2014 Year End Special

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian and Jason, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Let's get started.

Well, Merry Christmas, Jason. Merry Christmas, Brian. This is our second big Christmas special where we do a nice little short episode because Jason doesn't believe in taking hiatuses. I don't. We've never missed it. We've never missed an episode. I don't want to start because it's like going to the gym. If you if you miss one day, then you can miss two, then you can miss them all.

OK, well, here we are to to I hope you enjoy your holidays and have a fun time listening to this special buzztastic listic listic special is it technically it's a stick of a little or whatever post Christmas special because it's will be coming out after Christmas.

That is that is very true. So we decided for this particular episode because we like to keep it a little bit short and don't want to do news. We would we both went off by ourselves and came up with a listicle to present for your listening pleasure. Yes, we. Yes, we did. This is this. This was your idea. You said it to me and I'm just like, I kind of like it.

Yeah, I like it, too. So we're going in blind on each other's lists. I have no I haven't heard yours. No idea what you've done. You have no idea what I've done. I decided I'll go first. OK, I'll go ahead and go first. What are the virtual the virtual point toss lands on? Yes, it does. Win for Brian again.

So I decided to go back to one of the first topics that we ever did for Grumpy Old Geeks. One of the reasons we did our show was to impart our expertise about basically running our own ship in this crazy industry, be it entertainment slash the Internet. Yes. How to be poor on the Internet.

And we did impart a lot of advice over the various episodes. But so for my listicle, I decided to do basically 10 things that I wish somebody would have told me 15 years ago when I started my own company. Excellent. That sounds like a good list. Let's hear it. OK. All right. Number one. This is not cheery. So again.

Wait, actually, shouldn't you start at number 10 because it's a listicle? Oh, OK, sure. I'll reverse the numbers in my own head. That's how Letterman does. I don't write listicles for a living, sadly, because if I did, I'd probably have more money. Anyways.

I mean, actually, what do you think about it? David Letterman is the proto listicle. That he is. Yes. That is very true. So in true Letterman style with Paul Schaefer behind me, annoying me. Here we go. Did you just call me Paul Schaefer, you asshole? Pretty much.

All right. So pour yourself an eggnog. Here we go. Number 10. People lie with a smile on their face. They don't really care that they're lying assholes. So decide really quickly if you're OK with that or not. Quickly. Because that's one thing you can't flip-flop on. You've got your integrity or you don't.

Choose wisely. Be an asshole or don't be an asshole. Both paths will work. And I'll give you one guess as to who ends up making more money. The asshole or the not-asshole. See? Told you not cheery. OK. Number two.

Physical matters. Get up. Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. Sorry. Number nine. Number nine. I'm going to do a Beatles thing. Number nine. The physical matters. Get up. Move. It's good for the body. It's better for the brain. Start early because it only gets harder as you get older. Do not just sit in your chair all day.

Exercise every single day. Take walks. Lift weights. And stop drinking that Red Bull shit. This stuff will matter as you get older because just just because you're not out there doing a physical job for a living. You will feel your body creak. And wither. Grown.

Yes. Good one. Good one. OK. All right. Thank you. Number eight. See, I got the numbering right now. Excellent. Get contracts no matter what. Always. Yes. Handshake deals may get you the job. You may feel like the only way you're going to get the job is by just doing a handshake deal.

Doesn't matter. The job may last for years. It doesn't matter. No contract means you're going to get fucked in the end. See number one or number 10. People lie. No one that makes millions chooses the not lying path and you will get fucked. No contract. You're screwed.

End of story. Always get a contract. I screwed that one up gazillions of times. And for reference, go see Fuck You, Pay Me by Mike Montero. Yes. He covers that, which we have covered several times. But for new listeners, yes, get a contract. And I was just watching The Profit last night, which is a great show on MSNBC.

If you like Shark Tank, watch The Profit. And every deal he was fucked on were handshake deals. Exactly. And he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So get a great one. Get a contract. Yes. Number seven. Since a lot of this industry is based on handshake deals and basically personal connections, if you've never been invited over to someone's house, you do not have a personal connection with them.

So don't expect them to treat you fairly. It's true. It's very true. If you've never directly met your clients, you're going through managers, handlers, etc. You're going to get tossed under the bus at some point. So don't assume that you have that connection. Very. That's very prescient of you.

Very good. Okay. Okay. I'm digging your list. All right. Let's go. Number six. Watch what you say online because they will look. You may think that you, your Twitter account is underneath their purview. Somebody in that organization will look at it.

Somebody that's gunning for your job will look at it. You will get tattled on. I never follow this rule personally, and I've paid the price enough to include it here. I was going to say, this is do as I say, not as I do for you. I have the bizarre standard of everybody just knows that I'm a cranky asshole anyways, and nobody takes what I say seriously.

But if you're just starting out, you've got to be really careful about this stuff. Oh, yes. Yes. You have to have some swagger to back it up. Exactly. Number five. Most people are horrible. They will try to demand all of your time, and you will get zero return. Identify the good people. Focus in on them.

When I was younger, I scoffed at a lot of the older people that tapped out of the entertainment industry. I now know they just wanted a nice life where they were left alone. Okay. You know what? I have actually a little bit of follow-up on this because I completely agree. We're on board 100%. Go listen to James Altucher's new show on givers and takers.

He has a guest on that really kind of everybody that's going into this business needs to listen to. So check that show. Yeah. I mean, clients will make you feel as if you do not pay attention to them 24-7. You will get fired. Nine times out of 10, that's actually true. But stand your ground.

Stand your ground. Absolutely. All right. Number four. Travel young every single chance you get. It will enrich your life in ways you cannot possibly quantify. And when you're older, you'll have too many responsibilities, too many requirements for comfort, and you'll just be too damn tired to hop on a tour bus. Take every single opportunity any client gives you to travel the world.

Always. Good one. Good one. All right. Let's see what we got. Number three. Do not take social media seriously, even if it's your job. People present a version of themselves that isn't their true selves. It's too amazing or it's too bad because they're whining.

Realize it just is what it is. Don't get angry. Don't get sad. Log off. If you care, see them and meet space. If you don't, hide them, unfollow them, and move on. Life is too short, and you will gain nothing by seeing people's beach photos and getting angry. That's it. See episodes 1 through 89 of Grumpy Old Geeks if you doubt anything that was in that last segment.

Exactly. Number two. Read absolutely everything. Find new authors, devour their entire canons, and move on. Make a Google alert for the ones that you truly love so you know when something new comes out because the world is too fucking scattered these days to find these things. Read things that do not relate to your industry at all constantly.

Do not get back down in only reading stuff about things that you think you need to know. Words matter. Spelling matters. You will learn all this stuff from reading all the time. We may live in a culture where it seems not to matter, but the people that control things, they do notice if you spell things wrong.

On that note, I would say if you are a listener to Grumpy Old Geeks and you have not read Lamb by Christopher Moore, you need to do that before you listen to another episode of our show. It is true. Most of my entire philosophy on life comes from that book, sadly enough.

That is, hands down, the greatest book that is ever written. And if you say it's the Bible, well, this is the book you need to read. Yes. Get outside of your comfort zone. Read comedy. Read anything. I read Dostoevsky, you know, in my spare time because I'm a nerd.

But what Brian just said with get out of your comfort zone and read things that are not in your business, it's important for having a grander scale view of the universe. Yep. That's why I put it in there. And I'm just, hey, I'm backing you up, man.

No, no. It's Christmas. Don't be, you know, don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. Okay. That's number one. Don't be that guy. No, that'll probably be in my, I've pivoted and returned to the corporate world top 10 list for next year.

Don't be that guy. All right. And number one, if you don't have at least four sources, it isn't true. And if you don't have four copies, it doesn't exist. Very important. I mean, again, it's like, it's like, don't read just one news source.

Don't take one bit of gossip that you hear from one person. You got to have four sources about something or it's probably not true. And it's completely made up bullshit. And as you know, being in the digital world, if you don't have four copies of something, it doesn't exist. Servers go away. Dropboxes disappear. Thrive's crash.

Kind of cross purpose on that one, but I agree on both points. Absolutely. I just went for the four, four symmetry there. And that's, well, you know, you should go in threes. You got another four that you can throw in? Not, not at the moment. I scribbled this out last night. Come on, Jason. I'm trying to have a hiatus here.

Well, shit. I just scribbled mine out five minutes ago. That's my top 10 list. Merry Christmas, everyone. I thought that was, I thought that was pretty spot on. Oh, thank you very much. Okay. So now here we have six things that should not be a thing in 2015.

All right. I like this. Preach, predict, adorbs, or other bastardizations of the English language. Hey, that sounds familiar to my number two. Oh, yes. Tice way. Okay. I'm sorry.

That one was my fault. Yes. Enough of this. Speak the Queen's English. Even though we don't have a queen, we have a dictatorship. Speak, speak words in their entirety. Okay. If, if, if you want a pizza, you don't order a pea or, well, actually in New York, I guess you get a pie.

Shit. That, that ruined that one. No, I mean, I do. I agree. Like you can get away with using all that stuff with your friends and things like that. But if you're presenting something to the world, again, as I said, people will look you up when you're trying to get a job and things like that.

Words matter. It really, it, it does make you look like an idiot or an intelligent person, depending on how you portray yourself and how you use words. Totes. Totes. I, I still, I got in an online fight with a chick on, on Facebook because she kept saying totes, totes, totes.

And I'm like, totes for me is the old school umbrellas that were very short. Remember those back in the seventies, you could get a totes umbrella. I do. Or there's a tote bag. And I actually did purchase this for a friend. It's a tote bag that says totes big goats and it has a goat on it. It's pretty cute.

Okay. Okay. Number five, the lack of editors in online article writing. I'm not even calling this shit journalism anymore, but we need editors. So the lack of editors are, is, is the thing that should not be. I agree completely.

It's a fucking wasteland out there now. Every article that we have cited in the past month for grumpy old geeks has had a typo, period. How, how can you do that? When I post something online, I read it five times minimum.

And these people are just like, if versus is like, there's a big difference between if versus is. Okay. I agree. It drives me up a wall. It's insane to me because almost every, every word processing program has very sophisticated grammar engines in them these days that will underline things that are suspect.

It just takes, it takes a few seconds to correct. And getting to my next one, which does have a very good grammar engine in it, WordPress. WordPress is a thing that should not be in 2015, but they do have a grammar engine where you can click a button that says proofread.

And that is an amazing bit of technology that they brought in from somebody else. And it works if it, if, if you transpose, if it is, it will tell you, it will give you the, you know, the right way to say something. But all in all, after a year and a half of talking about how fucking depressing using WordPress is, it needs to not be a thing in 2015.

We have the technology to rewrite it from the ground up to be something that it could be. Let us do that as a community, as nerds, let's fix it. Okay. Good luck with that one. Okay. My next one is a little insider baseball.

John Lee Dumas. Have you heard of him? No. John Lee Dumas is a podcaster who goes out and has sold over a million dollars worth of online education on how to be a podcaster. I've kind of, I've kind of mentioned him on the show a few times.

Right. In some of my ranty bits. I want people to go out and Google things. I'm using John Lee Dumas as a, is a blanket term for being lazy and spending money for shit that you can find out for free. Okay. Honestly, I, everything that he sells, you can find out for free.

And there are people out there that make a living doing that kind of thing. And this guy's made over a million dollars doing it. Don't give these people any more money, please. So if there's a guru in, in an area that you want to know something about, Google it first.

That's all. That's all I'm saying. Don't give the gurus any money in 2015. Coming in 2015, the Grumpy Old Geek's Guide to Podcasting. Available on Amazon.com. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Kardashians.

Oh. That should not be a thing in 2015. We know what it takes to be a pop celebrity nowadays. The YouTube generation is figuring it out. The old generation is dying. So the fact that I knew when I wrote this down on my list, how to spell Kardashian properly says enough about the state of affairs that we need to get these fucking pop celebrities who are famous for nothing but sucking a dick out of our lives.

Yeah. To hell with the K-dashes. Okay. My last one. All right. Uh, listicles. We do not need any more of these thinly veiled attempts at, you know, a pseudo-psychological manipulation to get us to read something that is actually prescient and knowledgeable.

We just don't. So death to the listicle. That is my last item of my listicle for 2014. Are you saying I shouldn't publish my misspelled K-listicle on GrumpyOldGeeks.com now? Because I was about to hit publish. No. Well, our Grumpy Old Geeks Guide to Podcasting will be a listicle.

So, yes, that's how we round out the year, I guess. I guess so. Well, Jason, it's been another fun year. It's been a pleasure working with you, Brian. Yeah. And I just like to, I mean, I'm going to do my own little shout out here just for the end of our Christmas episode.

Everything takes a village. Nothing happens alone. I want to thank almost everybody in my life who has given me fodder for this podcast or supported it or told people about it. It's been a blast. And obviously, always thanks to Jason, who I have to give a shout out to specifically because he's been the one that has stepped into the breach when I've been way too busy with my pivoting attempts to actually put too much time into the podcast.

So thank you, Jason, for always filling everything up, particularly the security sections. I would like to thank my corporate stooge, corporate stooge co-host, Brian, who has gone on and left me in the lurch many times. But I am happy to fill the breach because it is this is the highlight of my week doing the show and a hearty thank you to honestly, everybody who listens to this show and the feedback we get, the donations we get are just it's touching.

And I have a bit of news that came from Tara Brown, our previous guest. We talked about her GitHub program. Yes. The first subscriber to her GitHub program was a listener to Grumpy Old Geeks. Hey, look at that.

That's awesome. Is that not cool? No, it's great. I mean, not only have you guys been supporting us, you've been supporting the friends of the show that we have on. You've been checking out the stuff that they do. We don't really just pick people out of the air to have on our show. We pick people we actually like and we like what they're doing and they're good people.

So that's awesome. Yeah. And definitely thank you to every guest that came on this year. It's been a blast. And yeah, thanks for, you know, taking two, three, four hours out of your week to hang out with us and chat and stuff. Yeah. Yes.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And thank you, Uber, for just continuing to be a bunch of assholes. It's been awesome. You sound like Jon Stewart thanking George Bush. It kind of. I mean, you know, the Uber basically, at least for me, for this podcast is the equivalent of having George Bush as president again.

It's just a never ending source of amazement. I kind of feel sad that we didn't thank Kickstarter last year's Christmas episode because they fueled the first year from the old geeks. Retroactively, I'd like to thank Kickstarter for the previous year. Now you're just a fucking storefront. Everybody knows.

Okay, man. Well, I hope you have some great eggnog and have a fantastic new year. And I'll hook up with you next year. That's right. I'll see you soon in person. We'll be announcing some potential grumpy old geek meetups in the Los Angeles area and maybe some other places as well.

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