15: The Boys are Back in Town

We're trying this again.

Yes, and this is going to be the problem with now doing this over Skype is we do not have the visual clues of looking at each other and knowing when we're each about to talk. Yeah, I know, I know. We could turn on the video, I guess, but it screws up the audio.

Yeah, it screws up the audio recording, so I already tried to test or two with that. Okay, well, I'm bored already, so we're back. We are back. We missed our first actual deadline. We did miss a week, unfortunately, because as we're about to explain, we were both traveling, and we did attempt, but the first attempt at any new technology or new attempt at doing something ends up horribly, plus we attempted really late at night.

Yeah, I don't think it was a technology failure. I think this was a pebcac failure. Exactly. And if you don't know what pebcac is, look it up. Yeah, so you're back from your Canada trip.

I'm ensconced in my mother's basement in rural Pennsylvania. Yes, yes. You have officially moved, and I just went on a little trip and came back. I was actually thinking about technology as we did that, because I believe you started driving about four or five days before I left, and we got to the East Coast at about the same time.

Yeah, and I mean, I flew through that. I did 2,000 miles in three days, then took a day off in Chicago, bought a laptop, because the three days without a laptop were nerve-wracking, to say the least, when people would email me, like, hey, this is important.

Can you come fix this? I was like, no, I can't, because I have been laptop-free for a while now, and no more. I picked up a new Air. It's gorgeous. It's beautiful. It's snappy. I need to get some more work to pay it off, but so, yeah, I took a day off there and then headed straight to Pittsburgh, and I have been here for about a little over a week and a half.

Excellent, excellent. Yeah, and I flew out to Toronto to see some families, some friends, and actually squeezed in quite a lot of work meetings and came home with some work. So I was there for about a week. I got to be there for Canada Day, which is their kind of bullshit made-up holiday, because we have the 4th of July, and I was there for 4th of July as well, but I did manage to find a hot dog and a Bud Light, so.

Oh, nice, nice. Yay, America. Did you have to pay import prices? No, no. I actually had a really nice-tasting hot dog, because it was not Farmer John's, and the Bud Light, they just looked at me funny. Say, look, man. It's our day.

It is our day. You can't complain about the Canadian micro-brews, though, so you're kind of near that area. So next time you get a chance, or next time I'm in Toronto, maybe you should come up and we can do a show from there, and I can treat you to some great Canadian micro-brews. Steam Whistle, shout out.

Awesome stuff. I love Toronto. I had a great time up there. I went up to go see Jay Goldman one time. He was, he's a tech guy, pretty cool, showed me around, and we had a bunch of the micro-brews. It was good stuff. Toronto's a cool place. Yeah, it's a really cool city. I've been spending an awful lot of time there, obviously, because my wife is from there.

The first time I ever went to Toronto, though, and this ties into Grumpy Old Geeks, was a hell of a long time ago, and it was a Shockwave developer conference. Nice. Yeah, very long time ago. Yeah, I think I had a WordPress developer conference when I was up there.

Yeah, it's a great city. It's a great city. Anybody that gets a chance to go there, don't hesitate. It's a lot of fun. Don't go in the winter, though. That sucks. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to the winter here. Maybe I'll make a break for it by the time that comes around. Well, it might be time for you to take an LA trip.

Yeah, definitely, for four to six months. So I noticed something now that I've been back here. This ties back into the work thing now that I have the laptop, and I've got my iMac set up, so I'm working on my workflows again, getting everything so I can, when I leave, I've got all my stuff.

But when I got back to sitting down to actually get back to work, as soon as I got all my gear set back up, I started to notice something very cool happening. Since I've left LA and had a nice, well, a kind of decompress on the trip, I did a couple days where I just didn't listen to anything.

It was just silence in the road and just, you know, clearing the mind. Yeah. But since I've kind of been here, I'm looking out my window at this beautiful green pasture. I can work so much faster now. I can punch out so much more stuff because I don't really have, like, all of the distractions of Los Angeles, like, around me all the time.

Really? It's crazy. It's crazy how much I can get done now. You know, it's kind of funny because I had the exact opposite on my trip. But then again, you know, I was in for a week and I had a ton of people to see and a ton of stuff to do. I found I really missed LA and kind of my routine here because I have a very, I also discovered how anal I am because I am so set in my ways with my routine here.

And I, you know, I get up at this time and I have my coffee and I get my workout in and then I do, you know, I check news and I respond to emails and then I have a little break. And I have a very, like, set regimented schedule that I try to follow here. I mean, it's not the same every single day, but it's pretty much the same throughout the week.

There's things I just do on Mondays and Tuesdays. And my time in Toronto was just so scattered because, you know, because I had so many people to see and there's the whole family aspect of it. So I wasn't, like, set up in a hotel the whole time. Not that I was couch surfing because, you know, I'm beyond that now.

But I am to the point where I'm able to guest room surf, which is nice. So I had guest rooms and, you know, I stayed with a couple of friends and bounced around a lot. But my schedule was all over the map and it totally screwed me up and I was really not very good, which is why I flew back the other day.

And it's just been a nightmare since then because I've just been trying to catch up on everything. And I feel like crap, too, because I was not following workout schedules and perhaps drinking way too many Canadian beers and those sorts of things. Yeah. I mean, well, and you look at the difference. You basically went from your house to Canada in five, six hours.

Yes. It took me five days. Yeah. You know, so I had that time to decompress and, like, get out of my normal routine. Yeah. Except I really did get in a terrible habit when I was driving. I ate. I hit the big three. I hit the first night I was there, hit Burger King.

The first night on the road, hit Burger King. Second day, hit Wendy's. Third day, hit Wendy's again. And then from Chicago to Pittsburgh, I hit McDonald's. Very nice. I have not had, like, fast food like that in probably seven or eight years. Right.

It was delicious. The stuff is good. It was totally delicious. I'm not going to lie. The first thing I did when we came back was drive down and out, so. Yeah. That's one of the things I do when I get back to L.A. too. But, yeah, it just, since I don't have all of the noise of L.A. anymore, I mean, my routine is completely different now, too.

I get up, have some coffee, eggs, relax, maybe read a little bit of the news. Then I can work out in the yard for about three hours. Yeah. You're a farmer boy now. Yeah. Well, we're trying to get this place up to ready to sell. Then I come in and I, you know, clean up and then get back to work.

But by the time I get back to work, it's just, like, completely zenned out and can just haul ass on everything. I'm not thinking about all sorts of other stuff. And when I'm done for the day, then I just, you know, can relax and do whatever. But I find that I can get my stuff done in the actual time that I told the client that it would take.

Yeah. Well, when you talk about distractions, do you think part of it is the fact that because you're kind of, no offense, I mean, kind of out in the middle of nowhere in terms of the Internet industry, is it because you don't feel like there's anything you can really be doing, like chasing work or networking that you have to be doing?

Because really the only way you can do it is via email. Yeah. Well, I've never done networking in person in San Francisco. In San Francisco, I go to parties. L.A., never. Just because it takes so damn long to drive anywhere. So I've been doing my networking and stuff just by email here like I did there.

But I don't know. It's just the noise of the city. Always so many options, you know? Yeah. And, like, what am I going to do for dinner? And you get a thousand different options here. It's like, what's in the fridge? Yeah. L.A. is pretty much crazy overload if you want it to be. So, yeah, it's a little bit – I think my situation is a bit different from yours just because I'm sitting right off the beach in Venice.

And I'm holed up in my little place and I kind of don't leave my castle, at least when I know I have to be working. During my work hours, I try not to leave. Then when I'm done, I go crazy. Yeah. So when I was trying to figure out what was going on, you know, I went back and reread a bunch of stuff on Analysis Paralysis.

Nice. And, you know, because when I sit down to work, I've got a thousand different things that I could be doing when I was in L.A. I'm like, oh, should I walk the dog? Should I hang out in the hot tub? Should I go for a walk? Should I do all this stuff? And it's like so many different things. And then I would get two hours of work done a day, but I'd be at the computer for 10 hours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, and then I came across an oldie but goodie TED video called The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. I'll link it in the show notes. It's one of my favorite TED Talks. It just talks about how choice is, you know, ruining us.

Yeah. And I totally agree with him. And now that, like, I've, like, forcibly taken the choice out of most of the things that I have to do, the local grocery store, you basically, like, you go to a Ralph's in L.A., you have everything. You take that and you, like, take a tenth of the choice that you have there.

That's the local giant grocery store here. Well, this is the Einstein thing, right? He had a closet full of the same exact suit, so he never had to spend any time thinking about what he's going to wear every morning. Yeah, I mean, I have nine black T-shirts. I love that theory. I do it all the time. I just haven't gone with the pants yet.

I'm way too fucking vain to ever do that because I like my clothes and how I look. So, but I totally, I mean, I think that, you know, a lot of people come and talk to me about, you know, starting up your own business and how I've been able to kind of do it for the 15-plus years that I've been doing it.

And it really, like, these kind of things that you're talking about, the TED Talk, the analysis paralysis, if that's not baked into you, it's going to be a struggle. Like, you have to learn it. For me, I'm just so, like, my mind just, like, makes grids all the time.

My time every day is a grid. My time is a grid. I look at everything as a grid. It's just built into me. So all that sort of stuff kind of comes naturally to me. Sure, I'll totally fuck off and, like, blow a few hours and get pissed off at myself going down some wormhole on the Internet every now and then.

But in general, like, one of my first things I do in the morning is I look – this is where I start to sound kind of insane. I have lists of lists. I have my master list, which is everything that I need to get done in my entire life. I have my work list. I have my personal list. And I look at those lists, and then every morning I make a what-I'm-doing-today list, and it's done in priority, and I knock them out one by one, the biggest priority first, no matter what.

And after I do every single thing or after I finish any one of those major tasks, that's when I slot in my go-workout, my personal stuff, all that sort of stuff. So for me, it's just – I'm kind of robotic that way. It's interesting that you make your daily list in the morning instead of the night before because I found that if I make it the night before, I sleep so much better because it's already out of my head.

Oh, it's the opposite for me. If I make it the night before, I will lay in bed going, oh, okay. And I start actually focusing on the problem already, and it's really difficult for me to get to sleep. Oh, see, once I put it down on paper and I know that it's going to be waiting for me in the morning, I can let it go.

I modify my master list at night, but I do my daily list in the morning first thing. Interesting. I sit down with a cup of coffee. Well, after I look at Huffington Post to make sure the world hasn't blown up or Kim Kardashian's tits haven't exploded, then I sit down and I do my day list. Have you read the book Checklist Manifesto?

I have not because I don't think I need to. Yeah, it sounds like you've already got that one kind of done. Yeah, I've never really kind of looked at any of those things, the seven habits of highly effective people, all that sort of stuff. I've skimmed the notes on it, but I'm like, I kind of do all that already.

Well, Checklist Manifesto is a little different from that because it just talks about straight up the merits of checklists because it goes through like doctors and how this guy got checklists introduced into emergency rooms and surgery theaters and completely knocked down death rates, infection rates, all sorts of things.

It's a really good read. It's really short. Highly recommend picking it up. I think I've done lists forever. People make fun of me. I'm known for having my lists. And like I used to always make the joke, I have my master list of lists so I can keep track of my lists. I mean, it's just, it's always been baked into me.

I probably started doing it when I was like 10. Wow. So it's kind of ridiculous. It's just, I find it to be the most effective way to keep yourself on time and on track and on top of everything. And if I don't do it, I feel itchy and scratchy and uncomfortable and like my life is spiraling out of control.

Oh, that's a motivator then. So it's, I'm just so used to it. I need it. And it is, I can't imagine how other people keep their lives in order without ever doing that. Yeah, I should probably do that. I mean, when I got, when I was at like two agencies ago, when I got there, they were basically their bread and butter was doing Facebook apps.

And we're sitting there and I'm like, okay, where's this, where's this, where's this, where's our icons for the app, where's our tracking from the client, all this different stuff. And it got to be such a joke is when a new guy started and I took him on his first Facebook app meeting. Right. And he's like, he was bringing up a lot of the things that I would bring up, you know, it's like, but the one that was the running joke was tracking.

Tracking from the client, either Google Analytics or Omniture, whatever the tracking that the client did. And he's like, he asked about it. I'm like, don't worry about it. That will happen three days after launch. Yeah. We will not get it before launch. We will get it three days after launch because the project managers never write it down.

So what I, what I ended up doing was I made a Facebook app checklist and I, when we started a new one, I circulated it to everybody on the team because everybody had a different role and we didn't launch it until every single thing was checked off. And you know what? It made everybody's life so much easier.

So I, I am, I am a fan of your checklist. I can highly recommend it. And I, you know, this is going to be funny because we're grumpy old geeks and we like to talk about apps and everything like that. Um, my favorite app in the world is a Moleskine notebook.

That's it. You already, yeah. You mentioned that before. That's, that's, I just, the physical act of actually writing these things down to me is so much more effective than typing them in or using some kind of app or whatever. It's just, I need my pen and actually my master list, my big lists are just on white paper and I write them out every night.

And then my Moleskine has, has the dates on one side and just a blank sheet on, on the right side of every week. And I just do my, you know, kind of like everything that has to get done on the week, it's written on the right hand side. And then I fill in my daily stuff on the left hand side and then I just go.

Yeah. I mean, for a one person team, that works great. But if you're in a team of 10 or five or even two, then that doesn't really work. Probably why I've never expanded my company. I don't know how to keep control of that. Well, there's, I was going to build a really nice web app for doing checklists and teams and all that stuff and save checklists and all that kind of thing.

But checklist.com pretty much exists and does it already and it's free. So I would, I would, I would not be doing a free app anymore. I might have to take a look at that because I still haven't solved my, my business partner checklist problem. So. Okay. Well, I may, it may still end up writing this because it's, the UI kind of sucks.

Okay. Well, shocking. We'll see. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's good to be back. Well, it's, it's, it's good for both of us to be settled in now so we can actually finally get back on the, on board with all this. Yeah. Except I leave for San Diego tomorrow. Well, that's why we're recording this today and we might be a little late next week as well, but we'll, we'll settle in.

So, so. Yes. Our, our, our, our good friend of the show who does our, our bumpers, uh, Mr. Robert Fogarty from Locker Gnome is, uh, getting married on Wednesday. So I got to go be best man. And congrats, Bob. I'm sorry. I won't be there, but, uh, I'll be, uh, sending my virtual thoughts and, and I'll drink along with you.

Yeah. Well, I got to go buy him that pizza and beer that we owe him for, uh, his voiceover work. Excellent. I'm sure he'll, I'm sure he'll, uh, redeem that one while I'm there. Comment of the week! Anonymous writes, hey, I was just listening to episode 12 of your podcast.

I wanted to let you know that NASA is currently working on a 3D printer to make food. We are only years away from a Star Trek replicator. Tea, Earl Grey, hot. Yes. And, uh, apparently extra pepperoni because it's, they're making it to make pizza. Well, if you were a geek, what, what would you make first?

Pizza sounds about right. Well, I'd like ribs or something. I don't know. Actually, a girl. I don't, unless you're a cannibal, I don't know if that really fits. Oh, food. Yeah. Well, whatever. Mr. Science over here.

Oh, God damn it. See, this is when I miss the fact that I can put music in because I'm totally dropping Oingo Bongo right now. Anyways, um, that's, yeah, I mean, I, I read that article as well, but I don't think they're anywhere near close to that. And, and, you know, people are already freaking out about just genetically modified foods, much less the vats of soon to be meat, which whatever the hell they were called.

Well, I'm waiting for that. Yeah. You saw like the $100,000 or $175,000 hamburgers. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're, we're more than just a few years away from a Star Trek replicator that's making food. I think we're probably a good generation away from that personally. So here, check this out.

So the pizza printer won't be a simple automated layering of sauce and anchovies. It will be a true 3D printer fabricating the different toppings from their component ingredients. This is important in space where the shelf life of food needs to be really, really long. All right.

Freeze dried pizza. Yeah. A digital recipe will be used to combine powders containing proteins and carbs and oils to create foodstuffs that have similar structure, taste, smell, and nutrition as the real thing. That's pretty damn cool.

I got to say. It's cool, but I didn't actually think it was possible to make a pizza that sounds less tasty than Pizza Hut. Domino's. I actually prefer Domino's to Pizza Hut. Oh, throw away, throw away the pizza and eat the box. It tastes better. Ah, well, yeah.

Grease, grease, grease, Pizza Hut. Anyways, let's not get embroiled in that debate. Although we should probably do that sometime. Oh, look. Now that I'm back here in the, on the East Coast, you know what they still have back here? What? Little Caesars. They still have, they have them out here. Although it's usually only in suburbs, like down in Anaheim by my parents.

We got, Little Caesars is what I had because my parents were so damn cheap growing up the whole time. I had to beg for Domino's. Oh, well, they, they don't advertise back there, but like the first night I was here, they had a Little Caesars commercial. I'm like, they still exist? Although, you know, my favorite was always Round Table.

Did you ever, did you guys have Round Table on the East Coast at all? Probably, but I just never ate there. They're very hard to find even here on the West Coast. They're almost out of business, but damn, that was good pizza. Oh, I'm hooked on Papa John's out in LA because I got my, my online ordering. I just basically hit repeat order and in 15 minutes I got a pizza at my door.

Technology rocks when it comes to pizza. See, like I said, if you're a geek, what's the first thing that you're going to make with a 3D printer? Pizza. There we go. Pizza. Well, thank you very much for your comment. Again, I think we're more than a few years away from this, but awesome. That's cool stuff.

Yeah. So if you want to send us a comment, go to grumpyoldgeeks.com and fill in the form. And if you want us to use your name on the air, unlike Anonymous did, click the little checkbox and we'll give you a shout out. Don't forget the checkbox because we don't want to get sued for our negative money that we're making.

Yeah. Or drop us an email at podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com. In the news. Since I just mentioned Earl Grey hot and did the kind of name check Star Trek Next Generation, John Luke Picard, this is a couple weeks old, but I thought this was cool as fuck.

And as the internet goes, you know, the kind of meme rolls out over time and I'm still seeing posts about it, so I thought I'd mention it. Patrick Stewart, who played John Luke Picard in Star Trek The Next Generation, was at Comica Palooza, which I believe is a British sort of Comic-Con type thing.

And did something kind of amazing. And we're going to put the video up in the show notes because it's actually worth a watch. He was asked a question about basically domestic violence while he was there. And he had his own experiences with this. I guess his mother was a victim of this from his own father.

And he just kind of, he ran over, he hugged this girl, and he gave this pretty amazing speech about how violence is never an option and there's no reason for it. And there's no reason for a man to ever beat a woman, although I can think of a few. Just kidding.

Here comes the hate comments. Yeah, you were doing so good, too. Well, you know, there's a thing called humor. Anyways, it's really freaking cool. It's worth a watch. It's one of those things that makes you smile and think that the world is actually not as horrible as it really is.

I got to agree. I saw it a couple weeks ago, and it's pretty moving, actually. Yeah, it really is. And John Luke, you know, John Luke, Patrick Stewart is a fucking kick-ass dude. Oh, totally. I actually got to see him do his one-man Christmas carol the first year I moved to L.A., and it was incredible.

Excellent. Such an amazing actor. But speaking of the world ending, Google has, this is the week that, actually, Jesus, no, it's been eight days now since Google finally turned on. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, no.

Is this what World War Z is about? Because I don't think anybody's seen it yet. Well, because they can't find theater times because they had their feeds going for their theaters. No, I mean, it really screwed me up because I have the Mac app reader, R-E-E-D-E-R.

Yes. I had that on my Mac, my iPad, and my iPhone. And they basically just stopped working, which there was kind of no real reason for them to stop working. If they were written properly, they should have just had the feed URLs and been able to pull the feeds on their own.

Yeah. Apparently, he didn't think that far ahead. So I had, I've been bouncing around, Dig, remember Dig from the old days? Yes, I do remember Dig. They, they came out with their version of a newsreader, which is, meh, not, it's, I mean, for a first, for a first attempt, pretty good.

I mean, I'll give it to them. It's pretty good. But, uh, I tried Feedly, which was the next one on the list. And I think I got to them right when they were in the, uh, the, uh, the herds of people migrating to them because there was no import for, uh, OPML files.

Right. There was, and like half of it wasn't working. So I spent like two hours manually putting in my feeds and I just got tired of it. I'm like, fuck this. And then I, I bitched about it on Facebook and everyone's like, no, Feedly's great. Check it out. I'm like, what? Went back. Okay. Feedly does, it, it, it's kind of working now.

Um, their iPad app doesn't work at all. Uh, but yeah, it was just, I just, the, the point of this is I just want to get to the point where Marco Arment makes a beautiful, Marco Arment's the creator of Instapaper and on every podcast known to man.

Uh, he, he did a great blog post about the demise of reader and why they shut it down, which I will link in the show notes. Why did they shut it down in a, in a nutshell? You know, I'd have to go back and reread it cause I read it and I'm like, right on.

That's it. That's cool. And now I've promptly forgotten everything about it cause it's over and I didn't want to, I don't need to keep that in my head. It's gone. I'm done. Got it. Well, I have two thoughts on this. Uh, the first off is I don't use a custom RSS feed. I just surf around for my stuff.

I can see the point of doing it, especially if you're a niche industries or whatever, but I, I guess I prefer to just move around a little bit and get different takes and whatnot. So, so I've never, I never used Google reader. I played with it for a bit, but I never got addicted to it. Um, it is odd that nobody leapt up to kind of have a replacement ahead of time.

That was as good, but then again, Google had a long time to kind of get it to where it was. Yeah. It's a, it was a really good product and I never actually, I don't, I didn't use Google reader for, as a reader. Okay. I, I used it as glue. I, it's basically with the Google reader API, you can have other third party readers that tie into your Google reader account that would basically sync across multiple devices.

What you've read. Okay. That's super geeky. Yeah. It was just an API hub for me. Okay. And then thought number two was, um, going back to this whole checklist thing. I do believe that we talked about Google reader going away in one of our first recordings ever that we did.

That's never been released because we got too drunk and said too many bad things. So you've known for ages, this thing was going away. Right. But I, I had hoped that, I'd hoped that the software that I'd bought and paid for had, had the wherewithal to get their shit together in time.

Okay. We didn't have to worry about it. So they've known for ages that this was going away and they just didn't do anything about it. Yeah. No, it just stopped working. Right. So. Yeah. Well, I dealt with a really similar issue and this is actually kind of a funny thing that, that I've been talking about with my clients recently is, you know, we've talked about this a couple of times too.

Back in the day, we kind of built everything ourselves. We didn't rely on third parties and APIs and all that sort of stuff. And now we do and, you know, things like even just like Twitter shutting off their version one of their API and their JSON calls and switching to one one, which screwed up a lot of people's sites because we'd all built these custom things.

And, of course, I knew about it because I actually tried to pay attention to that sort of thing. But I know tons of people didn't because Twitter didn't make a big ballyhoo about it beyond the dev circles. So it's when you start to rely on these third party things and they just shut down or change or no longer degrade gracefully, you're screwed.

Well, this is – this comes back to – this is actually a part of what Marco was talking about was that RSS is just an open standard that we all used. It's still there. You can use it. It's great. When you get these big companies that are basically, you know, usurping all of that traffic and turning it in on itself so it just makes them bigger, then it becomes a problem.

And then you're beholden to them. But like in the old days, we had all open APIs, like at Technorati, open API, use it as much as you want. We had tracking to make sure like somebody didn't go crazy with it and we could turn them off. But it was just an open ecosystem like Twitter was in the old days.

And over time, once a service becomes too popular, they can't afford to do that. But that's – I mean why RSS was so great was – and it still is great. And I'll get to why in a second because I'll still get to that. But it's an open standard. Everybody can use it.

You don't have to pay anybody for it. It just makes things work, you know? Kind of like music or movies. You don't have to pay anybody for them. Then they just work. Okay. Sorry. But now that I'm going back to like my clean Zen mind now, I'm going back and reading a lot more now that I have the time and the peace of mind that, oh, my work is done.

I can go read for an hour and go hit – with RSS, I can hit 100 sites and just scan them and pick out the good stuff, mark it to read later, send it to Instapaper. Or just read it while I'm sitting there and enjoy myself and take my time.

So now it just – the reader shutdown happened at a really inconvenient time for me now that I'm back into reading a lot of news and getting – dipping my toes back in the water of all the stuff that I've kind of – that Tim Ferriss got me on the information diet.

I'm like, oh, no, guess what? You can get too anorexic and die or too skinny and die on the information diet. You need to feed your mind with what's going on if you're going to be relevant. Yeah, I mean that's incredibly true. I guess I just personally have always kind of relied on aggregators or – if I want my tech news, I'll go look at Engadget, scan their headlines.

And then I'll go over to Slon for kind of a snarky take on popular culture from a very liberal perspective. And I'll look at BBC if I want hard news. And I'll look at HuffPost if I want to see celebrity boobies. So I've never done the kind of RSS thing and I've always just kind of scanned around to sites I know that specialize in kind of having an editorial voice in specific areas.

Yeah, but I mean it's the same thing but you just don't have to deal with changing sites and you have just the article. You have the words. You don't have to deal with all of the crappy chrome and the image galleries that like are a page load for every photo in it.

You can skip that crap. That's why it's nice. Yeah. It's efficient. If you're trying to consume a ton of news, it's way more efficient and you can just get smarter faster. There you go. So that's – that's why I'm just bummed it went away because it was – You totally just sold me on – you just totally sold me on a product that doesn't exist anymore.

All right. That's what I'm here for. Can I interest you in some gopher? How about some Jolt? Oh. I actually never – I actually never liked that because I thought it tasted like ass. It did taste like ass. I could never understand why people drink that shit.

Now I want a Red Bull. Oh. Well, you can get that. I know but now I'm in the woods, man. I can't run down to the corner store. Wait. There's no pink dot there? No pink dot. There's pink mule. Somebody with a mule looking at something. Oh.

To give you a little insight into how far out I am, we cut down a 100-foot tree that fell the other day. There's five guys out there, two dogs, a tractor, a trailer, and two chainsaws. We cut this thing down in two and a half hours, took all the leaves, made an eight-foot-tall pile in the middle of our yard.

This was actually on the 4th of July. That's pretty impressive. And we lit it on fire. Well, to be fair, we haven't exactly not seen that sort of thing in Venice Beach, but this is a little special place. But – and to also tell you where I'm at, for like 10 years, there were no cops here because the city couldn't – the town basically went bankrupt.

And this was like Deadwood. There was no law, period. So if something went wrong, you had to call the state police. And if they came out and determined that it was a bullshit call, they would just bill you for the $300, $400. So they finally got cops back, and as soon as – we had, you know, 200-foot plume of smoke going up in the yard, and I'm just like tripping out.

Cop starts rolling on by. Keeps on going. I'm like, all right. We're in the middle of nowhere. Excellent. Sorry for that aside, but – okay. Trivy was my crap app a while ago because basically it broke on me for about a week and a half or two weeks or three weeks or whatever, and I wrote them a few times.

They never got back to me. I have to say they did redeem themselves. They redeemed themselves a while back. I'm sorry we didn't get around to giving you your props, but they wrote me back directly. Not only that, they pushed out a new update specifically for my problem, which solved my problem.

And I'm back happily playing trivia with all you bastards again. Well, since it was your problem, it was my problem because you're the only person I played. And since you've been in Canada, you haven't accepted my new game, or at least I haven't gotten a notification from it yet.

I played you back today. Oh, no notification. Oh, really? Okay. Well, they also pushed out a lot of new things, which don't seem to be working so well, so we'll see. They're trying. They're trying. They split up. They redid their categories for when you're picking what you want to play.

There seem to be some new questions. When I delve down in deep to specific categories, they're still the same old questions, but they do seem to be building out their database a little bit more. And they definitely worked with me to actually get my app working again, which is nice. Perfect. Well, that was nice. Yeah. So well done, guys.

Yeah. In the vein of redemption, since it seems to be a week of redemption, I trashed on Camera Noir, a black and white photo app that basically I paid for and just would not run on the 4S. In short order, they've also put out a couple of updates and they work pretty well, I got to say.

And for a black and white photo app, it's only got three settings, which makes it really nice for me because I don't have the attention span to twiddle with knobs. I've got some photo apps that I'm never going to use because you open it up and there are 13 sliders and buttons and twitters and all that stuff.

And I'm just like, dude, it's a phone. I got a DSLR for that. You know, I just want to take a nice picture. Yeah. So but these guys, they think these guys kind of nailed it and give it a shot, I guess, if you're into black and white iPhoneography, it's it's pretty good.

So that one filter on Instagram, black and white, doesn't cut it? Actually, they have two black and white filters on Instagram and both of them are terrible. I don't I don't like either one of them. It seems like they're using like a yellow. Like if you ever did like actual black and white photography and you'd go out and put a yellow filter on, it seems like they're skewing towards that.

I personally like the red filter because it makes the sky pop. But, you know, that's just me. There you go. And also app wise this week, I haven't been able to get a whole lot of new stuff because I'm still running. I actually I went back to iOS 6 for the drive because I didn't I needed my phone to work in case I got stuck in the middle of Utah, which turns out wouldn't have been a problem anyway, because the 120 miles where I would have gotten stuck in Utah.

There was no cell service. So and it would it also seems that Nebraska is completely on the edge network. I did not get 4G or 3G once going across Nebraska, but neither here nor there. Well, neither is Canada, by the way.

So don't don't head up there if you plan on trying to do that. So you got Roger by Rogers. I got Roger by Roger. It happens every time. So I went back to beta 2 and apparently beta 3 just came out and they've changed the font already.

Oh, really? Yeah. I can't wait to see it. They've gone from Helvetica Noi light to Helvetica Noi regular. So I so, yeah, I had a problem with them. It was just way too skinny. And I know that anybody with any kind of vision problems was going to be it is going to be impossible to see.

So I'm going to as soon as we're done, I'm going to download that and give it a shot. So hopefully they're fixing things as they come. So, right. But still, the keyboard with no caps case thing is just, oh, it's ridiculous. You've got to look at what you're typing to see if it turns into caps so you can't just like flip through it.

But, okay, neither here nor there. But, yes, Camera Noir and Trivi, good on you guys. Wait, when is this scheduled for release, the new iOS, by the way? They're never, they're scheduled when they're done. Oh, so no date yet. Okay, gotcha. Well, it usually coincides with the launch of the new phones.

Right. That's why I'm going to hold off. And I was going to pick up a 5 because finally AT&T is going to let me buy one without, you know, raping me with sans lube. Sans lube. Sans lube. Because, yeah, the $200 phone will cost me $500 up until nine days from now, actually.

Well, see, I just upgraded the 5, so I've got like two years until I do another upgrade. Yeah, I'm waiting. Well, this is like a year and a half on my 4S or whenever it was. But I'm going to wait and see what's coming out because the 4S is fine. You know, the 5 is nice. Yeah, it's got some cool bells and whistles, a little faster, whatever.

But the 4S is like more than, it's faster than most computers I've ever owned. So I'm digging it. I'm digging it. I'm going to shoehorn a bit of a follow-up on this week in false advertising here as well. This week in false advertising. Because I actually just find it really hilarious.

You just left LA, what, a week and a half, two weeks ago? Week and a half, yeah. And the entire reason I was getting all the blinds put up on my upstairs where we were doing our podcast was it got too hot. So 84 days ago, I contacted 3 Day Blinds.

3 Day Blinds. And had them, you know, come over and consult and come up with these cool, like, little remote control-y, blind-y things. And they were supposed to be done within two weeks, which even at that point, my brain was going, your name is 3 Day Blinds. Why two weeks?

84 days later, today, this afternoon, they came in and finally installed the final blind. And it keeps it nice and cool up here, Jason. Too bad you're not here. Yeah, I'm missing it. Yep. Well, congratulations on your three-day blinds. Well, I'm glad I could get it done just in time for you to leave town.

Yes. But when I come back, it'll probably be in the middle of winter and we won't need them. Exactly. It's the library. So I just finished reading Wool by Hugh Howey, which actually didn't start off as Wool. It was a series of small, short stories that were collected together into a, what do they call that?

I can't even remember. Compendium? A compendium, I believe. Anthology, maybe? Anthology, perhaps. They called it the Omnibus Edition. There we go. Well, there you go. I guess it's called the Omnibus. So I would, Wool Omnibus Edition, perfect for your Kindle or your Kindle reader.

It's, you know, kind of your pretty straightforward sci-fi book. Nice. Really interesting. Nothing, you know, it doesn't change your life. It's no crazy sci-fi book that changes the entire genre. But it was well done.

But what was really interesting to me about this was, you know, again, being grumpy old geeks and the changing way that everything goes now, this was self-published. He wrote it as a standalone short story using Amazon Kindle's direct publishing system.

So never went through a major publisher, never got a ton of money, just did it. And it caught on. And not only did it kind of catch on, he sold the film rights to 20th Century Fox for a shit ton of money.

Not bad. Yeah. So he's actually got a distributor now for hardcover books in those few bookstores that are left. But overall, I mean, this is just a guy, had a dream, had a story, liked it enough, went out on a limb.

I actually don't know enough about him to know if he actually shopped it around first. One would think he probably did, because why wouldn't you? And probably got rejected. And then just went ahead and did it. And through word of mouth and tireless self-promotion, he's probably a multimillionaire now.

Excellent. And he's written a pretty good book. I actually really did enjoy Wool, the Omnibus edition. I think everybody should read that. I went ahead and read his follow-up to it, Shift, which is also an Omnibus edition, because apparently he only likes to do short stories, which is kind of cool.

Didn't care so much for how he continued the story, but the initial story, great. Really engaging, interesting read. Tore through it. Good stuff. Cool. I had to check that out. Really cool that he did it all by himself. I mean, I think that's just amazing, when you actually see these success stories of people doing the self-publishing.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of that stuff coming around lately. And most of it's like how-to books and SEO marketing and stuff like that. So it's cool to see somebody who's writing fiction actually bust through and make it that way. I mean, I would love to, but I don't write fiction, and I don't write how-tos, and I know fuck all about SEO.

So I'm pretty much out of that game. Well, we're waiting for the podcast to start bringing the money in. Oh, yeah. Rolling in it. We're going to get the film rights for grumpy old geeks. It's already been done. It's called Wayne's World. Damn it. And they were more entertaining.

That's true. They had a guitar. And Tia Carrera. Yeah. So, oh, Tia. I have a book. I have a book. Oh, you read a book. Now, did you read or did you listen since you were driving for how many days? Listen to this. Okay.

Those were pages being turned. Wow. That's a book. This is a book. And this is actually a book that I have read twice so far. And I'm bringing up this book because I'm reading another book by the same author, but I'm not done with it yet, so I can't really talk about it that much.

Right. But this book is Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, the great Stoic philosopher. Did you ever read any Seneca in your college days? I have not read Seneca, no. I've spent a lot of time in Seneca, and I've been into – in multiple Senecas in multiple states, but I've never read Seneca.

Now, this is one of the good books that Tim Ferriss did turn me on to before he started talking about it, like back in the day when we were just hanging out. And it's quite possibly one of the – this – I think this is the original self-help book. Right. But in the first two chapters of it, you can go through and pick out sentences that people have built empires on.

Yes. I'm sure Tony Robbins has read Seneca. But the fact that this was written in – well, he lived from 4 B.C. to 65 A.D. Right. So Mofo is old. Okay. Yeah. But it's just – it's a great book on just the philosophy of life.

Yeah, they're just letters that he was – that he wrote to – I forget the guy's name because, you know, I don't care who he's writing to. I care about who he was writing them. Right. Yeah. No. I recommend getting the Penguin Classics edition.

Get it in paperback because I don't think they come – I don't think this comes in Kindle yet. When I got my copy, I couldn't get it on Kindle but that was – this is a beat-up old copy now because I've carried it around with me for a long time. Well, as I do with all of your suggestions, I will actually try to get it so I'll report back on whether it's on Kindle or not next week.

Okay, good. So the actual book that I'm reading right now is called On the Shortness of Life, which is so far just amazing, completely amazing because he talks about how even back then people would waste their time on stupid pursuits.

Basically, he talks about the TV of the day, you know, wasting your time on drink and lust and political pursuits and all this crap and never taking time for yourself. Wait, drink, lust, and political pursuits? That's basically my entire day in front of the computer. I think you need this book.

Okay. It says that life is long if you just take time to realize it and spend time, you know, for you. Right. And, I mean, I've had this book in the pile forever. I just haven't gotten to it because it's so short. I think, oh, that will just take a day to knock out and I haven't ever done it.

So now I'm actually doing it. That's what I read when I go to bed at night and wake up in the morning and just kind of sit in bed and absorb it. I'm taking my time reading it because I want to, you know, take it all in. But it's really good. It is a little bit – the writing is a little dense just because of the style of the language.

But those are my two picks. I mean, like I said, I'm not done with On the Shortness of Life yet, but I'm going to guarantee right now it's going to be a forever pick for me. Excellent. But definitely Letters from a Stoic is a longer read. It's a couple hundred pages, but just chock full of really cool insights from back in the day.

Fantastic. I'm definitely going to be downloading it because I just finished up another one of your older suggestions. So I'm ready for a new book. What was one of my older suggestions? Well, I went through – damn it. I can't remember the author's names. I went through all of the really good books that you had told me about.

You read the Suarez books, yeah. Yeah, I read the Suarez and I just finished the Avogadro Corporation by Hurtling, which I think you mentioned but probably not on a recording. I've never heard of it. Oh, really? That wasn't me, yeah. Oh, okay. It was under the same listings and suggestions as the other ones, so I thought that was the one that you had talked about, which is actually pretty good too, so people should take a look at that.

All right, cool. Yeah. All right. So we'll link that one in the show notes. Yeah, we'll have it all in the show notes, and yeah, we'll talk next week once I've downloaded or found out if it's on Kindle or not or actually made a run over to Barnes & Noble and used a gift card I've had since my birthday. That's where I actually got mine was at Barnes & Noble.

Excellent. So I used to love checking out productivity blogs. I was a huge fan of Merlin Man, 43 folders, you know, the whole nine yards, a little bit of lifehacker, didn't really get into it that much.

So I don't know how I came across this, but you go to the site and it just says at the top, my productivity blog.

Little paragraph, so I was about to start a productivity blog, but that's kind of oxymoronic, isn't it? How productive will you be while reading a blog? Want a productivity tip? Go away and do it fucking now. That's it. Seriously? Get out of here. Okay, that's it.

It's just like... Exactly. And I agree 100%. I mean, I do enjoy Lifehacker and you get some fun tips about how to speed things up or different ways to do things in your life. But yeah, people who spend all their time reading books about being productive, just fucking do it.

Yep. There you go. Yeah, just start. Yeah. Best way to get something done, do it. Closing shout outs! When I was doing my little layover in Chicago, I got to go see a friend of the show, Mike Vinicor, the punk vault dude, who has been a friend of the show for a while now and has dubbed you the F-H-King.

And he kind of read me the riot act a little bit. Right. Basically, he said that we can't be trusted. Oh, really? Well, as much as we bitch about Kickstarter, we actually funded a Kickstarter project. We funded a Kickstarter project about drinking. I know, but we funded a Kickstarter.

I'm telling you what the people are saying. No, no, I hear you. Actually, he has a semi-point because, as I've said all along, I actually think Kickstarter is great for amateurs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, little technology things. What I didn't like it for was celebrities, and Zane Lamprey is a semi-celebrity.

And he's trying to get a TV show that everybody passed on. So, point taken, yes. And I do believe I did call out I was hypocritical when I said I did it. Okay. So, I embrace my own hypocrisy. Okay. And since you are the voice of the anti-Kickstarter campaign, I didn't feel bad because I like Zane and I couldn't give a shit less.

That one's all on you, brother. But I'm just going with the people saying, so Mike had a second point. Okay. This one is probably all on me. After we went through the kerfuffle with Squarespace trying to get them to fix our podcast feed so we could get our stats and all that stuff through FeedBurner.

Right. I came out and said, customer for life, because they had the best customer service, hands down. Right. And then I came out and said, we're leaving Squarespace. Well, I mean, you're still happy with Squarespace. You're just not happy with the way that they handle our particular milieu, the podcast.

Yeah, well, honestly, if it was nothing else, it's finances because I am spending $20 to $40 a month. Well, the first month I had to spend $40, and now I'm spending $20 a month on podcast hosting to actually host the media files on Libsyn so we can get stats on the downloads.

We can actually see how many people downloaded it. You can't get that at Squarespace. Nope. Period. I thought we might be able to get it through FeedBurner with their enclosures and all that stuff. Nope. So here's the deal. I got a hosting account set up at Media Temple.

It's unlimited. I can put as many sites there as I want. So instead of giving Squarespace $20 a month that I'm not making back on doing this show, I'm going to put it on a WordPress install that doesn't cost me any more. So this is a completely financial decision.

It's not about – I would – trust me, I don't want to move a website. I do that. People pay me a lot of money to do that. I don't want to do that in my spare time. Well, I actually have a more overarching point about this, which is you can't call us hypocrites or tell us that we're all full of shit and we can't be trusted.

This is a podcast. We are not writing a book on how to do these sorts of things and then charging you $14.95 for it. We are bullshitting in real time for free and talking about the shit that we're actually doing and trying to figure out how it works. And you're learning for free from us about what works and what doesn't.

So shut up. So fucking shut up. Okay. Okay. You're going that route. I'm down with that. I'm down with that. Yeah. No, I mean it is what it is. I mean the whole idea of a technology podcast is things are in motion. If we tried to hold everybody to everything that they said from even two weeks ago, of course you're full of shit because things change real fast.

I hated Trivia two weeks ago. Now I love it again. What are you going to do? I hated Movable Type two weeks ago. Oh, wait. I still hate Movable Type. I don't even think they're around anymore. Oh, probably not. Who knows? Yeah, I mean things change in this world and we're giving you our opinions at the time and I don't think we're shy of doing mea culpas when we realize we're full of crap.

Yeah, and honestly it's not the technology that Squarespace has because if we're doing the blog thing, they're great. Yeah, it was great. I put a couple people on there. They're happy as can be. I'm actually going to move my stepdad's band's website. Yes, my stepdad has a band. So I'm putting his band's website on Squarespace because honestly WordPress is just too complicated for them to keep maintained and deal with the calendar and stuff and the show dates and all that.

So I'm going to put them on Squarespace. So I'm like Indiana Jones with the gold statue in the bag of sand. I'm just swapping one for the other. It didn't really work out that well for Indy but – You've got to get one of those hats, man. You'd look good in it, especially on the farm. Oh, I actually have – this is weird but I have a black leather fedora which we were drunk in Long Beach at a haberdashery and then things just kind of went sideways.

Like you do. I can't remember. You know, I'm always in a haberdashery getting drunk. Well, Bob walked out with a tri-corner hat. You know, we all came out with hats. It's what you do in Long Beach. There's not a whole hell of a lot else to do besides eat seafood, drink a lot, and buy hats.

Yep. Gotcha. So, I mean, that's about it. So hopefully next week we will be on time, hopefully. We're going to try to. We're definitely shooting for that. And, you know, thanks for sticking with us. Thanks for letting us go a week by when we were settling into kind of new situations.

And hopefully this is all – we're settling in now and we're ready to go, I think. And I'm happy to be back doing it, man. I missed you last week. Yeah, I did too. This is – it is definitely the highlight of my week. And hopefully now that things have calmed down, it will get more interesting again. We can get some people on the show now that we have figured out the ways of the three-way Skyping and all that good stuff.

Yes, we do have some guests already lined up, so it will be good. Yep. So thanks for sticking with the downtime and we will be back next week. Exactly. If you want to, please go to iTunes and leave us a five-star rating and review.

Or if you've already done that, which we would appreciate that you already have, sneak onto your mom's computer when she's not around and sign her up and have her rate it too. Or your sister, your brother. You know, we're not – a little cheating never hurt anybody. Exactly.

But, hey, that's how it works. And check us out at grumpyoldgeeks.com. We're going to start posting more stuff up there once I get it moved from Squarespace. Sorry, Mike. Sorry. And it actually makes it easier. It makes it easier for us to post the cool stuff that we find during the week because we've got a ton of stuff that we just don't cover on the show because it's already out of date.

Yeah. And, you know – We just think it's boring by the time we get to do the show. Yeah, because we've already seen it and everybody's done it. But since I'm reading so much news now, I have tons of stuff that come through the pipe that's just fun and want to get it out there.

So subscribe to the RSS on Grumpy Old Geeks and you'll get the cool new stuff. Yeah. Shame you can't get in Google Reader anymore. Oh, well. So that change will happen next weekend when I get back from Bob's wedding. Excellent. Happy wedding, Bob. And thanks for listening, guys.

And we'll see you all next week. All right. Later. Keep up with the Grumpy Old Geeks on the web at grumpyoldgeeks.com, on Facebook at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks, or email them at podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com. Have a good week.

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