27: By-products of a Lifestyle Obsession

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

Man, Google Chrome, what the hell happened to that thing? I did an update this week, and it just completely screwed the pooch now. I cannot believe it. Oh, that's actually really bad news, because as I've been talking about, I wanted to finally make my switch over from Firefox, because it's pissing me off so much. And now you're telling me I can't even go to Chrome?

You can, but what it used to have for me, when I opened the browser, there were eight panels of my most frequently visited sites. Now what they've done is they've made those icons much smaller and put in a giant Google search above it.

And they moved, they used to be able to tile back and forth and go to your apps page if you ever use that Google or the Chrome app store, which nobody does. Now they put it in your link bar, which takes up space, and you can't get rid of it. Ugh. I hate it. It's just they're moving, they're pushing you, pushing you towards using more of their crap, and I don't want that. I just want the browser.

And you can't go back to Firefox, because Firefox is terrible, and Safari's got its bunch of problems. So what the hell's a, what's a girl to do? Oh, yes. Well, the browser wars, you know, Google overlords, not surprising. I just, this is the same complaint I had about, like, iOS 7 and everything being updated and moved around for no reason.

Why keep changing things? Why, changing things every three months so you can push out a new version and get some publicity, that's not progress, people. New does not mean improved. Ah, yeah, that's true. Did you see the new Evernote for iOS 7? I did not. I haven't updated that, so.

Oh, my God. 100% different. Completely different. They say it's better and faster. I'm still trying to find my way around it, but it totally flattens everything, you know. Makes it look crappy, basically. Yes. I'm not a, yeah, a lot of these updates for these apps are just, they're bland.

It reminds me of when, like, people were jumping on the bandwagon of 37 Signals style design. Yeah. And everything just started to look the same. So, now we have a couple years of all these apps looking the same. I'm not a fan. So, you're coming around to my way of thinking about not really liking the new visuals on iOS 7.

See, I still do, but I don't like the fact that everybody's just going for that same look and feel. You don't have to change your app. Your app's fine. I agree. You know? Why? It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I mean, this is just something that happens now. Everybody updates and changes things all the time for no reason whatsoever that I can figure out.

If you've got something that works, leave it be, people. Plus, we don't want to figure out new ways to have to do things every three months. It's getting really annoying. I've been playing around because I use the fingerprint scanner now on my 5S. It works about 80% of the time.

That's it? That's it. I get re-scan all the damn time. Fun. Maybe you just have weird fingers. Yeah, it could be that I'm putting them on wrong, but I've scanned the whole... I don't know. I like it for the convenience factor, you know, so if you just need to reach for it and you don't feel like typing in your code, great.

Right. I'm starting to... I haven't typed my actual code in in a long time, so that's good. I did find out that if you restart the phone, they make you enter your code, so don't forget it. You know, if you're using your thumbprint over and over again, you might tend to forget your code.

That's true, yeah. So, just something to keep in mind, for sure. Since you mentioned Evernote, I actually saw an article, and I'm starting to wonder if somebody over at Lifehacker is listening to our podcast, because this is the third or fourth time that I've seen something that we've been discussing pop up on there.

They had an article that basically goes into, do you prefer paper or digital to-do lists, talks about Evernote and a bunch of the other programs that you brought up, and, you know, gets into people who prefer to write things down, people who prefer to use apps, et cetera, et cetera. It's an interesting little read, but, you know, as Lifehacker does and all these other sites, they don't actually really say much of anything.

They just go, and you can do this, or you can do this. Now discuss, please, and keep reloading the page. Yeah, and the weird thing is, I couldn't get the discussion to load. Oh, really? Yeah, I use, what's this thing called? It's Disconnect, and it often, it's a Chrome plug-in that, you know, blocks a bunch of requests, the third-party stuff.

Right, yeah. And I tried whitelisting Lifehacker, but it still wouldn't let the discussion through, so I couldn't discuss. I wanted to see what people were saying, but I can't, so. Yeah, a lot of people came down on both sides. It's split pretty evenly between people who still prefer to write things down and people who do everything digital now.

I've been doing a new thing this week. We talked about online education and all that stuff, and when What's-His-Nuts from the Smart People podcast wrote in, we gave him some tips, and he was talking about Code Academy and that stuff. And I said, I generally don't like those things for learning how to code. Yeah.

And I still kind of don't, but for quick primers, since I already know how to code, I joined up for Toots Plus. You know, they've been around forever. I think Envato is the name of the parent company, but yet, or Toots Plus, whatever you want to call it. But it's tutorial, so Toots.

I'll go with Toots. And there's a lot of cool stuff on there. I've got to say, I've been enjoying it. They're not the best tutorials, but there are hundreds and hundreds of them. So, you know, just for fun, I'll, like, you know, pick up a Node one and spend an hour learning about Node or Ruby or whatever, just for fun to kind of, you know, stretch the legs, as it were.

But they've got, I forget who they merged with. It was Rockstar Press, I think. Okay. Because I got a note from Rockstar Press because I got a couple books from them, and all their e-books are now in there, too. So if you sign up for the monthly, you can just go in, download all the e-books for, like, 19 bucks, and get everything, and then cancel.

You know? The smart way to do it, yeah. Yeah. This looks pretty good. I mean, what's the pricing like on it compared to, say, like, a lynda.com, which I'm still a big fan of? I think I'm paying 20 bucks a month. Okay. That's not too bad. Well, actually, well, there's a discount code from the, maybe it's Rockable.

I'd have to look it up. But when they merged, they sent me an email because I'd bought books from them with a code. They said it was for lifetime membership, but it actually wasn't, which was kind of janky. Yeah. So I think I'll definitely be canceling just because they lied.

But, yeah, there's really good stuff in here. There are lots of graphic stuff, After Effects, like Photoshop, photography, web stuff, lots of web design stuff, web development stuff. It's cool. I've got to say I'm liking it. They're not the best, like I said, but it's still pretty good. Yeah.

It looks like they're good for quick stuff, too, which would have been really useful for me this week as I got involved in a quick little project that involved responsive design, which is, you know, far more complicated than one would expect, especially when you're trying to bring an old school graphic designer up to speed on how these things shrink and move around and everything shouldn't be graphics.

Yeah. Media queries, our friend. Yes, it is. That was a lot of fun this week. Yeah. And I have actually used a responsive tutorial on here. I was stuck on one crazy thing that was driving me nuts on one of my projects, one of my responsive, that responsive WordPress project that, unfortunately, still hasn't gone live yet.

So I can't pimp it. Yeah, I finished it three weeks ago, and they're like, oh, maybe next week, maybe next week. I'm like, okay, glad I rushed. Well, that's the way of it, right? Hurry up and wait. Get it done, get it done, get it done. When are we launching it? Oh, two months. Yep. So, I mean, check it out.

It's worth it if you want to learn some stuff, and just for fun, you know, it's cool to just grab a tutorial and spend an hour and just kind of stretch your legs. Right. You know? And, oh, this thing came out today, too. I just saw this. Somebody posted it on Twitter, I believe.

We know how we talk about getting old and how much it sucks. Yeah. Trying to get jobs and all that. Yeah. Jimmy Wales is coming out on our side and telling people, basically, just shut up, grow up, and hire old people because they're smarter than you. Yeah.

That's good advice. I mean, we've talked about that a lot here, and it's not just because we're the older people. There's a lot of value in the experience, and you just can't take that away. So, there you go. Yeah, well, I mean, it's a pretty cool article, and it gives some good stats on, like, age medians for different tech companies.

But it also lists the age of people who started stuff later in life. Like, Craig Newmark was 42, my personal age, when he started Craigslist. Right. You know? So, hopefully, it's going to start swinging back the other way, and this Mark Zuckerberg, oh, well, you're smarter when you're young.

Well, guess what? Sometimes not. When I was going through my stuff last week, and I found those hipster PDA cards from Merlin, I went back and I found an old, old, it was from 2007, project that I was working on that Merlin actually wrote about on 43folders.com, back when that was a thing.

Did you ever read that back in the day? I did. I did, yeah. I mean, not religiously, not every day, but I would check it out. Yeah. So, I did a 90-day project back then where it was just, like, total change, total life change. I'm dropping weight, I'm doing the, you know, all sorts of stuff.

And I found the old post, and I had to go back to archive.org to find my stuff because I have that nasty habit of burning down the forest every time I get a bug up my butt. Yes, the scorch and burn policy. Yeah. So, I'm going to link them in the show notes, but it's kind of interesting and fun because I'm doing it again.

That's one of the reasons why I brought it up because I'm going primal. I'm going paleo. Okay. I'm going to do it. Do you know anybody that's done it? Has gone the paleo diet route? Paleo diet? Yeah. And they usually combine it with CrossFit training. And because, you know, anytime that you try to make such massive life-altering changes, you end up burning out and going back to your old ways.

I would suggest a more gradual approach, Jason. See, that never works for me. The gradual approaches never work. All right. Basically, I do major shifts. Okay. And then some of it sticks, you know. That's right. You know, I can do anything for 90 days.

Yeah. So, I'm going paleo. I'm cutting out the booze, which is going to be the hard one, the fun one. Yeah. Gotcha. Paleo diet doesn't seem that particularly difficult to me, but that's stuff that I kind of like. So, you know, your fucking big old slab of red meat, you're all good.

Yeah. I mean, it's very Atkins-like, you know. Yeah, it's extremely Atkins. I can do a steak salad every day of the week. It doesn't bother me. Right. Yeah. And I think, I know a lot of people back in San Francisco that basically just cut out wheat and have felt a thousand percent better.

Yeah, I mean, I've really scaled back on that myself. And I've, you know, gluten-free, trying to, well, less gluten. I don't subscribe to the all or nothing thing. I think everything in moderation. But I've certainly cut way back and I feel a lot better. How was that gluten-free beer?

It's like making love in a canoe. It's fucking close to water. Oh, God. Sorry, old Monty Python joke. No. No, it's not. It's not really that great. That's always going to be my biggest issue because I just, I love beer and I love good beer and I love tasty beer and all the kind of lower calorie or gluten-free alternatives just, they don't taste like beer.

So, you know, there you go. But I've been cutting back on the booze myself. So, and I do love wine. So, it's just a matter of kind of a change of mindset. It's weird to sit in a pub and be sipping a glass of red wine instead of a beer. But it's possible. Yeah, it is.

And, you know, that's what I'm basically going to switch over to is red wine because it's good for you, you know. You can drink red wine. Not in the amounts that we drink it, but yes. This is true. You go, you know, a couple glasses a day, not a couple bottles a day. Yes.

All things in moderation. Yes. Two glasses. If I keep it under two glasses, I'm fine. I get a third glass, just give me the case. It's always been the issue. So, you're going to go paleo, which I think is good. I think that'll go well for you because I think it's going to be easy for you to stick to.

Now, are you going to pair this with any kind of exercise regime? I'm just basically going to up my Fitbit quota for the day because my daily quota is 10,000. I hit it almost every day. Cool. And if I go under 10,000, then I feel like crap the next day and generally that same day.

So, I'm going to up it to 15,000. I can do 15,000. That's an hour and a half. It takes an hour and a half to walk 15,000 steps. Right. Yeah, it's not bad. I do want to break the 40,000. My highest badge is 35,000, but I really want to get that 40,000 badge at some point.

So, maybe one day I'll take a day off and just go for it. Yeah. Yeah, I never get quite up to anything close to that using my moves app. But I'm also doing the 12 miles of cycling. And right now, I'm doing the new Insanity T25 workouts.

It's insane. It is insane. But it doesn't really log a lot of that stuff because I'm staying in one position. Yeah, I was thinking of actually trying the new Fitbit. So, yeah, the $100 thing is a little pricey, but I want to definitely see how they match up.

Because I've always said that wrist-based fitness detectors are a waste of time. Yeah. And I'm really curious now that the new chip and the new 5S is out, if somebody is going to put out a decent app that will work. But I don't have my phone on me all day long.

Yeah. It's one of those things where I like a separate device. Yeah. I don't know. It's $100. It's a lot of money. But, I mean, if it's going to motivate you and you want to do the tracking, that's a good thing. But I don't know. You know, what's interesting about the Moose app is while it doesn't catch some of the stuff that I'm doing when I'm doing kind of these in one to two square feet workouts, it does seem to catch, like, if I get my knee up by my hip, it'll catch that.

And it does seem to catch speed, like, if I'm running in place, it'll give me running credits. So, I don't know. It's a weird app where it picks up some things that you wouldn't think it would, and then it doesn't pick up other things. Yeah. That's the problem. It's, you know, you've got the accelerometer, but you've also got backgrounding, and it could be, you know.

One thing I did notice with iOS 7 is a lot of apps will jump out of, like, being in the front. It'll put them in swap, basically, and hibernate them. Yeah. When you just open another app. So, I don't know if it was a RAM issue or what the deal is, because when I'm using my podcast player, Downcast, if I'm playing a podcast, then go check my mail and, like, turn the phone off and come back, it won't be on the home screen like it used to be.

I have to unlock the phone and go back in the app and then open the app and go hit play. It's really annoying. So, I don't know if that's an iOS 7 issue or a Downcast issue. So, we'll see. And hopefully, Marco Armin's new podcast app will just fix everything.

So, I'm really looking forward to that. I'm still just using the built-in, baked-in Apple one. I know a lot of people that use that. I don't know how you do it. My issue is when we test the show, like, when you send me back the test, I have to test it on the phone.

Right. And make sure you're doing your job properly. And you can't, since I have iTunes Match, I'd have to go into iTunes, upload the podcast, let it go up to iTunes Match, then get it back down. It's a total mess.

You can't just load in a single file when you're using iTunes Match with the podcast app that comes with iTunes, or comes with the Apple's thing. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a pain. All these changes, Jason, they just, uh, they don't always work so well.

Would you turn that damn thing off already? So, I bit the bullet this week, and I killed my LinkedIn account. Really? Canceled it completely? 100%. I had 373 connections and tons of, uh, what are those little things that they do now with the, um, where you can promote somebody for a skill?

Oh, yeah. You get the, um, recommendations or whatever they're called. Yeah. Yeah. I had tons and tons, like, probably a hundred, a hundred of those for my PHP, Apache, whatever, you know, all my LAMP stuff that I've done. Yeah. And just killed it. Let it go. Right. For good.

Nothing ever happened. Ever. I've been, I've had an account on there since the day it opened, because I knew Reid Hoffman back then. And so I signed up to, you know, support a pal, and never got a single good lead, never got a job, nothing.

All I got was spam, basically. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm on it. And, uh, it's kind of, I have a lot of the, the same people that are my friends on, on Facebook. And, uh, it just seems like a big circle jerk. People write, you know, recos and they're kind of hoping that you'll write one. Um, I don't see the point in it. I'm sure that there are people out there that have gotten tons of jobs and they live on LinkedIn and they love it.

And it's fantastic. Uh, I just find it to be completely useless for me. Um, but I also just, you know, I don't know. I guess I'm getting sucked in by the, their hope is that everybody will just keep it because you never know. Yeah. And I try, I sent out my LinkedIn page when I went to job hunting a while ago, like when I went to Wikipedia and all those guys when I was doing my job.

And nobody, none of the HR people like gave it a second. Let's like, can you just send me a copy of your resume? They didn't want my LinkedIn profile, period. Yeah. So if I'm going to professional HR people in San Francisco, the hub of the tech industry, and they're like, no, we don't want that.

Send us a resume. So what I would do is I'd go to LinkedIn and there's a little print PDF. So I'd print it out the PDF and, and just send it to them. I'm like, well, you could have done that yourself, you lazy ass. Um, so I don't know what the point of it is. I have, I don't know anybody that's got a job.

Everybody bitches about it. So I just said, screw it. I'm done. I'm out. That's pretty smart. I think, uh, I think that's a good idea. I mean, if you've got something and it's just another time suck for you to be there and you're not getting anything out of it, to hell with it. My, my buddy did a pretty cool experiment though. It's good for social engineering and phishing testing.

He, he did a, uh, he did a talk at, uh, Defcon, I believe, Defcon or Black Hat, where he went and, uh, spammed, uh, people with top secret clearance and got them to give up like secrets. It was really interesting. He had to go to the EFF to get like approval and take things out.

But you can use it for trolling pretty well, I guess. That's your thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and definitely I found like people that like back way when I used to work for other people rather than running my own company, you know, coworkers that I worked with at the time that I couldn't stand that want to be connected.

And I'm like, well, why, why, why, why? I don't get it. So anyways, yeah, I, I, I, I hardly ever pay attention to it. Every now and then I look and somebody has given me a recommendation and I can tell that they're kind of just doing it because they want recommendations back. And I'm, I just, I can't be bothered with that. Yeah, totally.

No offense to anybody that's written me a recommendation. I, of course, appreciate it, but. But why? But why? What's the, what was the point? I don't get it. So, yeah, and speaking of, you know, your jobs and doing them, as you mentioned earlier, I think everybody probably noticed we had some audio problems last week's episode because my computer blew up in the middle of it.

That's been quite the process. It's funny because after I told people about what had happened, everybody's immediate reaction was, are you just going to go get another computer? Because that's how everybody thinks now. Sure, I'm just going to go spend another $3,000 on a computer when I'm 99% sure that I've blown a power supply.

So, my immediate thought, because you and I grew up in the day where we put together our own computers back in the day, we would order parts piecemeal and put them together and build them and do them exactly to our specs. I'm relatively comfortable with all that. I still remember how to do it. The thing is, I don't have the time.

So, my thought was, okay, you know, I'm pretty comfortable with this, and I thought people were crazy for telling me to buy a new computer. I'm not going to spend $3,000 when I know it's pretty much just the power supply. Problem is, I was under deadline for a project, so I didn't have the time to, like, run down to Fry's, buy a new power supply, come back and install it myself.

I figured, well, no problem. I don't really know a PC tech around here. I asked around. Nobody really had a good one. Screw it, and you're going to hate this. I'll just call the Geek Squad because it's a big corporate, you know, computer repair place. I figured, no problem. They'll, of course, just come over here.

I'll have to pay them for it, but they'll come over here and put in a new power supply. Called them. We don't do that. What do you mean you don't do that? What? Exactly. We will not. You can take your computer. He said specifically, that sounds like a serious problem.

I'm thinking in my mind, it's a power supply. It's not a serious problem. You take it out and replace it. It's four screws. He has four screws. It's four screws and a couple connectors. Come on. This is not a serious problem. So they basically told me, no, they will not come out to my place. They will not look at my computer at my place.

They will not bring out a power supply, even though I gave them the model number. And they will not come and install it. My option would be to bring it to one of their stores, where they will then ship it to one of their repair facilities, and in two to three weeks, I will get my computer back if it is just a power supply. Oh, my God.

I told you they were bad, but even I didn't know they were that bad. That was pretty insane. I was a little surprised. So basically, the Geek Squad now pretty much just deals with stupid software user errors, and they will teach you the problems of your ways. Otherwise, you'll be waiting two to three weeks to get any piece of equipment back.

And while they're doing it, they'll steal all your information and all your pictures and post it online. Exactly. And then all of a sudden, those private little shots that you took that you thought nobody would ever see are online. So next step was then go ahead and just do a quick search and catch some Yelp reviews.

I found a guy that was local, called him, told him. He got immediately that I actually knew what I was talking about, so I didn't get the 100-page questionnaire that you get with Geek Squad or anybody else. You know, have you tried powering it off? Have you tried unplugging it? Blah, blah, blah. Look, I know what I'm doing. It's the power supply.

The power supply blew. I need a new power supply. He came over same day, put in the new power supply. Unfortunately, found another problem, which I guess when the power supply blew, for whatever reason, the controller board on my main hard drive also blew. Now, that became an issue, but this guy knew what he was doing, and he had contacts that knew what they were doing.

He called one of his buddies. Yep, I got that same circuit board. 45 bucks. Sure, I'll take it over there tomorrow. He took it over there for me. Guy put on a new circuit board. Another day later, because I had some other stuff to do, guy came back over. here, installed it, plugged it, up and running. Boom, done.

200 bucks, as opposed to 3,000, completely working computer, didn't lose any data, didn't have to spend two days reinstalling software, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, one big point for, this is still not a throwaway culture. Things can be fixed. Well, you don't have an iMac.

That's true. I am still on PC, and another big point for PC is that you can actually get these things back up and running, assuming it isn't too bad of a problem. But, yeah, I mean, everybody else's immediate reaction was, okay, well, I guess you're just going to have to buy a new computer. That's not always the case, people.

My reaction was switch to Mac, but. Well, I mean, that is something. This is definitely pushing me to start making the switch over. It's just, I knew I had, you know, deadlines on projects, and I wasn't quite ready. So, but I'm going to start the process immediately. Well, next time you have a deadline and your computer blows up, then just hire me, and I'll take care of it while you sit around and go to the beach and do whatever the hell you do down there.

Right. Now, I do have one other comment, and this is just a personal grumpy thing. Oh, look, another random tangent. What the fuck is up with repair people and their need to be so chatty? They talk so much. It doesn't matter what it's for.

I've had plumbers over. I've had electricians over. I've had computer repair guys over. The reason I am hiring you to come to my place to fix something is because I am busy. I do not want to sit with you while you're repairing it and have a fucking conversation.

Shut up. Fix my stuff. Let me pay you and get out. This is why I'm paying you. Well, they want you to know exactly what you're getting your money's worth for, or, you know, your money for. I suppose so, but, you know, this guy just wanted to get into it and start talking about the new Adobe editions and showing me how much he knows about computers, and I'm just like, I'm working here.

So, there you go. So, you please do the same and get out of my house. You get to work, too, fix my little computery thing that I could have done myself, but I'm paying you to do it because I'm busy and stop talking. But, anyways, we're back up and running, and it's all very good, and, again, I always tell people, you know, when something goes wrong, don't immediately just throw it out and buy something new because that's what everybody wants you to do now.

In the news, Google turns 15 years old today. Wee! Okay, almost drive. Maybe next year we get the Google car. It really feels like it's older than 15, though. That's what... Does it to you? 15? Well, I mean, yeah, I guess.

I don't know because I still... Well, I still remember AltaVista, so... Well, yeah, I totally remember AltaVista and Lycos. Remember the old Lycos? Ask Jeeves. Of course, yes. Yes. I remember when Google first came out, and it was the little kid on the block, but now 15.

Growing some hairs. Dropping some balls. Voices deepening. Pockets deepening, too. That, too. Maybe they should buy Skype and fix it. That would be nice. Yeah, because I could have sworn I was still at my first job in L.A. in 95 when it came out, so that timing doesn't work there.

So, man. Okay. Yeah. Well, 15. Happy birthday. Either way, old. Very old. We lived in a world pre-Google. Yes. Pre-everything. Yeah, pretty much so. They've got a cute little Google doodle up today.

I think I got 190 points. I have not played it yet, so. It's a piñata. Aw. Speaking of old stuff, do you remember Cosmo.com? Of course I do. That was the place to go for ice cream and porn at two in the morning.

That's what you ordered from Cosmo. It was ice cream and porn at two in the morning, and they would deliver it and deliver it. I love that service so much. I spent so much money on them because that's back when I was making a ton of money. I spent so much money at an ad agency doing movie stuff.

And every night, I would order my dinner from Cosmo with a new DVD. That's why I had a $25,000 DVD collection. Talk about a waste of money. I mean, I had 500 DVDs at one point. And they would bring me a new one every night.

I would just go to Cosmo. I'm like, ooh, what's out today? And they would bring me a movie and, like, ramen and whatever I was going to make that night in my bachelor pad in Hollywood. And I loved them so much, I named a cat after them. Aw. Isn't that cute? I tried to get one of the messenger bags on eBay, but I couldn't find a decent one.

So I had a bike helmet for a while. Ended up giving it away because it was stupid to have a Cosmo bike helmet since it was just an orange bike helmet with a sticker on it. But they had those Vespas. That's the one thing. They had the cool messenger bags that said Cosmo on them, and they drove those orange Vespas. Right.

And it turns out they're coming back. Well, apparently, the tech is booming again. Yeah. So, yes, because I actually just read a really great article on Salon, which mentioned Cosmo coming back in kind of a chuckle chuckle. Look, even one of these dinosaurs is coming back because things are booming so well, especially up in San Fran.

The article, Why We Hate the New Tech Boom, Our New Masters Aren't Going Away, and Neither is a Two-Tiered Employment World, which makes inequality worse. Basically, this just is a lot of what we've been talking about when we were talking about Lanier's Who Owns the Future book. Siren servers, you know, a couple people, power centralized, all the money going into a few people's hands, disruption of massive industries to benefit a few and fire a bunch.

But it really kind of gets into this guy who wrote the article, obviously lives up in San Fran and is very involved. He is saying that there is the feeling in San Francisco that not only is it booming right now, but we see a big crash coming again. Yeah, I don't know about that crash, unfortunately.

I wish it would happen because I would honestly like to be able to go back there at some point if I wanted to and get an apartment. But you can't. You can't. I had a friend who was just telling me the other day, she worked at Apple. This is a girl that worked at Apple. And she had to quit Apple and leave San Francisco because she couldn't afford to live there.

Yeah. Rents are absolutely absurd there. Yeah, and it's – I don't know. It's just a bunch of douchebags now. I don't – I wanted to go back to the way it was. And it's crazy. The Soma part of town, which is where they're saying is like the highest rents because that's where all the startups are, nobody ever lived there.

I don't know anybody that ever lived in Soma. I did when I went back this last time, but when I first went out there in like 2006-ish or whenever – no, it was 2004. It was – nobody lived in Soma. It was a shithole.

And it's all been gentrified now. And that's where all the cool kids live. It's so bizarre. It's so bizarre. But I don't know if this bubble is going to end because everybody is making money now. Apparently. They weren't making money before. Yeah, I guess so.

I mean, I'm definitely seeing it here in Venice too. I mean, Venice is now what they call Silicon Beach. It's a very similar feel to what I'd imagine the Bay Area feels like right now. Rents are skyrocketing. Google's moved in. You know, $5,000 a month rent up and down this area, which I don't understand how anybody can afford.

But apparently, I mean, Google's paying people somewhat decently. But you're just blowing all your money on rent to be in the area. Yeah, it still turns you into basically a surf, you know? Which is kind of what this article is saying and what Lanier was talking about too.

It's all the big money is only going to a handful of people. Everybody else is getting, you know, the scraps and the perks that make them feel like they're doing great. But they're not really doing great. They're not going to have anything to show for it when they get fired or they quit and try to do something else. Yeah, I mean, that's why I'm still broke.

I used to make a ton of money and I spent all my money on nice places to live, which I didn't have to back then. Now you have to. I was just an idiot. These people are forced into it, you know? Yeah. And there's not that many cheap options up there. If you look at, even Oakland is having the same problem now because everybody's going over to Oakland to get a place.

And the rents are going up there, like off the charts. So I don't know why. We need a new San Francisco or a new Silicon Beach or whatever. We need a new town that's cheap, like maybe in Montana. Well, we need a new model that these tech companies should be following, which isn't draining all the money into a few pockets.

Let's talk a little more even distribution, people. How so? Describe. Pay your employees well. Don't disrupt entire industries so that you replace it with just three people working. Figure out a way. I don't know. If I could solve that, I would be doing it and I'd be heralded as a hero.

I don't know. I think these people are getting paid well. They're getting paid, I'm sure, at least $125,000 a year. And if you can't make it on $125,000 a year, then there's something definitely wrong. And the big problem with San Francisco is they've got so many fucking millionaires from Facebook.

And I mean, it was 200 millionaires in a day that were pushed into the economy. Right. And you've got the Google millionaire. There's just too many damn millionaires. And why aren't I one of them? Damn it. Or me. I know. I got it. I'm right there with you. I wrote enough software to earn my place in there, but nope.

Well, you know, that was a lot of, gosh, what's the guy? The 10,000 hours guy. Mouth and Gladwell. Gladwell wrote about, too. A lot of it was timing. We were in between the humps. You know, we were too late for the very first burgeoning grasp to make the millions.

And then, you know, we were right there in that fallow period where we did really well for ourselves, but we had no chance of really making the huge breakthroughs. And then, a little too old and too jaded to hop on board that second round. Yeah, that's the problem. Too jaded. Too old and too jaded.

Oh, man. Okay. Well, happy to happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Speaking of happy thoughts. Naked statues. Naked stuff. Naked stuffs. There's a post on the ACLU blog about how one of their Facebook posts got pulled because there were some naked boobies that they took a picture of on a statue in a public park in Kansas.

Right. And so they put up a post saying, oh, you know, Facebook needs to have better privacy or appeal processes and why, you know, corporations taking over all this crap. Whatever. I really couldn't care less about that stuff.

It's Facebook. It's their service. They're going to do what they're going to do. This is not, you know. Yeah. There's no recourse here. My problem is, this is the ACLU, and this is the technology, liberty, and national security section of their blog. The author, who is an attorney, he's a staff attorney for the ACLU.

His name is Lee Rowland, or Rowland, made that mistake that drives me mad. He confused blog and blog post. Okay. Intermittently. He called a blog post a blog. Right. And still mentioned blog post.

It's just one of those things. This is just a total, it's like the difference between GIF and GIF almost. It's a pet peeve for you? Yes. No, it's not a pet peeve. It made me want to tear my skin off. This is a lawyer for the ACLU. Know the difference between a blog and a blog post. A blog is the collection of posts. God damn it.

Sorry, I'm getting grumpy now. I'm pissed off. Okay. These are smart people. They should know better. Know the difference. A blog is a collection of posts. A blog post is an individual item that you post on your blog. That's it. Okay? We're done. I'm just annoyed by the fact that the ACLU spent and wasted time and money on this because it is Facebook and they own it and they can do whatever the hell they want.

Yeah. This is not a democracy. No. It's somebody's corporate property and they can literally do whatever the hell they want. Right. If they were paying for it, sure, you'd have a choice. But you can also leave. You don't have to post it on Facebook, so don't bitch about it when they take it down.

You know? They've got booby recognition software. Yes, they do. God, I could use that. It's called the internet. That's all it is. There's boobies everywhere. Just Google booby. So on a happy note, finally, finally, the FAA is going to let us play with our computers while we're taking off.

Okay. You don't think this is a good idea? I think this is great because I hate the music that's on the built-in system and I like to listen to music when I'm taking off. If I like to get pumped up, listen to some Rammstein, you know, as the engines rev up. I want to, you know, get in the mood. Yeah.

I don't necessarily think that this is an absolutely great idea. I fly Air Canada a lot and they're smart enough and they figured this out a little while ago. They don't let you use your own devices anymore, but they do turn on the movie system before you even take off so you can happily plug in your own headphones and start watching movies.

This is one of those things that makes me sound elitist a little bit. I never thought that the ruling had anything to do with our actual electronics. Maybe way back in the day when cell phones were like the size of a fucking minivan, there were some issues, but certainly not in the last five to ten years.

Our electronics do not disturb any of their systems. I never thought it was about that. For me, it was always, and I think most people felt this way too, it's because takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous plight, statistically the most dangerous times in a flight.

If anything is going to go wrong, chances are it's during those two periods. Yeah, seven minutes. Seven minutes on either side. Yep. And my whole thought on it was that this is just because they want people to be aware and not off in their own world. So if something does happen, we can get the fuck up and get out of the plane or do whatever needs to be done.

And when people plug in and lose themselves in their own stuff, they get sucked into the me, me, me world and they're not paying attention. And I'm perfectly capable of multitasking, but most people aren't. Most people are fucking stupid.

And I think this is a bad idea because of that, because I don't want everybody in that plane completely tuned out if something does happen. I'm fine. Wait seven minutes, people. You can wait seven minutes. Well, here's the other issue with the safety side. In a crash situation, they usually come around and take everything, glasses, jewelry, because when you're flying at 500 miles an hour and you suddenly stop, those are all projectiles.

Yeah. There's a whole bunch of iPads that are going to start slamming into people. And yeah, whatever. I don't care about that. If I'm crashing, the last thing I'm worried about is an iPad hitting me in the back of the head. Don't worry about my ass hitting the ground. You know, there's a big difference. So I agree 100%. You know, it's great to be able to listen to your own music.

It's been a stupid reason that we all know wasn't true that they were giving us for not letting us do it. But I think you see my point as well. I do see your point. I understand it, but I would like the choice personally to listen to my Rammstein when I'm taking off, period.

You know, if they want to change it, have better music on the damn systems. Virgin America has the best inflate entertainment system, and you can listen to some good music when you take off and land. So I approve of them. Or you can watch our friends over at Boing Boing on their TV. But that's the only airline, and they don't fly from Pittsburgh.

Now they do fly from Chicago, so that's good. But anyway, if I'm going to some place that doesn't have Virgin America, I wouldn't listen to my phone. That's it. Or a podcast, like ours. Yeah, listen to us. What we're telling people who are already listening to us.

I know, you're already listening to us. Take off your headset, put it on the person next to you, and just say, this is really good. Yes, lie to a stranger. Lie to a stranger. Lie to a stranger, Dave, just for us. So, I don't know.

Hey, Brian, go make me a sandwich. I have to make 300 of them before we do a podcast together? Yes, that's it. Yeah, this story drove me absolutely batshit. I just, I didn't see it, so bring it to speak. You know, it has nothing to do with the story itself.

This is like the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, as it were. It's another bullshit fluff story that went completely, absolutely bonkers viral. Some woman is engaged, and the husband said, probably as a joke would be my guess, you know, I will marry you, but I want you to make me 300 sandwiches first.

So that, you know, I'll know that you'll be a woman or whatever, or you'll be able to give me sustenance. Or, hell, I fucking love sandwiches, and if I'm going to spend the rest of my life with you, say I lose my arms. I want to make sure that I keep getting my sandwiches. Who knows? But she wrote some blog story about it, and it got picked up and became the big deal.

You know, everybody on Twitter, feminist pigs, blah, blah, chauvinists, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, we have serious things going on in the world. An article going in-depth about Syria will get, like, five-page views. This, well, a couple thousand, and then there's op-eds coming about it on either side.

And then we can put up another article about how that op-ed is wrong and what's wrong with that person. And then she's on the Today Show the next day, and, you know, publicities, agents, and fucking PR people, and social networking experts are losing their minds trying to get a piece of this because it's so viral. And, oh, my God, we're going to get her to write a book, and we'll get her a book deal, and nobody is going to fucking remember this in three weeks.

And this is what I hate about internet culture right now. In a nutshell. In a nutshell. Or in a sandwich. In a Monte Cristo. Monte Cristo. Oh, man. Yeah, it's, it, I mean, I hear what you're saying, and normally my response would be, well, don't read it.

Yeah. But unfortunately, I'm with you now. The problem is it just ends up everywhere because everybody is desperate for their page views and trying to make a buck and make a cent or two. Plus, people leap all over this and smell the money, even though there's no money here, because nobody's going to buy a book from this person.

She's been doing a blog. How much is, has she made a cent off of it? Probably not. Whatever. This is so non-story. It's a fluff little thing that, like, used to be passed around in emails. Look, there's some girls writing a blog about making 300 sandwiches so she can get married. End of story. Instead, it's everywhere.

Well, I mean, this just goes to the breakdown of culture in our society with the internet. And, you know, it's been driving me mad for quite some time. I stopped reading the news recently just because it is so fucking vapid. You know, I'm reading literature now, books, just to get that cultural feeling back.

I even started reading comic books again, and I've railed against old guys reading comics and talking about it on the internet. It's like... Aren't there about 500 podcasts about that? Oh, there's way too many. So, I'm just rereading Sandman, which if you ever need to read a comic, just go read that one and it'll blow your mind.

Right. But something, something different, something that's, you know, got substance. This is not... These are potato chips. This is the potato chip culture. Yeah. It drives me insane that this stuff is what actually pops, and it gets on TV shows, and it gets everywhere.

And it's such a non-story, and nobody cares. And like I said, in two to three weeks, everybody will forget about it until the actual marriage, where if she's really smart, she will make sandwiches as the catering. And then she might get a little publicity again, and everybody will pass that around and go, oh, oh, you remember this story from a long time ago?

Here she is at her wedding. She made all the sandwiches. And then gone again. And then she'll be in celebrity rehab. Exactly. I'm the sandwich girl. Yeah. So, that just really got to me this week and made me want to tear my skin off. I can't take the Huff-po-ization of our world anymore.

Well, if you listen to Seymour Hersh, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, he agrees. Wait, what's a journalist? We don't have those anymore. We really don't have them. Well, no, you know what? We do, and they're in Europe. It's called The Guardian.

Okay. That's all that's left. Yes. He basically says, fire everybody. Get rid of them. Yeah. Fire everybody and promote the people that make you uncomfortable and won't listen to orders, which is great advice. And nobody's going to do it.

No, probably not. It's interesting. He's got a book coming out. I will link to a piece in The Guardian that came out today. And it's funny. I found this. I follow Glenn Greenwald on Twitter, and he linked to it. And he's like, if there's one thing you need to read today, go read this. And it's true. It's a really good piece about how journalism is broken and how all the mainstream outlets are on their knees to the White House and just post the rhetoric of the day.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what I hope really happens is that this comes out on Amazon, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reads it because he just bought a paper. And maybe he should put his money where his mouth is and do exactly what Hirsch is recommending here.

Well, actually, he calls out The Washington Post in here in one sentence. Oh, yeah. He was wondering why The Washington Post wouldn't post the Snowden files until The Guardian was going to do it. So they had somebody to do it with. It's like, I don't want to go in the haunted house.

Will you come with me? I'm scared. Well, yeah. I mean, journalism is dead, and people are trying to do it to make a buck or they're – who knows? It needs to change because it's certainly driving me crazy. Stop reading the news.

Well, I mean, I stopped watching TV news ages ago. Every now and again, I'll pop on Al Jazeera or CNN if I have to watch CNN. But there's nothing on. It's done. Yeah, it's done. Comment of the week. All right.

So we have a comment of the week. Actually, it's a bit more of a homage, I guess, or fromage. Let me go on a – Fromage? Jeez. Fromage. I'm going to go off on a quick tangent first. As much as we bitch and moan about Facebook, I've got to say there are some pluses because the homage of the week actually comes from – Facebook and one of my friends.

And he was one of my old Disney buddies when I was 16 years old, and we all ran around like goss around Disneyland. And I haven't seen him in at least 20 years. So the cool thing about Facebook is that you actually do kind of find and reconnect with people like that, even if you'll never see them in person.

He's a really funny guy. We like each other's statuses. We comment every now and then. And Facebook is great for that kind of stuff, I've got to say. So, you know, a rare thumbs up for Facebook from the grumpy old geeks for this kind of stuff. Okay, boys. Reel it back in. But back to the comment of the week.

He put up a status update, which is really quite funny. And here it is. Within five years, there will be only four sections in the Huffington Post. Side boob, under boob, inner boob, and post baby boob. And I just thought that was hilarious, and I liked it immediately. And then the homage comes from – he did a follow-up status.

Brian, the status was honestly inspired by a rant you did on one of the grumpy old geeks podcasts. Good stuff. Well, thank you, Tim. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I do like it. And your comment was quite funny. Good job. I wish I would have thought of that when we were recording. Yeah, I'm going to post a link to – speaking of side boob, I'm going to post a link in the show notes.

You have to just go – I'm not going to tell you what it is. Well, it's actually – well, the 15 hottest side boobs at the VMAs. But you should go click on it, and it's – it'll give you a chuckle. That's all I'm going to say. We all need a good chuckle. Mm-hmm. And they're not man boobs.

So I just want to throw that out. They're not man boobs. Damn it. Kidstyle in the balls. Brian? Yes. Who is John Galt? Well, John Galt is one of the main characters in Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shrugged, the novel by Ayn Rand that every college student must read as – Yes, and most people go into a brief phase believing in her philosophies.

Like the Tea Party. Mm-hmm. They drag her out. Well, that's not so much a brief phase for them, but – Yes, unfortunately. We've all gone through it. I've read the book several times myself. Yeah, loved it the first time I read it because you're usually at that early 20s age.

Well, I mean, and they've been making movies. They bought the rights. These guys, rich guys, bought the rights and have been making movies. And now they're kickstartering the last part. They want – they're asking for handouts for their movie.

This is about the ultimate in hypocrisy. Now, here's the difference. They know it's hypocrisy, and they're saying it's a marketing ploy. Oh, okay. If you read the FAQ, they say this whole thing is a marketing ploy, and everybody's going to yell at them.

And they say the movie's already funded. They're still asking for $250,000, but the movie's already been funded. So I don't – this – it's – I mean, at this point, I'm just laughing at it because it's so ridiculous. So what are they going to do with the money?

Marketing. More marketing. Okay. Yeah. I mean, do you really think that they're going to get it? Oh, my God. They're close. They're close. Oh, wow. What do you mean? Like, as soon as you said that, I'm like, they almost have it already, which is ridiculous.

And some of these perks are ridiculous. $7,500, and your name is carved into John Galt's house. I know. This is just – if you know anything about the philosophy behind it, this is absolutely beyond ridiculous. And, okay, yeah, mission accomplished.

We're talking about it. Yeah. No. I mean, I saw the first one, and it was terrible. I gave it one star on Netflix because it was – Is it worse than, like, Kirk Cameron's self-produced crap? Well, his stuff is all about Jesus. Well, some people who believe in this stuff think that Ayn Rand is Jesus.

Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as that. But I would never watch the Kirk Cameron stuff, so I can't really – I can't comment on it. He's a nutter. I'm staying away from him. But I watched this, and, like, you know, as a fan of the book, I was just turned off by the movie because it was just so poorly done.

It was originally going to – they were going to have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as the leads in it. That actually might have been interesting. Which fell through. Yeah. I mean, this could have been a fantastic movie series. Yeah. But, you know, it got in the hands of these idiots, and they just kind of ruined it.

You know, I'll probably go and watch it because I love the story. I love the book. It is fantastic. I don't believe in the philosophy anymore at all. But I do love the book. And obviously these guys don't really believe in the philosophy either. But, so. Yeah. If it's on Netflix, you can go watch the first two.

I haven't watched the second one yet. I'm probably going to just because I've invested in the first one, and I don't apparently understand the sunk cost fallacy enough to follow it. And leave it be. So. But this is just ridiculous. We were talking about the Twitter thing when we were on break.

I actually have, like, seven or eight fake character accounts from the movie. And other people were making fake character accounts and following my fake character accounts. So, we've got this whole fake virtual gulch going on here. You guys should, you should just start posting all the links to, like, help us.

Be a moocher. Click here. Help us. Yeah, be a moocher. You know, I was actually just looking at the Kickstarter page, and I think this is interesting. Under special thanks. Did you see this? Special thanks. Go to Glenn Beck. Not surprising. John Stossel, also not surprising. Sean Hannity, Judge Napolitano.

And then here's the one that caught me. Penn Jillette. Penn Jillette is on Glenn Beck's show all the time. Huh. He's friends with Glenn Beck. Well, I don't really have too much of a problem with that, but I'm still a little surprised that Penn Jillette would get involved with this one. So, yeah, Penn Jillette's a hardcore libertarian, so it doesn't surprise me that he's on board with, like, the philosophies.

Right. But either way, this is just the most ridiculous Kickstarter yet to date. And the third movie is the, you know, the penultimate speech that John Galt gives, which in the book is 70 pages. I know. It's a 70-page speech.

I don't know how they're going to edit that. That'll be interesting. Are they just going to have him up there talking for 30 minutes as part of the movie? Well, it's over an hour. It's an hour. Yeah. Because I listened to the audiobook version of it on a cross-country drive, and I drove from California to Pittsburgh, and I still didn't get through the whole book. But that speech is, it's about an hour.

Yeah. So, I don't know. I don't think these guys are talented enough filmmakers to make that engaging, period. I mean, you need some, like, you know, Scorsese shit up there to make 70 pages of dialogue interesting. Yeah, I agree. All right.

Well, another crazy-ass Kickstarter story. Yeah, this tops it. I'm going to link an Onion rebuttal, because the funny part was the person that sent me this link was saying, I really thought this was an Onion article that they were kick-starting it because it's so ridiculous.

So, is it real or is it the Onion? Perfect. Yo, seriously? Are you shitting me? I find weird stuff online all the time, and this one takes the cake. Now, I love a nap as much as everybody else, because I've told you about my Pizzizz apps and things like that.

Yes. This is a napping pillow called the Ostrich Pillow. And, you know, an ostrich, it's a tall bird that sticks its head in the sand when it wants to take a nap. Yes. Reminds me of the bug-bladder beast of trawl from the Hitchhiker's Guidebooks, when if you close your eyes, it thinks it can't see you, so that's how you get away from it, because it's that dumb.

That's what an ostrich basically is. So, this is a pillow that you're going to have to go to the show notes, grumpyoldgeeks.com slash, what are we, 27? Yes, 27. Yeah, 27. Go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 27, and click on the link for the ostrich pillow.

It is so ridiculous that it cannot, I'll try to describe it, but it looks like you're a Martian. It's got a whole, it's a whole head pillow that goes over your head, but it's got a hole for your nose and your mouth so you can breathe, but it covers your eyes, and it has two handholds where your ears go, so you can put your hands under your head.

This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Description, yeah, you need to look at it. You can't describe the ridiculousness until you see it, particularly the video. It's quite, it's amazing. This is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen in my entire life, but I also am strangely attracted to it and love it.

I know. You know what would be perfect if they did? If they put Bluetooth speakers inside of it, so then you could at least listen to your music while you have your power naps. That would be nice. Yeah, it's created by a company called Studio Banana Things. Oh, great name. Great name, perfect for what this company does.

They call it your cozy cocoon. And I don't know, it just, you know what they also need to put in there is a fan because this thing looks ridiculously hot. It does. It does look hot. I mean, I love the concept of the company and the Grommets is a great name and they're finding interesting things and putting them up there.

And a huge, you know, round of applause for not Kickstarter-ing it, just doing it and putting it out there. Good for you guys. I'm a little concerned. They shut down their comment boards for comments and there aren't even that many, really. What are they concerned about here?

I don't like when people do that. You know what, I bet it, well, no, this site is, yeah, it's called Grommet. I think it looks like it's one of those, you know, Etsy type of sites. Yeah, exactly. So I thought maybe, it's probably a timed shutoff, you know, like with WordPress.

A lot of people turn off comments after, say, two weeks because any comments you get after two weeks, 99.9% of the time are spam. So you turn off comments automatically after two weeks. So this might be that kind of thing. So I don't want to go too much into that. Cool. What I really want is just, I kind of want one now.

They're expensive. 99 bucks for the power nap pillow. 99 bucks to look like a twat. It's pretty. And if you look at it when it's laying on its side, it looks like some kind of sexual device. It is exceedingly odd.

I would just probably lose my mind if I actually saw somebody in public with this thing on. It's pretty awesome. I just, I kind of want to get one and put like a webcam in it so I can watch, so I can take pictures of people looking at me wearing it. Like on a plane, you know, you wear this thing on a plane.

Yeah. Oh, there's an awesome comment in here from somebody named Kate. This looks like a Farside cartoon. End quote. Always one to sacrifice style for comfort. Eloise realized she may have gone too far this time. End quote. Pretty funny there, Kate. Good job.

Yeah. This is, I'm done with it. Just go check it out. Seriously. It'll make you smile. Yeah, it will make you smile. Awesome fun. Security. So the security stuff this week isn't very in-depth.

I just want to bring up a rally that's happening that I have some friends that are going to and will be speaking at. Notably, my friend Shani Jardin from Boing Boing and Anil Dash are going to be speaking there. But there's a lot of major players. It's the rally against mass surveillance.

It's, you know, it's a lot of people going to march on Washington about all the spying that we've been talking about for 26 episodes. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web. Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who's releasing the Snowden stuff, which is very interesting that he's coming here.

I know. Ai Weiwei, who's somebody I'd really like to see. He doesn't speak English, though, so hopefully he'll have a translator. One would imagine. Will Wheaton, which is a surprise one. Well, you know, he's Mr. Internet these days, too. Will Wheaton and George Takei. Wait, no George Takei?

No George Takei. Well, there's a full list. I think Cory Doctorow is speaking, too, which is weird that they don't have him as a prime one. Yeah, Ai Weiwei is. If you've never seen the Ai Weiwei documentary, check it out. It's really cool. John Cusack. Oh, God.

He's not going to speak. He's going to record his speech, put it on a cassette, and put it on a boombox. Play it. That would be awesome if he did that. That would be pretty awesome. Oh, Jake Applebaum's going to be there. That's cool. I thought he was on the run from the law.

Right. And the creator of the Ican Has Cheeseburger Network will be there. Oh, thank God. I'm sure he has a lot to be concerned about. Yeah, I'm sure the facial recognition software in Washington, D.C. is going to be going overdrive that weekend. Well, everybody's going to be wearing their V for Vendetta mask.

Wow. Well, I would be wearing mine if I could go, but it's October 25th, and I don't think I'm going to be this side of the country when that happens. I'll probably be on your side of the country. Yeah, I would like to attend it as well, but I just can't take the time out to fly to Washington, D.C. just to do this.

But apparently you can get involved online, viewing parties in cities around the world. I'm going to see if there's a viewing party around here. That might be actually pretty interesting. Oh, maybe we can do that together. If I'm out there, we should do that. Yeah, if we're out, let's go to it together and hang out and meet some interesting people.

Hopefully they will all be wearing tinfoil underwear, but we'll see. Check out the shirts, too. I like the shirt, the Icon shirt. Yeah, it's pretty cool. With the eye with the hand saying, stop. Check it out. Check it out for sure. If you're into this kind of stuff, it's at rally.stopwatching.us.

Stop watching us. If you've been listening to us, you probably are into this. Go take a look at the website. Sign up for the petition. This is important stuff, people. It's very important. So, yeah, if I can't make it to the thing, I'll definitely – we'll post if we're going to do a watching party.

Cool. For sure. For sure. Definitely. Maybe we'll just all go to Finn's and bring it up on the iPad. Just one iPad. We'll all hunker around one iPad. Exactly. A mini. We'll get a mini. We'll get a mini. The whip's not dead. So I found a site that somebody linked to called After iOS 7 Icons.

It's a Tumblr site, and it just chronicles different apps on what they look like before and after iOS 7 and the simplifications that are going on. And how boring iOS 7 is. Well, with these icons, I have to agree. I totally have to agree.

I think I really like some of the old stuff, and the new stuff is just meh. Yeah, it's way too simple. It feels, like I said the other week, which was just, you know, I'd had it for exactly a day at that point. It's boring me.

It feels like a toy. You know, the iOS 6 tilt-shift video icon, which I don't even have, that's an amazing icon in iOS 6. In iOS 7, it's so boring. And it doesn't tell you what it does. Well, iOS 6 didn't actually tell you what it did either, but it looked like a camera.

It was basically a really nice camera icon. And now it's a magnifying glass with a shutter graphic in it, which makes no sense. Yeah. Depth and shading and backgrounds are all being taken out. It's just, ugh, ugh, blah, blah. So, it's just a wrong design move on their side.

And, yeah, I'm glad you're kind of coming around to my initial impression, which was just knee-jerk. I had nothing to back me up, but now we have, this backs it up. Just look at this site, guys, and gals out there, and tell me that iOS 7 isn't boring. Yeah, I mean, I guess you can't overuse drop shadows, but I like drop shadows.

And you'll notice that the main difference is almost every single icon pre-7 had a drop shadow. Yep. In some way, shape, or form. Yeah. And now they're gone. And I don't know. And I miss them. I like it. Yeah.

I don't know what it is. Well, any sense of realism is gone, too. A lot of icons had at least some sense, well, not a lot, but quite a few icons had some sense of realism to it. And now it's all just kind of straight, you know, cartoony, you know, just straight-up vectors, blah, blah, boring.

Yeah, super bare minimalism is what it boils down to. Yeah. And, oh, the Geohopper one. That's a total, if you could check out, if you've got to scroll for a while, but it was the Geohopper one. The old icon is gorgeous.

It kind of tells me something about what it does, and the new one is just crap. Yeah. That one's all the way down at the bottom. It's the last one on the page. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, check it out. And these guys are still posting stuff, so it's worth keeping an eye on if you're interested in the progression of what's happening with it.

That's it. That's all I got. It's just, it's an interesting one. It seems to be the theme for me today is new does not mean improved. No, it does not. But this gnat that's flying around my head is going to kill it. Okay. Good catch. Yeah, candy, candy, candy, candy. Have you ever listened to the What the Fuck podcast with Marc Maron?

I've listened to a few of them, mostly the musician ones, because he gets some really interesting people that wouldn't pop up anywhere else, but I don't listen to it regularly. I used to listen to it regularly, but it's the same with a lot of these comics. They get depressing over time.

They really are just, like, damaged people at the core, and if you listen to them too much, it rubs off. Yeah, I told you that that happened to me with Adam Carolla. It was starting to put me in just, like, I was becoming a real asshole because I was listening to him constantly. I was bathing in Carolla-ness, and it really sunk into me.

Yeah, it can do that. So I stayed away from it for a long time, but I noticed, I was going through my list of podcasts, and every week I try and listen to, like, three or four new podcasts on just random topics that I've never listened to, just to maybe find a gem. Right.

And for some reason, I got back to the WTF show, and I saw that he did Simon Pegg, and I am a huge Simon Pegg fan, if you couldn't tell from last week's episode. As am I. So we talked about The World's End. Simon Pegg can do very little wrong, and he's just very funny. And this turns out, it's episode 415 of the WTF podcast.

I'll link it in the show notes. It is an amazing hour with Simon Pegg. I had no idea how cool or smart he was. He is really smart. Well, I will be downloading that one, I'll wait until after, since we're already having Skype issues. But yeah, I can't wait to listen to it.

Mark Maron does a really interesting job with people. He comes at an angle that I would never think of, so I'm interested to see how his chat with him goes. Yeah. I mean, he's a good interviewer. I mean, after 415 episodes, you get pretty good at it, you know? So he pulls out a lot of stuff from Simon, and they talk a lot about the movie, and they talk a lot about culture, the infantilization of people nowadays.

Like, 40 is now 18, you know? Yeah, without a doubt. They go into some little bits of politics and Marxism, and it's a really, really interesting podcast. It's way better than I thought it was even going to be. So that was one find this week.

Second find this week was a show called This Is Actually Happening. It's been around for a while, but they just moved to Mule Radio, and Mule Radio is launching like six or seven new shows this week, or last week. So I checked it out, and the first one was, What If You Spent Four Years in Solitary Confinement?

It's the first one on Mule, but it's actually episode 34. Okay. It was fascinating. It was completely fascinating. It sounds incredibly depressing. Here's the thing. The stories on here are just crazy stories about people's lives.

Like, the next one I listened to was this kid who left, I think he left China. It was hard to tell from the beginning because I was in a drive-thru. But he was like seven years old. His father was in a concentration camp. They left the country.

They were coming to America. They got on a boat. He was seven. His 12-year-old sister was taken by pirates at gunpoint in front of him. They never saw her again. Comes to the States, becomes a gangster. They move because he's going to kill somebody that robbed his mom at gunpoint, and now he's a hairdresser.

Like you do. It's just these crazy stories. I really think this is one of my – because I like the moth and those storytelling shows. There's a lot of really good storytelling podcasts out there right now. But this one, this is just an interesting take because it's mainly the person just telling the story.

And there's the host, and it's got really cool music. You're going to love the music, their intro and outro music. Cool. But check it out. It's called Actually Happening. And you can go to the old site and find the old episodes, which I recommend because – I mean, the four years in solitary confinement is pretty cray-cray, as they say.

But the older ones I'm finding are just as good. So, yeah, this is actually happening. Check it out. I'm going to check it out. And definitely the Simon Pegg one, without a doubt. That should be a hoot. Oh, absolutely. And I might throw in a few more in the show notes because I got a lot that I found this week that was really cool that we just don't have time to talk about.

So I'll throw some new stuff in there, too. But, yeah, just bouncing around the podcast directories and just picking up random shows is turning out to be pretty entertaining. Excellent. I'll keep relying on you to send me once. Okay. All right.

Who's this asshole? Guido Barilla. Careful what you say about the Italians. I'm Italian. I'm a Dave Filippo. Guido Barilla. I don't think that you'll stand by this guy, though. Probably not. No. Probably not. So he is the current CEO of the Barilla Pasta Company, which I think we've all had before.

It's in every store. You know, a lot of people go get it. A lot of people are raised on eating it. The gays can go eat someone else's pasta. That sounds dirty. Oopsies. Somebody's really got to keep these CEOs off Twitter or keep microphones away from them.

And if they have beliefs like this, shut them the fuck up. This is just what a douchebag. It exploded all over my Facebook feed, maybe just because I have quite a few friends that are either very involved with gay rights or are gay themselves. Nobody's going to be eating this pasta for a while.

What a big fuck up. Apparently, there was a follow-up story that came out right before we started to record where they apologized, but not really. So I haven't read that yet. So it sounds like they did a really shitty job of trying to do the mea culpa. Yeah, I read the apology. It was not very good. Okay. There you go.

It was like, yeah, we're sorry you feel that way. But still, if you're fruity, go eat somebody else's pasta. That's kind of the tone that it came off as. It's like, yeah, go away. But here's the deal. Look at this. This is Chick-fil-A 2.0. This is all this is. Exactly.

Chick-fil-A 2.0. You drive by a Chick-fil-A. Lines are just as long. This is going to blow over. People are still going to eat the pasta because it's everywhere. Well, you know, it goes back even further than that. You know, Nike, it's been well-known. Child labor, blah, blah, blah. Horrible company. They're still selling left, right, and center.

And people buy them every day. Still a huge company. Did you see the new reissues of the Jordans from 98? I did not. I'm going to get a pair of those. So whip the kids a little harder. I want the black, white, and red ones, please. And I want them cheaper, damn it. I do. They're 100 bucks.

They weren't that much when they first came out. I guess inflation. Yeah. So that's our asshole of the week. Stupid, stupid man. Yep. Pretty much. He's not doing any favors to the Italians. That's for damn sure. No, not at all. Although I do like the tweak. Thanks, Barilla. Another reason to buy quinoa pasta instead of your white flour poison.

No. You stupid hippies. Quinoa pasta? That's a thing? Well, I'm sure it's a Whole Foods thing. Oh, God. But here's the thing. This is the one weird thing. He's in favor of gay marriage. Just not child adoption. So this is a weird...

Yeah. Here's the deal. I don't give a shit. I really don't. I'm not going to eat his pasta. He's a douche. If you're running a company, keep your personal opinions to yourself. Yeah. Seriously. We don't care what you think. I don't give a shit.

So shut up. I never bought this pasta anyways, but I definitely... I would avoid it now, but it'll blow over and they'll still be fine. And nothing will ever change and nothing matters. Oh, God. I'm starting to get depressed. Press stop. Oh, my God.

Out. So just a little bit of follow-up to our friend David and Chen that we talked about last time who got hit by a car. They are doing okay. The driver stopped. It was not a hit and run. David had a concussion and he's doing okay.

Chen had some injuries. She's doing okay. So our thoughts are with them and speedy recovery. Yeah. Good to hear that you guys are doing all right and hang in there. Yeah, definitely. We need you around. Got to keep listening. Tell your friends.

So I've been going back to watching Fight Club again. Oh, God. I've been feeling that movie. I stopped watching it for a long time because it just – yeah, I'd seen it too many times. But recently I've gone back to it and damn if it doesn't resonate still.

It really does. Now more than ever, as they say. More than ever. I saw that movie three times in the theater the day it came out. I watched it and then I went back and I watched it again and then went home, had some lunch, came back and watched it again. I did not do anything like that.

But I've easily watched that movie at least ten times. It's a great movie. It's a fantastic book. I've read the book twice. In fact, I'd actually really rather read the book again than see the movie again right now. But unfortunately, I definitely need to have something for the at the library next week. So I've got to find a new book.

Yeah, I've actually got it on Audible. I got it on sale. So I started to listen to it and it was so much different from the movie, which was my first run-in with it, that it's a little difficult for me to quote-unquote read. Right. But do you think the book is better than the movie?

No. It's a weird thing where there are some differences. I think the point is the same that they get to. But I like both approaches. I mean, the movie is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's shot so well. It's done so well. And they did such a good job of getting the story across but doing it in a way that worked thematically and on screen so much better.

But the book is also just straight-up unbelievable. So I see them as different entities with the same point. Okay. Okay. So that's good that it's pretty much on par. Yeah, definitely. Never saw the play because it was a play.

Yeah. It was a book, then a play, then a movie. I'll skip the play part. I mean, I love the theater, but I'll skip that. But I don't know. It's just – I just want to bring it up because it's really – with the craziness that I've been going through with the move with my family and seeing how destructive just collecting shit can be.

The video that I posted on our website is us burning old furniture that we couldn't – that nobody would take and we had to – it was the last day of being in the house. So we had a giant burn pile and we burned stuff for probably eight hours.

That's how much old furniture that we had. So on the website, I was doing an iPhone 5S test. That's lowercase s, I found out from a snarky commenter on Facebook. Asshole. But that crazy slow-mo stuff that I posted on the Grumpy Old Geek site, which you should watch full screen, 1080p.

Facebook video is terrible. I had no idea how bad Facebook video was until I started posting from my phone. Wow. Wow, that's bad. They don't even try. It's like they – I mean, FFmpeg, which is the command line video processor that everybody uses to process video, they apparently don't know how to use it or have the flag set wrong because it's terrible.

Yeah, I enjoyed watching the video, so it was pretty cool. And the camera seems light years ahead of even just the one that I had on the 5. Yeah, trust me, it's worth it for the camera. Although a quick note, which just sprung to mind because you just mentioned that you got a snarky commenter for putting the 5 in the S capitalized.

Facebook apparently just rolled out the ability to finally edit your own posts. So you can go back and change history. Okay, well, I can't change the splash screen on the video, which is where it's at. Oh, damn it. Okay. But yeah, just because I've made a decision in my life that everything I own fits in my car.

I can travel with everything I own at the drop of a hat. Right. And people look at me like I'm a lunatic. And when I see what happens with people who just collect stuff over time – we're going to actually have a collector on the show probably next week or two weeks in two weeks.

Who collects vinyl records, thousands of thousands of records. It's just not my style. So watching this movie again just kind of reinforces that whole thing. And it might be just a generational thing. It really might be because people who are older than me don't understand it.

And people who are younger than me don't seem to quite get it either. So I don't know if it's a Gen Xer type of thing. What do you think? The people that are younger than us, there's very little physical items anymore anyways. Everything is digital. So they never formed attachments to it the way that our generation did.

You know, the CDs and the vinyl records and the pride of ownership and the physical items and the collecting thing. That's just not part of their culture. People older, well, same kind of deal. There wasn't as much mass production of items. And things cost a lot more and you got by with what you had.

You didn't want to, you know, have everything the way that we were kind of raised to do. I mean, that's my take on it anyways. Okay. Well, the funny part is the only thing that when we first started doing the show, I was having my digital pack ratness, you know, question.

So I deleted all these old archives and I'm going back through and doing it again. So pretty much I'm just going to have a standard OS installed by the time I'm done, I think. But if you haven't seen the movie, which I find hard to believe, but there are still people out there who haven't seen it.

But just go watch Fight Club. Yeah. Seriously. It's amazing and it's beyond relevant today. And, you know, you don't own the things. The things own you. Good paraphrase. Good paraphrase. Yeah, close. It's been a while. And when you're done, you can go watch Atlas Shrugged.

Or not. Or not. Definitely. Or not. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's all I got this week, man. Yeah, me too. So let's pack it up and get ready for next week. Word. Word. 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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