Episode 59 – Caught up on Monsters

Scott: Friends with Brews.

Scott: Yeah, when I moved my FaceTime window out of the way, I accidentally muted the mic without even realizing it because another window popped up in front of it right away.

Peter: It’s 2024, Scott, and we still have audio problems.

Scott: It’s 2024, we’re started off struggling mightily.

Scott: And I apparently need to get a hold of Rogue Amoeba and talk to them about their audio hijack problems because I’m sick of it.

Peter: Yeah, so you might have good luck with that.

Peter: You might be able to actually, you know, get in touch with somebody who can make a difference.

Peter: Maybe, I don’t know.

Peter: And I’m referring to Speechify.

Peter: So I have been sending them multiple bug reports and the number two guy at the company looped me into two more, presumably engineers, last week in an email exchange.

Scott: Two more conferences that go nowhere?

Peter: Well, no, I was like, so this time I’ve been having a problem with one of their features is, I think I pointed out to you and Adam a couple months ago, I found out, or a month or so ago, they have a way to tap into Amazon Kindle books.

Peter: So you can add your Kindle library and it would read it.

Peter: Well, the problem is, you can see where the problem would manifest.

Peter: If you look at the page of Kindle text, there was a bar like a little bit before the page ended and Speechify would read to that bar and then it would skip to the next page.

Peter: So it was always clipping the bottom of whatever page is.

Peter: And I was like, guys, come on, what’s going on?

Peter: And so they’re like, oh, what book does this happen on?

Peter: Can you reproduce?

Peter: I’m like, yes, I can reproduce it.

Peter: Here, here’s a video of it happening.

Peter: Here’s this book.

Peter: Here’s it happening in this book.

Peter: Here’s how, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Peter: And they’re like, oh, yep, we’re gonna fix that in the next release.

Peter: And they’re like, yep, that’s been fixed.

Peter: I’m like, yes, it has.

Peter: But now this bug exists.

Peter: And I gave them screenshots and I reproduced it and I’m like, wow, thanks a lot for the detailed troubleshooting.

Peter: I’m at the point now where I’m gonna say, hey guys, I think you need to put me into your beta channel and refund my subscription.

Peter: I’m doing enough work for you and pointing out these bugs and stuff that I think I’ve earned the 120 or whatever I paid for it, guys.

Scott: Well, apparently it sounds to me like they introduced a feature that they don’t use and apparently don’t have any internal testing for.

Peter: It doesn’t sound like it.

Peter: Sounds like I’m paying them a decent subscription, 10 bucks a month or 12 bucks a month or something on average to be a beta tester for them.

Peter: I also wrote a review and I think I give it two stars.

Peter: I was like, you know, the voices are amazing.

Peter: I’ve tried Natural Readers, I’ve tried Voicestream, there’s Siri, their voices are definitely better.

Peter: No question.

Peter: Everything else about the product is an alpha quality.

Peter: It’s just not ready for prime time.

Peter: So there you go.

Scott: Apparently, all their engineers are voice engineers and none of them are product app usage UI.

Peter: Could be, or maybe they don’t have a product manager.

Peter: So, hey, before we get too far, because I’ve got another audio thing to complain about, but we should talk about what we’re drinking.

Scott: They have a product mangler.

Scott: Oh yes, we should talk about what we’re drinking.

Scott: First of all, what are you drinking, Peter?

Scott: Because you said that it was going to be a repeat apparently.

Peter: This is a rerun, a Huckershore Oktoberfest Marzen.

Scott: Now you’re making me want to drink a beer and all I have is a coffee.

Peter: The original filtered Fest beer.

Peter: So I had been both drinking less alcohol and also drinking less in the afternoons, you know.

Peter: I’m making some exception.

Peter: Travel kind of screwed everything up.

Scott: Well, I was going to say, I think New Year’s Eve kind of screwed something up because I kept seeing beer lists pouring in from different messaging apps that you were using.

Peter: Yes, well, that happened too.

Peter: So yes, I’m having a Huckershore Oktoberfest Marzen.

Peter: And you are having?

Scott: I’m having a coffee, and I can’t find this coffee on the website of the roasting company.

Scott: However, it is called Steady State Roasting.

Scott: I got this coffee through Trade Coffee.

Scott: So I don’t know if it’s like a one-off or if it’s just now off of Steady State’s site, but it’s called Thal, T-H-A-L, which is a bit weird.

Scott: I don’t know what it means, but it’s described as sweet and tart with a unique floral note of cardamom.

Scott: And it’s pretty good.

Scott: It’s not bad.

Scott: Again, the problem with getting so many different coffees is it takes time to figure out how this coffee wants to be brewed.

Peter: Yes.

Scott: And I also have the difficulty of still trying to adjust my brewing style to the, what’s it called that we have?

Scott: The fellow, what, what, who, huh?

Scott: The opus.

Scott: The grinder.

Scott: Yeah, the opus.

Scott: The big penguin from Bloom County or whatever.

Peter: So while you’re doing that, I want to open my drink because I’d like to get going on that.

Scott: Please do, please do.

Peter: So I gotta, yeah, so regale us, but you’ll also get a, in the background, you may get a little bit of a sound effect.

Scott: Yeah, that’s what I want.

Scott: Peter, you’re here for the sound.

Scott: We want you for your sound effects.

Scott: When people think of Peter, they think of sound effects.

Scott: They think of, they think of that sound in specific.

Peter: Like that character, Larvel Jones from Police Academy.

Scott: Yes.

Peter: Cheers, friends.

Scott: Cheers, my friend.

Scott: Do you know what else I’m gonna do?

Scott: I’m gonna run down real quick and get myself a beer, because, do you remember, I said that Little Beast Brewing had a lot of beers at Whole Foods, but they never got my, what was the one with the owls?

Scott: The third eye blind?

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: They just have some stupid name.

Scott: Anyway, the one with the owls, the stout, the third.

Scott: Let me go to friendswithbrews.com.

Scott: Third Bird Oatmeal Stout, that’s what it was.

Scott: And they never had it again.

Scott: And it’s one of my favorites.

Scott: And now they have it and I bought it.

Scott: So I’m gonna go grab one of those since you’re tempting me with a beer.

Peter: While you do that, do we pause or do I tell the listener about my other audio issue regarding the Sonos Line In and Adapter and my new Aero 100s?

Scott: Please do tell them about your Line In issues.

Peter: Well, dear listener, I will regale you with a story of Line In or Line Out issues.

Peter: So, just flew back from a week in New Orleans.

Peter: I was there from Christmas to New Year’s.

Peter: Great little town.

Peter: Love it.

Peter: If it wasn’t for that whole below sea level thing, I could see myself getting a place down there permanently.

Peter: But that’s not what I’m talking to you about.

Peter: I’m talking about my latest audio woes.

Peter: Around Black Friday, I upgraded some of my Sonos gear, as I am wants to do every couple of years or every year or so when it goes on sale.

Peter: And I bought myself two of the Era 100s.

Peter: I already had one of them, and so I pretty much knew how it worked.

Peter: But I got two more, and I intend to use them as a stereo pair at my desk.

Peter: Then I noticed it has a USB-C input.

Peter: So I looked at it, and I realized that…

Peter: I said, this sounds pretty cool.

Peter: Maybe if I have a USB-C output cable, I can just plug it in from my CalDigit USB-C hub.

Scott: Uh-huh.

Peter: On my Macbook, and boom, I’ll have external speakers.

Peter: No, can’t do that.

Peter: It does not work.

Peter: It does not support a USB-C to USB-C connection.

Peter: So I was like, bummer, wow.

Peter: So I did look up, and I did find someone else makes an RCA jack output to a USB-C connection.

Peter: So I bought one of those.

Peter: So RCA jack, standard headphone jack, out of my hub into USB-C in the Sonos.

Peter: Also does not work.

Peter: So, okay, fine, Sonos, you win.

Peter: I will pay the $20 plus shipping to get the Sonos line-in adapter, which is their RCA female end to USB-C male end.

Peter: And, of course, I had to get another RCA adapter cable, you know, mail-to-mail, because I don’t have any of those anymore because I threw them all out.

Peter: I did a Marie Kondo, not a John Syracuse on my audio cables years ago.

Peter: So I bought another one of those, and I plug it in, and it works great, except it’s as if they’re doing some kind of weird airplay thing, because there’s like a second to maybe second and a half, two second delay from all sounds coming out of the Mac to the Sonos speakers.

Peter: And it’s, you know, like if I was just going to use it to play games, that’s fine.

Peter: But I make calls, and I play games, and I do other stuff like, you know, like window feedback when I click things, sound effect, dialogue boxes, and I want those in real time.

Peter: I don’t want them to be a second or two later.

Peter: So, I think I might just quickly open up a quick support ticket with Sonos and just say, hey, is this expected behavior?

Peter: Or should it be in real time?

Peter: Or are you expecting there to be this delay?

Peter: And if there is, I’m going to return it, and I’m going to feel badly because I’m assuming Sonos might take it and then, you know, list it on their refurb site.

Peter: But the other two cables I paid like $10 for, you know, I’m returning those to Amazon because I don’t have any use for them, which means they’re probably going to go straight to a landfill.

Scott: No, they’re going to go straight to some other buyer, I promise.

Peter: Apparently, somewhere around 80% of all online returns go straight to a landfill because it’s cheaper than dealing with the restocking and reshipping.

Peter: So, that’s one of the reasons I’ve been trying to, you know, buy less and return even less, you know?

Peter: Because I feel bad about it.

Scott: Oh, we’re covering, we’re littering the planet in toxic waste.

Scott: I mean, it’s just…

Scott: Okay, I have three orders of business.

Scott: One of them is related to what you were just talking about.

Scott: But first, I don’t remember if I played this down, so I’m going to play this now so I can move it backwards.

Scott: Friends with Brews!

Scott: Okay, that’s job one.

Scott: Job two.

Scott: Did I mute myself again?

Scott: Can you hear me?

Peter: I can hear you.

Scott: Job two is my beer.

Scott: My third bird oatmeal stout from Little Beast Brewing.

Peter: Sounds good.

Scott: The last item of business is to ask, USB-C is weird because the USB-C connector encompasses Thunderbolt, it encompasses different speeds of USB-C, it encompasses some things that charge and some things that do data, and I don’t understand any of it because you have to use Excel and you have to…

Scott: It’s like a full-time job trying to understand it, so I guess what I’m getting at is, are you sure that it can’t really do USB-C to USB-C and it’s not just that you have the wrong cable and or the wrong source, blah, blah, blah.

Peter: Sonos specifically says if you want to use it as a line-in, you must buy this hardware.

Scott: What’s their recommended way of using it then?

Scott: I mean, the speaker has to have audio from something.

Peter: Well, yeah, normally it’s AirPlay or it’s playing through an app that you’ve configured, you know, a service that you’ve configured through their app.

Peter: It’s not built to be a line-in.

Scott: They want it to be wireless, yeah.

Peter: Yeah, line-in is an afterthought with these guys.

Peter: I used to have the Sonos Play 5.

Peter: So my first Sonos gear I bought, I bought a Play 5 and I bought a couple of the Play 3s, you may recall.

Peter: I still have a couple of the Play 3s, but I’m down to one of them.

Peter: That’s the original first generation stuff.

Scott: I’m sure there’s a landfill you could throw it in.

Peter: I’m sure there is, but I’m going to use the landfill known as my father’s place in Vermont.

Peter: So I’m bringing all of my speakers up to there.

Scott: Call your dad real quick and give him a heads up on what his son’s saying about his headphones.

Peter: Oh, he’ll love it.

Peter: He’ll love it.

Peter: He’ll love knowing that I’m contributing more stuff to the clutter.

Peter: It’ll make him feel right at home.

Peter: Anyway, I bought the Play 5, because the Play 5 had an old RCA style headphone jack input, and you could use that as your line in.

Peter: And back in the day, before they had the Sonos sound bar or the beam, that was what I used for my TV output.

Peter: So I would loop it all to the Sonos and then my TV audio would go out into the Play 5.

Peter: Play 5’s input source would be line in, and then I would group that with the Play 3s.

Peter: So I made my own pre-real home theater, home theater thing.

Peter: This was like 10 years ago or so.

Scott: You were ahead of your time.

Peter: Since then, I have the Sonos beam, which apparently they don’t make anymore, but it was their lower end sound bar, which still works and sounds just fine for me.

Peter: I have their sub, I have the Aero 100s, I have the Sonos Play 1s.

Peter: Sorry, Sonos 1, not the Play 1 anymore.

Peter: Play 1 is old.

Peter: Sonos 1, and I have the Roams.

Peter: So I am heavily into the Sonos ecosystem.

Scott: Peter, with all that equipment and all that money you’ve spent on Sonos Gear, you must be in the Sonos High Priority Club so that when you call them up and say, and you hold up your two cables and say, which end goes into which end?

Scott: They should be at your door helping you wire it up.

Peter: You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?

Peter: Anyway, that’s my latest audio issue that I have to deal with.

Scott: That’s annoying.

Scott: Oh my god.

Scott: That is a dumb one to have, I have to say.

Scott: That’s a dumb problem to have.

Peter: Yep, indeed.

Scott: Because USB-C and USB-C on both ends should equal a blazing fast.

Peter: I’d like to think that.

Scott: Yep.

Scott: What else?

Scott: You had…

Scott: Are you going to talk about your little trip?

Scott: Your little New Year’s trip at all?

Peter: Yeah, so I decided…

Peter: Well, I told everybody actually while you were gone that I spent the last week in New Orleans.

Peter: I didn’t go into much detail, but that I just get back and I have a little bit of a cold.

Peter: You’ll catch that up when you’re editing the podcast.

Peter: I’m sure you’ll hear that I told everybody that.

Scott: This is great.

Scott: We should do it this way more often, because then when I’m editing, it’s all new to me and I’m just…

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: This is great.

Scott: So instead of listening to it five times, I’ll only hear it four times.

Scott: So tell me about the dive bar that you were in at the end of the night last night.

Scott: What was that all about?

Scott: Was it actually decent, even though it was a dive, or was it really an actual full…

Peter: Yeah, no, it was fine…

Peter: .

Peter: helpful in the world.

Peter: It was a fine little dive, but we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Peter: There was one other couple there and the bartender and that was it.

Peter: So I did not make formal plans for New Year’s Eve.

Peter: One is because my girlfriend can be a little fickle and very likely would have changed her mind or not wanted to go or whatnot.

Peter: And every place I was looking was like over a hundred bucks per person to get in to book.

Peter: The first thing I wanted to do was a riverboat cruise.

Peter: But we had already done one of those.

Peter: We did a riverboat jazz cruise like the second night there.

Scott: Oh, OK.

Scott: I thought you meant you’d done one in Boston.

Scott: I was going to say that was not the same.

Peter: No, no, we don’t have riverboats here.

Peter: We have cruises, but not riverboat cruises.

Scott: We have kayaks.

Peter: Kayak cruises.

Peter: It’s not the same, especially in New Year’s Eve.

Scott: Dinner on a kayak.

Peter: It’s called a sandwich or a cliff bar.

Peter: Anyway, so we didn’t make formal plans.

Peter: She wanted to find a rooftop place.

Peter: I said, I just want to go and hit Bourbon Street just a little bit, just to see all the people being idiots.

Peter: We got there, we got on, and we started looking, going up and down from the hotel.

Peter: We were a few blocks from Canal Street, which intersects with Bourbon and a few of the others.

Peter: And as we were going along the way, like, okay, this place looks cute, there’s a line.

Peter: This place, nope, there’s a line.

Peter: This looks like a hotel, not so great.

Peter: We kept on moving and moving.

Peter: And then we finally got to Bourbon Street, and she said, oh, she found this seafood and oyster bar place.

Peter: We’re like, oh, let’s go there.

Peter: And I kind of knew, I was like, it’s going to get busy, right?

Peter: Because I knew right where, I looked at her phone, but I didn’t say anything because I was like, no, I’m okay with this kind of town.

Peter: We get there and, you know, it’s packed.

Peter: You know, Bourbon Street’s closed off to foot traffic only.

Peter: It’s wall to wall.

Peter: The sidewalks, the roads in New Orleans seem okay, especially compared to Boston.

Peter: The sidewalks are dismal.

Peter: There are just, there’s holes, there’s old, you know, missing bricks in a lot of places.

Peter: You know, it’s really, you got to really watch where you’re going.

Peter: And that’s really hard when you’re like bumper to bumper, shoulder to shoulder with people and you can’t see where you’re stepping.

Peter: Because there’s no, you know, you’re like a foot behind someone, you don’t have any view of the ground.

Peter: So five minutes of that and she’s like, I need to get out of here.

Peter: So we started heading back and we headed down into another neighborhood where we had had dinner a few nights before.

Peter: And we’re just stopping and place after place is closed.

Peter: This is closed, this is closed.

Peter: And then she found, I never, oh, it’s called the NOLA Tap Room.

Peter: I think that’s where we ended up.

Peter: And I was like, hey, I like a tap room, right?

Peter: It wasn’t really a tap room, it’s just a dive bar, right?

Peter: So it’s not like a brewery like you would think, you know, tap room.

Peter: But we walked in and I was like, ask the guy, are you still serving food?

Peter: He’s like, I am.

Peter: I was like, all right.

Peter: You know, it was one man show, one guy behind the bar, and again, two people at the bar.

Peter: So I looked, you know, it’s like, all right, the menu looks okay.

Peter: It’s nothing fancy.

Peter: It’s not going to be, you know, this is not going to be grandma’s jambalaya that we’re getting here.

Scott: You got a couple of partly cooked crawdad or something.

Peter: My girlfriend, she didn’t care.

Peter: I looked at the menu and I knew exactly what she was going to order.

Peter: She orders crab rangoons and a cheeseburger and a side of french fries.

Scott: That’s hilarious.

Peter: So like me, I would go out of my way not to order that.

Peter: When I’m in a, you know, a different city with culture or a different country or something, she does not, she doesn’t care.

Scott: She doesn’t want the local flavor that much.

Peter: She’s like, I want a cheeseburger.

Peter: That’s what I want.

Peter: So we got it.

Peter: She ended up, as I suspected, she ate about half of it and I had to eat the rest.

Peter: I don’t know.

Peter: It was probably, you know, helped by the fact that I was walking around for an hour and it was way past dinner and I was super hungry.

Scott: That cheeseburger was good.

Peter: That burger tasted just fine.

Peter: I was not complaining about that.

Scott: There’s something to be said about, you know, pushing off your meal much longer than expected, walking around, starving, finally finding a place to eat, and that is your option to kind of help improve the taste a little bit.

Peter: Oh, and I tried, you know, we tried at different times throughout the week.

Peter: Now, granted, one of those days was Christmas and the others was New Year’s Eve, but we tried to get into some of Emeril Lagasse’s restaurants.

Scott: Oh, my God.

Scott: How many weeks in advance or years?

Peter: Some of them were just days, you know, I don’t think he’s quite as popular as he used to be.

Peter: But, you know, it was kind of funny, though, because, you know, he’s got Emeril’s Brasserie at Caesar’s.

Peter: He’s got Emeril’s Petite Brasserie, you know, there’s a little breakfast shop.

Peter: He’s got Emeril’s, which I think is the original.

Peter: He’s got Merrill.

Peter: And then there’s Lagasse Kitchen.

Peter: And then there’s the wine bar.

Peter: And, you know, he’s got at least five restaurants.

Peter: I couldn’t get into any of them.

Peter: And so, you know, so that didn’t happen.

Peter: But I had a lot of really good, you know, which I think pretty authentic, at least from, you know, from what little I know, you know, we had beignets, we had jambalaya, we had gumbo, etouffee, red beans and rice, you know, and it was, I was not complaining.

Peter: I probably haven’t weighed myself.

Peter: I did get out running a few times, at least two times and got on the treadmill a little bit and stuff.

Peter: So, you know, I wasn’t completely slothful.

Peter: But yeah, that was it was overall was a great little trip.

Peter: And, you know, I could definitely see myself.

Peter: It was my second time in New Orleans.

Peter: I enjoyed it.

Peter: I was really disappointed, though, that it was really rather chilly most of the time that I was there.

Peter: I brought my winter coat.

Peter: And normally, when I’m traveling, you know, in and out of Boston, I wear like a light jacket because I’m just getting in a car, getting into the airport terminal.

Peter: And then when I get home, I’m usually miserable for about 10 minutes while I wait for my lift to pick me up.

Peter: But then I’m OK.

Peter: This time, I wore my winter jacket because it looked like, you know, it was going to be really cold when we got home.

Peter: And the last time we got home from Austin, Texas, I was miserable.

Peter: You know, I was like putting on like T-shirt.

Peter: OK, I got an extra T-shirt, you know, just anything I could for extra layers.

Peter: I’m really glad I did, because it was down in the 40s down there in New Orleans.

Peter: So I was really disappointed.

Peter: And I was like, there were two days it got into the 60s, and that was nice.

Peter: But I’m really glad that I had my winter coat, because it was chilly some days.

Scott: It’s been down in the 40s here, too, as you might expect.

Scott: And we went on New Year’s Eve.

Scott: We went to Cheese & Crack Snack Shop.

Scott: This place, Peter, they get the best cheese and the best homemade crackers and the best…

Scott: Oh, and they’ve got amazing soft serve ice cream that they dust with matcha or other flavors of your choice.

Scott: But of course, I had the matcha one.

Peter: You’re saying soft serve ice cream with dust mites.

Scott: Dust mites, yeah.

Scott: No, they dust it with matcha.

Scott: But the sampler plates, we had two of the sampler plates.

Scott: They have Beecher’s Cheddar, Hook’s Blue, Brie Brulee, Cana de Ovea.

Scott: I don’t even know what that is.

Scott: Oh, that must have been the round, harder one.

Scott: OK, that was pretty good.

Scott: Double crackers, double baguette, olives.

Scott: What are cornichons?

Scott: Cornichons?

Peter: Cornichon.

Scott: Cornichon.

Scott: What is that?

Peter: Little peppers.

Scott: Yes, they did have those.

Scott: Those were little peppers.

Scott: Marienberry jam, Dijon, honey.

Scott: It was great.

Scott: Amazing.

Scott: Super good.

Scott: I sent you some pictures of the food that we ate, I think.

Scott: But yeah, that was really good.

Scott: That place is good.

Scott: But they’re tiny and they were packed.

Scott: So in the slightly less than 40 degrees weather at the time and raining, we were going to have to eat outside.

Scott: And they do have a covered area to eat, but it’s open to the wind.

Scott: And we were waiting and waiting.

Scott: We thought, you know what?

Scott: Let’s not eat here.

Scott: Let’s get it to go.

Scott: Let’s get it in boxes and get out here.

Scott: So I went back in and I felt bad because they were already prepping the plates.

Scott: And I said, hey, I hate to do this to you, but can you make it to go?

Scott: And they said, OK.

Scott: And they started making it to go.

Scott: And then I ordered the ice cream so that it would be ready when we were ready to go, too.

Scott: By the time they got our order ready, and not because of them, they were busy.

Scott: They were working hard.

Scott: These were not slothful, you know, slow people.

Scott: By the time they got our order ready, and then by the time they got our ice cream ready, we could have just eaten there because some people disappeared.

Scott: Like it was anyway, but the food was so good.

Scott: We brought it home.

Scott: It was amazing.

Scott: The ice cream we ate on the way home, but the cheese and crackers, it’s so good.

Scott: This is not your Ritz cracker and, you know, Kraft Cheddar cheese plate.

Scott: This is amazing stuff.

Peter: Not your Ritz crack.

Scott: No.

Scott: And then for the evening to usher in the New Year, my daughter and I watched The Wind Rises, the Ghibli movie, Miyazaki movie.

Scott: And spoke to each other in Japanese a little bit.

Peter: So I am almost current, I think, on Monarch.

Scott: Monsters.

Peter: Legacy of Monsters.

Peter: Monsters.

Peter: Monarchs.

Scott: What happened?

Peter: Well, in the previous episode, Godzilla has his, you know, what, third cameo in the season, I think.

Peter: He shows up sleeping under a mountain and just like wakes up and stuff.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: So I liked that one.

Peter: That was good.

Peter: You know, and once again, you gotta remember that when a Kaiju is around, if you’re flying in a craft, a jet, a helicopter, you’re too close.

Scott: Yeah, you’re too close.

Scott: It doesn’t matter where you are.

Scott: You’re too close.

Peter: You’re too close.

Peter: By definition, you know, you’re going to get knocked out of the sky or almost knocked out of the sky.

Scott: Why do they always fly towards the monster and then go, oh, brace for impact.

Peter: Oh my God.

Peter: Get away.

Peter: Pull up.

Peter: All right.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: That was awesome.

Peter: Spoiler alert.

Peter: That happens.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: We might be caught up.

Scott: I’m not sure.

Scott: It’s OK.

Scott: I don’t know, Peter.

Scott: I’m having I’m curious what you think because it’s kind of it started off pretty good.

Scott: I thought this could be really good.

Scott: And then it’s kind of gone to me.

Scott: It’s OK.

Scott: It’s all right.

Peter: Like some of the OK Marvel series in between the movies, it fills in a little bit of the gap.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: So, you know, that’s all that’s it.

Scott: And it’s it does feel a little hand wavy in some spots, by which I mean, it doesn’t feel like they’re trying especially hard to make it.

Scott: They don’t feel invested in it.

Scott: And I feel that way about a lot of TV where they’re just filling up the time.

Scott: You’re supposed to believe that something’s happening.

Scott: You’re supposed to believe that the people are invested in it.

Scott: You’re supposed to believe that blah, blah, blah.

Scott: And it doesn’t feel quite real and it doesn’t quite catch you and it doesn’t quite get you emotionally invested.

Scott: That’s how some of this feels.

Scott: And it’s a little disappointing because I didn’t think it was going to go this way.

Peter: So here’s something, speaking of which, and I know you’re not into the Marvels stuff, the Marvel Comics thing.

Peter: I knew that What If Season 2 was coming out.

Peter: I didn’t realize that the final episode is out.

Peter: Apparently, it’s been out for nine weeks and I didn’t even know.

Scott: What if Season 2 is coming out?

Scott: What do you mean?

Scott: What if?

Peter: Well, funny.

Peter: Anyway, I need to add that to my watch list because I didn’t realize that a whole new Marvel series had come out.

Peter: It’s an animated one.

Scott: Is it good?

Scott: I mean, are you glad that a second season showed up?

Peter: Yes, I am.

Peter: What if Season 1 was good?

Peter: And I love comics and I love cartoons, right?

Scott: Peter, what if Season 2 came out?

Scott: Would you watch it?

Peter: What if?

Peter: Yeah, what if Season 2 came out?

Peter: I think I would watch it.

Scott: Oh, okay.

Peter: But what if it didn’t come out?

Peter: So, no, I just found out, though, listening to the guys over on Big Sandwich and they’re like, oh yeah, what if Season 2 is over?

Peter: I was like, wait, it’s out?

Peter: I didn’t even know.

Peter: I guess it came out right after the Marvel’s movie did.

Scott: So this is Disney, right?

Scott: You have to have Disney.

Peter: Disney Plus, Marvel, yeah.

Peter: Exactly.

Peter: So I’m happy that I have that to watch.

Peter: Probably gonna keep the Apple TV+ subscription.

Peter: You know, I gotta watch Ted Lasso.

Peter: I’m curious about Slow Horses.

Peter: You know, I gotta finish up Monarch and stuff.

Peter: But you know, I’m hearing good things about the stuff on Apple TV+.

Peter: And the only series that I’ve watched, well, now Monarch is the third.

Peter: Ted Lasso, I really enjoyed.

Peter: I watched and I really enjoyed CSEE with Jason Momoa.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: You know, some of the parts was a little, you know, you talk about hand wavy stuff like that, but you know, but I enjoyed it.

Peter: You know, it was a little, it didn’t have to be that graphic for me to enjoy it.

Peter: They could have toned down some of the Game of Thrones level executions and stuff.

Scott: I was about to ask, was that like episode one of Game of Thrones with the Rock in the…

Peter: Yeah, yeah, there was just tons of stuff like that.

Peter: Yeah, they could have taken that down a notch or ten.

Peter: So anyway, but I’m looking forward to catching that.

Scott: You’re not an HBO guy, right?

Peter: My girlfriend has the HBO Max subscription.

Peter: That’s where I get all my DC Time Warner stuff.

Scott: Oh, did you watch Last of Us?

Scott: Because Vic actually bought me, Vic wanted me to watch it so much that he bought me Last of Us.

Peter: Yes.

Peter: I mean, that’s a good gift.

Scott: It is a great gift.

Scott: And I got to say, so you what did you think of the Nick Offerman episode?

Scott: I thought that might have been one of the best episodes I’ve seen on television.

Peter: Wait, who?

Peter: Nick, who?

Scott: The Bill guy, the two guys in the house?

Peter: I enjoyed it.

Peter: The only complaint I had about it was that the guy, the first guy, is able to just waltz right up to hardware stores and what, an oil refinery or gas refinery and stuff.

Peter: And what?

Peter: No one else is there.

Peter: No one has got, no one has thought about this, you know?

Scott: No, they were all ushered out.

Scott: The military came and took them all out.

Scott: That was the whole point.

Scott: They went door to door to door to door.

Peter: I must have missed that.

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: They didn’t have any choice and they had no time to prepare.

Scott: They basically were told, get a suitcase, we’re going.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: I missed that.

Scott: And if you remember, those people are the ones that Joel was later pointing out that were executed summarily because they didn’t have a place to take them.

Scott: Right.

Scott: So, yeah.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: I definitely may have missed a detail or two.

Peter: Plus, it was a while ago.

Peter: I watched it while it was still coming out every week.

Scott: I didn’t see the plot twist coming when that guy showed up.

Scott: I thought, A, he was trying to con, you know, Bill’s character, or there was going to be a murder, or I didn’t know what was going to happen.

Scott: But for Bill to…

Peter: Now, contrast that to the, I wouldn’t say big reveal, but the reveal in Monarch Season 4, Episode 4.

Scott: I don’t remember what that was.

Peter: The daughter in San Francisco at school.

Peter: So, you’ve got two…

Peter: that one in Monarch, it felt like, hey, you know what’s cool on television these days?

Peter: Lesbians.

Scott: Yeah, it didn’t…

Scott: Well, the thing is, is that they didn’t have enough time to…

Scott: They didn’t…

Scott: It just wasn’t done as well.

Scott: But the last of us one, I didn’t see it coming, but it was good.

Scott: It was well done.

Scott: Once they, especially after those, after they’d been a couple for a while, totally believable.

Scott: Great.

Scott: Loved it.

Scott: It was so good.

Scott: Yep.

Peter: Yep.

Peter: No, I agree on that one.

Peter: But it didn’t feel, you know, I don’t know, I guess, my sense is that in pop culture, gay guys are not as cool as bisexual girls.

Peter: So you don’t see that as much.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: And well, do you know why?

Scott: Because less men are going to complain and throw a fit about it than they are if it’s lesbian characters.

Peter: You know what else is coming around?

Peter: It’s a new year, and that means that at some point soon ish, my Evernote subscription is going to be up.

Scott: Someone I just saw this in a discord, I don’t remember if it was Six Colors or Max Stories, but there was a guy there who was saying, nope, Evernote is still for me.

Scott: It still does all these things amazingly well.

Scott: And I was like, I felt like saying, you know, if they lost Peter Nicolaitis, they’ve pretty much jumped the elephant shark, because…

Peter: I know, but you know what?

Peter: I still keep it.

Peter: I still have it.

Peter: And I think once I stop paying for it, I won’t have the ability to search in PDFs anymore.

Peter: I’m going to miss that.

Scott: No, that’s true.

Scott: And once you stop paying for it, you’re also going to get those annoying ads that are going to make you hate every person there and every inch of square earth that they take up.

Peter: Yes.

Peter: That said, I’ve been using Notion.

Peter: I’m happy with Notion, but I miss Evernote.

Peter: I prefer the UI and stuff.

Peter: I haven’t been thrilled with the direction the company’s been going in for over 10 years.

Peter: Let’s be clear.

Peter: Right.

Scott: And now it’s a different company.

Peter: Exactly.

Scott: Hey, Peter, I miss my childhood in Japan.

Peter: Right.

Peter: Yes, that’s great.

Scott: It’s not available to me anymore, though.

Peter: But you replaced it with a with an adulthood in Oregon.

Scott: And every time I try to go back to my childhood in Japan, I keep getting these ads that say, look, if you would just pay us.

Scott: No, it’s no, that wasn’t right.

Scott: I don’t remember.

Peter: I don’t know if you thought about just because I mean, I did pay for those ads for a little while.

Peter: I did pay for it.

Peter: And maybe if if you could just pay, you know, like 100 bucks a year and get your childhood back, I would do that.

Scott: That’s true.

Scott: Yeah, that’s pretty good deal.

Scott: You got to make sure you’re paying the right people or it could all go wrong.

Peter: But anyway, yeah, I don’t know what the latest was, you know, they’re going to be ads and they’re going to limit you to what 50 notes?

Peter: Is that what it is?

Scott: Fifty notes on the free.

Scott: Fifty notes is nothing.

Peter: Yeah, it’s it’s not a lot.

Peter: So you know, again, for me, Apple Notes is not a replacement, but you know, it’s getting to the point where maybe it’ll be, you know, because let’s be honest, I haven’t actively used Evernote as a filing system for quite some time.

Peter: I haven’t been throwing like EXEs and ISO images and stuff into that.

Peter: I keep those, you know, now either in OneDrive or an S3 bucket or somewhere.

Scott: Yeah, and I was going to say, part of the appeal of that is that rather than throwing it in a file system, throwing it in Evernote made it so much more searchable.

Scott: But, yes, did I ever actually go back and look at 99.9% of that stuff?

Scott: Negative.

Scott: Did not.

Peter: Correct.

Peter: But there have been, there were times just now I was digging in for things, trying to find old documents, legal documents for my parents.

Peter: And I had not tagged or indexed or titled the actual note itself and Evernote was able to dig into some PDFs and find the contents.

Scott: Now Apple Notes just got a lot better about scanning stuff.

Scott: It just got to where it can scan in PDFs.

Scott: And what I haven’t tried yet is searching and seeing if it knows what the contents of those are.

Peter: And also I want to give you a shout out because sometime years ago, I believe you bought me my copy of Scanner Pro.

Peter: I had not been using it.

Peter: I had been using Scannable, still an Evernote product, which along with supposed to have died along with Skitch, etc.

Peter: because they said at one point, we’re killing everything except Evernote and maybe like Skitch on something anyway.

Peter: And Scannable was not on that list, but it’s been getting updates.

Peter: I liked it because it was just the fastest of all the scanners I tried.

Peter: I point at a document and by the time I’m getting ready, it’s already taken the picture.

Peter: No one else did that.

Peter: And Scanner Pro, I knew I could force it.

Peter: I could like click the button and say, just take this stupid picture.

Peter: Now, I don’t know if this is new or if it’s been doing this for a long time, but then what it will do, it’s like if you forced Scannable to take a picture, it captures everything.

Peter: The desktop, the piece of paper, the mouse, your hand, you know, it all goes in.

Peter: Scanner Pro captures all of that, but then it’s like, hey, if you’d given me a little more time, I was going to crop it like this.

Peter: Is that cool?

Peter: And almost every time it does that, I’m like, well, yeah.

Peter: And so it’s just like one tap away and it gets the document that I want it to.

Peter: So suddenly Scanner Pro is no longer five times slower than Scannable, which pretty much takes Scannable, you know, makes Scannable do, makes Scanner Pro do what I will be using Scannable for.

Scott: So finally, you can retire Scannable for Evernote, since they apparently don’t want to do it themselves.

Peter: Bingo.

Peter: Now, what I don’t like, however, though, is getting stuff out of Scannable, or sorry, out of Scanner Pro.

Scott: Scanner Pro, yeah.

Peter: It’s actually easier for me.

Peter: So Scannable was built to get stuff into Evernote, right?

Scott: Yep, right.

Peter: But you can use the share button to call up the share and pull it into something else.

Peter: You can do that in Scanner Pro, but you have the list of all these apps and services, and then there’s apps.

Peter: But you have to do it, I have to find the other, and then I have to select Notion from that, and then send it in.

Scott: So here’s the thing, and I don’t know if they have a workflow for it, or if you can create one, but I believe it’s Scanner Pro that has the notion of workflows, and you can create little workflows that automatically upload it to some place or automatically…

Peter: Notion’s not on the list.

Peter: Now, I’m sure that I can do some kind of webhook kind of craziness, not unlike what I did to cross-post all my Mastodon posts using IFTTT over to Twitter.

Peter: I don’t want to go through that.

Peter: I don’t want to have to code stuff just to take a scan and put it somewhere.

Scott: Peter, Casey Liss has a Raspberry Pi, three ostriches, a hamster, and two webcams to close his garage door.

Scott: And you won’t even set up a simple webhook to put your document into Notion.

Peter: Shout out to Casey Liss.

Peter: I am a proud, paid customer for Call Sheet.

Peter: He was also the guest on this week’s episode of The Talk Show with Gruberman.

Peter: Gruberman was the name of the guy from Taekwondo Leap.

Scott: Hans Gruber was the guy from Die Hard.

Peter: Which is kind of funny.

Peter: Out of the three ATP guys, I’ve bought everything that they make.

Peter: I bought…

Peter: Syracuse has two Mac apps that you can buy.

Scott: Spyglass.

Scott: What’s the other one?

Peter: I don’t remember.

Peter: I bought both of them.

Peter: I can’t figure out how to get either of them.

Peter: Honestly, I don’t even know.

Peter: One of them, I’m pretty sure I don’t even know what it’s supposed to do.

Peter: And the other one, I can’t get it to do anything, so I don’t use it.

Scott: The other one was like a bit…

Scott: The one that was basically a little dock replacement, or it wasn’t a dock replacement, but it was like a dock, but it did something a little bit different.

Scott: I couldn’t make it work for me.

Scott: It did not…

Peter: I threw him the money, and then I threw the app away.

Peter: Marco, you know, I’ve paid for…

Peter: I’ve been an overcast subscriber for some time now.

Peter: I let it lapse though, so like I used to get it for like…

Peter: It was like $4 a month, and then it went up to like $10 or a year, or I forget, whatever.

Peter: It was cheaper.

Peter: I let it slide.

Peter: I paid the price now.

Peter: Whatever.

Peter: Casey, I happily buy call sheet.

Peter: And yeah, when I want…

Peter: When I’m sitting there watching something, I’m like, wait, is that…

Peter: Is that click click?

Peter: So much better experience than IMDB.

Peter: It’s great.

Scott: Nice.

Scott: So nice.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Love it.

Peter: And I also, you know, I’m a subscriber, an annual subscriber for their podcast.

Peter: So, you know, that should be your next thing.

Peter: Once you finished getting the search engine working perfectly for Friends with Brews, you should just let people give us a tip jar so they can like buy us a beer or something.

Scott: I’ve thought about it, but I’ve also thought, what do we want to do?

Scott: Because it would be fun to give people a membership, but then we would have to do stuff to make it worth their while.

Scott: And it’s not that I don’t want to do stuff.

Scott: It’s that I don’t want to make a time commitment for us and them that we wind up not keeping.

Peter: Bingo.

Peter: We’re not professional podcasters.

Peter: Some days we’re not even professional.

Scott: No.

Scott: Some days we’re not even podcasters, even when we try.

Peter: Some days we’re not.

Peter: Some weeks go by.

Peter: So it’s easier that way.

Peter: But anyway, no, I’m just kind of, that’s the beer talking.

Scott: But see, the thing that would be fun for this podcast is the kind of thing that you wanted to do while you were in New Orleans.

Scott: You wanted to sit there and review beers.

Scott: That would be bonus content that would be great.

Scott: But you and I also aren’t going to go out and go to bars and pay for beers all the time just so we can do that.

Scott: That’s not going to happen.

Scott: So we would have to come up with a whole bunch of other ideas to throw into the extra content thing.

Scott: And so-

Peter: No, we would have to add a lot more value.

Peter: So but a tip jar, you know what, we should just throw our Venmo cards up there.

Peter: Like, if you want to throw us 30 cents, hey, thanks, you know, we can do that.

Scott: I don’t want separate ones, though, because all the money is going to go to you.

Scott: So you know it.

Scott: So.

Peter: Well, I’ll get all the money and I’ll split it with you.

Peter: How’s that?

Peter: You are.

Scott: Don’t tell them that, though, they won’t give you any.

Peter: Well, OK, listener, if you tell me not to tell Scott, I will keep the money.

Peter: How’s that?

Scott: Look, I’m just going to assume that you’re lying and you really will still split it with me, but it does hurt.

Scott: It does hurt.

Peter: Oh, man.

Peter: OK, that’s great.

Scott: That is good.

Scott: I think we should end before I learn how to end on a high note.

Scott: I think so.

Peter: That was awesome.

Peter: Listeners, if you want to get in touch with us, you already know how, but apparently you need to be told again.

Peter: So it’s at friends with brews.com.

Scott: Slow.

Peter: Friends with brews.com.

Scott: I used to be the guide of Fire listeners.

Scott: Now it’s you.

Scott: B-R-E-W-S.

Peter: Did someday, a year ago apparently, in a drunken fit of podcasting, I bought friends with brews.com.

Peter: B-R-U-Y-S-E.

Peter: I did let that expire.

Scott: It’s also not Brie Brule.

Scott: It’s not Friends with Brie Brule, although I was friends with that last night.

Peter: Friends with Brule?

Peter: No, it’s not that either.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Anyway, you know where to find us.

Peter: You know how to find us.

Peter: And if you want, Scott will add my Venmo.

Peter: I will split any donations made to us with Scott, unless you tell me not to.

Scott: You just guaranteed 100% of anybody who does donate is going to say that.

Peter: I think it’s gonna be great.

Scott: Thanks.

Scott: I’m sure you do.

Scott: All right.

Scott: Thank you, listener.

Scott: And now…

Peter: Yeah, thanks, listener…

Scott: for the big red button.

Peter: Big red button.

Scott: Tell your friends.