33: Get Ready For A Bumpy Ride

[Music]

Welcome everybody into the Coffee and Code Cast, episode number 33.

Live from the Pioneer Square District in Seattle.

This is the Coffee Code Cast where we talk about neither coffee or code.

I'm Kyle Johnson.

And I'm Mike Sheehan. Hey, Kyle.

Welcome, dude. 33 already in the books here today.

Welcome to Gomer. I see him online here. Oh boy.

Kyle already spilled his beer on the keyboard.

You better try that off. That's a company keyboard.

All right, you got to keep the show running.

All right, get some paper towels. Get the hurry up, buddy.

Oh my goodness.

We got a good one for you guys today though.

We're going to be talking about, where's this thing at?

I can't believe you just did that.

Tonight, I can't believe you did that, dude.

Tonight, we're going to be talking about my recent trip

on a Delta flight with the new Delta 2KU High Speed Internet.

And that was a fun experience, streaming MLB in the air.

We're going to talk about being a people manager versus a project manager and kind of the different

qualities and objectives between the two types of management there.

And we have quite a bit of news that we need to catch up on here.

It looks like there's been some acquisitions, some new players in the podcasting space that

we want to talk about, and some stuff that we've been putting off for a few weeks because

I think we had a guest last week, some other stuff.

we're going to catch up on some old news. Alexa powered earbuds, iPad external

display. And if we have time, maybe talk about a little cougar hunting.

Thanks for saving my bacon. Wow. I wish I had the videos for that. That's a good

segue actually, because we just talked this morning about getting the videos

the video cameras purchased for the podcast. So we we've got a new budget

coming in here. And so I think we're going to get this new streaming video

device so we can, yeah, damn, alcohol abuse is right. That's what

going on. He knows you too well. He's got your number. Yeah,

but we are going to get some camera equipment in here,

probably not next week, but the week after it should get here.

And so that would have been fun to capture that.

That would have been great. But it's a good thing because we

have faces for radio. I've been told.

Yeah, yeah, I'm still hurt by that, Brad.

But you know what's great about this now, I have this wonderful

Surface Book 2, I think it's called. And it has this like nice plushy feeling

laptop cover on it. So now it's gonna smell like beer. So it's gonna just be like a nice fragrance every time I open up.

Hey, if anybody had any suspicions before like you just handled that those questions for them now.

Alright. Make no mistake about it. I think I got this mess cleaned up here. That was pretty classic. Yeah.

Well good, let's jump into some things here. You know, I was I'm gonna start out a little bit because I was on the road

I was in Arizona last weekend.

I don't want to delve into this too much, but it's worth mentioning, I think, just because

of the time of the year and whatnot.

I haven't really talked about this whole lot, but it was Saturday, April 20th was the 20th

anniversary of Columbine, Columbine shootings.

For those that don't know, I was a student there.

That time I was a junior in '99 when that happened.

There was a lot of activity all last week about the events that were happening in Little

Tin and happening around the school.

It was a big event and so there was a lot of talk on Facebook and a lot of things happening

and I just wanted to kind of get away for a little bit.

You know, I didn't want to be in my apartment all weekend and I really wasn't feeling up

to going to some of the things out there.

I kind of, when I left, I kind of got away from it and so I'm still connected to some

of the people there but I really don't participate much and that's just where I'm at personally

with it.

And so I ended up going to Scottsdale and had a really good time with a good friend of mine

and met up with on Saturday a really old friend of mine that I that I went to

high school with and Melanie and we used to work together at Dairy Queen our

first job in high school serving DQ blizzards upside down over over people's

heads and shit like that and it was really cool like I we reconnected about a

month and a half ago when I was out in Arizona and reached out again and let her

know I was in town and so she was having a little pool party at the house for her

two-year-old son and it was really nice. We had a little get-together. We sat out

the pool, had a few beers, reminisced a little bit, called a few friends of ours,

did some FaceTiming and it was a pretty nice little getaway.

When you messaged me and told me that you had met up with her, I actually felt

really good about that. That was kind of cool. I think originally you had

scheduled the trip itself to just kind of be a lazy hang out the pool, take a

to load off, you know, relax, do that sort of thing.

Not do the typical thing of traveling

and just kind of like run around constantly, right?

- Yeah, no agenda and just really kind of some R and R

and get some sun.

- So I just messaged you, you know, asking how's the pool,

how's it looking, you know, whatever,

you feeling relaxed, you got a drink in your hand,

whatever, and you had mentioned that you had met up with her

and were hanging out and I had actually read,

you know, there was a number of things going on.

There was kind of the crazy woman

that was obsessed with Columbine and that sort of thing.

all went down pretty recently. Right before that. It was the week before. Yeah, I think like Saul,

yeah, Pai Yis, I don't remember her, but she, yeah, there was a gal that had got from Florida that

came to Colorado, had purchased some one-way flights, caught the FBI's attention, right?

It was kind of a fiasco leading up. They canceled a bunch of schools. I think all the schools in

Denver Metro were closed because of that event. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, you know, from a personal

standpoint, it like made me feel good that you had somebody there that number one knows

what it feels like to be involved in that, right?

Like nobody knows.

Like we talked about this a little bit this week is like, you know, people are like, oh

man, sorry, I didn't know that, right?

Like they don't know what to say.

Because like that's a major like American event.

Yeah, it's a very, it's somewhat, it's a taboo thing to talk about.

It's just always very uncomfortable.

I don't mind because I've talked about it a lot, but for everybody else, it's a very

uncomfortable thing. You know, it's like, what do you say?

You don't want to offend?

Yeah, you don't want to offend. And you don't know, you know, my

brother, I thought he had the best example, because I talked to

him on Monday morning, and he said, Listen, man, I thought of

you, but I didn't know what to say. And I didn't really reach

out. I hope you're not upset. I didn't know what to say. We're

like happy 20th. Like, what do I say to that? And I said, you

know, you're in a situation that I think everybody can relate to

is that it's not one of those things you just bring up and know

what to do or what to say.

And I think the thing that's kind of interesting about that is

like not only do people feel kind of uncomfortable approaching you about it, but I think you

probably have the same feeling on the other side, like what do I say?

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

I think what's really hard from my perspective is that I always, I catch that vibe of discomfort

and so my reaction to that is try to make it a little more upbeat.

I mean it sounds kind of perverse to say that, but I try to not make it so down in the dumps

or try to put a spin on it to, "Oh, don't feel bad," or, "There was this upside," or, "This came out of it."

I have a very hard time articulating just the facts because they are really difficult to talk about.

Sure.

But anyway, that's not what the point of this whole thing is about. It's just that it was really nice

to go back there and see her, and we had a really nice time poolside and reminiscing about our high

school days and college days and that sort of thing, and a lot of people posting on Facebook,

old photos and that sort of thing. So it was really nice that we could be together for that.

Really appreciated that. What I was talking about on the technology side is that I flew out and back

on Delta and both flights had that new 2KU high-speed internet, which was fantastic.

So what is 2KU high-speed internet? So I don't know what that means. It's some kind of spectrum

or some kind of satellite technology. Essentially what it is, it's a big enough band with that you

can stream video on the plane. And so you can go to Go Go In Flight still, like they

provide it on Delta and you know it's a little more expensive but you can get just the regular

texting package or the light browsing package or you can get the full on streaming package,

it's $25 a flight for that or $10 an hour. And so I said well fuck it, I'll try it for

an hour and so I got that for $10 and threw up the old MLB TV on my iPad and was watching

like a baseball game. I think I showed you the photo like drinking some vodka sodas and

watching baseball on the flight out there. That's pretty incredible considering back

in the day you would send, well even on this flight you were able to use, well not SMS,

it was iMessage on the iPhone and I sent you an image and you couldn't get the image but

you had right next to you and iPad playing streaming video. Go figure dude. Yeah, it's

a little backwards right now. I think there's a lot happening with, there's different packages

you can get and shit like that. On my phone I have T-Mobile so I'm able to get one hour

of free texting and Wi-Fi, but it's got to be. Obviously it's throttled because it sucks.

Right.

Like I can send text messages, but anytime there's an image or anything like that it

just gets hung up and doesn't do anything.

Well and prior to this 2KU, like they would even specifically say when you signed up or

went to the GoGo in-flight page, it would say like, "Oh, you cannot stream Netflix,

you cannot stream X, Y, or Z," right?

Yeah, they advertise that.

Yeah.

before TKU, but like before that,

before they had that available,

before it was just like the straight satellite

or whatever they had before, like you couldn't.

- Could not, yes. - And it very,

very clearly stated like this will not allow streaming.

- Right, yeah, it was such a low bandwidth thing

that they would restrict that type of,

you know, that type of traffic.

They would just block it from the firewall from coming in.

So yeah, it's a huge improvement.

I was impressed that the plane out and the plane back had it.

So I think Delta's done a really nice job

upgrading their fleet.

Alaska made announcements a couple years ago. They'd be going through and redoing there. I think they're they're bowing fleet

They were gonna be upgrading all those this year

But I've yet to see it on an Alaska flight to be honest. I haven't seen a single one yet

So maybe it's just a little bit delayed. So tell me a little bit more because I think as I understand you

Maybe not are not such a loyal Alaska customer these days. Are you outing me in front of every like ever everybody?

I caught myself

Are you outing me on air, Kyle?

Maybe.

I did.

I did have a moment.

Well, I think I told you what happened is that I've been looking at, I'm already on

track for status on Alaska again.

I'll get MVP gold, probably not unless I really ratchet it up and do some bigger trips.

So what are the, what are the tiers of status on Alaska?

So you have MVP and then you have gold MVP gold and MVP gold 75 K.

Okay.

So there's different rules that aren't really worth hashing out, but it's just like how many

miles do you get?

20,000 you get your MVP, 40,000 MVP gold, 75,000 MVP, 75K.

Then with that you get different kickbacks or deals.

So like for me last year hitting gold I had gotten 50,000 partner miles.

So not all the miles were on Alaska, so they make it a higher bar, but you can still get

it.

And so I got it through a few other partner airlines, Condor, going to Frankfurt.

Anyway, I got a discount to the lounge pass that way, so I got a little bit of a break

on the lounge for a year.

And then you accrue more miles too, so for every flight you take now is an MVP Gold.

If it's like a thousand miles, you might get 1500 miles credit for that.

Kind of a thing.

But the last few of these trips I was taking to Arizona, I was looking at the prices on

Alaska and they were double.

This trip would have cost 800 bucks cash on Alaska if I would have gone for the same times

that I went on Delta.

And you know, it got me thinking, it'd be nice to have maybe another status besides Alaska.

So yeah, that's all.

I got a couple credit cards.

A couple.

I pretty much am on par now with Delta as Alaska.

So I've got 125,000 Delta miles coming my way, and I'm most of the way to status on

that airline as well.

So I may have been benefiting from this as well.

I might have got some very furrow miles here.

You fucking did benefit from this as well.

It's the only reason why I got two cards because I felt bad for you.

I appreciate the hit on your credit there for the extra card.

It's fine.

It'll all wash out in the end there.

It is kind of nice to have both options because Delta, of course, is really deeply connected

internationally, whereas Alaska is great in the Northwest,

but there's not a lot of other places you can go.

And their partnerships are dwindling.

They still have Alaska-- sorry, they have Americans still.

But a lot of the other partnerships

they've had, they've really tightened their grips on that

and not keeping those deals going.

Well, and we talked about this a little bit when

we were over at Casco here previous to the Cast Year.

We had a few margs, hence why I dumped my beer over

on my laptop.

That was great.

We were discussing just like Delta's planes are like seem to be like super, super nice, usually very well maintained, very well kept.

Their technology is great. The apps, fantastic. Their lounges, I think you said are better than Alaska's or at least seem to be in the places that you've traveled.

Well, I think Alaska has done a great job renovating the lounges like the sea lounge at SeaTac is fantastic. It's a nice lounge. It's very bright open airy.

But yeah, like the Delta, the newer Delta lounges, they're really like showpieces.

I mean, the new one in Phoenix Sky Harbor, it wasn't open last time I was there.

So I was there six weeks ago.

It had not been completed.

But when this weekend it was open and so we popped in and the whole thing about it is just very classy.

You know, they're in their large spaces too.

And so they have wonderful, lovely furniture, like the chandeliers.

everything is really high class and they have a better food offering too.

I find like Alaska is nice and I like, I like it still in the pancake machine

and all that kind of shit.

I didn't know there's pancakes.

Oh, they all have pancake machines.

So that was the holiday in.

Oh, well, they're two men like, you know, I guess the way I would say it is that

just seems to me it's, it's probably more family oriented.

The Alaska lounges are maybe.

I don't know.

I, I don't know if that's the right way to put it.

I just think that some of their decor, it's a little more like fun and whimsical, whereas

like a Delta lounge is going to be more of that professional business class kind of a

thing.

So it's more buttoned up, a little more formal, less casual, and they have a nicer selection

of items.

Nice.

And we're both now reserve card holders as well.

Delta Reserve, which is I think their top line.

Well, there may be some hidden one that you don't get to know about, but.

Yeah, you got to make a lot more for that.

Top of the line consumer credit card.

Yeah.

access to the lounge for free. You do. You get access to the lounge for free. I think

you can bring guests for an additional cost. You get your companion fare, which you get

with all the credit cards, well, at least the platinum, but the reserve allows you to

get a first class ticket companion fare if you buy the first one, right? Whereas the

other one is like coach class, right companion. Yep. Yeah, so I did, I kind of went big on

this trip so I bought clear on my way to the airport. Oh would you get a discount

through Delta as well? I do you get yeah with that card you get I think a hundred

bucks off or I don't know what it is maybe you pay a hundred you get 80 bucks

off something like that but you know I will say this I know that five years

ago I wouldn't have even imagined justifying the cost of something like

that because really in order to have clear you have to have pre-check so

you're already in for the pre-check 85 bucks right for five years and then if

If you want to go to Clear, it's another $179 full price a year.

But I'll tell you, my mom was telling me, she had to go, oh, I'm a business trip last

week from Denver and traffic was bad and she finally got rid of the car and got in there

and she's in her heels and she's got her luggage and she's trying to get to the gate.

And Denver has like kind of one central security checkpoint for everybody.

Right in the middle, right in the front.

So it's centralized and it can be a real pain in the ass depending on what time of day it

is and what's going on.

So yeah, she almost missed her flight.

She was sprinting down the, you know, got off the train and was sprinting to the gate

to make it and had like less than five minutes before they were going to close the door.

And that's why I really do appreciate having this shit.

Like we left the house at like 905 and by 930 we are in the lounge like drinking a beer.

That's excellent.

Which is kind of nice.

Yeah.

That's the way to do it.

Kind of rambling on there.

The perks of the Delta lounge is nice,

and the airline is nice.

And it's just a good to have an alternative when Alaska is not

convenient, or their prices are a little bit off.

I love Alaska.

I think they're great.

They do a really nice job.

I don't really understand some of the anomalies in pricing.

Like, to be twice as much expensive on some of these flights

I've looked at doesn't make sense to me.

But maybe they have their own method to the madness there.

I don't know.

Delta's pushing hard into the Seattle area.

They've pushed really hard.

maybe our friend there in the Slack channel has some thoughts about this

considering he works in the aviation industry but he just said that his my

miles can't stack up to his employee benefits well yeah he gets free flights

as long as he's on standby oh dude what airline can you say I don't know the

answer that can you tell me if not it's fine I don't have to say it online but

so what we'll have to circle up later and talk about that I'd be curious to know

so the other thing that you had when you were in Phoenix is I understand that you

were seeing some cougars.

The animals?

Yeah.

Oh, oh, oh, the other types.

Oh.

Just calling me on everything today.

Well,

Friday night was kind of fun.

We did do that a little bit.

It's it's it's so the funny thing is there's not much to say about this, but

it was like, you know, this was really kind of an R and R weekend and we were

definitely out in the suburban area a little bit.

And so there's just not a lot of options for

(laughing)

for people out there.

It reminds me a little bit of Little Tin to be honest,

like just, you know, it's 15 miles south of the city,

south of Denver and, you know, Scottsdale's kind of

off the path a little bit from Phoenix,

but yeah, you get some really interesting places

in the strip malls down there and a lot of fun,

a lot of nice places or great eats and that sort of thing.

But yeah, we did go to this, like, what was it?

It was a Cowboy Blues, which kind of sounds like,

It's kind of like a cowgirls down here,

but it's only like on a Costco level scale.

Like, I mean, this thing's ginormous, dude.

It's got to be like a football field size bar.

And they have live, you know, cover bands up front

and all that kind of stuff.

And it was more fun people watching Patrick and I

were sitting outside by the misters,

just kind of having a few drinks and just seeing like,

you got your Arizona, you know, meet head dude

who's on like five different steroids all jacked up,

ready to go wearing an extra small t-shirt.

- It's got his affliction on.

- Yeah, right.

You know, they got a crew down there

and then the ladies are like, you know,

like 40 something divorcees that are just looking for love.

So.

- Oh, how are you doing?

- How you doing?

Don't worry about it.

It's my friend Slayward's day.

Don't worry about it.

- There you go.

(laughing)

- So it was fun people watching.

We didn't meet a few people.

We had hanging out with a group there.

I pissed someone off by smoking a cigarette.

So that's kind of how we got introduced, but we had a nice time.

Ended up being a fun little evening.

The Cougar Hunt.

The old Cougar Hunt, man.

Yeah.

Not to be mistaken with Erotic Photo Hunt.

Very different.

This would be more of the, well, it could turn into that at some point probably.

This was a very casual yet interactive version of that.

Yeah.

Always interesting sightseeing out there, that's for sure.

Oh, very nice.

All right, let's move along from that.

There we go.

(upbeat music)

So today, I thought we'd talk a little bit about management.

- Manage, when you manage your bear over there,

that'd be the first time.

- That would be, I could, oh, I almost did it again.

(laughing)

- No, no, I knew Lexans, I can't believe you didn't know

photo hunt, I did know photo hunt from Alvarados.

- Erotic photo hunt, I didn't know erotic photo hunt.

- Oh, you didn't know, yeah, yeah.

Nobody had blessed me with the knowledge and the beauty that is erotic.

Oh, dude, I went for the tacos.

What would Christina's?

Yeah, sure.

I go to Hooters for the wings too, by the way.

If you didn't know.

Um, what would Christina's say if one of those showed up at your house, man?

Would she just going to get me like one of those old legacy console tables?

It looks like an old like Atari hooked up to a tube TV.

Oh, there's a regular version by the way to.

Oh, what does that mean?

Just it's not erotic.

get it for like your console game like my Xbox I can play erotic photo on?

Well it's no well that's not the regular version she's talking about.

Just saying you can you can get it uh sans erotic.

Oh although what's the fun of that?

I don't know yeah I'm not really sure what you'd do with one of those.

That's great.

Oh my goodness I definitely want to talk to Gomer about this he's giving me some

deeds I'm not gonna talk about it out on this thing but uh.

So you got some secret programs that you can get into?

I need to fly standby too. Do you have a can I get like a

Friends and family standby pass that'd be worth a few grand probably I'd pay for that

maybe we need to bring him on to talk about

Flying and flying programs. Maybe he's got some insider knowledge. Well, you know who'd be fun to talk to also is my

We're kind of deviating a little bit here. That's fine. We can do that

my buddy Chaz so Chaz is a cross-country coach at Cal Berkeley and

Good friend of mine. We ran cross-country in college together at Creighton and knew each other in high school and whatnot

And he is a good friend.

A good friend of his is a pilot.

I don't remember who he's with now.

It doesn't matter.

Like, like long time friend is a pilot.

And so way back in the day offered jazz like one of his.

Passes like standby passes.

I don't know if that's how it works anymore.

But at the think of the time, like they had a certain allocation,

like they each get a couple friends and family passes or a certain number of people

could buy into this thing.

and it was like 2,500 bucks a year,

but then you could fly standby everywhere

and he's had this thing for a number of years,

probably 10 years now.

And like if he has time off,

if he has like five days off or a long weekend,

he'll just go to Cairo or he's been all over the world.

I mean, he's been to dozens of countries

and he doesn't really pay for anything.

He just shows up and pays 40 bucks

to go international or something like that.

And it might take him two days to get home,

but he'll figure it out how to do it and boom.

That sounds like a great way to do it.

Sounds not dissimilar to you,

although you pay full price.

Like the other day we were sitting in our...

That's very dissimilar to me.

(laughing)

We were sitting in the office and like,

basically Fridays here tend to be pretty,

pretty easy going, you know, work till noon,

start drinking, that type of thing.

Yeah, totally.

And I'm in talking to the team

and he's sitting right in front of me and I look down

and he's messaging on his phone

and has I think the Alaska Airlines app up

and book in a flight to somewhere.

And he's like, oh, I felt like I was gonna be bored tonight.

Maybe I'd go get a mileage run in.

Why not?

Why not?

Yeah, I'll just go to Florida for the evening.

Why not?

That sounds awesome.

Hey, if you have the means in the time, why not?

I would say go do it.

Why not?

Why not?

You only live once.

Right.

The hell are we talking about?

Management?

What are we managing here?

People versus projects.

We're not managing time.

I can tell you that.

Actually, I think we're tracking quite nicely.

Okay.

Well, because last week we had a guest on, and it's been a while since we had a guest,

and Mike Davis from our Sacramento office was on here talking to us a little bit.

I thought that went really well, but we kind of rushed it in the beginning.

I was worried because we jumped into the topic like 12 minutes in and somehow managed it.

To be fair, you jumped into the topic.

I don't think I did.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, that's right.

I was a little jittery and nervous or something and just kind of ran right through it.

Thank you to Mike for being on the show, not you, Mike.

Mike Davis.

Yeah, thanks, Mike.

Great insights.

Appreciate your insights on the show.

Yeah, I thought that was really cool.

I'm looking forward to more of that too.

We're teeing up the next couple, so we're getting closer to having that materialized

here, which I'm very excited about.

Some good people coming on.

Let's hope.

So, being a manager, we talked a lot about this over at the bar across the street here.

Is this going to be a new trend too?

We can do a little pre-funk.

I mean the post funk has always been enjoyable, but maybe the pre funk might be more interesting. I mean it was fun

I like it. I might have to get like a protective screen

We'll get you one of those like little remember the keyboard covers they used to have. Oh, those are so gross

Well, they were like little plastic. Yeah over all the buttons soft plastic and they would just look brown because like yeah

Yeah, they were NASA's they were covered in cigarette smoke back in 85

They would keep all the food crumbs out of your

Well, you might need that for your MacBook Pro. I hear the laptop or the

Keyboard on that is pretty sensitive to dust. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't had that problem yet

But I've heard that this model in particular still it's not fixed

But don't worry a little like air squirt squirt and you're good. Hopefully. Yeah, or just gets wedged in there even further

Maybe yeah

Anyway, I digress there's a lot of digress and going on here

Now I don't even remember what the hell I was gonna talk about

You're doing great.

You're doing great.

No, we had a good conversation at Casco about this.

We're talking about, I mean, the last, the theme over the last month or so around here has just been about, like, how to organize your teams and different ways of structure.

And we're having some experience with a larger team now.

And I think we're kind of getting to the point of management discussion where, you know, everybody's kind of, we're growing.

We're growing and so now there's opportunity to really step up and take on some new opportunities.

And so it's for some conversations around management and what does that look like and how do you do it?

And if you're a technical person, what's different about managing people versus just being a technical PM or something like that?

Yeah, I think we talked about a lot. You know, I'm a pretty new manager. So a lot of this is new.

And this is why we're talking a fair amount about this on the podcast is

I'm very much a more of a people manager. I want to be the, I want to help my reports be successful

both with projects that they're executing upon and in their career path. So I want to like push

them forward, unblock any way that I can unblock them, help them in any way that I can help them

in terms of learning and push them forward, project them forward and let them kind of shine and take

a ton of success and not, I guess for lack of a better word, not take it upon myself. Like,

basically don't eat their success for myself, but like let them kind of shine and move forward in

their careers and progress in that way. So I think that's the difference that we talked about quite

quite a length. And you brought up a really interesting antidote about your dad who worked

in Omaha. Yeah, yeah, my father was in the restaurant business for the 15 year, a little over

15 years and kind of worked his way up. I mean it was back in the day when when loyalty was kind

of a thing. I mean you were very loyal to your company and so he started out at the ground level

working like cleaning dishes and working as a line cook and then eventually became you know worked

his way up to manager and ultimately to headquarters so it was like for the villagin restaurants and

Baker Square restaurants if you're from the Midwest there like Chicago area but anyway

Yeah, I think the point that he was trying to make is that it comes out like, I think management can put you in a vulnerable position.

Like I feel this at least because I have an opportunity maybe to lead some, I've had opportunities to lead people and considering maybe I want to do more of that.

But when you're the doer, you're kind of the guy that like it rises and falls on you.

So you get all the credit or you get all the blame, but either way, it's kind of like you're in control of your own destiny that way.

And I think when you kind of get further removed from that, uh,

from what I've heard from other people and what I've had a little experience on

is just that like now you have less control and it's really about how you

empower your, your team and help them out and get the roadblocks out of the way.

But you're no longer in direct control of, of the success of the product that way.

Right.

It's a kind of a different, different way that you're in control of that.

And you have like you have some control in that you can delegate, right?

You're not the pusher.

Like you can't go out and you're managing a project

that's probably much larger than something

that you can control anyway.

So even if you went in and you were like,

oh, I'm gonna get this done myself, right?

I'm gonna go get this over the runway, right?

Like you're not gonna do it.

It's too big, right?

So you have to delegate to the people that you can trust

and you feel can get you over the finish line.

And so I found myself doing that a ton.

Like that's something that I've had to adjust to myself.

you know, when times get tough and you are feeling stressed,

like the first thing is like,

that you think of is I'm gonna go home

and I'm gonna work, you know, six hours or eight hours

tonight and I'm gonna get this one thing done, right?

And that'll get me there, right?

But...

At some point, that's just not even possible anymore.

Also in the grand scheme of things,

like, you know, an eight hour push like that is meaningless.

Like it doesn't really factor into a project

when you have, in my case, when I have 11 people

working on the thing.

Like that's a partial day for that entire team.

So like you've done really very little.

Right.

Yeah, exactly right.

It's just it's a much grander scale of things.

And so like what you could do as an individual contributor

now is something you couldn't do that anymore at this scale.

And what I really appreciate about his thing,

this is something that really stuck with me over the years,

was that he was a firm believer in really not being afraid

of having those under you be more successful than you,

like bringing them up to their full potential.

And I remember a good story that he had about taking over a plant in Omaha when we moved

to Omaha back in the 90s, like 89, 90.

And he was brought in to kind of turn this pie making facility around because it wasn't

doing so well and they needed to change their numbers in the right direction and kind of

go through some staffing and get rid of some people and clean house a little bit.

And he went in there and he was very good at this.

This is what he did for a number of years, like at various different facilities.

So he came in to fix some problems and the assistant that he was working with, you know,

he really liked this guy and could see a lot of potential with him.

But there were some things I think that maybe needed improvement and whatnot.

Now, I remember all the specifics.

I was a kid when he was telling me about this, but it stuck with me over the years.

And I remember very clearly that, you know, it was at the one year review time and he

sits this guy down and, you know, this guy is kind of a little nervous and maybe freaking

out a little bit.

My dad told him, he's like, "Hey man, you did a great job.

I really love the energy you're bringing to this group and what the change you're bringing.

I want to give you a raise and I want to help you out and I want to do whatever I can to

make sure that you reach your goals."

The guy had an emotional moment and got really teared up and expected the opposite.

He expected to be fired because my dad maybe saw him as a threat or saw him as somebody

that was going to get in his way.

I think that's the downside sometimes is that if you want to be a good leader, then you

have to be willing to put that aside and just really try to help people reach their full

potential.

There's two types.

There's the people that want to silo and want to protect their territory, if you will.

And then there's other people that want to push other people into other territories.

So like, I'll give you an example.

You know, you might have, you know,

somebody that you wanna collaborate with

and instead of being like super collaborative,

maybe they shut you down, they wall you off.

And they're like, nope, this is my territory,

this is my ground.

- What are you doing stepping over here?

Don't chew on, and crouch on my area.

- Yeah, exactly.

Instead of being a collaborative attitude

and like being like, oh, how can you help me?

You know, how can we collaborate on this particular issue?

Nope, instead they like stonewall you and push you out

and push you away versus, you know,

empowering person would say like, "Hey, come on in. Let's talk about this. How can you

help? What can we do together to make this better, faster?" Right? So I think there's

a couple different ways that you can slice that, and I think that's exactly what he

was trying to address in some of those ways.

Yeah, I think so. And I think this isn't something maybe that you get out of the gate, but I

think as you sharpen your skills over time and have more of a sense of security, you

You're going to find that like if you're more insecure, right?

That's going to be a natural thing is to be more guarded and walled up.

And I think if you are secure in yourself and know like, hey, like I know that I'm

good at what I do and what I'm trying to accomplish here on to have a clear goal,

then it's not a threat anymore.

It's just like, look, I want to bring as many people around me up because it's

going to make us all better.

It's going to make the company better.

It's going to help help the team perform at a higher level.

And so very cool style of leadership.

and it's something that I've taken to heart for 25 years.

I mean, I remember that pretty clearly as one of the things

that he always left me with, and I always remember that.

- I think to the same point too,

I don't know where this has ever come from

or where I heard it from,

but one of the things that I've always felt too is very,

like I've always felt is very important is,

in my short time in management and even before that,

as a manager, I would always want to hire people

that are smarter than I am.

I don't feel threatened by that.

I feel like that's the thing that you do to empower the team

that you are supposed to be leading

to do the best thing possible, right?

So why would you hire people that are not as good as you

because you have some kind of insecurity, right?

So I'm very much of the mindset of like,

you're better than me, great, that's fantastic.

I want you to be, I want you to excel,

I want you to be far better than me

and I will hopefully help you get to wherever it is

that you're going versus being offended

or being scared by or threatened.

Well, you were saying this earlier too.

I think it's a valuable point, is that even though you were

in that position at some point in time in the past,

like that's not your current role.

So it's also kind of silly to think that there's

this competition because there really isn't.

Like here's somebody that I'm bringing on

at a technical level, but my job isn't really to prove

that I can handle what you're doing technically better

than you.

It's just, I mean, heck, our old boss, Don,

was this way as well, I think.

He was very good about being like,

boys, I've really not been in the weeds in a while.

It's been a few years since I've really been at that level,

but I'm here to guide, direct, empower whatever you need.

And so I thought that was a really good example as well.

- I would agree with that.

But then on the flip side, I would also say

like you can't be so disjointed or disconnected

that you don't know what the technology is, right?

- Sure.

- You could still maybe be a leader,

but you also, especially in a technical role,

you need to have some knowledge of what the technology is

so that you can help guide the conversation

shape the conversation for those that are there and make informed decisions.

Like, you know, you got to know what these guys are talking about.

If they're feeding you a line, you got to know it.

Yeah, you got to know what you don't know, right?

Yeah.

Otherwise, you're just going to be getting the wool pulled over your eyes.

Yeah, exactly.

You can't allow that either.

So there's a, there's a happy medium in the middle somewhere.

You have to be pretty connected, but, but you don't have to be like super

totally in the technical weeds as all your people are.

That's why you hire them.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think it's great.

I think it's exciting to talk about just because there

is so much change and growth happening here

as we've been talking about for weeks now.

And it continues to be so.

And I'm always amazed and surprised

at new things that I'm learning.

I mean, we always talk about back in 2012

when I came out and visited you and how I had no clue

about all these things.

And now that's kind of old hat, but there's

all these other things that I have no idea about.

And so it's just kind of fun to have people in the group now

that you don't have to waste hours or days or weeks trying to figure this out.

You can go across the wall and talk to somebody and they already know because

they've done this thing other times.

Yeah.

And it's an interesting bit of a growth pattern too, because we, you know, we're

both developers, you know, and I've, I've slowly made my way into the management

track. So it's a transition.

It's not been like totally clean.

It's not been totally seamless.

There's been problems.

There's been successes, but it's a story just like anything else.

So it's interesting to kind of relay and look back

and reflect upon and see what could we have done better?

What could we, you know, how could we be better?

Just, and that's true of regardless

if you're a manager or a developer, you know?

And that's I think the whole point of this conversation

is like how do we empower?

How do we push people forward?

How do we project those that are working for us?

I guess you might say, to be better

and to accomplish more, right?

- I agree and I do wanna add as well that

because we're talking about two particular tracks,

technical versus people management.

And I know that that's always been, for me, a hard reality.

Like I don't want to accept that that's the only--

it's not that binary, like that you can still

be technical in being management.

You can do architecture or do other things.

Now DevOps is another area you can get into.

So clearly, there are other ways that you can do this.

I think, though, that my attitude has shifted a little bit,

just because my value systems have changed

from thinking that like the end all be all was development.

Like that if you're a developer,

then that's really all that matters

and everything else is bullshit.

And if those guys only understood like what you're doing,

what's going on down here,

then we'd really be kicking ass and taking names.

But there's this tension between the two

and I wanna be down here and not up there.

And I think that that's shifted a lot

in the last recent times.

and the last year and a half, two years specifically for me,

to see like, you know what, like to be able to orchestrate

groups of these people is actually a pretty powerful thing

to do.

And it's a big challenge.

- Well said, that's a great way to describe it.

I think I feel the exact same way.

Like, yeah, I think back in the day,

you would think, oh, I can same type of deal, right?

Like I can power out this code in 24 hours

and I can create this amazing thing

and this is gonna be great, right?

Whereas now you're kind of at the point where you're like,

all I can, again, like you said, orchestrate this team of, you know, let's say 50 people

to create this crazy huge amazing project. And like, that's valuable too, right? Whereas

before I think you would just be like, Oh, this manager's in my way, stay the fuck out

of my way and let me do my job, right? But now I think there's there's a more concrete

value that you can see. And maybe that comes with age and and

And it's the only way that you really get to solve bigger problems. Like the stuff that

we were doing as like one one guy kicking ass was maybe it was cool stuff and it was new but it wasn't

it wasn't on this scale it wasn't on this level and now all of a sudden when you have 11 people

working towards something and you see just like what's happening day by day by day like this thing

is just exploding you could never do that with a couple people right it would never happen it would

take I mean what you're accomplishing in six weeks would take a guy a year and a half to get done I

I don't know.

Yeah, I love the concept of an orchestrator.

Like I'm not thinking of like a conductor of an orchestra.

That's right.

Like before you're just the drummer over there,

beating the drum and just creating like the one sound.

You might be a badass drummer, but what are you gonna do?

Yeah, exactly.

Without everything else.

Yeah, and it's really not as impressive

as if you have the whole crew.

Right, yeah.

Yeah, now you have this amazing, beautiful, crazy sound

while working together, all being super harmonious,

which it's only harmonious sometimes.

- Sometimes.

(laughing)

- Yeah, yeah.

(laughing)

It's gonna take a little more orchestration,

a little more practice.

- Yeah.

(laughing)

- We have moments,

we have moments that are very fleeting,

but when they're there,

it's very exciting and emotional and powerful,

but the rest of the time,

it's usually a discord of some sort,

you know, trying to get there.

- Yeah, it's interesting how experience

changes your mind on that a little bit.

Like you said, I think,

I think I came around to that too,

like, you know, I used to think that management

was just kind of there,

was in the way and I could move much faster and get shit done much quicker and

much easier, you know, back in the day somehow or some point I came around on

that and again maybe it's age, maybe it's experience, I don't know what it is

exactly but now I'm on the other side of it and I definitely see the value of

it and why there's, why there is the people there in those positions.

Well in part because there's more gray area now too, I think that comes with

experience and some wisdom. When I looked at it before it was very binary, like

you're either doing the hard work or you're just kind of watching people do the hard work

is how I would look at it before.

And to your point with the two tracks, so that's the one thing that I think in the technology

industry is maybe somewhat unique.

So we currently have at least two tracks, there may be more, but you could be a developer

or you can go up the management track.

And they're not necessarily more powerful one versus the other, it's just a different

career path is the way that you would describe it.

So maybe as a developer you start as kind of like the junior guy, you work yourself to

just being a regular developer, then a senior, then maybe a staff or a lead, and there's

a pathway up that side of the chain.

And then there's the same thing on the management side, right?

You become a manager, you become a director, you become a VP, you become, you know, whatever.

So it's just, they're just different pathways, but they're both, neither is necessarily like,

I don't know how you would say it, more powerful than the other.

And that's an interesting discussion that I think we've been having internally too is

like, you know, we have these management type meetings and that sort of thing.

So how do you bring in the cream of the crop of the dev side?

Because you know what?

Those guys are at the top of their game.

They're doing their thing.

So, you know, they should be involved in very important decisions more so than just code,

right?

They should be in organizational decisions as well.

So there's a lot of really interesting conversations that are bubbling up.

And it's been a lot of fun to be a part of those.

Certainly exciting times here.

I think we're going to have a lot to talk about over the next few months,

because things are changing rapidly,

and there's a lot of new blood coming through,

and a lot of good experience that we're able to harness here.

So I think we have a lot of good things happening and new ideas.

So I think good time to be here and a lot more to come on the topic of management

and tech and big teams.

And we're hiring. So if you, uh, if you're interested in working for quote wizard.

Yeah. And not, not to mention here that we have offices in multiple locations,

Sacramento, Denver, Seattle.

I don't know how this would work,

but we do have offices in New York and Chicago and Charlotte as well.

Right.

That might be a little bit of a stretch for working for quote wizard,

but our parent company is out there as well. So you never know.

We're kind of all over the place now.

We are under the lending tree umbrella.

Yeah. When banks compete, you win.

That's right.

But those opinions are not necessarily in my employers.

Those are just my.

Yeah, we put that disclaimer in there.

Very good, man.

Well, I don't have a whole lot else to cover on the topic.

I think that was a nice conversation, just a continuation, what we were talking

about earlier.

And so I think this is going to be evolving as things change here.

But there's done a lot of business talk lately.

Hopefully, you know, I think that's fun too.

But you know, I think I need to get some more Tesla news in the show here.

There's not a whole lot of good news.

Well, they had their earnings call.

That didn't turn out so good.

Did it?

I didn't see the stock after that, because that was just today, wasn't it?

Yeah, I think they had a loss, an operating loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Really?

Yeah, they were expected to.

They paid back some sort of debt.

Oh, this thing.

Well, you know, it's not crashing too bad.

Let's look here.

Man, there's definitely no spin news going around.

Sorry, man.

Now, what I think we were going to talk about is there's a new podcast app that was just

recently launched. I think it was launched a day ago. It's called Luminary. And I'm not

really that interested in the app itself other than to say that the app is trying to go down

the route of, say, a Netflix or an Amazon or one of these types of companies where they're

trying to, like, number one, it's a paid app.

Yeah.

So in order to be a part of the club and in order to use it to listen, stream, you have

to be a paid subscriber. So that's number one. Number two, they're trying to implement

exclusive content. So they're trying to bring people in and force their hand to paying for

their podcasts using exclusive content. They're going to have other podcasts as well. But

in order to get these specific podcasts from these major celebrities is what they're trying

to do. You're going to have to jump in and pay some fee to use the app, which is a very

big change from the podcast industry. The podcast industry has always been since Apple

kind of created or brought podcasts into iTunes. It's always been a very open ecosystem, right?

Like you use RSS feeds, which are effectively like a syndication mechanism. And anybody could

subscribe. That was the idea. You publish a feed, which is what we do, which is what the

coffee codecast is, just a feed. And it's a feed of shows and information like the title and the

show notes and the duration of the episode. It includes a link to a file that you actually

to download and listen to.

- A little artwork in there.

- It's a pretty simple transmission mechanism

and it's always been up until this point,

even with Apple, a very open platform.

Like Apple just kind of put it out there

and let anybody use it.

There was no cost.

And now there's all these players

that are joining into the industry.

Spotify is another one, right?

They just recently acquired Gimlet Media.

So Gimlet owns one of probably the top five or 10 podcasts

that are out there, it's called Reply All.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Which is, I listen to all the time, I love it,

but now that's under the Spotify umbrella.

So there again, they're like trying to bring content

into their ecosystem.

You can use Spotify for free,

but obviously there's advertising in there

or you might have to pay for the premium subscription.

So I guess I was just kind of,

wanted to talk a little bit about the state of podcasts

and I'm a little concerned.

- Well, it's definitely changing the landscape.

It's kind of a land grab now for exclusive content and a premium model, whereas before

it was kind of like, "Hey, everybody gets everything and you can find us everywhere."

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about that.

It's a little bit of an interesting problem to solve because currently as it is, the only

way that you really make money through podcasts, especially like you think of the big players

like Serial, right?

Like they make money through sponsorships in the show itself.

So you're going to hear the Squarespace ads, you're going to hear the This ads right during

the show.

And the way that those typically work is that you're going to get paid by the thousands

of downloads.

So if you got downloaded, we'll just say 50,000 times, boom.

Each ad that you play, you get that much money.

And in those cases, they're going to play multiple ads per show.

So they're going to come out with pretty healthy amounts of money.

And cereal, I don't know how many times it got downloaded, like crazy amounts.

So that's really at this point, the only way, well, one of the only ways, there's probably

three ways that you can get paid.

That's one, Patreon links, which is more or less donations.

That'd be another one.

And then the other one would be just advertising or protecting rather your podcast app or feed

itself.

So in order to basically subscribe to the show, you would have to have some sort of password

in order to get the show.

So you've paid upfront to get the content.

So those are kind of the three ways that currently you can get podcasts paid, I guess, if you will.

But these are kind of the new things that people are wanting to acquire, exclusive content.

And I just don't think it's a good way for the industry to go as a whole.

Like, I think the reason that podcasts have kind of blown up as they have is much like the internet was.

Like, the internet was very open, a very free space.

And because of that freedom, many, many, many things came out of it and grew out of it really, really quickly.

And I think podcasts is kind of the same way. So if you start to lock people in and lock things down,

you're going to come up with a very, I don't know, a hard walled garden that isn't going to be as easy to build upon any longer.

It could work out if you're great and if you are already at the top, then there could be some great negotiations

and you could come out on top with the deal.

But I think of YouTube because YouTube is free still and YouTube is open.

But they've been fucking with the algorithm so much lately that I know that a lot of

people that had been getting their accounts have gone down.

They've really tailored their algorithm towards what they want.

And so it's not so much just a free market anymore.

It's really about what they want to see on the top page.

And so that's interesting too because they haven't really walled it off technically although

they are fidgeting now with what shows up.

And so who loses out on this?

It's the little guys, right?

Yeah.

Shows like ours, which whatever, like we're completely unknown, but even medium sized

guys are going to be squeezed out because now all it is is like the big name shows,

which is great, but then also like superstars or, you know, movie stars, whatever people

that are really well known and can get their shows put onto a major platform like this,

they're going to be the ones that are going to be able to play in the industry and everybody

else is going to get squeezed out.

Yeah, what sucks about that is it's no longer consumer driven.

It's really about what you're willing to pay or what you're willing to sacrifice or what

you're willing to do to get up top.

Instead of just on your own merits, people love this and we're not fucking with it because

it's great.

And I think that's unfortunate too. The other thing too that this also creates is like luminary itself as a player.

And so before it used to be that you would have your choice of player, right? You could go use Apple podcasts.

You could use Overcast, which is another app. You could use Pocketcast, which I use. You could listen to it on a website.

You could listen to it through iTunes. You can listen to it a million different ways, right? You could download the, excuse me, download the MP3.

But now you're locked into specifically luminary's player. That's the only way you can listen to them.

Right. Yeah, like that was one of the beauties of podcasting as a whole from the beginning

Is that like any any Joe Schmo that wanted to create an app for podcasting great create an app?

It's open right as long as you conform to this spec

Like you can play a podcast and that was kind of a beautiful thing

There's tons of players reminds me a lot of like when Twitter was just beginning and there was like so many different Twitter apps

Like everybody was creating a Twitter app because like oh this one's better than this one this one's better than this one, right?

And there was a ton of play in that space tons of apps and then all of a sudden Twitter's like nope

We make the app nobody can play in this space anymore

Oh, or or they started to like slowly cramp down the APIs that were available to like third-party apps

And so finally they started slowly dying off right so now there's just the Twitter app

Which personally I don't care for I used to use tweet bot a lot

Yeah, and and they've been hamstrung pretty heavily now by what Twitter's done

So it reminds me a lot of that and and I don't think it's a good user experience for the end user

I think maybe it's good for them obviously as a corporation and a company and to the bottom line

But the user does not benefit good good for monetization not good for the end user and it kind of put

Squelches innovation. It's not really about making the best thing or the healthy competition. It's just about

Making more dollar and I feel podcasting is kind of at its infancy right now, right?

Like it's been around for a very long time. Don't get me wrong, but like it just suddenly

started catching on in a very large way with a lot of different people. Like everybody has

podcasts, including us. It's a very, very popular thing and people are starting to take note.

And so, yeah, now here comes the people that think they can make money from it in a big way. So

suddenly they want to close it off or wall off as much content as they can. Really unfortunate.

Yeah, it's sad and it's only on the rise because the gimlet thing, I just like all this stuff is

has really started to happen rapidly in a short amount of time.

So I just think this is just the tip.

It's just getting started.

And even some stuff that I didn't even realize,

I think you brought it up to me, Spotify.

So Spotify recently got into podcasts pretty heavily.

They opened up their system, and now you can submit.

We're on Spotify, which is great.

It's another easy way to listen to podcasts.

But the interesting thing about them is, traditionally,

the way that you might measure how your podcast is doing

is by downloads. Spotify, they download the episode themselves, store it on their servers,

and then they give you metrics based on that file itself, rather than your file being served

by wherever it is that you store it on your host. So it's a little bit of a different

mechanism. So like, now if I look at my metrics for our downloads, I have to look here, you

know, on our system, as well as over here on Spotify, because they're managing one single

file that they're distributing many many many times. So they're even starting to

mess with the protocols and the way that podcasting has always run in the past.

So it's changing. It's evolving and not necessarily in a good way. I think

there are always going to be channels out there where you can free broadcasting

will still exist, but it's going to be very segmented and fragmented as opposed

to where it has been, where it's just like one and done, it's everywhere.

The figure would be like going back to the Twitter example, you know, there's been a

couple of different upstarts that have come up that have been like the open Twitter.

I can't remember the names of them, but there's been two or three that have come up mastodon

or something I think was one maybe back in the day.

And they've tried to come up and replace Twitter and kind of be the more open and the less

corporate type model.

And they failed pretty miserably because, you know, once that first person gets in the

door and has established the market and been there a minute.

It's very, very hard to push them out.

Like, damn near impossible.

So like you can bring up, like that's what I fear is that, okay, now

they're going to wall off such a segment of the market and it's going to kind

of collapse part of it.

And then somebody's going to come up later and say, oh, here's open podcasting,

which we already have by the way.

That's what podcasting is.

I have a great idea.

And then somebody's going to try and reinvent it and it's not going to,

not going to happen.

Ugh.

We can't have done that kind of a doom and gloom there.

Oh, well, pick us up here.

Let me get you one of these.

There you go.

That was really quiet.

Oh, let me do another one.

There we go.

That's a little better.

Woo.

Feeling good already.

Uh, yeah, I don't have a whole lot.

I don't have a whole lot to cover.

I mean, some of this stuff was old stuff that we talked about, that we wanted to

talk about and never got to.

Um, this isn't on here, but if you, if you see in the galaxy fold, that's

having a lot of problems.

That's been a bad day for all you people that spent $2,000 on the foldable phone, man.

Did you spend $2,000 on the foldable phone?

No.

You like your premium products?

No.

Is this not a premium product?

That wasn't premium product.

That was not premium.

That was proof of concept at two grand, a pop, man.

How do you feel about foldable technology?

Personally, I think it's kind of a gimmick.

Yeah, I do too.

I don't think that's where it's going.

I like the idea of these foldable screens and what you can do with OLED and all this

kind of stuff.

that part is very cool and it's very innovative because there's, there's,

there are practical applications for this out there.

I'm not sure having a phone that you can unfold as the, uh, the one for me.

It's kind of like that laundry thing you showed me there a day,

the laundry folding machine for,

oh, they folded though. Ha, literally dude. Yeah.

That went so well.

It folded onto itself into bankruptcy.

My dad would have been proud of that.

Good one, Kyle. Yeah.

So yeah, exactly. I'm sure with their they probably had some very sophisticated technology. It could probably do some really cool things. I'm not sure that putting into a $16,000 folding machine was the right use of the technology.

So I'm curious what what like you said it's cool technology is whatever like what give me a use case as to what you would use a foldable device.

- I haven't had much time to think about this,

but I'm just imagining, what if I was

maybe in a combat situation,

(laughing)

'cause I'm fighting all these cougars everywhere, man,

and I need to know where I'm going.

And so I could imagine like having,

but think about having like a rolled up,

like a huge display, like rolled up,

and like, okay, here's the map of what's going on,

or here's how we can, like, deploy some sort of teacher.

- You're thinking more of a business or a military,

like you're not thinking of a personal use case,

Yeah, not right now. I'm sure it'd be kind of cool to have wallpaper that you could just glue on your wall that would be a TV or something. I mean, that's coming too. So that's very interesting. And there's some cool things you could do with that around art. But, but yeah, I'm thinking of more practical applications where you need a low power device that's going to, you know, provide some visuals or do this or do that and be able to transport it and not have a 60 pound or 100 pound display.

I don't know man like I just think of like these things are just gonna look like I

don't even have a good example but like you think of these like jelly plastic

type filmy screens and like you see them kind of curving and they get lumpy and

just look horrible like I can't imagine these are gonna be any better than that

like probably not I don't know I'm not buying I'm just really not excited about

this I don't but that thing just looked really clunky because it looked like a

it looked like two iPhones with a little hinge on it right and I thought why

the fuck would you even want that? You're not like I already it's not to me it's

underwhelming because it's a lot of money just for the device itself and it's not

really as good as the iPhone because it's twice as thick and it's not really

as good as the iPad because it's half the size so I don't know why I would why

you'd want that I'd rather just pay for both and they have their own purpose. And

what was the what was the issue that came out of it because I I know like it

came out and there was a big you know big story about what happened but I don't

I don't know exactly the details of like, did it crack?

Did it leave a crease?

Like what exactly happened to it, do you know?

- I mean, all I know is that the dam,

I thought the monitor was just like the displays

were not holding up.

- Okay.

- I thought that people were having all kinds of problems

with the displays from folding them, I don't know.

- Yeah.

- Don't know what happened here, I'm trying to find out.

- I didn't read too much into it.

Like I said, the whole thing just seems very gimmicky to me.

I don't, I can't really think of a use case

as to where I would ever care.

Like I'm not gonna set up,

I'd go sit at my TV or sit at my laptop.

I don't really see a time where I'm gonna unfold

my eight pain iPhone.

- That's right.

- Start watching something.

- Hang on a second, let me unfold this.

- It's kind of like an inflatable mattress.

I have an inflatable phone here.

The big screen's ready now.

- Yeah, I know.

- I don't know, it seems awfully gimmicky to me,

but that's just me.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Don't buy one, there's shit right now.

Well, thanks everybody for hanging in on this one.

'Cause it was a bumpy ride.

- It was a little, maybe the marks before the show

aren't the best idea.

- I don't know, I disagree.

- I think that was kinda nice.

- All right, well you can listen to

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And thanks for listening, everybody.

I will say this, Microsoft built May 6th, 7th, 8th.

We're gonna have some coverage coming up on that.

We'll do a little preview next week

and then get into the conference after that.

- All right, good night.

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