Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs - Episode 177: The Couch Episode

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

In this episode, Conor and Bryce chat about Bryce’s couches.Link to Episode 177 on WebsiteDiscuss this episode, leave a comment, or ask a question (on GitHub)TwitterADSP: The PodcastConor HoekstraBryce Adelstein LelbachShow NotesDate Recorded: 2024-03-06Date Released: 2024-04-12The Pursuit of Elegance by Matthew MayThe Eames Lounge ChairIkea FINNALAIntro Song InfoMiss You by Sarah Jansen https://soundcloud.com/sarahjansenmusicCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-miss-youMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/iYYxnasvfx8

I think we just release a whole episode on coaches. I think there should be a catch episode You know what folks screw it. We got six more minutes of God and can we talk about sleeper sofas? Welcome to 80 SP the podcast episode 177 recorded on March 6, 2024. My name is Connor, and today with my co-host Bryce, we hear from Bryce the epic saga of his past coach purchases. All right. We're recording now, but hey, well, your voice is loud.

Let's do a little game check here. You're thinking about? We got the Zoom H6, folks. We got to turn this down because my voice is too crispy. Say something a little game check here. You're thinking about... We got the Zoom H6 folks. We got to turn this down because my voice is too crispy. Say something into the mic, Bryce. Shut up and listen to me. Alright. That's probably not going in the podcast

because as a Canadian, we like to spread kindness in the world. Alright. That was too loud. We are here in Bryce's apartment. Have we ever recorded in either of our apartments? We have not.

And I got to tell you, probably the acoustics are fantastic in this apartment because Bryce has got a lot of fluffy pillows, a lot of couch real estate. He's got twice as much couch real estate. Have we done the couch story on the podcast? No. You know what? I would say typically the listener doesn't care. But you know what?

I'm actually kind of interested at this moment, which is rare. You must have heard this story. Well, give us a little quick jog of the memory. Hi, I'm only going to tell this story if you promise not to turn exit. I don't want to know. only going to tell this story if you promise not to 10x it i promise to not 10x all of it but hey if it's a good story i'll leave the whole thing in give me a little time estimate they're all good stories um so uh this is the second couch i have a couch guy this is the second couch that i've had this couch guy i'm gonna interrupt you right there folks so i've been staying at bryce's apartment it's uh what is it wednesday afternoon i got here tuesday midday so i've been here for about 24 hours that's bryce eating an

apple definitely the mics picked that up and bryce is actually he's got a very nice apartment very nice apartment i will say bryce will maintain that his view is better than mine It is not I have one of the best views in Toronto Yes, one of the best views in Toronto It's still worse than a bad view in New York But we actually have a good view in New York There is No Dude, when you look out your window

You know what you see? I see the CN Tower You see Toronto I see America You can see America And that's the thing I live so high up in the Canadians

Get that right Connor When Connor was listing The great things That was for you That was for you The great things That you see

From his apartment in Toronto That was for you The CN Tower And then Oh yeah America Yeah you can see America Because if we roll a tape back You were about to say that because it's

just canada and so then i added america in there anyways my point being i have a nicer view but bryce has a much he has a much nicer apartment he's got i was i said they were gold fixtures bryce immediately corrected me he said they're brass it's very nice though and brass yeah yeah brush brass brass there's a little tongue twister. Brushed brass. It's very nice. And, yeah, he's got the walnut credenza. He's got the walnut coffee table.

I was told that I would be killed if I put anything on the walnut credenza. And he also gave me the backstory. I told Connor, you can put your stuff on the walnut coffee table, but I will kill you if you put anything on the credenza. Which I appreciate. I appreciate the sort of upfront communication. He could have just murdered me without that information. The walnut coffee table is my oldest piece of furniture, and I do love it dearly, but it's not going to, I think, make it to the next department. But the credenza is much more of a unique piece and quite fancy and Spanish.

And it's not Spanish walnut. We went over this yesterday. It's not Spanish walnut. It's like, I think it's- You said it was Brazilian walnut. Somewhere in South, somewhere in the Americas, walnut. It may be American walnut, but it's made by people in Spain or Portugal. somewhere in south somewhere in the americas walnut it may be american walnut but it's made

by people in spain or portugal i don't remember the iberian peninsula though all right at this point our listeners probably don't care anymore but my point here was that bryce i actually can't remember what you were saying that made me want to interrupt you but i was telling my couch story yeah but you said something specifically where i did want to comment that Bryce has a very nice place. And it is really the fixtures, you know. It's turning the tap on in the bathroom. It's a lovely experience, folks. It makes me...

The heated bathroom floors. Yeah, that's also... I mean, that's nothing special. I mean, I've been in a few places that have that. I've never owned a place or rented a place that has that. But I will say it's just something I didn't realize in actually my whole life. I'm 33 now, folks. I've never lived in a place that wasn't kind of, it didn't feel like it had kind of like, you know, not top class like the people that constructed it.

It kind of feels like they cut corners. I feel like probably a lot of people listening have this shared experience where, you know, little things in the apartment, things aren't screwed in completely well, or they kind of jiggle, or blah, blah, blah, or, you know, the water leaks here and there. Whereas it feels like Bryce's place, they got everything tightened, tightened real tight.

This is a universal... Is this a facade? There is no price point at which like Bryce's place. They got everything tightened, tightened real tight. This is a universal. There is no price point at which you do not notice mistakes that were made in the place that you live. I could.

So I just haven't picked up on the ones in your place? I could show you half. I mean, the ones here are not as bad as in, you

know, other places I've lived. But I could show you half of those annoying little things, you know things around this place. Okay. Well, anyways, I'm just saying that when I turned the tap on,

I did think to myself, I would like some taps like this in my next place that I live in. You do have to be careful in the bathroom, though, because the hot water tap comes in one temperature, which is scalding. And it's one of those annoying ones where it's got two um uh two handles and um if you try to mix the water um the hot and the cold water you pretty much always just get cold and on like you have to like micro adjust to get like water

that is not like scalding hot or just like completely cold it's like we didn't need two knobs for this one knob would have been fine this is true it's a very poor design it's the same thing that infuriates me ever i read a book once called the pursuit of elegance and it talks about many things including like the fractal nature of jack Pollock's paintings and whatnot. But one of the things they point out is that doors, like doors that, you know, you enter and you push one way and then when you exit, you pull. But most of these doors, they have handles on both sides. And so every single time your natural inclination when you reach for a handle is to pull because that's what it's designed for.

So why is there any door that has handles on both sides unless if it it's it's bi-directional if it is you can only exit by pulling and entering by pushing you should not have a handle and i don't any time that i grab or twist a handle or pull something and you have to push it drives me nuts only because i read that book and then it got pointed out to me and it's one of those things that now that it's been pointed out to me it drives me crazy i mean it's the the two taps for hot and cold not the end of the world not necessary but not the end of the world but the door you'll like the door is not well fitted to that frame and you'll you'll you'll notice you need you it's a great security feature if you have the key to my apartment you will not be able to get into the apartment unless you have lived in

this apartment yeah that is true the first time i took the t the the key i twisted it left i twisted it right and i was like did i grab the wrong key and i was like no there was only one key and then so sure enough i did one of the things where you have to pull on the door or whatever but then i just i just did it a little harder and it worked yeah you have to like pull towards you and then push yeah just because it's like the there's not enough clearance between the door and the door frame. There's a few other things. Let me interrupt again. We're getting back to the couch. Don't worry.

I finished my apple. I was hungry. I didn't have breakfast or lunch today. We're at the seven minute mark. Maybe the five minute mark if I had 10x, two minutes of that. What? Two minutes of that? if I 10x two minutes of that. What? What two minutes of that would you 10x?

But I'm, you know what? It's rare that Bryce and I are in the same location and that I said that I do recall that we recorded like eight episodes when we did our Slovenia road trip.

But my point being is if you're at the seven minute mark thinking you're about to drop, if I include all this in, it'll be a 45 minute episode. So it'll be longer. So you'll get your regular 30, 35 minutes of content and all this extra, it'll be a 45-minute episode. So it'll be longer. So you'll get your regular 30, 35 minutes of content and all this extra stuff. We're keeping in for the listener that likes to hear the interesting stuff and the less interesting stuff.

Or should I say the tech stuff and the non-tech stuff? Back to the coach. I'm going to, as much as i love our chit chat we're gonna do this couch story real quick because then i'm gonna yell at you about grouping operations right we're gonna talk about we're gonna talk about so i have a couch guy um he is oh that's what made me think of it because you already had uh a furniture or like walnut person or is this all the same how many people how many people do you have i feel like i've told the couch guy story before you all but you you also told me you had an interior decorator yeah yeah okay yeah so how good the couch answer the question how many people do you have that are

responsible for any form of furnishing or apartment decorating stuff i think it's really just in the the the decorator and the couch guy. So I have a couch guy. His name is Hans. He has a great freaking mustache in Berkeley. I think they're called

Alpha Designs Berkeley. So he's designed my last two couches and he will design every couch that I own until I die. What do you mean design?

This is a custom made couch? This is a custom made bespoke couch. Oh my goodness. And when I say custom made, most people are like, oh, you mean design this is a custom-made couch this is a custom-made couch and when you when i say custom-made people most people like oh you mean he like picked the fabric no every dimension of this couch was like specifically um selected so i are we allowed to ask how much this coach cost then it was surprisingly surprisingly affordable what does that mean are we gonna alienate our listeners by listing this price? I mean, I think it was $5,000, and I think you can spend a lot more on a couch.

If you're buying a leather couch, you can spend $10,000 or $15,000. The fact that this is a bespoke couch that was made in America, I think it's a pretty good price. So you're comfortable with leaving that in the episode? Because to me, that sounds like 5X more than any coach I've owned. So if you know anything about couches, you'll know that that's like... Which clearly Connor does not. That's like mid-range for couches. Like as a point of reference, the Eames chair, which is not a couch,

but is an iconic recliner chair with a futon. And it's leather, admittedly, so it's more expensive. But like an Eames chair will run you like $7,000 to $8,000. And that's like probably like the highest end of like chairs. That's just like the only other piece of sitting furniture whose uh price i know at the top of my head all right all right so there you go folks five thousand dollar bespoke coach so not that expensive so i hans designed my first couch when i um started at nvidia and i moved down to uh uh to santa clara um because i'd driven back past his store in Berkeley,

like a dozen times. And I'd always wanted to go in. And then when I got the job in NVIDIA, they gave me that nice starting bonus. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go in and buy a couch from this man. I went in custom designed a couch for me.

And there was one aspect of the couch where I said, I wanted this. And he told me I was wrong. And it was, it was a, a section like this where it had a lounger where you've been sleeping. Um, and then it had like a regular, like couch body, like two pieces. It was sort of L shaped. Um, but unlike this couch, I put an arm both on this,

the, this side here, but also the back wrapped around. And there was an arm on that side there, on the end of the big lounger piece. Now, the lounger piece was great because I could lie down while I was watching TV and, you know, fall asleep, because I tend to fall asleep while I'm watching TV, which is wonderful, nice and cozy. However, because I put the arm on the end of the Shea Lounge, it was just like, just large enough for me to lie down,

but then my feet would just barely be pressing up against the arm. And so it wouldn't be like 100% comfortable. I would have to take off the back pillow and like sit in a very specific way to be able to like really just relax and lie on on on that part of the couch and and Hans had told me like when I'd asked him to put the arm on the end of the Shea Lounge he'd been like are you sure and I was like yeah that's exactly what I want but but Hans knew because he is a couch wizard he knew that I shouldn't have made that decision because he knew that people like to lie down in their shade their shade lounge so anyways that was couch number one her name was bertha and i thought the fabric that i picked was going to be more wait that wasn't the coach we're sitting on right now no no we're gonna get that that was a 5 000 coach no no that was like a

i think i paid like 1500 to 2000 for that $2,000 for that couch but that one was my couch in Silicon Valley for like 3 or 4 years her name was Bertha I thought that her fabric was going to be more of like a silvery blue but it turned out it was really kind of closer to a green

that's on me great couch but it was too big for this apartment um because it was this is uh 100 inches um and i think it bertha was like 120 inches and so there's there is just barely enough room it's actually three feet from the end of this couch to the start of my kitchen table here. My like, what do you call these? I mean, when they're disconnected, they're called islands, but yours is connected to the wall. Yeah, from the kitchen island.

Let's call it the kitchen island. And so the reason that it's three feet is because I specifically, you know, I specifically built this couch to be the maximum amount of space that it could be leaving just three feet there. Because three feet is usually the amount of space that you want in between, you know, any piece of furniture and a wall. If you want like three feet of clearance, that's enough space for people to move. So, yeah, Bertha was too big. So I tried to buy a couch, like a regular human being. Like I went to stores, I looked at couches. It actually, it took me like four days to find this apartment.

Um, and then it took me like eight days to find the couch for this apartment. And, um, so I, I found a couch that I thought I was going to like. It was from, I don't remember where, EQ3 or something like that. Some other couch, but it had like multiple separate cushions. So it sort of made it like hard to lie down on. But I finally found one that I was like somewhat okay with ordered it. I went back to California to pack up my stuff, to move to New York. And, uh, it was my birthday and

I was going to Yosemite for my birthday, um, to go on a hike. And, uh, I get to Yosemite and I'm, it's, it's like the evening before I'm going to go on my hike. And I, I'm at the hotel and I'm it's it's like the evening before I'm going to go on my hike and I I'm at the hotel and I'm just like I fucking hate this couch that I just bought it's it's just it's all wrong it's not going to be comfortable enough it is not the perfect like couch that I have in my head um and uh and I knew that like Hans didn't really like this this guy he built couches sort of only served the bay area um and that's that's why i'd never considered like having him build a second couch for me but i was just so i like i'd been searching for a couch for like more than a week and had just been unsuccessful and finally ordered something then decided i hated it um and so there, that night in Yosemite, I called up the company who I just ordered a couch from, canceled that order. And then I, no, it must have

been, it must have been after the hike that I made this decision. Cause I called up Hans and I remember telling Hans, Hey Hans, I have a couch emergency. I'm in Yosemite today. I'm driving back to, uh, to the Bay area tomorrow. I can, I can be in your, uh, uh, in your shop like tomorrow morning, or maybe it was, maybe it was like the, the, the day that I drove back, but I was basically like, I have a couch emergency. Like, can I order a couch from you? And then can you figure out how to get the couch from California to New York? And he's like, I will, I will come up with a plan for that. So I went in and we worked to design this couch. And the way it works is he has some like reference designs that you can start with. And then you can like customize them pretty much however you want

like this, the reference design for this one, it had like a little seam here that i didn't like so i was like we're not doing that um and like the specific height of this like i specifically picked how high this arm was going to be there's a lot of back and forth about that um but the major thing was the length of this shade lounge um which i don't remember how many inches it was. I think it's like 89. No, no, no, no. It was going to be 89. So originally it was much shorter, but I wanted to be long enough to lie down on. But I told him like, all right, let's make it 92 inches. And he's like, all right, if you make it 92 though, it's going to be more expensive because that's more than a 30 inch extension from the original reference design and we can do it but if you keep it under 30 inches you'll save like

let's say it's like 300 bucks um and so originally i'm like all right i'll just keep it as 89 and then i went home and i thought some more about it and i was like you know it's only three inches but uh like when i when i designed this out and measured this for like my body length, like I determined that I needed those three extra inches. So I call him up and I'm like, dude, I want it to be 92 inches. I don't care if it costs $300 more. And, um, and yeah, that's the story of this couch. It's got like, uh, down inside with like a memory foam core. So it's very comfortable. Ramana wasn't a believer in the couch at first she thought it was too soft but uh she has since become a couch convert

anyways can i now yell about grouping operations yeah you just got to give me uh 60 seconds so i will say folks that uh what we're really going to do here is I will leave my 60 seconds in and we're starting the podcast. You're listening to this. This is like the first couple minutes of the podcast. At the end of this 45-minute podcast, there's going to be 15 minutes about Bryce's apartment and a not short description of the effort that went into designing both of his custom couches. Because I actually found it interesting. And the reason is like probably a day ago, I wouldn't have...

And there will probably have to be a third couch too. Absolutely. And we will talk about that when you design that in the future now because a day ago, I wouldn't... No, no, no. I'm going to explain right now. No, no, no, no.

This couch was specifically designed for this apartment and the chances that this couch will fit in another apartment, pretty low. So chances are this thing is going to find a new home when we move to a new apartment. And we'll just have to design another one. All right. But the design of the next one will come up in a future episode. But the reason that I'm saying that a day ago I wouldn't have cared is because I don't really consider myself. Like I care about algorithms and like board games and stuff, but like interior design and whatnot, like I could

care, like I put literally the, um, what do you call them? Like poster cardboards that you buy at the dollar store. And then I just write stuff on them and I hang that stuff up on my wall. My girlfriend absolutely hates it. And, uh, I'm, they may not be there anymore anyways the point being is that after having slept on this couch for one night and having the tv i've realized that like yeah i'm missing out on life not in a minor way but in like a major way because when you're sitting on the couch with like two people what if you want to lie down but if you've just got a regular like we haven't really mentioned it but this is like an l-shaped couch with like the regular couch part and then the chaise lounge part that bryce referred to and that gives you the ability if you got multiple people and you just want to sit side by side

or if you want to lay down like very comfortably you don't have to then go on your side and worry about getting a pillow to prop your neck up. And maybe this is like basic knowledge for like a certain category of adults. But I am not in that category of adults. No, it's not. It's not just you. It's just that like there are very few people who have thought as deeply about couches as I have thought about couches. But just having slept on this couch has made me realize that like I'm doing couches wrong. And that's why a day ago i wouldn't have

cared about that couch explanation i would have been like who cares bryce but having slept on this couch comparing it mentally to my coach in my head or in my apartment does your couch have multiple cushions it has three cushions in the seated spot and then three sort of back cushions yes it's just it's just i'll link it in the description it's a hand-me-down ikea couch for my sister when she moved to calgary are like the bane of my existence like we have like an individual cushion for like each individual spot because it makes it super uncomfortable to lie down on the couch and it's just like a scam by the couch industry the the theory of it is oh well if you have multiple cushions and each person

like one person sitting down doesn't infect the other person sitting down but like how common is it for people to sit on a couch where they're like all seated seated next to each other just sitting there like it's a chair nobody does that nobody does that the reason that they have the small the smaller cushions uh instead of one big larger cushion can you guess connor it's easier to ship it's easier to ship and it's cheaper to make yeah it's cheaper to make smaller uh cushions um and uh instead of one bigger cushion yep yeah that makes sense i mean it's the same thing with the like glass panes and windows right like the bigger ones are way more

expensive because they're way harder to ship and they're way harder to manufacture um whereas if you get a bunch of smaller ones like this is wait you can stack them it takes less space etc my couch doesn't so much have cushions it has like a mattress like the uh the the one for the shea lounge is basically the size of like a single mattress um and then there's one for the other piece too yeah yeah but it's it is uh you know what folks all right once again it's been like four minutes so here's what's really gonna happen we're gonna start talking about algorithms in in 60 seconds this is probably gonna be like a 50 minute to an hour minute an hour episode i'm not gonna edit just do a couch episode man i don't think do people really want a couch episode they man. I don't think. Do people really want a couch episode? I think they do. Should we?

I think. Should we just release a whole episode on couches? I think there should be a couch episode. You know what, folks? Screw it. We got six more minutes of couch content. God, and can we talk about sleeper sofas? All right.

So wait, wait, wait, wait, though. You know, once again, listeners, this is the same thing. I'm engaged this time, whereas that episode, what was it about? Not the VIN numbers. For the record, I was ready to just jump in without any intro and talk about grouping operations and be on topic. I was ready to go. I was ready to do this regardless of whether we were going to talk on a podcast or not because we were just talking about work stuff. And I wanted to engage with you on this topic. we were going to talk on a podcast or not because we were just talking about work stuff and i i wanted to engage with you on this topic but you were the one who wanted to do the wanted to do

the fluff and then you got the couch story i don't know exactly if that's how it went down i think i mentioned something then you wanted to talk about the couches but then because of my interest it's ballooned into something more but uh like i was about to say before we talk about sleepers or whatever the heck those are similar to what was it the credit card number episode i thought that was gonna flop i thought it was gonna flop folks we asked for feedback and overwhelmingly every single piece of feedback was uh was mostly positive and some of them said it was the funniest episode yet uh please once again link in the show notes to a GitHub discussion or leave feedback on Twitter. I'm not promising that this is going to be a good episode.

I just like to know, do, would you have preferred us to just cut this stuff? Or what I was going to do is just post fix it unedited. Cause then it doesn't take any extra time. I just, whatever, splice it together and it saves me an extra hour.

And let us know. Do you like it? I'm rearing to talk about sleeper sofas. And also, let's just check the timestamp. We got 25 minutes and 20 seconds. So we got five minutes to keep this into a tight 30. Go, sleepers. First of all, what is a sleeper?

So a sleeper sofa is a sofa that somehow transforms into a bed. Usually there's like a mattress that's underneath. Oh, a pull-out sofa. Yeah, a pull-out sofa, sure. It's what the lay people call it. There's a mattress that's underneath the seat of the couch and it pulls out. Now, here's the thing. And there is a deep lesson in my opinion of sleeper sofas. A deep life lesson here.

And I have spent some time sleeping on sleeper sofas. My grandparents, who actually worked in the furniture industry, fun fact, Bryce's grandparents were furniture salespeople and interior decorators. But despite being furniture salesmen, they have a fucking terrible sleeper sofa, the most uncomfortable one in the world. And then for some reason,

my aunt bought the same one. Like everybody in the family, this sleeper sofa is so bad that when people go over to stay with the, one, people stopped staying with my grandparents because it was so uncomfortable. But two, we would just take the mattress out of the sleeper sofa

and just put it on the ground because that'd be more comfortable. But so why does sleeper sofas suck? Well, because they tend to be bad at being a bed and bad at being a sofa. Like they're trying to be two things and they do both of them in a mediocre fashion. And like I wanted a sofa that I'd be able to sleep on, but specifically I avoided anything that you could call a sleeper sofa. I just wanted a big couch that would have a space like this Shea Lounge that would be suitable for not only one, but two people can actually sleep on there side by side.

But because it's not a sleeper sofa, because it's not trying to be two different things, it is far more successful and a lot less bulky. Although one design problem with this couch, which I did not know I was going to have a dog when we got this couch, because I got this couch prior to the girlfriend and the dog, there is space underneath the couch. It does not have feet or a runner that goes to the floor.

And the next couch will have some sort of runner a runner that goes to the floor. And the next couch will have some sort of runners. And then he goes to the floor. Can you guess why? Cause the dog likes to hide under the coach. The dog likes to hide her balls under the couch. Cause the dog only likes to play. If she's, if she has our attention playing,

playing on her own, that's no fun for her. She wants our attention. And so she, she has our attention. Playing on her own, that's no fun for her. She wants our attention. And so she has, you know, the first few times that she lost the ball under the couch, she would whine and complain. She'd be like, hey, come help me. And we'd come help her.

And then she'd be like, aha, I have learned a new trick. If I just put the ball underneath the couch or if I put the ball in between the couch and the window where I can't reach it and then I whine and look pathetic, then the humans will come and retrieve it for me. So the next apartment is going to have no spaces where the dog can lose the ball. Look at that. Fantastic. Yeah. Be sure to check these show notes either in your podcast app or at ADSP the podcast.com for links to anything we mentioned in today's episode, as well as a link to a get up discussion where you can leave thoughts, comments and questions. Thanks for listening.

We hope you enjoyed and have a great day. Low quality, high quality. That is the tagline of our podcast. It's not the tagline. Our tagline is chaos with sprinkles of information.