Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs - Episode 86: Special Guest Tony Van Eerd! (Part 3)

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

In this episode, Bryce and Conor continue their interview with special guest Tony Van Eerd!TwitterADSP: The PodcastConor HoekstraBryce Adelstein LelbachAbout the Guest:Tony Van Eerd has been coding for well over 25 years, and hopefully coding well for most of that. Previously at Inscriber, Adobe, and BlackBerry, he now enables painting with light at Christie Digital. He is on the C++ Committee. He is a Ninja and a Jedi.Show NotesDate Recorded: 2022-06-24Date Released: 2022-07-15Too Big Too Fail (Movie)Too Big Too Fail - Top Bankers ClipHana Dusíková on TwitterMama Duck (World’s Largest Rubber Duck)CppNorth ConferenceIntro 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

Well, let's pivot to like a better, like let's pivot back to cancer, right? And I'll tell you- This part might get cut. This part might get cut. You just wait. You just wait. Welcome to ADSP, the podcast, episode 86 recorded on june 24 2022 my name is connor and today with my co-host bryce we continue with part three of our four-part interview with tony vannier

someone i had someone um can't give away what i my my my interview questions but um i had a question about two points and some function you could do on some points. Tony, it's not like you're on a popular podcast. You can give away your interview secrets. Basically, it's triangulation, right? It's just like, how do you, because this is what we do, right?

I do computer vision and I find where the projectors hit the monitor, hit the wall and where the pixelsors hit the monitor, you know, hit the wall and where the pixels land and all this kind of stuff. So triangulate, you can try triangulate two points and, and find the point that where they, where the two lines cross and someone's like,

Oh, we could make that a member function of point. And I was just like, Oh, you know, the interview was going so well. I mean, it was just a student in university. And I was just like, Oh, I was, you know, the interview was going so well. I mean, it was just a student in university, so I don't, it's fine. Right. But I was like, it's actually,

I love when I get this part because I, I will, I will teach during my interviews. I will teach people like, Hey, let's talk about whether that should be a member function of the point class or not and why it should be and why it shouldn't be and at the end of the interview i'll ask people what did you learn during this interview right it's like you can if you can tell me that you learned something in the interview that's like yeah that's great even if i'm not going to hire you i want you to walk away like it's actually i want to know if you are open to learning,

right? Like that's what happens. If you come work with me, we're going to have these conversations. So as part of the interview, I'd like to know how these conversations are going to go. That's a, that's a great,

it's a great interview question. What did you learn during this interview? I'm going to start asking that. Well, you got to teach them something though. Somewhere in the interview, they're going to do something. You're going to be like,

Hey, I think any, any conversation anybody has with me is going to be educational in some way shape or form oh price oh and i thought i was like conceited you know at least i have good reason to be conceited i don't know where bryce's gets his from that's top five bryce though but connor is experiencing undefined behavior right now listen listener of the adsb podcast okay i know lots of things and if you're talking to me let me tell you i know more things than you probably probably people tell me i'm not i didn't say that i knew a lot of things all i said is that you'd learn something you'd learn something about price that's what you that's good it doesn't mean that i'll teach you something it just means you'll learn something

i've got a big brain lots of things in the brain i i i'll be the first to say I am not a very clever man. I'm just a very good bullshitter. You as a consultant would be a very scary thing, Bryce. I would be a very good consultant. I would picture you on one of those HBO movies of like where they do the – there's an HBO movie called – it's not too big to fail. It's about like the financial crisis, and there's this scene where all the CEOs of, you know, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley,

they're all getting into this, you know, conference room and being called in by the Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner. And they're like, you know, you guys are all going to figure out how to bail these things out. We're going into the, you know, what do you call it? Great Depression number two and the way that they do this intro that it's like a montage of like you know jamie diamond

ceo of jp morgan and then like they freeze in on the guy's face and they go to the next one what should we expect from these guys Jamie is smart. He doesn't have as much cash to work with since he bought Bear. Lloyd's a superstar. Goldman's the smartest shop on the block, and just because I used to be his boss, it doesn't mean he's going to listen to me. John Mack used to run around the floor screaming,

there's blood in the water, let's go kill someone. He's a fighter. Thane was my number two at Goldman. He's selfish. He's a pragmatist. He knows if Lehman goes, Merrill's next. Vikram Pandit is the new guy at Citigroup. No one knows if he's running Citi or if Citi's running him.

Bryce would fit so perfectly with his unbuttoned three-piece suit, you know, looking like he's getting paid $35 million a year. Bryce Adelstein Lellbeck. He's known as the bloodsucker of Wall Street. Something like that. I don't know why this popped in my head, because it's totally unrelated, but I don't know how much you want to intersperse your personal life or whatever,

but Hannah went to visit you right yes and you just abandoned her i did this is true my best friend came to visit me and i went and abandoned her to go visit my other best friend because all i got i got texts from her saying like she was she was getting on a plane. And then she was like, hey, I'm over Canada right now. And I'm like, cool. She's going to be in New York. And then I'll hear from her after, you know.

And then, like, middle of the New York trip, she's texting me again. And I'm like, that's really weird. Like, aren't you hanging out with Bryce right now? Like, why are you texting me? And then she's like, he's not here. Like, okay. Okay. But in my defense, like, my not here like okay okay but in my defense like my girlfriend like hung out with her so like she was i i did not abandon her completely i i i i delegated events

you delegated your friend planned which i was planning on going to but that they went to instead yeah um and in in more in your defense you went back uh early when you could have abandoned her entirely for the rest of the week yeah he went he he made it as short as possible i did make it as short as possible um what i was gonna say though is i i assumed i didn't realize you were going to the conference and everything right so i was thinking i was thinking like okay hana's gonna be there over the weekend you guys are gonna you guys are gonna record a session of adsp and hana's gonna be on it so i'm like i'm all prepared for this and i was like wait i am going to drive to toronto

find where connor lives and just show up as the other you know you know because it wouldn't be fair bryce has like bryce and Bryce and Hannah sitting there and Connor's got nobody. And I just be like, I'm there for you, man. I'm just, boom, here I am showing up at your door. We did think about that, but, uh, but that weekend was just so, cause like I didn't, I didn't have the keynote slide deck like more than 40% constructed until like I got on the plane. And who would do something like that? Maybe it was 50 or 60% constructed, but like I completely pivoted on the talk I was giving

fairly late in the game. And, and yeah, that was a crazy, that was a crazy, this whole month, this whole summer is very hectic for me. Yeah. Like I had this nice period of like the first, like, like last summer was hectic because I was moving. And then like my first, like, like three to four months in New York was nice and peaceful

and calm. And then my life has just been complete chaos since then. You'll be in trouble for a week. I thrive on the chaos. I thrive on the chaos. We'll go see some ducks to calm down your life. Yeah. You can come with two, Tony.

We'll go see the ducks together. Remember when there was a big giant duck? There was the big giant blowout duck. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that floated around for a while. What was that about? I just remember seeing it. If it was an advertising campaign. What was yeah that floated around for a while what was that about i can't i just remember seeing it i mean if it was an advertising what was that about it was a duck if it was an advertising campaign it didn't work because i don't remember what it was about either

yeah i just remember it was a big duck i do think it was trying to bring awareness to something um ducks i hope to the needs of waterfowl you'd be really sad if it was like cancer or something oh yeah i don't remember what's the thing connor connor now you're gonna have to go check later and make sure it wasn't cancer i will double check you have to you have to edit i was about to bring up a real sad story but then i will avoid it so what's your real sad story what's a sad story? Well, because it's sad,

we can't actually joke about it. But when, um, when I was down in San Diego, Tuesday afternoon, uh, I went to the beach after the conference around like five or six. And there was a helicopter flying up and down the beach.

And there was also like boats and jet skis. And I had checked out the beach on the weekend because I got there on Saturday. But I just I wasn't sure if this was like a thing that happened in America that they just like for extra safety because the waves were pretty bad. And so I was like recording videos to like send to my parents like, oh, look, we got the we got the helicopters out and uh you know whatever actually turns out it was because uh there was uh three teenagers that were swimming out amongst a bunch of other people and uh lifeguards saw that they were struggling and was managed to get two of them in into the water but they were never able to recover the third and um i think yeah it was an 18 year old kid. And for the whole week, basically that it

was the Coast Guards that were basically up and down the shore from, I think like sun sunrise to sunset. So it was sad because I was, I just was, I just thought it was like an American thing. You know, they got guns everywhere down there. So they do things different. So I just thought, you know, it's like an American thing to be at a beach. And then like, of course there's like a helicopter because you know, we got, we got guns and we got helicopter like i don't know and so i was kind of recording these little videos and then i wasn't actually able to send them to my parents because because it ended up actually being uh the worst case scenario um um well let's let's let's pivot to like a better like let's pivot back to cancer right um and And I'll tell you.

This part might get cut. You just wait. You just wait. Let me tell you. If you're not cutting the patent part, you're not cutting this part. Let me tell you a cancer joke because, you know, cancer is funny. All right, Tony, you might be about to get canceled. I'm sure you know it's 2022.

I will tell you. I will set up the joke. My mom told the joke and she was the one with the cancer. Right? So – My mom had cancer too. So – And this is like to give an insight into my family and how I was –

why I'm a bit odd sometimes. So my mom had cancer. Had a mastectomy, right? Breast cancer, mastectomy. She's in the hospital. She's being treated well in the hospital. She's there resting, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, hey, mom, how you doing? You know, she's like, this is great.

They're taking care of me. I get, you know, she's like, some people go to like a resort and it costs an arm and a leg this costs less that's the joke didn't cost an arm and a leg that's my mom that's my mom for you joking about yeah so so i have another i also have a funny cancer story jesus what is this podcast i promise you listener i have no cancer jokes or stories my mother did not have cancer so my um my single mother got thyroid cancer when i was like two which is pretty terrifying for her um and then it went into like remission and uh and then it

guess it came back when like uh i was 10 or so and uh and and the thing is like i didn't know that she had cancer until like, one or two years ago. It wasn't like she tried to like, keep it a secret for me. It was just like, like, and like, I knew she like took like the synthetic thyroid thing. But like, it was just like, it happened at a young enough age that at the time at the times when it was active, like, I'm sure somebody explained it to me, but like not, like I knew that there was something, I didn't know it was cancer. But so when I was 10, she had to go to the hospital to get some radiation treatment. And when I was younger, I was really afraid of

radiation. Like I would not keep a flip phone on me because I was afraid of like the radiation, you know, because when cell phones first came came out there were all these people who were concerned about the radiation would have these long-term effects on or the the um the antenna would have all these long-term effects on us um maybe that explains society now all right maybe it does and so my mother comes back from the hospital just having had her you you know, radiation treatment for her cancer. And she comes in and she wants a hug from me. She had been gone overnight. And I go and hide in the corner because I'm like, I want to be as far away from you as possible.

And I think I accused her of like, are you going to glow in the dark at night so i would not hug my mother after she came back from getting her thyroid cancer treatment yeah and and you wonder why she thought you were gonna struggle what can i say yeah but it is really it's kind of remarkable that like, I didn't really understand that, like the impact of like, oh yeah, she had cancer. I didn't even realize that until like the last few years. It's like, oh yeah, you don't have a thyroid because they took it out. Yeah. There you go.

Okay. Let's talk about connor you gotta you no no no connor's gotta tell his his funny family cancer story who doesn't have an amusing cancer story i mean i do not i've been relatively i mean relatively i've been very lucky um i've actually only been really to one funeral of a family member in my lifetime. And it was my, my dad's mom who passed away a few years ago. But I guess I can't remember if she had cancer. But I don't really have a funny cancer story. I do have a funny I mean, I'm throwing my dad under the bus here. But he doesn't listen to this. So I guess whatever.

And this is not, it's not exactly in the same uh vein as your both of your stories but um my father uh is a journalist i don't know why that's relevant but we grew up in a small town called prince george british columbia on the west coast and um how do i describe my dad i mean hopefully never listens to this, but he's the kind of guy that like, uh, we lived, uh, like three minute walk away from, uh, a river and like woods. So we'd go for walks all the time. And, you know, sometimes you'd run into like black bears or brown bears, usually black bears that leave you alone. But my dad would always like to bring like a buck knife along, you know, he's wearing his jeans. He likes to, he considers himself and my sister, my three sisters and I always give my

hard time because he considers himself a man of the wild. And, you know, if pushed, you know, if he happened to find himself abandoned in the middle of the woods, you know, he would be able to fend for himself and build a small shelter that would soon, he would be, you know, the Robinson Williams or what is it, the Robinson family, Chris Robinson. He would, you know, he'd be, he'd, you know, be skin and rabbits in no time, even though that's, you know, that's not my dad. But that's, you know, that's what he likes to think. Anyways, he gets pain in his lower right abdomen. And long story short, basically self-diagnoses himself with appendicitis and decides to just drive himself to the hospital.

Doesn't let anyone know. And he's checking himself in. And then my mother gets a call from the doctor being like, hey, is this etc, etc. And yeah, it's me. Oh, we're just here with your husband. He's going under. I just thought we'd let you know because he mentioned that he had not told anyone that he was here and he's very proud of that he's very proud that he uh web mds himself to a correct diagnosis and uh didn't need anybody and um yeah my mother always uh sort of half laugh and half is just like are you crazy like what who does that who who diagnoses themselves with something and then just checks themselves into the hospital without

letting their loved ones know um i have two two uh stories on that um one so my dad my dad was in the rodeo and stuff right so i mean i got like 18 things i thought about when you're talking about that because i grew up in the woods i grew up in a log house like literally log house in the woods um and my dad raises any animal he can train anything you know pet badger pet whatever you want raccoons and squirrels and hawks and eagles and everything so my dad is like you know in the woods yeah he is a man of the wild um we had a horse farm trained horses and things but um he's in the rodeos and stuff like that and the one guy he hung out with in the rodeos got speared by a bull one time, right? Went to the hospital for that.

And while they were fixing him up, they're like, hey, did like your appendix burst once. And he didn't go to the hospital. They're like, there's like, we can see that your appendix, like, he's like, oh yeah. You know appendix, like, he's like, oh yeah, you know, six months ago,

I had a pain in my side and I just tightened my belt a little bit. You know, just like, just kept some pressure on it. It was fine. That does,

that does sound about right. Yeah. Six months. Yeah, that does sound, thanks doc. Yep. Thanks for confirming.

That was my dad's friend. But my dad also, um, uh, because he, I, I've got like a 57,000 stories of my dad's friend but my dad also um uh because he i've got like 57 000 stories of my dad being injured and and just dealing with it on his own like um his butt to scratch he he he used to cut wood in you know like because we lived in a log house and we would cut wood yeah bring wood in and then he would fuel for the fire yeah and then you know you bring in kind of big pieces of wood and sometimes you'd cut it some more with

the little hatchet oh no yeah yeah i know yeah you can see where this is going and so this is not a bad story though it's okay um and he would always you're just like and my mom was just like thinking that he's going to cut his thumb off or something right because he's just really close to he's holding this piece of wood just just on the edge and hacking it with an axe and stuff and one day he just cuts and he goes oh he just whoa and doesn't say anything just like oh and like literally cut off just the tip of his thumb right like not i'm also missing the tip of my thumb all right my left thumb so he cuts off the tip of his thumb and he picks it up and like wraps it up a little bit. I did the same thing.

Takes himself to the hospital to get it sewn back on. Right? Yeah. And they just fix him up. And they're like, okay. We've all been there. Who hasn't done this? And they're like, you know, take care of it.

Don't do anything. Blah, blah, blah. But, you know, But we live on a farm and stuff. So the next day, my dad's out on the farm with the horses and stuff. And it falls off. And so he goes back to the hospital and they sew it back on again and stuff like that.

And then one more day, I don't even know how much more time goes by, it comes off again. So he picks up the end of it and he throws it in the woods he's just like screw that and now it really wasn't much because like you can't you can hardly tell right that yeah yeah i'm missing like i'm missing like a fourth of an inch on my my left thumb and yeah it's exactly it wasn't so bad i mean it was incredibly painful and there were a lot there was a lot of

drugs that some but uh but yeah no my dad didn't even like my my dad yeah when my dad was 70 something 70 yeah he was training a horse to to go up on its hind legs and hop forward like a like a rabbit and you know why did he want to do this no one knows but and he finally got the horse to do it and then it when it went you know because he said the horse would do anything for him if you could just describe to the horse what you wanted right the hard part is convincing like trying to you know so you get the horse to go forward but you pull back on the reins like he's standing way behind the horse but you pull back on the reins so it knows to go up. But then you're like hitting it,

you know, tapping it with a thing to go to on its butt to tell it to go forward, but to go up and then to like, you know, it's really complicated. But once the horse figured out what to do, it would do it for him. Right.

Cause my dad can train anything. So for some reason, the horse finally did it once and then kicked after and kicked my dad in, in his hands, which were cause he was after and kicked my dad in in his hands which were because he was holding on to these reins and broke both his hands and the doctor basically said if your hands weren't there you would have hit your chest and you would be dead right and so my my dad had to call up my brother because my brother was still living you know on the farm there um on an old rotary phone that we had in the barn.

And he's like, his hands are all broken, but he's like dialing the phone. He's like, Tom, can you drive me to the hospital? My brother's just like, yeah, what happened this time? And he was 70 at the time. Yeah. And he went to the hospital and like literally looked like Edward Scissorhands

because they had to put like pins all through his hands. i see that connor is not good at this kind of stuff my dad is somewhat similar he is uh he is 70 and uh this is supposed to be his first year of retirement and he has spent most of the year building a house or rebuilding a house my dad's like one of those guys who like goes to lowe's like you know 40 times in a month and like goes in the store and somebody asks him like can i help you and he's like no um so my dad uh like six months after this you know had both his hands just shattered um he's complaining that his one hand hurts a little bit and we're like well yeah you like totally smashed your hands and he's like yeah but the other one's fine and he barely has a scar like

he is like a wolverine he just heals he's like well it should be fine now because it's all right dad like you're 70 years old and you know just get back out there and do you know do the next thing is most of i'm curious if that is a function of uh due to having lived on a farm was most of it i guess is like a way healthier diet like are you eating lots of like grown vegetables i think also um so my grandfather was was also like my grandfather lived to like 98 or something um and it's just the whole that side of the family just just as healthy my grandfather lived to 98 never went to the hospital in his life until you know the last days and he lived what about uh what about when the wife was pregnant and not even sure that because

you know farmers right just like yeah yeah right back in the day or whatever 40s 50s things were different then right 40s 30s 30s even right so wait the wife didn't even go to a hospital who knows right probably not actually back then um uh it's like my dad was born in like 32 or something like that 1932 so like. So things were different back then. Maybe he went to the hospital for that, but he never went to the hospital for his own. So two parts to this story too. My grandfather is in the hospital for whatever.

He's 98 years old, still driving. He was still driving in his 90s, still has his license and everything. And they're like, oh, you'll be able to go home in a few days something something i didn't know what was wrong with him and he just literally said no i'm fine this is it and then died the next day like that night he died he just like wait this is this is your your dad no my grandfather when he was 98 he's just like i, I've had enough. I'm done. And he just. That literally what he told the doctor, what did the doctor say?

They were like talking about letting him leave the hospital. You know, oh, you'll, you'll, we'll like, you know, I don't know what he had. I don't know what he died from. He just died from. He had old. Yeah. He just died from like, I'm done. I've had enough. Time to go.

See you later. Right. But also when my grandfather, my grandfather lived in holland and my dad's got all these crazy stories about living through world war ii right um they would they would be like german would occupy their farm and then you know americans were occupying their farm and then like you know they would have soldiers living in the barns and you know it's crossing pass all the time but um after the war they moved to canada and my grandfather was 50 when he brought the whole family over to canada my dad was

like 18 or something and my grandfather at the time said um i'm gonna live 50 years in uh holland 50 years in canada in 50 years in austral. Like that's his plan, right? So my grandfather, yeah, I know. But my grandfather is like when he was like 92 or something, he took a plane trip to New Zealand. And everyone's like, what are you doing? He's like, well, I'm going to check out New Zealand. I want to see where I'm going to live.

Like he's like, I'm planning when I hit 100, I'm going to move down. He's like, I've changed my plan from Australia to New Zealand and, you and you know all this stuff so he takes a plane ride to new zealand from from canada from toronto or wherever he like left from right long plane which is a long yeah long plane ride and i guess on this plane ride he's talking to the the flight attendants and stuff saying saying like i've been through the war you know i've been through a lot of stuff this plane's coming down i can just feel it like i can feel it in my bones this plane and the flight attendant's like let us get you a blanket sir and like you know doing everything they can to make sure he's okay right for the whole flight to new zealand and then they come down they land and he said like told you so told you the plane was coming down

what did your grandfather do uh he's a farmer farmer yeah he's a farmer how did he feel about your dad being uh in the rodeo uh my my dad was kind of the i'm not 100 sure because my grandfather also did stuff with horses. But all the other brothers and people in the family, like my dad's like one of 11 kids, right? Because people had tons of kids back then. They're all farmers, but they're all like pig farmers and like crops and tractors and the real farmers, right? We had horses. We're not farmers.

We had horses we're not farmers we had horses so my dad was the odd one out of the family um who like raised horses and trained horses and and uh trained horses for the circus and like all these kind of weird things that you know and and we lived in windsor which is you know right across the border from detroit so my dad took care of horses for people in Motown, right? Like Diana Ross and the Supremes and all these superstars of Motown in the 60s. They would pick up my dad in a limo with leopard skin fur seats on the limo and everything. My dad would be in his stuff to take care of horses and shoe the horses and all this

kind of stuff. They'd pick them up in the limo. So then you probably know how to ride horses. I know. Yeah, this is... I heard you talking about horses the other day. Yes. I rode my tricycle under horses. I just grew up with horses around all the time. So you've got some connections when Bryce is at that phase where he needs to

purchase a couple Appaloosas. You'll be the guy to go to. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed and have a great day.