Episode 51 – Excited and a Little Disappointed
Soundboard Friends with Brews!
Peter: Wait, I was going to do that again, but I didn’t do that again.
Scott: Oh, you were gonna do that again. By the way, hi Peter.
Peter: Hey! What? Hey, Scott, how are you?
Scott: By the way, when you said you wanted to put me on noise suppression mode, I’m like, you
Peter: I’m just going to mute you.
Scott: have no idea how many people want to put me on noise suppression mode. You are not the first.
Peter: Boom. Oh, man.
Scott: You’re not the first. I’m doing great.
Peter: Hi, Scott, how are you?
Scott: You’re in a different location than normal.
Peter: I am. I am in Vermont.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Peter: Yes, so I might sound a little different.
Scott: Okay, I’m watching that panda bear behind you that’s gonna dive on you at any second.
Peter: There’s a little bit of padding here. The walls are not padded. I’m not in a room with padded walls, but I am in a plush recliner and there’s some carpet on the floor, so maybe that will, you know, chill the echo effect, effect, effect, effect, effect. Yeah. He might. And there’s a koala over here also that is waiting along with Rowdy Roddy Piper, the
Scott: Oh.
Peter: I believe only WWF at the time, now F now E wrestler that I ever bought. He was a thumb wrestler, so you can stick your thumb in their back and you would thumb wrestle with them. Yeah, I knew you were going to say that.
Scott: Really glad that hole’s not a little lower.
Peter: I have a very classic and rough-shaped Spider-Man action figure.
Scott: That’s Spider-Man. Oh my God, his wrist is so broken.
Peter: Well, that can be fixed.
Scott: What did you do to him? Oh, okay.
Peter: It articulates.
Scott: I see, I see.
Peter: But, wait, there’s more. Who else was my favorite childhood superhero? Superman.
Scott: Oh.
Peter: Same thing. Same series, same articulation.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Peter: So yeah. Yep, and man, these are ancient.
Scott: Same look of use.
Peter: These things are like 40 some odd years old.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Peter: Wow. Yeah, my parents, they were hoarders. So yeah. Oh boy, that’s been on my mind a lot lately because one of the things my dad said this
Scott: I was gonna say, take those before.
Peter: year or next year, he wants to start tackling the third floor. And for the longest time before I moved out, the third floor was my bedroom. So there are still lots of old books and all my complete set of all my G.I. Joe toys, the four-inch 1980s series. There’s a lot of memories there. There might even be some value there. Well, that’s the thing. But if I take them, now I have not just a chore, but a project to actually sell them
Scott: Hmm.
Peter: somehow.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: And that’s the thing. So my concern is that an auctioneer comes and takes them to an auction and says, who will give $50 to the whole lot sold?
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Peter: And it’s gone. Whereas I did a quick look on eBay and some of them, I don’t know, it’s been decades since I’ve had my hands on them. I know some of them are going to be in super rough shape, poor condition at best, but others
Scott: Ah.
Peter: are near mint and a couple are still in the blister packs. A couple of them I bought later on for collection purposes as opposed to play purposes.
Scott: You could retire.
Peter: But I saw some of them fetching 50 bucks apiece. And there are at least 100, maybe hundreds up there. So I don’t know about that. But anyway, that’s more like it.
Scott: You could retire for a week. Well.
Peter: So yeah, it’s just like, you know, there’s that between that and my old comic books.
Scott: Peter: , you send me your comics and I promise you’ll get all the money that’s coming to
Peter: I just don’t know how to take the first step to get rid of them. So I got to take a step soon. But hey, yes. I’ll drink to that.
Scott: you. Okay, tell us what you are drinking because you were excited about this one. Oh.
Peter: I am.
Scott: Yay.
Peter: Now here’s the thing.
Scott: Ah, yeah.
Peter: I’m excited and I’m a little disappointed.
Scott: See, that other one was the chocolate one.
Peter: And I don’t know if it’s just this one. I am drinking and oh my God, three philosophers. Now dear listener, if you have stuck with us for far too long, you may say, but wait, Peter, you’ve had that on the podcast before. Technically, I haven’t because the one that I had on the podcast before was the double chocolate roasted version. This is the classic non-chocolate version.
Scott: Ah, yeah.
Peter: That one had a lot of chocolate.
Scott: See, that other one was the chock full of chocolate one. That one had a lot of chocolate in it.
Peter: But what I’m starting to think is I think my tastes have changed because I’m not enjoying this as much as I used to.
Scott: What does this taste like to you?
Peter: It tastes too strong.
Scott: But is it like a portish beer type of thing? What sort of too strong is it?
Peter: Have you ever had barley wine?
Scott: I don’t know.
Peter: It tastes, it reminds, barley wines remind me of this. It’s a Belgian quadruple. It’s 9.7% alcohol.
Scott: So, whatever’s behind you is very soft, right?
Peter: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a sipping beer and this is why my father had the other half of this. So we’re sharing it. Oh yeah, I got strategic about this.
Scott: Okay, good.
Peter: And for dinner, it’s just hamburgers.
Scott: I was gonna say, next time I see Peter, he’ll look as singed as that Superman.
Peter: Now of course there might be an open flame involved, so that could get fun. But still, I figured at least I won’t screw that up. I might burn myself a little bit, but I’m not going to. What happened to your eyebrows? But this is my last drink of the week.
Scott: Nice.
Peter: Why? Because I have a race coming up this weekend.
Scott: Oh, that sounds fun.
Peter: On Saturday, I have my first half marathon trail run. Yes. Oh heck yeah.
Scott: I know from experience that you can run that distance on a trail.
Peter: No, this will be fun. That was like my warm up last year when I was prepping for the 50.
Scott: Yeah, whereas I did that 13-mile trail run with you and my hips never been the same since,
Peter: It would be like, oh, just ran a half marathon this morning. Only one more to go. That was so much fun.
Scott: but it was a blast.
Peter: A bear.
Scott: Okay, so here’s what I’m having to drink. I’m having an Anderson Valley, a Foul Hornen pumpkin ale.
Peter: Oh, a pumpkin ale.
Scott: And I gotta say, this is a California brewer. This is not a local one, but it says ale brewed with pumpkin and spices. I have to say, usually anything that is pumpkin or pumpkin spice is way overrated.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: And I don’t expect this to be that much different, but I’ll give it a try because why not? Whoops, I should have done that near the mic.
Peter: Pop.
Scott: All right, here comes the pour.
Peter: Oh, it came through just fine. Yeah, apologies listener. You don’t get to hear the can pop for me because I’m pre-gaming.
Scott: All right.
Peter: But you know, there you go. Nice foamy top. Cheers.
Scott: These drinks actually look quite similar.
Peter: Mm-hmm. That’s good.
Scott: They’re not, but they look very similar. The color is almost identical. So yeah, pumpkin spice is overrated, but this is not a bad one. For a pumpkin spice, I’ll give this a thumbs up.
Peter: So yeah, we’re in pumpkin spice season, but we’re also in Oktoberfest season.
Scott: That’s probably true.
Peter: And I think really these days, I have leaned towards those. So Oktoberfest and MyFest or Mayfest beers, I think that’s my sweet spot these days. Definitely feels like my taste buds, my palate has changed a little bit. So maybe, you know what, if I wait on this for a little while and I wait and have the rest of it with dinner, I’ll bet you that’ll be a different experience.
Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peter: If I just take just a couple more sips, but I have it with a hamburger, that’ll probably rescue this and then I’ll love it again.
Scott: Oh. Right. And somebody had lost their eyebrows, so.
Peter: So I’m remembering like when I was first exposed to it, it was at my friend’s, Lori and Randy’s place and it was at a barbecue. So it would likely have been served with some kind of grilled beef, pork, chicken kind of thing. So a couple of things. We have public service announcement slash question from your side.
Scott: Okay, sure.
Peter: I have a quick little public service announcement first. Have your house in order.
Scott: It’s not what you think will happen in most cases.
Peter: If you don’t have a will, at least familiarize yourself. Have a conversation with a lawyer or maybe with a GPT and just understand what happens to all your stuff that you leave behind when the time comes. It’s good to just know exactly what’s going on. Yeah, exactly. The laws are different from state to state, so you never, you shouldn’t assume.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: But anyway, we went through recently some stuff with my father. So I was just going through all the different documents and things that we have.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: While all the paperwork is in order, we found that on his retirement accounts, his beneficiaries are not set up properly. And that doesn’t matter what happens with it. Like we have a trust set up for the house so that when my parents pass on, the house flows through to me. It doesn’t have to go through probate court. That’s great. It doesn’t affect anything in their retirement accounts. So as timing, you know, perfect timing, right? I decided, well, let me get this all squared away. I want to do this as soon as possible. As it happens, my father’s account is being migrated from TD Ameritrade over to Schwab this weekend.
Scott: You know what?
Peter: So I can’t do anything with his account. I can’t get into his accounts because I don’t know if Schwab, I think Schwab bought TD. So they’re moving, you know, all existing accounts over. Could be.
Scott: I think they’re doing the same thing with E-Trade. Somebody bought E-Trade and the timing is almost coincidental.
Peter: Could be.
Scott: The accounts are migrating. I don’t know if it’s this week, but it’s very soon.
Peter: Yeah. So anyway, as it happens, you know, my dad’s going in for a procedure tomorrow morning, which is always just a good reminder to have all your documents in place because you never know what happens. Right.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: You know, anesthesia, you know, it’s a nasty thing, especially if you’re getting on in age.
Scott: All right. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Peter: So not knowing, you know, what might happen.
Scott: Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Peter: Good time to have everything done.
Scott: Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Peter: And sure enough.
Scott: Bye. Sorry if this is a little messy, but I got to say, it really does help with the sound.
Peter: Oh, yeah, you can’t make any accounts changes. The account’s locked until Tuesday morning. As it happens, the account will unlock about an hour and a half before his procedure is scheduled. So I will have all the documents signed and everything and just getting ready to upload as soon as I can. But it’s just like, if you wait until two, it’s like installing, you know, endpoint security software on your laptop. If you wait until you already have an attack and an infection, it’s probably a little too late.
Scott: Yeah, don’t wait till the hackers are already in there encrypting all your files.
Peter: Bingo. So that’s my tip.
Scott: So now I can see you on the morning of the procedure. You’ll be clacking away and your dad will be going, Hey, Peter, wish me good luck and you’ll be hold on. I’m trying to make sure I get all your stuff.
Peter: Yeah, wish me better bandwidth. Come on. So over to you, Scott.
Scott: OK, well, first of all, I just want to say that a few minutes ago, the reason my mouth was full was because in addition to the beer,
Peter: Cookie.
Scott: I also had a yeah, a s’mores cookie that my wife made. It’s like a chocolate chip cookie plus.
Peter: Plus mushroom, I mean mushroom plus. How many beers have I had?
Scott: No.
Peter: Plus marshmallow.
Scott: Yeah, I don’t recognize the marshmallow, and there’s also little tiny pieces of graham cracker and they’re not very many, just like a couple per cookie. It’s really good.
Peter: OK, OK, good, good.
Scott: Anyway, when I was younger and to be honest, not that long ago, but I had this tendency to get in a mindset at work or when I was trying to learn new technical things or when I was trying to do something that I hadn’t done before, I would get frustrated and I would come to the conclusion.
Peter: .
Scott: I would just come to the conclusion that I couldn’t do it, like I would start really beating up on myself and it leads to a spiral of negativity because then you’re not focusing on the job, you’re focusing on you yourself. Frustration never helps to begin with anyway.
Peter: Mm hmm. Mm
Scott: And it’s also a crappy way to live thinking I suck at this stupid job, I would fire me if I was me. I’ve overcome that over time and I haven’t felt that way for a long, long, long, long, long, long time until Saturday.
Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Scott: I was trying to do some weekend testing for the engineers and the most basic things were failing and I was just, I went there again and it has been a long time since I’ve been there. I don’t like it. I don’t want to go there. And for the most part, I think I understand how I got out of that mess to begin with and quit beating myself up unnecessarily and learned how to handle stuff productively.
Peter: Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Scott: And I learned that it was okay not to A, know everything right away, B, to take time to learn certain things. And I also discovered that sometimes when you go back to things that seemed confusing or hard, then they make way more sense the second time or just later down the road sometimes. Anyway, somehow I got past all that, but I guess my question is maybe not to the same degree as that, but have you ever had situations where you’ve allowed yourself to get into that zone and what is your mental approach towards defeating that?
Peter: Mm hmm. So first question, is this not just a form of imposter syndrome?
Scott: It is, but it’s worse than that because imposter syndrome, yeah, it leads to imposter syndrome, I would say.
Peter: Okay, so it’s imposter syndrome adjacent.
Scott: Yeah, it’s a type of imposter syndrome, but it’s not really the same thing. It’s more like, oh my God, I can’t even do this very simple thing. Why am I failing? They put me here to help them get this thing done because we’re under a time crunch and I’m filling up the clock for sure. So that’s a win, but I’m not actually getting anything done and I’m apparently too stupid to live.
Peter: I mean, it sounds like imposter syndrome, if you ask me.
Scott: It is, but it’s more, there’s way more frustration and depression involved.
Peter: It’s extreme imposter syndrome. It’s imposter syndrome on steroids.
Scott: But imposter syndrome is more of a chronic thing, whereas this is more of a, I can’t do this simple thing. This particular thing.
Peter: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Scott: Getting frustrated is one thing and getting frustrated in and of itself isn’t bad, but when you start turning your frustration on yourself, then it’s just useless. You become useless because you’re not going to solve your problems once you get into that mindset. And like I said, I haven’t had that problem in so long.
Peter: Okay.
Scott: I’d forgotten how much it sucks. And I’m just curious if you’ve ever had a situation where you were just beating the crap out of yourself and focusing on your own inability to get something done instead of on the problem. .
Peter: So I don’t think that’s happened for quite some time, and maybe this is the same thing, but in my second job out of college, I ran a novel network for a college.
Scott: .
Peter: And the system would crack like daily, which was not NetWare style, you know, and I was really, really frustrated because I had gone through almost the whole CNE training at that point, certified novel engineer stuff. And I had no idea what the heck was going on, and I don’t even remember what the final fix was, but we ended up calling in an outside consultant who came in and adjusted some things and things got better. But that stuck with me because I felt hopeless and powerless, and I just had no idea, no clue. Yeah, but that was when I actually, not to diverge too much, but that’s where I started to realize that even when you go through a CNE training or MCSE stuff, there’s still so much out there that’s not covered in training that you’re only going to find on the job, in a book somewhere, in a knowledge-based article somewhere, working with someone else.
Scott: Yep. Uh, sure!
Peter: So anyway, how did I handle that? I mean, not very well. Eventually I ended up quitting that job, not because of this event. But I mean, I do remember though, there was a long span of weeks where I was just like, you know, like I hated going to work, you know, because I was like, here it goes again, oh, the server’s cr—
Scott: Okay. You
Peter: People would even ask, you know, like something would go slower a little and they’re like, are we crashing? I was like, what? What do you mean? No. So anyway, I don’t know that that’s happened to me professionally. I think imposter syndrome has definitely happened to me professionally. What I was going to say though is when I do my long runs sometime, I have definitely, most recently, I have definitely gotten that feeling of I can’t do this. That definitely has come back a few times. And you know, like yesterday, my long run was just, you know, 10K, which is less than half of the ultra because I’m a—less than half the half marathon. It’s not even a quarter marathon. And yesterday I was really, really frustrated because for the first time in a long time, I was stumbling. I was like stubbing my toe and that was a chronic problem last year leading up to the ultra.
Scott: Right I remember
Peter: I thought I had fixed it with my gait adjustment and just like, you know, making sure that I supinate my, you know, left foot. So, but even consciously focusing on that, I was still hitting stuff.
Scott: You
Peter: And then I realized that if I’m in like my head down, hunched over kind of mode, or I’m just barely trying to slog through, that’s when it happens. When my head is up and, you know, chest open and I’m bounding across things, it wasn’t happening.
Scott: Yeah, it sounds like a posture when you get tired issue You
Peter: Yeah. So a couple things to get back to your question. The fix on this for me was to walk when I was feeling tired like that and then bound and run when I wasn’t, you know, being more careful and also being a little more respectful of the terrain that I was on. So there were some bits, it’s one of my favorite trails, but it’s got some gnarly rocky bits. And I found myself just walking through a lot of it just to be careful, right? It might be something as simple as, I have given this advice numerous times over the course of my career, take a break and come back to it later. You know, if you can, right now, if you’re a paramedic, first responder, you know, at a head on collision, that’s maybe is not really the best option.
Scott: Yeah, for sure if you can yeah I need a break mister. You seem to be bleeding badly and I’m not stopping it So I’m just gonna go over there for a while
Peter: This is really stressful, man. I don’t know. But I would say that, you know, probably in the high 90th percentile, people, you know, are not in life or death situations in their job and probably could afford to take a break and circle back to it.
Scott: You Yeah, yeah, yeah
Peter: This is where, you know, I’ve been reading recently, I don’t remember what it was, but you know, some books about how the subconscious kicks in to, you know, once it’s given time, you can sort of like runs in a background process to work on a project.
Scott: For sure
Peter: I think that can be good for intellectual things that are stumping you, you know, right now. You know, but if the problem is like, I need to stack this cord of wood, and I can’t even pick up a single piece right now.
Scott: It definitely is See if you’ve grown arms in the meantime
Peter: I don’t know if that’s going to be a subconscious thing. But you know, again, maybe try again in a half an hour and see how it goes then, you know, taking a break and just maybe, maybe.
Scott: Yeah, I I mean
Peter: So, you know,
Scott: It’s it’s interesting too because I Yesterday or whatever day Saturday. I was so frustrated. I have not been that frustrated about work in so long And I was like, this is useless when I worked out later working out really helped working out definitely helps and and I will say for people if they don’t believe that
Peter: Oh, no, no question.
Scott: Fitness is good for a lot of things including getting rid of stress. It absolutely is you Can channel your rage into a workout and you will feel and it just clears your mind just making your body suffer a little bit Mm-hmm
Peter: Yep, no, absolutely. I was just flipping through YouTube yesterday, and this guy that I, you know, has come across my feed as recommended, someone asked him like, he was, you know, challenging people like to come up with like, if you just had three workouts that you could do, what would they be, you know, three, three different moves that you could do in your workout.
Scott: You
Peter: And he came down to three different ones. One of them is just body weight rows. So you know, you’re basically like pulling yourself up, which I had been doing before I got myself an actual pull up bar.
Scott: You never fell
Peter: I was doing those by just taking a broomstick and wedging it between two bar stools and you know, pulling myself up like that. No, no, it was properly stabilized. Another one that he did is the what’s called cross body lift and press, you take a kettlebell.
Scott: You Right
Peter: And you have it, imagine you have the kettlebell like by your left foot, you reach down cross with your right hand, you have a little bit of a squat to pick it up, you bring it up, lift, and then press, and then send it back down again. So it’s kind of like a, like a piece of the Turkish get up. It’s not a snatch, you know, it’s like you don’t you pause for like a split second and then send it back up again.
Scott: You
Peter: And I just did a few of those today just before I got in the car to drive north to see my dad. And I felt great just doing those moves.
Scott: Hmm
Peter: And between that and all the you know, listening that I’m doing to running coaches and stuff, I’m realizing I need to start committing to doing strength exercises on the regular as part of my routine, not just physical therapy for my knee and for my shoulder.
Scott: Right, right
Peter: But you know, just doing those and so this, you know, it might have been timely, this YouTube video came along.
Scott: Right
Peter: But third exercise he likes is the lizard crawl. So you get down on all fours, right? And you know, think Spider Man, right? So you’re like fairly wide out. And you move like opposite hand and foot at the same time. But when you’re doing this, the hip that’s coming when the when the leg stays back, you’re like rotating it so that hip goes down towards the ground.
Scott: Right You
Peter: And it’s a pretty intense, you know, workout. I just did a few like, you know, like one half lap around my living room like that. I was like, Okay, I got to prepare for this. So it’s fairly intense. So I was like, Okay, can I, you know, I don’t know if those three exactly are the ones that I need to be doing. But I definitely want to start doing something again with a kettlebell and incorporating those into, you know, more than just running. But I’m not going to start anything brand new right now because I have a race coming up in just, you know, in a week. Yeah, exactly.
Scott: Don’t throw your body out of whack But no running and cycling and things like that endurance sports That have the same motions over and over and over personally
Peter: Uh huh.
Scott: I like those kind of things because you can get in a zone and you can just feel amazing and I know running can have it but there’s been so many times I felt it with biking where the slope of the hill or whatever it is plus the gear ratio It just combines perfectly and I can get this RPM that I like and it’s just enough to be hard, but it’s not too hard I feel like I could go for a long time at it, but I know I’m working hard Endurance exercise gives you that in a way that no other kind of exercise can
Peter: Yeah, no, I agree.
Scott: But those exercises are super bad for your body in terms of they’re just repetitive exercises They’re just the same thing over and over and over and over thousands and thousands and thousands of time So you really do need to balance yourself out with things like yoga and things like strength training and things that do other
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: Kind of weird lateral motions that aren’t just a straightforward motion
Peter: Yes.
Scott: Yeah
Peter: I was gonna say they can be bad for your body if that’s all you ever do. And I mean, they can be bad for your body if you do other stuff to sure don’t get me wrong. But yeah, I know I need to commit to more cross training. And on that note, one of my students, one of my yoga students just sent me this book, which I’ve just started reading, and it’s called Built from Broken.
Scott: You Ooh a science-based guide to healing painful joints preventing injuries and rebuilding your body
Peter: So the thing is that, you know, spoiler alert, his big thing is, it’s all strength training. It’s all resistance training. And he even says, like, you know, you can’t run or stretch your way out of this, you know, you have to do strength training.
Scott: I want that because the only thing I ever have is my right hip still has some issues and it’s not bad most the time It doesn’t bother me, but I do feel it when I do yoga and stuff
Peter: And he always is like, are you talking to the yogi runner? It sounds like you’re talking to the yogi runner here.
Scott: Well, it makes sense because your muscles can help stabilize and compensate for joints and connective tissue that are having issues Yeah
Peter: Yep. And plus, you know, it’s going to be letting you, you know, when you get into your advanced age and stuff, you know, the, the muscles are kind of what move you around, right? You know, like being able to have the infrastructure there and, you know, holding it together is one thing, but if you want to get up out of bed, muscles are kind of a requirement.
Scott: When I was younger I used to do it but you would never know by looking at me but I used to do lots of weightlifting and
Peter: Right.
Scott: I don’t really want to do that anymore that bores the crap out of me But body weight exercises strength exercises that don’t involve barbells and dumbbells maybe dumbbells. That’s not true I do use some dumbbells for my shoulders, but I think that strength training that isn’t with the goal of getting bigger but it’s just with the goal of using those muscles and Strengthening them that way that’s the kind of thing that I’m interested in
Peter: So on that note, I recently gave away my ancient Bowflex weight bench that I had, there’s nothing wrong with it, except that it was lacking the leg attachment. And I want to be able to do like leg extensions, or, you know, knee curls, because those are good for your knees and stuff, right, and your hamstrings and stuff like that.
Scott: you
Peter: So I bought a replacement, and it was, you know, top rated on Amazon, 100 some odd bucks or something, started putting it together last night. And wouldn’t you know, the first four pack of screws that I opened has only three screws in it. So I got as far as putting in one screw, one washer, one bolt, and I’m looking for the next one. And I was like, well, wait, there’s, I’m supposed to put two of these here and two of these, son of a… I emailed them. And I’m just wondering, like, you know, should I have offered to like, hey, is it cheaper for you just to reimburse me if I run over to the hardware store and get one of these bolts? Is that going to be easier than you shipping me all new? Because they’re probably going to set a whole new set of all the bolts and everything, you know. So anyway, I’m curious to see how this plays out.
Scott: Yes That’s kind of funny I always wondered about Bowflex I never had one but it seems to me like the resistance would be
Peter: To be clear, this is not a Bowflex. It’s a weight bench by Bowflex. Yeah, what I did get is I got the adjustable dumbbells. So they go from like, I think five or seven and a half, I think five pounds to 52 and a half pounds each.
Scott: It’s strongest at the worst point. It seems backwards of what you want Okay, gotcha gotcha Yeah You Those are nice, yeah
Peter: Yeah, I’ve had them for like, kind of closing in on 20 years at this point. They still, I was just gonna say they weighed just as much as they did when I bought them.
Scott: Yeah, but they still amazingly they still weigh the same after all this time Peter Uh-huh
Peter: They did release an updated version, which is a little more compact, a little more streamlined. But, you know, it’s generally not an issue. So I use those a lot.
Scott: Yeah, and it’s probably not worth spending 200 bucks to get that set
Peter: No, no. Anyway, so I still have the original, you know, I kept the dumbbells and stuff, I just got rid of the weight bench. I’ve been doing a lot of that cleaning house, giving away a lot of books lately, just extra clutter and stuff.
Scott: Mm-hmm
Peter: And I think it’s a lot of its mental preparation for, you know, what I have to do at my parents’ place. Anyway, what else we got?
Scott: That’s about it I think just to circle back and close off my topic I think one of the things that does help a lot is
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: talking to other people that you’re working with and going over the situation with them because If you work with the right people a third, they’re not going to care that you’re asking questions and B
Peter: Yep.
Scott: They’re gonna like today. I got on teams with an engineer saying hey, I didn’t I really didn’t get anything done And we went over some of the problems I was having and some of it is broken software
Peter: Yep.
Scott: Some of it is changes that have been introduced since when I was off for a while and I didn’t know anything about That just the fact that she was fine with what it had been done And then we just looked at the different software and then she saw that there were some issues that she hadn’t been aware of that She needed to take to the people writing the software It just helps to have people who verify that you’re not insane
Peter: Yep.
Scott: Verify that they don’t think that you’re an incompetent idiot because they’re clearly willing to spend time with you going over the stuff and Trusting that you’re gonna try to do your best That kind of thing is great. And so it also brings up the idea of when people come to you you don’t know how frustrated or You don’t know if they’re like I’m a moron. I can’t do this. Make sure that you treat their questions as though You would want yours to be treated
Peter: Yeah, but then that sort of gets back to my story too is, you know, you got help, right? You know, with us, we called in an outside consultant and you know, you went so yeah, I mean that. Take a break, get help, try again.
Scott: You Yeah, and do a long bike ride
Peter: And do a long book, right? Or talk to a running coach who can examine your gait or examine it yourself and fix your posture.
Scott: Fix your toe. Yeah
Peter: On that note, I think we should wrap it up. Do you have one Raycast? Favorite new Raycast discovery of the week?
Scott: Oh one interesting one, it’s not that exciting but it’s kind of cool There’s one called describe cron and it’s in the raycast store. It’s an extension if you install it Basically, you can paste a cron line in there you paste the first part of the cron line in so not the command
Peter: That’s a store add-on?
Scott: but the asterisks part of the cron and It will tell you this means this is happening every minute. This means this is happening every three minutes This means this is happening every five day, you know, it’ll tell you that kind of stuff and it’s pretty cool Yeah, it’s an extension so I kind of like that
Peter: Got it. I’d be really curious if we give it to the one that I posted in Slack the other day. Describe that. Here, let me message it to you again here.
Scott: Exactly To be honest, I’ve never seen this format inside a cron tab before this is kind of a friggin amazing. Okay, so
Peter: Describe this cron.
Scott: You Invalid expression this whoever wrote this extension did not know about this kind of thing You
Peter: Yeah, I just learned that apparently the cron demon supports code expansion because you should just post it into because I was looking like, how do I run a specific job on the last day of the month?
Scott: You
Peter: Right? Last day of the month, it could be the 28th, 29th, 30th or 31st. How do you know? And this guy came up with an item tested yet, so I don’t know if it works, but theoretically it does. But you basically in square brackets, you say code language equals blah. And in this case it’s bash. And then you give it some stuff and apparently the cron parser will like, spish it over to bash and parse that out and give you results. I was like, that’s kind of neat. Linux never ceases to amaze me. Okay.
Scott: Yeah, the whole
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: Shell never ceases to amaze me and the whole expansion of term expansion code expansion Whatever you want to call it expansion is the most interesting thing because it can really trick you It’s one of those things where if you understand it, it can be incredibly powerful. I gotta say for the time Yeah, what a forward-looking operating system they created when Unix was created and these different shells were created She’s very amazing
Peter: I mean, of course they’ve evolved over time, right? But fundamentally, you know, this stuff has been around for like 50 years.
Scott: Yeah, it is amazing well, you know, what’s funny is Peter just thinking about time just thinking about how long I’ve been using Macs and
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: computers in general It really makes you understand how how much time is going by when we’re on iOS 17 is coming up It’s weird because I don’t think of myself as having used the Mac that long I don’t think of the Mac has been around that long but iOS is coming up on 17 years That’s crazy
Peter: I got my first Mac in 1996.
Scott: I got my first Mac in 1984 Then I used that one way too long even though it was upgraded to a Mac plus and I kept upgrading it then well, we’ve talked about this before then I was on PCs for a while, but You think about how long ago that was but just to think that the iPhone still feels relatively new But to think that it’s been around for about 17 years now is insane
Peter: You think it feels new now go and grab an old original iPhone and boot it up. Yeah. I feel like, wait, what the heck?
Scott: You Yeah, I’m trying to think what the oldest one I have is I think the oldest one have is an iPhone 5 I think I have an iPhone 5
Peter: I think I told you a few months ago, you know, I did this, I helped a friend clean out a whole bunch of old stuff and I had her old 1996 power book. Yeah. And an original iPhone. That was a wow. That was a wow moment for sure.
Scott: Yeah, you sent me some of those pictures You Very interesting. Well Peter before we get any older. I should let you go have dinner You should go cook dinner don’t fall in
Peter: Let’s do that. I should go cook dinner. I will not fall in and I will pair the remainder of my three philosophers with a burger and hope that it gets even better.
Scott: Okay, and next time we talk let me give you a cat update Oh, yeah, his name is Mikan
Peter: I wanted to know if you had named the pumpkin cat yet. I did not know this.
Scott: Yeah, cuz he’s like a little orange so we named him Mikan which is Japanese orange tangerine ish thing How do we leave there’s things that we have to say
Peter: Perfect. Excellent. All right. Next time we talk, I’ll get a cat update.
Scott: Okay
Peter: Well, we can tell people to find us at friendswithbrews.com. That’s B-R-E-W-S. And I think we should just call it there. Although I did just get the renewal notice for friendswithbrews, the other brews, dot com. Yeah. Yeah. I haven’t decided if I’m going to renew that yet. I probably will. But anyway, on that note, we should push the big red button.
Scott: I saw that I saw that You The big You
Peter: The big, the red, tell your friends, button, etc. Yeah. The big, the red, the button. The button. The big, the red, the button.