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[00:00:00] Do you like conversation on a variety of topics? Feel like no one wants to talk about the things that interest you? Tired of only hearing the same political, sports, or catastrophe talk? We feel that way too. Join two high functioning geeks as they discuss just about anything under the sun. We can’t tell you what we’ll be talking about each week because we don’t know where our brains will take us.
It will be an interesting conversation though, so hang on and join us. Here comes the Relentless Geekery.
Alan: Let me just adjust the amount of light I have on me because I’m so washed out. Night shift. There we go. That’s a little better. It’s funny. Whatever is going on with this picture is giving me a distorted head. Isn’t that weird? All right.
Stephen: Something like that. Exactly.
Alan: Like what’s going on here?
There’s nothing. Who knows?
Stephen: According to AI, my picture is a snow storm.
Alan: [00:01:00] I don’t actually see, I see meteors more than I see snow.
Stephen: Yeah, I think those are supposed to be snowflakes.
Alan: There we go. I do have quite, quite a bit of snow on trees and stuff like that with this background. So yeah, this is my, my living room window. Exactly. That’s where I am. So
Stephen: that’s what I should start doing is willing it to put like a window frame around it.
So it looks
Alan: like this is. Long ago, I, when I took some classes that were really good about exploring like, what do you really want out of life? And one of the things that it talked about was like, what’s your ideal working environment or just not quite living, like, where you can be really purposeful.
And what I always thought was, if I’m going to be, like, Neil Gaiman does this, right? He goes on, lives in another city, stays with friends, and that’s where he finishes his book. In all of his usual haunts and stuff like that, there’s too many distractions and interruptions, and so what I always thought was, I need a mountain cabin that has, like, all the wood and all the food that I need, and [00:02:00] get stowed in, and just Let the wind howl outside and stuff like that, but this kind of scenery outside, and every once in a while, I’ve got to go and get more wood off of the cord that I have outside or something.
But otherwise, that just seems like a very relaxing and yet productive, like you’d make your own sleep schedule. Of course, the sun would influence you, but it’s like people that live in caves, they tend to go from like 24 to 26 hours because that’s more natural for human beings or whatever like that.
I, maybe one day, if I’m ever going to be where I start being a multi house person, I don’t know that I want a beach house. I want like a mountain fasting. I want a thing that you have to like I snowcat it up here and then I have, I don’t know. I, you got to be careful about how bad it could really get.
What if you really, lost power or lost wood or something like that, but it’d be cool to really get stranded for three or four months and just devour books and just sleep according to when you want to sleep and eat according to when you [00:03:00] want to eat. It would be very interesting and natural maybe.
You might be also stir crazy after three days, and so maybe I’m full of it.
Stephen: I think it depends, If I didn’t have to worry about having a job to pay for food and medical insurance, then that would be one thing, but I got the little cabin here up in the woods and I do like to go up in the summer and stuff.
But it is, it’s close. So there can be easily distractions. It’s Oh, I gotta go do this. Oh, I got, and then you don’t get that time to really relax. It’s not really outfitted for winter. It does. It’s not insulated and stuff like that. And I know my buddy Casey has been hunting up in the woods.
He’s Oh, we can insulate this and we could cut this part out and put in a wood burner, blah, blah. And I’m like, I really don’t want that. I like it. As it is with the summer thing, I’m not, I’m okay with not going up there in the winter.
Alan: Very minimalist instead of a whole other house to maintain.
You know what I mean? So I
Stephen: don’t want to turn it into a hunting cabin because that’s not what I want it for. It’s just [00:04:00] different. People have different things, is thinking is. I would make sure I have it so I could have it for a hunting cabin. And mine is, I like to go up there and relax during the spring and summer.
Alan: Exactly. Like a gazebo almost, so this is I’ve been in a couple of situations in my life where I go to, I’d be at university of Illinois in intercession and there’d be nobody on campus or the usual 35, 000 over the summer drops to 5, 000 intercession, it probably drops to a thousand and it’s the Omega man thing.
It’s very cool to have all these facilities that are for you. You go into the Union and there’s nobody else there. You can shoot pool by yourself, which seems a little bit lonely, but you can sure get a lot of pool in when you’re not waiting on another player. You, back in, what here’s, what’s paradise to me?
Oh my god, I could play any pinball machine or any video game that I want. I’m not putting a quarter on the machine. I’m not waiting on anybody. It’s a little spooky, because once in a while you hear a noise, it’s I thought I was the only one here. You don’t want the shining going on.
It’s [00:05:00] actually, there’s something very cool about having a huge place all to yourself. So I wouldn’t mind being in like, when we were, long ago with my parents, we stayed in a hotel in Norway that was like a week away from closing for the season. So nobody else was there. We just happened to be there. And they actually had like huge rooms, dark, like no lights in the chandeliers and maybe even stuff like covered with cloths and stuff like that.
And so a little eerie. But it was also. Very cool to have it all to yourself. And it was me and my brothers that went exploring. You know what I mean? It was never really me in that case, but there’s something, and I think here’s hoping I don’t fall down the stairs. Cause no one will find me for two weeks.
You know what I mean? There’s downsides too. You got to take care of yourself while you’re there, but. I just, I would go to into U of I. I’d go to my favorite place to get a gyros, and instead of being, there’s always lines with tons of students there, you’d go there and the guy’s like happy to see you because you’re his third customer for the day, and he gives you a little extra meat because, it’s just, [00:06:00] there’s something, Very cool about that, about and I don’t even it’s, it may be similar to the mountain thing. You can decide what you want to do, and it, the time is different. You know what I mean? It’s not I got to rush to class, or I got to go finish my paper, or something like that.
And you’re in a place where you’ve usually been very busy. And this is I worked at Pete Marwick, Arthur Anderson, and then Pete Marwick for the early part of my career. And many people used to take like Christmas to New Year’s off. But I wouldn’t because it was like cool to have the office to yourself and it was also like here’s where I take care of Finishing this year.
I finish all my filing. I create the new files for the next year. I like Neaton You know I mean I get organized and make sure that all the things that kept getting pushed aside because you’re always under pressure at a big consulting firm that you actually got ready for the next race And if the people other people who were there with me that liked that kind of thing, we’d leave each other alone for most of the day.
And then at lunchtime say, Hey, you want to grab lunch? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You might want to go to do errands instead or something like that. But it, when you’re with the [00:07:00] other people that like that kind of thing, to give each other space and stop like visiting in interruption, you like, you’ll get together when, Hey, maybe it’s mealtime or something like that.
So I guess. I have very fond memories of just that, even doesn’t have to be a mountain cabin where it’s all rustic. I was up on the 18th floor of a skyscraper and it still seemed like you had the place to yourself. Cool. You can put things in the refrigerator and nobody would eat your leftover kum, kum pow or something like that because
Stephen: with the cabin again, with this weather, the way it’s been, I love the snow.
Not always pleased when the wind’s blowing and it feels like negative five, that, I guess I am getting older. But I remember going out to play with my kids all the time, and I still enjoy going out in the snow. So we’ve had snow since last Thursday or something, and it keeps coming. It was just snowing earlier, and I’m like, I’m not gonna miss this opportunity.
And I just threw my coat on and boots and stuff, and I went walking back through the woods. There’s nobody around and I know it’s [00:08:00] 100 feet. I could yell and somebody would hear me. They’re that close, but it seems like nobody’s around and it’s quiet and the snow’s falling and I’m walking around in the woods, and then I find the footprints of somebody.
No, always look for that. I’m like, there’s snow. I’m going to see if somebody’s been going through my woods.
Alan: Is there another, I don’t know not a prowler, but like someone who’s hunting or something like that. And they don’t know that it’s your property. It’s in the middle of the woods, We did have
Stephen: one time.
I remember I woke up. I don’t know if I had dogs and took them out or when this was. I don’t remember that. But I went outside and it had snowed and I looked down. I’m like, Oh, footprints. And I fall and they went all the way around the house, walked up to the windows. And I’m like, Oh, that’s not good.
Alan: That’s not good. Oh, fuck. That’s, that’s disconcerting. That’s okay.
Stephen: Where we live, we don’t worry about that a whole lot. I’m thinking it was just. Yeah. Maybe somebody went into the ditch and they were looking to see if somebody because they didn’t like on
Alan: this house door.
Exactly. You
Stephen: know, so I don’t know. But I’ve enjoyed the snow for the last week. I [00:09:00] haven’t really complained. It’s a little cold sometimes, it’s so pretty,
Alan: there’s a people who don’t read. Are no better off than the people who can’t read. And so that quote applies to a lot of things.
If you’re going to live in a wonderful place that has seasons, then you should take advantage of each of the seasons, not just, oh no, it’s winter, now I gotta tough it out. Colleen and I we’ve had a couple times, we drove up to see Niagara Falls when it froze over. It happens like once every 20 years or something like that, but we, I had never seen it.
And so you get in your car and you’re, it’s the quality car, so you’re going to make it all the way and not get stranded in the middle of the forest on 90 or something like that. And walking around there, you really had to like, Get the parka on that has the porthole and stuff because it was really freaking cold, but like nothing I’ve ever seen before the so much ice all frozen in place and the trees all have hoarfrost on them.
So they’re just a beautiful with the light coming through them. It’s a fantastic crystalline display. And even we’ve been here where the Rocky River, we’re right near the Rocky River [00:10:00] reservation. That’s part of the Metro Parks Emerald necklace and it froze. Yeah. And then, when it started to break up, we went for a walk all the way along it.
And heard the, the groaning and the cracking and seeing things maneuvering for position. And it’s just because you don’t see that sight often. Every time you go to the river, babbling brook type stuff. But to see the power of nature and how it’s like whatever’s going on underneath is enough current and drag that it’s, breaking ice that looked to be like six, nine inches thick. Cause remember this was, we had a really cold winter, I don’t know, maybe 10 or 15 years ago. And whatever it takes to break that up, it’s cool to see that level of power. Like when I’ve talked about going to a Gwatsu Falls and you’re just going to be like, this is noise.
And this, the spray of it is man, I’m a speck in the middle of all this power of nature. That’s a very cool feeling. And the fact that you can be out in the middle of a relatively inhospitable place. But if you got good boots and a good hat and gloves and a good parka, you’re good to go. You just keep moving, [00:11:00] and it might be that you get a little bit of snow on you, but then it makes you appreciate even more your warm home when you get home, so we’ve regularly done that. We got enough metro park places to go for a hike. We don’t have cool back property like you do, but there’s enough places that are just a 10 minute drive and you’re like, You make a point of I’m going to park where they’ve cleared it because I don’t want to come back to the car after a hike and then to dig my car out.
You know what I mean? I’ve had a couple instances and I did that in Chicago when I was wearing nice clothes because I was doing consulting and there’s man, nothing worse than slick leather shoes and a wrong shovel for the job that you’re trying to apply it to. And you’re just, I hope I don’t sop my suit with sweat.
I hope I don’t tear it, because I take a wrong step and it’s not designed for athletics, I it’s worth, even just, we’ve walked in the neighborhood a couple times as it’s gotten colder, and You get to notice who are the good businesses along Detroit and Lakewood that they actually do salt or shovel and which ones don’t.
And
Stephen: here’s something about that. And this may not be [00:12:00] all areas. This may not be all things. So clear back in the nineties, I was working at an insurance company and one day it just overnight, I’m going to unleash the snow storm, right? It had been just warm enough, cold enough up and down or whatever that everything wasn’t just freezing, but it was just coming down and piling up the parking lot, people were driving through and they were getting, little hillocks frozen.
So it was, uneven and treacherous with the ice. So I’m walking in, took a wrong turn. My foot turned under me and I went down. It sounded like something broke. I heard a snap. Oh and it turned out though, that, and this is in a bear, the two bones down there pushed my tendons apart and the tendons pulled it back together.
Alan: Thank God. Okay, God, but it weakened the tendons and I couldn’t walk. It felt like it was broke and it still never healed 100%. It’s still got issues today, but. What I found out was that [00:13:00] they hadn’t plowed that dry or the parking lot at all. They hadn’t touched it. They just let it snow and whatever happened.
Stephen: So I was told that it was an act of God, not under their control. So you can’t sue and they don’t even have to give you time off for work, for being injured at work or anything like that. If they had actually tried to plow it, then they participated. They take responsibility and then. So I wonder if some places with sidewalks are the same way and we take on
Alan: liability because we try to improve it.
And then we still somebody fell. I’ve read very similar things. And what? Honestly, that intrusion of like lawyers and law into your life that say, let’s just screw everybody because in case I get liable and I don’t know, I’ve had, we’ve all had friends that like, They get into an auto accident and then they talk about that.
That’s their like retirement lawsuit. And it’s your friend was driving, he didn’t mean to get you hurt. You’re going to pulverize him and his family [00:14:00] because of this not act of God, but an accident. It was just an accident. So there’s multiple sides to that whole liability issue. You know what I mean?
Like what liability you take on by affecting a system or something like that. I much appreciate it. For instance, this is funny, y’all. I am such aI rag so much on religion and the church, and yet you know what sidewalks were the best cleared? The ones in front of the churches. They have volunteers that come in, and they have that sense of community spirit, and that’s good Christianity and Judaism and whatever else might be going on, that we’re all in this together, and we’re gonnawe’ll work on this.
We’ll make this better for everyone. And not everybody thinks that way. Not the tattoo parlor, for instance. You know what I mean? It’s funny. If I was walking along and I would have stereotypically guessed which ones would do it or not, it was correct about 95 percent of the time. You know what I mean?
The coffee place, one should be able to get in and out because their business is warm up with coffee. Other places that have some seasonality, they’re like, If [00:15:00] they’re going to force their way in here I’ll still serve them, but otherwise let the snow mound up.
Stephen: I’m sure there is a small percentage.
I agree with you that some places just don’t care, but I’m sure there’s some small percentage where it’s somebody like in their sixties alone. It’s I’m going to die if I go shovel this. I’m sorry, everybody, but that’s just how it is. Yeah. You don’t get as many kids anymore running around wanting to shovel sidewalks for a dime.
Alan: Yeah. This kind of a. There’s neighborhood tales that we have a lady that has two dogs. So sweet. I think that she’s mute. And that doesn’t really matter into the story except that’s how you remember that if you would say hi, she wouldn’t say hi back, but she wasn’t being curt. She was her husband was really cool in that she would walk the dogs all the way along our block and back.
And he would get out there with their snow machine and do the sidewalks for the entire street, which is a half a mile here where I live on Lakeland. And everybody benefits from that having been cleared so that he could, she could walk [00:16:00] their doggies. And that, that stopped. And I think that maybe they parted because she was still around and that wasn’t getting done anymore.
And I didn’t see him anymore. So that’s why I thought that maybe they parted instead of him giving up on that. beautiful act of generosity he was doing. But it inspires you to we are right next to our neighbor and she’s a lady living alone and a little bit older. So every time that I shovel our front walk, I do shovel our front walk even though I’m sure that’s taking on liability for the neighborhood, I don’t stop at the yard line because that just seems like such a jerk thing to do.
I continue all the way to her driveway and I even do her front walk and she’s been kind and said thank you for doing that. But that just It doesn’t occur to me to not do it. Maybe if I was like, oh my god, I’m exhausted. I had to do my entire driveway, and I just don’t have it in me. But otherwise, you just don’t want to send that signal that there’s an invisible wall here, and you’re on your own.
Don’t you want to be a decent human being?
Stephen: See, we’ve got, and this is a weird issue, too. We do have neighbors that have those, not, like the [00:17:00] souped up golf cart vehicles for farm work and bobcats and tractors. So they have a gator,
Alan: that kind of thing.
Exactly. Okay. And
Stephen: they will come over and they’ll plow our driveway. They just do it and we appreciate it. We usually give them some money and say, Hey, I’d pay someone else to do this because this driveway is long enough. If I tried to do it, I’d probably die now. And it takes about three hours.
Alan: You really are pushing snow for quite a long time. And if It’s wet, heavy snow. Okay.
Stephen: Then the issue comes in, they come over and sometimes they do it when it’s not needed or they do it like three times in a day and it’s okay, chill, but they’ll grind up some of the yard on the side.
They’ll get too close and grind that up and leave those, or they shove the rocks like halfway up into our yard. So then I have to go pick them all up and put them back in the driveway before I go in the gravel. It exactly. Yeah. I feel like. A jerk going to say, hey, could you not do that when you’re doing the free shoveling of our driveway?
Alan: Do me this wonderful service, but do it [00:18:00] competently because That makes sense. Hear exactly what you’re saying. That’s We I don’t think that I’ve ever done other people’s driveways badly so they would say, why don’t you just lay off? You know what I mean? But I know that we’ve had, we have We’re right next to a parking lot, and occasionally they’ll push stuff so that it takes care of the sidewalk.
And then, but the, where they put it on our driveway is not end of the driveway, it’s at an angle jutting out into our driveway. And especially if they do that 5 o’clock in the morning, sometimes by the time I get out there at 8, it’s already become tundra, it freezes a little bit. I’m like, Man, thank you much.
But this is just one extra moment of looking at what you just did and thinking, that’s not a good thing. I’ve partially locked them in their driveway because then I got to get out there and really chip away at it and stuff like that.
Stephen: This is the cynic coming out again, and it’s a very stereotype talk.
But guys that have big trucks that have snow plows that do that type of work are the same [00:19:00] type that don’t really care. And too bad for you.
Alan: Maybe that might be
Stephen: that’s very stereotype. But, like they say, sometimes stereotypes are for a reason,
Alan: right? I because they’re in a service industry, if you will, if they have the plow on, they already are doing that for a job.
And so I hope just that they’re doing it like. I haven’t noticed, like I’ve seen people where they plow and they plow people in. If they’re parked on the street and it doesn’t even have a don’t park here sign but it really is just regular, somehow they don’t feel bad about pushing it up again.
You know that’s a dick move. You know you shouldn’t be doing that, but in order to get your street done and get back to the depot on time, you put aside That bit of courtesy, so then we’ve had things that get encased and they seem to be there for a couple of months until it probably is again a little old lady.
They can’t get out there and chip away at it. So I keep once in a while. I think, if I was a teenager, I’d Go on patrol and just say, Hey, as a courtesy of the neighborhood, I’m going to help get some of [00:20:00] these cars out before they’re a total iceberg and stuff like that. Oh
Stephen: I remember when me and Bobby were dating.
She lived in an apartment up in Akron and all the time. The snow plows would go through. Huge plows and everybody’s car would get covered so many times She went out to go to work and her car’s got three inches of ice on it. She’s on it shipping it You know, exactly the snow plows went through several times throwing slush every time and a new
Alan: layer exactly.
Yes One of the, we are three years into our new driveway and garage, and one of the joys of every time that I pull the car back out of the garage is not having to add that 10 to 15 minutes in the morning, usually when you’re well dressed to go to work to chip things out to make sure that you can get your car out.
You know what I mean? I’ve had a couple of times where it was exactly the wrong snow, where even though you’re letting it idle and backing out and not spinning your wheels, They’re the plow as it comes through on the street can give you that little extra iceberg, that little extra flow at the end, and you got to rev up enough to be able to get [00:21:00] through it, but not enough to spin your wheels.
And once in a while, I’d still get stuck and man, I don’t have time for this. I don’t want to do this thing right now.
Stephen: We had the mailman get stuck in the farm. Across from us. He was, he backed up a little bit after he put our mail in and caught the ice and just slid right down the hill into the driveway.
Oh, no. Okay. Get out. And they pulled the tractor over. They’re like, there’s nothing to hook to on this mail truck. We will rip the bumper off. So he finally got out. I’m not sure how and it was all ice on a hill. So it’s I’m not getting behind there to push.
Alan: Yeah, I’ll get smooshed into the thing.
Exactly. We, A lot of people have sent out lots of things usually on Facebook or something like that says, Hey, hope the guy’s going through this winter storm. We’re all okay. But then you find out they’re having like terrible fires in California and they’re having terrible drought and man, if we screwed the world, not once again, not to drag us down, it’s the new year, but all these things, they used to happen like the storm of the century, or once every 20 years, you’d get a really extraordinary snowfall where they’d cancel school or something like that.
And now it seems that there’s never an area of [00:22:00] the country that isn’t getting flooded. Avalanched, droughted, whatever else it might be. We really have a changed weather patterns. And if one of those things, it knew it was going to happen and they did it anyway. But is there any way
Stephen: they’re rich?
Alan: At least they’re rich. Exactly. Yeah. But I know that we’ve turned the world into a wasteland, but for a few golden years, we enhanced shareholder value.
Stephen: Very common going around, right? Okay. Okay. So let me change topics. Yes. Have you watched Skeleton Crew at all on Disney?
Alan: No, I have not
Stephen: put it on your list.
It’s
Alan: one of those they’re the crew that’s in the bottom of the star Trek or so that’s
Stephen: lower decks. That’s lowered star Trek cartoon. No this is a skeleton crew. It’s star Wars, Disney. They, I didn’t know a lot about it. They put out a trailer and the trailer looked good. It’s got Jude law in it.
Cool. And it’s kid focused. It definitely. Brings back the Star Wars is a fairy [00:23:00] tale for kids feel it’s pirates Star Wars is a Western pirate type story
Alan: like Firefly, like any number of other, okay.
Stephen: So they said they were trying to make a Star Wars TV show that felt like E.
T. and the Goonies. Is what they were trying to do
Alan: kid stuff, but still with a little bit of danger and a little bit of growing up is hard. And yeah,
Stephen: totally nailed it. 100%. This has been probably the most fun. Star Wars. Literally. I’ve watched in the last 6 or 7 years. We are loving it so much. And.
Alan: That’s big praise with the Mandalorian and various other things that I thought were really good.
Yes, they are very, very good. Okay. But this one is just engaging us in a way that those really didn’t. And Mandalorian is awesome. And I loved it. And Andor and I even like Kenobi and even Acolyte. And I know that’s A tough thing, but for the, it’s just skeleton crew is just nailing everything. So perfect for me now.
Stephen: I know some people may [00:24:00] say, oh, I don’t like watching kids shows. They may not enjoy it, but to me, like I said, it really is it’s, this is what star Wars is about, and there’s been so many good things in it, little Easter eggs and just fun, little things that they do
Alan: People who love Star Wars are who made this show and you can tell that they put their love into, what made it special.
Okay, I’ve
Stephen: been hearing almost universal praise from everybody else about it. I will
Alan: absolutely give it a watch. One of the things you do in the new year is all your resolutions to catch up on the best things of 2024 and what’s got new good buzz for this year. So very good. So we loved
Stephen: it. There’s been just, I haven’t watched this week’s episode yet because Colin’s been gone.
A friend had surgery. He’s been up there with. And for that to help him out. So it’s okay as soon as you get back, we’re watching skeleton crew, right? That’s our to do warm
Alan: up. Exactly. In fact, I think that the rookie restarts, like maybe even last night or tonight and we might be one episode already behind.
And we really love that show. Yes. It’s brilliant. It’s charming as hell. And the good ensemble cast is really good. So [00:25:00] I, one of those yeah. When we ran out of episodes, how long do we have to wait? That’s weeks, months. So
Stephen: I started watching Firefly again, and I haven’t seen Firefly for years. So a little bit I’ve forgotten about.
Alan: Okay.
Stephen: And I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is such a good show.
Alan: It really, honestly. So that’s Charles Whedon. Oh yeah. Another guy that really. Many of the things he made, he really, he made more episodes of the things he already loved, and it shows. You know what I mean? And very good. I just watched Black Doves. I think it’s only like a six or eight episode, probably eight, and it’s a spy and spycraft type thing, but excellent performances, great twists, enough going on, it’s multinational, so that and the good and the bad guys are who you expect, alliances shift and stuff like that but really one of those things that I have it on my, now that I am Skynet with my three monitors, I’m doing things here while I’m always watching something over here, almost always.
And [00:26:00] it’s wow, I’m going to pay attention over here instead of just catching it out of the side of my eye, because it’s really well paced and staged and the fight scenes are fantastic. The first time that I saw The Bourne movies. Some of those fight scenes were so different than any other.
They were, if you will, more realistic. They’re very intense. You’re not going to go fisticuffs and do all of, honorable things if you’ve got someone trying to kill you or if your mission is to kill them. You’re going to use everything in the environment around you. You’re going to stab them with a magazine.
You’re going to bash their head onto a bathroom sink or something like that. What’s harder than this guy’s head, that piece of porcelain. Wham. So I like where there’s many things that are just. still unrealistic, but once in a while when you get a fight scene that’s really you’re exhausted watching it because it’s so realistic and so fraught with danger.
You know what I mean? Like they’re really both good. Who’s going to win this? I Colleen [00:27:00] doesn’t care for those things. It’s a guy thing to like the guns and explosions movies. And yet, I’m sitting here in the thing and I’m like, moving as to what I would do next. What would be the next punch?
Stephen: I go back every now and then, and I’ll watch older movies sometimes refresh or an old movie I never saw or whatever, and fight scenes have really changed a lot for the better. And if you go back and watch some of those older movies, when they like swing a sword, They’re swinging here in front of me.
Why would I ever swing a sword three feet in front of me? And I’m going up there to block it. So the swords go, nobody swings like that. There’s nobody
Alan: does like that.
Stephen: It’s that’s not even realistic, but nowadays they’ve gotten so much better with, not with just with angles, but with the practice.
And I saw a meme about this. Somebody questioning, they, they showed all these movies from star wars. How did we go from this? And they showed the phantom menace, Darth Maul duel and Yoda against yeah. Christopher Lee duel and all the stuff they were doing. And [00:28:00] then we got this. And then they showed like a few scenes from some of the TV shows, which aren’t as big and dramatic.
We went from that to this in that the cost of making that one scene in a TV budget less and probably about 10 times less time to practice. And, come on it’s just, again, somebody trying to. Make Star Wars nowadays. Oh, it sucks nowadays. No, you’re comparing a TV show to a multimillion dollar movie.
Alan: Exactly. And they’re trying to make it a spectacle instead of cranking out an episode every week. Yeah. There’s differences there too. Actually, this brings to mind. I watched a lot of the Errol Flynn swashbuckling movies, and some of them were really good. They’d have fights up and down the stairs, and they’d speak from chandeliers, and we were okay.
But I remember the Three Musketeers came out in maybe the 70s, and it was one of the first ones where, instead of it being on guard and everything being honorable, they were all dirty fighters. They’d hit you in the face with a boot, throw food at you, they’d do whatever they could to [00:29:00] gain advantage, and it was like, I thought these guys were the heroes.
They’re heroes because they’re alive and they get to tell the story. You know what I mean? That was really a breakthrough. I remember who the director was, but there was all kinds of commentary at the time. Almost like besmirching the memories of these movies. It’s I’m pretty sure how, that was how it always was.
And that we, like gilded it instead of being realistic about if you’re in a life or death thing, you will do whatever you need to do to survive. If you say
Stephen: I thought the original book of the three musketeers, they were a little bit grittier and raunchier. Exactly. But I think that may depend on the translation too, because it’s French originally.
So
Alan: it was that Dumas, right? Yeah, exactly. In fact Bear with me. Can’t think of the author’s name, that he had a series of books that were written as if like Victorian style where every sentence ran on too long and it was too florid and stuff like that. But then in contrast to that, when you get to the fight scenes, they were Brutal, so it really was this era, perhaps of [00:30:00] refinement where everybody wore their lacy collars and their hankies up the sleeves, but when they were going to fight they would smear feces on their sword so that if it didn’t kill them it could kill them later from poison, from sexist, oh my God. I guess the, Maybe that’s anti nobility or anti illusion about nobility, if you’re a mercenary, or if you’re the king’s guard, you’ll do whatever it takes to protect the king. Not I’m only about nobility, I’ll do whatever it takes. So
Stephen: I mean You know, the thing with Monty Python throwing the cows over the wall, that’s because they did that stuff.
Alan: They put dead animals in wells to poison the castle’s water supply and stuff like that. That’s right. Did you ever see they live? A John Carpenter movie with Rowdy Roddy
Stephen: Piper,
Alan: exactly a great fight scene in that one where they are getting exhausted because it goes on like many fight scenes are two minutes and somebody is the victor.
And this one was like a 15 minute fight scene. Literally, knock down, drag out, fight, as they [00:31:00] sometimes say, and again, very realistic about after a while you’re like holding on to a table while you throw a haymaker because you can’t keep your feet but you’re going to put as much weight as you can into it.
I remember that being another one like, wow, that they made a point of making this, if not more realistic, at least more. True to the exhaustion that not everybody is in shape to go like 15 rounds, you’re going to keep to go about one round of three minutes and then you got to come out fast.
Stephen: That’s the, yeah,
Alan: exactly.
Stephen: The last mission impossible movie comes out in May it’s the sequel to the one two or three years ago, supposedly the last. Fast and the Furious is coming out, but I haven’t heard for sure if it’s this year or next year, end of
Alan: an era type things that they actually have declared no more coming.
Or maybe they’ll do like they ended the born with somebody else or something. Exactly. I think Renner, right? Renner took over for and so sometimes they get a reboot or a redo and stuff like that. I’m curious about that. In fact, some of the. TV, we get the end of year magazines and [00:32:00] we’ll almost always have, here’s our top 10 list of fiction books, non fiction books, TV shows, movies.
And one of the things they had for TV shows were a whole bunch of remakes. Like they remade Shogun, I think was Richard Chamberlain, way back in the 70s, something like that. And someone told me, the new version is really good. And even if you think you remember the other one, there’s enough differences and just the quality of the acting and the, Seating and all that kind of stuff is I, so maybe Colleen and I having just finished Brooklyn nine nine and looking forward to the rookie, but we’re always looking for not only individual movies, but like a series that we can look forward to each night while we have our salad or whatever else it might be.
And maybe the next thing will be Shogun when I’ve tried to. Get her into all my science fiction and fantasy things. She comes to characterize them as, is it, is there too much marching? I don’t want to watch another Lord of the Rings movie where a third of the movie is them going from place to place.
Stephen: Movie came out and Colin and I went and saw it. So to get ready for it, we went back and watched the old silent film. Count Orloff.
Alan: Exactly.
Stephen: And it [00:33:00] was still. A good movie. If you don’t like silent films and stuff, you’re not gonna like it. It’s black and white, for what it was still a good movie.
And there were a lot of things about it that we were admiring some of the filming and the way they did. It was great. And then we watched the 1979 remake of it. And Colin said, there’s a lot of people that love this and say that it’s better than the original. And we watched it went, Oh my God, the first 35 minutes is just the main character traveling and we’re like, what is this hobbits and it’s just traveling.
He’s riding a horse. He’s riding a horse. He’s riding a horse. He’s riding a horse. He’s still a goddamn horse. Get off. You know what I mean? It was horrible. So yeah,
Alan: Colleen before I arrived on the scene, she belonged to a movie group that was doing it. We remember we did the aficionados thing. We were watched by 100, 101.
They did all of the Oscar winners. And then they went back and started doing like best supporting actresses because that was the least crossover [00:34:00] with all of what they would have already watched with the Oscar winners. But the only one big group of people that they ever bailed out on. They just said, We need to turn this off and go have a party, was Lawrence of Arabia, because of all the camel rides across the desert, again and again, and it’s bright, glaring, it’s not even Interesting scenery. It’s this vast, I guess you get the idea of the vastness of the desert. That’s why it’s so inhospitable because if you don’t find an oasis, you’re gonna die. And yet it’s not cinematic. It’s Oh my God, just get to it.
Stephen: Colin’s been going through the thousand movies everybody should watch before they die thing.
It’s a thick book.
Alan: Exactly He
Stephen: started off with the old silence and moving through black and whites and film noir and he’s oh god, i’ve only got five movies left and then I get color But he was saying that there were a couple movies like he discovered and then he went and got other movies that were by the same director Yeah for reasons and there was You the Faust movie was a Faust, [00:35:00] maybe not Faust.
It was, I have to think about it, look it up. But the guy made another movie in response to the critics of his first movie. Okay. Collins said the movie’s horror. Oh marathon. So many people, this, the movie that he made this movie called invincible. That’s four hours long. Go on. Said, Oh my God, you can’t get through it.
It is so bad. He’s but the one cool scene was he was recreating Babylon and he built like this 2000 foot long wall and city and filmed like it was really going, and it was real
Alan: Like hanging gardens the whole like really epic. That’s cool. Wow. Okay,
Stephen: that’s you know, I always try and find something.
What was good about this movie? There’s got to be something but it really gets hard sometimes.
Alan: That’s right. Hats off to Colin, by the way, for, I know so many people that really think that the world started when they were born, and they won’t watch all black and white and, it’s you think that nothing quality [00:36:00] was made before a certain year if you go watch a Spencer Davis Catherine Hepburn movie, go watch the witty dialogue of Adams River or something like that, you’ll be blown away by how, Nosferatu, there’s all kinds of it isn’t all, I don’t know, Sometimes there’s a slower pace and there might be more building to a scene instead of just jumping from scene to scene and stuff like that.
But sometimes that’s how you build a suspense movie. You know what I mean? If you watch all the old Hitchcocks, they are not as fast paced as nowadays, but man, they’re so good because he was the master of that about, it’s not going to be that a bomb blows up. It’s going to be that he shows you the bomb.
And then he shows you people having a regular life all around it. And you’re like tell them
Stephen: what’s going to happen with the bomb under the table. Like that, whatever that’s called. I forget what that’s called. Yeah,
Alan: yeah. It I, we have not only from aficionados because like one of the things a friend Troy gave us a subscription to the Criterion Channel nice.
And we continued it because after you get spoiled by how many good old movies you can’t find anywhere else, and that the [00:37:00] commentary they have about it is not just. Stars talking about, I like my costumes, that there really is some analysis of, here’s the movie, and here’s the significance, and here’s the time that it was made, and here’s, they’re just older movies. You can have so much perspective about the French connection. Here’s how the world changed, not, maybe not because of it, but it was changing all around it, and it captured a certain amount of that, that cops, in order to like, capture really bad guys, they can’t be. Dudley Do Right after a while.
They have to be pretty gritty and pretty brutal and stuff like that. And and maybe not corrupt, because that’s when they get to Serpico, but that was about the same weird time. So it’s, I like seeing society reflected in those kinds of things and going, wow, the world’s been around for a long time.
Not just my time.
Stephen: But. I do think it’s great. He’s reading a lot. He’s read just about every batman He’s tried to find every batman Fantastic. I have not
Alan: done that. That’s fantastic.
Stephen: Yeah, it sounds wonderful But what it really means is hey, man I think maybe you should get a few more hours in the job.
You’re [00:38:00] working because you’ve got way too much free time That’s what it really means
Alan: And it could be that.
Stephen: We’ll see what happens once he’s not on my health insurance any longer. We’ll see how that stays,
Alan: right. There’s a certain amount of that that we just talked about this. I’m in a group where people pose interesting, big questions.
And some of the million
Stephen: thousand, a
Alan: million, almost same people, that kind of thing. I’m talking about that, that I believe that human beings all have relative worth, but I also am sad when people learn the system and then they don’t spend any time working. They spend time working the system. They spend time kind of manipulating their situation and and it’s both employees and bosses and they all bad talk each other so that they can feel good about the bad thing that they’re doing and stuff like that. So I wonder, the more that we put in a universal basic income, there will be a certain percent that’s going to be. Okay, thank you, but that’s not enough.
As opposed to, wow, I really can do what I want with my life, [00:39:00] and what I want is to be an athlete, to be an artist, to be a, something that’s not just eight to five, I go and give. the best time of my day to another cause, to another person, to make money for them and stuff like that. So that’s a, such a tricky issue.
And unfortunately, so many of the solutions that I see proposed are blunt instruments with no nuance. And we started the conversation. A lot of people work because they need the benefits. You know what I mean? It’s not that the job isit’s wonderful to find a job that really fulfills you and is the work of your life, make a career out of it, but a lot of people it’s just, I need money, I need my apartment, I need to be able to take care of my children, whatever else it might be.
Nothing sadder than a really talented guy that went ahead and had three kids really quickly and he and the wife are both now working and they’re trapped. You know what I mean? And that the employers know that and use it against them thathow many times have I Pauline saw multiple times in her career, just like I did, Hey, we know you’ve had this vacation planned for a long time, but I really need you to [00:40:00] cancel it because I need you for something or other.
And like, how can it possibly be the same value as this vacation? No, it’s because you know you have a grip on them and you really get to push them around. And I always hope that somewhere karmically, something happens to those people that voluntarily shat on other people’s lives over nothing, over next to nothing.
Bye. I’m not sure if you can see it, but I’m going to show you a little bit
Stephen: of the code. Was a really great project. You talk about what it was now, and it’s yeah, everybody can do that. But at the time it didn’t exist. We created it, through
Alan: stop exactly
Stephen: for 8 months. 3 of us were working on this project.
And we kept asking, is this what you want to do? Did you look at this? Is this? Look good, and nobody in the company looked at anything. So literally the [00:41:00] 23rd of December, they call us into the office and say, yeah, this doesn’t do quite what we thought when we told the company it’d be ready on the 2nd of January.
So we need you guys to work Christmas and new years and blood. And we’re like, are you kidding me? Yeah. It was like, now
Alan: you’re paying attention when you know, it’s going to wreck everybody’s holidays. If it didn’t matter to them,
Stephen: it was just you didn’t deliver what we wanted. That’s because you didn’t tell us what you wanted.
And I still run into that today so many times, do this. Okay. I did that. That’s not what I wanted. That’s what you said. No. I meant this. I can’t read your mind. Not as
Alan: good as my coding abilities.
Stephen: Yes. Questions. They get irritated. It’s are you an idiot? Just can’t you figure this out?
You’re supposed to know this. I’m asking questions because I do know, I am the one that’s the expert. That’s why I’m asking questions.
Alan: Exactly. I know, because we’ve been doing this for years and years, that sometimes we repeat stories. But my classic is I was working for an advertising agency, and it I should have suspected from the start, from the stereotype of an [00:42:00] advertising agency, it’s people coming into a room and throwing out ideas, and they put papers on the walls, and they, how about this?
And maybe bugs would do this. And so I knew that they were mercurial like that. And yet, they’re not. I had multiple times, when exactly what you said, they said what they wanted, I produced it, and they said what we really want is this. And after a while, you become defensive about, you hold onto your old code bases, and sometimes what they asked for something was that they had asked three versions ago, but now they decided that they wanted instead.
And after a while, I had to make that analogy of, Every time you do something like this, it’s not like I put together a Christmas tree, and you’re asking me to move one ornament to another location. You’re saying that you wanted a pine instead of a spruce, and you’re gutting the scaffolding that everything else is based on.
I need you to make a decision that is the core of this, so that at least we don’t lose that. And they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t do it. That’s the only consulting gig I ever said, I fire you. Because I couldn’t get them to like, take this seriously. It isn’t another brainstorming session. We [00:43:00] have to get to a product here.
We have to get to a conclusion.
Stephen: Changing that one thing that you think is simple may change a whole lot of other things. There’s a ripple effect and there could be a lot of work and just making the change isn’t. All of the work you have to get some planning to make sure you’re getting the right functions or structures or whatever.
And then you’ve got to test it. And that change may have affected this other thing over here. We got to find that out through testing. The, one of the ones that I was like a fish out of water, like not knowing what to say was did this whole project showing it to the principles of the company and why doesn’t it do this?
No one ever said they wanted that. That we need that before it goes live. Okay. It’s going live in two days. No, you’re not going to get that. No, I don’t understand why we can’t get that. And literally shared their screen, pulled up word and said, look, just this button here in word, just put it in your thing.
What do you [00:44:00] say to that?
Alan: I’ll go get Microsoft code base.
Stephen: Put this button in your thing. It’ll just work magic.
Alan: I’ll tell you. One of the last big projects that I worked on before Progressive came to an end was a database product that wasn’t really that. It was a quick file handling stay in memory resident system, but that was used throughout the code base throughout Progressive.
And. I couldn’t get everybody that was involved with that in the room at the same time so that they would make decisions and that they would say, what’s the tradeoffs? Who’s the one that’s going to call it here about this? Because that division is bigger and makes more money or because it would really the hazard that we take on is much bigger over here than the small minor repair we might have to do over here.
I I, I. As much as I identified that as a problem early and kept talking about that, as a corporation, we have big decisions to make here, and I would invite everybody, and invariably a third of them would show up. Too busy [00:45:00] otherwise. And then depending on which third showed up the next time, and the next time, they would undo other people’s decisions, or they would, it was maddening with, they must have known How important it was when I did the analysis and said, this thing that is how we file claims, how we handle file claims will break dramatically.
You will not get your cycle done overnight if we lose this product. What are we going to do? And they’re like maybe you’re being overdramatic. It’s no, I really did the testing. And I really, like it, numbers don’t matter. It wasn’t a pronouncement of doom. It was just like I really don’t want to be the bearer of such bad tidings.
And yes. And so that was what. sapped my will to continue with the place as an internal consultant. If I would have been an external consultant, it would have been like, keep paying me 125 bucks an hour. I’ll do whatever the fuck you want, but I’m not going to have my career go downhill because you guys can’t do good meetings, make decisions, be realistic about how [00:46:00] much by when, and all that kind of stuff.
Non hats off to Progressive for, wow they just, they, I didn’t, a terrible thing to say. Some places are based on they don’t have any stars. They have a whole bunch of good people, but they don’t know how to handle someone who’s really good. And they don’t, Progressive actually had things, I think I mentioned this before, where they were having, they had level one through five technical people, and they were having to level five people like reapplying for their jobs, prove why we pay you as much as we did.
And the resume of, Remember when this all broke and I was the one to fix it? You know what I mean? Campbell’s soup went offline and they had to make soup? And and, it, I couldn’t get how whatever person had been moved up into management, they weren’t good managers. They weren’t good resource people.
They weren’t good technical and realist numbers people. And things started to break. And wow, one of the, one In short, when I left [00:47:00] Progressive, one of the things I did was I had gotten options from having worked multiple years and was like, I think we cash these in because my confidence in Progressive continuing to do well, not because I’m going, but because I see all the things that make me leave.
I don’t think it’s going to do as well as it has, and I was right. For the next 10 years, they were in the doldrums, and now they’ve come back, and now they’re a good investment, so I bought some Progressive, and that makes me feel a little bit weird and warm, you know what I mean? No, I own you but, For the time, I was like, man, you guys are a bad bet.
And I guess not only as an employee, but as an investor, I don’t think you’re going to do as well. And people that have worked there for a long time and had a ton of progressive stock besides other S& P 500 type things. I was, a friend of mine named Ron really took a big hit when progressive stock went down the tubes.
And he’s That was my retirement fund, and it’s like a fifth, a tenth of what it once was. Oh boy. Oh boy. And you’ve earned it. You’ve earned the reward you should be getting here. Nope. I probably shouldn’t name [00:48:00] places as readily as I do. But isn’t that the world, though? Like, when you read these things about best places to work in Cleveland, it’s And then, so it’s often NASA, Progressive, Highland Software.
And then you talk to people who actually work there and say, yeah, that’s the survey. But in real life, we have all the same problems that any big software shop, that any big employer does, is that you’ve got that stratification of people that really know what’s going on, and then 10%, and then 80 percent in the middle that just muddle through, and 10 percent that are actually like so bad they’re sabotaging things, and they’re not good at.
Getting rid of that bottom 10 percent so that all these people aren’t disenchanted by, I killed myself to get something done. They did nothing. And yet we got the same raise in bonus this year. How are you incenting people to do well? You know what I mean? Oh,
Stephen: all right. I’m going to have to get rolling.
Alan: Okay. We have many things to talk about in a new year. We’ll make a list next time, but actually this was A good way to start the year because I think it was mostly optimistic and current conditions and stuff like that. So you got
Stephen: to get Colin on sometime and talk comic books. So that’ll probably [00:49:00] be a later afternoon or evening one sometime.
We’ll just have to coordinate.
Alan: In fact, this is a sad thing. I ordered, as I mentioned, like three months ago to get my set first set of comic books after having been out of the field for a long time. They’re not here yet. And it’s January 8th. What the hell? I was expecting him like end of December. So I need to Throw an email at them and say, what’s the time frame for this?
Whatever got published in December, even if it didn’t, if it got published and you were, it showed up on December 31st, box it up and send it to me because I should have it by January 7th. Sorry? Where’s it through? M& M Comics. And it, from 15 years ago when I stopped buying, they were absolutely dependable.
Everything arrived very well, padded and all that kind of stuff. And so this really is a surprise. I thought it would just be slipping on an old pair of clothes and everything works just right. And so far, this is a little bit of a toe stub here. So I’m going to contact them.
Stephen: Okay. Good luck.
Alan: Okay.
Stephen: All right. Later, man.
Alan: Take care, Stephen.
You have been listening to the Relentless Geekery [00:50:00] Podcast. Come back next week and join Alan and Stephen’s conversation on Geek Topics of the Week.
