Upgrade - 386: The Tube Man Ecosystem

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

In this Upgrade Holiday Special, Jason and Myke answer the holiday-themed questions of Upgradians everywhere. Smart decorations, holiday wardrobes, the definition of fairy lights, monkey strategies, an eggnog recipe, and Santa's complex cloud-based organizational system are just some of the topics covered.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 386 today's holiday special is brought to you by bombas hunter douglas and set app my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hi jason snell happy holidays mr mike hurley. It's Christmas week. Ho ho ho to you, my friend. Well, ho to you too. I have some jingle bell Snell talk for you. Oh. It comes from JD who wants to know, this is not a, this is not, I resisted a holiday Snell talk.

Not holiday themed. We are basically all holiday Ask upgrade for the the entire episode today because we got like a billion questions which is great uh but this one comes from jd who asked have you ever tried coding and if so what language well i have um yes is the answer jd um i started using uh basic when i was a kid where you had to number the lines of code, and that's how you navigated around. I was thinking about that the other day. I remember the first time I saw a programming language, I think it was Pascal, that didn't have line numbers, and I couldn't understand how you would do a program without line numbers. And I think back now, and I think, like like why did you need the line numbers but it

was how i was thinking it was how it was taught um and i i learned a lot of basic uh and and then we have to go to apple script after that like basically i didn't do anything beyond uh apple soft basic until i was in uh grad school maybe i'm not sure I did any Apple Script in college. And Apple Script is very weird, but it is a coding language of a sort. And I was scripting and connecting together various apps. Lately, I've been doing a lot more of this. So when we moved Six Colors to WordPress, When we moved Six Colors to WordPress, I built a custom template. It's actually kind of funny. As a side note, I'll say our friend David Sparks just changed his website over from Squarespace, I think, to WordPress.

And I was saying, well, if you need any advice, I spent several months meticulously converting Six Colors from movable type to WordPress. And WordPress is all PHP stuff. So I had to make a custom theme, complete from zero custom theme. I had to do a lot of PHP stuff. And I had a little bit of help from some of the people at WordPress. But for the most part, I did it myself. And the lesson learned here is that David Sparks' response was, oh, I hired a guy to do that. I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I could have done that. But I didn't. And I learned a lot about PHP and my weather page. Upgrade Plus

listeners can hear all about my weather environment, my weather ecosystem that I have at my house, that weather page is in PHP. Doing what PHP was designed to do, which is take a web page and modify it based on some simple-ish logic. Anyway, so I learned a lot of PHP from that project. People who will listen to Upgrade Plus may also hear another portion of my weather ecosystem involves widgets in Scriptable. Scriptable is an app that lets you write stuff in JavaScript on your iOS device, and you can put it in widgets and stuff like that. And so I had to learn some JavaScript for that, I resisted learning JavaScript for a long time, and I still don't understand it that well, but I understand it enough to be dangerous, as they say. And then in the last couple of months, I don't know, three, four months, I have made a concerted effort to learn

Python. And I've written a whole bunch of different scripts in Python that do a whole bunch of different things. And that's been really great because the great advantage of knowing one of these languages instead of Apple Script is that I have a server running Unix that's in the cloud and I can put scripts on it and they run. Whereas with Apple Scripts, you got to run it on a Mac somewhere. And it's nice to be able to have that script just running in the cloud and running it from there. I guess if you're going to know this stuff, it helps for it to be a bit more universal, right? Exactly.

And the reason that I've been doing this recently is that I really wanted to pick up some of those skills. And I think it's a fun challenge for my brain to try and do this. The AppleScript muscles are there. And the fact is all of these languages are kind of, I mean, I know enough now to understand when people like the ATP guys talk about the differences in programming languages.

I've seen enough of them now that I'm like, oh yeah, they are all kind of the same. And it comes down to how do they phrase things? And is there a built-in module for this and do they use semicolons too much or is it brackets that they use too much or is it indenting that they use too much every language has its uh issues let's say there is no perfect language although i prefer indenting in python to all the semicolons in javascript anyway uh so it's been fun because

it's good for my brain too as a 50 plus year old person i want to keep challenging my brain and keep it plastic and uh adaptive and learning and it has been a lot of fun to write these uh the python scripts especially uh you know and again i could probably hire a guy to do it like dude sparks did for his WordPress site. Yeah, I got to learn that lesson. But it has been a lot of fun to pick this stuff up. And I hope I will continue using it in the future. Do you want your brain to be plastic? Is that the right thing?

Well, plastic in this case means able to be moved. Instead of being set, fixed. It's like fixed and plastic or opposites in this case. So you want to be able to have a brain that's kind of adaptive and can learn and grow and change and not remain kind of locked in place because that's how you become like an old person who goes, ah, these kids today get off my lawn and I don't want to be that guy.

What about foam? Like a brain ball. Some people don't like foam, but yes, I would like my, I would like my brain to be as, as, uh, as squishy and adaptive as my brain ball. Some people don't like foam, but yes, I would like my, I would like my brain to be as, as, uh,

as squishy and adaptive as my brain ball. Thank you. If you would like to send in a question for us to open an episode of upgrade, just send out a tweet with a hashtag snow talk like JD did, or you can use question marks, no talk in the relay of them members discord, which I actually think is what JD,

JD did actually. 10 print. Hello world. 20 go to 10. You can get access to the RelayFM members discord if you want by becoming a member and supporting this show. You can go to getupgradeplus.com.

You can sign up and you'll also get to hear about Jason's weather station, which is what we're gonna talk about in Upgrade Plus today. If you are listening to this episode on the day of release, you have less than 24 hours remaining to get your nominations in for the Upgradees. Nominations are closing on December the 21st.

So if you still have time, go to Upgradees.vote and you can get your nominations in. The results will be revealed and deliberated on next week's episode of Upgrade as we do the Upgrade East to finish out 2021. Got some follow-up for you, Jason. I was talking last week about my issues

with Wi-Fi on my MacBook Pro. macOS 12.1 seems to have solved this issue, and now I have no problem connecting to Wi-Fi networks, finding new Wi-Fi networks and that kind of stuff. One of the things that I've noticed is, which was not happening to me before, when you click on the Wi-Fi kind of arrow, in Control Center, you can hover over it

and it has a little chevron which you can click. It shows you in that area, Wi-Fi networks that you can connect to. That UI never loaded for me before. I didn't even know it was in there. Oh. So basically my machine just could not find Wi-Fi networks unless I would go into system preferences,

toggle it on and off, on and off. I don't think I mentioned last time, but sometimes I would get like an NAN error on the turn off button. So like turn on, turn off Wi-Fi would sometimes say NAN and then like a code that would like break through the button. It like turn on, turn off Wi-Fi was sometimes saying nan and then like a code that would like break through the button.

It was like a big old mess. That's not good. But 12.1 has completely fixed it. It wasn't in the release notes. Like I was looking through the release notes. There were like MacBook Pro specific fixes, but Wi-Fi wasn't mentioned as one of them, but it has fixed my Wi-Fi problems.

So I'm really happy about that because now I don't have that annoyance on my computer. fixes but wi-fi wasn't mentioned as one of them but it has fixed my my wi-fi problems so i'm really happy about that um because now i don't have that annoyance on my computer that's good i wonder what caused that i wonder why they they did that but it's good i mean keep in mind 12.0 came out before the laptops came out and so there's a this is the first full version that um is released right so they decided not to put it in like one of the little dot updates but they they jammed it into 12.1 that's interesting i guess i guess we'll never know the behind the scenes thing i mean i always have this like belief that sometimes things just get fixed and well i don't i think this is not i think this is commonly held things get fixed about meaning to

be in the same way that things can get broken about meaning to be. I think that's fair. I saw you link to Notchmeister on Six Colors. And now if I ever want, I can have an application right now if I just go up to the notch, I have some Christmas lights that pop down. That's right.

So I posted a tweet about how somebody should make it so that the notch glows when your mouse is behind it, when your pointer is behind it, because you can lose your pointer up there. You can move your pointer behind and not see it and be, where is it? It's in the notch. Craig Hockenberry from the Icon Factory

took this as a challenge. And even though he doesn't have a laptop with a notch, he wrote uh with some other people and it's open source so anybody can look at it or contribute a thing called notchmeister and he was sending me builds to take pictures of like tell me what this looks like because he doesn't have one um and uh ended up releasing notchmeister which is this funny utility that is really craig and i both thought that it reminded us of, there's a program called Underwear back in the day,

which was like, kind of like a screensaver, except it was always on underneath your desktop. And it was a desktop diversion or distraction, I think they called it. And it was just silly is what it was. And so he was inspired by that. So yeah, you can have like a little Cylon light that goes around the notch, or you can have it that when your pointer goes behind it, it throws off sparks or it glows. And you can have it that Christmas lights drop down from the notch when you move your mouse up there. And also, I think there's one that's like a radar x-ray kind of thing, which is hilarious because, like I said, your pointer is actually back there and it's moving around

and so he built this thing that drops down a little scanner that shows you what your pointer is doing up there uh which is poking around and hiding behind chips and stuff and it's very responsive yeah it's really cool i have a feature request if if if craig happens to be listening or hearing this i would like a way to be able to hide the dock icon for this app uh for notchmeister so i can just leave it on like open all the time and forget that it's there and get uh joy whenever i pop up towards the notch that's nice yeah it's a fun it's a fun idea i uh you know my purpose purpose with it was really just I thought somebody should make a very simple utility that just lets you – maybe one of these utilities that fixes your menu bar or something like that, that literally just gives you a subtle indicator that your pointer is currently living behind the notch,

and that's why it's not visible. And Craig was like, what if we made it wacky? And he succeeded. It is very wacky. I like it. I think I love it when people do silly software. Like, I love it.

It feels very Mac to me. Like it does. Part of like the Mac's history is these silly little things that it can do. I mean, and Apple has had a history of building them in themselves, just not recently.

Yeah, it's whimsical and funny and yet also professional and considered, right? And that's the delight, I think, that makes it sort of feel Mac-like is that it's very intelligent, brilliant, serious professionals using some of their brainpower to create something silly. I like it. That's a lot of fun. Apple have delayed their return to the office indefinitely yep so this is something that they've been kicking this can down the road for i think

the best part of six to eight months now where it's like hey we're gonna come back entirely and then what can yeah no we've never seen a can what are you talking about this is actually kind of funny because uh i'm we're working on our connected year in review so we go through the year when we look at um look at stories and stuff like that and today i was looking through june and one of the stories for june was apple employees push back against return to office in an internal letter. So that internal letter that went around, that was in June of last year.

So they have been talking about their return to the office for over six months now. But they just kept saying, hey, it was this time, hey, it was this time, and now they've just said, you know, for very obvious reasons, we don't know when anybody's going to come back now.

So corporate employees are going to be given $1,000 to spend on home office equipment, which I don't remember if they've had this before. If they haven't, what the hell? What the hell? Why is it taking them so long if they haven't done it up until now? But that tells you, I think, quite clearly that this is for people that do not need to be in the office

because there are people that are in Apple Park. Like, there are. But for the people that don't need to be, I think Apple is now taking a hunker down kind of response for this one. I've been saying this for a long time that my feeling is there would be no wwdc this year i think that's set now like i think right probably right as i've said for the whole time like they were never going to do it if the employees went back in the office because that just doesn't make any sense right that you would be happy to bring

five to ten thousand people to place, but yet you wouldn't have your own employees in an office. And that decision kind of has to be made now. Yeah, that's the thing, is we don't know what the state of affairs is going to be in June, right? We don't know that. All we do know is that right now we are seeing you know surges everywhere because of omicron and it's not looking good for the next couple of months the problem is apple's got to make a decision pretty soon about what they're going to do and it's not just the not knowing it's the you got to take a gamble about a live wwdc in june um and and. And I think what we've seen in this pandemic is that it's really hard to plan even a couple of months. I have a thing that I'm supposed to go

to in LA in February. And I'm like, is that going to really happen? I don't know. I have no idea. So let alone June, right? It's tough. So event planners, like Apple doesn't have to have the event, unlike so many events where like the business is the event. Apple's business is not the event and it's shown that it can do it online just fine. So I think that you might as well just kick that can. The event is a distraction. That's what the event is.

It is actually. It is a cost and a distraction which is not needed like they have proven two years in a row that a virtual wwdc is as if not more effective for the vast majority of developers i think it's probably a fair assessment uh so it was always kind of like if they ever were to bring it back it's because they want the community aspect of it, which I understand. But no company wants to be the first company. No tech company wants to be the first tech company to bring their developer conference back. So everyone's going to be holding off anyway.

And I just think that, look, Apple needs to have made this decision already. They announced WWDC in March every year, which means before march they have to have all of the agreements with all of the uh conference center and all that kind of stuff i just can't imagine anyone would be working on that right now so yeah anyway so yeah the the return to the office thing delayed indefinitely i honestly now expect that they will just take this as an opportunity to change the

plan as well so that they will be able to appease more of their employees for a more hybrid approach. That would be my other guess on that, but we'll see. There are some rumors going around that LG is developing three display panels for Apple

displays. A 24-inch display, a 27-inch inch display and a 32 inch display the 27 and 32 appear to be mini led displays with pro motion support and the 32 would be an xdr replacement and also would include an apple silicon chip inside of it yeah this was covered really well on atp last week But for those who didn't listen, I think the speculation here that we don't really know this is sort of seen spotted at LG, these three displays. And I don't know if it really tells us anything about what will be a standalone display, because they're describing literally the 24 inch iMac display. Okay,

that's not that exciting. The 27 inch seems to be what would be in a new larger iMac display. Okay, that's not that exciting. The 27-inch seems to be what would be in a new, larger iMac, and that it would be mini-LED with ProMotion makes sense and is exciting. And then an XDR replacement that would be mini-LED with ProMotion also makes sense and is exciting. I think the question is, that a lot of us want to know, is any of these going to be sold standalone for people who have a laptop or a mac pro or a mac mini or whatever uh separate from just the imax and i'd imagine the 32 probably the 32 seems like the most likely right because yeah i actually don't imagine apple would make a 32 inch imac i think that might be a bit a bit aggressive um especially if it's going to have some kind of

chip inside of it that very much sounds like a high-end machine. I mean, maybe that 24, because why would they be continuing to develop an iMac screen? The iMac screen's available. Yeah, well, I mean, but we don't know where this information is from and whether this is a forthcoming thing or if it might be an old thing that is the iMac screen. Also, we should say there are two different LG companies.

There's the LG that makes panels and the LG that sells productized displays. And I'm unclear about which LG this is, but LG supplies Apple with its panels. So there's no proof that it's like, aha, they're going to be LG displays or they're going to be Apple branded displays. All we really know is that these panels are being seen

and that they're being worked on in some sort of container. So this is a really fuzzy, hazy kind of report. mini led technology that we've seen in the laptops and in the ipad pro 12.9 to the 27 inch and 32 inch sizes which we could kind of assume are going to be imac and pro display xdr but i think what it doesn't give us any signal on really is it is this going to be a standalone product as well is Is Apple building a full standalone product? Maybe it does, but I don't know enough about it. And that report is squishy enough that I can't have a lot of confidence. It would be quite a thing if Apple rolled out, imagine a 24 inch display, a 27 inch display and a 32 inch display instead of the, just the 32 that

they have now. But I don't know, part of me thinks, are we just seeing the iMacs here? Are they just saying, I saw the iMac panels and here's the next generation iMac panel. It's going to be mini LED. I don't know. So people who want to get excited, I can't get excited about it. I could imagine them maybe doing a 24 inch display.

That's just very, very regular, like just a regular display that apple makes you know and a 32 inch pro display xdr which is like 1500 bucks like that they bring the price down significantly because they move it to mini led and like i can imagine that would bring the price down like because they don't charge an incredible amount of money for all their other displays that use mini-LED. So that's what I would guess. I would guess that the 32 would be the one that people would want, and it would be much more price available.

But we'll see. Yeah, well, that is one of the things that we have not talked about a lot is the idea that what if they don't release a standalone display except for an XDR replacement? And what if the XDR replacement is way cheaper, right? Like that's a scenario that could happen. I think a lot of the conversation in our sphere has been about a 27 inch. And I would love to see that. Quite honestly, 27 is kind of big for me. I used that 24-inch iMac for a while. I thought, do I want a 24-inch display? Probably not.

Probably want a 27-inch display. I really don't want a 32-inch display. But that all said, that's just my personal thing. I do wonder if a scenario we did not anticipate is what if the XDR just gets replaced and it gets replaced by this superior and maybe cheaper mini LED technology and that that five or $6,000 monitor becomes a, I don't know what, two or $3,000 monitor. But a lot of people, again, a lot of people don't want to pay a lot for that muffler, right? That for that monitor. So we're all hoping for a 27 standalone and maybe we'll

get it. I mean, I hope we get it. I think 24th standalone maybe goes too far, but wouldn't that be great? I would love it for Apple to be like, we have so many different monitors you can buy now because we realize that nobody else is making them and we need to. Because that's the truth. I think this all goes back to the fact that Apple thought the market would zoom in here and be like, yes, we want to reach all those Apple customers. We're going to make displays. And it turns out they kind of don't care. And if Apple wants these products to exist,

they should make them themselves and then make a lot of money selling them to laptop and Mac Pro and Mac mini buyers in the Apple store. Like everybody wins Apple. A good Thunderbolt display isn't just a mac product either like i'm not i'm sure this is not what apple aims for and doesn't care but they wouldn't they would probably sell more of them right like i don't know we'll see also also i'll throw this in there especially about the 24 but in general I still believe that there's an iPad software update forthcoming, if not this cycle, the next cycle to do external display support with some proper kind of window management kind of thing.

And these products are for the iPad too. Yes. So that's something to keep in mind. Like these products are not just going to be for Macs. I think they're also going to be for the iPad. So that is another little wrinkle in this whole thing. So I don't know what it all means other than it makes me feel just that much more enthusiastic for the prospect of a standalone external Apple branded display and for whatever that next large iMac is, which is probably the one that I'm going

to buy. If that could be a 27 inch with high dynamic range and a mini LED backlit display, like, yeah, yeah, that'll probably get my vote. Bombas' mission is simple, to make the most comfortable clothes ever and match every item sold with an equal item donated. So this holiday, when you gift Bombas to someone on your list, you're also giving them to someone in need. It's a give-give. Bombas designed their socks, shirts, and underwear to be the clothes you can't wait to put on every day. Everything they make is soft, seamless, tagless, and has a luxuriously cozy feel. They're made from super soft materials like merino wool, pima cotton, and even cashmere, which makes them perfect for cozy winter layers.

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and RelayFM. It is time for some ho-ho-ho holiday. Hashtag ask upgrade. We put it out to the upgradians, Jason. Jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle. Jingle lasers. We put it out to the Upgradians. Send us your holiday questions.

We got about two times the amount of holiday questions that we're going to use today. A lot of them were duplicates. The Upgradians are very good. They're diligent. So we're going to do that today. That's going to be our holiday special for this year is answering your questions about our holiday preferences,

like this one from Timicus, who asks, what kind of tech do you employ in your Christmas decorations? Well, we have one of those candles that's an LED that flickers. So it looks like a candle, but it's fake. That's technology, right? Yeah, sure.

Actually, the best part of that is that it has a switch that is not just, it has an on, but it also has an on timer where you turn it on and it goes for five hours and then it turns itself off, which is great. Because otherwise you got to turn, you don't want to turn your candle on and off. Come on. And I think what this question is asking is I do attach the Christmas lights on the house and on the tree to smart switches. And I have a HomeKit automation that turns them on and off. I used to have a little timer that you would put the pins in pins in it and all that but now i just use smart switches

and home kit um they're not particularly sophisticated automations they really are sort of time on and off um they're it's actually linked into existing automations i have for like our our front light outside and stuff like that um and then i will say a word for how the led revolution has affected so many aspects of our lives um like christmas lights are so much better now because they're all leds um and so they don't use a lot of power and they they are cheap and they're just it's it's pretty amazing. As somebody who remembers glass bulbs with filaments in them that would break when you looked at them funny, the LED stuff is so much more resilient and it's better.

So that's mine. How about you? So I, for holiday decorations, we just have a tree, right? That's kind of what we do. And we have fairy lights on the tree. And a while ago, I used to use a wemo for these every year i have like a just a wemo that was just in the christmas box it was like one of the really old ones and that was what we'd use and it always made me laugh because every time it turned on it sounded like it was like a big thunk it would make like the wemo and then okay christmas is ready um but a while ago, a friend of the show, James Thompson,

turned me on to this surge protector by a company called Miros, I think. And it's for UK plugs. I don't know if they make them for other places, for other plug types. But what I really like about this surge protector is by default in HomeKit, and it just works with HomeKit. It's just very easy to connect. You don't even need to use an app.

What I like about it is by default in HomeKit it's four plugs sockets, four USB sockets. It's just on and off. But you can ungroup it so you can individually address each plug socket in each usb so over time like as we add different things to it so we have a lava lamp at home that's on it and that's got its own automation and then we have the fairy lights and that has its own automation

um my wife and dina are fairy lights fairy lights what are they are those christmas lights yeah we call them fairy lights i i guess this is a thing i've just found out that you don't call them that um fairy lights are christmas lights the little regular lights that you have and they twinkle uh and dina loves fairy lights so we actually just leave them in but when the tree comes down we just use them to decorate the living room so that we always have the fairy lights and then when the christmas tree comes out we then wrap them around the tree uh and i have that like you i mean it's then a switch in my home kit which i enjoy but i also have it on an automation in one of the home kit automations you know to turn on and off at certain times one of my favorite things about the home kit

automation stuff is how easy it is to enable or disable when you are or aren't home it's like i really love that like that you can set up an automation but only have it trigger when you are at home or when you're not at home so you know like when we're not at home lights come on at a certain time but that doesn't happen if we are at home that kind of thing i can't well i guess i could do that i have to i have to rope in all the people who live in my house to do that automation thing. And that's always been a challenge for me because some automations, it's like,

do I really only want this? And I work at home, so I'm always at home anyway. So it's a whole thing. But yeah, that can be really cool where it's like, you basically have it set so if you and Indina are not present, it doesn't bother. Yeah, but we have other ones as well that like if we're not there then they will also trigger so like you know i like that kind of stuff um so yeah that's probably a conversation for another

time but my um my cameras just got updated to support home kit which is wild but one of the things that they do that because they also have motion sensors in them, is the motion sensors are implemented separately from the camera. So they're like motion sensor switches that you can automate, which I thought was very clever. But I'm not doing any of those things.

I've just added Jason's HomeKit cameras in my topic documents for the future. Future conversation. Nathan asks, do you decorate your homes as well, and offices, we obviously are homes, but offices as well as homes for the holidays.

What kind of decorations do you use? Are they all for enjoyment? The enjoyment of neighbors? Like, do you use outdoor stuff? What do you do? Well, my office is not decorated at all. So I should probably get on that. Our homes are, we have outside lights as i

mentioned before on a smart switch it's mostly sort of peer pressure for the neighborhood like you can't be the house that doesn't have lights come on um but they're minimal lauren puts those up i i used to put those up and i got so frustrated with it that i retired from it and lauren was like hey why don't we have lights and i said i'm not doing it and she was like well then i'll do it so now she does it it's like all right i feel a little guilty and yet also i feel grateful every year that i don't have to do it because i hate putting those up um i do have so some listeners may know i enjoy the uh waving uh the air dancer the waving tube man the flailing inflatable i don't remember the family guy thing but people know what that is yeah you know it's like a car dealership and it's like a guy and his

arms and your your brain is programmed to react to motion and so you immediately go there and that's how they get you anyway i love them and uh uh jamie and i used to say uh you know lauren and julian would not care but jamie and i would be like, oh, tube men, they're so great. We should get one. And we talked about it. We joked about getting our own tube man and putting them on our roof and stuff like that. So I bought one. This was a few years ago.

But what you get is you get the blower. So I got an orange one. I put them up at Halloween. And let me tell you, the kids, oh, they love it. They love it. They love that there's this tube man flailing in our front front yard at halloween when they come by to trick and treat trick or treat it's great um but but once you're in the ecosystem the tube man ecosystem once you've given into the tube man life to big big tube man you're living your tube man life

once you're in the tube man ecosystem you can buy of course accessories oh i'm sure there's a santa tube man you can buy if you wanted i indeed there is mike and i have it i'm happy to let you and i have bought it and that is also the only thing is that those you really should only put up when it's not raining so uh if and we're about to get into a rainy stretch here but if it's not raining on Christmas Eve or Christmas day, I will bring out tube Santa and he will dance around to the delight of whoever is around on Christmas. So that's my outside.

And on the inside, you know, Lauren and I were just talking about this. We have a collection of stuff, but it's like, we've been married for like 27 years and we've been living together for 28, 27 years. And we've been living together for 28, 29 years. We've collected a lot of Christmas stuff and Hanukkah stuff over that time.

Lauren is Jewish, so we have Hanukkah stuff too. We have both. And it's all eclectic because it's just been collected over 20 plus years. And we were looking at it all. And she was pulling some of it out of the box. I'm like, why do we even have... I don't even like this. Why do we even have this?

But we save it because it's one of our Christmas things that we have. And they're not our style and they're not our preference, but we put them out because we have them. And if we were starting from ground zero and told, design your house for the holidays and get stuff, we would have a sensibility that our Christmas stuff does not have. A lot of it, especially because it's from people, right? It's like, my mom, my aunt gives me this pillow and it's got a fuzzy Santa beard on it. And you're like, pillow and it's got a fuzzy Santa beard on it. And you're like, okay, great. And then suddenly it's in your house every year for 25 years. So I guess what I'm saying is we have collected a lot

of those and ornaments too. I should mention, we've collected a lot of ornaments over the years. When you have kids too, you have the kid ornaments where the kids like make an ornament at school and putting the ornaments on the tree this year as every year is a wonderful moment when my kids put those ornaments up and they have whole discussions about this dumb thing that they made when they were in fourth grade. And they also have grown to have strategies

about our ornament collection. At one point we had friends who gave us an ornament of the month club from Etsy and they were a bunch of stuffed monkeys. And so my kids now have like a monkey strategy when they when they put the ornaments on the tree which like you got to spread out the monkeys so uh you know so we got a lot of those and then they're nerdy ones i've got like baseball ornaments and i've got doctor who ornaments and star trek ornaments and stuff and they're in there too there's lots so anyway it's

it's just kind of a mess but i think that that's what a lot of people do is you know not everybody is the like we have an aesthetic for christmas and we and we hold to it i think some people are but i think a lot of people are just like you know the stuff collects and we put it up and that's what it is and when they break or they're ratty we throw them away but until then we just put them out and they are what they are and that's very much our non-aesthetic for uh for our decorations so we only decorate home uh i have thought about decorating the studio we didn't spend much time uh in london for december so it wasn't going to do it this year but maybe next year i would like a bit of holiday cheer at the studio our kind of strategy

at home is we really just lent into none of this is going to make any sense as kind of like our general idea for decoration that's the way so our christmas tree decorations we have a large selection of felt ones that we found this company a few years ago that now lots of companies in the uk have just straight up ripped off because they did really well we have a lot of like so we have like a brussels sprout with a paper crown on it that's a good one we have uh a badger and a space suit with skis uh we have a few dinosaurs which are really great like the ones wearing a Santa outfit. One is a Stegosaurus with like four Santa hats on each of its like spines on its back, which is really good.

We have lots of really weird stuff. We've also started collecting holiday decorations from good vacations that we have. So we have like a Hawaii one. We have a couple of Disney ones. And then like around the house, we have these, I think maybe Adina bought this for me a couple of years ago. These like, they look like snowballs, but they're actually like little soft balls. So they go all

over the house, which sometimes we break out into snowball fights at home of those. We just really have lent into none of this is going to make any sense so we don't have to worry about there being an aesthetic but the kind of overall theme is eclectic which we enjoy very much it's very it brings me great joy when every year i was like oh my god i forgot we had a dancing mariachi day of the dead themed uh guy yeah i think i think your ornaments especially can and your decorations will speak to the people who are in the house and things that that have have delighted them over the years and that's definitely the truth truth with our uh our ornaments is that there's the story of our kids are in there and then other things we like um like i've got a i've got a a skeletor ornament oh of

course that i bought uh he lives in my he lives in my uh pen cup on my desk most of the year but then he he has to put in his his servitude on the tree during the holidays i got a doctor who like a tardis out there and then there are a bunch of things with dates on them because they're from the kids or for the kids or whatever. So yeah, I think that's good because it says something about you and Adina and your interests and stuff. That's what it's all about. Nathan asks, when is the proper time to put up

or take down holiday lights and decorations? So it will come as no surprise that I have opinions about this but it's um when i was in ireland for wool you remember that was around halloween yes we all dressed up in things for halloween for wool and then we're leaving and we get to the dublin airport and the christmas stuff is everywhere yeah and i thought oh like unforeseen advantage of thanksgiving yes i hate american calendar we don't have this there's no barrier we have no barrier exactly and it's a permeable barrier there are people

put on november 1st who are putting up christmas decorations i get it. It's fine, whatever. But even though it's a permeable barrier, it is a milestone. It is a barrier where you're going to get some people who are going to give you looks and that a lot of people use that as their date. So Thanksgiving in the US is a Thursday. It's a fourth Thursday in November. And so you end up with this very late uh november permeable barrier

and my opinion is that yes as soon as thanksgiving is over it's fair game you can put it up in late november if you really want to you can wait till december but like for me that is the the official start of holiday decoration is in the u.s. anyway should be the day after Thanksgiving, essentially. And then in terms of taking it down, for me, usually it is the weekend after New Year's. New Year's is on a weekend this year, so it might be the following weekend where you start taking the ornaments off the tree and eventually you take the tree out. The tree's fate is ultimately, we have a live tree, so it's ultimately decided by when the refuse company says to put out your trees so that they can bring the wood chipper by. That's part of the circle of life. And some stuff lasts longer than that. We slowly take that down. One tradition that we have that I really like is we have a door in our, our, we have a hallway that connects every room in our house. So there's like 11 doors in that hallway, but one of the

doors is out to the living room, which is a kitchen dining room, living room area. It is the big room in our house where we spend most of our time. And so that door gets covered with the cards we get. So we have, as the cards come in, they get affixed to the door. And so in an industry, just getting a card from people, you can see them and see the people, you know, and see their messages. And it's kind of nice to go there and look at them from time to time. And that stays up through the end of January. And even then, Lauren is reluctant to take them down because she really enjoys it that much. So that lasts to the end of January.

But otherwise, it all starts to drift away after New Year's. How about you? December 1st, no earlier than December 1st for going up. Coming down. Bless you. Like sometime in January, like early January. And for me, like you like i think the natural time is the next weekend after new year's that it just feels like the time you

would do it but no i i don't like christmas music or uh christmas decorations before december 1st good for you that's right you don't have you don't have the permeable barrier of thanksgiving and yet you're you're doing it right yeah i mean i'm aware of it which helps me a lot right like i'm very aware when thanksgiving is and we try to observe it in some way uh you mentioned you were real tree we're we're a fake tree household just because we don't have a lot of space so we have like a really slim plastic tree we would like to be a real tree household in the future like in a future uh house where we have more space it's nice i love the smell of it that honestly that's the thing that i don't think if we didn't have a live tree i don't think we'd have a tree because um i i don't like the i don't really

like the fake trees and i really love the smell of the tree that's my favorite thing about it as you walk into the house and it it smells like uh like a tree it's great i love it um also the slim plastic tree wasn't that one of david bowie's nicknames in the 70s the slim plastic probably not who not could have been uh tomber asks warm or cool lights on the tree uh yeah tomber's question warm or cool white lights on your tree, actually, is what Tombert wrote. And I think that's funny because my fairy lights, am I doing this right, Mike? Fairy lights? They are colorful LEDs. Ah, that's where you get me.

It's all the colors. All the colors, blue and red and whatever else is in colors. Yay, all the colors in the colorful LEDs. They're beautiful and I love them. Warm white tree lights. We like warm white fairy lights. Not a big colorful... Your fairies are boring.

They sure are. JD wants to know, what is your favorite piece of holiday apparel that you own? Controversy, maybe? JD, I do not own any holiday apparel. No ugly holiday sweatshirts i have nothing no holiday apparel of any kind not really a choice just just don't i used to have

i used to have a long sleeve shirt with a giant uh line drawing of a sheep on it that I considered my holiday apparel. Why? I don't know. There was something about it. It felt like it was the thing to wear on Christmas Day. I don't know. Also, because we are a Cal supporting house and our arch rival is Stanford.

I think I've explained this before, but I'll just explain it again here. At Cal, you can't wear red. You can't wear red to a Cal game because that's Stanford color. It doesn't matter if they're playing some other team. It doesn't matter. You can't wear red. And in fact, if you wear red at a Cal game, everyone around you will begin chanting, and this is true, loudly, take off that red shirt, take off that red shirt. You can hear it from across the stadium. So as a result, I own very little red anything. And certainly no jackets or anything outerwear that I might wear to a football game in the fall in red.

You can't do it. So I think red is a very Christmassy color. And I have almost nothing that's red. I also have almost nothing that's green i don't love uh wearing green either so where does that leave me with no holiday apparel so i'm assuming you didn't buy the red hoodie the red upgrade hoodie i absolutely did not in fact there was a real debate of whether i was going to even suggest we sell it. And every time somebody happily shows us their picture about the red upgrade hoodie.

The red one is a winner. I can't wait for mine to arrive. I know. It looks so good. And I just look at it and I go, oh, red. But we did a red incomparable shirt at one point, which I call the red Zeppelin.

And even that is deeply, and it looks great. And I find it deeply disturbing and I will not have it in my house. So that's how my life goes. However, I will say Lauren used to have a red sweatshirt with four penguins, a picture of four penguins in a stack in a phone booth that was labeled for calling birds. That was her Christmas sweater for a long time, but it was very old and is gone now. I think she had that from when she was in high school. And so I don't know if she has anything.

I have nothing. I have nothing. I have nothing. Should I buy? Is there some merch available, Mike, that I could buy to make my life more holiday-like? Not that I'm aware of. Back in 2019, we, for Cortex, made an ugly sweater. Oh, right.

I remember this. Well, I missed out on that. Yeah, that was back in holiday 2019 that is my favorite piece of holiday i have packed it because we're in romania for christmas this year and it's uh that is i'm going to be wearing it maybe on christmas day uh i love it i love it so much i i hope we can do this again one day like what i really want to do because it's printed i really want to do something actually knitted but that seems like very complicated and I'm not really sure how to go about it, but maybe one day. But I love it a lot. It's really good. This episode is brought to you by our friends at

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favorite Christmas song? Oh, my favorite modern Christmas song changes regularly. But my favorite modern Christmas song changes regularly. But my favorite classic Christmas song is the Christmas song by Nat King Cole. That's Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. Oh, that's really good. That's a classic and I love it.

And I have that one queued up every year. And then my modern ones, there are lots of good kind of modern takes on this. Father Christmas is a good one one that might be my number one right now but it varies over time i i go back and forth among many mine is step into christmas by elton john oh what i like about step into christmas is it it is not like other christmas songs it doesn't sound like other christ songs. It's just a good song. And I like that a lot. I like Christmas songs that are good songs. Yeah.

As well as just being like Christmas, you know? I agree. That's great. Justin asks, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Justin, of course it is. It so is. This is unequivocal, in my opinion. I mean, people joke about it.

They're like, oh, well, this movie had a scene at the beginning set at Christmas. So is it a Christmas movie? But like Die Hard is throughout. The whole point of Die Hard is that it's not just Die Hard as a guy running around an office building. He's running around an office building at Christmas with people who are hostages because it's a Christmas party, which leads to the classic, ho, ho, ho. Now I have a machine gun.

What could be more Christmas than that? It's like, you know the song Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea? Do you know that song? I don't. Okay. Well, that's just about a guy who's driving home for Christmas. That's the Christmas song. And really, you know, Die Hard is John McClane just like dying for christmas i don't know it's like

it's just he has to get through the uh terrible as action skyscraper yes that yep he has to get through the action skyscraper to make it out alive and so he can save christmas for everyone and have christmas with his family it is 100% a christmas movie you know it's like yeah it is for those who don't know action skyscraper is the swedish i think name of diehard that's how they released it there action skyscraper it's a good name it's very good very good name so yeah yeah 100 die hard is a christmas movie stance wants to know what is your favorite christmas movie oh my favorite christmas movie i have a recency pick like which is we just watched give it to me we just watched love actually again i haven't seen

it in years that is such a great movie it's just a good movie let alone a good christmas movie great love it and you know it's like i imagine maybe people who didn't see it at the time think, oh, yeah, it's like those movies where they bring a bunch of famous people together and all their stories intertwine. And it's like one of those movies. Love Actually was the movie that started that. Is that movie. Yeah.

That's the movie. And like, I remember at the time, I saw it when it came out, because I remember at the time, one of the things that was so shocking here was the poster, like all of the people on the poster. It's like, how does one movie have all of these people in it? Yeah, the answer is it was a very clever, multi-story kind of threaded thing. It's a great movie.

I have two. I'm going to again do the classic and modern take here because it cheats and lets me have two um classic is miracle on 34th street which is my wife's favorite and is it's a great movie it is sappy in parts but also super not in other parts the whole plot is that a santa gets so falling down drunk that he has to be replaced falling down drunk during the the macy's thanksgiving parade and has to be replaced and uh then he's replaced by uh maybe the real santa claus but they think that he's crazy because if somebody claimed to be the real santa claus you would think that he was a crazy old man uh things been out of control um there's oh i was gonna say i haven't seen this movie i have seen this movie we did this we did this we did this for mike at the movies i love

that movie it is it is so great but great it's weird and it's funny yeah Yeah. And Edmund Gwynn, who plays Santa Claus, won the Oscar for best supporting actor for that movie. Because it turns into Christmas courtroom drama. It's a courtroom drama where kids are getting called as witnesses. And there's a dramatic moment when the U.S. Postal Service brings in all of Santa's letters. And there's this whole political subplot where the judge uh says if i rule against santa the only person who's going to vote for me is the district attorney it's my favorite line in the movie because his political fixer who's always got a cigar and it's played by the guy who played fred mertz on i love lucy says he shakes his head and goes the district attorney is a republican so you're gonna get no

votes uh it's it's just a it's again if you haven't seen it you should see it it is uh it is it is surprising in if you think that it's going to be a super sappy kind of thing it's from 1947 it's not it's actually kind of light and funny and weird and takes all these strange plot turns that anyway, it's good. That's my favorite classic and my favorite new, more modern movie, although it's just rapidly becoming a classic. And I'm going to say the same things about it as miracle on 34th street. It's elf.

Oh, elf starring Will Ferrell. 2003. Yeah, it is a classic. And I'll just say, if you are a person, cause I've heard this from a lot of people.

If you're a person who doesn't like Will Ferrell, just watch Elf. It's not going to give you, I think, all the Will Ferrell things that you don't like about Will Ferrell. He fully commits to being a human-sized elf. And it is, I love it. I could not love it more. It is such a great movie. So those are my two favorites. Those are my two go-to watch during the holidays movies, Elf and Miracle on 34th Street. Elf such a great movie so those are my two favorites those are my two go-to watch during the holidays movies elf and miracle on 34th street elf is a great movie that's so good one it's very

funny it's very charming um yeah i want to say i don't know i i feel like i'm just gonna i'm gonna die on the sword maybe uh last year i watched uh well we watched nightmare before christmas for the first time yeah don't like it don't get it i love the style and the look there's no story in that movie i don't understand i don't get it don't understand i know it's a cult classic i don't get it i don't like it either good i'm pleased you know as i said it i was like i i know if i say this enough jason will agree with me i knew you'd agree with me. I don't get it. We were actually talking about this. I would like somebody to redo it.

Like, give us the visuals more of a plot. And then, you know, we can actually have a good movie. Brons wants to know, what are your favorite christmas episodes of tv shows this is tough i was good i i don't really have any particular thoughts on this i figured that you would say like doctor who or something well that that's going to be my answer is that i actually have a playlist of the doctor who holiday specials that i will sometimes just flip on but i did a couple years ago i did a rewatch i i watched sort of like a uh 12 days of christmas kind of thing i rewatched all the doctor who christmas specials and what i'm gonna say is that the best one is the is is

the return of dr mysterioso uh dr mysterio dr mysterioso it's uh it's it Dr. Mysterioso? It's silly. It's a superhero pastiche, which is not what you expect. I guess it's Dr. Mysterio, not Dr. Mysterioso. From 2016, written by Stephen Moffat. It's sweet.

It's like an homage to Superman, the movie, kind of, except in Doctor Who. and there's kind of a romance subplot and it is at the time i feel like everybody's like yeah yeah it's another doctor who christmas special it's kind of great um and i also really love last Christmas, which is from two years before. Another Stephen Moffat. That one has, who's in that? It's a good cast. It's what if we did a Doctor Who Christmas special that was modeled on The Thing, a horror movie? Why would you do that?

But Nick Frost is in it as Santa Claus. So it's Nick Frost and Peter Capaldi kind of going at it. That's also a legitimately great Doctor Who Christmas special. So I recommend those. Obviously, Charlie Brown Christmas is the greatest Christmas episode. It's a special, so is it a TV show? It's not a movie, but I do love that as well. And we'll see. I haven't watched it yet, but we're going to watch the Ted Lasso Christmas as well um and we'll see i haven't watched it yet but we're gonna watch the ted lasso christmas special this year and we'll see how that goes i don't really think i re-watch tv episodes like that you know like in a way that we might re-watch a movie

well the beauty of like the doctor who christmas specials for example is if you build something that's totally standalone then you can just enjoy it as a as a thing and that's why i made that playlist and it's actually pretty fun is that is that those are all structured to be because right it's because it's the bbc audience on a christmas day they know they're going to get all sorts of people who don't watch the show regularly and so they're the a good doctor who christmas special is just meant to be of its own story and not much more and be kind of big and fun. And, uh,

sometimes those are great, but, uh, but the Ted Lasso one is made to be a Christmas special. Yeah. And I read a story the other day that said that somebody finally admitted they actually asked Apple not to release it until Christmas. And Apple said,

yeah, no, we're not going to do that. So here we are. That's the explanation. They released this little, uh, claymation short that's cute but yeah kind of substantial um about the ted lasso's mustache but like their

original idea was to do the christmas special as a christmas special and it only really i mean that's how it works it's a great fun episode but it really should have been released as a surprise like now and that didn't happen so i'm gonna go back and watch that one larson asks favorite christmas time beverage do you have one for me it's eggnog it's really i think the only christmas beverage that i can think of and mike brantz asks do you have a preferred brand of eggnog i've only ever made eggnog i've never had pre-made eggnog okay what goes in the mike eggnog oh so we use the basic recipe that we use is a benjamin babish recipe um which i'll put a link in the show notes there's a you know you can watch the video but

it's also written it out on this website so we use that one and in it the recipe calls for rum and bourbon and that's what we use and that's what i like um the rum we just use bacardi rum we haven't really ventured out there but bourbon i have more opinions on so i kind of change it up every year depending on what i'm interested in having i think this year we used eagle rare in our uh eggnog i really enjoy eggnog but i've only ever had it at home it's actually uh like a it's like our christmas tradition the day we put up the tree the day before we do the eggnog part because you've got to let it mature so we do eggnog the day before and then we drink it on the day we put up the tree um okay so now you said rum and bourbon that's two things what else is in there eggs eggs sugar and sugar nutmeg ah nutmeg okay i've never

had eggnog it sounds disgusting and i'm not interested so here's the thing jason it does this is why i never had it i was like why on earth would i want to drink eggs this sounds terrible but it's really nice it's like a milkshake jason it's much more like a milkshake there's lots of milk goes in it too as well as egg oh okay i also don't like hard alcohol so it's it's you know yeah i don't even have bourbon in my house i do have some rub in my house from the Relay 5 when Shelly made mixed drinks for the Relay 5th anniversary pre-show party that we did at my house. I still have Shelly's rum, so who knows. For me, my favorite Christmastime beverage, Larson, is my favorite beverage, essentially, because Christmastime is the perfect time for people to have a dark beer, like a stout. Oh, it's holiday time and you can get a stout.

I drink stouts all year round. It's my favorite beer type. So there are more of them and they're easier to get this time of year and it feels more seasonal than when I drink them in the summertime. There are a lot of like, like I've got a, I've got a, a porter right now that is like a chocolate porter. And I have a stout that's a s'mores stout.

So it's like marshmallow chocolate graham cracker that one is so sweet that i'm actually saving it for christmas because it's like kind of laughably it's too sweet for regular use but um those are my favorite beers and and we have them uh i have a lot it's it's for regular use but that that beer is too sweet for the regular uses of beer. You can't drink a beer like that at a dinner. Don't do it. Anyway, that's my... The approved beer of the

holidays is my favorite beer style. And so that's awesome. So that's what I do. Also, I should say for special occasions, what we often do is we go and buy some fancy beer. So I've got a big bottle of a Belgian triple in the closet that we'll put in the fridge for Christmas. And I've got a couple of bottles of a really nice,

uh, uh, Belgian. They're all kind of the Belgians are the fancy for me. The ones that I really love are the Belgians. So we've got, we've got a Belgian style, big bottle,

um, with a cork and everything. And then I've got two of these. It's kind of expensive, but it's amazing, called Eau de Gouze, which is like a sour-ish. It's like a ghost, but it's Gouze because it's Belgian. And we will put that out at some point during the holiday season too. So some fancy, expensive beer uh but that's it bronwyn wants to know chocolate desserts or gingerbready spiced style desserts yes and during the holidays i would i would lean gingerbread i yeah i agree i i love ginger ginger is one of my favorite things. And I like eating raw ginger.

I like having ginger beer. I like having ginger bread. And so, yeah, I make these ginger. I think I've talked about it before, but there's a blue bottle coffee recipe for ginger cookies that I'll put in the show notes. They are amazing they're crispy and they're uh molassesy and they're gingery and i love them but yeah i'll take ginger wherever i can get it chocolate's great too but um the ginger is just that much more seasonal yeah definitely ginger like i like like you i like ginger a lot of the time i especially like it during the holidays

it's when all the good gingery stuff would appear. I think like, I like chocolate. I'm not chocolatey dessert as much. I feel like, you know, like cake, like chocolate cake and stuff like that. I'm not like a big fan of. I like brownies because I'm the only chocolatey cake type thing that I do enjoy.

But yeah, gingerbread, I enjoy it and you get the best gingerbread stuff during the holidays. Yeah, for sure. This is the time. This episode is brought to you by Setapp. Getting things done is a challenge that we all struggle with. It's something that we can all understand. And look, one way to tackle it is to make sure that you have the right tools for you and your computer. That means having the right apps. And Setapp is on a mission to help users get more done. With Setapp,

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All right, next up is from Dave. What personal knowledge management system do you think Santa uses? Is he on the Obsidian bandwagon? Or do you think he's got his own custom Vim system that he built in Linux? I think Santa... Well, first off, Santa is the end user user so he's got a whole team of elves who are building uh there's a technical elf database behind the

scenes so all santa needs is the end product which is santa's got a dashboard thing or maybe a phone at this point that gives him his next destination and the details. And there's probably a package dispenser, either automated or maybe an elf riding in the back that is getting the particular items prepped for the next stop. So I think it's all, like, really, it's in the cloud. And there's a whole... He's up in the clouds, so it makes sense to put it in the cloud. Well, I mean, it's fitting, right?

And there's a whole elf uh back end that's doing the uh the database approach and and timing it all out that's what i would say is that i don't think santa santa is you know he's the ceo basically but he is he's got a whole team to do that and it's way better than the old days where they had to have like scrolls and stuff and it was you know they they digitized and now it's it's pretty easy for santa he just needs to go to the next stop yeah i i could imagine he's got like you know somebody's used like a raspberry pi you know and they've they've created this like little computer that sits at the front of the sleigh and it's just pulling down from this system i think i again i think he might just have a like a phone and like a clip now on the dashboard of the sleigh and it's just pulling down from this system i think again i think he might just have a like a phone and like a clip now on the dashboard of the sleigh good point i might not even need the

interface also i would say either there santa's app does have some features um for example he has there's tagging involved so it's going to bring up the ids of the kids that he's delivering the presents to right he can on the fly check their naughty nice score oh my god jason a kid to naughty if you need to style swipe left swipe bright for naughty nice yeah that's probably happening honestly also their notes in there about like if they're trying to see him and he has to avoid or if there's a you know it's like a crm system a little bit where he can mark in like um this fireplace is dangerous and you should go in the window instead and all of that. So he can do some of that because he's the one who's out there in the field, right?

He's taking notes. But it's all going in the database that is in the cloud like his sleigh and operated by the elves. That's what I think. He's got to have a pretty beefy iPhone case on that phone though because he's in some elements that guy yeah yeah and you know it's it's sparkly and uh and red naturally marley's asks if you could buy all of the upgradians a gift what would you get them or us what do you think it would be the existence of said cheaper apple display from earlier on. That would be the gift I would give people. Wow, you're very generous.

So you're buying the existence of that. I'm buying the existence of it. They can buy it themselves. I'm not buying it for them. I'm very particular about this. I will buy that this thing exists. I will not buy said monitor. Nice try, everyone.

Well, if I go by your means, I'm going to say a 27-inch iMac that runs Apple Silicon. If I go where I actually have to buy it, but somebody's going to give me the money, I mean, if the money's no object, then sure, I'll just buy a standalone Apple display for everybody,

but it's probably not going to happen. So instead, I don't probably not going to happen. So instead, I don't know, a foam brain. Oh, a foam brain is good. Hang on, though. If somebody was going to give you the money and you could buy all of the

Upgradians a gift, we would make specialized merchandise. Yes. So then we would get the money at the end oh interesting now that's cortex brand thinking right there uh yeah but when i say foam brain mike what i actually meant was the foam brain the nick plus nerf foam brain has been out of production for 20 years what we're going to do is we're going to create a new foam brain that is upgrade branded

we may sub-license it to cortex because brain's kind of your thing and we're going to put it back in production and sell those because we know that we have stoked the fires of interest for foam brains for years now and yet they there's no product for them to buy so we will put that into existence and then we will give it away as a gift and pay ourselves as the vendor perfect that's good it's a christmas miracle we made money that's the christmas the christmas is all about charlie brown uh chris asks what are your thoughts about giving or receiving apple products as gifts will there be a polishing cloth underneath the oratory this year? If you're very bad,

you get a polishing cloth in your stocking. I think giving or receiving Apple products as gifts is great. It's a little bit like those car commercials with the big bow on the car in the driveway that you shouldn't buy a car for your spouse without their consent.

It's too big a purchase. Come on, don't do that. I think for your spouse without their consent like it's too big a purchase that's come on don't do that so i think you need to know them and maybe it's sort of a wink wink nudge nudge kind of thing but yeah i i think that they can be really good whether it's airpods or a or a laptop or or whatever an apple watch um i will tell you because no nobody tell her but uh my mom um she has a i discovered when I visited her last time that she has a very, very, very, very, very, very, very old iPad Air that she is using that is running several iOS versions ago because it can't be updated anymore. And I am going to provide her with an upgrade. So there you go. I'm going to give an Apple product to somebody in my family this Christmas.

I think that can be great. For me, like if you're asking for me, I don't want anybody to buy me Apple-related things. Well, we're already on it. Yeah, like I've got it taken care of. Yeah. Right? Anything you want to buy me you're probably

also not going to get me the thing that i want right like uh i'm good that part is good for other people yeah like you know yeah go for it and i'll ask matt's question what is the best apple product or gift for a complete stranger so i feel like app store gift card if it's a complete stranger i'm not exactly sure why matt needs to buy apple gifts for complete strangers maybe i would say app store gift card you have to know that they're in the apple ecosystem for that but if they're not a complete complete stranger probably airpods airpods that's what I was going to say is the other way is if you know they don't have AirPods. And even honestly, even if they are not in the Apple ecosystem, AirPods will pair via Bluetooth with anything.

So that's a nice price, nice gift. But yeah, gift card is always good because you can price that lower than any Apple product. Polishing cloths not available uh you know it would be very funny to handle hand them like a usbc to headphone jack adapter or something enjoy uh but but yeah i think a gift card is a great answer there so matt said that he was thinking air tags when he he asked. I don't think AirTags. AirTag is the gift of you might lose something. Yeah, bummer.

I don't know. It's not necessarily a fun gift, but cheaper than AirPods, so maybe. Aaron asks, why has it been impossible to buy an iPad or iPad mini this holiday? How big of a financial hit will this be for apple's quarterly results so obviously we don't know the exact

answer of this uh i mean we can assume it's the chip shortages and legacy nodes legacy nodes i hadn't been looking but i i actually do know like i know people that ordered their ipad mini when like pretty much when they came out and have just gotten them like which is wild to me it was like three months ago or something like that so this is definitely a product line that they're struggling with it's interesting to me that the iPad and iPad mini are that but I guess for most people that does seem like the logical iPad to buy right now is one of those two right it's either the cheapest one or the smallest one. I guess that kind of makes sense rather than the Pro or the Air in a lot of cases, like when it comes to gifts. I'm going to provide some advice, by the way, which is, it's actually our advice for new iPhones, but I'm going to provide it here, which is,

if you can't order it online until after Christmas, check and see if it's available at one of your local Apple stores, if you have a local Apple store. And I'll say that because I just went to apple.com and clicked through on an iPad mini and got to the bottom and it says delivers January 4th through 6th. Pick up today. So there's going to be stock. It may not be exactly what you want. You may need to get a color you don't want or a size you don't want, but there are going to be things available in stock in an Apple Store that are not available online,

so if you're near an Apple Store or going to be near an Apple Store, that's a thing you should at least try. Yeah, you should just keep your eye on that. I agree. Even if you put an order in, if your order's a long time, you can cancel the order.

Right. Go and get something you know much much sooner matt asks christmas is right around the corner uh but we have to get through festivus first do you have any grievances to air yeah here's here's here's my big grievance for you mike um oh you know there's a lot there's a lot of talk on on connected about the triple j conspiracy but it seems like only john vorhees is ever on connected and james is always present with other things but this is not my decision i i don't think i've have i ever been unconnected i was on the prompt but i don't know you've been unconnected you have been unconnected as a judge and adjudicator of things okay that's

true i just i feel like the the there's a lot of talk about the triple j but that i'm kind of left behind on that that's what i'm saying i just feel left out i do not trust the triple j so i wouldn't invite any of the triple j onto the show okay it's so it's not your fault that there are breaches in the wall it's other people's fault i see this i believe steven has steven invited john for he's onto the show uh well once one time recently john was just in the same room as federico so it was kind of unavoidable yep that was a good one and then another time was well i think the last time was federico was it federico had his booster shot a couple of weeks ago and so there was a concern that he wouldn't make it through the episode and it was true and so john came in but i don't know why this i don't know why steven keeps bringing john onto the show you're just

steven for that i i know i was on like the live episodes and all that and i i i just am saying i just i feel a little left out when there's all this talk about the the triple j me and john and james and yet i don't know it's it's a minor it's a grievance, but I like how you've just thrown it on your co-host instead. Oh, 100%. I will throw... You distrust us all equally. I appreciate the equality there. Thank you.

And I will throw Stephen under the bus for this anytime, anytime, all day. Nothing to do with me. I was on holiday. Do I have any grievances to air? Hmm. I don't think so i feel pretty zen right now i think i feel like maybe if you would have asked me this before i took that big vacation i may have had more grievances i i feel like your your uh your uh iphone scratches is your number one grief oh that is my number one grievance right now thank you for the reminder i have a grievance towards the AppleCare corporate...

What is it? I'm trying to think of like the... Corporate machine. That's it. The AppleCare corporate machine in denying my screen replacement, which is something that I tend to get back on top of when I get back home in January.

So I'm going to be back on it next year of trying to get my screen replaced. I do at this point, I think I said this in the show, I do feel like now I just want to get some of those new parts and just try and do it myself. But, you know, I would also like to, I demand satisfaction from this one. And finally today, Kim asks,

how do you celebrate the new year? What is your typical new year's celebration, Jason? It's going to be disappointing and boring. Occasionally we have friends who invite us over for a new year thing, but otherwise we are at home and we will try to get some

crackers. Usually it's a Christmas cracker that we've forgotten we had at Christmas and so we keep it and then we use the UK kind where you pull on them and they pop and you get a little crown. We do that for New Year's and it's a lot of fun. And I have picked up a tradition from my friend

Philip Michaels where I try on sometime on New Year's Eve to watch Duck Soup by the Marx Brothers, which is a very silly movie. Why it's about New Year's, I don't know. It's not really, but it has become a New Year's tradition. Might try to get in a viewing of When Harry Met Sally, which is New Year's related and is one of my favorite movies. And like I said, there's probably Belgian beer and other things like that around.

And then New Year's Day, because I'm an American, there's a lot of college football on while you're sitting on the couch under a blankie. And I like it that way. I do not like New Year's Eve as this idea of you're going to have a great night. Yeah. Like if you go out and party,

because I believe none of the great nights, like the true great nights you have in your life are because they were supposed to be one. They, the great nights happen because they just happen. It's not like, I really don't like this. Like we are going to have an epic night because it's new years.

Like, so I don't like new year's parties. I never have for that reason. I like very chill new year's parties i never have for that reason i like very chill new year's things so whether it's just me and adina at home or a couple of years we've gone to a friend's house and just just four of us and we just really kind of just use it as an excuse to be together like rather than actually really paying attention to anything past the fireworks that occur at midnight so hopefully i mean if we're lucky we might be able to do that this year but i don't know yet

um but otherwise new year's is just uh we might have like a nice meal like cook a nice meal kind of thing i like to keep it low-key low-key for new year's i i agree again unless i've got a friend uh and our friends who always did the New Year's party at their house, which was not a party party. It's just a bunch of parents getting together and their kids getting together. They moved, so they don't have that anymore. And we occasionally will get invited to another friend's place. And they're English, Mike.

Oh, wow. That is beautiful because what you do is you come over and you have some dinner or some snacks and dinner, heavy snacks, I guess, and you watch It Be Midnight in London. Yes. And then you can hang out for a few more hours. And then maybe if you're really feeling bold, you watch the ball drop in New York, and then you leave. And basically, London is perfect, right?

That's like 5 p.m something like that yeah so this is a tradition that i knew that the underscores did where they would have their like they would put the tv on for the kids to see the fireworks at new year's and then the kids could go to bed right right now they. But now they're in the UK. So I don't know. I'm asked to ask him, how are they dealing with this, with the fireworks?

Because now the kids don't get to see the fireworks because if they do, it's midnight. Because they're here. I don't know about their kids, but one of the things that I discovered, and I think they're still on Netflix, is they make New Year's videos for kids wow where where you get to play the video and it it and it plays the video and then it counts you down and then everybody says happy new year and then you turn off the tv and put them to bed

and they think that they've seen the countdown yeah so if i got let me go to netflix i'll type in new year countdown maybe yeah our new year kids i don't know skylanders academy new year's eve countdown the skylanders are celebrating their heroic accomplishments of a huge new year's party and you can help them count down to midnight that's one and it's one minute long yeah that's that's it that's it there used to be more i'm not seeing more of them but like that's that's what you want is you want the thing that is like it's a lie it's not really but they don't they're excited that it we all get to count down we have fun and then it's off to take your bath and go to bed and all of that and they're asleep whenever you want them to be very clever

thank you to everybody who sent in a holiday ask upgrade question yes you can send in ask upgrade questions for our more regular episodes as well just with a tweet hashtag ask upgrade or question mark ask upgrade in the relay fm members discord there will be no ask upgrade next week because we are going to be deliberating, judging, and awarding the eighth annual Upgradees Awards on next week's episode, which I'm really excited about. I will get overly excited about the Upgradees every year. I now have the monstrous task over the next seven days

of trying to work out the Upgradians for sponsors because in case you don't know like with the nomination but except for like one i think of our questions people just have to type in what they want and i have a whole process and i know how to do it and i've got it all taken like i got it down i wrote instructions for myself a couple of years ago because it's what something i do once a year and i have like a good process for it so i just follow the instructions uh and so i've got to go through that over the next few days but that this is like good work for me because it's kind of mindless work i like this work it's like a nice kind of end of the year thing so i got to be pulling that together plus i love watching the uh the little chart that I make.

I love watching it populate and seeing, because there's always surprises in there for me. So I find it kind of fascinating as a process to go through. And also, as I'm sure you will be, Jason, I have to finalize my own nominations, because mine and Jason's nominations, they weigh quite heavily, because we actually make the decision.

But I like to i like to see the uh submissions of the upgrading it helps me it helps me pull my ideas together and also very many times helps us make awards because i have a bunch of categories this year that i do not have uh strong answers for if any at all so i'm excited to see what the upgradians say so thank you for listening to this episode of Upgrade and we'll be back next week if you want to find Jason online you can go to sixcolors.com and he's at jsnell I'm at imyke

I-M-Y-K-E thank you so much to our sponsors Setapp, Hunter Douglas and Bombas and if you relay for a member and support this show thank you as well Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Stone.

Ho, ho, ho!