161: 2024 Goals
As we jump into the new year, the crew talks about their new year's goals—both for the podcast and for themselves. We strongly believe in the power of "learning in public". And, to that end, we've created a Google Form in which you can submit suggestions on how to improve the show: what do you like, what do you not like, what can we be doing better? No suggestion is off limits, so long as no people or animals are harmed!
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.
And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.
With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
Spot an error? Send a pull request on GitHub.
[00:00:00] Tim: From, I mean, for personal experience, just do what we did when we hired Carol, just throw her in the deep end with no instructions and see how well she swims.
[00:00:06] Carol: Actually, you know what? You did give me instructions. You handed me a box and said, put together these chairs. And there were instructions in the chair, like box. So we put together the chairs and then we said, okay, what's next? And you said, read these books. And I was like, got it.
[00:00:42] Intro
[00:00:42] Adam: Okay, here we go. It is show number 161 and on today's show we got the whole crew back in town. Hey, say hi everybody.
[00:00:48] Tim: Hi,
[00:00:48] Carol: Hi everybody.
[00:00:50] Adam: and on today's show I think we're gonna just kind of like talk about goals for the year, whether that be for the podcast or individually, career personal, just kind of go through goals. It's a new year, new us, so seems like a good time to do it. but first, as usual, we'll start with our triumphs and fails.
[00:01:06] Adam: And it looks like it is Ben's turn to go first, sir.
[00:01:10] Ben's Failure
[00:01:10] Ben: Yeah, I'm gonna kick off this fresh 2024 year with a failure and, it's a failure slash rant if you'll cut me some latitude here, but the other week I ran out of disk space on
[00:01:24] Tim: brought to you by Ben needs a minute.
[00:01:26] Ben: Yeah, I need a minute for sure. so I, I do Docker for Mac and apparently when you set up Docker for Mac, you have to allocate it a certain disk area to work with.
[00:01:37] Ben: So you can say, I'm going to give it 10 gigabytes of disk space or 20 gigabytes or what have you. And I've been using the same Docker for Mac instance for like eight years now. And I run out of disk space occasionally. And usually I can just. prune some images and get rid of some volumes and it clears up enough for me to continue working.
[00:01:56] Ben: But the other day I did some database work and I inserted like 2, 000 records and that was just a bridge too far and I ran out of disk space and no matter what I could do, even if I truncated the tables that I had populated, Docker would not free up that space anymore. And maybe there's a way to get it done that I just couldn't figure out.
[00:02:17] Ben: I was trying Docker system prune and various listing of images and containers and just trying to do everything that I could, I just, it would not free up space and it, and it got to the point where services wouldn't even start up. Cause when they would go to startup, they would just stop and start erroring out saying like classes couldn't be instantiated and this and that couldn't be created because there was no space anyway, so. What I ultimately did was I went into Docker for Mac and I went into the resources tab and I resized the disk. And when you resize the disk, it blows away all of your cached images and containers and volumes. Basically you start from zero. Now, normally this is not a problem because everyone has this mentality.
[00:02:56] Ben: cattle, not pets. So you should just be able to go, Oh, no problem. Docker build and everything, you know, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. And you're back up and running in like 10, 15 minutes. And this is where my rant starts because I just, I get so angry at this point in my career, whenever I hear anybody talk about how services, microservices, services in general, just don't have a maintenance cost.
[00:03:19] Ben: So what happened was I'm on a Mac M1 and when I went to rebuild one of my images, The, ARM version of the base image that I use is no longer being produced. Only the version of Lucy being produced by the official Lucy build. The, the version of Lucy that I'm using only had a, whatever the non ARM, AMD. And it runs so slowly,
[00:03:45] Adam: 86. Yeah.
[00:03:46] Ben: whatever, yeah, yeah. So it runs so slowly that the JVM, like, basically it's a crapshoot whether or not it can even boot up in, in simulation mode. So then I had to upgrade my version of Lucy locally. At this point, it's not even close to matching what we're running in production, but like, I just need to get something running locally and, the new versions of Lucy that run or that have the AR, the ARM build.
[00:04:11] Ben: They have different JDKs because apparently the, the like open JDK doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't build for the same platforms. I'm a little bit out of my depth here. So not all of my words are going to make sense.
[00:04:22] Carol: I mean, you're sounding super fancy to me.
[00:04:25] Ben: So I, I just, I just guessed. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's going through the Docker file and the build and the version of node is no longer supported for the platform that is the base image. So then I had to switch to a different base image to get the version of node to build. Then. It's going through the rest of the app to get install stuff.
[00:04:42] Ben: And some of those things don't exist. And because the base image has changed now, the names of some of the packages have changed and I had to like, NPM started conflicting with Yarn. So I had to remove the installation of NPM because apparently Yarn now brings NPM along with it when you install it. And it's just, it was hours of work to get back to a working, context.
[00:05:06] Ben: And then, you know, I'm fine. I'm back up and I'm, I'm working. So that's, that's good. But it just, it just makes me so angry. That nothing is static, like maintaining something just has cost period. There's no way to get around it. Even if you're like, Oh, I'm never going to update this code and we'll just sit there and live forever and it's a Lambda function, like eventually something's going to happen where you're going to have to update something for PCI compliance or SOC compliance or this or that, and then the libraries are no longer going to work and installs are no longer going to be available.
[00:05:38] Ben: And it's just. Anyway, that's my rant. It was really irritating. Everything has cost everything.
[00:05:46] Tim: True, but sorry for your frustration. I can tell it was frustrating. I think you, you were telling us about it on the discord, but I mean, isn't one of the Docker use cases is that it's infrastructure is code and so you just run the code and it can rebuild the infrastructure?
[00:06:00] Ben: Yeah, but that's,
[00:06:01] Tim: Sounds like at some point your, your, your cattle became a pet, but
[00:06:04] Ben: well, it's it, you know, there's this, the problem is that companies tend to not want to invest in updating software if it's doing what it's supposed to be doing, you know, like in quotes. So if you're not running on the latest version of Lucy or node or Java or whatever. But the business, you can't, it's hard to go to your manager and say, Hey, I'd like to update this.
[00:06:29] Ben: And they say, well, what's the cost of not updating it? And you're like, well, right now, nothing. And they're like, okay, well then go back to product work. It's, it's hard to make that. Yeah.
[00:06:38] Adam: it's, it's extremely short sighted, because exactly what you're describing is what's going to happen, right? Like, the cost of not doing it today is nothing, but the cost of not doing it tomorrow, the metaphorical tomorrow, is the entire world burns down around you, like you're describing.
[00:06:52] Ben: Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:53] Tim: there's no, there's no Docker way to, to tie, to specify specific versions of things.
[00:06:59] Adam: There is.
[00:07:00] Ben: You can, but I mean, even just the fact that I was running on an ARM build of an image and that, that ARM build is no longer being published.
[00:07:11] Adam: Yeah, I don't, I don't,
[00:07:12] Carol: you can't get it, right?
[00:07:14] Adam: I don't publish anything to Docker Hub, so I don't know what
[00:07:17] Ben: don't, but
[00:07:18] Adam: but,
[00:07:18] Ben: pulling down a base image from Docker hub.
[00:07:21] Adam: that's what I'm saying is I think that it sounds like maybe there's a way for you to specify like, okay, only keep the last three major versions or whatever, and, you know, once we get up to version 17, we don't want to see anything below version 15 on, on the page, right?
[00:07:36] Adam: and so maybe it's just no longer available through Docker Hub at that point or something.
[00:07:40] Ben: It's very possible. I mean, I'm, I'm talking. With things that I don't practice very often. So I don't have all this muscle memory for how it works. So it's very possible that all of the issues I was running into someone who has a deep understanding of how Docker works and how containerization works would see an error message and be like, Oh, no JIP not available during NPM install.
[00:08:01] Ben: Oh yeah, no problem. That's easy to fix. But for me, it's like half an hour of Googling error messages, trying to figure out. What the heck is going on? So
[00:08:11] Tim: That sucks.
[00:08:12] Ben: anyway, super frustrating. That's me, Carol. What do you got going on?
[00:08:17] Carol's Triumph
[00:08:17] Carol: Well, nowhere near as stressed as you are, obviously, but my Christmas went great. I know I wasn't around to talk last week with you guys, but, I cooked my first turkey and I am super proud of that. And I'm going to call it a win because my father in law said it's the best turkey he's ever had. So
[00:08:34] Ben: Dang.
[00:08:34] Carol: I didn't know if he was just sucking up or if, He really liked it, but I let it brine for over 24 hours.
[00:08:41] Carol: So I didn't, then I smoked it in the Traeger. So it was super juicy, super tender, and super young and like yummy. And the best part is I got to enjoy it with my boys because they were in town. They were in Arizona for the Christmas break. And, yeah, we had a great time and the food
[00:08:57] Adam: That's awesome.
[00:08:59] Ben: Very cool. Let me ask you a question. You said pre call that you're now a mile high where you're living. Is that affecting cooking? Right? Isn't it like the atmosphere? It makes everything more, less predictable.
[00:09:13] Carol: so, yeah, it's interesting. My son baked a cake and it had about 10 minutes left on his timer. I was like, honey, I think your cake's burning. He was like, there's no possible way. Like it can't even be done yet. I'm like, yeah, you have to adjust everything for altitude here. You've got to make some, it's not as high as like 14, 000, right?
[00:09:33] Carol: Like there's other places it's a lot worse, but where we are, it is just enough that whenever I bake anything, it. It cooks a lot faster and I usually end up adding more liquid to stuff
[00:09:44] Tim: So let me ask you, did you cook a whole, was it a whole turkey?
[00:09:47] Carol: a whole turkey. I even stuffed the neck hole with stuffing.
[00:09:52] Tim: Yeah.
[00:09:53] Ben: Neck
[00:09:54] Carol: I didn't know you were supposed to do this.
[00:09:56] Tim: only issue I have with turkey. It's such a big, big bird and the white meat and the dark meat, it's nearly impossible to get it, them both done well, right? Cause the dark meat needs to cook longer and the white meat does not.
[00:10:09] Tim: And I think brining probably helped
[00:10:11] Carol: It did. It made it super tender and juicy.
[00:10:14] Tim: Yeah,
[00:10:15] Adam: Need like an industrial sized sous vide.
[00:10:18] Tim: well I've done, I've sous vided not a whole turkey, what I did is I just, I took the crown, the breast meat off and did them separately at the right temperature for each, you know, portion of the bird and then just sear it up at the end. And that was really, really good. That was a whole lot of work for, I don't know, I guess it's tradition.
[00:10:36] Tim: So
[00:10:37] Carol: Yeah. That was us and we were going to be hanging around the house for a few days. So I wanted some leftovers. So a whole turkey was perfect and it was the experience of cooking dinner. Like this is my first time ever doing a big meal. Like I don't usually do big meals. My kids usually would go back home to my parents for the holidays or they'd go back to my ex husbands for the holidays.
[00:10:57] Carol: So like, I always just had ramen noodles or spaghetti, like nothing big. So it was interesting and it was a lot of fun and it all went off successfully.
[00:11:06] Tim: That is a triumphant in that case.
[00:11:09] Adam: Seriously. Cool, congrats.
[00:11:11] Carol: Thanks. All right. That's me. What about you, Tim?
[00:11:14] Time Failure
[00:11:14] Tim: Not so lucky there, Carol. Uh,I got a big fail. It's,
[00:11:18] Carol: oh.
[00:11:19] Tim: it's 2. 30 time.
[00:11:21] Carol: Oh no.
[00:11:22] Tim: Yeah, yeah, no, I did. If you hear me talking a little, oddly, it's not the, alcohol. It's, it's my tooth. my, the tooth in between my front tooth and my canine on the right side of my head, it had something called a reabsorption was basically where your body starts reabsorbing the interior part of your tooth.
[00:11:43] Tim: There's no cavity there.
[00:11:44] Adam: Is it gonna like become a quaddo?
[00:11:45] Tim: Uh, quad, I don't get, I don't get that reference.
[00:11:48] Ben: Recall,
[00:11:49] Carol: No
[00:11:49] Tim: Totorin, oh,
[00:11:51] Adam: has like a person coming out of his stomach.
[00:11:53] Tim: yeah, exactly. That's the,
[00:11:55] Adam: Open your mind!
[00:11:58] Tim: And I've actually known about it for a while, but it never hurt and it just really started hurting when I was off for the holidays and I, my dentist was closed, but they managed to squeeze, you know, get me in an emergency this morning and pull it out and then put a, right now I have a temporary, they call it a bridge, they just attach.
[00:12:14] Tim: Get to the, the eye tooth next to it and put a fake tooth there. But yeah, it really is sore right now. The Novocaine is starting to wear off. yeah, it's not fun.
[00:12:26] Ben: I hate all things teeth.
[00:12:28] Carol: Oh yeah. Ditto.
[00:12:31] Tim: And I have a recurring nightmare about my teeth falling out. And so the doctor was like, are you okay? Cause they're pulling the tooth out. And I had my hands like clasped on my stomach, you know, kind of, and I'm just shaking,
[00:12:42] Carol: Oh
[00:12:42] Tim: mean, just completely shaking and I couldn't stop shaking. I wasn't. I wasn't like freaking out scared, but it's like my body was reacting.
[00:12:50] Tim: It's like, you're taking a piece of me out. That is that, that, that just, you know, that bothers me.
[00:12:57] Adam: Do they give you like laughing gas or just a local or
[00:13:00] Tim: Novocaine, just Novocaine. And then, and then part of the tooth broke off when he was pulling it out. And so it was still, the root was still in there and he was, he was, he was messing around with the, with
[00:13:12] Carol: And all those sounds.
[00:13:13] Ben: gum
[00:13:14] Tim: He's working on building the appliance, getting that right. And then, so it's like 30, 40 minutes messing with that. Then he starts to go in to take the, get the root out. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to put some more Novocaine in there, buddy. Actually, it's more like, ah, ah, is there, you got pain?
[00:13:28] Tim: huh. Okay. It goes, goes in, shot it up. And yeah, but it's, it's, it's okay now.
[00:13:35] Adam: I've got a mouthful of silver because I've had a lot of cavities as a kid because I just didn't take care of my teeth, but now as an adult, I've gotten, and we've talked about it before, I've gotten much better at taking care of my teeth, but now my problem is I brush too hard, and I've, I've been brushing too hard, so now my gums are receding, so I get like no cavities, I get a great, you know, great, Response from my hygienist every time I go into the dentist, she's like, your teeth look great, your gums look awful.
[00:13:58] Adam: and so I get like lots of like cold sensitivity and stuff from my gums receding, like there's not much that I can do for that other than try not to brush too hard. Sucks.
[00:14:07] Ben: grafts and, I, for the last like six months, I've only been chewing on the left side of my mouth. Because my dentist went to fill in a cavity on the right side, and it didn't hurt before he went to fix the cavity, and then once he went to fix the cavity, it's become super sensitive on that side, and he's tried to fix it, and it just doesn't want to get better, and he thinks maybe the tooth cracked when they were doing the filling, and I'm just, I can't deal with it yet.
[00:14:37] Tim: Yeah. And the big scare is like, when it's like, I'm looking at the back of my head is like looking at the monitor and I can see the X ray and I'm seeing this big, long root and these nerves around it. I'm like, I'm like, man, I sure hope they don't like, you know, I hear about people like getting nerve damage and they're like, they're, they have problems the rest of their life.
[00:14:55] Tim: I'm like,
[00:14:56] Carol: And,
[00:14:57] Tim: yeah. Which is why I went with a bridge, not a implant. Cause I'm just, you know, he's explaining to me all the stuff that goes into an implant and I'm like, that sounds extremely complicated and very prone to problems. And, let me just do an old fashioned bridge here.
[00:15:13] Carol: and very expensive. So
[00:15:16] Tim: that's the, why they push you towards that. He's like, well, actually we make, you know, we, it's a less profit margin on the, on, on the implants. Cause he was all about, he had 3d drawings of the, he was all excited about it. And I'm like, that sounds really complex. And, he's like, well, you could do, you could do a bridge.
[00:15:30] Tim: I mean, and it turns out, you know, they make 2, 000 on the, on the implant. They make 500 on the bridge.
[00:15:37] Carol: you know what they're pushing for. I will say like for Dennis, it's awful for me because I'm a redhead. So anesthesia wears off so much faster.
[00:15:46] Tim: is
[00:15:46] Ben: Oh,
[00:15:47] Carol: So I'm, I'm always terrified when I go to the dentist because what's happened in the past is, you know, the dentist numbs you up and then they leave the room and then they come back.
[00:15:55] Carol: Well, by the time the dentist comes back, it's wore off and I'm sitting there going, I feel everything. You shouldn't, you shouldn't, honey. I'm like, I do. And you're going to stop now. So they have to, they have to give me the stuff that they give people for surgery. So it lasts like 12 hours.
[00:16:10] Ben: this conversation needs to stop because I, it is,
[00:16:13] Tim: We're making Ben, we're
[00:16:15] Carol: Sorry, Ben.
[00:16:17] Tim: Anyway, that, that's my, that's my failure. How about you,
[00:16:20] Adam: so fun to watch Ben squirm.
[00:16:23] Ben: No, when I go to the dentist and I get up out of the chair, it's not only is it, have I got like a full body flop sweat going, but the entire chair is just covered in, in a slime. It's disgusting.
[00:16:38] Carol: Do you know the term white, white knuckling?
[00:16:41] Ben: Oh yeah.
[00:16:42] Carol: Yeah. So whenever I go to the dentist, yep, I hold the arm of the chair and they're like, breathe. You have to breathe. And I'm like, nope, I don't either. I pass out, I won't feel it.
[00:16:54] Adam: just intubate me, I'll be alright.
[00:16:55] Carol: Yeah.
[00:16:57] Tim: Well, sorry to make you uncomfortable, Ben. How about you, Adam? What you got? Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's put him out of his misery.
[00:17:02] Adam: I am not sorry that you made Ben uncomfortable, I enjoyed it. but in terms of a triumph or a fail, I've got a big fat gut punch of a fail
[00:17:10] Ben: Oh, Oh,
[00:17:20] Adam's Failure
[00:17:20] Adam: And Ultimately, I think that we landed in a good place in terms of, what we, where we discussed things and, and, you know, my understanding of what the reasonable requirements are for my company. And so we, we did what we discussed and, We have one customer in particular who just has basically they're like our requirement is that you go to the next level up. So we did SAQA, the self assessment questionnaire level A for
[00:17:52] Tim: the easiest one.
[00:17:54] Adam: right? because we don't touch credit card numbers, right? We use, you know, it's either like Stripe or Spreedly or Braintree, you know, one of those things where it's like, it's an iframe on the page and,
[00:18:05] Carol: smart. Very
[00:18:06] Adam: and yeah, yeah, that's what you're, that's where you should.
[00:18:08] Adam: Um,and it submits directly to their servers, you know, Braintree servers or whoever's. And we just get like a callback that says payment succeeded basically, and here's a reference number. and so because of that, that's why we did the SAQA and all that. And we had a meeting today with this one customer and they were like, uh huh, uh huh, huh.
[00:18:26] Adam: That all sounds fine, but we're going to require SAQD anyway. Like that's, we just require this from all of our vendors that, that deal with financing. And,
[00:18:35] Carol: wait, does it go A, B, C, D or is it just A to D? Okay.
[00:18:40] Adam: that would make too much sense, Carol. We're talking about the payment card industry.
[00:18:43] Carol: Okay.
[00:18:44] Adam: So, no, it's A, and then there's A EP, I'm, I'm not gonna get into it. Anyway, so the difference between an SAQA, which is approximately 30 something questions, and a SAQD, there, it's approximately 330 something questions.
[00:19:03] Carol: Oh, boy.
[00:19:04] Adam: so, basically, now, all of the information that we collected to fill out our SAQA is applicable to the SAQD, so we'll take that and we'll move all that information over. And then the other 300 questions, I'll have to put in NA, and then I have to go down to, there's like a, appendix, and you have to say, okay, so for question number one, you wrote NA. You have to give a reason for that. For question number two. For question 2. A. RomanNumeral1, you wrote N. A. So what's your reason for that? For 2. A. RomanNumeral2, you wrote N. A. What's your reason for that? All, the whole way down. So that's gonna suck. And then, in addition to that, not only are they requiring the SAQD, They're requiring a QSA.
[00:19:49] Tim: Basically, a CPA has to sign it and say, we looked at their environment, we looked at their evidence, we looked at their documentation here, and everything is above board. That's what their QSA signature is. And so Because of that, we have to go back to the firm that we already paid a buttload of money to, to do the SAQA, and we're saying, now we need an SAQD on the same information, and it's gonna be, you know, all the same stuff plus a bunch of NAs, there might be a handful of additional questions that are applicable to us on the service provider section that we kind of, sort of, maybe fall into in the gray area,
[00:20:27] Tim: Quality security assessor.
[00:20:30] Adam: money collector,
[00:20:32] Tim: Exactly.
[00:20:34] Adam: and,
[00:20:35] Tim: Cause you were already working with one for the A, right?
[00:20:37] Adam: yeah, yeah, we did get a QSA sign off on our
[00:20:40] Tim: It's actually, I think it's the same company we use. Yeah.
[00:20:45] Adam: just to, like, just to have the conversation, I just, you know, I brought it to them, to our CPA, not CPA, to the, the accounting firm, and I said, like, here's the situation, we're going to have to do a D. You know, hopefully considering we just did the A with you and we're just kind of transplanting the information over, can we kind of fast track it and also like keep the cost as low as possible?
[00:21:09] Adam: And they were like, yeah, you know, we'll, we'll do our best to fast track it. There's a couple of things that you might have to do separately, you know, or again, or whatever, and we can give you a discount. So, it'll just be 12, 000. Oh
[00:21:22] Ben: what?
[00:21:23] Adam: just, it just, it's not a good day
[00:21:25] Ben: And this is all for one customer.
[00:21:28] Adam: But I mean, we're talking about, you know, multimillion dollar contract over, you know, it would probably be like a five years, 2 million contract sort of situation.
[00:21:37] Adam: Mm
[00:21:38] Tim: Yeah. Well, what's so stupid about that? At the end of the day, it's, it's a, it's an SAQ, which is a self assessment questionnaire. You're answering all the questions yourself. Now you get the QSA to review it, but that's all they're really doing is reviewing it. And then maybe go, well, why'd you say this? And you, you verbally explain it to them and they're like, okay, that makes sense. That's, that's 12, 000, please. And it's like, and the reason they have the different versions of the same questionnaire is, well, if you don't fit the profile that requires the extra explanation that a D has versus an A, then there's no reason to answer those questions. Cause like you said, you're going to be, mostly you're just gonna be answering not, not applicable, not applicable, not applicable.
[00:22:19] Adam: here's, here's where the gray area kind of catches us. if we were our own business, like if, if we were selling my book and we just needed all this infrastructure to, to sell my book on behalf of me, you know, I'm the author, I'm the business running, you know, I've got, it's my Stripe account or, or whatever, my Braintree account, that's a merchant.
[00:22:38] Adam: But because the, because our business does not have the relationship with the bank that's collecting the money. that quote unquote in, in certain people's interpretation of the rules set forth by PCI makes us a service provider instead of a merchant, which is, it, it, you know what irks me the most about all this is that if I had known, well, if I had known this going into it, we would have just done the D upfront.
[00:23:05] Adam: We would have saved the money, saved the time, all that. But what pisses me off is that the only way that we have any. So anything approaching clarity on what is, what we're supposed to do and why is from frickin like Reddit threads and Stack Exchange sites. Like PCI has a website and they have flowcharts on it and they have like a ridiculous amount of information and it feels like it's manufactured confusion specifically to create an industry that people can profit from.
[00:23:37] Adam: And it's infuriating.
[00:23:38] Tim: It's pay to play a hundred percent.
[00:23:42] Ben: It's frustrating.
[00:23:43] Tim: Cause we don't do self assessment questionnaires. All of ours have to come through a similar, like a co entity. We have to be audited, right? So we have an external company that comes in and sits down and does all that. We can't
[00:23:55] Adam: Is that what they call an ROC? Mm hmm.
[00:23:57] Tim: Yes.
[00:23:57] Tim: There's an ROC. That's what we do. That's a, of compliance. The ROC is, it has a very detailed one. It has network diagrams. It shows everything. You normally, you don't share the ROC with, with your clients. You give them the AOC, which is the attestation of, of compliance. Which says, you know, the auditor says, yes, we've reviewed it all.
[00:24:17] Tim: And here's all the things that, that they've done. And we've verified that they did it. Although their verification methods are a bit, they're like, how you do this? We do it that show me a line of code. Okay.
[00:24:29] Adam: Yeah.
[00:24:29] Tim: All right.
[00:24:31] Adam: So, so much of it, like, relies on screenshots, and I'm like, you know, I, it would be, it would take me, like, a third of the time that it, I'm actually spending collecting the evidence, I, it would cost me a third of the time to fake the screenshot. Like, it'd be easier to fake the screenshot than to, to get the real thing.
[00:24:49] Adam: This is stupid.
[00:24:52] Adam:
[00:24:52] Patreon Stickers
[00:24:52] Adam: All right. Well, then before we move on to our goals for the year, Lo, why don't we go through a couple of announcements? I've figured out where I want to draw the line in the sand to get your stickers if you're a patron, or if you'd like to become a patron and get some patron only stickers. you can, I need you to be a patron and have your address in Patreon by January 31st.
[00:25:12] Adam: That's gonna be the cutoff, and then so, you know, sometime in early February, I will pull all the address data out and have the stickers printed and ship them off to you. so, uh, if people are confused about what I've been talking about, what is, what have I been talking about? What, what's the deal with stickers?
[00:25:31] Tim: So, so we, we generated some stickers using AI, our, our, our new Lord and Savior AI. And, our Patrons can get that. There's this, I think we're doing three different versions, three different versions. So depending on your level, the higher your level, the more stickers you get. And I'll just give you a clue of one of them.
[00:25:49] Tim: I don't want to give it away. the AI prompt that was given was a, what if a tech podcast and a duck had a baby?
[00:25:56] Ben: Hmm. Classic.
[00:25:58] Adam: when I say you hear
[00:26:00] Tim: You hear quack. So get your addresses in if you want to see those special stickers. They're, they're quite fun.
[00:26:09] Adam: Thanks for the assist there, buddy.
[00:26:10] Tim: No problem.
[00:26:11] Audience Survey
[00:26:11] Adam: Okay, cool. So, goals for the year. I thought we would start with maybe some for the podcast. oh, that was the other announcement.
[00:26:17] Adam: We are going to do, by the time that this airs, We will, I'll put it in the show notes. we'll post it in our discord. We're going to do an audience survey. So Ben, you, you kind of brought this up. I thought it was a great idea. you know, kind of ask the listeners, like, you know, what are we doing well?
[00:26:35] Adam: What are we not doing well? What do you want to see more of? What do you, or hear more of? What do you want to hear less of? that sort of thing. So, you'll have your, an opportunity to shape podcast. Anybody have anything you want to add to that before we move on?
[00:26:50] Ben: I think, you know, we talk a lot about learning in public and the power of digital gardens and to, to some degree we need to practice that ourselves. So I like to look at this as, as us learning in public about what it is to host a podcast. So looking for any direction that anybody has on how we can improve things.
[00:27:10] Tim: And we've been doing this coming up on three years now, so we're kind of running out of ideas.
[00:27:16] Adam: I don't know, it seems like we always, you know, we, we never tend to know what we're going to talk about until the day that we get in here, unless we have a guest on. but otherwise, you know, we kind of sit down and we go, what should we talk about? And then we tend to come up with something.
[00:27:30] Tim: Yup. And an hour and a half later.
[00:27:31] Goals for the Podcast
[00:27:31] Adam: Well, so, as far as goals for the podcast go, I personally think that some of my favorite episodes are when we have guests on and we kind of interview them. And so I would love to have more guests on. And I think, definitely I'll put it in the survey, that You know, if you have a suggestion for somebody that we could bring on as a guest, we want to hear that.
[00:27:56] Carol: it doesn't have to just be in a survey. Like if, if you as a listener want to suggest somebody, feel free, you know, reach out, in our Discord. You can hit us up on, I was going to say on Twitter, but I'm not on Twitter anymore. I don't know about the rest of you guys. I checked the Instagram messages. Well,
[00:28:11] Adam: okay, you do. We have an email, but I, I haven't checked that in a while.
[00:28:15] Adam: I should check that. honestly, the best place to get ahold of us is on our Discord. Which is totally free and easy to join, just go to workingcode. But, yeah, absolutely, I don't know about you guys, but interviews are some of my favorite episodes, I feel like I learn the most on those.
[00:28:33] Tim: really enjoyed when we interviewed, Swyx. It's just cause he was not a person who was even on my radar. And I still follow him on, on X or platform formerly known as Twitter. Although, although he released, you know, his favorite podcast and we were not on there. So I'm a little, a little salty with them.
[00:28:49] Tim: Little, little salty, but I get, I get it. He's, you know, he's got bigger fish to fry. So there
[00:28:54] Adam: I saw that too. That's alright. Just knowing he listens is, yeah, it's a, it touches my heart.
[00:29:00] Tim: you go.
[00:29:01] Carol: my girl Thelma wants to come on, so she'll be a good one to add.
[00:29:06] Tim: Thelma?
[00:29:07] Carol: Yeah,
[00:29:08] Tim: As in Thelma and Louise?
[00:29:09] Carol: exactly the same.
[00:29:10] Adam: sure she's never heard that one before, ever,
[00:29:12] Tim: hmm. Mm hmm.
[00:29:14] Carol: she is UI UX, but she's a designer and she works with our customers to figure out how to move things forward. And she is great at hosting meetings and keeps things flowing and gets to the root of questions.
[00:29:27] Carol: And she's just amazing. So when I talked to her in Dallas about being on the show, she got super excited. So after the first of the year, she said she'd love to come on and chat with us about design and UI UX. So.
[00:29:38] Adam: Fantastic. great. Anybody have anything other than, interviews that you're, could think of as like podcast goals? What do you guys think about, the book club?
[00:29:49] Carol: Oh, the book club was great. Actually, I got really good feedback at work about the book club. one of my other architects started listening to the podcast after I started working there and he loves clean code. So that was like his first, like, get through. He refuses to go backwards. Like he has to start at episode zero and go forward.
[00:30:07] Carol: So he just recently got through our first book club
[00:30:10] Adam: Well, tell them I said sorry.
[00:30:12] Carol: Yeah. He.
[00:30:13] Adam: that was so rough.
[00:30:14] Carol: It's so, so terrible, but it was good. He enjoyed it and he, he, highly, like, suggests us doing that again. Cause,
[00:30:21] Ben: I enjoyed the Phoenix Project because I enjoyed it as a book, but I feel like, I feel like more technical books would work better as book club books. But that's just me.
[00:30:33] Adam: Yeah, I mean, I, I would certainly welcome any book suggestions from you guys or from listeners.
[00:30:40] Tim: No.
[00:30:41] Carol: I can read that on repeat.
[00:30:46] Adam: I don't, what, I don't sparkle enough for you, Carol?
[00:30:49] Carol: You are pretty shiny. I thought it was
[00:30:52] Adam: face grease. Yeah. All right. well. I guess I'll, I'll throw out a couple of my own here.
[00:31:00] Adam - Tracking Accomplishments
[00:31:00] Adam: when I started thinking about goals for the year for like career wise, right? something that I tend to struggle with is, what being able to kind of, I hate to say it to toot my own horn, but to just like have some sort of a log of my accomplishments, right?
[00:31:16] Adam: Like I'm, I'm so focused on this is what I'm doing now. This is what's coming next. And then like, as soon as it's deployed, it's almost out of my mind immediately. And so if you asked me what I did last week, I'm like,you're just deer at headlights. and so I want to start just like a diary of like.
[00:31:32] Adam: This is what I worked on. This is what I finished and deployed sort of thing. Just like bullet points are really short form just to have a log of it. I mean, I guess I know I have my commit logs, but that's, it feels so more, so much more difficult to pull that out for some reason. Maybe I'll make a tool that I can pull all of my own commits out of the repo.
[00:31:54] Adam: Mm
[00:31:55] Carol: Well, in the meantime, while you're developing your tool, you should just block off like a 30 minute section on your calendar every two or three weeks to, to make sure you follow up with that. Cause for us, we have our annual review. But then I don't remember what I did 12 months ago. My supervisor doesn't remember what I did 12 months ago.
[00:32:16] Carol: I only know what I just worked on, what I just finished and what's coming up. So he suggested the same thing for me that I block off, you know, a 30 minute block every couple of weeks and just jot down in my OneNote or in my. Word document, just a few highlights so that when we start having the discussions, it's easier to see.
[00:32:34] Adam: think if I don't do it daily, or at least like every other day, like, if you ask me what I did two weeks ago, I'm going to say, I don't know,
[00:32:41] Carol: True,
[00:32:42] Adam: probably something important.
[00:32:43] Ben: Yeah, I'd like to do that as well. That sounds like a really good idea. I've, I've heard people recommend that, especially to Carol's point when it comes to reviews. and it does sound like something that would be very valuable.
[00:32:55] Tim: You know, when I was young, young, I mean like. Late teens, 20. I was like, I need to keep a diary. I just thought that'd be, I read something where someone suggested that you journal. And then it's like, you know, you're an angsty teen. It's like. I thought that meant just writing about your feelings all the time.
[00:33:10] Tim: And I'm like, this is really stupid.
[00:33:14] Adam: Yeah.
[00:33:14] Tim: I'm not enjoying this. I don't know what I feel. I don't think I've lived enough. I know that now I just like, I don't know what to write is, but even if I just wrote what I did, like hung out with my cousins, I mean, Oh yeah. I hung out with my cousins. Yeah. I remember sometimes people will say, you remember when we did that?
[00:33:32] Tim: And I'm like. we do that? I, did we really? No, we went to Canada. I'm like, I did? don't remember that.
[00:33:41] Adam: It sounds so bizarre, but like, when you think about it, like, think back to like the, the, the time period of the colonial America, right? Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, these people, they would keep these types of diaries. And we look back on that now as very useful information. You know, they talked about.
[00:33:57] Adam: Who they did what with and, you know, the events of the day and when they were working on stuff and it all turned out to be really Interesting and useful information. Not all of it, I'm sure, but like a lot of it. And at the time I have to feel, or I, you know, I have to assume that I've kind of felt a little vain to write that stuff down.
[00:34:18] Adam: Oh, I had a peanut butter sandwich today. Like,
[00:34:22] Tim: Yeah, but if you have dinner with someone and then later that someone becomes famous and it's like, oh, so and so knew so and so back in 2020 and
[00:34:30] Adam: mm hmm.
[00:34:31] Tim: Whatever, cause we weren't eating dinner with anyone
[00:34:33] Adam: know what, that's what I need. So that's what AI could do for me, right? Like, so if it could just like, watch everything I do on my computer and just like summarize it and, and put it on like a, a dedicated Google calendar from 9:00 PM to 11 or 9:00 PM to 11 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM you watched YouTube , right?
[00:34:50] Adam: Like,
[00:34:50] Tim: hmm.
[00:34:51] Adam: you know, just like catalog my day for me that would be fantastic.
[00:34:55] Tim: Do you have a, do you have a browser cash option in that AI program?
[00:35:01] Adam: I see where you're headed with that, sir.
[00:35:03] Tim: Privacy mode. Mm hmm.
[00:35:07] Carol: do you get to log.
[00:35:09] Adam: Gotta have a dedicated computer. Anyway, so yeah, the Diary of Accomplishments sort of thing, that's, that's been, on my mind.
[00:35:16] Hiring Interns
[00:35:16] Adam: And then, so, you know, I talked about my big fail for the day, but I did get some good news today, which was that we were accepted into the, Drexel co op program. So we were, we are going to be attempting to hire a Drexel student as a temporary employee, like a full time person.
[00:35:34] Adam: Yeah,
[00:35:35] Tim: college?
[00:35:36] Adam: Drexel University in Philadelphia. and so we'll hire like a computer science student. I don't. It'll be an undergrad, but I don't know what year, and they'll work for us from like April through September or something like that, um, and the way that the, the things are, you know, kind of planned at the moment is that they'll kind of be, they'll report to me, and so I'm going to have like official, specific, regular, routine mentoring, appointments with them to help them, you know, sort of work on their skills and their career, and then I'm also going to be supervising them in terms of like, okay, these are your assignments and I'm going to pair program with them and that sort of thing.
[00:36:17] Adam: so that'll be interesting. you know, I'm definitely going to have to spend some time thinking about how to best, you know, help somebody along on their career. I have that book that I bought that I still haven't read, Engineering Management, for the rest of us. I will I would like to read that.
[00:36:33] Adam: And then speaking of reading, so I think I mentioned to you guys, I may not have said this on the podcast, we are going on a cruise in March. and, I'm gonna take that as an opportunity if I can, if I can convince myself to wait that long. I have never read the Harry Potter books. I've watched all the movies, of course, but I've never read the books.
[00:36:53] Adam: and especially, you know, as I've gotten to this point. In life where I consume so many books so rapidly, it seems like a good opportunity to, like, you know, we're gonna be, trapped on a boat for a week, basically, so, I'm gonna try to read the whole series, if I can. I don't know, it seems like, it seems like a lot to try and fit into a
[00:37:11] Ben: Yeah. Isn't it? It's like seven books or something at this
[00:37:14] Adam: it is seven books, they're not, like, the first three, I think, are only like eight hours, they're relatively short books, and then the rest of them, that's when it was like, oh, wait a minute, you know, I can, make some. I guess the, as the characters were growing up and the stories were growing up, it got a little more complex and she made the stories longer and more in depth, but
[00:37:33] Tim: like, I can make more money if I write more books.
[00:37:36] Adam: pretty much, and she wasn't wrong.
[00:37:38] Tim: Nope.
[00:37:39] Carol: So can I go back to the intern that you're going to be hiring possibly?
[00:37:44] Adam: Yes.
[00:37:45] Carol: Yeah, so not to be a negative Nancy here, but that is a giant undertaking.
[00:37:51] Adam: Oh, I'm sure.
[00:37:53] Carol: it is, it's massive and like when I've had to do this in the past, I've gotten very frustrated because I'm so used to people that understand general software development, like they understand Git, they understand.
[00:38:06] Carol: Code. They understand source control. They understand how to, you know, get extensions or packages and Visual Studio. And when you're having to teach ground up, like our day to day workflow, first it exposes like every flaw in your workflow because someone's going, why are you doing this, this doesn't make sense, and then you have to like teach them what you do every day.
[00:38:30] Carol: It's hard. It's hard to do that and still accomplish anything at work.
[00:38:35] Adam: no, I, I totally agree. And I'm hoping that we can, we, so this is not like a, hey, can we please have somebody and they go, here's a person. This is a, it's like a matching process, right? So we submit basically a job listing. And so they have all these, my understanding of the program is that, like as a Drexel student in, say the computer science program, you I think it might be optional, it might be mandatory, I don't know, but like a lot of their students participate in this program where instead of taking classes, one of your semesters, you do the co-op and that is your course load.
[00:39:10] Adam: And so you're working 35 to 40 hours a week as your, as your school. You know, duties, and they get, and they get course credit for it. And so, there's a, there's a lot of students available. I have no idea how many companies in the, how many companies participate. I don't know if they're in the region or whatever, but, there's, so it's like a matching process, right?
[00:39:34] Adam: Like we post a job description, students can post that they're interested in it. And then there's like, we get the opportunity to review the resumes of the students who are, who respond that they're interested, and then we can. And then we get to select the ones that we're interested in and they get to select the companies that they're interested in.
[00:39:51] Adam: So it's this whole like matchmaking. And so hopefully through that process, we'll weed out anybody that like, doesn't know what Git is, doesn't know how to NPM install something. Right.
[00:40:03] Carol: Yeah, that's very smart because it became much more challenging after COVID hit. Cause when you could have someone sit at your desk and work with you side by side, switch on, switch off from what you're doing and ask immediate questions, they sit confused and don't get as much out of it if you're not very hands on.
[00:40:21] Carol: And that eats up a lot of time to be very hands on with a new person, if you're the only one doing it. So I hope it goes well for you. And I'm not trying to be negative. Just that. Oh.
[00:40:31] Adam: it'll certainly be, uh, a source of, I'm sure a lot of, potential discussion content here on the podcast,
[00:40:38] Tim: From, I mean, for personal experience, just do what we did when we hired Carol, just throw her in the deep end with no instructions and see how well she swims.
[00:40:44] Carol: Actually, you know what? You did give me instructions. You handed me a box and said, put together these chairs. And there were instructions in the chair, like box. So we put together the chairs and then we said, okay, what's next? And you said, read these books. And I was like, got it.
[00:41:01] Ben: That's awesome.
[00:41:01] Adam: and so, yeah, you know, engineering management and official, like, mentoring formalized, this'll be pretty new to me. And so I'm, I'm looking forward to the challenge. It's definitely going to be a challenge, and I'm trying to Approach it methodically and with intention.
[00:41:19] Carol: I think that's good, Adam.
[00:41:21] Ben: That'll be huge. that's a big like career move to, you know, now it's not just programming. Now you have management skills.
[00:41:28] Adam: Well, you know, anything to get away from compliance. You need me to shovel some out of a ditch? Or into a ditch? So, yeah. How about anybody else? Anybody else go.
[00:41:42] Carol - Picking up Golf
[00:41:42] Carol: Yeah. Yeah, I can go. I'm just going to say technology sucks. So I'm going to go away from that for a minute. I ordered golf clubs. This was our Christmas present, you know, part of it this year. My husband and I have decided to pick up a hobby to A, get out of the house and B, avoid drinking and to help with our mental state, you know, it's just the whole like. Big picture of everything. So we decided to pick up golf.
[00:42:07] Adam: If you're not drinking while you're playing golf, I think you're golfing with the wrong people.
[00:42:11] Carol: Well, here's the thing. I think if I'm being active while I drink, then it's acceptable to drink so much. Like I feel like there's a good balance there. Like if I'm walking and holding my beer, it's fine. It's not cool to just sit on the couch and binge Netflix and have three drinks. So definitely got to like get this balance and do better.
[00:42:29] Carol: So yeah, so we did some research and I was super happy that my husband found these clubs called Stix. And, yeah, they're matte black. They have great reviews. they seem pretty techie. Like when I look at them, they make me think of something that a software engineer would golf with. So yeah, so we're gonna, we're gonna pick up golf.
[00:42:47] Carol: Yeah.
[00:42:48] Tim: Sticks are
[00:42:49] Adam: them, what, what makes them techie? I mean, it's a, it's literally a stick with a club on the end of it,
[00:42:55] Carol: So it was some of the reading about how they designed the putter and stuff and just kind of the science behind it. And then also looking at, if you go look at pictures of them, like the ones we ordered are matte black and they don't chip, they have this cool science on how they paint them or how they diamond coat them so balls don't chip away the matte on them and I was like, Oh, these sound cool and fancy.
[00:43:20] Carol: Will do.
[00:43:22] Adam: but they're still just golf clubs.
[00:43:23] Picking up Photography and Editing
[00:43:23] Carol: Yeah. They're still just golf clubs. And then, for myself, I, I think I talked about this a few episodes ago. For my birthday, I got a camera, and I want to pick up photography. And not so much photography, but I want to learn how to edit images. And I want to get really good at that. And I'm hoping that, by kind of, Getting that side of my brain, you know, churning on image editing that, you know, the design side of everything will come out a little better because I suck at that.
[00:43:51] Carol: I have a really, I have the worst time ever. If you put something in front of me and say, create this, I can create the back end of anything, but someone else needs to make it look usable. So I'm hoping that by picking up, photography and. Photo editing that I'll be able to flip that switch or at least do better.
[00:44:10] Adam: What are you planning on using to edit the photos?
[00:44:13] Carol: I think it's called GIMP is what I've been using right now. It's the one that's created by like engineer people, community source. It's, yeah, it's not super friendly, but for me, it's given me the opportunity to possibly support another software as well. Cause I could submit to it and be like, Hey, here are some.
[00:44:32] Carol: Things you could change, like as an engineer, here's what I think, and as someone trying to learn editing, so we'll see. If it doesn't go well, I'll just go to Adobe,
[00:44:41] Adam: Yeah, I was gonna say, I,
[00:44:42] Carol: and stuff, Photoshop.
[00:44:44] Adam: I really loved Lightroom when I was doing a lot of photography stuff.
[00:44:48] Carol: Yeah,
[00:44:49] Ben: I use, occasionally something called Affinity Photo, which it's, it's very powerful. I mean, I don't know that much about it, but I used to use Photoshop way, way back in the day and Affinity Photo feels like, So, The competitor to it, and it's like, it's like 79 bucks or something. It's pretty, affordable.
[00:45:07] Carol: 79 bucks a year or a
[00:45:09] Ben: No, no, no. It's a one time purchase.
[00:45:11] Carol: I love software that still does one time
[00:45:13] Ben: Yeah. I know. Right.
[00:45:14] Carol: they make me so happy.
[00:45:17] Adam: You know, honestly, I think that, subscription software has, has made me so much more likely to pay for like phone apps, right? So like I started doing Sudoku on my phone. and just to get rid of the ads, I, I paid like 5 for this app to go ad free and it was almost entirely just because it was like a one time thing, right?
[00:45:38] Adam: Like if it had been 5 cents a month, I would have been like, that, right? But for, but for 5 once upfront, heck yeah,
[00:45:48] Carol: I agree. Completely agree. I'm really, good at, when I go to play something, I'll just put my phone in airplane mode. That way I can't get ads, but now, now the, now the apps have gotten smarter and they know that you've done that and they just stopped working, so I'm like, aww.
[00:46:07] Adam: So, I know, I don't know if this would work, but a couple of my co workers are big on having a pie hole in your house, it's like a Raspberry Pi running DNS, and it's got, you know, ad blocking stuff in that, and I guess if you hook your phone up to your house Wi Fi, and you might, you know, have to turn off the, the cell, radio or something, but, then, it might block it.
[00:46:30] Carol: Yeah, I think you still end up with a black screen or something now, like it still holds that time period. So it's still very annoying, but you don't see an app.
[00:46:38] Adam: we can't get our ad, but you have to stare at this black screen for the next 30 seconds, which is almost worse.
[00:46:43] Learning RabbitMQ
[00:46:43] Carol: Yeah. So then I guess I will throw in one, tech thing that I do want to learn. And it's a challenge at work right now. I am learning RabbitMQ, the mass transit system for pub and sub and how all the consumers work. So for the next several months, I'm going to be diving really deep into RabbitMQ and mass transit.
[00:47:07] Adam: So, I've heard of RabbitNQ before, is mass transit something separate from the ESB, or the message bus thing? Or is that just like what they call the
[00:47:17] Carol: Let me Google that for you. I don't actually know that answer. Yeah. I really don't know. Like today, today's the first day I went really deep into the documentation. So like I said, it's a goal for 2024, Adam. I don't know yet.
[00:47:29] Adam: Okay, that's fair, that's totally fair, and honestly your answer was fantastic. Let me Google that for you. Oh,
[00:47:38] Carol: Yeah.
[00:47:38] Ben: So
[00:47:40] Ben - More Side Projects
[00:47:40] Ben: as, as I've talked about many times now, I've been trying to write a book for the last couple of months. and this is not about the book, but when I was writing the book, I basically stopped blogging that entire time. And at first that was very mentally challenging for me because definitely part of my identity is someone who blogs.
[00:48:01] Ben: And then suddenly I stopped blogging and felt like I was losing part of myself. And after a while that just became less painful, and, it's making me more comfortable with the idea that I can take on and execute smaller, more time consuming projects just in my normal life, and, that's one thing I want to try to do this year is have little side projects going that, that may interrupt my normal day to day schedule in terms of, you know, researching and writing, but I want to be okay with that.
[00:48:32] Ben: I want to be able to do little small side projects and, and create and build something that isn't just a little tutorial on how to do something, but actually creates something that then can itself be used and, that's, I don't know exactly what those are yet. I, I've long been obsessed with, having some sort of a poetry application.
[00:48:53] Ben: And I have a little poetry Angular app, but it doesn't persist. It's just like a full client side experience. And I'd love to create some sort of a backend so I can actually write a poem and then save it. And then I can, I'm sure I can iterate on that. Like, you know, coming up with printable versions where you can pick backgrounds and lay out the text maybe a little bit and send poems to people.
[00:49:14] Ben: And, yeah, so I just, I just want to give myself that latitude. To explore more and to try to create more at, at, at the cost of not doing as much blogging as I have maybe historically.
[00:49:27] Carol: So before the book, you were pretty deep into Dig Deep Fitness. Uh, where's that at right now? Is that one of those things you'd keep working on
[00:49:36] Ben: yes, exactly. That is, that would be one of the projects that, that got put on hold a hundred percent while I was writing the book. I still use Dig Deep Fitness for myself and I have, I think, two other people that seem to consistently use it, which is, which is fun. but yes, I want to take that and right now it is just a traditional request response Coldfusion Application.
[00:49:59] Ben: And Angular 17 had a, or Angular had a huge release a couple of months ago. They released Angular 17 and it has a lot of kind of new functionality in it. And, it's, they're calling it the Angular Renaissance. I don't know where that term came from, but it seems like people are suddenly excited about Angular again.
[00:50:18] Ben: And I'm like, yo, I've always been excited, but yeah, I think it's a hundred percent marketing, but Hey, whatever. I love Angular. So I'd love to take new Angular, you know, most newest modernist Angular and put it on the front end of Dig Deep Fitness, just as. As a means to, one, create a better experience in the app, but then also to, you know, just try new stuff.
[00:50:38] Ben: So that's, that's my big goal for the year.
[00:50:40] Adam: cool. So, one of the things you have here in the notes is to finish the book. How like, what's left?
[00:50:47] Adam: I don't know. That's the hard part. Okay, step one. Step one. Define what's left.
[00:50:54] Ben: mean, like I can call it done today, honestly, and it would sort of be fine. I think I, I, you know, made my own cover and it's a junkie cover, but it's whatever. Like, I don't know
[00:51:04] Adam: have not seen the original cover of my book. I guarantee you it's better than that. Calibur. Mm
[00:51:12] Ben: Adam Cameron has been reviewing the book and I think he still has a couple of chapters left to do. So I'll, I'll, I'll wait on that. No pressure, Adam. If you're listening to the podcast,
[00:51:22] Carol: actually lots of pressure, Adam. Come on. It's 2024. We want this book out.
[00:51:28] Ben: but, yeah, I I've been able to generate an EPUB version of the book and then I'm using an application called, I read it as Calibre, but I think people are pronouncing it as Calibre. It's just a desktop application. And, I can convert the EPUB book to a variety of other formats, such as PDF. I, I hit a hiccup.
[00:51:48] Ben: I, PDF is what I've been sending out for the last couple of months, the last month and a half as an early access. But I was just using a Chrome to render a webpage. And then I was literally just, you know, file, print. Save as PDF. And that was the early access PDF. And I didn't think much about it because I've been using and generating PDFs forever in ColdFusion.
[00:52:09] Ben: And it didn't occur to me that there's really anything special going on. And then I just randomly came across a blog post about ebook publication. And they were saying, Oh yeah, with PDFs, you have to be careful because PDFs embed fonts in the actual PDF file. And if you don't have a license to the font you're embedding, technically you're stealing fonts.
[00:52:32] Ben: Whereas with something like an EPUB, there's no embedded font. You can say, use this font, but if the system doesn't have it, you know, it uses just the next default font. And, you know, so of course, when you print from the browser, it's embedding Times New Roman and Courier and Helvetica, and I'm like, I don't know, none of these are free fonts.
[00:52:49] Ben: so I had to come up with, that's when, that's when I found out about Calibre and, and, and going that route. It's been a journey, but I do want to just get it done and put my foot in the. Sand, say, this is, this is it.
[00:53:02] Adam: Calibur is such a terrible name for a book app. like has nothing to do with books or libraries, like, and so for that reason, I think whenever I see it, I too go, is it Calibur or Calibray? Like, I, part of my brain wants to believe that there's some bookish word, right, Calibre, that somehow applies.
[00:53:24] Ben: It ends with R E and my brain just doesn't want to say that as a, as an ER.
[00:53:29] Adam: Yeah. No offense to my, my Jeffrey friends, but I have the same, like, visceral, like, that's, it's not right when I see, like, G E O F F, whatever. No. Yeah, I always, I see that and I go, G off.
[00:53:43] Ben: So who else has got something? Timere.
[00:53:46] Tim: go.
[00:53:46] Tim - Trade Shows, More Exciting Things
[00:53:46] Tim: So I mean, kind of work wise this year, I'm going to do more trade shows. We, we tend to typically go to shows where we just sell, but I've never been to like a credit card. We made some buddies with some folks from PayPal, from Discover. I want to go to some of those kind of industry events where I'm just, it's not me trying to sell our product.
[00:54:07] Tim: It's, it's me trying to learn more about financial services sector, and just. Making some networks and connections there. So that's one thing I'm going to try to do this year. they tend to be expensive though. I got invited to one of the. It was a PGA golf tournament. They're like, Hey, come out there.
[00:54:25] Tim: And you know, we're, we're major, you know, it was, Discover. And they're like, we're a master, we're, we're one of the, you know, top, sponsors, we'd like to have you there. I'm like, okay, how much is it? They told me like, Oh, okay. Maybe next year when I put it in the budget.
[00:54:40] Carol: Hey, and I have golf clubs you can borrow.
[00:54:42] Tim: Hey, some sticks. I think you can borrow your
[00:54:46] Carol: Yeah.
[00:54:48] Carol: I don't even care if they're ladies sticks. I'll, you know, I am 5'11 They're good.
[00:54:53] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. You're taller than me. and then, I don't know. I just, I just feel like the past year and a half, I've just lost kind of my mojo just for everything.
[00:55:02] Carol: Oh, it's
[00:55:04] Tim: Life just, just work life.
[00:55:06] Tim: Just, I don't really have anything I'm excited about, right? There's this stuff that I just keep waiting on and waiting on and waiting on. It's like, it's dragging my soul down. So I gotta find some way just to, to get some excitement back in my life. Part of it is I just never go anywhere anymore. I don't really leave.
[00:55:23] Tim: The house during the week. and so, you know, it was kind of, you know, laying around the office and, you know, being by yourself all the time. It's just like, I got to figure something
[00:55:33] Carol: not good for your brain.
[00:55:34] Tim: no, it's not good for your brain. and then I want to complete that Harvard AI course. So I kind of got distracted on it, you know, cause of holidays and.
[00:55:41] Tim: I usually do it when I'm visiting my mom on every other Friday where I go take care of my mom and let my dad take some time off. He's a full time caretaker for her. So, but sometimes, that gets a little busy even up there. So, um, and then finally I want to increase, you know, get to the age where, you know, I need to make sure that my retirement is going to be right.
[00:56:01] Tim: You know, I've got 13 years probably till I retire. So,
[00:56:04] Carol: you got smart kids. You'll be fine.
[00:56:07] Tim: Yeah, but you know, but you know, as you get older, it's like you, like a lot of the debts that you've incurred when you were younger, cause you just didn't really have the capital to, to go without debt and all of these things are kind of falling off my plate now.
[00:56:20] Tim: And so I'm just making sure that I'm investing that wisely, you know, so that, that I have some passive income when, when, when I need it, when I retire.
[00:56:30] Adam: So what we need is for you two, Carol and Tim, to write books so that we can have like the Working Code Bundle
[00:56:36] Ben: Oh,
[00:56:37] Adam: buy all four books for the price of one or something.
[00:56:39] Tim: don't even know what I'd write about.
[00:56:42] Carol: Parenting.
[00:56:43] Tim: There you go.
[00:56:45] Ben: know, plus one though, I'm just feeling more isolated. I, I mean, thank goodness I have this podcast where I get to talk to you people because
[00:56:54] Carol: are like my best friends.
[00:56:55] Tim: Yeah.
[00:56:56] Carol: So actually I was talking to one of my girlfriends in Florida and we made like our New Year's pact, you know, to go out one morning and have coffee and work from a coffee shop and hold each other accountable for it just to make sure that we leave the house because she's in the same boat as me.
[00:57:13] Carol: If it's not picking up the groceries, which I usually order ahead of time. So they're already ready for me. You know, I don't have a real reason to leave anymore. I just stay here, walk the dog, stay here. And so she and I talked about that and just getting out and going and working in a coffee shop for four hours, you know, before lunch or a couple hours before lunch, once a week is more interaction than we've had in like three years now.
[00:57:39] Ben: It's, it's funny when you said. you said something like meet once a week for coffee and hold each other. And like my brain, my brain immediately went like, Oh, women are so much more evolved than men. Like she knows she needs human contact. So she's going to go like hug people.
[00:57:57] Tim: she's like, bring it in close. Bring it in close.
[00:58:01] Carol: Nah, that's what I do to the bagger that brings my groceries to the car. I'm like, hi buddy, here's your tip.
[00:58:07] Ben: it in. I'm always shocked.
[00:58:09] Carol: Hugs.
[00:58:10] Ben: hugger and I grew up with a family of huggers.
[00:58:17] Ben: And I did not realize that hugging is not a hugely prevalent thing. I think in surveys, it's something like only 60 percent of people like to be hugged and give hugs that I had no idea that I thought it was like everybody except a couple of random people didn't like
[00:58:35] Adam: Poor, poor 40 percent of people.
[00:58:36] Ben: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I had no idea.
[00:58:39] Carol: I don't like being surprised by someone touching me. Like that startles me and it's never a good situation. As long as I know you're coming in for a hug, we're all good. Everything's perfect. Don't, don't surprise me with it because then I'm probably like gonna punch you or something.
[00:58:53] Ben: And to be clear, I'm not judging. I just, I just didn't realize that, that
[00:58:57] Carol: No, yeah,
[00:58:57] Ben: there were people who didn't like it.
[00:58:59] Tim: I mean, nothing's better than a surprise hug in the morning unless you're in prison.
[00:59:05] Patreon
[00:59:05] Adam: Alright, well, that seems like a pretty good place to wrap it up, we, how do I do this again? Okay, this episode of Working Codes brought to you by Tim's Missing Mojo, maybe Austin Powers stole it or something,
[00:59:16] Carol: heh.
[00:59:16] Tim: Yeah, baby.
[00:59:18] Carol: ha ha. Perfect.
[00:59:20] Adam: like you, if you're enjoying the show and you want to 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, editing, and transcription costs, and we couldn't do this every week without them.
[00:59:33] Adam: Special thanks, of course, to our top patrons, Monte and Giancarlo.
[00:59:37] Thanks For Listening
[00:59:37] Adam: We are going to go record our after show. And, looks like there's people rapidly adding things to the notes here, but I'm just gonna, I'm going to give you one little teaser about what we're talking about on the after show. I've got an idea for an app, and I'm calling it Streak or Streak. you know, we'll, we'll see where that goes, but, yeah, if you want to hear the after show, actually let me throw this out there too. You're already too late. I have already turned off. The, the free trial of our Patreon. So, sorry, not sorry. Gave you a chance. no more free trials for a while.
[01:00:10] Adam: Maybe I'll turn it on again in the future. Who knows? Time is an arbitrary construct. But,
[01:00:15] Tim: a capricious leader.
[01:00:16] Adam: ha, glorious leader. But, if you're interested in the after show, if you're interested in supporting this podcast, keeping the lights literally on around here, you can go to patreon.com/workingcodepod.
[01:00:30] Adam: Our patrons get early access and the after show and our eternal gratitude and stickers. Remember your stickers, get your address in on Patreon. If you want stickers, I'm not going to poke people too many times before I give up and just say, okay, well, I guess you didn't want your stickers. anyway, so that's gonna do it for us this week.
[01:00:47] Adam: We'll catch you next week.
[01:00:48] Tim: Remember your heart matters. No matter how you cook your turkey.
next episode: 162: A Question of Time
prev episode: 160: Design Systems and Coding Philosophy