240: Hard Out

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by you, the Grumpy Old Geeks fans. We love you. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo, discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Last one, Brian, of the year. It is the last one I have actually poured out, now I normally don't do this anymore, we don't do drinking shows, but I poured out a shot of Middleton whiskey that I will take at the very end when we finished our final show of 2017.

Okay, well, I'm opposite of you, so I just opened a Lagunitas Maximus and I'm going to have a sip right now. Do you go for that? Mmm. Oh, Lagunitas Maximus, alcohol 8.2% by volume, you are a beast.

Oh, you know what? This is a sipping whiskey, this isn't a shooter whiskey. There you go. Sip away, Brian, you deserved it. It's hard to believe that in the spring next year we'll be moving into our fifth year of this show. That is a little crazy. Five years of complaining about everything and being right all the damn time. It's exhausting, I tell you.

It takes a toll on you. It takes a toll on you. I am happy to report, though, that after all of our bitching and moaning about our audience size and the crap that Libsyn pulled and never apologized for, I would still like to point out, we're on the rebound. We have a solid 8,000 grumpy old listeners out there now, which is very nice.

That is nice. It's getting back up in numbers. So as you guys enjoy your holidays, be sure to tell a friend about the show. So, Brian, what are you going to do over this break? We have a week off. I am trying to do not much of anything, but as is the way things happen, I actually picked up two contract gigs.

So I'm going to be doing a bit of work over the holiday break, which I'll actually have some time for because we'll be around family and, you know, we're not doing the podcast. So I actually, you know, the kid will be looked after a lot more often than is normally doing my daddy daycare thing.

So I'll have a bit of free time to make a little bit of money. And I also signed up for a course. I am taking an online course via Coursera, Data Science Ethics. Now, I don't really think that'll help me out in my career because anytime anybody sees that I've taken a course in ethics in the Internet industry, they'll run away screaming because they don't want that.

But I think it's fascinating. I think it's a really interesting area and certainly something we talk about a lot on the show. And I saw the course and I figured it's only a four-week course. Why the hell not? It only requires about four hours a week, so I can squeeze that in there and I can give a shot with this whole online education thing so I can talk about my thoughts on that as well.

Cool. Coursera is one of the only ones I've never done. I was, it was, it was actually the course is available on quite a few different ones. And I tweeted out, you know, should I take Coursera? Should it be EDX? Does anybody have an opinion? And one person wrote me and said Coursera is better. So there I went. So I'll be doing that. I'm also obviously traveling. I'll be in Toronto for a while.

So, you know, family here, family there, party here, party there. All right. Sounds exciting. And you? Well, I've been trying to get my personal website back up to speed for quite some time at jpd.me. And it dawned on me every time I log into it, it's WordPress and I'm fiddling with the theme or trying to figure this out or patching an exploit that happened while I was sleeping last night.

All of that crap. And I gave up. I have gone with the unintuitive fuster cluck of Squarespace. Oh, God. I've paid for a year. It's very simple because the stuff that I need to put up there is basically brochureware and a blog. That's it. Right. So I'm going to be working on that over the break.

The front page is up right now, but that's about it. Well, when you finally finish, I'd suggest you save up some money because, you know, with net neutrality gone, you're going to have to pay to play. It's not like anybody really needs to go see my personal site, but I just still wanted to have it up there in case anybody needed it for all those podcast interviews that I do.

And I can point people to it and say, hey, here's my bona fides. Go check them out and put up some of my photography stuff because I do like I miss having that stuff online because I was at upick.com for a while and they kind of shit the bed with not letting me export. And if you're not going to let me export, then you're not going to get my stuff.

So damn right. Had to had to drop them. So, yeah, I'm just going to be dicking around with Squarespace, playing with the dog and watching some TV and relaxing and trying not to read too much tech news. We'll get to what we're reading later. But, yeah, that's about it. And our good friend Dave Bittner has left us with a little note for you all.

So here's what Dave has to say. Merry Christmas, happy holidays and a joyful, prosperous and safe new year to everyone out there in grumpy old Geekville. It's Dave Bittner from Security Ha and the Cyber Wire with a quick thanks for taking the time to listen every week and for helping spread the word and supporting us on Patreon.

We have a lot of fun and I think it shows and we're glad that you all enjoy what we do. We'll see you next year. Until then, stay grumpy, my friends. And don't click the links. Don't ever click the links.

Media Candy. And we're not doing a full show this week, obviously, because we are starting our vacation early. But there are a few things we wanted to quickly talk about whilst still mostly avoiding tech news. This is our Media Candy segment. So let's talk about some of the cool stuff that we'll be listening to over the break or that we've just finished seeing.

Good news in Dan Carlin world. He's kind of stopped doing common senses because, as he pointed out, there's no common sense to what's going on politically anymore. So the shows are impossible. Hardcore history has come out two to three times a year if we're lucky. But he's put together some odds and ends from Hardcore History called the Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Addendum Podcast.

And it's worth a listen if you miss him, which I do. Yep. I listen to both of them that are out now. And it's really nice to have Dan back and not have to invest like a day of your life in one of his shows, you know? A day, man. I can't get through. Those things take me two or three months to listen to because they're so damn long.

I was just saying, if you listen to it straight through, it's about a day per episode. And they're like multiple episodes per show. It's a lot. It's a lot. So these little snippets are nice. So, yeah, I definitely signed up for that one. That's good. Yeah, me too. You can't complain. I do wish you would do some common sense stuff because, God, I just need a real decent voice in the wilderness right now.

Yeah, me too. Oh, well, but he's not. So I finished watching The Crown Season 2. Okay, what'd you think? I think the problem is they came out so strong out of the gate. Season 1 was so damn good. Now, nothing against Claire Foy and what's-his-face who plays the husband who used to be a – he was a time lord, right?

Well, my run-in with The Crown this week was I got through the first 20 minutes of Episode 1 and was so mind-bogglingly bored that I just turned it off and went and watched something else. Oh, you got to stick with it, man, because John Lithgow playing Churchill was phenomenal. That's what made that first season.

And that was the real problem with the second season. Not that everybody else wasn't great. It just didn't have that John Lithgow presence, that protagonist. Let's be honest. We don't – here in America particularly, we know Churchill, and then the next prime minister that we know is Thatcher. We have no clue who all these other people were that they were throwing in in the third or in the second season.

And, you know, Dexter's turn – I'm forgetting that actor's name as well – as JFK was actually horrible. Thank God it was only one episode long. So this one was a bit rough. But I am looking forward to Season 3 because they're doing something totally innovative that no show that's doing well would ever do. They're getting rid of the entire cast because they're all too damn young because they're skipping ahead another 10 years.

So it's all going to be about the casting. That will be really interesting. But I am interested in that period of time because it is going to be Margaret Thatcher, punk, God Save the Queen, all that sort of – the Sex Pistols, the whole thing. So that could be really, really interesting. Season 2, not bad. Okay.

Yeah, I need to be in a mood to watch that, and I just haven't found myself in any kind of mood. You've got to channel your Downton Abbey back again, man. I know. Because that's all what this is about. So, and obviously I've been, you know, eyeballs deep in Battlestar Galactica, and I finally finished.

I finally finished. And here's the interesting thing. Now, when you watch it all in order and in a row without taking a week off between shows and sleep between shows, I actually didn't mind anything about the series ending.

It actually made sense when you watch it in order and in completion because there's that one thing that they did called The Plan, which came out years after the show ended, where they discussed The Plan. What's The Plan? The Plan is everything blows up a week ago.

All humans are dead. We Cylons all download. And the universe basks in justice. However – It didn't fracking happen. Hmm. Exactly. Not much of a plan, I would say, and I still think it was all cobbled together. And my problem with it being, I understand what you're saying.

However, half these things didn't exist when you watch it in the original time. Most of the really interesting stuff that would have helped with all of that was on, like, web series that I didn't watch. So maybe someday I will sit down and do your entire thing where you watch in the order that you should watch, not in the production order, with all the subsequent and ancillary parts and blah, blah, blah.

They really made a difference, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a slog, I got to say. By the time I got to halfway through season three, I was just like, and can we end this already? But, you know, it goes up and down and up and down. But, yeah, it is really just not a feel-good season, or series, for that matter.

My friend sent me this Battlestar Galactica promo that Portlandia did on IFC. And it pretty much sums up what it's like to binge-watch Battlestar Galactica. I highly recommend watching it. It's very funny and very true. It is actually very true. Once you start, it is extremely hard to stop.

Right. Did you get a chance to watch it? No. You'll enjoy it. Check it out sometime. Okay. Because I am not planning on doing this Battlestar Galactica thing for, like, a couple years, to be honest. You probably should wait a decade, is all I'm saying. Wait until the kid's out of the house. And I did find the Galactica series Bible that Ron Moore put together, which is kind of interesting.

I enjoy these series Bibles because it kind of gives you a behind-the-scenes into what they're thinking when they start the show. But it's like 45 pages long. I'll get around to reading it at some point. I'm not in a rush right now. But it's cool that it's out there. Yeah, anytime I see Ron Moore's name, I turn my nose up and disgust now, as if I were, like, part of British royalty and the crown and a peasant just walked by.

Well, then you definitely won't be checking out his new show on Apple that he's putting together that there's no details about. I will not. I am done with Ronald D. Moore. He has destroyed things for me. Okay. See, for me, he hasn't because, like I said, I enjoyed BSGs on the rewatch. Okay, moving on.

Well, speaking of things that have been destroyed but I still can't stop watching, The X-Files will be premiering January 3rd. This is the 10th season. And really, all I want out of the show is finally somebody do something with the aliens, which they kind of have to now, considering a gigantic ship picked them up at the end of last season.

Spoiler alert. Catch up. So we'll see. I found an e-online review with no spoilers that basically says, by the way, this season is good. So we'll see. Okay. We'll definitely see. It starts January 3rd, so it'll be starting before we're back for our first new episode from the new year.

So I'm sure we'll be talking about it. We'll have a review on the next episode. What we won't be having any more reviews of is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency for It Is No More. How many seasons did it go? It went two. Okay. So this perfectly fit into my rule of not watching it. It did.

The first season, like I said, it took me a while to get into, but once it finished, I really liked it. Second season took me a while to get into. I liked it for two episodes, and then the rest of it, I hate watching it. I watched it because it got terrible. So I'm not going to miss this. It just proves that if you don't stick to the books, you can't make it.

I mean, you just can't do it. I just say no more Dirk Gently movies or series or anything like that. If you want some Dirk Gently, go read the books. Douglas Adams is not built for television, period. It's not. You have to read it. I agree.

It's a little bit early to announce it, but I guess books are trying to drum up as much publicity as possible because nobody's buying books or reading. But the latest Laundry Files by Charlie Strauss. The Labyrinth Index will be out July 3rd, 2018, and we will certainly be reading that.

Yeah. I saw the announcement for this, too, and I'm like, seriously? Come on, guys. I know that you have a cover for it now, but that's about it. And I saw on Charlie's Twitter that he's like, he got the first line done of the new book, and he was very excited about it.

He likes where it's going. That was about it. I'm glad that we live in a world where we can preorder it before it's even done. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'll have to read it, but yeah, it's a ways off. It's still funny to get the email.

I'm like, seriously, guys? Really? Yeah. So I started reading Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I returned it. About 15% in. Okay. Big problem with this book. The protagonist species are spiders, and their enemy are ants.

Because what happened was, it was like, Earth is big war. People went off into the future and tried to do, so they have cold storage, so they can go to sleep for 100,000 years. But what they did was try and genetically modify a planet. But they were supposed to just be apes.

So they had this molecule that was going to make the apes evolve faster. So then they could have this super race of apes. The apes got killed, so there are no apes on the planet. But there were bugs. And they didn't know that this molecule would work on bugs.

So now we have sentient super spiders and ants and other creepy crawlies. And I just couldn't listen. I couldn't listen to it because I hate spiders so much. It might be a great book. The premise is really good, but I hate spiders. I mean, I really can't do it.

So I had to return it. So if anybody else has read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, let me know if it was actually good through the end. Because if I had to find and replace for the audiobook that you could just change the word spider, I would be okay. But just the visuals of what they were doing were so disgusting to me, I couldn't do it.

You just got to grip that book, man. Well, it's an audiobook. Kind of hard to grip. Yeah. I finished Genome, the Extinction Files book two by A.G. Riddle. Now, I really enjoyed A.G. Riddle's first three book series that I read.

The Atlantis Gene, The Atlantis World, The Atlantis Plague. I went back and skimmed, as I mentioned in the previous show, Pandemic, the first of the Extinction Files books, because I kind of forgot what had happened in the meantime before he put out book two. And I finished book two, and you know how I've complained about how recent sci-fi is written as screenplays, and they're shooting for a movie, and they're not written as books?

Oh, yes. This is a very slow-moving screenplay, and I'm so tired of this. Come on, sci-fi authors. You are writing novels. Use the depth that you can do with the novel. Don't write fucking screenplays. I really don't think I'm going to read the third in this series, except for the fact that by the time he puts it out, I'll have completely forgotten that I didn't like this book.

So I'll probably end up reading it. I'll try and remind you when it comes around. Yeah, try and remind me, because this was just excruciating. Which is sad, because the main premise is a great premise, and I'm not going to ruin it for anybody, because if you don't mind reading a book that's obviously trying to get a movie deal, by all means, go ahead.

It's just, I miss the nuances and the depth that you get when people actually write books, as opposed to, please give me a damn deal. Nobody pays for books anymore. Everybody has to write for movies, because that's where the money is. This guy's never going to make enough money on books to retire on, so he's got to sell those screenplays.

That's the way it works nowadays. Yeah. It's just, I mean, everything is just moving the plot forward. You can already see the tracking. You can see what shot they're going to do. You can see the cuts, and that's not what, that's not how I like to read. That's not what I want to read, damn it. Okay, well, again, like I said, good idea.

I'm fine with the book and where it's going. It's just, I found it really, I found myself not wanting to go back to it because of the approach that the author took. Gotcha. Well, like I mentioned before, Artemis reads like a screenplay, but it's a good screenplay, but if you go into it knowing that that's what it's going to be, it's popcorn.

The Martian was popcorn, too, you know? Yes, it was. And I, you know, knowing going into it is fine, and that's most likely going to be my holiday break reading material, so. Okay, my holiday reading break material is, reading break material, yeah. Can you tell I've done a lot of shows today?

A little fried. I'm doing The Wolves at the Door, the true story of America's greatest female spy. It's the story of Virginia Hall, a one-legged American spy in World War II. This woman was baller. It is such a cool story, and hopefully they're making a movie about her life because just a little bit that I've read about her is fascinating, and, like, the U.S. wouldn't let her become a spy, so she went to the British and ended up working for, you know,

like the SAS and, or the OSS in Great Britain, and she literally, at one point, parachuted back into occupied France with her leg in her backpack as she jumped out of a plane with one leg. Nice. That's some baller shit. That's all I got to say.

So, I know I've said baller, like, three times. I don't know what's wrong. Yes, you have. I don't, I don't know. I hate that word. For the first female spy, you know, because that's what you would go with. Well, she's not the first female spy, but she's the greatest female spy. Oh, sorry, greatest. Yes, there's a big difference there. I'll have to check out the BuzzFeed rating.

The top ten female spies at BuzzFeed.com. Hunting unicorns, hunting unicorns. So, we're going to wrap up the hunting unicorn segment for the year here. Just as a reminder, we had $10,000 mythical dollars that Jason and I split up between five stocks, which we picked both tech stocks, and friend of the show, Mike, picked five non-tech stocks to see kind of as a control.

So, we've got some final numbers here as of Wednesday, December 20th, closing bell, since we're recording on Thursday here. All right. So, I ended up with $15,224.02 with a 52.24% return. Very good.

I picked Apple, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, PayPal, and Sony Entertainment. Jason, you also did very well. You have $14,564.77 with a 45.65% return. And your stocks were Cisco, Intel, Netflix, NVIDIA, and Tesla.

Our control, Mike, not as good as us, but still $13,221.52, a 32.22% return. And he had picked Berkshire B, Citigroup, Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, and Striker Corp. Now, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 23.99% for the year.

The S&P 500 is at 17.99% return for the year. So, all of us beat both of them. But I am the clear winner. Ding, ding, ding. What was your biggest winner on yours? My biggest winner by far was actually Apple.

Shocking. Yeah. It's funny. My biggest winner was NVIDIA. NVIDIA went up 87.51%. So, I made, let's see here. Yeah. I made $1,736 in profit on basically, yeah, I bought it $104 and the last price is $195.

Which is really good because I was watching as we were playing this game and I ended up buying a couple shares of NVIDIA in real life. And I got them at like $140. So, seeing it at $195 makes me very happy. Cisco was my stinker though. Cisco sucked. It didn't do shit. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, this segment didn't really seem to get much engagement. Nobody really wrote us about it. So, unless there's some outcry, we won't do it again. We're not doing this again. Although, I do. I was even bored. I think I'm going to do it personally for the exact reason that you just said though, Jason. Because I think I'm going to go ahead and sign back up and pick out some stocks that I'd like to keep my eye on.

See how it goes through the year. And if I see something doing well, I'll invest in it. There you go. So, I think it was kind of useful for that. We also have our independent Twitter bet. That will depend on final price on the closing day, which is December 29th, last day of trading of 2017. So, we'll talk about that our first show back and see who gets the beer.

I think I can pretty much guarantee that I'm going to get the beer on this one. I think you're going to get the beer too, unless Jack does something really stupid in the next few days. Unless he deletes Twitter, there is just no way. Because they're at $25 a share right now, and I think I bought at $14.

Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, this won't be coming back, but instead, we'll probably be inflicting you with the results of our cryptocurrency gambles both Jason and I have bought in. All of which are currently crashing. As of last night, I was still $8 ahead of my initial $60 investment split over Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.

As of this recording, I'm $3 ahead. So, everything is going down, down, down. I'm about even on Bitcoin. I'm still way up on Ethereum, but I'm thinking about throwing another few bucks at Bitcoin since it dropped so much. Yeah, maybe. I mean, who the hell knows? I mean, I don't know.

Coinbase announced that they were going to add Bitcoin cash trades, and then they launched an insider trading probe and freeze them all immediately because it's all a fucking game. Like, that's all it is. Everything is getting gamed out there right now. So, you know, if you want to get involved, treat it like money that you would take to Vegas.

Don't take your mortgage. Just expect to lose it, and then it can be kind of fun. Feedback loop. All right, we've got a couple new Patreon subscribers, Eric M and Trent H. And as I checked this morning, we were back at 100 Patreon subscribers.

So, thank you all so much for helping us support the show. It really makes our day when we see you guys coming in and helping us out. It really pays for the beer. We appreciate it. It does. It really does. And we'll talk a bit more about that at the end.

We have some comments over at Twitter. Joanna Green says, you'll be pleased to know that I only found you due to the Slate article. And thank God you mentioned Overcast FM, deleted that Apple podcast app. Love you guys. Well, glad you find you. We're glad you find us any way you can. Yep. And 6502 Chip writes in, what tools slash websites do you use for trading?

I only use Coinbase. Well, at least for crypto. Yeah. For regular trading, I use E-Trade.com. And I'm a Charles Schwab member, so I use that. And I also use Capital One, the share planner thing that I talked about a couple episodes back where you can do basically set up regular monthly micro trades on stocks.

So, I do that. He also sent in, I'm off by 40 miles on my 1,000 mile goal on Strava for this year. I was super stressed about it and seriously considered ramping my mileage and risk injury just to meet the goal. Those apps are good, but you have to be careful not to get carried away. Agreed. You shouldn't let this stuff take away the fun.

But it's gamified. If you quit the game, do you want to play a game? Yes. Play a game? Yes. And Jason, he also wrote in asking you, what's the info for the Clash Royale game? Haven't played a phone game since Nokia Snakes. Going to try it. All right. Basically, the clan name is GOG.show.

That's it. We've got a couple people in there. He has joined up because I sent it over. So we had another listener that was in there, but he bailed because we're still kind of getting that going. And he's a pro player. He's been playing for a long time. But yeah, so right now. No time for you, amateurs. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Gabriel's in there and Jason Bryant's in there and myself. And we're just, you know, having a good time. It's really, I don't know how to run a clan there yet. So I'm still learning as we go. I mean, I'm just about to hit level nine. So I'm just getting my legs under me and getting the good things. Song of the Ass writes in, hey, guys, you're right.

Ramesh Ranga is damn funny, but not pronounced that way. However, I butchered the pronunciation of his name last time. Very funny guy. Yes, just the commercials were kind of silly. You know, I mean, again, going back to like people are listening to us and all that sort of stuff. He's on Adam Carolla's podcast today.

So I got to hear him talk a little bit. And he's a very funny guy. I thought you quit listening to Adam Carolla after they switched to the two episodes. They download. Well, they've switched back, Jason. That only lasted a week. Yes. OK, so I guess the metrics did not work out on them for that.

Chad Fackler says Brian's rant about music list sounds just like the beginning of Fruitcakes by Jimmy Buffett. I want junior mints. I went back and listen to that. Very funny. So thank you. All right. Chris Follin writes in Triton sounds a lot like the behavior of Stuxnet, which ICS targets the something, something control systems, industrial control systems.

I knew I had it there somewhere. Masking the true readings on the controllers, et cetera. Yes. Triton has been in the news this week. Unfortunately, we don't have Papa Dave Bittner here with us to discuss it this week. But I'm sure it'll probably still be in the news because that one's dangerous and it blows shit up. Yes.

And we got some new five-star ratings over on iTunes. We really appreciate you guys doing this. David 512321 says, great podcast. Hey, guys, I love your show. I haven't missed an episode in years. I work in the tech industry and your show keeps me updated with all the latest chaos going on. I know you guys lean more towards sci-fi when it comes to reading, but I highly suggest giving the name of the wind a try.

Based on what books you guys have mentioned liking, I think you'd really enjoy it. Keep up the good work. Thanks. We always appreciate book records. They always go in a list somewhere and hopefully eventually we get around to them. Yeah. I've actually listened to a couple books from listeners this year and some were good, some not so much.

But so let's move on here. Chesik23 writes, great stuff. I wish I'd found this podcast sooner, especially since I also listened to The Art of Charm. Woohoo. The guys are great. The episodes are very educational and informative. Keep up the great work. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.

dot show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG dot show slash iTunes and toss us a five star and snarky review. Woo hoo. And definitely tell your friends. Closing shout outs.

All right, guys. Thanks for everything. And don't forget, we're off next week. We are going to be taking a break, drinking eggnog, recovering from drinking eggnog, using our Strava app to get rid of the eggnog that we drank, and then looking at our Fitbit and crying in our eggnog that we will be drinking because we have so much left over from Christmas.

So it's an eggnog-y type of holiday. But thanks so much for listening. And for sure, check us back out on January 8th when we return with Vim and Vigor. That's right. And we'll be talking about something that I'm giving a shout out to my wife for. As announced this morning, Universal Music Group reaches licensing deal with Facebook.

So there's going to be a lot of music and different weird things coming to Facebook pretty soon. But my wife has been working on this basically forever. And I'm glad that it got done in time for us to actually enjoy our eggnogs. So we will be eggnogging and seeing The Last Jedi tomorrow. Very nice. Shout out to all of our sponsors this year.

Fresh Books, Away Travel, Home, Eero, Private Internet Access, 1Password, and a shout out to every single listener that supported us on Patreon directly via PayPal. He's given us a review, he's told a friend, he's written to us, or just fucking listens like a lazy lump. We love every single one of you. And again, thank you all so much.

You know, you guys are paying the bills, so nothing is coming out of pocket anymore. And we're between you guys and the sponsors. We are actually even getting a little beer money out of this, which is fantastic. It's all we ever asked for. Well, not really, but, you know, a man can dream. Baby steps, Brian, baby steps.

Baby steps. And how about a big shout out to our bestest of buds, Papa Dave Bittner, who sadly could not join us today, but left us that little note at the beginning of the show. We're both looking forward to you scaring the crap out of us on a weekly basis in 2018. Have a great holiday.

And a big shout out to all of my podcast brethren who I've talked shop with over the year and who have sometimes been on the show. So here's just a couple. I know I'm going to forget some folks. Let's start with Jordan and Jen Harbinger over at The Art of Charm, along with Jason Sanderson and Bob Fogerty, my daily workmates.

Shout out to Jason Bryant from Matt Talk Online. And of course, the guys over at The Grime Life, good old Christopher Piccioni and Seth Miranda. And of course, there's Kyle and Kenny over at The Morning Show. All right, man. And a shout out to you, Jason. Let me finish off my shot right here. Last show of 2017.

Woohoo. Cheers. Tap my beer on the microphone like a terrible podcaster should. There we go, man. All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillipo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash gog.

Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time donation, go to gog.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. And as we now know, you can do recurring payments via PayPal as well if you are so inclined and do not like the Patreon machine. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 240, but we'll be fairly anemic unless you want to go look at links to books.

From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff that we like. Stay grumpy and we'll see you in two weeks. Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no.

We're all in this together. This is a full-blown four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're going to press on and we're going to have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap danced with Danny fucking K. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney night, he's going to find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

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