The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Refactored in prison (Interview)

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Preston Thorpe joins us from inside prison, where he awaits a hopeful release within the next 12 months. His journey has been anything but easy—marked by hardship and uncertainty. But over the past few years, Preston has undergone a profound transformation. He’s refactored not just his skills, but his identity. Today, he proudly calls himself a software engineer and an open source contributor. In this episode, Preston shares his story of redemption, resilience, and what comes next.

What's up friends, we're back. Yes, your favorite podcast, the changelog. Today Jared and I are joined by Preston Thorpe. He is currently incarcerated. Yes, Preston is in prison, but he is also a software developer. He's been able to get access to certain things through privileges over the years. He was originally arrested for a nonviolent drug offense, and he's been in prison for quite a while.

On today's show, we go inside his life, what he's doing and how he has become a software engineer while on the inside of being incarcerated. It's a fascinating story. A massive thank you to our friends and our partners over at fly.io. Yes, the home of changelog.com and the public cloud built for developers

and robots who ship, that's you, that's me. And I guess it's us. You can learn more at fly.io. Okay, let's go on the inside. Well friends before the show, I'm here with my good friend David Shue over at Retool. Now David, I've known about Retool for a very long time. You've been working with us for many, many years. And speaking of many, many years, Brex is one of your oldest customers. You've been in business almost seven years. I think they've been a customer of yours

for almost all those seven years to my knowledge. But share the story. What do you do for Brex? How does Brex leverage Retul? And why have they stayed with you all these years? So what's really interesting about Brex is that they are a extremely operational heavy company. And so for them, the quality of the internal tools

is so important because you can imagine they have to deal with fraud, they have to deal with underwriting, they have to deal with so many problems basically. They have a giant team internally, basically just using internal tools day in and day out. And so they have a very high bar for internal tools. And when they first started,

we were in the same YC batch actually, we were both at Winter 17 and they were yeah I think maybe customer number five or something like that for us I think door dashes a little bit before them, but they were pretty pretty early and The problem they had was they had so many internal tools They needed to go and build but not enough time or engineers to go build all of them And even if they did have the timer engineers They wanted their engineers focused on building external physics software because that is what would drive the business

forward. Brex mobile app, for example, is awesome. The Brex website, for example, is awesome. The Brex expense flow, all really great external physics software. So they wanted their engineers focused on that as opposed to building internal CRUD UIs. And so that's why they came to us. And it was honestly a wonderful partnership. It has been for seven, eight years now. Today, I think Brex has probably around a thousand Retool apps they use in production, I want to say every week, which is awesome. And their whole business effectively runs now on Retool.

And we are so, so privileged to be a part of their journey. And to me, I think what's really cool about all this is that we've managed to allow them to move so fast. So whether it's launching new product lines, whether it's responding to customers faster, whatever it is, if they need an app for that, they can get an app for it in a day, which is a lot better than, you know, six months or a year, for example, having to schlep through spreadsheets, etc. So I'm really, really proud of our partnership with Brex. Et cetera. So I'm really, really proud of our partnership with Brex. OK, Retool is the best way to build, maintain and deploy internal software, seamlessly connected databases, build with elegant components and customize with code, accelerate mundane tasks and free up time for the work that really matters for you and your team.

Learn more at Retool.com. Start for free. Book a demo. Again, Retool.com. Today we are joined by Preston Thorpe who's currently incarcerated at Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, Maine. How you doing, Preston? All right, how are you guys? Did you just dox him, Jared? I don't think so. This is right there on his website. I'm just kidding.

You were very specific. I liked it. It was good. Well, I didn't want to just say Preston's in the clink, but that's what I was gonna say. Cause like, do people still call it that? Is it the clink? I think that's how cool. I don't know what they call it these days, man. Preston Like, do people still call it that? Is it the clink? I think that sounds cool.

I don't know what they call it these days, man. Preston, what do people call where you are? It's certainly not called that here. Yeah. Just kind of, yeah, locked up or they're put away. I don't know. Yeah. I think the clink is a little outdated. Yeah, I think it's from like the 50s probably.

That's definitely 80s slang, 90s slang. If you do that, you'll end up in a clink. Yeah. I think that sounds cool. I'm cool with it, I mean, as a term. Certainly not cool from the inside, maybe cooler from the outside if you're older. Regardless of what you call it, you're in a unique place,

at least first time for us, right Adam? We've interviewed somebody from inside. Yeah, and this is definitely a first. And maybe even as a prize, it is possible, right Adam? We've interviewed somebody from inside. And this is definitely our first. And maybe you don't surprise that it's possible. You know, like I wouldn't even expect, like you can podcast from inside a correctional facility. How did this all come together for you? Like how are you able to do this from where you are?

Yeah, so, you know, there are, I think a few podcasts that are like put on from correctional facilities, but they're like but the content is obviously a little bit more niche. I think California has an ongoing one, but certainly nothing like this were appearing on a normal podcast. At least none that are sanctioned anyway, right? It's like you might see it where someone's interviewed from a phone that

they're definitely not supposed to have. But yeah, yeah, certainly a unique situation. There's definitely all kinds of backstories of that. Yeah. So I am, you know, I have like, like first, I guess I would want to like put a disclaimer there that this is like not a common situation, like not a common occurrence. Like there is like internet access and laptops at main facilities, but this is like a very special occasion slash circumstance with the access that I've been given in particular.

Yeah, like we had to ask permission, sign paperwork, et cetera. This has been in the works ever since we had a conversation with Globber Costa from Terso, and he told us about you and how you have been contributing from inside on open source and such a cool story. Tell us a little bit of the story,

how you ended up where you are. You're serving 10 years or you're on your 10th year. Tell us the terms and kind of where you are in your term. Yeah, so I'm currently on my 11th year and definitely my last. I am approximately a couple months, roughly, away from release to home confinement. So I have to spend some amount of time with the curfew and the ankle monitor and all that.

Yeah. So I came about being here in high school. I was just young and made stupid decisions and chose to get into drugs when just being rebellious and ended up getting thrown out of my parents' house, but in a manner that they definitely didn't expect. The results happened. It was a really unfortunate kind of circumstance. I was quite a computer geek, you would say, in high school. I was really deep into the wear scene, like the torrent scene, wear scene type deal. And at the time, like it was kind of like before like what everyone probably knows like the

dark web and the kind of like, you know, underground, you know, internet black market that exists today. There was a version of that that was around in the pre-2010 era. And I had some proximity to that because I was involved in the torrent scene and the wear scene, there's some general kind of... It's adjacent. And that kind of access, unfortunately, I think what would have occurred in any other circumstance was I would have kicked out slash ran away. I probably would have learned my lesson fairly quickly and been super broke and it wouldn't work out and I would have ended up coming home and apologizing and turning my life around. That was definitely their intention. Unfortunately, I became very involved in using drugs and had essentially ended up getting real deep into that particular scene. And large amounts of money and an 18-year-old, 17, 18-year, like mentality is just like the worst possible combination. So I pretty much thought I was like untouchable and the man and yeah, I ended up getting in, you know, real deep into drug addiction and then eventually into trouble.

And I went to prison for the first time at 20 years old in 2013. And so you were using, you said there's lots of money running around, so you're distributing as well. I mean, you had easy access to basically cheap drugs via the dark web and whatever scene you were part of there. And were you distributing? And I assume you were,

because you gotta get the money somehow, right? Yeah, yeah, unfortunately that was the case. These things are available right from source countries in ridiculous, low wholesale prices. And it just, it felt like the movies when you you know, you ever seen like Blow. Yeah. And there's just like, it was like, it certainly felt like

a version of that. It was a very unique time when, you know, certain things hadn't been scheduled yet, like the DEA hadn't scheduled certain things, so they were just freely available on the clear web from distributors. And they weren't illegal. Obviously some of these things, right? Some of them are, I'm not,

was certainly not breaking the law, right? But it definitely made the price and availability pretty low. it definitely made the price and availability pretty low. And yeah, it just kind of just got, it took a life of its own. And yeah, the ego, like the money, the feeling of, you know, of like, the fact that I didn't come home and apologize. And I kind of felt like it was like, ha, like, I figured it out. the fact that I didn't come home and apologize. I felt like it was like,

I figured it out. I had some cheat code to life and the whole time, I'm just consuming tons of drugs and not feeling like a drug addict because I'm obviously not like the kind of typical what you see like broke and struggling for their next hit. It was just a never-ending supply of everything. It all contributed to just making it worse and worse because I wasn't self-aware of it. It was just a bad, bad deal. And surprise, surprise, 20 years, 20 years old, ended up getting caught with a pretty substantial package of like ecstasy in the

mail from Vancouver and got a four to 10 year prison sentence. It would just like ship to your house basically, like from a different country. Like how did they actually, is this common just goes through the postal system like that or what? Yeah, so at the time it was not common. And that's kind of like what I say, like it was a very unique time in history.

Like now there's like rap songs about it. It's like frequently mentioned in hip-hop. It's pretty widely known that this is a thing. Back then, it certainly happened, but it was not something that anyone was aware of, or at least not nearly to the degree that it is now. And that just kind of further, you know, enhance the feeling of like, you know, that like, I was just going to get away with this forever. And, and, you know, it

was just like, it was a bad, bad scene. I think it's wild how much, uh, I think even today Jared, a lot of drugs flow through the US postal system because I don't know firsthand, so I can't say that, but I know that I know people who boast about things even to this day, and it might not be a large quantity of what you described, Preston, but it's something similar and smaller or whatever. But like I've heard of people talk about moving these things just to friends, like that kind of thing in passing, let's just say.

Do not interrogate my friend group. I'm just kidding. I'm not even around these people anymore. I actually, you know, I keep my distance. It's so wild because I think that, and you probably can share some of this, Jared, maybe not so much in detail, but I think in adolescence, in that timeframe in our lives, it's already natural to feel some version of superhuman,

some version of superhuman, some version of, of, uh, invincible, immortal, like the end and death and suffering and loss will never come. This is somebody else's life. These, you know, I will never get caught because that's just not what happens. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm untouchable in some way, shape or form just because, you know, you're in that adolescence spectrum and you couple that with you know Somehow being with being able to find access to this stuff And I imagine like we know that drugs alter your chemical state in your brain

We understand that you know, even before this age group that you're in your frontal lobe isn't fully Formed they say it's you know fully until 25 roughly, so you don't even have a lot of your frontal lobe rationale kicking in like it would later in life to say, oh hey, Preston, this is a bad choice or hey, this is a dangerous situation. In those scenarios, it's almost as if your brain can't tell you there's danger or can't tell you these things. Now, that's not the truth for everybody. There's varying degrees of spectrums to, you know, to that.

But man, what a situation to be in to be in that era and have that kind of access and then go down the road you've gone. But in the end, though, you're in a place where I don't want to glorify your story in any way that you don't want to glorify your story in any way that you don't want to glorify your story so I don't know the full amount of it but there has been an ability for you to to recover in some way shape or form and to Give back and I think that's the uniquely wild free thing that is called open source software and even software development that free in the fact that

if you have a text editor or a terminal or access to a computer in some way, shape or form, you could probably find a way to hack around and poke around and get curious and discover things. And the fact that open source is available to you to make that connection, Jared, you mentioned Glauber Costa from Terso and the things they're doing there, being able to contribute to, I would say, a high value open source project. That to me is, wow, to go down the road you've gone, but then also to come back in a way to be able to contribute. How does that make you, knowing your story and you live this every day and this is your

reality and not ours, how does that make you feel that fact? How does it make you feel? Yeah, it's honestly, it's honestly amazing. And it, it, it, I feel like there's a, uh, this kind of, I go back and forth between feeling like this isn't real, like this day that, you know, like that I live now and like the career that I have and the things I'm able to do that access that I have. I go like half the time I feel like, like, wow, like this is unreal because compared to two years ago, you know, let alone five

years ago, it's just a completely different life. It's like I never in a million years would I ever have guessed that this would be possible from a medium security facility. And then the other half of the time, I look at my past life and I remember things like the things that we're talking about. And, and I think like that isn't real. Like that happened to someone else. Like I was kind of like recollecting about some stories with a, you know, this kid has been pretty much my best friend for 15 years. And like thinking about these like vivid memories was the craziest. It doesn't feel like it happened to me because it's so far away from the person I am now and honestly the person I was raised.

I grew up in a good household. I got brothers and sister, a sister and three brothers. My parents are together, a sister and three brothers. And my parents are together, still together to this day, great people. And, you know, I grew up a good kid. And, you know, so, you know, gives me even less like excuse, right? Like I knew what I was doing was wrong. So that's like, you know, first of all, obviously, I was like young and stupid, but I also was like super aware that, you know, of the consequences of my actions. But the person that I was for those years, like, is so far from who I am now that it doesn't, there's like no sane reality where I, the person I am today is like, is making it, it's like no sane reality where I,

the person I am today is like, is making it, it's like unbelievable that I just didn't care about anything. It's just, you just, I don't know, created this messed up kind of, you know, identity and like world for myself and just went with it. Accepted it completely and just, yeah, it got us out of control.

So you said you got four to 10 years and you're on year 11. Was there a second thing or was it extended? Yep, no, there's certainly quite a bit more there. So I get out after serving three of the four, so when I say four to 10 in the way the New Hampshire system works is you have a minimum and a maximum. You serve every day of your minimum pretty much. So I had a four to 10, got a year suspended. It was a clause for doing drug treatment

and not having dirty urine disciplinary tickets. So, yeah, so released after age 23, and after three years, and my parents had moved back to Michigan, where they're originally from. So this prison sentence I did was in the state of New Hampshire. And the time that I spent in prison, this was my first time in prison. It was the first time I ever been arrested. This was my first time in prison. It was the first time I ever been arrested. And honestly, it was... You're young and you're really impressionable. And the people that I was

surrounded with in prison were very different from the people that I was surrounded by on the street. There's a certain kind of novelty to prison, especially when you're in that lifestyle. Pretty much everyone you know has pretty much been to prison. Prison is like a rite of passage type thing. I like continued making all the wrong decisions and just like seeking out and surrounding myself with just the wrong kind of people. And continued to do the same stuff and just in a different environment. And- Right, got busted again and went back in.

Yeah, so even still like in prison different environment and- Right. Got busted again and went back in. Yeah, so even still in prison. And when I was released, I had the opportunity to move to Michigan with my family. So I was released with, I had no identification. I had no social security card or certificate. I had nothing, no money. And one of my old friends gave me an old iPhone. It was just a rough situation. I had a two-week stay at a rooming house in the city of Manchester. This particular rooming house is notorious to this day. There's overdoses every day, there was parole officers and cops like walking around this rooming

house. And it was that was like my kind of first like, I was released and like went there to like get my room, you know, you need like an address to make parole, right. So just to get out, I had to, you know, one of my buddies like got me that room. And yeah, it was just like a major, like, it was not a good scene. So I didn't transfer my parole to Michigan. Maybe I told myself it was because it takes like a couple of months for the transfer to go through and I wanted to get out immediately. And in reality, I think it was me just, you know, in the back of my mind just giving myself an out like if I, you know, because going back home would have been a guarantee that I have to like abide by their rules and do the right

thing and, you know, try to get a job. And when you're used to the kinds of money that I experienced at a young age, like the thought of making minimum wage or 10 bucks an hour, or even 50 bucks an hour was just not like, so I was just making excuses for myself. And yeah, very, very easily, like justified, getting involved in the same stuff. And yeah, the time that I spent out in 2016,

I was out from, I was released in March and by Christmas Eve I was arrested again That is the the case that I just finished and Yeah, and then was on bail and and was arrested again in May of 2017 and I've been in since May 5th of 2017. As you tell that story, it breaks my heart because my, my oldest son was born in March of the year that you were

arrested 2016 and he's nine and I see his life and I just think like, gosh man, these choices that people make and I don't want to like downplay it because this is your story and I don't want to like downplay This is your story. I'm trying to be negative, but it's just super sad to hear Because I see this the life my son has and obviously he's born so he's not your age But you know, I see this this I see all the new I see all the new goodness I see all the things we've done in our lives as a father and as a son for him

and I just think like what you've been doing our lives as a father and as a son for him. And I just think like, what you've been doing since that same timeframe, you know, like, uh, I know what we did for Christmas that year. It was his first Christmas kind of thing. So I know these, these are like dates burned in my brain because of my relationship and it just breaks my heart for you. Yeah, no, it, it, it's, uh, it's definitely no joke. I think these things are very commonly portrayed in media, music, television as being very different from the reality that I've seen personally. I've seen quite a bit of it. Yeah, I haven't had a Christmas on the street since 2012. It was the last Christmas

that I was free. This life will get you nowhere. Yeah, I don't think I've seen a single person succeed. Like there's no one, I haven't met one person that, you know, met a lot of very, very successful people in that life, but none of them got to enjoy any, like you might get a few years here or there, but it's, it never works out. Never, but yeah. So, uh, after I came in on, on this sentence, I got, I was originally sentenced to 15 to 30 years and receiving a sentence like that was like.

Super devastating. And I was particularly bad into the drugs before I came in on this sentence. I had kind of prior to this, this last, you know, 2016, my drug use was not, uh, like it was, it was bad, right? But like it, it, it wasn't as bad as it was this previous time. And so my head is just not in the right place. I kind of, any hope I did have for a life was now just completely over. Right? Like I didn't have much hope to begin with.

I didn't have much hope to begin with. So there wasn't a lot there to lose, but yeah, I pretty much gave up and had really accepted the identity of who I was at that time. That was like, I really believed that that's like, these are the decisions I made, and I'm paying for them now, and this is the person I am, and I'm going to... It's like, it's just something that, you know, I accepted that identity, and that's something that really like bothers me today, being a completely different person, going back and thinking like, yeah, like, why would you know, when was it that I decided that I was okay with being someone that I clearly wasn't and doing things that, you know, and that's in in 2017 was in the importer system for a couple of years. And, uh, the, you know, the case that I came in on was a very high profile case.

And I had already been to that prison system before. So I knew everyone, uh, you know, is a very small system. And like my name was a was a frequently brought up name in the system. And the things that I was involved with, I was making some poor decisions. I don't want to elaborate too much, but they ended up getting me on a List for an interstate transfer, right? They just want to get you out of the system completely and One of the luckiest things that have ever happened to me because I had court dates

remaining on that sentence I had court dates remaining on that sentence, you can only get sent within the New England states. So, because they were going to have to transport me back for my sentence review board and like, so I had some scheduled court dates and I was scheduled to go to Massachusetts and I was actually like excited about that. I have a lot of friends down in the Massachusetts system. That is what I thought that I wanted. Like that was the one I would have picked if you would have given me the choice.

And I actually went out for like a very minor surgery. And when Massachusetts came to pick me up, or they called or whatever, and learned that I was in the infirmary, like after this surgery, they actually denied my transfer, like after previously accepting it. And I had like a bed there and everything. The manager had already accepted the inmate they were going to swap with me. So it was, uh, it was pretty, pretty set in stone. Um, so by just a sheer miracle, um, they ended up denying me and I thought I was going to sit, I had been sitting in, uh, solitary confinement this whole time. So it would, it had been over a year at this point that I've been in, uh,

solitary confinement. No nothing, just to sell and books if you're lucky for like 13 or 14 months by this time. Then one day they came and told me to pack up and I was expecting it, but I thought it was going to take a bit longer. We ended up coming up to Maine and it was certainly not, I didn't even think it was an option. I thought it was going to be Rhode Island or Connecticut. Those are the three Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, are generally the three you would go to. I didn't know Maine was an option and it was quite literally the best thing that's ever happened to me. It absolutely changed my life.

The Maine system is very different from just about any other system. It's probably tied with Vermont for being the the safest, like prison in the country. And it's just, it doesn't have a lot of the prison, like it doesn't have as much of the mentality and like the subculture and the gangs, it's not as prevalent, not nearly as prevalent. It's not as prevalent, not nearly as prevalent. The New Hampshire system is certainly not, you know, San Quentin, but there are units where that's very much the, you know, how things work. And you're going to be, you're going to be exposed to that for sure.

And Maine is very different and not being around any of those people that I have been, you know, by this point I've done like, you know, six years or more. And so not being around the people that I had been influenced by and the people I felt like I had some kind of reputation to uphold myself to and just being in a new place and with a large sentence and just kind of And just, you know, kind of, you're kind of focused, you have no choice but to just focus on yourself because there's nothing else to do. You know, I didn't owe anyone there anything, right? I didn't owe anyone back home anything either, but it was just a feeling of like, I was, you know, this person and I had to, I was like entitled to act this way and be this person in the other system. So Maine has a lot of educational opportunities and a lot of, it's just a much nicer system. And I, after a couple years, kind of had like, just had an epiphany of like,

when, when, at what point did I just decide that I was okay with this? Like, at what point did I decide that I was all right with being the person that I was? Like, when did I decide that I was okay that I just am like, in prison prison and I live in a cell and this is normal? Like, why is this normal? Right? Like, why am I not spending my time trying to better myself and, and work on being the person that I'm going to be when I get out? Because I can't go back to what I was doing and who I was. And yeah, it was quite literally a single day. I vividly remember the day that I had this epiphany and from there just started to make, you know, that was the beginning.

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Again, depot.dev. And after this moment, did you just think to yourself, well, I like computers. I've been a computer guy since the start. It's ironically how you started, you know, your life towards this place was through the W.A.R.E.S. scene and really being adept at using the internet. And you just decided I'm going to pick up programming or had you been programming all along. Tell us the technical side of your journey? Yeah, so I had enrolled in college

or had already enrolled in college by this point. And this was pre-laptops. So the college, essentially you could apply for a Pell Grant and there was some funding through like Doris Buffett and there was, you know, I think the professors would come in and have in-person classes, or maybe they do Zoom calls, but there was no laptops in the cell with internet. So I had applied for college already and while while waiting is kind of when this when this all kind of occurred and the first semester that

I end up in college just so happened to be the first semester that laptops existed somewhat as they do today. And I had gone through like a couple different avenues in my head about like what I'm going to do. And I've always loved learning. I have spent thousands of hours, I've read hundreds and hundreds of books. Obviously, I've done a lot of time in segregation, so that's the main kind of thing you do. But I had studied organic chemistry. I had studied finance was the big one right before I ended up enrolling in school. I learned everything that I could possibly consume from getting books sent in to watching CNBC all day. And I was kind of obsessively learning about the markets and like trading, because I figured that I could day trade when I got out, and that was a potential career path.

Then when college started, I get the computer and that was epiphany number two, and I realized, wow, And that was kind of like epiphany number two. And I was like, kind of realized like, wow, I have like four years left. Like, where else does someone get 14 hours a day to learn something. Like, you know, I had programmed in high school kind of before high school, nothing, nothing super crazy, like, you know, lamp kind of, you know, PHP, like, you know, I've had a, I've had a Ubuntu Linux tattoo since 2009, right? So I was, I was definitely, I mentioned before, I was definitely a computer nerd. So I kind of had just enough context to understand and remember, like, if you're really, really

good at programming, that's kind of all they care about, right? Like, if, you know what I mean? And I definitely did some research and kind of found out that, like, criminal records or like college degrees or like any of that stuff is is negotiable. Like you know, I think I don't know what year it was, but like Google and Microsoft like did away with their they don't even care if you have a degree, right? Because there's just self-taught people out there that are, you know, spectacular. So that that was epiphany number two when I was like, wow, if I were to spend 12 to 14 hours a day, every single day for the remainder of my time, I might be looking at the possibility of having a promising career.

That was probably a thousand days ago and I have spent 12 to 14 hours a day every single day since that day. That is, that was pretty much exactly, roughly a thousand days ago. That's amazing. It's amazing to have that realization, make that choice. Sometimes people make a choice that's a sort of dream-like, you know, I dream or I wish I can do this. And there's some people who make a choice and resolve to do it and they commit to that resolve and they show up every day And they do that. I mean because sometimes boredom even though you you know You want to make change can get a hold of you because we're all human no matter what our scenarios are you know, sometimes we just we're like I really want to be this amazing thing.

And here's my pathway to do it, but you don't follow the steps to get there. And you've done that. That's, that's why I'll let you be able to do that. Yeah. Uh, for sure. It, it, uh, I think the environment definitely, uh, I think it works. It works well for this environment, right? The laptops are issued for college and the network is heavily filtered. Like that they're also, you know, as far as like what you're allowed, the sites you're allowed to visit, um, it is for school, right?

It's like, it's not for your entertainment. Uh, they, they, they allow like Spotify, want to stream music or something. But like, if, if, you know, the rules are, uh, essentially like, if you're watching YouTube videos that strictly for your entertainment, then that's like technically like against the rules, right? So that opportunity that I saw, you know, when I got it, I was always very, very cautious of there's no scenario where I'm losing this opportunity, right? Like, so, um, definitely I would say that the environment of like, there's,

there's not a lot of distractions. Um, it's, it's kind of the ideal environment for someone that wants to spend 12 or 14 hours a day learning to do something. Yeah, that it certainly helped. Yeah, I saw some Reddit trolls who were, I think reacting perhaps to the Primogen talking about you or something, or maybe it was Terso, I don't know.

And they were jokingly, of course, it's just a joke, it's not real guys, but saying that this is like the best life hack ever, if you actually wanna learn how to code, like, it's the best situation you could possibly be in. It's kinda true, I mean, obviously nobody would choose that, but once you're there, it has everything that it takes on, you have to still put the work in, like Adam talks about,

but you are well positioned with a lot of free time and very few distractions, especially like you said, because these machines are specifically for education. You know, what else you can do? Yeah, I actually get that pretty frequently. Do you? Yeah. I have a lot of, so my, the blog posts that I wrote about my story and then again, when the Primogen reacted to it on stream, the YouTube video, I have a lot of... it's actually been really cool. A lot of people reach out. Like I get everyone from just like people just being supportive to like other people that have just being supportive to like other people that have that have done like prison time and that might be in tech. And then a lot probably more than anything is like college students that are

maybe going for their CS degrees and like asking like what the secret was, like what's the hack like. And I have been told more times than I can probably count that they are jealous of my situation because, you know, they wish that they could just spend all that time and get really good at programming. That's a wild thing to be told. I think what's wild, even potentially more wild to that, is that we all literally have a choice. You made a choice that changed your life and those folks who envy you or are jealous of your scenario can also make a choice. They can turn out and tune out different things in their lives. The place they're in is a series of choices

that got them to where they are. And we know that because you just shared your story and it's a series of choices. And so while they have jealousy for you, they can do the same thing, not in the exact same scenario, but they can make the same thing, not in the exact same scenario, but they can make the choice to tune out the rest of the world if they so choose. But wow, it is just so

hard. Yeah, definitely. And that's something that I keep in mind for sure. Like, I've never been much of a social media person. But like, understand it, like most people's, one of their primary like time killers slash distractions is going to be social media. And I'm going to be getting out fairly soon, whether regardless of what happens, like the worst case scenario is like a year. But either way, it's soon. And that's kind of like something that I've resolved to keep is if it's not difficult to give up pleasures that you've never really had.

So there's a long list of things that I've kind of told myself like I'm not going to like start this, right? Like because I don't see a reason to like to change a whole lot, right? Like my, the sites that I visit, my, what I do on the internet, the people I talk to. There's definitely a feeling of like, oh, when I get out, there's no, you know what I mean? There's no barriers and rules. But at the same time, there's also not a whole lot that I care to do that I can't do now. that I care to do that I can't do now. I work at my job for eight hours, starting at like eight or eight thirty in the morning. And I write open source software from six to ten thirty at night. you know, six to 10.30 at night. And I work out before that.

And, you know, but obviously I'll be spending time with my family and all the kind of like, you know, normal life stuff. But as far as how I spend my time on the internet, I probably gonna stay pretty close to what I do now. Yeah. Well, you've developed good habits, and so that will be a real virtue for you

to maintain those habits. I would add options trading to the list of things you should not get into when you get out, because your Robinhood account can also be an entertainment that turns into disaster. And I'm sure you'd like to avoid future disasters. I think your program, your open source work is far more profitable and way less risky

than options, trading options. But tell us about the open source. How long did it take you to get into? How did you get into it? What do you work on in the open, etc. Yeah, so I guess I could kind of start into like just like I guess programming in general in here and how that started. So at the very beginning there was no, there was internet access on the laptops, but it was only

in the recreation building, like where the education department was. That's like where the Wi-Fi was. So you could, you know, you could browse the internet in the rec building, the education, you know, hallways and stuff. But when you go back to the, you go back to the pod, you go back to your cell, there's no internet access. So it was like, I would save Python documentation. And especially back then, there was, it's like Windows Active Directory network and you don't have any execution policy privilege. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the old AD Windows networks, but yeah, your execution policy is turned off. So you cannot install anything. You can run like bundled kind of like where all the libraries and stuff are bundled in the one application, the portable ones.

But yeah, it was pretty painful. I had to get a particular terminal emulator that would, there was all kinds of, I had to use like a PIP, like proxy that was like from a.edu domain to be able to get like Python libraries and stuff. And yeah, so after kind of jumping through these hoops and at the same time kind of constantly bugging staff to install things and like asking for like, hey, like I need to, you know, I need Git and I need, you know, and like, and also like volunteering to help out with like, you know, they don't exactly have a bunch of like full-time like IT staff and and this was a new thing at the time. So I ended up volunteering and eventually working for the education department at the prison I was at,

and ended up helping out quite a bit, just like running the network. And eventually I think they just got sick of me asking to install things for certain privileges. I eventually ended up getting that job and being able to at least have some level of root access to my laptop. And that certainly made it like a lot easier. And yeah, I was just like writing Python and C and like wrote my own like,

kind of like C standard library type deal. I knew enough to know that I wanted to like start from enough to know that I wanted to start from the bottom and not just learn, react or whatever. I think the usual starting point today would be considered that pathway. I knew enough to know that I like, that's not what I wanted to do that I wanted to start from like fundamentals. After some time, I'm in school, and I am working for the education department, maintaining the network, helping fix things and like get laptops ready and re imagingimaging and doing the daily maintenance. They started a...

I can't even say they started, but people that were enrolled in college that had graduated and got their bachelor's, there was a couple that were either in the process of getting their masters or they were going for their PhDs. And they had gotten this special permission to work, usually with the university that they were attending. One person was a fellow. He would teach essentially, like substitute teacher. He was teaching over Zoom for the school. And there was people were talking about, oh, they might start allowing remote work. They were playing around with that idea of like,

hey, like if people can get jobs remotely, we might just like sanction it. So I actually was the only one that was not a master's student. And I put in a request to seek remote work I put in a request to seek remote work after I'd probably been learning to program at that point for probably six months or so, seven, maybe seven, eight months. Really completely out of touch with what I actually needed to know and what was going to be expected of someone. But I just knew I wanted to look for work. I'm spending 12 hours a day and I thought, why not? And they actually granted my application to,

I put in like a special request or whatever to seek remote work and it got granted. And in another brilliant stroke of luck, I ended up kind of cold messaging my CEO now on LinkedIn. I had heard about the company from someone else that was on my pod that does work in prison reform, he's big into that kind of community, criminal justice reform, prison reform stuff. And yeah, I just got a random tip and ended up getting on a call, Zoom call with my CEO, co-director now. And they honestly had no, probably shouldn't have hired me considering the situation, but they gave me a shot.

That was pretty huge. That was a great opportunity. While I was doing open source stuff at the time, and I was writing a lot of Go and C and Python, and I was learning Rust at that point. I was learning Rust at that point. Right around that time is when I got involved in ESA. That was right after ESA was deprecated. So that would have been my, I would say, my primary introduction to the open source community. I had certainly made contributions

like to a few projects before that, but that was like the first like, you know, thing I would consider to be like being like active in a project. And I don't know if you guys are familiar with like the LS replacement command line. Which one? We are, we are actually.

We talked about it. When was that Adam with Nick Jantack was actually a couple years ago. Don't personally use it, but we are aware of it as like a LS on, I was gonna say on steroids, but I don't know, on better. On plus plus. Yes, there you go.

So you got involved with ExA and began contributing there? Yep that it it was like officially Exit was deprecated because that was like in like Debbie and stable like repo, you know, it was like You know, I like that. Yeah. Yeah been around since 2015 and Yeah, I've been around since 2015. And yeah, the, the, the author like disappeared. I'm not even sure to this day, like if, if anyone's like heard from them, but guy like pretty much, pretty much disappeared. Really unfortunate, like, like super talented programmer. And Exit was one of his, probably his most popular tool, a couple other ones too. And it being deprecated ended up on

on the front page of Hacker News. And I don't know, I think I was at a stage when if I found some issues that I felt like I could fix, it was like made my day and I was super excited to contribute to anything and have like commits in any, you know, project was just like the most exciting thing for me. I actually ended up having to, so prior to like putting in to get remote work, I had put in a request like to the to the warden at the other facility to contribute to open source because you're technically not supposed to like talk to anyone or have like any like comment on anything, like any kind of like, you're making no like post requests. It's like, like get, get only. Was that a tough pitch or not so much?

Yeah, like it's hard when I think like I actually like I think I contributed to Like micro like the like text editor. It's like written go It's like a nano replacement. It's actually pretty cool But that was my first like commit That was my first PR open source PR and that was like Must have been beginning of 23. Yeah, I think so. It was beginning of 23.

And I like screenshotted the whole process and wrote this like big proposal and like put the screenshots in there of like, this is like what it is. This is the code I wrote. Like this is like what it does and try to like give, you know, administration like an idea of, of what I was going to be doing or whatever. And yeah, they approved that. That was really cool. It was probably three or four months after that that I put in to seek remote work. But yeah, when I started at Unlock Labs, I had continued like, you know, I work, like I mentioned, there was a period of time where I would work for Unlock Labs. The 12 or 14 hours a day was all spent on work, work, because I was determined

to prove that they made a good decision in hiring me. And there were certainly no other opportunities for me at that time. So I really wanted to like show gratitude, like for the for the opportunity with them. And yeah, I had, you know, quite a quite a bit to learn, but pretty much always have you know, quite a bit to learn, but pretty much always have continued to like either build stuff for the DOC, like for the education department, like either build tools for them or my own personal like open source projects or yeah, just other like other contributions. Well friends it's time to build the future of multi-agent software and you can do so with agency that's AGNT CY. The agency is an open source collective building the internet of agents.

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Build with other engineers who care about high quality multi-agent software. Visit agency.org. That's agntcy.org. And add your support once again. Agency.org that's agntcy.org and add your support once again agency.org agntcy.org I'd imagine it's like uh it's like you got this new superpower that you never had before you know because skillless I don't want to say you were literally had zero skills, but comparative to what you have now skillless probably beforehand, you had some experience with lamp, you've had some experience with obviously internet and different aspects of that, but like you've got this new superpower and you're like, I

just want to contribute, I just want to be useful. I'm imagining this is what you're thinking because of your story that you just shared. Where can I make a dent? Where can I put some good out in the world? I've been doing so much bad or so much internally bad thinking and so much negative self talk about my identity.

And I've had this epiphany and I got this new dream and I've got hope and you've got, you know, all this inertia towards it. And you've got this new skill that you're like, where can I put this skill to use? Where can I be useful? That's, that's what I'm thinking. Is that, is that a version of what you did? Yeah, most definitely. You know, with, with all the time, right. The, the, uh, it was like, if I had a, if I had like a 20 minute conversation with someone,

like outside of myself, I would feel guilty that I wasted 20 minutes, like, because I felt like the three or so years that I had left, like, was such a finite amount of time that like, like any non-trivial amount of time spent doing anything but learning was considered to be like, was definitely something I felt guilty about. I think everyone knows how much enthusiasm newer developers have to pre- rewrite whatever and take on features or projects that are real ambitious that you kind of learn, aren't super realistic. So that ended up with... I wrote... The first thing was just an inventory system for the education department to keep track of all the laptops and the credentials and who had them and the condition and the allow list and just like CRUD. That was the first thing that I built for the education department.

Yeah, that worked out pretty well. And then when I came here to this facility from the... I was just at a different main facility. I was at the main state prison now. I'm at, as you mentioned, Mountain View, correctional facility. Not Mountain View, correct you'll say, not Mountain View, California. No, all the way on the other side of the country.

But yeah, when I came here, they have, believe it or not, actually, the state of Maine and from what I hear, most facilities, it's probably something that viewers will be interested to learn, have quite a bit of internally written software by presidents. That's actually a fairly common thing. I definitely was not aware of this prior, but the mainstay prison had a resident there that wrote pretty much all the software that it runs on to this day. So all the account sheets, the inventory for the woodshop and inventory for the kitchen and a system where you have to scan like a barcode in the back of your ID and use that to like access your account to purchase things from like the infrastructure at the other facility. And the administration here was aware that that existed. And when I came here, they had been made aware that,

like, I was someone that could replicate this and definitely someone that could maintain some of this stuff here. So the system, the point of sale system that they use for the Annex is written in, it's like vb.net. Let's say it's VBA. Yeah, it's definitely VBA because it runs on, what should we call it, it access and Windows 8.

So to this day still maintain a point of sale written in VBA on Windows 8, which is the absolute bane of my existence. But yeah, so the staff here like asked me to build a real-time something to keep track of what everyone's position in the facility is. So you come back to the unit, you scan your ID, and it will check you in to the unit. Because currently you have to sign out and there's like people whose jobs it is pretty much to like maintain these like clipboards with everyone's current location. So that if something happens,

they have to like count everyone. They have like record of like where everyone is, right? So they like wanted that built. Like, so yeah, I like built that like RFID based like system made that like pretty pretty much production ready. They pretty much abandoned wanting to actually get it set up because they were just the guy who wrote all the previous software at the other facility ended up getting out and now they're in a position where they don't have anyone to maintain it. And I think they're just trying to avoid that happening here. But I'm actually pretty grateful that they had asked me to do that because writing a full production front, full stack application,

definitely I think is being on the list of projects that I completed by myself. I definitely credit quite a bit of my ability today to that. Is it a web app or what kind of app is it? Yep, it is a web app. It was a Actix backend and SolidJS frontend. Just uses these, actually these right here. Of course this is gonna to keep alerting me. But yeah, it's like RFID, like HID.

Reader. And yeah, it spent quite a few, I would say probably at least a couple hundred hours on that. So do you have to interface with the scanners themselves? Or is there a way that you're getting the location data off the RFID? Yeah, so it is just a, so I had the client runs in like a towery window and these particular RFID readers

are keyboard input, like emulators. I had a client for this on a Raspberry Pi Pico that actually like interface with like the HID because you have like administrator privileges to like open like dev like you input and actually get get the raw bytes from the OS. But the web app front end just had an invisible form. And because it ran in a Towery window, it allowed me to just capture all the keyboard input. Using Towery, that's one thing I noticed about you Preston is you seem to be very on the tip of technology.

Like if I, on your about page, like, you know, big fan of Rust obviously, Neo Vim, Tmux, Ghosty, Elacrity, you're using Tauri, you're using Solid JS, you just seem like you're, you have a certain group of people who like to live on the edge. Do you know that about yourself? Do you realize that? I would agree.

I think it, there's a, I think some of it probably has to do with the fact that, of just like when I, like the time periods that so it's like so the last time I programmed anything was in like 2009 and then when I kind of came back to it like you know 2022 is when I started learning again. And I think that was maybe the peak of the rust hype, if you were to see a chart. So it just seemed like the technologies that were real popular at that time period.

At that time. It was a lot of like, it was kind of trippy because you kind of think you already have this, like, you have this preconceived notion of like what people use and like how popular things are. And like, you like don't, you know, it's like, I didn't like know that like PHP is like, like looked down upon now and it kind of has a reputation now. I was not completely aware of that at the very beginning. That's because you're not on social media, Preston.

That's where we talk about these things. The only place really, newsletters, podcasts. YouTube. Although PHP is cool again because Laravel is cool, Taylor Otwell's cool Uh Making money on the internet's cool Facebook I don't know about Facebook. Uh, you know

I think it's kind of it's actually kind of cool. I mean, it's kind of cool that facebook still exists And that people can connect so well globally. That's pretty wild Hmm. I mean I can stalk some people I went to high school with. That's a unique attribute in the world, I like that. I'm not doing it, but I like that I can. You like the idea that you could if you wanted. If I wanna check somebody out before I become one layer friend deeper, I can.

I can be like, well, this is who you associate with, these are your friend groups, this is who you associate with. These are your friend groups. This is where we overlap. That's pretty wild. See, I do a different style. You know, I look at someone's blog and I'm like, okay, you like T-MUX, you like Ghosty, NeoVM. Hey, we can be friends.

Because you're talking to developers, Jared. I'm like, Preston must be cool because we're both using Ghosty, you know? I do like that a lot. So you made a list of things you're not gonna do when you get out. What about, do you have plans? Like what you are going to do?

Because I mean, it's coming up, man. Yeah, I think the primary thing is definitely make up for lost time with my family. That is definitely, my dad's retired now. And to be able to hang out with him every day is definitely number one on that list for sure. And I've been fortunate enough to be able to like, so I like purchased a house, uh, right across the street from where they live in Michigan. Um, so the thought of fixing up the house and, uh, learning to do all that,

like handy stuff that never, never really learned. So yeah, it's like at, at home projects, stuff like that is what I look forward to. I'm waiting for the day that somebody writes the screenplay about your life, uh, from prison to promised land is a good ring to it. I think, um, are you scared at all? Cause I mean, you said you valued this last three years with finite pressure and the fact that if you wasted 20 minutes talking to somebody, you're like, man, I did

not adhere to my goal of total focus. Are you concerned at all? Do you have anything that you're trying to do to sort of push back against the fact that you will have unfettered access to the world and distractions everywhere. Not really something I'm super concerned about. I think I've kind of cemented my mindset and my goals and priorities now so much that I feel really confident. The main reason that I had a lot of that, the guilt that I would have previously for wasting time that could have been spent learning was because previously had no future and no hope for a career and money. And so I definitely feel a lot more.

Things are pretty concrete now as far as like, I know pretty much exactly what I want to do for a career. Like, I've been really fortunate to meet like some just awesome people in the industry. I've gotten a lot of support. Um, so yeah, I feel, I feel pretty good about, about the future. Any particular names you could drop that, uh, you can either thank or just mention that you've met that's like stars or not stars or just influential to you personally? Yeah, yeah, no, most definitely. I think super thankful for the company I work for, for giving me a chance at the time that I met them. Pretty much none of this would have been like possible, at least the way that it played out. Like, without them, great group of people, great mission. Definitely everyone check out

to unlock labs. If you haven't, we build education tools for incarcerated students and generally try to bring internet access in a meaningful way to correctional facilities. I want to give, we're trying to give more people the opportunity that I was able to have and like to see other people given the chance to be able to change their lives. So definitely big, big thanks to Unlock Labs. Yeah, definitely big thanks as well to Yeah, the whole like, terso team, Glauber, Glauber Costa specifically, is definitely the reason that a lot of this, you know, my story got picked up by like, Prime. Prime is absolutely on that list too. Primogen has been the only source of entertainment that I've allowed myself all this time. And he was a huge influence in the previously mentioned discussion about what technology I use and chose to learn. It's the reason that I use a tiling window manager in Tmux and

his story was like one of the first that I found after kind of deciding to go down this route. Watching his from meth to Netflix video was really inspirational. So definitely big, big thanks to the Primogen for sure. And yeah, I mean, I guess I don't know how like how broad being here, but I feel I would I would feel horrible if I didn't like mention my my family has like been by my side this whole time. And even when I definitely did not deserve it, they continued to support me and they stuck around for all the years that I was insufferable. You know, just to like, you know, they're great people and super fortunate to have such a great family. RG That's awesome. We all need people that pour into us.

You know, we don't, we realize, you know, there's a lot of us that can pull our life up by our bootstraps kind of thing and just sort of muster through and get through whatever we have to, you know, and the variations of that scenario can be very wide, obviously. But we definitely need other people in our human journey to get to where we're trying to go. And it's even better when you got sort of a peer, you know, like from meth to Netflix, for example, you know, something that you can say, wow, that could, that I can emulate that.

I can see now there's hope because there's somebody who's done it, a version of that, or similarity in some way, shape or form that says, this place I'm at is not the end. There is opportunity for a new beginning, a new change, a new identity, a new future, and having those people pour into you, and the problem with Jim being able to watch him and being entertained by him, I'm entertained by him. He's pretty wild. I think it's awesome

having that. Yeah. And I definitely, like, I certainly hope that like, you know, people that are in situations, like maybe kind of similar to the one I was in can see what I've done and what I've gone through and think, you know, it's like, it's really tough when your life is that far gone. You feel like you're so far away from just a normal life or like the things you see other people have, careers and family. And you feel like that's so unreachable. That putting any effort in that direction just feels feeble. I definitely hope that people are able to look at my experience and see just how far I was from any of this and get able to get some hope out of that. I'm not sure how much further I want to go, Jreg. I'm curious about your thoughts, Preston, on this reform idea.

You know, I think one of the things you said, either in this conversation or in your blog post, how you advocate for, you're an example of how access to education and betterment is an example of an inmate or somebody who's incarcerated changing. What does the world not know about your thoughts or advocacy of that that we should know?

Yeah, I think my main point there was there's a lot of people with similar mindsets to myself in different facilities that don't have any of the opportunities that they have here. That if given the chance, like would flourish and would pursue these things and give themselves a way out. Because without this skill and without the network, right? I guess like the skill is one thing, but without the ability to network

and the ability to make other people aware of your story, to be in a place with no ability to better yourself. And if all you're given is, there's like four phones on the wall and like 200, you know, gang members surrounding you, like you could be like even me right now, who's so far from any from having that mindset and being involved in that lifestyle. You know, it's like, if you don't have the means to improve yourself, it's like, it's

really difficult to expect at different behavior. You know, that's like, I think what I want people to consider is like, you know, if your expectations are that incarcerating people, it's the Department of Corrections, right? It's expected that you're going to learn your lesson and you're not going to do it again. But oftentimes, the reality is you take someone that maybe has far less exposure to some of the things they're going to be exposed to in prison. And, you know, they spend a few years there and just, you know, end up absorbing the criminal mindset and the negativity. And they have absolutely no resources to improve themselves. There's no access to meaningful education or any way to find a way out of the hole that they dug for themselves.

To then expect someone to get out and now have a criminal record and no work history for N years. It's now just orders of magnitude more difficult to actually improve your situation than it was before this punishment. When the recidivism rate is like 70% of people return to prison after, I think, like three years. The reason for that shouldn't be like a big surprise, right? I think making people aware that investing in education and investing in giving people opportunities to improve themselves and in ways to find a career path and meaning. That pays off significantly more. There's all kinds of statistics. I wish I was good at reciting these things. One of my coworkers is, shout out Jess, can tell you all the statistics about how every dollar spent on education saves N dollars in precidivism costs and all

that. Horrible at remembering those things, but yeah, I think that's the general idea. People need to be given a way to You know way out Did you ever study the Stanford prison experiment the either the movie? I don't think you probably have access to that maybe But the study of it like it was based on a real study conducted in 1971 it was like a stark realization of normal people

going into these scenarios and role-playing, but becoming very real and very abusive and psychologically jacked up, I would just say, to paraphrase it. Are you familiar with that experiment? I am actually familiar with it. I'm curious if the movie like shines any light on some of the details that have come out since then. Or I read that a lot of the participants weren't really aware that, I think they were encouraged to go farther than...

like, I don't know, like, I know this is like out there, because if you like do any amount of research, like, you'll see that people will come out and say, like, yeah, like, what's a part of that, but I like didn't know it was like, you know, they kind of thought it was like a, you know, more of like a game, like, the, I don't know, but that that is something that I that I saw, I'm just curious, did the movie play on that at all or was it kind of still discussed like it was like a very serious thing? I'm not deeply familiar with it. I did watch the film

and I know it's based on real scientific studies. I'm sorry, I got my child just busted in here. Get out of here, Micah Trying to bother me um It was a study done And it was a psychological Psychology psychology professor who had done this and I think he'd like canceled it after six days. It was serious so

to paraphrase the scenario the film film is based on this experiment. And the experiment was real. And the fact that they set up a mock prison, they took normal people in the world with their normal freedoms, probably in college is my assumption, or university. And they put them in the scenario where there was guards and prisoners basically. And the prisoners were not truly in prison. They weren't truly prisoners. Not that prisoners should be treated that way, no offense to you Preston, but you know, the scenario of like power, the struggle of power where you're in a position of power and then you're in a position of lack of freedom and lack of power. And the other role reversal, these people leaned into their

roles, they leaned into all these things and the prisoners were literally had become prisoners and the guards had literally become guards. And it got so real and abusive that even the professor was becoming abusive. And it's just such a stark reality. And the reason why I even bring this up is just to say that you'd mentioned before how you're advocating for more education access because this is a way to reform, you know, mass incarceration.

I think it's not the answer, but it may be one of the answers to some folks who are in prison, not so much all of them, but I can be wrong on that front. But it was just this realization that, wow, how in this scenario you are likely abused, you're obviously accessible to people with power and they can abuse that power. And that what happens when you lose that freedom and how it psychologically changes you because these people that were, like I said, non-prisoners, term prisoners in this experiment had meltdowns, breakdowns because they were being treated like people with no value, people with no hope, with

you know, people that have been in scenarios you've been in and they were, it was not good. It was, you know, the efficacy of the experiment was true and it's evident that in scenarios where you are treated like you're worthless and hopeless, you become worthless and hopeless. And you do not act like normal you. You act like somebody who's been abused. And it's just such a, if you haven't seen the film or looked at the study, I'd recommend just doing it after this podcast to sort of just have one more layer of understanding of, of Preston's life or I'm sure a version of it. Yeah, that's something that Maine has come very far in quite a few forefronts of like corrections.

But one thing that they're big on is like little things like language, right? Like inmates here are referred to as residents. And it seems like such a... I apologize. People just can't... Yeah, so Maine has humanized residents quite a bit. And although the power dynamic is still obvious, and there's still, there's always like going to be, it's like a certain kind of person that is more drawn to roles like police officer, corrections officer that, that like, you know, are more likely to seek out a position or power over someone.

And that obviously still happens. But yeah, I think a non, certainly not a negligible portion of why I had no hope or care about my life was certainly, I mean, I can absolutely imagine that some of it might have been from spending a third of my life locked up and treated like a number and like you're not human and that you're, you know, how you feel and your, you know, opinions and like, just don't matter. And yeah, it's absolutely a real phenomenon for sure. I think most people would be surprised. And I would say probably 99% of people that have a loved one that ends up having to do time are absolutely shocked by some of the experiences that they'll have. And most people's reaction is always like, well, they can't do that. Like, and it's like, it's like, but like but like all of your whole like preconception of like your human rights and like you are like like

Like that's like that's gone. Like there is none of that and a lot of people are absolutely shocked by how the average person is treated like everything in your mind that makes up your psyche of your own self-worth is challenged because at any given point, you can be told to... I'm not going to go too far into some of the experiences I've had locked up just because I'm still here. But yeah, no, it's certainly what shocked most people.

Well, I'm sorry that you've had to go through that. I know that you've been down a road that has been troubling. I think maybe early on you may have been a threat to society just based on what you've shared about your choices. And who knows the lives that you've impacted as a result of your choices. But you know, I am a believer in redemption and I'm so thankful that we live in a society where redemption is an opportunity and that you've been able to see and have that epiphany about your life, that your identity that you thought was accepted by you, pressed upon you, etc. was not going to be your long-term reality and you put it into your mindset that you're going to change. And I'm glad that you were able to do that.

I'm glad that something as simple as a computer and access to the internet and your previous curiosity into software and the fact that open source exists and that in today's age that if you can produce and you can be valuable then that's all that's required to have access to the world is a thing versus a degree or something else that you can that you can find rehabilitation in your life and a flourishing future ahead of you given, you know future choices that will be Exemplary of what you've recently done, you know, keep making these good choices. Keep making these choices that are about your future and

The future you want to have versus the ones that you don't ever wanna go back to. So I'm thankful for that for you. I appreciate that. Well, Preston, is there anything else on your mind, on your heart, or you were hoping us to ask you, which we haven't asked yet, that we could talk about before we let you go? I think we definitely have to cover quite a bit.

Yeah, I don't know. I think that about About wraps it up probably well, we appreciate you arranging this being willing to open up tell your story share with us thankful for the freedoms that you do have inside there to hop on a podcast and You know turn your video on and connect to the internet and talk to the outside world so Thank you, and I guess thank the folks who are in charge there. I'm giving you this amount of freedom until you Get your real freedom back Hopefully less than a year from now, but when you say a year in the worst case

Yeah, you're in the worst case May 5th of 26 would be the worst case scenario. It would be the worst case. So less than a year. Get that out of house next to your parents. Make up for lost time. Do some fixer-upper. Make sure you video it and put it on the internet

because you'll be famous when you do that. And all those good things, man. Good luck to you. When you sell the rights to your movie, make sure you get good money. That's right. Come back to me for the title. That's right.

I appreciate you guys having me. I'm back. Well, let me just say that this conversation with Preston has opened my eyes to some different perspectives when it comes to reform, but the prison different perspectives when it comes to what it takes to get someone to change their life and really just some sadness out there, some sadness, some unfortunate events, some unfortunate choices that we make in our lives. They can take us to literally the worst, literally the worst. You know, while Preston has a rosy story coming out,

this has not been a rosy road for Preston at all. I can tell you that. And we are all just one bad choice away from something different. So if you're listening to this and you have your freedom, go away from this moment right now. Shake a friend's hand, hug somebody, call a loved one. What have you got to do to take stock

of what you got in your life and not take it for granted? And directly after that, go code something. Okay, a big thank you to our friends over at Retool. Retool.com, our friends over at depo at depo.dev, and of course to our friends and partners over at Fly. Check them out, fly.io. And to the beat freak in Residence Breakmaster Cylinder, bring those beats every single week.

Love them. Okay friends, that's it. This show's done. We'll see you when we see you. Thanks for watching!