Episode 93 – Big 50

Scott: Friends with Brews.

Scott: Hi, Peter.

Peter: Hi, Scott.

Scott: How are you today?

Peter: I’m doing okay.

Peter: It’s a Monday, but you know, it’s not a bad one.

Peter: I just got back from a work trip where I was in Vermont for a couple of days and then Nashville for a few more.

Peter: I had the pleasure of having dinner with friend and sometimes guest co-host of the show, Adam Bell.

Scott: I heard about that.

Scott: The listeners didn’t hear about it, but I heard about it.

Peter: They’re hearing about it now.

Scott: And what else did you do while you were in Nashville?

Scott: Did you go run through the…

Scott: Is that where Elvis’ home is?

Scott: His estate?

Peter: No, that’s Tupelo, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee.

Peter: But I was in Nashville, which is not close.

Scott: Oh, Memphis, that’s right.

Scott: Whatever.

Scott: It’s Tennessee.

Peter: Yeah, Graceland is what you’re thinking of.

Scott: Graceland is what I’m exactly thinking of.

Scott: Yep.

Peter: But no, I mean, I did do some running.

Peter: I went out and ran one day down there.

Peter: I did just 45 minutes or so.

Peter: And it was kind of funny because I just did an out and back.

Peter: And if you look at the map, it’s just like a steady uphill climb almost the whole time and then a tiny little dip and then more uphill.

Peter: And, you know, it’s very flat with the gradual incline.

Scott: Are you saying you ran uphill both ways?

Peter: It was uphill both ways.

Peter: Exactly.

Peter: Speaking of that, this weekend, got an uphill both ways event planned.

Peter: I mean, at the time of this recording, it’s only four days, 16 hours and 35 minutes from now.

Peter: But who’s counting?

Peter: But I’ll be running the Trail Animals Running Club, Stonecat 50.

Peter: I’m calling it my big 50 because back in 22, I did a little 50, a 50K.

Peter: This is my 50-miler.

Peter: Woo, doggy.

Peter: Sounded to be interesting.

Scott: That’s amazing.

Scott: Certain world leaders would be very proud of you for calling the Imperial units that we use here in America the big units and scoffing the appropriately used everywhere else.

Peter: Bigly.

Peter: This is going to be my bigly 50.

Peter: This 50 is going to be big.

Peter: It’s going to be huge.

Peter: Huge.

Peter: Going to be gold.

Peter: I need gold.

Peter: I need to have my running poles gilded.

Scott: You do.

Peter: There you go.

Scott: Oh my god.

Scott: And accept nothing less than a gold trophy at the end.

Peter: Of course.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: And gold water bottles, and only lemonade-flavored electrolytes has to be gold color and stuff.

Scott: There have to be gold outhouses placed along the route.

Peter: Obviously.

Peter: All right.

Peter: Anyway, yeah.

Scott: Peter, we’re drinking some brews today.

Scott: So Peter of nikolaidis, why don’t you…

Scott: By the way, should we start at the log cabin where you were born and stuff?

Scott: What if people are just now listening for the first time?

Scott: Do we…

Scott: Every episode, should we start over with our birth?

Peter: No.

Scott: Skipping the conception portion, of course, because nobody wants that, especially us.

Peter: No.

Peter: I’m going to say no on both of those.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: Well, then let’s go straight to your drink today.

Scott: Peter, what are you drinking today?

Peter: Today, I am drinking the original Fogbuster Registered Trademark, Fogbuster Registered Trademark Coffee Works.

Scott: A Fogbuster.

Scott: Oh, okay.

Peter: And from their website, I was going to read from the package from the bag, but I left it downstairs.

Peter: So I’ll just read from the website, which says, the darkest coffee you will ever find, exclamation point.

Peter: The original Fogbuster is a rich blend of five beans and three distinct roasts, dark as night, smoky and spicy.

Peter: This full-bodied brew has just enough flavor and acidity for a rich cup.

Peter: I bought the 10-ounce sample bag, and that was $19.79.

Peter: The next thing I might buy is a five pound bag, and that’s $122.70.

Peter: Prices are going up, people.

Peter: I don’t know if you’ve noticed that.

Peter: But anyway, the roast, super dark, cupping notes, a distinct stout roast with hints of smokiness.

Peter: Totally agree.

Peter: This is good.

Peter: This one is good.

Peter: I already recorded for you, Scott, and, you know, my solo cup episode, but we don’t need this now that I’m coming back to it and recording it with you.

Peter: So, yeah, this one’s a good one.

Peter: Fogbusters.

Peter: It’s brewed.

Peter: Oh, sorry.

Peter: It’s roasted.

Peter: Obviously, yes, it’s brewed here in Massachusetts.

Peter: It’s roasted in Massachusetts.

Peter: And they have a, what they call a unique, I don’t know if it’s patented or trademark or whatnot, but they have a unique way of doing their roasting.

Peter: And I put a link to this in the show notes, where they have a video on, on YouTube where they show how they do it.

Peter: But it’s a process they say they invented called air roasting.

Peter: And it doesn’t have as much of the burnt shell particles, which they say tastes better and is healthier.

Peter: I haven’t looked this up, so fact check me on it or take everything with a pinch of salt or whatnot.

Peter: But I have to assume that they’re leaving out the burnt stuff, leaving out carcinogens, as we’ve talked about.

Scott: Exactly what I was going to say.

Scott: By healthier quote, they mean slightly less chance of cancer.

Peter: Less cancerous.

Peter: So I’ll drink to that.

Peter: So anyway, I’m enjoying my cup with two teaspoons of Trader Joe’s Organic Half and Half today.

Scott: I guess technically, though, they couldn’t sell it as cancer buster because the FDA would…

Scott: Well, this is the current administration.

Scott: The FDA wouldn’t do it.

Peter: RFK would go all over that.

Peter: He would go huge on that.

Peter: He was like, this coffee cures cancer.

Scott: But not throat cancer, right, RFK.?

Peter: Right, well, if I had had throgh, had had fog buster, I wouldn’t sound like this.

Scott: Oh, OK.

Scott: Let’s talk about my coffee.

Scott: I’m having Portland Coffee Roasters Endless Summer.

Scott: Scott, you may say, isn’t it October 27th as we record today?

Scott: Why, yes, it is, my friend.

Peter: Scott, isn’t it October 27th as we record today?

Peter: Why, yes, it is, my friend.

Scott: It is.

Scott: Yes, why, yes, it is, your friend.

Scott: So, I found this at New Seasons for $12.99 for a bag.

Scott: That’s why I bought it, because I was buying.

Scott: Yeah, I was buying.

Scott: Well, I’ve had coffee from Portland Coffee Roasters before, as you would possibly know if you’ve been on this podcast before with me, would you have?

Peter: I think I have.

Scott: So, I knew that it was a decent brand, not the world’s most stellar, but also very much not bad.

Scott: And so, I was looking for cheap coffee because I was getting a bag of regular and I was getting a bag of decaf.

Scott: So, I found both for $12.99.

Scott: Different brands, but both for $12.99, which is amazing because as you point out, bags of coffee are now in the $20 range, on, you know, off the shelf.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Anyway, this is honey and berry.

Scott: That’s all it says on the bag, honey berry.

Scott: Could be any kind of honey, could be any kind of berry.

Scott: Their description, which was not on the website because you currently can’t find this coffee on their website.

Scott: And Peter, I don’t know if you can detect this.

Scott: Why?

Scott: Okay, look, I get that it’s not in season right now.

Scott: Just put it under seasonal, just put it under one time.

Scott: If you made it, have it on your gut bleep or whatever website.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: Anyway, here’s their description, which I found on Instagram, of all places.

Scott: Chase the endless summer with this sunny single origin.

Scott: We specially sourced this coffee from, and here’s a word I don’t know how to say, Yurgachev district in Ethiopia.

Peter: Yurgachev.

Scott: I meticulously roasted it to coax out sweet notes of honey and a burst of juicy berries.

Peter: Whoa.

Scott: The smooth balanced roast is delicious brewed hot or cold.

Scott: It’s perfect for chasing away the morning chill or keeping cool on a hot afternoon.

Scott: And I will tell you, it’s not a hot afternoon here.

Scott: It is a morning.

Scott: It is raining outside.

Scott: It’s been raining for three days now, which we haven’t had here in a long time.

Scott: And that’s odd.

Scott: Coming from a state where we used to have entire weeks of rain at a time, but thanks to Obama, I guess.

Scott: I guess we’re supposed to blame Obama for everything now.

Peter: If it wasn’t him, it was Biden.

Scott: Right.

Scott: Biden, Sleepy Joe.

Scott: Sleepy Joe did it.

Peter: Could have been Clinton.

Scott: Well, okay.

Scott: I know that Democrats are going to get mad at me for this, but might have been Comey.

Scott: I’m way more open to criticism of the Clintons than basically any other Democrats in recent history because they had issues.

Peter: Could have been Comey.

Scott: It could have been Comey.

Scott: Oh, God.

Scott: I hate that man so much.

Peter: Tom Bolton.

Scott: I think Comey is inherently dumb.

Scott: I know a lot of people say he’s not, but the things that he has said with eyes wide open and gaping amazement, leads me to conclude that he is a person that has a specific world view and he won’t deviate from it.

Scott: And to me, that’s a form of stupidity.

Scott: Like if you never ever, regardless of evidence, deviate from your world view, that’s a form of stupidity.

Scott: Let’s be honest.

Peter: Yeah, inflexibility.

Scott: That’s the kind of thing that leads to burning people at the stake when they say that the world is not the center of the universe, for example.

Peter: Right.

Peter: Sure.

Scott: Too far?

Scott: Too soon?

Scott: Too late?

Peter: No, no, it’s perfect.

Peter: Yeah, too late.

Peter: Too late.

Peter: Oh, man.

Peter: Hey, so I got a question for you.

Peter: Are you using Hidden Bar?

Peter: Or and if not, what are you using?

Peter: Are you using anything for a Menu Bar manager these days?

Scott: No, I could not give less of a bleep about it because I’m tired of…

Scott: They all have their dumb idiosyncrasies.

Scott: None of them work perfectly, especially since Tahoe came along, and I just quit.

Scott: So what I did is…

Scott: And this is…

Scott: What Peter’s referencing here is that he and I both have MacBook Pros.

Scott: They both have notches on the screen.

Scott: And so if you’re not connected to a large monitor, what happens is many of your Menu Bar icons will disappear under the notch, and Apple provides absolutely no way to get to them, no proof that they exist.

Scott: It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.

Scott: I’ve seen a lot of dumb things from Apple, though, so…

Scott: But what Peter’s referencing are third-party utilities that make those available to you, despite Apple’s decision that, hey, nobody uses those, they don’t matter, which, again, gets back to, does Apple use their own stuff?

Scott: No.

Peter: I have to assume that Tim Cook is sitting there on a giant display, you know, and not actually looking at the MacBook at all, like ever.

Scott: Which is weird because at Intel, I would constantly walk into Cubicle, some engineer, and they would have, like, dual displays, tilted down, unplugged, and they were staring at their tiny little laptop thing with their neck tilted down.

Scott: It just blew my mind how many engineers would work that way.

Scott: It’s like, you’ve got monitors right here.

Scott: I even asked them, do you want me to hook them up?

Scott: Do you want me to position them?

Scott: Do you want me to set the height?

Scott: I will do all these things right now.

Peter: No.

Scott: No.

Scott: Anyway, there are third-party utilities that make these available.

Scott: I am currently not using any of them.

Scott: So what I did do, though, is I put all of the ones that I absolutely have to have every time over to the right corner of the Menu Bar.

Scott: So I have them ordered in such a way that the ones that fall off, I don’t really care if they fall off.

Peter: You see, I’m trying to do that, and it never works.

Peter: Like on my main MacBook built-in display, I always have something that I want vanished.

Peter: And I was using Hidden Bar, but I gotta tell you, I don’t understand Hidden Bar with its bars and stuff.

Peter: It just doesn’t make sense.

Peter: And so I tried using ICE for a while, and that was good.

Peter: I liked it, and then eventually it stopped working for me on Tahoe.

Scott: Right, and the guy doesn’t seem to, if you go look at the GitHub comments, he doesn’t seem to understand that it’s broken.

Scott: He doesn’t seem to get it.

Peter: Yeah, and he also did post back in November that development was going to be slowing down and yada yada.

Scott: So, how can you tell?

Scott: How can you tell that it was getting any slower, Peter?

Peter: So I asked ChatGPT to come up with some recommendations, and of course, number one option was Hidden Bar.

Peter: I’m like, yep, I came from Hidden Bar.

Peter: It’s okay, but it’s not as customizable as ICE was.

Peter: Option two it gave me was Dozer.

Peter: Well, Dozer, also, I went there to the GitHub repo for that, and it’s like, yep, this project has been abandoned.

Peter: Sounds like, okay, next to that.

Peter: The next two it recommended are Barbee and iBar, which are both app store purchases.

Peter: And the fact that when you go to install it or get it, it says, let’s see, Menu Bar icon control tool, and then the rest of it is all in Chinese.

Peter: That kind of turns me off.

Peter: And the exact same thing happened with Barbee.

Peter: So not really happy with the choices right now.

Peter: There’s something called Hide Menu Bar, which I have not really tried just yet.

Peter: But it’s also written in, you know, like Chinese in the description and stuff.

Scott: So I’m looking at Hidden Bar’s Mac App Store pictures.

Scott: And it looks to me like it doesn’t solve the notch problem.

Scott: It looks to me like all it does is clean up icons so that you don’t have to look at them all the time, and then they appear.

Scott: But it does not look to me like it drops any lower below the notch.

Peter: So yeah, and Ice did that, right?

Peter: Ice, it wasn’t beautiful.

Peter: But what Ice would do is just drop a second bar down below the Menu Bar of all the stuff that was in.

Scott: Right, just like Bartender used to do.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: I don’t think I…

Scott: Still does.

Scott: Bartender still does.

Peter: Right.

Peter: I don’t think I used…

Peter: Did I use Bartender?

Peter: Was that…

Peter: Now, is that the one that got acquired with problematic tracking or was that something else?

Scott: It was.

Scott: There’s a lot of debate whether there actually is problematic tracking.

Scott: Nobody was forthcoming in that entire sale.

Scott: They subsequently said a few measly things that made some people happy.

Scott: And I get it, because it is the best utility by far.

Scott: So I understand why people want to be placated and go back to it.

Scott: I was just like, you know, in retrospect, for me personally, this isn’t a big enough of a problem that I want to go back to those guys.

Scott: So I just didn’t.

Scott: But I understand why people use it.

Scott: And to be honest, if you investigated it and decided that you trust them, OK, and you’re…

Scott: Because you can use…

Scott: What is it that I use?

Scott: A little snitch.

Scott: I don’t have it on…

Scott: I don’t make it block things.

Scott: I just want it so that it shows me what’s outgoing.

Scott: So you could use a little snitch or something similar to say, what is this app connecting to, and you know…

Peter: And why?

Scott: Right.

Scott: Well, it might not necessarily show you why, because the communication could be encrypted.

Scott: But anyway, the point is, you might want to look at bartender and investigate the whole thing and spend years of your life that you don’t have investigating the history of it and decide whether or not you want to use it.

Peter: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Scott: If you did use it, I wouldn’t blame you in the least, because it is by far the best of them.

Peter: OK.

Peter: Well, I also was recommended to look at something called vanilla.

Peter: And that one…

Scott: The V or T?

Scott: Vanilla or vanilla?

Peter: The flavor, like the bean.

Peter: So I have to look at that one there, too, and see if that’s any good.

Peter: Haven’t had a chance yet, though.

Peter: It seems to be a lightweight version, you know, like a lightweight hidden bar, visually.

Peter: That’s what it looks like to me.

Scott: Now I’m sure you already know this, but for any listeners, if you do want to pair down some of the things that are in your Menu Bar so that you can keep track of the ones that are important to you more easily, in system settings, there is a Menu Bar tab, and it will allow you to turn things off from showing up in the Menu Bar.

Scott: So I have certain things I never want to see up there.

Scott: I have VPN off, I have weather off, I have fast user switching off, I have Bluetooth off, I have battery off.

Scott: Why do I have Bluetooth and battery off?

Scott: Well, for battery, I’ve got a different utility that I use for that.

Scott: I’ve got Siri off because I don’t want it to show up there.

Scott: I’ve got…

Scott: yeah.

Scott: And that’s it.

Scott: So anyway, you can do that.

Scott: So you do have some ability to say, don’t ever show these and that will limit…

Scott: that will cut down greatly the number of icons that you have bouncing around up there.

Peter: Yeah, and I’ve done that, but it seems like there’s always more, right?

Peter: There’s always some other thing.

Peter: I’m like, where…

Peter: you know what?

Peter: Now I do need to see the pure paste icon because I’m trying to paste something, everything’s broken.

Peter: It’s probably that.

Peter: Oh, wait, you know, yeah, I know I just took a screenshot with Shodder, but I got to find where the screenshots go.

Peter: I need to see it, you know.

Peter: So there’s always something that I’ve hidden.

Peter: And then it’s like, oh, wait, yeah, I do kind of need that.

Peter: Darn it.

Scott: So this is why I try to use utilities where I don’t need their menus.

Scott: Like I use paste as my clipboard utility and command shift space, command shift V.

Scott: Command shift V always just brings it up if I ever actually need to see it.

Scott: With clean shot, I just do command shift one and it drops down all of my recent things and I can restore them from there.

Scott: I don’t need to see the menu bar for those in order to.

Scott: So I basically have a system set up where it is minimal, the number of ones where I actually need to access their menu bar icons.

Scott: That doesn’t mean I don’t leave them there, and when I’m on my big monitor, I might use them, but I don’t need them there in order to function.

Scott: So it is a juggling act for sure.

Peter: Yeah, but again, this is something like, this is Apple making a problem for us that we should not have to, you know, it’s like, why?

Scott: Oh, absolutely.

Scott: I can’t believe that we have to spend calories fixing this problem that they created.

Scott: Do they not see?

Scott: And sometimes on the laptop, by the way, in laptop mode, if you’re running an app that has a bunch of different menus on, from the left side, you’ll have your menu options run into the notch.

Scott: Now, usually what they do is try to continue it on the other side of the notch, but that means even more of your menu bar icons disappear.

Scott: It’s crazy.

Scott: Like Apple, are there no power users at Apple?

Scott: Are there nobody running tons of utilities at Apple?

Peter: No, there are not.

Peter: On that note, I have been trying, as you know, friends of the show, listeners of the show will know that I’ve been going back and forth with Apple and Garmin watches now, and I am rocking a Series 10 as of Prime Day or whatever, you know, last month, because I basically got a Series 10 for around the same price as an SE 3rd edition, but with a bigger screen.

Peter: And there was some other feature the Series 10 has that the SE doesn’t have.

Peter: So, you know, since it was the same processor, why not?

Peter: But most days, I really like wearing my Garmin more.

Peter: And I don’t know if it’s just because I’m, you know, like super in full on runner mode now or what.

Scott: Because you’re old.

Peter: You know, I could respond to that, and I’m going to just pretend you didn’t say anything.

Scott: Actually, no, here’s the thing.

Scott: Actually, I would imagine more old people wear Apple watches than they do Garmin watches, 100%.

Peter: I know more non-ultra big guys wear Ultras that I think are totally not deserving of it, but I’m not going to go there.

Peter: But anyway, with the Apple watch, I have made a point to not change it at all.

Peter: Right?

Peter: So, so far, the home screen, I have not changed the layout.

Peter: So far, it’s pretty good.

Peter: You know, the default settings of the default layouts of the app view is, I can find everything pretty quickly.

Peter: And I used to go through this song and dance shenanigans where I try to group, you know, okay, here’s Overcast and music and any other podcaster and the now playing control.

Peter: And over here, I’m going to have reminders in my calendar and my email and Outlook and messages and phone and, you know, like I tried to group all those things logically.

Scott: Oh, interesting.

Peter: I found I’d not bother with any of that and it works just fine.

Scott: But remind me, by default, is it in the honeycomb or the list?

Scott: It’s in the honeycomb.

Scott: Okay, good.

Scott: So I use the honeycomb and I do have mine arranged to some degree.

Scott: But here’s where the difference is.

Scott: I don’t care about category.

Scott: I just put a bunch of the ones that I access all the time up on the very first screen so I don’t have to scroll.

Scott: I just put them in an order that I can remember where they are.

Scott: And then if I scroll down even one screen, they’re all just in whatever order they show up in.

Scott: I don’t care.

Scott: So only the first screen that I can see without scrolling is in any order and it’s just a random order of, here’s some apps that I’m going to use a lot, I need them here, that’s it.

Scott: So did I do any arranging?

Scott: Yes.

Scott: Was it super detailed and categorized?

Scott: No, not at all.

Scott: And it was only on the first screen and it was only in the aspect of, I’m going to use these apps a lot, so they should be here.

Scott: That’s it.

Scott: And I agree with you.

Scott: It’s not bad.

Scott: And I agree with you.

Scott: I can find stuff and I agree with you that not over managing that view is by far the best way to go.

Peter: And, you know, last weekend, during the No Kings protests or two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of wiping my phone and reinstalling it from scratch.

Peter: And it was funny holding a stock iPhone with default settings again.

Peter: Because I was like, oh, this is what these things look like by default.

Peter: It was kind of weird.

Scott: It’s actually not that great.

Scott: It’s actually just kind of dumb and boring.

Peter: Yeah, but also like two screens of apps and stuff.

Peter: I remember when I first bought the iPhone, there was nothing on the home screen, right?

Peter: Because there were just, what?

Peter: Phone, mail, messages, calendar, reminders.

Peter: And I was like, now there’s all kinds of crap there.

Scott: Yeah, now they want you to journal your thoughts on your brand new phone.

Peter: Everything, yeah.

Peter: So it was kind of interesting.

Peter: And going back to my restore, wasn’t quite as seamless as I would have liked it.

Peter: The biggest inconvenience is just re-entering credit cards for Apple Pay.

Peter: But a couple of the financial things and re-enrolling in Face ID and those kind of things, that’s the biggest hassle.

Peter: But as you and I discussed also, I was running out of disk space a lot, or storage on the iPhone.

Peter: And so to get around that, I have set my Overcast to not download automatically.

Peter: The only things that downloads automatically now are podcasts that I listen to daily.

Peter: So like daily news and cybersecurity briefs.

Peter: Everything else I just set to stream and download on demand.

Peter: And I’ve freed up close to 6 gigs of space on that, which now has basically stopped my phone from complaining at me that it’s running out of space all the time.

Scott: Boy, that’s amazing that everything’s always got 6 gigabytes.

Scott: Recently had to clean up some folders for a client, and they had 6 gigabytes here, 6 gigabytes there.

Scott: This 6 gigabyte thing keeps popping up, Peter.

Peter: Six gigabytes is the magic number when things happen or stop happening, I guess.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: So, yeah, right now I look at my phone and, oh, so now, holy cow, wow.

Peter: Now I’m at 107 of 128 gigs free.

Peter: So somehow I’ve got a hundred, I’ve got 20 gigs free.

Peter: So that’s that’s impressive.

Peter: I don’t know what changed, but now Overcast is using like 650 megs as opposed to six and a half gigs, which is funny, though.

Peter: I don’t know where the other 14 gigs went.

Peter: Somehow it freed that space up, though.

Peter: So that’s cool.

Scott: I cannot believe I’m going to give you an opportunity to talk about Overcast and Negative Light here, but how’s the streaming working now that he restored actual true streaming?

Peter: It’s fine.

Peter: For me, it’s fine, asterisk, when I have reliable signal or I have Wi-Fi.

Scott: Well, that’s the problem with any kind of streaming for any kind of app.

Peter: I understand.

Peter: But again, to the point I was making when we were talking about it the last time, was he had arbitrarily decided like, oh, we don’t need streaming, it’s fine.

Peter: You don’t need that.

Peter: And then there were tons of us in like spotty cell situations who are like, yeah, but we kind of do.

Peter: And that’s why he sort of brought it back.

Peter: And now he seems to have brought it back for real.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: That makes no sense to me.

Scott: First of all, let’s be clear.

Scott: The reason he did that is because streaming ruins things that have dynamic ads and there were other issues with it.

Scott: That’s why.

Scott: Oh, it was other things too.

Scott: Smart speed.

Scott: It makes it really hard to do things like have it set on different things, do smart speed with actual streaming, stuff like that.

Scott: So he decided that what he would do is if you had it set to streaming, he would actually just download the episode and it would make all that stuff a lot easier.

Scott: But you’re saying streaming, you want streaming in a place with spotty cell signal.

Scott: Isn’t that the opposite of what you would want?

Scott: Wouldn’t you want them all downloaded to device?

Scott: If you’re in a place with spotty cell signal, that makes no sense to me.

Scott: I don’t want to be in a place with spotty cell signal if I’m trying to stream.

Peter: So I’m not complaining about overcast performance in that case.

Peter: What I’m saying is Marco assumed, it seems from his communications, he seemed to assume everybody always has bandwidth and it’s just fine and you can always download whenever you need to.

Peter: And that was not the case.

Scott: I would just posit that if you can’t download an episode, which usually takes a few seconds, there’s no way in bloody hell you’re going to be able to stream over the course of an hour.

Peter: Probably not.

Scott: So, you’re fucked either way, so…

Peter: Pretty much, yes.

Peter: So for me, what it means is every now and then, like before I hopped on my airplane, for instance, I would go through and say, download this, download this, download this, just to preload a little bit.

Peter: So it’s made me a little bit of a chore when I want to download or when I want to preload things.

Scott: For sure.

Scott: Now you’re back to managing it just like the old iTunes days.

Peter: Right.

Peter: But I’d rather do it like that than run out of space all the time and have to constantly uninstall Overcast.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Or find out conversely that you have plenty of space, but you also don’t have any podcasts to listen to, which I’ve gone out on runs and thought I had stuff on my watch that wasn’t on my watch.

Scott: And I was like, gosh damn it.

Scott: It was never podcasts though, to be clear, it was music.

Scott: But same problem, right?

Scott: You get out there, you’re like, yahoo, let’s go.

Scott: And then, oh, okay.

Peter: No, you’re not going anywhere.

Peter: That’s definitely happened.

Peter: I, that happened to me a lot where like, you know, I would go to go for a run and I would have Overcast.

Peter: I was like, all right, start playing this.

Peter: And it would start, and it would just think about it and think about it.

Scott: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: And nothing would ever happen.

Peter: And then I’d be like, you know, and that’s frustrating, right?

Peter: I mean, that’s first world problem.

Peter: It shouldn’t have any effect on me at all.

Peter: And boy, I get so pissed that I want to put my fist through the wall.

Scott: I had one that always happened to me, and I didn’t get that mad, but I did get slightly annoyed.

Scott: Midas Touch Podcast for whatever reason.

Scott: I subscribed to Midas Touch for a short time.

Scott: Yep.

Scott: And it would never download if I was on my home network.

Scott: If I saw one stuck in the queue, I had to turn off my Wi-Fi and then it would download.

Scott: But only if it was very close to the point where it first started trying to download.

Scott: If it had been stuck that way for a while, I had to delete it and re-download it.

Scott: Unbelievable.

Scott: So, I finally unsubscribed for many reasons.

Scott: First of which I was like, is this really benefiting me?

Scott: I’m not getting through my podcast queue anyway, and I’m fighting with the downloads on this.

Scott: I think I’ll just skip this one.

Scott: But it just cracked me up.

Scott: It didn’t like my home network.

Scott: There was another podcast where all the podcasts from this specific group of people, all of their podcasts would do the same thing to me, so I unsubscribed from those two.

Peter: I mean, is that a problem with the service that they’re using then?

Scott: Something was blocking my IP or something.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: Yeah, it was something.

Scott: So anyway, the point is, it was like that to where if I was listening to a podcast and then all of a sudden there was just dead silence for a while, I would know that it was stuck on one of those Minus Touch episodes.

Peter: What was really funny with me is so I was flying back on JetBlue and they have Wi-Fi built in now on all flights.

Peter: I was like, oh, that’s really cool.

Peter: And so I started playing through and I played through a few of my podcasts.

Peter: And I was dozing a little bit, I was listening, but then everything got quiet.

Peter: And I was like, all right, well, I guess I’m done for a while, and I closed my eyes.

Peter: And then several minutes later, all of a sudden a podcast starts playing.

Peter: Well, apparently it was downloading on super slow Wi-Fi.

Peter: And so that was kind of funny.

Peter: It’s like this whole time Overcast was trying to pull down the next episode of whatever, and then it finally kicked in.

Peter: So that was kind of funny.

Scott: Okay, that leads to another unplanned topic.

Scott: What airplanes or airlines have you found actually have decent Wi-Fi?

Scott: Because I paid the 15 or whatever it was dollars for the Wi-Fi on the Japan Airlines going to Japan.

Scott: And oh my God, was that a mistake?

Scott: I think I might have gotten four or five bytes total transfer during that entire time.

Peter: I don’t remember if I have ever paid for airplane Wi-Fi.

Peter: I’ve only done it one time.

Peter: JetBlue this time around was fine, you know?

Peter: Like I was able to send and receive messages and I was able to download podcasts without even realizing it.

Peter: And that’s all I did go.

Peter: Because I get motion sick really easily, so I don’t do a lot of, you know, spend a lot of time staring at the phone.

Peter: So it’s usually just enough to start playing something and then I look away and, you know, let it do its thing.

Scott: Yeah, I made the mistake of thinking, I’m going to stream the F1 race on F1 TV while I’m sitting on JAL.

Scott: And I was not going to stream it, Peter.

Scott: I was going to watch, basically what I was going to see was snapshots of certain situations, usually in pixelated form.

Scott: So I saw some great pixelated snapshots of Formula One activity.

Scott: And my daughter just laughed in my face and I finally gave up.

Scott: She thought it was hilarious because she was like, I’m not even going to bother.

Scott: And I was like, well, you know, first of all, I would have been paying for her anyway, but she was like, I’m not even going to try.

Scott: And then she saw my efforts and she just laughed.

Peter: Yep.

Peter: So, I have another call for work in about five minutes.

Peter: Did you want to finish out or do I’ve got something quick that we could wrap up with?

Scott: Let’s do that.

Scott: Let’s do your quick topic.

Peter: Ecobee, have they changed things or am I nuts?

Scott: I think you’re nuts.

Peter: I know.

Peter: But that doesn’t mean, as Adam Mockler would say, two things can be true at the same time, right?

Peter: Have they changed their comfort settings?

Peter: And I tried to explain this to you, but this was a classic where Scott would say, this is not a text conversation.

Peter: So I don’t think I was clearly conveying the issue that I was encountering.

Peter: So if I go into the Ecobee app and I select the thermostat and I click more, and then I go down to go up to the settings, and then I go to comfort settings, and then I choose a comfort setting like third floor, which is the one I’m using because I’m right now on the third floor.

Peter: The options here shows desired heat, desired cool, heat mode fan, cool mode fan.

Peter: Someone is usually away or present, away or home, which sensors participate, and then delete comfort settings.

Peter: So those are the options that I have.

Scott: Okay, when I look at comfort settings, I have home, I have away, and I have sleep.

Peter: So I’ve created more.

Peter: I’ve made more settings, plus sign to make a new one.

Scott: But where do you see all that extra text that you were talking about?

Scott: It sounded like you were reading a novel.

Peter: Click into, click into any one of them.

Scott: Oh, got it.

Peter: Click into.

Scott: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott: Desired heat, desired cool, heat mode fan, cool mode fan, three participating sensors.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: Now, I swear that it used to be you could choose the mode for these, and there was an option to choose heat mode, cool mode, or auto mode.

Peter: And it looks now that they’re always all auto mode.

Peter: So you have to choose an upper limit and a lower limit, like a cool temperature and a heat temperature for everything.

Peter: And I swear I’m not crazy that it used to be just heat.

Peter: So now what happens is every now and then, in November or October or whatever, it’s like close to freezing outside, but because it got hot in the bedroom and now we’ve switched to move to a new zone, the air conditioning kicks on.

Peter: And I used to be able to fix that by just saying, this is a heat mode operation, never turn on the AC.

Scott: No, you’re 100% correct about that.

Scott: There used to be a way to say, only involve the heater in this, the air conditioner will never be used for this mode.

Scott: Yes.

Peter: So once again, Ecobee, what the actual ****?

Scott: Well, you can get around that.

Scott: So you can get around that by saying cool to 90 degrees.

Peter: Exactly.

Peter: Why?

Peter: Why should I have to do that?

Scott: I agree with you 100%.

Peter: It’s so stupid.

Scott: Yeah, I didn’t realize until this very minute what you were saying, because I’ve never looked at, I haven’t looked at that in years.

Peter: So the other thing, and this is a, I’m pretty sure it’s a recent change, right?

Peter: Because I don’t remember the last time I made, I adjusted my comfort settings, but it was sometime this year.

Peter: So now though, like there are, like I just said, I manually went in and I said, set the living room thermostat to heat.

Peter: Done.

Peter: Right?

Peter: Why can’t I do that as part of a schedule?

Scott: That is bizarre.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: Anyway, friends of the show, thank you for listening.

Peter: Thanks for listening to our tech gripes.

Peter: Thanks for confirming that, yes, I may be crazy, but I’m not wrong about my memory on this one.

Peter: And we have more coffees.

Peter: So like between you and I, we have a lot of other coffees to review.

Peter: I’ve done a few single shots, but I still have a few cups and servings of some coffees and teas that I have purchased over the last month or so.

Peter: So we should crank out some others soon.

Peter: But on that note, if you want to get ahold of us, you know how to already.

Peter: It’s friendswithbrews.com.

Peter: You can find us on the socials less frequently, but sometimes we’re there.

Peter: And with that, Scott, would you do the honors?

Scott: I will do the honors, but you just reminded me, there is a boba place and it has tea in it.

Scott: So technically I could review that.

Scott: I’m going to review that.

Scott: Oh my God, the best stuff you’ve ever had.

Scott: Anyway, the honors are, people, tell your friends.

Scott: Tell your friends.