39: Goal Setting

 [Music] It's almost like riding a bike we're back here with episode number 39. - Oh buddy. - Have the coffee and coat cast. Yeah, that's right. Podcast where we talk about neither coffee or code. I'm Kyle Johnson. And I'm Mike Sheehan today on the cast. Well, we've got some catching up to do. We've been gone for a few weeks. So we'll fill you in on what we've been up to. Of course, looks like we've got some Tesla news again today. A little bit of recap on your road trip. And some Apple news, some sad news. Johnny Oive is leaving Apple. Him and his aluminum. How do you mean him? And our topic for today is about goal setting in your organization. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that and some other good stuff in there too Bullshit bullshit. Well our bullshit. Yeah, there's always we I leave a lot of room for the bullshit man come on That's just that's a given that goes without saying buddy. It's it's good to be back here. Yeah, welcome back Hey, man, what you been up to the last couple weeks. Well, I didn't a lot of traveling That's why we've been missing the show here a couple times you've been traveling. I've been traveling yep both Plan vacations and not yeah, right right so We're back here. We've done a live show early. We're on a Tuesday here because Mike's got more travel He's got he's got to rack up those miles mileage run. Yeah, hey man You got you know you got to do a lot of flying if you want to keep status on two airlines these days Yeah, first world problems one is not enough man. Yeah Delta and Alaska. Yeah, I'm probably gonna Switch to Delta though -Full of you to Delta, you're off of the Alaska bandwagon? -I think I like-- -What happened? -I just think that Delta is a better experience. I will use Alaska when it's convenient to do so, but my loyalty will probably switch. I just think that they have a better lounge experience. They've got a lot of hot dishes in the lounge. -You like the hot food? -A lot of hot eats. -Speaking of hot food. Mr. Gomer Pyle here, one of our regular listeners here. -What the hell is he doing? - You want to go on the drive here at the KFC right now. - He sent us a video or an image of the new KFC Cheetos Sandwich. - Looks horrible by the way. - The fuck is this man? - I am looking forward to the review. We better get a review here, full play by play. - Yeah, Gomer, I wanna see this man. Let me know what's going on here. So it looks like it's a chicken sandwich that's breaded in Cheetos. (laughing) And they say that we have an obesity. - Let me get a zoom in on that. Oh, you can get a lover's box. What's a lover's box? I don't, I can't read it, it's too small. That sounds interesting. Apparently that Android phone that he's using doesn't have good quality. Yeah, that camera looks kind of a little grainy there. That's why you gotta have this Apple Gear, man. This is why we have the high quality stuff. High quality, dude. We don't mess around. Yeah. Fucking upgrade. (laughing) Yeah, man, it's good to be back. It's good. I know that you were gone, I think two weeks ago, right? Someone unexpected. - Yeah, there's a death in the family. So I think the day we were gonna record, I was kind of packing and preparing to get out of here. So we didn't do the show two weeks ago. - Yeah. - And then we just kind of failed the plan appropriately and you were out last Wednesday. - Well, yeah, because you got back, I think you got back Tuesday, right? - Maybe that was it. - And so you got back Tuesday night maybe, and I was leaving Wednesday to go to SAC. - Yeah. - The old Sacramento office. And so I was down there for a few days. I was at QW SAC for a few days. and then I decided to spend the weekend in San Francisco. So that was kind of fun too. - Yeah, how was that? Did you, what did you do just besides strolling around and going to the old haunts? - Yeah, that was really it. I didn't have a lot of time. So, we had Mike Davis on the cast a few months ago. He's one of the guys, one of our developers down in Sacramento. He was kind enough to give me a ride down to the Ferri and Vallejo Friday afternoon. And so we cut out a work and had a beer down there. And then I took the ferry in. So I had a little time Friday night just to kind of hang. I stayed at the Hyatt, which is excellent, down there on the Embarcadero. And I had a great view of the ferry terminal. So I think I put some photos on Instagram, but it was really sweet view, man. You got the Golden Gate Bridge and the waterfront, all that shit. - And you were high up. So you had a great, expective, not only of the ferry building and the water behind it and all that kind of thing, but yeah, you had a great-- - Yep, I was about a tenth floor, so it was pretty good. And I didn't know this. I've never been inside before this visit. And it's a weird looking hotel, because if you're coming from the ferry terminal itself looking across the street, it's the one that's kind of like an angled building. So it's a guy that is trying you learn kind of slope to it. And inside, it's all hollow. And so you can look straight up to the ceiling. And it's kind of weird, because each floor kind of comes in a little bit further. And it has this neat effect. but it's apparently it's the largest hotel lobby in the world. That's the claim. Yeah, it's big, I don't know. So that was fun. I did that. I just kind of loungeed around a bit, went out Friday night and then Saturday, I pushed my flight back. It was originally like a four o'clock flight and I said, you know, it's such a nice day. It was in the 70s, it was sunny. So I moved my flight to about eight o'clock. - I thought you were gonna tell me you moved it back so you could sit and lounge for a while. - Oh yeah, man. Well, I got to tell you that I have a little lounge story because Alaska does not have an official lounge in SFO. And so the lounge they partner with is the Cafe Pacific Lounge. And so a couple things cool about that. So I was in Terminal 2, but the lounge is in the International Terminal. And I didn't know you could do this, but I was able to use my ticket to get into the International Terminal. I'd go through security there. And so even though it wasn't where my departing gate was from, I was able to get in and still go to the lounge. And yeah, Kathy Pacific, those guys are doing it right, man. They had some good food there. It had like a noodle bar. And so I had a dumpling, like a dumpling ramen soup with bok choy. All right, pretty fancy. - Yeah, sounds fancy. - And it was a little trouble. It could have been a little trouble if I had more time because it was kind of a serve yourself DIY bar. - Open bar, yeah. - Open bar. - I've seen a couple of those. Now that's a little weird to see. - It's a little strange. There's just a bunch of bottles sitting there. - Yeah. If you need to fill up your flask before the flight, I guess you could just help yourself. It's self-service. We thank you for your service. Right. Thanks for being an Alaska customer. Little bit better digs and the mac and cheese and little smokies or something they have. Some of the Delta lounge has usually decent food. Well, I like what they do. But yeah, and especially in the bigger one, what it's over by the A gates, they have-- That's primarily Delta's wing. It's nice. It's really nice and they have a variety of things. It's like a Tom Douglas spread or something like that. So I think last time they had, yeah, they have the mac and cheese, but they had a few other things too. So yeah, it was a good lounge. This was fun. It was a good one. Also, another lounge related news. The Alaska has their new flagship lounge opening up July 12 in the end terminal. Oh, well, see, you're going to be hopping right back to Alaska, then when that's completed. So yeah, whatever has the best one. Yeah. better have some good food, but it doesn't seem like they're changing much. They're going to, I mean, it's a bigger lounge, but they're not changing the program. So they usually have like a couple soups on, which is fine. You know, if you got to get by, have a couple soups, but I'd really like some eats. Yeah. Oh, well, they have good mix there at Delta, but it looks like we got a little hello, hello from from Karen. Oh, I don't see that. Oh, there they are. Well, did you get that? Yeah. Welcome back to Iowa. They just, they just arrived back back to Iowa from Seattle. They were here a few days after some additional travel that we had done to Bozeman, Montana. - That's right, you were in Montana too. We've been all over the place, man. - I've been in a lot of travel though. - You've used in the last two weeks, like we've been to four different places. - Yeah, this actually ties nicely into the next topic. We can get into the Tesla news here. - Oh gosh, it's only eight minutes in, man. We have to jump to that right already. - Well, we might as well. - All right, go ahead, go ahead. - I don't like your attitude with the Tesla news anymore. (laughing) well we just need to talk more maybe it should be like elan news and then we can talk about more expansive topics like space x and falcon heavy uh... they just had another big launch to uh... last week writing chat that the show notes uh... i'd forgot about the show i was i was taking a nap on the couch before this alright my bad but yeah we took a pretty long distance trip to bozman montana it was uh... what fourteen hundred and fifty miles i think that's is that one way - To Boseman probably. - Yeah, here I would say so. - Pretty healthy trip. - Yeah. - Longest trip I've taken in the Tesla by far. And it was great. It was a really fantastic experience. I think we had to stop and charge maybe three or four times each direction. - Okay. - Usually the charging was not charging from empty to full. You didn't run it down to like you would in a car where you're like, oh I have 50 miles remaining or something like that. I'm close to the E, I'm gonna go fill up. - You don't wanna push your luck. - Right. You only have, yeah, because you only have filling stations in Tesla terms, so every so often, and the way that you'd want to do it is the lower end of the battery charges much faster than the higher end. Okay. So in other words, empty to half, you could charge probably at double or triple the speed as you can from the half to full. Interesting. So the more that you stay at the bottom end of it, you know, the better you are. So what they would usually have you do is start full from from home, or from wherever you're at, you're launching from and then kind of drain it all the way down to maybe 50 miles, 60 miles remaining. And then you would stop at a station, fill for maybe 15 minutes. That would probably get you 100 miles. Something like that. And then you do that again at the next station. So you just kind of keep hitting it, you know, a quick 10 or 15 minute, which was nice because you get out, you walk around, use the restroom, grab a coffee. How do facilities do they have on the grounds there? Is it kind of a primitive, like a rest area kind of a thing or are they pretty nice? So most of the stops are, it seemed to be either in or around hotel parking lots. Oh, okay, that's awesome. Usually like on the outer perimeter, a lot of them are around some sort of eating establishment, like a lot of them are Starbucks, some of them are pizza place, whatever. There's usually something around. Yeah. So that's kind of what oftentimes they want you to utilize. I'm going pop into the hotel bar myself. There you go. That's a good, I didn't consider that. That's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. There's multiple generations of these Tesla chargers, right? So are these the 480 volt chargers? Or what do you run into there? It's kind of a mix. I don't know what the voltage on them is. It's currently they're all the generation two. So I think we talked about the Supercharger version three, but the only one of those that exist today is outside of the Fremont factory. Okay. So all of them are generation two, the highest charge speed in terms of miles per hour gained. Yeah, at some points we're charging at 600 plus mile per hour. Yeah, excellent. But again, that's only on the bottom part of the battery. If you get kind of halfway, then it slows down pretty significantly. 400 something like that. Yeah, yeah. That's just, I don't really understand how that works. But what does it take total? A couple hours if you wanted to get all the way full? No, it's probably an hour total. That's not bad. Yeah, that's really not bad. It also depends on how many people are charging at the time that you're in there. So if there's six dolls available, if those are all full, then the load is divided. - Among other vehicle. - Oh, that's right. They were working on, isn't there like another future generation that are coming out with it that's dedicated power? - Version three would not have that problem. Yeah, that's right. - So it was really cool and it was a time to socialize too. It's kind of funny because it's a little bit like a little enthusiast club, right? You park your car and everybody's got nothing to do. They're all standing around or sitting in their car or whatever everybody wants to talk about their Tesla. - And how they're experienced with the Tesla. - Yeah, exactly. It's pretty friendly. So we talked about that and Lauren Behold we found somebody that a new Town that was 10 minutes from my little hometown in Northwest Iowa. I don't know where yeah. Wow. Yeah small world Right. That's pretty cool. It was good. And then how about the handling on the highway? Did you have it in like semi-autonomous motor? Oh, yeah, I drove us all the way here. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty cool No, it was great. Still have the only problem that I complain about the most is the If you're if you're driving in the right lane and an on ramp is coming on and suddenly like the the line markers are gone because the on ramp is coming on, it'll want to try and get into the middle. You know, as much as it can stay in the middle, it wants to stay in the middle. So that's a little annoying, that it kind of wants to veer out of the lane a little bit, or at least it seems like it does, but other than that, it performs flawlessly. -Oh, that's pretty cool, man. -It did shut off during a few storms. -Yeah. -Yeah. -Geez, you're warning and says, you know, can't read the sensors anymore, 'cause the rain's coming down too hard or whatever. -Wow. -Yeah. But yeah, most of the way there was great. -Hmm, that's awesome. I even turned on the autonomous lane switching. So like it didn't even have to warn me, it just switched lanes. - Oh, that's cool. - Which was nice. Work perfectly. - Wow. - Yeah. And you're in good shape now. You got your phone on, locks the car and all that. - Oh yeah, that's amazing. - That's all working, that's good. - I wish I would have had that a long, long time ago. That's like one of the best features of the car, I think. - Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like it's just kind of a hassle to have to do it the other way. - Right. - With the car or whatever. - And it's high on to that once we got home since my parents came, we did a little project and install the new charging mechanism. - At the house? - Yeah, so instead of using 110, now I can use two, what is it, 220? - 220. - I got the old NEMA 1450. - Double the power. - More than double the power. We were charging at five miles an hour before. Now we're charging at like 26. - Oh, that's great. - We can go empty to full in an evening, even if we were away at the end. and whereas before it would probably have... - Oh, you getting a... - Oh boy. - You getting an alarm there? - That's time for my eye drops is what that means. - Get your eye drops out. - Got 'em. - Get my roads in my eyes right now. - All right, go grab 'em no quick if you need to. - I got 'em right here. - Oh, you got 'em there, okay, that's good. All right, we're gonna take five. - We'll move on from the Tesla news because I'm sure Mike doesn't wanna talk about it. - That's the eye drops on. You know, that's fine. I don't mind talking about Tesla every once in a while, I guess. - Just every once in a while? - Yeah. - All right. They had a big launch. It was a week ago. It would have been Monday night Tuesday morning. Yeah, I was like it got it got delayed. There's a multi-hour launch window and because of the weather, I think they had to wait a little bit Oh, yeah, a little bit of a yeah, there you go. You got a wipe up there. You're looking better now. Okay Anyway, yeah, this was a this was pretty exciting launch. They it was the What was it like the largest payload? I think that they've sent up and Falcon Heavy. So, to date so far. And there were several different projects, missions that went up there. So there was, I forgot exactly what they were doing. There was some government stuff. There was some NASA projects that got launched. Something about some kind of global, or sometimes a deep space atomic clock, which one of the things they launched up there. And then a few other satellites and, I don't know, Some other shit. There was a solar foil that they, this thing's pretty cool. This was, it's supposed to go into like, you know, the further outer reaches of space. Like, and the way it works is that this thing deploys and it's a huge solar screen. And it just got, and it uses solar energy to propel itself, basically, further into space. I don't know. I don't have the notes on that, but there was some pretty cool things that they did. The boosters both made it back but the main stage missed. I guess it was the hardest reentry they've ever tried to do of the main core booster. - Is that the one that they had the ship with a gigantic V-shape net that they were trying to catch it in? - That's for the fairing. So like when they have the payload, they have the fairing is at the top of the rocket, and that's what opens up when they're in the payloads inside. The ship caught one half of it, which was the first time they've been able to do that. - Okay. - I mean, that's pretty amazing. That thing just falls back to Earth. And so they got some kind of fucking ship out there, like sipping around, trying to figure out where this thing is gonna land. And they caught half of it. So yeah, so that was a success. No, the main retrieval of the center stage. So here's interesting thing, here's how it works. So basically the two side, I don't know what it's called, but the two side boosters, I guess you can call 'em. Those are the ones that also land back. They retract and land. - Yeah. - And then they have the, I think those land, they can either land on land or on the barge. And so the barge is called, of course I still love you. - It's the name of the barge. - Not Bodimic boat face. - Not Bodimic boat face. - Okay. - But so the barge was trying to catch the main one. And the main one had a hard time landing. It was coming from, I mean, I guess the rate of, because it was so high up, like it had a, what did they say? The acceleration just like coming back was greater than before. And so trying to get to navigate. And then something went wrong. One of the internal components failed or something. And so it missed the barge by a few feet and then sank, blew up. - Hmm, it was pretty cool. - I read another interesting, if you wanna go down SpaceX route here. The internet satellites that we talked about, what was the name of those? - Starlink. - Starlink. - Yeah. - They reported that they are in contact with all but two of those satellites still. - That's incredible. How many did they launch with a 60-sum? - This was 60. - Yeah. - The goal is ultimately 12,000. (laughs) It's insane. I mean, 12,000 satellites that's gonna provide global broadband, high-speed internet. It's in lower orbit, so it's like low latency. It's gonna be super fast. It'll pretty much get rid of every other ISP. I don't know how ISPs are going to survive that. - I don't know about that. That's not what they're looking to do. They're just looking to get this into other areas that don't have internet services. I don't think they're trying to be the ISP of the world although-- - Why not? - Why not? Elon has, you know, nothing else better to do. So why not have an internet company too? - Sure. - Sounds great. - Yeah. - Hey, Christine just joined us. - Oh. - But we make boat face already made my night. (laughing) What the hell is Goomba doing here? So, okay, go and we're gonna check him back in here. You know, he was at the KFC getting a Cheetos sandwich. - We're checking in. This is a ribbing part of the show right here. - Not pitcher, but some Cheeto dusted popcorn chicken because it didn't put it in the bag and the new Mountain Dew is awful. Well, yeah, I'm not sure I did that. - One star. - One star. - The sandwich tastes as expected. A rather plain chicken sandwich with cheese and then an odd crunch from the gaggle of Cheetos underneath, one star. Yeah, I'm gonna pass on that. - So, go get your Cheetos. Okay, I see chicken sandwich. - Yeah, if you wanna be disappointed. - We're not getting a sponsorship from them anytime soon. - I think I'll just go to all of our autos instead, man. I'm not really interested in that. - What, yeah. - Oh, very cool. Okay, well, okay, so we covered SpaceX. Do you have any other Tesla news for us? - I bet you'll leave it at that. - You sure? - Yeah, that's a pretty quick recap for you. - Oh. - I thought you might have a few more things in here somewhere. - Nah. - Okay, well, very good. - Shall we move along? - I suppose, I mean, we're doing pretty good, aren't we? - No. Oh yeah, we should move along. (upbeat music) - Johnny Ive. - Big news in the Apple world. - Out of you Minium. - Yeah. - Johnny Ive, if you don't know who he is, he is the head of design in Apple. - You know what we should do? We should play a little clip. - Oh, you're gonna pull him up here, let me make sure you're-- - Hey, don't ramp that up yet, 'cause I still have Spotify. (laughing) - You don't want your house music? - We got the house music. that royalty-free house music so we don't get kicked off of Facebook. Yeah, so if you're not familiar with Johnny Ive, he's responsible for many iconic Apple products. He's responsible for these MacBook designs. He's responsible for the iPhone design, Apple Watch design. Yeah. Very, you know, he's the face of the design team. Apple, he used to do a lot of their keynotes and their conferences and used to speak a lot over a lot of their videos. He narrated them. And so the clip that Mike is trying to pull up here would be... Let's see what happens. I don't know what we got. We're gonna try it. This is the first one I found Come on Johnny Gotta get the intro Euminium it's nice. He did it right away. Eluminium Yeah, I wasn't expecting that man. That was kind of a shocker. It was I don't think anybody expected that Yeah, I was curious as to you you never see him anymore No, you know, he used to be like I said in all the keynote addresses and in any new hardware product that they would announce He would do the video. Yeah over you know narration Until you how sleek and Wonderful it is. Yeah, I mean you put a lot out a lot of you know colored right marketing products. Right. And clearly an iconic designer. Yeah. I don't know. How do you feel about it? How do you feel about his departure from Apple? I think it's inevitable. I mean, he's been around for a long time. So I'm sure he wants to move on to other things. I don't know. I don't really know what's going on. I know there was some controversy about it. There was a critical story that came out, I think, in the Wall Street Journal that said it talked about his last few years there and it made it sound like he was just just kind of checked out and was blowing off meetings and-- - Working from home a lot. - Yeah, yeah, maybe just tired of it. Like it ran its course, you know? Tim Cook came out and denied that and just said it was absurd that wasn't the case at all. But yeah, I mean, he'd been doing it for a long, long time. He was working with Steve way back in the days. - Right. - Yeah, I'm bummed. Yeah, it said, here's said, Mr. I've grew frustrated as Apple's board became populated by directors with backgrounds and finance and operations rather than technology. I mean, I could see some of that happening too. The company has changed a lot under Tim Cook and I mean, in a lot of ways for the better, but also too, I think they've lost a little bit of their edge that when Steve left and passed, like, you know, it's hard to replace that. - But I think too, I don't know, I'm mixed on this. Like I know his status as an icon in terms of design and the things that he's created. But I also think his time to your point run his course. I feel like he's not, there's no longer innovation for him to do in the minimalistic style. - Yeah. - That's his signature style as minimalism, which is why you see beautiful flat surfaces with very little detail on them. And even iOS is a very minimalistic style. It went from kind of, what did they used to call that particular style before he did it? where it was kind of like they emulated real life things in design. There's a skew morphism. - Oh, okay. - There's what it's called. And then they went to the flat design 'cause it's much more minimal. So everything that he's done is very minimal. And I feel like that's just like, they've gone so far to that side. There's really nowhere else he can take it. - Right. - Like what else are you gonna make? You can't minimize this anymore. - I think what's interesting is that apparently he did not work on the AirPods or the resigned iPhone X. And I just have to wonder, like how I can't see him doing like this design with the notch. To me does not seem like a Johnny I of signature design. I just wonder if that was a committee or something like that, or if there was-- Or if he was, like you said, checked out. And this wasn't a part of that particular decision. And maybe he became such a stickler for these types of things that eventually Tim Cook basically overrode him and said, you know what, listen, if you're not going to get on board here and we're not gonna move forward, we're gonna just eliminate you or not eliminate you, but ignore you. - Yeah. - Right? - Yeah. - So to me, I kind of feel like, personally this is gonna be a breath of fresh air into Apple. It's gonna give other people the opportunity to show their design prowess and potentially allow the platforms and the hardware to expand to something that Johnny hasn't influenced, which I think is both scary and I think could be very exciting at the same time, right? - Something different. - It's something different. It could be scary because that's what Apple is. He's been there for so long that that's kind of like to find what Apple does and is, but I don't think it's a bad thing that we move to a new paradigm and a new design. - Sure. - New form factors, whatever it may be. I think it's time for some fresh air and fresh blood. - I think that's fine. I think that's, yeah, I'm good with that. And I think also, you know, he's obviously made a lasting impression there and I'm sure that his ideas are not going to go away because he's gone either, you know. I think that could still. His influence there will be felt for a while at home I think. There's just a lot of other people that came up under him I'm sure. And so yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah, it'll be a slow transition to your point. And these pieces of hardware aren't going anywhere anytime soon. I don't know if, did it say in the article if you had any kind of impact on the Mac Pro that was just announced? - I don't know about that. Yeah, I didn't see anything in there about the Mac Pro. The old cheese grater. - Right, well, cheese grater V2 because there was a cheese grater before the little round one. - There was a five minute video in the design of the Mac Pro that he did. - Uh-huh. - I don't know if that was a cheese. - They didn't play that during the keynote, did they? No, it says it was not shown at WWDC. Or what do they say about that? - It's very possible too, that they already knew it was on the way out. At that point. - Featuring Johnny that wasn't shown at WWDC, he said there are no compromises. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure not for a $6,000 base model. - Right. - That's top computer. I don't think there would be any compromise. - Right. Shouldn't be. - Yeah, yeah, there's not, it doesn't say a whole lot here. Who knows who knows who they are not. - Yeah, I was just curious as to what your kind of gut check feeling was. I mean, I know just like Steve, he's gonna be missed in certain ways, but I think for him especially, I think the time for new ideas, I think it's much needed. - Yeah. - Yeah. Also, I read some articles too, 'cause he was heavily influenced the Apple Watch. - Oh, okay. - Right, and he very much wanted them to become a fashion company, which that I never understood. You remember the like the the air maze version and all these like super like you could get the Apple watch for like $400 or you could pay like five grand and get like a Gold band and a whatever and I'm just like come on man. Like that's not what you are your technology company Yes, like people your products are expensive already like you don't need to get into Being expensive for the sake of being expensive, right? Well, obviously they know it works because you know this this new computer coming out is ridiculous. But I don't know if that's true because there's art in that same article like they talked about how many of those very fashiony watches that just sat. Well they didn't they never solve right. My problem with with the watch I would like to get one at some point but I like different watches and I have several now you got me one as a gift once and I have a few others and I feel like if I had an Apple watch then I'd have to wear that all the time. Yeah and And I'm not particularly keen on the design. I mean, it's okay, but I do like, you know, classic typical watches, watch pieces. - It is very simple and it's just a black screen. You know, there's no design to it. Same type of idea, right? Like that's a fashion piece. - Yeah. - And the face is a big part of that fashion statement for sure. - Yeah, I'd like a round Apple watch. - I think that's, I don't think you're alone in that. That would appeal to me. I would like to. - Right. And then I think you could get a much bigger form factor with a round. - Yeah. - Yeah, think about it. With all the, what do they call those? Not widgets, but like the little applications that show up on there. - Yeah. - You could do a lot with that. - Yeah. You could have a lot more of them on there. - So I don't know. I'm on the other side of it, I do like the idea, especially with the new generation of the watch because what it has cellular now. - It does. - And so in theory, you don't even need to bring your phone. Like you could just have your watch, right? - Yep. I guess you could make calls too. I don't know how that would work. Like is there enough battery to do calls on that thing? It does work and I can tell you from experience yesterday this thing saved my bacon. What happened? I was I took a car to go home. Okay, and I stuck my my phone in the cup holder as I was driving home And I got out of the car and forgot about the phone being there So I lock up the car and when you get out of the car in car to go if you're not familiar The car automatically locks behind you. You get 12 seconds to get right G T F O - Yep, so I'm basically to my front door and I'm like, "Oh, shit, I don't have my phone." And I turn around and I'm like, "Damn it!" So now I'm like, "Okay, now what the hell am I gonna do?" 'Cause Christine is not there. She was out and about. So I was like, "Okay, how am I gonna get this phone out of there "because I can't call? It's in the car." - Yeah. - So I'm like, "Shit, what am I gonna do?" And then I remember, "Oh, this has cellular on it." So you're able to punch in a phone number. - Wow. - I had my AirPods in my pocket, so I slapped those in and I was able to call and have them unlock the phone. - No way. - Be in my watch. - That's the way. - Save my bacon. - That's awesome. - Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think that'd be good for me. You know, like, you know, last summer, I lost a lot of things. It's strapped to your person, you're fine. - If I had the watch, I probably wouldn't be losing as many phones. - Right, yeah. Maybe just take that out and you don't bring a phone. - Well, exactly. I don't bring the phone, I don't bring the wallet. And then I'm covered, man, because I've got Apple Pay. - There you go. - So I just feel like-- - So I just feel take Apple Pay? - No, that would be a problem. That would be a problem. I can't, I gotta get those guys on Apple Pay and then I'll be good to go. - There you go. 'Cause I don't get ID'd there or anything like that, so I don't need to carry an ID around. So with the help, that'd be pretty slick. Just my Apple Watch. - Yeah. - I would have saved a lot of money with that last year. - That's coming. Some day they'll be there. Your ID'll be on there, everything will be on. Or you'll scan it and they'll be like, "Oh yeah, you're my machine hand, you have." - Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. - Yeah, I have to say, like the ID thing, we need a little more modern technology around identification. because I lost my ID and it's a pain in the ass. You can't fucking do anything without an ID. - How'd you manage this now? - Yeah, I didn't tell you this story. It's happened while you were away. - Oh. - And yeah, I basically, I'm not gonna get into all the details right now, but effectively after the Wu Tang concert, my wallet and my phone were taken from me. They were stolen. - Not confiscated. that confiscated their stolen. - Okay. - And so yeah, essentially, just trying to get all those things back together. And they basically went down to Auburn and racked up like $3,000 to your man. - Oh man. - And so part of the problem is that I had too many cards in there. I had my business debit, my personal debit, and so they grabbed money out of both of those. And then I had two credit cards and they tried to do a bunch of shit with those as well. They went down to Auburn and filled up like 10 cars full of gas and went to the Walmart super center and bought a bunch of shit. - And were you able to recover all your funds? - Yeah, I got everything back. But in the shitty thing, as I just got an enhanced license from the DMV down here about a month ago. And so I went back in 'cause I was traveling last week and I was like, "Why do you need to get my ID?" And so I went into the DMV and unfortunately, they don't issue replacement cards in person. Like they ship them in the mail. And so normally I have a passport and a passport card. They both expired in April. And in order to get a renewal, you have to send in the old one. So I got a passport photo and send in the old passport and the old passport card. So I didn't have those IDs on me either. So I'm basically without ID right now. - Wow. - The only good thing is that I have clear, and you know, you can just use biometrics to get through the airport. So I didn't have to show an ID at all last week. - Hmm. - The downside is I'm going to Omaha and they don't have clear there. So. - I'm leaving tomorrow morning. I haven't gotten my license yet. - What are you gonna do there? - Well, supposedly you can TSA can verify your identity through other means so you don't have to have an ID. It just might take a little longer. - You're gonna have to go to a side room. - So yeah, I'm gonna get the full cavity search probably. (laughs) At the old TSA pre-check. - That would be great. - You know, station over in Omaha. - Yeah. - So we'll see. I haven't checked the mail today. Fingers crossed that the passport or the license came back. But if not, it will be a big deal. - I'm gonna go back to the airport. - I'm gonna go back to the airport. back but if not, it will be having a good time and security down there. That's a good story, you didn't tell me that. Yeah, well we haven't had a lot of time to reconnect since this week, it's been kind of a quick week but yeah, that was my unpleasant happening or like a little over a week ago, it was like a week ago Friday, Wu Tang, wasn't worth it man, wasn't worth it. Wasn't a good chill. It was fine. The problem is there's a lot of people in the clan. So like everybody's up there with a microphone, hollering and hooting and yelling and running around. So it was fine. I'm not a huge listener anyway. So some of that stuff I just didn't know. I didn't know a lot of their music. - I would be the same way. I think I know two songs. - Yeah. - So, yep, that's what happened. And I've got most of my stuff back. Fortunately, the phone, well, it's the other thing too. It's really frustrating because so much of what we do is on the phone as well. I went to the Apple Store and I have the theft and loss protection plan. But even with that, it's an insurance claim and it goes through some third party. You go to the Apple Store and you have the insurance that you bought at the Apple Store, but they can't give you a new phone. They have to send it in the mail. It's coming from someplace in Pittsburgh or something like that. So, um, yeah, that's a whole other convoluted story, but long story short, I had a temporary phone that I purchased that has like a 14 day return policy on it until I got the other phone in the mail and then, you know, got all that shit back together. So how many phones is this in a year? Ooh, yeah, that would still cover those last year too. So that would be two pixel twos of Nexus 5X and an iPhone. I think four. I think we're up to four now. - Well done. - It's been a rough year, okay? I've been going through some stuff. Things are looking up now. Things are looking better. - Yeah. - Yeah. That's enough of that. - Right. Let's move on to goal setting. We can set some goals for you. - Yeah. - No, who's in any phones this year? (laughing) - We need some, I need some goal setting. We can talk about that. - Yeah. - This week we had a couple of interesting meetings where we were talking about kind of figuring out what it was we wanted a particular committee or group Kind of to be doing right what the goals were for it. Yeah, we have this we can talk a little bit about this We have a we call what the architecture committee right and this is a Kind of a hybrid group of tech members like a good cross-section So we've got guys in there that are kind of architect level Guys and we've got software developers in their IT ops right data our data team is represented to here yep And I think that's a pretty good cross section of most of the teams got a little bit of everybody in there Yeah, and it's really functioned over the last year. So is kind of I don't know what would you say just A lot of the decisions that we make across the organization and tech like come out of this group And so if we're trying to get new projects approved or there's something coming up we'll discuss the Discuss the details in this group and then whatever we agree on is kind of what happens I think that's the idea of the group. I don't know if that's the way it operates all the time. Through no fault of anybody's own. I think it's such a large group and so many people with so many different pieces of expertise that I don't know that I mean things get talked about but I don't know that they always have ever get hashed through fully. Decisions do get made. We have recently done some decisions through, you know, with the data team. But I think they're, I think we're discovering that maybe this isn't maybe the appropriate format or at least we're looking at other ways to structure the meeting to make it a little bit more interesting for all the parties involved to make the larger group more effective and to come up with what exactly we expect that group to deliver, right? Yeah, I would say so because I think what we've run into lately has been it's not topical for everybody in the groups because we have so many people from different parts of the tech organization. We might spend one meeting just devoted to talking about reporting needs or something like that but it's relevant to the data guys but maybe not relevant so much to the software of the DevOps guys. And so I think we've felt, I think everybody's felt at one point or another that, But maybe it's not always the most relevant for them. And so it's like, oh, it's another meeting. And I'm not really getting anything out of this. And yeah, how do we make it more effective? - And so the last meeting we had was kind of, I don't know, a bit of a brainstorming, I guess, if you will. - Yeah. - Kind of felt discombobulated. A lot of people throwing a lot of ideas are out. A lot of good ideas. I think there was a lot of really great ideas in there. But I found myself during the meeting, kind of feeling like, I don't know, we were just kind of firing all over the place, like just missing the target all over the place, right? Right. Left, right? Yeah. And we kind of sat in my office for a little bit and had a pretty good talk about it. And I think, at least what I came up to and I think you agree is like we are talking about goals that are so wide ranging from like the company that we work for, quote, lizard, all the way from the top, all the way down to like maybe these like small working group type goals. So like in between there, you'd have, what wizard goals, you know, company type goals. You'd have the tech team as a whole, their goals. You'd maybe even have underneath that architecture team, which we were discussing, their goals. And then underneath that, you might even have, you know, subgroups, kind of working groups. And they might have their own goals. And I feel like we were kind of straddling all of those. And we didn't have a good, even from like lending tree down to Quote Wizard, down to the tech team. There's many pieces, many goals that need to filter down. So it needs to be a top-down approach. And I feel like we're missing both the Quote Wizard and the tech team goals in that conversation. Yeah, that was your main point that you brought up and I agree is that we need more clearly defined goals at that level to figure out how to function as a group, right? That's the problem number one. we understand what the goals are for the team, then we can figure out how to organize a little better around that. - And I thought that was a, this is an interesting kind of like, I don't know, a piphany for lack of a better word for me, because I remember back in the day, like they would do these like goal setting experiences, and I would just be like, "Why the hell we gotta do that?" That's so much stupid BS, right? - Waste of my time. - Yeah, exactly, like, "Why do I care?" - Yeah. - Right? Doesn't affect me. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But now I'm like the one calling out for it, like, "Hey, we need to make sure that we're all all on the same page, kind of going to the same point here and not just kind of like flailing and doing our own thing. - Well, it's a good place to be, because honestly, we've grown and matured as a company over the last few years, in a pretty dramatic way. I mean, I had this reflection yesterday when I was looking at our tech weekly meeting that we have on Teams. We had 59 participants on Tuesday morning, and I remember when I started here five years ago, it was almost exactly to the day. Like, there's like, ten of us that would get in the room. And that was everybody, like management tech, you know what I mean? Like, the whole tech organization was like 10 people in one office. And now we've got 60 people in what, four office locations. Well, I guess you've got Denver Sacramento, Seattle. And we even have some folks now in New York and our SEO office. And then Charlotte's kind of HQ parent company. So maybe not anybody there necessarily, but not from here. Not from here. And so yeah, I think out of necessity, we have to think about how we organize in a different way because we're a different organization. And my thinking on what I'd like to see is more of, I call it like the Patterns and Practices group. Like we kind of need to have a group that can define like certain facets of software development and how we structure and organize ourselves so that we're not reinventing the wheel with every new project. - Yeah, and I agree with that. And that's what we talked about quite a bit and that kind of lends itself to kind of, the very bottom of the stack, if you will, right? The working group. So you might have a working group for the software development guys. You might have a working group for the data guys. You might have, you know, there might be another one for PM, you know, project management. There might be another one for, I don't know, IT ops. - Right. - IT team. And they're self organizing. That would be the idea is that you might have a head of each group and those groups can meet some sort of cadence. And as they meet, they kind of talk about things. But the question again becomes, what is it that they should be focused upon? And that should be coming from a top-down, not just them saying, like, oh, this is what we think is important at the moment. Right. We're not just creating work for ourselves, but it's something that's more of a directive from above. Right. And so that's the, so there's two pieces here. One is, one objective is to have more clearly defined company and then tech goals. So we we know we're shooting for in the next 6, 12, 18 months, whatever the roadmap is. And the second piece is taking this group and making it more effective by having work come out of these goals. So I imagine it's going to be things like new projects that are going to come up. And then the working groups themselves can deal with the minutia of saying how things need to be done in each of those areas. We know, for example, that the software needs to be done a certain way, and everything needs to be in a DevOps pipeline. And so maybe in the meeting, you can have the PMs, get everybody at the high level know what's coming down the pipeline, and then if there's detailed work to be done there, instead of doing it in the meeting, we just do it in our subgroups is the idea. Exactly. And then report that back up to kind of the main group and say, this is what the software development subgroup recommends. Yeah. you guys hash it out and talk about it as a larger group and put the stamp of approval on it, which leads to yet another question that I pitched to, well, I didn't, I tried to, but I failed in the actual meeting that we were having, but it's kind of becomes a question of like, what is that group? What is the result of that group? Like what are we trying? What is the end product from the best practices architecture, whatever that group is called? Like what are they supposed to produce? And I feel like we don't have that either nailed. And to me, what they produce is number one documentation that can be followed by the groups or anybody that wants to find out what the best practice is for connecting to our reporting system or connecting to building a new app of XYZ type. So you have a library of these kind of best practices that the standards architecture, whatever you want to call a team has put forth. But then also we have, I think, a month, once a month tech team meeting. - We do, yeah. - And oftentimes we struggle to try and fill that in. So I think that's another valuable place where somebody can report. You know, what was discussed in the, 'cause these are biweekly. - Yeah. - The architecture and standards committee meetings. So they can meet twice every time during the month and then report that whatever they found or whatever they agreed upon during the tech team meetings. And that includes everybody in the tech organization. So I think to keep everybody abreast of what's coming, what's been decided, that sort of thing. And I think that's very valuable. And the other thing I'd like to add to that is all these subcommittees that are sitting underneath there, that gives everybody a voice at the table, regardless of if they're a senior or if they're brand new to the company, they can come into that group and have their voice heard in their opinion heard and make an impact, which I think is important. Yeah, it's good to get more people talking. I think one of the and we you know, we need to define the goals For the group, but I think there's some pretty obvious things that stick out to me like one we want to be more As far as efficiencies concerned like we want to break down the silos, right? And so like the way we've run for a long time here was like we've got one or two domain experts on a particular project And they're the only ones that know how it works and so if you're going from one system to the next There's a pretty steep learning curve usually associated with that because the way one project was written is completely different than the other one and If gosh if that guy got hit by a bus would be screwed because like nobody else has any of that knowledge It's not written down anywhere. It's a stall. You know and someone's head and we've had that happen We've lost people before that you know and and It was it was a loss for us because we didn't know we had to spend a lot of time kind of reverse engineering shit Right. And so there's a big risk there to the company. And it's a liability to have just one guy that just knows how this thing works. And so I think if we have these standards and we have these patterns and practices that we can apply across the software, across the whole tech stack, then ideally we can plug and play and different people can come in and be involved and not have too much of a difficult time trying to get ramped up. Yeah. And I feel like I keep making like a higher, a bigger and bigger hierarchy here, but I feel like there's another piece missing too. And I think lending tree is very good about this portion of it. They have a set of values that they tout very heavily and they live by them. And either I feel like we as quote wizard adopt those values and continue to use those and those influence our goals as well. Or we come up with our own or we add additional from the text side. So if our values are that we want to be diverse or we want to be inclusive or we want to be, I don't know, don't have silos. Whatever the values may be that we come up with, I think those need to also be included. So I think not only with the goals, but I think the values are important and we need to consider both in this kind of flow as we go forward. So I guess once we got done with this exercise, like I just felt we were too far down the road already with it or too far down the road. Like I feel like we need to take many, many steps back and say like, okay, what is the vision and the goal of the tech department? Maybe that's already done at a higher level than we even see which if that's the case that's fine, but that needs to be Push down so that we understand what those values and those goals are otherwise I say let's like continue down that road and have discussions about what the goals of the team are And start there and then we'll start building what this Architecture and standards groups looks like or works on yeah, I think that'd be good. I think We're what the question that was posed was what how we were gonna organize or how we were gonna I think it was more like an application life cycle, wasn't that kind of part of the conversation? - I don't even remember to be honest with you. I thought it was more like just a brainstorming of what the group was going to focus on or what it was gonna do, but it just kind of spiraled out to a whole bunch of other things. And that's where the goal setting conversation came up. From me, I think I brought it up mostly, but 'cause I whiteboarded it out. Like I said, this hierarchy of kind of needs and I feel like we're missing a big chunk from above. So I feel like we need to fill in those blanks. But yeah, it would be good to revisit this. And I think it's been helpful to have some times to whiteboard and think about it a little bit more. So we're gonna revisit one another week and a half, probably, two weeks. - Yeah, I would imagine something like that. And I think we need to, you know, you and I sat in my office and we kind of whiteboarded it and settled around on a little bit. And then our boss's boss Brad came into the office and checked it out briefly. And didn't seem to have any problems with it or whatever, but I think we kind of wanted to sit on it. Yeah, think about it a little bit. See what we felt about it a few days later. And that's kind of I think where we're still at. But I think it's an interesting discussion. The whole goal is in values discussion. I think it's pretty fascinating. Like the company, my wife works for it. I'm very, very envious in some ways of their company because they have also a very, very clear and defined set of goals and they very much live by those. They may have other problems just like any other company does, but their goals are definitely something that they live by and that they, like when you look at that company, you can tell that that's like their guiding light. - Yeah, and it makes a big difference. My previous employer was the same way. We would have quarterly goals and, well, really, like at the end of the year, like we'd have a planning session with everybody and we would figure out for the next year what we were going to do. And then we'd break it down, step it back, you know, quarter by quarter, and then even like, well, this month, next month, kind of a thing. And I think that's one area that we could really like, we need to flex that muscle a little bit more. It's like, we definitely operate more like that old startup in that way where we really don't have long-term planning. At least on our level. I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I think it does at the off-sites to some degree. But I, you know, we're not usually part of those things. And we don't take the business goals that come out of that and break them into tech goals long-term. Right. Yeah, we don't continue downstream, same problem, right? Yeah. And that's an executive team retreat. So like that just doesn't flow down far enough. Yeah. Yeah. And I found that to be really helpful at the last place, just because we knew what was coming up and what had to be done. And it was just-- yeah, it was-- the machine was oiled, and I felt like it ran a lot better that way. And we're getting to that point where we can do that now, I think as well, because we used to be very, we would task switch quite a bit. And I think over the last couple of years that that's really gone away. And now we do have kind of good alignment with business and we have the ability to focus on longer term projects. And I know that they've come back and said even this year, like we're not really bringing, there aren't really many new initiatives. It's gonna be really about supporting maintenance and keeping things going and making sure that the system's healthy. - Interficiencies, yeah. Yeah, so I think it's good. I think we need to identify these goals and then we can start to figure out how we organize through this group, especially because we're still pretty lean. I mean, like I said, 60 members, it's not a small number now, but like with the amount of work that we support, the products that we support in the systems, we're still pretty nimble in certain areas. And so everybody runs lean. And we need to have more people involved in other things. I think like Tonk in the Everest project was such a exciting prototype for us because we had nine people on the project, as we mentioned before, and just to see, what kind of throughput you get when you have that kind of focus and that many people was pretty exciting. If we could apply that to other things, that would have a lot of power there. - And that was an example I think of where they had a very clearly defined goal, right? We needed to get this new product, well, quite a number of different products pushed over the line by XYZ date, and they knew exactly what those products were, and we have most of them somewhat scoped. They weren't completely scoped, but better than we have in the past. And I think one other thing to bring up here, and we haven't done this in quite a while, but I think this can kind of even come down into your personal life, right? Like we talked quite a bit in previous episodes the way back when, about a lot of various things, but I think goal setting is an important thing to do there as well. Like I used to do that quite a lot. I would use it as like a New Year's kind of exercise, I would say like, well, in this year, I want to run a marathon. You know, typical, not, I wouldn't even call them like New Year's resolutions, but I would say like, these are the things that I want to accomplish this year. And I would try to make multiple types of goals. So there'd be like the long-term goal for the year, or maybe it'd be a multiple year goal. I don't know, it depends upon what the scope of the project was, but you have to make them realistic. And then try and make sub-goals of those, right? So like, if I want to run a marathon by December, I'm going to try and run a half marathon by whatever date, right? So like, I try to make them incremental and things that you can actually achieve so that you can kind of like continue to create success, right? So more success creates more success. And so I don't know, I think it's, it can be applied both in business and to your personal life or personal goals as well. - There's an acronym for that. It was the Smart, Smart Goals. - Smart Goals. - Smart Goals setting, Smart, it was a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. - I don't know if you've heard that before. - No, I've never heard of that. - Yeah. - Yeah, there's probably a whole bunch of books on that or something, it's something I've heard quite a bit. - Yeah, I used to be really, really good at that and I would do it every year, but in the last couple of years or three or four years, I would say I haven't. And it's something I should get back to because, like I said, it's very apparent to me. - Yeah. with this business use case. And now that I kind of like apply that to my life, I can kind of see that I don't do that. And I can see why maybe I don't feel like I'm as productive or as successful in some of the goals that I kind of in the back of my mind I'm thinking about. But I never sit and like put them to paper. I know, I actually plan them out. And writing it down just makes such a difference. Like there's something about that. It really commits it to memory for me. I have to do that. I mean, I write a ton just because it's the how I remember. And not even like I go back to the notes, just that even just writing it down once, like it helps stick for me. And I have to say, I do need to get back to that because I used to be a pretty regular goal setter and I used to have like kind of a year in review and then also like, you know, the next year ahead, what I want to achieve and like a travel calendar and that sort of thing and personal goals and honestly just got derailed with everything personally with all the personal life changes and the divorce and moving back. I kind of just like threw all that shit out. And yeah, now that I'm kind of resituated to be a good time to start getting back into that practice again, I think I can talk about it. - I think it's a good thing to do. And I think we should put an article or a link to the, to the what was it called, smart planning? - Yeah, smart goal setting. It's just that it's an acronym and they, they'll talk a little bit more about, what those mean. Yeah, there's some really good stuff in here. So I'll put that link out. And I think to your point too, like putting it on paper, there's something that like solidifies, you know, whatever it is that your goal is. Like for some reason, like if you just say it in your mind, like it's easy to just pass up, but as soon as you write it down, it seems like it becomes much more of a codified thing that you must hit. Well, I have to say, like this is kind of funny, and maybe it's not the most practical example, but I did that with the travel piece. I mean, I have a travel journal that I just would record my trips and plan what I'm doing. And it was a big goal of mine for a long time to have the status, which is kind of cheesy. I mean, everybody, there could be more, there's way more important things out there. - I disagree. - But I wanted to have that, a frequent flyer thing. I just like being in different places and new places. And so even just being able to articulate that in the journal and write it down, It's really like gone crazy over the last three years. And I think about it like three years ago, I really didn't do much travel at all other than maybe going to see my family around the holidays or maybe would take one big trip internationally. I started doing some international travel and do one big international trip and then just go see some family. And now I mean, I was just looking at this today. Like last year at this time, I had taken 14 flights already from Jan 1 to end of June, mainly because I was going back and forth from the office of San Francisco. But this year, even being here, I take a nine. So it's already kind of crazy. Nine trips, the first half of the year, already got status locked in on Delta and Alaska. I don't know, it's just interesting when you write it down and you have focus, you get momentum and things start to happen. - And what do you do with it once you write it down? So you've got a journal. Do you carry the journal with you every day? Is there a way that you kind of remind yourself of it? Or for me, I feel like once I've written it down, even if I'm not looking at it, it's still there. I know it's there and it's kind of locked and loaded and it's concrete. Even though I don't see it every day, I don't have to hang it on my refrigerator or something like that to take it. - I don't do that either. I don't have sticky notes or any of that kind of shit. I just, I refer to it from time to time. And so for me, generally speaking, like when I get back from a trip, then I'll open it up and write down what I did and what happened. And so yeah, it's not a regular thing, just when, you know, ad hoc style. So very nice. Well, that was a good discussion. We have more to unfold there, and I think we'll have to come back to this, but this was a good one for this week to get into organizational and personal goal setting like that. Get back into the swing of things. Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks everybody for joining. Our artwork is provided by your name, the Gentle Giant. You can always check out more of his work at Instagram and that's www.coffeecodecast.com/gentalgiante. Check us out on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @coffeecodecast or email us at coffeecodecast@gmail.com. Podcast is available from iTunes Spotify, Tuning Stitcher, Google Play Music, Radio Public, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find all of this and more on our website at www.coffeecodecast.com. Absolutely, sir. And if you like the show, jump on over to coffeecodecast.com/review and give us a quick shout out, positive, negative or otherwise. Thanks for listening and we'll be back at our regular schedule. I believe next Wednesday. Let's hope. For number 40. Yeah, there you go. Good night. All right, thanks, man. [Music]