Episode 67 – It’s Terrible but I Loved It

Scott: And run, Friends with Brews.

Peter: No, I don’t have time to run today, although the weather is beautiful, and I would love to.

Scott: Okay.

Peter: So, we are on a time crunch today, because I have had the morning of all kinds of things happen to happen all at once right now.

Peter: So, I’m Peter, you’re Scott.

Peter: I almost said I’m Scott, you’re Peter.

Peter: But no, I’m Peter, you’re Scott.

Peter: You are drinking what?

Scott: I am drinking, Peter, I’m drinking an Alma coffee slumber decaf.

Peter: Slumber, interesting.

Scott: And it mentions almond, chocolate and sweet pastry.

Scott: But then they show a croissant in the picture.

Scott: I don’t know what that means.

Scott: But anyway, I got it through trade coffee, of course.

Scott: And I’ve had other Alma coffees that weren’t decaf, but this is a good decaf.

Scott: This, let’s see if I can taste those notes.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: It’s not sweet.

Scott: I would not call it sweet.

Scott: I do taste the chocolate for sure, and maybe the almond.

Scott: I don’t know about the pastry, but yeah, I like it.

Scott: It’s a medium roast, and it’s good.

Scott: This is a good decaf.

Scott: I’ll drink this again.

Scott: For some reason, this particular bean, when I grind it on my current grind settings, it takes longer for the water to go through than it does with some of my other coffees, which is really weird.

Scott: Cause I’m grinding them all on the same setting, and I’m getting mostly medium roast and all that.

Scott: Anyway, it adds a little bit of bitterness when it takes longer like that, but that’s fine.

Scott: It’s a good coffee.

Scott: I like it.

Scott: I recommend it.

Scott: I will thumbs it up.

Peter: I’m drinking Bunky Chicken from Red Rooster Coffee Company.

Peter: Also got it through trade.

Peter: This is described as a flavorful crowd pleaser with notes, very dark chocolate and a sweet citrus finish.

Peter: It’s okay.

Peter: I would thumbs up it.

Peter: The first time I got it, the first taste, I was like, it’s a little too floral, a little too citrusy for my taste.

Peter: But what I have been doing today, I didn’t, you know, it’s pretty straight up.

Peter: But if I put a splash of cream or sometimes I’ll cut it with a Wegmans Dark Espresso Roast Decaf.

Peter: That does it for me.

Peter: But today is mostly almost pretty much just straight black coffee.

Peter: And it’s very drinkable today.

Peter: So thumbs up or one rooster claw up for Funky Chicken.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: So we have a laundry list of things to talk about today.

Peter: Do we want to narrow that down or do we want to just go through and just touch on everything?

Peter: Just blast right through.

Scott: Let’s try and do that.

Scott: Just see how far we get.

Scott: I’m sure we’ll have to cut some stuff.

Scott: But yeah.

Peter: I will start with I sold something on eBay for the first time in quite a while.

Peter: And the process was a lot smoother than I remember it.

Peter: So apparently they’ve done a lot to clean things up since I was an avid eBay seller.

Peter: And that was just really nice.

Peter: I had this Android phone that I bought a few years ago just to have as my second factor, you know, like a second 2FA device or as a backup, because I went through a time a while ago where my iPhone died and I had no cell phone.

Peter: I had no backup.

Peter: I had no 2FA backups or anything.

Peter: So I just bought this thing, and it was also good for me to get a little Android experience.

Peter: But this thing is stuck on an Android OS from a few years ago at this point, and I was like, I don’t really want to keep this around.

Peter: Plus now I have my dad’s old iPhone SE, so I don’t need that for a spare.

Peter: So I just listed it on eBay.

Peter: I got 27 bucks for it.

Peter: Buyer pays shipping.

Peter: eBay printed the postage label for me right here.

Peter: The hardest part of the whole thing was just getting to the freaking post office, so.

Scott: The thing that I used to hate about eBay the most, besides eBay is one of those companies where you can’t get ahold of anybody.

Scott: They never want you to ever talk to them or know they exist other than…

Peter: Nobody wants to talk to anyone today.

Scott: Yeah, but eBay, companies like eBay and Google and a couple others start PayPal.

Scott: And that gets me to my question.

Scott: The worst thing that I used to hate about eBay was dealing with freaking PayPal.

Scott: I hate PayPal.

Scott: I hate all the assholes who…

Peter: You don’t have to deal with that anymore.

Peter: They’ve also taken that out of the equation as well.

Scott: Okay, that’s the biggest pain point.

Scott: That was always the thing that pissed me off the most.

Peter: It’s just eBay payments.

Peter: So it all just goes right into your eBay account via an ACH transfer now at this point.

Scott: Oh, my God.

Peter: Thanks for reminding me, because now I’ve got to figure out how to get my money out of there.

Scott: Oh, good luck.

Scott: Okay, okay.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott: Maybe you shouldn’t paint that as an upgrade until you find out if it really is.

Scott: Maybe you’ll never get your money.

Peter: Maybe I won’t.

Peter: I don’t know.

Peter: Speaking of getting my money or not getting my money, in addition to the quarter from hell that I’ve been having, in early April, my furnace died at my place in Massachusetts.

Peter: So I need to replace that.

Peter: And I got a couple of quotes, one from my plumber heating guy, whom I’ve used now for about 10 years.

Peter: And I’m very happy with his work.

Peter: And I would prefer to keep him around.

Peter: But you know, I was like, due diligence, I should check around and see what some other options are.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: I got another option, which was twice as much as his quote for functionally the same thing.

Peter: Or I could go with the more efficient, you know, heat pump option and pay three times as much, but get $10,000 back, which equates to about the same.

Scott: I’ve been reading a lot about how heat pumps are supposed to be the future.

Scott: I think the government wants a way to go to heat pumps.

Peter: They do.

Peter: Concern that has been raised is whether the electric grid is ready to absorb all that.

Peter: And so for right now, I decided to stay with natural gas for right now.

Scott: No, no, no, no.

Scott: You just need an Elon Musk battery.

Scott: Elon Musk has this problem solved.

Peter: I forgot, among all the other things that Elon has solved.

Peter: Now, pivoting off of that note, so real quick before we get there, I will say I am looking at batteries.

Peter: I don’t want a Tesla battery, but I am looking at batteries from my place in Vermont, but I’ll put a pin in that.

Peter: Here in Massachusetts, not quite so much, although if I could go solar, I would.

Peter: I mean, lower my electric bill.

Scott: Sure.

Scott: Are you, your condo, your places go vertical.

Scott: So you have all the way from the bottom floor all the way to the top floor, right?

Peter: Yes.

Scott: So you could, you could scurry out your window and mount some solar panels up there?

Peter: Yeah, I can just climb out there and do it myself.

Peter: But as part of this process, I had to apply for a, well, I didn’t have to, but I chose to apply for a 0% interest loan to pay for the furnace, because why wouldn’t I?

Peter: 0%.

Peter: My money can be doing other things while I’ve got this.

Peter: And so I went through the application process, which was fairly smooth, but now that I’ve been approved on the state side, I need to find a local lender to actually fulfill the loan.

Peter: So I chose the credit union right up the street from me.

Peter: Can’t open it.

Peter: They’re like, all you need to do is just send us this application, the completed application from the state, which I did, and then just apply and become a member and pay us your $5 membership fee.

Peter: And I was like, okay, fine.

Peter: The website just doesn’t work.

Peter: First off, it doesn’t allow a PDF.

Peter: So great, I convert my driver’s license scan from PDF to a JPEG.

Peter: Won’t upload that.

Peter: Then it will upload that, but it says that it won’t.

Peter: Then it says, we’ve texted you a number.

Peter: We need to verify your phone.

Peter: We’ll text you a six digit code.

Peter: No six digit comes to my phone, but they email me one, which is not the same code.

Peter: It’s not the right one.

Peter: But simultaneously to them saying they’re texting me one, they email me a code, which does not work.

Scott: It doesn’t do a lot for verifying your phone number.

Peter: I try in Safari, an alternate browser, can’t even click the button to upload.

Peter: The button will not work because their JavaScript is borked.

Peter: Go back to Chrome in an in-private browser, I’m able to get a little bit further, and then I finally get the six digit code, cannot submit it.

Peter: There’s no button to click to submit the code, and pressing enter on the page does nothing.

Peter: Refreshing it does nothing.

Peter: Resend the code.

Peter: It says, yep, we’ve reset you the code.

Peter: No new code comes in.

Peter: So I go to the office, to the credit union locally, and it took about 20 minutes, and I opened up an account.

Peter: Now I have to re-verify and send them the paperwork from the state, saying that I’ve a lot.

Peter: I’m like, maybe I should just pay out of pocket and forget this.

Scott: Yeah, this sounds like a lot of time spent for very little gain.

Peter: For 0% financing.

Scott: Yeah, I don’t know.

Scott: Peter, I don’t know if you know this, but there are people who make a living doing computer consulting.

Scott: Maybe one of them can help you fill out your website.

Peter: Yeah, yeah, probably.

Peter: Probably.

Scott: What else is happening in Peter Nicolaitis’ life?

Peter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: Well, let’s see.

Peter: I’m heading to the house for the first time in a couple of weeks up in Vermont to see how that’s going.

Peter: I’m excited to see what the progress on the remodeling is going like.

Peter: For sure, yeah.

Peter: So that’ll be fun.

Peter: So as I’m planning to inherit my father’s Honda CR-V from 2011, I purchased a splitter cable to both charge it and have an audio out, you know, in traditional headphone jack, into the aux port so I can put me on aux.

Scott: Right, when Peter says charge it, he means the phone, not the car.

Peter: The car does not charge.

Peter: The car charges by inserting liquefied dead animals.

Scott: Dinosaur, yeah.

Peter: Yes, so I bought a splitter, and forward thinking to my next phone, I’m like, well, let me get a USB-C splitter.

Peter: So it’s USB-C input for charging, USB-C output for power and data, and audio in.

Peter: But then I’m like, well, I need an adapter for lightning.

Peter: Three adapters later, I hope I get the right one.

Peter: So the first one I bought, my bad, I borked.

Peter: I took lightning in to USB-C out, no, wrong, wrong, my bad.

Peter: Swapped it in, got another one, USB-C in, lightning out.

Peter: I opened it up, and the package clearly has a sticker on it, which says, data not supported.

Peter: So it’s strictly for charging.

Peter: So I send it back.

Peter: So now today, I should have one showing up, which claims to be rated to support data transfer and charging.

Peter: We’ll see if this works.

Scott: Who made these cables?

Peter: Oh, these are all Amazon alphabet soups.

Peter: Oh, yeah.

Scott: See, for something like this, I would bite the bullet and pay for a Belkin or a…

Peter: I’m prob…

Peter: We’ll see how it goes today.

Peter: If it doesn’t go today, I’ll learn my lesson and pay twice as much.

Peter: But I’m like, it’s nine bucks.

Peter: Sure, I’ll grab that.

Peter: Oh, 10 bucks, fine.

Peter: Now I’m wishing I should have spent the $25 and not wasted all this time.

Scott: You might be able to get a zero percentage loan for your $25 cable.

Peter: Maybe I can.

Peter: I’ll just roll it into the heat loan.

Peter: Why not?

Scott: I need a $10,000 and $25 loan.

Peter: Yeah, and $25.

Peter: That’s what I’ve been doing.

Peter: I haven’t been running as much because as I’ve mentioned to you, I’ll be going in for rotator cuff repair again on Tuesday.

Peter: And so that’s going to keep me out of most of the things I love doing for about six weeks.

Scott: You shouldn’t be running on your rotator cuff anyway.

Scott: Look, I’m not a physician.

Peter: More legs, man.

Peter: You’re a lot faster on four than you are on two.

Scott: I thought rotator cuffs were up a little bit higher than any of the stuff that you actually use.

Peter: More, man.

Peter: Four is better than two.

Peter: That’s how you gotta do it.

Scott: So you just run along like one of those apes and plan it in a…

Peter: Bingo, which I have not seen, by the way.

Peter: But I did see Kong versus Godzilla or a Godzilla X-Kong.

Peter: That was fun.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: So that was worth it.

Scott: That was good.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Well, I’m not saying good, but it was fun.

Scott: Wait a minute.

Scott: Is it good or is it not good?

Scott: Good.

Scott: I didn’t say, is it great?

Scott: Is it the best movie ever?

Scott: Are you gonna put it on your website?

Scott: Are you gonna create a website?

Scott: Best movie ever.

Peter: No question.

Peter: Best movie ever.

Peter: I mean, if your choices are best movie ever, worst movie ever, and it’s a movie, it’s best movie ever.

Scott: So you’re gonna create a fan website for it.

Scott: Blah, blah, blah.

Peter: Right.

Peter: Right, no, not gonna do that.

Peter: But anyway, yeah, no, I enjoyed it.

Scott: If you enjoyed it, then it’s good.

Peter: Okay, fine, it was good.

Scott: I don’t, am I wrong?

Scott: No, it was good.

Scott: If it was bad, but you enjoyed it, that doesn’t make sense.

Peter: No, it’s good.

Peter: That’s good.

Peter: No, it’s good.

Scott: Okay, I just wanna understand your rating system.

Peter: It’s good.

Scott: Peter Nikolaidis’ personal rating system.

Scott: It’s terrible, but I really had a good time.

Peter: It’s terrible, but I loved it.

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: Okay, so that’s one that I need to watch.

Scott: I think we’ve talked about that.

Scott: I just haven’t gotten off my ass.

Peter: Oh yeah, Godzilla X Kong was fun.

Peter: I mean, it had all the tropes.

Peter: It was trope-y, but it was fun.

Scott: Yeah, we talked about it.

Scott: They’re not big on character development, et cetera, et cetera.

Peter: Hey, Kong develops an Iron Man complex.

Scott: I heard that he had a toothache.

Peter: He does.

Peter: And Godzilla develops something.

Peter: So I mean, there’s that.

Scott: Right.

Scott: So yeah.

Scott: And they sold a new toy.

Scott: Okay, all right.

Scott: Peter, you already have been using the Eero routers.

Scott: I bought Eero 6E Pro.

Peter: Yes, pretty sure that’s what I have too.

Scott: Yeah, and I’m pretty happy with them overall.

Scott: There’s some oddities in using routers that use an app to interface with them for everything instead of a web thing.

Scott: But on the other hand, that doesn’t bother me that much.

Scott: When you look at the interface that I had with the Netgear Orbi, this is just as good.

Scott: And to be honest, one thing about Netgear and their routers is maybe the newer ones are better, but it feels like an old, it feels like something from early 2000 when you’re using the Netgear stuff, when you’re setting it up and configuring it.

Scott: And there were more options.

Scott: Like I could, I had support for DynDNS built into that.

Scott: Whereas with the Orbi, I have to use their DDNS email address and stuff like that.

Scott: A few things are different, but overall it’s pretty good.

Scott: I like it.

Scott: One interesting thing, and I don’t understand the change, is that in my iCloud account, I’ve always had Private Relay turned on.

Scott: So to external viewers, you appear to have a different IP address.

Scott: Now, my Eero’s know my true external IP address, and it is indeed a Ziply Fiber IP address.

Scott: However, my little script that grabs an IP address and displays it in my bar now, it shows the Private Relay one, and I can’t figure out why, because even if I turn off Private Relay, I still get the Private Relay one there.

Scott: Even if I go to whatsmyip.com, and now it shows the true Ziply one.

Scott: So I just turned Private Relay back on, and I don’t really care, because the Eero is, I think anything that matters, it’s gonna see the correct IP address and everything else, it won’t matter.

Peter: Yeah, so I’ve been using Eero now for a few years.

Peter: I was working with a vendor whom I used to resell and had nothing but frustration with the product.

Peter: And so I realized, you know what?

Peter: I really don’t need a full blown super firewall at home.

Scott: Well, that’s what it was.

Scott: It was a good product, and I could see why you would use it, but it was also slightly overkill, maybe?

Peter: No, it was overkill for what I needed, for sure, seeing how I have a decent endpoint.

Peter: I have pretty good surfing habits myself, and I didn’t need all the bells and whistles.

Peter: So, I switched to IRO in at least a couple of years now.

Peter: It’s been great.

Peter: The experience I’ve had with IRO is amazing.

Peter: It’s good enough that I’m planning to go all IRO at the place in Vermont as well.

Peter: It’s just very hands-off, and at this stage, that’s what I want.

Peter: If I’m getting paid to fiddle with it, fine.

Scott: When you come home, when you’re at home, when you’re troubleshooting technology all day and you’re fighting stuff all day, the last thing you want to do is come home and have somebody say, hey, this thing’s not working, and you’re like, I just don’t, I just, yep, there you go.

Scott: So I will say the Wi-Fi speeds are really good.

Scott: I used to have, with the Netgear Orbi, I had the satellite downstairs right next to the Apple TV, and I actually had the Apple TV ethernetted into the back of that.

Scott: But with this, I have the second euro further away, quite a bit further away, and the Apple TV is now downstairs, now just connected with wireless.

Scott: It still gets way faster speeds.

Scott: The backhaul between the two euros seems to be pretty bloody quick.

Scott: And again, I got the 6e Pro, so the reason why I did it now is because now that people are starting to sell Wi-Fi 7 stuff, the prices on the 6 stuff is finally coming down.

Scott: Because you know how it is.

Scott: Dude, they were sending me ads for upgrading Netgear Orbi, and I’m not kidding, Netgear wants like $1,000 for three.

Scott: It’s crazy.

Peter: Prices have gone up.

Peter: I mean, all of the decent wireless equipment is expensive now, though.

Scott: Right, but if you just wait until the next generation comes out, then all of a sudden the prices return to sanity, which tells you that it’s nothing to do with the actual cost.

Scott: It’s total gouging.

Peter: But how much did we pay for our USB hubs slash docking stations?

Scott: Oh, I don’t know.

Peter: Like 500 bucks.

Scott: Three something, yeah.

Peter: Yeah, they were not cheap.

Peter: Like I think I got a refurb or an open box version, and it was like 400 some odd bucks for that.

Scott: That is true.

Peter: So, that’s like-

Scott: I can see charging a lot for something specialized like that though, where I’m not saying they need to, but I’m saying those are very specialized use cases, and they’re selling to a very particular market.

Scott: Like they know I’m pretty much selling to Mac users when I do this.

Scott: Whereas this other networking gear, they’ve got tons of competitors, and it’s not niche.

Scott: Everybody needs it.

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: But they just went to town and started gouging.

Scott: Wi-Fi 6 is where they really started gouging.

Scott: All of a sudden, everything went up.

Scott: You buy two mesh things, and it’s $700, $800.

Scott: It’s like, no.

Scott: At the time, I was like, I guess I’ll never have Wi-Fi 6.

Scott: Fortunately, when Wi-Fi 7 came out, which I don’t even know if the standards finalized, they suddenly returned the prices of the Wi-Fi 6 stuff to normal.

Peter: That’s amazing.

Peter: Don’t get me started on price gouging and the, you know, quarry doctor-o and bleepification of things and stuff.

Scott: And shite-ification.

Peter: Yeah, it is.

Peter: So the more I, I know you recently unsubscribed from the Better Offline podcast, but I’m hearing more and more people talk about the same stuff.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Peter: It sounds like it’s gaining momentum.

Peter: And I’m curious, because last night I was listening to a much more eloquent guy who appeared to be of Asian descent, but he was clearly Brit, talking about a lot of the same stuff.

Peter: And he was talking about the phenomenon, as we’ve seen it, in Uber, in Amazon, in other companies, Google.

Peter: And my girlfriend, she was at about, after about 10 minutes, she’s like, I can’t listen to this anymore.

Peter: Take an economics class.

Peter: And she went and got to bed.

Peter: So as we drive up to Vermont this evening, I’m looking forward to pick her brain, because I understand that some of what they’re doing is economics, but it’s also a lot of just like, gouge the market, put everyone else out of business, and then develop or deliver an inferior product.

Peter: That’s something I’m seeing a lot more professionally too, is like, this used to be amazing, right?

Peter: Crowd strike, they used to be absolutely amazing.

Peter: And now you’re lucky if one of their core services is still amazing, but everything else sucks that they’re offering.

Scott: I think, okay, this is all of course speculation, but I think you’re seeing a confluence of things.

Scott: I think that the pandemic had a bigger impact on organizations than people want to admit, because we’re terrible at assessing things and figuring out what happened and taking lessons from stuff.

Scott: I think it was also an, I think things started falling apart when stuff wasn’t getting done or resources became a little bit more constrained for a while.

Scott: Some things have never recovered.

Scott: Restaurants are a great example.

Scott: You still pay just as much for food as you did during the pandemic, even though everything should be easier again.

Scott: But when it comes to tech, a lot of it is just greed.

Scott: Don’t forget, these are the same companies that are raking in billions, but still laying people off just to make Wall Street happy.

Scott: So I get the take an economics class argument to some degree, but not really because these same companies are making money hand over fist, but they are absolutely charging way more for the same or slightly inferior services.

Scott: The other thing I think is that you and I have talked about this, software in general is just becoming more inshite-ified and unreliable.

Scott: Everything is bad, nothing works.

Scott: And the reason why is because they’re just delusional us with new stuff all the time, and we’ve come to accept it.

Scott: Humanity has come to accept that their software is not gonna work, and no one complains.

Scott: We accept it.

Peter: Yep, that’s just it.

Peter: It’s becoming the norm of things not working.

Peter: And I remember having my discussions, discussions with my father about this when I was just like, we’re moving towards a third world country.

Peter: You know, like we’re moving like, you know, I remember my time in Brazil, and even to a lesser extent in Costa Rica.

Peter: Like, oh, this is how things are.

Peter: It takes time to get stuff, right?

Peter: You know, you can’t just drive down to the store and get a new phone, or you know, you need a tire for the car.

Peter: Well, we gotta wait, you know, the truck will be here next week with all the new tires.

Peter: But it’s kind of funny because this is how I remember things, largely being growing up in Vermont.

Peter: I’m kind of used to that.

Scott: Yes and no, because I think the whole, the software problem part of it affects the entire world.

Peter: Well, the software part of it, we didn’t have any software in Vermont.

Peter: We didn’t have phones.

Peter: We didn’t have computers.

Peter: We didn’t have electricity.

Peter: We didn’t have daylight most of the time, you know?

Peter: So, yeah, that’s new.

Peter: But everything else, the supply chain issues.

Scott: Yeah, right.

Scott: By the way, I will say one thing.

Scott: We’ve become spoiled by Amazon and getting stuff next day, same day, blah, blah, blah.

Scott: If you’re buying something technology-based, if you have a Best Buy near you, check to see if they have it in stock.

Scott: You can go pick it up the same day and you can avoid Amazon entirely.

Scott: And they will generally be the same price.

Peter: Well, they claim to price match.

Scott: Right, right, right.

Scott: So, they’re kind of amazing.

Scott: They are a company that, in my opinion, is doing it right at the moment.

Scott: They’re pretty good.

Scott: I would recommend trying them.

Scott: Go look on Amazon, see what you can get it for, and then go to Best Buy and buy it there.

Peter: So, I even tried to get my…

Peter: I tried to price match and get a new MacBook Air at Best Buy a couple weeks ago.

Peter: They only have certain pre-filled configurations.

Scott: Yeah, they probably only have the very base.

Scott: I don’t think they have upgraded RAM, upgraded SSD.

Peter: They did not.

Peter: So, I didn’t end up doing that at this point.

Peter: I decided, I’ll wait for the, you know, the NM4 processor or whatnot.

Peter: We’ll see how that goes.

Scott: Peter, speaking of going back in time and being a little bit retro, have you heard of an Apple TV show, Apple TV+ show called Sugar?

Peter: I’ve seen it come across my Apple TV+ home screen.

Scott: Yeah, and it’s Colin Farrell.

Scott: And here’s a weird thing.

Scott: I don’t know why I never liked Colin Farrell, but now I realized I had no reason not to like Colin Farrell.

Scott: I just didn’t based on like one thing I saw for a few minutes or something.

Scott: He’s really good in this.

Scott: And at first you think this is kind of a noir detective thing.

Scott: It’s, you know, cast back in time.

Scott: But I think really what it is is it’s not noir at all, but it’s a guy who romanticizes certain things from the past.

Scott: Like he’s big into the movies.

Scott: He always thinks of scenes from movies when he’s going and doing stuff, et cetera.

Scott: He is trying to make everything noir and romanticized in a certain way, but the rest of the world doesn’t give a damn about that.

Scott: I think.

Scott: Anyway, it’s kind of weird.

Scott: It’s a little bit hard to understand what exactly is the tone supposed to be here, but I’m really into it.

Scott: It’s a pretty good show.

Scott: It’s a pretty good TV series.

Scott: I would recommend watching it if you’re into, and they cover some dark topics.

Scott: Like it looks like they’re getting into human trafficking and stuff like that.

Scott: So it’s pretty good.

Peter: I haven’t gotten into it yet.

Peter: I have been catching up on X-Men 97, which I know that’s not your thing, but as someone who watched the X-Men cartoon in the 90s, I was like, this was an amazing continuation.

Peter: Really enjoying it.

Peter: And I’ve been also watching For All Mankind on Apple TV+.

Peter: Yes, tell me about that.

Peter: I got about six, seven episodes into Silo, and I realized it just was not holding my attention.

Peter: I was finding myself wandering away into the kitchen and starting to make snack and not even listening to it.

Peter: So I was like, okay, I’m gonna just bail on that one.

Peter: But in general, I like sci-fi, so I pivoted over to For All Mankind, and I’m really enjoying that.

Scott: Is your kitchen in a Silo?

Scott: Hey, wait, you’re in a vertical building.

Scott: You’re kind of an…

Scott: Okay, so I read the three Silo books, and I don’t remember much about them by now, because that was a long time ago.

Peter: I didn’t even know that they were based on books.

Scott: Oh, yeah.

Scott: Now, my wife watched the Silo series, and she said it was okay.

Scott: It wasn’t as good.

Scott: She didn’t like it as much as a couple other things we were watching at the same time.

Scott: So I think she probably shares your opinion there.

Scott: What else did you mention in there?

Scott: Oh, For All Mankind.

Scott: So what do you think so far?

Scott: I don’t know where you’re at right now.

Peter: We’re in the 80s.

Scott: What season?

Peter: Reagan is still present, season two.

Scott: Okay.

Peter: Getting towards the end of season two.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: I just like the dramatic action scenes in space and stuff like that.

Peter: That really got me going.

Scott: Oh, yeah.

Scott: They’re really well done.

Scott: It looks like they spent some money on this show.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: And if only, I mean, we know that can’t be because Apple doesn’t have any money.

Scott: Peter, all I am gonna say is they know how to fill out a 0% loan website form.

Peter: They probably do.

Scott: So where are you at in the Gordo and Tracy story arc?

Scott: Where’s Gordo at right now?

Peter: Tracy just flew her mission with all the Marines that were deployed.

Scott: Oh, okay.

Scott: So she’s kind of a celebrity already.

Peter: She’s a celebrity, and Gordo has just had a conversation with her current husband.

Peter: Yes.

Peter: And on the other side, I forget the other, the husband and wife who lost a child, she just agreed to sell the restaurant, or the bar, I should say.

Scott: Oh, right.

Peter: That’s where I’m at right now.

Peter: And it’s good.

Peter: I’m looking forward to each episode, and it’s a lot of fun.

Scott: You’re talking about the bald ones.

Peter: Bald ones, thank you.

Peter: When I’m looking at them, I can remember their names, and then when I’m not.

Scott: Yeah, Ed Baldwin’s the hothead astronaut, and Karen Baldwin’s his long-suffering wife, who, by the way, changes a lot during the series, because at very first, she’s infuriated that women would want to be astronauts.

Scott: And by the end, I think she’s kind of tired of putting up with the crap that men cast her way.

Scott: So, particularly her husband.

Peter: I did appreciate the nod.

Peter: I like how it’s alternate history, but we’re still keeping certain plot points.

Peter: I love the Order of Presidents, and how they had a picture of Jimmy Carter in.

Peter: I love how it’s like, what was the order?

Peter: It was like, it was Kennedy, Nixon, Kennedy, Reagan.

Peter: That’s as far as we’ve gotten.

Peter: And Carter’s still in Congress.

Scott: Yeah, certain historical events just don’t play out the same way at all.

Scott: And it’s kind of funny watching the news.

Scott: So, if you’re watching the show, pay attention to the newsreels and the-

Peter: Oh, they’re great.

Scott: At the beginning of the season, they like to do a catch up to show you things that have happened.

Scott: Pay attention to those.

Peter: Yep, yeah, and I enjoy that.

Peter: And seeing like, so what’s it, Ellen, Helen, being standing behind Reagan during a press conference and stuff.

Scott: Oh yeah, Ellen, yeah, who, oh, I won’t tell you her arc, but yeah, she’s-

Peter: Don’t tell her, yeah.

Scott: She’s good, yeah.

Scott: Yeah, it’s a good show.

Scott: And by the way, Ellen, is she with a certain guy yet, whose name I can’t remember?

Scott: Is she married?

Peter: Oh, long, she just said that she wants to not be married.

Scott: That guy, that guy who plays her husband, married for convenience, he’s in Sugar.

Scott: And he’s a totally different character, and it’s really funny to watch him, so it’s pretty good.

Scott: Anyway, yeah, For All Mankind, really good, love it.

Scott: Glad you’re watching it.

Peter: Cool, well, on that note, I am on a bit of a time crunch today, so we do have to call it, but as always, this is fun.

Scott: At a certain point, we gotta move on.

Peter: And I think we’re at that point.

Scott: Okay, Peter, what do you have to say to people if they wonder where on the internet, if they’re not gonna go to your Godzilla fan site?

Peter: I’m tempted to say you’re an idiot because you’ve already found us, but maybe somebody pointed you towards an audio file and not our website or our SS feed, but you can find us at friendswithbrews.com.

Scott: Right.

Peter: And all the links to us are all there, so just start there, and then if you can’t find us, then you’re an idiot.

Scott: If you can’t find us, Type cookie, you idiot.

Peter: Type cookie, you idiot.

Scott: All right, Peter.

Peter: That’s it.

Scott: Oh, I only have one more thing to say.

Scott: Tell your friends.

Scott: Friends.