08: I'll bet you think this podcast is about you. Don't you?

Welcome my friends to Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly conversation where two internet vets talk about technology, the internet, where it's headed, where we wish it was headed. I'm Jason. And I'm Brian. You can find us on the web at grumpyoldgeeks.com.

Tiny bubble. Welcome back from Hawaii, Brian. How was it? Mahalo. It was awesome. I'm sitting here in shorts and a tank top and my puka shells on because I'm trying to hold on to the bliss that I just had. You're very tan, I must say.

And I am very tan. It was an amazing trip. You know, we talked a lot about taking breaks and it's been, well, it's been a good two years. Not that I haven't traveled, but my travel's been either work-related or family. This is the first time in about two years I took something that was just for me. And it was awesome.

That's good. That's good. How was the work situation? Did you end up having to work a lot? I informed all my clients and, you know, I made sure that my business partner was around and available while I was not. But I did, the reality of what we do for a living is basically you have to be around daily and do things daily.

So I was able to keep it to, you know, 30 minutes to an hour in the morning and 30 minutes to an hour at night just to make sure everything was good and all the clients were happy. And it worked out really well. Three-hour time difference helps, too. So that's always nice. Yeah, definitely. And I did see you actually got to read two of the books that I talked about that you were going to get before you left.

Yes. I read both of the Daniel Suarez, the two books in the series, and I've actually started on his third, which I know you don't like, but I've been enjoying it. Okay. Yeah, I thought it was a steaming pile of crap. It's not as good as the other two, but it's still good. And reading is one of my favorite things to do.

So just sitting around with the iPad at the pool with my Mai Tai, it was very nice. And you didn't drop it in the pool? Did not drop it in the pool, so I do not need that particular feature. Somebody did send me the case that you can get for your iPad, which is waterproof. The LifeProof?

Yes. Don't get that. Yeah, okay. I saw a post Chris Messina from Google posted on Facebook or something, and it was a picture that he took of his friend's iPhone with a LifeProof case. And he's like, I took this picture just before all the water came rushing into the case.

Yeah, so I didn't end up needing it anyways. But it was absolutely fantastic. I had a really, really good time. It was nice to get away. Like J.J. Abrams, with Star Trek, we are now kind of resetting our time continuum, so we're back on regular scheduled podcast recordings. Yeah, definitely. I missed it last week, man.

This is a highlight of my week. I would like to say I missed it, but I was sitting on a beach with a Mai Tai, not missing it. Sorry. I'm happy to be back, though. Fuck you. Just fuck you. Yeah. So I hear some things might have happened while I was gone.

Some things that I might have predicted a little bit, and we discussed about, oh, I don't know, Kickstarter. Kickstarter. Yeah. It seems like you were ahead of your time with your Kickstarter bashing. Mm-hmm. So Ken Levine, who I believe is a writer on Cheers.

He was a writer for Cheers, yes. Yeah. He posted a blog post about Zach Braff and how he wasn't going to, it's Zach Braff, right? Yes. I can never remember that guy's name. Yeah, yeah. Garden State guy. The only good thing about that movie was Natalie Portman in the bikini. Yeah. And he posted a giant rant on his blog about why he's not giving them any money.

Yes. And it got something over six million hits. Something like that, yeah. So the backlash against celebrities going on Kickstarter has begun officially, I believe. Thank God. Yeah. And we also saw another, what, 1990s TV star go on Kickstarter for a pet project, Melissa Joan Hart.

Which is, if you don't know who she is, she was Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Yes. I didn't know. I had to look it up. Yes. Well, she's got her own thing now, too, as well, which at the moment, with 16 days to go, only has 51,000 for a pledge goal of two million. I don't think that's going to make it.

And only 299 backers. I think I could get more backers than that. That's kind of sad for her, but. Well, I mean, like I said, it's, Kickstarter is a great concept for non-media professionals. Zach Braff, who made ridiculous amounts of money off of all of his shows, should not be asking his fans to pay for his next movie.

Now, here's a conundrum. We both have a media celebrity that we both really like, Zane Lamprey, and he's got a Kickstarter now. This is true. And I'm actually going to fund it, because I really want to see the show. But I would say that he has never made anywhere near the amount of money that these other people did.

He would be, if, I would say Melissa Joan Hart is probably C-list celebrity. Zach Braff, maybe B. Zane's down in like the Q level. Oh, yeah. He's had a couple successful, no, not successful, because they'd still be running.

He's had a couple TV shows on bizarre, very deep down cable niche networks. Mojo. You remember the Mojo network? Barely. Yeah. The only reason I've ever heard of Mojo is because he was on that network. And his second show was on HDNet, which I don't get. I got it. I don't know anybody that gets it.

But it's gone now. And it's gone as well. So it's a bit of a different story. He went around. He shopped it to networks. No network wanted to take it. And now he's just going to do it himself and put it up on the internet. And if you pay the extra package, you can get a DVD of it or whatever.

Yeah, it does make me sound slightly hypocritical, except for the fact that he's not sitting on a pile of $20 million, like a lot of these other people are. That's true. And for those who don't know, Zane Lamper used to do several drinking shows, the best of which was called Three Sheets.

Three Sheets. Oh, it was amazing. It was a half-hour show where he would just travel to a country and drink. Well, and it would start off, he'd get there and meet some locals, and then he would drink. And at the end, they had the local hangover cure, which I thought was genius. Yeah, yeah, it was a great ending to every episode. It wasn't just about drinking, which is what I really enjoyed about it.

It was, you got a feel for the city that he was in. You got some history. You got a little bit of information and actual education about the city, as well as the drinks, how they're made, et cetera, et cetera. And it was still fucking funny. And the most underrated portion of the show, I believe, is that the entire show is structured as a drinking game.

Yes. So if something happens on the show, you at home can play along. And it is an actual drinking game. I do hope he brings that aspect back. So go to YouTube and check out, try to find some three-sheet stuff and take a look at it. And then go to ZaneLamprey.com, I believe is his site.

Yeah. Support him. It's a cool concept and it's fun. And he's not a multimillionaire trying to get your money. No. He's just somebody trying to make a living and do a cool show. Yeah. And actually, when his show went off the air, he did these trips that you could actually go.

He'd get 50 people together and you would go to a city and you would go drink with him. And I did that in San Francisco. And we spent three days of solid drinking. It was, I mean, the hangover was unbearable. It was a four-day hangover after it.

But he was super nice, super humble, and really, really funny. Like, he's a genuinely funny guy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he started as a stand-up and then he kind of fell into the drinking aspect of it. That became his little niche, right? I didn't know he was a stand-up first because I saw his stand-up. I thought he was. I saw his touring stand-up show and he was actually really funny.

He was really good on stage. Yeah. I really enjoyed the show. And yeah, that's a Kickstarter I will actually back. But like I said, not a multimillionaire. Yeah. So I did notice one other thing that came up actually today, since I've been trying to catch up on everything and reading through news.

After we had our big talk about security and telling kids not to ever send pictures of their privates, of course, a company leapt in to fill that niche called Snapchat. Yeah. Which apparently self, you know, it's Maxwell Smart. This message will self-destruct in 25 seconds. Kind of bullshit.

No. No. Not so much. No. No. It turns out that things that are saved to computer memory can be recalled. Yes. So some kid basically got some forensic software, plugged it up to his Android phone about six hours later.

Boom. Boom. There are those pictures. All back. Interesting. So apparently they're not just storing them in RAM and dumping them out. They're actually saving them to the onboard memory of the machine. Yes. And anything that's saved there can be recovered. Yes, it does require forensic software and a lot of specialist knowledge.

But as we all know, these things get easier and easier as time goes by. I guarantee you within a year and a half, tops, there'll be an app that lets you recover all that stuff. Yeah. I mean, somebody will just take the underlying code, put a GUI on it, sell it for $19.95 or get it free off BitTorrent.

Exactly. You know, you're back to where you started. So if somebody steals your phone, there's your peeper. So I'll go back to my original point. Don't take pictures of your jock kids. Yeah. Fine for adults, not for kids. Well, not even for adults.

I think we've seen a lot of that happen recently. There's a few senators that lost their jobs because they took pictures of their, oh, weaner. Yeah. So don't do it. Well, no, I think his problem was he posted them on Twitter.

Well, supposedly. He posted them on Twitter. He posted them on Twitter. But there's been other ones that have gotten caught with the text messaging and stuff. So if you're going to do it, if you're going to send your junk to somebody, just, you know, make sure they're cool and don't fuck them over because they will fuck you.

Yeah. It is evergreen blackmail material. Exactly. Even if your face isn't in it. Although I am convinced that we've raised an entire generation. Basically, every kid that's hit puberty since the iPhone came out, there's just going to be a library of everybody's genitalia. I don't think there's anybody that doesn't have a dick or a vagina picture out there somewhere now from that generation.

Junkopedia. Yeah. Which is why I don't want to ever have kids. It's just wrong.

The beer for the day is POS. It's a rye lager from the Great Divide Brewing Company from Denver, Colorado. I'm used to rye lagers being from Canada, or certainly rye whiskeys.

But it's pretty good. What did you think? I think something's coming in right now on the plane. I think it's amazing. See, when I think rye, I think of Tennessee whiskeys. Oh, I always think Canadian just because of my time spent in Canada. And apparently everybody's first drink in Canada is a rye and Coke.

Really? It's the big thing there. Oh, I don't think I had a rye and Coke when I was up there. Definitely try it. I've only been up there once. I've been to Toronto. It was a nice place. It's one of my favorite cities. One of my favorite cities is Newcastle on Tyne in England because our second beer today is Newcastle Brown Ale. It's a good beer.

And I've actually been to Newcastle. I can't actually recommend the city per se, but the beer is lovely. And I do like the soccer team jerseys. I've passed through there on the train on that giant, terrifying bridge that they have going into the city. Yes. And I'm terrified of heights. So this morning I was watching TV and they had that, one of their new set of commercials on and it's the one where, actually, I'm not going to say it.

Go to YouTube, Google for Newcastle Brown Ale Ocean. Ocean is the name of the spot. We'll put it in the show notes, but if you just want to go look at it. It was very amusing. Yeah. I enjoyed it. Yeah. One of the better beer commercials that I've seen. It's very short and very to the point, but on the way over, I just had to stop.

And pick some up because that's good advertising. Yeah. It's good advertising. It makes you, again, you should, you should spend money being creative. Yep. Because it works. It does. Because I haven't had a Newcastle in years and you showed up with it and I saw the ad and I'm like, all right, Newcastle. I'm in. I'm down. I am in.

So lately I've been doing a lot of interviews because I'm. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm a contractor. I've got different jobs right now that are paying the bills, but I'm kind of, I kind of want some stability in my life. So I'm looking for kind of a full-time gig. Stability is good when you become a old geek.

Yeah. I'm 41. I need to start, you know, I got to start at some point saving for the future. Living paycheck to paycheck gets to be terrifying when you're, you know, getting older. Yes. And I don't own a home. You know, basically everything I own fits in my car. Right. So starting to kind of plan for the future and trying to get some real jobs that are with companies that have like long-term, you know, prospects with them.

Right. So to put this in perspective, I don't think I've interviewed for an actual job in over 10 years. I was about to say, I haven't been on an interview in probably 19 years. Yeah. The process is not very fun.

It's pretty nerve wracking. The most of these jobs that I've been looking for are programming jobs. They're PHP programming jobs. Right. Because in my very broad skill set, I see, I see that as like my biggest strength. Yeah. Yeah.

That's definitely, I mean, that's, you cut your teeth on that. You are a master of PHP programming. Not according to everybody I've interviewed with. Really? So a lot of these, uh, every, both gigs that I've been looking at require PHP samples and then phone interviews.

And this last one I did was an actual live coding session where right as you start, they give you two tasks to perform. You share your screen with the interviewer and they watch you code in real time, in real time. Wow.

So, yeah, the last time I did an interview, they didn't know anything and, and they were just thrilled that I reportedly knew how to do anything. So it's been a lot of things have changed. Yeah. I mean, I've got a resume that's literally four pages long with experience, but you still have to go out and, you know, kind of be the performing monkey.

Right. Even though you've got, you know, 20 years of experience with it. Yeah. Well, I mean, my situation is somewhat similar in, in terms of like, I've been running my own company for 15 plus years or whatever. And we have, you know, the list of clients is like a four pages of a list acts, but we still have to perform.

We have to be the performing monkeys when we meet new management companies or new artists as well. So I get that. And it is nerve wracking mine in a completely different way than yours. Um, I'm God, I feel fuck. I would not want to do what you're doing right now. Yeah. It's, it's really tough. And the, the first company gave me almost, not almost, they gave me zero feedback on why they didn't pick me for the job.

Excuse me, beer. Newcastle. Not yet. So I'm back. Um, zero feedback. Right. I did an hour and a half long phone interview after submitting code samples. An hour and a half long phone interview. How much is there to talk about?

Brian, uh, what is the function of a net mask? Oh, Jesus Christ. In your PHP apps, what would you specifically use the empty function for? I mean, it was literally an hour long or hour and a half long interview of stuff like that.

The first 10 minutes were like getting to know the guy and then the rest was just functional questions on what do you actually know what you're doing? Yeah. And some of them I didn't actually know because they don't run it, run up against my daily life. And I looking at those jobs, they didn't run up against that job either.

Right. So what's the, yeah, I don't get the process that they're doing then. Why? Why? I don't know. In the next day I got basically just a, uh, auto mailer, you know, with the mail merge with my name in it saying, no, sorry, we're looking for somebody different. Right. And, uh, I do want to talk about this coding interview because I completely botched it.

I, the, the first, the first task was actually pretty difficult. If you dissected it, there was a lot going on. Right. And I was nervous as could be. No, it's funny. You sent, you sent it to me to look at and, and I looked at, and I'm relatively skilled in PHP as well.

I mean, that's the programming language I've been doing my entire adult life. And I looked at the first question. I was like, huh, I don't know how to do that off the top of my head. That would take me a few minutes. Well, it took, unfortunately it took me an hour and I was, I was running up against the bug because the first 15 minutes, my hands were literally shaking because I mean, I've got terrible stage fright, which is why we'll probably never do a live version of the show.

Oh, we so will. Okay. I'll get you drunk. No, I totally get that. I can't even imagine somebody standing over my shoulder and watching me code. Yeah. It's a, it was completely nerve wracking. So, and the weirdest part was I do all my logic on paper and with pen.

Right. You know, so there are long stretches where my screen was empty and he was like, is everything okay? Are you still there? Oh yeah, I'm still here. But I completely flubbed it and he's like, okay, let's move on to the second one. And the second one I did in, in less than five minutes.

Right. It was, you know, super easy. It's just like, boom, in and out. I'm like, why didn't you start with that one? Give me a warmup. Did you overthink the first one? No, the first one was just actually fairly complicated. Right. And it was one of those things where there's a lot of date stuff that you have to do and you're dealing with.

Which is kind of a nightmare anyways, with, uh, if you're not a programmer and you're listening to this, dealing with dates sucks. Yeah. Just Google Unix timestamp and you can get a thought on how you have to deal with dates. Yeah. And even the guy, when I was done, he's like, man, I hate doing date stuff too.

I'm like, yeah, pretty much. That's why I usually, every time I do something with dates, I save it off into my archives. So I have a library to go to. So I never have to do that thing again. Right. But it was, you know, it was humbling to have to do this in front of somebody who has been doing it for probably 10 years less than you have.

Right. And then to get a note saying, you know, we were looking for somebody who is kind of more modern in their approach. And I'm like, man, that hurts. It really. Geeks. But the thing is, I love the guys. I love the guys who, the company that I was interviewing for, super cool guys.

You know, I would have a beer with them any day of the week and I don't begrudge them for my flubs on the interview. Right. That is such a strange way to interview a coder, like live. Well, I mean, I can understand going through the thought process and how you problem solve that, but doing it in that kind of format was just kind of strange.

And the fact that they were just straight up functions, like here's a function, here's a function. And they're looking for modern coding practices. I'm like, well, first off, you put it in a class, you abstract it, you got methods, you got, you know, inheritance, you got all sorts of shit that goes into modern programming, not just a straight up procedural function.

Right. So that's, I think the test might've been stacked the wrong way, but it's still. It's an interesting thing because if that's all you even care about, I mean, God bless them for trying to hire somebody here. Why don't you just, you know, put this up there on all those sites that do the bidding for coding or fucking hire some Indian kid.

I mean, that's, if that's all they care about. Well, no, I think what they're mostly concerned about, which is, which is a really interesting point was, I think they're looking for personalities as well. It's a very small company, very like the owner picks everybody by hand. Right. Gets to know them and personality I think is extremely important in a small company.

It could be the most important thing. It is. It definitely is the most important thing in a small company. But I mean, what happened to trial periods? You hire somebody for, or you contract with them for 30, 60 days, see how they work out. And if you like them, you keep them. If you don't, you dump them. Right. I think that's the way to go, but that's just me coming off of these two terrible experiences.

And the second one wasn't terrible because I did get to meet some really cool guys that I will go have a beer with at some point. But it's just humbling, you know, when you're, especially when you get to be 41 and they want modern techniques. Well, this is an interesting thought. I mean, when you were telling me about this experience, the first thought that came to my head is why the fuck are you interviewing for a pure programming position anymore?

Anyways, your skillset is way larger than that. Your experience is way bigger than that. I think, you know, programming, like, you know, professional sports, all those sorts of things, that's kind of a young man's game to a certain extent, especially the hardcore stuff.

I mean, when you and I started, we, there wasn't as much stuff to know. We were able to kind of master everything. And as we talked about previously, we were kind of generalists, but that was fine because we could do everything and you can't anymore.

And what they're looking for when, when people are hiring programmers now, they're looking for some people that are so specific and so drilled down into one specific area and know it backwards and forwards. And that isn't the way we were brought up into the web culture, the way we learned.

And there's a value to our experience and skills. And I'm surprised that you're looking at programming jobs as opposed to producing gigs and that sort of thing. Well, that's the thing. That's why I'm trying not to let this get to my ego because it really, when I first had, when they first, I get the rejection letters, it's a total ego blow.

But then I'm like, no, that, that really isn't my skillset anymore. You know, I'm more of a technical producer because I can talk to designers. I can talk to clients. I can talk to coders, you know? Yeah. My, yeah, my coding chops might not be the best in the biz, but I definitely know.

And the kid that knows, and the kid that knows the super really modern PHP is so head in the sand that he has no understanding how to talk to a designer or how to talk to a client. And there's a skillset that you and I have picked up over the 20 years of the internet and being in it that these kids can't match.

And that's where our strength now lies in. Yeah. I have noticed like it, uh, a couple of places we had some really good JavaScript programmers. That's all they knew. You know, they were super good with JavaScript, but you give them anything else outside of it, they, they could not do HTML.

Right. Which is strange because they're working with the DOM. Yeah. Which is controlling the HTML. So you don't know how to fucking put a graphic in there. And the CSS and all that stuff. But it's, but when you try and get them to do like properly formed HTML, they're just like, their head explodes. Right. And forget like any other languages, try and get them to do PHP or Ruby.

It's like, I don't know. Yeah. Everybody's so specialized now, which is a very weird thing for me to think about. Yeah. I mean, I totally get it because I, I butt my head up against things all the time now where I'm just like, I have no idea how to do that. That's so like dealing with APIs throws me for loops sometimes just because I used to build everything myself.

Why would I use somebody else's tools and how do I access them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So. Yeah. And just going back to the ego thing, it's been humbling for sure, because as you know, for most of my career, I have been a raging, egomaniacal, dickhead asshole that nobody wanted to work with except I got the job done.

And nowadays, since things are kind of transitioning, I've, I've had to learn to be a lot more humble. Right. You know, and. Well, you and I were very similar that way. I mean, the company that we worked at together, I was regularly passed, you, you quit way before I did.

I hung out for a bit longer and I was regularly passed over for raises and promotions just because I was a dick. Yeah. But I was the dick that they also gave all the high profile projects to. So screw you, which way? You give me the promotion or the high profile project, but I don't get both.

Yeah. But nowadays, since everything is so fragmented being a dick. Yeah. It doesn't really get you that far in your career because there is, there is a lot more talent out there, but I'm worried about these kids nowadays coming up because they are like where we were in their fields. Like look at all these kids in startups.

Yeah. I have met so many raging assholes. Well, they all think they're rock stars. Yeah. They, they get on tech crunch and they think they've made it. Oh, and by the way, that's how I got humbled because I actually started working with real rock stars. Oh yes, that's true. And yeah, the ego's there and you can't be a dick to that because they, they, fuck you.

Yeah. I'm a rock star. I'm a rock star. There's really no counter for that. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much at the top of the, so I got humbled real quick when I started my, my own company and I was basically just dealing with those egos. So yeah, it's, you can't be an asshole. And these kids that are coming up now that are just, they're fucking geniuses in what they do.

But what you do now, unlike when you and I did this and we were actually real in air quotes, web masters. Yeah. And we could do it all. We were the masters of the web. These kids now they're, you're, you're, you're not a webmaster. You get one thing and that's all, you know, and if you're an asshole, you're not going to get fucking hired again.

Yeah. And then the company is not going to take you on because you now have to play well with others. Extremely well with others. Yeah. We, we fired a couple of people just, you know, mainly because they were a dick to work with and they, they were really good people. It was hard to see him go, but it got to the point where they, you know, if you can't have a meeting with somebody and have a civil conversation about how to do this or that you're out.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. You can code five ways to Sunday, but if you can't sit down and talk with your project manager and your graphic designer. Speaking of graphic designers. Oh God. Yeah. So yeah. The bane of my existence. So here's the deal. I mean, designers have their own egos.

Oh God. And they hate us. Yes. And we have our own egos. Yes. And we hate them. Yes. And we both think that the other side is doing it wrong. Yeah. And I was hoping that by now we would all just get along, but I was listening to one of the mule podcast and they still make fun of developers.

And I'm like, guys, code monkeys and pixel pushers. This is an ecosystem. It's been there forever. You know? You make it pretty. We make it happen. Yes. Your shit don't work without us. Yeah. But then again, our shit looks like crap without you. Yeah. Our shit don't work without you. And I wish there was a way that, because I have met some unbelievably difficult to work with designers to this day.

I'm sorry. Have you met Wendy? Yeah. But I've never actually had to work with Wendy, so. Okay. But especially up in San Francisco, there was one guy I worked with. And it was, his ego caused one of the biggest blowups in that time that we had seen in San Francisco.

Right. In the scene. And his partner has, is honestly a better designer, super humble, super nice, super laid back. We'll have a conversation. He stayed. Right. And the other guy was the founder of the company and we fired him.

Right. And then publicly, we had a lot of backroom conversations where I would take him out to drinks and I would implore him, don't make this public. Let it go. Don't let your ego get the best of you. Even though his ego is what got him fired. But his ego is also what made him create that company.

You need an ego to even step out on your own like that. So there's, there's the yin and the yang to the ego. Uh, well, not really because the other. Okay. Maybe not in this case. It was a complicated, it was a complicated confluence of events.

Right. The nice designer actually formed the company because he had worked with the other designer on the thing that they made that was just a little thing and then they made it into a big thing. But the dick designer sold the little company to the big company. Okay. Gotcha.

And kept, there was another, there was a third party in this company. And after they sold, he and his partner sold the company to the new company. Right. He would not let go that they were still the driving force of the company. Even though the other person didn't come to the company and left.

Right. Okay. You know, that person went on to a completely different job. We offered, we offered them a job. They turned us down and said, no, I'm going to go work over here. Okay. Then why is your name still on all the emails that go out? Why when this, the dick designer is at a conference talking about the company and how it currently runs, doesn't mention the eight employees that are sitting there every day that give blood, sweat, and tears for it.

Right. But talks about the origin of the company and that it's still the same way. Like, that's the kind of ego that's like, it just can't let go that there's other people involved now. Yeah. Give these people credit because they're busting their ass. Yeah. No, I get that. Yeah. It ain't all about you.

No, it's not. Um, it's, yeah. I, maybe this is why I've never really hired people on. Yeah. I don't know. Like, I get that. I, I understand the, the wanting to keep control, but if, if you do sign onto a situation like that is you got to step back.

So I get that. Yeah. And ego can be good. Ego, ego is what gets you up in the morning to do a good job, you know, but. Ego made me start my own company. Ego makes me chase after clients. Ego gives me the confidence when I'm sitting in a room with a rock star. Who the, who the fuck am I?

I'm just some fucking kid that like picked up a computer and had run a BBS and, and, you know, knows how to do this stuff. And I'm sitting in a room with people that have so much more money than God in the bank and, you know, 50,000 people screaming at them every night, but they think they know what they're doing and I have to shout them down.

Ego lets me do that because I know what the fuck I'm doing. Right. So, but you have a balance of it. Yes. You're not like, you don't go in and say, I got the biggest in the room. I know when to turn it on when I need to, and I also know when to step back and not be a dick, but I learned that the hard way because I was, I did not know how to do that my first few jobs out of college.

Yeah. I mean, well, up until like three years ago, I didn't know how to do that. And one could say a year ago, I didn't know how to do that. But now that since the landscape is changing and you don't have a choice, but I also do get, you know, with age comes a mellowing of the testosterone and the, I'm invincible.

Yes. You know, I mean, my, well, we start to realize that we are not invincible and no like 20 year old kid that's out there programming right now that's at the top of his game thinks that he's never going to have work. And now that we're older, we know that even if we have the best skills in the world, if, if the dice just fall wrong, we're fucked.

Yeah. So, cause we've seen enough of life now. Yeah. And then you go, when, when the chips are down, you need to fall back on relationships. And if you've been a dick your whole career, nothing's there, no relationships, no one to reach out to no one to call on. Yeah. And from experience, I can tell you that's the, what that's what happens.

Yeah. You know, I was a raging asshole and now it's like, it's like, you were known for it. Is it too late for me? I mean, if you could read my bio on grumpy old geeks, that was supposed to be tongue in cheek, but it's actually pretty true. It's not too late for you, man. I'm still sitting here with you. I got one friend.

I got one friend left. Oh no, it's, it's, uh, I don't know. We, we came up in this industry in such a weird time because everybody had the egos. It wasn't just the designers. And we can talk more about the designer versus programmer ego clash.

Cause that's always kind of fun. But I mean, I remember being so frustrated with, with the project managers at that point in time. And I'm sure it's different now, which is why I kind of think that you would be a great project manager. And that's something that you might want to consider interviewing for more instead of the programming.

But back then they didn't know shit. Remember? Yeah. And, but they had the ego and just like they would promise the clients anything, but they had no clue what the fuck we were doing or how any of it worked. And we were the teachers, we taught the designers what was possible. Yes.

We taught the producers what was possible. Unfortunately, generally after the fact, especially the salespeople, which we mentioned on another podcast. Salespeople. I always fought to be in the meetings with clients and they never let us. Yeah. No. Who wants to, who wants to bring the dude in? Who's going to say no. We've got the nine inch nails t-shirt and doesn't know how to wear a tie.

But now, I mean, that's at least now that's the normal, right? Yeah. Yeah. No. Like I haven't been in a real office in a long time, but I assume people aren't wearing ties. Um, no, not even in the big meetings. Yeah. That's what I thought. I've been on a couple of pitches to a couple of studios and you're wearing t-shirts and jeans and nice shoes.

Right. You know, the shoes are the most important. Forget the ties, whatever. If you, you got to walk in with nice shoes. Okay. And a belt that preferably matches your shoes. Can't wear my flip flops. Well, you can, but you might not walk out with a job. Okay. Still in Hawaii mode. Mahalo. Mahalo.

Now I've got to go listen to a Adam Carolla podcast. Yeah. Um, so do you want to talk about the design versus code? Cause I know this is something that is, uh, you and I both have a lot of experience with. Start. Um, well, I mean, I, I work with what I humbly think is probably the best designer in the business.

I, I, Wendy is amazing. Her designs are awesome. I've said from day one that the only reason this company exists is because the people that we've worked with love her design sense. Uh, I make it work and that's great and you know, worthy of its own thing. You're the magic behind the mirror.

I'm the magic behind the mirror. And I've accepted that a long time ago. Um, it is frustrating though. Uh, because there's, uh, there's the ego involved with just like, I made this beautiful design and it needs to look exactly like that. Well, you don't understand anything about how actually things get programmed and need to function with each other.

And so I can't make it look exactly like that. And I've already told you 15,000 times that there's only rollover states in this. No, I know. I know. Training a, training a designer is really hard. Yeah. It's beyond hard. I think it's almost impossible. Um, and then there was the great white hope of CSS, which I am.

I know you disagree with me on this. Uh, CSS is, is basically a programming way to do design and most designers should really learn it. Yeah. Most of the designers I know are proficient in CSS, actually very proficient. Good. And, and the Dick designer I was talking about before, I actually taught him a lot of PHP to let him do the front side with the templates and he picked it up and then he was good.

I could, I could, he knew what was possible from an actual design versus build standpoint. Yeah. So even though he was a complete raging asshole and I, I can't, I can't let that up because he called me out publicly on it, but we're not going to, I'm not going to name names or put links anywhere, but that ship has passed.

I do give him props for being an amazing designer and learning, taking the time to learn how code interacts with his design to make it work. Yeah. If more designers did that, the world would be a much better place. No, I totally agree. And it's, it's better for the programmers. It's better for the designers.

Um, I don't think that you can be all in one anymore. I think it's too specialized now. Like there used to be kids that would just like, I could do the design and the programming and put everything together. I think, uh, to build anything that's compelling and interesting, you need both now and you need to be able to talk to each other. I know if you guys like that, but they are unicorns.

Yeah. They're it's few and far between and, and that they live, breathe and eat it and don't have any of the life and that's all they do. No, the guys, the guys I know, you know why they know everything so they can have a life. They take on jobs, they make 200 grand in six months and then go on the road for a year and relax. Oh, nice. That's the way to do it.

What the fuck are we doing? We don't know how to design. We don't have the patience for it. Damn it. I hate designing. I love designing. I'm just not good. I mean, I actually, I'm not good at it. That's the thing. Like as I was going to start to say about CSS is it's an interesting phenomenon because it puts some of the ability to do really good design in the hand of a programmer, but I don't have a degree in design.

Like I picked it up over 15 years. I can, I can put together a decent site and I can fix things and I can, I have a sense of what works and what doesn't and how to do things. But, but I'm nothing compared to Wendy. Wendy went to school for this. She has, you know, multiple degrees in, in the theory and basics of art and design and color theory and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So, I mean, there's, you can definitely pick it up though. No, I mean, you can pick it up. I mean, and what we've seen recently, I mean, especially with like your social networking sites and your Twitters and your Facebooks, there's, there's no design anyways. It's a couple of colors and it's a font and.

I did not Twitter. I would, I know the guys that did the design on Twitter and they're very smart guys. Right. And go look at Twitter, you know, five years ago and versus now. Yeah. Grant, I don't like the business decisions that they've done, but the design aesthetic that they brought to it, I thought was fantastic.

Yeah. But that's almost, that's more UI design than anything else. Well, that's the thing. And now you've got UI, UX, you know, we've got, you've got all sorts of different, um, AI. You've got, you've got, you've got so many acronyms now that used to be, give it to the programmer.

Yeah, give it, give it to the programmer. They'll put it together. So, I mean, I, I think we were justified with our, with our crazy egos back then, but it's time to, time to dial that shit back. It's a different world now. And I don't think anybody that's coming up now with those egos is going to get away with it for long. Yeah. They're going to find themselves unemployed and blacklisted.

Yeah. Blacklisted is the hardest part. If you and I came up now, we'd be fucking homeless. Which is why I live off somebody else's couch. But, um, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Like how, how to get through this process.

Yeah. I've learned a lot from these two unpleasant experiences. And like I said, the second one was not that unpleasant. I still would have a beer with the guys. I really like them. Yeah. The first one. Fuck you. Well, I mean, that's always been the case.

There's good companies out there. There's bad companies. There's, you'll run into somebody you just don't get on with. You'll run into somebody that you really get on with. And again, it really is. I mean, if you know the basics and you know how to do the job, it's almost 99% just who you interview with and you get on because especially in smaller companies, like you're talking about startups and, and you know, any company under like 20 people, it's so important.

The personality aspect is, is way more important than almost any level of skill. Yeah. So. Oh man. Okay. You just gotta be nicer, Jason. Maybe you need to go to Hawaii. I need a hug. You can cry and despair and declare unfair and demand reparations or democracy.

You may equalize with the aim to revise the unsporting distribution of ability. You may level the field, but the playing will reveal. In spite of all your efforts to homogenize, he remains a giant, you remain a runt. Suck it up if success you want.

It's bums to the rear to be so blunt. God wants the bricks and the cunts up front. It's an unfair world and it ain't no fun to the ones who count out subservant. Did you ever eat the candy dots? No, because they're horrible. They do. They fuck up your teeth really badly.

They don't even taste good. Yeah, they do. If frozen, eat them frozen. Oh, frozen dots. Then you suck on them and then they're like, just sugary goodness when they melt. But the other dots that I like, it's a new app. I saw this week for the iPhone. Okay. It is a 60 second game, beautifully designed, where you just match colored dots in a grid.

That's it. That's it. And it's addictive. I played it for seven hours one day. Straight? No, I was on call for a client and waiting for changes. And it's one of those things where it's like, okay, we've got seven levels of bureaucracy to get through to get a word change.

It's going to be a while before I get another email back. But I'm on call, like on IM, just waiting. They're like, it's going to be 10 minutes. It's going to be 10 minutes. Seven hours or 10 minutes later. With a few pee breaks in between. It's a free app. It's really addictive.

And I ended up having to delete it at the end of the day because I looked at myself in the mirror and said, you just spent seven hours of your life. Touching dots. Looking at your phone, matching dots. And my left hand was claw hand because I was holding onto my phone all day. And I'm sure it's been so irradiated at this point.

My left hand will never have kids. Damn it. I wasn't expecting that. That was good. I dug it. It's a good app. But it's good if you have self-control, do not have complete OCD, and have to just keep matching dots.

See, I don't think anybody that has any of those things would ever download the app. I mean, I did watch you play it on the break, and it looks really cool. I will never download it. I promise you. I will never. I see myself getting sucked into the wormhole, and I just go, I'm just not even going to download it.

You know what? You're a better man than I am. You have more self-control than I do. You say I'm a better man, but my app for this week, Trivie. Trivie? Yes, because apparently trivia was taken. It's French for trivia, I think. It is? No. Is that like Marche? Totally fucking with you.

I have no idea. It's T-R-I-V-I-E. So search for that or Trivie.com. A trivia app. And as much as I just made fun of you for playing seven hours, I couldn't even tear away from this app while I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii.

I was playing it. I'm big on trivia. I do a pub trivia once a week when I'm in town with some really great friends that I've made doing it. I live for my Monday Night Pub Trivia, and one of the people on our team found this app, and we're all playing it now.

We're all playing each other constantly. Jason got it the other day. I probably have seven games going right now. I cannot tear myself away from this fucking app. I play it constantly. I sat it at the pool in Maui playing it.

I had it. Okay, okay. I get it. You play it a lot. Yeah, I play it a lot. And by Jason, you mean me. I just got it. Yes. And I think you're down three games to zero now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr. Trivia Pub Guy. Well, here's the deal, though. I'm not a gamer, so I don't understand these power-ups and all these options that you get, which you know these things.

Because there's a giant screen in the middle. I just play the trivia. I just want the questions. No, stop. Stop. Before you play every game, it says, would you like to use a power-up? But see, this is the difference between a gamer and somebody who isn't. I am not a gamer.

Last time I really got into a game, it was Super Mario Brothers on the NES system. So for me, I'm thrilled about the trivia aspect of it. I love it because it makes me feel like I'm not just playing a game. I'm actually learning things. And I don't really get the gaming stuff, so you beat me regularly right now.

But you're the only person beating me. So thank you very much. All the other people don't understand gaming either, so none of us are doing the power-ups. Well, I'm glad I can keep you humble. You are keeping me humble. I get pissed every single time. I'm sitting out there going, wait, I answered that immediately and I only got 300 points. Why do you get 340?

Oh, it's that power-up shit. Yeah, that's right. Fucking power-up. That was for you. You know who you are. You know who you are. Oh, so as an almost 40-year-old man, you don't know how to use a power-up. I just, I've never been a gamer.

We've talked about this. I mean, I'm a super tech crazy guy, but I'm not a gamer. And I'm really enjoying this app for the trivia aspect. Again, I think it's great. It has some flaws. I'm actually going to, as we've talked about a couple times on the show, I'm actually going to go pay for it.

Because I think they deserve the money and I want them to make a better app. Because the depth of questions, not so great so far. Yeah, especially when, like the sci-fi categories, five questions about Lost, which I don't even count as sci-fi. Smoke monster.

Pandas or polar bears. Random polar bears. I would argue with you, Lost is definitely sci-fi. They never explained the smoke monster? They never said what it was? No, I know. They didn't explain 90% of that show. They were making shit up as they were sitting there talking on camera.

Still didn't upset me as much as Battlestar Galactica's ending, but whatever. Oh, man. Siffy! Siffy! Speaking of Battlestar Galactica. Speaking of shitty names, like Trivy and Siffy. Well, before we go back, on Trivy? We should finish up on Trivy. Yeah, it is buggy as hell.

It's buggy as hell. I paid for it, though. I paid for it because they have the greatest power-up that you can get from any game. Same power-ups. It's always the cheapest. I paid $2.99 because they have a double points power-up. Is this why you're always beating me?

No, no, no. It's double points because you have a little bank. And to pay for a power-up, it's five little coins. Okay. So whenever I answer a question, I get two points, and you get one for the token bank. I have no idea what he's talking about. Yeah. But on any game that I'm going to play regularly, I look for a double bonus.

Subway Surfers, I got the double coin bonus. Monsters Ate My Condo. I got some... Super Monsters Ate My Condo. Not Monsters Ate My Condo. Super Monsters Ate My Condo was the same thing as Dots. I got to like 10 billion. I hit number 700 in the world out of millions on my score.

And I'm just like, okay, time to put it down. Yeah. Step away from the phone. I can't. My hand won't unclench it. I do feel that way about trivia. I can't stop. When I hear the noise, when I know somebody's just played a game against me, I'm over there immediately.

I'm playing it. Love it. Great app. They definitely need to put some depth into it. Like you said, a lot of lost questions in the sci-fi category. They created a category called Cycling, which has four questions. And the answer is either Tour de France or Lance Armstrong.

That's it. And they'll build it out, I hope, anyways, if people buy it. And I'm going to go buy it because it's a lot of fun. And some of this stuff is crazy. If you pick things out of your comfort zone, you learn some shit.

So it's pretty cool. Yeah. I like it. I like my educational gaming, Jason. I don't power up. I power my brain up. See, I play smarter, not harder. That's what it's all about. Oh, okay. It says the guy with the cramped hand. So I want to talk about Siffy.

The worst rebranding ever in the history of the universe. Besides New Coke. No, New Coke beats that. Okay. Because that actually came up in trivia. Really? How long did New Coke last? How long was it? Well, they tried to switch over completely, remember? And it was something like 72 hours before they announced they'd bring back regular Coke.

Wow. I don't, I remember that. That is one of the worst rebrandings in history. Wow. That's, it's like, I mean, talk about worst rebranding. Well, you got the JCPenney logo. You got the MySpace logo. But, or MySpace in general. My underscore. Which was a question in trivia.

Yes, it was. It came up in trivia too. Oh. So, I started watching a new show on Siffy called Defiance that my friend Joey turned me on to who might actually be a guest on the show. Is Siffy French for bad sci-fi? Um, could be.

Could be. I know that my favorite show on sci-fi, when it was sci-fi, was Farscape. And it got canceled because they spent all that money on Stargate, which I think was terrible sci-fi. I think it was one of the worst shows ever made. I don't, I don't think either of them were very good shows.

They, they both reminded me of, of, like, when you watch BBC's Red Dwarf. Just horrible production values. Have you seen Farscape? Yes. The production values on that were off the charts good. No, I don't know. It was the same company that did Battlestar Galactica that did the effects for Farscape.

So, fuck you, because you like Battlestar Galactica. Except for the last episode, yes. Yes. Well. Battlestar Galactica was great. They were still sci-fi at that point. Yes, they were. Do you remember the old sci-fi, I'm talking the old sci-fi channel back in the 90s when they would spend, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars on those just interstitials.

Yeah. I would, if I could buy a DVD of all the old, like, commercial interstitials where they would just show the upcoming shows that were coming up. They've got to be up on YouTube. I've got to find this because they were so good. Because most of them would, it would just be the Friday the 13th Marathon. Yeah. I love that show so much. Also on Trivy.

Really? Friday the 13th versus Nightmare on Elm Street Guy. Which one had more movies before they were in the movie together? No, no, no. I'm not talking about Friday the 13th. I beat you on that question, by the way. You got it wrong. Yeah, no, I got it wrong. No, Friday the 13th was the series, the Canadian series, where it was like a shop and they had all these cursed items and they would have to go out and find them.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Which I think they, there's a new Warehouse 22 or 21 or so, I can't remember the name of the show. It's like a remake of that show, but that show was so camp and so good. I love, there was this gorgeous redhead on it. Oh man, I would miss that show. Well, maybe there'll be a Kickstarter campaign for it soon.

Bring it back. I don't know if I want her back now, but it's been a while. Okay, so Defiance, tell me more about this show. Okay, so Defiance, it's like, it's... Should I be watching this? Well, here's the thing. It's kind of sci-fi popcorn. It's, I mean, it's executive produced by Rockne O'Bannon, who did Farscape, which I said I loved and I still do to this day.

Look, I love Firefly and Serenity, and that is total popcorn sci-fi. No, man, that's, that's, I forgot about that, so... Those shows are great. It's a tie. It's honestly a tie between, oh, Farscape and Firefly, but Firefly only had 14 episodes and Farscape had four seasons and a finale, where Firefly did not have a finale.

If you count Serenity, maybe, but I don't know. I'm still sad about Wash. I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar. I was, I just watched it the other night. I was, I was crying, man. Wow, I was about to say, did you just watch it yesterday and you beat me to it? I did.

I watched it a couple nights ago. I love re-watching that stuff. So Defiance is, it's like, you know, post-apocalyptic, aliens come wipe out everybody, there's aliens and humans living together. Not in perfect harmony. Not in perfect harmony. It is not ebony and irony. No, there's plots to destroy the city and the world and whatever.

It's your standard sci-fi hokum. Yeah, it's not extraordinarily well written. The effects are pretty good. The main character's pretty good. He's kind of a cross between Ben Browder on Farscape and Mal on Firefly.

Okay. You know, the rough and tumble. Yeah, the Han Solo-esque. Yeah. I mean, he's the archetype. Yeah. And his hot sidekick chick, you know, who's alien, who likes knives and all that stuff. I don't know. If you've got nothing else to watch, watch it. It's not on the top of my list for like great shows, but for something that I throw in when I go to bed at night just to kind of fall asleep to, it's pretty good.

Well, the interesting thing that you were mentioning about it was that it has so many tie-ins. It's not just a show, right? Correct. It's actually... Never ask somebody a question when they're taking a big drink of beer. Seriously, that was just rude. Sorry, man. Sorry. Apparently, they made a video game at the same time with it to do a tie-in.

I don't know how well it's doing. I'm not a console gamer anymore. I actually... My Xbox is in a box in the garage. After my Rock Band addiction, coming clean with that, my 12-step after Rock Band, I put away the Xbox and...

I'm sensing a theme here, Jason. What? Dots for seven hours, had to delete the app. My Xbox is in a box. Yeah, well, I like my video games. What can I say? You know, I played Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 the day it came out and I beat it in 18 hours without sleeping.

Yeah, I may have a problem. I can't say that I feel I'm missing out on this not video game thing. You know, if I had to do it again, I would probably still do it, but I would not... At least I didn't get addicted to Warcraft.

I know too many people that got addicted to Warcraft cost them their lives, their businesses. Are people, like, living other lives now on these games? I have no idea. I stopped paying attention. They just plug in and that's it, and their real life doesn't even matter anymore, which terrifies me. I don't know if it's as prevalent as it was.

I think people have started to unplug from that. Good. Yeah. I mean, every now and again, I'll still pop in and play a game of Starcraft, but it's one game. 20 minutes. Right. You know, get my Protoss on, and I'm good. But, you know, these long-term, like, never-ending games, they'll just suck you in and bleed you dry.

Yeah. Great books about them, though. Great sci-fi books about that kind of stuff. Like what? Damn it. Hey, you brought it up, man. You got to look. Well, Stevenson's last one, which I know you didn't like. Oh, Reamed. Yeah. Or Reamed-y.

I just prefer Reamed. Yeah, Reamed. Actually, I liked it. I just didn't think it was up to snuff with something like Snow Crash. Well, no, it's no Snow Crash, but at least it's not that Mongolian crap he's writing right now. I thought it was Mongoloid. Mongoloid. I don't know what it is. Whatever. I tried to work my way through the first one.

I couldn't do it. Yeah. Did you know if his Kickstarter thing happened? He has a Kickstarter, too? No, he had. No, it was when Kickstarter first started. They wanted to build an engine for sword-fighting games. Oh. It was like a $2 million thing. Right, because he got totally into that for a bit. Yeah. Yeah, for the whole Garok cycle ship.

Which also was horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well. So, there you go. Okay, well. Lots of stuff for you guys to Google and check out that we like. Yeah. And sort of like. You know, seven hours is excessive. So, you can find us on the web at grumpyoldgeeks.com, on Facebook at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks.

You can also find us on Twitter, but we don't really use it for very much because neither of us can stand on Twitter. If you've been listening to the podcast, you know we're not on it that much. Yeah, that's twitter.com slash gogpodcast.com. And if you want to send us an email and tell us we're full of shit, or give us some ideas for shows, just write us at.

Sorry, I totally forgot our email address. Podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com. Podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com. Sorry, my bad. And yeah, please send us anything that you'd like us to review. Send us anything you'd like us to check out because I'm not really good with the apps and Jason is playing games all day.

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