Episode 91 – Sleepwalking Through Berlin

Scott: Friends with Brews Did you hear that?

Peter: I did hear that, and that was a very pleasant surprise.

Peter: I’m not going to share my non-fond.

Scott: Your video disappeared.

Scott: I guess you turned it off on purpose, I’m assuming.

Peter: Yeah, I didn’t want you to have video inferiority complex.

Scott: I don’t know if you realize this, but I’m not at a point in my life where I really give a shit what people think.

Peter: I’m glad that you’re not inferior, or at least you’re not complicated by it, or not complexity by it, if you are.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: We have a surprise today.

Scott: First of all, I listened back to the last episode, which I just published because I was editing it.

Scott: And I had a lot of energy and I was super happy.

Scott: This time, I don’t have any energy and I’m not super happy because I got up at 630 to do this.

Scott: Although now it’s 746, so that’s pretty good.

Scott: But why did I have to do that, Peter?

Scott: Tell me.

Peter: Well, you had to do that because you have to work.

Peter: Because you have a work call coming up in like 45 minutes or something.

Scott: But that’s not why I got up at 630 though.

Peter: No, because this was a convenient time.

Peter: Number one, because I am nine time zones away from you.

Peter: And number two, because this is the time slot that our AI assistant booked for us.

Scott: Yes, you are correct.

Scott: I don’t know why.

Scott: Wait a minute.

Scott: You’re blaming AI for this problem?

Peter: Duh.

Peter: I’m absolutely blaming AI for this problem.

Peter: You’re not?

Scott: Okay, here’s the problem with your AI assistant.

Scott: And I know which one you’re using.

Scott: It’s the…

Scott: what’s that stupid calendar service we use?

Peter: Calendar Bridge.

Scott: Yeah, Calendar Bridge.

Scott: Calendar Bridge has an AI now that will attempt to schedule you, but it doesn’t have any insight into anybody else’s calendar.

Scott: It only has insight in yours.

Scott: I mean, obviously.

Scott: But…

Scott: so I guess my question is how is that helpful?

Scott: Because you still, like in my case, you still have to go to my calendar and see when it’s got available.

Peter: Well, no.

Peter: The idea is that the assistant would ask you what works for you.

Peter: So you should have gotten the entire conversation.

Peter: I’ll look at the bridge as a new AI assistant feature.

Peter: And I cc’d it on an email to you.

Peter: And I said, I want it to set up a teams meeting with Peter and Scott for later this week.

Peter: It then promptly replied and said, Hello, Peter and Scott, I was unable to find any shared availability for a meeting this week.

Peter: Please let me know what works for you next week.

Peter: Now, it was unable to find any shared availability because it has no access to your calendar.

Peter: Right?

Peter: I mean, that’s a reasonable fault on its own.

Peter: So I replied, Hi, assistant.

Peter: You should already have access to my calendar, which it should because calendar bridge can read my calendar.

Peter: And I said, Scott is on Pacific time.

Peter: I am in Central European time, but I’m working a US slash Eastern schedule.

Peter: Scott appears to be completely free tomorrow and Friday during working hours.

Peter: Now, that might be where it got messed up.

Peter: As it came back and it said, I’ve scheduled the team’s meeting for you on Friday, September 12th at 10:30 a.m.

Peter: Eastern Daylight Time slash 7:30 a.m.

Peter: Pacific Daylight Time.

Peter: Please let me know if you need to reschedule.

Peter: Now, we did not hear back from us after that.

Peter: So that meeting stood and that’s why we’re meeting right now.

Peter: Now, would you like to pick apart the problems with the scheduling?

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Well, the problem is normally that would be fine.

Scott: The problem is that you and I both have a calendar set up that looks at our, it looks at all our calendars.

Scott: It looks at our iCloud calendars, it looks at our Outlook calendars, and it presents a interface for people to go and say, Oh, Scott’s only available here.

Scott: I’m going to schedule a meeting here.

Scott: And the problem with the AI sending me a message saying, when are you available, is it destroys the whole purpose of having that.

Scott: The whole purpose of having that is people could schedule me without me having to do the dance.

Scott: Oh, I’m here.

Scott: What about you?

Scott: I’m there.

Scott: And this assistant goes right back to that dance.

Peter: Yes, but there are still people in 2025 who have trouble with online calendar schedule.

Peter: There are people who are lazy, who will refuse to click a link.

Peter: And there are still people, this may shock you, but there are still people who don’t know how to join Zoom meetings in 2025, who have been on the internet free pandemic.

Scott: So I think…

Scott: I’m only saying that for me, it sucks.

Scott: I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea.

Scott: I’m saying in general, it would work, except that you and I both have a system set up so that we don’t have to do that dance.

Peter: Correct.

Peter: So, but again, the whole purpose of this test was to test this AI assistant.

Peter: And given that, let’s just deal with our standard Friends with Brews rating.

Peter: How would you rate this test?

Peter: Thumbs up, thumbs down, or a side thumb?

Scott: Definitely a side thumb.

Scott: I don’t…

Peter: I was going to go with a side thumb as well.

Scott: There’s absolutely nothing about it that makes me go, Oh my God, my life is better.

Peter: Right.

Peter: I mean, it did succeed in scheduling a test.

Peter: Oh, sorry, an event, a call, right?

Peter: So we got that far, which is more than I can say for some of my assistants in the past, most of them are human assistants, right?

Peter: So there’s that.

Peter: Was it the optimal time?

Peter: It’s not great, but I mean, in its defense, it’s dealing with nine-hour time zone shifts, and we all know how that sucks.

Scott: So I think it has.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: And also in its defense, it has no way to know what my schedule is.

Peter: Except I told it.

Peter: But you see, again, that’s where it might have gotten a little confused because I did tell it that you are on Pacific Time, but I didn’t tell it what your work availability was during that.

Scott: So that’s the thing that I’m specifically talking about.

Scott: I’m talking specifically about it doesn’t know what blocks of time I have.

Scott: Like you gave it an option of Thursday or Friday.

Scott: It doesn’t know what I’m doing on Thursday or Friday.

Peter: So had the AI been programmed to, it may have chosen to be a little more investigative, a little more curious and said, hey Scott, what time’s work for you?

Peter: But instead what it did is it’s booked a call.

Peter: But it did say, please let me know if we need to reschedule.

Peter: So theoretically, we could have replied back and said, that time’s not great.

Peter: Can we pick a different one?

Peter: So I’m leaning, I know we don’t have it, but I’m leaning towards almost a 45 degree angle thumbs up this time.

Peter: This is almost up by sideways.

Peter: It’s like, let’s see if my right hand is out.

Peter: I’m saying this is like a northwest thumb.

Peter: You know, same that range.

Peter: I’m going to give it the best.

Peter: You know what?

Peter: You know what?

Peter: I’m giving it the benefit of doubt.

Peter: I’m giving it a thumbs up.

Peter: I think given the information that I presented it, it did a good job.

Peter: It made an effort.

Peter: It scheduled a call during my working hours, which I did tell it what my working hours were.

Peter: And it did say, let me know if I need to reschedule.

Peter: And it CC’d you on that too.

Peter: So, by extension, it asked you if we needed to reschedule, and we didn’t.

Peter: So, I’m going to give this one to the AI.

Scott: You are correct.

Scott: You are absolutely correct.

Scott: Again, it’s only due to my own use case, where if I get an email saying, when’s a good time?

Scott: Like if it was a person, I would send them a link to my calendar.

Scott: That’s it.

Scott: That would be the end of the conversation.

Peter: Absolutely.

Peter: But we’ve definitely both worked with at least one mutual client.

Peter: Well, we’ve worked with multiple mutual clients for whom scheduling things online is hard.

Scott: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Scott: That doesn’t happen.

Peter: Anyway.

Peter: All right.

Peter: I think we’ve beaten this one to death.

Peter: I think we’ve got a new AI assistant.

Peter: Oh, and just for the record too, I got $5 of credits to use on this, and this little exchange cost me about $0.04.

Peter: So by that logic, assuming, what, two e-mail back and forth each time, I should be able to schedule about 100 meetings for free before I need to buy more AI credits, which at the rate we’re going, it’s probably lifetime.

Peter: So we’re good.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: And I guess I have to say that seems, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but for the transaction to happen, it seems like a lot.

Scott: Like if you had a busy schedule during the entire week and all week, you were asking whatever it’s called, bridge, weigh bridge, schedule, calendar bridge, bridge calendar.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: Anyway, if you were always saying do that, schedule me something, I don’t know, you’d be up to $3 easily by the end of the week.

Peter: I mean, that’s probably their idea, right?

Peter: They want to make money on this feature.

Scott: So how many euros would that be?

Peter: You know what, I’m thinking in terms that euros, like one euro is one dollar for my purposes these days.

Scott: I think so, yeah.

Scott: It’s pretty freaking close.

Peter: It’s close, it varies, but when you factor in things like exchange rates, conversion fees, mental stress in thinking what it costs, you get to 2.56 euros, which is what Spotlight tells me.

Scott: $3, I said.

Peter: $3, okay.

Scott: I’m going with the $3 that I…

Peter: Got it, got it.

Peter: Got it, got it, got it.

Peter: Okay, understood, yeah.

Peter: Well, but here’s the thing, I was trying to find an ATM.

Peter: So I hit an ATM last week and made a withdrawal and everything worked fine.

Peter: I went back three or four days later to the same bank in the same physical ATM, the same exact machine.

Peter: And it said, your card is invalid, contact your institution.

Peter: And I didn’t have time to screw with them at that time, so I went home, called my bank, and they’re like, yeah, we looked into it.

Peter: It’s not us, right?

Peter: There’s something with that bank, just try another bank.

Peter: And I was like, all right, I was going to do that anyway, but-

Peter: We looked into it.

Scott: I put you on hold for 30 seconds.

Peter: It’s definitely not us.

Peter: It’s definitely not us, right?

Peter: We looked into it real hard.

Peter: We tried as hard as your AI assistant did.

Peter: So anyway, what they did was made sure that there’s no freeze or lock on my account, there’s no restrictions, right?

Peter: Which I knew because before I came here, I made sure to let them know that I’m traveling to France and Germany during this time frame.

Peter: So okay, fine.

Peter: So I did that.

Peter: And then I went to another ATM, and it was one of those little, you know, I don’t use the term that a former employee of mine used to, but it implies involuntary sexual relations with respect to the person using the debit card with regards to the fees that you get charged.

Peter: And so for example, I said, well, I want me to make a withdrawal of 250 euros.

Peter: And I was like, okay, after the conversion fee and this charge and this surcharge, the net result will be $337.

Peter: And I was like, given my simple one-to-one math, that seemed outrageous.

Peter: So I didn’t do that.

Scott: It seems in the range of 50% or so.

Peter: Yeah, it was pretty high.

Peter: So I was like, yeah, maybe not.

Peter: So then the next one, I came back to another one of those same, same branch bank, Spark Pass, I believed.

Peter: And also it said, your card does not work here.

Peter: I said, okay, fine.

Peter: On the way back to my apartment, I just happened to pass another one, same branch, but it’s just a little hole in the wall, just an ATM, not a branch.

Peter: So the same bank, not a branch.

Peter: And I was like, what the hell, I’m here.

Peter: May as well try it, right?

Peter: Walk four steps out of my path.

Peter: I can do that.

Peter: I checked it, worked fine.

Peter: Let me pull down 250 euros, no question.

Peter: So I guess the higher security in bank ATMs don’t like it anymore after the first one, but the little hole in the wall ones work fine.

Peter: I guess.

Peter: I have no idea how, you know, what their algorithm is doing or what.

Scott: Well, I know that it’s not your card because you’ve been paying for German massage with that card all week.

Peter: Hopefully, no, those are built on my credit card.

Peter: Thank you very much.

Scott: Let’s go under a different name.

Scott: So since this is Friends with Brews, oh, I do want to say something about Japanese ATM machines, help me not forget.

Scott: Put a German pin in that.

Scott: But first, let’s talk about some brews because I don’t know if you’re drinking anything.

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

Scott: The listener may detect that you are out and about, you’re on the live scene from Berlin.

Scott: How do you say it?

Scott: What was the in Ich Berliner, whatever.

Scott: What did JFK say before?

Peter: JFK said that the world was proud to say, Ich bin ein Berliner.

Peter: And when you say that-

Scott: Means you can get a hell of a German massage in Berlin.

Peter: Yes, but only if you’re into donuts.

Peter: But if you are into donuts, you can get a hell of a massage from that donut.

Peter: And I did that just this morning, actually.

Peter: I had, because I’m in Berlin, so when in Berlin, do as the Berliners do, I ate a Berliner.

Peter: And why this is so much innuendo, you could read into this if you wanted to.

Peter: But I did have a jelly-filled donut for breakfast this morning.

Peter: So it was good.

Peter: Right now, however, I am at Burst Coffee Roasters.

Peter: I think that’s how you pronounce it.

Peter: It’s 3ST, or maybe it’s 3ST, or maybe it’s 3ST.

Peter: I don’t know, but it’s the number 3ST.

Peter: And I’m sitting here because when I looked, as you know, the listener does not know, I had planned on being back at the apartment I rented for this call.

Peter: I got on the high-speed train, not a bullet train, but the U-Bahn, you know, pretty fast train going in the wrong direction.

Peter: And I didn’t realize that until I was about five stops out of the way.

Peter: So since I knew that you were getting up early to record this podcast, I didn’t want to make you get up for no reason.

Peter: So I found a coffee shop that had Wi-Fi and a restroom.

Peter: Those were the two most important things on my checklist.

Peter: I’m very pleased to say that the Wi-Fi is very good.

Peter: This is probably the best Wi-Fi I’ve had since I got to Germany.

Peter: So knock on wood.

Peter: And I’m actually sitting on a nice wooden bench, so I can do that.

Peter: Take that back.

Peter: It looks like it’s a facade, but it looks like wood.

Peter: But I am drinking a Hefe Milch Matcha Latte, or as we would say an oak milk matcha latte.

Peter: That’s what I’m having right now.

Peter: And it’s very good.

Peter: The reason I went with that is I’ve already had a couple of cups of regular coffee and in my time, it’s 5 p.m.

Peter: right now.

Peter: The last thing that I need right now is coffee because it will nukes my sleep.

Peter: And tomorrow morning, I’m planning a three and a half hour long run, so I really would be in fit top shape for that.

Peter: What are you drinking?

Scott: I’m glad you told me what oat milk was, because the only Germans, the only German I know are Schell, Ochtang, Goodmorgen, and Sturmtruppen.

Peter: Right.

Peter: And I think I said it wrong.

Peter: I said, hey, first of all, a little bit, half an inch, half an inch, half an inch.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: I’ll get this, one of these times, I’ll get the right.

Scott: I’m having a repeat coffee.

Scott: I’m having Back Porch Coffee Roasters Early Bird.

Scott: And based on my last time’s full analysis of it, I gave it a thumbs up.

Scott: They describe it as sweet, winey, chocolatey, and citrusy.

Scott: And I said, I don’t know why they call it winey.

Scott: I’ve never heard it complain once.

Scott: And I won’t complain about drinking it either.

Scott: So that was my review.

Peter: Well, well, in that case, cheers.

Scott: Sturmtruppen.

Peter: Cheers.

Scott: So have you talked to the Chancellor yet?

Peter: No, no, it doesn’t come to that.

Peter: What is he?

Scott: He, she, I don’t know.

Scott: I don’t even know what’s going on in Germany these days.

Peter: We have a few big notes since the Chancellor here.

Scott: Ah, okay.

Peter: Also, my laptop has just popped up a note in Riverside saying, device struggling to record is maybe due to a high load on your device.

Peter: I’m going to set energy mode from low power to automatic and see if that fixes the problem.

Scott: I think you should kill all processes on your laptop, all processes.

Peter: Including Riverside?

Scott: I mean, is it in the list of processes?

Peter: I’m sure it is if I look for it.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: Well.

Peter: Scott told me to, dear listener.

Scott: Okay, so what are your thoughts?

Scott: Oh, I want to, because we’re doing time zones, because we did the time zone dance today, I want to recommend a couple of things.

Scott: One is a Mac app called Datow, and it is by Syndra Sorhos.

Scott: It is one of his many menu bar accessories, and this one is called Datow.

Scott: And all it is, is a little thing that sits in the menu bar.

Scott: You click on it, and it shows you the calendar, it shows you stuff you have coming up for today.

Scott: But the most importantly, and the only reason I use it, is at the bottom, it can show you different time zones that you have configured, and you can choose what cities, what time zones you want to appear, and there’s a slider.

Scott: So you can slide it to say, okay, Peter said 4.30 in Germany, and then as you move the slider to 4.30 in Berlin or whatever, it will then show you what your corresponding local time is.

Scott: Very handy.

Scott: Then for iOS, I use one called time zones, or is it zones?

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: I put a link.

Scott: Let me look.

Scott: It’s called zones, and it does run on the Mac, but I find it to be less useful.

Scott: It’s too annoying.

Scott: There’s too much stuff to do.

Scott: But on iOS, it’s nice.

Scott: You can have a little widget.

Scott: So I’ve got a widget on my home screen that I can flip to on a stack, and it tells me what time it is in Berlin for any given moment.

Scott: And you can also open the app and do a similar slider thing where you can say, okay, I’m going to set it to as though Berlin is 430 and see what time that would be my time.

Scott: Very handy.

Scott: Get those two apps.

Scott: They will help you immeasurably.

Peter: It does sound cool.

Peter: I’ve just been taken to running a world clock.

Peter: I have the world clock pinned as a widget on my iOS home screen, and I did what the clocks app running on my Mac.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: The nice thing about these is you can say, oh, they want a meeting at this time.

Scott: What would that be for me?

Scott: You can actually change the times in the different zones.

Peter: That does sound nice, and it sounds better than the interface at dateandtime.com, which is another one that I’ve used a lot.

Scott: Yeah, dateandtime.com isn’t hopefully in your menu bar or on a widget.

Peter: Right.

Peter: Could you make it a widget?

Peter: I don’t know if you make web pages into widgets.

Peter: I’m sure someone like Cinderis Or has this probably written a thing to let you make them into widgets, right?

Peter: That would be something he would do.

Scott: I don’t know.

Peter: Oh, it’s timeanddate.com, not DateAndTime.

Peter: timeanddate.com.

Scott: The listeners.

Peter: Yeah, I’m sure they did.

Peter: I’m sitting here saying dateandtime.com, like, why is this not loading?

Peter: Because you’ve got the website.

Scott: Oh, my God.

Scott: Peter, I am amazed that some Fisher hasn’t registered that.

Scott: I’m surprised you just didn’t get pwned right now, literally.

Peter: I am too.

Scott: Thank you for not pwning, Peter, you poners.

Peter: We appreciate you not pwning me.

Peter: I just asked who is dataintime.com, and of course, Warp decided that that was a question for AI, so it’s warping my query right now.

Scott: So you can always hit Backspace and it starts doing that.

Scott: Or I think it’s Scape, if you’re already typing, I’m not sure.

Peter: Yeah, I mean, it’s already at the point now.

Peter: It’s like, oh, Terminal Command, to retrieve the record for this.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: Whatever I’m doing with the keyboard to make it stop, I can have it not do the AI mode when I see that it’s going into AI mode and I don’t want it, I can pop out of it immediately.

Scott: I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know how to never have that happen if I don’t want it to.

Peter: So I think for this episode, we should also introduce a bonus, a bleh bleh brew from my side, because I don’t know when this will be released, but I will be back in the US mode.

Peter: Unless I decide to stay here permanently, I should likely be back in the US by the time you hear this, dear listener.

Peter: Not you, dear Scott, but dear listener.

Peter: All right, Scott, once again, I am coming to you from the road.

Peter: I am at the Necklwurst, which claims to be Germany’s original currywurst.

Peter: And in addition to having a currywurst and some Kartoffelsalat, which is potato salads, I am drinking a Benina Hindu Weisse.

Peter: This is the Hindu version, so raspberry.

Peter: And I had one of these the other night in a bottle, now that I am eating it, for us.

Peter: It is super delicious.

Peter: I am going to take a sip.

Peter: You can’t see this because it’s only audio, but I am having it with a straw.

Peter: Yes, I serve it with a paper straw.

Peter: And wow, it’s very sweet, because it’s got raspberry.

Peter: It’s like a, what’s the, like a lamb becker.

Peter: They say it’s sour, but it’s not sour.

Peter: Well, there’s a hint of sourness, but there’s more sweetness to it.

Peter: So I estimate it’s probably like maybe 2% or 3% alcohol.

Peter: I’ll have to look it up.

Peter: But it is absolutely delicious.

Peter: This is the second time I’ve had this at that same beer.

Peter: And yeah, absolutely no pressing on this one.

Peter: This is a two thumbs up.

Peter: It’s low alcohol, so I don’t get buzzed.

Peter: And it just tastes delicious.

Peter: If they made such a thing as a session by Sebeer, this would be it.

Peter: And I would love to have an extended session.

Peter: So cheers.

Scott: OK, let’s talk about what else do you have to talk about, Peter?

Scott: I’m sure that you called me for a reason.

Scott: I’m sure that you called me what you called me for a reason, too.

Peter: Well, I have an update on the Garmin, which I have not yet blogged about.

Peter: But I did notice that starting with the day that I started wearing the Garmin, which was, I believe, July 31st, I want to say.

Peter: So it’s been about a month and a half now.

Peter: My step count for the days have gone up a little bit, nothing dramatic, but my walking and running distance has gone up dramatically.

Peter: And at first, I didn’t notice this because I’ve been running more, right?

Peter: I’m in the ramping up, you know, the last six weeks before my 50-mile marathon.

Peter: So of course, my walking and running distance per day would be going up dramatically.

Peter: Didn’t think of anything of it.

Peter: Until the other day, two days ago, three days ago, I happened to look at the distance walking per day.

Peter: And I broke it down to a single day, and it shows me every hour of the day walking.

Peter: And for like a couple of days ago, it showed me walking a quarter mile every hour at minimal.

Peter: That was like when I was in bed.

Peter: Now, granted, I have not been sleeping well for a while.

Peter: So, you know, this would be a great explanation.

Peter: And I would love to hear the legend sleepwalking.

Peter: And that’s why my sleep quality has been so bad, and I’ve been waking up feeling so cranky and tired.

Peter: Except it is precisely the same distance every hour, like a quarter mile, 0.23 miles, 0.28 miles per hour.

Peter: And so I sent an email to Garmin Support, and they asked me, you know, like, what’s your serial number?

Peter: What’s your model number?

Peter: And I sent it, and they sent me back generic help desk articles, saying things like, oh, well, if you’re in the shower, it could look like you’re walking because you’re washing your hair and you’re moving your arms.

Peter: Or, oh, if you’re shinging a bag of groceries with the arm that you’re wearing the watch on, then it won’t look like steps.

Peter: And oh, if you’re getting restless sleep, that could contribute to additional step count.

Peter: I’m like, I get that.

Peter: But first off, for contributing to a quarter mile of additional walking distance at night, that’s a little of a stretch.

Peter: But also, precisely the same amount every hour, right?

Peter: So I’m tossing and turning the exact same distance every single hour as this happens.

Peter: I don’t think so.

Peter: So they sent me back a survey and said, how would you rate the support you received?

Peter: I was like, absolutely horrible.

Peter: You didn’t fix the issue.

Peter: And then the guy or whoever is on the other side replied, they’re like, oh, tell me where you are and I’ll try to troubleshoot this.

Peter: So he seems to think that it’s like a geographical issue, like somewhat somehow tied to where I’m at.

Peter: But he needed my location, so I gave him my state and country and they’re still working on it.

Peter: So that’s a little bit of a garment update there.

Scott: That is troubleshooting skills zero.

Scott: If they did not immediately catch the pattern, that every hour at the exact same time, it records this exact same amount of activity.

Scott: That’s not a Peter carried a bag of groceries indicator.

Peter: Or Peter had a restless night’s sleep, right?

Scott: Right.

Peter: And I told them in the initial email that that was the case.

Peter: And then in my follow up email, I sent screenshots.

Peter: I was like, okay, look, here’s September 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th.

Peter: Take a look and you can see, like every single hour while I’m sleeping, it’s the same amount.

Peter: Now, it’s not the same day over day, but any given day, the amount that they’re adding on is the same every hour.

Peter: I was like, guys, y’all got a bug.

Peter: And frankly, I said this to you and Adam in the email.

Peter: Had I bought this during the 30-day return window when I bought the things, I probably would have, albeit possibly prematurely, returned the things because I would have been like, this is garbage.

Peter: I can’t stand this.

Peter: This is ridiculous.

Peter: No way.

Peter: But anyway, we’ll see what they say.

Peter: It’s in Garmin’s hands right now.

Peter: But related to that topic, what do y’all think of the new Apple announcement on Tuesday?

Scott: I was about to ask you the very same question because Apple Watch Ultra got an update to Apple Watch Ultra 3.

Scott: And it’s not a lot.

Scott: And we know that over time it will be even less, but they did promise six more hours of battery life.

Peter: Yes.

Scott: So do you think that you could do a 50-mile run in 48 hours or whatever they now promise?

Scott: Or whatever?

Scott: Yeah, 48.

Peter: Probably.

Peter: I think that that probably would be enough because I was close, right?

Peter: I thought I was like plus or minus two hours based on, obviously factors, how much I’m using the watch, how fast I’m actually going, how long I’m actually going.

Peter: But four more hours probably wouldn’t work.

Peter: And some of the, you know, the watch OS features I really do miss.

Peter: There’s a lot of those niceties that I said, even though over time, the less I have them, the less I’ve been missing them, right?

Peter: The fact that the Ultra 3 now has satellite SMS for emergencies again, I could theoretically go back to not carrying my phone with me when I’m out in the woods.

Peter: Okay, sounds kind of cool.

Peter: Maybe there was another, what, was there another safety feature I was thinking of?

Peter: I don’t remember.

Peter: I mean, you know, testing your blood pressure.

Peter: I’ve got a blood pressure cuff.

Peter: I tested every now and then.

Peter: You know, that wasn’t really a huge deal for me.

Peter: The new screens that you can’t read, I mean, that’s always a plus, right?

Peter: Who doesn’t want to watch a face where you can’t read the numbers on them?

Scott: I mean, I don’t.

Scott: The time is one of the least things that I care about with my watch, let’s be honest.

Peter: I mean, why would you want to look at your watch and tell time?

Peter: I mean, that’s so 1800s, right?

Peter: So stupid.

Peter: But that said, if I do go back, I will probably just get a Series 11.

Peter: And the one big thing that the Garmin can do, that the Apple Watch cannot at least easily do, is it can import my training runs, my training plans right from my coach’s website.

Peter: So I just click Send to Garmin, and the next run that I am scheduled for just shows up on my watch.

Peter: And that’s a nice big, you know, a nice time saver.

Peter: Plus the other, you know, running centric features that we’ve covered in my blog post and on previous episodes.

Peter: So as silly as it sounds, and as extravagant as it sounds, I might very well get myself a Series 11 and just use that for my daily wear stuff.

Peter: And when I’m going to go out for a run, slap on the Garmin.

Peter: It might come down to that.

Scott: Yeah, I guess my concern would be, given the battery life that I am currently getting with my Apple Watch Ultra 2, and by the way, it’s not even the original battery from when I bought it.

Scott: I had to get it replaced or something.

Scott: So my battery is pretty new.

Scott: It’s in good condition.

Scott: I don’t get anywhere near the battery life I used to with it.

Scott: And I can only think it’s due to the Watch OS.

Scott: It’s due to Watch OS.

Scott: It’s due to something.

Scott: So with a regular series watch, as Apple calls them, I don’t…

Scott: Boy, I don’t know.

Scott: I wouldn’t want to have to be looking at the charging and manage that.

Scott: And I also…

Scott: And I realized that I’m talking about several hundred dollars difference.

Scott: I couldn’t go back to that design of that watch.

Scott: I really don’t like it anymore.

Scott: It looks kind of dumb.

Scott: Really?

Peter: What’s the big differentiator?

Scott: Well, the Ultra Watch…

Scott: The Ultra has a big flat display.

Scott: It doesn’t have those dumb rounded corners.

Scott: It doesn’t have the weird plastic…

Scott: Like the edges of a curved piece of even glass or plastic, they look weird over time because they’re always rubbing and stuff.

Scott: You don’t have that with the Ultra.

Scott: You’ve got an aluminum edge.

Scott: It’s flat.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: I just…

Scott: I don’t…

Scott: The Apple Watch has looked the same for 48 years now or whatever.

Scott: That design doesn’t appeal to me anymore, whereas the Ultra still looks good to me.

Peter: Interesting.

Peter: I guess I don’t…

Peter: Yeah, I think the series…

Peter: I mean, again, compared to this thing that I’m wearing right now, which reminds me of the Timex and Casio’s that I wore in high school, the series is so funny.

Peter: And after, it must be because the guys on ATP mentioned it, but now we’re referring to it as the series as opposed to the Apple Watch, right?

Peter: The Apple Watch is such a leap and bound ahead of what I’ve got on my wrist right now, as far as aesthetics and design goes.

Peter: I wouldn’t care.

Scott: Yeah, I’m just, I’m looking at that dumb rounded edge where the glass meets the shell.

Scott: And yeah, I just, I wouldn’t go back to it.

Scott: But the main thing would be the battery life, honestly.

Scott: I wouldn’t want to have to manage it.

Scott: And even though my Ultra 2 doesn’t get the battery life of the Ultra 3, it’s still supposed to get a lot better than it is.

Scott: So I’m wondering if it really is down to watchOS.

Scott: I’m like, I don’t even know what that would do to a standard watch.

Scott: I know what Apple says, but I don’t know if I trust them.

Peter: When it comes to battery life, I definitely do not trust them when it comes to battery life.

Peter: No question, I do not trust them.

Peter: It never, I’ve never had an Apple device get anywhere near the battery life of a phone that I’m supposed to go.

Scott: So in fact, I remember seeing a video clip of Tim Cook sitting at a dinner with a bunch of other tech leaders praising a certain orange character and telling him, thank you for making a wonderful business environment.

Scott: Then he looked at his watch, said, Oh, I’m sorry, I have to go charge my Apple watch.

Scott: I specifically remember that.

Peter: Well, I mean, that could have been a convenient excuse for him to get out, but it’s not outside the realm of plausibility, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: I have to think it was real and he was relieved.

Peter: Yeah, I have to.

Peter: So, okay.

Peter: So that’s cool.

Peter: Let’s see, what else do you have?

Peter: Do you have anything for us for right now?

Scott: No, I have nothing.

Scott: No, I do want to say we talked, we had did an episode on getting you set up with different AI, and we talked about Codex versus Cloud Code a little bit, I think.

Scott: And I got to say, when it comes, so I listened to, I don’t remember if it was Vergecast or something else I was listening to a little while before we started recording.

Scott: And the guy who, I don’t remember, he writes a newsletter, I don’t remember his name.

Scott: Right now, he’s doing the Vergecast.

Scott: He said that Claude is a better product than ChatGBT.

Scott: And I will say Claude is a better product than ChatGBT because you get Claude, you get Claude Code, you get the ability to easily hook up any MCP server, including remotely hosted or local, into either Claude Code or Claude the Mac app very, very easily, easily done.

Scott: Whereas ChatGBT Mac app will only connect to remote MCP servers, which is inconvenient if you’re trying to write your own.

Scott: And Codex was a little fidgety.

Scott: In fact, it had a bug to where MCP servers wouldn’t even initialize.

Scott: And I fought and fought and fought and fought with it until I found some people online saying, yeah, there’s a known bug and they’re going to fix it in 0.34.0.

Scott: And I finally, Homebrew always lags a little bit behind, but it finally got to 0.34.0.

Scott: And I can say that MCP servers work in Codex now.

Scott: But I would like them to also work in ChatGBT.

Scott: And yes, the ones that OpenAI provides connectors for do, but those aren’t the ones I want.

Scott: I want the local stuff on my Mac.

Scott: Anthropic has got that covered.

Scott: So, I agree that Anthropic, I agree that Cloud is a better product.

Scott: What I don’t agree is that it’s a better LLM.

Scott: And I think that GPT-5 is by far a better LLM.

Scott: I sent you a link to a video, Peter, in which our favorite Theo F Word guy.

Peter: Yes, I gotta say, I have been watching those, and YouTube, I don’t think I’ve subscribed, but YouTube has been recommending his videos.

Peter: And he’s generally pretty entertaining.

Peter: So I, you know, despite that he’s, and he doesn’t, he says F-ing a lot less than he did on that Phil’s F-ing video.

Scott: He does, but he also does say it more than I remembered.

Scott: So it’s in between, it’s like, it’s in between the first impression that you had of him and my recollection of him.

Peter: Well, it’s because I F-ing pointed it out to you.

Peter: If I hadn’t F-ing said something, you probably never would have F-ing noticed.

Scott: And I F-ing appreciate it.

Scott: I just want you to F-ing know that.

Peter: Well, you’re F-ing welcome.

Scott: Yeah, so anyway, he did a thing about Claude being dumber.

Scott: He was explaining why, how they need to allocate resources, why they only have so many GPUs.

Scott: He went through this whole breakdown of why Claude is dumber in certain circumstances.

Scott: And the thing is, is that Claude is a big freaking gaslighter.

Scott: It will tell you the dumbest things, and then you point out why that’s dumb and wrong.

Scott: And it goes, oh, you’re absolutely right.

Scott: And it’s like, yeah, why didn’t you figure that out the first time?

Scott: Like, why did-

Peter: You’re exactly right.

Scott: Right, and don’t brown-nose me until I’m at it.

Scott: Just, ugh, just don’t be wrong in the first place.

Scott: GPT-5 doesn’t really have that problem.

Scott: I don’t see it gaslighting as much at all, actually.

Scott: And I definitely don’t see it sniveling and going, oh, you’re so right, please forgive me.

Scott: Can I eat at the big table with you?

Scott: It doesn’t do that kind of stuff.

Scott: Whereas Claude just incessantly does it, and it drives me insane.

Scott: So I think the guy on the VirgCast was correct that Anthropic has a better product.

Scott: Absolutely.

Scott: Hands down.

Scott: But ChatGPT is a better LLM.

Scott: GPT-5, anyway.

Peter: Yeah, and he went into differences in several of his videos now talking about the difference between GPT-5 and what you’re getting on the web interface.

Peter: And how there’s a lot of, you know, you can’t and you can, but if you just say ChatGPT versus Claude, that is like saying any Windows computer versus any Mac, right?

Peter: Whereas one Windows computer we’re talking about might be a 2090 running Windows NT version 3.51, and the Mac is a MacBook Pro M4 Pro, and running the latest Mac OS.

Peter: Not exactly a fair comparison, right?

Scott: Right.

Scott: The thing is, is that like, assuming my use of any given LLM service, I’m going to use the latest model or whatever the best model is.

Scott: And I’m not a model switcher.

Scott: The people who go, hey, for this task, I’m going to, you know, screw that.

Scott: If I have to do that, if I have to manage models to get tests done, I’m not going to use LLMs at all.

Scott: Just, it’s just dumb.

Scott: So, yes, if I’m using OpenAI, I’m going to use GPT-5.

Scott: If I’m using Anthropic, I’m going to use Sonnet 4 or Opus 4.

Scott: And there are differences there.

Scott: And the reason why I would say that with Anthropic is Opus is more expensive.

Scott: And quite honestly, I get better results on it sometimes.

Scott: But anyway, aside from that, most of the LLM providers are integrating with MCP way better than OpenAI.

Scott: And OpenAI really needs to get their act together because if you want this thing to be useful for the information on your computer, they have to do a better job of connecting with the things on your computer.

Scott: Like right now, Claude on the Mac can integrate with your reminders.

Scott: I’m not talking about Google.

Scott: I’m talking about the Apple stuff.

Scott: You can give it permissions to get access to your calendar, your, you know, all kinds of stuff that ChatGPT just has never even considered doing.

Scott: So they really need to catch up in that department, OpenAI does.

Scott: And by the way, all these companies have their own creepy and weird and stupid areas, and they all have leaders that are just bizarre beyond belief.

Scott: Like, they worry about the dumbest things.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: These people are crazy.

Scott: I don’t believe in AGI anymore anyway.

Scott: But just some of the scenarios that these idiots come up with and how they think that they’re the ones to protect us.

Scott: And we have to develop this thing that’s so dangerous.

Scott: Only us will develop it.

Scott: Don’t worry.

Scott: They’re all just a bunch of crazy people.

Scott: The whole, what’s it called, where people want to get rich on purpose so they can help humanity in the future.

Peter: Private equity?

Scott: No, no.

Scott: It’s the affected altruism.

Scott: All these people are affected altruism.

Scott: They’re all crazy.

Scott: It’s a bankrupt philosophy.

Scott: It’s just an excuse to get rich.

Scott: It’s dumb.

Scott: And I don’t know.

Scott: These people are all insane.

Scott: Anyway, I understand all that, dear listener.

Scott: I get it.

Scott: And the problem with using LLMs is you have to pick your poison in all these.

Scott: Like Theo, who we were just talking about, he goes off on anthropic a lot, but he doesn’t point out the glaring creepinesses that open AI has and the wild abandon with which its CEO just does the dumbest, says and does the dumbest things possible.

Peter: So yeah, I mean, maybe he’ll get to that at some point.

Peter: I’m sure we could leave a comment in his videos and ask him if he wouldn’t do something like that.

Peter: So talk about the politics of these companies.

Scott: Anyway, it is interesting because regardless of what you think of the actual words coming out of his mouth, Theo is clearly an intelligent person who’s done a lot of thinking about this stuff.

Scott: And the whole reason he cares is because he’s got a product that wraps all these LLMs in to make it easier for people to access them in one specific place.

Scott: So clearly, he’s not a dumb guy.

Scott: Let’s just put it that way.

Peter: He certainly knows a lot more about AI than we do.

Peter: I’ll give you that.

Peter: I’ll give him that.

Scott: All right, Peter, I think we should probably wrap this up because I was scrolling on Wired and Stephen Miller popped up on my screen.

Scott: And that’s pretty much, I would like to call it a day after that because I don’t, I don’t know.

Peter: I don’t blame you.

Peter: I can’t imagine what it’s, I mean, I can’t imagine what it’s about.

Peter: And I can’t imagine that it has any bearing in reality.

Peter: If you, like me, are listening to this on a Friday afternoon and see you’re like sharing a friend with a brew or a brew with a friend, you could do that with us at friendswithbrews.com.

Peter: Or you could just in the tradition of George Thorogood, drink alone with your friend Johnny and his brothers, Blacky and Red, or your old granddad, or your buddy Wiser, if you wanted to.

Peter: You know, and there you go.

Peter: That way you’ve found us, you found a friend, you’ve drunk alone, and you’re ready to hit the weekend.

Peter: I think that’s all I got.

Peter: What do you think?

Scott: I think that you managed to come up with an incredible array of cultural references that just blew right over my head.

Peter: It was all reference to a single song by George Thorogood, and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes.

Scott: That explains, I have a deep distaste for any type.

Scott: Is George Thorogood, whatever Thorogood is considered country?

Peter: No.

Scott: Oh, well, he’s semi-close.

Peter: He’s blues.

Peter: Nope, he’s blues and hard rock, dude.

Peter: He is nowhere near country.

Scott: OK, well, OK, that’s fine.

Scott: All right, people, I only have one thing left to say.

Peter: Tell your friends.