432: Rotten Soffits

Rotten Soffits

Welcome to Overtired

[00:00:00]

Brett: Hey, you’re listening to Overtired. I am, uh, Brett Terpstra, and I am here with Christina Warren and Jeff Severance. Guntzel. You guys have been carrying on without me.

Catching Up with the Hosts

Brett: How’s it going?

Jeff: Good.

Christina: It’s good. It’s good to, I’ll be back again. It’s been a few weeks. How?

Brett: your, I enjoyed your last episode without me. It was fun to edit.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, uh, yeah, that was where we’re talking to over one another. We’re out of practice. No, that was great. It, it was great. Great, great.

Nerding Out on Acapella

Christina: With our friend Brian. They, they are a delight. And, uh, uh, once again, thank you, Jeff for letting us nerd out for an inordinately

Jeff: a delight.

Christina: about acapella.

Jeff: It was a delight. I think the podcast tag should be, what is it now? It’s like tech pop culture and acapella. Uh, but what is it? What is it now? I forget. Our tag.

Brett: I think it should be Tech. Taylor Swift and Jeff is a really good sport about whatever topic comes up.

Jeff: No, I’m not a good sport. I, as I

Brett: are a

Pathological Curiosity

Jeff: [00:01:00] as I said to my son, when he was annoyed with something, I was pointing out, I said, you have to understand fucking everything is interesting to

Brett: Yeah, that’s what I, that’s what I’m

Christina: was, I was gonna say,

Brett: Like Jeff, Jeff has a curiosity about literally anything that other people are interested in.

Christina: pathologic. Oh, that’s good. Pathological curiosity. I love that. No, ’cause you do. I, I, I, I, I I love that about you. I mean, I, I’m also like very curious, but you’re even more so than me. Like I will go down a rabbit hole on almost anything with anyone, even if it’s something that I’m not that into.

But you are like beyond me. Like, ’cause there are some topics where I’m just like, I will just, my eyes will just glaze over.

Jeff: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christina: you do that.

Jeff: Well.

Brett: know, you know, my eyes glaze over

Christina: Oh, I know. Yeah. No, look, I, I, I, I was, I, I was not even, I was not even bringing you into this. No. Trust me, I, we, so we, we record this with, with video and, um, or we can see one another. We don’t record the video. I, I can see Brett’s face and it’s, it’s those moments where I’m like, do I

Jeff: you can see [00:02:00] Brett Glaze.

Christina: You can. And then there are moments I’m like, do I care or do I wanna finish my rant?

And a lot of the times I’m just like, no, I’m gonna finish what I say ’cause he’s not listening. And it’s fine.

Mushroom Talk and Edibles

Brett: Um, so Jeff has a hard out in a little over an hour, which I think we could do. I just took a ceremonial amount of mushrooms, so we’ll see. How interesting. I’m just kidding. I didn’t, I

Christina: fuck. Bummer.

Brett: I was gonna, no, I only, I have literally like a 16th of mushrooms left and I’m saving it for a rainy day,

Christina: Got it. Got it. Yeah. Fair enough. I mean, I, I just thought it was gonna be fun. I was like, damn, I’ll go take an edible. Like, we can just have like, we, we, we can

Brett: and we’ll just see who kicks in first.

Christina: whose kicks in first. Absolutely.

Jeff: What topic are we on when it kicks in?

Christina: Right, right. It’s, it’s like, it’s like it for me. You’ll know. I’ll just like, I’ll just either get Yeah. I get, I get quieter, honestly. I’ll just be like, cool.

Jeff: yeah, [00:03:00] yeah. Right, right, right.

Brett: All right,

Jeff: like a SMR.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Mental Health Corner

Brett: so let’s catch up on mental health. I would love to hear about you guys first.

Jeff: Oh, I can go

Christina: Okay.

Jeff: but it’s gonna be improvisational.

Brett: Yeah. This isn’t youth group. You can share

Christina: Sh.

Brett: you

Jeff: Wait, what does that mean? It’s not youth group,

Brett: it. We used to have to like go around and Yeah. Testimonials and stuff and like you’d go around the room and everyone would have to share like who they witnessed to this week and all that shit. And, and I realized I really, yeah, a hundred percent.

And I really can’t

Jeff: wait, wait, wait, wait. At this moment Brett is maybe accidentally raising his hand

Brett: Hallelujah. Hallelujah. But, uh, I can’t believe I missed the opportunity in high school to name my band, youth group

Jeff: Oh, that’s a good

Brett: so that everyone could tell their parents, oh, I’m going to youth group tonight, and they could come see [00:04:00] our

Christina: And instead it goes to your show. That would’ve been so, yeah.

Brett: about me real fast.

Jeff: I like that a lot. Um, me, uh, I, you know, it’s, it’s funny, if it were a few days ago, I would’ve had a, a, a lot to say, but then I had therapy, um, and so, and that, that helped calm a lot of things down. Um,

Christina: mental health corner.

Jeff: yeah, actual mental health corner. I also just went through a phase where, so I have like, um, I mean, I think I’ve talked about this before, but I have nightmares pretty bad and, and, and I’ve managed to like.

Make them quite infrequent through therapy, initially through medication, but then stopped that and through therapy, which has been amazing. Um, but I just had, I had one of those weeks where like. If I watch something, um, it becomes, uh, in my dream something like 40 times more terrible. Like if I watch something kind of terrible, uh, or just stressful.

So like I accidentally on TikTok, uh, got a, a really [00:05:00] terrible nine 11 TikTok, just like a little VHS scene that someone had had recorded and that became this crazy ass dream. And then we we’re watching Bad Sisters again. I dunno if you watched that show, but it’s so stressful and awesome. And so every time I used to watch Bad Sisters in Season One, I had nightmares, but I was like, I don’t care.

I love the show. Anyway. Um, no, but I’m, I’m doing good today. Um, I’ve had the place myself for the weekend and my kids are here, but my, um, my wife is outta town, so I’ve just been kind of like roaming around the house and I’m now like doing actual, uh, like garage repair work. I’m like, uh, I will not go into this, but I’m replacing rotten soffits and, and fascia and it’s really exciting because it’s the kind of thing I’ve never done and anytime I’m doing something I’ve never done, I find it kind of thrilling.

And then when it actually works, I find that I don’t hate myself. And that’s, that’s awesome. That’s like a good way to come to not hating yourself.

Christina: Yeah.

Jeff: So, yeah, [00:06:00] I’m, I’m good. Rotten wood. I had to clear out a squirrel nest today that I was pretty sure had dead babies in it. ’cause I had a squirrel war and I had to close off the, the soffit from this squirrel I was fighting with that would yell at me in my workshop.

And I was extra sure that I made extra sure that there weren’t babies in there before I shut it off. But man, a couple weeks later, it sure didn’t smell good in that corner. And so I, today, I like finally had the courage when I was ripping off the soffit and, and everything else to like, clear it out. But I found a way to do it so that I didn’t have to see, I didn’t have to see there was a massacre.

I can’t handle it. One animal dies in my garage every winter and, and they all, they all are like framed, uh, in the, in the palace of my mind.

Christina: Yeah. Uh, okay. So Rotted Wood should also be a band name. I’m just

Jeff: rotted wood.

Brett: I actually, I actually already decided to title this episode, rotten Soffits. We’ll see what else happens,

Jeff: That’s good. That’s good. I like it. That’s what I got.

Christina: [00:07:00] okay. Uh, I’ll go next. Um, okay, so the first, the, the,

Jeff: My name’s Christina

Christina’s Taylor Swift Update

Christina: Yeah, I’m, I’m c I’m Christina, and I’m a Scorpio and No, um, so, uh, most important thing, uh, for, for my mental health and, and I think also going back to the roots of this podcast is that, uh, Taylor Swift got her master’s back, and, uh, so this is very important

Brett: her, the recording’s not her degree. Okay.

Christina: no, she hast not already doctorate, so she’s already, she’s already that, but like, yeah, but she got her master’s back.

And so, um, that means that like all of her, her first six original recordings, all the music videos, all the photo photographs, the concert films, the demos, everything belonged to her. And the reports are that she paid in the $350 million range. So basically what the, what the original, what they were sold to for the second time, they sold them back to her.

Um, and which, which is, which is great ’cause essentially by doing the Rerecording project, she devalued them enough that they didn’t, you know, get a, a massive premium, which, which they would’ve had [00:08:00] otherwise.

Jeff: was that an unintended consequence or was that part

Christina: Oh no, that was the whole point. No, no. The whole point was absolutely. ’cause she’s the song. Well yeah, ’cause she’s the songwriter, so they can’t do sync rights without her permission.

So even though they owned the master recordings, they wouldn’t be able to like, license them to film or television without her permission. And she was like, no. And then she got half the royalties from the streaming stuff anyway, so they were making like 30 million a year. But So was she off of just the other stuff?

I still think they did her a kindness because they could have been juicing that for all they, while it was worth, they could have been putting out DVDs, they could have been putting out books, they could have been licensing the photos for merch. Like her fans would’ve revolted, she would’ve made a big deal about it.

But like, let’s be honest, your aunt in hot topic is not gonna know or care if the Taylor Swift shirt is licensed by Taylor Swift herself, or if it’s licensed by like, Apollo Global, like, you know what I mean? Like, like they’re, they’re not gonna care. So, or Shamrock Holdings or whatever it was called. So.[00:09:00]

The fact that

Jeff: just your aunt. That’s me in hot topic.

Christina: right. But what I mean is like Swifties would, would know the difference between like the official merch and like the, the the, you know, um, uh, like licensed photos that she no longer had any ownership of stuff. Like I’m, I’m just saying. So, but like they, they, they could have made a lot more money off of this is, is what my point is.

And so the fact that they basically like made a hundred million dollars and, you know, ba basically sold it for even money, I think is a kindness. Um, so, so did she from her letter. But the only reason I’m mentioning this for mental health purposes is that like, finally, like I’m happy for Taylor and all, but like my national nightmare of, of having to pretend like the Taylors versions, like we’re anywhere near as good as the originals is over.

And I never

Jeff: the music you love and came to love of hers back in your life.

Christina: well, okay, look,

Jeff: I mean, you had it. I know you had it in

Christina: Yeah. Well, no, no, but here, here’s the thing. I’m a huge Taylor fan and like I, I’m like a Taylor shooter as they would say, obviously. Um, there’s no way in hell [00:10:00] that you could pay me enough money to listen to like Style Taylor’s version over the original ’cause it was ruined.

It, the, the, the, the new guitar bit, like, the whole thing was, it was just fucking ruined. And I paid for those albums. They were in my iTunes library. I also had physical copies. Fuck you. If you think I’m gonna stream like the, the non misogynistic version of better Than Revenge. No, I’m gonna be like listening to the slut shaming version.

That’s it. But the thing is, is that I had to pretend in like plight company, like. You know, like I, I, I, it, it was one of those things like when I would tell people, oh yeah, I still listen to the old versions when I want to. And people were like, oh my God, you monster. And I’m like, okay, now I don’t have to pretend anymore.

And, and, and, but more importantly, ’cause I never really pretended that much. Like I think on this podcast I was even pretty off open. I was like, oh, I think the rerecording are interesting and some of the vocals sound better, but it’s obviously, it’s a different vibe and, and whatever. But some of them, I was just flat out why I was like, this is worse.

But the big thing is, is that like, they would only play like the Taylor’s versions, like on like radio and on like playlists and stuff. And that’s annoying [00:11:00] because they’re, they’re just, to your point, they’re not the ones you grew up with. Like, it’s, it’s not the the thing. And so,

Jeff: fan and, ’cause I know that some of those differences are obviously so subtle and some are so glaring, but like if you’re a fan, the subtle is not subtle.

Christina: No, and the thing is, I think for like, people who came in and became like fans of hers, like during the ERAS tour, and there were a lot of people that got into her that way. Fair enough. You are not gonna really notice or care, but like, if you’ve been spinning like more than half your life, listening to someone like, come on.

Um, or, or close to half your life, whatever the, the, the math breakdown is like, you, you know, those songs and like, you know, every intonation. So I’m just glad that, like, for my mental health, that like my personal nightmare of having to ever worry about hearing style Taylor’s version on like a Spotify playlist or in a store somewhere is hopefully gone because there’s, there’s no reason that we, that anyone should ever subject themselves to that the vault tracks different, right?

Like, that was like a gift and that was great. And like, I’m glad we got all two L [00:12:00] 10 and like she said, she’s not gonna re-record reputation, which think fuck, she would’ve ruined it. Um, and, uh, but, but we will get the vault tracks, which will be great. And, and she did apparently rerecord the debut album. I would be interested in hearing how that sounds, you know, versus 16 versus like, you know, almost 36, but.

When, whenever that happens, that that’ll be a fun thing to listen to. It’ll be a fun deluxe edition to, for me to give her more money for. But like, I don’t, I I, I don’t need to have it like in like on the Delta playlist, which they still have. Like if this was a movie Taylor’s version on their playlist, and like, honestly that was a pretty good re re-record, but it’s still just a jarring thing where I’m like, this voice is, this voice is more mature

Jeff: Yeah,

Christina: you know, 2009 or 2010.

So anyway.

Brett: So Trump’s Trump said that

Jeff: Wait. Whoa, whoa.

Christina: Yeah, he said that she was no longer hot.

Brett: no, no. Since, since he said he hated Taylor, that she was no [00:13:00] longer hot. And if we ignore that, the heirs tour also ended in that period. He was right a hundred percent right.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, yeah. Well, what’s funny about this is that like she didn’t go to the American Music Awards and, and the fans, this is, okay, this is genuinely the funniest thing. You guys might appreciate this. So there’s been all this criminology and, and there’s a joke that says that by Taylor buying back her masters, she prevented, you know, millions of white women from join joining Q Anon.

And it is true because these, these people were insane, including like people that I know, some of my friends got really into this too, where they were looking for all these Easter eggs that clearly never existed about when she was going to drop reputation that rerecord, because that album has become AOC cult classic.

People really like it. And they were like, oh, she’s gonna go all out on this. And like, they would look into the, how many emojis is she putting in? And oh, she’s wearing this snake necklace and so that must mean this is coming out. Like it was getting like genuinely Q anon shit, right? And so she doesn’t go to the American Music [00:14:00] Awards because she didn’t win anything.

But also she’s doesn’t have anything to promote and you only go to that award

Brett: Or to prove for that

Christina: Well, no, she has nothing to prove. She’s got like the most of them that you can possibly get and it’s a fan, ostensibly, fan voted award. But then they make it very clear we can change the results to be whatever the fuck we want them to be.

It’s one of those things. So, you know, it’s like a third tier like music award show that you go to. If you’re trying to promote something, your label forces you or your like a, a d or E list, like influencer. That’s why you go, Taylor Swift’s not going to that. But people were like convinced that last week they were like, oh, she’s gonna go on, on, on, you know, Monday or whatever and she’s gonna do this.

And I was like, no, she’s not. Like I told people in the the Google Swifties chat, I was like, no, she’s not going. Of course she’s not. And oh, we look like clown. She’s not doing this. So the funniest possible thing is the fact that she admitted she hadn’t even recco rerecorded a quarter of reputation and that like she didn’t want to, and that she had really been like hit a hit, hit a wall with it, and she was like.

Yeah, [00:15:00] sorry, that’s not happening. I will give you like the bonus tracks if you want them, but like, I’m not re-recording this. So like, that’s genuinely the funniest thing is that for like years, literal years people have been like trying to figure out when is she gonna drop reputation and like it was all in everyone’s head.

Like, it’s just, it’s, it’s incredibly funny. So, yeah.

Sports Fandom and Mental Health

Jeff: I like this, um, bringing in fandom into mental health. Like, uh, this is a, a far more, uh, kind of a stupid version, but I, I, every once in a while I get invested in a sports team and I did this year for almost an entire NBA season. And I am always struck by how, when, when your team wins, you personally feel like you’ve done something right.

Yeah, yeah. When your team wins, you personally feel like you did something right. When they lose, you personally feel like, and here’s what pisses me off, is that like when they, when they, when they lost the conference playoffs last week, um, I, you know, I felt for them. I felt for me, I was say I felt like I did something where I could hardly look at them, but here’s what I realized of saying [00:16:00] this to my wife.

I was like, they’re gonna go home tonight to their fucking $30 million homes, and I am just gonna stay in this bed I’m in now where I watch the game and feel shitty about myself and wake up and still be like, I. Not quite as, as able to buy three meals a day as I want to.

Brett: Do you,

Christina: right. Exactly.

Jeff: Sorry, I mean, eating out, that was a weird, but

Christina: No, I get what you’re

Jeff: that was a weird,

Brett: l has a small group of queer friends that adopted the wolf emoji and the blue heart emoji as they’re kind of like, they’re also mostly neurodivergent. And it was kind of their way of saying, I love you. I feel you. I’m not gonna respond right now. They would reply with just like a wolf and a blue heart.

Jeff: but it’s not, that’s not a timber’s reference.

Brett: I, no,

Jeff: Okay. Okay. Okay.

Brett: when the Timberwolves won last weekend, her their, uh, whole feed, like [00:17:00] all their text messages, their Facebook wall, everything was flooded with wolves and blue hearts. And,

Christina: It’s very confusing.

Brett: and El thought that thought of that as some weird synchronicity with the universe not realizing that, that el didn’t even know that the timber wolves was a team.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

Brett: so it, they had to come to me who knows just slightly more about sports than L does. Um, to

Jeff: spend many years when they’re not a team.

Brett: to figure out what was going on. I was around when they became a

Jeff: Acapella and sports and Taylor Swift and awesome.

Brett: we a sports podcast now?

Jeff: that is the deepest I’m

Christina: I, I

Jeff: gonna go.

Christina: I was gonna say, now we are actually, and, and we need to get to Brett, but like, on a future episode, Jeff, I do actually wanna like di dig into like, sports fandom with you because I don’t, I, I don’t go to sports Twitter, but, um, my friend Justin, um, is, is like a, a, a diehard for so many sports and [00:18:00] he keeps me up to date on it.

Like he and I, like, we share obsessions with like, the various TV shows that lesbian Twitter is really into because that’s the best Twitter. And unfortunately Twitter is just the best network for anything. Pop culture or blue sky. It doesn’t have any fucking juice. And like, we’re not even gonna talk, pretend that threads and, and, and Mastodon exist in this conversation.

’cause I’m sorry, but they don’t, um. But like, but he will keep me up. Like, like he was sending me all kinds of memes from Paris last night when, um, when, when, when Paris won, like the, the, the, the soccer championships or whatever, like the premier league or whatever it was. And, uh, and, and, and like, you know, he sends me all kinds of other stuff.

So I, I know some things, but not a lot. But I would love to like hear more about how you got really into the, in, in, into the timber wolves this,

Jeff: I have to scrub my algorithm on YouTube now because it’s only when the season’s on that I wanna watch highlights and press conferences. So I had to do a, you know, the full cleaning you do where you’re just like not interested, not interested, not interested. For some reason I have to say not interested to like corn videos about every two months.

I don’t like corn. I don’t listen to [00:19:00] corn, Brett. Sorry.

Christina: Well,

Brett: I don’t listen to corn. What are you talking about?

Jeff: No, I’m saying, sorry. You have a, you have a mental health update.

Christina: yeah, you do. And we’re, and we’re talking about Maynard or whatever, but like, uh, yeah.

Brett: Yeah.

Jeff: Brett, Bartholomew Terpstra

Brett: How I have never told you my middle name. How did you,

Jeff: names. Yeah. I’m a great guesser. I can also guess your weight

Brett: you want, do you want, do you know what my middle name actually

Jeff: No.

Christina: Paul.

Brett: It’s Marine.

Jeff: Marine. What

Christina: would’ve gotten

Jeff: Really?

Brett: Marine with two R’s, which was my, I think, my great-grandfather’s first name.

Christina: Okay,

Brett: And it means man from around the water. My first name means man from the Isles of Britain.

And my last name, name means man from the Manmade Hills in

Jeff: a man.

Christina: so you’re just

Jeff: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Man. From the man. That’s how, that’s very specific.

Brett: family from the Manmade Hills. So like a [00:20:00] TURP is the obs opposite of a dyke. Um. Well, not

Jeff: That’s not, we don’t say that.

Brett: I get that a lot, but, um, like they were like manmade hills that cities were built on in areas that were prone to flooding.

I think so. Turp a turp and Terpstra means from the TURPs if you’re Dutch. And so yeah, I’m, I just have a well-traveled name, but Aloia, I

Jeff: is there some name that could be like, um, man from the text editor in his basement?

Brett: Hmm.

Jeff: You could like, you could add that

Brett: Tex Mara.

Christina: text,

Brett: Text extra. Text extra. There you. Yeah, it’s right there.

Jeff: All right, Maureen, you go.

Brett: All right.

Job Hunting Struggles

Brett: Um, so I can’t remember where I was last time I was on, but I have been let go from Oracle. I have spent the last month sending out job applications. Um, I got. [00:21:00] A bite from Shopify and they put me through three hours of interviews and had me spend two hours on a writing assignment.

So we’re looking at five hours invested before they said we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates. And that was so tiring emotionally that I have taken a couple days off before I start sending resumes out again. Um, but it took me 30 resumes to get one hit. And for some of those resumes I had like referrals within the organization.

And even then I couldn’t get an interview. Um, so despite the fact that LinkedIn is chockfull of jobs, I’m qualified for getting an interview is. Difficult. Um, so I am [00:22:00] heavily weighing my options as an independent developer. Um, I have, uh,

Jeff: Which should have made you rich. Not literally, but you shouldn’t have to. You should want for nothing given the quality of your work.

Brett: Thank you. Thank you. But I, I also am a horrible business person,

Jeff: Yeah. Well that goes along

Brett: and I give so much away for free, and, but

Jeff: punk rock damaged. I think that’s Ted Leo’s term. Your punk rock damaged. You give everything away from free or you feel guilty.

Brett: yeah, right. I, uh, but I’m looking at like how I can like kinda revamp my, my stable of apps to actually pay out, um, getting like Envy Ultra out the door. I have a version three of marked that is. Um, well, it was 90% finished and then I, I’ll tell you about it in a second. But, um, and I’m gonna put that out as like a subscription, uh, pricing [00:23:00] and uh, and I think even if I were to get another job, I could turn all of this passive income into like a second income.

Um, but if I decide I’m don’t like interviewing and working for corporations, which feels like super possible right now, um, that I figured out ways that figured I can, I can have a 401k, I can have health insurance. I can have like, group rates on health insurance and get, like ACT did. Okay, so side note, in the Affordable Care Act, there’s a carve out for religious institutions.

Do you know about this?

Christina: Um, I, I’ve heard about this, but I don’t want know what the details

Jeff: Are you back in the church?

Christina: I was gonna say, are you gonna start a

Brett: no, you don’t. You don’t have to be religious. It’s kind of a, it’s a backdoor if you know about it. [00:24:00] Religious organizations are allowed to negotiate these group rates for better insurance. And the problem with a lot of them is for anything major, it’s full coverage for anything minor. You often pay out of pocket and then they negotiate directly with the provider and then pay you back.

Um, so it’s not like it’s not as convenient as regular health insurance, but in many cases

Christina: you pay up front, but

Brett: it’s better than what you can get on the. Yeah. On

Christina: the marketplace.

Brett: Yep. Um, so like, there, there are options out there. And right now, uh, I’m on Minnesota’s Medicare basically, uh, medical aid, um, which is

Jeff: A great program. Minnesota’s the best.

Brett: for people with zero, with zero reportable income, which is where I’m at at the moment.

Um, and then if I start getting income, [00:25:00] I can switch to sre. Um, yeah, Minnesota’s, Minnesota’s a decent place to be broke. Um, we have, we have our homeless problems. We have, you know, we have homeless policy problems, but like if you are broke and you need health insurance, I feel pretty safe being in Minnesota.

So, um, no complaints there. But anyway, can I. What do you wanna know? I feel like that’s my mental health in a nutshell.

Jeff: Is, what do you wanna know about Marked or about you?

Brett: Oh, I don’t care. I’ll talk about anything

Jeff: have a

Brett: these shrooms kick in.

Jeff: I um, I have a question about applying for jobs. ’cause I have a colleague who does in the neighborhood of the work I do, I mean, he is a, he is a co-owner of the business, but he does far more like traditional evaluation. And I’m as always just kind of a weirdo of the backpack in the corner [00:26:00] making shit up.

Um, but he’s. Been applying for jobs and he has applied for so many jobs and has not heard back from a single one of them. This is an extremely competent, um, person with a long history of, you know, demonstrable history of work, of good work. Um, he’s struggled with the fact that it, there’s a clear sort of AI filtering.

Um, and so then he is trying to figure out like, do I use AI to match that? What I assume is the AI filtering and there’s all this, all this shit. And Brett, then I hear you talking again. Another, I mean obviously demonstrably capable person in the area that you’re, um, applying in all areas. Brett, let’s be honest, um, I realize this started to sound like that’s, I was saying you’re just, you’re just competent there, but let’s, let’s just be clear.

Um, so do you get the sense, are you even hearing anything back when you’re not getting an interview? I.

Brett: Um, I’m, I twi two out of 30. I heard immediately, like, [00:27:00] clearly AI generated, your resume doesn’t fit. What we’re looking for. Um, but 28 of those, not a peep, nothing. I didn’t even get a confirmation that they had received my resume.

Jeff: wow.

Christina: Yeah.

Brett: I got a confirmation from Apple that they had received my resume and that if I were a fit, a recruiter would be in Dutch, but then nothing.

Christina: nothing. Yeah.

Brett: um, yeah, I think, I think AI is detrimental and if you don’t use it properly, I don’t think you get a job anymore.

Jeff: is part of this, and Christina, I bet you would know some of this too, is part of this, that AI has also made it easy for many, many, many more people to apply for a job than they would have.

Christina: Yes and no. Um, the, the, this whole like recruiting thing started long before the AI stuff, um, in terms of the automatically filtering and stuff out, because on the hiring side I dealt with things where if [00:28:00] somebody didn’t fill out and didn’t like show like all the requirements that were on a certain job, like they didn’t check every box, like I fit all these requirements or whatever, then they would automatically be given, you know, from greenhouse or whatever the system would be.

Um, a rejection notice. Even people that we were actively like wanting to get their, like resume into the system because we were purposely recruiting them. There could be things that could break down in the system that would, would come down. And then at big companies, referrals can work and not work in certain ways.

Like in, in some cases it will actually. Guarantee that a, a recruiter will give you a call and, and do a, a, a, a preliminary call and, and see if you’re a fit. But that’s not a guarantee because some places will claim, oh, well, because we fire, we, we, we have federal contracts, then we can’t technically take anything that will be, um, preferential from anyone.

Even if it’s literally us asking our employees to refer people internally, we can’t take that as a signal. So you have to really, in a lot of cases, if you issue a referral, you really need to know the hiring manager and then be able to advocate for the [00:29:00] person directly. But the thing is, is that that doesn’t scale and we don’t all know the hiring managers for jobs that we see at companies that have hundreds of thousands of employees.

So it’s shitty. AI has made it worse for sure, because the systems can now go through much faster than the older algorithms were, which we’re already doing the same things. Um, in terms of if more people are submitting that way, there have been a number of, I guess, kind of local projects where people will kind of spam, um.

You know, uh, like job applications using AI to basically write the cover letters and maybe, you know, rework the resumes and, and whatnot based on the skills that you insert. Um, there have been some takedown notices for some of ’em. I think some are trying to maybe, you know, pivot into more paid services and whatnot.

I don’t know how much that is actively being used in terms of sending in bulk, but I do feel like at this point, if it were me, if I were like actively looking for a job, I would absolutely be trying to use the AI against itself. Right. I would absolutely be trying to optimize my cover letter or my resume everything, um,

Brett: so I [00:30:00] did that. I, I optimized and I, and I would do it per application too. I would copy in the job requirements and the whole nice to have section and then copy in my current resume and tell it to tailor it. And, and I would use that. And I sent out a bunch of tailored cover

Christina: That, and that can work or it can’t work. Yeah. What I, what I will say, um, and I don’t know if this’ll help like either of you, um, but, but might be something to put out to your friend. The years of experience thing is, unfortunately, even though it’s illegal, like one of the few labor protections that we have in this country is supposed to be around like ageism.

It doesn’t matter. Um, limit the, uh, limit how far back you, uh, go in terms of your resume. Yeah. Like I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m being freaking real. Like I, and I would do this myself. Like I wouldn’t, there’s, I, I would like, uh, at a certain point this where it kind kind of becomes a problem if you’ve worked at places for really long periods of time.

Like a friend of mine, um, Microsoft laid off a bunch of people and, and [00:31:00] he’s been there for 19 years and that is gonna be hard for him to be able to like. Fudge on a resume, right? But, but, but, but in general, like drop things from before a certain period of time because it, ageism should, it’s not supposed to be legal, but companies, recruiters, whatnot, they will look at that.

And so dropping the amount of years of experience, uh, is one of the, one of the things that I hear from, from people, from recruiters and, and from, um, like that, that just advice that I, I would give to others. Like, it, it doesn’t actually work in your favor the way that it should because the way that recruiters potentially see it or employers is like, oh, this person’s going to cost me more money.

Not, this person’s going to be more valuable. And, and so that can like, fuck you from even getting into the conversation. The, the, the job market is so shitty right now. I have a lot of friends who are going through this and I, so I really, you know, feel for you Brett, and like it has nothing to do with you.

Like that’s the thing. Like, and, and then the interview process itself. You’re not wrong. Like many times you’d have the take homes and you have like the [00:32:00] systems design interviews and you have like. A lot of work that goes into it, and some places will pay you for that, but, um, most won’t. And you know, four or five years ago things were different and people were actively trying to recruit talent for, for tech jobs.

Now they’re not. And so like the amount of money that they will, you know, uh, put out for recruitment in terms of like, if they, in the past, like sometimes some places would pay people like a, a, a small, like hourly wage to go through the, you know, uh, testing process. Like that’s all out the window because they know that, you know, people want the jobs.

It’s, it’s really shitty.

Brett: I, so the Shopify one I got pretty excited about because not only was I a hundred percent qualified for the position, like there were some things I’ve applied for that I’m like, I could pick it up, I could learn this. But the Shopify one, I mean Shopify’s written in Ruby

Christina: I was gonna say,

Jeff: Oh man.[00:33:00]

Brett: it’s written in Ruby.

And like I would, I was applying for the docs team writing API docs for developers working with Ruby interfaces, using static blog generating systems based on liquid, which Shopify invented. And like all of this stuff I have. Decades of experience with, um, and, and when I got the letter that said we’ve decided to go with other more qualified candidates, I was like, what?

Jeff: That was the letter.

Brett: I, yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I would, I would love to meet the person more qualified than me for this job. So I have to assume there were other factors that they can’t legally say were the reason.

Christina: Totally, totally. I mean, ’cause and that’s such bullshit, like, ’cause the thing is, is that, like, to me that also seems like a, I don’t know, either they had another candidate in mind or, or what, which, fair enough. But like, you know, [00:34:00] this, this is like a, a, a clear problem to me with like their recruiting systems.

If you’re going to take one of the foremost experts on all the things that, that they’re looking for and be like, no.

Jeff: Hmm. Yeah.

Brett: yeah.

Jeff: I am, uh, one of the things that gives me pause. I mean, I, so the way I’ve always gotten work is usually based on something I had been working on in the previous year, and someone sees that and goes, Hey, we want you over here. Um, that’s how I kind of like moved forward through journalism.

It’s how I ended up in what I’m doing now, which I’ve now been doing for more than 10 years. Um, and, but I can see a, a world in which it’s no longer possible for me to make a full living doing this work. I mean, we’ve had, you know, I’m, I’m noticing we have fewer small contracts. I don’t know that we’ll have more of the really large contracts.

We’ve kind of, that’s been our bread and butter. Um. And, and one of the things that really is like, oh man, I’m fucked. I’m, I’m strictly gonna have to get whatever my next job is based on a relationship somehow. [00:35:00] Because if it’s AI filtered and I don’t have a high school diploma, I’m out before you get to anything else.

Like, that’s it. I’m gone. I’m not making it through. Um, and that is, that is, um, humbling. It also pisses me off ’cause I finally am at a point in my life, I mean, I’ve been there for maybe 12, 13 years, but where I didn’t feel like that was gonna be a liability ever. And in fact I felt like just because of the trajectory it set me on, it was a strength.

Um, but I will say that when I got a job in public radio, no one there knew I didn’t have a high school diploma, didn’t go to college. And when my boss found out, she had a little bit of a, I hope my boss doesn’t find out response to that. Um, and, and so like, you know, I was, but I was able to just kind of skate through without anybody asking.

’cause people were focused on the work I had done and

Christina: Well, right, well, well, they just assume they, they, they, they just make assumptions. I mean, that’s why usually a lot of places will say, or equivalent experience, which is, is, is where you can kind of not be saying that you’re lying, you know, on your application stuff. ’cause that’s, that’s the [00:36:00] thing you gotta be careful about with things like that, is like, depending on what it asks, if, if you give incorrect information, then they can pull the offer when, when they do a background check and whatnot.

And, and those background checks will try to verify, um, you know, like education and whatnot. But, um, but, but it’ll say like, or equivalent. And if you have, like, you have clearly the equivalent experience of, you know, a, a bachelor’s degree. Um, so, um, like that. Like, obviously you, you wouldn’t claim like a higher degree than that, but like you,

Jeff: At least a high school diploma.

Christina: No, I

Jeff: What if I, do you think I could sneak through? Do you think I could sneak through listing the school of hard knocks?

Christina: No, no.

Brett: my, my college apparently doesn’t have me on record as graduating. Um, when Oracle did their background check on me, they’re like, we cannot confirm. And I sent them a photo of my diploma and they accepted that. But I never followed up with Mc CA to see why.

Jeff: mcad. [00:37:00] Uh, that’s, uh, art school in the Twin Cities. Everybody.

Brett: Why would they not have me on record as having a bachelor of Arts?

Mental Health and Hobbies

Brett: But anyway, so, so, so mental health wise, I’ve been staying sane by coding, working on, um, being self-sufficient. Uh, gardening, we’ve been planting, planting some subsistence farming style crops, um, and, uh, and watching movies. And I think we can go from there into

Christina: First we should do our our sponsor break.

Jeff: Oh, but Brett, when we’re out of that, I know, I know we have some pitch Perfect. Top. I have so many questions about Mark three, and we can just do an episode on that

Brett: so here’s, here’s what I suggest. Give me after, after the sponsor read, give me three minutes to tell you about Mark three. You can ask any questions you

Jeff: Three minutes. That becomes gratitude. I want, I have so many questions.

Brett: uh, three minutes for me to tell you.[00:38:00]

Jeff: Oh,

Christina: And then we’ll do a follow

Brett: And then, and then you can ask, you can ask all the questions you want. And then I definitely wanna talk about Pitch Perfect and step Up

Jeff: Well, we are an acapella

Christina: we are

Brett: here’s,

Jeff: We got this

Brett: Here’s your cliffhanger. We’ll be right back with all of this after these messages.

Sponsor: Insta360

Brett: Today’s episode is sponsored by Insta 360, a leader in 360 degree action camera technology. Their latest 360 degree camera, Insta 360 x five, launched April 22nd, and shoots a full 360 degree video in incredible eight K 30 resolution. Since it films in all directions at once, you don’t even need to aim the camera.

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Christina: Um, 1, 1, 1 thing I’ll note just real quickly about the Insta 360 stuff, because I’ve used their stuff and it’s really actually very good, is that invisible selfie stick. What they do there is they basically like have, I guess it kind of programmed in like how their recording software works or whatnot, so that if you’re using that particular stick, when you bring your video in, like literally the selfie stick just disappears.

Like it’s automatically taken out, like without having to do anything in, in like an editing app or whatnot. It’s just like gone, which is, which is kind of badass.

Brett: I’ve seen, like friends of mine, Richard Lawler from End Gadget, uh, got a 360 degree, degree camera and was posting like 360 shots to Facebook. And they were cool. Like I was, I was jealous. They were cool. I, I also kind of want drone, but some things are just

Christina: Yeah, I mean, this one, you don’t have [00:41:00] to get an FAA, like granted, it’s like a, you know, small license, but like, you don’t have to bother, like with, oh, where can I use this? Where can I not? Like, that’s the nice thing about it is that, ’cause there you wouldn’t have this problem because you have like land and whatnot, but like, there are a lot of places, like if, if you live in an urban area, like I would love a drone.

I would not be allowed to use a drone. Um, and, and even a lot of parks and stuff like, won’t let you use them, but like you can get similar shots to that if you have it like a pie enough, you know, because it’ll go, it’ll go 360. So it’s, it’s pretty fun.

Jeff: What if, if I got a drone, I’d put a Ukrainian flag on it just to scare the shit out of anybody,

Brett: Ukrainian and a German flag.

Jeff: and it’s, oh, yeah. Okay. All right.

In-Depth Discussion on Marked App

Brett: so, so here’s what I’ve been working on. I have focused most of my development time on Mark, which is my pre premier, premier. I don’t know if that’s the word I want, but it’s, it’s the, it’s the app I have that makes me the most money,

Christina: It’s your flagship app right [00:42:00] now. It’s your

Brett: flagship. There you go. Until, until NV

Christina: Until Envy Alter comes out. This is your flagship? Yeah.

Brett: So, so I have been focusing on Marked, which originally released at 3 99, and John Gruber immediately wrote about it, and I began making like seven grand a month on it, um, at 3 99.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Brett: And then time went on, uh, sales slowly dwindled. Eventually I added enough features to it that I considered it like a $15 app.

Um.

Jeff: easily,

Brett: And so now, so e even today it’s 1399 and, um, I have customers that have been with me since they paid $4 for it and have never paid another dime and have gotten over a

Jeff: on this podcast.

Christina: Huh,

Brett: over a decade of support from me. Um, [00:43:00] and it’s either time for a major version upgrade, a paid upgrade, or that I switch to subscription pricing.

And I am, I, I’m pretty, I’m 99% decided that I’m going subscription because. Like people who are anti subscription, say, if you’re not paying for hosting, if you’re not paying like your own monthly costs on something, you shouldn’t charge a subscription. But I disagree because if you are constantly putting in development and you wanna just release new features as you develop them, instead of saving up for one big yearly release, a subscription makes perfect sense.

So, um, I had, I had decided I was gonna price it at like 2 99 a month, um, with, with like a, with a six month and yearly and a permanent unlock price. But, um, setup [00:44:00] has, is about to roll out their single app plans

Jeff: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Brett: Where they will handle the subscriptions for a single app instead of paying for all of set, but they have a minimum pricing of 4 99 a month for an individual app.

And I thought when, let me, when I tell you about what’s about to happen in Mark, I think you’ll agree that’s a reasonable price. So what I’ve added, um, okay, so Mark has always had a Doc X export and it has always been bullshit. Um, it is always basically just giving you an RTF file pasted into a Doc X file.

Jeff: Yes.

Brett: It now on my machine will give you a fully structured word file with styles, with headings, with list items. It can [00:45:00] even import, uh, it can turn word change tracking. Into critic markup, and it can change word highlights into colored highlights in your markdown using span tags. Um, and it’s bidirectional.

You can open up a Doc X file in marked,

Jeff: Shut your dirty mouth.

Brett: save it as markdown or turn your, or save it as a new word file with cleaned up syntax and cleaned up change

Jeff: I’m just gonna send you my credit card. The whole thing.

Brett: I also completely rewrote Scrivener in, uh, integration. So up until now, Scrivener integration is always depended on a combination of Python and Ruby Scripts to render a Scrivener file into a markdown document, it is now completely done in native code. Lightning [00:46:00] fast handles all of Scrivener’s additional syntax.

Um, for highlights and callouts and footnotes and everything is all handled and exportable as, uh, multi markdown or GitHub flavored markdown. I also built in crammed down and common mark processors into Mark. So you, you, you have four, four processors to choose from and what I’m working on right now is, um, you guys have used Hazel.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brett: So when you edit a, when you add a rule in Hazel and you get the criteria, like the predicate editor is what it’s called in like Mac Os, and then you have your action section, I have built that for Mark so that instead of a single custom processor, you can now use a predicate to base, uh, a decision on file, name, extension path.

What other files [00:47:00] exist in the same directory or tree as a file? Uh, text content matches. Uh, there, there’s about 20 things you could match on, and then based on those matches, you can run about 15 different actions. Everything from like normalizing headers, shifting headers, running commands, running processors, um.

Uh, adding setting styles, adding metadata, you can do just about anything with zero code. Uh, you can do it all using a graphical interface to build out your own custom processors so you can run different processors even if you just run, even if you just wanted to run, cram down for documents that existed in your, your blogs folder and multi markdown for things that existed in your work folder.

Uh, that would be, it would take you 30 seconds to set that up in the custom rules builder. And then from then on [00:48:00] whenever you opened a file that met those criteria, the correct processor would just be run. So that is light years ahead of where Merck has been for the last 10 years, and, and I think it’s worth some

Jeff: call that shit marked five.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, you could, yeah, you could. I was gonna say like, like, like, bring, bring it to 6, 6, 6 blades. Um, if I can make an observation, and I know we wanna talk about movies. Um, it seems like especially with the, the, the, the custom processing, uh, pre-processing work and conversion work you’ve been doing, um, especially if you can like both, like take this into, and I’m assuming like I, and like you said, it’s bidirectional, right?

So not only can you put all that into nicely formatted word stuff, but you can also take all the word stuff and put that into markdown, right?

Brett: Yeah.

Jeff: is insane, by the

Christina: Right. Well, this is my point. I feel like there’s an opportunity, you have the consumer product and marked and, and you can price that and, and figure out whatever the, the, you know, monthly or, or subscription price on that, um, will be.

But I feel like there’s an opportunity [00:49:00] with so many businesses and so many, um, like firms needing to convert data into markdown, to interact with LLMs, that you should be licensing that to them directly from like an enterprise level or a business

Brett: already, I have already made it extractable. Um, it can run, um, on its own and it could be sold as a library

Christina: Right. And that’s what I’m

Brett: without any of Mark’s other proprietary code. It’s a completely separate library that could be licensed or used, or I could build an app that literally just does word to markdown or word to word conversion.

Christina: totally. And, and what I’m saying though is, is that that should be like a, a thing that you should be talking to like larger places about and like selling that, like as it as its own thing. Because I think not only all the, all these features great and obviously like from having a gui, there’s great value there, but even as a library for people that are going to need to do RAG and other types of stuff and they’re going to need to convert lots of documents, they might not actually wanna use a [00:50:00] gui, they might wanna have a library so they can build their own automated system so they can, you know, have like probably a webinar interface where people would upload a bunch of docs and it would, you know, spit out the, the ensuing, uh, text files so they can then submit them into, into their processes.

But they don’t wanna spend the time, you know, they’re, they’re not, what they build themselves is not gonna be as good as what you’ve done because you’re one of the experts in this. Um, I’m just, just pointing out there that there’s like a. There’s a market for that, um, with either to license the library for other people to build it into their stuff or to, you know, sell to people directly so that they can build it into their own internal systems.

Brett: My friend Kaylin, uh, I don’t know if you guys have ever used a label printer,

Jeff: Yeah, I got one on my desk ’cause I’m 400 years

Brett: course you do. Um, but like, so there’s, there’s this huge market for label printers, for everything from co-ops to Walmart. And there is like zero good software for

Jeff: Oh yeah, this is less. Less than zero. Yeah,

Brett: awful.

Jeff: [00:51:00] Also, the one I use is unfortunately called P Touch. But go ahead. Like, what’s up brother? Like, that’s, how many meetings did p touch make

Christina: Well, they’re so Japanese, they’re, they’re so

Jeff: Uh, good point, good point. Sorry, Brett.

Brett: so Kaylyn wrote Universal Printer label software. It’s label something. Label I label live. He wrote label live, and he sells it at a premium price because there’s literally no competition. And he, he is, he lives the most relaxed lifestyle. I. Because he’s an amazing developer. He keeps his software up to date and it takes him, I don’t know, maybe an hour a day, and then another hour a day of doing customer support.

And he charges a premium price and makes enough to buy a house. And, um, and [00:52:00] this is, this is to Christina’s point, like if you sell the right product to the right people, you can, you can set yourself up. And I’ve just historically done a shit job of that.

Jeff: Well, and the thing about like Word right, is the reason I’m excited about that is ’cause whenever I work with big, like big clients, I have to work in Word. And so like those are the kind of, I mean, amazing.

Brett: Well, and when I was, I was, I was started working on this when I was still at Oracle and when I switched to the last manager I had, I started having to daily work with Word files and people would send the most fucked up Word files to me, uh, for like editing for, or even just as like, here’s instructions for how to do a thing.

I’m gonna send you a Doc X file with, with a poorly formatted list in it. And so I began writing the software that would convert that into clean markdown, [00:53:00] and then I could use Mark to output a clean PDF and, and I would send it back to them and be like, here’s what you sent me 30 seconds later, here’s an actual readable, usable version of it that doesn’t require me to launch Microsoft Word.

Um.

Jeff: is there, is there anybody that’s gotten that markdown to Doc X export? Right. ’cause

Brett: Yeah, Ulysses has done a pretty good job

Jeff: yeah. I barely used it. Okay.

Brett: and, and I, I borrowed a lot from some of Ulysses philosophies. Um, I think my Doc X export is now better than Ulysses. I am confident in calling it a best in class markdown to Doc X conversion. Um, I and I, like for a while I played with the ability to convert CSS styles into word styles, um, that gets messy.

Christina: Yeah. And, and, and I feel like that’s, that, I also feel like that’s a [00:54:00] niche enough thing to be completely honest with you, that like most people who are going to be doing that sort of styling, like Mo,

Brett: sable, they already have their own templates.

Christina: They only have their own templates. And so what they really want is a way to get the, the, the base text into Word or to get the base word document into plain text.

What they’re not wanting to do is, is, is fuck with the formatting because in many cases,

Brett: especially not in CSS,

Christina: Well, well,

Brett: how they wanna do

Christina: well, I was gonna say, when I, when I’ve used Mark for, for some conversion stuff, I, interestingly enough for some LLM usage with some like, uh, uh, coding stuff where I’ve like, basically taken a lot of HTML stuff and I’ve needed to, uh, have, have a easy way to kind of convert it.

And I’ve either used command line tools where I’ve used Mark, like I’ve always turned off the export to like hide any style sheets. ’cause I’m like, I, for, for my purposes, I don’t want that. Right. Like that, that’s like, it, it’s fine if I’m looking at it visually in the app, but like that’s, that’s not what I’m here for.

Brett: I did was just build in a bunch of like well-designed custom styles. Like there’s like [00:55:00] five, and you can choose a well-designed custom style that’ll look great in Word, but it’s like a hundred percent designed so that when you open it in Word, you open up your theme. Pal, you pick a theme and it works.

It just applies it to everything. Um, which is my assumption that most people who are required to work in Word also have corporate style guidelines

Christina: I, I would say that,

Brett: and like, and themes that they have to use. Um, oh by the way, headers and footers also translate from

Jeff: Oh wow.

Brett: and you can set headers and footers in metadata in your markdown file and it’ll translate into a styled header in Word.

Anyway, enough about Marked. That was fun. Thank you. Um. Yeah, I, I look forward to this release.

Movies and Entertainment

Brett: So the other thing that has kept me sane is movies. And I [00:56:00] started, I started with Pitch Perfect, which I think was inspired by listening at, by at, when I was editing the last episode and listening to you guys talk about acapella.

And the only experience I have with Acapella is the Pitch Perfect movies. And I had seen them all previously, but I decided, what the hell, I’m gonna watch ’em all again. So I, I watched them in the wrong order. I watched them 2, 3, 1. Which kind of skewed my perspective on how good they were by saving the best for last like that. But it was fun. And I talked to, I was texting with Christina and Brian while doing this, getting opinions and feedback and, and that was cool. And then I, for some reason, I decided to get into the Step Up movies. And again, I fucked up [00:57:00] the order. I started with Step Up two, skip to Step Up Revolutions, then did three, then did one.

I don’t know why I do this to myself.

Christina: And this,

Brett: like obviously

Christina: right, and the thing is, is like the summit movies had their charm and like, I, I, I, I can like defend most of them, but like the original, you know, like Channing Tatum like movie, like it is, it was far better than it ever had any right to be when it came out.

And like it holds up far better than it has any right to and, and, but like, yeah, don’t start with the sequel. The sequel I would argue is like the

Brett: I know. I

Christina: I actually think that the second

Brett: But I think, I think it was a masochistic, like I just, I wanna watch a shitty

Christina: Yes. Now I will say

Brett: start with number three.

Christina: Now I will say this. Magic Mike is one of those series that you can’t do in a wrong order actually. Like I actually

Brett: Oh, I should do that.

Christina: should actually, ’cause like the first one is a Soderberg film, and it’s actually like, of all of them, it’s [00:58:00] like, probably like the, the most movie movie and then Magic Mike, XXL or whatever.

I loved, and I actually, I saw that in Pitch Perfect Two, like there, it’s the same movie as Pitch Perfect two. I think The Magic Mike two is, is, is, uh, far more successful. Um, and then the third one, um, is just, it’s just a great time. So yeah, that should be another one that you should like, uh, like Last Dance, like

Brett: Yeah, for sure. I love chanting

Christina: yeah.

But, but also like that’s another series where it’s like far better, you know, to to, to step up. Like it’s far better than it has any right to be. But, um, yeah,

Brett: Side note, Channing Tatum showed up in the last episode of Welcome to Reham, which is, uh, ri

Jeff: I need to

Christina: uh, McEnery and, uh, Ryan Reynolds show

Brett: ny and yeah, um,

Christina: he’s now just Rob Max, so we can just call him that now.

Brett: Rob Mack, Rob Mack and Ryan Reynolds, and they own a soccer team. And Magic Mike shows up and does Magic. Mike moves in the locker room, [00:59:00] like shaking his fucking nuts in front of the soccer players,

Jeff: Oh, it’s like a Jesus

Brett: like, literally like one of them’s on the bench, and he has, he’s on the hands on the ground, feet up on either side of the guy’s head against the locker, just shaken. And it’s, it’s hilarious. I, I love that guy. Um, but.

Jeff: I feel like not having seen the movie. This is where I feel like the mushrooms have kicked in for you. ’cause somehow I drifted for just a second and we went from acapella to a guy’s nuts.

Brett: The movie that made me the happiest watching all of these movies that I enjoyed in like the nineties and the early two thousands. Uh, there was a movie called Stick It with Missy Pergram, and I fell in love with

Christina: yeah, yeah. I remember this. I remember

Brett: This movie, I had such a crush on her after I

Christina: Yeah. Oh yeah. This, this was from the, from, from, from the Bring It on Director, which makes complete sense because in my opinion,

Brett: Another favorite of

Christina: yes. Now I will say this. [01:00:00] Bring it on the sequels. No, like, don’t even try, they’re all Director video. However, however, I’ve made this argument before and since you have now watched all the Pitch Perfects, maybe you’ll agree with me.

Pitch Perfect One and bring it on one, the exact same movie.

Brett: close. Yes.

Christina: And, and that is not a pejorative, that is not like a, I’m not saying that in a negative way. Like when, when, and that clicked with me when I saw Pitch Perfect One in the theater and I was like, holy shit, this is a, this is acapella. Like bring it on.

And I, and, and I mean that in the, the highest possible compliment because I think Bring It On is a perfect teen movie for what it attempts to be like the, the level of like, you know, like that was the first time we s.

Brett: it’s a bureaucracy.

Christina: Exactly. But not only that, but like they showed like, you know, actually talented, obviously in that case it was, it was, um, extras, but like actually talented cheerleading movies where like Pitch Perfect.

You see actually talented singers in, in Step Up, you see actually

Brett: Actually talented

Christina: And like, that’s, that’s the thing for me with these movies, I’m like, okay. And I don’t, I don’t really care. Like if you’re having to like for both Step Up and, and Pitch [01:01:00] Perfect, it’s the actors themselves. But I don’t even care if you’re getting, you know, extras in on it.

Like, just show me the real fucking talent. Like that elevates the whole thing to me. ’cause I’m like, yes, I love to see how this all comes out at the end.

Brett: I, I owned the first bring it on, on VHS, on DVD. I own it on iTunes. Like I have owned it in every format. It’s been released in, I think. Um,

Jeff: Wait, what’s the longest, what’s the longest series? Any of us own on, on iTunes or on.

Brett: um, back to the future is probably, I don’t, it’s a

Christina: Yeah, I was

Brett: the longest I own.

Christina: oh, I, I, I’ve got like all the Mission Impossible

Brett: Oh, I do own all the Harry Potters, but not because I like them, because my ex-wife bought them and left them on my account.

Christina: Yeah, I have,

Jeff: I beat Christina by a little bit ’cause mine is fast furious.

Christina: those too. I, I, I don’t know, have the, I don’t have the

Brett: own them.

Christina: yes.

Jeff: all of ’em.

Christina: They, they sell them in these, they had these sales from time to time

Brett: [01:02:00] Yeah. There. It’s on right now. You can on iTunes. It’s like 29

Christina: Right. That’s what I’m

Jeff: have Dom’s car as

Brett: they have,

Jeff: popcorn, uh, holder

Christina: Oh my

Brett: they

Jeff: on display in my office.

Brett: buy all the Mission Impossibles for a bundle price right

Christina: Yeah. That’s how I buy. I have, I, I have like, like literally like a couple thousand movies on iTunes because of the bundles.

Like people, like,

Brett: yeah. No, I do that. I’ll be like, I, I have 30 bucks to spend. Let’s go see what’s

Christina: actually, you know what, um, uh, remind me on this because I have an app for that that I will use as my gratitude actually.

Brett: Awesome. All right. So anyway, stick it with Missy Pergram excellent movie. It’s not, it doesn’t have the thrill of like dance troops or it’s gymnastics.

Christina: Yeah. Which is still fucking great.

Brett: And you see some amazing gymnasts, some amazing moves, and the, the kind of, the like friction in it isn’t contrived the way, like the step up sequels had real, like just [01:03:00] contrived friction in them.

And like the whole hook was like, dance was not the answer for these problems. And they, they shoehorned, they shoehorned dance into being the answer, but in, in stick it like the problem is gymnastic judges and the answer is gymnastics and it is team like co collusion. And it, it works. It’s, it’s really good.

Jeff: Christina, I was listening to the Hard Fork podcast and they were talking about Google io and they mentioned, one of them mentioned seeing the Google acapella group rehearsing in the hallway. What the hell is that? They haven’t They have one.

Christina: I mean, I’m not surprised. I think Microsoft did too, but Okay, cool. sure. Why not?

Jeff: to add that in. It’s all I

Brett: I,

Christina: No, that’s amazing. ’cause I was at Google io. I wish I had seen that. If I had seen that, I would’ve taken video and I would’ve been like, what’s [01:04:00] up guys? Like.

Brett: was a fan of the

Jeff: You’d love my

Brett: group, but they were all like 60 years old,

Christina: Yeah, that’s that, that, that, that, that’s the thing. Like you’re never sure on those things. I’m like, okay, are you, you know, like, like, are are we, are we like my age or younger? ’cause I would hope that it would be people younger than me. ’cause that would make me feel better about myself. But like, you’re like, did you come in, like, did Pitch Perfect and, and the sing off?

And did those things get you interested, like when you were in middle school and then like that’s why you did this? Or are you a nerd like me who, like, or the people who led to, you know, like the book that inspired Pitch Perfect. Oh, that’s another thing you should do, Brett. You should read the book. That Pitch Perfect was based off of, it was, it’s it’s a good book.

Yeah. It’s by a guy. It’s, it’s by a fucking New Yorker author,

Brett: All right.

Christina: Mi Mickey Rapkin. He, he like followed like the world of collegiate acapella, um, in like 2009 or something, and then wrote a book about it and then that was adapted into Pitch. Perfect.

Brett: Will you throw a link to that book in the show

Jeff: You’ll also notice it in last week’s show notes. Oh, I’m sorry. The last episode. I don’t know if it made it in the show notes, but it, [01:05:00] uh, it was mentioned, maybe it didn’t make it in the show notes.

Brett: cool. All right. Should we do

Jeff: I just wanna point out that that particular acapella book has now been pitched in two of our,

Christina: I was gonna say, look, uh, well, well look,

Jeff: pitched.

Oh

Christina: gonna say it was, it was like you purchased a Kindle edition on August 11th, 2009.

Brett: All right.

GrAPPtitude

Brett: Should we do some gratitude?

Jeff: sure.

Brett: Um, I can kick it

Christina: Yeah. Kick it off.

Brett: if that’s cool. Um, so in the process of working on Marked and I. Some of my other projects I tried out Cursor and I know you guys talked a little bit about vibe coating recently, and I’m not, I’m not personally doing vibe coating, although I have seen some good products come out of vibe coding, um, respectable applications being developed.

A friend of mine, friend of the show, rabbi Eric [01:06:00] Linder, uh, friend of the show ’cause he is a friend of, he was on Systematic, um, he he

Jeff: He is been on this show. Yeah, I was. I think you and I had a mom and Christina couldn’t be on once.

Brett: he released an iOS app that he built entirely with ai. Um. But I’ve been using it because like GitHub copilot is outstanding and especially when I’m working in Ruby, I have found it just, I start typing DEF, which is how you sort of function in Ruby.

I type DEF and fucking knows the function I’m about to write without even writing a comment. It’s just like, it’s there in like grade text, I hit tab and the function I was thinking of for whatever reason, it, it predicted what I was gonna need next. Um, and Cursor is much the same, um, as using like a conversation mode in GitHub copilot.

[01:07:00] I have enjoyed with, with Cursor using Claude. Um. I have gotten really good results and it has written entire sections of code for me that honestly, like it takes, I’ll come up with an idea and I’ll, I’ll flesh it out in cursor and it’ll take me an hour to debug the code it wrote, but that code would’ve taken me easily five, six hours to write on my own.

Christina: No, I mean, and that, that, that’s the perfect way I think of using that. Try, please try the Gemini 2.5 Pro model in place of Claude. And because I’m not just saying that because I work, uh, at DeepMind, um, the models are finally getting good, and I would like to, I would be curious about your feedback.

Um, they, they do Nerf how big the context window is a little bit because the context window, um, on, on, um, uh, uh, Gemini 2.5 Pro is [01:08:00] significantly larger than on Claude 3.7. I, I don’t know, for, for Claude four, I think it still is, but give it a shot. I’d just be curious your, your, your thoughts

Brett: And then the other half of my gratitude would be an app called Co Typist for Mac, um, and co typist is it, think of it as AI for text expander, anywhere you’re typing. Uh, so, so Apple recently, recently introduced like their AI writing tools and like when you’re in messages, it tries to predict what you’re gonna write.

It’s never correct, uh, for me. Like it’s always in the wrong tone. It’s always the wrong sentiment. It’s never what I actually wanna say. But co typist is amazingly good predictive text. And when you use co typist in cursor. It will literally write your prompts for you. You’ll start writing, [01:09:00] this is what I wanna accomplish.

And then you’ll start like, it’ll name variables, it’ll name method names. It’ll give you file names just by typing the first couple letters and it’ll complete all of these, all of the things you need to write a really detailed, really, um, actionable prompt. In cursor co typist will handle 50% of that workload for you.

So the combination of co typist and cursor has cut my development time by 90%.

Christina: That’s

Jeff: Wow. That’s amazing.

Brett: That’s it. That’s it for me.

Jeff: Love it.

Christina: Um, I’ll go next. Uh, this is just a kind of a, we were talking about like iTunes prices and deals and stuff. There is an app, it is actually available on the app store on um, Google Play and on um, the web and it is called Cheap Charts. And so if you go to cheap charts.com or, or cheap charts.info, um, you can access it and basically it is a tracker is a way for you to track like a wishlist of all like [01:10:00] the movies or TV shows or, um, if you use the website, you can also use video games for like, you know, Xbox or PlayStation or Switch.

Um, but you can also do things like books I think and audiobook, like basically any of the stuff that Apple offers, you can create your own playlist. This is actually cool because last year, maybe two years ago, apple got rid of the ability to have a wishlist feature, um, in iTunes. And like people were really upset about that.

You can still maintain this on, um. Cheap charts and they will, like, the app will update or you can choose to get notifications or not. Or you can get an email when the price comes down. And so you can basically view what the price is, what the historical price trend has been. So, you know, should I buy this now or not?

Right? Like 4 99 is as low as any movie goes on, on iTunes, um, for a one-off. But, um, bundles can, can vary in prices. So maybe like, okay, well this bundle is $30, do I wanna get this? Or is there a shot looking at historical price trends that it might go down to, you know, $20, you can make that decision, right?

Like I think, [01:11:00] um, uh, 30 is usually a pretty good mark, but sometimes you’ll see things even for like one day, like sometimes I’ll get notifications and I’ll be like, this, you know, like a hundred dollars box to this $15 and you, I know it’ll only be on sale for like. A day if that, and I’ll just immediately buy it.

So, uh, so cheap charts.com is, is great. I’m a big fan. Um, and, uh, they, the, the website version can also work on Fandango and Google Play and Amazon. I, I don’t use it with those services, I just use it with iTunes, but, um, because that’s like my source of truth. And then I use, um, the, the movies everywhere, uh, movies anywhere, service rather to port them to, to other, um, platforms if the, if they’re part of the, the studio consortium there.

But, um, yeah, this is a free app. They also cover things like for, you know, gift card deals and stuff like that. And I’m, I’m a, I’m a huge fan, so, so cheap charts. I’ve been using it for years. Um, they’re, uh, they’re good people. Their, their iTunes app or, or their iOS app, uh, there’s a test flight that’s, um, often available to join [01:12:00] I’m, which I’m in, and they update pretty frequently and like they do, they do a really good job.

Jeff: It is super interesting. I’m looking at the price history for the Dwayne, the Rock Johnson, um, uh, picture snitch. Um, and, and it is super interesting to see how it just has this drumbeat of going from 9 99 to four point 99, 9 0.99 to four point 99. It’s just super interesting to see like the, to kind of see the logic.

Bet of the history of that.

Christina: Yeah, totally. And then like, it’s interesting ’cause like I, I don’t know what the other stores do. ’cause like I said, I primarily know the, the iTunes store ’cause that’s my point of truth. But, um, they have, um, you know, but you, like there will be sales, like, like Memorial Day is usually a big sale, 4th of July.

There’s often, sometimes like summer things, some stuff around like, um, you know, day after Thanksgiving and, and Christmas time where like you will, I will notice that there will be either really big brand new bundles of movies that they haven’t done before, or there will be, you know, just big price cuts.

And so, um, like, I, like I have, I have some movies that have been like in [01:13:00] my, um. Queue or on my wishlist for a long time, and I’m just waiting for them to drop because I’m like, I’m not gonna pay 1499 for hackers, which for some reason I don’t have in iTunes, but I will pay 4 99 for it. Right. And, and, and what I find myself doing, and like, so because of this app I’ve spent, it’s a free app, but I’ve spent so much money because of it.

Like I don’t trust the services to, to keep things on them at all. Like, like even like I don’t trust HBO Max, which is now HBO Max. Again, I

Jeff: Yeah, which is amazing.

Christina: which is amazing. But like, I don’t trust them to keep like Oz and The Wire and Sex and the City and the Sopranos. Like, I don’t actually trust they will keep them on those networks, like on, on their streaming platform perpetuity.

Even though they own the shows. Like you would think, oh yeah, I can just rely on this. I don’t, right. Because David Zoff sucks. And, and so like if I, if I see that like the, the complete series of the Sopranos drops to 50 bucks. I might buy that, right? Like same [01:14:00] thing if, if I, you know, um, uh, things like hacks and other shows like succession, like if I can get, you know, good prices on it.

Like for me, I, I guess I’m, I’m, I’m playing a little bit of a game of chicken ’cause I’m, I’m betting that iTunes will keep the content playable longer than the streaming services will. Um, but I, I, you know, that, that is, is paid off. It’s been like 21, 22 years, so,

Jeff: paid off.

Christina: so, you

Jeff: I’m amazed.

Brett: So here’s, here’s, here’s my thought. Yes. Buy, do exactly what you’re doing. Archive using iTunes, but then grab the Torrance and save your own

Christina: Oh

Brett: ’cause you’ve paid for it and you should have

Christina: and I do and I do do that. Right. And, and, but, but many times it’s just like the convenience of like having it in

Brett: Mm-hmm. Oh, absolutely.

Christina: like is just better than having to deal with Plex and I love Plex. Um, but no, I, I fully agree with you. Um, but yeah, I, I, uh, I’m, I’m a big fan of, of, of cheap charts.

So if you are somebody who still buys digital media [01:15:00] yeah.

Brett: yeah, once I bought Stick it on iTunes, I also grabbed the Torrent and now it’s on my plex as well.

Jeff: Rule one, pay the man, rule two, steal it out of the

Brett: Paid the

Christina: no, it’s, it is rule rule two was have multiple backups, right? Like we, we, we were all like a, a multi backup strategy family. Right? And that means that, like, I think that of all the companies, ’cause like Sony did that thing last year where they like got rid of everybody’s movies that they purchased on PlayStation, which was fucking bullshit.

And I was

Jeff: Oh, really? That’s

Christina: yeah, it is fucked up. And I was like, okay, well I’m glad I never like bought any media from them. Right? And, and I, and I feel like, you know, Amazon, Microsoft, um, apple are probably gonna be the three that will be the best for that. And I would put Apple very top just because the institution, the, the backlash that they would get, I think if, if they remove people’s library content would be astronomical.

But, you know, it will be one, there will be come a day where they’ll be like, no, we’re not gonna do this. And that’s when the, the, the Torrent downloads will, will save us all.[01:16:00]

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Fuck the man.

Christina: Fuck the man indeed.

Jeff: Um, well, mine is kind of funny. It’s an, it’s an app that you can’t, can’t get called scans script. Does that sound familiar, Brett? Because I have had, as I mentioned in the last, uh. In the last, uh, episode, I have had the great fortune of being able to vibe code with Brett Terpstra.

Where Brett Terpstra is, is like the vibe coding service. And, and Brett, you and I, I, you know, I do qualitative research and, and that requires a lot of really expensive, like super locked down software, and it’s really complex to use. And I had this, this sort of vision for being able to share single transcripts or a, a set of transcripts with like a client who I was doing interviews on behalf of, or analysis on behalf of.

And I wanted them to be able to, like, I’m big on, um,

Brett: Oh,

Jeff: kind of learn, learn how to do qualitative analysis. And so Brett, Brett and I did this thing, and by Brett and I, I mean Brett, but I was vibe coding, [01:17:00] um, where like, and Brett successfully created this like prototype where you can load up a transcript, you can load up the, I think you used HTML five for this, which is awesome, right?

Like, uh, you can load up the audio file and. Then once you’ve done that, you have the transcript open. You can, you can click anywhere in the transcript and the audio file plays at that point. You can do highlighting, you can highlight just proper nouns, um, which is always really important for like de-identifying a, a transcript.

But anyway, at the time when I was imagining, and this is why I’ve revisited, it was like, you know, like you could have an elementary classroom that could learn qualitative coding with this really basic thing where you just have one transcript and you have all the basic tools you would need that are in a, you know, thousand dollars a year, um, piece of qualitative analysis software.

And so Brett, I, I, I revisited that. I fired it back up this last week and man, it’s so cool and, and I love it. And maybe one day we can, um, vibe, code a qualitative app,

Christina: Yeah.

Brett: [01:18:00] That’s awesome.

Jeff: scans script. And then I’d like to also just like to also just like rep my new app, uh, from Vibe Coding, which is just in my, on my computer locally that I talked about last time.

But I keep creating is this thing I’ve always wanted to be able to just like, pull up a bunch of transcripts that are in markdown files, do a search for a term and have it start popping up, um, results in context. And so I have keep, I keep adding features thanks to, uh, whatever the fuck it is that I use.

Um, whatever new. Why can’t I remember? Bolt, bolt not new.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: I got features now where like I can say, give me 20 words of context on either side, right? Or I can say 10 or I can say 30 I got, it’s a lot of beautiful shit. But now I’ve been able to, when I meet with clients and they’re asking me questions from the interviews in the past I would always have to kind of look at my coded segments.

But now I can just do this super quick, like type in a word and I see not only how many times it appears, how many times and how many documents, but I get the contextual sort of results and I can [01:19:00] just quickly kind of answer questions. Which by the way, Brett is how I used Envy Alt in the very, very beginning was I was a reporter and I had all these calls out to people and I didn’t know who was gonna call back when.

And so I would keep little lists of questions in there so that I could just super quick type in a keyword and I would get that list of questions for that person. And uh, so it’s that kind of like that thing of like just the super quick, but in context, that’s the thing that’s so helpful to

Brett: you use DEVONthink, don’t you?

Jeff: I do use Devon Think, yeah.

Brett: Have you used DEVONthink four with the AI integration?

Jeff: it’s pretty bananas. Yeah.

Brett: That’ll, that’ll

Jeff: run it in my browser.

Brett: in another week, but

Jeff: Anyway, that’s all. Thank you, Brett, for vibe coating with me. Long before anyone knew what vibe coating was, we were doing it.

Brett: I am happy to be your Gemini. Um, well,

Jeff: you as my Claude. [01:20:00] All right.

Brett: Thank you guys for showing up. Um, we, our goal, we have a sponsor lined up for the next three weeks after this. So our goal here is to do four weeks in a row.

Christina: Woohoo.

Jeff: selfie stick every week everybody.

Christina: Woohoo.

Brett: It is actually, yes. Um, so we will hope to see you all again next week. Thanks for listening. You guys get some sleep.

Christina: Get some

Jeff: some sleep.