13: Over Your Skis

Ha ha ha, sizing your projects. Break them down. Break them down! Speaking of breaking it down... Yeah, we cranked out a show without knowing what the fuck we were going to talk about. These are the fun ones for me though. I love when we can kind of pull it together. I know that that's not... I know I've wanted to get away from that a little bit. You're very good about the show notes are there, put some stuff in there. I want it to be more routine. I also do like the Spontaneity sometimes. It's nice. Yeah, no, I'm totally happy with that. I just, you know, for me, I guess I just need it there as something that, you know, if there's a, if we're done or we fall flat, then I need something to fall back on. 'Cause you're the, you're the big talker here, not me. Ha! Full of hot air right here, hot air machine. (upbeat music) [Music] And we're off folks. What is this number? 13? 13. Lucky 13. Oh it is. Oh my gosh look at that. That's pretty neat. So what's new man? It's been a while. It's been a couple weeks I think. Yeah it's been a while since I've even talked to you. You've been kind of buried. Yeah I've been kind of buried. I'll talk about this some more later but I do this all the time. Take on, I have a new project, a new side project. We talked a little bit about that and I'll get into some more of that but It's kind of my shtick is that I I'm at it. I'm in this period where like things are really Kind of on cruise like things that work really easy. I'm cranking stuff out or there's not a huge backlog So things are going pretty good, and then I'm ready for something new. I want a new project or I want to learn a new Technology I want to get into a new framework or whatever it is and then I'm some kind of board and I'm like, okay I want to do something new and then I find something finally in this case. I'm doing a little side project mobile app development in React Native and we're gonna write it for iOS first and then do Android next so I Picked up this project and I got really excited and then I freaked the fuck out because it's like I've never done that before I know like I've never done react native and I have never published anything on the Apple App Store and Not only that but like the commitment was kind of rough ish 12 week commitment to get this whole thing done So no pressure But I kind of do that to myself like I'll get into this I'm bored I find something then I get in and then I'm a little out over my skis And then they freak out about it and so I've been kind of in a freak out mode all that to say I've been a little bit in a freak out mode the last couple weeks But but think it's okay. Things are going okay, and it's better this time So you're starting to feel like it's smoothing out or you're inching your way toward being somewhat comfortable. It sounds like Yeah, because I We've done this enough times like this isn't a new thing, you know, especially this point in our career like and so I there have been some good learnings from past experiences that I've applied to this project So I had put in buffer for certain things and made allowances for other Discovery type things that I knew that would happen and so like that's been helpful already and I also kind of like eat your frogs first kind of mentality like just some of the Harrier things that I wanted to tackle that I was scared of or unsure certain of how to handle I've tried to get into that first So that's been helpful to take the edge off a little bit cool Well, we'll get sounds like more into that deeper here in a little bit. So I On the other hand have been dealing with more fucking house woes. I think you you you're aware of the Issues that I've already been having. I've had a number of them since we moved into this place Like the dryer was one. Yeah, we had the laundry issues when we moved in You know, they still had all the staging furniture still here Like there's just been like one stupid thing after another with this place, right? And I don't know the last time I've talked to you, but the the coaster doesn't stop man. I mean We've recently found some water damage in one of the window sills Oh, no, so we've been working with them to try and get that fixed, but they haven't been very responsive So we were even almost to the point of getting a an attorney ready to go But luckily they have responded at least a little bit and they came out to look at it But they haven't sent an actual contractor out to fix it So then that kind of got all Buttoned up or at least on the right track and then the other day we come home and there's no fucking gas in the place It's everything's gas. It's a gas heat gas stove gas water heater Shit, and there's no gas, and I'm like what the hell's happening here. Well for whatever reason The utility company came out and just shut it off mine and the neighbors and no no door tag No anything just shut it off. Oh Fuck bills are paid no idea what the hell the deal was and they're in like everything's already in your name at this point Or is the builder still kind of paying for a few months or what's going on? It's already all transferred I don't know nobody knew I called the customer service had no idea. They were like your counseling good standing It says it's on like everything should be good. We called it like a service guy. He came out and he Like there was clearly a lock on the actual valve Wow, so he took that off and was like, I don't know. I'm not sure what happened here He's like, I think they might have been mislabeled But I was like even then even if they were mislabeled why would you come out shut off two of them and not leave any kind of notification? I don't know just weird screwy. Yep, and then come home this evening, man and not my place luckily, but the neighbor, I walked by his door, which I have to, to get to my unit and I just smell like a super strong smell of gas, like natural gas. And I look over at his door and there's a pipe that kind of pops up through the cement and then goes into the wall of the house and that pipe was really, really wet and it was actually like dripping. And so we kind of got freaked out and we called the utility company again We're like, hey, we got a gas leak here Come to find out apparently they were out earlier in the day and did some sort of like sealing on those pipes of some kind I guess is what their explanation was and that the smell of gas at least for a I don't know a few hours was Probably normal But again, no notification at all. So this place has just been a fuck show. I'm kind of getting tired of it Fuck man, you know, that's just the last thing you want to deal with when you plop down a serious chunk of change on a new place I mean, it's one thing if you were getting a fixer upper But this place is like a few months old. Yeah, I mean we've lived here Maybe six seven months at this point something like that and it was built. We were the first owners It was just built so I was telling Brian the other day in the office my manager, you know I was just like man I'm getting really tired of like having to give you the excuse that I have to stay home for house shit Yeah, and it's in to your point like it's not it's a new house. It's not an old like fixer-upper that needs a ton of work, right? Exactly, so yeah, I that's yeah, and it's like that's a very typical response. Unfortunately, I've had that experience Well, not personally but just with other people that I know The builder is a little dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, right? Like when you meet them and they're selling the fucking place, like they're willing to do everything and anything for you and then the second the keys are handed over like you can't get ahold of them for anything. Yep, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's that's frustrating, especially like in a competitive space like Seattle where you have your paying top dollar for these places, you think you get a little better service, but doesn't seem to be the the case necessarily. - Yep. - Fuckers, well. - Yeah, what else is new? So I've been using for a while, I used Wunderlist as a to-do app. Do you use a to-do app? Like a getting things done type of app? - Yeah, I do, I'm back in that groove again. And this time I'm using to-do list. - To-do list, okay, that's good because we're gonna talk about that later. So I was working through, I used to use Wunderlist and I actually really loved WonderList quite a lot. However, it got purchased and folded in when Microsoft acquired them. And Microsoft went ahead and launched a new app that they just call simply to do Microsoft to do. - Well, I'm familiar with that as well a little bit. - And it's not too bad. I used it a little bit. It's a little light on features. But generally speaking, it was okay. But I ended up finding myself having some troubles mainly because they don't have, It's not a cross application and cross platform application. And so I was kind of finding myself being, they do have a web interface, but I found myself wanting an actual application that I could interact with. And so I kind of went back to the drawing board and started researching what to do apps are available and what's out there. And I had a couple, I guess, stiff requirements that I wanted to have, that I wasn't willing to budge on. And the first one was that it had to be cross platform and multi-device. So I work in the Mac world, I work in the Windows world, I'm on mobile devices. So I need apps that can sync the content across all of them and work across all of them. So that was kind of item number one, that if it didn't meet that, it was out. So the to-do app itself was out immediately. Number two was that it needed to have some sort of a reasonably nice UI. I'm a, I don't know, I wouldn't say I'm a designer, but I'm a creative type. So I definitely appreciate a good, clean design. So, you know, it had to have a reasonably good UI. - Yeah. - Another one that I use a lot in Tiddu apps is I needed reoccurring tasks, which doesn't seem to be a real common thing in Tiddu apps. I don't, I find a lot of them don't seem to support that for various reasons, or maybe not in the way that I want it supported, I guess. What is the example like take out the trash every Tuesday or something like that? Yeah, you got it exactly or even even more silly than that. I have a reminder every single day set that goes off at one o'clock. That just says no fucking sugar. Oh, nice in the afternoon when you're kind of in that little coma after lunch. That's right. Yeah. So just kind of a little reminder not to, you know, walk up and get my hand in the M&M jar or something. Yeah. Grab a Snickers out of the old Q dub Snicker bin. Yeah, exactly. And then the last requirement that I had is that it had to be pretty visible that it was still being actively worked on. I didn't want, you know, a stale application that wasn't being consistently updated or just had been abandoned, that sort of thing. So, and really, you know, I didn't really have to look very far. I ended up settling pretty rapidly on Todoist, the same one you just mentioned. just mentioned and so far it seems to serve all my needs and another thing that I actually really have enjoyed about it is that in addition to being cross-platform and multi-device, included in the multi-device is the fact that I can now also just tell Alexa to add shit to my to-do list, which is pretty awesome. Oh, I haven't even tried that yet. That's awesome. So, yeah, that was another one of the big perks. I was like, "Oh, man, that's like a total winner to me." And even though the application I think for the, I don't know what they call it, the pro edition or whatever they service plan they give you was like 25 bucks a year or something, it was totally worth it so far. And so far I'm loving the app. It's definitely a huge improvement. I love like the natural speech recognition, I guess maybe you would call it or natural text entry recognition as you add tasks to it. So for instance, you would say, take out the trash tomorrow at six. and it will actually figure all that out from text, what it is that you meant, and create it as a reoccurring event, or those sorts of things, just based off keywords that you type in, which is pretty cool. I agree 100%, I love it. I bought the Pro package for similar reasons. It was a low bar, low barrier to entry there. Thought why not? 'Cause yeah, there was some features that I wanted that I didn't get out of the FreeBee too, but that's sweet. I did not know about the voice piece with Alexa, So I definitely am going to try that after this. But similarly, I love even typing it in when you put in those certain keywords, the tomorrow or something. If I mention the name of one of my labels, because I have different categories, all those things, it will infer that from what I'm typing and then categorize it the right way. And that's pretty cool. It saves a lot of time. Little keyboard shortcut, cue to pop open the quick add, and then just type a couple of things and you're done. You're not really spending time in the app. It's just a very efficient interface. Get it in, get it out of there, kind of a deal. - Right, and yeah, I feel like it's, like you said, it's very efficient. You don't spend a lot of time organizing. You just kind of like pop in there. You type in exactly what you want and you're done. - Yeah, it's really easy. - Really, really slick. I'm really happy with it. I definitely recommend the app to anyone that needs to do app. And if you're not feeling confident or comfortable with the app that's provided on your phone, 'cause I did used to use iOS reminders, I think is what it's called. That's the built-in iOS version. And again, that leaves quite a lot to be desired. So if you're looking for something a little more fully-featured, Todoist is a great app. I'm gonna argue a pretty scientific study here. We both, in a double blind scientific study, we both came to the conclusion to do as was the winner. There you go, yeah. That's about as scientific as you're gonna get here. I didn't know you were looking into it. I just did this a couple weeks ago, one or two weeks ago. So since the last episode aired, I needed to get organized for reasons we were discussing earlier. And I tried kind of went down the same path you did and landed on this one. And it's been great. And I haven't really looked back and haven't had to think about it much. It's just easy to do. And it's right there. Synergy, buddy. Boom. I don't mind the gamification, too. I'll add like my little like whatever score that you get for completing shit is kind of fun. Yeah, I'll be honest. I haven't really played around with that too much. I don't know. I'm not super into that, although I guess there's you know, if you're competitive or something like that I can see how you might get into that but so far I haven't I haven't really played with that too much Like the other day there was a down arrow next to my score and I was like well That's not good. So I need to do some shit. So I got some shit done I may have added some things and then checked them off because I forgot to add them I don't think that's how that works is it Probably not but you got the score back up in the proper place where it needed to be All right. Well in the news we've talked a number of times about Alexa and or the echo devices and we've talked about sonos devices Well good old Apple our favorite company here on the show love Apple wants to join the fray and they've now released What they call the Apple HomePod? Ho Finally, we were talking about this around Thanksgiving time. I think you're right about that. Yeah So I don't I I'll be honest. I don't have one of these and I don't know anybody that does so everything that I'm Everything that I say, I guess it's totally from reviews or other things that I've read online but so far reviews seem to indicate that the Sound quality is is superb Just as good as even say like the sonos play five which is kind of the the flagship product from sonos Not the entry level product, that's more of a high end Sonos. That's right, yeah, that's kind of the top dog. Well, I mean aside from maybe like the Playbar or something, but like that's the top dog single speaker that they have. And some people are even saying maybe even slightly better in terms of sound quality. So it's getting some pretty nice reviews. The things that people are complaining about mostly are app related, so it doesn't support Sonos out of the box or at all. Sorry, I didn't support Spotify rather out of the box. So you're kind of locked into the Apple ecosystem, typical Apple, right? Of course. Beat Spy Dre out of the box, man. Yeah, there you go. Maybe title. Maybe you can get on title. Oh, that'd be nice. I like that. As far as like Siri integration goes, because you know, it is a smart assistant or that's part of its claim. The Siri recognition or voice recognition is supposed to be pretty awesome as well compared to the iPhone. I don't know how many people out there have iPhones, but as I have one and anytime that I ask Siri anything on the iPhone, she doesn't know what the fuck I'm talking about. So people who also have that complaint seem to be pretty happy with the voice recognition on this particular device, which is, I guess, at least promising that maybe they're improving some of that. Now that's interesting because I've heard, I have not heard about that. Comparing the phone to the HomePod, but I have heard that Siri on the HomePod compared to some of the other ones out there is not as robust. That I definitely can believe. But yeah, I've read definitely some things about the phone because the phone, like I said, I never use Siri on the phone at all because it's horrible. Like every time I do it, either you push the button to activate her and then she just clicks off before you even say anything or it's just really clunky it never works exactly like you wanted to it's not like hey Alexa do xyz and she just does it right it's really a painful process and so I just never do it which sounds like maybe they've cleaned up with this but who knows I imagine the far field mics and all that sort of thing probably help out significantly so um only other thing I've read about this thing I keep reading articles about it and people are like freaking out which is kind of funny is that it doesn't have a removable power cord That's like the one gripe that I keep seeing over and over and over again. It's actually like a physically attached power cord Okay, I don't know. I mean, I guess if you need to replace it, that's a big deal, but I did hear uh As a little cliff note that they would repair that cable for you for the low low price of 29 Bitcoin 29 29 bucks not 29 Bitcoin Yeah, I think I saw the same type of thing so you know your 29 bucks and you're in the Apple HomePod itself is about 350 bucks so you know there you go. You got yourself a home audio solution and Apple makes a few a few hundred on you Don't open it up though. I how I saw it somebody had done a little tear down of this device and it's fucking rock solid It's built like a tank. At one point, they had to get a hacksaw to open one piece up, because it's not meant for repairs. So if you think you're going to go in there and unscrew a couple of things, think again. It's very well hardened, and it's not meant for any kind of repairs. Yeah, if you're not familiar with this device, it's a-- what does it say? It's almost 7 inches high, about 5 and 1/2 inches wide, and inside of it is a woofer, an array of seven horn tweeters, which have their own amplifier. The woofer also has its own amplifier. Six microphone array for far field Siri. So there's a lot of tech, I mean, and there's other things in here too. There's also an internal low frequency mic for automatic bass correction. So it can kind of adjust the bass level for you based on what it's getting back in terms of vibration. So I mean, it's packing quite a punch that is inside of this thing. So ultimately, I think coming down the road, one of the big features to this guy is what's called AirPlay 2. If you're not in the Apple world, AirPlay is a proprietary, I guess, music streaming device over Wi-Fi, or technology over Wi-Fi. So eventually the HomePod, excuse me, is set to accept AirPlay 2, which should open it up to a whole range of other audio sources like Spotify and any other app that you want to connect to it. Okay. So you do get AirPlay out of the box, but that's like the first gen AirPlay. I don't think it even has AirPlay 1 currently. I think you have to wait until they enable AirPlay 2, which isn't available yet. What the fuck is that all about? So currently your only available options are Apple Music, iTunes, iCloud Music, Beats One Live, Apple Podcasts, and oh it does say airplay yep so airplay one okay so there's gonna be some new yeah that sounds like the apple thing to do there will be the home pod s coming out in another year that'll be it'll unlock the really cool shit that you wish this one did but you just can't get an upgrade that's probably about right yeah let me get it well it's everybody's gotta make a buck well speaking of making bucks uh you like to bag on apple a lot i know so i don't have the article in in front of me and I did not put it in the show notes. However, did you see the article about how many Google Pixel phones were sold in the last year? I thought it was somewhere around 2.7 million or so. Yep, I think that's about right. Something like that. And the article that I read was poking fun at that a little bit saying basically that's about the number of iPhones Apple sales in a month. Oh, fuck, is that right? Oh, I found it here it is I was off Google sold 3.9 million pixel phones Less than a week's worth of iPhone. Oh a week. Oh Fuck that's no more. Wow. This is on the verge and I'm reading through it right now da da da da The global smartphone market that hit 1.5 billion units and less than a week with the buy phone sales Well, I have a pixel. I bought one. So I guess we're a pretty rare breed that bought the pixel last year Yeah, it sounds like it's a rare breed then I guess I would have thought I'm surprised by that. I thought there'd be more sales for it. It's a good device I know there was some issues with the pixel XL right with the screen some discoloration So there's a little setback there, but I don't know if it would account for all that. It's very interesting Well, apples walled garden is holding people in man. I Don't know. I don't know about it I mean, I do like the phone. Sounds like there's the rumor mill kicking up again about some of the new androids coming out are gonna try to mimic the curve in the iPhone. I did hear that this week. - Yeah, I did see that too. They're gonna throw the notch up there just to kind of entice the iPhone folks that are used to that now, right? - Man, fuck the notch. I don't like the notch. - Just embrace it. Embrace the notch, man. - Ugh, I'm not a big fan of the notch. They need to find a way, so it's interesting. There's probably, you could get a patent on this, we could make a few bucks doing this Kyle, but you know, when I was back in the home audio business a few years back, there were some interesting products. So a lot of times we do a whole house audio systems, we put ceiling speakers in or wall speakers in and it was more of a two channel stereo kind of a deal, but you could have music kind of playing in the house before Sonos, right? I mean, it was really a hardwired, hook up to a big amp in the basement kind of a setup. But there were some interesting products that came out around that time that were meant for new construction or like home builders at the time of building, you could actually put these, they were sorta speakers, but not the same way that we think of tweeters and woofers. Like these devices actually installed between the studs and you'd cover them up with drywall. And the device, like it was metal and it would actually make surface contact with the drywall and it would use the drywall as the woofer and the tweeter. You would do some kind of like wave form onto the drywall and it would go through and come out like sound So you'd hear sound coming through the wall Wow That's how did that did it sound okay? And it sounded like I didn't listen to this I just saw the product on there, but it was a high-end product and people that listened to it thought it sounded pretty good I don't know how it would stack up to like audio file quality when you're high dollar systems But if you didn't want to see the speakers and you wanted it to be invisible It sounded pretty damn good is what I heard. That's crazy. I felt for a while that that's kind of a Spot that Sonos has yet to fill is the the kind of in-ceiling speaker I feel like yeah, I mean, I know they need power which is a major problem, right for them But I feel like you could pretty easily create a self-contained ceiling speaker just like they do currently and then maybe like leave leave kind of electrical ends and maybe you just like put it right next to like say a can light in your ceiling and tie off onto that or something like that. I guess that wouldn't work because that's gonna be switched on and off. I don't know. It just seems like a pretty big hole that they've they've not yet filled. I don't know. Maybe they maybe that's why it's because of the power situation, but... The power situation is a tough one to nail and I think you you're on the right track though. There was a Phillips for a while and a couple guys came out with light bulbs when LED was just starting to come out. They came out with LED bulbs that actually had speakers built in. you could put it into a regular socket. The speaker quality wasn't great. It was like Alexa quality echo quality. I've seen a few of those and a lot of them now have come out where yeah you can use your like your wi-fi to control what's being broadcast to them and you can group them and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So it's a nice retrofit option. It's not quite the same but you think that Sonos could maybe do something like that. There would be I don't know maybe they could even make something that would go into one of those can light fixtures but then be a little bigger and I don't know even have a light on it but be a more robust speaker. Right. An interesting area. I'm sure they've looked into it for whatever reason they decided now we're just going to do shelf speakers. Right. Bookshelf speakers. Yeah. But my whole point of that technology about putting the that device in the wall like that sound generator whatever the fuck it was is that like you could get away with the notch on the phone if you could do something similar to that. I don't know if you could have do away with the speaker line on the phone and just have some device that when you have the phone to your ear it translates the waves into your ears. So just using vibration through the phone itself maybe. It's almost like it reminds me of have you heard of bone conduction headphones? Exactly that's what I'm thinking of. Exactly right. Get rid of one more port if you will. It's not really a port but it's another design feature that has to be built in to the device, the speaker and nobody really gives a shit about that. So, phone conduction, right on, man. HomePod, good for you guys for getting a product out there February 10th, we appreciate that. I wanted to just briefly mention in the news the Uber Waymo reached a settlement this week. And I don't know how much you've been following along but Waymo is a parent company's alphabet and they have the self-driving car technology and a couple years ago, things got heated up because Uber was interested in the self-driving space as well. And back when Trav was running the show at Uber, he was very competitive and was very interested in any kind of details he could get from those guys over there. And so there was a big allegations that some of the engineers that came over, one in particular, had brought a bunch of documents over from Waymo and that there was some trade secrets that made their way over there. So anyway, like that has been ongoing for the last couple of years, right? I think a year or two, maybe more, I don't know, a couple of years. And the settlement had been reached, $245 million. agreed to pay Waymo to not use their technology and basically they just said look like it didn't Darra that a CEO at Uber had said this wasn't handled the way it should have been he wasn't there at the time he's kind of been here after Travis left to kind of clean things up but pretty sweet deal for Uber honestly like 245 million dollars it's actually a stock they're paying them in stock which which is, I think they valued the company at 74 billion, which equates to about 0.34%, one third of 1% of the company's valuation to make this sum bitch go away. - So what was the, do you know what like the actual technology or the crux of the actual litigation was? - Well, it was about trade secrets being stolen, brought in from Waymo to Uber, but in particular, I think it was the Lidar, The LiDAR technology is like, it's a new radar that they use, light detection and range systems. It's basically the car's eyes, like that's how the car can see in front of it, a couple cars ahead of it. Okay. It was that technology that really is driving the autonomous vehicle technology. And so I think there was some, the issue that they were debating or that was being, you know, under question was whether some of those trade secrets were stolen or not. That's interesting too that Lidar would have been the crux of the argument here. I guess it's a difference between companies because there was just an article that came out I think it was a couple days ago that Elon Musk basically was saying that Lidar isn't necessary for self-driving vehicles even, even what do they call it, full autonomy. I can't remember what the term is, is it level six or whatever. Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, he was basically saying it's unnecessary that we don't need those kind of radars to make our cars autonomous So kind of an interesting argument, especially given that this settlement obviously was worth so much money Yeah, I'm sure that when you get into the specifics of it They have they probably had a unique twist to it or something that was proprietary that Made it different. I don't know. I mean sure there's multiple ways to attack to approach that problem Of course Elon would have a way to do it without that but he's also sending roadsters into outer space too. So it was a good settlement. I think it was a win for Uber, obviously, because they can put this behind them. This was something that was kind of looming over after their shitty year last year with everything that was going on. Like this is one more piece that they can walk away from and look to the future. Some good things happening there, I think now. And there was never really an admission here that they used the technology or did anything with it, But they just said it wasn't handled properly and then they would not use that info going forward. Hmm. Fucking Uber, man. Who would have known a cab company could be so scandalous? Boom. You know? Scandalous, uh... Well, it's getting better. I don't know. Maybe it's not. We'll see. To be determined, right? TBD. I... Like I was telling you offline before, I like what I've heard about Dara because I know that our co-worker has worked with him at a company. worker has worked with him at Xpedia and had a lot of good things to say about him. And so far I think he's done some pretty amazing wizardry. He came in having to deal with some pretty big shit and has done really well so far. So I am excited to see the transformation and hopeful that things will be quite a bit different there going forward. I mean that was the other interesting thing too and his statement that he made. It wasn't even so much. I mean there was a big... To me what was amazing about it was not only the settlement but it was the relationship the bridge that I thought was burned, it looks like they've been able to kind of restore relations there, even saying that look like we need to put our companies aside and like what we can achieve with autonomous driving is bigger than us and bigger than this debate. And we didn't handle it well at the time and we're not gonna, we need to be partners going forward. And so it even left some hope there that Alphabet and Uber could work together down the road in some capacity, which I thought, man, that's pretty cool to be able to cover from that in such a way. Yeah, that's yeah, especially in a multi-year kind of litigation situation, I think that's pretty pretty amazing that you could set your differences aside and yeah, for the greater good, maybe leave the door open for future collaboration. I think that's important as well. We will see. Tell me, Mike, a little bit more about your side projects and overextending yourself too often. Well, kind of, yeah, I mean, that's kind of the deals like overextension, but it's really like it's a combination of that with mixed in with the imposter syndrome shit that we talk about sometimes with I don't know. I'm a firm believer that when in order to grow in order to learn that we need to get out in front of our skis a little bit like I don't think safe is always the best way for growth like the path to growth is by putting yourself out there a little far sometimes and so I've always Operate under that I have some funny stories. I can tell about that later, but I won't tell them all now, but I think just in previous projects that I've done and previous companies that I've that I've run Some of the things that we've done. We definitely probably didn't have business doing but we figured it out And I think that you when you listen to other people that have had Successes like it's a common theme is that yeah, well, we weren't really I was just I'll tell you what we're I was just listening to Ryan Sirhant. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's a young real estate broker in Manhattan. He's on a million dollar listing. And his story is really funny and it's kind of like this. Talk about putting yourself out there. So he went to New York, he had aspirations to be an actor, and was having difficulty getting into that scene, needed to pay his bills. And some friends of his at the time of pre-2008 crash were just killing it in real estate, running apartments on Craigslist and making, you know, little spiffs for getting those apartments rented so he got into the real estate game as a way to pay rent and find the acting gig somehow that led him to there was a series there was something that was announced the million dollar listing show was coming to New York and they already had it in LA and it was working really well and they wanted to bring it to the East Coast and so they had an audition 3,000 real estate agents showed up to audition for the show and he went in and convinced them that he was a rock star fucking broker who had really only been doing it for a few months in New York City and he was one of the three chosen out of the three thousand to be on the show and so all of a sudden now he's thinking how the fuck am I gonna get million-dollar listings because like I've only been doing this for a few months I'm pretty green and I don't really know what the fuck I'm doing and I just convinced them that I'm like a powerhouse broker in Manhattan so he's been doing it after seven seasons so he figured out how to make it work right But I like that because I can relate to that story like there's been different points in my life where Like the rubber meets the road and it's like I had an opportunity and I needed an out I need I needed it the opportunity to work out and so jumped in maybe without thinking it through the whole way And and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't but you do learn and grow from that I think there's kind of another angle you might take on that story and that is that To your point of kind of being out over your skis is just being not comfortable. I think yes I think a number of times throughout my career. I've been very very uncomfortable and during those periods of comfort are the Periods of my career where I've grown the most the quickest And one of those that I can recall very explicitly is I had left my job at Seattle Children's Hospital a place where I guess technically I was considered probably the lead engineer at the time, which is kind of sad to say But I was considered the lead engineer for that group and without kind of knowing any better I have felt that I was doing doing very well I knew a lot of shit and I kind of jumped over to another company Grounds speak as a matter of fact, which I worked with another co-worker of ours at briefly and And pretty quickly, I kind of got knocked on my ass there and shown that I didn't know a hell of a lot. I actually was kind of way behind, which really lit a fire under my ass to learn a whole slew of new technologies and catch back up on things that I had apparently missed during the time that I was at Children's. So even though I ended up ultimately getting let go of that job after about three months, it was probably one of the biggest growing experiences I had in my career. And it was really painful and really uncomfortable at the time, but it was a very, very valuable period. What an opportunity now. I mean, you didn't say that then, of course, but you've, going through it, looking back, what an opportunity that was. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, oddly enough, I, you know, I work with the guy that I technically was reporting to, I guess you might say at the time. I don't remember technically the whole hierarchy, but I'm pretty sure I reported to him, or at least it seemed like I did. And he was in the room when I got let go. And now I still work with the guy, you know, I have nothing but respect for him. And I think he respects me and the quality of work that I do as well. And so there was no hard feelings. It was just a piece of growth that I needed to do. And I needed to do the work to get there. And I did it. And here we are. You know, I want to say something about that. You just maybe think of this idea too, or this reality, because we talk about imposter syndrome and talk about just not feeling good enough. Here's a situation where you got into it. You were a little over your skis. You learned a lot, but it didn't work out. You got let go. work together now. I've had a lot of experiences like this where I've had the realization that it's definitely not personal. I think it's really tough to be, especially after rejection, or even if it's going to an interview and it didn't go well, or it's like, "Oh man, you just knew that it wasn't your day." And for me that would be a really, not only a humbling experience, but I typically would beat the shit out of myself about that. Like, "Oh man, I can't go back and do it again or I really suck." And I learned this just from doing interviews at our current company. We had a few runs there where we were doing interviews more than writing code, you know? It was just like, "Let's get another one through the door." And it wasn't personal. I mean, even when I had great interactions with people, it just weren't a good fit. And it was like, "Look, it's not about you, it's just not a good fit." And so I think that's... I don't know why I felt the need to bring that up other than just like I want, I think it's important to know for people that are out there that are in pursuit, that it really, it's just a learning experience, get back out there, figure it out, make a few tweaks and then go back. In some cases you can even go back to the same place and have a different outcome. It just wasn't, the timing wasn't right. - Yeah, I think in terms of, you're talking about interviews, you know, if you're, A, if it's a good employer, and B, if you've corrected whatever problems that you got dinged for in the interview or even if just for whatever reason, something was wrong during that particular day or if you had something else going on in your life and you're distracted and just couldn't focus or whatever the case may be, they should give you another shot if they're any kind of a good employer at some point down the road and see that you're worth, that you can cut it for them, I guess. Just don't be fucking nervous though. That's one thing I'll say is like, just slap yourself out in the lobby before you go upstairs. I think I've noticed too, like too many people coming in and like being so nervous that it was just like a barrier to even like writing their name on the chalkboard or whatever. You know? - Yep. - It's like, get that shit out, like, you know, go do a sprint, like wear yourself out, whatever the fuck it takes, but don't bring that in. I think that's the one thing that I can say, but anything else is like just you'll learn from it. - Yep, I think on the other end of that too, like you're talking about coming into the interview as if you leave the interview and it goes a little less than stellar, you know, like take it as a learning experience. I mean, obviously you need to kind of, for lack of a better word, grieve it, right? Like maybe it was something that you were really, really interested in and it didn't work out well. I mean, unfortunately, that's unfortunate. Give it a day, give it two days, give it a week, whatever it may be that it takes you to kind of get past it. but ultimately you should reflect on it and kind of use that as fuel, use it as a barometer to get better. - Fuck yeah, 100% I agree with that sentiment. Couldn't say that any better myself. Yeah, so all that to say getting back to the topic how I was saying is that, my specific example of kind of getting out over my skis right now a little bit was taking on another side project. So like I said in the beginning of the show, things have been kind of routine for a little bit, like work's been pretty good, I'm keeping on top of things, not a big backlog. Wanting to get my feet wet again in some new front end stuff 'cause I have been doing a lot of middle tear things for the last year and a half, two years with the Azure migration and getting into event hubs and queues and all that kind of cool messaging shit. Fun stuff, but I'm not doing a lot on the front end. So enter this opportunity to do a new project, and it's a mobile app development, React Native. The first project is going to be targeted towards iOS devices in the App Store, and then we'll go back and release it on Android as a follow-up. And decided to do that in React Native. I've not worked with React before. It's a 12-week timeline, so not a quick-- Well, it's a pretty quick timeline. I think it's a pretty aggressive timeline because I'm the only developer on it. And so there's front end work, there's also the back end work. I need to build the database, the APIs and all that shit for the React Native application and do that on my nights and weekends, right? So, got that negotiation process went pretty well. Went back and forth a few rounds. I think we both came out of it feeling pretty good about it. Got the deal signed and started working on it. And instantly just-- and I was up front with those guys. I want to say that too. I think it's important when you're getting out in front of your skis a little bit. Like, I didn't bullshit anybody and say, oh yeah, I built 10 of these before. This is no big deal. Like, no, I was very up front and said, look, I've been a web developer for x years, but this is the first time I've done an iOS application in the App Store. I've done websites for a long time. I've done APIs. I've done database. understand how this stuff works but I haven't done React Native ES6 on iOS so if you're okay with that I'm okay with that and we were you know we worked it out to where it was a win for everybody but but yeah I did feel after taking it on about 30 seconds of excitement and then this dupe and gloom like what the fuck did I get into fuck man for the next 12 weeks I'm not gonna sleep like I I gotta cancel my appointments. I can't go out anymore. I gotta fuckin' order 20 pounds of beans. I gotta call Simon up and get a fuckin' huge fuckin' truckload of Starbucks coffee over here. - I will say, man, you have definitely been like head down low profile. Like I can definitely say that. - The last few weeks? - Yep. - Yeah, and I don't know how I feel about that. I think it's good because it's been a great start. So I've only been at it for, I think this is week four-ish, four and a half. And like to date right now, I actually have a back end API. I have a database with some stuff tied into it. I'm getting some mock data out of my swagger. I've got a React Native project with like 12 screens set up with routing and a little like hamburger menu. And so I have some sample data from the APIs on the screen. I think that's pretty cool for not doing it before. in four weeks and it's really only like 10 hours a week, so 40 hours, ish. - I would say that's real good for, I mean basically you're what a third of the way through then at this point, right? - About a third, probably a third of the way through, yeah, definitely. I mean, as we, I think that it'll be really easy to get to that 80% mark on time and it's gonna be the last 20% that's just gonna fucking hose us. Like I wanna get ahead of that and make sure that like whatever detail stuff, like there's gonna be some API integrations with Stripe and some other things. I fucked around with OAuth on Facebook for like four hours the other night because of some header file it was missing. It wasn't being linked in Objective-C. So there's some bullshit like that that scares me. But hopefully, like I can get enough of the app. I'm just trying to do the low hanging fruit. It's like the easy shit that I know how to bang it out, get it done, and then come back and refine later, right? - I think that makes sense. Yeah, exactly. I think, well, and there's a mix too. I think earlier you were kind of alluding to trying to figure out some of the big stuff as well, the big scary pieces that you really, that were kind of nebulous, that those would be the things that could really bite you quickly because you don't have any idea in terms of scope of A, the learning, and B, what the actual work would be, right? Well, that's true. Actually, yeah, I appreciate the, yeah, bringing that back around because that's right like for me getting the react native app set up required a special type of Macintosh for me the hack the hackintosh 1.0 I hope there's no way from Apple listening to this we'll sell out of court really easily and cheaply I'll just buy a Mac Air for three thousand bucks or the fuck they're going for now if I have to do that but no seriously though like just getting the react project set up there was some prerequisite stuff there and I was like oh boy I've never done that before you know and you have to go through the rigamarole of getting the Apple developer thing set up because you have to have the license with Apple and then you've got to get Xcode installed and the fucking bundle ID and all that shit. So like, you know, some of that stuff I hadn't done before and it took a little time. So yeah, I wanted to get into that first, you know, back in the day, maybe when I was a little more green at this sort of thing, what I would have done is said, well, I'm really comfortable with APIs and database. So I'm just going to do that shit first. And I'm going to make sure that's 100% fucking buttoned up. And then that would have taken me six weeks, and then at the six-week point or whatever, I would have been like, "Oh, now I need to do the React Native thing, and I'm not sleeping anymore because I don't know how the fuck to do it, and I'm getting into it, and it's week seven, week eight. Now the deadline's really close, and I'm having to stumble around some of this shit that I haven't dealt with before." And it's just not a good situation, so I think what's been really cool is to take that piece that I hadn't done and say, "Look, build out a couple APIs, get some sample things cooking, I'll spend a little time on that, a day on that." But then next, instead of trying to perfect that process, I'm going to go back to the front end and get the React Native app working, get navigation working, get OO Offset up, and struggle with that now. And then if I need to take a break, I can go back to the API shit because it's easy and fun. And I can go and then come back to the hardship. And so it's been a nice back and forth, right? A little bit of a dance between the front and the back. And it's not too overwhelming because I have a lot of runway right now. I think that's a nice approach. I've been working on not a paid app. There's no value in it or stakeholder other than myself in my case. But I've been working on just a little app that I push up to Azure and I do it a little off and on in my free time. And it's the same type of thing. It's a web application with an API. And I'm thinking about eventually down the road using those APIs to do a react to native application for iOS and those sorts of things as well. But yeah, I think to your point with the, with the kind of bouncing around a little bit, I think that's a pretty helpful way to do it. I think you kind of set some pieces up and then kind of bounce over somewhere else that you really have a lot of interest in at the time and kind of set that up for a little while. And then maybe if you get stuck, bounce off to something else and work on that for a little bit and then come back. I think that's a pretty healthy way to do it. And I think it keeps you interested in the project and keeps it flowing instead of you just kind of getting stuck and pounding your head into the wall as you try and solve one particular piece of the puzzle, right? Completely, that's some of the wisdom that comes with doing this enough times. And from pounding your head on previous projects over and over again and saying never again, you know, it's like, get to that point where it's like, I'm never gonna do this again. It was so painful. And so the opportunity coming into a new project like this was to remember a little bit. Like part of it was just, you know, a retrospective on how some of the last projects went and realizing, look, I wanna do different this time. So I'm gonna be upfront about what my strengths are, and I'm gonna be upfront about what my weaknesses are with the client, and be upfront about, I might need more time for this part of the project, or whatever it is. I think the transparency has helped. Trying to bounce back and forth has helped a lot, because it's kept it exciting still. So even when I'm struggling with some piece, I can look forward to something else that needs to happen that isn't as technically challenging. Or if I'm tired, if it's been a long week, and the only time I have to work on it like on a flight home or some like off-hour at night, then I have some, there should be some easy shit that I can like, you know, lay up and it's not a big deal. I'm not trying to tackle some huge problem at nine o'clock at night after I've been going at it for 14 hours or whatever. And are you using like a, any kind of project management? Do you have a roadmap, a plan, a requirement? So like, how are you dealing with that? Because what But I guess the reason I'm asking that is with the whole bouncing around idea, what I do find myself consistently having issues with, and maybe this is because my app doesn't have real great requirements, I'm kind of building it and making it up as I go. But I find myself kind of leaving things semi-incomplete and then forgetting to come back around to them. And again, maybe that's just because the whole app itself doesn't work end to end, right? So I mean, those things aren't as noticeable yet. Maybe they will be as I get further down the road. I don't know, just something that I was kind of thinking as you were talking. I'm with you. I had the same issues, the same challenges. What's helping me to stay organized here. I don't have a full, well, here's what I did. I'll tell you what I did. So when I first was entertaining the project, like before I even, like before there was an agreement made, there was a very loose proposal that was given to me. was like a PowerPoint that had some slides on it. It was like a slide per page of what this app would look like. So I mean, they did put some thought into it. I mean, the requirements weren't bad, right? Like they already gave me a good starting point. So I took that and rolled it into Figma and came up with what the mobile screens would look like start to end, you know, and spent a little bit of time doing some prep there. And then back from, I got this piece of it from my construction days when I was doing like the home audio stuff. Those guys were very formal with specifications and you'd have like 1.1.a.1.b or whatever. Very meticulously laid out like the contractor shall provide XYZ. So I took that kind of approach, dumbed it down a little bit or simplified it, but took what I saw visually in Figma and I wrote it down into an outline in the contract. And so as far as what the deliverables were going to be, it's like, OK, well, here are the pages. And so there's like-- let's just go with 12. There's 12. 1 through 12 is going to be each screen. And then within that, I might have a few bullet points, ABCD. It's going to provide a login button to Facebook. And it's going to provide a login button to Google. And then if the user is logged in, it's going to skip this page and go to that page. So that's where I kind of outlined all the steps, which gets pretty detailed. I think it was like an eight-page contract for this app, which is a pretty basic app, honestly. And then I did the same thing for working my way back. I said, OK, the API is-- I already know that I'm going to have to have some basic user profile API. And it's going to require add, update, delete, or whatever. I'm making shit up now. But the user profile was in there, the user API, the payments API that connected to Stripe. There's going to be some reporting involved, so the reporting API. So I outlined all those pieces and then started getting to work. And then what I've been doing to kind of bridge the gap between what I've done and what's remaining is if I get something and it's not quite there, I'm using everything I have is in GitLab. So I'm using the GitLab repo. I really like what they've done. And it's free for private projects, unlimited. So I have a GitLab account. All the code is in there. And I just use some of the project management tools they have. They have their own task manager and that kind of shit. so I can just put stuff in there and check it off. Perfect, yep, that's kind of what I was wondering is if you were using something, I was thinking more Git or GitHub, 'cause that's what I end up using. But yeah, that's the kind of thing I was curious as to if you had project planned it more than just kind of, here's the screens I'm gonna deliver, right? Yeah, yeah, so I would say basically having the screens in Figma and then taking that to an outline would really button up all the details. And then that wasn't even entirely technical, very functional but I could take that and put a technical set of requirements together in the GitLab and that's been pretty good. I think the takeaway from it for me though has been, like yeah you said I've been pretty dialed in and I haven't been, you could tell that I haven't been on my normal routine that I was in like around the holidays which I think is good because I was kind of in a lull at that point anyway but what's been nice about this time is because of the planning and being upfront about it and buffering my time. I have noticed the shift in how I've been able to respond to this project. So typically in the past I would have blocked everything off, cancelled all my appointments, wouldn't talk to anybody. Oh by the way, I can't do the podcast for three months because this project fucking came up and I don't know what I'm gonna do until it's done. So it's been nice to see that shift, that I've been able to maintain this. I still have maintained some social activity. Like I'll be doing some travel. I'll be in Denver this weekend working on a house project for my mom. So, like I'm able to do that. And I still have a call with those guys, like a status call, you know, at 9 a.m. on Saturday. So it's pretty cool to get to that point where like my life doesn't stop because I just got over my skis and I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do. It's like, okay, like wisdom comes along over time of doing it wrong. like we figure out ways to do it right and it's a pretty good feeling. Well, and I feel a lot of it's just psyching yourself out, right? Like you, I think at this point, to your point, you have enough experience that for a minute you kind of are like, oh, shit, here's a lot of work. I'm in trouble. And then instead of you just kind of flying off the deep end and just kind of freaking out and doing this or that or trying to like flail and get things done, you kind of stopped and slowed down and planned and made up, you know, solid step forward or a solid plan to go forward and Because you did that. I think things seem a lot more attainable Yes, or completable and so it keeps you you know much more calm and able to keep progressing instead of just kind of falling into the trap of stress and and I think I feel like if you get stressed you immediately kind of just are ineffective, right Yeah, right like the stress itself is paralyzing and it kind of puts you in that place where you just don't even know where to start Right, it's all overwhelming. Yep. Yep Yeah, it doesn't help it doesn't serve a healthy purpose. I mean, it's good to have some sense of urgency around a deadline to make sure you're staying on top of things but You know, I would say to this too like I would offer up for other developers listening and other What I've found to be extremely helpful too as far as like tackling some of these things is I'm a huge proponent of the Pomodoro Effect which is like the Pomodoro is the technique not effect. It's a Pomodoro technique That it's essentially time-boxing right so you would say like for 25 minutes You set a timer for 25 minutes and just get into the shit and so a lot of times I've been Stuck like you're describing I've been paralyzed like I don't know where to start I don't know what to do. And so Pomodoro is great because it's like, look, I'm just going to fucking do something related to the project for 25 minutes and that's it. That's my goal for this session. And a lot of times, when I do that, even though in the beginning I'm like, "Well, I don't know what I'm going to do," or "I need 10 hours to get this done," 25 minutes is enough of a time box that will force you just to accomplish something and then get traction and say, "Okay, well, I can do that again." And you can build momentum off of that so that it isn't this huge thing because it really is about breaking it down. I think as developers, one of our biggest challenges, especially as we're coming up in the ranks, is that we don't learn how to properly size things, how to estimate things, how to break it down. And so a lot of times when we're in a sizing meeting or an estimation meeting and people say, "I don't know, two days," it's like, basically, I don't fucking know. And what that tells me is that it's not that you don't fucking know, it's that the problem is too big at that level. It needs to be broken down into smaller steps. So yeah. And yeah, I would agree that that's a, that's a hard nut to crack. And I think there's a lot of engineers even that are that are many, many, many years into their career that still are unable to do that. They just kind of use really vague terms like that. They'll be like, Oh, that's a week or that's, you know, that's four days, whatever it may be, I don't know. But I still see that even today. So sizing is a very hard thing. And that's why you We have project managers and different methodologies on just how to do that project management. So that's a big deal. So the one time guys were smaller is better, I'll tell you that much. Well should we, you want to put the wraps on this here show? That's the wrap for episode 13 of the Coffee and Code Cast. You can contact us at Twitter @chipperSF, that's me, chipperSF. Kyle at KyleP Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N, and reach the show at CoffeeCodeCast. Also, if you're going to give us a shout out or talk shit, make sure you include us with the hashtag #Ask3C. That's how we can see your comments. You can email us at coffeecodecast@gmail.com and hit us up at our website, our official website, www.coffeecodecast.com. Subscribe to our episode, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, iTunes, and TuneIn. Rate us, like us, share us, leave us a comment. Really, we'd love to hear from you guys. Anything. Good, bad, or otherwise. Reach out to us. [Music] [Music] (upbeat music) [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] (upbeat music) [Music] [Music] (dramatic music) - Yeah, we can bullshit a little bit. I mean, I feel the same way. I haven't really talked to you. I was reflecting on this when I was back in Seattle the last time. I think I barely saw you there either. I don't know if it was just like, you may have been home one day or I don't know if the fuck was even going on, but it's not like we had a lot of time on that visit. I felt like to catch up. I think that was the beginning of my house woes, version 500. Oh, fuck, man. Yeah, that's killer. I think that was the day that they were coming over to what the hell was it? Gas problems, something like that. I don't know. I ended up being out Thursday. I think you left Thursday and I was out Thursday. So yeah, and then you're in quite a few meetings back to back to back. So yeah, just wasn't a lot of time. Wasn't a lot of time. And the way that things are going now, so when it started out with Q4, It was more of a regular thing, like come out Tuesday, go back Thursday, but do it every other week. So there was always a little touch point, but it felt really rushed. This time around, Brad said, let's back it off. Let's do four a quarter. So it's kind of like one and a third a month, right? I mean, it's a little weird to kind of time it out. So I've done two so far this year. I've been back there twice. I'll be back there again next week. But I'm going to be out there longer. So that's what I'm trying to do now, make it not as frequent but a little more length to it so that it doesn't feel so quick. Because that's what happened. I'd go there for a day and a half, two days and I was just like fucking meeting, meeting, meeting home. You know, it was just a lot. So. Well, and not only that, but you have, I mean, just even beyond your side projects that we've talked quite a bit about here. I mean, in your regular nine to five job, you have no shortage of shit going on right now with the, you know, we, there was a company acquired, you know, you're converting a bunch a code to their platform. You've got other projects in the queue. So I mean, yeah, you've got to, you got to fuck ton of work going on right now. Yeah, man. I'm growing the grays. I guess that's the thing right now, right? Like, that's the, that's the benefit of all this shit, man. It puts a couple gray hairs on the old chin. Speaking of that, I just got called out for that shit yesterday. Uh-oh. Who called the wife? Calling you out already on the gray hairs, man. Yeah. She was telling me I looked distinguished. Oh, distinguished. Oh, that's nice. Good for Christina. Yeah, yeah Need to bust out the just for men I guess already No fucking own that shit man. I tell you what like I'm not I'm good. I'm not gonna be correcting any of that shit I'm just gonna do it All right. Yeah. Well the problem is it's only one little spot on the corner of the chin So it's gonna be like this one little like stripe It's so funny how that happens because my buddy Slayer downstairs on to you know down there Him and I have the same thing like in the beard area. It's like little patches on the sides. Yep Yeah, I guess that's true I now that I think about it people that I know with beards do seem to have some sort of a light spot in it usually Starts on the sides and then it's all downhill from their boys. Yeah. Are you saying Slayer's old? Slayer has shown his age. He's very distinguished in his age. He's a handsome fella. I Have some bullshit. I want to talk about is uh What what is the likelihood that we would do some kind of? Running event this year. Are we still feeling good about that? Are we still kind of is it up in the area a little bit? Well, I just ran yesterday. It's that's something that I definitely want to get into again For you for me, I guess I should say the weather here is a bit more uncooperative Yeah, and I am definitely not a fan of treadmills They're very painful for me not painful in a in a real way, but I just I have a really hard time just being in one place constantly. That's why generally I like to run outside and cycling outside are kind of things. I'm not a big gym guy, I guess. So I'm trying to get into it a little bit more. I would have probably even run this evening if we weren't doing the show. Maybe I still will, I don't know. It's awfully cold here today. It's been frosty in the morning. So, hoping for it to warm up. But yeah, I mean to answer your question, I think I'm still interested in it. Am I ready for that kind of thing? Like now, hell no. I'd need quite a bit of training to get there, but I'm still intrigued. Yeah, I would say the same. Like I'm intrigued by it. I went running, well first of all, I ordered some gear, I had some shoes, but I ordered some running shorts and whatever. So I went out on Saturday and did six on the Embarcadero, which was kind of fun. I did just like a three mile out and back kind of a thing. But I'm in the same boat. Like I'm not in tip top shape. Like right now, like that 10, that was, it was, it was, I wanted to do a 10K was a little short of a 10K. I'm going to probably sign up for one in March and do a 10K. - Okay. - But I mean, but if we're going to, but going the distance is like doing four of those motherfuckers. It's like, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that. So I'm open. I guess we'll just kind of play it by ear see how things go as it gets into spring and gets a little nicer because I'd like to up my game a little bit but I'm. Who I just need to be able to. I mean I'm not I'm not setting a high bar for this one I would be interested just in completion I just don't want to do it for five hours. Like. So I don't know we'll have to see how it goes. Well here's what I would say is if if there was any plan that we were going to run. together and completed it, you know, at a similar pace, I guess I would say. Traditionally, even my fastest, probably half marathon, I think was somewhere in the vicinity of like 2.15, like 2.15. So I mean, you're gonna be an hour, you're gonna be at 4.5 hours if you're gonna be running with me, probably at the minimum, right? So what is that? What pace is that? I don't know that's math and I don't want to do math We don't have to think about that right now. Yeah, I'm not worried about like I Don't want to say it was just under sub ten minutes Okay, because here's the deal is that like my I I I just I just don't have the endurance right now as a thing like well happen is is like I'll go I would go out and run my first 10k Blazingly fast and then I would stop and eat some cookies and some pizza Right like so I just need to Regulate that a little bit. I need to get a sense of pace back and I went blind. I didn't have my phone or anything So I need to just at least Get a device Maybe you could recommend something for me, but I just want to be able to track my pace I want to I want to be able to say that I'm running a nine-minute pace and have it Tell me if I'm going too fast or too slow. Is there something like that? Oh, yeah The Garmin's would be great for that any any of the Garmin for runner watches or that I have the Phoenix It's the same type of thing They'll all do that for you Yeah, I figured there's some good shit because like when I was doing this competitively We had like a timex watch for 30 bucks like it wasn't very sophisticated tech here. Yeah I guess coming from somebody who wasn't a collegiate runner, but what I would say Just from kind of my experience Way back in the day at this point. I would I would actually avoid running for time at this particular moment I would run for time, I guess, in a different way. I would run for-- Go for an hour. Exactly. Or two. Yep. Regardless of pace, just go for an hour and get your body acclimated to just running for an hour. And then start to work on pace once you've kind of gotten acclimated back to running. That's kind of the way I would look at it. Or that's the way I will approach it. But maybe you've done this more even than I have, so it's probably a different animal for you. No, no, you're right. No, you're actually right. That's what I should be doing. My problem is that I get into a competitive nature. - Yep. - And I, even though I haven't run competitively in 10 years, like I go out there and I think that I can just fucking crush people around me. - Yep. - And then I get mad when my body doesn't allow me to do that. (laughing) - Yeah, when you're wheezing like you were on the last podcast. - Yeah, man. I mean, this fucking six-miler, like I busted the first three miles out, probably in eight minute pace, maybe a little, maybe a little better on the better side of that. And then turned around and just like fucking wanted to take a shit. Fucking sidewalk. I finished it, but I had to go a lot slower. It's like, okay, dude, like you got to, that's, I, like, but I agree with you. Just go for time. I think what was really hard for me is I didn't have a sense of how fast I was going, because I have been doing treadmill training. And for that, it has been very dialed in, like I'm going to do 6.0 or eight, whatever the fuck it is. And, and then you get into that rhythm and being outdoors for the first time in a while. I had zero concept of like was I going 10 minutes a mile, 20 minutes a mile, five, you know, I still know. So yeah. But I agree that that's the right mentality and that's the right approach I think is to not get into the the numbers and just go for time. Yep. That's what I need to do. Yeah that was my goal yesterday. I was gonna go run down the Lake Washington waterfront and I had mapped out a route that I figured would be about the right amount of miles and yeah, I had to take this big staircase 'cause as you know, I'm kind of on the top of a hill, kind of leading down toward the water. Well, I get over to the damn staircase and of course the fucking stairs are closed to like mid-year. - Oh, for what? - I don't know. So then I, at that point, now I'm on the other side of the hill. So now I have to go up or down the hill and back up at some point. So I was like, God damn it, this fucking sucks. - Oh, geez. - It's a big hill. - That sucks, man. Anyway, I didn't get down to the waterfront, but I'm still planning on doing that. I still have the route. I think it's about a six-miler in total. So yeah, my goal initially is to just try and stay running for about an hour in terms of length. - Yeah, that's great. - And however long I go, that's fine. I don't really fucking care about the distance or the speed that I'm running, just as long as I get my heart conditioned to be able to withstand those types of long runs, I guess. Well there was a woman, I would love to find out, I gotta need to do a little more digging to remember the story, but there was a gal, this was in the 70s, and I don't remember the whole circumstance. She was training for a marathon, and it was a big event. I don't remember the event. Could have been for the Olympics. I mean, I don't remember, but she had been living somewhere like in the fucking Arctic Circle, right? she was up in the, let's say she was in Alaska and she had, she had been coming off of an injury. And so she was going to get back into training for this race. I don't remember what it was. I'll find out the details later, but she did treadmill training for like four months before the race. And all she did was distance training. She had no speed workouts, no interval workouts, no hill intervals, no that shit. She just went out and she just did distance 10 miles, 15 miles, whatever. Yep, repeatedly. And she ended up fucking crushing the race. Like she came back and won because her base was so strong. The fact that she didn't have some of the technical work down didn't matter. Like she just fucking crushed people. It was crazy. That's all I've ever done. Honestly, I've never, never been a sprinter. Never been an interval guy. I've just kind of gone out and on a very consistent basis done four miles, six miles, eight miles, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. And again, you know, I'd eventually, you know, you kind of get comfortable with it and pace becomes more of a concern because you kind of yeah Like you said you start to get competitive even against your own self you you want to beat your previous time or whatever but but before I guess until then I just kind of Relyed on I'm gonna run this many miles today no matter how long it takes Well, and I think that's the winning strategy I think the the part of it that I don't and I've been out of it a while So somebody can correct me on this too, but it's like maybe it's psychosomatic But for me, I feel like it goes both ways. Like I need to get the base mileage down, but then also too, like it really helps me to kind of advance a little bit by getting my body used to faster pace. So like I'll go and do like 400s or like quarter, you know, quarter mile intervals and like pick a ridiculous pace. Like I'll do a quarter mile. Let's say I do 12 quarter mile intervals. So that's three miles. but I'll do that at like a six minute pace or a 630 pace. Like I would never do that in a marathon. I couldn't sustain it, but like, you know, my body all of a sudden, like doing that six minute, 30 second pace in a quarter mile sprint for three miles. Like now when I go out and run a 10K at 830, it feels like I'm taking a nap, you know? - Yep. - So I don't know like that, but that's probably just me mentally. I'm not sure like the studies probably show that like, don't be a fucking idiot like I am trying to kill myself over there, just go out and just get the basin. Like that's the way to go. So I need to do that. I brought my running gear. I'm packing my running gear with me. I want some of my travels coming up. So I'm excited to like actually get some runs and I'll be in Denver this weekend to get a run in there. And then I don't know, maybe run in Seattle. - Sweet. Yeah. If you do it, then we should go together. You'll smoke me, but I'll come with. 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