Maybe Go Fix Those

Scott: Friends with Brews Coffee drinker, huh? Not today, Satan. Today we are beer drinkers. And, I have somebody here who I feel like I’ve known pretty much all my life. Who are you and why have I known you all my life?

Keith: I think you have known me most of your life.

Scott: I’ve known you all of my life, whether I knew I knew you all of my life or not is debatable at the very beginning, because I was

Keith: This

Scott: a baby.

Keith: is true.

Scott: this is my brother Keith, and Keith is going to join me for… Are you having your pumpkin?

Keith: No, not pumping.

Scott: Oh. Oh. All right. Well, I’ll start first. I’m having, my… Not my first choice of pumpkin ale by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a Laurelwood Brewing Company pumpkin ale. I’ve never been a huge fan of Laurelwood. I will say this is the best thing I’ve ever had from them, which does beg the question, how do I know so much about them? I think I bought a box of their beers at Costco once, when Costco had some, like, sampler boxes or whatever, and I was like, “Hey, that looks like beer.” And I bought it, and I was like, “I never want Laurelwood again.” And unfortunately, the box did include some IPAs, which, as you know, is a travesty to humans. But this is, this is my beer. I will… I think I’ve had this on Friends with Brews before, but I don’t remember. let me describe it to you in words. I don’t have words. S*** man. It’s back. Our annual pumpkin ale is brewed using pumpkin puree and a blend of seasonal spices, creating a smooth and robust amber ale. Smooth and robust with puree. It’s got puree coming out the wazoo. All right. Here, here goes. This one tastes spicy to me. This one does taste spicy to me. It’s not bad. It definitely has a, pumpkin season vibe to it, I will say that. It’s, it’s not bad. It’s not my favorite one. For sure, I prefer at least the Hopworks one, if not, That orange bottle is Rogue’s giant pumpkin ale bottle. that one wasn’t bad either. Rogue does tend to have very strong flavors, but that was a good pumpkin ale. But this is a good one. It’s not bad. I can drink this without being too outraged. So I’ll give it, I’ll give it a three quarter thumb. We don’t really have that rating, but I’ll give it a three quarter thumb anyway. All right. What is yours, sir, kind sir?

Keith: [chuckles] Hmm. Hmm. I just got a message that my mic disconnected. Can you hear me?

Scott: I can hear you. I have no idea

Keith: Okay.

Scott: what mic it’s using.

Keith: All right. Well, what I have, let me pour it in here and make sure it really is. It’s a pale ale, and it does look pale. Now, if it’s just an ale, we’re good. And it’s got quite a head. This is a Talking Cedar Tribal Pale Ale,

Scott: Uh-huh.

Keith: and it’s,

Scott: Is that

Keith: uh,

Scott: a,

Keith: Du-

Scott: is that a product of Washington State?

Keith: It– I’m not sure if it’s Washington. It is

Scott: Oh.

Keith: a tribal brewery, though. Yeah, it is Washington.

Scott: Uh-huh.

Keith: It’s in Chehalis.

Scott: Mm.

Keith: Um,

Scott: Okay.

Keith: it’s a tribal brewery, and it says on the can that a portion of the proceeds support the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women project.

Scott: Well, I like that. I actually like that a lot.

Keith: So let’s see how this pale ale goes down.

Scott: Looks like it goes through the mouth.

Keith: That’s actually really nice.

Scott: Is it?

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: It looks good. It looks really good. I wonder if I can find that at Jack’s Market or John’s… Jack or John, whatever the f*** Some J guy, his market. They’ve got beers from Washington, as you know, because, What was it, the Jack’s Amber that I had from them, I think?

Keith: Maybe.

Scott: y- you’re familiar with Jack’s Amber. It’s a black can. I think you’ve… It’s not your favorite one. You said it was one of your backup ones.

Keith: This is Chloe.

Scott: Hi, Chloe.

Keith: Chloe

Scott: You’re not

Keith: apparently

Scott: invited.

Keith: wants to be in here too.

Scott: What does Chloe have to drink? And is Chloe gonna

Keith: Uh,

Scott: give it

Keith: Chloe gets

Scott: paw,

Keith: a, a…

Scott: paw up, paw down, a side paw? Oh, I saw a side paw.

Keith: Chloe gets a, a very special tap water.

Scott: Mm. That’s

Keith: It’s

Scott: exciting.

Keith: from the Tacoma Public Utilities.

Scott: Yeah. It’s, it doesn’t sound like it’s brewed though, so it can’t really be on this show.

Keith: Um, and I’ve been thinking in the background, Mac and Jack is what you had.

Scott: There. Mac and Jack, yes. Mac

Keith: Their

Scott: and Jack

Keith: amber

Scott: Amber

Keith: ale.

Scott: Ale. Yeah. Anyway, um, that store has coolers with beers from several different states. re- regional to the area, I mean, surrounding, like California, of course,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: uh, you in Washington, me in Oregon. They have the Oregon ones. And by the way, this one’s from Astoria, Oregon, which people who know anything about Oregon know that, A, I’m saying Oregon absolutely correctly, and B, Astoria is up the coast. And when you go to Astoria, you basically just smell fish all the time, which, I don’t know. Are you a… Like, Anna could happily live… Like, we were looking at places, like if we lived in Korea for a while,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: she would be happy to live in Busan, and it is very coastal there, and I said, “That’s great, as long as it doesn’t smell like the coast all the time.” Because I don’t know what it is, I just, I like the coast, but I don’t wanna live at a place that, that smells like the coast all the time. How do you feel about that? What’s your… When you think of places you want to live, do you think, “G*** don’t bring that coast smell to me every day,” or do you think, “I don’t care”? Or do you think, “I want the coastal smell every day”?

Keith: Uh, I know the smell you mean. Um,

Scott: [clears throat]

Keith: it’s not my favorite.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: My– I, I, I love the coast, but I love it when it is stormy and the waves

Scott: Yes.

Keith: are smashing onto the shore,

Scott: And everyone

Keith: and

Scott: else is gone.

Keith: everyone else is gone, and you’re either

Scott: Yep.

Keith: in a lodge watching through the window or you’re wrapped in, in blankets and everything else, sitting out in the spray, and it’s, it’s salt and seaweed mainly that you smell.

Scott: I will say I do like it also when it’s a little bit stormy or when it’s cloudy and rainy, and, we go out on the beach ’cause no one else is there. And if you just bundle up and it can be a lo- it can be fun. Olivia and I have gone out there bundled up, but with bare feet wa- wandering through the water and the sand, and had some

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: pretty good days like that just ’cause no one else was around. But yeah, for

Keith: Is

Scott: the most

Keith: it…

Scott: part, heading back to the warm lodge and staring out the window at the ocean is the best strategy.

Keith: Yeah. Now, I do like going to Ocean Shores here in Washington, and

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: they have a beach that goes for like 5,000 miles or something, perfectly flat. Um, and

Scott: Don’t worry,

Keith: it’s

Scott: it won’t

Keith: re-

Scott: be flat very long.

Keith: it’s really deep, so it’s a long way from where you park to the ocean,

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: and it’s just

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: flat sand all the

Scott: Huh.

Keith: way out. And even when it’s not stormy, um, the fog rolls in, and you can sit there in the fog, and you can’t see anything, but you can hear the waves

Scott: That’s

Keith: lapping

Scott: cool.

Keith: at the shore, and it’s just you’re like out of space and time. I

Scott: That’s

Keith: really

Scott: pretty

Keith: like

Scott: cool.

Keith: it.

Scott: there’s a lot of, I mean, the Oregon Coast is pretty renowned for supposedly having great areas, but to be honest, I find a lot of them overrated. I do like Newport quite a lot, and Newport may not have the actual best beaches, but I think it’s the best coastal town experience. I don’t know what beaches, beaches I would rate the best in Oregon. A lot of the time, well, some of the beaches that are rated the highest, I don’t find the towns to be very compelling. You know, the surrounding area is not so great, and

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: when you go to the coast, you want good food, you want a decent place you can walk around a little bit, and then you wanna be able to… Also, the accommodations, like when we go to Newport, there is a, a place th- whose name I can’t even remember right now because we- it’s been so long. But it’s basically like little, rustic homes as,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: as a hotel, but the insides are like little homes, and they’ve got multi-story and they’ve got fridges and it’s, it’s really nice. And

Keith: Yeah,

Scott: then when you

Keith: there’s

Scott: go to

Keith: this…

Scott: another place and it’s like a white hotel room, you’re like, “What? What is this? I don’t, I don’t want this.”

Keith: Yeah. I think my favorite ocean spot of all, um, was actually the town of Chania on Crete. And not a beach, it’s a harbor, but you can– there’s the harbor and then cobblestones and then cafes and bars. And you

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: can sit there in the summer warmth under a big awning with a yard of beer sitting on the ground next to your chair and, uh, just enjoy the, the salt and the sun and the breeze and good

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: beer.

Scott: I hope there’s not a breeze in here right now ’cause I hear a cat in the litter box. [sighs] Midnight has this thing, I don’t know if your cats do this, but Midnight, if it’s, if he pees in the litter box, he’ll go in there, dig a normal amount, and then he’ll leave calmly and casually. If he poops, he digs and digs and digs and digs and digs. And if I’m in here working and he’s doing that, all of a sudden, like my brain is focused on work, and then all of a sudden I’ll just realize I’m out, I’m incredibly angry. And it’s like when you have TV on in the background. I hate noise just for the sake of noise. I despise it. And so if things are on in the background and I’m not listening to them, all of a sudden they’ll finally just build up to where I just wanna snap. That’s what his digging does to me, and I feel bad about it because he’s just doing his animal thing, but he is so obsessive about digging when he’s pooped that he just keeps going and it never ends, and eventually I become angry.

Keith: My cats

Scott: Hey.

Keith: are too stupid, both of them. Uh, they do dig, but they, they dig the plastic side of the litter

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: box. They dig the cabinet that’s sitting next to the litter box.

Scott: Yes.

Keith: They

Scott: Yes.

Keith: dig the carpet. They dig

Scott: Yes.

Keith: the leg of my desk.

Scott: Yes.

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: M- Midnight does do a bit of digging on the side of the box, and he also digs the… When he, [chuckles] he gets his wet food in the morning, and he’ll, he’ll either dig at it but then eat it anyway, or he’ll decide he doesn’t want it and he’ll try to cover it up and dig it, but he’s really digging at something up, way up above it. I don’t, I don’t

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: know. I don’t understand cats. They’re not stupid, but they are kind of stupid.

Keith: The digging that cracks me up is when I give them a wet food that they don’t approve of, and they sniff at it and then dig as if to bury it.

Scott: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: That’s the kind of digging Midnight does with food. Anyway,

Keith: Hmm.

Scott: well, what should we talk about? What are some programs and some pieces of software that don’t hurt me every time I have to touch them? Do you have any pieces of software that don’t hurt you every time you have to touch them? [laughs] By the way, that’s Theo. I’ve talked about Theo on this show before, but Theo, he talks about AI. He is so… He is smart, but he’s not, I don’t know if he’s quite as smart as he thinks he is. He does come across weird, and some guy parodied him and- made a video, said, “Average Theo video be like,” and some of the things he said were things like this I’m just going to be real with you guys. I’m way smarter than you at everything. Whoops, this one I know for a fact that everyone who watched that video until the end completely agrees with me. Anyway. But,

Keith: Uh-huh.

Scott: uh, what software have you been using recently that doesn’t hurt you when you touch it? Sh- show me on the software where the bad software touched you.

Keith: Software

Scott: [laughs]

Keith: that doesn’t hurt me when I touch… Eh, I don’t know, everything does. Mostly

Scott: I know.

Keith: I’ve been, uh… Well, I mean, the Proton email client sucks.

Scott: It is

Keith: Claude

Scott: total s***

Keith: k*** pissing me off.

Scott: Really? I haven’t had

Keith: Oh,

Scott: too

Keith: yeah.

Scott: many… Some things annoy me with Claude, like they did come up with some keyboard shortcuts for it that surprised me that they came up with and that I like, but then there’s other things that are just completely missing as far as keyboard shortcuts, and I love me some keyboard shortcuts.

Keith: Hmm.

Scott: And

Keith: And for

Scott: having

Keith: me,

Scott: to

Keith: it’s not,

Scott: click…

Keith: not that

Scott: Yeah,

Keith: interface

Scott: go ahead.

Keith: so much as when I ask Claude to, um,

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: to, you know, we– I, I’ve got a bunch of files that have this issue, please go fix that issue. And he comes back

Scott: Yep.

Keith: and says, “Okay, I fixed these 27. These other five I didn’t fix.”

Scott: What,

Keith: Well,

Scott: what

Keith: may-

Scott: bothers…

Keith: may- maybe go fix those.

Scott: Yeah, maybe do that. Yeah, it does that to me all the time where, and I even have a standing rule with it that it constantly violates, which is it’ll do something, it’ll finish up, and then it’ll say, “Hey, are you ready for me to commit this? By the way, here’s these other things you should be aware of.” And I’m like, “I don’t want homework for later. I don’t want stuff hanging over my head. I don’t want a to-do list. The whole point of you is to get rid of to-do lists, to get rid of homework, to get rid of f*** things that I won’t remember that you’re telling me that I need to remember. Well, f*** you. Fix them.”

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: yeah, it’s, it’s like, and I, so I made a rule. I’m like, “Don’t give me homework. If you have something to address, address it before you think we’re done, and let’s resolve it.” “Oh yeah,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: you’re right. I shouldn’t give you homework,“ and then it gives me homework again. It’s like, g*** W- there,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: there are some things I’ve kind of resigned myself to. No matter what rules you put in place, you’re not gonna change it. It’s gonna do it that way. There are some things that I feel like the only way to do it would be for me to rewrite the harness completely, and it’s just not gonna happen, and that is one of them, where it just consistently pops up a button saying, “Should I commit these changes?” And then underneath it goes, “By the way, here are some things that you might wanna be aware of,” and yeah, they are things that I actually wanna be aware of, and I want them fixed. Ugh. Okay, sorry.

Keith: what’s been frustrating me most recently is not the software, it’s the hardware.

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: I have,

Scott: Wait.

Keith: uh… Let me disappear. Here we go. I have this awesome keyboard, kind of an antique typewriter style

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: keyboard, and a mouse that goes with it.

Scott: Okay, but

Keith: Um…

Scott: it looks like

Keith: [keyboard clacking]

Scott: it should have sticky keys just as a feature, just to be part of the look.

Keith: Uh, yeah, it has clicky keys.

Scott: No,

Keith: But

Scott: sticky

Keith: it qui–

Scott: keys.

Keith: it di– Oh, sticky keys. No.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: It died on me.

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: Um, and

Scott: What was the…

Keith: about six

Scott: Who

Keith: hours

Scott: makes that?

Keith: later… Hmm?

Scott: Who makes it?

Keith: The what?

Scott: The keyboard, who makes it?

Keith: Oh, who makes that? That’s a good question. Azio.

Scott: Oh, s- I’ve never heard of.

Keith: It’s been a great keyboard. I’ve had it for quite a while. I really liked it, but it died. And

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: shortly after that, my mouse died, and I was back to my laptop keyboard, which when I’m sitting in front of a monitor just doesn’t hack it. So I picked up, um…

Scott: No, I, I

Keith: We

Scott: don’t

Keith: won’t

Scott: know how

Keith: say

Scott: peo-

Keith: what it

Scott: yeah.

Keith: is. I picked up a keyboard and a mouse, and they’re driving me nuts. They have no tactical fee– no tactile feedback, neither the keyboard nor the mouse. So I don’t know when I’ve clicked on something. I don’t know if I’ve double-clicked something. I’m getting typos all over. They’re, they’re just driving me insane.

Scott: Yeah, I don’t like that. I also don’t understand how people sit at a monitor and then use their stupid laptop keyboard. Also, when I worked at Intel, all of the engineers that surrounded me would have dual monitors. Now, they would be, I, I don’t know the resolutions, 1080p I guess, or twel- I don’t, I don’t know. Not 4K, but whatever HD is, the ba- the basic,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: and, ’cause Intel wouldn’t pay for decent monitors. But anyway, they would sit there with two monitors. They would have external keyboards and mice and all that set up, but every time I went to their cubes, they’d be sitting there using their laptop, hunched over, look at their little tiny display. And I was like, “You guys, do you need me to fix something for you? I can set this up for you. I can get all this stuff working. I can get it nicely arranged. You can use your office like an office now.” They’re like, “No, no, no, I’m okay.” I was like, I, it just drove me insane. It drove me totally insane. I just thought, “You guys deserve all the misery that you are suffering.”

Keith: An engineer that worked for me at, at one of the companies I was at had a, uh, had two displays on arms and

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: a third arm with a little holder that he could set his laptop on. So the laptop screen was up there with the two monitors, which is kind of cool,

Scott: Yep.

Keith: except he didn’t have a separate keyboard. He still worked on the laptop keyboard reaching across his desk.

Scott: That’s insane. That is b*** insane. You know, one of the weird things about me, and I’ve always been this way, is my hands, I have to be at the, my hands have to be straight to the keyboard. I can’t be at a weird angle. I can’t be above it. I can’t be to the side. I can’t type like that. I can’t do it. But if I just have it at a good position… No, I can type on those,

Keith: Okay.

Scott: but my hands have to be, I have to be in front of the keyboard. I can’t be off to

Keith: Oh,

Scott: the

Keith: okay.

Scott: side or reaching over at a weird angle, and

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: I don’t know why. and it’s not like I’m a slow typer. It’s just that I can’t deal with that. so yeah, when I see people typing like that, it, it does drive me a bit insane. We had– Now, there was one guy whose cube was right in front of me in the last, not the last place I had a cube, but previous to that, Tom Leahy, an Irishman who lived in America, worked at Intel. He was a numbers guy. That guy was an Excel wizard, and he was a statistics wizard, and he was the funniest guy. But he came across as like a… You would definitely think he was a numbers geek, you know what I mean? But he was absolutely hilarious. He was just– I just love that guy. But he had this workstation that when it rebooted, it sounded like a jet aircraft taking off. It just, it was so loud, and he would have it reboot in the middle of the night or sometimes in the evening, and it would do that. And if people that didn’t know about it were near, they would stand up and look around and go, “What the hell?” And it’d be like, “Oh, that’s just Tom’s computer.” but anyway, he had a whole array of monitors, and he would actually use them. That guy had my respect ’cause he knew how to use

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: monitors.

Keith: Mm-hmm. s- speaking of numbers reminded me, I just… I had my spreadsheet open right before this working on something, which then reminds me, uh, we talked about the fact that I switched to LibreOffice.

Scott: Yes. “Wait,

Keith: Um, I have not had a problem yet.

Scott: isn’t

Keith: I’ve been…

Scott: somebody trying to hack into your LibreOffice account nonstop? Oh, wait,

Keith: No,

Scott: no,

Keith: somebody’s

Scott: that was Microsoft.“

Keith: trying to hi- hack into

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: my

Scott: [chuckles]

Keith: Microsoft account. [laughs]

Scott: No. Nobody tries to hack into LibreOffice. [laughs]

Keith: Uh, but yeah, all the, all the office

Scott: So,

Keith: files that I’ve worked with, I have had no problems at all. I’m really

Scott: you

Keith: happy

Scott: ever listen

Keith: with it.

Scott: to the Risky Business podcast? Was it the Risky Business podcast I heard this on? it’s a security-based podcast, but it couldn’t have been the Risky Business podcast. Anyway, there was a podcast I was listening to lately, and they said that Europe, some country, I don’t remember which country, there was a European country. A- as you know, the Europeans are trying to, somewhat wean themselves off Microsoft and other American companies, which I think is actually a good idea. The problem is

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: there’s very few alternatives for them. And they were using LibreOffice, and they quit using it because there were so many complaints about file compatibility and all these other things, and so they just gave up. Now, it was not a detailed segment. They didn’t say what the problems were. They didn’t say who the people are or who tried to fix the problem. So my feeling is a lot of these problems probably could have been resolved if they had somebody there that knew what they were doing. I don’t know. But I also tend to assume that people are stupid until proven otherwise. and so it is possible that even their technical people getting involved didn’t help, but I don’t know. But anyway, your saying that just reminded me that an entire country in Europe disagrees with you. [laughs]

Keith: Uh, I remember some of that, but it seems like most of that wasn’t really recently. It was a little while back.

Scott: Well, this quitting of LibreOffice was a recent one. Maybe

Keith: Oh, yeah?

Scott: they’re just slow. Maybe they’re slower than all the other countries. The other countries were like, “Hey, we’re going back to Microsoft.” And then they were like, “We’re not.” And then later they were

Keith: Oh,

Scott: like,

Keith: they

Scott: “I

Keith: didn’t

Scott: guess

Keith: go…

Scott: we are.“

Keith: Actually, most of the countries are, are, uh, leaving.

Scott: Yeah, they should. I mean… [sighs]

Keith: Well, I think the EU is leaving now, and the countries are at different stages of, of, uh, getting that done.

Scott: They’re like, “Hey, where’d the EU go?” [laughs] I thought we were the EU.

Keith: Most of their,

Scott: You’re, [laughs]

Keith: um… I think

Scott: you’re only

Keith: most

Scott: the EU

Keith: of their,

Scott: if we say you are, you idiots. [laughs]

Keith: most of their migration problems have just been from going, going from Windows to Linux ’cause

Scott: Yeah, I know.

Keith: then they got millions of people that have to learn how to use Linux. I don’t know

Scott: You know–

Keith: millions. Lots,

Scott: Yeah,

Keith: lots.

Scott: I know. Good luck with that. You know what’s funny is that same Theo guy, he always talks about how bad the Mac software is, and he did some tests on executing something in the Mac file system versus executing it on Linux, and the Mac file system was so much slower. I don’t remember what he was doing. But then another guy that I listened to on Accidental Tech podcast, John Siracusa, he was like, “That guy was stupid, and I didn’t like him. He, he’s, he doesn’t understand the Mac file system.” Rah. [laughs] Anyway, Theo always talks about how he’s gone to Linux, but every time he makes a video, he’s on a Mac. So it’s like, okay, what did you go to Linux for? Apparently not everything, ’cause sometimes you actually wanna get some work done, and then you pull out your Mac, don’t you, you f*** idiot.

Keith: Yeah. It’s his home theater system.

Scott: Yeah, probably. Or he probably does run agents on it, but he probably doesn’t sit there using that computer very often. His agents probably use the hell out of that computer, but he probably doesn’t. I don’t know. I just find it amusing when… The other thing that amused me was when, like Steam Decks and so forth were running on Linux, and so everybody was all excited about how, how much inroads Linux had made into gaming, and it’s like, no one platform used it, [laughs] and it’s running Linux in the background, and no one knows because they’re busy playing the games in the game UIs. It’s not like anyone knows or cares that it’s Linux behind the scenes. Oh, Linux people. I mean, I do love Linux for servers, but I must say, and in many years ago, starting with the, one of the early releases of Slackware, when you had to know your own monitor’s refresh rate and configure all this stuff yourself, and you could destroy hardware if you got it wrong, I played with Linux on the desktop, and I will say it’s fun to play with, but good luck getting a lot of work done.

Keith: Speaking of games, World of Warcraft Forever launched yesterday. I assume you took the day off so you could play.

Scott: Mm. I took the day off so that Olivia and I could go to PDX and watch… So Olivia’s become very into aviation, which is pretty cool.

Keith: Hmm.

Scott: And she, knows a lot about the different, carriers and the different types of aircraft. And it turns out that most 747s these days are cargo planes, and there’s one company in particular that has the most 747s in their fleet of any other, uh, than compared to anyone else. And there was one of the 747s flying out of PDX that day, and it was one of the mustachioed ones. They have the Movember mustache on the front of the plane. And so she was like, “I’m gonna hop on the MAX and go into PDX and get some pictures of that.” And I was like, “Wait a minute. That sounds like fun. I’m going with you. In fact, I’m driving.” So we, hopped in the car and went over to PDX and got some good pictures and video of that 747 taking off. And we were lucky because they typically tend to take off headed west, but they were taking off headed east, and we had a little location that was perfect. Right at the end of the runway, there was a sidewalk outside of a fence that we could stand at and get some pretty good views of it, so it was pretty cool. But anyway, no, I didn’t play World of Warcraft forever because I was busy, uh, being at the airport with my daughter. [laughs]

Keith: Mm-hmm. Cool. I was thinking

Scott: So…

Keith: as you were saying that, I’ve been on the 747s, but the plane I spent

Scott: Yes.

Keith: most of my time on was the 707.

Scott: Was that military craft?

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: Uh, the 707, I just, just double-checked my memory. Uh, it went into service in 1958.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Went out of service

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: before I joined the military [chuckles]

Scott: Yeah. Well,

Keith: . And there…

Scott: apparently not completely out of service. [laughs]

Keith: Uh, according to this, there are currently about 79 of them still in operation, and those are military and government.

Scott: So let me ask you this. You would hope that the military would take amazing care of their airplanes, but they have got some crazy, old, creaky tubs flying through the air. Did you ever feel like– When you were in the air, did you ever feel like you had doubts about how well they were… Did you think that they were just trusting the airplane to stay in the air regardless of its condition, or do you think they were really maintaining those things pretty well?

Keith: Uh, I think that, um… I think that our mechanics did an awesome job of taking care of those aircraft.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: I think that, um, um, the spare parts inventory in the world was shrinking rapidly, and Boeing wouldn’t… My, my understanding at the time was that Boeing didn’t, uh, agree with some of the ch- some of the things the military was doing with the planes and didn’t give full support. Whether that’s true or not, that’s what we were told. And so that made life harder for the mechanics, and, uh, I think they did an awesome job despite that.

Scott: I will say, not being in the aviation industry, but being in the semiconductor industry and seeing what things are supported and not supported, just because they say they’re not gonna support it and don’t approve of it, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s dangerous and unsafe and is a bad idea.

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: But it does mean that they won’t help you if you need help. [laughs]

Keith: Yeah. there are a lot of things where they decide that… or decide they, they design something so that this needs to be able to hold 500 pounds, so we’re gonna design it to hold 900. That way we know it’s good. And then the military will do something that instead of 500 pounds, they load 700 pounds. Well,

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: it was still designed to do 900 pounds, so it’s still

Scott: Yeah,

Keith: okay.

Scott: but now you’re closer

Keith: But

Scott: to

Keith: it’s

Scott: the limit.

Keith: not, it’s not within the specs, so it’s not, you know.

Scott: Well, in the aviation industry, they like to talk about their Swiss cheese models, and, you know, there are scenarios where maybe you’re not technically doing anything wrong, but you’re pushing it just enough in just enough different areas, and just enough things happen that then something does go wrong, and then that difference can matter. But

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: I also wonder if Boeing wasn’t looking at the military going, “What is your problem? Of all the people in the world that can afford a new airplane, I would think you guys would be it.” [laughs] “Don’t you… Aren’t you guys buying billion-dollar toilets and stuff? I mean, why can’t you just buy a friggin’ new airplane?”

Keith: Well, you look at how long it takes for one of those aircraft to be designed and tested and redesigned and retested and approved and certified and retested, and then you gotta do all the military stuff to it, and it

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: takes the military, whatever, six years just to write the specs that they want the thing to hit. Um, it’s no wonder this stuff is older. And then you look at… Yeah, it’s just been amazing watching Ukraine, where we, we take a couple of years to iterate on a missile, and Ukraine is

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: iterating on their stuff multiple times a day, iterating on those

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: drones multiple times

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: a day. It’s

Scott: By

Keith: amazing.

Scott: the way, you showed me– I don’t remember what the website was. I think it was like a New York Times or what… I don’t remember. Anyway, it was… There was a website that had a graphic, graphical journey of the different drone zones that are going on between Russia and Ukraine, and

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: it is horrifying. You don’t stand

Keith: Okay.

Scott: a chance if you’re a human being in those regions.

Keith: No, they, they say that in some of those areas, the, the life expectancy of a troop entering the area is measured in minutes.

Scott: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and injured people, like getting injured people out, they will do it, but they wait for specific times, and they still have like an 80% chance of dying [laughs]

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: performing the rescue or whatever. It’s crazy. It’s b*** insane. That is a dystopian look at the future, and I understand… I do understand why Ukraine is going down that path, and I, and I, I think Ukraine kind of escalated it first and U- Russia is following, but I could be wrong on that. I– maybe they both… Anyway, I understand why, because they have to if they wanna win this war. They have to do things like that. But

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: it also just is dystopian as all AF.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott: Come here.

Keith: Well, for a long time people have talked about, you know, what, what would happen if these

Scott: Meow.

Keith: two countries went up against each other and, and part of the conversation is always, “Well, this country has this many hundreds of thousands of troops, and this country has

Scott: Right.

Keith: this many hundreds of thousands of troops.“

Scott: Yeah, yeah.

Keith: And you got such an imbalance or had such an imbalance with the Ukraine-Russia thing that they had to come up with force multipliers, and they did a good job of doing that.

Scott: But the good news is, the good news for Ukraine is that Russia really… Okay, cat, that– Okay, that’s my mic, and that’s my camera, and you’re interfering with both at the same time, and that, that’s pretty good talent there. anyway, the good news for Ukraine, of course, is that Russia obviously hadn’t taken care of a lot of their equipment, and they obviously hadn’t kept a lot of their people battle-ready. I don’t know. I, I was a little surprised by how badly they fumbled right out of the gate. but I, but also glad because I don’t wanna see Ukraine get wiped out for no reason other than the fact that it exists, and that pisses Russia off.

Keith: I just noticed your, your Macintosh posters up there.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: I like them.

Scott: I like them too. Those were all, That was from, like, a double page in a magazine. That was from a double page in a magazine. So was that one. That one I’m not sure about. they might be blown up a little bit, but that’s their original sourcing.

Keith: Mm-hmm. I’ve got behind me here you can see a couple of boxes. I have had nothing on my walls here for a year. I just haven’t

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: bothered putting anything up. And then I started reading “The Lonely City,” which is a book about loneliness.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Um, and the author digs into art as part of her exploration of loneliness.

Scott: Really? [clicks tongue]

Keith: And, uh, that triggered,

Scott: Hey.

Keith: that triggered some thoughts. Um, there’s some art that I really, really like, uh, that can be interpreted as portraying loneliness, um, as one interpretation. But some of them I really like, so I, I ordered a couple of them. I’m gonna get those put up, and then my walls will no longer be naked. Well, two little spots on one wall will no longer be naked. [chuckles]

Scott: Hmm. So you’re saying that you’re using paintings of depictions of loneliness to help your walls feel less lonely?

Keith: Yes.

Scott: Okay. That’s good.

Keith: No,

Scott: I like

Keith: that’s

Scott: that.

Keith: not it. I don’t care if the walls

Scott: Oh.

Keith: feel lonely. They’re to, they’re to help

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: me feel lonely… I mean, not

Scott: Oh. [laughs]

Keith: lonely. Or…

Scott: They’re here to help me feel lonely. What, what have you been doing with Claude recently? Have you been ex- have you been, going outside your… Now that you have– You’re on the Max plan, correct? Not the newly renamed Ultra, but you’re on the Max plan?

Keith: I’m on the which?

Scott: Max

Keith: Yes,

Scott: plan?

Keith: I, I am on the Max plan,

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: yeah.

Scott: Yeah. what, have you burst outside your Obsidian bubble and started creating all kinds of utilities and applications for yourself?

Keith: Uh, I have had Claude doing a lot of programming, but it’s all still been programming within the context of the, uh, knowledge management stuff I’ve been working on,

Scott: There we go.

Keith: for the

Scott: [laughs]

Keith: most part. I had it build

Scott: Uh-huh.

Keith: that one thing just so I could find a new apartment, and now I’m not gonna be moving as soon as I hoped.

Scott: Yeah, but you might use it, and it was cool. I, I thought that

Keith: Oh,

Scott: was

Keith: yeah.

Scott: pretty cool.

Keith: Yeah, I was really happy with the way it turned out, considering I didn’t give it… I, I told it what I was doing and what the important factors were to me, but I didn’t give it any instructions on what to build, really,

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: and it built a

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: really cool thing.

Scott: I have found that building systems with Claude is a lot of fun, and the most fun it is, is when you tell it what you’re trying to achieve, but not necessarily how you’re trying to achieve it, and

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: see what it comes up with, and it does come up with some pretty cool things. I had it create… So I’ve been working on this brain system, and, I just recently paired out all of my apps, so like all my Xcode stuff, a whole bunch of scripts and stuff. Now they’re o- often in their own directories again, as they should’ve been from the beginning. But I had it create me a webpage that tells me how the brain works, how it’s organized, where everything is, where all these other supplemental things, like my apps and everything else are, and I can even run scripts that I used to run a custom, terminal GUI Python dashboard f- for. Now I can just run them from the browser. It just has all this stuff in one place. It, it tells me the status of what I have committed, what’s not committed, what’s in my inbox for the brain, and so on and so forth, and it’s really cool, the system that it came up with. So it is kind of fun watching Claude come, come up with systems. There’s a cat tail right here. [laughs] He just,

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: he’s…

Keith: Now Claude, Claude does over-engineer stuff. It was this latest iteration of, of my pr- my, uh, uh, Claude’s brain, my, my version of Claude’s brain that we’ve been

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: working on.

Scott: Yep.

Keith: Um, we hit one point where it was telling me to create these eight different passwords and these eight different accounts and get all this stuff put in, and it wasn’t allowed to look at them, so I had to run these commands in the terminal to

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: get them put into

Scott: Yep,

Keith: the…

Scott: yep,

Keith: Like,

Scott: yep.

Keith: dude, everything in this brain you wrote there. I don’t care if you have access to it. Just no, we don’t need eight different accounts.

Scott: Yeah. I’ve got, I’ve got a 1Password service account for it that it can access through the command line, and I have the 1Password MCP so that if it’s doing something in a session when I’m there, I can give it the password and it won’t see it. But, but it is funny to me when it does freak out about stuff like, I don’t remember what it was, AWS keys or something. There was something I was doing for work and, and I, all I did was document in a screenshot where the AWS keys were and which ones were the ones that I needed and, and so on and so forth, and it was the, it had the key ID. It didn’t have the key value. And every time it discovers that in there, it’s like, “I don’t know. There are some keys in there.” And I’m like, “You f*** idiot. We have had this conversation. There is nothing sensitive in there. Quit telling me

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: that you’re not gonna include that file. I want that file in the brain. I took that

Keith: You know,

Scott: snapshot for a reason.“

Keith: you know what you need is a brain so it’ll remember that.

Scott: Mm. That’s

Keith: That,

Scott: a great idea.

Keith: that’s another one, that, that’s one of the things. For you, it’s the, the noise, the s- the clawing in the litter box. The thing

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: that just sets me off is when Claude says, “Okay, I’m gonna save that to my brain so I’ll remember it.” No, you’ve

Scott: And it

Keith: saved

Scott: never…

Keith: it eight times.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: You just never

Scott: Yep.

Keith: query it.

Scott: Yep, and it will say, and I will push back on it, and it will say, “You’re right. I have a rule about that, too. I shouldn’t have done that.” Yeah, no s*** We’ve talked about this, you idiot.

Keith: I’m kind of excited about, uh, what’s going on with my Claude brain. Um, we’ve got everything to the point that right now memories are decaying and,

Scott: So

Keith: uh, once,

Scott: what is

Keith: once

Scott: the…

Keith: we’ve got enough s- history of decay built up, which I think will be next week, I get to turn on dreaming and have it start

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: dreaming.

Scott: What, why did you decide to go with a, what was the name of that database?

Keith: Um, it’s,

Scott: I can’t…

Keith: what is

Scott: Supabase

Keith: it, Postgres?

Scott: or whatever.

Keith: It’s Supabase,

Scott: Sup-

Keith: but it’s,

Scott: Supabase,

Keith: I think it’s Postgres.

Scott: yeah. Yeah, right. But I– One of the things that I enjoyed the most about quitting using OpenBrain was getting away from that Supabase thing.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: I don’t know why, but I actually almost think that if I did it again, I would rather have a local Postgres or some other

Keith: Yeah,

Scott: just

Keith: and

Scott: local

Keith: that,

Scott: database.

Keith: that’s where I’m headed.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: I think I want to, um… So right now, right now the only machine I have here at home is my laptop.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: I think I want to get to where I have a Mac Mini sitting on the desk, and

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: then I’ll put the database on there, stuff,

Scott: That

Keith: things like

Scott: makes

Keith: that Postgres

Scott: sense.

Keith: server on there,

Scott: Yeah, yeah, that makes

Keith: and

Scott: sense.

Keith: keep my laptop as my laptop.

Scott: I’m actually underutilizing my Mac Mini at the moment because a lot of the stuff that I had automated on there now, Claude does so well in different ways, other ways now.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: there are a few things that I need to set up that I don’t want to set up on my Mini also. I have… I set up an automation server for Paradigm that I really liked, and so I’m making a clone of it for my own LLC, but to use for automations, and I think I’m also gonna use that for a couple, personal related things. Like I’m using Claude Duet on my iPhone, which is kind of interesting ’cause it’ll pop up and it’ll say, “Hey,” and sometimes it’s annoying, but it has reminded me about a couple things that I’m like, “You know what? I can just have it take care of this for me right now and I’m done. I don’t have to worry about it.” Like replying to people about a certain… Like I was trying out a specific RMM

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: product, and we decided not to go that way, and I just had it. I was like, “You know what? I’ve been knowing that I need to reply to that guy. Yeah, just draft the response right now.” but what it can’t do is like when it comes up with some information, it can’t give me a markdown file. It can give me markdown. It can’t give me a markdown file. I want the file on my Mac so that I can shove it in the brain, and I know I can connect things and give it a place to put it and so forth, but it’s like, it’s weird that it doesn’t have that capability right out of the box. why can’t it make an artifact that I can access from my Claude account like every other

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: artifact?

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: So anyway, I think I’m gonna put an inbox for it on, on my automation server that I’m setting up, and, and then it can dump stuff there for me, and then I can just go retrieve it periodically. But, I don’t know. It’s, it’s interesting.

Keith: You mentioned it popping up and helping with stuff. One of the things that I have really been getting a kick out of lately is back when I ran the mobile team at Nordstrom, which was, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, 10 years ago, 11 years ago that I

Scott: Probably.

Keith: left that team. So from

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: 13 years ago to 11 years ago, I ran that team. And people would bring me stuff that they thought was cool and, uh, stuff that, you know, the, the iPhone was still really new then. Things that would come out on iPhone that they thought were really cool and ask me what I thought about doing such and such with it. And I would, I’d always give pretty much the same answer, that where I thought we were going, that all this was really cool, but where I thought we were going was that someday I’d have this in my ear, and I’d be talking to you with my phone or whatever in my pocket, and we’d be talking and I’d say, “Sure, let’s get together next week for lunch.” And a little voice would pop up in my ear saying, “You’re both free at noon on Tuesday. Would you like me to put that in your calendars?” And it would just happen.

Scott: Mm-hmm. [chuckles]

Keith: And I would, uh, be walking into the office and somebody would jump out in front of me and say, “Keith, it’s great to see you. It’s been quite a while.” And a little voice in my ear would tell me who it was and that I met them at such and such conference

Scott: This is your

Keith: in New

Scott: boss.

Keith: York last

Scott: You

Keith: year.

Scott: should

Keith: [laughs]

Scott: get to know them. [laughs]

Keith: Right? Um, and they all thought I was nuts, and now it’s happening.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: I wanna go back

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: and yell at them all.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah, they probably don’t remember, and they probably don’t feel the shame

Keith: Yeah,

Scott: they

Keith: probably

Scott: should.

Keith: not.

Scott: Americans have a short… By the way, this is one of the things that I was thinking about today as I was listening to a podca- I was listening to Decoder with,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: Nilay Patel, and he was talking to an economist, and he was talking about China’s five-year plan and all this, and it does occur to me… And then talking about the complete chaos of the tariffs and just how nobody can plan anything. it really does occur to me that regardless of what happens going forward, even if we get rid of the authoritarians, even if we get rid of the people who want to rename things to Department of War, Americans have a serious short-term thinking problem. It’s in everything from business, where we live by the quarter because of Wall Street, to our understanding of other countries. Like Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about Iran. He doesn’t know anything about their history. He, he never– I guarantee he never read a book about how many people went up against Persia and failed. [laughs] Hey, have you ever heard of the Roman Empire, you dumbass? But just the short-term thinking that this country has, and e- if you ever listen to people from other countries who know anything talking about a certain field, you’ll, you’ll understand America may be the only country that has short-term thinking to this degree that we have it here. I, I genuinely am starting to believe that.

Keith: Yeah. Um, of course here we don’t have context for anything,

Scott: Right.

Keith: right? Uh, Italy, the University of Bologna, the School of Medicine there was founded in 1088. Americans can’t even conceive of that. It’s what– We’re– The country’s what? 250 years old.

Scott: Okay.

Keith: You remember

Scott: In

Keith: in,

Scott: 1088

Keith: in Japan,

Scott: in Bologna…

Keith: in

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: Japan, the department stores were there that were older than that.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: There’s a, um, there’s a, a really cool… really cool ryokan that was initially built in the year 700 something, and it’s been run by the same family ever since. Americans can’t, can’t grasp that.

Scott: But, but it, it is that, and it’s also not just that because we don’t even know our own history. We don’t–

Keith: Yeah,

Scott: The problem is we

Keith: true.

Scott: will make a massive stumbling, bumbling, stupid mistake, and we will forget it three months later. Like, we don’t have the capacity to learn from the, from the past either.

Keith: Yeah, that’s true. Even the recent past. I, I

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: will give you that. I think we went into Afghanistan, and the Russians were sitting up there going, “Oh, you guys are so f*** [chuckles]

Scott: Yeah. Exactly.

Keith: But yeah. Um, but you mentioned the, the profits. Yeah, a lot of it is the American style investment capitalism wants turnaround. It wants results now.

Scott: But

Keith: It w-

Scott: the

Keith: it…

Scott: problem is even a great business can’t grow forever. There’s only so many people in the world. And certain businesses, like I worked in semiconductors. How well do you think quarter-by-quarter thinking works in semiconductors or any other industry where you have to plan stuff out ahead of time? It doesn’t.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: So what can you do? You can lay people off to make them happy that quarter. You can do stuff like that, but your strategic thinking can’t be quarter by quarter. It just cannot be. And actually, I don’t, I can’t think of any business, even a clothing store like Kohl’s. You can’t run Kohl’s quarter by quarter either unless you wanna go bankrupt at some point. There’s literally nothing you can do if you’re only thinking ahead three months at a time.

Keith: Yeah, but then I d- I was grinning there. Even if you, uh, even if you do plan stuff ahead, then all of a sudden you get blindsided and somebody asks you, “So, uh, how is it that the Chinese are producing chips that does the same thing without two nanometers technology?”

Scott: Yeah, there

Keith: Well,

Scott: is

Keith: they,

Scott: that. Although

Keith: they came

Scott: I,

Keith: up with

Scott: I…

Keith: a different way of doing it.

Scott: Although I will say that the ability of the Chinese to produce competitive models will be somewhat diminished if their, ability to distill things gets taken away from them to a degree that I didn’t expect, I think. I think that I underestimated the degree to which they were sort of cheating at that. And, there has been a lot of evidence that, yes, okay, Anthropic is annoying as hell with their, “Oh, open weight models. Uh,” but they,

Keith: They stole

Scott: they

Keith: our

Scott: do

Keith: stolen

Scott: actually…

Keith: stuff.

Scott: Yeah. But they do actually have a problem with people distilling the hell out of their models,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: including, I might add, Elon Musk, who is now renting them capacity.

Keith: So yes, but I think that’s what got the Chinese started and got them where they are. If you look at, uh, you know, just, just harvesting information about AI and stuff going on and, and ML and everything else, it blows my mind how many of the papers that I come across are Chinese. How many

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: of the advances are Chinese. I don’t… I think, yes, that’s how they got to where they are, but they’re smart enough that they’re building capability maybe even beyond what we have.

Scott: Right. Well, if you look at any economy or industry or country whose industries and economies are trying to catch up, that is what they do. Like the Japanese

Keith: Oh.

Scott: used to be called copycats. Now the Chinese are called copycats. Well, yeah, that’s how they start. but they do– they don’t just do that. They don’t just copy things. They are doing other things. But– And they also have, for all of its many, many problems, China does have a stability in terms of long-range planning and what they,

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: what they want their companies to do for them. So those companies can kinda just sit there and do their thing without having to worry too much about it. Whereas if you’re Anthropic, you never know when Donald Trump’s gonna ban your model because he hates Dario Amodei or whatever,

Keith: Mm-hmm. Now, I did get a kick recently out of the, the latest release from Mistral, ’cause everybody’s been sitting around kind of like, “Oh, the Europeans can’t come up with anything, and they can’t…” Oh, wait, what the heck is this? [chuckles] And it’s not, you know, it’s not frontier, but it’s a heck of a lot better than anybody expected to see from there.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: I think that’s cool.

Scott: Well, let me ask you this because there is a perception that the Europeans have hampered themselves, and of course, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, I don’t know what his beef is with the EU. He’s He’s a smart guy, but he’s a little overly peeved about the EU. Look, the EU has come up with some pretty stupid regulations, there is no doubt. But generally speaking, they kind of are trying to protect the consumer. Yes, they’re ham-fisted. Yes, they’re heavy-handed

Keith: [sighs]

Scott: sometimes. Yes, yes, yes. And they’re dumb, and they, you know, probably stifle competition in some ways. But we, in this country, go the other extreme where we’re not so worried

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: about the consumer, and we are worried about the precious feelings of the corporations. but

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: anyway,

Keith: [sniffs]

Scott: so I guess my question to you is: do you think Europe is that f- do you think Europe actually can do the things technically that American or America can? Or are they just… Is their s- is their way of thinking and their systems, the way they’re set up, such that they will never be able to compete? ’Cause I don’t understand why they can’t just do a lot of this stuff themselves other than they haven’t had the will to so far. Or is it more

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: than that? Is there some systemic problem where for some reason

Keith: I…

Scott: these things can only happen in America, where we let companies define our future without any discussion whatsoever?

Keith: Yeah. I w- I was thinking as you were saying that, that it’s, it’s not even that they don’t care about the consumers. We’ve got a bunch of… We have a bunch of companies owned by companies owned by, by billionaires who say,

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: “Screw the working class, we’re gonna work them to death. And as for consumers, they’ll buy what we tell them to.”

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: Um, but I think that to some extent we’ve been, we’ve been producing really cool stuff, and it was easier to just buy it over in Europe. It was easier to buy what we produced than to create it. And now that they’ve, uh… Now that we’ve, we’ve kind of burned our bridges there, um, they’re not gonna rely on us, and I think we’ll see them producing stuff we don’t expect very quickly.

Scott: They have to have academics who can…

Keith: Oh,

Scott: I

Keith: yeah.

Scott: mean, they have to have– Maybe it’ll take them some time to get up to speed or whatever or refocused, but they have to have people that are capable of this stuff. They have to.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: There’s no way that… I mean, [sighs] everybody thinks that Sil- you know, everybody talks about how Silicon Valley has the smartest, but they also have the most myopic.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: And it’s like a weird version of inbreeding,

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: you know? And

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: it doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily lead to… It, they do come up with amazing things, but in terms of the, the effects on society and their desire to actually be a benefit to society, it doesn’t come up with the best results at all.

Keith: Yeah. So we’ve talked about this a little bit. I think that, um, you know, we’ve talked about education and how now if you go into, um, technology or you, you wanna go into cybersecurity or you wanna go into AI, you go into such a narrow, focused funnel that gets you right there and you don’t get educated in anything else.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: And how I think I was probably one of the, one of the last generation of people or last group of people that actually studied computer science, and Russian literature, and human sexuality, and women’s studies, and Judeo-Christian religions, and the history of Europe, and, and ethics, and philosophy, and everything else along with it,

Scott: But

Keith: right?

Scott: we’ve also created… Not, not only have we created a country where people don’t think that’s important, we’ve created a system where you can’t afford to experiment. You c- you

Keith: Oh, yeah.

Scott: have to know exactly what you wanna do, and you have to g*** well do it in a timely fashion, and you’re still gonna owe for the rest of your life.

Keith: Yeah. Yes. Um, but I think that, uh, I think we’ve kind of scof- I think, not me, but we in the Americas, in America, have kind of scoffed at the education system in Europe because they’re not doing that like we are when they’ve been smart enough to keep people broadly educated.

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: A- and along with that, we’ve talked a lot about, uh, my ideas about collisions and how, um, a lot of things, a, a lot of really cool things in history have come about not because somebody was really good in a field,

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: but because they had knowledge in 20 fields and they,

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: they took things from three of them and said, “Well, this is really cool, but you know, what if I brought that over here and stuck it in here? What, what would that do to it?” And if you don’t have that breadth of knowledge, you know, and you don’t have to be expert, you just have to know something exists. Or we’ve, we’ve got Claude. You only have to know enough to ask Claude about that thing and say, “Hey, Claude, what happens if you take this and this and put it together?” Um, but we don’t have that kind of education here anymore.

Scott: No. We have very narrowly focused education, and I honestly think with a lot of people, you know, just based on what Olivia saw at her high school, they don’t– nobody gives a s*** They’re just trying to get through.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: which, which is fair enough. When, when you’re in high school, you really don’t care about education. But even in the university level, I, I think that there’s probably very few people that, that care to that degree, and there’s

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: definitely very few people that see the need for a well-rounded overall education in terms of just knowing stuff. And then again Like I said, it’s for the wealthy now. It’s for the wealthy, and that’s, that’s it. And the wealthy don’t give a s*** ’cause their lives are golden already anyway, so why would they sit in school learning all kinds of stuff that they don’t give a s*** about?

Keith: Yeah. I, I know you’ve heard Dad say that as he w- he was teaching at the grad- at postgraduate level Um, that he had a lot of students tell him the most valuable thing they learned from him was how to think because nobody had ever taught them how to think before.

Scott: It’s weird that you have to be taught how to think, but I guess part of the problem is, and this is the weird thing, and I will say, without going into specifics, I have experienced this myself. Most people in the United States believe that they have the right framework and the right mentality and the right belief system, and that they should pass that on to their children.

Keith: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott: And it is hard once you’ve been– And it is programming. I mean, let’s just be honest, it’s programming. W-

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: Actually, most of what we experience in life is programming. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it is programming. Everything we know, everything we think, everything we believe has come from other humans in some fashion, and then m- maybe we work with it and we come t- with our own conclusions, maybe we don’t. But anyway, it’s hard to get out from u- under that. In my case, I went through an evolution of my belief system that persisted into middle age, really. So, but okay, it’s fine. So she went to school with a bunch of kids who were programmed by their parents, and they bought into the programming, and they haven’t done any thinking about it for themselves yet. But, but yeah, to be th- to be taught to think is to be taught to be able to look at opposing ideas and not be threatened by them, to be able to… It, it do- Yeah, we don’t have that capacity anymore because every idea we have now is such a part of our identity that we become enraged that other people exist.

Keith: No.

Scott: Oh my God, the traitors, the infidels, you know, they have other ideas. And

Keith: Yep.

Scott: I don’t, I don’t know when America became quite that strong. I do remember in the ’90s– And look, I’m pretty liberal, but I just have to say I’m not really a huge fan of the Clintons. I was there in the ’90s. I do think the Clintons were highly amoral people. but it gave rise to the screaming, frothing, you know, loathsome Rush Limbaughs and all those people.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: I

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: don’t know if that was the start of… When did, when in America did a single thought, a, a belief system become such a huge part of our identity that we become enraged that anybody else could possibly think anything else?

Keith: Yeah. I don’t know. It’s… I, I, I talk to people. I try not to, but I get stuck talking to people, [chuckles] uh,

Scott: I try not

Keith: who,

Scott: to talk to people too.

Keith: you know,

Scott: [laughs]

Keith: they’ll, they’ll say X, and I say, “Well, you know, I, I lived in Greece, and I lived in England, and I spent time in Turkey and in Italy and in Germany, and I saw…”

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: And they say, “Well, that’s wrong.” “Well, you know, if you look…” “No, they’re wrong.” Okay, there’s seven billion people that do it this way and 350 million who do it this way, but the seven billion are wrong.

Scott: But see, it’s not

Keith: Let’s,

Scott: just

Keith: let’s think

Scott: the…

Keith: about that.

Scott: And it’s not just the, it’s time and space, right? ’Cause

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: think

Keith: [laughs]

Scott: about all of history. All of history was wrong until, G*** d*** it, you know, 1770, whatever it was. [laughs] And now we’re correct, and now we’re

Keith: Yes.

Scott: even more correct because we follow the cult of Trump or whatever. It

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: doesn’t make sense. Like, logically, that doesn’t make sense. You can’t

Keith: No.

Scott: convince me that all of humanity was b*** insane until this little group of people came along in this place, and for this short period of time, they’re the only o- for 300 years

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: or 200 years, that these are the only people in the world that have had the correct way of thinking. That

Keith: Well, they

Scott: is

Keith: came

Scott: insane.

Keith: up with democracy in Greece way back when, but we’re the first people to do it right. Nobody

Scott: It’s just

Keith: else

Scott: insane.

Keith: has figured it out.

Scott: It’s,

Keith: Yeah,

Scott: it’s wild.

Keith: I know.

Scott: That’s hubris. I don’t know if that’s hubris, stupidity, a huge combination of both, but it is just wild to, to me. And, and the same goes with religion, you know, I guess since I’m gonna go there. If you– There’s so many– There’s totally different religions, and they all think they’re right. But even within Christianity, let’s say, let’s pick on Christianity for a minute here. all these different branches of Christianity that think that the other people are wrong. Like, h- we grew up in a branch of Christianity that thought that Catholics are definitely not saved, they’re definitely going to hell, they’re definitely Antichrist. In fact, I knew people that thought the Pope might be the literal Antichrist. But

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: they’re wrong. They can’t be saved ’cause they’re wrong. They don’t believe the right way. But, but okay, they think the same thing about you. Like

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: y- how are you so convinced? It does seem like a bit of an ego trip to me to think that. And I know, okay, if you’re gonna believe in religion, you’ve gotta believe it. Okay, fair point. You have to go all in [laughs] on it or it’s not worth practicing. But, I just don’t understand that line of thinking where you can just be so, be so oblivious to the fact that, wait a minute, I’m kinda like all these other people who think that I’m wrong. Wait, how do we know that we’re the right one again? It just kills me. It just kills me that humans can be so sure of something when there’s such a minority of people that believe this stupid thing or whatever.

Keith: Yeah. Yep. And the, uh, the other thing that goes along with it are the people that, that just are brainwashed, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: It– They’ve got that set in their brain, “This is what’s right. This is

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: how you do it, and seven billion people are wrong.“ Um, that drives me nuts. But the whole… The, the… What, what goes with that, the, the refusal to question anything is so hard for me to understand because when I find out that I’m wrong, or maybe I wasn’t wrong but I didn’t have a complete understanding and now I have more information and now I know more, I think that’s freaking cool. Yeah.

Scott: Yeah. But I’ve also heard, I’ve heard people literally say that if it was proven today beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no God and that Christianity was wrong, they would still be a Christian.

Keith: [inhales]

Scott: First of all, why? But secondly, there are people who want to have a belief system because it’s their identity and because it makes them feel better rather than…

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: My perspective is we only get one life. The only thing

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: that… This is what we are right here,

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: which is kind of sad ’cause we’re not very much past the apes, but this is what we are. I don’t know what reality is, but I would like to know it to the best extent possible. And no matter how s*** it is compared to some utopian dream, if it’s reality, I still want to know that reality. I still want to be able to believe in that reality. I don’t want to believe a lie just for the sake of believing a lie. I don’t

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: see the point in that. I really do not. I don’t see the point of being self-deluded.

Keith: The, the two things you said there jumped at me… Or yeah, two things you said there jumped at me. One, you’re right, it gives them an identity and it makes things safe. And here I am reading about loneliness and putting Edward Hopper up on my walls. Um, that’s true. It, it does. It gives you a community, and it gives you an identity, and it gives you a whole lot of things. And

Scott: Okay.

Keith: if you

Scott: But

Keith: don’t

Scott: that’s,

Keith: buy into it…

Scott: that’s different than… You’re not defining the nature of reality with those things. What you’re saying is, “Here’s

Keith: No.

Scott: how I…“

Keith: What I’m saying is I’m lonely because I don’t have that identifier, identity.

Scott: Oh, okay.

Keith: I’m not part of

Scott: I

Keith: a

Scott: gotcha.

Keith: group,

Scott: I gotcha.

Keith: right? So I, I get to deal with being alone, with maybe I’m the only person that thinks this. Maybe I’m, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m weird. I don’t know. The other thing was I just read an article that was really cool, I thought, that they found… So looking at DNA in the, in the apes, in the great

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: apes, um,

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: they found traces of, uh, viruses that… Or a

Scott: Retroviruses,

Keith: virus,

Scott: yeah.

Keith: yeah, retrovirus. Did you see that?

Scott: Yeah. Yeah.

Keith: That affected their brain so that they couldn’t develop intelligenc- the kind of intelligence that humans did.

Scott: See, now

Keith: I thought that

Scott: I will…

Keith: was very cool.

Scott: It is fascinating, and I will say this. One of the smartest people I ever worked with at Intel, I think he was probably born the year I started at Intel. Very young,

Keith: W-was actually

Scott: super

Keith: a gorilla.

Scott: smart. He wasn’t a gorilla.

Keith: Okay.

Scott: Oh, the, he was super, he’s super smart. he was brought up as a Mormon.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: He did a lot of thinking about it. He decided that he can’t believe in Mormonism. And I had a lot of discussions with him about evolution and biology because there’s certain things that don’t seem intuitive to me, like how does an eyeball evolve? Because an eyeball’s not much good unless it’s fully working. It either works or it doesn’t. So how does it get to that endpoint? And I had a lot of conversations with him where he was like, “Look, it’s not… You think that, but it’s, it’s not as counterintuitive as, counterintuitive as you think.” But, but one of the things that I think about when I think about retroviruses and other, like just the interaction with just viruses, parasites, all these different things, I’m not gonna lie, it does seem designed. These do seem like systems. And the problem is, I worked my entire life in an industry where [chuckles] everything that looks designed, it is very carefully designed. It has to be designed to work.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: So that is one aspect where I do say, like I don’t… That comes up against a weird phrase called intelligent design or whatever. I don’t even know what that movement stands for, but I’m not advocating that. But what I am saying is I am fully open to being very curious about what is all behind this because there are things that, to me, I marvel at their ability to come into existence just by sheer chance. I will say that. I don’t know what I think about that. I do believe in evolution. I think evolution is proven. I don’t have any doubts about evolution. But I also do think when I look at some of these things, these are fully functioning systems that seem like they had a mind behind them. ’Cause how does a parasite or something know, “I need to evolve in this way so that I can go attack this other thing”? I don’t know how that happens. Biology is weird, let’s put it that way.

Keith: Uh-huh. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. The… Yeah. I, I know what you mean. Um, I’m, I’m partway there with you.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: I do think that, um, a lot… That if you have mass amounts of randomness, some of the randomness pays off.

Scott: Yeah, for sure.

Keith: Um, the… Like I read, I read, uh, quite a while back about, um, a theory, a, a s- a study that was going on that, that turned into a theory or almost a theory, or it wanted to be a theory, but nobody would give it a name or whatever. Um,

Scott: The series is great, but we’re not gonna name it, so I guess it’s just gonna die over there. [laughs]

Keith: so, uh, like bipolar disorder, genetically, according to what I read, I don’t know this myself, I haven’t res- done the research, but according to what I read, uh, the, the genes that… A lot of the genes that govern bipolar disorders seem to come from a certain part of the world,

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: and they come from a part of the world that spends a lot of its time in darkness.

Scott: Hmm.

Keith: And to live there, you have to basically depress your system all winter long and try not to burn resources while everything is dark and there’s nothing you can do. And then in the summer when it’s light, you gotta bust your ass and get every, all the crops in and do everything else, and kill animals, and build houses, and everything done, and be totally manic. And then it gets dark, and you need to depress your system and stop burning resources. And maybe Maybe something like bipolar disorder fit right into that, and so those genes actually expressed more and more. Well, now they don’t make any sense ’cause we don’t have that

Scott: Right.

Keith: kind of culture or that kind of lifestyle, and so people who have those genes are just kind of f***

Scott: Well, yeah, and, and the bipolar disorder would have to be way more spaced out. Like [chuckles] it would have to be, it would have to be way more seasonal than it, than

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: it usually is for most people.

Keith: Yeah. And we’ve also got, uh, you know, one of the things that I think is cool is carcinization. Carcinization. It’s an S, not a Z, carcinization. Um, which Cory Doctorow brought up in something I just read the other day, which reminded me of it. But the… Among crustaceans, there are lots of, lots of possible forms a crustacean could take.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: But as they evolve, even separately in different places, as they evolve, they all kind of converge on the shape of

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: a crab.

Scott: Right. Yeah.

Keith: That’s, that’s

Scott: Well, again,

Keith: kind of interesting. That’s really weird. It’s cool.

Scott: I know, but, but see, that’s where people who either think that we’re in a simulation or alternately people who believe in creation say that that’s design reuse, right?

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: But it e– but to your point, it could just as easily be something that works, and isn’t

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: that what evolution is supposed to be? [sighs] Maybe the people who live in those dark places should have severance. Have you watched “Severance”?

Keith: No.

Scott: Oh, okay. So they

Keith: I don’t.

Scott: basc– they basically get their, their brain severed in such a way that when they’re, when they’re at work, they go into work and it triggers something in their brain. I don’t know how it triggers which part of the brain is active, but that’s their work brain, and they

Keith: Good

Scott: don’t

Keith: chunk.

Scott: remember anything. Yeah, they don’t remember anything about their personal life. They don’t remember anything about theirsel- outside life. They call themselves outies and innies.

Keith: Hmm.

Scott: And, and then when they go out, they only experience that. So the outies only experience the outie time. The innies only experience the innie time. maybe that’s what those people who live in those dark climates really need.

Keith: Yeah, no, I haven’t watched it. I have… Right over here I have a TV sitting up on my mantle. It’s

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: not even plugged into the wall. Um, that’s so it won’t listen to me and report, ’cause you know they do that. Um,

Scott: Hey, they actually do.

Keith: I know. Um,

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: I, I

Scott: You should

Keith: just,

Scott: design

Keith: I don’t

Scott: your own

Keith: watch

Scott: TV

Keith: stuff.

Scott: OS with Claude, like, like those people who are, taking out their spyware television operating systems and replacing them.

Keith: But I’d have to care about TV to do that.

Scott: I

Keith: You

Scott: know.

Keith: know, I just…

Scott: I…

Keith: You know, there have been a few shows that I’m really glad I watched. There have been, there have been movies that I thought were incredible, and some movies that actually shaped my thinking. That’s cool. But I can’t sit in my apartment with a TV on and just stare at it for hours like Americans seem to do. It blows my mind. It would rot

Scott: Yeah,

Keith: my

Scott: w-

Keith: mind. It would… I, I can’t do that.

Scott: Yeah, I don’t either, just ’cause I have other things I either need to be or want to be doing. But I do watch some TV shows every now and then. Now, usually it’s at the end of the day when I’ve given myself permission not to care about work anymore

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: or, or whatever. But I still– one of the things that we do, Anna and I together, is we do like to watch videos of, of different people going to Korea and Japan and other countries that we have been to and want to go back to again. Those kinds of things are fun. But, but I don’t know. I, I find myself watching a lot of different things on YouTube. Like Olivia got me into the aviation thing, so now I watch a lot of different aviation channels. and of course a lot of wa– I watch a lot of the, I watch a lot of AI stuff, which is hit or miss because there’s a lot of people that are basically just trying to promote their brand through that. And by the way, that does remind me, you sent me in that article from that guy the other day who, who was like talking about how to use AI to make money with different apps. Like these are proven web apps or whatever. And it did get me to wonder though, because I’ve already wondered this, ’cause I’ve been given this advice myself, is like if you want to get customers for a certain type of business, you should have an online presence. And my question, my– I refuse to believe that in order to be successful at a specific type of business, you have to be online, you have to be in people’s faces. I just don’t buy that. I’m sorry, but I– Maybe I was in the wrong career for 30 years and other people were doing the marketing and so on, and those people went home at 3:30 every day. But I don’t…

Keith: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think it depends on who your audience is.

Scott: I guess so. But I don’t

Keith: Uh, I mean…

Scott: see myself selling to the type of people that are sitting there looking at YouTube to figure out who they wanna buy stuff from.

Keith: So the, the easiest thing in, in examining something like that is to go to the extremes, right? Then you work your way back in. So if you look at the extremes, there are people that they get all their information online. They don’t know

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: something exists unless it pops up on, on TikTok or Zigzag, or Claude gives them a, a hint about it or something. They j- it doesn’t exist to them. So there are those people, and if that’s the audience you’re trying to sell to, you gotta get your information there s- to them somehow.

Scott: Right, but

Keith: On

Scott: I’m

Keith: the

Scott: not

Keith: other

Scott: selling

Keith: hand…

Scott: jeans. D- d– Are those the people that actually have money

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: to make a business buying decision?

Keith: Uh, I’m, I’m not saying what it is that you’re… There are people,

Scott: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Keith: you know…

Scott: yeah, yeah. For sure.

Keith: There are products that are specific for those people, that that’s the

Scott: For

Keith: only

Scott: sure.

Keith: way they’ll find them. On the

Scott: For

Keith: other

Scott: sure

Keith: hand, if what you’re selling is the authentic experience of an Irish pub with darts and billiards, nobody gives a s*** if you’re online, right? If you run a game store and cafe where people can come in and sit down, I don’t know, maybe you want to be in Google’s little business index thing, but beyond that, who cares?

Scott: I will say this though, when I am researching places to go to when I’m traveling

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: to a place that I don’t know, I do greatly prefer that they have their own website. I do because, I don’t like that experience, and usually it doesn’t tell me enough about the thing. I like to see like who, who owns this restaurant? Are they really Japanese? You know, who are these people? Blah, blah, blah. I don’t know. I just– I find that it does bother me. If I’m, if I was a restaurant, for example, I would want to have a really good website. If I was a, a bar, I would want to have a really good website. Maybe that’s all I do. Maybe I’m not constantly on TikTok or whatever. but maybe I am. Like if I had seasonal drinks, I would be on TikTok or whatever. I would be somewhere where people could see that my stuff is changing. But, but I guess I’m– what I’m saying is I, I do strongly believe that everybody should be online to some degree. The question is, if I’m a business person, how much do I really need to be yapping about stuff in people’s faces all the time as a person, like as me? “Oh, there’s Scott. I remember him from YouTube when he was, having swear words bleeped out in that conversation with his brother. I should probably buy his AI services or whatever.” [chuckles] Does that work?

Keith: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it’s funny because I, I spent my career in tech, and so I’m… Which… And I’ve, I’ve always kind of been right near the leading edge in the places that I’ve worked

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: dealing with tech. Um, so I can’t really say, “Well, you know, I’m a little bit older than you, so I think differently.” ’Cause I don’t, ’cause I was in tech and on the leading edge, and that’s how I think. And yet, the first time I went to Italy, went to Rome, it was with a brand-new girlfriend. And, uh, and we went there to meet her mom and his boyfriend, which is, you know, it was practically our first date was going to Rome, and we’re gonna go meet her mom in Rome. That was interesting. But anyway, we’re in a little pensione in old Rome, um, not very far from the Spanish Steps, and she wasn’t feeling well, and she wanted to sleep, and I was starving. So she went to sleep. I went downstairs, and I managed to get… I didn’t know any Italian yet at the time. I managed to get across the fact that I was hungry to the pers- to the woman who, the mama who ran the place at the front desk, and she threw me a little map of go down this, go here, go here. So I walked down this little alley, and turned left onto a littler alley, and turned right onto a tiny little alley, and there’s the only place with an open door and a lit sign, so I went in. And they had, like, four tables. There’s two chairs at each table, so they can handle eight customers. [laughs] So I go in, and this woman comes out of the back, the old, uh, uh, a stereotypical older Italian mother person comes out of the back just babbling whatever I, that I couldn’t understand. And, and, uh, she figured out I couldn’t understand, and she told me to sit down. Gestured for me to sit down, and I sat down. And, uh, her daughter was in the back cooking stuff and came out to say hi and went back in the back, and they started bringing me food. They just start… I never saw a menu, nothing. They, they just… They gave up on me. I didn’t know Italian. I was an idiot, obviously. They were gonna help me. Um, they just started bringing me plates of food. Incredible food. Amazing food. That was when I discovered that I, I love real Italian food. It was just incredible, and they just kept bringing it, and bringing it, and bringing all these different things. I didn’t know what any of it was, and there was no menu, so I couldn’t even f- point and ask them what the name of it was. She’d just bring it out and put down this little plate in front of me with a little something on it. And finally, I was stuffed, and I told her, “No more.” And I pulled out all the money I had in my pocket and held it out, and she kind of dug through it and pulled out some coins and took them and smiled. And, and I went on my way and got back to the pensione, and that’s the way I like to travel.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually, when we– One of the most fun things about going to Japan with Olivia was she was just finding all these random places to eat, and we wouldn’t do any research on them before we went in. If she found it, we

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Scott: just randomly, some of it, she would just say, “Dad, we’re going here.” We would go there, and it would be amazing. yeah. That is, that is fun. The favorite, the best place we had, we just stumbled across like that, and it, it was just amazing. Yeah, I like that too.

Keith: I mean, you can’t do

Scott: I just

Keith: everything

Scott: think that

Keith: like that. Uh, if you want

Scott: you

Keith: to

Scott: can’t

Keith: get

Scott: do

Keith: into

Scott: everything

Keith: the

Scott: like

Keith: Sistine

Scott: that.

Keith: Chapel, you gotta plan ahead. You gotta buy your tickets. You gotta be there at the right time. Cool. But, but for most of life, I mean, it… The stuff when I was living in Greece and we traveled around there, and we went to, uh, to Delphi, and we went up to Meteora where they’ve got the, the monasteries up on these huge stone spires. And all the stuff we did was kind of… It was all kind of spur of the moment. It was, “Hey, we’ve got, we’ve got three days off. I saw a picture of this place where there’s monasteries on stone spires. Let’s go check it out.”

Scott: Yeah. You can’t– The, the, the problem– Let’s say, let’s go back to the food examples, though. Like, around here, that doesn’t really work. You have to know where you’re going. Everything is a drive. You can’t just wander into an alley and stumble into Italian grandma’s best food ever situation.

Keith: So one of my… I’m gonna… T-two of my favorite places in Portland, uh, I don’t even know if they’re still there, but one was, um, Cheryl’s on 12th, and one was Zeke’s,

Scott: We

Keith: I

Scott: have

Keith: think.

Scott: the highest turnover of restaurants in the universe, I think.

Keith: Cheryl’s was there for several years.

Scott: there’s Kenny & Zeke’s.

Keith: Kenny &

Scott: Oh,

Keith: Zeke’s.

Scott: Zeke’s– Kenny & Zuke’s, sorry.

Keith: Kenny & Zeke’s, that’s it. And both of those… Uh, so I, I went to Portland. I stayed in the, the Mark Spencer Hotel.

Scott: Mm-hmm. [laughs]

Keith: Why? I don’t know. It looked cool. Uh, but I stayed there. It was cool. They had a TOTO toilet. Oh, all the buttons and knobs and squirts and splashes

Scott: Why,

Keith: and everything

Scott: why

Keith: else.

Scott: are Americans so primitive, by the way? Why don’t we just use leaves

Keith: I don’t

Scott: and

Keith: know.

Scott: grass? I don’t…

Keith: I don’t know. But anyway, I, I walked out of the hotel and there’s Kenny & Zeke’s right across the street, and it looked good, so I went in. It is good. It was amazing,

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: and I go back every time I go to Portland.

Scott: There

Keith: And

Scott: are parts of Port- Yeah.

Keith: I went from there to Powell’s.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: And from Powell’s, I wanted to see something else, so I went over here, and on the way there, I walked past Cheryl’s on 12th, and it looked really cool. So I went in and I had… I don’t remember what I had. Like cinnamon toast s- or cinnamon roll French toast and something else and whatever, and it was good. And I’ve gone back there every time I’ve gone back to Portland. And

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: both of those places I just stumbled over. It does happen.

Scott: It does happen, and you can do that in Portland and, and in the city itself, and there’s a couple other outlying places. I think I sent you information about that one place where we like to go, but it’s a very small area. I’m in a suburb off to the west, and so there’s none of that here. You have to know, you have to know where stuff is. You have to research in advance.

Keith: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott: You’re not just gonna stumble on something ’cause you’re driving

Keith: Well,

Scott: by it.

Keith: yeah, you’re not gonna stumble ’cause it’s not walkable.

Scott: Exactly, yeah. You might crash. You’re

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: not gonna

Keith: Which

Scott: stumble.

Keith: is a whole ’nother topic that we should save for another time, ’cause that’ll be another

Scott: We should,

Keith: two hours.

Scott: we should save for another time. Yeah, you’re right. This is almost two hours. It’s an hour and 28. yeah. Let’s wrap it up. all right, so your beer was good. I wanna look for your beer.

Keith: It

Scott: I’m gonna…

Keith: was good.

Scott: Yeah, I’m gonna make a note of that, and I’m gonna send an email to John’s Market or whatever. And, by the way, I like that place. Not only do they have a lot of beers, they have a, they have a nice, staff. And now that we’ve won the midterms, am I allowed to say diversity again? They’ve got a lot of diversity. They’ve got, got some inclusion going on there. I don’t think I can… Is that too woke?

Keith: At a minimum, that’ll all be bleeped out.

Scott: it’s funny because sometimes we have our door– We like to let the wind come in when it’s even at all remotely warm. So we’ll have our

Keith: Uh-huh.

Scott: back door open, and Olivia and I will be making jokes about woke. “Oh, that’s so woke,” and we’re– And I wonder, do our neighbors actually think we’re these idiots who hate the woke people? Like, it j- I don’t know. I don’t know what they think, but it, all right, people,

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: if you want to know more, you can’t. Wait, what does your cup say? That’s right. You got that cup today, and you don’t

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: believe it’s a pint.

Keith: It’s

Scott: First of

Keith: the

Scott: all…

Keith: Senior Techie.

Scott: Okay. And

Keith: Um,

Scott: then…

Keith: it’s, it’s a s- a guy that’s old like me, um,

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Keith: that writes about tech in terms that people like our parents can understand. He does a really good job at it. [laughs]

Scott: Wait, have you tested this? Have you taken his writing to the parents that can’t understand and said, “Can you understand?” [laughs] Wait, wait, wait. I have a clip for this. Do you understand? [laughs]

Keith: Do you have a little deck with all the buttons on it for each of

Scott: I

Keith: your

Scott: do,

Keith: little

Scott: yeah.

Keith: sounds? Do you?

Scott: I do,

Keith: Cool.

Scott: yeah, yeah.

Keith: I, I don’t know why my brain connected those. It’s because I’m an idea man. I know all this stuff and ideas just gonna, you know, feed the mayonnaise to the tuna. Um, but I just had a flashback to WKRP in Cincinnati. Did you ever watch that?

Scott: I did, but I don’t remember most of it. Like, I don’t remember any specifics.

Keith: They, uh, they had a Thanksgiving one where they decided to, um, give turkeys to the people of Cincinnati by dropping them from a helicopter.

Scott: These

Keith: Um,

Scott: were frozen turkeys. [laughs]

Keith: they were frozen turkeys. And even… [laughs]

Scott: I mean, even if they weren’t, still a bad idea, but…

Keith: Yeah. Uh,

Scott: Oh my

Keith: I,

Scott: God.

Keith: I think they were frozen turkeys. I d- maybe not, ’cause I do remember one of the lines

Scott: Oh.

Keith: was, was something like, “For the love of God, I thought they could fly.” Maybe they weren’t

Scott: Oh

Keith: frozen,

Scott: my

Keith: but

Scott: God.

Keith: either way, it was a bad idea.

Scott: Oh, then I guess they weren’t frozen. I don’t know. That’s wild.

Keith: I don’t know. Frozen ones can’t fly, I’m pretty sure. I haven’t

Scott: So

Keith: tested

Scott: anyway,

Keith: it.

Scott: you were t- you were telling me, “Hey, they’ve tested this on windshields of airplane.” Hey, so you were telling me that your cup is not exactly a pint, or you suspect that it might not be exactly a pint. Why? Is that because you poured a drink in it and it overfloweth?

Keith: No, it’s because I’m looking at it, and I

Scott: Oh.

Keith: spent so much time in pubs in England. Of course, there you’ve got the difference between a US pint and an imperial pint, but still, I don’t think

Scott: And

Keith: this is a pint.

Scott: by the end of your pub session, how big did you think a pint was? Like, your eyes were no longer calibrated.

Keith: Ah, they were, because see, I played darts,

Scott: Oh,

Keith: and

Scott: okay.

Keith: the Brits in these pubs grew up in those pubs. As soon as they

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: could walk, they were in those pubs

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: playing darts.

Scott: Yep.

Keith: And so the only way I could… I had any chance was if I kept buying them drinks and got them totally s- sloshed, and I bought… I drank… I always drank shandies, and I’d buy them really strong, whatever the strongest thing in the bar was. And then usually by about three hours in, I was starting to do okay with, against them at darts.

Scott: I’m assuming that shandy is visibly different than any other kind of beer. Like, it doesn’t just look like a pale ale or something.

Keith: Yeah, but all the beers look different and, and

Scott: They weren’t paying

Keith: they,

Scott: attention.

Keith: they tend to mix

Scott: [laughs]

Keith: the… I mean, you get like a black and tan, or you get

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: whatever, and they all look different, so.

Scott: Okay.

Keith: Plus, people were used to seeing shandies, so it didn’t really catch their eye, because shandy’s what you give your kids when you go to the pub.

Scott: Yeah, I just think that if you were using it as a trick to beat them in darts, they might have paid attention to the fact that, uh, what you were drinking looked different than what they were drinking.

Keith: Nah. They were just happy that an American was actually playing darts with them. Um,

Scott: So anyway,

Keith: yeah,

Scott: did

Keith: I,

Scott: you…

Keith: I don’t

Scott: [laughs]

Keith: know what the drinking age is in, in England, if there is one, but when I was

Scott: If

Keith: there,

Scott: there

Keith: it

Scott: is

Keith: really

Scott: one.

Keith: seemed like

Scott: Oh, there’s

Keith: if you

Scott: a

Keith: could,

Scott: drinking age. It may not

Keith: if

Scott: be

Keith: you could,

Scott: legally

Keith: [laughs]

Scott: stipulated. [laughs]

Keith: if you could climb up on a stool,

Scott: Yeah.

Keith: you could drink.

Scott: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. it’s funny because I’ve always thought it would be… So we had a lot of Irish that came over a period of time from Intel in Ireland to our plant and, first of all, it was hilarious because some of them had such strong accents. They, they would be f*** this and f*** that, and for some reason, nobody would understand that they were just swearing all the time, which I was like, “Okay, uh, yes, they have a strong accent. Yes, it’s still imminently hearable.” But anyway, it was surprising to me how many of those guys were like, “I don’t drink anymore.” [laughs] Like, they, they had a problem, and they quit.

Keith: Uh-huh.

Scott: I just found

Keith: Uh-huh.

Scott: that amusing because I always thought, “Oh, I should go over there. It’d be fun to drink with these guys,” and then they were like, “No, we don’t drink anymore.” [laughs]

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: They’d done their, they’d done all their do- their drinking, and by the time they hit 30, they were done.

Keith: You know, it’s

Scott: All right.

Keith: funny. At the, at the bar in, uh, in Athens, um, our… most of our barmaids were Scottish, but most of our drinkers were Irish.

Scott: Oh. Could they understand each other?

Keith: Nah.

Scott: I will say, you know what? I… The Irish accent is pretty awesome, but I have to say

Keith: Uh,

Scott: I, I think Scottish is the best

Keith: oh yeah.

Scott: by far.

Keith: A, a Glasgow region accent just catches my attention from across the room.

Scott: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. You can be the dumbest box of rocks, and if you’re saying something with that accent, [laughs] you just sound amazing.

Keith: Yeah.

Scott: Uh, all right, people. We’re gonna hang up. I’m gonna go get more beer probably, but I’ll drink it off camera. [laughs]

Keith: I gotta save

Scott: Here

Keith: mine

Scott: we go.

Keith: for next time. It was such a trek to that place. It… I had to drive for like 10 minutes to get there.

Scott: see? That’s terrible. You couldn’t just stumble in there on your feet.

Keith: I know.

Scott: All right, people, tell your friends. Tell your friends. FriendsWithBrews.com, and I don’t know, some internet-related thing. I guess we’re not on TikTok or whatever ’cause I’ve already said I hate being on the internet. Bye. Thank you. We’ll do this again. You should, we should do this a, a, a lot.

Keith: I

Scott: Often.

Keith: don’t know. I’m thinking about all the things I said. Probably gonna get hate mail, people doxxing me, people outside the apartment building waiting for me to come out.

Scott: Well, you don’t have to worry about this causing people to try to break into your Microsoft account ’cause that’s already happening, so.

Keith: That’s true. Yeah,

Scott: So. [laughs]

Keith: it, uh, the emails have been popping up while we’ve been talking.