letter of commendation. And I sent that to my manager. This is like two days after I found out I wasn’t getting a bonus. And I’m like, fuck you here. This is, this is what I’ve done for the company.

[00:39:12] Jeff: And also, I will go work for that team

[00:39:15] Brett: I asked them, can I just switch to your team? They’re like, we have zero headcount. We have to lay someone off this month anyway.

[00:39:21] Jeff: oh no, the, the interesting part of that though is we just had this conversation yesterday as I had to give this demo to our team, and they were like, wait a minute, y’all have done all this work, where’s the JIRA tickets for this? Where’s the GitHub repo? And we’re like, they’re all private. And the team was like, what, how dare we not be able to see what this super secret squirrel team is doing.

[00:39:47] Jeff: All the time, and put in our comments,

[00:39:50] Challenges of Corporate Metrics

[00:39:50] Brett: I hate JIRA so much that I find ways around actually using JIRA. So when managers go to look at [00:40:00] JIRA ticket count as a metric of success, I look horrible. I have like two tickets completed for the whole year.

[00:40:07] Jeff: well, and the thing that we came, we came to finally was like, we’re doing all this work, it’s all listed as private, but here’s the thing. These five super important things that make our company the company that it is, and how it operates, and how it ultimately makes money, were all done as SkunkWorks projects.

[00:40:28] Jeff: And people’s off time just because they were tired of the way that it was working and they made it better. And then it got adopted into, Hey, this is really great. We should use this for everything now. And to me, it’s like, wait a minute. What we’ve learned is that yes, we can be open and transparent about things.

[00:40:47] Jeff: Doesn’t mean that everything needs to be open source made available to the public on day one. Sometimes, especially when you’re working in a company, it’s better to be like, let me get my idea out there and [00:41:00] done. And then when it’s at a place where I can present it to the company, Then I’ll present it, then we’ll take all the criticisms, then we’ll take all the feedback and apply it as needed, but if you’re coming out the gate on day one with just like, Well, you chose Fish as your terminal editor, I don’t know why you did that, you should be using T Shell, because Reasons.

[00:41:21] Jeff: And you’re just like, nevermind, now I want to quit and go find a new job.

[00:41:26] Brett: Yeah,

[00:41:28] Jeff: But also, you shouldn’t have given yourself a three on that, Brett. That’s, that’s totally five work.

[00:41:33] Brett: Well, dude, the, the, the ratings are like, how is your leadership? I’m not a manager, I don’t,

[00:41:40] Jeff: leader.

[00:41:41] Brett: I, I don’t want to be a leader. I want to, I want to do shit behind the scenes and make shit better for everybody. Um, and,

[00:41:48] Jeff: being a leader.

[00:41:49] Jay: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:41:52] Jeff: That’s the definition of a leader, Brett.

[00:41:54] Brett: Like, and I edited maybe 20, 20 long articles and I did a great [00:42:00] job of editing, but my name doesn’t go on those articles. Like I’m invisible at this company.

[00:42:06] Jeff: I have another blog post that I am actually working on in that whole series that is exactly what you’re saying. Like we, talking with a bunch of architects has taught me one thing. Commit count, line, like code line count, all of those things are very, very horrible metrics. And what are better metrics are, how many things did you help push across the finish line?

[00:42:30] Jeff: Not, not like, oh, I’m the one that wrote the code, but like, I was the person that said, Hey, you should run this through a linter, or, hey, you have a typo there, or this is off messaging, or whatever, or even, Oh, you’re stuck on this here. Here’s an example of some code that I wrote in my spare time that explains how to solve that problem, and like, all of those things are not easily quantifiable.

[00:42:58] Jeff: And that’s the [00:43:00] problem with companies.

[00:43:01] The Value of Unquantifiable Work in DevRel

[00:43:01] Jeff: And again, we’re both in DevRel. DevRel has this horrible, like, challenge in that everything that we do that brings value is not quantifiable. Everything that we do that

[00:43:13] Brett: all DevRel is unquantifiable.

[00:43:16] Jeff: Like every, and like both, you know, people who give talks at DevRelCon will argue this, but everything, all the challenges of like, we need to figure out how to turn blog posts into quantifiable metrics and conference talks into quantifiable metrics.

[00:43:31] Jeff: I was asked to keynote at a conference next year that hasn’t been announced yet, so I won’t, I won’t do that, but I’ll be keynoting at some conference next year. And as I had to justify travel, eventually I was like, okay, look, I’m an influencer in this community. I can go there and, like, regardless, I’m going to go there because they asked me to keynote.

[00:43:53] Jeff: I’ve blown them off a couple of years in a row because of other work things getting in the way. I’m going this year. The [00:44:00] options are I can take vacation, I can go on my own because they’re going to pay me to go, and I can be super excited to talk about my company and all the cool things that we’re doing, or,

[00:44:12] Brett: Right.

[00:44:13] Jeff: or, you can pay for me to go.

[00:44:16] Jeff: And then I’ll be really, really excited and I’ll want to give demos and I’ll try to go to meetups and stuff and I’ll like extend my time there and have a really good time that benefits the company or you’ll continue to piss me off and I’ll just go and then I’ll let people know that I’m looking for work in which then I will have five offers.

[00:44:34] Jeff: So it’s your choice. Like

[00:44:36] Brett: but when you’re making this argument, you can’t say it’s going to result in this many new customers because that’s not trackable. Like you, new customers don’t get. There’s no, there’s no, uh, signup thing that says, how did you hear about us? And they put down Jay Miller and you

[00:44:56] Jeff: that one time, that one place.

[00:44:58] Brett: All right.

[00:44:59] Brett: We should get, we should [00:45:00] get to our, uh, gratitude. Before we run out of time here, Jeff, you’ve been kind of rail railroaded out of this conversation. You’ve been quiet. Would you like to go first?

[00:45:09] Jay: Oh, I don’t feel railroaded. I’m a listener. Yeah, sure.

[00:45:13] Exploring Useful Apps and Tools

[00:45:13] Jay: My app is, so you know, there are all these apps that we all have that have been there for so long and they are just working and then maybe you forget that your computer behaves this way because a certain person made a certain app hazel, right?

[00:45:28] Jeff: a new update.

[00:45:28] Jay: So, oh

[00:45:30] Brett: quick, quick note

[00:45:31] Jay: yeah, please.

[00:45:32] Brett: I wish Hazel, when it came up with the buy a new version dialogue, it should tell you, you currently have this many Hazel rules running on this many

[00:45:43] Jay: Yeah, yeah,

[00:45:44] Brett: Because I forget how much Hazel is doing for me in the back, sorry Jeff, go ahead.

[00:45:49] Jay: No, it’s a great, it’s a great, it’s the ultimate example, right? Like, um, so the app is front and center, John Siracusa’s app, um, from 2020 and front and center [00:46:00] just restores a classic Mac OS feature. I think Siracusa used, uh, the classic OS from like age nine to 26 before OS 10 kicked in. And what it does is so simple.

[00:46:12] Jay: When I click on a window of an application, All of the windows that are on my desktop open, uh, appear. I use this mostly for Finder. You can actually just an exclude list. So if you don’t want it to happen to other apps, that’s fine. If you shift click on an app, it won’t bring them all forward, but it is something that for me, I found I wanted all the time.

[00:46:33] Jay: I especially want it with Finder windows because I spray those things like indiscriminately onto my four monitors or whatever. Um, and so it’s just a lovely, elegant app. It’s constantly updated. You wouldn’t think. There’s a lot of attention that needs to be paid, but like, if you look at, I mean, it’s not surprising given it’s Siracusa, but like, if you look at the change log, there’s just these little incremental meaningful changes that happen over time, as recently as two weeks ago, even though it’s a 2020 [00:47:00] app, app that does a very simple thing.

[00:47:02] Jay: So highly recommend.

[00:47:03] Brett: Can you, can you reverse it so that it only brings forward all windows if you hold down

[00:47:09] Jay: Yep, you can have a classic mode or a modern mode. If you have it on modern mode, then shift click gives the classic functionality. If you have it on classic mode, shift click gets, gets the modern.

[00:47:19] Brett: I could see that being useful. In general, I’ve gotten really used to the current macOS behavior, and I often only want the window I click on to come forward. But, in the cases where I, the Finder is a good example, like you said, um, to bring forward all windows,

[00:47:35] Jeff: I’ve been playing with the tiling manager and the reason why it is not my Grapptitude is because my brain hasn’t wrapped around it yet.

[00:47:44] Brett: right?

[00:47:44] Jeff: I’m still like, why, why is this one window so

[00:47:47] Jay: Wait, like a, a specific timing manager or?

[00:47:50] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, called Aerospace. Um, more, I, I’ve been on this quest to make the terminal my friend again. Um, [00:48:00] and it’s, it’s weird because this isn’t a terminal focused application, but it’s one that a lot of.

[00:48:07] Jeff: Terminal First content creators have all kind of endorsed. So I was like, ah, we’ll, we’ll try it out. And, and it is definitely a brain thing. But like, Brett, when you said, can it reverse it? I thought you were like, can I reverse front and center? So like, back and off to the corner. Like, like, like, if I click shift, if I shift click it, that it like moves into the smallest window possible.

[00:48:33] Jeff: Like,

[00:48:36] Jay: Awesome.

[00:48:37] Brett: well, speaking of terminal, Jay, what you got? I

[00:48:39] Jay: their

[00:48:40] Jeff: mine is because I’ve been trying to go back to the terminal lifestyle for no, no particular reason other than I want to challenge my brain to do something different. And I’ve always been a big fan of terminal things, but I am using a Um, multiplexer called Zellige, or Zellige, I’m not sure [00:49:00] how the J is pronounced at the end of that, um,

[00:49:04] Brett: Y. I think it’s Zelia. Okay.

[00:49:07] Jeff: Zillia, there we go, um, it’s ultimately an alternative to something like a TMUX, um, It is pretty much feature has like feature parity with tmux.

[00:49:19] Jeff: The big difference that I see with it is that a lot of, a lot of tmux commands either have to be aliased out of like the leader or you didn’t have to like play configuration hell with them all. This, this, uh, starts at that spot. It, like, while it supports the TMUX, like, leader and then going into another thing, you can also just do the natural thing.

[00:49:47] Jeff: So, panes, tabs, windows, sessions, all those are relatively quickly accessed with just control and then a logical letter. Other than session, which is O, and I don’t know why [00:50:00] session is O, but whatever. Well,

[00:50:02] Brett: I term, I term Command Shift O is Switch Session. Maybe they were just

[00:50:06] Jeff: Okay, so maybe it’s

[00:50:07] Brett: But I don’t know. I also don’t know why it’s like that in I terms. So,

[00:50:11] Jeff: The thing that I like most about Zelig that kind of made stuff start to click for me was this idea of a floating window for excess things. So where I’ll In TMUX, if you try to go to like list your sessions, it pretty much takes over the entire screen, and then you have to go do stuff and find things and move things around, and then like everything goes away.

[00:50:36] Jeff: Um, with Zealage, it’s like this little tiny window in the center of your terminal window. that just like pops up really quick. Oh, do what I got to do, click it, it goes away, and everybody’s happy. And I can still see the context in which where I am. The nice thing about that is you can also have floating panes.

[00:50:53] Jeff: So, hey, I have a static site generator that’s built in Python called Render Engine. I use it [00:51:00] to maintain my own personal website. And it has, uh, It’s a file watcher and like auto reload functionality. So now I just always have a local version of my website always running and it’s just running in this little hidden floating window.

[00:51:16] Jeff: So I can just like write a blog post, save the blog post, go to a terminal or go to an internet browser and like preview that article and if I make any changes to it, you know, give it like two seconds and then I can see those changes live as they’re happening. Which is usually it’s like. As I’m writing, I have Marked open, so I’m looking at it, but then I haven’t gotten to the point where I have all of my CSS, you know, custom piped into Marked yet, so then it’s like, what does this look like?

[00:51:48] Jeff: Okay, cool, go over here and do it. But it also works when I’m trying to, like, edit the CSS layout, or change terminal stuff, and I don’t have to think about if it’s running or not, because it’s just always running, and if something, [00:52:00] Get squirrely with it. I’m just like, boom. Uh, was it control PW then to pop up that little window, write, you know, terminal stuff, relo, relaunch the server and then hit control PW again, and then it just pop pops off back into the background and like, I’m happy.

[00:52:19] Jeff: Um, and this, this has been great 'cause for the first time now I actually have like SSH windows and stuff that I have running. that I’m connected to that are just like, oh, off in the background. Oh, I need to do that thing really quick. Pop it up and go. But my brain couldn’t get Tmux. Zillage seems to be working for me.

[00:52:34] Jeff: So hooray.

[00:52:35] Brett: my brain has finally gotten TMUX. Um, I’m definitely going to check this out, but like I use anytime I SSH into a machine, I immediately open TMUX. Usually I have it as part of like the profile. Uh, this is an SSH session, open TMUX and I, I have run into plenty of issues. Um,

[00:52:58] Jeff: suggestion I would [00:53:00] make if you’re going to try it, switch to the compact UI. or the compact interface, because the default interface is kind of chunky. So you’re losing real estate if you’re not doing the compact one.

[00:53:14] Brett: cool. All right. I will, uh, check. Yeah. Jeff.

[00:53:18] Jay: roadmap visualization is bananas, and I’m not sure if that’s just something that already exists as a way you do roadmap visualizations, or

[00:53:27] Brett: never seen this

[00:53:28] Jay: it is bananas. I put a link in the show notes. I was

[00:53:32] Brett: like a, it’s like a pie chart, mind map, concept

[00:53:35] Jay: It’s a little hard to take in, but it’s like, A for effort.

[00:53:38] Jeff: It looks like that thing that Brett was talking about where you take your bipolar medication and then crush it up and dip it into it.

[00:53:48] Brett: I don’t know what the purple versus the tan means.

[00:53:52] Jay: No, it’s a little bit of a mindfuck, but I also, it’s just like, okay, alright, you mean it though.

[00:53:58] Jeff: Hey, if it works for them, [00:54:00] right?

[00:54:00] Brett: Yeah.

[00:54:01] Jay: Awesome.

[00:54:02] Brett: Um, all right.

[00:54:03] The Future of Link Management

[00:54:03] Brett: Mine is, uh, Link Warden. Um, I’ve been seeking out slowly a pinboard, uh, replacement. Uh, pinboard hasn’t seen an update in years.

[00:54:16] Jay: you’re going to do it.

[00:54:19] Brett: yeah, well, so I was thinking about doing it and I pitched the idea on Mastodon and a few people replied with, wait, somebody’s already done this.

[00:54:27] Jay: I said yes. Fuck whoever’s done it. It’s not good.

[00:54:32] Brett: Like all

[00:54:33] Jeff: Brett more work, but I would also sign up for whatever Brett’s version of this is.

[00:54:37] Brett: I, all I really want is like the exact functionality of Pinboard, but with a way better interface on the web, but like a replicated API, which is already a replication of the delicious API. Um, and Yeah, like to just bring that forward, add maybe a few new functions, [00:55:00] uh, but like Pinboard is a very overall, very simple database app.

[00:55:06] Brett: Um, but one of the alternatives that was presented to me is called LinkWarden and it is a beautiful open source version of a link manager that also handles. Um, archiving and PDF duplication of websites. You can also easily submit a link to the Wayback Machine and it has a decent API. It’s poorly documented.

[00:55:36] Brett: Um, so I have a couple of GitHub issues in right now. Um, but it was easy to export all of my pinboard links, 8, 000 of them, um, and import them into LinkWarden. I’m currently having a little bit of issue with. importing tags, uh, which they replied to my issue as, well, that’s odd. Um, [00:56:00] but I haven’t gotten any resolution on that yet.

[00:56:04] Brett: And using it without tags is pointless to me. Um, so I’m hoping they resolve that. The people I’ve talked to that are already using it have had no problem with tags. So this is something unique to me, but it’s beautiful. It works well on iOS. You can add shortcuts to Safari, it has plugins for Chrome and Firefox, and, um, it looks great on mobile, and it, it offers like screenshots of every link, you can view, uh, you can sort your links in any way you want to, you can organize by tags, or you can create folders, which, um, Um, I, I was using link bundles on Pinboard, um, which make a little more sense to me, but I think I could replicate that functionality in LinkWarden.

[00:56:53] Brett: Um, but yeah, if you’re looking for a Pinboard replacement because Pinboard hasn’t seen an update and the [00:57:00] creator of Pinboard has been going slowly mad on social media and I don’t have a lot of faith in the future of Pinboard. Um, BigFan, LittleFaith, and LookingAround. So LinkWarden is my top pick.

[00:57:16] Brett: LinkDing is another one, but LinkWarden looks better.

[00:57:19] Jeff: I, I’m really tempted to, so this is like the, the combination of tools enabling this. So I could see self hosting this on a Raspberry Pi

[00:57:31] Brett: Ha ha.

[00:57:31] Jeff: activated by like, um, I keep wanting to say Tailwind, but Tailscale.

[00:57:37] Brett: Yeah, yeah.

[00:57:37] Jeff: And then I, then like, then I’m happy because all of my links are saved for me and I don’t They’re all mine, I’m not sharing them with the world, I really have no desire to share what I watch or what I look at on the internet with the world outside of like what I do from like a micro blogging standpoint.

[00:57:54] Brett: that’s the thing. Is I, like, my web excursions are all driven by Pinboard. I just [00:58:00] save. Uh, links to Pinboard and they turn into blog posts for me, um, so there are some that I want public.

[00:58:08] Jeff: Is there not a world where this can just be stored in plain text? Because I’m, I’m, I’m really trying to figure out the like, all right, look, I understand that AI is the devil, or the the angel that is here to either save or damn us. And I’m like, I do look at a bunch of links. And I often am just like, I don’t know what I know anymore.

[00:58:30] Jeff: And I don’t know where I went. So I’m just gonna look for it again to save myself the energy. And If I had something that I was like, give me everything that I need to look at regarding this.

[00:58:41] Brett: you seen HistoryHound?

[00:58:43] Jeff: History. It sounds familiar,

[00:58:46] Brett: I think it, I think it was C Command, but, um, HistoryHound will track your web history and you can then search everywhere you’ve been by just typing any words that appeared on the page [00:59:00] and it will find people. Links you’ve already visited. It is, it’s pretty cool. I don’t personally use it.

[00:59:05] Brett: I, I, uh, like a more curated approach to saving my web history.

[00:59:11] Jeff: yeah, I think, I think that was that. I, I have used HistoryHound in the past and I, I think I just, I think I didn’t use it, which is the problem. Uh, like I used it, but I didn’t use it. And that’s, that’s where I like the idea of a pinboard because with pinboard, it was like, I just clicked a button. And then when I went to need it, it was like there.

[00:59:37] Jeff: And I, I think that the future of that is kind of like. I have some collection of these things and now I, I just say, hey, you know, local LLM, here’s all of this content, quick search it, and then you tell me what I should be

[00:59:57] Brett: That’s kind of a brilliant idea.[01:00:00]

[01:00:00] Jay: on now, Brett, let’s really quick talk about how you’re going to build this app, because Cause here, the problem with, I know we don’t,

[01:00:07] Jeff: two enablers,

[01:00:07] Jay: know we don’t normally, we don’t normally argue in Grapptitude about apps, but here, here is the primary problem. Use the word twice in describing this app. You said beautiful.

[01:00:16] Jay: It can’t be beautiful. I hate it when it’s beautiful because I feel like I’m in a browser on a webpage and what I love about Pinboard, even more than I liked Delicious, is how plain and simple it is. And it’s not like Craigslist, like it’s not that bad, right? But it’s like. The only, my only complaint about it is when I have private links, cause I like to have my links generally private.

[01:00:36] Jay: They’re grayed out in a way that I find aesthetically very unpleasing, but here’s the thing. I know that you would make beautiful without making it beautiful. Uh, if that makes any sense and

[01:00:47] Jeff: I would just take raw, like, give me raw JSON. Like, I don’t care. Like, I want it to

[01:00:51] Jay: yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And, and, and I would, I would love the incremental changes you would come up with over the [01:01:00] years to this service, because I think they would all be thoughtful and lovely.

[01:01:04] Brett: I really like, I really like the AI idea where

[01:01:08] Jay: Oh, I do shit like

[01:01:09] Brett: stores the text of everything you bookmark and then you can just ask like a, a small, a, a small language model. Um, you can just ask it, hey, tell me more about this thing that I bookmarked 20 tabs. Remind me, like, where I was in this research.

[01:01:29] Jeff: this is where, like, the, the combination and, like, if, Brett, if, if no one’s going to give you a five, let me give you a five here. Like, you have

[01:01:40] Jay: Are you giving him a five to the future?

[01:01:42] Jeff: you have so many projects that can be combined in this, with like, doing, I see like, yeah, I see like doing in SearchLink, just working together with some easy bookmarking system.

[01:01:56] Brett: with gather and maybe curly cute. [01:02:00] Like someone,

[01:02:00] Jay: Jay. Well

[01:02:01] Brett: me, someone sent me,

[01:02:03] Jay: Way to speak his language. I like, I feel like Jay just definitely like manipulated you. I mean, I think Jay meant it, but I also think Jay knew it was like.

[01:02:11] Jeff: percent of the code already exists. You’ve

[01:02:14] Brett: someone, someone sent me a keyboard maestro macro today that combines, um, search link and gather. So with keyboard maestro, you can just type in a couple of keywords and get back plain text version of the result, which, yeah, I think that’s kind of brilliant.

[01:02:32] Jay: that’s amazing. All right, well, Brett, I look forward to checking in next week on how this is going, because you have an opportunity here to save the world, and that doesn’t happen much, and the world needs saving.

[01:02:42] Brett: All right, all right,

[01:02:44] Jay: All right, great to talk to you, Jay.

[01:02:46] Jeff: Absolutely. Um, but I guess my one shout out here is everyone be, be kind to yourself and each other. I think we’ve got like, what, a week or [01:03:00] a week and a half before half the world loses or half of America loses their mind. Um,

[01:03:06] Brett: well, yeah, yeah,

[01:03:07] Jeff: oh, I’m sorry, they’ve already,

[01:03:08] Jay: technically 48%.

[01:03:10] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:03:11] Jay: The undecided voters are going to be

[01:03:13] Jeff: Yeah, but ultimately, like, I, I have my opinions, and I will say, we have survived the last eight years with and without whoever your favorite person running is. Let’s not kill each other because of a decision. I think we’re going to survive another four years and then maybe we’ll survive another four years after that.

[01:03:39] Encouraging Open Source Development

[01:03:39] Jeff: Um, but also like, hey, if you’re wanting to get into open source development, you know, reach out to me. I have opinions. I’m Last time I was here, I think we talked about Black Python devs a little bit. Brett, we have almost 900 people in that Discord now. Like, it’s, it’s so wild. We’ve, we’ve, you know, [01:04:00] been able to sponsor events all over the world.

[01:04:02] Brett: so cool,

[01:04:03] Jeff: fantastic. But if it’s taught me anything, it’s taught me that Again, people don’t hire people because they write good code, they hire them because they’re actually helpful. And give yourself more fives. Come on, let’s,

[01:04:16] Jay: Jay, hold on.

[01:04:17] Live Coding and Teaching Insights

[01:04:17] Jay: I know, I know that we’re technically wrapping up, but I wonder if you could talk about your sort of live coding and live sort of teaching, because I’ve really loved skimming through those and it’s, and you’re just, you’re wonderful at

[01:04:28] Jeff: have to still be doing it, um,

[01:04:30] Jay: talk about, I mean, you’ve done it, right? Like I.

[01:04:33] Jeff: I’ve been doing some live streams with some friends who are trying to get into programming, and I’m a firm believer that like, if you read a book and you just try to follow the book, it’s not going to teach you anything other than how to do what the book is doing.

[01:04:45] Jeff: Try to build some stuff. Go out there, build stuff. You’re smarter than you think you are. Sometimes it’s helpful to have a person there that has maybe done this before and walked you through it. But I’ve been working with a few friends and, [01:05:00] um, helping them to just build stuff that they want to build. And it, a lot of it is more of like, here, I’ll show you where you can find this information and I’ll show you what it looks like in this language.

[01:05:13] Jeff: But ultimately have fun with it and just. Just, just do stuff, and don’t be afraid not to do those things, and if you want to see more of that stuff, go to my YouTube channel, um, youtube. com slash K. J. Miller, K. J. A. Y.

[01:05:27] Jay: you’re a great, you’re a great teacher. You’re great. I think you’re just, you’re great at that. I don’t think it’s cool that you tell people at the end, I’m giving you an A, even though you’re an asshole, cause you did the work. But otherwise I think you’re a fantastic teacher. No, truly it is. The spirit of it is wonderful and it’s almost good ASMR.

[01:05:43] Jay: Uh, I really recommend it.

[01:05:44] Jeff: I appreciate that. I, I am, I’m not so great to look at, but just like, you know, put me off in the background and just do, do some other stuff. You’ll be

[01:05:52] Jay: awesome. Well, we’ve loved looking at you.

[01:05:56] Brett: for sure, all right, you guys get some sleep.

[01:05:59] Jay: Oh,

[01:05:59] Jeff: some [01:06:00] sleep.