159: No Effort December Returns
After a stressful year, we happily ease into another round of "No Effort December" in which the conversations flow without concern or constraint. Carol is excited to go ice skating for the first time in her life. Tim is trying to teach his kids about financial literacy. Ben shares his limited ability to fantasize. And Adam wonders why his computer gets so sticky.
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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
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[00:00:00] Highlight
[00:00:00] Adam: it's just weird, like out of nowhere, the computer just got sticky.
[00:00:03] Adam: I don't understand it.
[00:00:05] Ben: Hmm.
[00:00:05] Tim: Did you check it's browser history? Mm
[00:00:08] Carol: Oh
[00:00:09] Intro
[00:00:09] Adam: Okay, here we Go to show number 159, and on today's show, we're gonna figure out what it's about along with you. that's right, it's no effort December, and we know nothing more about how this show is gonna go than you do. Other than, I guess, the fact that, we're kind of saying, for the most part, work discussion, code discussion is sort of off the table.
[00:00:48] Ben: We'd like to just keep this sort of, you know, personal stuff. so, I guess What do I usually say? Gosh, it, it, I'm gone for one week. I'm gone for one week and I totally lose the plot. think he's saying, but, but as always, we'll start with the triumphs and fails.
[00:01:03] Adam: Okay, you just did it. Thanks, Ben. Um, so, uh, Ben.Ben, it's your turn to go first, man.
[00:01:09] Ben's Triumph
[00:01:09] Ben: I'm going to kick it off with a loose triumph, which is just that I made it through the year. It's, it's been a tough year. A lot has happened business wise and, lots of downs and some ups, but a lot of downs and, I'm just happy that made it through the year and business has basically closed this next week.
[00:01:29] Ben: So I'm basically done. Like I basically did it. I made it through 2023. Pretty pumped about that.
[00:01:36] Adam: I'm just curious, you know, it was like, Somewhat early this year that you told us that you were getting like laid off and then kind of went to like a part time thing. So I'm just curious how that, how that fluxed out through the
[00:01:47] Ben: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot's actually happened in the last couple of months too. none of it is really great, but it's, it's not awful. So in September I was downsized going from full time to, two days a week. And so I took that as an opportunity to try to write a book, which I, that's, that's probably been the highlight of the year is actually making that happen.
[00:02:09] Ben: And I'm, I'm pretty excited about the progress on that and I'm hoping to have that Kind of cleaned up in the next couple of weeks. So, September, October, I basically worked part time and then spent a lot of time on the book and then in November at work, there was some grumblings that we were in a potential acquisition deal at Invision to be acquired by Miro.
[00:02:35] Ben: Miro's a big, whiteboard. and that ended up happening really fast over the, over just a couple of weeks or something, or at least, you know, the parts that I was privy to, which is very little of it. and Miro ended up acquiring InVision, and that's public knowledge at this point, so I can say it. a couple of weeks ago, I don't remember when the exact date was, cause it had zero financial impact on me whatsoever, unfortunately, basically like, nothing was transferred over to Miro as far as, you know, equity or anything like that.
[00:03:04] Ben: So. Long story short, a bunch of people who were at Invision you know, I say a bunch, but this was like the winnowed down shadow of the company. Most of those people have actually now moved over to Miro
[00:03:17] Adam: 70 percent of the 10 percent of people that remained.
[00:03:21] Ben: yeah, exactly. So, as of December 1st, they actually brought me back, to full time to help. I don't know what the plan is, but basically they've off boarded a lot of people now over to Miro and there's a, there's like a real skeleton crew of people left and so they brought me back full time to keep the lights on. and they're currently trying to figure out what the long term plan is. And I don't
[00:03:46] Tim: on the legacy
[00:03:47] Ben: Yeah, exactly. So.
[00:03:51] Tim: You dude, you can stretch this out to your retirement. I bet.
[00:03:54] Ben: Yeah, so, you know, I, I think this is a temporary thing, you know, I think they're going to get to a point where they realize that they're just letting things run at status quo and they're not going to need me, but this is more of a transitional period as, as the two companies merge and they figure out where all the chips are going to lay.
[00:04:12] Ben: But, you know, the way I see it is at least for me, probably the next couple of months, I can sort of exhale a little bit. Every time I see people talk about. Jobs in the last couple of months, it's all about how hard it is to find a job and how they've been through dozens of interviews and haven't found things.
[00:04:31] Ben: And, it's kind of terrifying out there. And, so I'm feeling very thankful that I have money to buy food and pay mortgages at this moment. So. I'm going to wait, you know, and, and great thing too, is obviously once the next year starts, maybe budgets become a little bit, looser I'm, I'm told, and I'm not privy to this.
[00:04:50] Ben: Maybe there's a stuff like Tim might understand better, but apparently, you know, like October, November, December, people have already decided on budgets for the next year. So that's like a really, really slow hiring period. This is what I've been told. So anyway, like I said, I made it through the year. I'm kind of in this temporary limbo that is putting food on the table, and I'm very thankful for that.
[00:05:13] Adam: Well, you know, congrats on still being employed.
[00:05:15] Ben: so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm enjoying it, and it's like I had a little almost, sabbatical where I got to write my book, so I'm loving that.
[00:05:24] Carol: I picked it up on Cyber Monday, so.
[00:05:26] Ben: Ah, thank you, very exciting. I, I, I hope you enjoy it. I, actually, let me, if I can, just take a moment to give a huge shout out to Adam Cameron, who has been pouring radical candor all over my book and, helping
[00:05:39] Tim: As he, as he does.
[00:05:40] Ben: as he does, as he's known to do. And, it's been really helpful helping, fine
[00:05:45] Adam: So I'm not the, when it comes to reading a PDF on my computer, I find myself easily distracted. or it's either that, or I just struggle to carve out the time to sit in front of the computer. Right. It's like, Yeah, I'm sitting here reading. I could be, you know, watching stuff on YouTube. I could be working on something, you know, there's like 10 other things that are competing for that time at the keyboard.
[00:06:10] Adam: whereas, like, with an audiobook, I feel like I can do that while I'm showering, driving, cutting the grass, you know, washing the dishes.
[00:06:16] Ben: Yo,
[00:06:16] Adam: I'm only, like, two or three chapters into the book now, and here's the thing. I'm two or three chapters into the original PDF, the one with too much italics and too much bold.
[00:06:26] Adam: And, like, you gotta tell me if it changes enough to the point where, like, I really ought to go get the new version. Like, I know you're changing, like, you said a new version with less italics and less bold and stuff, but
[00:06:38] Ben: Yeah, yeah. And I'm, I'm updating some edits and, and some small, you know, sectional changes and, that kind of stuff. I mean, I think you can just, I'm hoping that people can just log
[00:06:48] Ben: That is my understanding as well, as you can just go into, as a purchaser of the book, that I can just go into my account and say, I would like the latest version now, please. But, you know, I, no pressure to read the book. I don't want you to feel like,
[00:07:01] Tim: You got a new forward
[00:07:02] Ben: Yes. Yes. Mary Jo Sminkey, generously wrote the foreword to the book. She's a huge fan of feature flags
[00:07:09] Tim: and a huge fan of you.
[00:07:11] Ben: yeah, so I think that was a great, that was a match made in heaven.
[00:07:14] Tim: Mm hmm. Oh,
[00:07:15] Ben: Anyway, that was me. I'm super excited to have a, some downtime now for the holiday.
[00:07:21] Ben: Carol, what do you got going on?
[00:07:23] Carol's Triumph
[00:07:23] Carol: All right, so I'm gonna also go with a triumph, but this is a big triumph. you and I talked, just a few days ago, it feels like, about premortems and, my fear going into it was knowing it was gonna go terrible. Well, the great news is it didn't go terrible.
[00:07:38] Ben: Lovely.
[00:07:39] Carol: Yeah, a lot came out of it. A lot of great questions.
[00:07:42] Carol: I was able to prioritize 10 takeaways, go work those, and then we'll come back and reevaluate. So from those, you know, lots more questions have, you know, surfaced, which is fine. Kind of that's the point of it. We want to make sure we're going down the right route, but everything was great. It was positive.
[00:07:59] Carol: The feedback was good and. You know,
[00:08:02] Ben: it ended up being positive. Cause I knew last week you had concerns that people were going to go in being Too negative and not necessarily just critical.
[00:08:12] Carol: yep. And just go down big rabbit holes of, you know, we've always failed at things before, so why is this going to be any different? And some of those just negative Nancy kind of comments, right? But no, it, it was really helpful, really good. Set up lots of meetings and action items for after and have already made big.
[00:08:31] Carol: steps to improve and improve some of the processes in our workflow So, I'm really happy with it. The pre mortem was great. I'm so glad we did it. And it's definitely something we're going to keep doing for large projects like this.
[00:08:44] Adam: so when you say it was a success, you mean you like, identified things that now you'll carry with you and your brain's going through the project and it'll Keep you from falling down, pitfalls sort of thing.
[00:08:56] Carol: Yeah, and actually it also exposed some things I didn't even think of, you know, so other architects brought up information and concerns that hadn't crossed my mind yet, and some of them were concerning enough that it could be showstoppers, so it's forced us to take a step back, re evaluate, and make sure we're going down the right path.
[00:09:14] Carol: So yeah, that's me. What about you, Tim?
[00:09:17] Tim:
[00:09:17] Tim's Triumph
[00:09:17] Tim: So this past week we did our, I think I mentioned this. Prior that we were preparing for our strat plan. So we do an annual strat plan for the year. we did a strap plan and, what was interesting is looking at it. So we did a strat plan for the last year back, I think in November of 20. 22. And we set these goals, right?
[00:09:38] Tim: And we have these numbers that corporate wants us to hit. We have that. And I remember sitting there thinking in that strat plan, we put these numbers down and then we were like, how are we going to get there? And I'm like, there, I have no clue. How we're going to hit these numbers. I seriously, this, seems like a stretch goal.
[00:09:57] Tim: And then we, so you do a one year plan. You also do a three year plan and look at the three year numbers. And like those numbers are just ridiculous that, you know, it's like, I don't know how we're going to get to one year in three years out. It's like anybody's guess. Well, we, so we did a retrospective. I pulled up our strat plan from last year and I said, all right, here's what we said we were going to do.
[00:10:17] Tim: And here's what we did. And if you notice, not only did we meet our one year goal, we actually. Met our three year goal in one year.
[00:10:26] Carol: Oh, wow.
[00:10:28] Ben: bonuses for
[00:10:29] Carol: Uhhuh. Someone was sandbagging that original Strat meeting I'm
[00:10:34] Tim: I don't think so. I don't think so. What's funny is, is that it, we did not, we got to the, where we wanted to be financially, but we did not get there the way we thought we were going to. We had a new product that we're launching. It's like, and although we have the new product, it's partially launched.
[00:10:49] Tim: There's some legal hangups and hurdles that we've been fighting with and still fighting with. that. Prevented us from getting there, but we, we did it other ways. Right. And so, that's what I really like about having a small team, a kind of a small company inside of a big company is that you can, you can pivot pretty quickly.
[00:11:07] Tim: And I don't really like the word pivot, but you can, you can react to changes in not just the market, but also just changes in the reality of what your company's doing is like, all right, it's obvious right now that. Sales of this new product that we're trying to sell is not going to make it this year.
[00:11:25] Tim: What else are we going to do? And you figure that out and you attack that. And then it's like, okay, we, we got to where we wanted to be as far as numbers go, completely different way than what we thought it was. And so I think that really opened my eyes to just say, you know, don't be so dead set on how you get there, just get there, right? So if you're so married to no, we're going to do it this way. And if it doesn't work, we're just all going to die. No, that's, that's stupid. yeah, so that, that was, that was really eye opening. It was, it was a good scrap plan and didn't really take, we spent like several days, full days last time. And this time, just because we had put so much work into it last year, we did like, From 9 a. m. to noon on three days. So we just did like a morning session each day and, went well.
[00:12:18] Carol: great. And that's awesome. I'm super proud of you guys.
[00:12:21] Ben: Yeah, but, but now when you come up with your three year plan, do you think people are going to be like, ah, they'll just do that in a year?
[00:12:27] Tim: I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I mean,
[00:12:31] Ben: Yeah. You over delivered way too much.
[00:12:33] Tim: there was a bit of luck involved too. Right. And I did point that out. So I had to present this to the rest of the, the higher ups of the, you know, owning company. I'm like, there's a, there's a degree of luck here, right? That the stars aligned pretty well.
[00:12:48] Tim: Some things landed that we didn't think were going to land. And chances are some of that will happen next year too, but there could be also some bad things, but all the bad things that we know, cause there are some bad things happening as far as with your customers, customers leave you, whatever. We've already modeled that in and we're still, looking at it now compared to what we did.
[00:13:07] Tim: It's like our numbers for next year, actually pretty conservative, right? So probably do better, but it's like, yeah, you always want to. Under promise over deliver.
[00:13:18] Ben: very cool.
[00:13:19] Tim: So anyway, that's me. How about you, Adam?
[00:13:22] Adam's Triumph
[00:13:22] Adam: Well, I, I guess I'm going to go with a triumph this week. I am, as we say, on holiday this week. I took the week off. Um, normally my usual,
[00:13:31] Tim: Rub it in. Jeez, dude. He just keeps saying, I'm on. Hey guys, when are we recording? I'm, I'm off work all week.
[00:13:40] Adam: yeah, we, you guys tried to record on Monday and I was just like, didn't show up. and it was like.
[00:13:46] Tim: We did respond or like, well, if he's, I guess he's not coming.
[00:13:49] Adam: that's the real triumph here that so I'm, when I made the plan to take this week off of work, I was kind of thinking in my head, like I've been working on this design system, and it'll be some nice quiet time and I could just really sit down and crank out a whole bunch of components and get a whole lot done so we can really hit the ground running in the new year.
[00:14:07] Adam: And I have done so good, and Tim just walks away, he's not even listening. I have done so good at, stepping away from the computer. I've gotten so many text messages that are like, Hey, did you get my email? Not from work people, just like from, you know, life people. Did you get my email? I need a thing. I need an answer from you real quick.
[00:14:27] Adam: And so I've gotten, I've had to like reply on text or like with you guys trying to record on Monday. Like we, I agreed to record on Monday and then I just totally forgot. and I, you know, like Tuesday in, in the early part of the day, I was, you know, catching up on discord and stuff. And I, and I looked, it's like, Oh no, I completely forgot.
[00:14:45] Adam: And I looked back and you guys were like, I wonder if Adam's going to show up. No, sorry.
[00:14:51] Carol: Great, though. Like, that's a huge win to step away.
[00:14:53] Ben: Yeah,
[00:14:54] Carol: Yeah.
[00:14:55] Adam: I'm particularly good at disconnecting, and I think that that is a good, a good triumph. Welcome back, Tim.
[00:15:02] Adam: anyway, so yeah, I guess I'll, I'll, I'll say I've been super productive this week, but just not in the way that I was thinking, you know, when I made the plan to take this week off. You know, I figured I would be at the computer all week, catching up on the stuff that I want to do to get ahead at work.
[00:15:16] Adam: And I've just been on my feet all week, basically. Like, I'm building myself a new desk, I rearranged my office,
[00:15:23] Ben: Oh, you're building
[00:15:24] Adam: oh yeah. I mean, just the, the desk surface. I have a sit stand convertible electric desk, so the, the legs are themselves, but I'm, I'm making the new desk surface. Which sounds easy, right? You just take some boards and you glue them together, bada bing, bada bang, desk.
[00:15:37] Adam: But it's not that easy, right? You gotta, like, I'm buying rough lumber, like, basically. Chunks of a tree and I have to make them flat and smooth and glue them together and sand it and shape it and all that. Anyway,
[00:15:50] Ben: Very cool.
[00:15:51] Carol: heavy, isn't it? If it's solid
[00:15:53] Adam: it is solid wood. Not that heavy. It's about an inch thick of walnut. I'll post pictures on the Discord.
[00:15:58] Ben: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:15:59] Carol: Great. We'd
[00:16:00] Adam: Not that kind of nuts, Tim. You can't eat them. so yeah, like getting a ton of stuff down. We're like, for the first time in recent memory, we are, we've been like ready for Christmas for like five days now. Which is unheard of. We're usually we're that family that's usually like, you know, it's three days till Christmas and we're sitting here like, I really hope those Amazon packages arrive today or tomorrow because we're gonna be screwed.
[00:16:23] Adam: and we've been ready for a while and it's just it feels weird. We somehow managed to get ahead this year.
[00:16:29] Ben: Very cool. Yo, four triumphs!
[00:16:31] Adam: What what? Good way strong strong end to the year, my friends.
[00:16:35] Carol: Yeah. Aw.
[00:16:37] Tim: mean, it's all down here from downhill from here. 2024.
[00:16:41] Adam: Okay, wait a minute. Didn't we start this in 2020. Must have been 2020 like, December 21, I think.
[00:16:51] Tim: What the podcast?
[00:16:52] Adam: . When you look at it on our website, WorkingCode. dev. December 16th, 2020. So, wow,
[00:16:59] Carol: Crazy.
[00:16:59] Adam: years, you guys.
[00:17:00] Ben: Yo,
[00:17:01] Tim: I know.
[00:17:02] Carol: You guys are like my only friends now. I interact more with you than anyone else in my life. Except my husband and my dog.
[00:17:10] Ben: for real.
[00:17:11] Tim: You guys are my online role play group. It's like, Oh, okay. This
[00:17:15] Ben: We're all LARPing together?
[00:17:17] Tim: Yeah, he's all larping.
[00:17:18] Adam: Different kind of roleplaying, yeah. Okay, well, that covers our triumphs and fails. So, who has something interesting that you want to talk about? Hopefully not work related.
[00:17:27] Carol's Going Ice Skating
[00:17:27] Carol: Oh, okay. I got one. I think it's interesting, but you guys might think it's lame because you're not from the South. So you don't understand the joy of cold things and weather and, you know, seasons. So recently just had my birthday and, you know, turned 39 and can enjoy my last years in my thirties. And I am going ice skating next week.
[00:17:46] Carol: And I don't think I've ever been ice skating a day in my life. Like I've been skiing, snowboarding. I've had to travel to do it. So it's. It's fun to be somewhere that we have seasons and it gets cold, like real cold, and you can have pop up ice skating rinks in the area, so I'm really excited about it. So my triumph may be that I break something when I fall, but, or you know, my failure, my failure going into this, but we'll see, we'll
[00:18:11] Adam: Did I ever tell you about the first time that I went ice skating? I was, I was in my late teens. no, you know what? It must have been like, you know, maybe 19 or 20. we went to visit my grandparents and my parents were like, here's the car keys, go take your brothers to the ice skating rink that's just down the road or whatever.
[00:18:27] Adam: And so I do. And, you know, we rent skates, we're skating around in circles or whatever. and I fell. I didn't really think that much of it. I just got back up. It was no big deal. and we go around the circle again, and I'm looking at the, at the ice, like, there's red spots. Somebody's bleeding on the ice.
[00:18:44] Adam: And we're going, and there's like more and more, and I'm like, what, this is a big deal. Somebody's bleeding on the ice. And, and my brothers look up at me and they're like, Oh, it's you. And I had like, when I fell, I like, just like sort of smacked my chin on the ice. It wasn't even, it wasn't like a scrape type cut.
[00:19:01] Adam: It was just like a pop. You know, apparently if you, if you pop on, you know, like press instantaneously or whatever on the skin hard enough, you can sort of just pop it open. And I had like popped open a hole in the bottom of my chin.
[00:19:13] Ben: oh.
[00:19:14] Adam: I had no idea. So that was fun.
[00:19:17] Tim: Let's see what you think about ice skating, Carol. But it's a lot harder than it looks. It's not, it's nothing like
[00:19:25] Carol: I'm pretty sure I'll be the only adult, like, pushing the little kitty, like, you know, trainer thing around. Yeah.
[00:19:33] Ben: saw that for the first time just the other day. I didn't realize that that was a thing.
[00:19:37] Carol: It is a thing. They have them at, skating rinks too.
[00:19:40] Ben: Yeah, I used to go ice skating as a kid, but then I, I have flat feet and it turns out that like anything athletic hurts my feet at this point, so I haven't done anything.
[00:19:50] Tim: And I will say this, Carol, the forties are the best being 40, being 40 in your forties is amazing. You're, you're, I mean, and you're newly married and it's going to be great. You're going to love it.
[00:20:00] Carol: And my kids are off at college, so our house is empty.
[00:20:04] Tim: you're set. Geez.
[00:20:06] Carol: It's pretty good.
[00:20:07] Tim: It's pretty awesome.
[00:20:09] Carol: I don't know. I don't know if it can top like 26. 26 was such a good year
[00:20:13] Adam: I was gonna say, what about like back pain?
[00:20:15] Tim: That's when you started working for
[00:20:16] Carol: Yeah, that was a, well, it was a couple of years into it, but yeah, it was when I got really independent and traveled to conferences with Tim and met you guys, actually.
[00:20:26] Tim: Obviously. I mean, it's 20, can't be 26. It's just, but forties are
[00:20:29] Carol: Forties are good. That'll be number two. I got it.
[00:20:33] Adam: Well, good luck at your ice skating trip. Don't fall.
[00:20:36] Carol: Thanks.
[00:20:37] Adam: Or if you do catch yourself with your like
[00:20:40] Adam: arms, not your face. I,
[00:20:42] Tim: so I got one. so the movies are back, you know, the strike is over. They're actually starting to do calls for, you know, parts and background and extras and stuff. So, um, we, we got a notice the other day that, not too far from here, about an hour north of here, they're, they're. starting shooting for the final season of Stranger Things. And so my kids are, you know, they're, they're all, my daughter's over 18. So both the kids are of age, so they can like play a high schooler, but not have to do the, when you're under 18, they have very strict rules about hours and all you can do and that sort of stuff. When you're 18 or older, you're an adult, basically.
[00:21:21] Tim: So they really are looking for those. So, we took all our photos and shots and everything and, and submitted them. So we'll see what we'll end.
[00:21:29] Ben: Very
[00:21:29] Tim: uh,yeah, so it'd be, I've always wanted to be on the set of Stranger Things and this
[00:21:34] Carol: such a good show. It's such a good show.
[00:21:37] Adam: thought the monster was already cast, Tim.
[00:21:39] Tim: I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure they need like an evil senator at some point, you know, to come in and like try to legislate, legislate, Eleven's body for some
[00:21:50] Adam: a congressman from the underground.
[00:21:52] Tim: Exactly, yeah, the underdark, the underdark congressman number two.
[00:21:56] Adam: Upside upside down. Yeah, that's what it is.
[00:21:58] Tim: Upside down. Yep.
[00:22:00] Carol: No, he's just gonna be like tree number three. Yeah. But his daughter will have like a real role.
[00:22:06] Tim: And even, even our vehicles like are getting submitted, so they need like eighties vehicles.
[00:22:10] Tim: So I have like a 1986 Chevy Silverado,
[00:22:13] Carol: Heck yeah.
[00:22:14] Tim: which was like the, the, the truck that I learned to drive on as a teenager. And so like submit that as well. And the truck actually make more money than any of us. If it gets picked, that cars for some reason are super, they get a nice pay rate.
[00:22:29] Adam: Probably because it's got to be very specific to that time period and in good
[00:22:33] Tim: Yeah. And, um, And they also have to pay the person driving it. So you get an extra bump on top of that. but, it's pretty interesting. Some of the requirements they're like, so you need to. Because it's the eighties, they don't want you to have like weird colored hair. Although I did know a bunch of kids in the eighties who had weird colored hair when I was going to high school.
[00:22:52] Tim: but you have to say that you agree that they can cut your hair and, and they can perm
[00:22:58] Adam: Oh, nice.
[00:23:00] Carol: This
[00:23:00] Tim: possibly perm it.
[00:23:02] Ben: Amazing.
[00:23:04] Adam: I can't
[00:23:04] Tim: my daughter, my daughter,
[00:23:06] Adam: I can't wait to see you with a perm, Tim.
[00:23:08] Tim: Probably not so much more for guys. Although I did, I did at one point have a perm in the
[00:23:13] Adam: I mean, there's, there, there's guys on the show with super curly hair.
[00:23:17] Carol: Yeah. Heh
[00:23:18] Tim: But it's not, it doesn't look like perms. I mean, the, the, the eighties was like those big blowout permit and then like tease the heck out of it. so yeah, I asked my daughter, like, you know, that they could put you in a perm. She's like, I don't care. It's just hair. I'm like, okay,
[00:23:31] Adam: Yeah, how cool would that be? Oh, yeah, I was in Stranger Things. I was dead person number seven over here.
[00:23:37] Tim: yeah, exactly. that there in a town a little bit North of us, Macon, Georgia has, there's a Denzel Washington movie that's, that's being filmed in the next month. So we've submitted for that too. So we'll see, hopefully we'll get some of these parts.
[00:23:49] Ben: I love Denzel Washington. I just recently saw Equalizer 3. Actually that was the first movie that I have, well, I'd say the first and only movie that I've seen in the theaters since the start of the pandemic. And it's funny. So then I looked up, I'm like, Oh, I really love Denzel Washington. I looked him up on IMDB and he's really not made very many movies.
[00:24:10] Ben: He is very selective. It seems with his roles. He's only really made a. I mean, a handful is probably understating it, but when you see some of these people who have been acting for four years, you know, they've made like 97 movies and
[00:24:24] Tim: Nick, Nick Cage has made over a
[00:24:25] Ben: yeah. Yeah, exactly.
[00:24:27] Adam: his, bar is a little lower, I think.
[00:24:32] Tim: Well, he has all those villas and, the five ex wives he's got to pay for. So
[00:24:37]
[00:24:37] Ben's Imagination
[00:24:37] Ben: I'll go. I got a weird one for you. so the other day. We're watching a rom com, romantic comedy at, at home and part of what I love about romantic comedies is they feel so nostalgic of a, of like an earlier time in my life. I've, I've been married for eight years, I think now, and I've been with my wife for like 12 years or something.
[00:24:58] Ben: So you know, there's, there's, it doesn't have that new relationship energy that you see in, in rom coms. Anyway, so we watched this one the other day. And I just feel like funsies. I was laying in bed, trying to fall asleep. And I was like, you know what, let me, let me think back to my youth when I was in high school and everything felt so innocent.
[00:25:15] Ben: And I was like, let me just fantasize about that for a moment. And I remembered this weird limitation that I have, which is that I don't know how to fantasize. And what I mean by that is like, mechanically, my brain doesn't know how to do it, and it, and it's this weird thing that I've had all my life.
[00:25:34] Ben: Where when I visualize things in my head, when I visualize people in my head, I never see faces. I like literally can't see faces. They're, they're blurred out. And it's been the same, even in my dreams. I've never once seen a face in my dream. It's always me staring like at the ground or at people's feet.
[00:25:58] Ben: And, and there's this vague sense that they have a face, but I never see it. And if I'm looking at someone's head, they usually have. Like a weird helmet on or something that distorts their face. I don't know where this comes from, but, it,
[00:26:12] Tim: like, sounds like aphantasia. Yeah,
[00:26:16] Ben: that is. Is that a hippos and tutus that we're talking about?
[00:26:21] Tim: exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:24] Ben: Well, cause I know that, I don't know, maybe like 10, 15 episodes ago, I remember Tim, I think it was, was talking about a friend that he had that didn't know that people had internal dialogues. And this feels, I have an internal dialogue, but this feels very much in that vein where there's something that's just, I assume, fundamentally different in my head than what other people have.
[00:26:46] Ben: And when I try to fantasize, and what I mean by fantasize is like when I try to paint a moving picture in my head, It has like a two second duration and it can't, it can't proceed. It's like, it's like in TV when an old record player gets hit and it starts skipping every like two seconds. That's what happens to me visually.
[00:27:08] Ben: I start playing the same two seconds over and over and over, and I can't move forward in the
[00:27:14] Adam: You're just talking about your imagination. Like, if I told you to imagine something right now, that's what would happen to you.
[00:27:19] Ben: Yes. I, if I. Were to speak it out loud while I was visualizing it, then I can sort of move the goalposts farther down. I, I almost at that point become like emotionally detached from what's going on. It's like, I can observe it, but it's not something that's meaningful to me. It's more like, I'm just describing it to someone else as it's happening.
[00:27:46] Tim: definitely, you should Google aphantasia. It sounds very similar to that condition.
[00:27:52] Ben: Well, now I got to Google it right now. I'm going
[00:27:54] Adam: are you, how confident are you on that? Because I think the last time we talked about this, you, when I say that, like, how confident are you in that, that being the term, Tim? Because last time we talked about this, I think you called it aphasia. And,
[00:28:05] Tim: There is aphasia, that's
[00:28:06] Adam: yeah, aphasia is something totally different.
[00:28:08] Tim: Yeah, it's a different
[00:28:09] Ben: so, so when I Google aphantasia, the little Google smart widget at the top says aphantasia is a characteristic some people have related to how their mind and imagination work. Having it means you don't have visual imagination, keeping you from picturing things in your mind. Oh yeah. That's like, sounds very much like what I have.
[00:28:27] Ben: It's not across the board. Like I can picture things in my head. But it's, it's very, there are definite constraints about what I'm able to visualize.
[00:28:39] Tim: Yeah, people with aphantasia tend to have symbols or text in their head rather than necessarily visual people's faces and stuff like that, apparently.
[00:28:50] Ben: It's interesting.
[00:28:52] Tim: The brain's amazing. It's
[00:28:54] Ben: amazing. Well, so let me throw this at you too. And, and sorry, this is like somewhat unrelated, but somewhat related. So I was driving the other day and it was a a drive that I've done before. I was actually going to the dentist, I think. and it's, it's an hour and a half drive to the dentist.
[00:29:10] Ben: So I have a lot of time to sit there and think and listen to podcasts, but, and I can, exactly.
[00:29:16] Adam: because that way it would be 2. 30 when you got there.
[00:29:20] Tim: Two thirty, get out!
[00:29:24] Ben: So I was thinking about this, right? Because I'm, I'm sitting in the car and I'm not zoning out, but you know how sometimes your mind wanders, even though you somehow managed not to drive off the And, and I'm visualizing. The trip in my head and I can, and I can sort of see the road. I'm like, oh yeah, there's a curve coming up to the left and then there's going to be a curve going off to the right.
[00:29:45] Ben: And in my head, I see the road, but I can't imagine that what I'm actually seeing is a memory of the road the previous time, I have to imagine that what I'm seeing is like a completely fictionalized. rendered model of what a road might look like. And I'm just like generating this on the fly and, and imagining that this is what the road looks like.
[00:30:12] Ben: And I'm not even sure if I'm actually seeing it in my head. Part of me feels like it's half a visualization and half almost like a sense memory. Like I'm sensing the curves and, and that's exaggerating the visual elements as well.
[00:30:26] Tim: I mean, sensing the curves sounds like a really nice fantasy to me. I, I, I delve in on that a little bit more, buddy.
[00:30:34] Adam: They have special kinds of therapists for this.
[00:30:40] Ben: So anyway, I think my brain's a little bit weird sometimes.
[00:30:44] Tim: All of our brains are a little weird.
[00:30:46] Carol: I Googled it, you know, while you were talking and there was a post about. It basically describing someone who has, is like seeing crackling on the TV or static a lot. Things just don't fully align with, with an image. And every time I have a fever when I lay down, I like, start to fall asleep and I see a tunnel and all I see is like a static y TV screen.
[00:31:11] Carol: Like that's, that is every time I have a fever, I know I'm getting really sick when I go to sleep and that's all I can see. I can't, no other image goes in my head. It's just that. So when I read that, I was like, huh, I was like, that's interesting. I've never known like what caused it, but since I was a kid, like I can remember going, oh no, I'm going to be sick, aren't I?
[00:31:32] Tim: Wow.
[00:31:32] Carol: Yeah.
[00:31:34] Tim: Do you, how about, did you say in your dreams, do you see faces?
[00:31:38] Ben: So, no, I don't see faces in my dreams. Let me describe it like this. I don't know if you've ever heard this, and I don't know if this is true, but I was told at one point that if you're outside at night, you're, like, the cones in your eyes actually see better peripherally than they do straight ahead in dark.
[00:31:56] Ben: So like, sometimes if you're looking straight at something at night, you can't see it, and then if you sort of cock your head to the side and sort of use your peripheral vision, it'll be a little bit clearer. I don't know if that's true, that's what I've been told. That's, that's what my dreams feel like. I, I feel like I'm constantly Looking at things through my peripheral vision, and I'm like, never looking directly at anything. Yeah, it's, it's, it's weird.
[00:32:23] Dream Talk
[00:32:23] Adam: So, on, on the topic of dreams, nobody likes to hear about other people's dreams, I get that.
[00:32:28] Tim: No, it's the most boring thing ever.
[00:32:30] Adam: I feel like I never remember my own dreams except when they're super traumatic. Like, so, there's a new season of Black Mirror out, and I'm not gonna spoil any of it for anybody, but there was this, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like five or six episodes, and they're all super traumatic and super dark and, tough to watch.
[00:32:49] Adam: But. there's this one in particular, if you've seen the new season, you know which one I'm talking about. and I just remember, like, I woke up from this dream, and I just had to, like, you know, I told my wife about it later in the day, I'm like, I had this terrible dream, and you were super abusive to me, and, like, you were threatening me with a, with a drill, and, like, like she was gonna, like, drill holes in me type it was, it was rough. and
[00:33:16] Ben: That sounds crazy.
[00:33:18] Tim: I've had my wife actually wake up mad at me for something that I did in a dream. Seriously? It took like, it took like four hours before that all just, I had to like, walk away. I'm like, all right, I'm, I'm, I'm walking away here. Let me know when you got this out of your system.
[00:33:34] Ben: Have you guys ever flown in a dream?
[00:33:37] Tim: All the time.
[00:33:38] Ben: Oh, really? I've
[00:33:39] Adam: You're talking about, like, not in an airplane, just like, your body in the air, flying, like Superman. no, so, but this will interest you probably, so I have had a number of skydiving dreams where I hit the ground and survive. And a couple of them, it's like, so, obviously, you're not supposed to do that. it's frowned upon.
[00:34:04] Tim: S it's suboptimal.
[00:34:05] Adam: but so like, the thing that I find amusing about those dreams is like, I'll hit the ground, and I'm like, Oh I didn't open my parachute, and then, like, okay, well, I don't want anybody else to know that I did that, so like, I'm like, looking around, yeah, yeah, so I'm like looking around, like, okay, you know, nobody saw it, I'm good,
[00:34:28] Tim: Oh, whew.
[00:34:30] Ben: That's
[00:34:30] Tim: Glad my shoot was out when I hit the ground.
[00:34:33] Ben: Oh man. So, Tim, you're, you're flying all the time though?
[00:34:36] Tim: all the time. I'm like, yeah. So I I, it's not like flying like Superman or whatever. It's like I would just, I can tense, I tense my body up and I, I levitate for a bit and then if the wind catches me just right, it pushes me. And so like the, the fear is like, I'll go, like, I'll be like at a window.
[00:34:54] Tim: It's like sometimes I get in a mall and it's like, I don't want to go down the steps at the mall. So I just kind of like levitate and just throw myself down and I just kind of hover down. But then the wind will sometimes catch me and like push me out to like toward the ocean. And I get really scared.
[00:35:09] Tim: I'm like, I don't know if I can control this.
[00:35:12] Ben: Oh my
[00:35:13] Adam: Well, you know the trick to flying,
[00:35:14] Tim: But yeah, just throw yourself to the ground and miss. Douglas Adams. How about you, Carol? Do you
[00:35:21] Carol: No, no, I've never flown in my
[00:35:24] Tim: Wow. I'm the only one. That's
[00:35:25] Ben: The closest I came one time is I had a dream where I could jump really high like the Hulk.
[00:35:31] Adam: Mm.
[00:35:32] Ben: That's only one time. That's the closest I've ever come.
[00:35:36] Tim: Yeah, I would be like at like a convention or conference and I'd like that big group of people and I'll just kind of like do the hover thing and like start floating over people's head. People look up at me and like, really mad, like wait in line, Tim, with everybody else, but I'm like, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's clear up here.
[00:35:53] Tim: It's great.
[00:35:54] Adam: It's cool. It's cool. I
[00:35:55] Carol: this line's empty. There's, there's no waiting up here.
[00:35:58] Tim: Yeah, exactly.
[00:35:59] Ben: Well, so on top of never really seeing people's faces in dreams, my
[00:36:03] Carol: And never flying.
[00:36:05] Ben: and never flying, my dreams are always, Not a hundred percent silent, but they are predominantly silent. I think in all the dreams that I can remember, I remember hearing someone actually say a sentence, like maybe once in my entire life.
[00:36:23] Tim: Wow. I have, I have full blown arguments and debates in
[00:36:28] Adam: mine don't go like that. I just get, like, the feeling, like, I have had a conversation. Like, I get, like, instantaneous communication has happened and people have feelings because of that.
[00:36:39] Carol: I wake my husband up talking to the other person in my dream.
[00:36:44] Ben: Oh yeah. My wife does that.
[00:36:46] Tim: I've had such good witty replies in my dreams. Like I gotta wake up and remember that. Cause that was good. That was a sick burn.
[00:36:53] Carol: Cute.
[00:36:53] Tim: I wake up and I can't remember it. I'm like, dang it. Could have been an improv, could have been a comedy special. One thing that does annoy me. So I, as I mentioned before, I listened to audio audible books that I've already read before, so I'm not invested in the story. I just like to have the verbal sounds while I'm sleeping and, but sometimes I'll get in that semi lucid state and I'll hear. I'll hear the words and then I'll have like a person that I'm imagining is saying them to me. And I'd be like, so like, uh, uh, the project Hail Mary, I was listening to that a few weeks ago. And this, this weird multi tonal voice was like explaining to me how astrophages work. And I'm like. I'm like, dude, I've read the book. Stop. And they wouldn't stop because the audible just keeps playing. Right? And I'm like getting more and more frustrated.
[00:37:44] Tim: I'm like, why are you lecturing me? Why are you lecturing me about astro ages? I completely understand. I've read the, then I'm like, oh wait, you're dreaming Tim
[00:37:55] Ben: Oh,
[00:37:56] Tim: my bump.
[00:37:57] Adam: that reminded me, I had a dream not that long ago. God, we're doing the thing that we just said was annoying.
[00:38:02] Tim: I know. Cut all this. Cut all.
[00:38:04] Adam: Should we really?
[00:38:06] Tim: No, I don't know.
[00:38:07] Adam: last one from me. I had a dream not long ago, where, I was getting really upset because somebody was like, Speaking to me in an instructional way, like, trying to teach me, stuff about, like, space, physics, that sort of thing.
[00:38:21] Adam: And I was getting all upset because they were doing it wrong, like, I already know this and you're wrong, sort of situation. And it turned out it was because I had fallen asleep with Cosmos on, the new Neil deGrasse Tyson. And so it was like science stuff coming into my ears, and it was like being incorporated into my dreams.
[00:38:38] Ben: Wait, what's the, so what's Cosmos? Cause I do love Neil
[00:38:41] Adam: Okay, so in the 70s, do you know who Carl Sagan is? Okay, so in the 70s,
[00:38:46] Tim: Billions and billions of
[00:38:47] Adam: Carl Sagan produced a TV series, just like a, like a one season TV show. It was called Cosmos, and he was like explaining astrophysics basically, and like all the way from like the, the subatomic particles up to intergalactic science stuff.
[00:39:03] Adam: Just like sort of blow your mind the TV show, right? but that was in the 70s, and so, 2019, I think it was, his widow, and it was on Fox TV channel, and I don't know who, oh,what's his name, Seth McFarlane, the guy that does Family Guy? He was like the executive producer. Basically, they just sort of re created the show.
[00:39:26] Adam: It's not, it's not like a work, they didn't take the script. Yeah, they did not take the script and just like put a modern video with it and have Neil deGrasse Tyson read it. It's a total like reimagining of it, but it's totally the same spirit, right? Like just sort of like, if we can use our imagination and
[00:39:45] Adam: put it on the screen, it's really
[00:39:45] Ben: you were listening to it as an, as like an audio version or you had it on
[00:39:49] Adam: I had it on my tablet, yeah, while I was
[00:39:51] Ben: Ah, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Gotcha.
[00:39:55] Adam: there's two seasons, it was pretty good.
[00:39:57] Ben: I'll have to check it out. Because I think I only saw one episode. Now that, now that I
[00:40:00] Adam: Yeah, so the one thing
[00:40:02] Adam: that gets on my nerves about it is that the opening credits, like, it's one of those shows where it's like, it's got a full two or three minutes of opening sequence, and it's the same, yeah, yeah, so it's like, there's a cold open, there's like two minutes of TV show, and then there's like two or three minute title sequence, and then the show continues, and it's like, just like, grr, stop it!
[00:40:22] Adam: That's why I love Black Mirror, it's like, you get three seconds, I don't even try to fast forward through it, it's just, you know, okay, you're watching Black Mirror, go. You Were you trying to say something, Carol?
[00:40:31] Carol: oh, you said that there was a new, you were watching the new Cosmos and I was like, wait, there's a new one? Cause I only knew about the one from several years
[00:40:39] Adam: Yeah, there's two seasons back then, and sometimes I will go
[00:40:42] Carol: got my
[00:40:42] Adam: if if I'm really struggling to sleep and I need something that's gonna be super boring, in part because I've seen it so many times, but also just because of, like, The way that they pace TV shows now is so different from the way they did it back then.
[00:40:54] Adam: You know, like, if you ever go watch an
[00:40:57] Tim: Way back then in 2019.
[00:40:59] Adam: no. Way back then, in 1970, whatever, that Cosmos came out.
[00:41:02] Tim: Yeah,
[00:41:03] Adam: Um, do you ever watch, like, movies that came out when you were really little? Like, The Land Before Time, right?
[00:41:09] Carol: Oh, such a good
[00:41:10] Adam: but if you watch it now, something that you will pick up on that you didn't notice when you were a kid is that, like, The, the opening credits, the whole title sequence, everything in the beginning, takes forever, and we just, like, sat through it as kids, because we had the patience for that then, and we don't have that now, like, modern society, it's like, you gotta go.
[00:41:29] Tim: Yeah. And we had the ex, the expectation of it too, right? Like, Oh, we got to sit through, got to see who the, who the gaffer was. And the,
[00:41:36] Adam: The best boy.
[00:41:37] Tim: best boy. Yeah,
[00:41:39] Adam: What even is the best boy? Do you know, Tim?
[00:41:43] Tim: I, I knew, I knew that at one point I don't remember right now.
[00:41:46] Ben: I think I have something to do with the sound. Is that the person who holds the boom? The boom mic? Oh, that's the gaffer. What do I know?
[00:41:54] Adam: Actually, a gaffer is the coach of the football team. Not American football. That's a
[00:41:59] Carol: And did Adam have one yet?
[00:42:01] Adam: come on. I didn't, but that's okay, you know, we're not It's not we're not taking turns or things. Which basically is my yeah, which is basically my way of saying I don't I don't really have anything, you know, I've spent this week, wrapping Christmas presents and building a desk.
[00:42:12] Adam: That's pretty much it. I went to the doctor today because I thought I might have had a broken bone in my foot and oh, fine. It's just inflammation.
[00:42:18] Carol: Oh, well that's good.
[00:42:20] Ben: Just pain. Don't worry about it.
[00:42:22] Adam: It's just inflammation. My my back hurts, my my legs hurt, my feet hurt,
[00:42:27] Carol: You must be 40 already.
[00:42:29] Adam: Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's why when Tim was like, 40s are the 40s are so great.
[00:42:33] Adam: I'm like, really? This sucks. If,
[00:42:38] Tim: Only compared to the, only compared to the
[00:42:39] Adam: if, if it, if it turns out we're living in a simulation, I've got a bone to pick with whoever designed this simulation because this sucks.
[00:42:47] Tim: right?
[00:42:48] Ben: right, Tim, what do you got?
[00:42:49] Investing
[00:42:49] Tim: so I've been teaching the kids about investing. So like I said, they're, they're of age now. I think that's an important thing. It's my dad
[00:42:56] Adam: So they picked out their bored apes or their bored apes, the NFTs.
[00:42:59] Tim: Yes, they're, yes, they're NFTs, yeah. No, EFTs actually, Exchange Traded Funds. So, just kind of teaching them about how dividends work and, you know, what's the S& P 500. Cause they don't get any of this in school, none of it.
[00:43:14] Carol: none.
[00:43:14] Tim: And my, my son's working, you know, he's, he's. The little bit he has that the scholarship doesn't cover, for, for school, but it's like, you know, he's got thousands of dollars just sitting in there.
[00:43:25] Tim: like you need to do something with his money. Like, let's, let me explain to you how this works. So setting up auto pays and things like that. And it's so much easier, you know, when, when I was growing up, it's like you had to actually have a, like a, a, a person you talk to. Right. And now it's like, I mean, Robinhood is not necessarily the best stock trading tool out there, but I mean, it's super convenient.
[00:43:46] Carol: Yeah, it's
[00:43:47] Tim: that's what you want. That's what you want to make, make it easy. Just say, Hey, set this up. explain to them about four different Vanguard, ETFs, you know, two of them, one of them is as rentals and it's an REIT, so a real estate investment trust, which is basically of people that. You know, these, these companies that rent properties and they give you 90 percent of their dividends every, every, every quarter, high yield dividends, and then to two growth, two growth funds, S& P 500, and then an emerging markets, fund, and just explain what each of them are and say, you know, just put a little bit of money each pay period or whatever it is, and just don't touch it.
[00:44:27] Tim: Right. The goal is like, particularly with, you know, with dividends is like get, get like, you know, 100, 000 a year, by the time you're, you know, 30 years from now, 100, 000 a year in dividends and you don't have to work. It's passive income. A hundred percent.
[00:44:42] Adam: There's a, there's a video that I saw. I think it might've even been a YouTube short. no, I say that, I don't think it is, but so the YouTube channel is called PolyMathematic, it's, it's by a math teacher, like a high school math teacher, and, he was kind of reacting to, he saw an article or video or something where one of the guys from Berkshire Hathaway, not, not,
[00:45:05] Tim: was a month monger or
[00:45:07] Adam: it must have been Munger, because the other guy, what's his name, Warren Buffett, and, it was not Warren Buffett, so it must have been the other one, and the guy, the other guy, Munger, had done a speech somewhere and he had said like, you know, Berkshire Hathaway's been around so long and their returns have been so good, whatever, like, basically, I think what he said is if you had given them 10, 000, in the year that they opened, today it would be worth, what did he say, think he said there would be, it would be worth like a million or 10 million today.
[00:45:35] Tim: right. Yeah.
[00:45:38] Adam: but, and, and he just used this as an example of like how to explain compound interest and the importance of investing early, like it's not about, it's not about putting in a ton of money. It's about getting started early. And so I made my kids sit down and watch that.
[00:45:53] Adam: I was like, look, even if you've only got, you know, a spare five bucks, After you pay your bills. That's where it should go.
[00:46:01] Carol: Yeah, Peyton actually came to us, the beginning of this semester and asked if it was okay if he transferred his savings account from the bank we had it at, which is just where we banked at when we moved to Georgia. And we just had it set to auto put money in their accounts, every paycheck, you know, we never really thought about it too much.
[00:46:21] Carol: and then he started looking into it himself and he was like, this is paying me like 3 pennies, like a month. It's nothing. He goes, if I move it to just Ally. Their base right now is like 4. 25 percent on. Savings. He goes, so I would make a lot more money if I just move it over and let it sit there. Do you guys have a problem with that?
[00:46:40] Carol: I'm like, no, I'm proud that you went and figured it out yourself and want to make the money you have make more money for you. Yeah.
[00:46:51] Tim: ETF and then every quarter he gets it and just reinvest that over and over again.
[00:46:56] Sticky Stuff
[00:46:56] Adam: So actually,
[00:46:57] Adam: I was just gonna say, I have a, what will probably be a microtopic that we can, end the show on here. so, I promise this is not anything weird or gross or whatever, it's just, so I have a, I have a desktop computer. Right, MacBook Pro, and I love it. I have this desktop computer that I bought.
[00:47:17] Adam: Like, I've been sort of like, ship of theseus ing this computer for the last 10 15 years, or probably longer, right? I have the case, the case is probably 20 years old. and I, you know, I've been using it off and on for years, and it's been sitting on the shelf that was next to my desk for like the last 5 years.
[00:47:37] Adam: And when I put it there, it was fine ish, right? Like, the power button was a little sticky or whatever, but, and I say sticky meaning, you know, you'd push it in and it wouldn't necessarily come all the way back out. Sort of thing. and I say that because the top of the case is now actually sticky. Like, I don't understand. Like, okay,
[00:47:56] Carol: It's disintegrating.
[00:47:57] Adam: maybe that's the case. I mean, it's been, it's been very close to my 3D printer, so maybe it's the heat it's giving off is having some sort of effect on it, or the fumes from the 3D printer. I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm sure I can just take some rubbing alcohol and clean it and it'll, clean right up, but like, it's just weird, like out of nowhere, the computer just got sticky.
[00:48:20] Adam: I don't understand it.
[00:48:22] Ben: Hmm.
[00:48:23] Tim: Did you check it's browser history? Mm
[00:48:25] Carol: Oh
[00:48:29] Ben: So, I don't know if this is related exactly, but, I've, I've noticed that when we're driving around in the car a lot, the inside of the windshield gets like a film on it. And, and it seems like such a weird thing to happen because you're in a closed space. There's no dirt flying around. So I googled it and apparently it is what happens.
[00:48:48] Ben: There is a lot of dirt actually flying around in the air and they said like your body's giving off oils, like aromatized oils. And then it condenses on the windshield and they're like, you know, dead skin coming off sloughing off of your body and whatnot. And yeah,
[00:49:06] Adam: all those
[00:49:06] Ben: that's a, that's an SAT word. and yeah, so the inside of your windshield gets this, gets this film from basically you.
[00:49:15] Ben: As a human, just being like this filthy excreting person. And, and I wonder if maybe if it's on the shelf next to you, it's literally like the oils from your body over the last 15 years. No, no. I don't mean like you're particularly oily. No, no, no. I mean, like, you know, we think about cleaning surfaces all the time, cleaning countertops and, and sinks, but like no one would ever think necessary to clean the top of a computer.
[00:49:43] Ben: So like, that just builds up and builds up and builds up.
[00:49:46] Adam: Did you just reach over and, like, rub the dust off the top of yours,
[00:49:49] Carol: Yeah, I rubbed the top to make sure it looked okay. There's nothing. I feel fine. Mine's not sticky
[00:49:53] Adam: I would, I would reach over and touch the top of the computer, but I'm, I need my hand for the rest of the night. You know,
[00:49:58] Carol: Yeah.
[00:49:59] Adam: some typing to do.
[00:50:01] Carol: That's what you need your hand for. Typing.
[00:50:03] Adam: I hate you guys so much.
[00:50:08] Tim: Check his browser
[00:50:09] Carol: Uh
[00:50:09] Adam: That's what incognito mode is for, sir.
[00:50:11] Carol: There was actually, speaking of Neil deGrasse Tyson, and, and disgusting bodily stuff. I was listening to an episode of Radio Lab. I think it was like a replayed episode of Radio Lab, where Neil deGrasse Tyson and Robert Krulwich shake hands. And then. Over the next like 15, 20, 25 minutes, they continually check the bacterial levels on each person's hand to see how much of one person's bacteria transferred to the other.
[00:50:38] Ben: And, they talked about this thing that they called the founder effect, which is that essentially the, the bacterial biome that you develop as a child. basically is the bacteria that is on your body for the rest of your life. Even if you clean and you scrub and you try to take medications to flush bacteria out of your gut, it will eventually come back and it will have the same genetic makeup.
[00:51:06] Ben: as the bacteria that you had as a child. And, and they're now exploring ways to use that to essentially identify where people have been. Like, if you were, if you were a criminal and you broke into an office and then they swabbed surfaces for bacterial residue, they could in theory, map that bacterial residue back to specific
[00:51:27] Adam: So instead of fingerprints, they're gonna come, like, scrape the top of your forehead to get some of the oil off or something?
[00:51:32] Tim: Yeah.
[00:51:32] Carol: Mm
[00:51:33] Ben: Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, they said it's very early phases right now and it's incredibly hard to do, but in theory. It is something that's possible.
[00:51:41] Cavities
[00:51:41] Tim: Like here's another random one, but it's another, it's related to what you just said, you just sparked something in my, it was a TLDR article and it, talked about cavities for this, that have this bacteria that, that they've. Have released that can make sure you never have a cavity in your
[00:51:57] Carol: Oh, I need
[00:51:57] Ben: that.
[00:51:58] Ben: so bad.
[00:51:59] Tim: So, what it was, was that the grad student years ago, grad student, found that there's a mutation.
[00:52:04] Tim: So, what, what causes cavities? You have bacteria in your mouth, it eats sugar, and it excretes lactic acid, and the lactic acid breaks your teeth down, and that's what creates a cavity. Some people have a mutation that, The bacteria excretes two things, antibiotics that kills all the other bacteria and alcohol.
[00:52:25] Tim: So it generates alcohol. So it's not enough to get drunk off of, but as you know, it's alcohol and alcohol doesn't break your teeth down like lactic acid does. So, he was trying to get this passed for years and years, the FDA, for some reason, I haven't told you this already, right? I've, I've, I've told this multiple
[00:52:43] Carol: No, never
[00:52:43] Tim: so, all right, it wasn't you.
[00:52:45] Tim: so the FDA, in order to prove that this was safe, they wanted to do it on not real teeth, right? So it's in the mouth, but it's dentures. They were looking for a hundred, a group of a hundred people between the ages of 18 and like 24 who had full dentures in their mouth. Well. He couldn't find that. He didn't think there was a hundred people in the world that even existed that had that.
[00:53:08] Tim: So he never did the trials, but now he's, for some reason it's coming back and he's trying to release it right now. You can buy it as like a 20, 000, like a biohacker kind of thing where you brush your teeth with this pumice. toothpaste that kills all the bacteria in your mouth. And you take a cotton swab with this bacteria on it, rub it on your mouth.
[00:53:27] Tim: And once it's there, it becomes the predominant bacteria and kills all the competitors. But he's hoping in the next couple of years, this will actually be something available that you can have that you can just rub on your, on your teeth and no cavities
[00:53:41] Ben: Oh my God. I want
[00:53:42] Carol: Me want, me
[00:53:42] Carol: want. I'd pay 20, 000 for it.
[00:53:45] Adam: It would
[00:53:46] Ben: Is that the most important medical breakthrough?
[00:53:48] Adam: I mean, I've heard, You know, stories in the news or whatever about stuff like this that's coming, but usually what I hear is like a coating for your teeth, right? Like some sort of clear enamel sort of situation. And for me, like yes, prevent cavities, that's important, but the other thing that I would really love in that is like a color protection, like you'll never get stains from coffee or anything like that.
[00:54:13] Tim: And then part of the article is talking about, well, could you pass this on to someone else? They're like, well, if you're kissing someone or a whole lot, and maybe they've had a lot of antibiotics, it's killed all the bacteria in their mouth. You possibly could kiss them enough so that where they could get this bacteria from you, but they said, if you have a baby.
[00:54:30] Tim: The baby's just getting its teeth and you're kissing that baby. It will 100% get that bacteria.
[00:54:36] Ben: Man, so
[00:54:37] Carol: Oh, so pay for and kiss all the babies you can find.
[00:54:40] Tim: you go. Okay. Exactly.
[00:54:42] Adam: As a service.
[00:54:43] Tim: Ma'am, may I kiss your
[00:54:44] Adam: No, that's, that's my, hey, dibs. That's my startup idea.
[00:54:47] Carol: Yeah.
[00:54:51] Tim: That's really cool.
[00:54:53] Tim: I just, I just feel like there's, I read so many new science things that's coming out. It's like, it's be super interesting, I mean, seeing the next 20, 30 years that the stuff they're gonna fix. I mean, there's talks about vaccines for cancers, fixing, you know, re reversing gray hair. I mean, just.
[00:55:12] Ben: Well, if I can do just a cross show shout out for a second. one of the shows that I love is, NET Rocks. And at the end of the year, one of the hosts, I can't remember which guy's name. he does this, end of the year roundup where he talks about scientific things that happened during that year.
[00:55:30] Ben: And they're always just very fascinating. So. If, if, if any of this medical science y stuff is interesting, NET Rocks. It's, something you'll want to check out in the
[00:55:39] Adam: Go to dot, go listen to this dotnet podcast to get some interesting science tidbits as a year end wrap up.
[00:55:45] Ben: No, they're, I know they're totally unrelated to the show, but they're just, they're just fascinating.
[00:55:51] Tim: kind of, kind of like what we
[00:55:52] Ben: Yeah,
[00:55:53] Adam: Except interesting and
[00:55:54] Ben: Except he does like, I think months of research and preparation.
[00:56:01] Adam: that's where we'll wrap it up.
[00:56:04] Patreon
[00:56:04] Adam: So I'll tell you that this episode of Working Code was brought to you by Adam's Baby Kissing Service. It's a dental thing, not a creepy thing.
[00:56:13] Carol: Perfect. Yeah.
[00:56:16] Adam: show and you want to make sure that we can keep putting more of whatever this was out into the universe for another year, then you should consider supporting us on Patreon. Our patrons cover our recording, editing, and transcription costs, and we couldn't do this every week without them.
[00:56:28] Adam: Special thanks to our top patrons, Monte and Giancarlo, you guys rock. and I think, if I'm not mistaken, we're planning on skipping the aftershow this week. Yeah, I'm getting a bunch of thumbs up from people. So, okay. So no after show this week. and I guess then we'll do the, we'll do the homework thing instead.
[00:56:45] Adam: Right? So if you want to help us out, you can go to patreon.com/workingcodepod. And we would love to have you on, help supporting us.
[00:56:53] Thanks For Listening!
[00:56:53] Adam: And if you want to hang out with like minded people who love this podcast and, and, want to talk about life, pets, parenting, working in code, that sort of stuff, you can go to workingcode.dev/discord. That'll take you to our discord signup page. Totally free. It's like Slack, but better for communities. and we would love to have you. And if you, if you make some noise when you come in, Ben or I or somebody will post a very nice Bruce Willis welcome to the party pal gif.
[00:57:22] Ben: just the perfect
[00:57:23] Adam: It is. And it's the best way to welcome somebody to our discord.
[00:57:26] Tim: It's the gif that keeps on giffing.
[00:57:28] Adam: It is. All right. Well, that's going to do it for us this week. We'll catch you next week and until next year.
[00:57:34] Tim: Remember, it takes no effort to know that your heart matters.
[00:57:39] Adam: Nicely done.
[00:57:40] Carol: Good night,
[00:57:41] Adam: All right. That's going to be it. Yep. Have a good one.
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