Episode 74 – It Came From Notes

Scott: Friends with Brews.

Scott: Friends with Brews.

Scott: Wow.

Peter: That was like, what, episode eight of South Park, when it was like, oh my god, they killed Kenny, you bastards.

Peter: I mean, wow, that’s, wow.

Scott: I did the soundboard, but you can’t hear it.

Scott: For reasons that I just refused to talk about.

Peter: Friends with Brews.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: Well, hey, I don’t know about you, Scott, you mean, but I’m glad to be back.

Scott: I don’t know about you either, Peter.

Peter: Episode 73 of Friends with Brews, or 74, right?

Peter: Yeah, you say that.

Peter: You message me and say, this is episode 74, by the way.

Peter: And then we start recording and I get a pop-up message in iOS or Mac OS notification that says, Scott would like to collaborate with you on FWB 73.

Scott: I don’t know where that would have come from.

Peter: It came from Notes and the Notes app, which I have had open for the last 15 minutes.

Peter: But now that you and I are talking about it, Apple felt like it was time to notify me that we could collaborate on this note that I already have open.

Scott: Well, I’ll make this 75, since we’re not going to look at this note for this episode, because we have everything in reminders.

Peter: Well, we do.

Peter: Let’s talk about that.

Peter: So I say, yeah, the life hacks, we put that on hold for next episode.

Scott: Yeah, in fact, I’m going to edit out, but I’ll mention that, because that will be a big surprise.

Peter: Oh, and by the way, Notes just sent me another notification saying that I could collaborate with you on a note.

Peter: Oh, there’s another one.

Scott: That’s because I opened Notes, and it sent me a notification saying, hey, maybe you should collaborate with Peter on it, but by then I’d already renamed it to 75.

Peter: It just notified me that too.

Peter: Hey, at least we’re getting close to real time updates, which is more than I could say I was getting on my vacation in Europe from Verizon.

Peter: See what I just did there?

Peter: But wait, before we go too far, what are you drinking today?

Peter: And wait, before we go that far, who are you?

Scott: Um, let me go back in time first.

Peter: So you’re Doctor Who.

Peter: Got it.

Scott: I don’t see…

Scott: Let’s see, Test, could you reply?

Scott: I don’t see the RCS one on my Mac, which is kind of weird, because I swear to God I’ve gotten RCS messages from other people on my Mac.

Scott: Is that true?

Scott: Maybe not.

Peter: It has to come…

Peter: I believe it has to come through the phone, but we should explain to people why we’re talking about that.

Scott: But it should already do that, because I already have it set to receive all messages that go to my phone to send them to my Mac, and it does that with SMS, so why wouldn’t it do it with RCS?

Peter: But what I’m saying is our dear listener doesn’t know why we’re even talking about that.

Scott: No, I know that.

Scott: I know what you’re saying, but what I’m saying is I don’t know why it wouldn’t.

Scott: I don’t know why it wouldn’t.

Peter: Okay, we’re not getting anywhere.

Peter: I’m going to cut to the chase.

Peter: You’re Scott, I’m Peter.

Peter: I’m drinking for a many return show, straight up copy of Wegmans Decaf Espresso Roast Whole Bean, which I grind in my fellow grinder and then brew in my AeroPress.

Peter: I was supposed to have had another one, but apparently I timed it correctly to not show up.

Peter: So my latest Trade Coffee Subscription shipment won’t be here until perhaps tomorrow, which is better than sitting out on my front porch for like three days while I was still flying back from Germany.

Peter: So there you go.

Peter: And what are you drinking, Scott?

Scott: I am drinking the Extracto Coffee Roasters 11 of Spades.

Peter: 11 of Spades?

Scott: And it says that it is chocolate and dark fruit.

Scott: It says our house blend silky smooth chocolate throughout sweet dark fruit tones in a lingering German.

Scott: I sense a theme here.

Scott: Chocolate finish.

Scott: It’s not bad.

Scott: It’s a little bitter for my taste.

Scott: I actually found this coffee.

Scott: This is not a trade coffee one.

Scott: I found this at our local Japanese snack shop, Oyatsupan.

Scott: And they had bags of it there.

Scott: Apparently, they use it in there because I had a matcha latte, and I guess they use this coffee or maybe they just sell it.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: Who knows?

Scott: Who can say, Peter?

Scott: But anyway, I bought the bag.

Scott: It says $18.50 on the website, but I’m pretty sure it costs more than that at Oyatsupan.

Scott: And I’m drinking it now, and it’s not bad.

Scott: It’s a little bitter, but it’s, I definitely taste the chocolatey notes that they’re talking about, but it’s slightly bitterer than some of the other coffees that I’m drinking at the same, not at the exact same moment, but at the same period of time.

Peter: Slightly bitterer.

Scott: Slightly bitter, slightly, unsightly.

Peter: Slightly, unsightly bitter.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: Well, this is, you’ve all heard me talk about Wegmans decaf espresso roast many times before.

Peter: It’s relatively unchanged.

Peter: I like it.

Peter: It’s my go-to.

Peter: It’s my default go-to coffee these days, because I once again, I’m having caffeine withdrawal today.

Peter: As we’ve mentioned in a previous podcast, which I don’t know, maybe you’ve released it.

Peter: It’s safe to release now anyway.

Peter: I’ve been on vacation in Europe for the last three weeks.

Peter: It was great.

Scott: I haven’t released that one yet.

Scott: Okay.

Peter: Well, by the surprise, dear listener, you haven’t heard that episode yet, which hasn’t been released yet.

Peter: Maybe it will be by the time this one comes out.

Peter: Who knows?

Peter: I’ve been on vacation in Europe for the last three weeks.

Peter: And by the time I got to Paris, I was, which was like a week in, I was drinking regular coffee again, fairly regularly.

Peter: And by the time we got to Rome, which was the last week, I was just pounding coffee left and right.

Peter: And I was back up to like four or five cups a day.

Peter: Flew back from Germany yesterday, and I realized it this morning, it had been about 30 hours since my last cup of coffee.

Peter: And sure enough, I was feeling a little depressed.

Peter: I was totally run down, combined jet lag with caffeine withdrawal and headache and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Peter: So I did treat myself to one cup of caffeinated coffee this morning, and a Tylenol.

Peter: And then things were looking up, and I was like, well, we can’t have that.

Peter: So I went straight to the local CVS and got the latest Covid shot.

Peter: So I took another Tylenol, and I’m feeling okay, I’m feeling okay.

Scott: I definitely need to get a Covid shot and also a flu shot, but I keep having this thing where it just keeps recurring, where I feel slightly fluish, and I feel slightly under the weather, and I sleep abnormal amounts, like just way too much.

Scott: And then it kind of goes away, and then it kind of comes back.

Scott: And I don’t know what’s going on, and my doctor doesn’t think I’m sick.

Scott: But I say that to explain why I’m slightly concerned about getting the shot, because I don’t want to actually have anything when I go to get the shot.

Scott: I want to be positive of that.

Peter: But you’ve been feeling like fairly under the weather, fairly consistently, though, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: So it’s probably safe to do it, but this better not be my new baseline or else.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: I mean, long Covid is a thing.

Peter: And I really hope it’s not that.

Peter: But if it is, you know, I don’t even know.

Peter: I don’t think they can really conclusively diagnose.

Scott: I don’t think they can really know.

Peter: It’s a syndrome, right?

Scott: They know that it happens.

Scott: They believe that it happens.

Scott: But I think that’s the insidious part about it, is it’s so freaking hard to diagnose.

Scott: It’s kind of when you’re left out of all other options and the person had Covid, as far as I can tell.

Scott: I don’t think there’s a sure fire way to diagnose somebody saying you for sure have.

Scott: If I think what it is, is if you have a certain combination of symptoms or some certain symptoms, and you’ve had Covid and everything else been ruled out, then I think they go to long Covid.

Scott: But which is not a good feeling, whether you’re the doctor or the patient.

Peter: It’s the ruling everything else out part that I think gets you, because how thorough were they at that ruling?

Scott: Well, I don’t actually have any blood cells left, but they didn’t notice that, so I guess.

Peter: Well, there’s not…

Scott: No, see, all that stuff is normal.

Scott: That’s the weird part.

Scott: Anyway, I will get my shots.

Peter: Seems like you should at least have some blood cells, Scott.

Scott: That’s what they tell me, but…

Peter: So before I push by now, I’d like to throw this out to the listener.

Peter: I would like your technology recommendations.

Peter: If you can recommend a Coffee Mug Warmer for my desktop.

Peter: Now, I did see some on Forbes and some on the New York Times, and they were rated, you know, like, you know, these are our best.

Peter: These are the top ones.

Peter: And some of them are the Ember brand, which I’m a little averse to because it requires their cup along with their, you know, heat plate.

Peter: I’d want something more portable or more compatible than that.

Peter: Cross-platform compatibility.

Peter: It’s been a thing of mine for 30 years.

Scott: Very important.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Peter wants an open source cup.

Peter: Absolutely.

Peter: But I looked at a bunch of the others and like all of them have like maybe three and a half star reviews on Amazon tops.

Peter: So I think that, you know, I would hope that the Amazon crowd would agree with Forbes or New York Times, whoever they were saying these were the best.

Peter: One of them I thought was kind of cool.

Peter: Omu, I believe, was the brand.

Scott: I’ve heard of Omu.

Peter: Functions as not only a coffee cup warmer, but it also is a Qi charger for your phone.

Peter: So you can put your phone on it and, you know, warm that up the same way.

Scott: See, I guess that’s what I was going to ask is like, I don’t, do you, you don’t want something you plug into your computer, do you?

Peter: I’m, I’m assuming most of these are probably going to be USB.

Peter: If not, then, you know, I can just plug it into the USB adapter in the wall.

Scott: Yeah, I guess so.

Scott: I don’t know why I feel snobby about that.

Scott: I just do.

Peter: I mean, I, like even though I have this CalDigit desktop, you know, port situation every now and then it’s rare, but every now and then I’ll still get a note from some peripheral saying, we don’t have enough power, you know, and so I’m a little hesitant to plug it into that.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: But I now have a new little spare, like an Intel NUC style Linux server sitting here on my desktop, and it’s got plenty of USB ports, so I can just power it off of that.

Peter: But anyway, dear listener, if you have a recommendation on a desktop coffee mug warmer solution, we’d like to hear from you at friendswithbrews.com.

Peter: And you know, there you go.

Scott: And what Peter doesn’t realize is by the time this episode comes out, because I haven’t edited, so 72 is the next one to be edited, then comes 73, then yeah, so he’s going to find out about this like six years from now.

Peter: That’s fine.

Peter: By then, you know, I’ll probably have gone off coffee and come back to it again.

Peter: That’s true.

Scott: It’ll be perfect timing.

Peter: It would be perfect timing.

Peter: So yeah, so I took my first real vacation for quite some time.

Peter: It was my longest for quite some time too.

Peter: Three solid weeks.

Scott: It was a vacation.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: It was good.

Peter: It was a lot of fun.

Peter: I think my favorite to definitely, well, you know, so we were in France, Germany, Italy.

Peter: Germany, I think was definitely the best.

Peter: It was for me, it was a highlight.

Peter: Rome was really nice, but super hot.

Peter: Oh my God, the temperatures were just wow.

Peter: Paris, surprisingly, you know, Paris, I think Parisians have a reputation, especially like Parisian waitstaff and stuff like, oh, they won’t even talk to you if you don’t speak French and they’re all snobby and yada yada.

Peter: We went for the first day there, went for breakfast in this Parisian restaurant.

Peter: The waiter, I told him afterwards, I was giving him a tip, like cash tip, not like plant the crops early this year type tip.

Peter: He was like Paris’ number one ambassador.

Peter: It was great, because we asked like, what do you normally eat for breakfast around here?

Peter: He said, oh, a croissant, cup of coffee.

Peter: This isn’t the French Revolution here.

Peter: But the people in Paris were all very friendly.

Peter: I was very happy with that.

Peter: Rome, also very friendly.

Peter: We stayed at this hotel and the staff were just amazing.

Peter: They were like falling over themselves to make sure that we were happy and had everything where we needed.

Peter: So that was really nice.

Peter: But I think I just felt like I fit in Germany a lot more.

Peter: Maybe because there was more beer, I don’t know.

Peter: Hard to say.

Peter: Could have been a factor.

Peter: But one thing though, I did notice everywhere we went, so much more smoking, so much more cigarettes everywhere.

Scott: Interesting.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: And it was like, like they even still have in the airports, there are smoking rooms.

Peter: So you can go.

Peter: And it’s kind of funny because they’re like clear glass or plastic walled off areas.

Peter: So you walk by and they’re like these people in these clouds of smoke in there as you’re walking by.

Peter: It was a little dystopian.

Scott: But if you really pay for the fancy one, do they give you a bathrobe and a chair too?

Peter: Maybe.

Peter: I don’t know.

Peter: I didn’t go there.

Peter: So but I noticed that like the contrast this morning when I went out for my run, like I was going out for runs in the countryside, in the vineyards in Germany.

Peter: And I would still come across the occasional person smoking either a cigar or a cigarette or something in the morning.

Peter: Contrast that, just a little 5K run on my usual route today.

Peter: I passed dozens of people, no cigarettes in sight.

Peter: So that’s one big cultural difference.

Scott: Yeah, the United States definitely, and it could be areas that we live in, like I don’t know about other parts of the country because I haven’t, I’ve been to many parts of this country, but not in recent years.

Scott: And so, yeah, there’s not, I mean, there are people that smoke downtown Portland and stuff, but it’s definitely rare.

Scott: You definitely don’t see it, you would never see it in a place.

Scott: That’s impossible.

Scott: And it feels weird when you see people just puffing away.

Peter: Yeah, I mean, go to New Orleans or Las Vegas, you know, any casino cities and stuff, and you’ll see a lot more there.

Peter: Sure.

Peter: But, you know, it was just, that was probably the most shocking, you know, not only say shocking, but the most, like, notable, you know, cultural difference.

Scott: So I’m watching this series called Sam Spade, and I’m trying to remember the name of the guy that’s in it.

Scott: You’d know him.

Scott: Sam Spade, Netflix.

Scott: He’s done a lot of different things.

Scott: But anyway, it’s in France, and it’s supposed to be back in the, oh, Clive Owen.

Scott: And it’s supposed to be back many years ago, and he’s in France, and he goes to his doctor, and his doctor’s like telling him that everything’s fine with him, except he’s getting emphysema, and he needs to quit smoking.

Scott: And as his doctor’s telling him this, his doctor’s getting his pipe ready, and getting it all set up and filled up, and putting it in his mouth and lighting up.

Scott: And he himself was pulling a cigarette out of a box, and putting it in his mouth and lighting it up.

Scott: And he goes, so emphysema, huh?

Scott: Sounds bad.

Peter: There you go.

Peter: Oh, brother.

Peter: Yeah, sounds bad.

Peter: All right.

Peter: So.

Scott: But in terms of, I’m kind of curious because it’s interesting to hear that you found Germany to be the place that you enjoyed the most.

Scott: As a tourist, what place had the most things to go and see and do?

Scott: Because even though Germany, I guess I wouldn’t just out of an ignorant point of view, I wouldn’t think that Germany would be near the top of that list.

Peter: You wouldn’t and it probably wouldn’t.

Peter: Like as far as things for Germany, it’s got lots of castles, lots of cathedrals and then lots of great places for wine and beer.

Peter: So there’s that.

Peter: Brazil.

Scott: Berlin.

Peter: Brazil is great.

Peter: Yeah, suddenly we went to a side trip to Brazil.

Peter: I don’t know how I wound up here.

Scott: It must have been a hell of a bender.

Peter: Well, that could happen in Berlin.

Peter: But Berlin, we toured things like the Berlin Wall, the Jewish Museum, the German History Museum was closed that day, but the Berlin Wall Museum was open.

Peter: Lots of museums and stuff like that.

Peter: But as far as sights, I mean, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, we went to Versailles, there’s the Louvre.

Peter: I messed up though.

Peter: I found out only after leaving Paris that the famous stairs scene in John Wick 4 is at Sacre Coeur in Paris.

Peter: Oh, I had to, so the best I could do was, I got to run up and down the Spanish steps in Rome, which is nowhere near as impressive.

Peter: I was so disappointed because I actually went out for a run, and from the hotel we were at, and I ran past the Louvre and I was running along the Seine, and I definitely could have gone to Sacre Coeur and run up those steps.

Peter: It would have been amazing.

Scott: You could have set up a camera at the bottom and ran partway up and then rolled back down.

Peter: Yes, absolutely.

Peter: Well, the hard part was just hiring.

Peter: You know how hard it is to find an assassin in France these days?

Peter: Because they don’t let you have guns.

Scott: That’s true.

Scott: They’re a little tricky about the terrorist thing because I think they’ve had some problems over there.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: So it was weird.

Peter: So I couldn’t find anyone anyway, so I guess maybe it was better.

Peter: But in Rome, obviously there’s the Colosseum, there’s all sorts of sites within Rome.

Peter: Like I said, the Spanish Steps.

Peter: So the other thing too that would jumped out radically like right from the back, the get-go in Germany, they have lots and lots of small cars.

Peter: And as we proceeded from Germany to Paris, to Rome, the cars just kept on getting smaller.

Scott: I believe that.

Scott: That’s what I was going to say was, I would imagine that of the places that had relatively larger cars, Germany would be one of them.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: So I saw, I can’t remember.

Peter: I think I saw two pickup trucks the entire time.

Peter: A Ford and a, like I saw one Ford Bronco, and I mean not Bronco, Ford F-250, I think.

Peter: And I think there was, I think the other was a Dodge Ram.

Peter: And I don’t remember.

Peter: I think the Dodge Ram I saw in France and the Ford was in, you know, on the Autobahn in Germany.

Scott: Were they flying giant American flags?

Peter: They were not.

Peter: They were not.

Peter: But I think it, you know, you sort of said something.

Scott: Yeah, it’s sort of implied.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: But we did see, I saw two one-seater cars, two different ones.

Peter: One’s a Twizy and the other, I don’t remember the name.

Peter: I have to look it up.

Peter: But if you’ve seen Silicon Valley in the first episode, Peter Gregory, one of the VC, you know, investors drives in one scene.

Peter: He is in a one-seater car.

Peter: I saw that very car.

Peter: So that was pretty cool.

Peter: But lots of little, you know, tiny, lots of smart cars, tons and tons of smart cars.

Peter: And the same, you know, competitors from like Citroën, little box, you know, just little boxes, barely enough to fit two people.

Peter: But they’re really cute.

Peter: But those little one-seaters, I mean, they’re even, those are adorable.

Peter: Like I could have one of those for commuting around.

Peter: That’d be great.

Peter: But they can top out at like 50 miles an hour or so.

Scott: So I didn’t realize that Mazda actually makes a Mazda Miata monoposto.

Scott: And it’s based on the MX-5 and it’s got 190 horsepower.

Scott: So it’s not a completely gutless little guy.

Peter: I forget the twizzy one that we saw.

Peter: I think it’s technically classified as like a motorcycle.

Peter: It just happens to be like enclosed, you know?

Peter: So it’s like an enclosed motorcycle.

Peter: It’s like that’s still, you know, it gives you something.

Peter: And in bad weather and in the, you know, unlikely event that you get rolled over or something, at least you’ve got something between you and the concrete besides just some leather.

Scott: Plus when you tip it over and you’re sitting on the shell, you look like a helpless little turtle and people inevitably want to come help you.

Peter: Exactly.

Peter: So yeah, I mean, that was definitely interesting.

Peter: And the funny thing too is that, you know, we got down to the rental car, found it, found the car, got in and I was like, oh, you know, good thing I know how to drive a stick.

Peter: And I forget which brand it was, but it’s a Volkswagen spinoff.

Peter: So over there, there’s, you know, over here we have Volkswagen and Audi, but over there, there’s like three other different, like Skoda and a couple of others.

Peter: We had one of the other brands, but it was nice, you know, for a relatively low end Volkswagen, essentially, you know, six speed overdrive, it supported carplay, which was great.

Peter: I cleverly had planned, you know, I brought my USB cables and the C and A adapters, but I also brought my little clip on MagSafe phone mount.

Peter: So I was able to mount the phone, but I had carplay, so I didn’t really need it.

Peter: The car was pretty good.

Peter: I mean, like it’s so it’s been a long time since I’ve driven a, you know, regular old gas powered car, and even longer since I’ve driven a stick.

Peter: This thing had six speeds, you know, like five gears and overdrive.

Peter: And the intelligence was really clever.

Peter: Like its cruise control would let me shift gears and it would resume after I had depressed the clutch and changed gears.

Peter: Back when I had cruise control on a standard beforehand, anytime I would hit the clutch or disengage the gears, that would never happen.

Peter: And it also like it auto detected hill stops.

Peter: So if I was in neutral and you know, on a hill, it would automatically, you know, hold the brake while I was there.

Peter: Some other pretty cool stuff.

Peter: It wasn’t the Volkswagen spinoff was not a hybrid, but you know, it’s constantly encouraging me to shift up, like run at lower RPMs, lower RPMs, like all the time and pausing at stoplights.

Peter: It would, you know, just conk out the motor, just turn it off.

Peter: And then as soon as you push the clutch down, it reengage and stuff.

Peter: So, you know, they’ve definitely done a lot to make the, you know, gas powered vehicles more efficient, which is great.

Peter: But they still, I think, need to be doing a lot more towards electric.

Peter: So anyway, so that was fun.

Peter: I love the food.

Peter: German food is great.

Peter: Frankly, I gotta tell you, the croissants were pretty much the same in all three countries.

Peter: I couldn’t tell the difference.

Scott: But were they better than Boston croissants?

Peter: They were pretty good.

Peter: I mean, they were all fresh and delicious everywhere.

Peter: So but, you know, if you told me like, oh, you know, France has the best croissants, I’m like, do they, though?

Peter: I don’t know.

Peter: One thing I told you about was lessons learned.

Peter: And I believe that I was well, I definitely was scammed, and I believe I was pickpocketed in the during the the event.

Peter: So that was that was not fun.

Peter: But it essentially just, you know, got me back on to heightened sense of alert, even if I didn’t feel like there was a physical threat from anybody to just be like, you know, default, no back off, no stay away kind of thing.

Peter: So, yeah, when we were trying to find a parking spot in in France, you know, a guy came up to me and, you know, just like asked me if I had a few, you know, a few cents.

Peter: And learning from my experience in Brazil, this is a common practice where, you know, a guy hangs out in a parking lot, you give him 50 cents or whatnot, and he makes sure nothing happens to your car.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: And, you know, again, from my time in Brazil, I was just conditioned like, oh, that’s what’s going on here.

Peter: Got it.

Peter: You know, okay, fine.

Peter: So I gave the guy 50 cents.

Scott: Okay, fine.

Peter: And then I was trying to figure out how to park the car and how to pay for the meter.

Peter: And in hindsight, I realized that he had probably sabotaged the parking meter, so it would not take my credit card.

Peter: And but he was like, hey, it’s okay.

Peter: You know, I’ve got the parking pass here and I’ll pay for you and stuff.

Peter: And so I just, you know, wasn’t in wasn’t the I was I was in a stupid was that, you know, state one state two thinking, you know, thing I was in.

Peter: Oh, right.

Peter: Fine.

Peter: You know, this is the price to make this guy go away.

Peter: I’ll pay him to pay the parking meter or whatnot.

Peter: And then while that was happening, I don’t remember exactly, but I think I had taken my glasses off because at one point we were putting on sunscreen and I put my airpods and my glasses on the roof of the car.

Peter: Now, I grabbed the airpods, I had those, but after this little encounter when we were leaving, I realized that my sunglasses were missing.

Peter: And now the funny thing is what, assuming that he did steal them, he couldn’t have known at the time was those are my prescription Morby Parker glasses.

Peter: So I was like, dude, you didn’t get away with a pair of just Armani’s or something like that.

Peter: But anyway, lesson learned and then as a result, and there anytime anybody was strange was coming up to me, the default was like, nope, nine.

Peter: At one point, I even started speaking Japanese to some people.

Peter: So just to get them off.

Peter: Well, it made them scratch their heads a little bit.

Peter: They’re like, English, German, French.

Peter: I was like, do you understand Japanese?

Peter: And no, that didn’t.

Peter: It just kind of looked sideways and we walked away.

Peter: So anyway, yeah.

Peter: So lessons learned.

Peter: Don’t trust anybody.

Scott: That kind of sucks, though.

Scott: I mean, it’s not surprising.

Scott: It’s basically any big city that you go to or any.

Peter: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: I don’t have that on, you know, I don’t blame any specific culture or country for that one.

Peter: So but yeah, overall, it was great.

Peter: It was great to get away.

Peter: I definitely could see myself relocating there if I had to.

Peter: And, you know, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Scott: To put it in a Friends with Brews context, what about if you weren’t desperate?

Peter: Oh, I weren’t desperate?

Peter: No, I’m…

Peter: Dude, it’s tempting, you know?

Peter: So yeah, no, I mean, like I said, food, wine, running.

Peter: You know, if I was to be in the south part, southern part of Germany, just like getting up in the morning and running through the grape vineyards and stuff, like there are worse ways to start the day.

Scott: People don’t care that you’re running through their vineyards stamping on their grapes?

Scott: Really?

Peter: Well, you don’t stamp on the grapes, Scott.

Peter: You run in between the grapes and you just leave them there.

Peter: No, there are roads that go between the vineyards.

Peter: And if you want to, you can go like right into between the rows of grapes if you want to, too.

Peter: There’s most, there was, out of all of the places, all the ones that I ran through, I only saw one that was fenced off and it was for, I think, apples and maybe peaches or nectarines.

Peter: But all of the ones for plums and grapes and stuff, it’s just like right off the road, you know, nothing stopping you from stamping their grapes if you want to.

Scott: I want to live there.

Scott: Hey, what’s the internet like there?

Peter: Just fine.

Peter: My cell signal, like, I had cell signal almost everywhere.

Peter: There was, on the train from Frankfurt to Paris, there was a long dead spot along the way.

Peter: But in general, you know, I have Verizon, as you know, and I bought their monthly travel pass.

Peter: So I paid 100 bucks for 250 minutes and 25 gigs of, you know, 5G or whatever data while I was there.

Peter: You know, just to not have to fiddle with, not have to worry about the hassle of changing numbers and getting a different e-SIM, et cetera.

Peter: I thought it was worth it, but it worked fine.

Peter: Internet was high speed, you know, in all the places I was, worked just fine.

Peter: You know, it was great.

Peter: There were plenty of electric vehicle chargers everywhere when I was, you know, going around.

Peter: The gas is very expensive.

Peter: They tax the hell out of gas, but that doesn’t stop the Germans from driving their cars.

Peter: They love it anyway.

Peter: But yeah, it was like all the modern conveniences.

Peter: And that was how one day to Positano in Southern Italy.

Peter: And it’s, you know, famous like, you know, beach touristy resort town.

Peter: And it reminded me of all of the places in Costa Rica, except the internet and the power grid were much more reliable.

Peter: So you know, it had all the modern conveniences and it felt like everything was a lot, you know, like more, I was less worried that everything was going to cut out on me on a whim.

Peter: So that was nice.

Peter: A little more expensive, but not terribly.

Peter: So that’s that.

Peter: That was my wonderful vacation in Europe.

Scott: Well, I gotta say, as a person who hasn’t even been to the beach in a long time, it looked pretty friggin amazing to me.

Scott: And I, boy, I would love to live outside this country again sometime.

Scott: And that, I’m sure that sounds weird to a lot of Americans.

Scott: But the fact that it sounds weird to a lot of Americans, to me, proves the reason why I want to live outside this country.

Scott: It just, you know, there’s other ways of life.

Scott: There’s other…

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: And just in case, you know, your listener doesn’t know, you lived for a long time in Japan, right?

Peter: So people might not not know that, so.

Scott: And it’s it’s kind of nice to live in another culture where you you can absorb their problems, of course, over time.

Scott: But for for a long time, you’re just getting used to the culture.

Scott: It’s a little bit different.

Scott: It’s not the same.

Scott: You don’t have the same vested interests in some of their goings on.

Scott: And so you get to enjoy just the culture itself a little bit more.

Scott: And you’ve got stuff to learn.

Scott: And learning cultural stuff and learning different people and learning things about different languages is always a lot of fun, I think.

Peter: And so, yep, no, absolutely.

Peter: No, it’s just I had an interesting thing.

Peter: I had some discussions.

Peter: Well, one discussion about politics and the US presidential election that’s coming up.

Peter: And it was interesting that one guy had a opinion that he would prefer to see Trump get re-elected because during his whole tenure, there were no invasions or armed conflicts under Trump in other countries.

Peter: And I didn’t want to push too far.

Peter: I was like, and that whole thing where we launched a bunch of cruise missiles at that airport in Syria, I guess that doesn’t count, you know?

Peter: I was like, I didn’t, I wasn’t really like, I don’t want to dig too deep into that, but it was interesting to get that perspective.

Scott: Yeah, and I got to say, like, that is true.

Scott: And I will say that this is something that Democrats have never come to terms with, is that they’re very good at identifying the bad parts, the violent parts of their opposition, but they’re not, they don’t understand that the fact that they support the military industrial complex and its current continuing set of actions so heavily should be re-examined.

Scott: You know, they don’t, and I do think that’s actually one thing you can say about Trump.

Scott: Now, it’s not because he’s a good guy, it’s just because he’s so incoherent and out of control and he was doing so many domestic things.

Peter: Yeah, I said, give a matter of time.

Peter: It’s only a matter of time until-

Peter: Once you’ve got America under your thumb, then you start looking around, hey, why is the oil so expensive again?

Peter: Let’s do something about that.

Scott: Not to go straight to the Hitler thing, but that’s how it started with him.

Scott: It started home and then it spread out.

Scott: And that’s how-

Peter: And I, you know, looking, there were so many…

Peter: So here’s again, now, I remember when George W.

Peter: Bush was running for president, that people were just throwing around the Hitler comparisons.

Peter: And I was like, okay, I don’t see it.

Peter: Right, I still don’t think I see that.

Scott: No, I do think that he was way too easily led to war, but that’s not the same as being a dictator, an authoritarian.

Peter: Exactly.

Peter: But yeah, if you, you know, and we’re touching that political third rail now, and I don’t care at this point.

Peter: But yeah, you should really compare a lot.

Peter: And if you don’t believe me, go to your friendly, if you can’t do your own research, go to ChatGPT or Perplexity and just ask them to do a point by point comparison of Trump’s policies, proposed and otherwise, and compare them to the rise of power, or of Adolf Hitler.

Peter: And if you don’t see a lot of similarities, it’s probably because you’re using GroK and Elon Musk has filtered it out.

Scott: That’s true.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: He’s filtered the Russians in, but he filtered out the German comparisons.

Peter: Right.

Peter: That’s right.

Peter: We don’t filter anything because everything should be open and free.

Scott: Oh, yeah.

Peter: Just like Twitter in Brazil.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: So anyway, there are lots of reasons to live in other countries.

Scott: But I will say one thing.

Scott: You know, you could say the same thing about the Israel conflict.

Scott: Like if you’re of the opinion that Israel has the right to defend itself, but they’ve gone beyond that and they’re doing bad things to innocent people, then you could also say, well, hey, Trump doesn’t seem to support that as much.

Scott: You know, you could look at it that way.

Scott: And again, it’s not because Trump is a good human being, it’s because I don’t know why, but the Democrats just have a long history of supporting the status quo when it comes to throwing our weight around all over the globe.

Scott: And it’s really unpalatable to me.

Scott: It’s not something I enjoy.

Scott: I think America needs to change in that regard.

Scott: I think that if your empire is going to start waning in power, you should start trying to piss as few people off as possible because at some point, you’re no longer going to be an empire with lots of power and you want those memories to have faded somewhat.

Peter: I mean, the United States, we still have a lot of power and a lot of influence, right?

Peter: But it’s not as much as we used to, but we’re still, we’re in the top, well, I think in many metrics, the US is still at the top, but I think that the gap between us and the others has gone down and in many ways, you’ve got China overtaking here and et cetera, et cetera.

Scott: You can’t say, well, China has overtaken us in everything.

Scott: It certainly hasn’t.

Scott: You can’t say China is behind us in everything.

Scott: It’s not.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: But anyway, I think that’s as political as we should get on this podcast anyway.

Scott: Yeah, I think so.

Scott: It’s just a discussion.

Scott: It’s not, we’re not trying to change any minds here or get angry about anything.

Scott: We’re just, it’s just an interesting thing to think about.

Scott: Because when you think about living in other countries, you do have, you know, it does automatically occur to you.

Scott: What are the differences in opinions on these things and how do people view us as Americans?

Scott: I mean, it’s just an automatic thing that you bump into.

Peter: Yep, but it is interesting to see and hear other opinions on this.

Scott: Yeah, for sure.

Scott: It turns out that not all humans have to be one exact way.

Peter: Interesting.

Peter: Funny how that works.

Scott: So good for you.

Scott: And are you now drinking from the fire hose?

Scott: Well, you just got back.

Scott: You haven’t had a chance to drink from the work fire hose yet.

Peter: I have had a chance and not taken it.

Peter: I am not going into my work email until tomorrow morning at 9am.

Scott: We were running at you with the hose, trying to point it out at you and you were like, no thanks.

Peter: I did check in with one of my colleagues after the first week and I just messaged him.

Peter: I said, all right, one week down, you know, like it’s like, you know, was it one?

Peter: Oh my God, when are you coming back?

Peter: Two, things are, you know, we’re holding it together, but we miss you.

Peter: Three, no, everything’s good.

Peter: And four, new phone, who dis?

Scott: Peter who’s?

Peter: So anyway, apparently things are holding together, but I was missed.

Peter: So I was like, okay, well.

Scott: Yeah, that’s good.

Scott: That’s the right place to be.

Scott: You don’t want people to be panicking and wishing you were back.

Scott: You also don’t want them to realize suddenly that they could replace you with a small shell script.

Peter: We don’t need this guy.

Scott: I always warn people at Monolith 3000, and by the way, there will come a time, there will come a time when I can name Monolith 3000, but…

Peter: I have been waiting for over 20 years.

Scott: I know, right?

Scott: So have I.

Scott: But I always tell people, don’t go on vacation, because it always seems like the crazy things happen when somebody’s gone for like a month or something like that.

Peter: Yep.

Peter: Well, I am…

Peter: I’m looking forward to digging into my email about that.

Peter: So, you know, we’ll see.

Peter: So, anyway.

Peter: Cool.

Peter: Last little bit.

Peter: Do you want to save your Moom review for a future episode?

Scott: I will save my Moom.

Scott: I will not Moom you.

Peter: Save your Moom.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: But one little funny news bit.

Peter: I don’t know if we’ve talked about on this podcast.

Peter: Definitely Adam and I have on Blurring the Lines.

Peter: I’ve talked about AirTags from time to time.

Peter: I do love me my AirTags.

Peter: You know, I had them in my watch and my…

Peter: Sorry, not my watch.

Peter: My wallet, my backpack and my luggage for this trip.

Scott: Did you dismantle the case or something to fit in your wallet?

Peter: No, I have a special wallet that has a little bubble for it.

Scott: That’s right.

Peter: Yep.

Peter: And it looks not unlike the three burner stove on the back of my iPhone.

Peter: You’ve got this little butt sticking out on it.

Scott: I’d like to…

Scott: Sometime I’d like to see that wallet, see how thick it is.

Scott: Because I am so anti-thick wallet.

Scott: I’m not a thick wallet guy.

Scott: I’m a very thin wallet.

Peter: Yeah, it’s still pretty thin.

Peter: My girlfriend has one that she says it’s better.

Peter: Slips inside.

Peter: So it’s, you know, but as a result, the whole wallet is thicker, but still not that thick.

Peter: But anyway, I had it.

Peter: And while I was there, I got, of course, perfect timing.

Peter: You know, got the notification.

Peter: Hey, the luggage, the battery in your luggage is running low.

Peter: So some features are disabled.

Peter: I was like, of all the times, right?

Peter: And I couldn’t find a place that sold the CR, what, 20, 32s or whatever they are.

Peter: So I just swapped it between my wallet and my, you know, luggage.

Peter: So at least the, you know, the one that’s most likely to, well, will be away from me, you know, during expected times, will have the best battery in life.

Peter: So fortunately didn’t need all any of that, but it was just nice to get those.

Peter: And every now and then, you know, like every morning I’d run from the hotel or wherever.

Peter: It’s like, Peter’s, you know, three items left behind.

Peter: I’m like, okay, thank you.

Peter: That was expected.

Scott: For me, I find that it notifies me way after it would have been useful.

Peter: Yeah, it’s usually, well, for me, it’s usually a little later than and definitely, you know, a little later than it would have been.

Peter: But if you’re like walking, it’s not that big a deal.

Peter: But if you’re in a car, it’s like, yeah, you’re about a mile away.

Peter: It’s like, hey, you know, you left your wallet back at that restaurant.

Peter: Well, okay, great.

Peter: So, but, you know, it’s still better than nothing.

Scott: I do like it.

Scott: It is.

Peter: It’s not as timely as it could be.

Peter: So, you know, it makes me wonder, like, I don’t know, like, how much time needs to elapse between an iPhone getting near my luggage, between that, you know, event happening, and then Apple getting the notification, and then my phone saying, oh, your wall, you know, your luggage.

Peter: Like, I had my luggage in my hand before my phone knew that it was off the luggage, you know, conveyor belt, for instance.

Peter: So it wasn’t like all of a sudden, my luggage moved off the plane, and then suddenly, hey, it’s in the same building as you now.

Peter: It’s really close.

Peter: You know, it was just like, oh, your luggage is with you again.

Peter: Huh, go figure.

Scott: That’s actually a really good point that you just brought up, because I, of course, have thought about the exact location availability being due to other iPhones wandering around.

Scott: But I never thought about, are the notifications affected by that also?

Scott: And maybe they are, because the AirTag itself doesn’t really know where it is.

Peter: Right.

Peter: It just, it doesn’t.

Peter: But I see that, too, because I have AirTag on my keys for my car in Vermont.

Peter: And every now and then, it’ll be like, oh, it was last seen four days ago.

Peter: So I know one of my contractors was up at the house four days ago with an iPhone.

Peter: But up until then, it’s like, last seen the last time you were in Vermont, Peter.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: That might explain some of the variability of the notification timing.

Scott: See, what I thought it would do is it would say, okay, I know when he was last with it and it knew where he was compared to it.

Scott: It’s been a while.

Scott: It doesn’t seem like he’s with it.

Scott: I’ll notify him, but maybe it’s not doing that.

Scott: Or maybe it is taking that into account, but that’s not the whole algorithm.

Scott: Right.

Peter: And there’s more to it.

Peter: But the reason I mentioned that was, you know, a little bit, you know, it’s not new news.

Peter: This came out Wednesday, the 28th.

Peter: And as you said, I’m sure someone’s done this before.

Peter: Woman uses AirTags to nab alleged parcel pinching scum.

Peter: Consumer-grade tracking devices are good for more than finding your keys and stocking.

Peter: So we’ve talked, like I said, I’m blurring the lines.

Peter: We talked about someone used an AirTag to stalk her boyfriend or husband and then run him over with a car.

Peter: This was a good thing, though.

Peter: That was not a good thing.

Peter: This use of an AirTag.

Peter: So a woman suspected that her neighbor was stealing her mail.

Peter: So she mailed herself an AirTag and then used that to track them down and they caught him and the guy’s being held on $460,000 bail.

Peter: So huzzah.

Scott: Whoa.

Peter: It wasn’t just, well, it wasn’t, apparently they found this whole like, you know, ring.

Peter: It wasn’t just this one event.

Peter: So I was like, there you go.

Peter: So that’s another, maybe I do need to buy myself a spare AirTag and just half a round for something like that.

Scott: I definitely need to get more AirTags.

Scott: I should attach more things.

Scott: Right now, I’ve got one in my car.

Scott: And, you know, typically, like, if I go into Monolith 3000 and I make the quarter mile walk from where I park to across into the building, by the time I’m getting down to the gown room of the clean room, it’s telling me that I left my car behind.

Scott: And I’m like, yeah, I got that.

Peter: Yeah, you did, really.

Peter: I could have sworn I had it right here with me.

Scott: I swear, I tried to drive it in here.

Scott: The door was a little narrow, but I kept banging it.

Peter: That reminds me.

Peter: Is it All-Star Superman?

Peter: I don’t remember.

Peter: It’s something, a Superman, you know, graphic novel came out.

Peter: I think it was last year at this point.

Peter: Last year or early this year.

Peter: And it’s a story about Superman through the ages.

Peter: And the one part that I remember out of all of the funny things in this book is there’s one part where Lex Luthor is planning to take over the world or launch the nukes or something like that.

Peter: And he’s holed up in an old nuclear missile silo.

Peter: That’s his base of operations.

Peter: And he’s basically in this boardroom having a meeting with all of his henchmen.

Peter: And Batman shows up, like rams down the door with the Batmobile.

Peter: I’m just like, how exactly did Bruce get the car into the silo?

Scott: Was there some vertical travel at some point in time?

Peter: I just thought it was hilarious.

Peter: They’re in there and all the next frame, the door comes down and the Batmobile charges through.

Peter: I was like, okay, sure, why not?

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: So anyway, on that note, I think we should stick a fork in it.

Peter: This one is done.

Scott: What do you call a fork in German?

Peter: Oh crap, I don’t even remember now.

Peter: See, that’s the thing.

Peter: My vocabulary needs work.

Scott: Well, also, when you’re learning a language, especially for me with new country that I’m learning and stuff, it’s very contextual and you take me out of that context and I may not recognize the same things that I absolutely know.

Peter: Yes.

Peter: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: And I did notice, for example, that I was definitely in Germany, I was definitely picking up a lot more, like listening in on the conversations.

Peter: But I wasn’t able to say what I wanted to say as easily.

Peter: Fortunately, everywhere people spoke English.

Peter: And I would try to speak German and they would generally humor me a little bit.

Peter: And my relatives, they would go on and they’re like, Oh, you mean this?

Peter: Oh, right.

Peter: I was asking, do they have milk?

Peter: And she’s like, no, you’re asking me, do I have milk?

Peter: I was, oh, right, right.

Peter: Has du, not haben sie.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: All right.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: They haven’t heard about pronouns over there, I think.

Peter: Good point.

Peter: I don’t think that’s what it was though.

Peter: So anyway, where were we?

Peter: I don’t forget.

Scott: We were going to exit ourselves and you were going to stick a fork in it.

Scott: And I asked you how to say fork in German.

Scott: So Peter, how, how Peter, can people, whether they be in Germany, whether they be in the United States, whether they be in Boston, whether they be in Portland, how can people find us?

Peter: Well, number one, oh, and it’s Gable, de Gable, yes, that’s the fork.

Peter: How can you find us?

Peter: Well, okay, as I say on like every episode, you already did.

Peter: How did you find us?

Peter: Just ask yourself that.

Scott: Same way you wound up in Brazil after.

Peter: Exactly, that’s what I was gonna say.

Peter: If you’ve forgotten, I’ll tell you again.

Peter: We’re at friendswithbrews.com, and that’s B-R-E-W-S.

Peter: You can find Scott on Mastodon at.

Scott: Nope, don’t say it.

Peter: What’s your, no, no, what’s your handle?

Peter: I don’t remember the first part.

Scott: I think it’s Scott Wilsey.

Peter: It’s just ScottWilsey, at ScottWilseyatsocial.law.

Peter: I am at NicolaitisatInfosec.exchange.

Scott: And he will exchange your info security there.

Peter: I’ll exchange your info sec, sure, right there.

Peter: Yeah, other than that, I don’t think, I still have an active Twitter account, and I was thinking about it, you know, like right now, I don’t even know if it’s still doing it, because I stopped paying for my IFTT subscription, but my Twitter account was basically, the only thing it would do is anytime I would post on Mastodon, Twitter would say, hey, I just posted to Mastodon and send a link back to that.

Peter: I was thinking though, it should retweet anytime Elon Musk posts anything, and just say, you know, something like, hey, he’s still full of shit, hey, he’s still full of shit, you know, just like that, something like that.

Scott: How many days since Elon Musk was full of shit?

Peter: Zero, days since Elon was full of shit, zero.

Scott: That could be a website.

Peter: That, or it could be a Twitter account, because he’s not gonna ban it, right, because he believes in free speech.

Scott: That’s right.

Scott: Now, Peter, I think you should tell your friends.

Peter: Tell your friends.