Episode 80 – Busy Time

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/

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https://www.pixicade.com/

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Transcript

that’s a good thing to have on our checklist. When we start these sessions, he lost a good chat at the start last time, but I think we included it somehow as we went on. Yeah. We gave an overview a summary. So here’s what we kind of talked about. All right. Moving on, pull up some notes for today. We have a couple of things.

Uh, the weekend, the RG let’s let me [00:01:00] recap that real quick for ya. Um, it was okay. Uh, there were white as many people as I’m used to in Cincinnati. Uh, and I think a couple of the people running, it were new. So, you know, there were bumps and stuff. Uh, of course you had some people just sitting around bitching.

It’s like, okay, I have not even talking to you people, you know, whatever know that’s a sad thing in mental or any volunteer organization, just how much the people who are not doing anything are willing to talk about how it should be done. Right. You know what I mean? There’s, there’s this, it’s, it’s very tough to stay a happy, involved volunteer when 80% of the feedback you get is how you somehow screwed up.

Yeah. Yeah. And I know how rough those things are to plan and execute and the logistics of doing that stuff. Jason had a fantastic weekend. I mean, Sarah Sunday morning, Gina texted him at three [00:02:00] 30. He’s like, Hey, uh, you coming back to the room and going to bed. He’s like, I’m still playing cards. So very good.

That’s all, you know, I’m getting a little to stay till Dawn, but that was one of, some of our favorite RG memories is you’re goofing off with friends. You don’t want it to stop. So you do you play until 3 45 in the morning and then you’re like, well, I had a program I really want to see at nine o’clock.

Can I get my on three hours of sleep and a shower I’m going to try? Yeah. Nope. And my talks were okay. Um,

the first, the first one was supercharger kids talking to parents about things we aren’t teaching our kids for the future, for their work in life that we should. Um, and I, you know, of course, as making a few little adjustments and edits up to the last minute, it was the first time I’ve done it. So I’m still working out Kingston.

And I didn’t realize I was using open office instead of PowerPoint. And open office is a little harder to use at times a little [00:03:00] clunkier. Uh, and I did not realize that I had turned off several slides. So I’m going through the presentation and like this isn’t making sense. You can take them out of the stream cause you kind of want to have them for future, but you don’t have no.

Yeah. And so I got done I’m like that wasn’t right. There was something that was missing and someone might talk that and feel flowy. Like it should up to this crescendo and I missed a few notes on the way. So I’m like, okay, well now I know how to use it properly in there you go. And the second one went pretty good.

Uh, that was, uh, actual learning, a new skill video game storytelling for kids and how to prepare for it. Um, and that went fairly good, better than I thought. And we had some fun, cause I use a program called pixie. Kate, I’ll put a link. Um, essentially you use colored markers and each color represents a wall or a bad guy or something you can move or a goal and you draw a level and then you take a picture of it with the app and it turns it with all the [00:04:00] physics into a game like that.

That’s very cool. I mean, I’ve always went the very first time. They started to have visual things like logo or whatever like that, where you did programming, not by typing and having to worry about typos and exact syntax and stuff, but actually just be able to, my robot wants to take this path and it, I don’t know.

I, I said that poorly. It’s more like here’s a box for an if then thing. Here’s a box for a repeating thing. Here’s a, you know what I mean? Characteristics of how learning, how to code, which is its own language and its own mindset and making it as approachable and easy as possible. That’s a very cool thing.

And so you’re seeing that people are going to have not something as rudimentary as that level of programming, but how to create alternate levels for their favorite video, because they can imagine, well, the third floor of the castle it’d be cooler. If it was like this, you know what I mean? Additional, and I’m not focusing on programming.

It’s something I talk about. And it’s like, you know, start with these steps and do that when you really get into it. It’s more [00:05:00] about creating a story that works for a video game and how to work on narrative branching stories for video games, if that’s the skill and boat. So it works well for that, but there’s some other tools that work even better.

It’s just trying to get the time, uh, because I was an hour and I felt rushed. Uh, what I need is an hour talk in our. That’s a great way to put it. You know, Natalie, like say I’ve often been told, you know, the way to do a good talk is tell them what you’re going to tell them and then tell them, and then tell him what you told him.

Right? And so it’s hard to do that all in an hour. And if there really is any kind of experiential component, any kind of hands-on, you kind of don’t want to interrupt your talk to get to that, but then you shouldn’t let people take it out for a spin kind of wandering the room. Like, I dunno, I’ve been at Oracom.

He talks where it was very hands-on and they first, the table tells you to go into where he seems to take a pretty good mix between here’s how to do it. And then walking around the room and saying, oh, you’re doing that slightly wrong. Let me show you. You know what I mean? Correcting errors immediately is a big [00:06:00] part of how to not let people go down a long, bad path and then language at the end where mine doesn’t look anything like yours, et cetera, et cetera.

And you still have, have a quote, uh, that we have to get on t-shirt. As we investigate this more, a couple of years ago, doing the duct tape wallets with. Uh, if you remember that you were sitting there and you’re like concentrated and doing it, you went, so when does the fun chicken? That’s just such a great t-shirt quote.

So we’ve got to put that on a t-shirt. I wrote it down and I’ve had it ever since, you know, so as we move forward with some of our t-shirts thinking and, and what we can do to do that, that’s going to be one of them. We have originals. It’s very cool that you did that. I have any number of friends, especially again, Dave flipped hell that at one point he said the most you ever made me laugh was this good line.

It’s like, wow. I kind of hardly remember it. I mean, I really am always just kind of chatting and it is situational [00:07:00] and throwing things out there. And sometimes they’re perfect and pithy and memorable, you know what I mean? I’ve made it out to any number of quotes out of context, discussions of the deck, I think, but I don’t know that I always remember is that like.

I have a whole bunch of spring loaded and I wait for the opportunity to like thrust it into the conversation. Just kind of pop out, you know what I mean? But it’s cool that they’re good. That they’re memorable enough. So

I have to so much Springs to mind. I was at a gathering in Virginia and I’m gathering and we were at breakfast and, um, people were talking through, you know, how medicines get, they start riffing hunting on various different things. And someone had arranged their, um, grits into a line. And so that was the great wall of China and the perfect opportunity arose when suddenly the room just got quiet.

And I said, you know, that’s the only breakfast you can see from space and people fell out of their chairs because of course it’s absurd. I don’t know it’s that [00:08:00] creative alive, but it was perfect for only was the great wall of China funny, but he actually in real time font a great addition to it that when you go back and forth, It builds instead of just being little bond, MOTS hahaha dropped into conversation.

I love when there’s fencing going on, there’s volleys back and forth. There are certain people like Fred Burke bear bird that he’s really good at. You start talking about bread and he never runs out of bread funds. I’ll make a right comment. And then you start to get more and more obscure. And he just, he’s amazing.

There’s a couple of us that are great at that kind of fencing. I try to be one of them, you know what I mean? So I’ve got a shirt. My kids got me, it says I like my puns intended. Exactly.

Oh, I’m sorry that we didn’t make it as, you know, without a vaccine mandate. It’s really tough for us to say what’s our favorite activities, gaming, chatting with people over meals programs. And in fact, a quick announcement, I just got asked to be the [00:09:00] publicity person for the upcoming AIG in Reno slash sparks.

Um, and I had done that for a couple of previous AGS and I, and, and so I’ll be doing that again. I’m, I’m pretty much active on social media. So I have a whole bunch of Facebook groups that I can post things in. And, and my, my writing style was pretty good at getting, um, a lot of people to sign up for both Indianapolis and Phoenix.

But having said that there still no, like in text, on the website, whatever, yes, there’s going to be a vaccine requirement. And so I kind of said to the chair, Beth, you know, it’s going to be hard for me to get the right amount of enthusiasm when I’m not sure I’m going, you know, if they didn’t have one for Kansas city and that one got canceled, because that was early in COVID and we, it was more like the hotel and the local laws didn’t allow.

We just did one in Texas where wow. While Texas was full of people in beds, in parking lots, because they were overwhelming their ICU capability. We still had our gathering and I just couldn’t do it. Thank [00:10:00] God. We didn’t have an outbreak. We had, I think they, they said they had one person to test it positive, but it, from the doing a little bit of contract tracking, they didn’t say, oh my God, now we’re going to have Sturgis Mensa style.

But it isn’t only about what message should do. It’s about me and Colleen, you know, we’re both in our sixties, I’ve had melanoma, I’ve had atrial fibrillation. There’s a list of things that you don’t want to get. COVID because they’re complicated when you get that, you know, I’m, I’m pre-diabetic, as you have some issues with that as well.

I so much, is it just because I’ve gotten too old to go to places where I really can’t breathe the same air as everybody, it’s kind of that. And so I, I will be doing my job and talking about there’s all these cool features as you know, Yeah, an ag is an RG times 10, that many more cool programs and special events.

The gala speaker, the Mr. is now what’s both Mr. And Mrs. All kinds of cool stuff, but something deep in me says, wow, the smart group should be smart. And we really shouldn’t be exposing our best friends to [00:11:00] potential complications. And a mask mandate is a good step in the right direction, but vaccination is important.

So important nowadays, why aren’t we setting that good example? Right. And in fact, it’s also, from what I understand, some of the consideration is what we don’t want to exclude anybody because there are some people that can’t get the vaccine, the younger they are immunocompromised or whatever else it might be.

And I guess my reply is, wow, those are executive people. You don’t want to come into the gathering either. The ones that are more at risk, not less. I don’t know. You know, that’s the argument you use when you’re just talking to somebody on the street as to why you can’t go to a restaurant, you can’t do immersion for five days in closed spaces.

Those activities and feel good about what your chances are. And yet I’m just not seeing that line of reasoning all was being followed. Uh, so I mean, you know, obviously there are still people out there that don’t get it and think, oh, it’s not a big deal or it’s over or whatever. And I just posted that article yesterday, it’s from NPR, [00:12:00] which I would hope would be a little more fact checking, a little more trustworthy in its reporting.

And it correlated said, look of the counties that voted Trump, those people are three times more likely to die from COVID than the counties that voted by it. If it’s like an overall look at the county, right. There you go. I mean, I know people would say, oh, it’s all this, that, and the other thing. But as an example, I have a friend, my old Scoutmaster he’s in his mid seventies, he fell yesterday, hurt his knee, had to go to the emergency.

Which is a dangerous place nowadays. It is. He got there at three 30 yesterday afternoon and got home at a quarter to five this morning, but like 14 hours. Wow. Because they have 14 beds in the emergency ice and ICU, and eight of them are with people on respirators, from COVID and from everything you hear, once you’re on the respirator, your chances are pretty nil.

And so these are people that [00:13:00] didn’t get the vet. So he was in the waiting room and there were still guys in there saying, this is ridiculous. Uh, they say it’s, COVID, it’s all a joke and alliances damn Democrats that are not what’s going on. They’re saying it can’t be what you say it is. That’s mind boggling to me,

you know, I would never have look for that quarterly. But the groups have made it very political and very like social weirdness as to why you believe in vaccines or not. And you take a vaccine. I just posted a thing with a shirt that says the last variant is communist. And like how in the world have you made it that getting a vaccine or not is a political statement or that it’s fear of socialism that you do, I’ll keep you and your loved ones and your neighbors and I, but it has become that.

There’s no denying that it’s there, as you said from your charts. And so I so much don’t want anybody to die with this. [00:14:00] If people are going to die, they’re now bringing it on themselves. I’ve said 99% of the people that are dying are indeed the ones that have refused the vaccine. And so I guess Darwin written.

If you really are like, you know, there’s a, there’s a great old joke about, you know, someone waiting for God to save them from being on a rooftop of a flooded house. And he’s like, I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a robot. I sent you a helicopter. Didn’t you take the hint. It was trying to help you. Then it is the hand of God reaching down from out of the clouds to save you.

I mean, that was going around, uh, it showed a Viagra pill from Pfizer. It says, you know, you trust us with this, you know? And, and, and I bet those same people, all the government and vaccines and this, Hey, can I have an aspirin because I have a headache. Yeah. See, it’s kind of the number of examples that we can start naming of like how in the world have you gotten to this place of, like, you don’t know what’s in a hot dog and yet you eat them and that’s the argument you use about [00:15:00] like, okay, it’s someone, just, someone just had their cousin dialect Monday and it was along the lines of, he said he didn’t do it because it was, you know, untested and we’re all getting.

And so it’s. So first of all, um, it might’ve been that at the start that you were worried about that, but after you seen millions, hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine given out without huge drastic side effects, you got to say, well, we have to through the experiment and it’s being proven to be that it’s 99.999 effective against the disease and no bad side effects.

And if you do any kind of looking into it, it isn’t just, Hey, I whipped this up in the lab, let’s try it. It was 20 years in the making in terms of investigating MRN technology and vaccines themselves are 70 years in the making. And so, so many of the arguments, this happens all the time. The first thing they say is what they’re going to stick to.

They’re not going to learn anything new. They’re not going to listen to any other opinions or learned opinions or facts in kind of that order. I [00:16:00] feel that somehow they’re showing weakness, if they don’t stick to their guns, well matter how feeble and foolish and ill advised that gun that they chose it.

I, the fuck it then die. You know what I mean? Are you, people might argue and say I’m wrong and it might be a harsh statement, but personally I will point almost every bit of the problems we’re having right now to the last president. And if I’m wrong on that, and he announced it was a hoax, he didn’t take it seriously.

He had tripped out all of our protections that we have to handle pandemics that had been built, not just by the Obama administration, but by like 10 previous presidents administration. And so that, that weirdness of creating a problem and then saying, you’re the only one to solve it, but then failing to solve it, but then finding someone to blame.

That’s kind of like the Republican rule book written large. Sorry, not just Trump. [00:17:00] It’s kind of weird. I don’t mean to get into political discussions and yet the data is there. The pattern is there to be found. How many times have we had a budget discussion that the budget doesn’t matter when they are cutting taxes and overspending and so forth.

But the minute that the other side is an office, it’s all about the budget deficit. It’s always about the bed, the debt ceiling. And I’m like, wow. And unfortunately it seems enough time. The public just says, oh God gas prices are going up. It’s this guy’s fault, but no, it’s a complex thing. And the oil companies that are in charge of gas prices and maybe oil was just, it’s not just a matter of the U S releasing a strategic oil reserves, how much profiteering is being done whenever there’s a crisis.

And you can see the data and prove that that’s happened again. And again right now I just inflation, oh gosh, prices are going up. There’s so much proof that inflation is not a matter of what really causes it. Um, wage inflation or low Bower lowering rates or whatever else it might be. It’s the companies [00:18:00] that are raising prices on the standard basket of goods.

If you will. Um, they’ve made record profits. They’re not getting squeezed by the supply chain. They’re not getting squeezed by, um, uh, uh, labor difficulties and so forth. They’re just saying we can raise prices with impunity. And so we will, but we need a scapegoat inflation magic word.

So to sum that up, the, the one thing I, I remember every single time to sum that up is after the election and Biden was elected and there were still problems with, COVID still problems with people with the vaccine and stuff. And you started seeing the posts of everybody blaming Obama. What that it’s his fault about the vaccines?

If you can’t that’s my problem. You can’t argue with something that stupid with somebody that totally believes it. And you know, we’ve thrown that word around stupid or [00:19:00] whatever. And I know kids get yelled at don’t call somebody stupid. I have no other word when it’s that stupid. And there are levels of that.

There’s the irrationality of not being able to like follow how a line of thought works. There’s the unacceptance of facts of science or whatever else it might be. But there’s just, I know we must have talked about this before. One thing that’s absolutely coming into my, come into my vocabulary over the last probably 10 years is the Dunning-Kruger effect.

What it is about is when you’re stupid or incompetent or just lower level in terms of your ability to interact with the world. I’m saying that just saying, there’s a topic that you don’t have all the knowledge of it doesn’t matter whatever else, but what it is is it’s about your inability to. How well, you know, that topic that you have, um, ridiculous confidence in your ability to handle situations.

And one of the situations that you don’t have any competency in is judging that. So the Dunning-Kruger effect [00:20:00] is about, you’re stupid about knowing whether you’re stupid or not. You shouldn’t be that confident. You should be able to say, I only got a certain amount of data. I only have so much experience in, Hey, if I think for a minute, someone was a lot of experience and a lot of data and a proven track record of correct conclusions.

Maybe I should listen to, Hey, instead of going out there, puff your chest out and or rate about some ridiculous. And so that I see that all the time and in the past I had dealt with it kind of on a smaller scale. There are certain occupations where it’s really important for you to look like, you know what you’re talking about because you’re in situations that are about that.

Yeah. As a police, you can’t show uncertainty, police, man, please, woman, as a lawyer, you can’t, as you know what I mean, anywhere, anywhere where you have to like, as a military guy, you have to be able to follow orders and tell others what their orders are without there being any hesitation, any maybe not.

Well, unfortunately, sometimes when you’re a lawyer, you kind of can’t turn that off. And so you’re dealing with a plumbing [00:21:00] problem at home and you’re like, well, I’m a lawyer. So I know all about everything. And that just isn’t the case. And that’s where I used to see it in isolated incidents where your job has formed you into this overconfident in everything.

God. And now it’s like just living in this world has formed certain people into this. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve tried to use the knowledge of what that is. Uh, for myself that when I start like, yeah, you know, that’s like this, I’m like, wait a second. I’m really not an expert in this. Maybe I should back off and find out more.

But then on the opposite, when I hear someone starting to spout this, that, and the other thing, I’m like, oh, well, you’re like that lower 20% that knows nothing about this. I’m not even listening to you. Can you compare? You can see that you’re being cautious. You’re having some humility, you know, I dunno, there’s a great quote from Bertrand Russell that says, you know, the problem with the world is that fools are certain all the time and wise men are filled with doubt.

And so whenever you have to say, well, here’s what I think it is. But here’s all the caveats as to the limits of our [00:22:00] knowledge, into significant digits that we can take this calculation out to that every one of those hedges, which is reality still comes across as well. He’s not a bold man taking charge.

What, you know what I mean? I get, oh man, I get that with the computer development and database stuff all the time that I’m asked to do this, that and the other thing. And then, you know, how do you think that. Well, you know, they could be this because of this and this. We have look at this and there’s this factor and, you know, we think, and they’re like, well, don’t, you know what you’re doing?

Well, yeah. That’s why I’m telling you that there’s all these complaints.

So jumping back real quick. One second. One of the great things about the RG this past weekend was, uh, I have a card game. That’s a Christmas elf card game that I have been working on. And I took that and we played, tested it a bit. So it was nice to play test with some people that loved to play games and was able to really dig into it a bit.

Uh, it [00:23:00] still needs some tweaking, you know, that. So hard people don’t realize how hard it really is to create something new, that’s fun and play a bubble. And you know, all the different things that go into all those things, especially when there’s so many games already out there to find something that has that unique element, but that it isn’t by going unique, you now become obscure or unplayable or something like that.

So hopefully the people that you had that were indeed some of the people that will be able to give you better feedback than usual, because they play games all the time. Well, it’s kind of like this gamble with these rules changed, but then here’s why it’s better or worse than them. And then you can tweak based on that feedback.

Yeah. So, and it’s, it’s just one of those creative endeavors, uh, that’s fun to work on and, and twist your mind around, uh, you know, that game has been through like five, six different iterations with changes to cards and rules and everything. It’s really close. There’s just one little bit more and I think it’ll be.

Good for you, you know, that’s, there, there sure [00:24:00] are enough stories of people that they, they have a good feel for playing lots of games as to what kinds of things they enjoy. And it isn’t totally, if there’s one kind of game, every time we go to mind games, as you know, there’s 20 different overall categories of games and you can be successful by being social but simple, or by being an all day long, conquer the world type game or a resource development game or an abstract strategy game.

And I kind of like all different kinds of things. And one of the things that’s often proposed at mind games is that people should be able if you will, to specialize and we’ll to play the strategy games, because that’s what they most love. But I think that some of the feedback that you have to give the game developers is not, this will only fit 10% of the market.

There’s this small niche. It really is. You should be able to give you and your staff to give feedback on all different kinds of games, because at first blush any kind of gaming experience is still going to help you give better feedback than just theater people. You know what I mean? So when I want to know, when I play.

It doesn’t really matter what my experience is. It matters that I [00:25:00] try to give feedback and a lot of other people there do not just rating it, but kind of saying here’s the ways in which the quality of the materials was better or worse than it needed to be, or here’s the way that, that has, it’s a great game, but you can play it once.

It doesn’t have any replayability because you actually like your cards while you’re playing or something like that, you know, in those games. Yeah. But, so I love that because as you know, I have the variety of the novelty gene, and so I love being exposed to all those various different things. And I often don’t play just a minimal number that I have to, I try to finish as many different games as I can in that weekend.

And I do go sleep lists and stuff like that are now not going totally oblivious, I guess, but not always in forums coming up for like Christmas time. We played that in usually April and then to see those games come to market and to see that sometimes they have incorporated some of the suggestions for medicines.

That’s very heartening that it wasn’t. Yeah, we did it to try to get the Mensa select seal, but that we actually listened to you guys who are avid game [00:26:00] players and we made a better, you know what I mean? So it’s always great. And, and you know, if I’m a worker placement strategy gamer, and that’s what I really love.

If that’s all I focused on, the problem is, you know, well, this is my 15th one this weekend. And I just don’t like this game because I don’t like the mechanic of having to do this, that near thing. Okay. That’s fine. But now you’re like, I want every game I play to be just like the ones I like, you know? So you got to try and judge them on the game itself.

Uh, and that’s, this is kind of, I, I have many times in the past said I’ve learned more about people from gaming with them for an hour that I’ve known when I’ve known them for 10 years. And part of the weirdness of going to bind games is when you really get to be. Well, they have, they have no depth. They have no capacity for complexity.

They don’t think moves plies ahead in various different games. They, how they play like a cooperative gangs. They’re not a cooperative person. This [00:27:00] is really hard for them. And I know that that’s a weird thing, but I really have kind of pigeonholed various different people. And it’s proven to be true when it’s like, wow, he really went off on someone over nothing in a game.

And that’s not only in a game. Do you know what I mean? People that are rules Nazis as we often call them. And they’re like, wow, they’re always looking for what rules. And not only because they want to know the rules because they can be the enforcer of the rules and see that play out in their lives. I think there’s something very cool.

Not only about learning about the games, but that exposure to 300 different medicines. And I think I’ve been about 98%, right. Picking up on, wow. That’ll, I’ll remember that about this person and not in a way that condemn them, but it really is just like, we’ve often talked about the Enneagram. What’s the Myers-Briggs these are other data points for understanding what works in a person, what their default problem-solve thing is, what their default socialization socializing thing is.

And then it’s just good to know that going in for [00:28:00] future interactions. I get it. You know what I mean? So difficult to hide or mask your true self and personality playing a game. Uh, it really kind of shows who you really are when you’re just in a social setting or you’re in charge of a group. There’s anything you can kind of act one way or there, but when you’re playing a game, it slipped.

Cause you’re, if you’re really concentrating on the game, uh, it’s a good indicator. Like you said, And maybe this is a little bit backpacking and I hope you don’t mind it. Uh, early on I realized I really wasn’t a killer. Like when we would play as a family, it was like some people, if they have the advantage, they press the advantage and they wipe you from the board.

And somehow when I would get someone, I would play the game and strategize and do well. But when it came down to it, like they have one country left final combat. I went back to like medieval times. It’s like, I’m not rolling three dice against your one. Let’s go one day, I guess one day I sent my champion, you send your champion and we’re [00:29:00] going to do this title, like more, no bleed.

And, and I, I there’s any number of times, I’m not kidding that I didn’t get them because they roll spectacularly with one die, their six beat, my fives and fours and so forth. Then they took cards and then they just came right back, you know, with 30, 50 armies or whatever like that. And so sometimes nobility causes.

And yet I never stopped doing, I don’t know what it was. My parents didn’t teach me that my friends didn’t teach me that there was something about, I just didn’t want to like crush them. I wanted to say, here we are at the end, you get to make a good stand. You know what I mean? Well, I think some of that is because it’s more about playing the game and having fun than about whoever wins.

And I think that really is a lot of, and I will also say this. So what I decided, oh, I’m all noble. I’m helping them out. Somebody once said you’re like a cat playing [00:30:00] with it. Like with a mouse that you, now that, you know, you have it now you’re 20 with it’s like, no, that’s not what I’m, but that’s not how it appears to other people all the time.

So I’m aware of that too. That what I thought I was doing as a favor, they took it as, why are you drawing this out? Fucking kill me. Yeah. Been there, done that. So speaking of jumping back, let’s get back. Uh, you’ve mentioned a couple of times of watching the Beatles, uh, documentary that’s on lately. So tell us about that.

I haven’t gotten a chance to catch it yet, but it’s a city. It’s a series. It’s three long episode, like two, two and a half hours. Each I think is a total of eight. So they’re like two and a half plus each. And it’s from the act of them, you know, um, making the, let it be album. So they’re kind of the Twilight of the beetle.

There’s starting to be fractures in them. Uh, George Harrison leaves a group for a while, but comes back. You can see. I don’t know, they’ve been the Beatles for a long time. [00:31:00] They’ve had incredible fame, incredible spotlight on them. This isn’t about that. It’s about them working in the studio and being together.

And you can see that they’re still good friends. They’re incredibly playful with each other. Sometimes even when there’s difficult things happening. The fascinating thing about this was in the act of staying camera on these guys. It isn’t the selective snippets that you often get from bio pics. They don’t compress things down.

You see them huddling around roaming playing and get back emerge like in real time, this amazing memorable pantastics song comes out of Paul McCartney’s fingers on guitar. People contributing lyrics and they’re wrinkled twenties and on drums and sort of starts to form up, but just seeing the creative process, the, the light coming on the birth of things.

And that’s not the only song they do this with. It’s fascinating. Uh, I dunno, it makes me Revere the Beatles all the more, but just from the act of noodling [00:32:00] around, they’re going to come up with a song we’ll sell a hundred million copies. It’s, you know, the long and winding road. And, um, let it be, we haven’t gotten to that yet, but I know it’s going to be something like whoever, I think it’s all song when he offers it.

The whole group is going to go, let’s do that. Let’s you know what I mean? Sometimes when I’m sure that the first time that a Tommy Shaw played Renegade for stick, they all said, this is a monster hit. Let’s make this as good as we can. And a number of groups must know that sometimes the record company executives are pressuring them to produce hits.

Well, what’s the about somebody walks into the room with smells like teen spirit with, you know, um, there’s, there’s certain things. The first time you hear them on the radio, you got to know by Alanis Morissette. Oh man. It’s like the perfect song for that kind of song that boys with Leon bass and whatever, you know what I mean?

It’s just, I’ll push back on that a little bit [00:33:00] because I’ve been in this situation, writing music and stuff like that. And I’ve interviews from actual bigger names and stuff like. That’s not actually the case. Most often there are so many times those song that becomes the hit is the one they did. Weren’t going to put on the record or the one that, you know, they didn’t think was that great.

And everyone else loves it. Or this is the one this is going to make us a break us. And it flops, you know, it, it happens way off. Yeah, exactly. So what I was thinking about the Beatles, I’m sure that they had ain’t, like you said, any number of surprise hits and also it’s not always collaborative. I remember reading about the meeting of leftover true by Kansas, that Carrie LeBron kept coming in with great song after a great song.

And usually Steve Walsh and others contributed, but they just kind of like, wait, we can’t top this, every one of these songs is fantastically. Stellarly good. Let’s go with them. And then sometimes people get writer’s block and they fade away a little bit. And then somebody else kind of swoops in, I don’t know, [00:34:00] uh, uh, I, it was, I guess I really love seeing the creative process, a couple things that you’re at all a Beatles.

It’s really obvious that Yoko didn’t break up the beetle. That’s such a canard. That’s been pastoral target though, is an easy target, but it really wasn’t. Some part of what’s been said in the press maybe is that she wasn’t hearing, she wasn’t continually chiming in and acting as if you were a beetle and saying, oh no, this is good.

This is not good. He pretty much sat at John’s side and she might’ve been a distraction. And she might’ve been that. He was by magnetism pulling him out of the Beatles because they were going to go do other things. But while she was in the studio, that was not the case. Billy Preston coming in was the guy that finished that album.

They’re all having difficulty sometimes getting to that good version, the lyrics, not always what you expect them to be in the final thing. And Billy Preston, just having this great, full, full, playful keyboard playing that he does. Not only all the films. His energy is his [00:35:00] joy. His love of playing makes everybody like, need to take this so seriously, you know, we’re grinding this out.

How, if we just try things and it’s very obvious that people always talk about who was the fifth Beatle. I don’t know if I call them the fifth Beatle. Cause I think it was only for that one or two albums, but nonetheless, he was so much the spark that they needed. Not George Martin, the producer, not Yoko, not, um, Linda McCartney when she was Eastland.

Exactly. She came in and you know, just that for people that I admire so much, it was very cool to see a little bit, maybe feet of clay where they’re not always perfect. They can be belligerent, they can be, but it’s also, they really are even better than I ever imagined. Paul McCartney is. Yeah. You know what I mean?

That guy has made, like, we’ve talked about him, Billy Joel, Elton John, Randy Newman. They’ve written a hundred great songs, not like two albums worth 30 albums worth of an entire career. [00:36:00] Neil Morris from Spock’s beard who people don’t know as much, but when I’ve seen him do it, do a concert about here’s what I was doing and thinking while I was creating these various different things and him talking through, no, you gotta go, you know, from G back to D or whatever, it’s like, they speak the musical language.

They, they just try things. And then it sounds just right or it doesn’t, but they immediately know what to do to play with it, fix it, give somebody else a better lick. And hopefully that the Eagles are not so much in a way, part of what led to George Hearst believing for a while was that he was kind of being talked too much about what to play instead of being also a creative input to the group.

So I don’t know. We’re all in George are very, um, Paul and Ringo, the two surviving. Very brave to release this warts and all. And in fact, what I understand like Disney is the guys who put it out. They were like, well, we got to tone this down. He goes on the Disney channel, it’s got swearing. And they kind of said, are you kidding me?

We’re like late twenties guys. We, we, you know, that’s what you do when you’re in the studio and something isn’t [00:37:00] working out, you know? So it’s, it really is authentic. I, I just loved it. It’s really, really. Yeah. You know, so it really is. We didn’t watch it all the way through. We didn’t even binge like single episode.

You’re two and a half hours. We kind of like, okay, I kind of, I’m kind of full of this. Let’s go, come back to it. We interspersed it with the latest British baking show, holiday episodes or whatever else for watching. Well, you were talking about the creation and I know Paul has said he and John, one of them would come up with song the rift, the main idea.

And the other is like, oh man, now I got to come up with something that’s better. And so that competition helps a lot too, but you know, we’ve mentioned the fifth beetle, George Martin, um, I think back to Def Leppard cause they came out with pyromania and they were like the hard rock band of 80. You know, that that was a huge album, huge hit for them in the [00:38:00] career potential in front of them.

And then they go into the studio and the exact say, we’re going to give you mutt Lange who has done meatloaf. Uh, and, uh, she did, uh, uh, was a Bonnie Raitt or some kind of Carrie Underwood. You know, one of those that kick started that. So, uh, a big producer and he basically helped put the songs together. So every single song was a hit that he even said that was his goal.

He’s like, why can’t you have an album where every song is a top 10. And so he helped create that. And it took leopard to a whole nother level with hysteria. And that’s still like one of the top 10 albums ever sold and all that jazz, you know? So there was something to be said, not always for the musicians.

You get that right combination with the engineer or producer songwriter, Bernie Toppan and Elton John, you know, look how many songs they put together at [00:39:00] collaborative. Yeah. One thing they haven’t talked about, I know that Alan Parsons, for instance, figured into some Beatles albums around this same period, as well as pink Floyd and other things, but they haven’t like named him and showed him instead.

It was, um, I don’t remember all the names, um, the wizard, the guy that like actually made the entire studio that they were going to record in and was really good at cobbling things together. Because at that point they were going from like four to eight track to be able to just have that many tracks, to be able to record on that things don’t have to care.

They, they haven’t talked about the production. As much, but part of what makes them those Beatles album beautiful is that they listened with great production. You know what I mean? So it, it, um, it comes across much more, more organic. Nobody’s telling them what to do there even is like, Hey, we have a TV special coming up.

You’ve got to get these songs done so we can put the album out so that we can have this special. And then it doesn’t happen that way. But nobody is able to tell the Beatles, oh, now where you’re you’re you, you have to do, especially, even if you’re not ready [00:40:00] or now you lose a lot of money, that there were so much, like, whenever you’re ready, we’ll take it because we know that you are it’ll the guys in rock and roll.

Yeah. And they’ve never really had to worry about having jobs or if they were going to make money off something. And it almost is, you know, there you go right there, uh, with all the success, all the money, all the, everything you had in life. And John didn’t even get to stick around and enjoy it, you know?

And then Jordan. He, yeah, he did live okay life, but it’s still not like Paul and Ringo now, you know what I mean? George has been dead 20 years, 25. Exactly. This, I just probably just read this and inform you that if he got shot outside the Dakota in New York, a hotel slash apartment building, if I remember correctly and they done away, he was living there at the time.

He actually heard the shots that took him out. So that, I mean, I, you know, there really [00:41:00] is always interconnections that you just don’t imagine, you know, you don’t want to hear bullets sound on city streets, and then to find out that it wasn’t sadly a straight shot, that it was actually a terrible thing to think about John Lennon.

So, yeah. Yeah. But you know, Beatles, uh, Colin, that’s like his favorite group. Um, you know, who hasn’t heard the Beatles, heck a gunslinger, Stephen King, the whole series practically revolves around pay Jude. It’s really true. You know, I was inspired. I have lots of beetles out, but not enough. I don’t have the catalog and they haven’t always been easy to get because quite, uh, I dunno like stingy about releasing thing, but at least what I’m probably going to do to get for Colleen and I is get like the greatest hits the red and the blue or the one.

I think one of the ones I have, and I really love listening to album the way that they were put out, because a great time capsule aspect of the artists is much more in charge [00:42:00] of what order they want. Things played and stuff like that. So I don’t know that I always go for greatest hits collections, and yet I want to be able to put on just this thing has 40 grades Beatles spot.

That’s what I want to hear while I’m wrapping Christmas gifts this year, the beetle, it was that time. And the kids nowadays, we’ve talked about this. They don’t understand that. Pleasure of listening to an album all the way through the way it was intended. Uh, and you know, they’re really just, everything’s gotta be a greatest hits album.

Uh, but I go through depends on the time of day. Sometimes I’ll just hit, you know, pull out 10, 12 albums from different artists, put them in a jumble and hit, you know, random sometimes I’ll say, oh, I really feel like Tom petty. So I’m going to start with his first album and I’m going to go all the way through his albums org.

I really love this album. It’s on repeat for the rest of the week. Yeah, hardly ever do that. Hardly ever listened to albums that gas, you get a second, listen in a row from me are extraordinarily rare. [00:43:00] It’s like, boy, I just want to hear that again. Cause I, I have listened to it for six months and one isn’t going to be enough.

I don’t want another. So I think I mentioned there’s an album by Thomas Dolby called astronauts inherited any kind of some radio play and so forth. It’s perfect. Every single cut on the album. That’s what I would call it. A perfect album where there’s no, clinkers, there’s no filler. Everything is great.

And it very much portrays him. And it just, there’s so many things that like, I get a little ear worm. It’s like, I really need to hear that song. And yet those four songs. So there’s certain things that are there like that. I’ll. Wow. Um, oh, he’s one of those artists that had a little radio airplay and you wouldn’t say he was successful in the sense of pop 40 hits and you know, posters on the wall and.

But he’s extremely, well-respected in light throughout the industry and music efficient and nanos. Yeah. I’ll listen to hummus. Don’t be, you know, exactly. And there’s actually a kind of a set of like 80 guys. I really like Howard Jones. [00:44:00] I really like Thomas Dolby. I like the Thompson twins. I like tears for fears that they, they stood out.

There was so much, oh, look, I bought a little 16 key keyboard and I’m going to painted it. Love man. Like, that’s just not enough of a song to me, but other people made beautiful music. You know what I mean? So I still listen to those to this day. Howard Jones is one of those guys. I’ll listen to like his first four or five albums in a row when I’m having a Howard Jones Jones.

I really don’t want him to leave anything out. I want to hear until he. Until they got them here. And those albums, liter albums haven’t grabbed me as much, but those first like four rate stuff all the way. I love Howard. One of the albums that you do, by the way, I’ll put on Tom petty, he has a box set that is like all kinds of, besides rarities back from the mud quest days and stuff.

And I’ll be like, slides one to four. Here we go. Over to the TD side. Did you [00:45:00] tape that track? Uh, what are the, uh, albums groups? Uh, that just floored me the first time I heard it was third stage by Boston. That album is one of those that you can’t just listen to. One song. The album is constructed in a way that each song leads to the next so well.

And, uh, who was it? Tom wood. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, did such amazing work to get the song. Pleasure. I’ll that album over. If I remember it there’s even a little blip on the album where he talks about at one point, the master tape got gluey. Yeah. Cause he spent like six, seven years or something. Exactly. And so it was like, oh, thank God.

It wasn’t lost. And start over. Cause talking about a punch in the face that would be right. And uh, rush is one and led Zeppelin. Sometimes those two bands. If I get in the mood [00:46:00] quite often, I put an album number one, okay. 2, 3, 4. And I go through the catalog. That’s me too. And in fact I’ve actually, I hardly I’ve ever created playlist for purposes.

Like this is the party, this is the driving. Most of what I’ve done is I’m going to listen to an album, a group where there’s all kinds of things, but I want to listen to chronologically, like you’re saying. So you can’t listen to Jethro Tull because the first album alphabetically is a, and that’s like their 18th album.

So I’ve, I’ve done it for Jethro tall for Kansas, for Alan Parsons project, where I really want to hear them chronologically because you can kind of hear them develop as an artist. You can hear, you can remember the period of your life daily, Dan wise, you can say that’s the, I was riding my bike to that song.

That’s why, that’s what I, I kept the reminiscence as well as the appreciation for their music. You know what I mean? Steely, Dan is another one that I enjoy much more than I’ve gotten older than I did when I was younger. It’s grown on me even more. Yeah. I w I would say that’s true. They, weren’t one of [00:47:00] my absolute favorites when I was growing up, but Kelly really liked them.

And so I’ve been playing more of them and now I’m like, wow, they have always been good. I just didn’t whatever that frame of mind that I was in that I was much more into all of my prog rock instead of jazz rock that. Now I’ve added them. My I’ll listen to them anytime I really enjoyed. Yeah, definitely good musicians there.

Donald Fagan.

Um, Felder right then no way we can’t miss him because these guys were important just a minute. Uh, and not remembering, oh, sorry. We still respect you, but why is it not popping out solo albums? Yeah. And let, let’s not talk about the, the, uh, uh, Walter Becker, Jesus, Walter Becker and Donald Fagan. Jeez. I think that’s probably why usually they’re set in that order.

And so that, [00:48:00] yeah, I did it backwards and you know, let’s not talk about the origin nation of there name. If you don’t know what that is. Go ahead and look that up. I believe William Burroughs first use it in the book. As I recall those damn British, they, they, they always do events. So you’ve mentioned a couple of times, uh, some of the, um, the inventions and some of the stuff from this Time-Life magazine before it gets to be too old and we get to next year’s timeline.

What’s some more of the stuff from that that you’ve been reading. I talked about a little bit before. Really the overall thing is it’s so hard. You know what I mean? We, we often talk about, well, things are tough in the world right now. Things are pretty polarized. Non-thinking going on, but when you see these inventions coming out that are just improving the world in a hundred different ways and, and that it’s not only pure science, it’s like, they’re very human.

And it’s kind of funny because I knew I wouldn’t remember a hundred, but I [00:49:00] wanted to like scroll through and bring things up there. Things like, um, uh, with artificial intelligence, it is only about, Hey, we figured out how to do finance better. There are things like, um, if you’re going to have inspections of pipe that you really have to keep working the combination of, um, creating little drones or robots that can be in those pipes without human beings.

And then being able to put together all those data sets to say not only something is actively broken, but prediction that says if we’re going to try to get to this before it breaks, which is a disaster, but do preventative, they’ve made huge advances. Um, cities are filled with, you know, 10 and 20 and 50 and 102 hundred year old pipes or electric, or very super public utilities.

And they’re making great advances on how to do that. So that it’s the least amount of tearing up main street disruptive. You know what I mean? Practical things. It’s very cool. Look at the, the [00:50:00] building that, uh, apartment building that collapsed and it had just been inspected and the guy warned everybody, you know, and I think that’s cool because when people think of top 100 inventions, they’re thinking of the sleek pop culture stuff, the new cars, the new grade.

Yeah. I think it’s cool that they, they recognize, Hey, this is important and this is a big deal. Exactly. Well, I’m going to page around a little bit. Let’s see. I’m a very human thing. Um, so, uh, roof entertainment is international. A film gets made in a certain country and with a certain language and culture, and then it gets often distributed.

Sometimes it’s with subtitles. Sometimes they dove it. Well, you and I have watched I’m sure movies from Japan, France, Germany, et cetera, where they got the w pretty close, but it’s not quite right. And it’s actually very disconcerting and like Woody Allen level. Funny of, that’s not what the guy was really saying.

They’re now making it that between them being able to digitize [00:51:00] film and be able to actually manipulate like, kind of like old, um, uh, Scott McCloud space Rangers were only the most moved and being able to speed up slow down and manipulate language. They can make it, that it looks like is it’s in whatever language you’re dumping.

It is finished. People are not feeling left out because it looks like the guy who’s speaking authentic. In a star wars movie or whatever it might be. That’s amazing. I’ve been, I mean, I’ve been reading and keeping up with a lot of the AI technology and voice technology for using AI robot. So one of the things they’re saying is probably going to come about here in the future is if you buy the audio book of whatever, your favorite novel that you can choose a voice to have it read to you back and it’s computer generated, uh, it’s not there yet because like ACX, doesn’t allow computer generated voices as to be read by a person, but then you could also have that book read in your language, [00:52:00] uh, wherever you’re at and translated on the fly in a voice that sounds like your country, uh, male, female, young, old, yeah, exactly.

Into another invention. You know, we know we’re talking obviously, um, you know, wonderful video streaming and. They have international meeting. And instead of it being that we’re going to have to have everybody speak English. Cause that’s how the lingua franca that’s. One of my favorite jokes is like, even that, you know, English tends to like knock people down and steal their terms, you know, Swiss army knife of languages.

That’s another one. So, um, they’re now making it that because translation has become so good and is so mighty that they can do it in real time when you’re having an international meeting or a United nation session or, uh, you can have it be that everybody is hearing in their language. What’s being said in your real nice.

It isn’t I guess, sorry. Translators who there might be. I don’t think there’ll be out of their jobs as much as don’t be the guys that are now advising well, there’s idiomatic language. It. [00:53:00] Being able to create these translation algorithm is still as a matter of dictionary to dictionary a correspondence.

That’s not exact. And so there’s still going to be a whole bunch of work as they try to translate, not into the top 10 languages, but how about the top 2050 at a hundred so that soon, and it’s not only that we have to cover, how many is it nowadays? 270 nations. You kind of have to cover all the dialects of Chinese.

It’s all the dialects of Bantu or whatever else it might be. So I just, the fact that they can do that in near real time is the fit. It’s something that used to be science fiction. And someone said, give us a chance with our Nvidia chips to catch up and we’ll be there. So that’s and yeah, you’re right.

That probably will put a lot of translators out of this. Not that that’s like a huge number of people in the world. It’s there are people, but I that’s, one of the things I did talk about in my one talk, it’s like, it’s always happened folks that, that, you know, people will ma oh, we’re losing these jobs, but they’re always getting replaced with something new.

You know, I mean, [00:54:00] I ask everybody, I’m like, I ask everybody, how many of you went to the blacksmith to get new shoes on your horse before you rode over here to the RG, you know, or, or how many of you told the caboose, uh, driver, thank you for bringing the train so you can get here. None of us, you know, we all drove, those jobs are gone.

How many of you pick up a phone and ask the operator? None. So I understand that if it was my job, I’d be lamenting and too, but then there’s always new opportunities coming about to, in fact, that’s, you know, not only loving the future, but also being a little bit of investor in it, like, so battery technology gets better and better.

That’s one of those things that there’s so much research going into it and it. Real interesting, you know, material science, which I’ve always loved. Do we really understand fully how the batteries operate, how nickel metal hydride does and what variations can be trialed that and how do we [00:55:00] keep tweaking that?

So we get more and more power out of less and less space or with cheaper materials or whatever the constraints might be. So there’s all kinds of things where now there’s a cover for your phone. That like is as thin as the one that used to put on just to protect it in case you dropped it. So you wouldn’t crack the screen, but it’s got a battery now.

So that’s now how you keep your phone charged is that thing can, we can give you 16 hours instead of eight hours of battery life or whatever else it is. It makes us so to you being without charge and never happen. You know, they have charging stations going on everywhere now for EVs electric vehicles.

And I just saw an ad for like, Hey, we’re going to make that into kind of a cock Robin type. While you’re getting a vehicle charge, some will come out and distribute your burger. It’s like, what, uh, how do I invest? What a perfect opportunity for if I’m going to be having to cool my heels for 30 to 60 minutes, depending on how mighty the charger is and what kind of car you have, perfect opportunity for someone that rollerskates your food [00:56:00] before you could, uh, you know, sit there and watch some episode of a TV show or a movie or something at the same time.

Know like that. Exactly. Another thing they talked about is that you’ve seen this ad on TV, so particular model of the Ford F150. If I remember correctly has a mighty enough battery that in case your house loses power and you don’t have a generator, you can hook your truck up and give your house a nice worth of.

Wow. And so like what an interesting, you know, they’re talking about how we’re going to get our cars starts. We’ve put enough power out to our garage so that when we finally go Evie, instead of hybrid, we’ll be able to do it out there, but it’s also, we’re gonna get the solar panels on so that we’re going to be able to charge things to our house and not have it charge our car up.

And if it turns out that the car has more charge than the house currently does, it’ll be playing back and forth with all the right regulators so that it maximizes your available power, depending on what your situation. And can’t, you know, it’s got the little trips in that are going to say, [00:57:00] well, here’s how low, and I’ll let you know can’t overcharge.

So it can’t blow up on you or anything like that. There’s, there’s all kinds of wonderful monitoring. It’s not with the universe of things, but at least associated with things like that. They’ve all got little governor chips on them now, so that they have. The guy that you’d want to say, checking your battery level 10,000 times a minute to let you know how you’re doing that little idiot, savant chip is doing them.

And I’m sending you a text to your phone when it is getting, you know what I mean? There’s this such interesting sparks. You definitely. Aren’t going back to getting your horse to shot. Exactly. Let’s see a whole bunch of AR and VR type stuff. Like, you know, the better and better glasses or goggles that are going to give you some screens that you can drop down and interact with as if there’s a computer on your head.

AR so these see for the world, and I’m, I’m fascinated by that, you know, uh, what’s the name of that mountain over there? What’s the name of this person or their name and I’m embarrassed, that kind of stuff. And [00:58:00] there’s a third model for that quick update on that. Now that you mentioned it, uh, everybody around here has been first for some reason.

If that’s a tech thing, a soured, whatever everyone’s looks to me and says, so when are we getting it? I’m making the final decision. And I’m not sure why that happens other than I’m the tech guy. I get that. But then when we don’t know, it’s your obligation. Yeah. But when we don’t have it, because I don’t think it’s the right time or we’re not ready for it, or whatever reason that everyone like gets grumpy with me.

It’s like, oh, you kind of job, go get your own. I mean, shut up anyway. Everybody’s been like, why, why don’t we have VR goggles yet? You know, my answer is well, cause I don’t want all you sweaty kids using my VR goggles, but I don’t think. I didn’t want to get a VR Goggle set. It’s like, oh, I can only buy from this store.

And these other games are exclusive over here, so I can’t play them. And then these other ones are over and I was just like, that’s mover advantage. But there was first mover limitations. Cause you got to [00:59:00] commit to some, you know what you’re saying? I’ve done that with too many things and I don’t want to do it.

Right. So I was looking at it and then you got the problem with like, some of them are self-contained, but they’re not quite as powerful. And then you have ones that hook up to the computer or console, but then you’re stuck wherever that computer and console is. Exactly. But you’re getting much better and better, but they’re they’re eventually.

So it really is. If you will like computers now, Whatever you just bought. There’s already a better model out there. You know what I mean? On the price point that made it for you. But you know that in six months they’re going to have new guy NB, because they’re going to keep grooming these various different things.

But having said that VR is the technology. That’s been the next big thing for what? 20 years now, even talking to him, I, I saw my first demonstration. Um, swooping around on a Tara. Dackle when I was at an early Macworld in like 1990, what I mean? So they’ve had some things and what they’ve tried to overcome is all those human factors of you.

You can’t get [01:00:00] motions because it doesn’t work like your eyes in real world. You can’t have it stutter. You know what I mean? There’s all kinds of things that they’ve had to wait for computer power to catch up for connectivity to catch up. So it’s not a wearing a bath escape comment for different than real life.

I’ve been looking into it again because my cousin just got a set. Uh, so, you know, I, uh, keeping up with the Jones’s there. Um, and I found what I think is a good, um, Uh, a balance right now. So the Oculus quest to the Oculus owned by Facebook and they’re turning Facebook into a whole thing. So that’s something to talk about at some point, but the quest to is standalone.

It has its own store and you can just have the goggles and do not connect the day thing, but they have another product called the rift and the rift connects your computer, but it’s a whole separate store. Well, I’m looking into it. And the quest too, you can [01:01:00] get cables, hook it up to your computer and play the rift games, uh, from there when you’re hooked to the computer, plus it’s steam compatible.

So I could play Oculus quest, rift and steam games, which had, I think like 40 out of the 41 games I was even semi-interested in. So I’m like quest to, that’s probably going to be on our list here. Uh, on Facebook and I’m, I’m getting continually invited slash prompted by Doody and Emily and Steve to like, come play mini golf with Humboldt, come explore Toronto, whatever else it might be.

And because I haven’t bought yet, honestly, what I have is I have the little, remember that Google had cardboard glasses when they cost 20 bucks or something like that, it was to try it out. That’s what I have. They’re woefully underpowered for some of these better experiences. And so, but I haven’t moved up for some of those reasons.

I am getting what you just said for the, for the rift or the Oculus, the various different recommendations. You know what I mean? To, to be able to do it. [01:02:00] And yet something is stopping me from pulling the trigger. Maybe some part of it is I want to have. Enough money so that if I had to discard one in a year, instead of five years, then I’d be willing to do so.

But right now, as you know, you and I both laugh about, we hold onto our technology longer than most people do, who are first mover type people. And somehow that kicks in for this, my phone is still useful and I’m like for generations, I’ve got a feeling that I would get Oculus envy, depending on when I finally buy, depending on what the next version of that is going to be.

Cause I’m also aware of all those cool graphs going on that show me computer power going up and how many people are working on cool immersive experiences on what, what game libraries I’ll be able to tap into. I just haven’t done it yet. Maybe it’s not only a matter of just a thing in and of itself.

There’s all kinds of things that I would like to spend money on besides that, and throwing 200, $300 at back compared to [01:03:00] a new watch, a new apple. That’s kind of going to be my choice. You know what I mean? I can like monitor my heart rate and my diabetes level cooler than being able to explore Toronto.

And, you know, there’s always that price point and features, like you said, and the quest to it’s $300, I’m like, oh, that’s starting to get into a price range. That’s, you know, kind of doable for a new tech. I mean, when I got the latest Xbox, it was like 4 5500, but you know, we’ve had it by six years. Plus the other thing is to keep that I like, okay, the quest to ha is basically backwards compatible with the old quest.

So any games you use bill to play, you can play on the new one and also on the new so, and I, I, I mean, I don’t think they’re going to have a quest three anytime real soon. So I’ve, I kind of hit that point where it’s the features, the cost, uh, you know, everything you can do. And everybody in the family wants to get it.[01:04:00]

And my cousin got it. So, you know, now I’m like, okay. Also when I’m kind of looking for is like, it, isn’t just a matter of new hardware. I want it to be at the hardware, somebody that they’re still tapping into it and improving upon it. And if I can update the device with new software and that’s what gives me the version 2.1, 2.3, et cetera, that gives me that extended life that I’m curious about when it seems to be that it’s kind of frozen as that version, it doesn’t have hardware, software update ability that makes me distrust it.

You know what I mean? One of the things about getting any smartphone or any watches that are perpetually putting out new versions and not just, it runs faster, but they actually add like new features and new connectivity and stuff like that. So I like that situation. We’ll see. Okay. So, uh, holiday season, um, what’s that doing to the investing?

Uh, how has that changed at the holiday season?

I just had a bad week. [01:05:00] Last week I lost, um, I hardly ever used number. I lost tens of thousands of dollars. I’m in, um, very much growth, very much tech as Omicron comes out as Christmas shopping as using data about growth, but about Christmas, these things, if you will, as the end of the year is often where people that are investing for the year are taking profits so that they can not worry about it because they’re going to go on vacation two weeks.

They don’t want to be in the market. They’re going to get out of things. All of those factors combined to punch me in the face last week, this morning, I was up 11 K out of the 20. And so percentage wise, I don’t even know that it’s like, oh God, he’s not, you know, I’m going to do okay. But just individual stocks for instance, have gone down like, um, DocuSign was down 42.

DocuSign is a fantastic company. That’s going to change the world over the course of time, but whatever was built into the price earnings [01:06:00] ratio, it really isn’t the right thing to use for growth stock. But there is enough people still that say, wow, that’s just getting to be too much of a rarefied atmosphere, even though it’s profitable.

Even though it’s, there’s a multiplier that says a lot of people are betting too much on future profits instead of no profits. And so of all the stocks to get out of, apparently DocuSign didn’t even have bad financial news. They didn’t have the wrong earnings report come out. There was some, sometimes you don’t know how couples run through the fear, uncertainty and doubt that runs through the market.

And so today it was, um, maybe yesterday it was I’m sorry, um, pharmaceutical and again, no deep, bad financial report. That was just the whipping boy that everybody said I’ve lost faith in this for a while. And they took, or it could be that they just took profits and maybe they’ll get right back in some part of why I made money back today was all the people that made their profits.

Now they’re saying, no, these things are kind of on sale. I [01:07:00] want to be in HubSpot. I want to be in Tesla. I want to be in that gray desk. I want to be in Spotify. They’re getting back in having let, like maybe they got out at, you know, 40 and it went down to 30. So now it’s on sale. You know what I’m trying to say there there’s um, I’ve been on a bit of a roller coaster ride, but I sold nothing off in a panic.

I’m holding on to everything. I have about a hundred stocks now between my multiple multiple portfolios that are all pretty much looking to the future. I’m in for at least five years to get some of these things to pay for. Having said that I, I, you know, what are our top stocks? Tesla is still doing really well.

Um, if you’re worried about any kind of like, um, if you want to be in the wild west, you’re looking into all the variations of crypto. Am both Bitcoin and Ethereum and I’m, I’m learning a lot about one of the things I might want to be in. And yet that’s where those things have. 30%, 40% in a day are common, not startling.

And so I just, [01:08:00] I don’t know, maybe cause I feel ill-equipped compared to a lot of people that really know a ton about it. I don’t want to be, you know, if you’re at the table and you can’t look around and see who the PSAP is, it’s, you know what I mean? Don’t sit down in a table full of sharks when you’re a minnow.

And so until I learned enough that I’m cocky and how much I know about cryptocurrency and all the various different variations of it, I’m just invested in kind of, I’ve read the stories of these enough and you can’t do buying Bitcoin is kind of like I’m into crypto. That’s what everybody does to learn about crypto, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, I’m still heartened by like, uh, some stocks that I bought a long time ago because I liked their story. There are now getting more recommended to the mainstream, like Twillio, for instance, if you’ve had, uh, your phone, you’ll get little texts that say, Hey, um, your dentist appointment is coming up, please wait in the car in the parking lot.

So you don’t have your [01:09:00] waiting in the office cause we don’t worry about masks and stuff like that. And all that messaging back and forth about reminding you of your ticket, reminding you of a doctor’s appointment, much of that is driven by Coolio. And it really everybody’s just looking at that solution to those problems of, I don’t want someone working the phones and calling 500 people.

I want to be able to run off of my customer database and then send these things out automatically with my tolerance is for three days before, one day before, et cetera, William is behind all of that and they’re a well-run company. So if you’re looking to say not only are those messages useful, The people that are putting those messages out for every company out there, I recommend Twilio.

So I’ve, I’ve got super minor investments compared to what you’ve got, but they have been up a little bit. So, I mean, I checked it a while back. I was talking to Colin about it, trying to convince him to start looking into it. Look, dude, you’re 21. You’re making a lot of money, put it into this and retire when you’re 45 50, not 70.

Um, [01:10:00] so I was like, oh good. I’m up a little bit. But I’m done thinking about it for today. But my Amazon ads for books, I, over the last three months, I doubled the amount I spent on advertising. So for every dollar I put in advertising, I got $2 in sale. Yeah. I was like cool. In the face of, um, handled in terms of how many listens you have to have on Spotify to make any kind of money compared to the seat.

Yo now being worth $4 billion. It’s cool to see that there are some that work and there was even a list of, um, which were the ones that got you the most like reasonable return for the time and the money that you put into it, product out there, putting advertising there and stuff like that. So Amazon is working for you, at least in that.

Yeah, a little bit. I mean, it’s still not thousands and thousands of dollars. Uh, you’re actually get limited to the amount Amazon will spend some time. It’s weird, [01:11:00] but I do have not necessarily a raspberry PI update, but a programming Linux update. So I have been on, um, mint, uh, Linux that I told you about, and I’m going to have an update next week with something different, but I wanted to.

There’s a program I mentioned called twine, which is allowing you to create interactive fiction. And it’s actually used in video game companies to create narrative design. I mean, the last Assassin’s creed, they use twine to create the branching narrative for the game. So yeah, it’s a good game. And if that’s what they use, exactly.

So I’ve been playing with it. And one of the reasons I liked twined compared some of the others is it will export into just HTML and CSS, so you can put it on your browser. But then what I’ve been doing is using Cordova, which is an open-source project that takes those tapes type of things, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and [01:12:00] compiles it into a format that you can install as a mobile.

Uh, program, uh, on iOS, Android, stuff like that. So draw some libraries and make a standalone instead of having to worry about what the environment is. So I was doing this on Linux and like a lot of things, Cordova is not just, oh, I installed it and I have a nice interface there’s commands and I, and you have to pull down libraries.

And so at some point it’s fun for the tech old, how do I get this to work? And what’s wrong with it now in research. And it can be fun for the person that’s been doing it and a little older with family and other responsibilities like, oh my God, just freaking work. This is why I use windows or Mac, you know, but anyway, so I played with it and got it working.

So I literally sat down and created a really quick little branching, interactive narrative on. Exported it, put it into Cordova, compiled it and then put [01:13:00] it on my phone. So I have a very short, interactive fiction story on my phone that I wrote and got working. That’s amazing magic. It used to be that you really had to know so many lessons about compiling a language and what, what’s your destination, your target environment.

And man, how many installers I wrote for America that were based on what version of windows and other things you had and making sure you had the components. So you’d just be able to open and print a spreadsheet or whatever else it might be. And now they’ve so idiot proof that they’ve so smart. Oh, I don’t know if I’d say idiot proof that it took a little bit, at least it’s doing so much for you.

That used to be. And wow, good for you. You know, that was two weeks worth of work. And the thing is, all of that is on windows and Mac. I can run all of it on windows and Mac and I do, and I have it, and it is a little quicker, [01:14:00] easier to get it all running. Uh, it still did take some work, but Dova is not much easier on windows than it is on Linux, but I really wanted to do it on Linux just because you know how that is.

I’ll tell you when I first started to work with things, cross-platform, that’s what it was. I spent a lot of time learning how to do it because I knew that this was going to be useful into the future. There will always be multiple platforms, concepts that go into, how do you isolate your IO? How do you deal with various different, all, all of your, um, display devices and input devices.

You have to know what they’re capable of and how to scale up and scale down. Putting it all on the machine and letting it choose or be able to choose for their environment what’s most appropriate. And it was kind of fascinating to say, I’m going to overcome all these limitations that might make it break.

And actually it’ll run when they install it first time, they’ll be happy. They’ll be satisfied. And so it was kind of a cool puzzle, but boy, was it a ton to learn the amount that I had. We’ve talked about this [01:15:00] long ago about it. Isn’t only matter what you have on a computer. Are you with the most current driver, can you prompt them to install a newer driver so that their video car really does?

And man, I had to contend with so much, this is back in my Meritech consulting days to just make it so that it was bullet proof, 80% of the time and know that I was still having to go to these and then be able to explain, well, the reason that you did work. You’ll have two new or a two old version of this.

And it could be that we can find the driver and make this better. Or you can just requisition a new video card. You’ll be happier on your green sheet and it’ll be more compatible to put out. And so there was a chance to get fucked, all kinds of people in a way that I really kind of got to be, I wanted to be knowledgeable.

I wanted to be able to say quickly troubleshooting. Here’s the flaw. And here’s why you can’t. But you can, if we just fix this one thing, not just throw your hands up and say, well, I’ll get back to you in a month with a new version. You know what I mean? It was, [01:16:00] it was kind of cool to be able to be that knowledgeable people don’t realize how easy and lucky things are with the current OSS and the state of the computer.

It’s totally different than 30 years. Yeah. I probably write a post about that a year. That every time that I apply a system software update to any of my devices and it doesn’t crash. You know, that it’s unavailable to me for two or three days until I read the 12.001 version available, you got to go on apple, but you already, you know, when the installer got rid of, um, the library that they executable use, so now you have to, it used to be such a matter of troubleshooting and pain, and now it just seems to be it, it does all that for me.

And so it’s kind of cool. I’m happy to not have, so everything pretty much works. It’s all good. So I have to go seek out new avenues to create pain and make it difficult, you know, different problems to solve. Now it’s for [01:17:00] enjoyment. I mean, I know that sounds weird, but you know, I know Linux is something I can just dig into like I did in the eighties, nineties and really get down and what’s the problem and what do I have to code?

And, you know, and all that, I just thought, you know, memes pop up all the time versus different posts and someone just posted about where. I just changed this thing in CSS and like five buildings away on somebody else’s screen, something just went wrong because if you’ve used CSS at all, it really did have kind of under the hood ripple effect type stuff that continually happened.

Even though you were sure that what you were doing was as compatible and as small as you could make it, it was still just all kinds of like, well, that code fell off into LA LA land and it didn’t even affect me. It affected anyway. Okay. So do you have, besides the beetles get back, do you have any music movie or book recommendations this week?

Yes. Um, [01:18:00] I have long liked an author named F Paul Wilson. Who did the repairman Jack book? Yeah, they were great. They were the reason I first got into them. You know, everybody kind of browses and the pull quote was from Stephen King saying one of the best, um, summer novels I’ve ever read or the series. If you’re not reading the repairman Jack book.

I like Stephen King, I respect Stephen King. I think I will try them. And then I found out that there’s like, um, he’s got a whole world of interlocking series about, um, these vampires and repairman Jack and, uh, uh, kind of like moving towards the end of the world night world, somethings have been made into movies like the keep.

And so I really liked all those books and he actually brought the repairman Jack series pretty much to a club Bob on my part, just discovered that he has a new series out called panacea. That’s about a universal. And how the world would pursue that or hide it or kill people about it, et cetera, et cetera.

And his, I love his writing style. I love how knowledgeable he [01:19:00] is. I love how he creates good characters. He often, um, he has a really interesting thing of dropping in and out of like first, second, third person, he’ll talk about what you’re thinking, what the person is thinking. And then they’ll have somebody else that talks about what they speculate they’re thinking about, but what they really did, you know what I mean?

It’s like it it’s, um, they let you kind of play along with somebody just did something. What did the person think of it? What were they thinking when they did it? And it really creates a very interesting tanglement of, uh, this is how things really happen in the real world. When someone buys something tricky and the other person is able to out with them.

And we’re just lucky. They actually said, I know enough about person to, that’s why they put their car here because they were trying to think that no one would look for it. And so it just, I really enjoy them. And they’re a patient. They really are like for a thriller, you got to find out what’s going to happen.

Well, there’s three in this series and I’m already, I’m like two-thirds of the way through the first book. You know what else? I love books where it is known that you’re reading it and like the last half hour, a day before you [01:20:00] go to sleep and it’s like, oh, I just went to the bathroom. But you know, I could just sit down here on the bed and read about a half an hour while I want to do.

And I’m sneaking in time to read more because hang out well, so the panacea series by, okay, I’ll check those out. Um, I don’t have a book this week. Uh, it’s been a little slow with everything going on at work and stuff, but, uh, since it is Christmas, I pulled out my train Christmas and Tahoe out and it very quickly became one of my top Christmas albums every year.

Um, if you’re going to get it, I’d recommend the Amazon deluxe version digital version because they have some Amazon exclusive songs. So it almost doubles the album. So love it. Aye. Aye. Aye. Not to be weird. Crane is one of those roots, like what happened to them? They were huge for like 3, 4, 5 years. And I haven’t heard of them for like 10.

Yeah. So putting things out there still vital. Uh, [01:21:00] yes, I’m calling and I went to a couple concerts and loved it that I didn’t care for the group as much, um, before this, but Colin loved them. So I took him to a concert, totally fell in love with him and devoured, you know, but then I guess after, uh, the. One, I forget the name of the apple of top of my head, California, 37 maybe, or the golden gate bridge album.

Uh, the group kind of split apart. Uh, most of the group left to do other things. Pat stayed there. Um, and they started, oh, here’s a trivia. Well, I didn’t think I had trivia for the week. So I’ll throw this in a trivia question. Train started out before they were signed as a cover band for what group? So what do I think about their music?

How about like counting crows or something like that? That’s a good choice. Very similar style. No, they originally were a led Zeppelin cover band. Interesting. So the Greta van fleet of [01:22:00] their day, we recommend that if you haven’t heard of them, they are Zeplin esque ways. I have rock Smith for playing guitar and bass on steam and Greta van fleet has like six, seven songs.

I’ve got them all. So they’ve released into that environment. Yeah. Very cool. The train train released a, uh, after the group kind of disintegrated a bit, pat went back with some new guys and recorded led Zeppelin to the complete led Zeppelin, two album cover, uh, and then the Christmas and Tahoe. And that’s all I’ve known about them for the last couple of years.

Okay. So, um, wow. We just saw Kansas and Marietta this last weekend and it really is. Um, it’s kind of funny. A guy who I thought was their new main songwriter has left the group. So it was kind of back to being. Really good artists, virtuoso musicians playing good music, but I kind of thought he had become their new leader.

Now [01:23:00] he’s gone. So I’m not sure where go Kansas. Having said that, the reason I wanted to say is I really miss Steve Walsh on certain solid. They had a good vocalist, Danny. Um, I can’t think of the last name, but you know, Steve had that. He had that ability to like crack your voice at the right time, that ability to sort the right time.

That really was, and there’s a, he has a solo album called glossolalia and the word means like unable to stop talking if I remember correctly and I can’t tell you they’re great Kansas songs, but with extra crunch it, the guys he’s got working with and we’re all from like dream theater and other heavier bands, if you will.

I that’s one of those albums that I, I put that on more often than other albums, because I never mind hearing it. It’s again, it’s got like 10, 12 great songs and a couple of nights, like nine, 10 minute ones, like punching the clouds. And I dunno, it’s just, it’s really good and relatively unknown. So getting on glossy, Lilia by Steve Walsh, if [01:24:00] you’re looking for a dose of great new Kansas without being Kansas, there you go.

And I’ve been listening to a lot of Trans-Siberian since we went and saw for snow. So trivia I failed miserably. I could not think of the planet. Silver surfer was from, I did not look it up. So what’s the answer to that one. It’s done law, Zen law. I did not remember that. I kept thinking it was like a K D R something there that’s the one that couldn’t come to me.

I did remember. It’s funny. I remember shallow ball, which is his love that he actually had. Leave her. Right. So the whole planet could live. So I, I don’t know. I, I just was, um, I won’t go into it. I’m happy that I’m not going too much flowers for Algernon where I really starting to lose too many, you know, occasionally when I blip on somebody’s name, I’ve never been good about that for all that.

I embarrassed myself too many times where they’re like, I really like you, I know we’ve talked at NRG before, but without your name [01:25:00] tag on, I just suck. I just sit down and write code to connect to the database and I can do that without thinking about it. So I tried the mnemonics of like, you meet someone you go like, okay, bill, bill, bill.

And you’re trying to pitch your bill with like, you know, a Buffalo bill and I’ve tried all those things. And then somehow things flit away with, even though that’s such a terrible thing to be bad about. Well, I just, it’s kind of, it’s good to be humble. Again, and again, because for as much as I can be full of myself, well, I know all this stuff about that.

I just, I’m not, I’m just not. So next week we hopefully should have a guest on, uh, Collin leaves tomorrow to go to the Chicago comic con toy shop. It’ll be a pleasure to hear his take on all the good new Christmas goodies. And that’ll be great. So it’ll be fun finding out about that stuff. Very good. Very [01:26:00] good.

Oh, it was a pleasure. We’ll see you in a week. Talk to you later.