Gen Xers Love the F-Bomb

I Have a Question Part 1

[00:00:00] Brett:

Hello and welcome to two very special episodes of Overtired. I am here as a, this is Brett Terpstra. Hi. Hi. Hi. Um, hey. Um, so I am here with Jeff Severance Gunzel and Christina Warren, and we are going to do two episodes where each of us takes a turn, asking a kind of, we’ll say, creative open-ended interview question.

Uh, and the other two then answer. And I, I assume we’ll end up answering our own question too, because someone will say, well, yeah, but what about you? What do you think? Um, so we are going to forego the mental health corner this week. I feel like our answers will probably give you a good insight into our mental health.

[00:00:52] Jeff: now and, and past.

[00:00:54] Brett: And we have, we have some questions about apps and technologies that I think will [00:01:00] satisfy the need for a gratitude segment. Uh, so without further ado, let’s, uh, let’s get into the, the q and a time. I should before. Okay. No, let’s warm up. Let’s warm up a little.

[00:01:14] Jeff: Let’s warm up a little, do some stretches or something,

[00:01:17] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. Some jumping jacks, calisthenics, I think they call it some verbal calisthenics.

[00:01:26] Jeff: I’m good. I, I took my son to a college tour yesterday, um, as somebody who did not go to college that was super novel. It’s the second time I’ve done that. Um, we’ll do more and, uh, it’s fun. It’s fun. Kind of one of those things that makes you feel old, but in a good way.

[00:01:46] Brett: How are you, Christina?

[00:01:48] Christina: Well, I’m tired. Um, although I’m like gonna be completely awake and, and happy to do this, I, um, I had like two hours of sleep. And then I had a really weird, like, lucid dream where I [00:02:00] thought that we were recording a little bit later than we were. Um, but I also watched that, uh, that Murda family, uh, murders, uh, uh, Netflix series because of the, the Alec Murda trial that, uh, ended this week, which, uh, I like belatedly kind of became obsessed with.

And, um, so I had weird, like intermingling dreams about some of that stuff, but I’m fine.

[00:02:27] Brett: were there murders in your dream about this podcast?

[00:02:31] Christina: There were not,

[00:02:32] Brett: Okay.

[00:02:33] Christina: unfortunately, I, I, I did

[00:02:34] Brett: Yeah. That could have been

[00:02:35] Christina: not dream of kill. I mean, that would’ve been interesting for, for, for our, our conversation to focus like, yeah, I dream of killing both of you, but no, I didn’t

[00:02:41] Jeff: It was strictly a lucid admin dream.

[00:02:44] Christina: Yeah, it was, it was true. This is, I was gonna say, my lucid dreams are like the most boring things ever.

Whereas like I look at my phone and I’m texting with people and I’m like, oh, I have 30 more minutes to sleep. Like that’s literally like

[00:02:59] Brett: You [00:03:00] dream about waking up and going back to bed. All right,

[00:03:02] Christina: Basically.

[00:03:05] Jeff: That’s awesome.

[00:03:06] Brett: quick question before we roll. I have noticed that Gen Xers love the bomb, and I think my, my theory is that Gen Xers love the F-bomb more than the surrounding generations. Um, not elder millennials. Elder millennials still love the F-bomb, but you talk to younger millennials and you talk to Gen Z. Like ones that are old enough to comfortably swear.

Um, and, and it fe like I drop the F-bomb and it feels uncomfortable. It feels uncomfortable with certain types of boomer and silent generation people. There are always exceptions. There are always people who, you know, swear a lot. There have been age as old as time swearing is, but there’s something like a Gen Xer will just f this and F that and fuck you, you fucking fuck.

And like, I feel like we [00:04:00] grew up on Tarantino and it just, what do you guys think?

[00:04:05] Christina: I think you’re totally wrong. I think that like Boomer, no, I think I, I think the boomers like, might have more of an aversion to it and, and I think you can credit Gen Xs with maybe like the tarantinos and whatnot of a popularizing, some of it, although you could make the same argument that fucking Scorsese, like honestly, you know, really led to that.

And, and he’s a boomer. But I, if you listen to popular music and, and everything else, like especially hip hop music, which has been the like defining force in culture for the last. 25, 30 years. It’s definitely not Gen X. Uh, especially not the hip hop that’s out now. Like none of it is. Um, they drop the all the time.

Like TV shows now. Like especially now we’re in an era

[00:04:49] Brett: But I’m, I’m not talking about media though. I’m talking about conversations

[00:04:54] Christina: but I’m talking about people. Yeah, but I’m talking about people too. Like, because it’s in the media and [00:05:00] the media at this point, the people who are creating it, making it are not Gen Xers. Um, they’re not. So it’s like, no, I, I, I, I don’t, I don’t think so.

Like,

[00:05:09] Brett: so you think it’s all in my head?

[00:05:11] Christina: I think that people might, you might be noticing people’s reaction to you saying words, but I don’t think it has anything to do with, with the, the lack.

[00:05:21] Brett: like to make it a generational thing as a broad. Characterization. Um, and, and I know this very much relies on anecdotal evidence. Um, I’m just, I’m computing, I’m computing all the conversations I’ve had in the last year and realizing, I swear a lot, and obviously they’re like, I can’t swear on my parents.

Um, but I don’t, I don’t ascribe that to their entire generation. Um, you know, boomers do say the

[00:05:52] Jeff: I mean, it’s, uh, been a rhetorical friend to humanity

[00:05:56] Brett: Yeah.

[00:05:57] Jeff: quite some time. I, I have a very specific [00:06:00] memory from second grade. I was walking home, I was a latchkey kid and I was walking home from school with my buddy and I said, you know, I’m gonna try to stop swearing so much. You know,

[00:06:14] Brett: I remember in, I was in would’ve been I think the equivalent of third grade. uh, I was getting picked on by a bully and I called him an f n a hole. And for me that was like, I can’t believe I just said that I felt so guilty. Um, and then he made fun of me because I couldn’t actually swear. Um, so

[00:06:39] Christina: fair?

[00:06:40] Brett: that didn’t help with the bullying at all.

[00:06:42] Christina: no, that made it worse. I bet. Because he is like, you fucking nerd. You can’t even say, fuck, what the fuck. You freaking loser. You fucking loser. Yeah. Uh, I’m sure that didn’t help. I didn’t say so I, my sister taught me the curse words and I didn’t curse a lot until probably middle school.

And then I never stopped, [00:07:00] but I did like, but I also didn’t take like the Lord’s name in vain until I was like 11 or 12. And then I started saying God all the time and feeling bad about it. But then it slowly became desensitized and I was like, I don’t care.

[00:07:13] Brett: yeah, we were not allowed to say, oh my God. We had to

[00:07:17] Christina: same. Oh, same, which, which, which then like

[00:07:19] Brett: even say, geez, we couldn’t say, oh geez. Cuz that was too close to Jesus

[00:07:25] Jeff: I remember taunting, taunting my teacher in like fifth grade. I would just go, fuck without the ck. She’d be like, stop it. I’m like, I didn’t swear. I just said fuck. And I’d be like, shit. She’d be like, stop it,

[00:07:36] Brett: my girlfriend’s sister has, um, a daughter who she was trying to get out of the habit of saying, oh my God. And I don’t think it was for religious reasons, it was just because she said it so much, just like always. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Um, but she says, she has a little bit of a speech thing and she says, oh my God.

Oh my God. And so as, as her like, kind of, [00:08:00] uh, negotiation with this, she would go, oh my God.

[00:08:05] Jeff: Just a little bit off to the side

[00:08:07] Brett: Yeah.

[00:08:07] Jeff: just to please the people in the back.

[00:08:10] Brett: All right. Um, so Jeff, do you wanna kick us off with, uh, an interview question?

[00:08:17] Jeff: Oh yeah. Okay. I’m really excited about this. I also like that we shared them with each other in advance, actually. Um, it helps. Okay, so I, here’s a question. This is, let’s start with a tech question. Okay. If you could experience, and Christina, you start, if you could experience any tech for the first time again, why?

Again,

[00:08:41] Christina: Okay. So are we talking about tech that I’ve experienced or tech that like maybe predated me or

[00:08:47] Jeff: something that it, I would say it, it’s in your lifetime. It’s something that you did yourself. Experience for the first time, but maybe you were a lot younger or maybe you just didn’t get it at that point or whatever. Or you just, it was such a nice experience, you’d like to go [00:09:00] back to it.

[00:09:01] Christina: Okay. So I think that for me it’s probably a cross between like, The internet

[00:09:12] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:09:13] Christina: or video games. Um, what’s interesting to me about the internet, and that’s I think one of video games I loved and I loved them from the minute I ever saw them, but I saw them so early that it’s hard for me to experience like what my first experience with it was, right?

Because it basically had an Nintendo from the time I was born, basically. So it’s hard for me to like, put that into a context of a world we didn’t have it. Um, whereas the internet, like the worldwide web I read about before I ever used, I read about in a magazine

[00:09:46] Brett: Pc PC world.

[00:09:48] Christina: um, for me it was actually weirdly, it was Nintendo Power.

It was, uh, because they were talking about the x uh, link or X browse. It was, it was a I’ll, I’ll, I’ll find it, but it was basically a cartridge that would [00:10:00] connect you to the worldwide web and, um, For, for the Super Nintendo, sorry, not the Nintendo 64 for the Super Nintendo. And, um, it was, uh, um, uhand, there we go.

And

[00:10:13] Brett: browser on a cartridge.

[00:10:15] Christina: it was, it was a, it was a modem is what it

[00:10:17] Brett: Oh,

[00:10:18] Christina: and it, it, it was called Expand. It was for the Genesis and the Super Nintendo. And it was a modem that would let you connect to a, not the full worldwide web, because not This was 1994 when

[00:10:31] Brett: Every, everything was corralled by like AOL and CompuServe. That in

[00:10:35] Christina: I I I was gonna say it was basically internet.

It was basically like a, what were those called? Uh, uh, uh, um, they weren’t internet service providers. They were like, um, online, um, uh, service or

[00:10:44] Brett: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:46] Christina: like an online service thing, kind of like a prodigy, I think Prodigy might have even, um, run, um, their, um, their system. And then the idea too was that you could potentially, Um, like, uh, online games with people and which, which in [00:11:00] that way was sort of similar to the Sega Channel, which used cable, so that was better to, to kind of stream games.

But this was, this was an actual modem,

[00:11:08] Jeff: Used cable. Like a, like what do you mean?

[00:11:10] Christina: I mean like, like cable television.

[00:11:11] Jeff: Cable television.

[00:11:12] Christina: So that’s why it was called the Sega Channel because it was a, a system where you would have a special cartridge that connected to cable tv, and then you could basically, um, stream, um, games, um, because you had access to a whole library of

[00:11:25] Jeff: neither did I. Did you have any of those

[00:11:28] Christina: Um, I had friends who had, um, a cable, uh, Sega channel. Um, and so I played that like in, in fourth or fifth grade, and you could rent Theban from Blockbuster, but it was expensive. So, but, but, but, but, but I, but I rented, it was, it was like 15 cents an hour or, or I don’t remember how much it was. It was like $3 an hour or something.

I don’t remember how much it was, but it was expensive. But you could rent it. Oh, no. So here’s what it was. It was available blockbuster video for $20, a equivalent of $40 and 2021 with additional charges based on usage. And one had a monthly fee of [00:12:00] $5 and allowed the user to connect the service up to 50 times per month with each additional connection costing 15 cents.

And the other had a monthly fee of $10 for unlimited connections. And I did rent it once I think. , but I might be inventing that in my head. But regardless, I read about, this was the first time I’d ever read about like a o l or any of these things. And I’d used Usenet, but I, that didn’t really click with me.

I didn’t really know what I was doing. And, and this was like a graphical thing and it was describing all the stuff that you could do. And my mind, just like the possibilities just unfolded before me. And so when I finally used the internet, like, and then the world wide up for the first time, like a year later, like again, like I saw everything that we’re doing now.

I didn’t know exactly how advanced it would be and I had no idea how far it would go, but like, I got it. I instantly got it and, and it was my first love and, and it remains my, my, my biggest love. And, and so [00:13:00] if I could go back and experience anything again, it would be like the worldwide web. Like that would be it.

[00:13:05] Brett: Because of the feelings it causing you, like the amazement and the Yeah.

[00:13:10] Christina: the amazement. And, and, and not only that, but like, I instantly understood. I was like, this is going to change everything. Like I, I, I just knew, I was like, the idea of, I was like, oh, you can look things up, you can create things, you can link to other things. You can have images, you can, you know, um, uh, have it as a way to tell your own stories and do your own stuff.

Like, it just instantly made sense to me. I was like, oh, this is gonna change everything. Like I, I, uh, I went to the library and I rented, uh, check out two books, one on, on modems and one on the stock market. And the librarian was such an idiot. And she was like, but not together, right? Because those things would never go together.

And I’m like, that, and at, and at that point they already had for, for, for decades. You know, it’s not the eighties,

[00:13:51] Jeff: But not together.

[00:13:52] Christina: but not together. Right. And it was like, like a year later, like the whole thing was intertwined and you had, um, uh, [00:14:00] uh, what’s the, um, e-trade and, and all of those, which, you know, became like these massive things.

So it was really, it’s so funny that she was like, oh, but not together, not modems

[00:14:08] Jeff: She’s like, I clearly global finance would not intermingle with this internet thing.

[00:14:14] Christina: and, and, and, and, and, and I was like, no separate. But then when I was reading about them, I was like, oh no, obviously these are going to be, I mean, you know, I realized the high finance had already had been, but I was like, oh, obviously individual trades are going to happen this way. And they did like almost immediately.

So I, I I, I would re-experience, uh, the worldwide web because. A, the feeling like you said B, like I just, it’s one of the few times in my life where I’ve seen something. I even got a glimpse of it, even reading about it, and I was like, oh yeah, no, this is the future. This changes everything. This makes complete sense and this is exactly what we will all be doing for the rest of our lives.

[00:14:49] Brett: Yeah,

[00:14:50] Jeff: so cool. Do you, I know this is still inside of the question, sorry, but I have to know, um, if you all remember the very first act you did on the internet, [00:15:00] like, do you remember when you logged on and you were like, this is the. Or was it something like more like you’re in college and there’s emails

[00:15:07] Brett: I think, yeah, no, I, I think email was the first thing I did.

[00:15:12] Christina: I had a Juno account.

[00:15:14] Jeff: yeah, I had a Juno account. Planted hands

[00:15:18] Brett: Yeah,

[00:15:18] Jeff: Duck. I did, um, I, uh, I made, I was with my brother the first time I went on the internet and we did film it. But unfortunately my brother and I, when we’re together, our collective IQ and our general emotional intelligence just tanks. And, and you can imagine some of the decisions we may have tried to make once we were finally on this thing where you can see anything.

Um, and uh, so that’s not

[00:15:42] Brett: with just, with just 20 minute time investment, you can download a single JPEG of a nude woman

[00:15:47] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think it’s coming in, I think it’s coming in . Exactly.

[00:15:55] Brett: like, like printing it on a dot matrix printer. Um, [00:16:00] so is do I, is it

[00:16:01] Christina: You good out? Yes.

[00:16:02] Jeff: It’s your.

[00:16:03] Brett: so mine’s actually very similar, just goes back a little farther. The first time I logged and, and this, so there’s two equivalent experiences for me. One is the first time I logged into Phyto net, or no, no, no, not Phyto, um, uh, gopher from an As 400 and, and just started, uh, flipping through the equivalent of library stacks worth of information and realizing like what I had at my fingertips.

That was literally an intoxicating experience. And the other equivalent experience would’ve been the first time I logged onto a bbbs and, and felt like I was part of a community. Like I had been using computers for 10 years before that. Um, and, and me and my friends would get together and we, we would hack and write code.

Uh, but it was, it was this small group of friends and suddenly I’m on a P B S [00:17:00] that has maybe 500 users. And, and I’m communicating not simultaneously, everything’s async, but I’m communicating with 500 people and we are sharing interests and likes and, and text-based role playing games and, and, uh, sure porn, but like, it was, it was communal.

And that sense of community combined with the, what felt like limitless information, uh, like you could find anything you wanted to, uh, that first time you feel that. And I don’t know what it’s like for a kid today who literally, like, as soon as they’re old enough to hold an iPad, they have access to all of this.

I don’t know if they get that same like, oh my God, everything’s here. Um, as we did when it first became available. But that, and the reason I would wanna experience it again, is just that sense of intoxication. Uh, it like, so the, the new field, uh, the emerging [00:18:00] field of ai. Is is as big a change, like potentially as big a change, um, to the world as the internet was.

Um, but it, but it’s not intoxicating me in the same way. It’s not, I’m not getting the same chills from it,

[00:18:17] Christina: I, I’m, I’m not,

[00:18:18] Brett: getting different chills.

[00:18:19] Christina: I’m not getting the exact same shuls, but I have a similar feeling like this is obviously the future and we’re all going to be doing this and this is, this is how things are going to be. Like. I have that same feeling, but I’m, but I’m with you. Like the intoxication thing is different and Yeah, I’d be interested to know like how your kids would answer this, Jeff, because they’ve grown up always having access to the internet.

Like my generation was the first where like we were, you know, spent like our, our formative years online, but we did have a pre demarcation, like before the web and you know, like after, uh, we, we, we were, you know, young, but we were, we, we had, you know, we had that demarcation thing and, you know, [00:19:00] um, people who are, uh, younger than me don’t have as much of that, but still have some of it because wide broadband wasn’t available.

You know, people, your kid’s age and your son’s age and younger, like literally have never not, it’s not even that, they just haven’t always had the internet. They have, they’ve always had broadband

[00:19:16] Jeff: They’ve always had iPhones.

[00:19:17] Christina: had iPhones. That’s what I’m saying. Right.

[00:19:19] Jeff: Yeah. Whether it was ours or they’re ultimately

[00:19:21] Christina: Right. So, so that’s, that’s a a, a different sort of thing. You know.

[00:19:26] Jeff: Yeah. It’s interesting because they, they together, um, ha, have built a collection of old tech stepping backwards bit by bit until finally they have this like Windows 95 machine and there’s a DOS machine here. And like when you, one thing that’s, I highly recommend doing it. I’m sure it can be done in an emulator, but I did this yesterday just turning on a Windows 95 computer and reading how it talks to you.

Like, would you like to access the worldwide web? An unlimited amount of electronic communication. You know, it’s like, yeah, yeah. Click, yeah, I want to get online, [00:20:00] whatever. Just settle down. Um, and so they definitely have kind of, they almost seem to be seeking what that was like. But you know, when I think about my first time on the internet, like I had been, I have been like a hunter gatherer researcher, almost like from my youngest age.

And when I think about what it took me to find certain albums or bootlegs or magazine interviews, what it meant to be a fan, which we can talk about later, um, in pre-internet, like that was a lot of goddamn work. It’s like, it’s like grandpa went to the mine every day, you know?

[00:20:31] Brett: there was this, there was this weird thing for us too, because like we grew up in the era of 900 numbers where you would

[00:20:39] Jeff: Yes. Yes.

[00:20:41] Brett: you wanted King’s Quest advice or someone to talk you through your lonely night, you were paying 25 to 50 cents a minute to get this. And then Prodigy and CompuServe and AOL were all pay as you go services.

And every time you connected your modem, you were thinking, [00:21:00] Oh God, I gotta do this fast. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta get this done and get offline. Um, because you’re paying for every minute you’re on

[00:21:08] Christina: You, you’re, you’re paying for every minute. And, and again, like I, I, you know, because I, cause I’m just enough younger that, that it, that it was different. Like it started to be, they started off with the unlimited plans or more hours or whatnot. Um, and also modems were, were faster. Like my first, you know, modem I think was a 14 four, um, uh, modem that we had, um, connected to the laptop.

Um, and, uh, that, that I bought like an external modem or something. And, um, granted my family was a little bit later at adopting this than people who were already on this in the eighties. But the difference too is like you were, not only did you have to get on and get fast, but it was also because speeds were so much slower.

A lot of things were designed around like you downloading and getting off, right? So like a BS was that you would upload like your information, like you, like send your message or whatever, but you would, you know, download a bunch of stuff and then get offline.

[00:21:59] Brett: And then you [00:22:00] would check back the next day to get responses to your

[00:22:03] Christina: exactly. And, and well, and I, and I even remember that, you know, with my Juno account, it was because it, it wasn’t Webmail, it was like an actual application that had its own dialer that was different than like the I s P dialer, right?

So it was, it was not a, a web thing like that wasn’t until Hotmail. And so you would log in on this, on this program that had like a free, you know, dial-in number. And that was one of the advantages of Juno. It was like free email. It was like one of the first ones, but you didn’t have to have the corresponding, you know, AOL or Prodigy or whatever service.

And so you’d log into that number and you’d download your mail, um, or you’d stay connected to, you know, read other messages coming in and you’d write your stuff and you’d send it off and then, and then, you know, you, you’d disconnect and, um, but you’d have to reconnect a bunch of times to, you know, throughout the day to, to check your mail unless you, you know, were some fancy person who had like a separate phone line.

Um, and, um, so it’s a very different experience than, you know, [00:23:00] Always having access to stuff. Uh, but, but to your point, Jeff, like, yeah. For you as always being a hunter-gatherer researcher type like internet must have like blown your mind because I mean, I remember not well, but I do remember like, you know, using libraries before, like with card catalogs.

I think the public library had computerized systems, but you just think about how much research changed

[00:23:24] Jeff: oh my God. My God. Yeah. Especially someone who loves, as a researcher now looking across things like, I was showing my boys a card catalog and I’m like, this is how, this is literally how you, and they’re like, what? I’m like, yeah, it’s fucked up. It is fucked up.

[00:23:40] Christina: yeah. Yeah. I, I remember having to go to like some of the better public libraries or having to go to some of the university public libraries to access certain things and even certain databases, right? Like, I remember like, like in elementary school, like making my mom take me to the University of Georgia.

Libraries so that I could do research on certain things [00:24:00] because they had better, um, like, and I think I went to the Georgia State Library once too, but the, the u g A one was, uh, at the time was nicer and to, to, you know, go through like different research databases to be able to do something for a project because otherwise, you know, you’d have to go from like branch to branch to try to find all these books.

And they didn’t have stuff scanned in like newspaper. I mean, you know, they had microfiche, but it wasn’t like it was you. But that was still like a per branch thing.

[00:24:27] Jeff: yeah, yeah,

[00:24:28] Christina: school, I remember having to do some research and because everything wasn’t digitized, having to go to like a specific branch to the library that had every issue of like the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal Constitution and some other papers backed like the 18 hundreds and having to go through the microfiche

[00:24:45] Jeff: Micro fish.

[00:24:46] Christina: having to, um, do go to a specific branch because it wasn’t all network connected.

[00:24:53] Jeff: Right, right, right.

[00:24:55] Christina: is unfathomable. I’m like, okay, you might be still be seeing like a scanned copy of something and, and, [00:25:00] or maybe poorly ocr and I’d prefer a scan, honestly. But, um, you know, you don’t have to go to a specific library branch to do it

[00:25:08] Jeff: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:09] Christina: that’s all gone. And, and you know, that’s just 20 years ago.

[00:25:14] Jeff: Totally. Totally. Um, can I answer my own question?

[00:25:18] Christina: course.

[00:25:18] Jeff: Um, the first part’s not the answer. So my mom worked in it from, you know, the sixties or late sixties. She, when she was, you know, she’d have nightmares that she was carrying the computer cards that were all collated in order, and then she’d dropped them all and she’d wake up like sweating and screaming.

[00:25:33] Brett: my mom told me about the same nightmare.

[00:25:36] Jeff: Yeah, , which you can imagine cuz you look at like, there’s, you’re talking stacks, right?

[00:25:41] Christina: yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:42] Jeff: so, um, and in fact, just a, a quick like PC thing, like the reason we had a PC in our house is as PCs started to become more common in offices, for her to be able to get a job, she had to be able to say, I know how to use a pc.

You know, she had told me this story once too, where, uh, her office had [00:26:00] just started bringing in PCs for the first time and, and nobody had used them or used mouses or anything like that. And a woman came into her office, one of the people in the office said, I can’t get my mouse to work. Can you come in her office and, and tell me how?

And she goes in and she was holding it on the wrong plane and she was like holding it up like you’re waving at someone and moving it around in the air and it’s like, you are way ahead of your time, like

[00:26:20] Christina: super ahead of her time.

[00:26:21] Brett: That le that leads into, into one of my questions. We’ll get there though.

[00:26:25] Jeff: Okay. So anyhow, I have put, I don’t know if both you’re in Quip or not, but I’ve put pictures of my first computer, um, which is an i b M system, three room size computer. It was

[00:26:35] Christina: Oh my God,

[00:26:36] Jeff: It belonged, it belonged to the magazine distributor. Go for news. Speaking of porn, that’s how they made all our money. Um, and there is a little, you know, green and black screen in there and I used to play hangman on

[00:26:47] Brett: mm-hmm.

[00:26:48] Christina: that’s

[00:26:49] Jeff: And I would love, I would love to be able to go back and experience it for the first time, but, uh, uh, as me now , just to be able to get in there and play around, [00:27:00] play hangman, like see how much memory was in that room, , um, which I’ll put, I don’t know if we can put images in the show notes. Can we, I can

[00:27:09] Brett: uh, yeah, we can fit it in

[00:27:10] Jeff: And that printer, that’s my mom. My mom’s sitting next to that. My mom’s sitting next to that printer. Look at the size of that printer. . She’s just waiting for it to create. If you look close, it’s f it’s like financial reports. She’s just waiting for it to finish. But I assume she’s gotta stay there because you never know if it’s gonna get all jammed up.

You know what I mean?

[00:27:29] Christina: Oh, totally. Totally. And that was, that was got, I mean, I don’t even wanna think about how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars that printer

[00:27:35] Jeff: my God, can you imagine, can you imagine all the cook, the books for a porn dealer? Um, Anyhow, I would love to go in that computer room. It was a false floor and underneath it were all the wires and there was venting down there. I used to sit on the floor and color and I could pop open one of those things.

I mean, that whole room was the infrastructure of this one machine and all of its data . So anyway, I would love to [00:28:00] just walk into that room and, and play.

[00:28:02] Christina: Yeah.

[00:28:03] Brett: of my first apps that I ever wrote was Hangman in Basic.

[00:28:08] Jeff: Awesome,

[00:28:09] Brett: Yeah.

[00:28:10] Jeff: I love it. I love it. All right, who’s next?

[00:28:13] Brett: Um, I have a question.

[00:28:15] Christina: Yes. Go for it.

[00:28:17] Brett: All right. So I, I’m gonna pick my last question first. If you could pick, if you could imagine the perfect input device for a computer or for, for any, any platform. Uh, you know, uh, keyboard, power, glove eyes. Like glasses. Like what, what to you is the perfect input device? Uh, and how would it work in general terms?

Uh, who wants

[00:28:44] Christina: with Jeff. We’ll start with Jeff.

[00:28:46] Jeff: Okay. I love this question because the answer surprised me. I had not previously had this answer, uh, . I had not previously kind of like had this thought before. Um, so I, I’m a drummer. I, I [00:29:00] drummed almost every day from eighth grade until I was about 24. Um, touring bands like the whole thing. But I, I drummed a nonstop.

I loved it. Um, I loved how it felt. I loved how my brain worked. I loved that it was, I didn’t have anything in the like, knowledge world where, where that was nearly as effortless as drumming. Like I, I would love to be able to do certain things like computer programming, something as effortlessly as I did drumming.

Didn’t have to think.

[00:29:27] Brett: it’s like a leap motion.

[00:29:29] Jeff: So basically not, here’s, here’s the thing. I’m, I’m ta between two things. One is like, it all depends. So it would somehow, um, it would all be based on specific rhythms, like some quick thing like whether it’s like the rhythm of a fill or, you know, uh, two time signatures. You know, like my one hand’s doing one and other hand’s doing the other or something.

Cuz like I am terrible at remembering keyboard shortcuts. But if I could just be like, oh yeah, no, that’s the opening, uh, to, to immigrant song , [00:30:00] you know, just once, boom. That’s your, you know, that fa that opens my browser. Um, I would love that.

[00:30:08] Brett: I just wanna point out that, um, keyboard mice show accepts midi inputs.

[00:30:13] Jeff: Oh

[00:30:14] Brett: with like an old like rolling drum machine and a bunch of Paso

[00:30:19] Jeff: yes.

[00:30:20] Brett: have a drum input

[00:30:22] Jeff: or even I have this, I have that one of these little, um, keyboards in my closet here. Just like certain harmonies or something. Right. Like a cord.

[00:30:31] Brett: I actually, I, I played around with that a while, like having different

[00:30:34] Jeff: Of course you did

[00:30:35] Brett: Different chords. Well, because I mean, keyboard shortcuts, you’re learning chords like, like control shift, op delete, like that, like that’s a chord, that’s a two-handed chord. Uh, but yeah, like you are creating chords. So I figured I’ve got a 24 key mini keyboard in front of me.

What, you know, what could C minor do? What could, what [00:31:00] could an A seven, like, how could I, uh, like trigger just with like, just keyboard, literally like piano, keyboard chords.

[00:31:08] Christina: That’s, and that’s actually a brilliant way to maybe teach somebody music. Like somebody who like, has a, a different, like, like, like, like I, I know music primarily by ear and um, and I was able to kinda like fake it enough to, to, um, like read music, at least for, for voice stuff. Um, and, and play a little piano.

But my problem is, is that I primarily am, am a by ear person. But like that would be, I, I could learn music that way. Like, you know, kind of reverse engineering things. Like, okay, you know, this is, this is what you do to, to get like, you know, this chord will correspond with this shortcut. Like that, that would totally, that would totally be how I

[00:31:49] Brett: a very specific personality

[00:31:51] Christina: 100%. But I don’t think I’m, I mean, it would be specific. I’m, I’m, it’s niche. I’m not trying to claim this is the broad, broader poach, but, but I also don’t think that it’s quite as small as, as you would [00:32:00] think. Like I think there are a lot of people who are like, oh no, if I could see this in, you know, have this cuz you know, music is mathematical.

But like, if I could have it framed in this way versus this way, I, I think a lot of people would probably be able to understand like notation.

[00:32:16] Brett: If all those Photoshop users who had learned all the keyboard shortcuts, who, who could hit command shift option S uh, to save a JPEG without thinking twice about it, realized that those skills could translate to making music. Yeah, sure.

[00:32:32] Christina: Oh yeah. No, I, I I wonder if there’s like a high correlation between people who are really good at piano, um, or really good at starting guitar work and people who are really good at, you know, certain like ridiculous keyboard things. Like, just in terms of people who do both. Like, I wonder if there’s a, like if you have people who are, you know, do both of those things, the people who are really like, you know, people who both, um, dabble Photoshop or whatever, play music.

If the people who are really skilled at the

[00:32:57] Brett: That would be, I would be

[00:32:58] Christina: they’re good, that would be interesting to [00:33:00] look at. But that, that’s, that’s fascinating.

[00:33:02] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:33:03] Brett: I’ll get us a grant. We’ll study that

[00:33:06] Christina: I

[00:33:06] Jeff: we should get a grant. We should, we should get a bunch of

[00:33:08] Christina: Are we kidding me? Oh my God. We could have an o o Overtired Pod. Pod. The, the grant, the grant funded podcast, honestly,

[00:33:13] Jeff: We got our internet, internet history grant. We got our emerging, uh, technologies, grant. All right. Christina, what’s your, what’s your answer?

[00:33:22] Christina: Uh, I think that, and it’s so interesting what you say about the drumming because a, I wish I could drum, but I can’t do the, I can’t keep a different, um, a rhythm on one hand and the other. I’ve tried my whole life and I’ve, I can’t do that. Like, I can’t like have like a consistent like pattern,

[00:33:41] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:33:42] Christina: 1, 1, 1 thing on one hand, one on the other.

Um, I think, I mean, mouse and keyboard is pretty great, but like touch input is also great. Like part of me thinks that what they should often minority report. Which was just a little bit [00:34:00] too ahead of its time in some ways, but dead on. And some others I think was really good because it got the touch aspect of what we were gonna see with multi-touch on the iPhone, but it was, um, rather than on a, on a, you know, physical device, it was kind of in the air

[00:34:13] Brett: in 3D space?

[00:34:15] Christina: in 3D space.

And I think that that whole concept makes tons of sense. Uh, I still do. And so I, I, I do feel like, I think kind of, as much as I love, like my mouse and keyboard, I really do think that kind of like the pinnacle of kind of a perfect input is, is touch.

[00:34:31] Brett: Here’s the thing, did you ever have a leap motion?

[00:34:36] Christina: Um, no, but I, I, I, I, I did, I did review. Yeah, I did, I did review it though. Yeah. I, I didn’t have like a, a full-time one, but

[00:34:45] Brett: I had one and I set up like I could read through all my r s s feeds, just using hand motions, uh, while I was walking on my walking desk treadmill. And I could just like,

[00:34:57] Christina: Yeah.

[00:34:58] Brett: wave to the next article. [00:35:00] Scroll up and down with two fingers. My arms got real tired

[00:35:04] Christina: That, that’s, that’s what they, uh, that’s what they said in Minority Report is that they had to do like that, that was the biggest problem in that film. It was, it was doubly a problem because they had to make the movements even bigger to be appear on film.

[00:35:17] Jeff: Oh.

[00:35:17] Christina: But like Steve Harris and, and Tom Cruise and other people, like their arms apparently like got real sore

[00:35:23] Brett: it’s exhausting. I mean, like the effort that you put into a keyboard that you most people don’t even have to look down at. Um, you know, and then your track pad or your track ball or your mouse, um, that you can, you know where it is on your desk. You don’t have to look down. There’s just these minor elbow and wrist movements to do it all.

Um, like that seems.

[00:35:45] Christina: I agree. Well, well, that, that’s why I, I’m not saying that. I was saying touch, like, like touch, like on a phone or an iPad.

[00:35:51] Brett: Yeah. Have you ever, you used like a surface, right?

[00:35:54] Christina: Yeah.

[00:35:55] Brett: Um, do you find scrolling the screen using touch [00:36:00] to be superior to scrolling with like a track pad?

[00:36:02] Christina: Yes.

[00:36:03] Brett: Okay.

[00:36:04] Christina: Significantly so.

[00:36:05] Brett: Yeah, and I haven’t, I haven’t, like I’ve used an iPad but not as like as a computing surface, really.

[00:36:11] Christina: Right. And

[00:36:12] Brett: as a me, a media consumption device.

[00:36:15] Christina: mean that’s primarily how I use it too. But I will say, and, and the iPad is also weird because they, they try to kind of be this weird mishmash between the two and it kind of doesn’t really succeed. Um, and, uh, where’s like, the surface, what’s interesting about it is I don’t use touch on a lot of other things, but, but scrolling, scrolling, it is significantly better.

Now, I will say it’s usually faster to use a track pad, but there are also times when it’s not where I’m just like, oh, I really quickly need to just get to the bottom of a page. and, you know, just being able to flick up on the screen is significantly better, or zooming in is another area where it’s just so much better, um, to be able to pinpoint that exact place that I need to zoom in on.

Um, I mean, you know, the magic track pad goes a long way with that, [00:37:00] but it’s, it’s still not as good. Um, so I mean, I feel like, uh, stylists sometimes I think is great because like, like a, like Apple pencil, um, oral Wacom, because you can again, get really granular with things and, and really kinda like annotate on stuff.

But I don’t know. I think I feel like touch, I think this is why the iPhone worked, because capacitive touch is the thing. Like we’d all used the, um, uh, resistive touch screens on like the, you know, Palm pilot and, um, you know, the, the, the, the trio and that

[00:37:33] Brett: had a, I had an 800 by 600, uh, capacitive touchscreen that I used for home automation, the thing, so the screen is 800 by 600, but it was like two feet deep and, and went out an additional three inches on each side with like perforated steel and that I mounted in the wall so I could have a touchscreen

[00:37:54] Jeff: When was this?

[00:37:55] Brett: This would’ve been like 90. [00:38:00] No, I guess it, it would’ve been like 99, but, uh, 99, 2000. But, um, like I was buying ancient tech at that point. This, this was from an airport terminal. Uh, the, the device I bought was like a scrap from an airport terminal where you had had like touch touchscreen

[00:38:21] Christina: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. To like check into the airport. Yeah. Gotcha.

[00:38:25] Brett: yeah,

[00:38:26] Christina: Well, and we all know, well, even to this day, we still know how bad some of those systems are. Right? Like, they’re not all like capacitive the same way. Right. Completely inaccurate. Like, like even like in, um, um, maybe check-in is better.

I, I don’t check in at the airport, but, um, like definitely the, the, um, screens, you know, for the, in, um, uh, you know, ine entertainment. Um, if, if you don’t have like the latest plane, like, like I’ve, I’ve more than once had an experience where it is just been off enough that I haven’t been able to like, actually watch anything in the seat.

And I’m like in first class and I’m like, [00:39:00] this is why we all have to bring our iPads because I, the, the capac, the, the transitive test doesn’t work, but a capacitive touch. Like I, that’s why iPhone is such a game changer, you know?

[00:39:11] Brett: So looking at my setup where I’m sitting right now, uh, I have 2 30, 2 30, 32 inch displays that I can’t reach. Like I hold my arm out straight from where I am. I can’t, I can’t touch these screens, don’t want to. Um, my track pad works great. I could see if I had like, leap motion and I could just pretend to touch the screen and get accurate results from it.

If I could just point at something and move it around the screen, I could see that being, uh, a useful interaction. Do you wanna hear my answer to this question?

[00:39:46] Christina: We have to,

[00:39:47] Brett: Neural link.

[00:39:49] Christina: yeah. Okay. I, I was, I was, I was actually kind of thinking this too. This was, this was gonna be like one of my like futuristic answers.

[00:39:55] Brett: no, no, no props to Elon, but if we are [00:40:00] imagining the perfect human interface device, I want to think shit and have it happen.

Um, I don’t know. I don’t know how it work. Work. That’s why I said in general terms in the question, because there are so many questions. Like, like they have, uh, for disabled users, they have eye tracking

[00:40:18] Christina: Yeah. Which is amazing. Which was so, which is incredible.

[00:40:21] Brett: huge. It’s huge, but not terribly convenient. Like you would do better using your hands if you had that option.

Um, for, for people who don’t have that option, amazing

[00:40:34] Christina: Well, and it certainly results in eye strain, in, in ways that like, because people who, um, don’t have those options, it’s amazing how quickly they can do stuff. Like, it’s unreal, but, but, you know, but it leads to the genuine eye strain and, and other stuff, whereas just being able to think it

[00:40:50] Brett: Just imagine how, what Stephen Hawking could have done if he could interface directly with his brain instead of the assistive [00:41:00] technologies he was forced to use later in life. Um, like I, I, I don’t know how it works. I, I don’t, but I just want to control things with my brain.

[00:41:11] Christina: I mean, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s gonna be Elon, but like it’s going to

[00:41:15] Brett: I bring up, I bring up Elon

[00:41:16] Christina: Oh, I know, I know because Nora link No, I know. I, oh, no, no, no. I know, I’m, I’m just saying like, I, you know, I, look, we all hate him, but he’s not like some of the stuff that he’s invested in and, and the ideas he have are not bad at all.

And, and they’re going to do it. I mean, from what I understand, and, and, uh, the two of you might have more information than me, but from what I understand is they basically, I think the idea would be you could kind of take like brain waves from MRIs, types of things, and they’re able to map that to, I guess, certain actions or, or certain functions and kind of, you know, uh, they find, they find patterns there.

And so they would be able to infer basically from those wave things and kind of program things and that regard saying, okay, if we, if we get this sort of signal, then this is what we’re going to be doing. [00:42:00] So it’s not, Again, I think this is where like the AI stuff becomes really interesting because that could potentially speed up the processing of all of those, like brain scans, right?

And, and looking at the patterns and maybe figuring stuff out like that would automate that a lot more than you could, you know, in a, in a, um, uh, like a manual kind of way. Um, I don’t know. I, I think we, we might have something like that in our lifetime. I wouldn’t be surprised. I, I It would be exciting.

[00:42:27] Brett: Yeah.

[00:42:28] Jeff: Just as you, right. When you’re like, can I tell you, mine and I, and you hadn’t said neural link yet. I had this thought at the exact same time as you said, neural link, where I’m like the clapper which is like, exactly why I am not you. Um, but I was like, but, but that, and that worked great. But what if you had like, like you’re, you’re the choir teacher and you have like, um, update website, right?

You just, that’s the pattern and then your bunch fires, you know, and you’re updating your [00:43:00] website.

[00:43:00] Christina: no, that would be genius. That would be, and honestly, that would be a lot more doable than, than the Neurolink thing,

[00:43:06] Jeff: Well that’s what I’m thinking. I think we can get funding for that

[00:43:08] Christina: I totally think we could get funny for like a, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s like a clapper meets like a voice assist thing. And, and that goes along with, with, with, with your, uh, perfect thing, Jeff, of being kind of like the rhythm based.

[00:43:19] Jeff: Yes. Right.

[00:43:20] Brett: yeah. I mean, so like four years before Siri existed, makos had, I can’t remember what they called it, but they had voice commands. You could record your voice saying a command, and then have your computer listen for it and execute. It was in the sis of technology. Um, I, I feel like you could record beats with that.

[00:43:42] Jeff: I think you could also do that with like an Arduino or something. I, I think I, I’ll have to look it up. I bet somebody’s done that.

[00:43:47] Brett: sure.

[00:43:48] Jeff: I like that even better though.

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[00:45:23] Christina: All right. So if you could do anything in the world as a job, like what would it be and why, and, and kind of an add-on follow-up to this that you can add on as you’re answering this. Like what has stopped you from trying to do this

[00:45:40] Brett: Oh, I have the answer for this

[00:45:41] Christina: Yeah. All right. You, you, you go first.

[00:45:44] Brett: Deep Sea marine biologist.

[00:45:47] Christina: Okay.

[00:45:48] Brett: like it is, out of all of the jobs I’ve learned about in my life, the one that has intrigued me the most and that I thought I could really just fucking [00:46:00] dive into, no pun intended, um, is Deep sea marine biologist, because the deep sea contains such weird things.

And it’s so overall unexplored that it would, it’d be like being an astronaut, but underwater. Uh, what’s kept me from doing this is I, I don’t think I could get through the schooling. Um, like I, I, I’m not good at chemistry and biology and at least in a school setting, like these things I understand in a general sense.

But, um, and I also, I’m claustrophobic and like submarines don’t really appeal to me. So all things being, uh, if, if, if I could take care of those issues, I think that would be just, uh, a very fulfilling career. Uh, but there are some major blocks for me.[00:47:00]

[00:47:00] Jeff: Oh my God. I, my, my stepmom’s father, uh, was not in a submarine, but he was in a battleship at World War ii and he was in the boy, he was in the boiler room upside of being in the boiler room. He would take coins and melt them on the boiler and turn them in, turn them into naked lady rings that he would sell.

Um, downside, he, he is told from the be beginning, anything goes wrong in this ship. Your little space gets steeled off and you die. Like you are not coming out of there. Everyone else may survive, but you are not coming

[00:47:34] Brett: I had an uncle who worked on a nuclear submarine for a good portion of his naval career. Um, and, and he was kind of in the same boat. Like, uh, you’re, you’re,

[00:47:46] Jeff: Same boat. Huh?

[00:47:48] Brett: I’m so full of puns, unintentionally unintentional puns, but like, yeah, um, you, you go about, you go about your business, you do your job, but if something goes wrong, probably outside of your [00:48:00] control, you are gonna die.

Like this is a seal, this is a coffin. Underwater

[00:48:05] Jeff: right.

[00:48:06] Brett: you’re going down.

[00:48:08] Jeff: Um, my answer to that is I think, I think I know my answer, uh, but I’m so worried I’m not, I’m not thinking of something, but I, um, I had, uh, a family, distant family member from Norway, a sculptor who was in town this week to unveil like this very large sculpture, uh, that’s now in Minneapolis.

And he was describing the work it took to make the sculpture and, and how, you know, it was a year and a half of just kind of a bunch of people hammering on this thing, this metal to bend this metal just so whatever else. And like, but it was like a year and a half of like this very specific act. And, uh, had another friend that came in town that has a, a, a survey at the Walker Art Museum.

This artist Paul Chan and Paul makes these things called breathers. And it’s like, if you imagine those like [00:49:00] gas station guys that with the wavy arms, you know, he, he figured out a way to make them in the different types of figures that are actually kind of oddly moving to look at. Um, but it, they’re literally inspired by those goofy things, but they end up being really serious.

Um, and, and just kind of, uh, just amazing. And, and he, to do that, he learned sewing, um, he learned fabrics and, and he spent, you know, day after day after day making a shape. How does it move? That’s not what I’m looking for. I’m gonna fix it here. And so I would love to be an artist that works with like physical mediums, because I think that one of the things for me that was not ingrained in me having not gone to college was that sometimes.

To get a thing done. It just takes this like day after day of like tiny steps that don’t look like anything. Right. And that was never ingrained in me. And so I’ve always, I’ve always hustled in a way to get things done. Even when I’m, even when I’m getting them done very [00:50:00] slowly, I feel like I’m hustling to get them done cause it’s supposed to look like something or something.

I think I just never got that, that piece. Plus, it’s probably also personality, whatever, but like, I am so blown away when I, when I realized that like a researcher just spent a year and a half reading one document after another after another, and they could not come to this like grand conclusion had they not spent that year reading these documents.

Like I just, I want to do something that takes advantage of that, that style of working.

[00:50:30] Brett: is part of the appeal though, that they are short term, that they are finite. Like you can dedicate all of that time and energy, but you know, it has, it’s not the rest of your life. It’s a year and a half and, and you can use your creativity and problem solving and, and really dig into working with your hands.

But with, but with a final goal

[00:50:53] Jeff: Totally. So in the case of the art, in the case of the art, that’s totally it, because like I can’t just do the same thing forever, right? I don’t want to [00:51:00] be the person you hire who’s always hired to hammer on things, right? Like, I don’t want to be that person, , you know? I wanna be, I want to have the vision, be working on it, get it done.

Next thing.

[00:51:11] Brett: that’s what’s appealing to me about being a craftsman as well. Like, I’ve often thought woodworking would be a fun pursuit and like someone hires you to build something and, and you have a couple weeks where you use your, know-how, you use your creativity and you’re building something and when it’s done, you get paid and you move on to something new.

And for my A D H D brain, that sounds very appealing. Um, like I went to art school, we, uh, we would get usually like in a 3D class, in a, in a metals class or in a 3D sculpture, We would usually create like two pieces for the semester and you would dedicate hundreds of hours to building one thing. [00:52:00] And you should have an idea what it was gonna be, when it was done, when you started.

But you don’t always, uh, but you really, you get to go to sleep at night thinking about how you’re going to contribute to this finite object the next day. And, and that, that worked for me. That worked well with my brain. Way better than going to a university ever did

[00:52:23] Jeff: like that. Yeah, Christina, I’m very excited to hear your answer.

[00:52:28] Christina: So it’s kind of pouring in, in comparison to these. So it’s, it’s like a cross between two. Like one would be like a talk show host slash like news anchor. Um, and uh, and the other would be like, Being like a, a, a television showrunner, like, like, you know, like, like being a, a writer, creator of my own, um, uh, TV show.

And, um, I guess what stopped me from, well, [00:53:00] the, the writer creator thing is honestly a lot of the atmosphere and, and not being in Los Angeles and, and being willing to kind of take the chances you’d need to do to do that sort of thing. Um, the anchor thing, like I, I’ve been on TV a lot and I’ve, I’ve definitely host a lot of things, um, for, for Microsoft and now for GitHub, and I hope that continues and, and I’m really good at it.

And I obviously do podcasts, um, but I, it was a weird thing where to do, to get the on air jobs, like if you really want them. I did have an interview with CNBC and I blew it and it sucked and that is what it is. Uh, but. typically, like you have to kind of start, you know, the very low paying jobs at the local news stations and then kind of work your way up.

And when I was starting out in journalism, I was getting paid double what you would get paid the local news stations to do that. And I just was unwilling to, to take the, like, the monetary cost, like the, like the cut that would be [00:54:00] necessary to kind of go through those steps. To be totally honest. Like that’s, and I, you know, I was hoping that, oh, you know, if I’m good enough, you know, on camera, that I’ll continue to get invited back and maybe that’ll lead to something and that can for some people, but you typically have to go viral and like a certain way.

And, and for things that I wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable going viral for, like, you’ve gotta be like a Tommy Laren or someone and then they don’t end up becoming good, um, hosts most of the time. Right. So, um, one, like, I think that those would be the two things that I would, I would love to do, like.

All things, like, if I could just like snap my fingers and be like, oh, you know, what would I do every day? One would be like running like my own TV show because I have a lot of ideas for things. Uh, and then the other would be just like, yeah, I would love like having like a daily like newscast talk show, whatever.

[00:54:51] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:54:52] Christina: Rippa. That would be fun.

[00:54:54] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:54:54] Brett: You would be, you would be an amazing host. I just gotta

[00:54:57] Jeff: Totally,

[00:54:58] Brett: like your, your [00:55:00] depth of knowledge of any fucking topic, like you could, you could get answers out of people. You’d, you would be the John Stewart of any tech talk show.

[00:55:12] Jeff: Yeah, that’d be awesome. That’d

[00:55:13] Christina: Yeah. My, my goal and, and, and this is why it sucked so much that I blew and it was my own fault that I blew the scene VC interview, was that like I’d always wanted to be the Erin Burnett of tech because what she did, Uh, finance stuff when, when she was in finance. And then she parlayed that into getting her more general news thing on, um, cnn.

But what she did for, uh, financial news and reporting on, uh, cn bbc, I was looked at that. I was like, I could do that for tech

[00:55:39] Jeff: Mm.

[00:55:39] Christina: one to this day, and this is what’s frustrating, like, uh, we’re now like, it’s been more than a decade since I kind of had like that, you know, kind of like brainwave or, or thought or whatnot.

It’s been, well, more than a decade, like nobody’s done that, like, for whatever reason, as as big of a topic as a tech is, there aren’t, like tech TV went off the air a billion years ago, but there aren’t like tech focused, [00:56:00] like you have segments on, on these news shows, but you don’t have anybody who, like, that’s just the whole thing they talk about.

And uh, and I think it’s because it, it’s a hard mix to find somebody who. Talk to a general public and bring on experts and ask questions and have the skills that are needed to actually understand what they’re talking about. I think it’s just a hard mix. Is is all I can guess that, that, or there’s just not an audience interest.

That could, that could be the other thing.

[00:56:27] Brett: so would you wanna be talk show slash showrunner now, or in this hypothetical scenario? Would you want to do it 10 years ago?

[00:56:41] Christina: I would totally do it now, but it would obviously would be, would’ve been better to do it 10 years ago.

[00:56:47] Brett: Okay. Easier perhaps?

[00:56:49] Christina: I don’t know, the easier, but yeah, it would be easier to, to break into it for sure, 10 years ago. But, uh, but I would totally still do it now. Like, and if somebody wanted to call me up and be like, Hey, [00:57:00] do this for, for, for you know us every day and we’ll pay you really well for it and you can make living off of it.

I’d be like, absolutely hell.

[00:57:07] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:57:09] Brett: I wanna

[00:57:10] Christina: show, the show running thing, I was still like, in any age, that would be still

[00:57:14] Brett: Oh, well, like right now, to me, right now, the, the television landscape, um, this is the ideal time to be a showrunner. Better than any time in history. Uh, TV is breaking ground. That fascinates me. Like I, this is the first time in, in my lifetime that I’ve paid close attention to who the showrunner for a show is.

Because I watched the show and I’m like, who, who, who put this together? Who is in charge of this? Uh, showrunner has actually become like a real, um, part of television for.

[00:57:54] Christina: it has. Yeah. No, it, it, it’s so interesting kind of the rise of, of that. And uh, my friend Catherine, um, she was one of my best [00:58:00] friends. She wrote an amazing. For, um, vice last year that went viral. And it was funny because it had originally, I dunno if I can share this. No, I’ll share it. It had originally been pitched to another outlet who winded up spiking it and like paying the kfi.

And then, um, it went to Vice and it did gangbusters and has had like some actual impactful changes on the industry where she wrote about how like television is having a show running crisis. And, um, because,

[00:58:30] Jeff: I remember this.

[00:58:31] Christina: uh, yeah, because she’d interviewed, um, like just so many people it, she was in the process of writing that.

I think she started like basically right as, as C O V was kind of, uh, kicking off. And so it was, it. Probably 18 on this of, of work that kind of went into this cuz um, she works at the e f now, but it’s, it’s just this incredible article, and you’re right Brett, that like, we care more about the show owner than ever, but it’s all, it’s equally true that a lot of people are getting thrown into that role who have [00:59:00] no experience and aren’t being mentored well and are, you know, it, it’s all these things.

And so I think that to that point, like it becomes even more important than ever to have like a good showrunner because there’s like a massive difference and you see it in the quality of the shows, right? Like it’s, it’s, it’s really interesting. But yeah, Catherine’s uh, Catherine’s article on that was just, uh, such an awesome thing.

Um, and, and when I read it, it was funny because I was like, oh, so, so Showrunning is just like PMing, like that’s, that’s like,

[00:59:31] Jeff: Yeah. Right, right.

[00:59:31] Christina: exactly what it is. And, and, and, and I was, I was drawing all these parallels between like software development and Showrunning and I was like, that would be an interesting article that five people would really like. But I might write it. I, I might write it someday anyway.

[00:59:46] Brett: So I want, I kinda wanna hear the, the follow up answer from Jeff. What, why, what stops you from this career, this artist, artist career?

[00:59:57] Christina: Yeah.

[00:59:58] Jeff: it’s only a, it’s only a [01:00:00] recent, like in the last five years, uh, it’s only a recent kind of epiphany that, um, you can do that kind of thing. And of course you can’t just do that kind of thing, right. Um, so like it takes a lot to make money doing that kind of thing. But, um, I don’t know. I would say fear probably, cuz I’ve had ideas over the years and of things I’d like to do and I, like I weld and I, I am handy with all sorts of tools and everything, so it’s like I have the.

I have the skills to kind of fabricate something if, if, um, if I had an idea that I loved and, and felt like sort of bold enough to, to seek some money for. Um, but I think it’s just, yeah, I think it’s just fear probably, but also just recency. Like I just, I honestly, it was two nights ago that I went to this family member of this Norwegian sculptors thing, and he talked to me about the whole process and I was just like, God damn, I would like to do something like this

That [01:01:00] was my job, but like as a, as a side hustle.

[01:01:02] Brett: you know, what I could see you doing is, um, art in public spaces that benefited people. Um, art, art, art installations for the unhoused. Um, you, you did like the the water stations.

[01:01:18] Jeff: hand washing stations. Yeah.

[01:01:19] Brett: Like you could make that into public art that I could totally see you doing that. I could totally see you being a, an activist artist working in 3d, working with all the skills you have.

All right, Jeff. I

[01:01:34] Jeff: Well, it’s funny, the, the funny thing about that is when, go ahead, Christina.

[01:01:38] Christina: I was just gonna say, I could see you doing that in addition to like doing like the public art thing. I could even see you like making it a nonprofit thing, like having a public art space. Right. Where in addition to

[01:01:48] Brett: A Maker Space

[01:01:50] Christina: Yeah, yeah. In addition to being kind of a gallery for your work that you’re doing, it could also be a space for, um, you know, like, um, underrepresented groups, um, to, to [01:02:00] come and, and either appreciate the art or create their own, sorry, go on.

[01:02:04] Jeff: I think it would be fun. I was thinking about that yesterday when I was touring this university with my son and all of the resources they had, and you could like, You know, you could like check out a 3D printer and bring it to your room or whatever. It was kinda cool. Um, no, I was gonna say with the, so what Brett’s referring to is during the early days of the pandemic, um, uh, there were a lot of, um, unhoused people in, like kind of little mini tent cities in Minneapolis.

They were popping up everywhere and, um, there was nowhere to wash your hands. And this was when we were all freaking out about washing our hands. And so I looked at a bunch of designs online for like, um, like foot pump, hand washing stations where you can get some kind of water flow and some drainage. Um, and I ended up , the funny thing about this is why I’m bringing it up is I could have just, it’s two five gallon buckets basically.

Right? Um, and I could have made it just that, but I, I really wanted it to be beautiful. And so it had, um, like, it had like [01:03:00] a, um, stainless steel bowl, uh, and an actual drain, like sink drain so that it just didn’t seem like something throwing off on people. Ah, they’re homeless. Here you go. You’ll figure it out.

Um, yeah, here’s a bucket. And then I remember I even, like I, it had said hand washing station on it. I, I bought two like fleet farm white buckets that were extra large and then I spray painted the, the logo over. So it was an all white bucket. And then I got . I used the JetBrains

[01:03:26] Brett: Yep.

[01:03:27] Jeff: mono space spot, which I loved, and it’s, and it’s in this blue, and I use it with my cricket, which is what usually use middle-aged ladies making wedding invitations.

And it, and I kind of, it said hand washing. It said hand washing. I love the cricket. And so I just found a picture of it the other day and I’m like, God, it’s beautiful and I wanted it to be beautiful. And so I’m, anyhow, it’s funny you’re saying that thing about that mix of like some kind of social purpose and, um, and art, but I ended up kind of forcing that onto this hand washing station,

[01:03:57] Brett: We’re gonna, we’re going to get you some grants.

[01:03:59] Jeff: That’s right.[01:04:00]

[01:04:00] Brett: It’s gonna be

[01:04:01] Jeff: all your

[01:04:01] Brett: your side project is gonna be grant writing and, and public art.

[01:04:06] Jeff: That’s right. Awesome. Well,

[01:04:08] Brett: we got through one round of questions in this first, in this first episode. Um, I think, uh, I think we, we call it here

[01:04:17] Christina: Yep.

[01:04:19] Brett: and then continue. We, we all wrote down three or four questions, but I think we’re gonna make this a two episode series, so we’ll see what we get through next time. In the meantime, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks, you guys.

[01:04:33] Jeff: Yeah, super

[01:04:33] Christina: you. I love this.

[01:04:35] Brett: Get some sleep.

[01:04:36] Jeff: get some sleep, but not too much cause we gotta start recording again.

[01:04:39] Christina: Exactly. Get some sleep. But you know, just enough I.

[01:05:00]