Episode 16 – Coffee Drinker, Huh?

Scott: Coffee drinker, huh?

Scott: Friends with Brews!

Scott: You may have noticed a slight difference in the intro.

Peter: I did notice a slight difference.

Scott: Your camera’s already out of focus again.

Scott: This ties so beautifully to our software topic.

Peter: I did it just for you.

Scott: First of all, let me tell you that when you were trying to FaceTime me back immediately when I wasn’t ready, the reason I wasn’t ready was because sometimes when I go to my Mac, my Bluetooth mouse takes a little while to connect.

Scott: This time, it just wasn’t connecting.

Scott: So I had to get a wired mouse, turn Bluetooth on and off, and then go into Bluetooth and make sure that it was going to connect, and it finally did.

Peter: Oh, I’m glad.

Scott: This is the kind of software stuff that drives me insane, and this is the kind of software stuff that Apple is just failing at miserably these days.

Scott: It’s just so much worse than it ever, ever, ever used to be, Peter.

Peter: But before we dive all the way right into the topic, maybe we should talk about the brews that we’re having today.

Scott: You had a perfect thing.

Scott: You should have said we should dive into our brews.

Peter: Well I’m going to.

Peter: I’m going to dive into a Warsteiner Oktoberfest.

Scott: You hear Peter pretending like he knows how to pronounce that.

Peter: Site 1753.

Peter: So Warsteiner Brewery has been around for a little while.

Peter: So yeah, I’m having a brew.

Peter: Not just a beer, but it is a brew.

Scott: They’ve been around since back when software used to work.

Peter: I think this might have even predated that.

Peter: This is like written word software.

Peter: Aw, can you hear that pour?

Scott: Hear the pour.

Peter: I don’t know about you, but I need something like this today.

Peter: What are you having, Scott?

Scott: I’m having a Good Life Beach Life POG, pale ale, I’m not sure what POG means.

Scott: Can you see this?

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: This is a Bend, Oregon brewing company.

Scott: Supposedly, this is a pineapple.

Scott: Oh, sorry, it’s passion fruit, orange, and guava.

Scott: That makes more sense than…

Peter: I was going to have something almost identical to that.

Scott: It’s very good.

Scott: I’ve had these.

Scott: These are quite good.

Peter: I was gonna have the Jack’s Abbey version of that.

Peter: Like, seriously, almost that same.

Peter: It was definitely, I think, guava and passion fruit.

Peter: I don’t know about orange, but that’s hilarious.

Peter: I almost literally almost had like a sister beer to that.

Scott: And also, today, I’m having, I have to look at my notes now, I’m having a Back Porch Coffee Roaster Single Track.

Scott: I have a 24 ounce mug full of this coffee.

Peter: Now let’s be clear about something.

Peter: That’s not a beer.

Scott: No, it’s not a beer.

Scott: And we’ll get there.

Scott: We’ll get there.

Peter: Well, when I looked at the website, friendswithbeer.com, I click on the link that says, The Beer.

Peter: Yeah, hold that.

Peter: I mean, I wish I had some, but hold on to that.

Peter: But the website definitely says, when I click on the link that says, The Beer, so this is a comprehensive list of the beers we’ve enjoyed on the podcast.

Peter: We can’t guarantee you can find them near you.

Peter: We can’t guarantee you like them.

Peter: But we can guarantee one thing.

Peter: Every single one of these is beer.

Scott: Right.

Scott: But we’re already going to have to change our podcast and our website because, Peter, at your suggestion, and as per the episode that I’m not done editing yet, we are becoming friends with Brews.

Peter: I like it.

Scott: B-R-E-W-S, not Brews as in…

Peter: Nope, we need…

Scott: No, I’m serious.

Peter: Hang on.

Scott: It sounds horrible.

Peter: I’m registering the other version right now.

Scott: Do you understand now why I was more in favor of Friends with Brews?

Peter: I’m getting friends with Brews with a U-I.

Scott: Because what we want is we want the option to drink beer if we want.

Scott: We want the option to…

Scott: Coffee, coffee.

Scott: If we want.

Peter: What?

Scott: Somebody said something about coffee.

Scott: Because we don’t always feel like drinking beer.

Peter: This is stupid.

Peter: This is stupid.

Scott: Why?

Peter: But I’m gonna get friends with Brews.

Scott: You should, because you know there’s gonna…

Scott: I don’t want to insult our listeners.

Peter: Somebody will want it.

Peter: Somebody will say, wait, what?

Peter: Oh man, the friends with Brews.

Peter: Yeah, so what we’re trying to say is…

Scott: Besides, if your work week keeps going the way that…

Scott: If your work weeks keep going the way this day has gone, you may need friends with Brews.

Peter: I’m gonna be Brews’d.

Peter: All right.

Peter: I mean, this is…

Peter: Is this dumb?

Peter: Is this really dumb to get friends with Brews?

Scott: How much does it cost?

Peter: That’s 10 bucks.

Scott: Buy it.

Scott: Freakin buy it.

Peter: This is so stupid.

Peter: This is like when I had the beer during my ultra marathon.

Peter: This is probably the second stupidest thing that I’ve done all day today.

Scott: What’s the first stupidest thing you’ve done today?

Scott: Are you allowed to talk about?

Peter: Well, okay, no.

Peter: This might be the third stupidest thing I’ve done all day.

Scott: All right.

Scott: Well, I’m also having a homemade by my wife pumpkin cheesecake that she made for our anniversary.

Scott: And I’m having that with my coffee and my beer.

Peter: All right.

Peter: Well, my friends with brews.com.

Scott: So here’s the deal, dear listener.

Peter: Let me know where to point the domain when you’re ready.

Scott: Here’s the deal.

Scott: Here’s the deal.

Scott: Here’s the dear deal listener.

Scott: So what we’re going to do is we’re going to pivot to friends with brews.com.

Scott: That will allow us to have brews of any kind.

Scott: We can have the beer kind of brew.

Scott: We can have the coffee kind of brew.

Scott: We can have the tea kind of brew.

Scott: It gives us flexibility because we don’t always want to drink beer.

Scott: And I will set up a website for that.

Scott: I will probably put those episodes in the Friends with Beer RSS feed for a time.

Scott: And then I’ll just redirect Friends with Beer to Friends with Brews.

Peter: You know, there are plenty of podcasts, shows, websites and stuff that never even change.

Peter: Like, I’ll bet you we could even leave it all at Friends with Beer and just change the text and change what we call it.

Peter: And few of our tens of listeners would even notice.

Peter: Not saying you should.

Peter: I’m just saying we could.

Scott: Well, if I put in a permanent redirect, hopefully they won’t notice.

Scott: But the thing is, is that we’re so early in our, in this podcast, and we have so few listeners, we might as well just fix it, right?

Peter: Fix it now.

Peter: Right.

Peter: Fine, fine.

Peter: How’s your cheesecake?

Scott: Oh, it’s frickin amazing.

Scott: This is an amazing recipe.

Scott: This is real pumpkin, by the way.

Scott: This is not pumpkin spice.

Scott: This is pumpkin.

Peter: Pumpkin, yeah.

Peter: Scott’s wife is a pretty talented cook, so I will say that.

Peter: I am, just because of that, my past history, I am somewhat envious of you and your pumpkin pie.

Scott: Cheesecake.

Peter: That’s pumpkin cheesecake pie.

Peter: Cheese whatever.

Peter: It’s got pumpkins.

Peter: Cheese pie.

Peter: Cheese pie.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Hi, cheese.

Peter: So, I’m not having coffee right now, although if I pound this thing, I might need something else to recover.

Peter: But what happened is, I had a packed schedule this morning.

Peter: I went for a 10K run out in the woods.

Peter: I think that’s my second 10K this week, so I’m pretty much back to my pre-marathon training intensity, which is good, feels good.

Peter: And then I had one morning meeting cancel, but up until that, I was at schedule for back-to-back meetings from 8.30 to 5 o’clock, and then I was going to be teaching two yoga classes at 5.30 and 7.15 tonight.

Peter: And I was like, I need a freaking break.

Scott: Let’s see, aside from the yoga, you just described my bosses every day.

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: It’s just as every day.

Scott: You’re just not used to working for a living, Peter.

Peter: I generally choose not to live like that, Scott.

Scott: I know you do.

Scott: But sometimes when you get paid by other people, sometimes they get to impose their will upon you.

Scott: It’s the weirdest thing.

Peter: Does that seem fair to you?

Scott: No.

Scott: By the way, I want to talk about, before we talk about your woes, or maybe we’re done, I don’t know.

Peter: We’re good.

Peter: I’m moving on.

Scott: I bought a new interface from a mic.

Scott: It’s called a, who makes this?

Scott: Elgato.

Scott: Elgato Wave XLR.

Scott: And this thing is really cool.

Scott: It has a, what’s it called when you can just put your hand near something and it senses it?

Scott: Not electrostatic.

Scott: Anyway, it’s got a mute switch that all I have to do that, put my hand right near the, it’s not an actual button.

Scott: I just put my hand over the thing at the right location and it goes into mute mode.

Peter: Is it powered by software?

Scott: It is powered by software, but the good news is the settings get saved into the device.

Scott: So it doesn’t rely on an app always running because you and I know that apps that always run and apps that don’t always run and apps that only run sometimes, they’re all terrible no matter what they are.

Scott: I’m serious, software, oh my God, I’m just so mad at software these days.

Peter: So let’s talk about your issues with software.

Scott: Yeah, I test semiconductor test equipment software for a living.

Scott: Why did I say the word test in there twice?

Scott: Because semiconductor test is the act of testing the fabricated devices.

Scott: Anyway, the group I work for is responsible for helping to steer the future of the software, figure out what features need to be added, blah, blah, blah.

Scott: Get them implemented by whatever people at Monolith 3000 and the vendors need to…

Scott: We have so many different pieces of equipment talking to each other.

Scott: Anyway, some of it’s vendors, some of it’s us, blah, blah, blah.

Scott: Get it developed and then test it.

Scott: Regression test it, feature test it, do all kinds of testing.

Scott: So I have very little patience anymore in my spare time for software that’s not working.

Scott: A lot of people are just like, oh, that’s the way it is, and they’ll just start messing with it.

Scott: I hate that.

Scott: I just want it to work.

Scott: I don’t have time to play troubleshooting in my…

Scott: Like, it’s just…

Scott: Most of the time when we’re using our devices now, we have stuff we want to do.

Scott: We’re trying to get something done.

Scott: It’s been decades now, Peter, since…

Scott: Okay, aside from web development, which I really do enjoy digging into the hows and whys, but aside from that, just using devices, using technology, it’s been decades since I enjoyed the experience of something going wrong.

Scott: Oh, this is a learning experience.

Scott: No, I don’t want a learning experience.

Scott: I have tons of learning experiences.

Scott: What I want is for this piece of software to work.

Scott: I want it to know what I’m saying to it.

Scott: I want it to dictate the thing to the person.

Scott: I want it to open my garage door.

Scott: I want to create a…

Scott: I want to be allowed to duplicate a note in Google Docs or whatever.

Scott: And none of these things can happen without friction.

Scott: And Apple is rapidly becoming a large part of that feeling of constant friction, constant fighting, constant, oh my God, what do I have to do now to get this thing to work?

Scott: Et cetera, et cetera.

Scott: And Apple is becoming a huge part of that, where some things are just totally screwed up.

Scott: And I think that you have seen this yourself with dictation lately.

Scott: Am I correct?

Peter: Yes, can I take a quick aside and share with our dear listener?

Scott: I would love it if you would, because then I can try to get my blood pressure back down just a tiny bit, because just talking about this is doing numbers on me.

Peter: Okay, so a couple days ago, I was on the road up in Vermont for a meeting with one of my clients.

Peter: And, you know, long day, long drive.

Peter: It was hot.

Peter: I was wearing a sweater because it was cold in the morning, so it was hot in the car.

Peter: Long drive, you know, day.

Peter: I got really tired when I got back.

Peter: Wanted a quick nap.

Peter: Took a quick nap.

Peter: I was like, yeah, I’m going to go out for a run now.

Peter: Came downstairs, noticed, glanced over at Slack for the hospital and noticed that the entire SOC team was in a huddle.

Peter: I’m like, 4, 15 p.m.

Peter: everyone on a call.

Peter: That’s generally not a good sign.

Peter: Let me see what’s going on.

Peter: Hopped in.

Peter: Sure enough, there was an incident they were handling, and they needed some guidance.

Peter: So I jumped in and guided them on that.

Peter: Great.

Peter: Still sunny, still nice weather.

Peter: Got up and ran, and I broke my first mile.

Peter: Did it in 7 minutes and 59 seconds.

Peter: I’ve only broken an 8-minute mile a handful of times before.

Peter: And I felt really good.

Scott: Was this pace spurred on at all by your irritation with an incident happening?

Peter: No.

Peter: I just felt rested and good, and happy to be alive, and had a lot of energy because I had just taken a nap, so it was great.

Peter: So I take out my watch, my new Apple Watch Ultra, by the way, and I say, hey, Dengus, send…

Peter: Follow me now on this one, Scott.

Peter: Send Judy an audio message.

Peter: So, because we were comparing this Judy lady and I were comparing notes on being an athlete recently, so you’ll get to the inside joke in a minute.

Peter: So I said something to the tune of just got home from a long drive to Vermont, from Vermont, took a nap, woke up, guided the team through remedying an incident, and I just ran a sub eight-minute mile.

Peter: I am an athlete.

Peter: Okay?

Peter: I look down at the watch, and I see the text of what I’m saying, trying to be transcribed by the watch, and it shows this blob of text on it, and it says it’s going to send to Taryn.

Peter: Now, you may remember that I said to the dingus to send a message to somebody.

Peter: That name was not Taryn.

Peter: It doesn’t even sound remotely like Taryn.

Peter: I don’t know what reality.

Scott: It wasn’t Taryn.

Peter: It wasn’t Taryn, Merrin, Miriam.

Scott: It wasn’t a baron.

Peter: It wasn’t a baron.

Peter: It wasn’t any of those things, right?

Peter: It wasn’t a darin.

Peter: So I tried to hit the button to cancel, but on the Apple Watch Ultra, there’s a new button for the side button.

Peter: There’s the action button.

Peter: And basically, I hit a button, and that sent the message.

Peter: So Taryn, who she has not heard from me for about eight and a half months or so since my birthday.

Scott: I thought you were going to say years.

Peter: Gets a message that says, just got home play down, so can I have guided my team on an estimate?

Peter: You got out and ran a 759, so I could mile an athlete.

Scott: Oh my god, wait a minute.

Scott: Wasn’t the message that you originally tried to send to the other person way shorter than that?

Scott: Wasn’t a subset of that?

Peter: No, I tried to say, I just got home from Vermont after driving.

Peter: I took a nap.

Peter: I handled an incident and just ran a 759 mile.

Peter: I’m an athlete.

Scott: Okay, I got the part about the athlete.

Scott: This is the thing about Dictation lately.

Scott: It is into creative fiction.

Scott: It’s writing stories that is just making stuff up wholesale.

Scott: Now, this happened to me when I was trying to send stuff to you.

Scott: And all of a sudden, it was talking about a windstorm.

Scott: There was no windstorm.

Peter: Right.

Peter: But even then, it’s not even supposed to be, it wasn’t even supposed to be Dictation.

Peter: It was supposed to be an audio message.

Peter: It didn’t even get that right.

Scott: I know, but you were dictating to your device to send an audio message.

Scott: This is what I’m talking about.

Scott: Dictation was just making stuff up.

Scott: And then, yeah, remember that day I was talking to you about a windstorm?

Scott: And then the other day I was trying to say I want my watch.

Scott: So I had a problem where for some reason yesterday, my watch, I wear my watch to sleep, it gives me a haptic alarm, which means it just taps me lightly on the wrist.

Scott: And if I eventually I don’t wake up, it gets a little bit stronger.

Scott: It does wake me up way more gently and gradually than an audible alarm, particularly because most audible alarm sounds are annoying as hell.

Scott: And you have to wonder what UI genius thought that pissing someone off and waking them up instantly out of sleep just to be pissed off was a good way to start the day.

Scott: Because I’d love to go to that person’s house and just slap them across the face to wake them up and then say, how did that start your day for you?

Scott: Was that the way you wanted to get going?

Peter: So I will say that the UI geniuses who did that are taking a page out of the inventors of the classic alarm clock.

Scott: No, I understand that.

Scott: I’m talking about them, too.

Peter: Oh, yeah.

Scott: Who thought that this is the way…

Scott: These are people who clearly didn’t need alarm clocks for themselves.

Scott: Or they were tremendous s***holes and they just enjoyed being angry from the word go.

Peter: There’s that.

Peter: There’s definitely that as a possibility.

Scott: So I started off angry that way, and now it worked today.

Scott: I think what happened, I literally think what happened is right before I went to sleep and put it in sleep mode, I pulled my watch off the charger, unlocked it, and real fast went into sleep mode.

Scott: It was unlocked.

Scott: I checked to make sure that I hadn’t failed.

Scott: I thought maybe I mistyped the number and thought it was unlocked, and it was locked on my wrist, because if it’s locked, it will let the phone do the audible alarm instead.

Scott: But it wasn’t locked.

Scott: That’s the thing.

Scott: I think it thought it was, but it wasn’t.

Scott: I think there was a timing issue, and this is what kills me about Apple software lately.

Scott: Dictation obviously isn’t a timing thing.

Scott: It’s a comprehension thing.

Scott: But there are so many weird timing bugs in Apple software where I know when it failed, I go, you know what?

Scott: I bet if I go back and do that slower, it’ll work.

Scott: And it does.

Scott: And there’s so many timing things where it’s so clear to anybody who’s ever written software or debug software or done anything with software that because their software is doing something, it’s not looking for your other input.

Scott: Even though it allows it to happen, it’s not looking for that.

Scott: And so you wind up with timing bugs.

Scott: And Apple has got a ton of timing bugs right now.

Scott: And timing is everything, I’m told.

Peter: Any good stand-up comedy would agree with that.

Peter: A comedian, not a comedy.

Scott: Every stand-up comedy would agree.

Peter: Every comedy would agree also.

Peter: If they didn’t, then, you know, I don’t know what’s wrong with them.

Peter: So this does have to be a short episode, because now that I am almost finished with my beer, I have to go back to work.

Peter: Well, not quite yet.

Scott: Wait, is this something you didn’t know about a few minutes ago?

Peter: No, I did send the invite for only 30 minutes intentionally, because this was the only slot that I had.

Peter: Literally, this was the only opening I had all day.

Peter: It was 30 minutes, and that was it.

Peter: But I did want to get that off your chest.

Peter: But tell me more, tell me more about, you know, let’s cover one more item on your bullet points.

Peter: Did we talk about your Siri dictation fail?

Scott: It was the windstorm thing, right?

Scott: But then the most recent one was I was complaining to you.

Scott: The reason I went into the haptic story was I was complaining to you about the haptic, and I was saying that some dude was suggesting I use lights or something.

Scott: I’m like, I don’t want lights.

Scott: I just want my watch to do what it has done for years.

Scott: I wanted to go back to doing that.

Scott: And instead of sending you that, it said something about my watch have sex or something.

Scott: And I’m like, I don’t want my watch to have sex, especially not on my arm.

Scott: You know, it’s just like, I don’t even know.

Scott: None of it makes any sense.

Scott: They could, even the most basic programmer could parse that and go, oh my god, that doesn’t sound right.

Peter: Speaking of software problems at Apple, and this, I have to, I’m gonna have to close on this one.

Peter: You may recall, I have been having issues with my iPhone 12 Pro Max my AirPods Pro for quite some time.

Scott: 50 years.

Peter: Not that long, but what will happen is they go into what my friends call Decepticon mode.

Peter: All of a sudden, the channel just, the connection just breaks down like, noticeably.

Peter: It’s so bad.

Peter: And everything will be like brrrr And so I say that, oh yeah, I’m speaking Decepticon, right?

Peter: And it’ll happen like to me listening to it and people on the other side hearing it.

Scott: That sounds like a device problem.

Peter: Yeah, because it never happens on the Mac.

Peter: It never happens on the iPad with the same AirPods, and recently, the same thing happened in my Tesla when paired to my iPhone.

Peter: So I explained that to the people at Apple and they said, oh, you need to update your software.

Peter: I’m like, ah, apparently, I didn’t realize that 16.0.3 had come out.

Peter: So, okay, fine, I updated it.

Peter: And then promptly last night, the same problem happened again.

Scott: Right, there was nothing in the 16.0.3 update that I saw, unless they just don’t list wholesale categories of stuff that they do as bug fixes, there was nothing in there related to any audio issues whatsoever.

Peter: Well, that’s normal, though.

Peter: It’s normal for them not to put something in there.

Peter: So, I didn’t hold it against her.

Peter: I was like, fine.

Scott: But they always say that.

Scott: That’s just such a rookie.

Scott: That’s just such a playbook move of, did you try updating your software?

Scott: It’s just to get you off the phone and blame it on, it’s just I hate that.

Scott: I hate that line of thinking.

Scott: It’s so lazy.

Scott: It’s so lazy.

Peter: They’re front line people, they’re not paid to troubleshoot.

Peter: But, on that note, I need to return to the front lines and troubleshoot some things.

Peter: Can people still find us at, like, where they found us?

Scott: Well, first of all…

Peter: Like, I mean, if they’re listening to this podcast, do they know how to find us already?

Scott: They do know how to find us at friendswithbeer.com What about on Twitter?

Scott: Oh, I made a Twitter account for the new one too.

Scott: I followed you even, I doubt you even noticed.

Peter: Is it Friends with Brew Pod?

Scott: No, it’s Friends with Brew.

Peter: Oh, even better!

Peter: I like Friends with Brew.

Peter: Wait, is that B-R-E-W or B-R-U?

Scott: See, that’s the problem though, is I didn’t know we were going to choose the domain with the S instead of the domain without the S, so now it doesn’t quite match.

Scott: This is a cluster brew.

Peter: Can you rename it?

Scott: You used to be able to rename your Twitter account.

Peter: Quick, do it before Elon buys Twitter and ruins that ability.

Scott: It’s a cluster brew, Peter.

Peter: So, you can still find us at friendswithbeer.com, but soon you’ll be able to find us at friendswithbrews.com.

Peter: Either one.

Peter: They’re both going to work.

Peter: By the time you hear this, you can be bruised all you want.

Scott: No, I don’t say…

Scott: Well, actually, by the time you hear this, probably, yeah, that’s true, because I have another episode I haven’t finished editing.

Scott: I don’t know, but you’re putting time pressure on me, and I have to build this thing.

Peter: You can always just delay the release date of this podcast.

Scott: I can also delete things that you say.

Peter: You can, and you probably should.

Peter: Alright, on that note, though, I need to go back to work.

Scott: You have a big red button?

Scott: Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Scott: I bet I have a big red button sound.

Peter: Big red button.

Scott: So early.

Scott: You guys want to get some coffee or something?

Scott: Let’s listen.