16: Sum Ting Wong

Scrummy Old Geeks. Two old farts, a microphone, and the internet. What could go wrong?

Hey Brian, I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling. You were late, so I was looking at a bunch of watches from a site that we'll talk about later. But they've got a blog with six of these watches that I will never be able to afford, and they're gorgeous. And I'm drooling all over my microphone, and damn you for being late.

Sorry for being late. Bastard. Yeah, it's just running a few minutes late. We're actually recording on a Sunday, which we've never really done before, and that's a big errand day for me. So a little late, but here I am. I don't get the watch thing. I know so many people that are into watches, and I haven't had a watch since I basically got a pager that had a little clock on it.

I was always a watch geek. I've had tons and tons of watches. I still have a few. I've got one or two nice ones that I wear when I go out, but I don't collect them like I used to. I used to have like 30 or 40 watches, and yeah. It was one of those things. Like in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, humans still think wristwatches are a nifty idea.

Right. Yeah, I'm not on board with that, so more power to you guys. But I do see that one that you posted looks pretty cool, so we'll talk about that later. Well, it was on a site that you want to talk about, so it's your damn fault. Yeah, that one's my fault. I actually blame Facebook advertising for that one. That's how I came to know that site, so we'll get to that later.

So, did you get to read any of the books? I have not read it yet, but I can now confirm that Seneca's On the Shortness of Life, and the other one, actually his old collection, is available for Kindle, and I have purchased and downloaded. But I'm still working through one of the crappy sci-fi books that I'm on, so I will get to that next.

Okay, because yeah, I was all ready to, I thought you were ready to go, because I saw you posted to our little mammoth board that you found them. I downloaded them both on Kindle, so I can get rid of the paper versions. And I'm 70% finally through On the Shortness of Life, and it is better than I expected.

Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm sure we can talk about it probably by next week, because I'm almost done with this book. But yeah, I just said I would follow up on whether it was available on Kindle or not, and that is my follow-up, hence the post. Okay, well, there goes 10 minutes I had to talk about, so I'll be saving that one for next week.

Yeah. Well, let's hear about your crazy trip and Bob's wonderful Noopitals, which I noticed was on a pirate ship, which is pretty awesome. Well, it was actually on the HMS Surprise, which if you've seen, I think that ship was in Pirates of the Caribbean 4.

But it was also the main ship from Master and Commander. Oh, there you go. Yeah. It was a pretty cool little ship. The, you know, Tuesday was a whole day of flying and drinking and reading on the planes, multiple planes. Yes. And the wedding itself took 14 minutes.

Oh, that's the way they should be, to be honest. Yep. Stacy, the bride, was like, can't you just say you're hitched and we can go about our day? And the reverend was like, yeah, I don't think that's legal in California, so we had to go through a little bit of it.

And we went on a big cruise down the bay and took some pictures. And then the next day we went to the coolest part, which is the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. It used to be called the Wild Animal Park. I remember it well. I grew up down here. We used to go down there a lot as kids.

Yeah. It's super cool. And we did the, like, three-and-a-half-hour tour behind-the-scenes dealio, fed a bunch of giraffes who licked all over, up and down my arms, which was kind of gross. I hear the tongues are scratchy. Is that correct? No, it actually wasn't.

It wasn't too scratchy. They're creepy and prehensile and will reach out. The fun fact of the tour, in regards to giraffes at least, is for every foot that a giraffe is tall, their tongue is one inch long.

So it's like a 13-foot giraffe will have a 13-inch tongue. Who knew? Yeah. I didn't. There you go. Learn something new every day. So, yeah. Yeah. I haven't been to that park in probably, oh, gosh, well over 25 years.

But the San Diego Zoo and then the Wild Animal Park were big draws back in the day. You know, we were bused down from school as, like, field trips and that sort of thing. So very cool places. Yeah. I highly – I can't recommend the zoo enough. But as far as, you know, just a different type of experience, I definitely liked the safari park.

This is my second time. And, I mean, we just did the three-hour tour, three-and-a-half-hour tour, and we were just so knackered after it. We went and watched a cheetah run really fast for, like, literally, like, two seconds and took off because we were so tired because you get so much in that tour.

Right. It's crazy. I mean, it's not cheap. It's definitely not cheap. But the tour guides were top-notch, and they let you do a whole bunch of fun stuff. So – Very cool. Highly recommended. I'm actually thinking about heading down to San Diego in maybe a month or two, so that might be a stop. Oh.

I'll definitely check it out. So, yeah, and then I had to fly back on Friday. I am now convinced – I mean, I didn't have to be that convinced before, but American Airlines is hands down the worst airline I've ever flown in my life and will never fly them again.

It's like they have the jankiest fleet. It's all these old MD-80s, you know, the ones with the engines on the tail. Yes, yes. That you never see anymore. That's like all they've got. Right. And they're – the service was atrocious between San Diego and Dallas and back and forth.

I actually had the same flight crew or part of the same flight crew going out and coming back. Right. And there was this dude on there who was just snotty as can be, uppity, and didn't even give me my damn sandwich after I paid for it.

I had to call him back. He was like, oh, I'm sorry. That never happens here. Even the guy next to me was like, what a dick. Wow. But when I came back – here's the kicker though. When I came back, I was leaving San Diego, coming to Dallas, and I look in the cockpit because I always like to stick my head in the cockpit when I get on, see what's going on, you know, get a little something, something, see what kind of the vibe is in there.

And the captain – I don't know if it was the captain or the co-pilot – basically had his pre-flight checklist clipboard out. Yeah. And I could see the stuff underneath and on top of it – he was doing a crossword puzzle about 20 minutes before takeoff.

I thought that was slightly disconcerting. Well, you know, perhaps they were so on the ball that they finished quickly, Jason. Well, the other guy was flipping switches and talking and the other guy was just like 23 across. He was just – he was checked out. And then I had – you know, I had a beverage.

It was like a two-and-a-half-hour flight. I had a beverage and then just took a little bit of a nap and woke up about 13 to 14 minutes before we landed. And I see people running around and I've still got my cup, tray tables down. They never came and got it. They just kind of let it sit.

I had to like grab everything and shove it in the seat and just hang on. It was so unprofessional that it was just – it boggled my mind how unprofessional they were. Unprofessional in a bad way, unlike the kind of fun unprofessional of Southwest. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I actually – I mean I just – I won't fly any American airline anymore if I can avoid it. Not just American air. I mean U.S. Air, United. I can't stand American airlines. They're the worst. So any chance I get, I will happily fly any other country's airline except for perhaps, you know, like Air Uganda.

Probably not a good choice. Yeah, U.S. Air is second in the worst category and they're out of Pittsburgh here so I get stuck with them every now and again. I never have a problem with United. I've never had a problem. And the reason I flew them for so long was Channel 9. You got to listen to tower comms.

So you can listen to everything. I love doing that on flights. And, yeah, nobody does it anymore. They've taken it completely off. I mean I kind of had a feeling after 9-11 that might be going away anyways. But it lingered on United for quite a while. But I fly United if I have to do domestic just because of the partnerships and the travel miles that I have.

But, yeah, they got rid of it. It hasn't been on any flight I've been on in the last, like I'd say, four years. Yeah, it's about four years. And what they did was they gave it – they handed it over to pilot discretion because I actually cornered a captain one time. And I'm like, why wasn't it on? And he's like, eh, one of our guys had a problem not too long ago and we just decided to kind of stop doing it.

And the crazy part was there was one time – I think I told you this story when we were coming into Chicago almost ready to land. And I heard the plane in front of us declare a bird strike as he was taken off. And about like five seconds later – because we were almost on the deck. Right. Engines gun up. We take off.

And I was in the front row in first class. And I saw the whites of the eyes of the flight attendant. Her eyes got so big. And she was just like, oh. And I'm like, no, it's OK. It's a bird strike. Like I tap my thing and she's like, I don't know what happened. I'm like, no, no, no.

Calm down. Calm down. Because when the plane moves and then you know why it's moving – It's not that big of a deal. It's not that big of a deal at all. Yeah. That's why I like listening too. I just – there's a bit of an awareness. The flying thing and just being completely out of control is what bothers me about being on a plane.

I'm not piloting. And I don't know what's happening. And I loved listening. It was great. But I'm not surprised that they got rid of it because people are stupid. It should be standard on every flight. You should be able to hear what the hell is going on. I agree. So that's all I got from the trip.

The wedding was good. They're hitched. We had good food. We drank a lot. I'm still trying to catch up on four days of not working. Right. So it doesn't help that I got back to the loveliness of Pennsylvania where there was a giant storm the day I – like the day after I left and more trees fell.

So we've been cutting wood and like I want to write code. I can't cut wood today. It's an interesting combination of tasks you're taking on on a daily basis right now. I know. It's so bizarre. It's like seriously, the morning is sweating and muddy and dirty and chainsaws and tractors.

And in the afternoon, I'm like, oh, how should I inherit this class? Very, very strange. But, you know, it's fun. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? In the news. Speaking of horrific flights and horrible things with airlines, did you happen to see what happened with that Asiana crash?

I mean, obviously, we all saw the crash, but the news reporting in San Francisco? Yes, I actually did. Oopsies. Well, would you care to explain it for those people who – like the few people who haven't seen it yet or heard about it? Sure. No problem.

So a few days or – I guess it wasn't the same day. I believe it was a day or two after the crash. There was some reporting on a local station up in San Francisco Bay Area that listed the Asiana flight pilots' names and some incredibly ridiculously racist things, such as Holy Fuck.

Captain Sum Ting Wong. Captain Sum Ting Wong. Yes. Bang Ding Au. It's incredibly funny except for the fact that it actually really did happen. And I'm a little surprised. San Francisco Bay Area, not exactly – not used to the Asian community.

That this didn't get caught anywhere along the lines is a bit ridiculous. But the funny thing for me is the NTSB is blaming a rogue summer intern. I know. We now have rogue interns running around. Oh, call the NSA.

Call the NSA. Yeah. So this is just one of those – another example of, you know, don't outsource everything to your interns and, you know, double-check stuff. You're not paying them. They're kids. They're having a little bit of fun. And your damn fault. You know, this kind of smells fishy to me.

It really does because it took – you're looking at this. Somebody in that booth had to have picked up on it. I mean it was – They had to make a graphic. Yeah. We have one of your lovely stupid news graphics with the names up there. So a ton of people saw this list before it went online.

Yeah. That's why I'm saying it's something fishy. Yeah, it's Fox. You know, so you take it with a grain of salt there. And they ran it twice. Oh, did they? They ran it at like the 7 o'clock and they re-ran it at 10 o'clock. Oh, that's awesome. But I tell you what. The woman who does the read is straight as an arrow.

Yeah. Straight like there's nothing wrong. That's – again, I find that hard to believe as well. I mean there's just no way. But I do like the NTSB statement. Earlier today in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on her craft.

Yeah. That is awesome. I mean it's – the onion? This would have been a perfect onion story. I'm sure they're pissed off that they didn't think of it. Yes. They lost one. I don't even think they would go that racist. No, probably not. The onion actually – when they do go racist, it's for something that's really funny.

Yeah. This was – I mean, yeah. This is a bummer of a crash. Two girls died and it's – or are they – is it still just two? I kind of lost the thread. I was flying. Yeah. Well, I was as well. So this happened before I – the crash happened the day before I was flying back to L.A. from Toronto.

So I get a little superstitious about following up too much on plane crashes when I'm about to board one. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember seeing this. I think this came out on Friday. Yeah. I think this was a Friday thing because I saw it as soon as I got home and got off the plane.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The whole – and here's the thing. I've – now that I'm – I told you last week I was reading just a ton of news now. There are no editors or spell checkers. You brought this up before. There are so many typos and factual errors.

Like some of the stories that I was researching for today, they were just like straight-up factual errors in these stories. Yeah. Nobody really checks. The budgets aren't there I suppose is one thought on it. But it's wrong. Nobody checks anything anymore. You know, double – fact-checking is not bringing up your Google browser and looking at the first article that comes up.

That doesn't cut it. No. I mean but the authors should have a little bit more pride in their work. You know, I mean if I'm going to post something, I read it like four or five times all the way through. And, you know, I'll take a good hour on just like maybe a 500-word piece of just rereading it, checking it, making sure everything is typed right.

I am insanely, you know, detail-oriented when it comes to anything that I write. And these people are getting paid for it. I just do it for fun. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm fed a lot of – in my day job, I'm fed a lot of the social network updates from interns at management companies and whatnot.

And, you know, we're not even talking 500 words here. We're talking a sentence or two. And how they can spell things wrong in one or two sentences is beyond me. Everything has a spell check built into it now. You know that little red line that comes underneath the words, kids? That means something's spelled wrong.

Yeah. But also, even if it's spelled wrong, make sure that it's being replaced with the right word. Yes. You know, pool versus poll. There's a big difference when you talk about, you know, the pool that CNN did to find out if Zimmerman was guilty or not from the – it's like, no, you didn't do a pool.

You did a poll. Come on. Yeah. Reread it and make sure it makes sense. Don't – it's driving crazy. I mean, it's like CNN Reuters. Seriously, like major – the Washington Post. I've seen errors on all of these sites, and it's ridiculous. It's like nobody gives a shit anymore.

Nobody does. That seems to be the case. Yeah. So I got another little bit of news. Do you use Hulu? No, I don't. Okay. Neither do I. So for me – Commercials. They put – if I'm going to spend eight bucks – I mean, yeah, eight bucks isn't a whole bunch of money.

No. But like I go to Netflix, I spend eight bucks a month. I watch the shows I want to watch. No commercials. I watch Hulu commercials. Yeah. No. Not cool. Yeah. Well, Hulu was owned by the big networks, so it makes sense that they would try to inject their own business model into it.

And double dip it. Regardless of what we think about it, quite a few people really, really, really love their Hulu. And as of last week, it was looking to be sold to either DirecTV, AT&T, Time Warner, one of the big cable companies, rather than the networks owning it, which caused everybody to – who does love Hulu – to have a minor heart attack, I guess, because I don't know why.

But you and I both already know that they have commercials on there anyway. So who cares actually who owns it? I think it's a conflict of interest for the networks themselves to own it. I think it is as well because it's their own programming. So, you know, they're – yeah.

But we also, you know, in much the same way that nobody seems to give a crap about their writing anymore, nobody seems to care too much about monopolies anymore either. So, but regardless, breaking news is that the sale is now off, and the owners are injecting about $750 million into Hulu to keep it going themselves.

But as we've seen with Hulu, it's every other week they're up for sale again, so it's probably just a month away from it happening again. Yeah, I got no horse in this race, so I'm sticking with my Netflix and just going with that. I mean there were a couple shows on there that I kind of wanted to see, so I got the 30-day trial and watched them and I was done.

Yeah, I got to do the trials on some of these things. I figure if I do a Netflix trial, I can zoom through the couple shows that I want to watch without having to pay. Yeah. So, yeah, I really couldn't care less about Hulu. If they went away tomorrow, my life would change not one iota.

Right. And I know a bunch of people that do have cut the cord. They don't have cable anymore. So, for them, it's a bigger deal. Yeah, yeah. I still do the cable thing, just my bundle with internet and everything, and that works for me.

So, for me, I don't really give a crap, but there you go. Yeah, and I've done the cord cutting before, and that was back when my main gateway to everything was either like an Xbox 360. Yeah. You know, an HDMI cable in a MacBook, but it just got to be such a hassle because I wanted to see – that was like right when the big financial crisis was going on back in the late 2000s.

Yeah. And I just wanted news. That's the hardest part. I'm like, I want to see what the hell is going on. Is the sky falling? Is the sky falling? And in retrospect, that was a really, really kind of stupid way to get the news because it was just crap news anyway. Yeah.

I guess read a book. Read a book. Screw it all. Read a book. And speaking of books, one last bit of news that is kind of affects me. As you know, I've been doing Apple e-books as part of my business recently. Apple got smacked by the government, and a judge ruled that Apple was engaged in collusion on e-book pricing, which is hardly shocking.

Oh, yeah. I saw this. Did you see the video? No, I didn't see the video. Oh, there's a video of Steve Jobs talking to Walt Mossberg. And basically that was what was cited as the damning evidence. Because Walt's like, hey, well, how are you going to charge $14.99 and Amazon's going to charge $9.99 over here?

And he's like, no, the price will be $14.99 across the board. Yeah. It was just like, oh. Oops. Yeah. Well, good on him, I guess, for breaking that up. But are we hardly surprised that that was trying to happen anyways? No.

Not really. No. I mean, there was basically collusion across the board for the old school bookstores as well. It's not like the prices were all that different between, say, Borders and Barnes & Noble back in the day. Yeah. I mean, it's a race to the bottom on those prices for the most part. So if they get together, then they can raise the bottom.

Back that back. Back it up. Back it up. Kickstarter in the balls. Seriously? Seriously. No, seriously. That's the name of a new game that the creator of Pong is trying to get kick-started.

The creator of Pong? Pong. Like Atari Pong, you know, Ping Pong. Okay. And he's partnered with Roger Hector, who is known for Sonic the Hedgehog and Madden NFL football. I did love my song. The name of you. Well, I mean, it's a reality, not a reality, I think it's an ARG, augmented reality game.

Right. Where you hold out, you get questions and cards, you hold the cards in front of the phone and it does something. So these guys are looking for $100K to start up their game. Right. So far, it is, they've got 27 backers at $1,800.

Right. August 11th. Yeah. At least $100K. Now, I'm sorry, if you have been in the video game business for ever since the whole damn thing started. You made Pong. You can't come up with $100K.

Yes. Seriously? Well, that is my... That's why they're calling it Seriously. By You Get It Productions, actually. Which is also kind of amusing. As in, you're getting it up the ass if you give them money. Yeah. No, this is really, I mean, this is the same problem I had with, you know, my original rants about the musicians and celebrities.

People that had been in the game and had made a ton of money and they can't, they won't put up their own money anymore. Which, you know, is smart, as we all know. If you're going to do something, never use your own money. But this is starting to get ridiculous. No, these guys could go to any... I mean, this guy worked, Alcorn, worked, you know, in Silicon Valley, worked with, you know, everybody.

He worked at Apple. He worked at... He co-founded Zowie Entertainment. Right. Which was a Paul Allen company. So right there, you can just call up Paul and say, hey, man, can you drop me a Hyundai? And you're good to go. And that was sold to Lego. And it's like, come on, guys.

That's ridiculous. Actually, as I'm kind of scrolling through this and reading through it, they're doing something that I think is almost even worse. Not only are they asking for money, they want you to be a creative backer. So give us money to do this, plus help us build out our game by submitting questions. Yeah, exactly.

Well, why don't I just make this myself? I don't need them. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's a, you know, it's a trivia game where they basically want you to write all the questions. Maybe trivia should have taken a note. Yeah, maybe they could actually sell their database to these guys and, well, you know, actually just become creative backers and give them money and the database because that's kind of what these guys are asking for.

Seriously, get off your ass, guys, and do it yourself. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I generally don't get to up my panties in a bunch about these things because that's your purview. But I just had to jump in today because I'm like, no. This is, yeah, this is exactly right up the alley of the things that drive me absolutely insane about Kickstarter, and I hate these people automatically.

Plus, the game looks stupid. I don't need an augmented reality trivia game. Make me an app or make me cards. I don't need to do both. Yeah, this is like Henry Ford trying to Kickstarter a go-kart company. Okay, that was good. That's all I got on this one. It's just like, and I think everybody notices because literally 27 people.

Yeah, yeah. And it's a funding period, July 2. So 27 people. It's only been up for two days. But in two days, you know, you get your two bursts, your two big bursts right at the beginning, right at the end. So they've got 27 people now. It's dead in the water.

Yeah, this isn't going to happen. Thank God. Seriously, go back to work. You know, maybe we should start outsourcing our podcast. Let's put up a Grumpy Old Geeks thing, and let's ask people for money, and they can go ahead and submit other crappy Kickstarters for us. So then we can just make fun of it.

Hey, that works. Okay, cool. I'm sure you call that a lot, do you? It's crap. So I actually have an app. I know how rare that is. You know, like you having a Kickstarter. Here I go with an app I found. It's called Prismatic, and I haven't really decided if it's crap or not yet.

I thought it was interesting because, you know, we were talking a bit about, you know, Google Reader and RSS feeds and whatnot last week. And then the very first thing I stumble upon is kind of, you know, basically a social news reader. That's what they're trying to call it, social news.

Did you stumble upon StumbleUpon through StumbleUpon? I did not use StumbleUpon, no. I actually don't even remember. I think it was yet another Facebook ad. So Facebook ads seem to be working at the moment. I thought you never saw ads. You're the one that says you never see Facebook ads. Well, I don't see them on my desktop.

I see them on my phone. Oh, okay. You know, you can't really avoid them on the phone because they lock everything down. Okay, mystery solved. Anyways, Prismatic, social news reader, basically. You sign up. It pulls in from your Facebook feed, you know, destroys your privacy a bit that way.

It comes up with a number of kind of automatic suggestions for you for various categories. I kind of found it amusing that two of the categories that came up were Irish Americans and beer for me. I guess too much time spent at Irish bars. So, you know, you pick your categories.

And, you know, I did a lot of tech news and entertainment, obviously, because that's what I like. And the theory behind this is that, you know, the more you use the app, the more it will remember every single story that you click on. And they have an algorithm, you know, one of those fancy things that Facebook uses that nobody explains, that will basically try to feed you more and more news tailored exactly to your interests.

That's the concept. I know you downloaded it, and you've been using it a little bit too. Do you find it doing anything? I just seem to be getting pretty much the same sort of news feeds that I would get if I just went to my normal sites that I go to. So here's the deal. I didn't download it because I didn't find a way to download an app.

It's a web app for me. Oh, really? So I'm just using the web app. Yeah, I could not find a way to download it. Their site was so bad I couldn't figure it out. I did find their completely arrogant hiring page, which was – you just have to read it to believe it.

It's like, are you a super-duper genius motherfucker who wants to change the world? I'm like, you're making news, dude. I tell you what. Just go read the hiring page because it's hilarious. These guys are super big on what we used to call the wired buzzwords, even in their press releases.

Social news discovery works really well if you follow the right people, but often it's not good for finding topics that fall out of your proxy of interest. Proxy of interest? Are you frigging kidding me? So these guys are big on the big words. But it seems to be okay. I mean, I find myself loading it up and scrolling through, and certainly everything that shows up except for the Glee guy dying because I hate Glee.

I feel bad for the guy, but I hate Glee. It's about right on. The only sports thing that pops up is the Dodgers because that's about all I pay attention to. Well, obviously I pay attention to soccer, but this is America, and we don't get soccer news. A lot of tech stuff. I mean, it kind of seems to be nailing it for me a little bit.

Okay, so here's what I did. I signed up and didn't use any social network to sign up. I just signed up with an email address and my name, right? Yeah. So I wanted to see what it originally just gave me out of the box. Right. So I got posts on public nudity.

I got posts on Hispanic news. I got tons of conspiracy theory stuff. Oh, yes. Whistleblower exposes lunar bases and ruins is up there now from Disclose.tv. If you were to look at this in person, you would die instantly.

You know what? Yours sounds way more interesting than me. Maybe I should nuke all my preferences and see just what it gives me. Yeah. Ten best celebrity PDA on Instagram. And here's one. I don't even know. Obama files federal charges against George Zimmerman following acquittal in shooting.

Is that true? I haven't checked the news yet, so I don't even know if that's true. Not sure either. Actually, this is interesting. We just finished talking about Asiana Airlines and the TV station that aired the fake names. Asiana Airlines mulling legal action against TV station that aired fake names. Is this app listening to our podcast in real time?

It must be because it's – I mean the stuff on here is just so ridiculously bad. Right. Yeah, I could keep going. I could keep going, but I really don't want to. And here's the thing. I know that underneath – because like I said, I'm on the web app.

And this is – for as smart as they claim to be in their we're hiring page and even on their blog where they talk about – they show code and all their closure stuff that they're doing and all this crap. Well, on the left-hand side is the main news window.

On the right-hand side is a really ineffectual sidebar because the suggestions is an iframe that can't scroll. It's ridiculous. But they use infinite scroll on the left. Right. And I swear I've seen a footer peek through. And this is one of those things where if you make this faux pas and you're building websites, you should be just kicked off the net.

I'm going to go back to this. If you have a footer and use infinite scroll, you just should be beaten to death because people see the footer. They go to click on something in the footer. They want to hit contact. They want to hit about whatever. As soon as they get their mouse anywhere near it, the next batch of posts loads.

Like how stupid do you have to be to put a footer on an infinite scroll that's not pinned? Yes. Yep, I agree. No, I'm actually – I'm kind of scrolling through their site a little bit because I just looked at the app and these guys just think they're way too cool for school.

I don't know if you looked at the people page on their website. You know what? I have to log out because on their – you can't get back to their normal pages. Oh, once you're logged in. Once you log in, you can't see any of the people, jobs, buzz, blog, blog. Well, you know, first off, they say Prismatic is the most interesting place in the universe, which is incredibly arrogant.

And then they have their – look, we're cool, funny, quirky photos, animated GIFs of themselves. I'm going to tell you right now. Prismatic is the most interesting place in the universe. Second guy down is wearing orange shorts, no shoes, and a Green Lantern shirt listening to an iPod.

Yep. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. No. He's got – in some of the animated GIFs, he's got no shoes. And in like one frame, he's got – what do you call those Jesus slippers that all the hippies like? Oh. What the hell are those?

Birkenstocks. Yeah, he's got those on. Yeah. So, OK, right now, you're not – oh, he's got a PhD in computer science from Berkeley. That explains it. Yeah. Well, the blog is also quite interesting because they're very proud of their programming. Yes. Yeah. So, well – OK.

Well, there's only five people there. Yeah, there's only five people, so that's not too – that's kind of impressive for what they're doing. How the hell interesting can it be with five people? Well, they certainly definitely have a good PR company because the word is out there big time. There's a lot of buzz about this app at the moment.

So, I'm going to continue playing around with it. What's different from these guys than – what's the iPad app that everybody loves? Flipboard? Yeah, Flipboard. What's the difference? Well, this has a special algorithm. That is Flipboard. Well, I don't know that. These guys have a Green Lantern guy with Birkenstocks.

Yeah. And they're funny and clever and cute and talk about themselves a lot on their own website. That's what's different. Yeah. If you want to be an interaction designer here, you must design with a strong sense of empathy. Synthesize our vision together with user interviews and feedback to generate new ideas. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Big words, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Some of these – It's a lot of wired buzzwords. Anyways, I'm going to continue to play around with the app for at least one more week. So I'll report back next week to see if I think they're actually doing anything. I mean, the design is kind of nice on it. I like that. Except for the infinite scroll where you don't need it.

Well, I mean, I'm just talking on the app. So I have not used the webpage at all. Okay. Here's one that I've got to bring up. Okay. It's under their design positions. Growth design. Define how product and marketing combine to form a powerful growth engine.

Blow up – no, blow up growth grates to new levels with breakthrough creative ideas. What's a growth grate? I don't know. You understand that social interaction drives growth when done well and drives confusion when done poorly, as when driving through a grate of growth.

Ensure great initial user experience and get our customers to the aha moment as quickly as possible. I have no idea what that position is all about. Yeah. Oh, you have to read more. Okay. SEO, SEM, viral. Hold on one second. I'm looking at the headline here.

I thought this was a social newsreader, but they're saying reimagine entertainment on every device. Is this news or entertainment? I'm starting to get lost on what they're trying to do here. Well, that's the thing. Are they – this was a Technorati issue. It was like were we a media company? Were we a search engine?

What is this? You've got to be everything to all people now apparently. Yeah, so these guys basically just still have – it's a newsreader that is slurping in content that people didn't agree to slurp in and eventually will put ads on because my newsreader, I specifically say, I want these stories.

These people are taking possibly stories from your site, my site, whatever site, putting them in front of people without asking permission. And then going to make a buck or two off of it eventually. Eventually, yeah. We'll see how it goes. Well, enjoy it. I'm done with it. Yeah, I'm going to have a hard time.

Except when I want my daily dose of tinfoil hatness because the tinfoil hatness stuff is actually pretty good. See, I'm jealous of that. I might actually have to nuke my preferences after this week is over and then try that out. But I'm going to have a really hard time launching this app now without seeing that stupid guy in Birkenstocks and the Green Lantern T-shirt.

They should actually have just changed that to their little icon. Dorkmatic. Yeah, because the orange matches his shorts too. Okay. Triforce, whatever. Okay. Nice pick. Thank you.

Security! Ha! In the security world, the summer is the best time for conventions, especially if you're a hacker. Right. Because you've got Black Hat and DEFCON back-to-back in Vegas. You'd think that you guys would choose winter because those guys tend to be kind of heftier and wear a lot of dark, heavy clothing.

They never leave the hotel. Okay. Air conditioning. About air conditioning. Gotcha. And most hackers aren't hefty. Okay. Things might have changed. I've never really met any large hackers. They're usually scrawny. Oh, okay. Scrawny with really long hair and bad facial hair.

And yeah, seriously, most of the hackers I've ever met are skinny. Right. Except, you know, Kevin Mitnick got chubby when they took his picture for that one bit, but he was always generally fairly fit while he was on the run. Right. So, back to this.

Yes. So, Black Hat's first, DEFCON's second. Okay. The founder of DEFCON this year, Jeff Moss, has made a request asking that the feds not show up to DEFCON this year. Okay. Saying that all of the kerfuffle that's going on with Snowden and the NSA and all the realizations about what they've actually been doing for the past 10 years.

Yes. Or out and the hackers might need a break since tensions are high that maybe the feds should just stay away this year. Okay. And now, just so you know, the last year at DEFCON, General Keith Alexander, who is the director of the NSA and the leader of the U.S. Cyber Command, spoke at DEFCON.

Right. So, he was a guest. Which is cool. I like that. Yeah. And it was – I actually watched it, watched his talk, and it was a really good talk except for the part where he just lied through his teeth about what they're tracking about us. And it's worth watching.

I'll put a link in the show notes to go watch the talk because it is a really interesting talk. He's a pretty personable, cool, funny guy. I give him credit for that. Right. And Welspin knew what he was talking about, but except for when the question came in on like, what are you tracking about us?

He's like, no, we're not doing anything outside of our purview. You know, civil liberties, the whole nine yards. You know, it's just like if you watch it and just go back and read the news. If anybody's been under a rock, just go back and read the news about what the NSA has been doing and then listen to what, you know, General Alexander says.

They just don't mesh up at all. Yeah, not quite matching up. So, some people have already pulling out of DEFCON because they see DEFCON as like, you know, everybody going with one goal, being open about, you know, security and trying to make things more secure and, you know, ideas going back and forth.

It's been, you know, I mean, yeah, DEFCON does have the spot the fed game, but it seems like the whole thing is kind of in good fun because there are smart guys on both sides of the aisle there. And it just seems kind of stupid to do this.

You know, why is the dark tangent like really putting this out there? Yeah. I mean, other than desperate need for publicity, perhaps? No, no, no, no. DEFCON sells out every year. Okay. No, there's, trust me, it's hard to get into DEFCON.

And, and they're not checking IDs. I mean, it's not like they're going to keep anybody out. They're like, it's just like, hey guys, can you just not come? It's like, what, what's the point? Yeah. I don't, I don't quite understand that. And on the flip side of that, General Keith Alexander will be giving the keynote at Black Hat this year.

So he's going over to the other side and speaking there first. And I just, the whole thing is, is kind of silly. It's, these guys are, I mean, it's people who are in the Black Hat, Gray Hat, White Hat, you know, security community.

They go back and forth to work for government. Government comes back and works in private sector. It's a whole, it's a whole community. Right. So just saying guys don't show up makes no sense to me whatsoever. No, it doesn't seem to make any sense at all. Yeah. You know, I mean, I wish, I had never been to a Black Hat or a DEFCON.

I kind of wish like back in the day when they started, I would have gone because it seems really cool. The stuff, the, the, the videos, fortunately, especially for DEFCON, I haven't, haven't dug too much into the Black Hat site, but DEFCON, I've, I'm halfway downloading the videos from last year's DEFCON, DEFCON 20.

And I'm, I'm at two full days of video already. They put all of the panels, most of the panels up with slides, with the presenters. It's all free. You can just go download them. And I've, I've got my, my little iPad mini is full now of just tons of crazy hacking stuff that I just, I find fascinating.

Right. I love it. Yeah, it all looks pretty. Worth, worth checking out. Very funny. It's interesting to, I'm, I'm actually looking at their website right now and they post a clarification. Which isn't much of a, doesn't make things too much clearer for me.

Apparently many in the press can't parse the English language very well. Nowhere in DT's statement did he ban anyone from attending. There's a lot of tension in the community right now and he was asking politely for feds to consider not attending. What the hell does that even mean? This, this seems a bit ridiculous. See, here's the deal.

If, in my position, if I was going there, I would want as many feds there as, as you could possibly get so I can talk to them and ask them, what the fuck are you guys doing? And why not hear what they're doing? It's, it is one community. Like you said, these people bounce back and forth a lot of the time. It's stupid. This is, this guy is just, I don't know, maybe he, maybe he's got that prismatic app and he's getting way too many black helicopter stories in his feed and starting to freak out.

Who knows? No, but he's a, he's a consultant for Department of Homeland Security. It's not like he's not tied in with these people. He does, these people are his friends. Oh, he's a consultant for them. Really? Because. Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. There's, there's cross-pollination between both of these communities, like heavy cross-pollination.

Yeah, because the last line of the clarification is, if you are on your own dime pursuing your own personal interest in hacking and not assigned to be there working your federal intel job, then don't consider yourself a fed. Well, if he's on the dime as a consultant, isn't he a fed? Hmm, interesting.

Yeah, it's, you know, I posted a couple links to go check out some of the stuff and I posted one of the links to one of the speakers that have pulled out and none of it's actually making any sense why the speakers pulled out. Just, there's a, this whole thing is really stupid.

There's a bunch of those, this guy should have just shut up and had as much fun as he could have, but. Right. Yeah, he's an advisor on cybersecurity to DHS. There you go. So, and I don't know, if, if somebody can clarify this, please drop us a note because I'm just.

Baffled. I'm befuddled. I'm befuddled. Baffled and befuddled. It's the whole thing. Yeah. Right. Well, I have a little security thing as well, which is, again, rather weird for me. It's, it's also an app. I mean, the headline kind of caught my eye, uh, earlier this week.

Apple approved stalkers dream app background check. So as soon as I saw that, I was like, well, better download that, better install that right away and take a look. Um, it's nothing new. It's, it's been verified.com, which has had, you know, their website's been up for ages and you can pay and, uh, you know, find out information about people.

Um, they're basically doing a really good job of marketing themselves, you know, so now they have an app, so on your iPhone and you get, you get basically one credit free per month if you register and you can check out one person every month. Okay. That's, that's fine. That's great. Whatever.

Uh, you know, I tried it out. Of course, I ran out on myself as well. Um, you know, I found out it's got all the sort of stuff that you would expect to see. Basically every address I've had for the last 15, 20 years, uh, family names, you know, people that I was on leases with our people connected to you now in the, in their press release, they talk about, uh, you know, find out what social networks they're on, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I didn't see any of that stuff for me. I don't know why it came up. It didn't come up, you know, uh, check out online photos, websites, blog posts, entire online presence, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they're marketing it in that kind of, you know, creepy way. Like want to know, imagine sitting at the bar and finding out the truth about the person who just bought you a drink all before they returned from the bathroom, all of that sort of stuff.

And, you know, then they, they're actually doing a really hard pitch because, you know, once I signed up for the download and registered, I've gotten, I did this yesterday and I didn't get a chance to actually check myself out until today. Um, I've gotten about seven different emails from them pushing me to do the purchase.

Uh, curious about someone you just met. Don't recognize that phone number that's calling you or that email address. What's in your public records, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, you know, I, I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, all of, obviously they're just pulling straight from public record anyways. And I think it's worth everybody downloading it because you get to try it out for free.

Do yourself, search yourself, make sure that the, any information up there is accurate or, you know, if there's something that you're really freaked out about. Uh, I was fine. So, but then, uh, when you do do the report and then you have it cut, you, you can get a PDF emailed to you. It's, it's funny because the entire first page says, please remember you're restricted from using been verified for, and then a whole list of things that gets them off the hook legally, you know, employment screening, hiring of household workers, tenant screening, educational

qualification, creditor insurance, business transactions initiated by an individual customer. So, you know, they're, they're covering their legal asses there, which is kind of amusing. So that begs the question, what would you use this for other than to stalk some chick? Or find out if the dude that the chick is dating at the bar is a scumbag.

But this is, this is not the first one. These have been around, uh, there used to be one called date check from Intelius. That's the one that I used to use back in 2009, 2010. And they, they gave you, they didn't have this model where they would give you a full pre like a, you know, a full profile on somebody.

You'd get minimal stuff. You'd get, you know, a little bit of stuff and then you could sign up and get the full package. And it's, it's been pulled from, uh, it's been pulled from the app store. I don't know how long ago it was pulled, but they have like their different app now, just a straight Intelius app.

And I'm, I'm wondering how long this one has before it gets pulled. We actually ran a report on my roommate one time. We were like, let's see what they got on you. Just, you know, sitting around having some cocktails. Let's see what they got. And it, the, the information was so, so weird and wrong that we actually paid the 40 bucks to get the report and had to actually call them and get a refund back because it was so, it was such terrible and incorrect information.

It was like, like a third of it was her two thirds of it were like just an amalgamation of other people that were named her that like lived in the same, like they were like, you know, 30 years apart, like birthdates were 30 years apart because it is, it's all called from Google searches, public record information, arrest records, all this stuff.

And it's, it's like junk info, you know, it's almost completely junk info. I was looking at my own report and everything in there was correct. You know, none of it really relates to my life anymore whatsoever because it's like ancient addresses and like the first cell phone number I ever had in college and that sort of crap.

But I was intrigued because they had aliases and it listed three aliases, like had the number three and then you have to click and see what they are. And I was like, aliases, I've never had an alias. And I click on it and it's just my name spelled exactly the same three times over. I'm like, that's not, yeah, mine was spelled, mine was just misspellings.

Yeah. Yeah. I get misspellings on mine because my, my, my last name is so apparently hard to spell. I always got to think about it, man. Is it two L's and two P's? Yeah, that's right. Two L's. Two I's, two I's, two L's, two P's. So, you know, the, the marketing on this is really good, but it's kind of the same shit all over again.

The only difference is you can't, you get one free a month, which is kind of neat. I mean, one free pile of crap a month is still a pile of crap a month. That is exactly true. But I will, you know, continue. I just wouldn't, I wouldn't trust them either. So, but you know, now that I've signed up for them, I'm sure they'll have a, they'll have that in there forever.

So now if we, if we had a Prism app where I could actually get a report, I would pay for that. But you know, you can just go get a private investigator's license and get access to all that stuff anyway. There are, there are tons of really good databases that private investigators use.

That, you know, you can just call them, have them run this. It'd probably cost less to call a private investigator, spend the 50 bucks that you would spend on a full report on one of these apps and have them give you a real report. Seriously. So if you really want to find out about somebody, there are way better ways to do it.

I just, I wouldn't give these guys any money. And the fact that they're emailing you, that's, you know, that's just spammy. No. And I just, I actually just did the email search bit, which is where you get all the social media reports and all that sort of stuff. And it's all completely wrong. So this app sucks. Like the photos are not me.

The, I'm not even on Bebo. Uh, the, my space profile is a different Brian with a different last name. I'm not on Flickr. Yeah. None of this stuff is actually me. So this is all completely wrong. There you go.

There you go. Another crap app. Yeah. Shuffle this one back up the crap app. All right. At the library. Being around airports and flights and the mass of humanity, I want to say something. I mean, I know this isn't actually a book review, even though we're in, at the library.

Yes. I hear this quote all the time and I've heard it four times in two days on, in, what, three airports. Okay. The, the old, the quote goes, and you hear this a lot with self-help gurus and shit like that.

Insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again. And expecting different results. Yes. I'm well aware of that quote. Yes. And it's attributed mainly to Einstein, also Ben Franklin, or Mark Twain. Right. None of those guys ever said that. Period. I just want to, I want to make sure that people listening to this know that that is a bullshit quote, not from anybody smarter than they are.

Right. The, there are a couple of theories about where it came from. Uh, the, the main one I heard was, uh, this writer, Rita Mae Brown, she, uh, had it in her book in 1983 called Sudden Death. That was the big one that was circulating around for a while that everybody thought, okay, we found, we found the culprit, you know?

Nope. Ain't it? Um, if you, if you believe the Wikipedias. Right. It can go back as far as the late 60s, um, in, uh, University of California, Irvine social studies lectures where it was being used as a teaching reference.

But the earliest provable actual quote is in a narcotics anonymous, uh, document from the, oh, when was it? I believe it was the 1981, 1981.

So maybe Rita Mae was writing her book in 81 because we know it takes a while for books to go from writing to print to publish and maybe she was narcotics anonymous and she found it in there because their quote is, insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.

There you go. So it somehow just kind of got into popular culture, maybe from there. Interesting. Yeah. And the attribution to Einstein and Franklin, it's just, you know, just another lazy, one of those, one of those idiot things that somebody came up with and goes, Ooh, that's so smart.

I think Einstein must've said that. Yeah, that's, that's what that's just, please. If you hear that and somebody says Einstein said no, smack them, pop them in the nuts, do whatever, just make sure they never say it again because that's not what insanity is.

Look it up. That is not the definition of insanity. Everybody's got a dictionary. Look it up. Excellent. Well, I actually still, I mean, I like the quote, even though I don't, you know, I wouldn't take it literally like that. So it does, you know, it's always had a bit of resonance for me and, and, you know, I've often said it when banging my head up against the wall on a coding problem, I'm keep doing it the same way and I'm expecting a different result and I don't get it.

So I like the quote. It's interesting to learn where it came from though, because I've also heard it attributed to so many people. It's ridiculous. I don't think that's insanity. I think that's life. I think we all just do that. That is very true. It's human nature. How many times when you lost your keys, do you look under the same cushion over and over again, expecting them to pop up?

Exactly. That's just life. Well, I actually, um, I didn't have a book because I'm still working through a book that I'm not going to recommend it. I haven't gotten to Seneca yet, but we've ended up talking so much about flying on this particular podcast and airports and whatnot that I, uh, an old book that I read came to mind that, that I actually really love.

Um, and I, you know, I just Googled him and, uh, the guy's name is, uh, Patrick Smith and he's a, he's a pilot, um, has been for a while. He's, he's used to write a regular article for either Slater Salon. I can't remember which one that I always read.

And, and he still pops up and does articles every time something major happens. So he's obviously, he just wrote an article about the Asiana accident. Um, but he's got a great book called Ask the Pilot and, uh, he's at askthepilot.com as well, where he keeps a blog and, and, you know, he can get all of his articles that he writes for everybody.

And, um, I guess he just has a new book out called Cockpit Confidential, everything you need to know about air travel. Questions, answers, and reflections. He's, he's a really good writer. Um, he's probably just a little bit older than us because he talks a lot about his past and, you know, he was like listening to Joy Division and all that sort of stuff and how he got started flying.

And just, uh, he debunks all the stuff that you hear about in popular culture, just tears apart popular culture articles about anytime there's a plane crash and the theories and all that sort of stuff. Um, if, if you're afraid of flying or if you think that flying is a ridiculous process these days and it should never be that way, you should read this guy's book.

It's awesome. Really good stuff. Uh, definitely eased my mind a lot about flying. I'm actually more scared of the, you know, the people on the ground than I am of being up in the air now. It's, it's, you're, you're, you're in a worse situation in the airport with, with all that security than you are in a plane.

So. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, I can't wait to check this out. This sounds really cool. And it is available on Kindle. So we'll get those links in our, in, in the show notes. So yeah, I loved the first book. And now that I see that he has a second one that is on deck right after Seneca. Okay, cool. That's really cool.

Yeah. Um, I, I will throw out one actual book recommendation too. Um, if you're big into like spy planes and stuff like that, it's a book called Sled Drivers. It's, it's very expensive. Sled Drivers were what they called pilots of the SR-71 Blackbird.

And the book Sled Drivers is written by two of the pilots or a pilot and a co-pilot, a pilot navigator, the two guys in the, in the plane. And it has their photographs, their stories. I got my dad a signed copy one year for Father's Day and I was like 270 bucks. It's not a cheap book, but if you're into that kind of thing, like big, giant, beautiful, like 80 pound coffee table books.

Right. I'll put a link in the show notes, but check out Sled Drivers. It's really cool. And there's a really cool story that I'll put in, in the show notes too, about doing ground speed checks that I'm sure a lot of people have read before, but it's really cool. I'll, I'll put that in the show notes and you can check it out. Awesome. The web's not dead.

I found yet another high end curated site for really cool stuff that I like. So, um, in, in addition to my fab.com pantheon, I now have touch of modern.com. And this is again, another one that I found through a Facebook ad. Um, but they do have some beautiful stuff.

Um, absolutely gorgeous. And, uh, uh, let's, let's go ahead and talk about what irks me about it. And, and, and also irks Jason about it at the sign in process. Well, no, no, before that, let's talk about some of the beautiful stuff because that's what I was looking at when you were late.

Right. I found a $23,000 watch on here that I really, really want. It's the Devon tread one. So I can't get into the site yet. I had to find it on their blog because they do have a ridiculous signup process.

You know, the interesting thing is I never got an invite or anything. So I, if you click through from, I think the Facebook ad, it'll just let you join. Probably. So that seems to be the way it works. I didn't even know that there was, they were doing that annoying thing where you have to like get an invite and invite friends to do it.

Um, I can send you an invite. I got to bring three people. Yeah. I got to bring three people till I can get in. Okay. So yeah, or just click on the Facebook ad because I got in no problem. But the, the sign in process is still annoying to me. I hate sites that don't let you see anything unless you sign in, which is what they do.

You know, they just bring up the page. You can't even look through anything without signing up. Can't stand that to begin with. Then if you're already, so when I come to the site, I have to click on already a member. Then a little email address box pops up where I put in my email address, but I can't even put my password in right away.

I have to click submit and then I get to put in my password and then I'm finally in the site. Oh my God. It's so annoying. That's ridiculous. I freaking hate it, but they have beautiful stuff. They just have, is it stuff you can afford because I haven't been able to get in.

All I found on their blog is like stuff that is literally like, you know, 20, 30,000. Oh, it's all, it's all over the map. A lot of it is really affordable. I mean, I'm looking at this, uh, caloric practical home appliances. They have this stunningly gorgeous glass toaster that's 60 bucks, you know, beautiful salt and pepper grinder set.

That's 15 bucks. It's all over the map. I mean, then you've got your watches that are like 500 to $10,000. They have full like bedding and couching and furniture sets that are just, you know, it's, it's all over the place. So it depends on what you, Oh, look at this beautiful wall mounted corkscrew that I can put right next to my, my refrigerator beer opener.

Yeah. I wish I could look at it, but I can't get in. Well, I will send you the invites so you can get in. Um, or like I said, everybody just, you know, click on, click on that, uh, Facebook ad when you see it, because you can get directly in without any advice. Actually, no, screw that. Go to the show notes and click on my link.

Cause I put my link in there so I can get it. Okay, perfect. Do that. So Jason can get in and look around and, and, you know, again, like I, you know, we've talked about a bunch of times surrounding yourself with, with interesting, beautiful stuff. Um, these guys have got a lot of it, this and fab.com. Like whenever I need anything anymore, even particularly if it's just a humdrum kind of household thing, I'll go look at fab and now touch of modern to see what they've got first, because you'll find something that's maybe, you know, 5% more expensive than what you'd

get at target, but it's gorgeous and stunning. So see, after, after going, going back and rereading Seneca, I just, I want almost nothing. I am so, I'm going back to going back to the Spartan lifestyle. It's like, I just don't want anything. Yeah.

Well, I, I like the really lean, uncluttered look as well, which is kind of the nicer aspects of a lot of these high end designers kind of do that minimalistic approach to things. I mean, you're still going to need a bottle opener. So get one that's really cool and minimalistic. You're still going to want a coffee machine. So get one that's really cool and beautiful.

See, I'm just the other way. I'm like, give me something cheap and utilitarian that lasts. That's all I can. I mean, my, my bottle opener is a, is a $2 Trader Joe's wine key. That's, that's what I go for. I don't need anything wall mounted. I need something that will open my beer and open my wine and I can put in a drawer and never look at it again or a backpack.

Basically my stuff goes in a backpack because I don't have a drawer. I don't have a home, but the one thing I will give them credit for is credit. If you, if you look at their, their invite page, because once you, once you sign up and says, Oh, well, here's your code to get people to come so you can get access.

Um, early access, three friends, you're in. If you get 10 friends, $25 in credit, 25 friends, $50 in credit, 50 friends, $75 in credit. They don't go past that because apparently their cost per acquisition is, uh, man, it's, that's still cheap.

They should be, they should be jumping that up. Yeah. But, uh, that's a buck and a quarter or buck 50. Yeah. Buck 50 per, but still, um, they should be, they should be given more perks on that. But the fact that they actually do give the perks, this is the only site that I've ever seen that has this ridiculous, uh, mechanic for signing up, uh, and actually gives you perks if you go past the limit.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I kind of get it. It does that whole like, you know, exclusivity kind of feel or whatever. But then again, I'm just like, isn't this the internet? Shouldn't this be out there? Oh, this is a, it's a cheap PR trick. It's a cheap PR trick. It, it, it's false scarcity and makes people think that, oh, okay, well, if I have to do this, then, you know, then I'm, it says early access, early adopter, makes you cool.

So like you're in on the, on the down. Oh, you know, much like fab, it's, it's kind of built in the, you know, this is what's on sale for today. And, you know, some of the items will be listed as already sold out, which is, you know, is a complete load of bullshit. If you actually wanted to buy it, they'd still sell it to you. Fewer than 10 left.

Sure. Right. Well, I mean, maybe they're doing kind of a woot thing because woot was, uh, I mean, woot was great back in the day. I haven't seen woot in a long time. I don't even know if they're still around because they got, didn't they get sold to Amazon or was it think geek? I think think geek. What the hell did they do?

Sure though. Yeah. But woot was the way, man, you had friends send me stuff in the mornings and I'd go check it out and they were gone because they literally would just get the, you know, a couple of boxes of stuff and that's what you've got for the day. I bought a, I bought a $500, uh, refurb TV off there.

My first HDTV, I got off a woot. Nice. Yeah. It lasted a year and then it exploded. Yeah. It went, it went, yeah. I mean, it's, I, I can't wait to see it again. You know, I just, uh, I, I geek out over beautiful design, functional art, my fart.

Love it. It is. I mean, I, I do like how they tease on their blog, some of the really cool stuff. Cause that watch, man, as soon as I'm, as soon as I'm rich, I want that damn watch. They're coming to, they're coming out. Check it out guys. Devin, D E V O N tread one. I'll put a link in the show notes because it is so cool.

It just, I love it. And it looks like they have the tread two coming out, which might be affordable for, you know, small moguls or Island state dictators. But, uh, the main one, you have to like be, you know, a leader of a major country to, to afford or Richard Branson.

Um, so I, I have one link for the web's not dead. And this one is, this is one of those things where people may have seen it. You've seen some of the pictures. It's one of those curated type of bunch of photos that are cool, that go in a theme.

This is like the 50 most perfectly timed photos ever. It's, it's on twisted sifter, which I've never heard of. Which is a great name. I love it. Yeah. I do like that. I do like the name. Um, and there, there are a bunch of cool pictures that are neat and perfectly timed.

And these are pretty damn cool. And they're, they're really cool. And I've seen them individually on other sites here and there. And this is just like a collection of them checking out, check them out. It's a fun little time waster. There's some that I still think are a bit shopped, but, um, especially there's one of an eagle with like contrails coming out of his butt that looks really shopped.

But the, most of them are, are totally, totally doable. And it's, it's, it's a fun time which is to spend five minutes as your perk of the day. Yeah. This is well, well worth the quick scroll. I'm enjoying it immensely at the moment. And I usually don't, don't pimp these kinds of sites because they are just, you know, stealing content from everywhere else and aggregating it.

But you know what? You can't get away from it anymore. You just can't get away from it. So, you know what? Learn to enjoy what you got. So there's, there's your five minutes. Candy, candy, candy, candy. I've been listening to a bunch of podcasts on my, my trip, even though I should have been reading Seneca and, uh, one that I picked up a while ago that I haven't really gotten rid of.

Cause a lot of podcasts I'll listen to for a couple of weeks and put down, but, uh, this one, it's called quit on the five by five network. The host is Dan Benjamin, the founder of the network. And I think it just hit 30 episodes, which is crazy because it seems like I just started listening to it like a month ago.

The time flies, man. It really flies. Uh, it's basically about smart ways to quit your job and start something on your own. Cool. And, you know, I'm, I'm a big fan of that, obviously, you know, not a, not a fan of the day jobs.

They never seem to work out. And, uh, the advice that Dan gives on the show is really smart. It's really smart. He, he always says, make sure before you do anything, have three months of funds in the bank. He tries, you know, if you're young, single, unencumbered and have no debt, then that's the time to just go for it.

You know, if you've got an idea, go for it. Because when you're, when you're 42 and a hundred thousand dollars in debt, not a good time. It doesn't mean I'm still not going to do it, but Hey, that's what we do. Um, but if you're into that kind of thing, the entrepreneurial spirit and have ideas, I mean, everybody's got ideas, but if you're willing to bust your ass and work on it.

And that's the other thing I really like, he's, he's like, when you, when you make that jump, that's your life, you bust your ass. You don't stop. That's the most important thing in your life. And it's not like, Oh, I'm just going to do it on Saturday. Yeah. It's one of those things where it takes over your life and it has to get to do it, to do it properly.

You can't have a day job. You can't do it in your spare time. It has to be your 100% goal in life is to make that thing succeed. And he's done it. He did it with his, with his five by five network. He was a contractor like us. He had day jobs. Right. I mean, unfortunately he was a Ruby programmer.

We're kind of, um, but no, he, I, I give him huge credit for what he's built with that network. Cause some of my favorite shows are on there or they used to be on there and now they've left and have their own shows, but he's still got a bunch of great stuff. And I just, I recommend checking it out.

If you are, you know, one of those types of people that really want to just start your own thing, great advice. And it's a fun show. He's actually a really good host and he's got good people. It's a call in show too. So you can call in and ask questions, even though getting through, it seems to be a little, uh, a little dicey.

People tend to spend a lot of time on hold cause they talk a lot, but anyway, check it out. Check out the show. It's a, uh, the link is in the show notes and, uh, yeah, that's, I, I am surprised that I've lasted this long with it because I've already quit my jobs. I've, I've been through this ringer, but it's still entertaining for me to hear other people on that path.

Yeah. Yeah. And every now and again, I pick up some, some cool advice. This is definitely like, I'm going to give it a listen to, I mean, I've been doing my own thing for, for, you know, 15 years now, so I don't know how much I'll learn, but I love hearing other people's stories about it. So very cool. Yep.

So that's all I got this week, man. All right. Yeah, me too. So I think, uh, pretty good show. We packed a lot of stuff in and I'm kind of getting used to this, not being able to see you thing. So, ah, there you go. Well, we, we belch a lot on the brakes. We do belch a lot on the brakes and, you know, we're still doing the same shit, just, uh, on different coasts.

Cool, man. Well, I will catch you next week. And, uh, I think that's, yeah, that's definitely all I got. And Bob will take us out with the places to find us. All right. And here comes Bob. 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.

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