Coding Blocks - How did We Even Arrive Here?

Episode Date: August 4, 2024

We were asked in one of our recent reviews in Apple Podcasts if we would share our career paths and how we got started and how we arrived where we are today. We took some of that info, threw it at Microsoft’s CoPilot / DALL E 3 and that’s the artwork for this episode – […]

you're listening to three guys talk that's interesting is that yeah i thought he's gonna change the title of the show he's gonna do it i have a lot of podcasts like that so uh yeah yeah so so anyways yeah this is episode 239 uh that's what you'm saying. You know the deal. You know what? Do subscribe to us on iTunes and Spotify. And go to CodyBlocks.net. And okay.

I'm Alan. I'm Zach Joe. And I am Outlaw Mike. All right. And we're doing another water cooler. Woo. We are. Yeah.

So, uh, we, we took a little break because there were vacations and burnout and I don't know what else there was, but just basically time off was definitely like involved. Yeah. Time off was involved. So,

so I think two of us were out. So like only one of them, one of us left. So it would have been a very different kind of show. The roundtable would have been interesting. To be honest, though, I would have probably still filled the two hours. I would have just been talking

to myself. The weird part, though, would have been when I answered back. Weird only for you guys listening that hadn't already heard me answer back to myself, but normal. Completely normal for me. I listen to me shows like that you ever listen to a hardcore history the dan carlin show oh yeah yeah i've gotten into it recently i'm like 20 hours in so basically nowhere but uh yeah he definitely does a lot of that it's awesome but he's man he is such a good storyteller but i mean

that guy so i love his content i'd never liked history in my entire life until I found his podcast. But but you cannot listen to that dude at one speed. You can't you can't like you will absolutely just drool on yourself. Fall asleep. Well, also, his episodes are like or his things are like 60 hours long. Yeah. Yeah. You can't listen to it at normal speed you

have to like you'll never make it no i got things to do man come on yeah i need to drive to california and back it's interesting though too because like you mentioned hating history and i remember like you know when i was younger like three years ago in school and i just absolutely like i thought it was the dumbest subject I know that they say like oh if you don't know it it's going to repeat itself I'm like yeah whatever yeah you know send me the cliff notes and I'll avoid those big mistakes and and but otherwise like I was like who cares about who did this on what date when when, where, like that date isn't going to repeat itself. So what is, why, why is that the thing that mattered? Like, I don't know. I just was

never a fan, but you know, now I kind of have a better appreciation for it. Like I do find, kind of find some of this stuff, you know, a little bit more fascinating to go back and listen to. Well, when you don't have a teacher, like throwing the most obscure facts at you on a test, it's a little bit different. Right. When you're listening for enjoyment or learning for enjoyment versus learning because, you know, you're about to get grilled on it. It's always different. Yeah. That's probably a big part of it that I can get instead of it being history, because this is what some school board decided the curriculum should be.

And this is the particular topic instead it can be like oh let me dive into the history of something very interesting to me like oh that's how the first lamborghini was used for that okay i got it or you know whatever or not first lamborghini but i was thinking of the the cannonball run lamborghini i think it's a lot to be said for like knowing where you are like today because of the things that happened kind of yesterday so like of course a lot of the history that on his show like is around world war ii and stuff but like all the things that led up to it and the different countries involved like why they were involved and influence of the great depression and influence of world war one and the aftermath of that and all the you know the trees and whatnot that were signed and how they kind of played into things and

natural resources and there's just so much to know and a lot of that stuff is still really relevant you can see a lot of those things kind of being factors today for even how countries get along, people get along, culture. I think it's really interesting, good to know. It's just there's a lot of it. There's more every day. Yeah, there is. Say the name of it.

Okay, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, I know you're a newbie to it then because you said that it's a lot around World War II. Dude, he covers so many centuries but but though and it's uh dan carlin i think is the question you're going to ask dan carlin's hardcore history and the thing about him that makes his so unique is he focuses on what he calls the human experience so so if he's talking about a battle in world war two world war two he'll talk about experience. So if he's talking about a battle in World War II, he'll talk about the battle, but then he'll talk about what people are experiencing.

And I didn't know this. I didn't know that the term shell shock actually came from the fact that when shells would hit, the percussion of it would make people freeze up and lock up. And he goes into all that and it's like it's it's truly truly incredible listening so uh hardcore history when you sign up be sure to use promo code coding blocks right and you will get nothing really i don't know does if he even does

promo codes we're we're getting at that, but you know, I guess he's subscribed and you get an episode. Yeah. Yeah. He's, and he's going to be like, why does this say coding blocks?

So, so we'll, we'll put a link in the show notes because it truly is. If you want something that's, that's just, um, entertainment, I guess.

Infotainment. Infotainment. Infotainment. Isn't it called infotainment? Isn't it called infotainment? Yeah, it is infotainment. Yeah. Um,

he's a good one. So I, now I guess we should get into our show a little bit. Oh yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Unfortunately I just busted my tip of the week. So,

uh, you're listening to coding blocks Blocks, episode 239. Oh, you did it just right. It feels so slow. Like, that's why you can't. You got to move on. Subscribe to us on iTunes. Yeah, that's right.

I like to hear you do the reviews that way. There we go. They're really slow like that. I already butcher them enough and then if i do it that way then people aren't going to know like well wait a minute so speaking of sound butchered because it was slow or it is time for him to butcher one um we did get a review in from itunes so you want to uh to give us that one okay so this So this person is from New Jersey, I'm going to assume. And there's either, I have two ways that I could possibly pronounce this.

First way that comes to mind is, you know, like if you do a lot of bash or kind of shell scripty type stuff, you immediately see this and you think like, oh, that's K said from New Jersey. Right. K said in J. Right. Do you mind? I'm not that's K-Sed from New Jersey. K-Sed in J. Right? I'm not the only one that sees the sed in there, right? I didn't think sed, but I see it in there. Okay. Or the second way that I would think to pronounce this is K-Sed in J.

I like that. So it's one of those two. And I'm probably wrong on both. We'll find out soon, I'm that. So there's one of those two. And I'm probably wrong on both. We'll find out soon, I'm sure. So, yes, thank you for that one. And then we mentioned it, or we have been mentioning these past or these upcoming events here. Atlanta DevCon coming September 7th here in Atlanta. So that's atldevcon.com.

Check that out. Yep. And we have the Florida DevFest Central Florida is also coming up. We'll get the link in there.

It's coming up on September 28th. So talks are no longer being accepted, but now you should go to the event pretty soon. Oh, I forgot about that. I was going to try and

post some sort of thing, but I don't know. I don't think I have enough time to put something together anyways. I was trying to see if they were... I had a coughing fit over here

in the background, but I was trying to see if they were doing a... The call for sponsors was still going on for... Atlanta? Atlanta. Because I wanted to see what the topics were going to be. But, yeah, I guess the call for papers is done, but I don't see,

Oh no, no, no. They do still have to call for speakers. All right. Now there's a chance. I'll think about it. I'll think about it.

I got August, September. We only got like one month, man. That's, that's pushing it. Well, I thought you were saying that you were going to do one for the Florida.

Oh no, no, that's, that's too far away. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Well, we can you were saying that you were going to do one for the Florida. Oh, no. No. That's too far away. Maybe not. I don't know. Well, we can talk about it. You know what?

In 30 days, I'll hit you up again, and I'll be like, hey. And then you'll be like, oh, one month. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'll think about it. I have topics, but I don't know. Atlanta DEF CON does have a list of topics that they're looking for right on the front page. If you scroll down a little bit, game development is one of them. That's probably the only one I could be interested in talking about.

You going to do it? No. Oh. Maybe next year. Awesome. I'd like to. I've done it before. It's a great event.

It's awesome. He did say maybe. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So one of the things that I think it was in a review that was left for us a few weeks back people asked or somebody asked that hey i'd like to know about the career paths and and how you guys got to where you are and how you progress so i don't know when you guys

want to kick us off with with how yours went um mine's the most interesting so maybe i should go first let's let's do that i like interesting it's not actually no i got up so i was really into drafting in high school and if you're not familiar with that and uh you know why would you be nowadays but it's basically uh it was like drawing for like machine uh for like cnc machines and stuff like basically designs and also a little bit of architecture but mostly um like drawing out designs so you would send to get best producer to factory somewhere it's like wrenches things like that and in hindsight it's kind of like wait if someone already knows how to draw the thing like what am i doing but you know there are

different specs and different machines need to be written if you need to scale something up or whatever someone actually needed to take it and do that and you would draw it up write all the dimensions and stuff and anyway i thought that was going to be what i was going to do and uh so i got a job at a company that dealt with maps uh locally and uh really the only reason i even got into that was just because like they use tools like protractors and rulers and like written descriptions and legal scripts of property. And what they were was a mortgage insurance company. So someone would try to buy a house.

They would do one of the fees that you pay for in the US is research on the property to see if there's any liens or whatever would be like, from the corner of whatever, travel 115 feet, 113 degrees, whatever, and kind of spell out the property. So you'd have to look at this lawsuit and figure out what properties it encompassed. And you would tag all the properties in the database. So we worked on mainframes and stuff. And I had some computer experience, which was a big plus because we worked on mainframes and uh i was there for like just a few months and uh they ended up uh offshoring a lot of that work and i got bumped into qa and so we were doing much more volume but i'd have to go to kind of like check people's work correct them and like eventually got into

sampling and all sorts of different stuff. From there, and I had not heard of QA, by the way, at the time. They told me they wanted me to work QA, and I was like, what's that mean? Quality insurance, a pen and paper. So literally, I would write on papers, and we would scan them and email them back

digitally. So it was pretty funny. But from there, I was able to kind of partly... Wait, you emailed them back? You didn't just send it through a DM or something? Nope. We didn't have DMs. We did have that little Windows Messenger that could pop up stuff on people's computers.

That was kind of fun. Most people didn't know how to do this. They just see this pop it up, not knowing who it's from, whatever. It was great. I've been hacked! But I had a lot of fun with that. Even when we started

the offshoring and they kind of upgrade some computers and system uh systems and whatnot like the it guy came from corporate and like uh they hired me to like set up the computers with them and stuff and so i got to learn a little bit about networking and kind of setting up the server room and stuff which was kind of cool and from there i was able to parlay it into uh like a job with a friend of mine who was working at a web shop because I was also going to school at the same time. So between being able to say, well, I'm in college studying computer science and I've got some QA experience

and some experience at the server room. And the year was like 1999. They were like, you're the most qualified candidate, Mr. 18-year-old. So come on in. And then from there, it's not really that particularly interesting.

I stuck with web development for a long time before I got a job at Symantec through another contact. Contacts, by the way, best. Networking, that's the way to go. You got to get those referrals. And that was a very different kind of product. They were moving from like a

kind of a bespoke uh client server architecture they created the client they created the server uh server all like you know from scratch basically like opening sockets and meeting and stuff and moving towards uh web services and i forget what that was in dot net at the time um so a bunch of like kind of porting native code and then from there i don't know i got back into web dev at uh amazon and then this security and each one you can kind of see like the you know how it kind of like the experience from one kind of parlayed into the next and there have been times when i kind of like drew out little bin diagrams of like things like mobile and i don't

know ai and e-commerce and whatever, and kind of like aim security, like for things that I thought made the most sense, like both in terms of what I'm interested in and where I thought the market was going. And so some things were kind of calculated. But for the most part, it was a balance of just like what I thought was going to be a good idea for the future balanced with like the people that actually knew in the industry. That's pretty cool. I never knew that you came up through that way.

I was basically full-time working. I was dumb and I signed a lease that required a car payment that required me to work full-time coming right out of high school. I was 18 and had to work full-time trying to go to college full-time and i really liked work like i fell into it like i got along i enjoyed everyone i worked with and

so i just i prioritized that for many many years before finally giving up you you were only like a class or two short right seven seven okay so probably two semesters right if i was going full time yeah full-time true yeah and i was working I was going full-time. Yeah, full-time, true. Yeah. And I was working way more than full-time. The place that I, like that web shop that I worked at, like they worked you. There were times when it was a crazy, that was a whole other thing. People went to jail and stuff.

But there were times when the boss was like, anyone who leaves before we launch this is fired. So we would like end up having to work till 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night, sometimes like unexpected. You know, it was just, it was a very chaotic environment. Wow. Yeah. And then the feds came in

and things calmed down a little bit. Wait, what? Now you're getting to the good part. Good times. Good times. Yeah. I mean, just the short version of like, I don't know how much detail you want. But the short version I would just say is co-op while in college, which got me, you know, like literally I think everything spawned from that one decision

of, you know, going after a co-op and, you know, getting my foot in the door at a very early age, you know, cause I was like 20 ish when I did that co-op and then I got hired on full-time at like 21 or something like that like you know so how long did you stay there way too long way too way too long yeah it's like 16 years but that's not a big deal you know some people learn to drive a car in that time but yeah whatever you know they grow up and but uh yeah way too long what. What language were you working in? Oh, well, when I first got with the co-op, it wasn't for doing languages, it was for doing network administration work. But then when I was hired, it was as a C and C++ developer.

Okay. Yep, making the money moves. So after 16 years, why'd you end up leaving? It was as a C and C plus plus developer. Okay. Yup. Making the money moves. So, so after 16 years, why'd you end up leaving? Well, I think that,

I think I don't know that like anybody would be able to relate to this today. Like the, anyone coming up into this industry, I don't think would be able to relate to this today because I don't think this is that big a deal, but there was a period of time where like you would stay with the company and there was like reasons to stay with them. Right. And so like there was this kind of like transition where when I started with

them was that was still in that kind of mindset where like, no, no, no, we're going to take care of you. And like, here's, you know, pensions and whatnot, like you stay and, and things kind of shifted. Right. And so nowadays, like people stay with a company and later like out in a year or two, three years, you know, it's a really short term kind of thing, you know, get in and out. And, and that's not really frowned upon, you know, like nobody thinks about it, but you know, that kind of that, that window, you know, for me, that window you know for me like i definitely in hindsight i'm like i stayed there way too long and you know at the end i was just like there's a

better way to make a dollar and so i'm gonna i'm gonna leave and that's what i did and then from there from there what was the the path what did that look like? So you went from 60. The whole thing? I was trying to keep it short. That was pretty short. So 16 years there. And then did you go get another job you stayed at for 10 more years? Or what was the deal? No.

No. What did I do? Jeez, I didn't realize there was going to be a test. Right. What did i do geez i didn't realize there was gonna be a test right um what did i do i i did i did some contracting for a while i worked for a small startup then i did some contracting and then yeah i got to where i am today kind of thing like it hasn't really been that crazy. But I mean, like the law, if like I was never planning to get into this field, like some people are, you know, especially today, like you hear more stories of kids who like programming at very young ages. And, you know, that's their desire to get into. And, you know, it just it happened that way for me. My original thing that I had wanted to get into was a car

audio. Like I, I, I envisioned myself working for like a Kenwood or Alpine or something like that. Like I really super duper wanted to be involved in like the acoustics of it and designing systems for it and that kind of thing. And like, you know, that, that's where my interest was. And so it was the electrical engineering side where I started in, in college and then ended up, uh, you know, falling in love with the programming stuff that we had to do as a side effect of that, of that. Yeah. Cool path. All right. Well, I guess mine, yeah, mine mine's mine's sort of interesting my uncle gave me an old handheld trs-80 like a radio shack trs-80 when i was maybe 12 13 i don't know and you couldn't do

anything with the thing unless you programmed it and you had to program it at basic so it came with like a little booklet and i learned how to use it and put some stuff in there and so i actually made it do my math homework right like i figure out how to put an equation so that I wouldn't have to do anything. And that was fun. But then, but then I kind of put that down. And when I got into high school, we had computers that didn't have real hard drives, right? Like they were tiny. If you installed Word on it, you couldn't put anything else on there. And I do remember there was a game that was kind of like, what's the snake? Snake.io or whatever nowadays. Oh, yeah. There was one, I forget the name of it back then,

but it came with QBasic, I think. And I remember hacking it to give myself infinite lives. And there was another like banana throwing game where you were like a gorilla on one side of the map and I would modify the gravity. Right. So I just went in there and figured out how to modify the things that have more fun with it. And that was kind of it. I got into college and I was going to go into computer engineering. And what's funny is when you were talking about, you were doing handheld drafting, Jay-Z, I fell in love with 3d drafting. Um, uh, I absolutely never touched it before, fell in love with it, almost changed my degree to that. But instead what I did is I played basketball all the time and flunked out all of my classes. And at the same time I was working at IBM,

but I was working with people that are making courses. It was using something like PowerPoint, but it was Lotus's version of it. I can't remember the name of it anymore. But it was a bunch of tedious work. And I was like, man, there's got to be a way to automate this. And so I started just scripting some stuff. Right. And so what was taking people hours a day now took like minutes. And ironically, we see this now as we talk about AI and all that kind of stuff, people kind of got mad at me because the thing that they were making money at sitting there

for hours a day doing tedious stuff, I just sort of automated it and it could be done in two minutes. And it was a thing. Well, they decided they wanted to make me a position to be a programmer and see your C plus plus, but they weren't going to pay me anything. So at that point I quit and built and made my own business and that was doing websites and stuff. And we were doing it for like the eye care industry and other things. And that was, that was sort of fun, but that sort of, I don't know, I guess me and my partners, it didn't work out too well. So then I went and contracted for nine years. And the irony is when I left there is when I came and met you guys at Amazon and I was a consultant there as well. And I had no plans of changing

that. Honestly, like I was just going to be there and be a contractor and we were trying to have kids and we were having to go through infertility. It had just happened to Amazon's healthcare was absolutely phenomenal and would cover a large expense on that part. And that's why I ended up joining and then sort of everything just sort of parlayed from there. Right. Um, left Amazon, went to a little small company we all worked for and that company got acquired and here we are. Right. But I think the interesting thing for me is I didn't start out as a computer programmer either. Right. Like it sounds like none of the three of us had that in mind, which is really odd. But I think all three of us just

have naturally curious minds, which is why programming so good. But I think going back to our designing database or designing data intensive applications, one thing that was sort of core to me, and it all stems from ColdFusion, is when I first started getting into like web programming and stuff, it was ColdFusion that I was learning. And they had a couple of books, like they had their starter book, and then they had the advanced book. And they were so heavily focused on database stuff that that's why like for years and years, database was sort of like the core of how I thought about applications running, right? Like you put your business logic in the database,

you ever display logic outside. And it wasn't until, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago where I started thinking differently about it. Right. Like when, when I started, and I think we all started talking about it differently too right like hey let's maybe we shouldn't be putting things in stored products because that's your single point of failure that's your bottleneck you know and you start thinking about making things testable and so like that journey that we went on as we started getting out of these these three tier designs or whatever is sort of what drove me from being like a UI and a middle tier and a backing guy to where I'm like super, I love the data tier,

the streaming data and big data and all the problems that come along with it. So it's weird how that all kind of happened. I still like doing UI, but I'm not nearly as involved in it anymore. So, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, none of us started out as it, and we're all there now. And I think the reason we've all excelled

is because we're just naturally curious at it. I really believe that. It didn't seem like an option to me. Like, we had one computer, you know, like in my kind of grade school in the library that I kind of did some Lego logo stuff with. In high school, there were a couple, but it just didn't really seem like it was

feasible. I had never seen a programming book. I grew up in a small town. We had Walden books. I don't remember seeing any sort of programming books or anything, and I went in that store a lot. There's nothing else to do. That's also where you can get your two or three Commodore computer games that they had for sale.

I remember Walden books. They're long since gone, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's pretty interesting thinking about it all. So hopefully, you know, for anybody out there listening, you know, the person who asked us to do that, maybe you got something out of it, right? Like, it doesn't have to be your first career choice.

I think there's a lot of people that stumble into this because they end up doing something that they like in the middle of trying to figure something else out. Oh. Anybody that's stumbled out of it? I don't know as many people. I'm sure there's a good reason to, like you said, there's sometimes where companies are like, I need you to work until,

you know, three o'clock in the morning. And when you do that long enough, you're like, okay, I'm done. Yeah. I hear people talk about the time,

like what they would do instead, but I don't know anyone that's actually left the field. Well, the only ones that come to mind for me though, would be like the, the, the well-known success stories that were like now they're you know running the company they're not you know yeah writing the code day to day but i don't know them i don't know anyone that like quit and

started a coffee shop you know we know jim retired but uh that's about it yeah that's interesting yeah i don't know if you guys know share i'll leave us a comment on the episode yeah man hiring let me know the coffee shop uh that's amazing yeah i always joked that like i'm always i'm always enjoying picking up like new random skills you know like for things that uh that are of interest to me, like, like bicycle wheel building as an example. Right. Like, um, so I always joked that like, well, you know, that, that'll be my next career

path. I'll like have something planned and they're ready, you know, that I can do aside from programming. Yeah. I have two hobbies. I'll open up, I'll open up my, uh, my bike shop and, you know, do I got a weird freaking sound. So yeah. Bottom bracket. All right bike shop and do repairs. I got a weird creaking sound. Yep, bottom bracket. All right, let's do it.

All right, so here's stepping into something that I saw today, actually, that sort of blew my mind. Did you wipe it off before you walked in the house? No, no, I didn't. Matter of fact, I stepped straight into this one. So this was absolutely ridiculous i i've been trying to get something to work that what it is isn't really all that important um but the details of part of it actually matter so i was trying to figure out how to deserialize some cryo incidents in java and for those that don't know, there's, there's, you know,

a handful of serialization methods, you know, Java serialization is one cryo is one that's super popular that's used by a lot of frameworks. At any rate, trying to deserialize this thing is blowing up. And it's given me all these kind of obscure errors. And so I trying to be the, you know, resourceful guy was like, well, how do I turn on trace level information to see where this is actually blowing up? Cause it was giving me garbage for errors. So I turn on trace and all of a sudden it spits out just a ton of information from cryo. And when I say I turn on trace, I actually had to invoke the cryo object and then set some trace thing on it. Right. And so it starts dumping out a bunch of things. And I finally get to where I've got

stuff coming in that make a little bit more sense, but it's blowing up on this one, this one object that's given me a two string failure. And I start looking at this object and it's because there's a null detail that there's a null property on that object that it's trying to two string and, and it's two stringing that thing and then call another method on it. And so with a null pointer error, it's just blowing up on it. And I'm like, man, so I contact the people that have done this library and I'm like, I guys, I don't, I don't know, like, I don't control this And I'm like, man. So I contact the people that have done this library and I'm like, I guys, I don't, I don't know. Like I don't control this. I'm trying to use it. What's going on. Turns out they had a two string on this class. It was, it was trying to do some operation on a property in the class. That's not supposed to be nullable all right wasn't supposed to be nullable

and and so they were just using it in their two string thing turns out nobody's ever seen the error before and you want to know why because it only ever calls that two string method if you have trace enabled for the cryo serialization. Nice. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. And when somebody was like, I wonder if,

if cryo is trying to write that out to string, because, because they were all like, well, why are you calling this method? I'm like, I'm not calling the two string method. It's dying during the de-serialization process.

Nobody ever ran into it ever because nobody would ever do that when the thing was either null or they didn't have that, that trace level turned on. So having trace turned on got me to the point to where I could actually get the thing working to a certain degree. But then when it blew up in order to get to go further, I needed to disable trace. So it was it's a bug in that in that library I was using in that that code that was using cryo. But yeah, I mean, I say all that to basically say, hey, when you see something that doesn't make a ton of sense, right? sense right brainstorm with some people because you'll get somebody that maybe thinks just enough differently outside the box than you are because it was actually somebody else it was like huh i wonder if the if there's some sort of log trying to be thrown out that's calling that two string that's the problem and i was like oh i bet you're on to something nice and sure enough that's what it was

that is frustratingly random yeah it and i spent a lot of time on this one like an embarrassing amount of time on it i swear like as you were describing it though it seems i was like going through my head and i'm like man i swear that there's like an uncle bob kind of story about this and like one of the clean blah, blah, blah, fill in the blank books related to like not putting stuff in like an if def kind of situation to where like it only gets executed in certain situations. I feel like there's definitely, uh, like best practices around not doing that sort of thing because of exactly that type of situation where you don't want like unexpected behavior to happen only because you have enabled, you know, like you added some additional compiler flag or whatever, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a good point. It's funny. Like we were talking about after the fact, like, should we, should we put this in as a bug and get it fixed? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. Because the next person that, that goes to do something here, they're going to be chasing their tails on something that's not obvious because it's not even in a library they control, right? It's happening in an outside library, just based on a flag. Like you said that you're doing. I guess I guess I'm still a little bit confused there, because at the end of the day, you said that it wasn't supposed to be nullable. And the two string was calling your thing and it was null. Why was it null? Because that's the bug, right?

Like, well, it was Java. No, Java doesn't force, you know-nullable types you know uh you now you already said enough you said java yeah but in fairness the two string method they had there assumed that it never would be null so you know whatever it was just it was a random thing that cost me a ton of time so i thought you know i'll share it with you so that you can think about it all right so here's another one this one's this one's sort of funny. So I recorded a bunch of video while I did this. Um, we we've talked about the networking equipment that I bought for redoing the wifi and stuff in my house. And it was basically an Omada switch and some wifi

Omada gear, whatever. Well, when I plugged in the switch, it's a POE switch. That thing sounded like a jet engine and it made me so mad. Like I've owned so many switches over the years, but most of them aren't like commercial type switches. So I think when you buy commercial gear, they just don't care about noise levels because they assume you're putting it in a network closet somewhere and you know, who cares how loud it is. I in a network closet somewhere. And, you know, who cares how loud it is? I had a problem with it. So I looked up some information.

I bought some Noctua fans to replace that. And like I said, I made a bunch of videos. I might actually post them on YouTube, but here's the embarrassing part. And so this is a warning to everybody else who's an idiot like me. I was like, man, there's not that much voltage that goes through these things so i don't need to unplug it i'm just going to try and hop these wires here and see and see if it does what i'm supposed to do so here in a nutshell the problem was i hooked the fans up it took no time but there's a fan light on the front of the case that shows you that there's a problem with the fans and apparently because they hate us um omada put

in fans that had some sort of weird um third pin that you needed to actually ground to the chassis otherwise it would think there was a problem and so i was like hmm i want to test this live right like this is the best way to do it so i took a wire and i had it on the ground on the chassis and i was trying to get it up on that pin, on that third pin. And apparently I touched the second pin. And yeah, so I kind of shorted it and arced and burned up. Didn't make that noise anymore. Yeah, it didn't.

It burnt one of the transistors. So I fried one of the fan headers on my $350 network switch, which was really fun. So, you know, moral of the story, turn the crap off before you start running wires. Well, you know, the frustrating thing about that, though, is that a couple,

maybe a year or two back, I forget exactly the time frame, my son's computer was acting up. And, you know, have you ever had to do the thing where when you're troubleshooting stuff, and specifically you want to troubleshoot the power supply.

You're like, okay, is the power supply dead or is it not? Right? Do you know what I'm talking about? Have you ever had to do the trip test on the power supply? Do you know what I'm talking about? I haven't tried it, no. Nope.

Okay, so there's a thing like that for – so on the power supply, if you want to just verify that – it varies by power supply, by the way, especially on some of the newer, more eco friendly ones, you, then they, the eco power supplies are a little bit more problematic in, in regards to what I'm about to say, because what will happen is they will go into like a low power mode and they won't cut on the fan and things like that because they're trying to be eco friendly, right? The older school ones where they would just always run the fan, then, then you could do what I'm about to describe because basically what you're trying to do is trip it to where it thinks that it has an active connection to the motherboard and that there's going to be power. And so it'll go ahead and spin the fan on. That's really what you're looking for is for it to spin the fan and then you know, a, like a jumper that you, you would plug into, uh, one of the, one of the connections on the, on a modular power supply to, to jump that.

Cause you basically, I just add like a little bit of resistance and then it'll think, okay, fine. Yeah. I got the resistance looking for turn the fan on. And when I was trying to do that kind of test on his, there was another test where it was like, okay, if that checks out, pull this, this jumper off the motherboard and now trip that like, like put something metal, like put a jumper between those, or I said, pull the jumper off, but there wasn't a jumper already there. Um, either, either put a jumper between those, or I said, pull the jumper off, but there wasn't a jumper already there. Either, either put a jumper there or, or like put something there to connect those two pins on the motherboard to

try it. And I'm like, you know, well, this is the hold onto your butts moment. Cause we're going to, power's on and we're going to see like, does this, does me putting a piece of conductive metal between these two pins and don't let me touch anything else, by the way. Right. And, you know, like I'm in this, you know, cramped computer space, you know, and even though I've got the lid off, like it's still, you know, with the cards and stuff in there, you know, it's still kind of crowded. Yeah. So.

So, yeah, I can. Oh, no. Because I'm. You're the goat. I'm good at what I can. Oh, no, because I'm you the goat. I'm good at what I did. Yeah. Yeah. When I saw an arc, I was like, oh, no, man.

And then and then when I plugged in the fan header to it, the fan would come on. I was like, come on, dude. Really? Well, my. Yeah. It's yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off yeah basically what i ended up doing to make it work

now though is i had to wire it off the one fan header and so i'm running both the fans off that because i truly did i burnt the resistor or the transistor that was right there in front of it i was so mad about it the my my running joke with my family, whenever I'm doing any kind of electrical work though, is like, especially like home electrical work. Like, Hey, if I start smiling and nothing's funny,

call for help. That's awesome. Uh, I always like to act like I'm getting shocked and then my wife wants to kill me. And after I'm away from her, it's not good. Yeah.

Okay. All right. So next one one next one i got here um travel router so i brought it up it might have been on the last episode and outlaw was was like yeah i don't know man i just don't trust that stuff i mean it's probably made in china and then i was like dude all, all of the network switches and everything on the planet are made in China. But when you do. Yeah. That's exactly what I said. Bob America. I don't think I said it quite like that. Yeah, maybe not.

I don't think I said it. It's Chinese made. Did I say it? I think you did. Not exactly like that. What's interesting, though, is when he said that, I was like, you know what? I probably should go look it up. And there have been people that have done like Wireshark and like tried to look at packets that are going back forth.

And it seems to be totally fine. But here's what I do want to say. I have now used this thing like five or six times in five or six different environments. And I freaking love it. It's not one of my favorite things that I've ever purchased. So using it here at home and we'll put a link to that same one that I got. Truly love it.

Using it here at home, a great use for it. If you don't want to try and segregate your network from like work computers and personal computers and stuff, hook this thing up as a repeater on your network and put your work computer on it. And it's the only thing that it can see works out really nice. So that's a good one. Another thing I've been using it at Starbucks, like somebody cut my internet line outside, which was awesome. So I went up to Starbucks. It does beautifully with the captive portal.

You just log into the thing. You tell it, hey, I want you to connect to the Starbucks Wi-Fi. And then on the computer itself, you don't even have to do anything else. There's no networking garbage you got to do. You just go to the computer. You choose your router name and your Wi-Fi thing. And then it'll actually let that captive portal page flow through and be like, hey, sign in Starbucks, but it uses the Mac

address of that travel router. It was amazing. Then another thing I did was I went on vacation and this works really well with iOS, by the way. Um, I don't know if Android does it probably maybe, but if you have an iOS device that's on a Wi-Fi network and there are other Wi-Fi or there are other iOS devices that your device sort of knows about, it'll be like, hey, do you want to share the password with this one? So what I did is I just set up like my kids iPads and all the iOS devices on this thing. And then we went on vacation, plug the thing in. Everybody was online. I didn't have to do another thing. It was absolutely beautiful.

It worked across the entire floor of the condo we were in. Like it truly was absolutely beautiful the whole time. So highly recommend it after having used it many, many times. Now I love the thing. I actually like taking it to Starbucks and using it there so that I'm not actually directly on their network. Just little stuff like that actually matters to me. So yeah, it's nice. I didn't think about like just going and not having to tell four people what the password is or whatever. It's so good for that reason. And then for people who go on cruises, this is actually where I see a lot of people say that they really love this thing. I've not been on a cruise. I'll never get to go on a cruise because my wife hates being on boats. So I'm stuck for the rest of my life. But from what I understand, when you go on a cruise, you have to pay for

internet per device. So, and it's like a hundred bucks a week for, you know, a single device. You take this thing, that's the only one that connects to their internet. Everything else connects to it. They only see one device on their network. You only have to pay for one internet connection and you can use all your devices. So, you know, um, again, absolutely love it. Uh, I forget somebody was reaching out to me on Slack, but I was on vacation. So I was, you know, not great at responding, but I think they said they used it and they loved it too. So, you know, it's not just me that I think they said they used it and they loved it too. So, you know, it's not just me that's in love with this thing. I think it might be the greatest thing since sliced bread or it's up there.

But I wasn't the only one though, that had questions about it too. Cause I also like after that episode went back and did some reading on it and found other people like also questioning. And I saw some of the same kind of posts of wire sharks. And I was like, you know, at the end i was like okay i get it but you know there were some legit like in the beginning when that device came out uh maybe not that particular model but but you know what i'm saying yes there were there were some things where i read where people were complaining about it being based on older versions of wrt like not the version that was available at that time like it was so i mean i wasn't like out of left field like

i was no no like somewhat justified reason to be a little concerned on it wasn't just like it was made in china yeah yeah 100 but i mean it's it's funny though like we take for granted like big name brands you know but they're mostly all manufactured in the same place with the same chips now whether or not somebody's putting software on these things is doing things that are nefarious who knows but i mean you guys remember there was a thing um i don't remember if it was the cisco routers or maybe it was else. I don't want to put like real bad information out there, but I know at one point like Verizon on their internet, we're inspecting your packets and injecting things like JavaScript into pages

that were coming back. Like, Oh yeah. There's so the trust thing is sort of hard nowadays one way or the other. That was, Oh man, I remember the Verizon one and I'm trying to remember how to search for it to include it in the show notes. Cause that was a big to do. And I don't think it was just Verizon. I think that like major ISPs, like even Comcast were involved in it and they ended up getting around it for, if I recall, because somebody, I don't remember if the person worked at Verizon or at Comcast I think it was Comcast and they came up with the super cookie concept and then ended up going to

Amazon do you guys remember that it was around all that time but I don't remember like what to search for for that Verizon story yeah I mean there's been all kinds of crazy stuff. But yeah, at any rate, it truly is a sweet little device that if you travel much or if you don't want to be somewhere and use some unsecured network and be putting your things directly on theirs, this actually does work out pretty well. And one other thing I want to bring up about it, that is really sweet. It has, it will actually sort of multiplex connections. So you can tether your phone to it. You can either plug it up via USB, or you can have it repeat the phone's wifi. You can do a repeater for other wifi networks, you can actually plug into like a network, uh, cable. Um, there's, there's like so many ways for this thing to, to actually use and, and provide the internet to other things. So it actually is a pretty phenomenal little device. So, all right.

And I think the last one I'm going to share here, because I know we're already running a little bit longer than what I thought we were going to. Microgi, who is always or Mike Argy, who is always coming up with just great stuff in our slide channels, and he's kind enough to share with us. He mentioned that there is a problem with like ancient technologies and people sort of aging out of their careers. And this idea of tribal knowledge and it causes real problems. And there may be some big problems coming in the future. And it sparked a little bit of a discussion that sort of extended it further out to where it's like, well, maybe you can just buy your way out of it. And it was an interesting one because one of the things that was brought up and it was in our episode dash discussion channel, if you're in our site community, one of the things was, okay, well, would you work on jquery today and i mean for anybody that doesn't do a ton of ui stuff i don't when did jquery sort of stop being a thing is that

10 years five six i mean it's still used today i don't know what you're talking about yeah it's still used but i don't know that anybody's trying to do a ton of active development with it right like it's still there but at any rate, just take any sort of deprecated technology, whether it be COBOL or maybe ASP.NET, NBC-type pages, that kind of stuff, right? Like, those have sort of moved further on. Would you work on it for some obscene amount of money? Right? Like if somebody is like,

I'll pay you $400 an hour to work on this. Done. Yeah. Would you, would you like, like seriously, it's higher here. Yo.

Yeah. $400 an hour. Do you realize the ridiculous price you just threw out there? Well, but all right. So here's the thing, right? Like, let's put it into context a little bit, 400 bucks an hour, but all right. So here's the thing, right? Let's put it into context a little bit.

400 bucks an hour, but it's probably going to be a month's worth of work. Do you take it? Well, wait a minute. Hold on. I thought we were talking about something doing something for the rest of your, you know, the remainder of your career. Right. No, I mean, my guess is a lot of these things, you know, something stops working and they need to get it fixed. And you're going to have a hard time finding somebody that's going to be

working on this. And so like buying your way out of it seems like almost a hard proposition unless you're just going to have like these specialists that, that run around doing this consulting work from time to time. But are they really going to want to do that? Because they're going to have an up and down income too. So I don't know. I think, I think it might actually be a real problem. You're always going to be able to find somebody. Like that's,

that's just it. So like if you're a company and I'm assuming, I'm assuming that the buying out of it is from the company perspective, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just trying to buy the way out of the problem. Right. Yeah. Like if you're still using, I don't know, like Adobe flash for some internal application, I'm sure you're able to find somebody that's still willing to do it at some price because either one it's $400 an hour. That's a ridiculous price tag. So, so they're like, yeah, where else am I going to make, what else am I going to do? Like to make that sure I'll do it, you know, or you know,

maybe they just don't have any drive or desire. Maybe maybe they don't have any drive currently because they could have previously had in there just at the point where they're like, I don't care anymore. But you're always going to be able to find somebody that will be willing to fix that thing that still has that knowledge. even if that's a person, you know, who's like near or in retirement years. And they're just like, yeah, I mean, you know, for an extra month, you want me to do it for a month? Yeah, sure. Whatever. Like I got nothing else going on. Like why not? And you know, judge Judy was getting kind of boring, you know, whatever. Judge Judy is never boring. Right.

Well, I was speaking like hypothetically, it's sustained. Yeah, I don't know. Is it? Hmm. It's interesting. I don't know. I don't know. It would take me a long time to get ramped up. So like, can you find someone for $400 an hour? Yes. Is it going to work out for you? Probably not. That's my curiosity. So I think they took it a little step further and said that, you know, there's tribal knowledge that maybe it's just not easy to look up, right? Like, it's not like you can just go, if you're picking up an mvc.net app from like version one or whatever, you can still go out there and find information on it, right? Like, it may not be fun, but you can go find the information. If you're talking about some sort of bespoke in-house thing that was written, that's got like 25 different pieces that all have to, you know, magically align. That's a lot different. Like

who's going to crawl through all that and try and figure it out. And will they be able to figure it out? I don't know. It was, it was interesting. Hey, a side note. If you haven't seen Judge Judy lately, she has a granddaughter on the show. And the granddaughter will help her out with technical questions or something. So if she's like, explain to me this Uber thing. And then the granddaughter will.

And then they'll have little conversations afterwards. The granddaughter is the best part of the show now. You do that rather well, man. Yeah, I think I probably offended some people i'm sorry but that is exactly what she sounds like though so it is you know yeah i think you found your calling yeah all right so so we'll skip my next one and uh we'll move on to some new stuff uh but first how about you leave us a review and here's the deal with the stars i'll tell you the truth uh the more stars you leave the better so two is better than one three is better than two

four is uh five is the best you should just do five and then you have to think about it i forgot all that just simplify five star review and you can just type some uh just smash some keys on the keyboard and uh that would be great or you can just type some uh just smash some keys on the keyboard and that would be great or you can leave a heartfelt message that will make us feel good or bad about ourselves either one uh that's all fine just make sure to get that five star that fifth star in there but also a cool little uh you know programmer hack here if you submit a review with a star count that's too high, then it rolls over and start over.

Pretty cool. A little over slow. Negative one stars. Because you submitted six. All right. Well, while Alan has to find his medication then to

deal with this this is mental blocks dun dun dun alright no I made up new music for it dun dun dun yeah see you gotta do the head shake with it

I'm like on a 12 game losing streak here yeah and by the way just for those who are catching up You got to do the head shake with it. I'm like on a 12 game losing streak here. Yeah. And by the way, just for those who are catching up, if I were to summarize the last game, Allen got trounced. I mean, it was just a proper just smash, like Hulk smash. Joe was the Hulk. And he just, you know, he had in this, in this story, Alan is Loki and Hulk just smashed him and threw him around and he had his way with him.

Yeah. I don't remember. So, yeah, it was, it was brutal. It was like 15, zero. It was bad. Let's do it again. I can't wait. Here we go.

All right. So, uh, this is 239. So, Alan, you are up first, according to Tataka's trademark rules of engagement. Hashtag copyright, trademark reserves. All rights reserved. Copyright 2001. Legit. All right. So here's your topics shout it out i i kind of want to hope that that's like a kiss reference but maybe it's not

road trip i spy where i give you three tourist attractions and you'll tell me which U.S. state they're located in. Shakespeare plays by initials. That one sounds easy. OK, so the topic for this one is threesomes. Next, moving on is hairstyles of the rich and famous. And the last topic is I want my M in quotation marks TV. Man, let's do I spy 300 or for three. I appreciate you so much for making this easy for me.

So, I'm a little flustered. I don't get it. Yeah, you don't. I promised myself I wouldn't cry. All right. So I spy for 300. I spy Pike's Peak, the John Denver Sanctuary, and Red Rocks Amphitheater. And if you don't know this one, I'm going to drive over and slap you right now.

Denver, Colorado. Well, I only needed the state, not the city, and it's Colorado is the correct answer. Yes. All right. That's why I went with three. I thought that I wouldn't embarrass myself too terribly much if I went middle of the road. I'm still like the interview one's tripping me up

I got some trivia for you actually a little sidebar here you know the song Country Roads by John Denver I do do you know what state it's written about West Virginia have you ever looked at a map of Virginia and West Virginia

everything he describes in that song is in West Virginia. Everything he describes in that song is in West Virginia. That's what he said. He said West Virginia. Western part of Virginia. Oh. Yeah, like the river and everything. Yeah, I just found out this recently.

He was singing about the western side of Virginia. So he's not saying West Virginia. He's saying West Virginia. Interesting. That's some trivia knowledge right there you're dropping on us. Yep, we'll give up some time. Okay, I'm going to see if I can get through these category topics with a straight face. Joe, your topics are the eyes have it

and the eyes in this one are like the pupils, you know, the eyeballs in your head, not the letter I. Pizza at the movies. If you order a pizza and have it delivered to the movies, you should rethink your life choices. Yeah. Literary tourism. The moon. Also a Taylor Swift song.

Oh, I know each correct answer here will have two sets of double O's at least four O's total in other words okay oh geez no O's oh

here we go this is really hard I don't really know I'm bad with movies bad with tourism he somehow doesn't know anything and gets them all right it's a little frustrating I'm sorry I'm sorry are you up on your Taylor Swift maybe

I don't know that I am I saw the movies one though like who wouldn't know the movies oh I don't know the movies I maybe? I don't know that I am. Also, the movies one, though. Who wouldn't know the movies? Oh, I don't know the movies. I know pizza. I don't know the movies. I just haven't. If it's asking me anyone's eye color, I don't know. Go with what you know, then.

I mean, if you know pizza, whatever. Which one do you want to go? You tell me. Let's go with also a Taylor Swift song, and let's just hope that it works out. I think I'm going to embarrass myself here. I don't know the deep cuts. Fair with her. If you get it right, it's go with also a Taylor Swift song and let's just hope that it works out. I think I'm going to embarrass myself here. I don't know the deep cuts. Fair with it. You get it right.

It's embarrassing. And yeah, uh, I mean, let's go for five. Is it, is it going to be like, uh, an I prevail thing where you, you like play a Taylor Swift song and reluctantly play it. That's right. Taylor Swift 5. Here we go. While crossing the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey,

drivers are greeted by a sign with these four words. It's been waiting for you. Welcome to New York. There you go whoa so let me come on that i didn't know that was a song by her what welcome to new york the worst song on 1989 come on see he knows the album album right come on dude the best album though i mean come on the best also the pizza ones by the way like half man half pizza this space balls villain meets a tragic end when he eats himself pizza the hut yeah come on who wouldn't know that all Alan, your choices are the Harlem Renaissance chorus lines, where I'll give you the lyric. You name the Broadway musical. Oh, great.

It might be more easy than you think. Maybe not. I don't know. Culture, right? Like how much culture you got? I don't know. I've seen a couple, not that many. Spelled wrong on purpose. And also know that in that category title, wrong is spelled R-O-N-G. All right. No W. All right. Welcome to the White House.

Celebrity tell-alls or a change of pace. Each response here will be a word you can make by changing one letter from the word pace. Just one letter away from pace. I like the pace one. Let's do that for E-A-C-E. Just to be clear. Let's do pace for four. For four.

Okay. Four. Often used in wedding gowns, chantilly is a popular type of this fabric. Lace. That is correct. I think I mispronounced it, though. Chantilly, right? What did I say the first time?

I think you said Chantilly. Yeah, whatever. Figures. Of course, the guy who can't pronounce words would say the thing wrong. We made up some rule last time where there's a fourth round. Joe gets another round. All right. So, Jay-Z, your categories were Shout It Out, Road Trip, I Spy, Shakespeare Plays by Initials, Threesomes, Hairstyles of the Rich and Famous, I Want My MTV, The Eyes Have It, Pizza at

the Movies, Literary Tourism, The Moon, also a Taylor Swift song, Oh, I know. Or the Harlem Renaissance chorus lines spelled wrong on purpose. Welcome to the White House. Celebrity tell us a change of pace. Let's go with I want my MTV. I want my. OK, for how much? Oh, five. Always five.

OK, five. Always five. Okay. So, this TV character inspired a verb meaning roughly to make or repair something with what is conveniently on hand. Is MTV character? No, remember the M was in quotes. Oh, okay. MacGyver. I want my... What was your answer? It. MacGyver. I want my... What was your answer? What is MacGyver?

That is correct. Okay. That was close. Let me record that. I thought it was going to be MTV. All right, there we go. I was going to be about catfish. I got that.

Or help him in a secret relationship. It's a good one. 120 minutes on there. Kennedy, what's up? I can keep doing it. I can do this all day. All right. So here's our final category in mental blocks.

Applied geometry. Thomas Hales proved hexagonal structures are the most compact way to fill a plane, a centuries-old theory based on the behavior of these. You will send me your – oh, I forgot to tell you to send me your – You did. Dang it. I already did. I think I know the answer, too, but I forgot the question. Okay.

Thomas Hales proved hexagonal structures are the most compact way to fill a plane, a centuries old theory based on the behavior of these. And Alan, did you already give me

your... It's seven. Oh, you're just all in? Yeah, I mean, why not? Always. Wait, what are you guys doing? Oh, I see. So you got to write it in, Alan. You're not going to tell me. Yeah, I got nothing to write.

You're supposed to write it here with your bet or wager. Oh, he. Based on. All right. Okay. So let's see here what we got so alan already said he's wagering all in on seven right now joe's leading at 10 he's all in on 10 the correct answer thomas hales proved hexagonal structures are the most compact way to fill a plane. A centuries old theory based on the behavior of these.

The answer is what is or what are honeybees? Oof. Do do do do. I didn't say honeybees. I just said bees. Well. Oh, come on. The judges do accept bees all right joe did bet 10 for honey bees

or bees rather sorry god dang it i can't type tonight and let me see here go to the thing alan bet he says the based on the behavioral uh behavior of no ideas that That is a negative, I think, seven. So it is again, you got wiped across the floor. Wow, this is really looking bad. But yeah, so that's a 20 to zero.

That's another tail whooping. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I don't feel terribly bad about it because even going all in if i got it right i still was gonna lose this so you know whatever you let me tell you a story let me tell you a story here here's how it'd be worse imagine imagine you just got a brand new job you're getting 400 an hour to work on some like you know uh you know n one app and, um, they ask you to push out an update and you're like, yeah, I think I nailed it. Right. Hashtag boom, nailed it. And, and Oh,

by the way, I forgot to say that that job is at CrowdStrike. Yeah. Ouch. Oh man. Those guys. Yeah. I almost put that in the show notes, but i hadn't read up on it oh wait oh i did put this on this crap well that's why i made the joke because somebody put it there i was like wow that's weird that's where i was gonna put it uh so i didn't read the full story i'm not educated enough to to uh talk about it but wow that did some damage huh so i actually watched a video of it and i mean the real short gist of it is there's like a bootloader thing that happens. And CrowdStrike had a thing in there that would basically go load templates that it had. Right.

Because I guess there's like supposedly some safety net features in the Windows bootloader type stuff. But the way that they were doing things they were for they were hot loading things off disk one of the things was was sort of a null pointer and it blew it all up and so it was crashing everything so the way to fix it is you'd have to go into windows go into one of the sys directories delete this template file thing out in safe mode and and then it'd go away but it was basically something that was not tested right from a hot load template that crashed everything you're not fixing that by pushing something out from active directory right couldn't no i mean because everything was blue screened at that point so so the only way to fix it was basically put the things in safe mode and go in and manually

take care of it from what i understand yeah i think it brings up a lot of interesting questions about what's going to happen with like liability like uh at first people said oh this is going to bankrupt them and i thought no way these companies they sign up with these you know multi-year contracts and stuff it's going to be harder for them to get out of it's going to be you know tough for cloud strike to go under but then i started reading about the damage damage is for like the airlines and the hospital industry like people that are personally affected i was like oh well i don't know i don't know you fight all that off you pretty much hold right it's not worth trying to fight all that i don't know like but it is interesting to see how like one piece of software can really like

bring a lot of things down yeah well that one piece of software would be windows in this case though right because like so much relies on it just happened to be that you know crowd strike was used in a lot of places but i mean i only say that about it being about windows being the common denominator though because uh crowd strike is on other platforms that weren't impacted by it but i did see that one of the recommendations was to reboot 15 times did you see that one no i mean i was like what kind of logic is that if it doesn't work the second after the first or second reboot why would you think let me do this 14 13 more times no i know how it happens you have something that like does five retries and inside of that there's something that does five retries in case it fails

and inside of that you have something that does five retries and then you end up with 15 it's the thing in the inner loop boom you know you know what stinks about it though is kind of what you said is like windows sort of got the rap for this thing like i saw people actually saying all windows is like you know they're crashing me and i mean to anybody that's not familiar with what the problem was sure it looks like it but again it wasn't them and they could have done that on any platform right like any platform that was running something if they got in front of the actual loader they could have crashed anything it just so happened that that they did this on Windows machines. So it was unfortunate, but it was massive, right?

Bank industry, airlines, everything. Yeah, I mean, that's fair. If I sounded like I was harping on Microsoft, I didn't mean it to be that way. But they are the most popular platform, the lowest common denominator. So yeah. Yeah. That was rough. And they allow you to do a lot of things that maybe you shouldn't to your point. And by the way, uh, I had mentioned this guy, the one, I think he's, he's the one that even mentioned travel routers, but at any rate, I'll find a link to the YouTube video where he explains it. He does such a good job. He's the one that even mentioned travel routers. But at any rate, I'll find a link to the YouTube video where he explains it.

He does such a good job. He's an ex-software engineer at Microsoft who worked, I think it was on Windows. So at any rate, I'll find his channel and we'll share it in the show notes. All right. Oh, cool. Well, I got another one for you. Don't read it yet. programmer's day uh march 14th that's that's a good answer so i i was just kind of wondering about this other day i was like you know like it seems like everything's got a holiday or pull up

like a calendar like some goofy calendar be like did you know today is hat day and also hot dog day and also uh ketchup on a also ketchup on a Sunday day. It's weird. Can I give you an alternative answer there before you tell me the real one? Yep. Since I didn't get right because my next guess would be January 1st. Oh, that's pretty good, but also not correct. Dang it.

Why January 1st? It was 0101. Oh, yeah. Good. Good. Okay. Well, I went and Googled it to see when it was, and I thought it might be some famous person's birthday or something, you know, but it wasn't. It turns out, no joke, the answer is it depends.

Huh? Oh, that's beautiful. That's the best. That's the best. That's so good. The deal is that somehow, for no reason I could find, there is an International Programmer's Day. It's January 7th. I couldn't find a birthday. I couldn't find a reason.

It's just International Programmer's Day, January 7th. They put up a website. But most people ignore that one. Most people pick the 256th day of the year and choose that to celebrate well what what's that day well just so happens to be after leap year so some years it is september 12th and some years it's uh the 13th this year it's the 12th it's usually the 12th but not always so what a that is what a messed up pretty awesome how is it that we have not so even the the one date that has you know some sort of like reasoning behind it

is inconsistent it's different it changes every four years or so and then one error there's some competing standard for no reason that i just kind of also randomly competing for it. And somehow it's popular. Facebook has a blog post about it. That's about the most primary thing I've heard in a while. Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. Let's celebrate all three. Yeah.

Well, as soon as I said March 14th, I was like was like well that's probably be more for mathematicians instead so that's probably like not a good a good option but i thought i thought january 1st was like spot on man yeah come on that's actually pretty good much better that or october 1st would be an alternative that's good that's also our deck 25th, right? Was that old joke like why do programmers think October 10th equals December 25th? Something like that. Yeah, Octolingus. Yeah, good joke. Ha ha.

No one's laughing. You know what? We should have you read the dad jokes. All right. With dad delivery? Yeah, have you read the dad jokes. All right. With that delivery. Yeah. I'm a great deliverer. That was awesome.

Okay. Well, so we'll have some, you know, resources we like section. We're going to definitely have the manual to the TSR 80 from RadioShock. So, you know,

I know you've been waiting for that one for a while, so prepare yourself. to the TSR 80 from Radio Shock. So, you know, I know you've been waiting for that one for a while. So prepare yourself. And with that, it's time for Alan's favorite portion of the show.

It's the tip of the week. And before we get started, I just want to say like I had way too many tips of the week. So, Jay-Z, you can go ahead and take my first three.

OK, got him. I got a bunch of them. So as recommended by several people in the slack and uh derek in particular uh helped encourage me to finally get around to playing this game that i bought years ago uh hollow night wait a minute you bought the game years ago i'm a collector never played it yeah i played it for like five minutes originally and then something happened i got i lost the thread and i never got back to it because i had read that it was long and hard and i didn't want to deal with the game that was long you know it was difficult and uh it was gonna take me a lot of time uh and so i'd always been kind of put off by it because

you know like i go through spurts like sometimes i'll have a week where I play a lot and then I'll have a week where I don't. And it's hard to pick back up on something, especially if it's difficult, right? So I don't want to like some 40-hour game that's going to like require all my attention and be impossible to pick back up. So I was always like waiting for a good time. Well, I finally started and it's amazing. And I think that I had just kind of internalized that stuff or maybe I'm just playing, you know, 2D 2d side scroll video games for too long that I just didn't think it was that difficult compared to what I'd heard about it. And also it didn't take that long.

It took me like, I think 20 hours, which is normal for, you know, a game like this. Now, if you want to go and get all the cool alternate endings and all the other stuff,

then, you know, it's going to take you much longer. But I mean, it was incredible. The action was really cool. It's a 2D game. You know, it's not over-the-top graphically.

It was made mostly by a three-person team. If you get the credits, you'll see that there's a lot of people involved when it comes to testing and marketing and stuff. So, you know, three people are never really three people. But it's still really cool. And the music, amazing. That was the first time I was listening to the soundtrack. And it was the first time I had seen Apple Music pop up and say, why don't you go check this out on Apple Music Classical,

which is apparently a separate app. I had no clue. So I did. It's pretty cool. They consider it to be classical music. I do too. And you can play it on just about anything. It's probably available on your iPhone. It's almost like Flash game-ish in terms of look and feel. It doesn't seem as bad. It's heavily stylized,

but it's just not very graphically demanding, I think. And it's just super cool that it exists. It's a good game. It's very retro-y looking. It's got a very nice different look to it. Yeah, it's all these little black and white bugs.

I didn't realize that apple music classical was a thing yeah yeah yeah i don't know why they split it off i don't i don't i haven't seen anything that's really different or that weird about it like i've tried listening to a few things like on it and you know it's cool well i remember like a long time ago when music was going digital people talking about like classical specifically there would be like some fidelity that would be lost and depending on the compression algorithm that would be used for to make that digital file but i don't understand why the regular apple music app wouldn't be good enough to play that same thing maybe maybe it's free or something maybe it's i don't know but i i never

heard it it's already installed on my phone too i was like oh i didn't know well it's not installed on mine no no but no because i'm looking at it in the store because i was curious but yeah whatever the i guess maybe maybe the thing is that it defaults to like a higher quality audio file so that you do get that fidelity or something, you know, maybe that's what it is. But I was going to ask though, you mentioned the game being a hard and that being one of the reasons why you, uh, were kind of turned away from it in the beginning. Are you guys the type of player to where like some people will set the game

mode to like a super easy level? Cause there it's less about the challenge of playing the game and more about the story of whatever it is of whatever the game is. Right. And so they just, they're just in it for the story and then, you know, maybe depending on what it is,

maybe they'll go back and replay it at a higher level. Or do you just immediately like, okay, you know maybe depending on what it is maybe they'll go back and replay it at a higher level or do you just immediately like okay you know what i'm going into simulation mode right from the start let's do this normal yeah i keep on normal but i love a lot of games now we'll let you adjust it on the fly and you don't have like fine grain controls hollow night is kind of it doesn't do that at all they kind of made a stance um from the programmers and kind of said like this is the way we intended to play we want you to play it this way you have to learn the game and some people don't like that and some people do but a lot of games now you can go in there and like set the projectile speed or set the damage down or turn it into story mode or whatever i love that there's times i played a

game and i just got sick of it sick of dying and didn't want to put more time into whatever and i just pop it into easy and see the rest like how many old games have there been where that just got too hard and so people only see that first small percentage of it and shinobi oh my gosh yes yeah i was always it always bummed me though that some of the games were like there would be certain content that you wouldn't even get to see unless you played it on like the hardest level possible. Yeah, right. You know, like I remember I think one of the Call of Duties was like that, too, where like unless you played it on like veteran mode, it was like, forget it. You're not going to see this extra scene, you know, stuff like that.

Yeah, I played Dead C cells recently and um that's another thing it does have a lot of accessibility options to make it easier but if you're just playing on a normal and like you get to the first beat you know the the first time you get to the big bad boss at the end of the game you've spent 30 40 minutes in your run and it's going to kill you the first time unless i can't imagine it not because you've never been there before but it's like a 30 40 minute walk back to that because it's kind of game that starts over so it's uh it's really demanding on your time and like i you know i mentioned like stepping away for two weeks and trying to come back to that like i'm never gonna get to that boss you know i'm sick of it so i you know i was able to pop that that uh accessibility options uh kind

of tune it to my liking and enjoy it and it's the old argument of like you make something more accessible you make it better for everybody not just the people who necessarily need uh the accessibility but just for people that want it for whatever reason it opens you up to a wider audience yeah i like that yeah well i got another uh tip for you oh no you this is my second one you go ahead and take it okay yeah i'll take it yeah uh yeah so this is another option that can be picked up via the Steam app store, game store. But it's not really a game. It's called Middiness. And what it is, well, first of all creating kind of decision trees and running through like a

like a little simulation uh that will kind of take um random paths through nodes that you set up and you can set weights up and you set the parameters that those nodes kind of modify and you create these trees and these loops and kind of set these timers and it ends up looking a lot like victoria we've got all these kind of like connecting tubes with lights running through them and circling back around on themselves but what it's doing is actually just generating music so you can do things like i'm going to create a node and it's the the note b flat and i'm going to draw a little line for four units, which maps out to four beats.

I'm going to draw another one and say C. And then, you know, it's going to play the B flat, wait four beats, hit the C. But then you start doing other stuff. We'll say, well, 50% of the time, I want you to hit a D. I want you to lower the velocity. And I want you to pipe it to the modulation wheel and turn it up and just draw these really cool kind of visually attractive like node forests, if that makes sense. And, you know, hit play and it ends up doing this kind of procedurally generated music.

And the outputs that people are doing it is really cool. And you bring your own instrument to it so whatever kind of the MIDI functionalities of the instrument you're playing with it are going to be expressed and tunable with it. So you can bring kind of any instrument in virtually and hook it up and have it control all the parameters

of the MIDI which is a fascinating format. One of these days we're going to do a show about it because the MIDI is just amazing and how it's... And old. It's very old format one of these days we're gonna do a show about it because the midi is just amazing and how it's uh old it's very old but it's it's stuck around and done well for so many years and people are still finding new ways to kind of uh extend it and do cool things with it so it's just a cool app it's like 25 bucks um i heard a story uh in the youtube video i'll link um where the person uh they're a content creator, they make digital electronic

kind of music. And they had someone that was in their content creator, whatever community, Discord, said, I have an idea for an app. I don't know how to code. So they ran off and learned how to code and they made this app. And it's super cool. And so I actually just bought it, but I haven't tried it yet. So I just looked at the video this morning and I'm gonna go to shop it looks super cool it's very creative it is neat looking yeah and the stuff it generates is uh it's kind of like that serendipitous kind of mix of like things you would never like set out to you never sit down on the keyboard and come up with this stuff but you can kind of tune it and tweak it and end up with something cool and so i'm into it cool as if writing music wasn't hard enough now you can have a boss level beat you at it i'm over doing it the normal way right yeah well

i mean because you've listened to all the taylor swift stuff you that's right got that catalog memorized that's right it looks like that if i'm reading this right the midi standard was first demonstrated in 83 so what what, 41 years old? Yeah, pretty good. There is a V2 of it that is kind of more recent, but a lot of stuff still uses V1. It was designed to be extendable because they're like, well, we don't know how many parameters or whatever. We don't know what kind of information you're going to want to bundle in here, so let's give you a little options and set payloads. I don't know that i've ever used anything

midi oh man it's good it's cool i did back on the atari 520 and 1040 sts yeah back in the day heck yeah man well those are the controllers i'm just kidding i got some several more for you uh stolen from our law from Allah. So if you don't feel like drawing little nodes around is like hardcore enough, there's also a low-level Lisp-like wrapper that wraps around an audio engine called SuperCollider, all open source, and you can use it to make really cool live looping music. And so if you've seen people doing coding and kind of making music on YouTube or anything or on Twitch, then it might have been this. But it's really cool.

It's very Lispy, but you kind of... It's like Lisp, but you got like a parenthesis all over the place, but you kind of drill into these parentheses and kind of define your loop and have it kind of start over again. And it just kind of plays to the timer and you add these little events in

to happen over time and it's just a cool way of making music and the outputs are surprisingly good. I mean, my bicycle wheels like the first drawing. Yeah. I was like, wait a minute. What kind of bike is that? Yeah, the art looks really cool too.

The VGA ready one? Yeah. On the main page? And it's all open source so you can go do this right now for free. All right, a few more things, all open source. Did you know that canines is a slick way of supporting skins? So a while back, I talked about how you can kind of create themes for canines. It was kind of awkward, and so I made a couple that I didn't really like because I didn't spend much time on it and they were really ugly. But recently, more recently,

they've brought in this thing called XDG config, which is kind of like a standard way of configs for your application. So if you're doing a command line or really any sort of application now, you might want to check into XDGg config it's just a slick system for kind of like having config files for your applications kind of standardized and cml in this case but basically uh they don't install the they don't bundle skins with uh canines i wish they did but uh there is a way that there's basically a folder that you can drop it into and then canines already has a config file for each of your context and clusters uh set up and so you basically just go into the file and say like scan colon and give it the name of one of the files that you put in the folder so

it's really easy it's like for production type stuff i have uh you know themes that kind of mirror the uh severity or the the importance of those environments so that it makes it so it's not so easy for me to like kind of accidentally make a change in the wrong window if I'm comparing two environments or something. So, um, not that you should ever have product access, you know,

but whatever, if you do prod like access, you should, uh, be careful with it. Do you know, you want to know a fun, a fun tip?

Yeah. You've actually given that tip before. Not in the episode. This is before. They weren't called skins. They were themes. Yes. Right?

So episode 159. Yep. Your tip of the week. Not only does canine support skins and themes, but it supports cluster-specific skins. Yeah, they do. But they used to be harder to set up. I'm telling the truth. I swear.

It used to be much more difficult. You had to go and create the files. Now the files all exist and you pop them in there easier. But maybe I didn't forget. So really the tip of the week is that they got easier. They got easier. It's easier. It's more friendly.

It's much more friendly. How do you not remember this? This was only like 18 years ago that you gave this tip. Well, I did say I thought I brought it up in the show before. It just used to be much more difficult. Yeah, I'm just kidding. It used to be a pain in the butt. And so back in the day, I had to look at a color wheel and pick the colors. I'm like, oops, I typoed the color.

Well, back in the day for reference that was may of 2021 so that's back quote back in the day no kind of that's what you just said a minute back in my day that was pre-pandemic that was that was that was actually on the like the the the back side of the pandemic yeah that's what i meant back in my day all right well i got one Our calendar year started with a two. That's right. Yeah, you only need two digits for your years. So this one, I could have felt like I could have sworn I gave this tip already. So you might, you know, get me on this one. It might have been like in the last two episodes because I could have sworn I shared it, but I couldn't find it.

You shared it in another chat. Okay. Phew. All right. So the other day I went looking for how to configure something in my command prompt I use for my ZShell called power level 10K. I've recommended it as a tip of the week a long time ago. And I went to figure out how to do something

and I realized that the repo above the documentation basically said it's deprecated. And so I went looking for, you know, why they deprecate it, and they just said it was going to be too hard to maintain, and I looked for alternatives, and most people I saw were recommending this one called Starship RS.

You know, Rust. So Starship is basically a minimalist prompt, so it's a little bit smart about how it, you know, basically loads up things that you use so it doesn't waste time trying to kind of bring in configurations and bring in options and levels for things that you don't care about. So it's kind of a little bit lighter weight. And it does everything that I was able to do with Power Level 10K and just supposed to be a little bit faster. I mean, Power Level already felt pretty fast to me, so I don't really notice or really notice there anything but you know hey that's uh what the cool kids are doing so you

should check out starship works on any shell allegedly that's interesting i'll have to check that out i didn't realize that power level 10k had been deprecated yeah i'm pretty sure that's what i'm using on my z show that's what i'm using on NYZ Show. That's what I'm using, but yeah. I noticed it recently. It had been deprecated as well, and I was like, huh. How did you notice it? Like in your prompt, in your terminal, did it come up for something? Setting up my Mac. You were setting up your Mac?

Setting up my newer Mac, yeah. Oh. Yeah, and so when I went looking for it, I saw it was deprecated, and I was like, man, I don't want to find something new. God forbid you made me learn something new. Right. Jeez. Back in my day.

That's right. We didn't have to learn new things. That's right. All right. So my tip of the week, I only have one this time, but it came from what I was talking about earlier in the show where I was trying to do stuff in cryo and there was this obscure thing. Well, one of the ways that I was seeing where the problem was coming from is I was able

to put a break point on what it said was throwing the air and that's not super helpful. What's more helpful is how did it get there right like what was the actual stack trace well when i started looking at the stack trace it had that line where i had the break point and then it had something that said like hidden 19 frames and i was like what i need to know where those 19 frames are because i know the previous call what happened in between there there is a setting in IntelliJ. If you're looking at that stack trace and you're seeing the different items that you can click on and take you back through it,

you can right-click, and there might even be a settings option there, but you can basically uncheck the thing that says hide external library frames. And when you do that, all of a sudden, all the additional things that were called in there, you'll see those, and that's where I was able to you do that, all of a sudden, all the additional things that were called in there, you'll see those. And that's where I was able to find out that, oh, it's this, if trace enabled, then call this, this method. And that's where I was able to find it. So if you find yourself looking through stack traces and you need more information, there are some things that are hidden and there's more than just the external library thing. There

were like six or seven items in that menu that you could do. So, you know, go check that out. Very cool. All right. Well, for the tips of the week that Joe left me since he took some many of mine, just generally, you know, we sit at this job too long, man. Like we're, we're, we're, this is too much of a sedentary lifestyle. So go get out, go for a hike, go for a ride, go see a concert, go see Deadpool and Wolverine. Even though that means you're back inside sitting down eating pie.

There's somewhere in there. The logic works out that you had to get out of your house to get to the theater, by the way. So, you know, it works. But yeah, I mean, take care of yourself, I guess, is the thing. Like, even if you're trying to learn something, you know, for your own mental health, it's healthy to go do some kind of an exercise and get out. Right. But also, too, another tip, you know, short tip the week from the Department of well, duh. But, you know, I mentioned this earlier, but if you're a student.

Get an internship or a co-op job while you're in school, because it is going to be to wait. Because if you start working on it while you're in school and people kind of see that as like you're motivated, you're interested, you're not just waiting for things to happen to you, you're trying to make it happen kind of situation. Otherwise you get out of school and you're like, what have you been doing? And on top of that, to add to that, to even give it more weight is the school has resources to help get you in there. Right. So, so yeah, you've got, you've got a lot of things going for you if you go try and

do that while you're in school. Well, even to, well, okay. So to add on, to add that add on, even when you are like approaching the end of your schooling, that same, those same school resources can help you, uh, you know, there too. So like take advantage of the school resources there to help you find an internship or co-op as well as, uh, you know, get, get into a job within your career path because that's what they're there for. And by the way, when I, when I said the co-op and internship, I mean, that's a great point that, you know, you made.

I didn't even, it didn't even dawn on me to think that like, oh yeah, the school was there to help you get exactly that. I'm sorry.