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Overview
Alan with his orange skynet starts us off today. Actually, it’s only briefly mentioned before we are off on tv and movie zoom backgrounds and then mental health. Not overall health, but witnesses and how our brain remembers what was seen – and how that can be different for different people.
Have you seen Castle with Nathan Fillion? You should, and we tell you why.
Then Stephen reveals his origin story as a writer, which involves Nathan Fillion. See, we really do jump around but it all ties together, right?
And believe it or not – Pink Floyd has a tie in with Dr. Strange, and we talk about how geeky Smucker’s is.
There’s a few 3d prints of a beholder, angel, and werewolf to show.
Recommendations
Castle – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219024/
Dr. Strange 158 – https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Strange_Tales_Vol_1_158
Trivia
Triple trivia – Who wrote the “Lub Nub” Ewok Celebration song, what famous band did he front and who is his father?
YouTube
Transcript
[00:00:41] Alan: Ooh,
[00:00:43] Stephen: movies and DV.
[00:00:46] Alan: Uh, it’s amazing how many zoom backgrounds there are available by the way, let me get every possible memory user off that will get, you know, no stutter. So, yeah, so I [00:01:00] kind of funny how, you know, we often talk about. Um, things that are very current, but already game of Thrones is not quite fading from public consciousness, but this is nowhere near the oo that it would have been seven years ago, eight years ago, trying to think of how long it took for them to finish the series.
And now there’s been an interim before we get to the pre Quill. Right. You know, where they first target area in the, uh, the insane put powerful family that doesn’t have any precedents in history at all.
[00:01:27] Stephen: Right. Yeah. And I’m hoping Maverick finally comes out one year. I mean, it’s been sitting in the camper like two years.
COVID started is that I
[00:01:36] Alan: think unfortunately like maybe Tom cruise still looks eternally young, but I wonder how how’s the Iceman, how’s the other character names. Do any of them
[00:01:45] Stephen: now Kilmer is a little rough for worse for the wear. It seems, but I mean, you know, we all do if we really, I mean, heck I look at my martial arts pictures from 10 to 12 years ago and I’m like, wow.
I looked like that. I’m like, [00:02:00] dang.
[00:02:02] Alan: As we always do. I love Val Kilmer. I know that he’s had occasional press where he’s sometimes difficult to work with, but I think it’s a matter of him really trying to do well. Like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Hoffman was known for not suffering fools gladly, but because he was turning into a great performance and wanted everybody to rise to the occasion, if you will.
So that’s what I’ve seen. Val Kilmer and all kinds of things. It seems like he’s often the best thing in the movie. And not even as the star, when he played doc holiday, right in tombstone, what a performance, what a, what a, an understated yet powerful who could give a line? Like I’ll be your huckleberry and not sound ridiculous, but actually sound kind of dangerous and kind of like afraid of dying.
You better be careful. Right?
I don’t know. I,
[00:02:54] Stephen: uh, it’s one of those things. Uh, you hear good and bad about certain people and you’ll [00:03:00] hear bad. In fact, this will be a great segue, right? To one of our topics on the list. Um, you, you hear these things coming from some people, but not in others. And so it gets really difficult to. No, what’s the truth because, you know, even, even if I go complain to somebody about one of my kids or my wife or something, well, that, that may be me at the moment that may be heated.
It may be that particular instance. And if you talk to her, you’ll get a whole different story. And I’ve, I realized that. So when people say, oh, you know, I read this tweet about so-and-so okay, wait a second. Where you on set, were you talking to somebody that you’re friends with that was on set or is it just some random tweet?
You can’t go with that. Plus there was a lot of like rock and roll that I would’ve never listened to. If you really look at the, we love the blues artists, those guys were notorious for sleeping with everybody in every town. So, you know, I mean, come on.
[00:03:59] Alan: Um, [00:04:00] there is such a voracious need in humanity to be a gossip.
You know what I mean? Like it doesn’t even matter whether it’s true or not kind of like along the lines of memetics it matters that it’s juicy. It matters that people will want to repeat it because they get like, if not power, at least influence over. Oh, they said, they’re the one that seems to be in the know, they’re the one that’s, that’s telling a scandalous thing though.
They weren’t there to witness it like you were saying. And so I have known all kinds of people that I was there at the event when it happened. And boy, their version of it spawn not just rush them on like slight variations, but like I was standing right next to you. None of that happened. Can you, so it’s, it’s very weird to see how people kind of rewrite history often with them self having a bigger role or a bigger hero or whatever else it might be, or just to be salacious, just to be like, you know, whisper, whisper there’s there’s real influence from all the gossip shows.
And, and 24 7, 365 PV, there’s a never-ending appetite for that kind of stuff. [00:05:00]
[00:05:00] Stephen: And I don’t want to delve into mental health. I’ll mark that mental health down as a future topic because I’m not even going to say who though, anyone who knows me knows what I’m talking about. I know a person that I came to realize that no matter what the event was within moments a day, a year, a month, it doesn’t matter.
The story coming from that person would be completely different than what really happened. Even if, and this is where I started to realize it. Something we had on videotape that multiple people witnessed that you ask, well, what happened? Type thing, the story’s complete. No, no, this is what happened. No, that must be another time.
And they completely believe it. And I started, I, I came to realize that they aren’t just lying and being manipulator. There’s something wrong and they honestly believe what they’re saying. They could pass a lie detector test, but oh, sorry. No, no.
[00:05:59] Alan: I’ve read many [00:06:00] studies. You know, we put such credence and eye witness testimony and trial and stuff like that.
And there’s all kinds of studies about how bad people really are at remembering detail, remembering sequence of events and remembering like at attributing, what was going on and why as compared to just say what you saw, just say what you think happened and you know, that. Uh, not in, again, a, a bad way. We have, we can’t have eye witness testimony that people that are good attorneys or good examiners have that kind of stuff they learned to ask the questions that get to the part of your brain that captured it sensorily instead of immediately going into the storytelling part of the brain, because that’s how we really remember things is that sequence of events.
And we kind of fill in what happened between one and the other. And it’s not, if you will elements of a story, it’s all the time that while I’m looking at you, really, what I’m doing is a series of, you know, like it’s kind of like sampling, right? Taking shots of you and I’m creating reality out of all the things that are gapping in between.[00:07:00]
And especially, I remember learning this long ago, I did studies of display devices and the way that you get idea of what, how frame rates matter, or how the definition, um, in number of pixels and stuff like that, that the brain is amazing with how it will fill in all the gaps. So it doesn’t feel like it’s continually jittery and the world is unsafe and unstable.
No. When I moved my eyes, it’s not a standard sweep. It’s a serious, I think they’re called saccades, right? Where it talks to the samples and it fills in the tracks. And, and, and that’s how we learn about like physics and stuff like that is if you see a ball going through the air, you expect that if I already have it here and here and here, and therefore I have an idea of velocity and trajectory that I expect it to be over here.
And then when you see like a magician, that’s really good sleight of hand magic. They’re very knowledgeable about what our expectations are and how to work them, how to, how to like, interrupt that in a way that like at first it Sterling. And then it’s like, well, that’s different than every other time in my life.
Where did the ball go? Right.
[00:07:58] Stephen: I love that.[00:08:00]
Well, like we have filters. So if I buy a BMW car, suddenly I see a million BMWs. It’s the same number. I just, my brain filtered them before. And that’s it, the paranormal world, the cryptids and stuff. Like when I was working with Colin, that’s where it causes a problem because people will, their brains will interpret and put things in.
Oh, I saw a face. You open the closet door. Oh, it’s not really a face. It’s just the light on the sweater. How, you know, so paradigm that’s a term. So everything has to be taken with a grain of salt, you know, and that makes it rough. And this whole thing about actors. Uh, there’s some actors that I’m like, yeah, you can kind of tell after watching movies and TV shows what they’re like and who you’d want to know and who you wouldn’t.
And it’s funny because one of them that had some controversy, Nathan Fillion seems like a great nerdy, fun guy, every interview, everything I’ve ever seen, but then the end of [00:09:00] castle, there was some controversy and some bad blood. It sounds so. Was it he’s actually that, or was it just those two? Uh, between themselves.
And you said you’ve been watching castle. So castle is a great topic.
[00:09:13] Alan: In fact, boy, let let’s, let’s push to that. You know, I think that’s like maybe a 10 or 15 year old series. Now it was a while back. And it was, if you will, Nathan, Fillion his work after Firefly and other things that I had become, I really kind of came to like him and this character is a variation on that kind of the lovable rogue, you know what I mean?
But he does have standards and he does. He’s willing, he is brave if, when he has to be, but having said all that I had, I guess I had read some of those similar things stand up Khattak right. This is co-star. And that there was whatever chemistry they had on screen was really good acting after a while because apparently they just didn’t like each other, a certain amount.
I can’t say apparently is that the rumor mill that fed us that is that, that the characters they had to play with how many times they had to kind of. Come to teasing each other a little bit too much [00:10:00] getting together, but then breaking apart, you know, that was a series. Where did they jump the shark by having them finally, who gets together like number of series, you know, when in Moonstruck when, um, Maddie is exactly that finally got together.
Well, the slow boilers over same as chairs, same within a number of other things. So, and then they almost had to overcompensate where they really in, in character at least sort of to really hate each other, resent each other just couldn’t get along, but then danger brought them back together. And I remember some of what I had watched before.
I don’t know. I’m only up to like season two. The reason I really liked the series is because without, and this is kind of funny. I have all kinds of friends at what they want to know always is how were the special effects done? What’s the backstory on people. And honestly, I just want the entertainment. I occasionally it matters to me.
Like I like know who the author is, so that I can track them and maybe go to other things that they’ve written screenplays or something. But most of the time, I don’t want the backstage gossip. I really don’t want it to spoil my illusion. And so. [00:11:00] I want to be able to watch this in, in some way. Can I put it out of my head that, Ooh, where’s the signs of friction as they appear?
I just want to see how the
[00:11:08] Stephen: character was. I don’t care what TMZ says. I want entertainment weekly.
[00:11:13] Alan: I know that they did a good thing with that first. It starts off relatively. It’s what interesting combination. One of the ways it’s interesting is it’s relatively lighthearted the banter and not only between the two stars, if you will, but the entire police office, if you will, they’re all very well-written characters and they have their own little ranking on each other and stuff like that, but, but also incredible love for each other and dependability for each other and stuff.
But the crimes they’re investigating are often pretty gruesome. Do you know what I mean? This person got frozen for five years and then, I mean like, wow, it, it’s not quite a special victims unit or crimes criminal criminal minds where it’s like, wow, is the United States filled with serial killers? This, there can’t be that many evil geniuses.
You know what I mean? And, and so I, and I love the fact that [00:12:00] they’re in an hour, they managed to set up all kinds of red herrings, all kinds of, oh, it must be that guy. He looks suspicious. He has the motive. Oh, wait that, and then they’re very good at like, kind of tracking you through not one or two, but 3, 4, 5 suspects before you get to, oh, there’s the big revenue.
[00:12:14] Stephen: And the interesting thing is it Nathan Fillion, his character is a writer who’s following the cops and then it just goes on longer than would be reasonable. Okay. We’ll bypass that illusion there that’s whatever, because the setup is just great. Uh, and if you like cop shows, this is a great cop show, but.
All the mysteries are really done in a more genes Patterson writer way, which fits him as the character. And the thing that, like you said, that totally makes it is Nathan Filene’s character and the interactions. I think I enjoy him with his daughter and his mother as much as the rest of the story.
[00:12:52] Alan: Absolutely. I’m not sure whatever happened to the daughter as an actress, but I thought that that was going to be the launch of a career. She is still out there. [00:13:00] I don’t remember seeing her in other things, I guess it. And it’s kind of funny. One of the things at the heart of the series is very much what we’re talking about, the culture, all about evidence and putting together enough solid evidence to be able to convict.
And Nathan is the storyteller that is Frank castle is a Frank. Yes, no, Rick sorry. And so the combination of the two is what kind of gets you to reality that he can take them to the let’s extrapolate from that. Let’s think of what might’ve gone on there and oftentimes he’s wrong, but at least he gets them to open up from just the very kind of static and stale.
It’s only the evidence that you of, if you’re going to figure out motive to get inside, somebody’s head, you have to be able to put yourself in their shoes. And so he’s got those skills and the others and you know what I mean? So it shows the contrast between those points of view and that maybe you need both in order to kind of succeed in life in order to at least catch criminals.
Very
[00:13:57] Stephen: cool. I [00:14:00] it’s different. There there’s little Easter egg stuff too. I mean the one Halloween episode, it’s funny, you’re watching that because I’ve started rewatching it and I’m on season two.
[00:14:10] Alan: And honestly, we didn’t talk about this. Who knows what led us to it? You know what I mean? It wasn’t like I got an ad for it.
It was just like, you know, I never saw that entire series two. I need to do the X-Files thing, everyone in order and get to the end. And I don’t know, am I going to end up paying for some, because right now I’m watching it. Pluto that’s. One of the things I had mentioned is man, this Roku box is opening up incredible worlds of all the different stations that are out there.
And how many of them have different specialties? You know what I mean? That the entry channel and misses the Brit channel and whatever else it might be. And what used to stop me from, uh, subscribing. Like I actually cut the cord, we ended up getting Netflix and Amazon and that two infinities of movies.
That should be enough. Well, the industry got cutting enough to say, if we have a certain amount of exclusive content, we can get 2 99 a month out of a million [00:15:00] people and that’s still pretty good money. So let’s do that. And so I’ve been kind of looking into, do I really need to get the Brit box in order to be able to watch my doctor who is, or my Wallander is who I’m printing?
I mean, that’s not a bird service, you know what I mean? There are certain, there’s a characteristic grit series. If you will, that I want to catch up on a lots of old stuff and also kind of stay current with. I know that I don’t have to just get it. And I don’t know, I’m trapped forever. It used to be, I had to sign a contract for a year or two nowadays.
It seems. And we just did this with peacock. We turned it on so we could watch the Olympics. And now that the Olympics are done and I kind of scan through, what else do they have available standard, if you will, NBC primetime
[00:15:36] Stephen: TV and you can turn it back on later. Yeah,
[00:15:41] Alan: exactly. And that’s what I intend to do is with Roku, you can do a search for all different kinds of things to find out what channel it’s on and here it’s free and here it’s a buck 99 or whatever else it might be.
And so hopefully I’m going to be able to kind of hop around and turn things on and off. Wisely instead of, oh, I lost track of that. And then I ended up [00:16:00] paying 40 bucks a year for never having watched it. Right. 40 bucks doesn’t seem like a ton nowadays, when you have five
of
[00:16:06] Stephen: them,
[00:16:07] Alan: wasteful times five is 200 bucks.
And I just, I just pissed out away
[00:16:13] Stephen: like that. The one, the thing I love about castle and a lot of his shows is all the little. Personality things, the one Halloween episode, and I know you’ve just seen it where he comes, busted out and he’s wearing his Firefly outfit and his daughter goes, come on, dad, didn’t you wear that like five years ago, isn’t it time to move on, you know,
[00:16:37] Alan: referential and it’s aware it’s got, we just watched a movie recommended by a friend called Mitchell, the Mitchells versus the machines.
It’s an animated movie. So it can maybe it’s up for hospice, for animation or something like that. I think that’s why she was able to watch it because she’s in the industry and gets to watch all of the cool things, um, you know, be there to be able to vote. So she really does vote for the Oscars. So, um, It is nowadays many, [00:17:00] many movies are very aware of what has gone before.
So they’ll not only as an Easter egg as a snarky thing, but they’ll make a reference of, well, you don’t want to be, uh, you know, a brown coat from Firefly. You don’t want to be, you know, they they’re aware of this is a star Trek world or a star wars world lorry era. You know what I mean? Future dystopian or utopian are we shooting for here?
Right. And in fact, that’s become such a cultural touchpoint is very interesting because in the movies, fake movies, they can make reference cause in the real world everybody has seen.
[00:17:29] Stephen: Right. And I, so did you ever see, um, the sword in the stone animated Disney show? Yes. So Berlin was supposed to be lived backwards and lived forever, you know, any new worlds outside his own.
Uh, so the, the Disney cartoon, the wizard guy made little hints and references to like our real world. Uh, just those little funny things, if you didn’t get it, it’s fine. If you did, it’s just a [00:18:00] little funnier. Well, in. Tom magician story. I kind of modeled my main wizard guy after that. And he makes a few references and my editor didn’t quite get it and said, well, who’s this person you haven’t talked about them yet.
And I’m like, it’s just a little nod, a little Easter egg wink, wink. If you get it or not. And she’s like, well, it’s going to confuse people. You just take it out. And I’m like, no, I’m not. And the interesting thing is a castle with Fillion was one of the signs from above for me to start writing. I had like three signs all at the same time, literally within a week of each other that I said, okay, I’ve been thinking about writing, thinking about writing.
And there’s one voice of sending me messages. Exactly. I had been playing the game, Alan wake, which is one of my all time favorites forever. And I. And I’m like an and the guy in there as a writer and he’s finding pages to a book and, you know, so it’s that. [00:19:00] And literally the weekend after I finished that, I went to bill embryo’s house for the first time met bill and learned he was a writer and that, and then the Sunday we got back, I think it was Sunday.
We sat down and have dinner and you know what this new show or this show with, uh, Nathan filly and castle, it always looked good. Let’s watch some of it. And he’s a writer I’m like, okay. Within like three days, I got three signs about writing. So the following weekend, I didn’t have the kids and I started writing.
[00:19:29] Alan: Good for you. I love that there are really our origin stories in real life, just like tiny books. And sometimes it’s kind of funny. I really don’t think that there’s a massive cosmic forces that are telling us those things, but there’s nothing wrong with each of us saying, you know, I just had this encouragement three times in a row.
Why not listen to it? I like telling this story. When I tell the story of my life, I want to be able to say the universe talked to me three times and I couldn’t turn away. That’s a great story. [00:20:00] You know what I mean? The
[00:20:01] Stephen: quest came to my house. It’s either that or a radioactive to that or a radioactive Nathan Fillion bit me.
So, so there there’s a recommendation. If you haven’t watched castle, you really should. It’s it’s a fun.
[00:20:17] Alan: It’s really good. And I. As I watch it, I’m aware of like, wow, I’m only on the second season. I think there’s seven or something like that. So I love exactly. I was like, wow, I got a whole bunch ahead of me.
And it’s something that Colleen and I both seem to like, sometimes, you know, my series are to comic booky or science fiction or something like that, too many guns and explosions and Coleen doesn’t always care for them. Sometimes when we find things that we like, we, we devour them and then you have that little bit, oh, I binge too much.
There’s no more baking show for another year. You know what I mean? Such that out. But there is a joy to saying I really am enjoying it. I’m liking the, the current series contestants. Let’s just watch one more. Let’s see what happens when you find something you really like, you don’t [00:21:00] have to always deny yourself.
It’s okay. To binge a little bit, you know,
[00:21:04] Stephen: so I mean, uh, if you like the police shows, it’s got that crossover because it’s more lighthearted and fun with him in it. I’m not a big NCR. Person, but I love castle. Now, have you watched his newer one? Rookie? That’s what got me to watch castle because I started watching rookie after three or four years now.
I just started watching season one. It’s similar. Uh it’s. He’s uh, 40. Mid forties and he has a midlife crisis. And so he decides to move to LA and become a cop. So he’s the oldest rookie there. Cause like the other rookies are 24, you know, he’s 45. And so that’s the premise to set it up that, oh, here’s this bumbling old guy trying to learn all this stuff.
Like a new kid. But just like castle. There’s a lot of good characters, a lot of heart. And it’s not just like watching an [00:22:00] episode of cops. It’s a lot of the story and the characters. It’s not so much what primes they’re busting. They use that to very good dramatic effect, but you’re not just sitting there watching them solve mysteries.
It’s the characters and everything they’re going through, not, not a soap opera, but you can’t just watch them Willy nilly because some of the other storylines. Yeah. And one of the
[00:22:22] Alan: things I love about ensemble cast shows is that they’re really, there’s always unplumbed depths. They can say, wow, we haven’t put the spotlight on this character.
We really should go a little bit more into what was their cop story? What was their, you know, the trauma or the message from above that that told them that they should be doing this. I’ve seen lots of cases from learners being canceled and. Oh, if you watched any of Lucifer, but he’s consulting detective with a lady policeman.
And the fact that he has, you know, celestial powers or infernal powers is probably a better way to put it, but there is lots of the good office staff, the banter back and forth, the, um, mysteries that seem to [00:23:00] take multiple terms before they finally catch it. If, if a lot of the writing staff didn’t go from one to the other, they handed off the template about how to do a show like this and easily do a quality hour.
[00:23:11] Stephen: Now I’m going to have to go watch Lucifer. It’s always been along the fringe, but now you say that, and I will, I’ve said this before, and anyone listening passed this on tweeted out, there is no other duo than filling it in tunic. That should be salmon out in a quantumly reboot. I have said that how many times?
I, I, I will like have a very rough time with anyone that is not them.
[00:23:36] Alan: Uh, you know, it’s kind of funny, Alan tunic has become kind of the Zelig of Hollywood. You know what I mean? When I keep finding out, oh, he wrote that he did that wrapped the dancing for a peacemaker. Like we just talked about, I won’t wait until the end and this isn’t really trivial, but it’s like mind blown because I just posted about this.
So we both know pink Floyd album there’s is called a saucer full of secrets. And in fact, Nick Mason has been touring with a [00:24:00] jazz Prague ish band. If you will recreating a lot of that, because it’s not anywhere near radio friendly, it’s really interesting and odd having settled. If you remember both that cover, it’s also full of secrets and metal are really interesting, kind of like oil drop paintings.
They’re up, they’re very unformed. Um, metal is of a year submerged under water and recognize it will be so, so it’s full of secrets has all kinds of Lincoln montage of various different images. What did I just learn? Dr. Strange comic number 1 58, where the living tribunal, it’s the second appearance of him.
There’s a page that they show it. They grabbed this image of his head and it’s in the upper left-hand corner of the album cover. Here’s a series of planets showing how he has this cosmic, you know, influence that series of planets, Dr. Strange muted, but recognizable over to the right hand side. So it matches perfectly it’s late sixties.
That’s exactly. When this was being made, you know, there was all kinds of [00:25:00] crossover between comic book people and music, people, and movie people and stuff like that. And I just, I love both of those things and I had never noticed that before. Wow. I’ve had those kinds of books for 50 years and those albums for 50 years.
Oh, it really is. They’re mind blown. Isn’t that the coolest thing, like when you put on pink Floyd, dark side of the moon and watch matches really well, you know, you started, I think right when they first go from black
[00:25:28] Stephen: and white to color the color.
[00:25:29] Alan: Yeah. Or opening to us, I just, how cool that they really did that, but kept quiet about it for all these years.
Well, nowadays it would be like, people couldn’t wait two weeks before blabbing, you know, either creators or somebody on set or something would cop to it. And instead they just kind of like. I love that. I love that.
[00:25:51] Stephen: It’s like, it’s like a real life dungeon RPG, and you discovered a rare treasure.
[00:25:57] Alan: Exactly, exactly.
So that’s my cool bit of [00:26:00] trivia for the week. I love that and really trying to find it. People won’t have a lot of access to Dr. Strange tells them 1 58, Dr. Strange, but if you go online and look up. You will see that it really is there, man. It’s not like you were saying before about, Hey, I’m going to see a face in this because we’re built to recognize no, it’s very clear that these three things are all right there.
Right? So
[00:26:21] Stephen: speaking of comic books, you probably could go. Onto Comixology or Amazon and find that, but this is Arden and segway. You might not be able to. Uh, we mentioned, okay, so two topics we’ve talked about in past couple of weeks. One is, uh, Amazon buying and changing Comixology and the other is. User design in interfaces for programs and stuff.
And I’ve been saying how Lennox really needs to work on that. The open source people, well, Amazon made an announcement. They’re shutting down Comixology and folding it all into Amazon, which we said, when they first did it. Yeah. That’s what’s going to happen. And all of that. [00:27:00] Well, they are, and it sucks.
[00:27:02] Alan: It really does when they bought it and just left it alone.
I was fine for them to create the sales opportunities of, Hey, it’s not only about coming Comixology unlimited where you can look at things online that they really were good at. You can buy the latest issue. You can buy it digitally or physically, you know what I mean? That, that integration between atoms and bits, if you will, well, whoever put together this transition plan and how they’re going to be absorbing it into the Amazon world, it’s terrible.
Especially if you’re an existing Comicology subscriber. And I have been for a couple of years to like, Where is the list of things that I borrowed in the past, because I don’t always buy it and then read it all the way through. I like, if I borrow it, I like, okay, I know I’m going to want to read all the boys again.
So I put them all in my queue and I think there’s a limit, but I haven’t hit it. And same with doom patrol and same with, um, current, um, like with a moon night movie coming out, let’s go read some of the best moon nights ever, especially the ones with Warren Ellis, with text and Chevy and stuff like that.
I just want to go and do [00:28:00] that used to be you just kind of go onto Comicology and go where you want. And now, without going into torturous detail. Okay. Um, I look up mood night and it has that, but there isn’t a series of buttons for, Hey, buy it or rent it or, you know, save it for later, if you will. All right.
There’s a thing here for library. What I’ve already gotten borrowed. So let’s go there sorting that based on chronology or on alphabetic. And it’s like it’s dog’s dinner. It’s a huge screen. All the things that used to be, I can get in and out. I have time for reading to issues of something. That’s what I’ll do with my time, while they’re waiting for this thing to compile or whatever else it might be now it’s torture.
And what they’re trying to do of course, is push you to buy a Kindle, to buy a dedicated reader. And it might even be like, well, that’s kind of book size that would work. When I try to go into the Kindle app on my computer, it, it wouldn’t let me. I’ve been to Amazon for 20 years. How do I use my same Amazon login and so forth?
And I [00:29:00] declare myself to Kindle something breaks. Is it sometimes there’s weirdness about the safari browser versus Chrome or Google. So I’m like, okay, Amazon doesn’t really have a browser like Google does. And so I always think of maybe Google is just trying to make it use Chrome. Maybe the way to go is Firefox because that’s really not company, but kind of agnostic browser.
I don’t want to have to use either one of those I’m comfortable in safari. So my only half suspicion, I don’t have why that isn’t ranking, but after you troubleshoot a little bit and say, okay, let’s go and clear the cache let’s come back in. Let’s delete the app that I currently have because maybe it’s a previous version and get the latest download version.
Nope. It wants me to go use Kendall and I can’t get logged on to Kendall. So it’ll make the connection and show me what’s available to them.
[00:29:43] Stephen: Who does have a customer like that? Yes. I have an iPad with the Kindle app and I use that a lot for reading. It’s a great size for reading and comics. Especially I opened up the Kindle app and it throws all my [00:30:00] books, which I have quite a few and all the comics mixed up within that.
And I can’t hit a filter and say, just show me the comic books
[00:30:11] Alan: it’s
[00:30:11] Stephen: unread, or, uh, just the red or, and I’m just like, no. So I go on line to Amazon, go into my account, the devices and content, and I look and they do. The comic separate, but it’s just a big, long running list. And I’m just like, this is a horrible and, and they don’t, and that, see, at least in the Kindle app, they’ll put it by series.
So if I find amazing Spider-Man I could click it and I see 127 issues or whatever your flow
[00:30:42] Alan: from issue to the next one.
[00:30:45] Stephen: If you go in the back end, because you want to manage your content. It’s individual issues listed by alphabetical or a release date. So you don’t get it by series. And I’m just like, oh dear God.
It’s
[00:30:57] Alan: ridiculous. I mean, I what’s weird [00:31:00] about this is, you know, that it can’t have only been like in the Amazon labs, they must’ve put it out for beta testing and who didn’t say this. Isn’t what I want. This isn’t how I want to read comic books. This is how I want to be able to search for something. There must be, they must have gotten feedback and yet they pushed it out.
For some reason,
[00:31:17] Stephen: ugly I’m betting. They have some plan good or bad, whatever, but they’re like, okay, this is the date Comicology is going to go away. So it has to be minimally working by that. Uh, we don’t care if you have a I’m. I would hope that they have things still being worked on. Now. They can say, okay, we bought Comixology.
We’re only making this much money, so it’s not worth any time and effort. We can’t support. Comicology we’ll get rid of it. They’re here. It’s all good. And we’re done. I am afraid that could be it having
[00:31:49] Alan: been on any number of teams where they had a hard deadline, like you’re saying, and whatever they had working, they declared we’re in.
Everything after this is maintenance, even though it’s missing [00:32:00] major features, even though certain things are broken, but we had to be in production as of 1, 180 7 or whatever. And look we are, you know what I mean? So that’s, that was a big realization. When I first, we all got on big projects for. Peat Marwick days.
And as a consultant was that, that free. Perfect. And now you don’t even get, usually they say you can get like two out of those three. A lot of times there was nothing that mattered as much as somebody somewhere made a commitment, made a promise and they weren’t going to renege on that promise. Even if it didn’t match reality, they just couldn’t do it.
That would end their career. Did they give you the resources to meet that date? Did they make sure that they had, you know what I mean? It was wow. Put America, man. Wow.
[00:32:40] Stephen: And having some programming issues along those lines that I haven’t had in a long time that, uh, well, here’s this, uh, we want to change all of this and we need to in a week, I don’t even know what all needs changed or here rush this.
It needs done. I I’m not getting it. It’s not working. I need more assistance. [00:33:00] I need some articles. I need support something. Well, it needs up. Why is it up? Get this up chain. Oh, wait, change this one and said do this, but I already spent five hours on that. Okay. I’ll change this. Okay. It’s not working. That’s okay.
We’re not gonna use any of that. We’re going through. I’ve had both of those issues in the past couple of weeks. And it’s just like, guys, we would have been much further ahead on all this stuff. You just say, let’s plan this and see what we need to do. Here’s the priorities. Here’s secondary. Here’s what can wait.
Yeah.
[00:33:29] Alan: I have had success and terrible failure. When I finally had to pull the plug on things like that. Some cases they were like, you’re right. We, we bought this. We really need to pull back. And as you said, decide on priorities, decide on feature center and stuff like that. Others. It was Nope. We needed this week.
We gave you what you needed. There was no, there was no pulling back from their series of bad decisions. But as long as they were the decision maker, the teller of the tale, they had to have escape. And, uh, just, uh, I, I think, and I always tell the story. [00:34:00] I did some work for a big advertising company in Chicago, and every time that I went in with the prototype of what they had talked about, because their advertising people, they didn’t say, okay, let’s take what you’ve got refined.
It, they would have another idea meeting and they would just say, oh no, we didn’t. And the kind of changes that they were looking for. It wasn’t, well, we don’t like the blue let’s go with green or we want to have five things. Ms. Listen, instead of three. It was the equivalent of, we really liked this Christmas tree and all the ornaments you put on it, but really what we want is a spruce instead of a fir you mean like, so the fucking structure, the actual, the thing that
[00:34:34] Stephen: everything else, which is something you never mentioned before is
[00:34:38] Alan: that solidly now you’re and I get that.
You won’t know what you like until you see it, but after you’ve done that 3, 4, 5 times, and you’re really, there’s an envelope that you go towards a refinement, you know what I mean? That you’re getting big decisions early and kind of commit. And then you, I just kept getting the rug pulled out from under me, the heart of the system, stabbed, throw that one away.
And as [00:35:00] any quarter will tell you, I didn’t throw it away. I kept all kinds of components, every single bit that I thought they don’t know what they want really. So when they see it again and they compare it to other things that they’re suggesting, they’re going to come back to version four, they’re going to say, well, really, they’re not going to say what we want was version one, but they’re going to say something like.
This is what we want. I’ll be like, I already got that Conan. He didn’t like it then, but I’ll bring it back on. And I, I don’t, I never, I was never, um, sneaky about it, but it just was out of self-defense you learn if I’ve got a series of wow. Fireflies that just don’t have an attention span beyond mayflies beyond the day that they’re alive.
You know what I mean? And even in making committee decisions, there’s people that have an uncommon ability to sway public opinion. That really don’t have the best ideas, but they sure can talk it up and they share Evan’s enthusiasm and they have anger.
[00:35:52] Stephen: Right. You know, I’ll a lot of people still just don’t understand the coding and development [00:36:00] for computer systems.
Uh, they just don’t get that. They see, and I’ve actually had this said to me, uh, Can we add this button? Okay. What’s that going to do? Well, it needs to do this hoof. Wow. With the way the system is, that’s going to be rough. Let me look at it and I’ll get back to you. Who, what do you mean? This should just be easy.
Well, here I literally on a, got a screen-share they pulled up a word, a document word and said, see that button there. That word has, I just want that button over here in our stuff. I can just copy it. I mean, it’s literally, you had that told to me,
[00:36:36] Alan: yeah, that, that, that whole tip of the iceberg thing, that people really don’t always have a great idea as to the level of complexity, the level of difficulty in integrating multiple things that come from different worlds into one thing.
You know what I mean? And I don’t know. Sometimes when I tried to explain, here’s why it’s different. I get the hand-waving. I don’t care about that stuff. I just know what I want. It’s like, I want it tomorrow, [00:37:00] but that’s what my, my estimate is based on. And you can bring in another consultant if you want.
They will tell you, hopefully once you have what I’m telling you now, no, one’s going to commit to doing this in the weeks that you just described. It’s it’s just not doable and I’m pretty good at what I do. So sometimes most of the time I’ve been able to get rapport and trust early by doing difficult things, but with quality, and then they trust you to make those next decisions.
Sometimes I’ve had the, how much by when people that were just it’s did you go to the bathroom again? Is that time away from the desk? It’s like, wow. I think I’ll never work with you again, after this gig is over. You know what I mean? I can’t have you. This is, I always apologize for repeating myself, but Colleen has been going through a certain amount of this.
And so I just hear some of these stories when you go with so many and say, okay, um, this will be done in two weeks. And then they call you on Tuesday and say, how’s that coming? It’s like, I swear if anything has changed, it’ll give you a better, a due date or a worst one. I will, [00:38:00] of course inform you. I’m aware that you’re mentioning expectations, that you’re talking to the rest of the firm and so forth, but I am not ever going to hide or withhold or work overnight to try to make up for something
[00:38:10] Stephen: that I did wrong.
And I’m not telling you two weeks and then doing it in an hour. It’s
[00:38:15] Alan: not going to sit on my hands and watch et cetera, et cetera. And then of course not only Tuesday, but then come back Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And it’s like, honestly, I guess this is your management style, but no one I have to tell you is every time you interrupted.
You cost me, there’s a whole bunch that you put into your head to load to be able to keep multiple, your name, it code fragments and database things, and all, all of that has to be in to get it to integrate well. And when you interrupt me, I have to reload that. And it’s not like a minute it’s 20 or 30 minutes to gather again, right.
Frame of mind to work. So please, don’t the reason that I. The nice office cube that you offered me that I got this Scott Q, but it’s over here in the quiet area is because [00:39:00] I need quiet. I need concentration. If you can give me an office and not have it offend all the people that think that the office is a sign of power and authority it’s cause I need to be able to close the door.
I need to be able to get away, go put me in the unfinished section of the floor, as long as I have
[00:39:14] Stephen: electricity. Exactly. They’re not looking for the big Rosewood desk,
[00:39:22] Alan: the plant, I don’t need the desk.
[00:39:24] Stephen: Exactly. I had one that they said, okay, well we want to make sure this gets done. Right. So we need to have a meeting in the morning and then another one in the afternoon to get updates.
I’m like, okay, first of all, if we have a meeting in the morning and I only worked for four or five hours, we have another meeting. How much do you think really is getting done? It’s not like. Parts of systems are, and literally we’d have a meeting at four and then at 8:00 AM the next day. So four o’clock we’d have a half hour 45 minute meeting.
That’s pretty much my day I’m done. And then they eat in the morning. We could start again, drinking coffee. So what, what do we got here? Well, remember what [00:40:00] I told you at four 30 yesterday, that’s where we’re at and we’re going to Elvis did not come in. You know what I mean? So, okay. Whatever, but oh, go ahead.
I got different updates. I just,
[00:40:13] Alan: because, because it’s funny to, you know, um, I worked at progressive for a long time as director of databases and not only did I do director level stuff, but I regularly did, um, analysis and coding and things that required. Again, some concentration I had by luck, the lactation.
Yeah. Formerly the lactation room. Nobody else wanted it because it had no windows. It wasn’t like a nice place to work necessarily, but it had a door and no windows so that no one could interrupt. And in the act of just like walking, by looking in and you know what I mean? I just, in there, I could have like my own music and my own privacy.
And when I emerged, I was not an antisocial guy. I’d go and talk with people on the way to the bathroom or really the break room and stuff like that. But then when I went into the thing and just [00:41:00] that most of the time I had my door open, cause I was approachable when I had the door closed. It wasn’t like me being a hermit.
It was, there’s something important that has to happen, that I need to be able to concentrate, concentrate this as if I’m lactating treat this as if I’m taking care of my baby and that, you know what I mean? But that only lasted for, uh, not long enough at, uh, progressive and then changes. They regularly did movement.
Reshuffling of desks and move into do people from building to building. And somehow I never seem to trade up or retain even what I had had, I kept getting do, I was like a level six out of seven technical guy and director for awhile. When I was a director, I had an office cause they really did have that weird hierarchical system there.
Once I moved to a more technical track, kind of an internal consultant, they just didn’t have that respect because you didn’t have to be to close the door to have a confidential conversation. Oh
[00:41:57] Stephen: man know [00:42:00] when are you at progressive? Sorry. When were you at progressive? When, what, what timeframe?
[00:42:08] Alan: Uh, early two thousands, right after I got in town, that’s I provide 2001 to 2006
[00:42:16] Stephen: early, two thousands, probably a little before that, your time progressive was one of the companies I was looking at, uh, maybe interviewing and trying to get hired in, because I heard about their tech and how, you know, pretty good benefits and good tech work at the time and stuff.
The other one, believe it or not with Smuckers down in Orville that they had, what was it in money magazine or something? They were one of the top 10 tech hiring companies in the country. And I’m like, I could drive the Smuckers every day. You know,
[00:42:46] Alan: I remember being at either an Oracle or a Microsoft conference and, and representing progressive if you will.
And someone works for representing Smuckers and I really want. A little teasy. Cause I did not know until they talked about the kinds of things that they were [00:43:00] doing, you are absolutely staying in the yard in terms of SQL server with UDB and Oracle, which we’re trying to do it progressive and not necessarily successfully because we’re having problems, finding people that do these things.
It’s because you’re stealing them because, because
[00:43:13] Stephen: they, people exactly. They paid good, they had great benefits and, and they really pushed it at the time as, uh, do you like tech, do you like doing this type of program? We’ve got something you’re going to love. And this is so much fun, you know, because they understood that the tech guys, the programmers, coders that we get off on it, we love the coding.
We love seeing that come to life and thinking about it. It’s a very analytical, technical, creative process. Yeah.
[00:43:44] Alan: It’s Colleen actually, when she was doing some job interviewing, this is a while back now, like 15 years ago, that was one of the places that she, who looked into and things didn’t work out. But that’s always been to her.
One of the ones that got away, not in the technical side that we’re [00:44:00] talking about here. She does retirement planning and so forth, but instead of doing their retirement plan where either a company that offers them and then it was be the person that runs that for the individual company. She got such a good vibe from, I don’t know, are you going to, we already, there was possibilities of remote work.
Is she going to ever going to move to Orville? Not sure. We don’t know that small town, Ohio compared to Lakewood where we have all the good life that we love having said that it really was just not one of those ones that. We made a point of stopping by. They have an outlet store. You know, we went down to Johnson woods, which is a cool old growth forest in Ohio, like the oldest one in Ohio that’s untouched.
And again, I apologize if I repeat a very interesting combination of the is right next to like a swamp land. So that Archer Daniels, Midland that tore up all kinds of Southeastern Ohio in order to get to the stuff underneath. This was not a good prospect for them. So it was left alone. So there’s massive, cool old trees there.
And conveniently right down the road from Orville is [00:45:00] this Smucker’s outlet. And the first time that we were there, we were like, they got every single kind of nut butter you can imagine. They’ve got, and we didn’t realize how many brands Smucker had. So they’ve got like, I don’t know, Um, Angus Chile, and I’m making these things up, but, you know, they had, we, we walked out of there with like bags of stuff like this.
We, we struck while the iron was hot. I didn’t, I wasn’t aware that there were that many different coffees, bread, mixes, all that stuff. Let’s just try a whole bunch of different stuff. And, and the, the, the people working there were just so impossibly cheerful, it was like, was this like Stepford? Is this it?
Is this like a real,
[00:45:39] Stephen: it seemed like Orville revolved around. Smucker’s like they built the town and every TV show, that’s always an alien race controlling. So you got to wonder,
[00:45:50] Alan: you know, you got to get to the outlet store, you drive past the entire big factory and office compound. And it really is like, wow, there, [00:46:00] they could be doing all kinds of stuff in here that the government isn’t aware of.
It’s an interesting area. And I guess just that they’re going to be a company town. I again, I apologize for going, like one of the cool things about being a company town is when you look at, oh, they also sponsored the softball team, here’s the softball diamond. And like they there’s a, the local symphony is part sponsor.
So they really were creating quality of life for the people that live there. Not just, we’re going to grind you down when you beyond, you know what I mean? It really seemed to be that they had integrated beautifully into the community,
[00:46:36] Stephen: which is funny because last week I talked about, uh, Jack Reacher, the Lee Childs book, and the very first one is exactly that some big company comes into a small town, revamps it and cleans it up.
They, they give all the storefronts. No looks nice. Give it to the community and all these great things. And then it turns out that they’re laundering money and just using the town because it’s small, or you can [00:47:00] say
[00:47:00] Alan: instead of low for the
[00:47:02] Stephen: community, it could be like charming where you’ve got the sons of anarchy, riding their bikes around and keeping control of things like some wild west town or something.
So
[00:47:15] Alan: the machines that I just mentioned by the way is all about like, you know, the robots deciding don’t worry, humanity will keep you safe. Well, until you’re no longer useful to us, you know
[00:47:22] Stephen: what I mean? So then we’ll just use you as a battery like that, or
[00:47:26] Alan: it, well, in this case, Load them up to these beautiful rocket ships and shoot them into the sun
[00:47:35] Stephen: or in this case. It’s like, so what do you think of our new flavor jelly?
[00:47:42] Alan: So special little Zang.
[00:47:44] Stephen: You like that? That’s a natural coloring red. So in updates for coding, we were talking programming and all that. You know, some of the new things I’ve been working on, I successfully this past weekend with a little help from Ethan, [00:48:00] uh, made a. A WordPress theme from scratch that I coded it didn’t use any tools.
It was all literally notepad, uh, and you know, got figure. I did look it up. It was kind of going through a tutorial thing. So it wasn’t like, I was just randomly. I did, you know, what are the files? What is needed in the files and that type of thing. But, you know, I’m able to open up the WordPress test development and I see the theme.
I choose it, it activates it and it changes and I can go in and mess with the CSS and, oh, it looks different. So yay for me.
[00:48:38] Alan: Good for you. A great success story and great success for like WordPress. That’s been around for like 25 going on 30 years. It’s one of the things that tamed the web in terms of a lot of people wanted to do a blog or a V-Loc or whatever else it might be.
And instead of. Uh, trying to make a storefront front into a blog. They said there really is a need for this to be able to do serial posting, to be able to access [00:49:00] indices, to be able to stop spam. You know what I mean? All the things you need to do to be able to stop people posting badly on you and stuff.
Right. WordPress has been a great solution for a long time. So I did it long ago when I first started the smart life before relentless geek, where I had a thing called the smart life that I was working with. And then I ended up moving from WordPress to Ning because it had even better, um, social media and, um, powerful capabilities if you will.
But, and everybody has these stories maybe. And then I moved to Nang, social media, and then Facebook arrives, explodes, and it’s like, wow. I really want to stick with all the investment, the time and the pain that I’ve put into this and building my hundreds of users and stuff like that. It wasn’t thousands yet.
But then it’s like, wow, I’m finding that Facebook is a tsunami. There’s no way that you’re going to be able to fight this. I’m going to it as often as I’m going to the smart life. And if I wasn’t already committed to the smart life, I’d be like, wow, this is a lot of good stuff over here. [00:50:00] You
know
[00:50:01] Stephen: what I mean?
Which is funny because now we’ve come to that other side of the loop. And we’ve talked about that before that people are getting very disillusioned with Facebook and there’s people that just don’t want to do Facebook. They don’t want to go on it. A lot of authors like got rid of their author page, and they’re not on that, but I know several that are starting their own social media camp using slack or discord, or, uh, there’s one another online one.
I mean, it’s like your very own small personal Facebook and they put their own website and
[00:50:34] Alan: that’s right. This court is one of the ones that I, when I first discovered it, it was like, well, you know, so it comes from a gamer perspective. You know what I mean? It really is about forming groups of people to be able to go in and do your rating and stuff like that.
But having said that it’s a great alternative and they have. Uh, tried to compete directly with Facebook. They kind of let people discover them that are looking for that alternative and for different things that they might need. And I guess maybe we are getting to [00:51:00] different industries or maybe a bad way to put it different interests.
Like if you want to share a recipe, Um, maybe Facebook isn’t the best way to do it because its search features don’t allow you to do what you really might want to do, which is go back to 10 years of recipes and look for anything that involves all the condo or something like that. And so I love the fact that there are alternatives.
That’s what it should be in a free world, a capitalist world. Uh, you know what I mean? It shouldn’t be the monolithic thing. It’s so crushes everything else that now there’s only one
[00:51:27] Stephen: way to do it. People want more control over their stuff and Facebook takes that completely away. And that’s I think the biggest thing, so, okay.
I know we’re, we’re slightly rushed. Not totally but slightly today. So here’s my, my other tech update. Uh, so my 3d printer, which I was ready to throw outside and I’m like, come on, I can’t be this bad. I know you, blah, blah, blah. I tried everything I could to get. Couldn’t get it to work. So I finally said, okay, well, I used up most of the little demo reel of filament [00:52:00] playing around with it.
I said, I can buy some filament. It’s like 25 bucks a ton of it. You get a whole ton of it. I mean, it’s huge. Yeah. I can afford 25 bucks if it doesn’t work, I didn’t want to waste the money. If things weren’t going to be working. Okay. Guess what? The whole problem was a filament. It was all dried out. The new stuff prints beautifully.
[00:52:20] Alan: So your high quality filament.
[00:52:22] Stephen: Fantastic. It’s a werewolf. I know you can’t see it. There you go. You know, how
[00:52:30] Alan: often is that true? Unfortunately, Scott, a good friend of mine who, uh, uh, I work with an Ameritech and then went on to become a painter. He just decided he wanted to do something more physical, more like you can see results at the end of the day, instead of just pushing paper and bits, he really wanted to be, this room was white and now it is olive or whatever.
And he always talked about what matters of course is the quality of your brushes, the quality of your paint. It isn’t me magic as a great painter. [00:53:00] I am absolutely enhanced by knowing enough about these things that like, what am I, my VOC is my volatile organic compounds. And he was so happy to launch into, I guess it’s like when I’m talking about my bread machine, you know, it was like, well, you just can’t stop talking about, if you get the right flour and you get the right, you measure your ingredients correctly and stuff that whatever was not working before kind of magically goes away.
And I’m so happy that you discovered that the sample filament was kind of like aged out. And now that the good new stuff is going to put you back in again. I’ll let you
[00:53:32] Stephen: make werewolf. So the, the biggest problem now, oh, I made this angel too. Uh, I think she’s pretty.
[00:53:41] Alan: That’s great, too. Exactly what it was.
The, the, the, just the sort of having, there you go there. Yeah. Um,
[00:53:47] Stephen: the, the problem now, but anyway. Okay. And now is that the little post is this big to hold the real, but the real is like this thick. So it keeps spooling off and getting tangled. I ruined two princess weekend. [00:54:00] One, it got twisted, so it wasn’t printing.
So I look, and here’s the bottom of the, where it was printing and the head’s up here doing nothing. And I’m like, crap. And then another one, it just has to unspool and it must’ve got caught and it pulled it in and it like broke the filament. So again, it got halfway through a print and then it was ruined.
So that was a beholder. I was printing on the holder,
[00:54:26] Alan: whatever spool size they use, you would think that they must know that what’s the right size to make it so that the weight of it is not so much that it doesn’t feed correctly. Doesn’t ever struggle. Right. I don’t know what you want it to be perfectly round.
Cause if it’s like this, when it turns, it can actually do that weird
[00:54:42] Stephen: little thing on
[00:54:45] Alan: school, more than you need. And then that, like you said, can get tangled and other things. Wow. So breakthrough, but maybe some new things that you need to yeah,
[00:54:54] Stephen: a little, but I said, it’s such a big role. I could just cut it.
And Ethan even helped me [00:55:00] with support because when you print it, if I’m holding my, if the figures holding his arm out and you just 3d print, that’s just going to break off and fall or droop. And so you have to actually add a support that gets printed. Yes. The hold it up and that snaps off. Well, you can do that in your slicer program.
The first one we did it just added support, but then it like filled in, in between the support. So we were a solid block almost of okay. That one’s ruined. So, you know, it takes some work. The programs we were talking about, you know, interface, these programs are not the easiest, cause there’s so many variables, but they’re not just very intuitive if you don’t know 3d design and all of that.
So I’m playing with it. I’m like, okay, it doesn’t matter. I’m learning and getting better. So yeah.
[00:55:53] Alan: Right now, unfortunately, um, had to handling my dad’s passing and handling my mom’s care is absorbing a lot of my time. [00:56:00] In fact, I’m flying out today. There are more things out in California. That’s one of the reasons that even though I keep reading about it and reading about, Hey, I’m going to do a, learn how to do honeycombing so that it’s not, it doesn’t have to be solid.
It has to be what’s the structure that gives you strength per weight and that kind of stuff. I will eventually dive in because I have so many things that I want to experiment with it. So I want to make puzzles. I want to make figures. I, all that stuff I’m just lagging behind you. I wish that we had, we can go back and forth about this.
Hey, here’s the latest thing. And this worked and this didn’t, you know, that kind of thing.
[00:56:32] Stephen: So I’m, I’m much happier with the printer, uh, and I can give it a better rating than I was giving it before. Um, and when you have your files, So the, I did get some files from humble bundle, but you have to put them in the coding format for your printer to recognize you have to save it in the right format.
So you have to bring it into a slicer program and the size of program cuts it. So it knows for each layer and you can adjust those. And, and you can [00:57:00] just for ease of use, you can say low quality, the highest quality, and it uses more, um, of the filament and it takes longer at the highest quality, obviously.
So I got to play with it some more because I mean, these are blue because Microsoft did not have that much filament. They were like almost bare. I was like, oh my gosh. Uh, but I think if you paint over it, it’ll still paint well and cover up the blue. Um, but you look at it and it’s got some, like the sword is not nice and smooth.
It’s a little jaggedy. Um, and there’s the detail looks nice, but then it’s also got areas that are a little. Uh, jenky from the Brittany. So it’s not as high, a quality as like a figure you’d buy in the store for five or six bucks. But this cost me like 45 cents. My younger
[00:57:49] Alan: brother and his friends were great when they played D and D they often played with little fingers, you know, a little miniatures, and they bought all different kinds of sets and they learn which ones were great about it right out of the box.
It looks great. Or they have [00:58:00] to kind of like file away some of the flashing, you know, if it was done in a moment, that little Ridge on the side where that was, what leaked out from the mold, if you will. And I think they were amazing, like the artwork that they could do and the tuning that they could do so that it was all just the Rick’s mood and texts, smoothness, texture, et cetera.
It was really cool. I, to see, like, I dunno, um, they all looked like Juul thieves or something like that. They had these little visors that gave huge magnification and they got such incredible steady hands. They’re painting like a sigil on a shield with a brush that. Too little, um, spindles, you know, I’m trying to think what you call it, you know, and, and yet they were able to like, have that incredible steady hand.
My idea was like, can I dip it in brown tonight? You know what I mean? I’m like, I’m just not the guy to make this. I’m like, give me the roller and I’ll do the entire wall. Right, right.
[00:58:53] Stephen: Maybe that’s not
[00:58:54] Alan: true. I have really good eye, hand coordination and fine motor skills. But I don’t know that I [00:59:00] get the satisfaction out of people that really love being able to say, you can see each individual link of the chain that’s around this guy’s waist.
He’s wearing a chain belt. I don’t know. I just, I get impatient or something I don’t have.
[00:59:13] Stephen: Right. And me neither. All right. Well, I know we’re closing in, uh, real quick. Um, I, you know, we still got things on our list that we haven’t gotten to we’ll get to, but I have a quick, interesting trivia. You ready? The, you know, return of the Jedi, the original E-box celebration song, the love nub song we got into the net.
You know that one, right? Do you know who wrote that?
[00:59:41] Alan: So is it, so I’m going to get somebody like mark mothers.
[00:59:45] Stephen: That’s an extremely good guest here. I’ll give you a clue. Good guests.
[00:59:52] Alan: Darn it, uh, I would’ve guessed somebody like that. Like a rocker. They became, uh, a, uh, a [01:00:00] sound guy for
[01:00:01] Stephen: movies. It’s almost the opposite,
[01:00:04] Alan: Trevor Raven also, uh, let’s see, um, uh, uh, Weber, Andrew Lloyd Webber.
[01:00:13] Stephen: I’ll give you a little flu. He was the front man after this, after Jedi, he became the front man of a class, a supergroup classic rock group, um, in like the mid eighties.
[01:00:29] Alan: So like John Wetton for, uh, Asia or,
[01:00:34] Stephen: but not them,
[01:00:35] Alan: not them. Um, so.
[01:00:43] Stephen: Okay. So I’ll tell you what he was the group of, but see if you know his name, that after he did the love song for return of the Jedi, he became the front man for the supergroup Toto.
[01:00:58] Alan: Oh, it’s [01:01:00] Jeff Porcaro no,
[01:01:01] Stephen: that’s um, it was only like a year and a half, two years.
[01:01:07] Alan: Right, right. I’ll get this, um, finger in front, man, right?
[01:01:12] Stephen: Yes. His father is another famous musician.
[01:01:17] Alan: Okay. So I knew it was the poor Colorado brothers. Um, and it’s, uh, Dan, why is not coming to me because I can even like picture
[01:01:30] Stephen: first album and I didn’t know this one. I didn’t know who it was, but.
[01:01:36] Alan: I give I’m sorry. I
[01:01:37] Stephen: should get this. So the front man of Toto that previously wrote the , the Jedi was Joseph Williams, who is John Williams.
See, I wouldn’t have gotten that neither. I was like blown away. The first total album. I wouldn’t have that. Someone that doesn’t ring a bell at all. Well, I don’t know if it was the first total album. It was like [01:02:00] 84, 86 or something like that. He was
[01:02:04] Alan: like Steve Luther albums, who was their guitar, amazing guitarist.
In fact, he has like, there’s a couple of Christmas albums that are like, you know, shredding Christmas albums and call like Merry Xmas. Yes. I love that he’s ever made is like, man, this guy can play that’s I really love him. And the Hydra album before the album from Toto, I really loved the first album because it had puff friendly songs.
A Hydra album has all kinds of more proggy type things. And it’s like kind of that transition before Africa and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, show stuff.
[01:02:35] Stephen: There you go. Did not know. I watch, I watch one of those things online, you know, 10 things you didn’t know about star wars or whatever. Well, I knew nine of them, so whatever,
[01:02:46] Alan: very good.
And John Williams song. So that’s interesting. And the fact that I was going down that, well, there are certain people that are Danny Elfman, John Williams. I mean, they were responsible for 90% of, you know. [01:03:00]
[01:03:00] Stephen: Wow. Okay. So that’s a good stumper. Okay. I have a good time out in California. Well, you know, as much as you can, honestly,
[01:03:12] Alan: Grief works.
Oddly, I’m not torn up, but I I’m ambushed, uh, occasionally by a boy, you know, reminiscent of something that me and my dad talked about and we’ll never have that conversation again, but it’s all those little memories and all those songs and all those places that are like, I can’t think of it without being well, my family went on a vacation
[01:03:33] Stephen: there and you really do go through those different stages and any strong emotion like that.
You just can’t sustain it for long. It’s just human nature, but it enters a different feeling and phase, you know? Uh, so yeah, I get ya.
[01:03:50] Alan: It’s kind of weird. I’ll I’ll be like talking and I’ll start leaking tears because it isn’t like, you know, whoops. Anyway, tight time will heal as you were saying, [01:04:00] you know what I mean?
And there’s still things to be handled, but there’s nothing that’s scary. It’s just going to be, what does the law require? What is the, what is the family require all of it. You know what I mean? How. The money and the possessions. And of course, making sure that my mom is taking care of, you know, she’s the way their brothers are able to work it out.
We’re still not going to be able to always be there for her. So she’s going to be weeks without a visit. Whereas my dad used to visit every day and that, Ugh, I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.
[01:04:27] Stephen: Right. So I can’t stand it. That’s all the crap you got to go through. Cause then you can worry about your mom and talk to your brothers.
We met, Hey, remember when we did this with dad and you, you know, you get, you remember the good days. So today is the day of
[01:04:42] Alan: his cremation. Uh, so tomorrow or sooner thereafter, I pick up the mains and that’s just going to be like, oh man, that’s about as final as you can
[01:04:51] Stephen: freaking get. Well, make sure you got your favorite tunes on.
That’s a great
[01:04:56] Alan: way to put it. Exactly. So I got my traveling outfit [01:05:00] already. You know, I got casual clothes. I tend to not dress up on planes anymore. Pretty much for getting this a little bit early today, sir, we’ll not be in a crazy rush to get to the plane and have a great weekend. We’ll still be able to do things next week, even if it’s a laptop instead of my characteristic Skynet rig
[01:05:18] Stephen: remote Skynet later,
