118: Things We Should Be Doing But, You Know... Reasons
As web developers, we're all high-functioning, motivated people. And, we certainly have a good sense of what we should be doing with our time (both personally and professionally). But, theory rarely survives contact with reality. And, on today's show, we talk about all that sweet, sweet stuff we ought to be doing and why we can't quite motivate to get any of it done! Topics including backing up computers; creating reproducible systems; reading educational books; upgrading all the things; learning analytics; and, meeting other hoomans!
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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
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[00:00:00] Adam: Like I had a, I had a desktop and I moved to a MacBook and, and I am now on.
[00:00:04] Adam: At least my second, if not my third MacBook Pro, since that computer that had back Blaze on it. And I still haven't gotten around to using the Back Blaze license that I'm paying for, you know, not sponsored. This is just, you know, I, I'm, I am paying yearly for this and not using it. and to the point where they send me emails like maybe twice a year, they're like, Hey, you still want this, right?
[00:00:24] Adam: And I'm like, yeah,
[00:00:26] Intro
[00:00:26] Adam: Okay, here we go. It is show number one 18, and on today's show we are going to be talking about things that we probably should be doing, but you know, reasons, reasons happen and we are not doing them.
[00:00:58] Adam: But first as usual, we'll start with our triumphs and fails. And I guess it looks like it's my term to go first. I, it's, it feels like we might have skipped somebody, but whatever. I'll, I'll do it. Um,
[00:01:10] Adam's Failure
[00:01:10] Adam: so I'm gonna start us off with a fail. And, and this is good because I feel like I've had too long of a streak of triumphs anyway, um, I, submitted a talk proposal for spelt society, or for, I'm sorry, for spelt summit, in.
[00:01:23] Adam: and I was getting really excited about it. I was, you know, I, for me it was, you know, submit the topic because you want to learn the topic, not because I already know it and, and, uh, am just ready to go with a presentation. and, I was very excited about it. And then I found out that, from the moment that I got notified to the moment that I would have to have like a recording of my presentation done and submitted, cuz it's all prerecorded would be like two weeks.
[00:01:47] Ben: Oh.
[00:01:48] Adam: Yeah. And, so between the short timeline and the fact that I don't know the topic that well already and the fact that my workload is just a bit high lately and looks like it's gonna stay that way for a while, I just had to withdraw. So I was really excited. and, you know, maybe I'll submit it again in the future if somebody doesn't beat me to it.
[00:02:07] Adam: But,you know, you win something, you lose.
[00:02:10] Tim: Hmm, that sucks.
[00:02:13] Ben: I can dig it
[00:02:14] Adam: Nobody's gonna ask me what the
[00:02:15] Ben: well, so I didn't know I was gonna like dance around it because I didn't know if you wanted to give away your topic.
[00:02:19] Adam: That's okay. Yeah, that's fine. you know what, if somebody wants to present it and, I can learn from them that, you know, all the better. Right. so the, the, this proposal was, test driven selt kit. So, end-to-end tests with playwright and using v test to do like unit tests of all your, you know, your little services and utilities within your application.
[00:02:39] Adam: and trying to, model how to do like true test-driven development in that modern stack. And cause that's something that I am very interested in, in getting into, but, have not.
[00:02:52] Ben: have you started that, t d D book yet?
[00:02:56] Adam: Yeah, I mean, I still have my bookmark in it from 20, what was it, 20 20, 20 21? I don't know. It's still there. I'll probably have to like back up a chapter to remind myself where we are, where I am, but it's on my list for, Hey, it's March.
[00:03:10] Ben: There you go. There you go. We're still early.
[00:03:12] Adam: rest of the year to finish it.
[00:03:14] Tim: You got the rest here to procrastinate it and then try, try to do it in December.
[00:03:18] Adam: exactly. No, I'll get through it. I'll get through it. So, well, that's it for me. how about you, Tim?
[00:03:26] Tim's Triumph
[00:03:26] Tim: So I'm going with a triumph, and then I'll do a follow up on last week's failure. My triumph is not code related. As I mentioned earlier, we, I was doing our annual wild game exotic meat dinner
[00:03:40] Ben: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:40] Tim: and, Python was the main, main dish and it was a, it was a big hit. I was really, really, this was probably most stressed about this one than any of the other ones I've done just because Python was just so chewy and it smelled like swamp.
[00:03:54] Tim: And I was like, how is this ever gonna taste good? But, you know, I chopped it up super fine. Cooked it really well, seasoned it really well, and put it on, you know, did a, a Thai green curry. Cause I love Thai food. It kind of looked like, you know, a python and a swamp, you know, the green color and, and, it, it was a huge hit.
[00:04:14] Adam: Everybody's like, it was amazing. Of course, they're all had been drinking pretty heavily that that point. So, I don't know. Um,And when you compare it to testicles, I mean, everything's gonna be better than that, right?
[00:04:24] Tim: Right. Yeah. So, but I was, I was super good to, now I put a, I'll put a picture when this show, the show comes out, but, and I put it on our channel right now if you wanna look at it. This is one of the snakes that I put out there, is that, that long white thing I'm holding
[00:04:39] Adam: Wow.
[00:04:40] Ben: my
[00:04:41] Tim: it's like a 12, 13 foot long python filet.
[00:04:45] Tim: And we had two of those. That I served. And what really stressed me out was that he, we always ordered like one, it's like small portion so that I can do testers, right? Like so, cuz I experimented with like six different recipes till I got something I thought was halfway decent. But the, the, see how white that meat
[00:05:03] Ben: Yeah.
[00:05:04] Tim: So, so that had been in the freezer and like a couple days before I took it out and the, the snake that I had cooked as a tester was like bright pink. It was red meat. And I pull this out and I'm like, Something's wrong here. Did this, like, get improperly stored and like, like, like, you know, like, like gets frozen and then goes, maybe gets warm and it gets refrozen.
[00:05:26] Tim: I was really worried, so I, I took a little portion of that 13 foot snake, cooked it and I ate it the night before. To make sure. and I told
[00:05:36] Ben: just to take one for the team,
[00:05:38] Tim: told you. That's what I said. I what I said to the guy who is told things for his dad, the memory of his death. And I said, Gary, I, I, I ate some and if I'm puking in the morning, I says, we're just gonna have to do something else.
[00:05:49] Tim: But, it, it was fine. It was good. So did the, the, the menu, I'll just read off the menu that we had, spicy deer sausage, cheese dip, the, ed Martin, which is the guy who's, it's an honor. Of famous Rocky Mountain Oysters Llama and Dewey Skillet Pasta with pepperjack cheese, Burmese ball, python filets, and a Thai green curry sauce and creme with strawberry sauce.
[00:06:13] Tim: So yeah, it went, it went really well. So I was super pleased.
[00:06:16] Ben: Oh very.
[00:06:17] Adam: So with the Curry's thing, are you like trying to hide this really pungent, kind of odd meat in it? Okay.
[00:06:24] Tim: Well,
[00:06:24] Adam: it's more about the rest of it than.
[00:06:26] Tim: By the time it was done, the actual snake didn't have a huge amount of like bad flavor. You, it was still this kind of whip because I had been cooking it so much that, you know, flavor was really, really pronounced to everyone else. I'm pretty sure they didn't, it was like a hint to me.
[00:06:39] Tim: It was like I still had the stink on my fingers and it's like, you know, so I, I like ate, ate it and just taste, tasted it, make sure it was all right. And I was like, okay. It taste, it, taste, it's just really, really chewy. But, It was, it was really cool to have, like, I had this big kitchen with a walk-in cooler and freezer and like an eight burner stove, and I had two line cooks helping me and two servers coming.
[00:07:01] Tim: So I just hand them stuff, they'd take it out. I showed 'em how to, oh, I also did, it wasn't on the menu. It was, I didn't know if I'd have time to do it, but I did, I did a, like a sushi role and I was gonna do the, the silk.
[00:07:12] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:13] Tim: Larva. It was awful. So quick. It tasted of nothing. It was like cardboard. So I instead, I put black ants dried out, black ants on there, which I've done before.
[00:07:21] Tim: They taste citrusy. It's really actually tastes pretty good. So I did that and everybody thought, I showed the line cooks how to do that and they were just cranking out those rolls and those were a big hit. So,
[00:07:31] Ben: Very nice
[00:07:32] Tim: yeah.
[00:07:32] Adam: Remind me not to come to dinner at your house.
[00:07:34] Tim: Hey, I only do this once a year. This isn't like a regular thing. It's not, this isn't what we eat at, at the Cunningham household, I promise you.
[00:07:41] Tim: but then an update. So last week I was complaining about the failure of the, one of the processors that, that we use. just kind of messed everything up. There's three days worth of funding that they, they char charged everyone's cards and, and that they, you know, gave us, you know, Authorization codes and everything.
[00:07:58] Tim: And you know, so we funded the customer, but the money was just, was not there and, and people were just mad. So we actually, that finally got settled Friday. So all of last week was just still a nightmare for me. It was just stressful. I've got a pimple, 52, 52 years old, I got a pimple, from just being completely stressed out.
[00:08:18] Tim: They, they wound up. So what happens? So whenever you charge your card, there's several things that happen. One, they, they do an initial authorization. Like if you go to the gas tank and, you know, if you maybe have alerts on your phone, the second you swipe your card, it like charges you, it doesn't charge you, it authorizes Right.
[00:08:36] Tim: But it does show up. So if you look at your bank account, you'll see pending, you know, $50 or a hundred dollars or whatever. So the, the processor at the end of that, they had to sort of, they had to settle. and that settlement is actually what switches it from pending to funded. And then your bank knows that it needs to send the card processor the money, and then the card processor takes that money and sends it to whoever the merchant is.
[00:09:00] Tim: and so what happened was they, they authorized it and they sent us the authorization, but they never settled it. So what happened was people would look on their card statements, they saw pending authorization, 200 bucks, and then next day it was, With no existing like $200 charge. And so what they had to do was, I, I just, I learned a lot about, more about how the back workings of, you know, the card networks work is an authorization can stay valid for up to two weeks, 14 days.
[00:09:33] Tim: And we were in the 10 day window still. So what they did was they didn't recharge the card. But that's not what it looked like to the end user. Whether what they did was they basically used the exact same authorization, so the same off code, and everything showed up. They charged people's cards and the money got funded, and then they, they have promised that if, you know, they charge, and let's say it's your debt, you know these people that are buying insurance, it's, it's.
[00:10:00] Tim: Maybe, you know, they, they spent all the money in their account, right? And now it's, it goes declined. They said they will fund those, even though the person actually didn't pay them, so that's gonna come out of their pocket. So, and then some people had overdraft charges. They're, they're covering that as well.
[00:10:14] Tim: So they're making it
[00:10:15] Ben: All right.
[00:10:16] Tim: They're making it good. I mean, it's, but it's just been so stressful. But I'm just, so, I'm just glad it's behind me now and hopefully nothing like this happens again. And I'm definitely doing my best to move. Those few remaining customers we have on them off to another provider?
[00:10:32] Ben: No more, no additional Twilio challenges this week.
[00:10:36] Tim: No, they, they seem to be working. I did get confirmation. So with an, I'm moving things back to an 800 number, because toll-free numbers, they work, I found this out. This was new to me as well. Toll-free numbers. as long as you put in a request, even when they're pending, they don't block.
[00:10:53] Ben: Ah.
[00:10:54] Tim: Because a toll-free number is gonna be a little more expensive than if you're, you know, using a, a just a regular local code.
[00:11:00] Tim: Right? So they assume a business is is using that number. So basically, yeah. So I got everyone 800 numbers. I haven't been able to work on that because all the crap was going on last week, but this week I'm gonna move 'em over those 800 numbers. Two of them actually have been approved. And so the rest of them, I'm just gonna go get pending 800 numbers and, and do the, process to, to get it going.
[00:11:19] Tim: Cuz yeah, it took, took four months. When they say it only should take, you know, four to six weeks, it took four months for them to approve those 800 numbers. But as long as I can still send things through them, I'm cool. So
[00:11:30] Ben: nice.
[00:11:31] Tim: that's me. How about you, Ben?
[00:11:33] Ben's Triumph
[00:11:33] Ben: I'm gonna go with a triumph. So I've been, part of this much larger cost cutting initiative at work. And what I've been tasked with is trying to find S3 objects in, Amazon's simple storage to that that we can delete because we've been paying for. Tremendous petabytes worth of, data, multi petabytes worth of data.
[00:11:52] Ben: And, there's, the way that the application works or has worked historically is when you go to delete records that have S3 objects tied to them. We do a best effort deletion of those S3 objects. But, you know, sometimes there's network calls and instead of. Stopping the overall process will kind of just swallow it and log the fact that it failed.
[00:12:13] Ben: And over the years, you know, there's a lot of cruft that's, built up or, or at least that's the theory. And, I was going through the AWS console like two weeks ago and I have this weird permissions thing we can't figure out where, I can't actually see all of the prefixes that are in the S3. So I was literally just typing a, and then I would see what would come up and I would type B and I would see what would come up as far as prefixes.
[00:12:37] Ben: And I get to P and suddenly these two random folders show up that I have never seen before. And it turns out that it was a temporary upload storage for one of our, little plugins. And for the last seven years, nothing has been deleting any of the temporary files that were uploaded to those, prefixes.
[00:12:56] Ben: So I've, been scanning these two folders for like the last two weeks, and so far I've located and deleted 300 terabytes worth of temporary files,
[00:13:05] Adam: God.
[00:13:08] Ben: and they're all in these, they're all in these hex, you know, like, U U I D. So it's all hex charact. And, and, the way you list objects in S3 is you basically, they're listed alphabetically, so I say, you know, gimme the next thousand keys starting with this key.
[00:13:22] Ben: And so I can sort of get a sense of how far we are in the journey. Cuz I can see we're in the, we're in a folder that starts with, you know, the letter two or the letter A and we're going up to F and we're at 300 and like 330 terabytes that I've found so far. And, and, we're up to the letter seven I.
[00:13:42] Tim: Oh,
[00:13:42] Ben: we're on our way to f so it's gonna be, I, I'm,
[00:13:46] Tim: you already were at F, but now, now you're just finding out how much
[00:13:50] Ben: it's, it's, it's crazy.
[00:13:52] Ben: And, so S3 storage is incredibly, incredibly cheap.
[00:13:57] Adam: Yeah, no kidding.
[00:13:58] Ben: but once you get in, apparently to the hundreds of terabytes, it's, it's gonna deleting this, it's gonna start to actually save the company real dollars and cents, which is kind of mind boggling.
[00:14:08] Adam: Do you have a, a rough idea of how much,
[00:14:09] Ben: I don't know if I can say, I mean, like I don't have a great understanding, but I also dunno if I'm allowed to say just cause it's financial stuff.
[00:14:17] Ben: but it will be
[00:14:18] Tim: are publicly traded,
[00:14:19] Ben: No, no, but, you know, who knows what they wanna say, who knows what I'm allowed to say. but the, the next thing that we have to figure out is that, on that S3 object, on that S3 bucket, there's a 90 day retention policy for deleted objects. So, in theory, even if I delete a bunch of stuff, it's like months until we realize that cost savings.
[00:14:38] Ben: So we're gonna meet on Monday to talk. Either lowering the retention for the whole bucket. Cause I don't think 90 days we need that. But also you, apparently, you can have multiple lifecycle policies within a single bucket where they're, they're targeted at individual prefixes. So we can go into, say like just this one random folder prefix and say, reduce that retention policy to like 24 hours or something.
[00:15:02] Ben: And start to realize those costs much sooner.
[00:15:04] Tim: Hmm.
[00:15:04] Adam: Well, let me just throw this out there. I just real quick pulled up like the AWS pricing calculator. 300 terabytes per. On S3 costs you, now this is, you know, the, the like on demand, no special
[00:15:16] Ben: No intelligent tearing or anything.
[00:15:18] Adam: Right. But you're looking at like approaching $7,000 a month for 300 terabytes.
[00:15:23] Tim: Wow,
[00:15:24] Ben: sounds right. It's gonna start to be real money.
[00:15:26] Tim: wow, wow. And then that time's 12.
[00:15:30] Ben: Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:32] Tim: goodness.
[00:15:34] Adam: Well, good job.
[00:15:35] Tim: maybe you can hire someone back that you guys laid off
[00:15:37] Ben: oh, burn.
[00:15:38] Adam: below the belt
[00:15:40] Tim: Sorry.
[00:15:42] Ben: Oh,
[00:15:43] Tim: It got a new way to hire people. Just let's just delete our stuff.
[00:15:48] Adam: best product is the one that doesn't exist
[00:15:50] Tim: Yeah, man, I, I'll tell you,
[00:15:52] Adam: at.
[00:15:53] Tim: AWS and like, I'm sure you know, Microsoft Azure's the same. It just gets so complex, right? It seems simple at first. Like, oh yes, just throw it. But it's like, there's so many moving pieces and just every time it's like, I'm just amazed the whole thing works. And then, and then I sometimes wonder if Amazon makes, it seems like they make things a little hard.
[00:16:14] Tim: They let you do it all yourself, but they also give you enough rope to hang yourself, right? , because they wanna make money, right? That, that, that is their, that's their cash cow. Forget Amazon, you know, Amazon purchases and everything. They make a butt ton of money off hosting that, that stuff. And yeah, so it's in their best interest.
[00:16:31] Tim: You can make sure, you know, the whole retention policy thing, the default is three months. Yeah, you deleted it, but we're still gonna charge you for the next three months.
[00:16:38] Ben: Well, and it gets, it gets so complicated because there's so many little, there's different types of storage and then there's different details. So we've been going back and forth with their, some of their technical experts on S3 just to figure out if there's a better way that we can optimize our storage costs.
[00:16:53] Ben: And there's, this in, I think this is the intelligent tiering where once you have objects that have been in S3 for over 30 days, they can get a sense of whether or not they're permanent. And then if they're permanent but not accessed for like another 30 days, they can move them into this really low cost.
[00:17:12] Ben: Like pre glacier, but still instant access. But that only applies to things that are, I think are like above 128 kilobytes. Cuz anything below 128 kilobytes, they won't move into that lower tier storage. And then there's a per like, million object monitoring cost because they have to know how frequently things are accessed.
[00:17:31] Ben: So they have to store that somewhere. So it's like, it's not just how much does it cost to store X number of gigabytes of data. It's like, how big are each of those objects and how frequently are they accessed? And what's the latency that you, you know, your application can have on that. And it's, it's really not clear.
[00:17:47] Ben: Like you have to have people who really think deeply about integrating storage into the application.
[00:17:52] Tim: Yeah. And a lot of people just don't do that or just don't have, I mean, it's like, I don't need to be
[00:17:56] Ben: Yeah. Like I'm building an application. This is not, this is not how I wanna
[00:17:59] Tim: wanna store something somewhere. Yeah. And it's like, so, I don't know how many years, probably seven years ago, I guess we reached the point of, of aw w s usage that they assigned an account person to us and they reached out to us and I was pretty flattered like, Hey, they're call alright.
[00:18:14] Tim: And they're like, Hey, we're gonna, you know, we wanna help you and if you guys have any questions, you know, we can get you in touch with experts, you know, on the moment. I'm like, cool, cool, cool. So, and I took some several calls with them, probably like 15 calls and at the end of it I'm like, I'm done talking to you guys cuz they, they never really helped me solve any problems.
[00:18:32] Tim: All they ever did was try to sell me more stuff.
[00:18:35] Tim: That's all they ever did. I'm like, oh yeah, we can give you a subject matter expert on, you know, AI stuff. And so they put me in touch and it's like this whole new service that I gotta buy and that's, they never like helped me with an existing problem.
[00:18:48] Tim: They're like, oh, hey, we'll get back to you on that. And it's like, crickets after , I don't think bothered looking it up what I was talking about. they'd maybe give some vague suggestion and point me some docs that, you know, made no sense. But it's like, I'm, I'm done talking to you guys. I don't need an account rep.
[00:19:00] Tim: Stop talking to me. All you're trying to do is upsell me. I respect the hustle, but you know, no,
[00:19:09] Ben: Yo, I, I will say one other triumph just to sort of
[00:19:12] Tim: no, you can't have
[00:19:13] Ben: No, no. Hold on. Do this. I think this, this is exciting. This is exciting cuz dovetails with your food festival. just this afternoon my wife taught me how to cook a hamburger, which I have never in my life done. So that was very exciting.
[00:19:26] Tim: I am proud of
[00:19:27] Adam: you, did you wear sunglasses while you were doing it, or,
[00:19:30] Ben: I cooked it in a cast iron skillet on our, on our stove. She was like, do you wanna fire up the grill? I'm like, no. That's way too much work. I do not want to get, like, I want this to be as easy as possible. And it, probably would've been easier on the grill just from a cleaning perspective. But,
[00:19:44] Adam: Yeah.
[00:19:46] Ben: but, yeah, and I didn't die.
[00:19:48] Tim: Nice.
[00:19:50] Adam: Congratulations. You and my 14 year old have something in common.
[00:19:57] Tim: look good for you.
[00:19:59] Champions of Truth Winner Response
[00:19:59] Adam: All right. Well, last week we did, one of the things that we did was announce the winner of our, what do we call it? champions of Truth, our two Truths and a Lie, little game that we played. and the winner was Nathan Struts, and he did send us his acceptance speech. So I'm going to play that for you
[00:20:16] working-code-studio_tim-ben-and-adam_mediaboard_sounds-xpgk09z9u_cfr_2023-mar-05-2132pm-utc-riverside: Thank you. Thank you. You're too kind. I'm so honored to receive this, the most prestigious award in the universe. It means so much to me. I'm crying. This is such a sweet moment. I'd like to thank, first of all my parents for raising me to be such a cynical, skeptical human being. It finally paid off mom. I knew it would.
[00:20:37] working-code-studio_tim-ben-and-adam_mediaboard_sounds-xpgk09z9u_cfr_2023-mar-05-2132pm-utc-riverside: Kept the sarcasm up the distrust for long enough. It turned me into such a winner, huh? I'd also like to send my thanks out to all the liars out there for making this moment possible without your blatant disregard for the truth. I wouldn't be standing here today basking in the glory of this award. Thank you once again for this incredible honor.
[00:20:57] working-code-studio_tim-ben-and-adam_mediaboard_sounds-xpgk09z9u_cfr_2023-mar-05-2132pm-utc-riverside: I promise to use my powers for good, or at least for our collective amusement. And finally, I have a challenge for
[00:21:03] working-code-studio_tim-ben-and-adam_mediaboard_sounds-xpgk09z9u_cfr_2023-mar-05-2132pm-utc-riverside: you. Two truths in a lie.
[00:21:07] working-code-studio_tim-ben-and-adam_mediaboard_sounds-xpgk09z9u_cfr_2023-mar-05-2132pm-utc-riverside: Number one, I won a country music award. Number two, my brothers and sisters all live in Alaska. Number three, I've worked at Boeing for over 15
[00:21:18] Adam: Hmm.
[00:21:20] working-code-studio_tim-ben-and-adam_mediaboard_sounds-xpgk09z9u_cfr_2023-mar-05-2132pm-utc-riverside: One of those is a lie.
[00:21:22] working-code-studio_tim-ben-and-adam_mediaboard_sounds-xpgk09z9u_cfr_2023-mar-05-2132pm-utc-riverside: Thanks for the great podcast y'all.
[00:21:25] Tim: awesome.
[00:21:26] Adam: nicely done. Nathan.
[00:21:28] Tim: Yeah.
[00:21:28] Adam: Yeah. Oh, and, and he threw down the gauntlet. okay, so let me, lemme start with this. I believe I have known Nathan now for more than 15 years,
[00:21:38] Tim: Same. Yeah.
[00:21:39] Adam: and I am almost certain that he has worked at Boeing that entire time.
[00:21:43] Ben: All right. All right.
[00:21:44] Adam: like that one's gonna be true.
[00:21:46] Ben: He can't, he can't possibly have won a country music award. That's crazy. Come
[00:21:50] Tim: I mean, and if, and if he has, that's, if he has. That's pretty Googleable, isn't it? Which I'm doing right now, by the way.
[00:21:56] Adam: well, but. There's, I feel like that one is designed to get us right. That that feels like it should be the lie. And so it is probably true,
[00:22:06] Ben: This is like Tim living in Glasgow, Atlanta. Or
[00:22:09] Adam: yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:10] Tim: Scotland,
[00:22:12] Adam: Scotland, Georgia. Yeah. no. And, and the other one, he said, all of my brothers and sisters live in Alaska, which there's so many like little weasel words that he
[00:22:20] Tim: right? all, Yeah.
[00:22:21] Adam: or, or like live as in currently live
[00:22:24] Ben: and sisters?
[00:22:25] Adam: not. Yeah. Right. Like, and yeah. I feel like this is something I should know about
[00:22:28] Tim: And Country Music Award. It, it doesn't have to necessarily be the Academy of Country Music
[00:22:33] Tim: Awards, right? It could, it could be, right? Yeah. The, the, the Hacksaw Chickasaw, you know, country, country music, blue ribbon at the county fair, right?
[00:22:42] Adam: right?
[00:22:44] Ben: Oh man,
[00:22:45] Tim: Yeah. I, I think it's the brothers and sisters. I think it's the all
[00:22:47] Adam: Yeah.
[00:22:49] Ben: I'll, I'll, I'll party up with you on that one.
[00:22:51] Adam: Yeah. Yep. I'm going to the same, same. So Nathan, you're gonna have to let us know. Did we get it right?
[00:22:56] Ben: But thank you so much for calling in, sir. That was amazing.
[00:22:59] Adam: That was awesome.
[00:23:00] Tim: And you still need to pick your gift. I told you, pick what you want. He's like, ask me for a budget. I'm like, God, I'm, I'm gonna give you a budget. Just tell me what you want.
[00:23:07] Adam: well,
[00:23:09] Tim: the, he'll pick the, working code dev, diamond Ring.
[00:23:14] Adam: let me quick, let me go take that one off the website. cool. So, things that we should be doing but that we're not, and we probably feel bad about it. Who wants to go first?
[00:23:25] Backups
[00:23:25] Ben: Yo, I'll just throw this out there cuz I've actually regressed and that is backing up my computer.
[00:23:30] Adam: Yeah.
[00:23:30] Ben: I was not backing my computer for a long time and then it, and then the battery started to expand and I like panicked that I would lose it forever. So I started backing it up and this, and that was on the old Intel Mac.
[00:23:42] Ben: And then I switched over to an M one Mac I restored from the backup, like I did a time machine restoration from the backup, but I wasn't sure if it, like, everything works, so I didn't wanna touch the old hard drive. And I have yet to start backing up my, my new computer and I've been using it for like three months now.
[00:23:58] Adam: Yeah. I'm in a very similar spot, right? So I've, I, I don't know what, maybe 10 years ago I was like, okay, we gotta get this, get serious about, taking care of our computers. So I got Backblaze for myself and my wife, and got all of our computer stuff, like fully backing up to the cloud, and it was great.
[00:24:15] Adam: And then like her computer died and so I had to like build her new computer and restore from the back up. And it was a similar situation for a little while, but eventually I got it sorted out and, and, and then I moved, right? Like I had a, I had a desktop and I moved to a MacBook and, and I am now on.
[00:24:30] Adam: At least my second, if not my third MacBook Pro, since that computer that had back Blaze on it. And I still haven't gotten around to using the Back Blaze license that I'm paying for, you know, not sponsored. This is just, you know, I, I'm, I am paying yearly for this and not using it. and to the point where they send me emails like maybe twice a year, they're like, Hey, you still want this, right?
[00:24:50] Adam: And I'm like, yeah, yeah,
[00:24:54] Tim: We're here for you.
[00:24:55] Adam: I, I, I think the problem is like it takes, so I can, I, it would be easy to just be like, okay, turn it on, start backing up my machine and use this license. But if I do that, then it's going to delete everything that's in the backups that I have saved on there. And so what I need to do first is like, get all of that data and, and put it somewhere safe so that I can know that I haven't lost anything.
[00:25:18] Adam: And they, they have a, a tool to like export and you can go through your backup and say, okay, I don't care about the Windows folder, you know, all of that stuff, but like, you know, gimme my photos and videos and documents and that sort of thing. and it takes time to generate that file and then you have to go download it and do something with it and like, be confident that you've got it in the right place.
[00:25:36] Adam: You're not gonna lose anything. And, and, and I think that adding a NAS to my local network is probably something I've done since the last time I've even thought about this. So probably that would be the thing for me to do now, is like to, to download my back place data, put it on my nas. So just like, you know, here's, here's a, a giant old zip file if you ever need something.
[00:25:55] Adam: This is like the, you know, the, the whatever, the zip file of last resort
[00:26:01] Ben: Well, and, and I, my, my, one of my big problems is that I'm, I'm not like a super technically savvy person, and I get, I, I get sucked into the whole paradox of choice. So I'll go to something like wirecutter.com, which I think is owned by the New York Times now, and I'll say like, what is the best network drive for backing up your computer?
[00:26:21] Ben: And then they'll give you great choices. But it's always by category. It's like, here's the best budget drive, and like, here's the best spinning drive and here's the best flash drive, and here's the best flash drive. If you only need to go less than two terabytes. Or like, and here's the, you know, the hardy that you travel with and like, here's if you're a digital photographer.
[00:26:37] Ben: And I just wish that someone, like, I almost don't care what the quality is. I just want someone to say, this is the one you should get. Don't think.
[00:26:45] Adam: Yep.
[00:26:47] Ben: I just want, I actually want that for like all aspects of my life. , could someone just do that?
[00:26:52] Adam: Yeah, exactly. I was just saying the other day, like, God, it would be so nice to have like a personal assistant that I could be like, look, my truck has a recall for like the seal around the light that shines down over the bed, like off the back of the truck, right? Like, yes, I want to get this fixed so that like water doesn't get inside my truck, but it's not, you know, a, a mission critical thing.
[00:27:11] Adam: So I just haven't done it yet. I've probably been sitting on it for more than a year and I've just like, I need somebody to just like, schedule it sometime that I'm just gonna be sitting at home working and like, come pick up the truck, take it in for me, wait for it and bring it back and just be done with it.
[00:27:25] Adam: You know, I've got so many things, done my to-do list like that, that are like, it doesn't have to be me that does it, but if somebody in my house is going to do it, it's gonna be me, like running network cable through the attic to all the bedrooms or like right now it's just running on the floor, down the hall.
[00:27:40] Adam: Cause cuz we needed something, you know, I in a day and I wasn't prepared to go climbing through the attic drilling holes in the wall. But, yeah.
[00:27:50] Tim: so talking about backups, I, I don't do that at all. I don't think I've ever have, and I don't think I ever will but honestly, so I was in a meeting the other day and I heard kind of the. Probably one, it's not necessarily being backed up, but so I, I know of a company that got, ransomware and so for an entire month they basically were out of business.
[00:28:11] Tim: They couldn't do anything for their customers, their, so their, their customers at all. And it was, and they couldn't say anything legally, things like that. But, and this isn't one of our companies, someone I was talking to, when we were talking to, our, one of our auditors, telling me this story, but what they, they started doing because it's like, so these, these people that like, like impersonate themselves and say, Hey, your boss needs you to send these, you know, gift cards
[00:28:37] Tim: to, uh, but he doesn't, you know, you get that all the time, but it's like where they're mining this data is we, we have so much in our laptops or our computers, like, you know, I hoarded, you know, tons of like spreadsheets and files that go back sometimes a decade.
[00:28:52] Tim: Right? And it is, I've got people's. personal information. I've got their tax information, I've got their salary, and it's like, I, I just never throw it away, cuz I don't know why I never need it, but I just don't. And so someone gets on your computer and they start rooting around. They find this stuff,
[00:29:07] Adam: Tim, you're establishing yourself as a, a potential target
[00:29:10] Tim: right.
[00:29:11] Tim: Right. So, so here's, here's what I, I need to start doing and I, I will, right. This is what we're talking about. Things we need to do is just, you know, every 12 months or whatever, back up your entire computer on external hard drive, wipe your computer and then, you know, start kind of fresh. And then if you need something, you know where you have it, you can physically plug it in, pull it off, like, oh, where's that spreadsheet that I need from two years ago?
[00:29:37] Tim: Okay, here, I'll pull that in. All right. I need that. Unplug it cuz they can't hack it if it's not plugged. Right. so yeah, just. That made, that was actually one of the fir, because it's like, honestly, it's like most of the stuff I really know I need, I've uploaded to OneDrive or corporate OneDrive I, all the stuff that's really important is there.
[00:29:54] Ben: that, that's how I feel a little bit. It's like it's either on Dropbox right now, which I know they say you shouldn't use as a backup, but whatever. And then, or it's on GitHub is basically where my two things live.
[00:30:06] Tim: But when you're talking about like backup solutions, this, they are very cumbersome. If we need a backup solution, that's like get, if you just go command line, get back up and then it just takes, whatever's changed the last time you did that and like patches it in, like you just move to another that that's what we need.
[00:30:22] Tim: But it's like, I don't know that, I dunno if it's even possible,
[00:30:26] Adam: back place just runs constantly and you can set like how aggressive you want it to be in terms of like, how much of your CPU it will consume. So if you're, if you are using the computer, it will. Back off, or
[00:30:36] Tim: you'll chill
[00:30:37] Adam: it's overnight. If it's overnight and, and your computer's, you can have it like, you know, kind of go hog wild there and you can tell it like, you know, don't use too much of my network bandwidth during the day, or, or, you know,
[00:30:48] Tim: S sounds great, but you're not using it.
[00:30:51] Adam: Right. Yeah. Well that's what I'm saying though is like, you know, you were talking about you need something and, and it, that's kind of what it does. It's just like constantly looking for changes in the folders that you specify and, and backing them up. So
[00:31:01] Tim: Awesome. Why aren't using it?
[00:31:03] Adam: I explained that already.
[00:31:05] Ben: Damnit, Tim. All right. We got a lot of these things, so maybe we
[00:31:08] Adam: yeah, yeah.
[00:31:08] Cloudformation
[00:31:08] Adam: Let's move on.
[00:31:09] Adam: I got a good. When we had, Brian Kloss on the show many, many episodes ago, he introduced me to a term called click Ops. Right? So that is, you're like, you're using AWS and you just go in, you're like, oh, okay, I need an C two instance. So you click, click, click with
[00:31:23] Adam: your mouse
[00:31:24] Tim: what I do.
[00:31:24] Tim: That's
[00:31:24] Adam: the console. Yep. And, and, and that's great cuz it's, you know, you can experiment, you can can learn and, and figure out what you need to do, but it is not at all reproducible, especially like, you know, you think, okay, well I'm gonna write down everything I do, write down the steps.
[00:31:39] Adam: Well, they change that interface so often that
[00:31:42] Tim: my God. So often.
[00:31:43] Adam: Yeah. And so, like, even if you take meticulous notes about what you did, and it would be a long, laborious, tedious process to, to recreate it from scratch. Your notes are still not gonna be perfect. Right. They're people are gonna have to sort of read between the lines and, and figure it out.
[00:32:00] Tim: And is that true with blog posts? You find blog posts when it's like old screenshots from two years ago, right?
[00:32:05] Adam: Yeah. So, I mean, AWS's answer to this is a tool that they call cloud formation, which is, to my understanding, I've never touched it. And that's the failure here is that, you know, these are, this is something I should be using, but I'm not. And you like basically provide configuration. I don't know if it's adjacent file or a yammel file or what, but provide configuration and it can create all of the instances and databases and whatever that you need.
[00:32:30] Adam: And, and, and, you know, network 'em all together and set all the settings and do all the things. It's supposed to be. Great , that's, definitely something I should be looking into.
[00:32:40] Tim: yeah. Fortunately someone else already kind of one, one on our team already did all that stuff for me. So all of our deployment stuff is, is based on that. It's just a script you run, which is repeatable and it's works great. But yeah, I couldn't write it myself if I had to right now. So I'm with you in that boat.
[00:32:56] Ben: we have at work such, I mean to like Tim, we have a team of people or dwindling team of, team of people, people at this point that have done this kind of stuff. But even though they've done this kind of stuff historically, you look and it's like, yeah, some of the newer stuff is really clean and put together, but they're still very handcrafted old machines that are running a very old part of the system.
[00:33:20] Ben: And, and so there's really still a, it, it seems like it, it's hard to bring the old things forward with you. It's sort of, people are starting new things with better approaches, but not necessarily going back and cleaning up the old things.
[00:33:33] Tim:
[00:33:33] Reading
[00:33:33] Tim: so, so I got one, reading more work related book I read a lot, but all of it's like science fiction, fantasy. It's all pleasure reading. Right? , don't, I, I find it really hard just to read books about coding or more and more, you know, management kind of stuff and like team building and, finance stuff.
[00:33:53] Tim: I just, I know I should, but it's like, you know what? I'm like towards the tail end of my career here and I've done pretty well. Do I really need to learn some new stuff?
[00:34:02] Adam: now the time for you to be reading Clean Code
[00:34:05] Tim: Well, I mean, I read, I read a clean code. I benefited from a greatly, but I was forced to by you guys so and it was awesome. But it's like, I just, I can't find that impetus, like reads new and read tons of articles and stuff.
[00:34:18] Tim: I can do that. I can do the bite size pieces, but an entire book, where I'm dealing with like, even like some engineering management for the rest of us. Okay. By Sarah. Try. Yeah. Yeah. See, see, you're, you're a good example of that. You, you do tend to read.
[00:34:32] Adam: I, I read a lot of books. I'm, I'm right there with you. Most of what I read is science fiction, not so much the fantasy, but, and then, you know, occasionally it's other stuff. Like I, I read, atomic Habits and I read some stuff that's like, you know, about time management, that sort of thing. And, and like more recently I read, learning Agile.
[00:34:47] Adam: I just wanted to, to finally like, get a go from, I've heard of Agile, I've heard of what are the practices too. Like I have read the book , you know, there's a big difference between there. and so I, I got the audio book, which you know, turns out is, it's the O'Reilly book. It's called Learning Agile.
[00:35:02] Adam: It's free on Amazon is obviously not Amazon Originals, but it's in their plus catalog or something. And so if you're a, if you're a, audible. , then you get that book for free and you can just, it didn't cost you anything. which is great cuz you know, then I was able to like, you know, read it while I was doing the dishes and driving around, picking up my kid from school, that sort of thing.
[00:35:20] Tim: The, the problem that I have with, with a lot of books is, is there's a huge amount of just sort of like, Duh. I
[00:35:26] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:27] Tim: you know, there's a huge amount of that. It's like, yeah, okay, obviously, and there's other stuff that's, it's more practical principles, but it's like, all right, how do I actually put this into practice in my world?
[00:35:40] Tim: And that disconnect between the principles of, of the idea and the actual execution is kind of where the gap is. It's like, I, I get it. I see where, you know, this is important, but how do we actually make this reality? and so I feel that if I've, I've spent that time and that, that bandwidth in my head, it's like, is that wasted opportunity?
[00:36:02] Tim: Like, it just, just, it's not gonna become a reality. I, I just feel like now I just know how inept I am. Right.
[00:36:10] Ben: Well, I think, part of the issue for me, cuz I, I also struggle with this, is that, is twofold. One earlier in my career, a larger percentage of the things that I were reading were helpful because I didn't know very much. So I could read an entire book on SQL and you know, 80% of it was stuff I didn't know or didn't know very well.
[00:36:32] Ben: If I went and I read a book about sql, it would have to be something like super niche, like I, I don't know, you know, like maximizing bin log usage for read replication, like something very targeted. Or I'd have to read a 400 page book to get, you know, a handful of tips that might be applicable, which to your point, like, is that really a good use of my time?
[00:36:55] Ben: The other thing that I think I struggle with is, and this kind of ties back to when we had Brian Ronald on talking about how niche all the conferences are is. It's like, it's hard to just read a book about web development, like generalized web development and get something valuable outta, especially at our point in our career, if it was early on and I wanted just like a little light touching on all of the different aspects of web development, it'd be helpful.
[00:37:21] Ben: But, you know, I love Angular as an example. I'm not really heavily investing in Angular right now, just cause it's not involved in my day-to-day work. So it's like, do I even, do I even need to stay up to date with it or is like, is that worth my time? It, it's very, it's very hard.
[00:37:40] Tim: Yeah. I, I, I totally agree with you. I, I, I've struggled with that too. It's like, I'm gonna read this and probably 80% I know and trying to find the 20% that's actually gonna help me at this point in my career. my son could, my son could read that book and be like, oh my God, this is a revolutionary Daniel.
[00:37:54] Tim: And he'll like, stand at my doorway.
[00:37:56] Tim: And, and
[00:37:57] Adam: architecture is gonna change everything.
[00:37:58] Tim: Yeah. He'll regal me with, you know, something that, that he's learned about, you know, programming and or AI and all. Also, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. But, yeah,
[00:38:09] Ben: even just going back to the idea that the AWS console is changing constantly. It, it takes people a long time, relatively speaking to, to write a book
[00:38:18] Tim: mm-hmm.
[00:38:18] Ben: you know, you're writing a book about spelt, and then suddenly selt Kick comes out and it's, and like, did it change everything?
[00:38:25] Ben: I mean, I don't know about Spell, but like you could write a book about React,
[00:38:28] Adam:
[00:38:28] Ben: whatever com, you know, like class-based components. And then everyone now is writing functional components and they look at your book and you're like, whoa, does anyone even write React like this anymore? And I'm not.
[00:38:38] Adam: yeah, and, and that's why I think you've seen a, a major shift in tech books from stuff that clearly, like the O'Reilly books, right? That clearly takes years to write to something that is more approachable and, and like, you know, the writer can get it done in like two, three months of like intense work.
[00:38:56] Ben: Right, right.
[00:38:56] Adam: as far as reading though, I had a thought, and you guys tell me how much you think that your companies would be down for this, but like, what if just as a, as like a professional development thing, you set aside like a half an hour a day. So we're, we're talking two and a half hours a week, right? Of, you know, I'm just gonna sit in my office and read some technical book, right?
[00:39:19] Adam: I'm gonna catch up on my t d d book, or I'll read, you know, whatever that engineering management book or, or whatever. But like, we just think about that. Would that fly if you asked for that time at work,
[00:39:29] Tim: I mean, I don't have to ask
[00:39:31] Adam: Well, if, what if your, your reports asked you, Tim,
[00:39:35] Tim: I would totally tell 'em. Yeah. In fact, I, we have like a dedicated like training budget that we use and I struggle every year spend that money. I'm like, what do you guys wanna learn and do? I'm like, oh, I never really get any straight answers.
[00:39:48] Adam: you wanna send 'em to a Taffy workshop?
[00:39:52] Tim: I'm the only one who uses staffy, so.
[00:39:54] Ben: I, I think, I think you need an accountability, buddy. I, I, I think at work, and I can only speak for people I work with, they're all very bright, very motivated people. I, I still think even in that context, it's very hard for people to voluntarily carve out self-guided learning moments in the week.
[00:40:17] Adam: Yeah, it's almost like you need to have like a, a cohort for, chunked learning at work, right? So you need to just be like, okay, the whole team is gonna read this book, and we're gonna do like one chapter a week. So you've got a ton of time to read each chapter, you know, fit it in wherever it makes sense for you on the clock.
[00:40:33] Adam: And then, like, you know, Friday from four to five, we'll get together and we'll just talk about what we learned.
[00:40:39] Ben: I, I.
[00:40:40] Tim: You just gave me an idea. So we do something at, I, I instituted something last year called First Fridays. So around here, I don't know if many cities do this, like first Fridays, like local towns will have like food trucks and little party. So at work on first Friday of every month, we kinda look back at the, the previous month and say, Hey, what are some wins?
[00:41:02] Tim: What are some awesome things that that happened last month? And what are we looking forward to this month? and we do that every first Friday. One of the things like this is for, this isn't for a coding type person, but, her assignment is, I need you to bring me, so we're in the money moving business, so explain, you know, give us something interesting that you read about the industry that we don't know.
[00:41:23] Tim: So we can keep, keep up with competitors or, you know, changes in legislation and things like that. And so she has to bring two items to each first Friday. normally she can only bring one. I I, I don't, I don't know if it's a lack of time or, or, or what, but she normally brings one. I could do the same thing with the coders, right?
[00:41:40] Tim: I could say first Friday and I wouldn't do it in our general meeting. It would be maybe a first Friday with just the development team and say, first Friday, I want you to like, demonstrate some new thing that you learned in coding, like new aspect, new library, new principles, new pattern, Antipater, just something that you learned and present it, you know, in 10 minutes, doesn't right.
[00:42:02] Tim: Don't make it. And I think that would, if I did that, it'd be germane to what they're trying to do. Because I mean, why would they be look learning about it unless they thought it would be useful? And then it would give them accountability that they have to present, you know, an informal presentation of, Hey, here's what I learned about X and here's why I think it's interesting and here's how I think we can use it.
[00:42:28] Tim: And here's the pros and cons. And then we can challenge each other and say, yeah, that's awesome. Or, you know, have you thought about this? Or, yeah, that's great. But I think this language or library or method works better.
[00:42:39] Adam: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a totally valuable thing. You want to. Do it in such a way that the team doesn't feel pressured to, like, I have to find something to present. Cuz you know, first Friday's coming up, right? So like, you want the, you want the culture to be like, just they're, as they're working, they're constantly on the alert for like, Ooh, ooh.
[00:42:59] Adam: Yeah, I just learned that, I just figured that out. Like, let me write that down so I can bring it up at first Friday. alright. You know, like you just learn about some strange H T M L feature or something. you know, like that, that would be
[00:43:10] Tim: And it, and it gives you, it gives you a whole month to like work on it. Right. So
[00:43:15] Ben: I get frustrated with people. I feel bad that I get frustrated, but, so we have this meeting at work called the Architecture Office Hours, which sounds very official, but it's really just you show up and anybody who wants to talk about anything can talk about anything
[00:43:28] Tim: yeah, I don't like those
[00:43:30] Ben: So I, so people show up and, and, and it's very, it's very informal.
[00:43:35] Ben: Occasionally someone will do a presentation, but it's mostly just if you have something on your mind, let's have a chat about it.
[00:43:40] Ben: And,
[00:43:41] Ben: I remember one time I was there and nobody was saying anything. It was just the Zoom meeting. It was like 13 faces just standing there. And I was like, Hey, has anybody just worked on anything interesting that they wanna share?
[00:43:53] Ben: And it's just quiet. And I was like, has anyone struggled with any problems this week? Like, have they found anything technically challenging? Just quiet. I was like, she told me that no one here has worked on either anything interesting or challenging and just, just like sea of quietness. Yeah.
[00:44:12] Tim: They're just showing up to the meeting with nothing prepared and like, oh, they're probably sitting there just working on go, you know, typing away. Just waiting to hear what everyone else says.
[00:44:20] Ben: I, I get so jazzed up talking about code. It, I, it's hard for me to understand when other people don't just wanna talk about code all the time.
[00:44:28] Tim: I mean, you should be on a podcast
[00:44:30] Ben: I need some sort of a platform.
[00:44:33] Adam: we'll have to find somebody who can do that for you.
[00:44:35] Tim: Yeah.
[00:44:36] Adam: All right, well, we've been on this one for a little bit. Why don't we move on? So, who's got something else?
[00:44:41] Upgrading
[00:44:41] Ben: I'll go with, upgrading all the things. So libraries and dependencies within the application databases, general techniques. I, I just, you know, it's so hard, especially when you're having to weigh building something new with keeping something that exists and seems to work fairly well up to date. but.
[00:45:04] Ben: You know, eventually it all breaks at some point and becomes problematic at some point. And one day you're gonna do have to do an NPM install and, and, and, suddenly the thing that you want is no longer compatible with the version of Node that you're running. Like, that stuff just happens, but it's so hard to be proactive about any of it.
[00:45:22] Adam: Absolutely. I have an application that I, I spent some time on this week that I upgraded it as much as I possibly could without like going crazy about it. but I mean, so next JS is on I think, version. It's either 13 or 14 is like the latest right now. Right. This application is on next v4,
[00:45:39] Tim: Ooh. Yeah.
[00:45:40] Adam: ancient and it's just been sitting there because it didn't need any attention.
[00:45:44] Adam: Right. It was just working well. and I, you know, I went and it's like, okay, well we need to move this from EC two over to a Docker container running in Fargate for a variety of reasons. Like, one, we wanna get rid of the EC two instances, two, you know, Fargate can scale and blah, blah, blah. Right. And, and it works, but we cannot, we can't change anything, right?
[00:46:06] Adam: Like the, the built files work, but the tool chain to rebuild from source no longer works.
[00:46:14] Ben: Yo.
[00:46:14] Adam: it's just dead. Like the Webpack stuff has moved on and, and all this other stuff, and it's just,
[00:46:20] Adam: we cannot do
[00:46:21] Ben: percent. I, I, I literally think that we have a Lambda function somewhere at work that's still running on node four, and I think technically Lambda doesn't even support Node four anymore. But I think like, as long as we, no one touches the, like the zip file that was generated for it, like it'll still work.
[00:46:37] Ben: So it's, it's just like, well forever, no one will ever.
[00:46:41] Adam: Well, I mean, even if they do, I know for a fact that you can, there's a couple of different ways you could do it. So they have like the layers thing where you can like upload a container and it, and it,
[00:46:50] Ben: Yeah, this, I think this predates like all of that stuff
[00:46:53] Adam: Yeah, well, I'm just saying like if you need to dig it out of a hole, and then there was a, there was a lambda that we did years back, like when, somewhere probably around like the time of node zero point 10, which was like, you know, just eventually became Node 10 or something.
[00:47:05] Adam: But, like there was, we wanted to use 12 or something like that, and just like AWS takes forever to release new, you know, like, I don't think you can use 18, on, on Lambda right now, but it's a, it's the current version, the current lts version. and so you, what we did, we we included the node binary as part of the code that we upload and then we just like, Child process dot exec using our custom version of Node
[00:47:31] Ben: That's great.
[00:47:32] Adam: our script.
[00:47:33] Adam: It's great.
[00:47:35] Ben: I wish upgrading databases was easier. I know, Adam, you just went through this, right? Like upgrading to eight something on MySQL or Aurora, whatever
[00:47:42] Adam: Yeah. Let's see, what was it? Yeah, so we, we, this was maybe a couple of months ago, we upgraded from like V five of mys L on Aurora to v8. and yeah, I mean, it, it was a pain. I talked about it on the show at the time. You'll have to figure out what episode is, if you wanna learn about that. But,yeah, and then more recently I've been doing like going from the unencrypted database cluster to encrypted and that there's some automation available for that.
[00:48:06] Adam: but yeah.
[00:48:10] Ben: And sometime,
[00:48:11] Tim: Database upgrades are tough. Yeah. We're, we're, we're struggling. The same thing with MySQL,
[00:48:16] Ben: you get cool stuff too with the new things. That's, that's like the, that's the frustrating part is you'll learn about some new feature and then you realize that it's not available in your version.
[00:48:25] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:27] Tim: Unless it's
[00:48:27] Tim: Postgres, then it's all awesome
[00:48:30] Adam: moving right past that.
[00:48:32] Metrics and Analytics
[00:48:32] Adam: so, was listening to the Art of podcast, the Art of podcast, sorry, the Art of Product podcast lately. and, and there was an older episode I was listening to where they were talking about, surfacing useful information out of like, not, what's the word? out of like metrics that don't really mean anything by themselves, right?
[00:48:50] Adam: So if you've got, like, you know, you've got your churn, you've got like your revenue, you've got, you know, new signups and different things, and if you can like say, okay, you know, Oh, God, I'm gonna, I'm totally butchering this because I can't remember the very specifics, but it's like, you know, you divide, you know, like new signups by the, by, by, I don't know, whatever it is, but like, you know, if you take the time to think what is actually useful information to know, like if what is, what is a request that I might get from my CEO to, to figure out something useful and, and it, that it would be useful to know over time, right.
[00:49:23] Adam: Well, could I broaden this to just say that I wish I was better at analytics? That, that I, I know very well how to go into the app and add a counter that says how many people clicked on this button. And I, for me, that's a very dopamine driven, emotional. I can see a graph. I released a feature and, 74 people clicked on it yesterday.
[00:49:44] Ben: It's amazing. But, but we have people at work who, who will do like, oh yeah. And, people who click on this button and then send other users an invite to engage on this. Then those users then have a 50% greater increase, engagement within the next four months. I'm like, I the, like, nothing you just said even makes sense to me. but, but like, it's clearly powerful. I just don't understand how you arrive at that kind of information. And I'm, and it's a whole career, so I don't know why I feel like I should even be good at it, but,
[00:50:16] Tim: I
[00:50:17] Tim: think that's, that's what you, that's what you feed into the AI machine. That's what I'm waiting for. It's like, just let me, I'll give you all this data, ai, and you just tell me what it means. I, I don't.
[00:50:25] Ben: Yeah.
[00:50:26] Adam: Yeah. But like there's, there's other things that are even like more low hanging fruit, right? So, if you just push data into CloudWatch, CloudWatch has like anomaly detection built in, so you can just be like, okay, I'm gonna send you a notification every time somebody makes a payment. and then you can turn on anomaly detection.
[00:50:45] Adam: And if somehow your payment collection form stops working and payments stop coming in, you know, that's gonna just sort of fail silently, right? You're not gonna get any information that payments aren't coming. But then if you've got anomaly detection on, it'll be like, wait a minute, I'm, you know, I'm expecting more payments and, you know, I'm not getting them.
[00:51:02] Adam: Something's going on. And it'll let you know, like, that's super low hanging fruit. Or like, you know, you know, if the error rate goes up, you know, the, the number of people who fail caps goes up like,
[00:51:12] Ben: Well, and, and just, I mean I didn't, I don't know much about CloudWatch. It's awesome that it has that, but even other metrics based tools, like we use Datadog at work and Datadog's crazy powerful. And again, I will do things like, I have a counter and I can see how many people click on this button, but then they'll do, they'll provide monitoring and alerting for all this fancy anomaly detection and like change of rate stuff.
[00:51:38] Ben: So it's like, it doesn't matter if your database is running at 60% cpu, that's fine, but if it was running at 20% CPU a minute ago and now it's running at 60%, like that's a problem and we need to know about that. And they have all these just really fancy mathematical, like regressions and stuff and, and it's, I don't know how to, I don't know how to leverage any of it cuz it, it, I just don't have the mental model
[00:52:00] Ben: for it.
[00:52:01] Tim: like magic.
[00:52:01] Ben: It does seem like magic. And it's, and it's not, it's like, it's one of those things where you, you can't just click a button and suddenly it's value add all day long. Cuz you'll click a button and it's like value add 80% of the time. And then the other 20% of the time you get paged in the middle of the night for something that was like, yeah, because everything drops to practically nothing in the middle of the night except for this one background task that has to reprocess a whole bunch of data for some reason.
[00:52:26] Ben: And that's not a problem. But it, it, it was an anomaly technically. And, you know, so then you gotta figure out how to mute that or, you know, I'm just saying it's, it's, it's hard. I wish I was really good at analytics and metrics.
[00:52:37] Adam: Okay.
[00:52:38] Tim:
[00:52:38] Socializing
[00:52:38] Tim: yeah, so I, I backing away from code a little bit, I, I'd say that one thing I, since Covid I need to work on that I know I should be doing is socialize.
[00:52:50] Tim: I used to, I used to be a very social creature. I'm, I'm borderline, I'm borderline ex extrovert, introvert.
[00:52:58] Tim: I'm an ambivert. So I can very easily be pushed into my extrovert mode, right? Love going to conferences, hanging out. I get so jazzed, you know, talking to people. But it's like, since Covid, it's like I've really doubled down on introvert and I just don't wanna go anywhere. I can't get the energy to go anywhere.
[00:53:16] Tim: I don't wanna see people, I don't wanna talk to people. I don't want to go to a gathering. I don't want to go to a party. I don't wanna go to a restaurant. It's just like, it's, it's, and I realized, and so a coup, like a couple weeks ago, I went out, I forget where I went. I went out somewhere and, and hung out with some people that I normally don't hang out with.
[00:53:36] Tim: And I came back and I was just talking to my wife like 90 miles an hour and, and she's like looking at me weird and I'm like, she's like, are you okay? And I'm like, and I realize I haven't done that and I really, really enjoyed it. And, and, but I can't. But I sit here at home at work and I don't, I can't find the energy to get out and going.
[00:53:58] Tim: And so I know I need to socialize more. I mean, doing that, that dinner last night was awesome. I'm really was jazzed after that. I came home like super hyper, super happy. And even today it's like I got energy, but I just knew it's gonna wear off . So, so I don't know how to fix that. I know I should be socializing more, but I just, I just don't know where that's gonna come.
[00:54:19] Ben: when I moved, so I moved last July. In, in, into a more country area away from the metropolitan meetups and whatnot. And, I signed up for a meetup.com account. Like I've always had a meetup.com, but I signed up to be a potential organizer of events which cost money. And, I was like, maybe I'll try to start a technology meetup in my area.
[00:54:41] Ben: And, so I signed up and I think I posted one message and I was like, yeah, I'm just trying to see if anyone around here wants to do anything. And and that was it. And I just canceled it, like . Cause I'm like, I don't know what to do. Like, I don't know how to engage with people and do stuff. But, it was, I, I also feel like I need to get out and see people.
[00:54:58] Ben: And at this point I'm like, I almost sort of don't care if it's technology related. I like, I'll, I'll go to a book club or like a knitting circle or something. I just need to see some people occasionally.
[00:55:12] Tim: Yeah.
[00:55:13] Adam: Start watching Sports
[00:55:15] Ben: Oh, I know. Oh man, I'm so jealous. Honestly, I, I was just literally, I was just talking to my wife about this today cuz of the whole, I just learned how to cook a burger thing, which I think is probably something that like 99% of men know how to do. and I was saying how jealous I am of the fact that men like sports and men like drinking and I don't like to do either of those things.
[00:55:34] Ben: And I feel like that cuts off so much opportunity or not cuts off, but like it makes the barrier to entry much harder than, like, I could just go to a sports bar and start drinking and talking to the guy next to me, but like, none of that appeals to me.
[00:55:50] Tim: If it makes you feel better, you won't. If you do that, you might feel better, but you won't remember what you talked about. So he'd be like, I met some dude and we talked about something. And yeah, I'll probably never see him again, but, uh, So I really don't know the point.
[00:56:06] Adam: Yeah, I mean, for me, the things that come to mind are like, you know, for me, where I get that sort of activity is like the skydiving club. I have been interested in, there's like a, a wood turning club in the area. where you can go and like, you know, basically see talks where people like will come do demonstrations about different topics, that sort of thing.
[00:56:24] Adam: But I don't know, it seems like a lot of work to go and watch somebody, watch somebody do woodworking, right? Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna become an eSports fan. I don't wanna watch somebody play Geometry Dash on YouTube, but,apparently a lot of people do,
[00:56:39] Tim: Yep.
[00:56:40] Adam: so.
[00:56:41] Ben: that's what it is. I need, I need, I need an additional hobby. Like for years, both my job and my hobby have been the same thing, which is programming. But I need to have something outside of that, I think in order to connect with people in, in a less urban area.
[00:56:56] Adam: gotta join a club or
[00:56:58] Adam: something.
[00:56:58] Tim: Take up. Take up farming. Good buddy.
[00:57:02] Patreon
[00:57:02] Adam: Alright, well, sounds like that's a good place to wrap it up. so, uh, we are on our way to go record the after show, and on tonight's after show, I got a couple of teases for.
[00:57:13] Tim: Ooh,
[00:57:13] Adam: We're gonna talk about, I got rid of my stockpile of used needles. I don't know if I've mentioned this on the show or the after
[00:57:18] Ben: That's right. Oh, that's right.
[00:57:19] Adam: before, but I, I'm just gonna leave it there, you know, leave some mystery unit maybe for the people who don't have a, a clue what I'm talking about.
[00:57:25] Adam: just kinda had some used needles, you know, and, now they're gone. we are going to talk about spelt and Hotwire, possibly the Ben's future. I don't know. We'll see. And, might wanna talk a little bit about the New York Times. We'll see. but,
[00:57:39] Tim: And, and I'll, I'll review. So for our dinner, my, my, my friend, he compiled everything that since I started cooking this dinner, all the weird things we've cooked. So I will have a list if you want to hear all the weird stuff we've done over the years.
[00:57:54] Adam: that sounds awesome. So if you, are interested in getting the after show to get access to content like that, then you've gotta become a patron of the show. And I will be talking about that in just one quick moment. But first I have to tell you that this episode of Working Code is brought to you by cooking Yourself a hamburger. That's it, Just cooking yourself a
[00:58:11] Ben: Delicious.
[00:58:13] Adam: and listeners like you. If you're enjoying the show and you wanna make sure that we can keep putting more of whatever this is out into the universe, then you should consider supporting us on Patreon. Our patrons cover our recording and editing costs, and we couldn't do this every week without them.
[00:58:28] Adam: Special thanks of course to our top patrons, Monte and Giancarlo, you guys, we really appreciate your continued super support. If you'd like to help us out, you can go to patreon.com/WorkingCodePod.
[00:58:44] Thanks For Listening
[00:58:44] Adam: I am going to continue doubling down on Discord. We've seen more and more people join our Discord, and it's been a heck of a lot of fun hanging out in there, talking to people.
[00:58:52] Adam: I've even seen our one and only Ben Nadel pop in once in a while
[00:58:57] Adam: to, let's just
[00:58:58] Ben: Every now
[00:58:58] Ben: and then.
[00:58:58] Ben: Every now and
[00:58:59] Tim: two before he, once again disappears in a cloud of smoke. It goes to bed
[00:59:03] Ben: yeah.
[00:59:05] Adam: it's like 4:00 PM now and he's already talking about going to bed. Anyway, come join our Discord. It's a good time, great place to network with your community.
[00:59:12] Adam: You can go to workingcode.dev/discord to get yourself on there. That's gonna do it for us this week. We'll catch you next week. And until then,
[00:59:19] Tim: Remember, your heart matters. Even if you don't back up your stuff like we do.
[00:59:24] Adam: like we don't apparently.
[00:59:26] Tim: Like we don't.
[00:59:46] Bloopers
[00:59:46] Tim: So we're 41 in, we wanna do, plus whatever
[00:59:49] Tim: we
[00:59:49] Adam: was like 14.
[00:59:50] Tim: Yeah. We wanna get into more like, soft stuff rather than, and
[00:59:54] Ben: sure.
[00:59:54] Ben: Get soft for us, Tim.
[01:00:00] Adam: Oh, blooper.
[01:00:01] Tim: Blooper. Oh my god.
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