Episode 48 – You Counted Us Down

I have pushed the button.

Friends with Brews.

You actually, oh wait, hold on.

Hi Peter.

You counted us down this time.

I received some flack for my counting us up before previously.

I’m Scott Wilsey. I am the host of this show. I’ve always been on this show. But you’re not Peter, even though I said hi Peter.

Hi, Vic here. I’m Vic Hudson, the guest of this show.

You’ve been on here how many times? One or two?

Uh, two I think.

I think so.

And I think we are ironically recording less than a week from when you told me, “I don’t think I’m gonna need you anytime soon!”

I’m canceling your contract.

It happens.

All right, let’s talk about drinks. First you go.

First me go. All right. I am having something called Shotgun Wedding.

Mm-hmm.

Courtesy of the Country Boys Brewing, made right here in Kentucky. Georgetown to be specific. it is…

Vic’s getting on the glasses. He’s getting the readers on.

Yes, 5.3% alcohol by volume for Peter.

But tell us the flavors in this stuff, what does the can declare about itself?

The can declares… oh hell, I cannot read that. I’m gonna have to open the website in a moment after I pour it, I’ll read it from there.

I was gonna say, what’s the name of the brewer again?

Country Boy Brewing.

Oh yeah, I’ve been there before. Country Boy Brewing.

Yeah, I also have this nice here Frosty Glass.

Look at that, this is a nice dark one.

Ooh, yeah, the beer. I clicked on the beer, but I hate the pages that just show all the beer. Shotgun Wedding. Brown ale aged on vanilla beans.

That sounds pretty good, honestly. We’re about to find out.

I’m gonna give that the That’s a thumbs up, that’s pretty good.

There you go, you should.

I like it.

Okay, I am doing a repeat, but I’m doing a repeat that I told Peter I was gonna do at some point. This is called Bierly, B-I-E-R-L-Y, and it’s Blackbird Stout. Now, Bierly’s claim to fame is they make gluten-free beers, or as I say, the beers without the glutes.

The beers without the glutes.

Now, last time I had this, I didn’t like it that much.

Yeah.

But since then, since then I have to refer to my website. I don’t know if I’ve told you this Vic, but friendswithbrews.com is a website and it has a search function. I don’t know if, there’s no way you’ve probably heard about that ‘cause I’m sure I haven’t.

You know, I think I may have heard about that once or twice.

Okay.

Per episode.

And the last time I had a Bierly, I had the Felix Pilsner and that was quite good.

So I started double guessing, I started second guessing myself and saying, was the Blackbird Stout really that bad or am I just remembering it wrong? ‘Cause it sounds good on paper.

So this is a beer that you previously thumbs down?

Yeah, and I’m gonna try to thumbs it up. It’s malted millet, malted rice, malted barley, hops and yeast, but it’s a stout.

I don’t understand what most of that means. What does it mean when you say it’s a stout?

I don’t know, it’s a stout.

Okay. Good chat.

[laughter]

Same time next week. What is a stout beer?

Okay, I’m asking chat GPT. It’s not coming back with anything. Stout is a type of beer known for its dark colour, full body texture, and roasted malt flavours. It belongs to the ale family, and has a long history that originated in the United Kingdom. Stouts are typically characterized by their deep brown to black colour and a creamy, persistent head. They often exhibit complex forms of roasted barley coffee, blah blah blah, yeah yeah yeah.

So anyway, it’s dark, it’s rich, etc. So I gotta find out why I didn’t like this. Here comes the port.

Your glass is not frosty.

That’s because I was ready before you were.

Oh, my bad. I may have gotten distracted in between podcasts with Prehistoric Zelda.

Yeah, I thought so. No, not Prehistoric Zelda, Dystopian Zelda.

Dystopian Zelda, that’s what it was. Yeah, my bad.

Okay. Yeah, so now I’m gonna taste it.

Do you not pour it down the side?

No, I did I actually did I just poured it a little and you still got that head I did I poured it fast though But I did pour it down the side. Yeah.

Oh, see I poured it nice and slow down the side I have no head.

Normally I managed to pour beer without getting foam. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s pretty bitter. Yeah, the thing is is that some stouts are bitter

is that an ATP shirt?

It is I don’t think they failed Vic so much as I just don’t particularly like this particular stout It’s a little bitter and strong for me. That’s all

That’s cool.

Yeah, I’m probably gonna give it a thumbs down again but I really I hate to do that because I’d like the I Like the very few companies that can make a really good gluten-free beer And I think this is a stout that some people would probably like I just prefer Like I said, I don’t want the leather chair and I also don’t necessarily like bitter beers. Peter likes bitter beers

Peter might like this. I should send him the rest of this can I’ll just tape up the hole that I created when I popped it open.

It sounds like that would work.

Mm-hmm

duct tape

Oh, yeah, I hate to give it a thumbs down, but I’m going to it’s just not my type of stout. Okay

Oh, so what’s the protocol here? You’re just gonna keep drinking it or do we need a recovery beer?

Oh No, I’m gonna keep drinking.

Okay. All right, carry on as you were

that’s it. That’s all I have to say Okay, whatever my review was last time. I’m pretty much going with let’s see what I said about it I said not the best gluten-free beer. I’ve had a little thin a little bitter. Oh, see I disagree with that I have to update that it’s not thin it is bitter.

What do you mean by thin? Are we talking physical texture?

Well, I thought it tasted watery a watery.

Okay.

Yeah, but it’s not at all. I don’t know what I was thinking I must have had a glass that was really frosty and then all that water Condensed inside the glass or something. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what I did. I held it wrong Steve Jobs would have been really pissed at me

Describe what your beer tastes like to you though. Do you taste those flavors that it talks about? Do you taste the vanilla and beans and all that?

I do I do

Okay, Google would like my address. Why does Google want your address? Not my address. They would like to use my location

I was bringing up the country boy brewing. They would like your GPS coordinates. I am at least 21 years old Can I just say that this is a complete waste of time because oh, yeah, of course Does anybody ever just like check that and see that box and say oh, I’m not 21 years old I have to leave this site.

The problem is Vic. It’s not about actually making sure you’re 21 It’s about saying that they tried.

Okay fair enough and they tried

brown ale aged on vanilla beans

An attempt was made. Let’s put it that way and attempt was made country boy brewing Enjoy responsibly

by the way, I think an attempt was made was oh, no, it’s called there was an attempt I think there’s a pretty good subreddit called there was an attempt

so I can’t speak to the brown ale part

Well, hold it up hold up your glass I do I mean it is in fact Brown

Yeah, it is in fact Brown I can speak to that but I don’t know what like a brown ale supposed to taste like But I can definitely I do taste of vanilla

sounds good I’m glad you found that Brewer. They they make some good stuff They do make the mistake of making an IPA at least one IPA

I’m sorry,

but you know what you’ll have to try it and see if you like it. Maybe you will Obviously some people like IPAs Vic or they wouldn’t keep selling them

Well, I do know some people that don’t share your hatred for them.

I don’t trust them, but that’s fine

country boy brewing.

Hey, I’m gonna be magnanimous here and I’m gonna say that you can make your own judgments about those people who incorrectly like IPAs and therefore their judgment can’t be trusted whatsoever. But you can decide that for yourself.

This is actually really good. I like it.

Yeah, good.

Country Boy Brewing was founded in 2012 by four native Kentuckians, y’all, with a passion for great craft beer. Prides itself on making minimally processed beer with high quality real ingredients. Their passion for great beer shines through their core brands. High quality real ingredients

fished straight out of the river.

That’s right. Their passion for great beer shines through their core brands, Cougar Bait, American Blonde Ale, and Shotgun Wedding, Vanilla Brown Ale. Their recent expansion to Georgetown, Kentucky, with the largest production brewery in the state will allow them to can their popular cliff jumper IPA and halfway home pale ale in addition to several seasonal offerings.

I’ve had some pale ales that are pretty good, it depends. It’s mostly the IPA that I don’t like and I don’t know why, it’s just because when it comes to IPA they have to dump all the hops in the universe into the one beer.

So this sounds like they just started a Georgetown place.

Yeah it does.

It sounds like they started their company in 2012 and since then they’ve been flourishing and now they’re gonna up their game.

Yeah, but it doesn’t say where in Kentucky. I would like to know this.

It just said Georgetown.

Just recently expanded to Georgetown.

Oh, you don’t know where they started in Kentucky.

Yeah.

So now pouring Lexington, now pouring Georgetown, now pouring Louisville. Probably started in Lexington or Louisville would be my guess.

Wait, you don’t recognize any of these guys?

I do not.

I actually looked.

At least three of these guys are related to each other. Or… Hmm. Possibly married, I’m not sure. They’ve got so they only can some of their flavors.

Oh, yeah I’m sure they have stuff on tap that they don’t sell if you click the now pouring in Lexington link and Then look at the list of beers man

trying right now. Nothing’s loading. Here we go

Yeah, they’ve got a lot of stuff. Most of them have their own Logo on it, right?

This one called prime directive as a Star Trek fan. I gotta like man

That is pretty funny honestly survive Amos Moses Nitro oatmeal stout?

That sounds pretty good. Nitro is, I don’t know, the Nitro thing is overrated but it’s…

Orange cream cider?

That sounds good.

Key lime cougar bait.

Yeah, that one’s an IPA but it’s got lime in it.

Oh it says blonde ale with key limes.

Oh cougar, I thought cougar bait was the IPA, where’s the…

No cougar bait was not the IPA. Cougar bait with limes. I can actually make this at home. I have some of the cougar baits in the fridge. I could get some limes.

The beer. The beer. Oh yeah, cougar bait is American Blond ale, that’s right.

That one sounds pretty good, actually. Throw some lime in there? Sounds pretty good.

Yeah.

You can edit this out if you want, but I have actually tried the cougar bait. It’s pretty good. But if you want to edit that out so you can save it for the next show, that’s fine.

No, no, no, no, no. It doesn’t have to be something you’ve never had before, just something you haven’t had on the show before.

And as you noticed, I’m having a repeat, and Peter actually had a repeat last time. We just don’t do it very often. We try not to make a rule of it.

Yeah, and I don’t think that Kentucky bourbon barrel ale is gonna make the show.

Really?

I’ve had two of those now, and I don’t think that I can bear to drink another.

Yeah, that’s fine. That is fine. Never waste calories on alcohol that you can’t stand. It’s just not worth it.

The second one I tried was Friday night while I was playing my game.

And when I finished playing the game and went to bed, I ended up pouring half of it out. It’s just, it’s… In premise, it sounds very good and it appeals to me. In actuality, that’s some nasty.

All right, we talked on, is this the show today at length about video gaming. So I wanna ask you a question. Why not build a gaming PC? Why a PlayStation and why hooking it up to the TV? Why the console versus building a nice gaming PC? for you personally, what was, why do you, why do you do that? And I’m not saying, by the way, that question doesn’t imply, I think, that gaming PC, gaming PC is the way to go. I just am trying to, I don’t know what I would do if I was gonna get into gaming.

Yeah, for me personally, and this most recent foray back into gaming in my life, it boils down to one simple answer. I got back into gaming because I watched and liked the show, The Last of Us, and I wanted to play the game that it was based upon, Which happens to be, at the time, was a PlayStation exclusive. Now you can get it on Steam, but at the time the only way to play it was on PlayStation.

Yeah, but that was like two months ago.

It was earlier this year, like February or March. So that basically that’s how I ended up with the PlayStation versus the gaming PC. In my youth, I used to build gaming PCs all the time. I don’t think I have the patience for it these days. So I kind of wanted, in addition to wanting to be able to play the one game that I wanted to play at the time, I kind of wanted what you would consider like an iPhone of gaming, you know A console that you just plug into the TV and start playing I can see that

I mean building a PC is not a big deal

No, but then you’ve got windows and you’ve got drivers and you’ve got settings and

Honestly with most modern hardware drivers aren’t even a thing like you don’t really

It’s been a long time since I played in that world. But I hear where you’re coming from though I seem to remember back in the day like I built me many a gaming PC’s I think the two games I spent the most time on back in the day were alien vs. Predator and a Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy game that I really loved but I also seem to remember I think I spent almost as much time maintaining the PC as I spent playing the games probably

Yeah, I would hope that that’s a better situation these days, but I don’t know it is However, one thing that that gaming PC wouldn’t give you is an easy way to… as easy of a way to hook it up to your TV and integrate with your stuff. You would have to decide do I want to set this on a desktop and get myself a giant monitor or do I want to hook this to my TV?

Right. Well, and not just the TV, but in my case also, you know, I’ve got that nice 7.1 channel surround sound system out there in the family room too, and I wanted to enjoy that.

So yeah, you’d have to research sound cards and

Mm-hmm.

How can I hook this up to my yeah, it’s true.

The PlayStation doesn’t support the It doesn’t support Dolby Atmos, but it does support 7.1 channel Dolby Digital. So,

oh, okay

So I still get you know, discrete channeling and stuff like that. It’s just not the the newest codec, but it’s fine They’ve got their own unique 3d audio engine and it really is fantastic.

It doesn’t sound fine. It sounds subpar way You’re describing it. Mmm. Sounds like you should throw it out and get something more state-of-the-art

More state-of-the-art than a PlayStation 5.

I mean you can talk to them and see if they’ve got something ready for you

What’s newer than that? I

Nothing, but you know, okay, but it’s subpar

It does support the Dolby Atmos if you’re like playing DVDs and streaming Oh

Services not for game. It’s just not in the games. The games don’t support Dolby at most. So EA was wrong. It’s not in the game

Hmm, I don’t know anything about that. Was that one of their slogans?

It’s in the game.

Is there?

Yeah.

Have we mentioned that I’ve only just recently gotten into gaming again? And I’m very out of touch with the culture and the phrases and the companies and…

And EA is a horrible company anyway. They produce some okay games, but they’re horrible. They’re one of those ones that wants to root your computer in order… and actually they all do. They all want to root your computer in order to You know for copy protection for some DRM scheme. I’m sorry not copy protection anti-cheat is really why they’re rooting your computer now Mmm, because the cheat mods root your computer effectively to avoid It’s a chicken and egg game that went straight down to the kernel of the operating system

Gotcha So see I don’t I don’t worry about any of that in while on the PlayStation

Right too bad you if you’re ever going to be a competitive gamer You’ve got to find a way to cheat but not get caught cheating

You know ironically I have like zero interest in online multiplayer gaming

Well, that’s good because if you’re anything like me you would die at it all the time

There is that but more to the point is while I’m doing that I don’t want like 14 year olds cursing and mocking me.

I Think last time you were on here did what was it on this podcast? We talked about my friend Brandon playing League of Legends and they were his own team

I think so

his own team was harsher him up and I said just log off and let these bastards die

Yes, I remember that it was on the show. Yeah, I remember that phrase Just log off and let these bastards die.

It’s bad enough getting it from opponents But when your own team starts working you over that takes all the fun out of it and he wasn’t it’s not a bad player Either he’s a good player. In fact, he was better than they were they just didn’t like his strategy or something I don’t remember what I don’t know

I just know that like several years ago when I still had teenage boys that lived in the house with us and They were playing a lot of this stuff and you know their call of duty or whatever they were playing I just remember, you know Sometimes they would play with the audio on the actual audio and not headphones and I just hear like the opponents little small children it sounded like Just really foul mouth trash talking. It was just like, you know, honestly I I don’t want any of that. Just give me a game with some good gameplay and a good story and some good looting and foraging about, and I’m happy!

Yeah, it’s interesting. Yeah, the gaming culture has a lot of male toxicity in it, unfortunately, and I don’t…

Yeah. Has it gotten any better since that whole gamergate thing, or is it still a toxic hellstew?

I don’t think so. I think it’s still a toxic hellstew. I think… I don’t know why. I think there’s just this expectation. You know how it is when there’s peer pressure on things where you just assume that, “Oh, this is the way things are and this is how it has to be and we have to do this and this is what…” And like I remember a long time ago, you know, now at a certain age, you know, older boys would just mock the idea of Minecraft even being a video game. But when my daughter was little, these little boys were like, “Oh, girls don’t play Minecraft.” And I was like, “Dude, my daughter knows more about Minecraft than you do. And she has known more about Minecraft than you do since before she was even allowed to play the game. So I would zip it little man.

And I don’t always advocate talking to other people’s children that way, but it really annoyed me. And I always, and I thought, where does that attitude come from? Does that come from other boys? Does it come from, you know, if you’re the parent of a boy, please take extra time and care to help them understand what attitudes are just based in, we’ve always said these stupid snotty things, so we’re going to say them again and help them to understand what is reality in some respect. There are parents out there doing a great job with their boys. There are some boys that don’t have that problem, but there’s also a lot of boys that are growing up and they get online with other boys and they start developing this misogyny that’s It’s really corrosive to everybody involved and try to understand your child, I guess is what I’m saying. It’s work. I’m sure it’s not easy. I don’t have a boy. I don’t have that problem to have to worry about.

I have three.

But I also do believe that just based on our family dynamics and the attitudes we have, I would like to think that that would have some influence on that child’s worldview, that they wouldn’t completely…

Yeah.

You know, I don’t know. Friends and the stories that friends tell you and the ideas that you get from friends can be powerful because I can remember some stuff.

They can.

I remember some things I believed in my youth that were totally wrong and I look back at now and go, “Oh my God.” And it was just, it just came from other people my age, you know?

Yeah.

And you just accept it. You just accept it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So talk to me about this Minecraft game. I know nothing about it. Sell me on it.

Okay. Well, it’s basically, and you were talking about open world and liking the open world type games. This game is very much that. But then if you’re playing in survival mode, which is the standard mode, you know, you have, there are stakes, you’re going to die if you, you know, basically what you have to do is you have to, you get into world, you log in with nothing.

Okay.

And you have to craft things for yourself out of natural resources in order to survive.

Okay.

you can use various resources that you find to create other things. And then based on that, as you escalate up the chain, you can mine more and more different things, not just punching down a tree, but now you can mine for ores and minerals and jewels and that kind of stuff. And then with those, you can build like better armor and stuff like that. But the basic thing is at nighttime, all these mobs come out. And they involve giant spiders, they involve creepers which if they get close to you, they blow themselves up. And they’ll blow up your house and stuff too, by the way.

Bastards.

Right, so they can undo work that you’ve done. And it’s basically, that’s what it is. It’s an open-world game of exploration, but it’s also trying to survive and trying to build up your capabilities as fast as possible while not dying.

That sounds pretty cool, actually.

The fun thing about it is it’s fun for kids and adults. And it also has this thing in there called redstone. And Redstone is an element that will conduct electricity. You can actually build circuits and stuff in Minecraft using Redstone. So you can have literal gates, not gates as in a swinging gate, but gates as in a logic gate.

Like AND gates and NOR gates and…

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. That sounds pretty cool.

It is pretty cool. And so, you know, stuff like that. And then of course there’s online servers and there’s, you can have your own private server where you and your friends can hang out and play Minecraft. And a lot of times my daughter’s friends would get servers and they would play on them in creative mode, which means they could fly for one thing, which you can’t do in survival mode. You could also

Flying is cool.

You just won’t die. But the point of that one is just build all kinds of crazy stuff and have your own world. So there’s also that mode if you’re into the more of the creativity side of it. And then there’s also online servers where people from all over log on and there’s games and there’s contests and there’s all kinds of stuff that go on. So I don’t know if you’d enjoy it or not. And if you don’t, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.

What I will say is it honestly sounds pretty cool.

Yeah. It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty wholesome, I would say for the most part. And yeah, I don’t know. The only reason I ever got into it was because my daughter, but she was really into it for a while and we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun together in it. It was, it’s one of those things that if you have children, for sure, you’re especially up to a certain age for sure. You’re probably going to have a ton of fun playing with the kid in Minecraft.

That’s cool.

we used to all three sit around on our devices and play the Minecraft PE, which is the bedrock edition basically now. So we would all log onto the same place and run around building things and doing stuff like that. And you can skin your characters and there’s different world packs available. So you can be in an ancient Chinese temple or something like that. And there’s all these things available. It’s pretty cool. It’s fun.

That does sound cool.

And I will say Microsoft gets a lot of grief for a lot of things and there are things they should get grief for. one of the things they did with Minecraft when they bought it was they’ve been a very good Minecraft steward. They’ve made the game better and better and better. They’ve done nothing but improve things.

Yeah, actually in general, I mean, I still give Windows a lot of hate, but in general Microsoft is a company. I feel like it’s been doing a lot better. They, you know, they’ve been acquiring a lot of good developer tools and stuff like that and for the most part they’ve proven themselves to be pretty good stewards of it all.

Yeah, they still have some shady practices with regards to their OS is where their OS is want to phone home all the time and do all this kind of thing people don’t really like but I mean

No, who doesn’t love them some github though,

yeah exactly. Oh my god. Yes, and they have been such good stewards to it That’s the exact kind of thing that they’re good stewards of those kind of things that are their non core business But that they view as an essential side thing as part of their ecology or whatever or that least helps, you know, those kind of things are what they’re best at I think

Yeah, and I’m not as big a fan of it these days but I know you still use it Visual Studio code is like a fantastic editor and You know it in the olden days that would have been for Microsoft Windows development and that’s it But I mean they’ve enabled it to be a powerful tool for web developing I think you can actually write iOS and Mac code on it I mean, you still need Xcode to build and run and stuff, but it’s a fantastic code editor with wide platform support.

Well, the reason they can do that is they still have actual Visual Studio for doing the Windows development stuff.

Right.

But yeah, it’s pretty good. I like it. It’s not my favorite editor. I do like Nova a lot better in terms of looks.

Nova’s very pretty.

But I need the language support. Nova doesn’t support the stuff that I use. And the problem with Nova is the way that it’s built, it would be very difficult to translate those tools so that I have that language support. And it’s just so much faster to have that language support. I know you don’t have to, you don’t have to have any of that stuff, but it sure makes things a lot faster.

Yeah, but the syntax highlighting and the auto-completion and stuff like that, it’s so nice. And it honestly, it speeds up your productivity.

Oh, a lot faster. You know what else speeds up my productivity? I’ve been using GitHub Copilot.

Yeah, what’s that? Talk to me about it.

GitHub Copilot, it’s like chat GPT-ish, but except it’s been trained on GitHub code. And so it’ll just auto complete whole gigantic sections of code for you.

Wow.

Nine times out of 10, it comes up with the right stuff. And if it doesn’t, it comes up with mostly the right stuff. Then I can just edit the parts that I don’t want.

And there’s a plugin I’m assuming, so it’s integrated right into VS Code?

Yeah.

I’ll have to look and see if Nova’s got one.

Now for what I do, is it worth, they probably just have a chat GPT. They don’t have a co-pilot one because I don’t think co-pilot has an open API for most people.

Right.

But they might have a chat GPT one. But the co-pilot one specifically, and then Amazon’s got a co-pilot equivalent too that’s also been trained on code. I can’t remember what theirs is called.

Yeah.

I haven’t tried that one. Co-pilot, for what I do, is it worth paying for? I don’t know, probably not. I probably won’t pay for it again, but.

Oh, it’s a for pay service?

Oh yeah. It’s like a hundred bucks a year.

Oh, that’s not bad.

It’s not bad.

Not if you get value and use out of it.

Right, but it’s just one more thing that you have to weigh into the total pile of, the total stack of money going out of your house every year.

Yeah.

(laughing)

You know how that is.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Yeah, I don’t know. It’s interesting how often it comes up with good stuff. Like across the gamut, like in the JavaScript section, in the CSS section, it watches what you do and it kind of, you know, comes up, it kind of knows. Yeah, it saves a little bit of time. For me, it’s probably not worth the price, to be honest. The amount of time I’ve saved for what I do, probably not worth the time. But for people that are spending a lot of time actually coding hardcore logic, all I’m doing is doing website development and not a lot of logic. I’m not doing any backend stuff or anything like that either.

I wonder if it would have made Hugo a little bit less of a mess to understand back when we were elbow deep in that.

Maybe. Maybe. Hugo is such a mess. And I blamed Go for that, and I still don’t have any love for Go. But I found out it was actually the Go templating language that was the abomination to man.

Yeah?

Yeah.

It just backwards. It’s Yoda speak. And it doesn’t make any sense in programming complex logic, and it becomes immediately impossible.

Especially once you start nesting stuff.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Then it’s almost impossible to understand.

But I’m really glad to be away from template language. None of those weird bracket syntaxes in order to put stuff in.

Yeah.

I just, you just use HTML and CSS and actual JavaScript or whatever programming language and program the stuff and it’s so much nicer than fighting with templates and ugh.

That’s cool.

Where’d your cat go?

Ah, I don’t know. She wanted to go anywhere but in here, so I let her.

Cats have a way of putting you in your place that way.

She was at the door and then she stuck her head up past the top of the desk and looked over at me and gave me the look and so I opened the door and I let her out.

By the way, this little cat that has adopted us.

Yes.

He’s definitely, so right now we have him in the garage. And then I let him out at times and he runs away and then later that day he comes back. But he wants in our house so bad, and he is… it’s not just that he wants food and water. This cat wants affection. He wants to climb on you, he wants to snuggle up against you. This cat has to have been somebody’s cat. But they didn’t chip it, they didn’t neuter it, they didn’t do anything to it as far as I can tell, and he’s been outside for a while, like he’s not…

I wonder if somebody’s just moved away and abandoned it or something.

I guess, but you know what? The list of missing cats around here is a mile long.

Yeah, you told me.

And I think that there are a lot of people that have cats that are indoor/outdoor cats and they don’t do anything to them. They don’t chip them. They don’t… I don’t know how you can do that. That’s so irresponsible because the cat’s the one that pays because it goes missing.

Yeah. Well, my cats don’t even go outside. I just…

No, ours doesn’t.

I am of the opinion that… No cats were, you know, they’re from the wild originally and they’re capable of surviving out there, but I don’t really feel like the outside world’s a safe place for cats anymore. Not domesticated ones anyway.

I saw this country, I can’t remember what country it was, I’ll have to find this documentary, but it was about cats. And all these people, it’s basically an educational area, it was like this fancy university, very ideal-like place to live, right? But the cats would just wander all over the place. There weren’t very many busy streets and there were huge grassy fields for them to play in and cats would wander all over. So they started tracking these cats to see where they would go just for fun.

Yeah.

You know, put trackers on them. And anyway, that kind of place would be perfect for indoor outdoor cats around here. It’s a terrible place.

America, not so much.

Right.

There’s busy roads all over the place right here. There’s uh, I don’t know. It’s just a hostile area. And plus right now it’s so hot outside. If a cat can’t go inside and it can only be outside, this is a bad time for a cat right now.

Yeah.

But I can’t let this cat in the house. Like I’ve, he doesn’t seem to have fleas. I don’t, I can’t possibly tell about worms or any of that kind of stuff. I don’t see anything. He does use a litter box. That’s the other thing. But I can’t let him in the house cause he’s not neutered and I don’t want, I don’t want to take the even minute chance that he might start spraying. I don’t think he will because I think he and my, he and our cat seem to want to play with each other. They seem to want to get along, but they’ve only interacted through a screen door and then they can smell each other under the inside garage door. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. You could go ahead and just preventatively deworm in him, but the, the getting him,

but the vets won’t touch him though.

Yeah.

That’s won’t touch him until the 90 days are up and we can prove that we’ve tried and now we’re the owner. know where that rule came from and how they would even know. I told my wife I’m like look at some point we’re gonna have to go to a vet and lie and just say this is our cat.

That’s that’s what I said earlier when we were talking about it you know at this point I think I’d honestly just go lie hey we just got this cat we need to get him checked out we need to get him dewormed just to make sure and we need to get him neutered. I mean I get no declawing. I get no

declawing is wrong. I did declaw one cat in my life and I really regretted it.

That’s how we are one of our cats has been declawed and we got it done when we first got her and we honestly we just didn’t understand the process and we didn’t know any better and I learned a little bit more about it afterwards and we’re both wrecked with guilt over the fact that we did it and we’re not Ever doing another one, but it’s the cat. Okay.

Yeah, the terrible thing about it was the cat I did to it weirded that cat out from then on that cat did no

Well in Bella’s case we did it when she was still pretty young

So I don’t know if we had a good baseline of what a personality would have been without it I think about the weirdest thing that she’ll do and this is really when I mean she will honestly just make you feel guilty as She’ll go to like a scratching post or something and she’ll scratch at it Just like she still has the claws, but she has no claws and I just look at it

I thought she would put her paw up there and then she would just look at it and then look at you and be like

No, no, no, she’ll sit there. She’ll just And nothing’s happening

instinct. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The, the one cat that I did it to it, it weirded her out. She didn’t handle it well. And then I, I felt horrible about that. And then, yeah, it’s not something you should do. There are other ways to at least try to minimize the amount of scratching that cat doesn’t,

the term declawing is wildly inaccurate. I mean, it’s accurate, but it doesn’t even begin to encompass what really happens and And it makes it sound much less harmful than it really is. What you’re really talking about is an amputation, 10 amputations at like the first knuckle.

That’s pretty brutal.

It is.

And yeah, it’s just not worth it.

Now we are lucky right now because this current cat that we have midnight, he does not scratch furniture. He scratches things, but not, not furniture. He scratches toys, he scratches cardboard boxes. We always have a cardboard box out for him. At least one. and he scratches those. He even chews on those. He kind of goes nuts and insane and starts attacking cardboard boxes, but he doesn’t scratch furniture, so we’re kind of lucky. I don’t know if what this cat would do, assuming we ever get to the point where we can get him fixed and get him into this house, I don’t know what he would do, but right now all he does is he goes over to where my bikes are and they have exercise mats underneath them. He scratches those. those are rubber so I I’m not that worried about him. He’s so lovey and so friendly, he’s so desperate for attention.

Yeah. He had to have been somebody’s cat.

He for sure was socialized at some point because he seems curious about our cat and wants to interact and he also

well and he’s he spent time indoors if he knows the litter box.

Yeah. Oh he absolutely has and in the day if we’re out there and we open the garage door he’ll follow us out and in but he he won’t leave. And if I let him leave during the day, like yesterday, I was working with Peter. So I opened the door down there and I was like, I can’t trap this cat in here forever, especially if I’m not paying attention to it. So I opened the door and then when I came down, he was gone. But that evening he came right back and as soon as I walked outside looking for him, he was running over to me as fast as he could.

Yeah. You’re his people now.

We’re his people now. He’s definitely socialized, but yeah, at some point we can’t do this for three months. At some point I’m going to have to lie to somebody and-days seems so crazy to me. I get that they don’t want you to steal and neuter someone else’s pet and that they want to give the pet a chance to be reunited with its rightful owner. I totally get that. But 90 days?

90 days seems pretty excessive. It does.

Yeah. So anyway, that’s that.

I would just go to a new vet and lie. That’s what I would do.

Yeah, well, the problem is, that’s the other problem too though, Vic, is just getting a neutering scheduled.

Because you have been making good faith efforts. It’s not like you haven’t tried to find out if somebody else really owns this cat.

No, absolutely not. We registered as lost with the local shelter that everyone gets their information from. We have put up posters, etc, etc. And my wife is online scouring. But the other problem is just getting a neutering scheduled is like two months out anyway, Vic.

Really?

Yeah, it’s crazy around here. There’s so many cats. There’s so many. And apparently there’s so many lost and wandering around. It’s kind of saddening.

It really is heartbreaking when you…

So I filled out the form saying, “Here’s a lost cat.” And so now every day I get emails saying, “These might be matches to the cat that you found.” They’re not. But it’s 80 feet long. I just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. It’s like, my God, this never ends.

That would be heartbreaking. That would be heartbreaking.

It’s like, guys, take care of your friggin’ animals. You know, it’s hard not to be judgmental when you see that list.

I’d end up adopting them all. I’d be the crazy cat guy with like 42 cats.

Yeah, that is the problem. Now we were a little worried ever since the beginning of a midnight’s career here in this house. I’ve always thought about getting him a buddy because he was fostered in a home that had a bunch of animals, dog, cat, multiple cats just, and he’s so social and so playful. And I thought he really needs a buddy, especially on days when we both have to work or whatever. but we haven’t done it because, you know how expensive cats are to own, you know all too well.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

So we haven’t done it, but now it looks like we’re gonna incur that expense anyway, plus a few additional unexpected ones because of this stray cat, but it’s…

Yeah.

I think they’ll get along and it’s kinda, I don’t… At least we have got to try to do right by this cat ‘cause he clearly needs the help and wants the help and he’s willing to accept the help. It’s not like he’s skittish and he’s running away every time we try to help him.

Right.

So anyway.

No, it sounds very much like he’s already adopted you.

Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Anyway, that’s that.

I live here now. These are my people.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the way he’s acting. He wants in the house so bad he can’t figure out why we’re not letting him in.

Yeah.

But anyway.

That’s heartbreaking too. I’d have a hard time with that.

Oh, my wife was in tears today.

Yeah. ‘Cause he’s so lonely out there. We spend time out there.

Can we just let him in?

We spend time out there and our cat just sits there by that door sniffing underneath it wanting to, he wants to go see that cat. That cat is his buddy because.

There’s a friend out there.

Yeah, because before we brought that cat into the garage, that cat would sit right outside, right up against our screen door, trying to basically get in the house as much as it could. And the two cats would interact and they would kind of bat paws at each other. And but neither of them seemed angry or upset. They just seemed like they were having fun.

Yeah.

Anyway, that’s that. I talked about that enough. Everyone’s gone to sleep now.

I hope they’re purring.

We’re the only ones that care about this topic, as I can tell by all the long list of cats that need homes around here.

Yeah. I love cats, man. It’s really funny, I never was a cat person, just basically because I had to have a lot of experience with them. The wife made me into a cat person. I was previously a dog person.

Right.

And there’s a part of me that would still like to one day maybe have another dog, but I’m-

Oh yeah, sure. I totally get it.

I think I will save that possibility for retirement. A time, you know, when I can like really truly be home to give the dog the attention and care it needs and to take it for walks and stuff like that. But she introduced me to, you know, just the joy of cat. And I really love them.

And I think the good thing is that you’re not one of those guys who tries to approach a cat or think of a cat from the dog perspective. Because some people do and then they’re just in for disappointment. Cats are a different animal.

Yeah, they are.

People who look at a cat and say it’s not expressive, they’re insane. Cats are super expressive.

They are. They are.

They just aren’t dogs, that’s all.

Yep.

But they will tell you exactly what they want and need in no uncertain terms if you’re paying attention.

Yep. And there’s no greater joy, man, than… And I mean, I guess to an extent you could get this out of a dog too, especially if it was a smaller dog, but there’s no greater joy for me than like just sitting on my couch watching my recliner and just having a cat on my lap, just purring, whether I’m watching TV, playing my games, staring out the window. Sometimes me and the cat stare out the window together side by side, and it’s just a good time.

It is, I like that. Yeah, for me, it’s at nighttime. Midnight isn’t quite as cuddly. He will climb on our nap and nap during the daytime sometimes if he feels like we’re not gonna go somewhere else, but what he really prefers is a human is lying in bed and he will climb up lay on that human’s legs and just sleep there most of the night.

Yeah.

And occasionally if I get up to go to the bathroom and I come back, he’ll usually get right back on my legs, but occasionally he’ll wander up towards my arm and he wants me to stretch my arm out for him to lay down on it. That can be a shoulder pain experience after a few hours of that. But yeah.

But yeah, my cat will do that. Bella does that when you’re in the recliner. She loves to we call it taking an arm. lot of the times, she’s content a lot of times to just lay in your lap, but a lot of the time, she is very insistent that you put an arm on the armrest so she can lay down across it.

[laughter]

Yep, exactly.

And we call it taking an arm. She’s taking an arm.

Gets really hard to get stuff done.

It does.

Like if you want to be on your computer at the same time, forget about that.

I’ve actually gotten myself used to playing my video games with the game controller to the left hand side so that Bella can play across my left arm while I hold the controller and do my thing.

You can just blame all your in-game deaths on your cat.

That’s right. It’s her fault.

It’s not that Vic’s not a good gamer, it’s that he’s got a cat.

I don’t think it’s fair to put that much blame on the cat, but sure. Cat’s not here to defend itself.

That’s right.

All right, I think we should probably wrap this up because you’ve been more than generous with your time today and your wife has been more than generous with your time today.

All right man.

Good talk.

It’s fun. Always fun.

I have a suspicion that you might be on again next week. Don’t tell the listeners.

Okay.

Okay.

I’m clicking an orange button.