14: Dead Hamsters

Yeah, so you want to get into the hamsters talk then? Ha ha, I will not get into the... Somebody had... That was my sister-in-law that suggested that and I don't. I have no expertise in this area. All I can lend to the discussion, I did have a couple hamsters as a kid and it was actually very tragic because I was probably maybe eight or nine and I had my two younger brothers my youngest brother at that point would have been probably three or three or four maybe? I don't know. And what like was freaking out and I was babysitting, maybe I was a little older because I don't know if eight or nine you're allowed to do that, but I can't remember. I just remember that mom was running in there and they're doing something and we were pretty young and one of my brothers was freaking out and so I ran into the bedroom to see what's going on and something happened with the hamsters and like one of them ate the other one or somewhere shit it was a pretty gory pretty ugly mess like there was some hamster death that we experienced and so that was the end of the hamsters for us wow i didn't i didn't realize they were like cannibalistic i don't know i don't remember what happened like that that's what i remember but it could have been the other one was sick i just don't i don't know if they do that or not so don't quote me on this i'm definitely speaking out of turn. I just remember that I go in there and I saw like a bone and blood and it was pretty nasty. Alright that's the coffee code cat. That's all we got today. We're gonna wrap that up. That's number 14. We're not gonna top that I'm pretty sure. Spay it new to your pets and keep your hamsters safe boys. Peace. [Music] Coming to you live with episode 14 of the Coffee Code Cast. I am Kyle Johnson and this is my co-host Michael Sheehan. Coming to you from the Bay Area and Seattle. Yo, coast to coast. Yeah. The same, the same coast. Yeah, there you go. North to south. So what up dude? What up? Ah, doing alright man. doing alright. That's all I consider now. Living the dream. Living the dream, yeah. [laughter] No, I'm doing good. I told you earlier today I got a fun shipment in the mail today. I'm really, this piece is really nice. Yeah, it's better than you expected? Better than I expected. I was looking at the photos, and the photos look cool, but getting it in hand, whole different experience it's really nice it's the that I guess it's a portfolio a tech portfolio satchel and page makes these fine handcrafted leather Vegetable tanned leather products from they make them in Tuscany Anyway, this is in the interest of our premium products podcast here, right? Yeah, I think it is Yeah, definitely is it's not cheap. It was it was a bit of an expense and I got it on somewhat on a deal because it was right after the Kickstarter, so they had a promotional offer going up, but Really awesome durable sturdy. So yeah, it's a little leather portfolio with a shoulder strap and it has enough room in there for all the gadgets so it has The laptop the XPS 13 fits in there I have room for the remarkable tablet a regular notepad of paper just to like regular paper Passport credit cards charger cell phone holder sleeve thing It holds the Kindle oasis that I have I have a Kindle oasis That's pretty new isn't it? It is fairly new. Yeah. Yep. They designed it to fit that as well. So They're very forward-thinking people they We'll show you on their website a list of the different laptops that it supports Like what version you would want to get paying out at laptop and they had new models on there, so they they're very hip and current with the Software trends so you were carrying around a backpack that was like osprey, right? Wasn't that the brand that you were carrying around before a pretty good size? Yeah. Yeah, that's right I so how do you feel you still feel like you can kind of get everything into this this satchel? I mean, it's much smaller than the backpack it fit in the backpack if I wanted to do that I don't know how I'm gonna use them both yet. So I imagine that like I'll be taking a day trip this week and I I have some personal business on Thursday in Seattle to take care of. I'm gonna go to the this week and I have some personal business on Thursday in Seattle to take care of so I'm just gonna it's just gonna be out in back it'll be a 12 hour trip altogether and I'm just gonna bring the satchel. Yeah I mean I think that makes pretty good sense in that particular scenario you don't really need a whole lot more than that right? No. Something to work on the plane maybe and to hold whatever docks or whatever you got to do while you're here and that's really about it. Yeah, the electronics the notes the charger Some IDs Yeah And I saw it today too that when I because I forgot about this product we had talked about this quite a number of episodes ago and so I quickly reviewed the Details of this thing and this thing has a lifetime warranty on it as well So they're pretty they're standing pretty hard behind it like you should definitely not have any trouble with it They claim this is meant to be an heirloom product that you've hand down they they were inspired by One of the guys I don't know if there's a real story or just really good marketing But like somebody's grandpa, you know going through the attic found an old World War two leather case or something like that era case that he had and it was really high quality and Nostalgic and so they wanted to create products that were that old-school kind of quality disposable grade type stuff and Have it last The test of time pass it down from generation to generation. I think that's really cool Like how's the leather quality feel is it pretty is it pretty good stuff like good feeling? Oh, it's amazing. Yeah It's it's the best leather. I've ever gotten my hands on before and it comes with a certification Like I said, it's a vegetable tanned and so they have this whole thing But yeah, the presentation of it was very nice taking it out of the package and they have it in a special like dust set proof sack or something like that and Yeah, it was very well done and copper rivets on different parts of the work on the edge of the handles Yeah, just very Very hefty and be very heavy-duty You should have done like a unboxing video. You could have made a few YouTube bucks Yeah, I should have done that I thought about it, but I was so damn so I bought I pre ordered this thing in December and Like that. I was so fucking impatient. I just wanted to get it out So I thought about it I took the first I opened the cardboard box and then I had the like the plastic bag with like the dust proof bag inside And I go, oh, this is nice. I should take a video or take some photos. Yeah, fuck it Yeah, I get it. I'm the same way so I did that I opened it up. I think it's one of those Like like leather can be I think it's just gonna be even cooler over time right like the more that it's worn and weathered a little bit It looks very cool right now and the inside feels very soft and the whole thing is Well, well done, but I think it's just gonna have a nice little patina or it'll start to have a little more of a Custom look the more it gets used used Yeah, as with anything leather the character kind of comes out in it when you Kind of use it day-to-day and it softens it up and you get some you know Nicks and marks and different scuffs on it. So that kind of just gives it gives it its character So yeah, I think that'll be really cool. I'm looking forward to seeing it when you get up here Yeah, for sure. I'll make sure I show it off because I'm really excited to have this. This is a nice piece Yeah, so We're back again, I guess after another short hiatus This is the first one we've done in a couple of weeks at least maybe three I can't remember I think three weeks because I think the last one we did would have been Well, let's see we're currently at the 13th today Yes, we did not do it on the 6th and we did not do it on the 27th Yeah, so by the time this is heard that'll definitely be three weeks probably more So yeah, we've been been been off been doing other things Taking care of business And now we're back. We're trying to trying to get back on top of things Hopefully schedules calm down a little bit. Maybe they won't we'll see how things go. We'll play it by ear Yeah, I don't want to get into too much I'll just say that there's definitely been a fair share of life issues going on I think a lot of personal issues matters. I'm healthy, I'm good. It's something like that. It's just dealing with some other personal things. And so it's been difficult. And with the travel schedule as well, it's pretty hectic travel. Travel schedule there in February, I was gone about half the month, the second half of the month. And as much as I really wanna try to do one of these on the road, I did bring that little pocket mic, you know, that Samson mic. We just haven't been able to make that work yet. that's more on me but it'd be fun to try that at some point. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we both had things going on. So I mean, it's not a big deal and we're gonna try to get back on the regular but you know, should happen. So if we're not here, we'll probably be back in short order. We don't plan on stopping, I don't think at this point. So yeah, I don't wanna stop. I wanna keep going. I think it would be good to have some more regularity in it but right now it's a little choppy. You got a little quiet there too. I understand because we just haven't been very active. I haven't posted any videos or anything like that. Oh, in terms of feedback. Yeah, but I did see today, you know, when you posted that we were getting ready to record the show and did people have any ideas and we got some feedback on that. So people are out there keeping an eye out for us, at least, which thank you, appreciate that. Yeah, and I checked the downloads today. I hadn't checked the statistics in a little while, just because we hadn't been recording. And interestingly enough, we continue to get big spikes of-- I mean, not big spikes, but relatively for us, they're big spikes, even when we're not actively recording shows. Really? We've had a number of days where it spiked up pretty helpfully. So it's cool. People are still finding us. Awesome. I love it. And we're not really doing a whole lot. I've been watching more Gary Vee and his latest push. He's been, he's really into the newer social, Snapchat and even like music, musically and some of these other things I don't even know what's up. But he was just talking about Instagram ads being like a super cheap deal right now. And I don't really know a whole lot about it but maybe that's something that we look into is trying to boost our presence on the Insta. - Yeah, I mean I created the account and I try to throw one of those audio grams up there every now and again but yeah we should definitely push some stuff out there more frequently. Their algorithms weird I don't understand it. I refresh it and I see the same thing three days later I just don't have a lot of contacts on there I think that's probably my problem. That would probably be it yeah. Facebook you can go on there and refresh it like immediately and it shows you something different all the time I never see the same thing well I see it the same thing twice sometimes but it's usually very randomized and always very different. Yeah, they try to give you instead of the most recent. It's not chronological, right? They just give you algorithmically generated feed that is a mix of who you interact with the most, who you're related to, all these different factors, right? Right, exactly. Yep. Geographic, yeah, of course. Yep, I think we definitely should. I think you can also add a shitload of tags and they actually work really well on Instagram. So I do that when I do photography, I'll tag photos and yeah, the number of likes that you get just because you put tags on the photo is kind of crazy. I was wondering about that. I have a friend in Denver that I went to high school with and this guy is a big barbecue guy and beer guy and so I don't remember his name, it's like barbecue, beer, I don't know what the fuck it is. But anyway, he does that. He'll have a post, it'll be some amazing, you know, Applewood smoked bacon, cheeseburger, heart attack, and then it'll have about 18, 20 tags at the end of it. - Yup. - He gets a lot of likes from that. - Yeah, exactly, yup. So we should be on Instagram a little more, all right. - So we'll get into the Insta. We gotta be keeping up with the cool kids, the bullies, the new generation, right? - Yeah, and I mean, I see you have a Snapchat too now. - Well, I have all of them just because I wanna, I wanna at least figure out what's going on, but I haven't really cracked into the Snapchat. I don't know, man, it's just not, I'm not there yet. Yep, I'm with you on that one. I know that it's important, I know that, you know, Gary, again, I'm gonna go back to my mentor, Gary Vaynerchuk, this guy is, he's very bullish on all these new social media technologies. I mean, he uses all of them, but I just haven't figured out the Snap. Yep. Yep, we have a gal that we mentor and she's on Snapchat all the time as I think most younger folks are. But yeah, I've been looking at it and I just can't really, I guess I don't understand it that well. And maybe that's 'cause I just don't give it a big enough chance and don't use it enough or often enough to really make it stick. I'm not really sure. So part of the problem for me is that I still use social, Twitter's different. Twitter, I follow things, areas of interest. I follow topics that I'm interested in, or technologies, programming, stuff, whatever. It's not really a social network in the sense that my friends are on there. I don't have any of my, a lot of those people that I follow, I don't even know who they are. Like I've never met them before. I know who they are, but we aren't friends, right? Whereas Facebook, everybody that I've known in the last 20 years, I'm friends on Facebook. And I think part of the problem that I have is that I'm not really using Insta or Snap or even Twitter as a platform for an idea. Like the coffee codecast, for example, if we really wanted to be hardcore about it, probably it could be the platform that I publish on. Like, whatever that persona is that we're talking about tech and we're talking about bullshit and stuff like that, that should be the voice that I'm using when I'm publishing content on those channels and I just don't think that way. Like for me, I'll like a story about like a there's this gal that's a bob like has this um Pack of huskies and she does like the I did her odd or whatever You know, I mean just like random shit that I'll see and I'll like and I'll post sometimes it's political Sometimes it's like around the gun control stuff and I don't think if you want to be really effective On any of those channels that you that you should be doing that I think what I'm hearing at least is that you have to kind of have your your niche and Then you speak from that point of view That's kind of an interesting topic and I'd like to dive into this a little further because I Follow somebody and you probably know his name. I believe it's Scott Hanselman. I know the Hanselman I mean, I've never met him, but I know he's almost yeah. Yeah, so He is a pretty prominent blogger etc primarily for Microsoft products and I followed him for years and years and years and More recently he's kind of been going through a battle with people that follow him specifically around the types of posts that he puts on Twitter and Most recently it's about Politics because he's very very outspoken against the Trump administration So he's making that very well known and you almost constantly see a Barrage of things pointed at him. You know talk tech quit talking politics and yeah He's just kind of like you know well if you don't want to listen to what I have to say don't follow me You know, so it's kind of an interesting push and pull argument I'm sure Gary V just being a marketing guy is gonna very much hit home like stay on message stay on message But there is also the personality piece in there. You know, that's his personal Twitter account. It's not a business account Yeah, although it is kind of tied to his persona because he's very well known So I don't know I think there's an interesting push-pull argument there that that I don't really know what the correct answer is Well, I'll say this I think in his case in Gary's case He would alienate a large Population of his audience right because he is edgy and he's opinionated and he's not afraid to drop f bombs Like it's just a regular part of the vernacular But it's the something that like appeals to his audience And I think when you start bringing in politics or religion or other things like that that he's passionate If he were to do that, I think he would alienate a good part of his audience. So I think in Scott's case, he's just being Scott. That's who he is. He's also been very much an advocate for, well, tech, you know, IoT devices. Well, he's diabetic, right? So he, he talks about that a lot as well. And so I think what he's done is really just make it about, this is me and my life and this is who I am. I'm not really trying to be a marketer. I'm just presenting to you who I am. Right. And I agree with that, but I think his persona is being primarily a Microsoft blogger. That's where he got his name. That's where his recognition comes from. So most people expect to go there and see, you know, primarily tech-related Microsoft content, right? Because that's who he is. That'd be like, you know, I don't know, Tim Cook writing a whole bunch of personal shit instead of tech-related shit, which I guess he does actually now, the more that I think about it. He's very much about you know different causes and stuff like that that he's interested in I guess so I don't know It's a weird it's a weird place to be and when you're a very public figure like that and are well known for a very specific type of business But yet you have a person you obviously have a personal life, right and you have a pinion so I don't know so we're going to straddle it is you have to Well, I think it depends on what your outcome desired outcome is as well in Scott's case I don't think he gives a shit he says look I'm not here to try to like make a living off of social media But so I don't care, but I think maybe other people might If Scott did care about that then maybe he would have a Hansel minutes handle because that's his podcast right or whatever. Yep. Yep You could have a Hansel minutes handle that would just be like the tech stuff that the tech guys want and then Scott Hanselman handle would be like Hey, here's the personal shit, and if you want to follow that Come over here, too And that's kind of what I was getting at I guess so in our case you would if you wanted to post content that is tech-related You had posted from the coffee code cast Twitter account rather than your own personal one You would use your personal one for whatever the hell you want to use it for right? I would and I might even if I wanted to personalize it even more Maybe I would just do like coffee code mic or something like that to if I wanted my own right like That I thought that it would be nice maybe to have my own To differentiate from what your nobody knows who's that I can't speak right now, but it's really hard to tell who's Who's publishing at that point if we're both publishing stuff to the coffee code cast is like was it Mike is it Kyle? Is it somebody else is that a ghost writer like you know? That's her. Yeah. No, I think that makes sense So yeah, I don't know it was kind of that's kind of a cool little impromptu segment there that I you know You were on a roll and it was an interesting topic. So yeah cool stuff. Yeah, good stuff. That's the beauty of the bullshit is that you never know where it's gonna go We're thinking about doing a new segment here on the coffee co-cast and Oh, it's it's it's the top story of the day and really actually it's the top story of the week And what we're doing is we're gonna grab the week's top upvoted story on Reddit So that's what this top story of the day is gonna be and it's gonna be in our news segment where we usually talk about the news so today's top top story of the day is Got a hundred and forty seven thousand upvotes and 2026 comments And what channel does it come from? It comes from the subreddit called mildly interesting. Oh interesting A lot of these that come from mildly interesting. I follow that sub by the way. Do you I? Have not been on reddit for probably three months Wow You were kind of big into it for a while. Well, I really like reddit a lot I like it too much and so I was spending way too much time on reddit Okay, all right, so mildly interesting generally has Exactly what the the topic describes there It's things that are very mildly interesting like they might peak your interest and they might not There's also a series of Subreddits that are similar to it that are like not interesting where it'll be like You know a picture of a shoe on a floor or something like that just stupid stuff that people think is funny. Anyway This particular story the title of it is found the cliff Let's see what I say found the cliff this cliff bar came from and so It's a picture and the picture is of a cliff bar and on the cliff bar. There's a pretty prominent rock climber and He's kind of hanging from a cliff and there's another mountain that's in the background of the scene and this particular person found a Pretty perfect match in real life to what this mountain scene looks like and he's holding the cliff bar up in the exact correct position To where it matches up on the actual packaging Yeah, it's really impressive. I mean it's like even the clouds kind of blend in a little bit. Yeah, it's it's an interesting Interesting place. I guess I didn't look through the comments to see if anybody wanted to mention where this actually was taken. I Didn't pay attention to that either. I just thought damn this is a This is a very realistic. It looks like it looks like the exact spot where it was Photographed or whatever. Yeah, the the actual background mountains kind of line up perfectly the Cliffs the the color of the cliff that the cliff hangar is hanging off of it's like perfect Like everything just matches up really really well So it's it's just an interesting kind of visual I guess So we'll make sure to link to this image in the show notes that you can take a look if you're interested in that as well Yeah, I'm just looking through some of the comments right now and so the top comment from Gravenson was, so did you find it and then go buy a cliff bar or did you happen to have a cliff bar and then realized it? So many questions. If you're yeah if you're not a redditor, if you don't spend time on Reddit, the comments section of Reddit can really be entertaining sometimes. Sometimes it's really annoying but a lot of times the very first like 50 comments are just kind of joke on top of joke on top of joke. Yeah it seems like further down that somebody claims this is not the actual cliff from Cliff Bar that the real cliff was from Smith Rock, Oregon in a route called the chain reaction. Oh, is Cliff Bar from Oregon? Ah boy, that I could not tell you. Let's see, I'm looking at Cliff Bar's Instagram. As rural myth has it, chain reaction at Smith Rock, Oregon was the inspiration for the iconic Cliff Bar rapper. Here team cliff bar friend in the field snaps the shot while fellow photographer puts the moves together Don't know if they're from Oregon or not Well, hopefully they hooked him up with the box full of cliff bars at the very least well They should I mean that was a pretty nice little promotional hundred and fifty thousand people. Yeah clicked on that link So that's how many up voted it. I mean who many how many people actually looked at it, right? That's right. That's true You know what I'll give it an up vote right now from the old copycode cast Yeah, I tried to but I'm not logged in so There you go. So that's the Story of the day not necessarily always tech related could be tech related Really just depends on what's what people on reddit are finding interesting. Yeah, if you have a Story you'd like to up vote go to how do you go to this thing? It just doesn't matter. It's just the highest one I guess you can look in an up vote ones on this thread top thread in the past week Yeah, so this is from the the all subreddit, which is basically all stories and then you have to sort you can sort it based on past day month week, etc So you'd have to select week and then you can see what the top top up voted stories of the week are and we're just gonna pick the top one Each time we record so that'll be that segment some inspirational posts in here in the top 10. It looks like some weight loss Wow, that's impressive some pretty big weight loss stories in there Married couple in China discover they appeared in the same photograph and as teenagers. Oh, that's interesting That there is a really fascinating subject to me And I think that's gonna happen a lot in the future like especially Facial recognition as good as it's getting now There's like if Facebook wanted to just turn that on like and broadcast across like every photo that it has record of You imagine like the photos that maybe you're like just a bystander in Seriously, I mean this that's that's what this is. This is this one is in our interesting as fuck because yes, it is They're a married couple and This photo. I don't know what this fucking statue is in China But there's a picture of her sitting down like on this little Bench not even a bench like a little stool thing and he's off in the background in the right making this kind of leaning pose and Then his copy of the photo you just see him front and center making the leaning pose. Oh, yeah, I see the okay I found the story here. Yeah, it's hers is taken kind of more distantly Yes in the back. Yep further back. He's in the background of her photo and his is kind of more off to the right So she's not in his but yeah, that's crazy. That's fucking crazy. So they were teenagers They're there at the same time and now they're married. I saw a similar similar thing going on on reddit here And it dealt with photography kind of like this but a little bit different and it was a big a Big story about like a fake image because what there was these two photos and they looked exactly alike So it's of this lighthouse and the gigantic like wave crashing into the lighthouse and like crashing up and over and throwing water everywhere well There's two different images and like everything about them is like spot-on the exact fucking same So people are like this is a copy you copied it and you changed it You know yada yada yada right come to come to find out these two photographers were there at the same fucking time and took a picture At the same fucking instant. No way It's fucking crazy. That's unbelievable. I should find it I'll find it and link that up in the short show notes, too But you can tell they're different photos because like the actual like exposure is slightly different You know there's a little bit different tinge color to to them, but yeah, it's the exact same fucking wow That's crazy. I think we have our this isn't just a segment. I think we have a new show the interesting as fuck podcast That's what I was telling you man like the a good old Dignation back in the day which is reddit today like they had something going on like it was just like they go down there or list of stories and bullshit and drink and laugh about it, you know? Well, we are gonna do that. I wanna give too many spoilers away for future episodes, but we are planning a recording together on location and it will involve some beers. Ooh. Maybe, we could do whiskey. I mean, I don't wanna, we could make it our own, you know? Yish. No, not so much. I mean, we'll stick to beers. I slur already as it is. I don't know that I need to. That's right. I remember the time we went to Casco Antigua and after a couple margs dude, whoo didn't take much. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean I'll let you hit the whiskey I'll stick with beer. I mean we can we can we can have some spirits and some beer That sounds great and no promises, but if you're doing up whiskey you might get a little free bird at the end Man, we'll see I think we'll suck Wayland in Wayland's a co-worker of ours who likes the booze So if we bring booze into the mix, I think he'll be a solid listener. He's uh, he's not gonna object to that at all I think I have no problems with that. [laughs] This is good. I like this segment. This is fun. Reddit story of the week. Good. Yeah, I'm glad that turned out nicely. From mildly interesting to interesting as fuck. I actually do... that is my one hang up with Reddit. You talked about the jokes in the comments. Like, there's just a lot of bullshit. The bubble's up. This married couple in China. That actually... I would like to upvote that 47,000 more times. So if you get to the top... I think that's more interesting than the cliff bar. Well, the clip far is cool too, I guess. Well, it's interesting as fuck. I bet it's the highest one in the interesting as fuck category. Well, let's find out. I'm going to go interesting as fuck, and I'm going to go to top. All time. Come on, show me the money. Yep, top. Interesting as fuck. Posted by Dick from Accounting. Nice. So I'm going to look real quick, like, before we move along. Yeah. I know usually they list related subreddits. Usually on the right side they list related subreddits. So I was hoping that they would list like, you know, mildly interesting, not interesting, etc. etc. Oh, I see that for interesting as fuck. Okay. What are the related ones there? Not interesting, offbeat, oddly satisfying, damn that's interesting, unexpected, and WTF. Yeah, there you go. That's pretty cl- pretty correct. And I think I follow most of those. Do love oddly satisfying that one's a good one as well. I need to Maybe I need a re Need to download the old app on the phone again oddly satisfying is a lot of like Just kind of silly shit like let's say you have I don't know like let's say you have a old school like big-ass coffee can and then maybe you have like a Two liter bottle or something like that and it just fucking like perfectly fits into the can Like just you know like how it makes that like slow ride down because like the air is escaping Yeah, it's like stupid stuff like that, but like it is oddly satisfying right in some weird way So it's it's it's an interesting thread to see every once in a while. Sure. Yeah, I see you're saying I'm kind of poking around right now huh Definitely not interesting as fuck. I mean, that's why they have these classifications Yep, okay All right. Well moving on Yeah, let's move on. We got to talk about next. Well, Amazon has made yet another acquisition to take over the world. Oh Are they getting into? Financial markets now. Yeah, exactly financial markets Well, I mean there was a pretty hefty financial transaction involved in this. Did you see the number involved? So they acquired one they acquired a billion dollars. Oh ring. Yeah, go ring the doorbell company. Yeah So they acquired ring which kind of gets them into the same space of the smart home makers So they have the doorbell Excuse me. They have the doorbell products. They have the video products. They have now a new security product so this gives Amazon kind of a competing interest with say nest Well, nest is probably the biggest one, right? I think that Feel like I'm missing one an obvious one, but yeah nest is the biggest competitor I think in that space at the moment So yeah other companies even smaller companies like Simplicef, which is my security system company They're kind of even getting to the space a little bit So I have a wireless security system It's a do-it-yourself and they've added cameras recently and a whole slew of other things just that integrate right into the security system So there's a number of players in the field big and small But Amazon definitely is getting into the field as well with this acquisition As well as their own products that they've kind of already come out with with cameras and Kind of tie-ins to the door locks and stuff like that so they can deliver into your house Which we talked about in a previous episode Well, especially in a DIY space because you do have like you said simply safe and huge huge huge Vivint has grown, you know exploded in the last five years in this space and You've got 80 T with whatever they have their prime I forgot the name of their but they all have home automation stuff, but that's more on the commercial Well, it's residential, but it's like You know you're it's not DIY right like you're paying these guys a monthly fee and they're coming out installing shit But they have that and now you've got these guys coming in and Google with their camera. It's it's interesting like this DIY space It's just keeps getting bigger It's it yeah, it is interesting and it's becoming kind of like the next Phone frontier or something like that where you're kind of locked into a specific ecosystem because none of them want to talk to each other or talk Talk across platforms. So that's a little bit of an unfortunate thing I think that'll come around kind of like the phones did eventually there'll be Things that can start to make them communicate together. But yeah, right now, you know, I'm in the nest world I'm in the simplest safe world. I've got You know Amazon echo devices. I've you know, I've got a little bit of everything and dabbling everywhere But not all of these things can talk to each other yet. And so it's a little bit painful in that respect. I Think the interesting part of this story is that these dudes were on Shark Tank back in 2013 Trying to hawk the product the ring doorbell. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, they it was called something else It was door bot or something. I mean it was a less sexy name back then and they wanted much smaller figure I think they wanted like 700 grand for 10% of the company and Nobody wanted the deal. I don't I would love to watch that I'm sure that clip is floating around now, but you know there they were not interested. Oh, this is dumb or whatever This isn't gonna make any money and then fast forward Five years and Amazon pays over a billion Wow dollars Yeah, that's a That's gonna eat at them for a while. I think it's a nice payday. Oh, yeah You know we I hate hearing about this shit not that I had that idea But when I was doing home automation, you know my partner at the time and I both Saw the vision of where things were going because when we were in it into that space like I've said before it was very hard wired and it took a lot of programming and a lot of time and Cableing da da da and so We were we were on to that idea of how do you make it more DIY? How do you make it inexpensive and here it is and it's just crazy like I don't know what I could have done back then but It's just one of those things like shit. I should have stayed with that a little longer I don't know if I would have gotten the billion dollars for a ring But you never know I think our problem was that we wanted to try to do everything at once and these guys just said look Let's just make a doorbell with a camera on it and Make perfect that I I remember you back in the day talking about all these different wireless technologies that were available for these things and Getting out Arduino boards and doing all kinds of crazy shit. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, we were trying to Drop the cost because these are very cost-prohitive systems that were tens of thousands of dollars And you had to go through dealers to be certified to buy the products and install them and they required a lot of maintenance and upkeep And they're very proprietary, right? I mean the same way you're seeing that now but but it's just been mass produced and it's easy and cheap and anybody can stick it on a wall and turn it on it's you don't have to have a certified installer to come out and do all this stuff for you. Yeah yeah it's really cool it's really exciting stuff like I kind of geek out over all these little gadgets and gizmos that you can plug in and yeah exactly like you said you just like plug and play and click a few buttons in app and bam you're up and running it's crazy that is it very cool yeah Amazon just keeps engulfing everything up right now yeah exactly speaking of another giant GM is getting into the peer-to-peer car sharing services so have you ever used I believe there's a car sharing service called Turo are you familiar with this I'm familiar with Turo I've never used it San Francisco has get around which is a similar concept as well. Okay well the idea is that you can effectively allow other people to use your car while you're away or not using using it. Yeah. So obviously it has to be in a publicly accessible place and you have to be able to get them the key and so forth so you can think of it a little bit as the Airbnb of car renting. But GM is apparently going to try and create their own service to compete with the likes of Turro and Gitaround, which I thought was really fascinating coming from one of the major car makers. Yeah, it's an interesting concept because they have a lot more influence being such a massive company globally. They could disrupt that space. They could. The article seems to indicate, I didn't realize this, I've never heard of it, but there's already a service that they they own it looks like that's called Maven gig which I had never heard of before no I don't know anything about it Maven gig GM's car car sharing service for Uber and Lyft drivers so it's a gig-based service is what it is and so it allows you to use effectively it's the same idea but it's allowing you to use somebody else's car for gig-based servicing oh interesting really. So they already have something kind of in the space but now they're going full on peer to peer like user to user sharing rather than kind of more business related which it's interesting coming from a car manufacturer like I kind of feel like I would expect to see this from like the likes of Tesla but I don't know that I would have expected it from GM. Well you were talking about Tesla's plans for that in the future a while ago. Yes yeah Tesla that's kind of part of of the whole master plan that Elon has put out and who wants to make it so that if you have a car that it can be utilized to its fullest potential rather than just sitting in a garage or whatever you know get some cars off the road if I'm not using my car it can pull itself out of the garage if you if Mike requested it'll pull itself out of its garage drive itself to Mike and Mike can drive it around for the day and then it returns the self to my garage and then it's ready to go for whenever I need it. Yeah well the self-driving feature is gonna just crush it. I mean that'll be amazing. Yeah. Pick you up. Yeah I'm ready for that day. I know a lot of people are dreading it but bring it on. My problem with this space that GM is trying to get into is that I've looked into Touro, I've looked into Get Around and I've shied away from both of them. The prices are more affordable for sure. If you need a car for a few days or if you wanted a really nice luxury ride you could even get access to those types of cars that you wouldn't get from Zipcar or you know other car services like that. So there's a certain appeal there but for me I just don't I don't trust it personally. Maybe this is unfounded but I just am worried about the liability. What happens if I get into an accident in somebody else's car? How good is the coverage? what's covered what's not covered. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding now having been a Zipcar member for several years and I paid nine bucks a month for the "drive me off the cliff" kind of waiver release. Yeah. You know like there's a certain security that I get with that and and for me like that I don't know. I just have never I've looked several times and I just decided at the end of the day that it's not worth signing up and also I just don't like the idea of just just getting into somebody else's car. It just seems a little, not as professional. - I think a couple of things that I have from my standpoint. Number one, our friend Erin Rifkin. - It's her Rifkin. - She used to Turo for a while or she offered her vehicle up on Turo for a while. And had some people use it and of course, not treat it well or not clean it well after they were done. She had things like people would bring animals or dogs in the car and then try to argue that they didn't. You know, stuff like that. Just bullshit that you don't wanna deal with on a day to day basis. So, I mean, there's that kind of stuff that you're opening yourself up to. So that's one thing. And now I can't remember what the hell the other thing was that I was gonna talk about. - Bring the car back. - Oh, I know what it was. It was related to a study that I just recently read and that is that basically the car sharing services, Uber's the list, the, you know, car to go, the reach now's all the different various services that are available. There's been a pretty recent study that came out that basically said it's not doing anything for traffic congestion. In fact, it may be making it worse. So, you know, is this the continual? Is this going to be the way to continually go? I don't know. Like even if even if GM gets into the space and is successful, I feel it's a very short term, short, short sided. execution plan because ultimately like I guess it's my belief although I think a lot of people would argue with me about this It's my belief that the Autonomous driving vehicles are coming very very very rapidly Well, that's for sure and that is going to change The landscape I think at least in larger cities in the metro areas, you know It's gonna be a little harder to push in the rural places Initially, it'll get there But but especially in Seattle or San Francisco where if you had some kind of mandate that like in Europe where in the city that in this case it would only be autonomous vehicles then that would be a big game changer right um I would like to see the study you're talking about I'm interested in that because I had cited a previous study and I've reached out to some some of the local politicians here without any luck any success getting a reply back but just need to keep trying because we don't have car to go or reach now here. We have more limited options in San Francisco for car sharing. And when I'm reaching out to these guys, I'm citing this study from UC Berkeley, and it was probably a few years ago that said that a car to go could take as many as seven cars off the road. I think, yeah, I may have misspoke slightly. It's more geared toward Uber and Lyft. I don't know that the other car sharing services were actually involved in the particular study that I mentioned. Oh I see so you're saying just in general like Ubers and Lifts now you're just so saturated with those guys that you're not doing anything to alleviate congestion. Yeah and in fact making it worse and this this study is actually I got the article here it's actually from the SF Weekly. Oh yeah I read the SF Weekly I didn't see that one yeah 60% would have biked walked or yeah interesting or used the bus if it to want for rideshare services. - Yeah, yeah, it was an interesting article. So, you know, I don't know, I don't know how much more room there is in this space just because the roads are congested, right? Like you have, that's kind of your bumper, right? Like somewhere there's an upper limit to everything. And for this type of business, the upper limit is the road, the roads throughput. And we're already maxed out or damn near maxed out, right? So I don't know how much more of this you can put on the road. Yeah, I agree. I don't think so. I think having autonomous is going to help when it's fully autonomous. I don't think in the beginning that's even going to help because it's going to be driving with regular vehicle traffic still. I do think that there-- I think we've talked about this already. I do think that there are some things that they can do in the interim where they dedicate lanes to autonomous vehicles because those lanes can suddenly become incredibly fast. Because now you have all autonomous vehicles traveling in the lanes that are aware of each other. and you know, can manage their own speed and distance and so forth, which makes them much more safe to travel at high speed. So I think there's some short-term wins, but yeah, I agree with your thought that full autonomy is gonna definitely open up things to a much larger degree. - And I'm still holding out for the fucking hyperloop, dude. That's gonna solve all our problems. - Yeah, who needs the hyperloop, man, when you can take the Falcon Heavy from here to China in 30 minutes? (laughing) - That'd be pretty cool. I'm not sure. Well good story that's interesting. Good luck GM. I really don't care about GM that much. Yeah luck. Yeah. So moving on from the GM story. We don't talk about gaming much here. I don't I'm who does that. I'm I play games here in there. Uh specifically lately. There's been a big craze. With two different games. One is called Fortnite and the other one is which stands for player unknown battlegrounds and The crux of these games is there the typical first-person shooters, but they've put a spin on it and what that spin is is that they take a hundred players and The hundred players all jump out of an airplane onto this island or multiple islands maybe But you basically jump out of this plane and then it's a kind of a free-for-all It's a land grab like everybody has to go out find weapons And then you it's a hundred versus, you know one versus a hundred basically to the last player But what what makes it really unique is Although it starts with a very very large island in the case of pub G in fortnight It's not quite as large, but it starts with a large landmass and then every say two minutes The there's a circle that continues to shrink and you have to stay inside of this circle or you? Become injured or die if you stay outside of the circle So it just continually shrinks down and shrinks down and shrinks down until you're you know Basically face-to-face with the last person or the last few people so kind of forces conflict Which is really really interesting and it makes games move along So yeah, it's an interesting concept and Fortnite which is the one that I'm Interested in talking about here is a pretty cool game. It's made by epic games, which is a pretty major game maker But the game itself is fairly cartoony feeling but the graphics for the game are incredibly performant like crazy performance, so the game itself is on the Xbox the PlayStation and the PC and I have a little bit of an older PC. I have a i5 processor with a you know a graphics card that isn't super strong I don't know the specs on it exactly but it couldn't be a crazy strong graphics card because I don't have the power supply to power it But this game runs I can run it at the highest settings that it has available And it runs the lawlessness like it's crazy how good the graphics run And to tie on to that what I found really interesting is that this game is going to come in its full version They're not gonna strip out anything To Android and to iOS what damn to me is fucking insane Wow, how the hell they gonna put that on I don't know right now They're accepting beta signups So I went ahead and signed myself up for that just to kind of see what it would be like I think it'll be hard to play just because you're playing a full Console or PC game in the iOS environment or Android environment, which I feel like would be fairly difficult unless you have some sort of Bluetooth remote or something but But if it can perform as well as it does on the PC or the Xbox on iOS, I mean that's, to me that's kind of a game changer in terms of games going forward. Like if you can run a full-fledged console game on iOS or Android, that's, we've turned, we've turned a pretty big page. No shit, that's impressive. I wonder what they're going to do there. Are they taking, doing some HTML5 there? Probably not. Probably not using the canvas tag. I'm sure they have some pretty interesting technology behind that. I suspect it's probably a flash game. Flash, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Well, that explains that, man. I guess we got to figure that out. Very cool. I didn't know about this. And when I saw that on the show notes, I still had no idea what the hell you were talking about and then looked at the site and I go, "Oh, interesting." Yeah, it's a pretty fun game. It's pretty quick. The other nice thing about it, if you play a game of the one versus 100, it's pretty it might take 20 to 25 minutes maybe per game so it's pretty rapid you don't have to sit down for hours and hours to you know have a good time so pretty fun I would definitely recommend checking it out if we have any gamers out there that makes sense I was trying to figure out what what fortnight because fortnight is like two weeks time right and so you were saying that the world kind of advances every two minutes or something like it gets shrinks so I think the fortnight title is a play on words I'm not totally certain about this but the whole game itself is is centered around the fact that you can build things so aka build your fort and then I think the night portion of it the monsters there's another portion of the game that's called save the world where you fight zombies kind of waves upon waves of zombies so I think the night portion of it is kind of referenced to the zombies are coming out at night I could be totally making that bullshit up but I think that's probably what it deals with Well, Fortnite used to mean 14 nights, so if it's 2 minutes per night, then the game would last 28 minutes. So I don't know. Maybe. I don't know if they squeeze that in there or not. I haven't tried it, but I'll check it out. Urban Dictionary says it's a game that commonly causes men to lose their girlfriends because the game gets more attention from the man than they do. That's probably right. My homeboy just lost his girl because of Fortnite. dictionary to the rescue every time man. Game that broke the internet in 2018. Everything guys post about under snapchats now are their royal victories on fortnight. I will say I'm appreciative that it didn't come up with some sort of horrible sexual life. Yeah that's probably further down in this third-end dictionary somewhere. Yeah I'm not gonna read that one. Ah, well that's fine. Ah, there you go. There you go. Alright, well, I guess that wraps up what we have for news. Today's news. Yeah, that's the news. I don't think there's anything else that I have in the news right now. [MUSIC PLAYING] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] (upbeat music) [Music] [Music] Gotta be looking pretty dapper these days man. You tucking the shirts in you were in the jacket you got the satchel and page Bag there you got the newspaper Like a regular old Wall Street. What the hell? Well, I don't know hipster and I got a few different influences there Man, it's the old San Francisco influence, you know, I Got the haircut the I got that new haircut basically the Yeah, a little tighter. It was looking good. I liked it tighter on the sides a little I forgot what they called it already. It's like shaved on the sides and then they carve in like a little fucking hard part on the side there too. Leave it a little thick on top. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it looked good. Yeah, so we'll see. I'm trying to clean it up a little bit, man. I gotta look good. Yeah. Keep it polished. And keep working out, man. I've been doing some running, not every day, but a little bit here, a little bit there. I'm still on that. Do intermittent fasting. Yeah, you're still on that. That's good. I did a thirty six hour fast that I ended this morning at nine AM. Wow. Yeah, that was good. Were you struggling through it or did you feel pretty comfortable the whole way through or like I struggled with it yesterday afternoon because I was a little bit stressed about some stuff and then I kind of have you know, you still get the cravings around mealtime. So lunchtime kind of craving that Usually like if I was in the office this is when I'd be going and grabbing like some you know kid sized snicker bars or fun sized snicker bars out of the basket up there. Yeah. So, um, yeah I mean I kind of like perused the kitchen a little bit. I opened the pantry up and I don't have a ton of that stuff in there but I had some stuff I had a tea instead. Yeah, that's a good way to do it. Drink some fluids rather than eat something. Yeah, I'll do that. I'll do bone broth. I'll heat that up. Interesting. Yeah, it actually can be very satisfying, very satiating if you're fasting for a period of time to have a warm cup of bone broth. Yeah, yeah, I've been running a little bit off and on need to get more in a rhythm I did a I did a few days on the treadmill. I did one day Down on Lake Washington waterfront, which is really good got in a nice like four miler 4.2 miler something like that So yeah, I'm starting to slowly work my way into it. Uh Got some new shorts recently The last time I ran I have I have some road runner road runner shorts Which I really really like and they've got built-in liners on them. That's what I wear - yeah, they're great. I love them and What I noticed is like suddenly like I was getting some really bad chafing like on the on like the inner thigh on One leg and I couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on because I've never had that again before well Turns out the inner liner had torn. Oh at a seam. So yeah, it wasn't doing anything wasn't doing its intended purpose. So Pitching those away, and I got a couple new pairs and now I'm ready to go just got to get back in the rhythm and Ideally probably eat a lot less shit than I do right now still working on that Yeah, it ebbs and flows man. I mean I I've been doing pretty good, but it's it's hard to stay consistent all the time It really is I've got a time with that. I still Kind of break from it a little bit But I'll say the intermittent fasting for me is just helped me kind of maintain because I even though I did kind of go on a few different You know went off the deep end a couple of times or had you know, buddy in town, whatever it was You know, but when Slayer was up here a few few weeks ago Or down here depending on what your point of reference is. I mean we went to a bunch of different craft beer places and Did a number and I actually didn't do that bad coming out the other end of it Just I think the big part of it was just from the fasting. So nice. Yeah, I'm hoping my hope here is that this summer between Running hiking biking Etc. I'm hoping to just kind of kind of crush it. That's my my goal. I guess is just to Pretty much be constantly outside doing something one of those activities like damn near all summer long That's kind of what I'm hoping nice. I Will do some of it. I won't come I can't commit to that much. That sounds like a lot Yeah, well, I mean like anything, you know if you get into the running eventually that becomes pretty easy to do on the regular Same thing with biking same thing with hiking right? I mean Fitness begets fitness is what I've been told so Eventually, it's not a problem. Yeah, no, that's great So yeah other than that What have you been watching you got any cool TV shows you've been watching lately, or are you just too busy to? Pull up anything on the old Netflix. No, not too busy. I I have yeah I actually really got into last year sneaky Pete. Did you see that on Amazon Prime? No, I've not even heard of it What is it? Okay? It's really cool. It's the second season just came out last week So I'm binge watching that some bitch right now It's it's it's Giovanni Robisi. I remember him from like boiler room and and what's his name breaking bad not Vince Gilligan but Brian Cranston thank you Cranston yeah so he this is his his show basically he I believe he's pre-produced this did he oh yeah because I think when he came off Breaking Bad I think he was yeah starting to get into directing or something or producing so So yeah, that would make sense that this might be his show. He's the creator. He co-created this show with David Shore. But it's really good. It's a-- Giovanni Grubbisi is this con man. And he's trying to get back on track. But it's kind of interesting, like he needs a place to stay. And so his roommate, his cellmate in prison, they became pretty close friends the years they spent together and as cellmates so he knew a lot about this guy's family and then when when he got out of prison he kind of assumes his identity because his buddy's still back in prison and he needs a place to stay and he's kind of get back together you know get his life together and maybe even get a few dollars on the side and so it's just a very interesting he's a con man does some pretty interesting shit and and uh Kranzin's even in the show as well a little bit he was in there in the first season too so it's been a good show to watch fun drama excellent yeah I'm gonna have to check that out that sounds really interesting and I definitely like Brian Cranston from from good old Breaking Bad that was a good show that I binged breaking I can't wait for better call Saul the next season to come out I think that's not gonna be out until like April or May though yeah I never really liked that character so that that that show kind of I never got really wanted to watch so all kind of annoyed me so. All that's too bad I love it all it's great man these. That that's been fun it's been and I like it just because it's it's an extension of breaking bad it's actually like the prequel. What happened leading up to breaking bad so I think as the seasons. Roll on you're gonna start to see more and more characters come on from the originals show all that's cool I thought it was a follow up or whatever it's been off follow up. Yeah, no It's like him like back in the day trying to get his you know, budding law business off the ground He's trying to do things right and then how does he become? Slip Jimmy or whatever, you know, how does he become salt good men? Yeah Well, I've been really into have you seen the series on Netflix or heard of it. It's called my next guest. I Did I watch the episode of Barack Obama? Yeah, so I've been really impressed with this show. It's it's it's David Letterman And he's basically doing more or less like what he did before, you know on his own show just long form So it's at least an hour long with one particular guest and It's interview format, but they also kind of do like little side segments where like he's clearly traveled with them or gone to their home or Whatever it may be and he's had three really really interesting episodes this far So like you mentioned President Obama was the first episode George Clooney was on there who you know, I'm not necessarily like the biggest George Clooney fan out there in terms of movies But like they talked about his fundraising and philanthropy and Those types of things and like they people that they've rescued from various places and stuff like that just really fascinating kind of real real people stories and the most recent one was Malala Yusufsai Who maybe that name rings a bell, but maybe you can't remember who she is and she became like a very big women's advocate and education advocate As a I think as a teen because she was actually shot in the face for speaking out and survived and has become a huge advocate for Women and women's education and women's rights and so on and so forth. But yeah, the show itself is really really well done and Really good interviews. So if you if you like, I don't know. It's almost feel of documentary ish sometimes But that's what I felt the first one. I felt like was that but it was it was entertaining and I went by fast Yep, yeah, and it's not it's there's some definite serious moments and there's definite, you know Laughable moments. So I think you can kind of get a little bit of everything from the show and I've been really impressed I think it's really great. I need to watch that episode with with her with what you said Malayla Malala. Yeah Malala Yusef's I She's a 20 year old Pakistani Woman. Yeah, I remember her. I didn't know when you said her name ring a bell But yeah, I didn't know who she was. Yeah, I pulled this up. Yep, really well spoken. She's really well spoken It was really fascinating to hear, you know, she had her family is full of teachers So her whole life she's kind of taught how to portray a message really well and she's very very good at it Yeah, they're all really fascinating really really interesting life stories and You know, maybe not hard hitting or anything like that, but just like really good stories a lot of fielded stories Even some stuff that's maybe not so fielded, you know He dives into asking her about what she remembers about being shot point blank in the face You know stuff like that which is pretty hardcore, but you know it's part of her story and part of her What made her what she is today? So I don't know how been a really really great great series, and I hope they continue them so Netflix is just killing it though. I mean they keep coming up with all this content billions of dollars of content Yeah, hopefully they can kill the cable companies. I'd be I'd be grateful. Oh, they're getting neutered right now, man They don't have much of a chance Yeah, I don't know the only other show that I really have note here is I'm finally jumping on the stranger things bandwagon. Oh I didn't I saw a couple episodes about it. I didn't really get into it. Okay. Yeah I'm only maybe four or five episodes deep into the first season, but so far so good interesting Not a big sci-fi nerd, but so far it's holding my interest The big news for me today was today the presale Ready Player One is coming out in theaters March 28th Wait, what ready Player One did you read the book? No, I've never even heard of this. What is it? Oh? Oh my gosh, I can't believe what happened this conversation right now inform me man inform me Yeah, you got it. You got to check it out. I mean the book is a great book. This was a science fiction novel from 2011 And it's like a I don't know how to say It was like this dystopian society like in the future You know you've got like this corporate entity that pretty much owns everything and people live and like this little ran you know like Slums basically like like there's it's a trailer park stacked vertically because there's just no room for for anything and and Anyway, like it's just a horrible horrible world and people escape through this Program called the Oasis and it's a virtual reality World basically Yeah, you're 2044 the world's been gripped by an energy crisis from the depletion of fossil fuels and consequences of global warming and overpopulation To escape the decline the world is facing people turn to the Oasis a VR simulator accessible by using visors and haptic technology like gloves and The games creator left Easter eggs in there when he died he announced in his will That the first person to find his Easter egg would inherit his entire fortune and the corporation and so here's a bunch of You know people in poverty that like can barely survive and so now they're on this big hunt in VR land to try to find these Easter eggs Wow, okay. I feel like maybe I have seen a trailer or something about this But it's cool because I'm such a fucking 80s Nerd and there's so many references to everything from like Atari and back to the future and Ghostbuster like all kinds of shit 80 songs War games. I mean, it's just sweet sweet like 80s References throughout the whole thing and so Spielberg did the film and that's coming out in In a few weeks. Oh cool. Yeah, I might have to check that out. That sounds very interesting the way you describe it So after may have to look into that check it out. Yeah, I bought I bought a couple tickets. I'm gonna see it in IMAX 3D and Hey, maybe you have to fly down and come watch it with me. I think I bought one thinking that Lauren might Go, but I don't think she will because I think she doesn't like 3d and she doesn't like science fiction So I'm pretty sure she's not gonna like it. All right fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah [MUSIC]