436: 100 Days Sober with Erin Dawson

100 Days Sober with Erin Dawson

Welcome Back to Overtired

Brett: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. It’s been a minute. How, how, how are you? How, how is everybody out there listening to Overtired for the first time in,

I don’t know, two months,

months?

Christina: like that. Months

is

all

Brett: was a, it was a, it was a nice break I am here. I am Brett Terpstra. Christina Warren is here. Hi Christina.

Christina: Hey there.

Brett: And we’ve got special guest, Aaron Daw. Aaron Dawson. I am, I almost said Dawson’s Creek for some reason. Aaron, how are you?

Erin: I am well, Brett and Christina, how are you?

Christina: Yeah, I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s been a, it’s been a few months since we’ve been here. Um, I think everybody’s had a, a interesting summer and, um, so yeah. Uh, glad, glad to be back talking with you guys and see, see what you’ve all been up to.

Brett: Yeah.

Erin: I’ve used the Dawson’s Creek thing. Uh, if, if there’s a a a a din, the denin of a bar is too [00:01:00] loud and I’m, I’m closing out and I’ve, and I’ve done this motion with my hand by my neck, like I am going to it. That’s the motion to either you want to kill someone or you’re closing out. Um, and it’s Dawson and they’re like, huh.

And it’s Dawson, like the creek, and it works like a charm

Christina: Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, that, that, that’s gonna be one of those that they’re like, okay, got it, got it.

Mental Health Check-In

Brett: So Christina, how’s your mental health?

Christina: It’s okay. It’s been better, but it’s been worse. Um, I’m, uh, going through some stuff right now that I’m not going to talk about on this podcast . So, um, that I, that I hope will, will, will work itself out. But, um, um, yeah, it, I, I’m Okay. How about you?

Brett: I don’t, I, I went to the hospital again for just a day and a half this time. Um, the end result of which being I had to completely cut out alcohol. Um, so most of my mental health [00:02:00] in this moment I’ve, is around like, just ending something that I was pretty reliant on, um, for a lot of things and finding new, uh, activities, new ways to deal with energy and, um, I’ve been really happy coding.

I, I get up around 3:00 AM every morning. I write code, I, I usually stop coding by about 11:00 AM and then just chill and watch movies and ride my bike, exercise bike and whatnot for the rest of the day. Um, and that makes me really happy and I don’t miss having a day job at all. Um, but, um, there will come an end to my unemployment benefits and I will need to have this app I’ve been coding on, published and making money by then.

Um, and that’s [00:03:00] causing a little bit of anxiety some mornings more than others. Um, I, it’s so close, but I’m just like with NV Ultra, I’m stuck on the getting paid part, uh, working in all the payment processors and everything and trying to, and then I, I posted. A thing that mentioned offhandedly, that it was going to be a subscription payment plan.

And predictably, I got a lot of shit on social media and people were just very upset. And I know that’s, if I’m gonna do this, I’m just gonna have to deal with that. Um, but my personality does not like people being mad at me. Um, and alternates between feeling very, um, scared and feeling very angry. And, and I have to pull myself away from social media because neither one of those modes is gonna make for a good [00:04:00] reply from, from an app account.

So anyway.

Christina: Well, yeah.

The Reality of Subscription Software

Christina: I mean, the thing is, is like, look, you gave people a heads up. So that they can be prepared, they can have the attitude that they have, but you have to, at a certain point, not take that feedback as hard as it is, like to just like to your, like do what you’ve done, which is to log off, not, not be part of that.

Because yeah, I mean the reality is like you need this to be something that can generate income and one-off purchases can’t do that. And, and don’t do that. And, and, and we are now, I don’t know, 12, 13 years, uh, past when Adobe started, you know, doing subscriptions for Creative Cloud. Like, I’m sorry, I’m just gonna fucking say it.

People need to grow the fuck up and realize this is how software is sold now. Like, you know, and, and, and if, if you, if you don’t like it, then, then don’t buy the software. But good luck finding anything because there are, the only companies that can afford to sell one-off licenses are, are companies like Apple, who even they have moved, you know, the, the final cut for freaking iPad as a subscription.

[00:05:00] So, you know, they, it, it’s still a one-off on Mac, but I’m like, okay, also how much time and, and investment has, um, apple put in Final Cut versus Adobe or versus um, uh, you know, um, um, uh, da Vinci resolve almost none. So like. You, you, you can choose, you can either have software that continues to be maintained and updated, or you can have one off software that isn’t.

And, and that’s just the reality that we’re in. It’s nobody’s Well, it is, it’s the industry’s fault. It’s like companies, frankly, like Apple’s fault, who, you know, created these sorts of expectations to have updates free forever and didn’t allow ways to do app purchases. And then, you know, um, people like Adobe, who, because fighting piracy, they were like, we can just make it a subscription as a service.

I get it. It’s, it’s, it’s frustrating. People don’t always wanna pay an annual or monthly subscription to something, but Okay. That, but, but you

know, that’s what you

Brett: if you’re paying if you’re paying for constant updates and you’re getting constant updates, then there’s really no difference between.[00:06:00]

Christina: you’re

Brett: a monthly subscription or upgrading your software every year because the developer was forced to put out a, a major version release.

Christina: right. Right.

Brett: I think that the, the happy medium is what a few companies like Nova are doing or what, what panics doing with Nova, where you get the app one time and then you pay for updates, um, and you pay, you pay a subscription.

But if you stop paying the subscription,

Christina: It’s locked. I was

Brett: I would love, I would love to do that, but I can’t do it on the app store. It would mean I could only sell direct.

Christina: Yeah. Which, which, I mean, at this point, is there any value

Brett: over, over, half my income comes from the app store right now.

Christina: Okay. That, well, that’s

unfortunate. Yeah,

Brett: it’s, just a little more than I get from set. Um, so I really, I think the app store is good for me. Uh, I am willing to leave it behind [00:07:00] if I could make a sustainable living just selling updates direct. And if everyone who was finding it on the app store would still find it elsewhere.

But anyway, I don’t want to completely derail the mental health corner. So I will pass the mic to Aaron. How are you

Aaron’s Career Pivot

Erin: I think I’m well. Uh, a couple thingies about me. I was recently rift.

Christina: I’m so sorry.

Erin: Thank you. Um,

Brett: Reduc reduction in force for anyone who’s not down with the, uh, the acronyms.

Erin: Yeah. I mentioned that to someone who I, who kind of worked in tech and they’re like, riff. And I was like, yeah, I thought this was, sorry. Um, so for folks out there, Brett and I used to work at the same unnamed Mega Corp. Acme Corp. Um, and it was a good run for me. I, I can’t complain. I can always complain.

Um, but I will not, it was a great run. Um, [00:08:00] and I should be pretty pessimistic about the job market. I mean, see above Brett. Uh, but I am weirdly serene and optimistic, and I have no reason to be. I’m kind of seeing this as a moment to maybe pivot. So instead of like traditional tech roles, like I’ve, like I’ve had in the past, is this an opportunity for me to combine my love of music tech and traditional tech?

Uh, I think it is. That’s a, like I studied music, I’m a musician. I think, you know, I’d be kind of a shoe in for a place like a splice or something. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that service. Um, yeah, splice Brett is a service that provides like library music and sound effects for film or whatever.

Um, like a sort of creative commons that’s organized and

premium, which

Brett: an audio stock site.

Erin: a library. Yes, that’s exactly [00:09:00] right. So something like that. I don’t know. Um, God knows that the Apple music app could use some love. Um, the, I’m not a Spotify user, so I have a lot writing on

the

Brett: canceled Spotify last week, so

Erin: Based good. I, I use Logic Pro every day.

You know, I have, I have some expertise there. So anyways, all that to say, I think like, could this be a pivot and could it be a more extreme pivot towards not working in tech at all? Maybe I teach music or I teach composition and I sell feet picks. I don’t know. But looking at untraditional forms of income that I haven’t explored in the past, I’m like mostly kidding about that last one.

Um, my feet are not, no, no, no. That was a bad example. I think I have two bodily features that I’m proud of. One are my, uh, one feature is my calves. [00:10:00] And the other is my, uh, clavicle, my collarbone, which I think looks pretty good when the temperature is about 64. And I can find a fleece with a high collar, uh, accentuating, elongating the neck.

Uh,

Brett: there, is there a fetish for clavicles?

Erin: clavicle,

Brett: there clavicle porn out there?

Erin: clavicle, tentacle porn. Yeah, it’s the most, only two people are into it. Yeah. I don’t know.

Brett: But they’ll pay a pretty penny.

Erin: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Brett: All right.

Erin: So all that to say like, I think I’m pretty good.

The Impact of Alcohol on Mental Health

Erin: And also Brett, I think I’m good because I too, as you mentioned, have ceased alcohol. I’m doing a hundred days and I think I’m 13 days percent into that.

Into that. So it’ll be December 13th for me, which means if I choose to not continue, I’ll have the holidays, which is like the funnest [00:11:00] time to maybe

Brett: Yeah. See that’s, that’s a little bit different boat because I have to give it up for life and like if it were a hundred days, I could see it as a challenge. Just something to like get excited about and do. But like the thought of never, ever having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer at the bar again is that’s, that’s taking some adjusting to I’ll get there.

It’s not an impossible task. There are millions of people who do that or who more to the point don’t do that. Um, so

Erin: It is a little different. I think I, my goal is to get to a place with alcohol. Um. The same place I’m at with heroin, which is, I’ve never done it. Um, I’m not, or, or, or, or like Coke or something. Like, I’ve never done it. I have no desire to do it. But the principle of being able to do it is something that I enjoy.

I just have no opinion on whether I would like to, I would like to get to that same place with alcohol, which is [00:12:00] like, I can if I want, but I don’t want, and that’s okay. You know?

Brett: Um,

Erin: so I bring that up because alcohol’s a depressant

and I think that’s what I can contribute to doing well, despite being rift like I was having a cocktail. I was drinking two, like a cocktail every two or three days, which is like, who cares? That’s like basically average for an American who drinks. Uh, but for me, what I’ve learned, and you probably know this Brett, I just learned this recently, is that alcohol takes longer than three days to metabolize out of your body.

And so if you’re having a cocktail every two or three days, that means your body’s always on the carousel of metabolizing it, processing it, and it’s affecting you even two or three days after you’ve had those cocktails. So what’s that mean? That means that you are more prone to depression, your sleep suffers your.

Your attitude. You like your just [00:13:00] overall mental health suffers your skins. You know it’s, I don’t have to, it’s poison you’re poisoning yourself. It sucks that it’s a beautiful poison and a cultured poison. And a delicious poison, but it is. And so I thought I was fine, like two or three. But no, it’s always in you, even if it’s that infrequent.

So,

Brett: Yeah.

Erin: yeah.

Christina: really interesting to note, Brett, for you, like, did they figure out, I guess, um, uh, definitively that that’s why, um, you were, you’ve been having, I guess like the, the, the stomach problems and the other stuff you’ve had is, is that it’s, it’s alcohol.

Brett: first time I was hospitalized, I had been on Wegovy for six months and they blamed that, um, which I took as a license that I could still continue drinking in moderation. Um, and I did like, I wasn’t like full like a bottle of liquor every day or anything. It was pretty moderate. Um, but the only reason they could come up with the last time I was in the hospital was it had to be alcohol.[00:14:00]

Um, and I have had, I have had entire runs of my life where I was drinking, you know, half a bottle of whiskey a day, easy. Um, or, or more. So it’s no surprise that I would have some organ damage, but like my liver tests, my kidney tests even like my pancreatic, whatever the enzyme level is that they measure for that is normally totally fine.

Like I’ve always been given a clean bill of health. Um, but when my pancreas flares up, whatever that enzyme is, it goes from the safe zone of like one to 200 up to over a thousand. And like I have a very strong reaction when it does happen. So yeah, it, it’s pretty much gotta be alcohol, I guess. It, so, so if I quit drinking and it happens again, then perfect.

We can look for another cause and I can go back to having a [00:15:00] glass of wine every couple days.

Erin: But you’re doing the FODMAP version of drinking right

Brett: Right? Yeah. Yes, exactly.

Erin: Brett, what do you,

Brett: not familiar with fodmap, it’s an elimination diet designed to remove all sugars from your system,

Erin: and then once you figure out that, uh, F isn’t messing with your system, you can add O and you can have Ali oligosaccharides and

Brett: I did fodmap, I did it. That’s how I found out. I’m sensitive to gluten and dairy.

Christina: I I had, yeah, I did a variation of, of that I guess, but it was, ’cause I had a blood test first, and then we did like an elimination diet thing and then was slowly able to add more things in. This was when I was told that I had a sensitivity to gluten and wheat and egg whites and egg yolks and, um, dairy yeast and brewer’s yeast and, uh, white potatoes.

Um, so basically no starches for me. Uh, we had to add white potatoes back because I lost too much weight. Uh, but it, [00:16:00] it, and like the doctors were like actually actively concerned. They were like, oh, this is. real problem. Uh, this was when I was 16, so this was, this was a while ago, but, um, I, I’ve done those sorts of elimination diet things before and yeah, the, that, those, those are not fun, uh, to go through that process.

Erin: Brett, what do you enjoy about drinking?

Brett: Um, it, it slows my brain down. Like I have a very active brain. You could call them voices, but they don’t tell me to hurt anybody. Um, but just like a constant inner monologue that, um, gets overwhelming at times. And a glass of wine just makes it shut up. And like, and I, I, like, I don’t get drunk. I never drink until I’m drunk or rarely, like, almost never.

I drink just a

Erin: But Buzz

Brett: Yeah, couple drinks, get a buzz, slow those thoughts down, and then move on until it’s time to go to bed. Um. [00:17:00] It’s, uh, yeah, it just, it quiets the voices. How about you? Why do you drink?

Erin: Oh man. Um, I think what drugs do to me, and I do not think all drugs are bad, I think what drugs help me to do are the drugs that I enjoy, the substances I should say, that I enjoy, allow me to, I. To, to neuter or castrate or make inactive the, as you say, voice that tells me that I am bad and that I should feel guilty for not having my, um, this particular shelf on my fridge, uh, perfectly laid out with the de containers that I have in there, or that I haven’t gone for a run today, or that I broke up with the, the love of my life.

And I should always think about that all the time, every day, and I should punish myself like, and it makes my legs warm while doing it, [00:18:00] and it’s this nice warmth, you know? And so those thoughts go away and my legs get warm and I. I send the text that I have been too scared to send or I get in touch with the person I lost touch with four years ago and like these little things start happening and building up and you can have an event by yourself at a bar.

And that’s a beautiful thing to me. I also really love bar culture and drinking culture like it is. My safe space is a really, really dark bar. No ever head lighting brassy ends of the booths that are open and shellacked and millions of people have sat there and billions of first kisses have started there and it smells like incense a little bit.

And the of the bartend, like it’s such a romantic, not romantic as in interpersonal dating love like, but it’s this like sublime, [00:19:00] romantic environment that’s just like everyone’s dreaming in a bar like that. You know, everyone’s in this like. Istic dream realm and I love that. And like, can I access that by getting a mocktail maybe.

I don’t know. I’m still figuring it out. But

Brett: you should open a bar called the Imaginarium.

Erin: all tiki

Brett: could have, you could, you could have like a whole board of na beverages, which is so, so I intend the, my favorite bar, the no name bar, um, does always have at least two mocktails on the menu, and they’re cheaper than alcohol drinks. And I could go and be a part of the shows and the environment and all the friends I have there.

And just drink na beverages. Like I have no compunction about that. It [00:20:00] doesn’t bother me at all to be like the one guy drinking club soda at the bar. I don’t care. It’s just that the bar isn’t as much fun for me

Christina: Right.

Brett: if I’m totally sober,

Erin: And are you by yourself in that hypothetical?

Brett: uh, I usually, so the bar I go to, I’m never by myself because I know it’s a small town and it’s like all of my people, my like granola liberal people, they all go to this bar.

So if I go there, I’m guaranteed to run into somebody I know or meet somebody that I’ll get along with. Um, which has

Erin: There’s no accounting for that. There’s no substitution for

Brett: Well, there’s church,

Christina: Mm.

Erin: there is not church, not for me, um,

Brett: but I mean, that

Erin: blah, blah, blah.

Third

Brett: around here.

Christina: I was gonna say, unfortunately, that is actually like a, a, a valid, like, I mean, it’s not like I, I wouldn’t do that either, but like, I think this is for a lot of people, especially like when we look at [00:21:00] now, ’cause there’ve been like a lot of people like trying to figure out like why is like, like tra culture back and why are some of these like people like returning to religion and whatnot?

And honestly it is because of community. Because for, for as much as we can, um, uh, you know, and, and should like critique, like organized religion, one of the things that organized religion does really well is community. And, um, and for a lot of people, like even, even if you live in a place like that, has like a bar scene, each bar can have different vibes and it can have different stuff.

And it can be hard for people, especially if you’re not in college and you’re not, like in an environment where you’re constantly, or you know, you’re, you’re not like, honestly in your twenties like it can be even if you’re in your twenties, but especially if you’re not, it can be hard to meet people, um, for, for some people.

And that’s where like, yeah, I, I think a lot of people turn to turn to organized religion because church is one of those things.

Brett: So in my small town we have, uh, like a hippie bar, like, I guess just like the leftist bar, we have the right wing bar, we [00:22:00] have the um, coke bar. Um, and the rest of the bars are mostly college kids when college is in session. Um, and you can kind of, you can go on a bar crawl if you want to, but you’ll only have fun at the one bar that really agrees with you.

Um, there’s a bar on like, every, every block of our downtown has a bar and every block of the residential area has a church. So we have a bunch of churches and bars, and there’s not a lot of overlap, I guess, between the two. But you’re, you’re right. And, and, and there are enough variety of churches here that it’s similar.

There’s no like Koch church or anything, but there are, there’s like the Lutheran church with a female pastor that’s open to homosexuals, and then there’s. The, the church I grew up in, which is just like a hate machine. All, all, all Trump all the time, like [00:23:00] gays are lower than dogs. That kind of rhetoric and like, you can kind of, I don’t think anyone does a church crawl, but you can, you can find a church that agrees with you, I think.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, I think what people typically do, like, from what I’ve heard from like, you know, friends of mine or, or family members who are religious, like when they are either leaving a church or staying or, or move to a new area or trying to find one, is that like you go and like, maybe it’s not like a bar wall where you’re going from one to the next, like the same day or the same

Brett: Sure, sure.

Christina: It’s

Brett: No, you gotta sit through a whole service.

Christina: Exactly. You, you, you. And, but, but that’s what you’ll do. Right? Like, I remember when I was growing up, like we, we left one church and we like found another, and that was sort of the process where we, like, we would go to one for a couple of months or we would try it out and then we would go to another one and just try to, you know, and

Brett: Well, and

it, you’re right, it does take a couple months because it’s not just the pastor’s sermon. You have to worry about. You have to worry about the community that we’re talking about, and you have to, you have to make friends. You have to get to know the people. You have to find out like what their [00:24:00] shared values are before you can make a judgment.

So it’s not just like seven days, seven churches kind of

Christina: No, exactly. I was going to same. And that would typically be, ’cause I was trying to think back, I was like, why would we ever like, leave stuff? And I’d be like, oh, well my dad or my mom or somebody would be unhappy with, sometimes it would be the pastor, but more, more often it was like community, you know, bullshit and, and, and politics happening within the, the church itself.

And yeah, you don’t really get the sense of like what that is until, um, you’ve been there a little while. There was this, um, there was this, actually, it was funny when you were talking about like the Lutheran church with like the, um, you know, accepting of the gazes and whatnot. It was making me think of King of the Hill because like they had this character who was like this, this female pastor who was um, who came to, to Arlin and she’d come from Minnesota actually.

So that was partially why I first thought of that. Episode and she did, she actually, you know, if she, if there was any like, like religious character in, I mean, that show was always pretty pro L-G-B-T-Q, um, ia. But like, um, if they’d [00:25:00] ever like, talked about that specific issue, like she totally would’ve been like, I think like on the side of like, yes, gays can come to church, but it, but it made me think there’s this funny episode where like, Hank leaves his local church to go to the, um, the mega church

Brett: Oh, right, I remember

Christina: Yeah, yeah. ’cause ’cause he’s mad that like they, they gave up his seat or whatever and, um, and so, so he goes to the mega church and tries out, and at first it does, it seems great. Like they have a Starbucks and they have all this stuff and they have all these activities and then he gets there and he is just like, it, you know, it dawns on them over like a, a period of weeks that like a, the church never wants him to do anything but church.

And he’s like, I, I have a life and I can’t hang out with my friends in the alley. And, and then, you know, um, uh, Peggy does is not well, she thinks that she’s appreciated and she’s not. And then. Everybody’s kind of miserable, so they wind up going back to the old church. But that’s a funny episode, which kind of encapsulates, I think, but it’s true of bars and stuff too, right?

Like you have to find your community, you have to find your people, and, um, you know, not every place has that, but that can be, certainly, I [00:26:00] think that’s for a lot of people, the appeal of drinking. I don’t, I don’t drink very often, so this is all interesting to me. I do understand what you’re saying. I think about it like maybe clamping down the anxiety, you know, helping you get over the inhibition so that you can talk to people that you wouldn’t otherwise turning off the noise in your head that, you know, never stop ceasing.

But, um, um, just for, for various reasons. I, I don’t drink that often, so I, I don’t, I’ve never like sought out those things, but I definitely, other than maybe the next day after I’ve, you know, gotten drunk and, and maybe texted people that I shouldn’t have and been like, come on, what were you doing? What, what, what?

Why did you think that was a good idea?

Erin: Hangovers alone are a great reason to stop

Brett: I never, I, I haven’t

Erin: really?

Brett: since I was in my late teens.

Erin: Oh, bless your heart. Word.

Brett: I don’t get hangovers. Like I said, I don’t generally drink to excess. And when I, if I drink to like blackout, which I did a couple times in my twenties, um, I, I might have a hangover for an [00:27:00] hour or two, but it goes away. Um, so speaking of all these benefits of drinking.

Exploring Alternative Substances

Brett: In the absence of alcohol, what are you doing to quiet the thoughts and deal with your inhibitions?

Erin: Yeah, for me, I have resorted to, not resorted to embraced another substance that I’ve dabbled with for the last few years, but it’s become a, a more important part of my life, and I will not name that substance

Brett: You can. Is it for personal reasons or out of respect for the pod? You don’t have to. There’s no pressure to, but you’re welcome to if you want to.

Erin: It grows from the earth. It, it, you know what I mean? Um,

Christina: I enjoy that substance as well.

Brett: Well, I

Erin: well, I don’t know if we’re talking about the

Brett: yeah, so this is, this grows from the earth and you can’t smoke it.

Christina: Oh, okay.

Erin: Yeah.

Christina: Got it. Got it. Yeah.

Erin: it usually grows [00:28:00] by the trunks of trees

Christina: it. Got can get it in gummy form.

Okay. Yeah. I, I

Erin: or chocolate.

Christina: that.

I, but I’ve, I’ve heard good things. I’ve heard good things. but I’ve, I’ve not, uh, in imbibed in this, in this particular substance.

Erin: It’s the best. It’s the best. And it gets me, um, really close to how I want to feel if I’m having a couple cocktails, but without, for me, I get hangovers really easy, but without that, without the like, oh my God, why did I text my ex from three Xs ago? Um, and it increases my enjoyment of art.

Brett: Yeah.

Erin: And so what’s there to miss?

Like, I, I really, it’s really been doing it for me like last night. Yeah.

Brett: just out of curiosity, do you take what would be considered, uh, a micro dose or do you take a like therapeutic dose or do you take a full on like tribal ceremony dose?[00:29:00]

Erin: Never heroic tribal, my life rearranged by metso American Gods doses. Um, really a kind of a split between micro and just like,

Brett: so around two grams probably.

Erin: I, a thing about me is that I refuse to measure anything. Uh, I cook all the time. I will not measure. I,

Christina: but, but that means you don’t bake then.

Erin: I don’t,

Christina: Yeah, I was going to say ’cause

Brett: Yeah. Bake baking requires the measuring.

Christina: going to say you can get away with it. With cooking you cannot, with baking. Baking is like, you have to be extremely precise. But

Erin: I don’t have a sweet tooth. Uh, so, so, yeah. Yeah. I guess somewhere between a micro thing, you know, um,

Brett: You realize you can bake bread that’s not sweet. Right.

Erin: I do realize

Brett: Okay. Just checking.

Erin: Thank

Brett: Baking doesn’t have to be, doesn’t have to be cupcakes. Um, [00:30:00] yeah. Okay. So like, I, I was, I was using said substance quite a bit, uh, for, for a while and I hit a point where I don’t know what shifted, if there’s some sort of tolerance or what, but now it just makes me sleepy.

Like, no, no side effects. Just like I took a sedative and I go lay down and I have a deep sleep and that’s a waste of money to me.

Erin: Have you experimented with different, I guess they’re called strains. I don’t

Brett: yeah, I have,

Erin: Oh, they all kind of do that

Brett: yeah, yeah. Like, and I thought maybe I was getting like bum product from the guy I was getting it from. So I tried someone else and um, I went through multiple people who all grow their own and grow different strains and it’s just across the board it.

Makes me sleepy now. So what I found, I’m also allergic to [00:31:00] THC, which left me kind of up a, up a creek without a paddle as far as like quieting these voices. And then my partner’s cousin was visiting and she said, oh, I just take CBD Gubbies

Christina: Yes. and, and they make me spacey. They don’t get me high, but they make me spacey and they quiet the voices.

Brett: So I tried it and sure enough, like 50 milligrams of CBD, which is what I just drank for the pod, um, it, uh, it, it does, it does exactly that. It makes me feel spacey and relaxed and not anxious about stuff. And yeah, so I’ve been spending not. Not an equal amount of money, but most of the money I was putting into alcohol now just goes into buying CBD beverages.

And I assume that they’re not addictive, and I’ll eventually lower my [00:32:00] intake of those, but, eh, yeah.

Sponsor Break: Open Case

Brett: Okay, quick sponsor break. I am really excited about today’s sponsor Open Case. Open Case is a patented iPhone case with a literal open space in the back of the case designed to make using Mag safe accessories. Way better than with a normal case, and in many cases, even better than a bare iPhone. The open case is designed around Apple’s MagSafe wallet.

They offer their own wallet and other accessories as well. A lot of MagSafe accessories and chargers are designed around the dimensions of Apple’s wallet, and anything with that rectangular format will fit snugly in the opening, preventing it from moving around, keeping things thinner, than adding on an accessory to the existing thickness of the.

Phone case all while allowing bare naked access to the charging system. Apple recommends in its wireless charging support documentation [00:33:00] that used or should not place anything between your iPhone and the charger. With Open Case, you can optimize charging with nothing in the way and there’s no lock-in.

Open Case offers a suite of accessories that fit perfectly in the open space, but it also works with most. Third party MagSafe accessories that fit. There’s a great video I’ll link in the show notes that demos a wide variety of accessories that fit

with open case, you can even create a stand on the go. The open space creates a ledge that you can wedge, an accessory like a wallet into to create an impromptu stand.

It also works with most of the MagSafe stands that are out there and makes them even more stable. It also reveals the beauty of apple’s design when using a traditional case. Most people never see the color of their iPhone. With open case, you can regularly enjoy the beauty of Apple’s design and the functionality of a case open case, thinner, lighter, and sliding around and shoeing off [00:34:00] accessories optimizes MagSafe charging and more.

It’s the case for MagSafe and iPhone 17. Thanks to Open case for sponsoring today’s episode.

So do you want to talk about, this is a, a question for the panel.

The Tahoe OS Controversy

Brett: Do you want to talk about coffee or do you want to talk about Tahoe?

Christina: So I refuse to use Tahoe, but I’m

Brett: Good for you. but I’m, but I’m happy to talk about

Yeah. Okay, let’s, let’s do Tahoe. I will, I will kick it off by saying I am usually the, Hey, let’s give it a chance, guy, like you’re all overreacting, just because it’s new and different and you’ll get used to it and fuck it. Fuck. Oh my God, it’s so bad.

It’s so bad. It’s made my, it’s made my laptop basically unusable and ugly to boot.

Christina: yeah. I’m incredibly unhappy with it. I, I’ve had it in a VM and I did try like the most, like, I guess like the final beta. I haven’t tried the, the final [00:35:00] release, but I did try the final beta. And granted it was in a vm, but it was in a vm, you know, on a very powerful system. And, um, I just, I couldn’t go. Past that point.

And I went, okay, when I am forced to, to use this by like an employer or for applications or whatever, then I’ll do it. This is the first time in a Mac os like time period that I’ve ever not been running it. And that I have like, absolutely no desire to put it on my machine and like I’m happy that work.

Basically. Like they had put the, the up, the update out. Um, but it was by mistake. And I was like, I don’t think this has been certified. And people came in, they’re like, no, no, no, it hasn’t. We, we, we removed this. And I was like, good, the minute you forced me to, I will. Um, obviously, but until then, no. Um, no. I mean,

it, it, well,

Brett: even out, even outside of an emulator. It is significantly slower to do everything.

It’s, it’s not good for productivity.

Christina: Yeah, like here’s the thing, like I can get behind and I can [00:36:00] deal with like, some of the changes and I don’t love all of them, but some of it is change aversion. Some of it I think is general complaints about iOS 26. Um, I have fewer complaints about iPad os I think because they actually made it better actually, like in some regard.

Like they actually like

Brett: No, I agree. Right? Like it’s

I, I’m, I’m borderline on liquid glass in general, but the, the, the latest, like 26 4 iOS, Not bad.

Christina: no, exactly. And, and I’m, I’m, I, I, I can deal with that and like, I obviously, I just got a new phone yesterday and I can, um, you know, so I wouldn’t have any choice, but I needed to update just so I could transfer everything over anyway. And like that I can, I can deal with, I might have some battery issue, uh, you know, complaints that hopefully will go away with the new phone, but, we’ll, we’ll see.

But, but with bot Tahoe. A, I think it just looks terribly, like it looks awful. Like it looks terrible, right? Like, I think the, the new design is, is a complete shit show. And then b like there were some usability things that I saw that I’m like, what are you doing? Like, what have you done?

Remote SSH and File Vault Changes

Christina: The only feature that [00:37:00] I could see myself actually enjoying, and then they’ve kind of ruined this because you don’t wanna actually use the operating system, is that you can now SSH into machines like headlessly, like from boot and basically like won’t have to like, have physical access to the machine to be able to, to do that.

So you could like remotely like, um, you know, SSH into something and restart it and then log back in again. So because of how changes they’ve made to file vault. Um, so that is, is cool. But like, you know, I, I’m not, you know, remotely SSHing into machines that I need to reboot very frequently. Like if I had like

Brett: Oh, I, I am, yeah, I do that all the time and I’ve actually never had a problem with it on the current operating systems. Um,

Christina: Well, no, like

Brett: shut, shut down minus, shut down, minus R now, um, to reboot, but then you have to, yeah, you have to have a automatic login.

Christina: Right?

And, and, and that’s the thing that,

Brett: which you

can’t with File Vault. You’re

Christina: [00:38:00] Exactly right.

So, so that, that’s the whole thing, that if you wanna have file vault and vil and you wanna be able to, you know, SSH and, and, and

Brett: Yep. Okay. that’s really nice, right? So for headless situation, somebody who has a home server, businesses, whatever, that’s pretty cool.

Christina: I’m glad they did that for me, for my use cases. Like, I’m like, that’s maybe if I had a Mac Mini, you know, set up in some way, I would, you know, install that

Visual Changes and User Experience

Brett: Did you, did you, see the alert dialogues? They’re all left aligned. Like, why, why, what purpose did, why, why would you? Uh, it looks awful. It looks awful. Aaron, what are your thoughts?

Erin: I have not ins, I’ve, I’m still on Sequoia, which I love. Um, I, I put IO S 26 on my iPhone 15, um, a couple days ago, and I’m fine with it. And I also was, I also knew that I was going to be speaking with you both today and I’m like, do I have a take on this? [00:39:00] And I found myself resisting manufacturing a take.

Like, there’s so much going on where it’s like, I don’t, I don’t wanna contribute to the take economy here. Like, I have nothing to say. It’s fine. It’s a little different. It’s subtle, it’s fine. Um, I kind of like it actually.

Christina: Yeah.

Brett: I think it’s extremely visually different. I don’t hate that. Um,

Erin: It’s glowy

Brett: I do hate

Erin: are glowy.

Icon Design and Builder Limitations

Brett: not to jump back to Mac os uh, willy-nilly, but I do hate that Apple, uh, what do they call it? The Squirkle, um, uh, Squirl, Squirl Jail. You can’t have an icon that’s not a perfect rounded rectangle.

Erin: What’s a squirl?

Christina: that’s what we call the squared circle. Like the, the, it’s like

Erin: Oh,

Christina: it’s like the

rounded it’s a very rounded rectangle. Um, and on, on Mac Os, [00:40:00] if you have an icon like that has, that’s like tilted. Um, it’ll display it with the squirl, with the tilted icon inside of the squirl gel. And it looks awful. And any app that doesn’t update their icon to match this exact, um, layout will be, it’ll look awful.

Brett: Um, and so they also introduced the icon builder, which lets you compile vector, uh, vectors and add gradients and colors to them, but it saves them as like a layered. Flexible icon that you can have like a dark mode and a light mode by just changing basic parameters of the, what’s essentially an SVGI guess.

Um, which is kind of cool, but it is also very limiting for any kind of, [00:41:00] or at least for, for an amateur or even an everyday professional to build something like the Tower GI icon in Icon Builder would be tedious, difficult. Um, and I don’t envy people that have really great icons having to rebuild them in Icon Builder.

Um, possible. Sure, you can do, you can do all the design work in like Sketch or Illustrator. And bring all your layers in. But it’s a pain. I don’t love, I don’t love that they forced it. I, I wouldn’t have minded if they added, if they had the option to, but they have made it the law.

Christina: yeah, they’ve made the law and like, and I think the problem, and I haven’t, you know, again, I haven’t used it like on, you know, like bare metal or whatever. Um, I’ve just used it on my M three Max in a, um, in a vm, which is gonna be more limited because, you know, the, the third party apps that I can run are obviously I can’t do anything from the app store or whatever.

But, [00:42:00] um, yeah, I, I think forcing it sucks.

Mac OS Customization Frustrations

Christina: And then it, it, I don’t know, to me it just seems to like be, it’s like, okay, I understand maybe why they had some sort of enforcements, and I think it was for that reason you, you pointed out, being able to change the color styles of being able to go like the light mode or the dark mode, or to have the coloring that they want for this liquid glass, you know, stuff which. Whatever, but like you have people who sometimes, some of them have decades worth of, of really intricate, really beautiful app design icons that they’ve spent time on, that they’ve took branding on that people know by like type. And it was bad enough when, when they did move everybody to encouraging everyone to be in that squi thing.

But yeah, you could still have people that like, it might slightly extend outside of the squirl, like the old preview icon used to, and like some other icons would do other similar things and it would have the same shape, so it would still look, you know, uniform

Brett: Or like the automator icon with, what’s his name? The robot. I forget that robot has a name, but like it, it was, uh, [00:43:00] it was a shape, not a square.

Christina: And, and, and yeah, he, he, yeah. That, that robot was like, you know, would go a little bit out of frame. Right. And, and so, you know, it was, it was fine, um, to, to still have that, like I, I understood that. Um, and a lot, most app developers, not all of them, but most of them did. Do the work to at least still be in that frame, but when you then insist upon that, so you can’t have anything what it winds up doing.

I, I think to your point, if you’re somebody who doesn’t have the, the resources or the money to completely redesign their icon, um, is that it means that you’re gonna have a more simple, unless beautiful, and, and unless a detailed look, right. Because how else are you supposed to accomplish that in Icon Builder?

Um, that, or you’re gonna, like, in a perfect world, we would be like, oh, well, places like Icon Factory will get more work, but they won’t because someone, I mean, at this day and age, I, I don’t know how many developers are gonna be like, oh yeah, I’ll drop 10 or 20 grand to update my app icon. Like, fuck off.

Like that’s not happening. Um, so instead they will [00:44:00] either buy it from someone on Fiverr, use AI to generate it or, or have very simple shape stuff, which will make it difficult for people to find things. And I don’t know, like, and not to be all get off my lawn, but to be a little bit like, get off my lawn.

It just feels like, and we’ve seen this over the last decade. Where like the, you know, what was great about Mac Os and some of the things that really did make it like, unique and, uh, especially I think for like creatives, like the little, you know, like weird touches, right? Like the little flourishes seem to be going away.

And like, it was fine on iOS that we didn’t always have that, right? That, that the customization wasn’t really there. And now I actually like that as part of iOS 26, like, you can customize your color tent. Do I think a lot of them look like complete garbage? Yes. But if you wanna make your phone look fucking ugly, you can.

And, and that’s, that’s beautiful. But like on Mac Os, I don’t even have the option. Like back in the day we used be able to change the icons for our applications to whatever we wanted and we could have themes and then they basically took that ability away from us. And you can still kind of do that, but not for system [00:45:00] apps.

And so, um, UN unless you wanna, you know, go through a whole bunch of gyrations and so it’s like, okay, you’re making everything look the same, making it harder for me to find and you’re kind of ruining the whimsy. You know, of, of like this operating system that I loved. And, and the the worst part is there’s nowhere else to go.

Apple’s Design Philosophy and User Dilemma

Christina: We are stuck. Like all the people go, go to Linux, fuck you. Like no, Linux is fine for development work for some tasks and for some things that might even be ideal, but for like a day-to-day user operating system, no, I’m not gonna use fucking Linux. Absolutely not. And, and Windows, God bless ’em, they try. But like the people who do the good work on Windows, wind up getting this short shift and there’s so much other crap that’s associated with Windows that it’s like, no man, I’m not, I’m not, I’m stuck.

I have no choice. And I think Apple knows that. They know that they have to give us the minimum amount of effort, the minimum amount of care, even though the Maxs are selling better than ever because they’re better than ever. And that we all will just kind of have to suck it up and deal with it because.

And then we get [00:46:00] gaslit because we will, you know, if I look at like, the changes that happened a decade ago, they weren’t great. There were already changes and things that happened that weren’t excellent even five years ago. And now I would long for those days, right?

Brett: Yeah. Right. five years from now, I’m gonna be like, looking back at this and be like, oh, well this was fine.

Christina: This was a good operating system, right? I’ll be like, oh, Tahoe was excellent. We know it, it wasn’t, they’ve like, we’ve, we’ve regressed. Like, like, you know, I think with Michael s who, who wrote on his blog something about how like the peak, you know, Maco West was, was in 2010, and I think he’s right. And I’m like, I think that was probably the last peak period.

And I’m like, that’s shitty. The best operating system we’ve ever had was 15 years ago. Like, that’s, and that’s not just me being like, oh, I hate change. Um, I mean, I’m sure that’s part of it, but like

Brett: Well, so open to it. But this is just objectively true,

what I object to is change for the sake of change. If you’re gonna make things better, if you are making a change in the operating system to adapt to a new technology, to new processors, to new [00:47:00] peripherals. If you’re making things work better than changes necessary,

um, this far. If you’re going to make all of this look so much like iOS and act like iOS and whatnot, then give me a fucking touchscreen, like full stop. Give me a fucking stop touchscreen and stop with this bullshit that people don’t wanna touch their computers because you’re blur, you’re the ones that are blurring the lines and making it harder and harder to figure out.

Christina: You’re the ones that go make people go through the fucking gyrations of, of doing sidecar and all that shit to use your, your, you know, iPad as a secondary display where you can then touch it. Right.

Brett: Right.

And then, and then they made iPad os more Mac, like when that was antithetical to what they told us,

Christina: For, for

Brett: you know, just five years ago. yeah, no, it’s all, it’s all very frustrating. I am, I am unhappy with Apple. I know a lot of good people worked there, and I know a lot of good people worked on this os but there are some decisions being made at high levels that are [00:48:00] just shitty.

Christina: Yeah, I mean it, to me it kind of indicates like, and, and it’s, and I’m not gonna do like one of those, oh, you know, if Steve Jobs was still around things. ’cause we don’t

Brett: Eh, eh, a different place. It’s not about that. But what I will say though is that it does seem like there is a, a supreme lack of like, taste and design from the top.

Christina: And, and I think that goes across the product line. Um, I, I did get the new, I did get the new iPhone and I got the 16 Pro Max, or 17 Pro Max rather. I got the orange one. It is chunky, it is a big phone, um, that like, it, it, it’s one of those things where I’m actually kind of thinking about like, even though this, this might be such a pain in the ass that I don’t wanna bother with it.

But, um. I might wanna go back and like see if I could get a a, a pro, um, rather than the promax instead. But I do really love the orange and I’m, I’m into that. The air I looked at, I have zero when it folds, I will

be in line, but, but until then, like I have zero desire to get a phone with like less battery and a, a worse camera just because it’s thin.

Just because for my use cases like it, [00:49:00] I’m still gonna have to use two hands. It’s still not gonna fit in my front pocket. Like there’s no value to me for getting a thinner phone. Um, but it is beautiful and, and I, and I actually don’t kind of mind the sort of like ugly industrial design of, of the pro Max, right?

Like, I think that there, it’s, it’s so ugly that I almost kind of enjoy it. And, and again, I’m super into the, the orange color, but like from like the top down, like, you know, at least on the software side, like hardware I think is a little bit different. Like, it just feels like there’s a taste vacuum. And, and, and a lot of people are, are blaming Alan Dye.

I don’t know if that’s correct or not. Sorry Alan. But also you are a millionaire, so you can take the heat if people are gonna criticize you. Um, but

it. It, It, really is. So, like I, I, I don’t know who we can like blame on this. I think people oftentimes wanna like find like a figure that, that they can go to.

But like, I, I think that it’s just, I dunno, the worst part is, like I said, where else could we go? Like, yeah.

Brett: So, uh, next topic.

Overtired Phenomenon Explained

Brett: I think, um, [00:50:00] Erin put in the show notes that she found out what Overtired means. So I’m really curious what Overtired means.

Erin: Sure. Um, I was taking a walk and I, I’m not proud of this, but I’ve been using as, I think Merlin Mann calls at this, uh, on the rhetoric on the Line podcast, or maybe it’s John Roderick, but Chatty G, which I can, I can refer to it in no other way now,

but I,

Christina: Yes. Chat g Baby.

Erin: So I engaged Chatty G on, on some body physiology stuff, which was like this, Hey, I.

Took a run. I, I went for a run yesterday and it was a pr, it was a personal best, it was a personal record for me and many miles. And I did that because I’ve been having trouble sleeping. And I thought that running so much over a [00:51:00] great length for me would tucker me out. Uh, it, it did the opposite. In fact, what’s going on?

Is this common? Is there a name for this phenomenon? It’s happened to me before. It’s a pattern, what’s going on? And Chatty g said, what you’re experiencing is a phenomenon called being Overtired. Uh, which is when your body sees that you did this thing, uh, provides you with ample in some may say, uh, too much, uh, adrenaline or whatever.

And. Then you go to bed and you have yet to burn off the reward for that. Um, so of obviously everyone’s bodies are different, like I think running a lot and then getting great sleep is normal for a lot of people. Maybe it’s an age thing. Um, I don’t know. Maybe there’s, there’s so many factors, but yeah, that’s what I, I learned Overtired is

Christina: That’s

Brett: Interesting.[00:52:00]

Christina: I love this.

Erin: didn’t know that.

Christina: well, I mean, I,

Erin: I love

Christina: I did, I didn’t know this either. Like I’ve, I have no idea. And I was the one who like came up with like the, the name like Overtired. Like I’d obviously heard the, the term before, like when we were in an elevator, um, at, at Twitter HQ back in like 2012 or whatever year it was.

Um, but I know, I didn’t realize that that’s, that was what the technical definition was. I had no idea.

Erin: Yeah. There you go.

Christina: Cool.

Brett: All right. So another errand suggestion is that

Christina: I love this.

Grapptitude: Fuck, Marry, Kill Edition

Brett: instead of a gratitude, we do a Fuck Mary kill episode. Um, where we pick apps that we would fuck Mary or kill. And, um, I think I have, I think I like this was a last minute thing for me, but I think I’m ready. Um, Christina, do you have, do you have some in mind for

Christina: I have some mind. I’m gonna ask you, one of you to go first because I’m still trying to kind of be figure [00:53:00] out like what my thing would be, but yes,

Brett: Aaron came fully loaded, sober, yet fully loaded. Um, uh, so we’ll let Aaron kick it off.

Erin: Oh, golly. I don’t know if I was prepared because I, I was thinking about this and it’s easy for me to think about Mac or Apple specific apps that I really love and use all the time in the spirit of gratitude, but apps that I want to love and cease loving and in fact want to terminate and kill them harder to do.

So I’ll do it in order though. So. Fuck, I’m going to fuck keyboard maestro.

Christina: Nice.

Erin: is just a, an oldie buddy goodie. It’s a standby. Uh, it continues as your, as your use cases continue to evolve and an entropy takes over and life takes over and things get more complicated. There’s always a new macro you can add.

Like I just added one [00:54:00] for fantastical. Like just, I, I just hit like til day or whatever and fan fantastical pops up. Uh, I’m gonna curse my own name once I need the Tilda for like a code block or whatever. But that’s not a use case that I run into that often. So it’s just like. It’s just so nice. It just always works.

Come over anytime. No wine involved. We’ll, we’ll put on a movie, but like, let’s not pretend I’m fucking keyboard maestro. Um, Mary, this one’s tough. Um, and I wanna be a little conceptual with it. Marriage to me, relationships to me, uh, are enjoyable, but take work, as we all know. And I think relationships are a constant timeline of discovering who the other person is because we can never really know who each other is.

We can never even know ourselves fully. So in this, in that spirit, I’m going to marry final cut. And here’s why. [00:55:00] I think like, not having separate tracks for different. Entities and whatever you’re editing, whether that’s like a visual thing or an audio track or, or whatever is really strange. But I know people love it.

I, I’ve used it myself and I, I don’t know if I’m getting used to it in the way that I think a lot of people do. So that self-discovery, I want to click in, but I’m super interested. I’d like to put a ring on it and see where it goes. Uh, prenup, please. Um, kill. This is a toughie. I’m going to say there are so many good ones to kill. Okay. For my kill, I think I might kill bartender.

Brett: Yeah. Okay.

Erin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they’re getting really fucky with their upgrades and like forcing you to buy [00:56:00] a new license if you already,

Brett: and between ice, ice and Barbie. B-A-R-B-E-E-B-E-E, um, the, it’s, it’s as good without all of the hassle of bartender. I, I, I have killed bartender. I was a, I was a bartender. Diehard, but we got divorced, I guess. Divorce. This should, this should be Fuck Mary divorce. Um,

Christina: say, yeah, we, we, we, they, they sold and, and we all had to go to ice bar or whatever, which is worse.

Brett: yeah. Ice. Ice has potential. It’s not, it’s not there yet. Barbie actually does, in my opinion, everything that Bartender can do.

Erin: I’ll look

Christina: I,

Brett: we worth checking

Christina: I was gonna say I haven’t, uh, um, uh, seen that one. Um, awesome. But yeah. Yeah. Bartender. Yeah. I mean, that, that was a great one. And then we, yeah.

Erin: Yeah. What about y’all?[00:57:00]

Brett: I, um, I would fuck Clean Shot X. Um, it’s so, it’s so elegant. It does exactly what it needs to do, and it’s, it’s just orgasmic every time I use it. And I use it all day, every day.

Erin: same.

Christina: Same.

Brett: I’m a fuck machine with, uh, with Clean Shot X. Um, Mary, I would marry again like this is. Um, it’s, it’s a conceptual thing, but Cursor,

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Brett: um, has been making my life so easy, but it also at the same time takes a lot of work.

Like I, so anyone who hasn’t used Cursor, it’s a, it’s a it ai coding app.

Um,

Christina: uh, fork.

Brett: yeah, and it can do a lot of things. It can make a lot of mistakes, but [00:58:00] ultimately, if I total up the hours, it would’ve taken me to do something versus the time it did take me to do something. I save time every time using Cursor, especially for like in-depth refactoring and, and doing things with my code that I, I should have done years ago.

But I let get out of hand. I can say, examine all this code, figure out how to go, how to turn this from like spaghetti code into a functional app. And, and it’ll take its time. It’ll do it. And then I’ll have to repair a bunch of stuff. ’cause I’ll hit compile and it won’t, um, and then we’ll have to debug together.

But if you know code and you’re able to look at the code it generates and you’re able to see problems on your own, uh, you can save a lot of time arguing with something that really, honestly believes it did the right thing. Um, so it, it’s a marriage. [00:59:00] It takes some work. But, but I would, I would tie the knot with it.

I think it’ll be part of my life for, for a while. I’m not a, I’m not a married for life guy. I, I believe in divorce, it could happen. Um, kill slash divorce. I would go with the Shortcuts app. Um, well, okay. Kill, kill is Quip for sure. I’m

fucking done with Quip. Um.

Christina: You stole mine, but yes. Yeah.

Brett: I’ll, you can have it. You can have it. I will say, I will divorce the Shortcuts app.

I feel like Apple has put a lot of effort into making a worse automator when they could have just been making automator better. Um, and the Shortcuts app, just, it, it’s so infuriating to me to use It’s powerful. Yes, but not as functional or as usable or as integrated with the system as like writing system services in Automator [01:00:00] is, and Automator lacks a lot of the things shortcuts can do, but again, you could have made automator better, but instead you made a worse automator.

So that’s, that’s me. What do you got, Christina?

Christina: All right. So, um, for, fuck, I’m going to, uh, choose. It was funny because I was thinking about Cursor. I think I’m actually just gonna go for, for, for VS code and make that Inc, Inc. Inclusive of all like the various kind of forks. Um, so I would kind of include like, like cursor. Um, I know they’re separate, but it’s, it’s, it’s also like one of those things that I’m, I’m like okay with, um, like I know they’re different.

What I was going to say is like, I’m okay, but, but I guess kind of completing them together, even though I, I, I do realize that they, um, do different things and, and, and all of that. Um, I, uh, so, but, but, but I’ll just kind of be, be inclusive of, of all of that. So I’ll say, um, uh, vs. Code kind of family is what I’ll fuck because similar to you, like I’ve just used these things for so [01:01:00] long and, uh, they’re

important to me and they work

Brett: and with copilot it, it’s basically cursor like

Christina: I mean, yeah.

Brett: of the same

Christina: You, you can, I mean, I think it’s a different experience. I think Cursor does some things better. I think Copilot does some things maybe, uh, preferably I think that this is where we’re sort of in a messy, you know, situation, but, but on, but under the hood is all vs code so, so vs. Code is, is my fuck because I, I feel like, yeah, I, I fuck with this app.

This is a, an app that has gotten me through a long time. I never thought that I would like, love this as my, you know, primary code editor. But yeah, it, it is for sure. And, um, and, and the extensions in the community around it. For Mary. This is an interesting one because I think a lot of people will hear this and they will disagree with me, or they will like, not like, love this.

But, but I, I, I thought you made a great point, Erin. Like marriage is work and marriage is back and forth, and marriage is, you don’t love everything about it all the time, but you were committed to it for life or for an, you know, long period of time. May maybe you do get divorced, but like the idea is when you get into the commitment, you’re not going to be jumping out of it.

[01:02:00] Like you’re gonna be staying in it for a long time. And so for me, that one is one password. Um, uh, you know, again, there are a lot of people who have complaints about the fact that they went electron for the design and this and that. Fuck off. Uh, it’s been fine.

Um, the

service and honestly, it’s been fine and it’s been better.

It, it’s been better than like the, the, you know what, what’s the MAC equivalent call? That’s so shitty.

Those apps are much worse, in my opinion. Like, like, like the news app is a much shittier and much less Native Mac app to me than, um, uh, the, um, what should I call it than, than one password is so and for my parents, I actually more than one password. I think that I can probably get them on board with it. Um, especially now that you can, ads have the types of things, the way you can share and it’s natively built in. And if all you use is an iPhone and, and your Mac, I think that’s great for me. And the stuff that I do, one password is more than passwords.

I have my SSH keys, I have my, um, uh, social security, uh, card. I have my nephew’s social security card. I have my passport. I have like all kinds of anything in it. I have my two

Brett: catalyst, sorry. I’m sorry. [01:03:00] Catalyst. That was really bugging me.

Christina: Thank you. It was bugging me too. Thank you for coming up with that. So, yeah. Um, I, I have so much of my life in one password, and I, I’ve said this many times, this is why I think this for me, this is the Mary, is because like, I would be like, my life is over if I lose access to my one password account.

Like, genuinely, right? Like I have, you know, like the, the recovery key, like in a safety deposit box. Like it’s my, my life is in it. Like, if somebody really wanted to fuck with me, they would get into my one password. But I do actually trust them to have that secured. I do actually, uh, you know, I, they, they’ve been a good steward of the company.

I’ve been using it for 18 years at this point. And, um, yeah. So for me, one password is, is it, and like, I, I can’t conceive of a world where like, again, like I have a bunch of stuff also stored in Apple passwords just ’cause it’s more convenient, even if that is maybe less secure. Sorry, don’t add me security bros.

I’m aware I should probably not, you know, whatever, but it is what it is. Um, but it’s cross platform, you know, I can use it on, on a web browser. It, it’s, it’s really, really nice. And so, um, that, that’s my Mary. And then for my [01:04:00] Kill, uh, yeah, Quip. Quip is fucking dog shit. And it wasn’t app that was really good.

Um, when it started, um, when, when Brett Taylor, you know, first created it, he wanted to basically make a good version of Google Docs. He was like, what if Google Docs had more advanced features and you could export it in different formats and you could, you know, collaborate in certain ways. And it, and it, and it didn’t suck.

And that was a beautiful vision. And then it was sold to Salesforce and then Brett Taylor joined Salesforce and he’s no longer there. He’s now I think like the chairman of, of, of Aries on the OpenAI board or whatever. He’s rich man is basically what he’s doing. And um, uh, and Quip is. For some reason still pseudo maintained.

Um, I would think it was an Atlassian product. The way that it’s, it, it, it works, honestly. And, and, and yes, I mean that with everything that, that, that, that says, but no, it, it is like an Atlassian product and I’m like, this is garbage. Right? And, and like I, I’ve never really used a lot of other Salesforce stuff.

Um, I’ve used it Salesforce a few times and I’ve used Slack, obviously. But, um, no [01:05:00] Quip. Like we had this issue today as we were getting into this, where we couldn’t find the file for our notes, where we put in the things we wanna talk about.

Brett: I had just created it, and then I sent a link to Aaron. Aaron got in. I did see Aaron’s changes, so I left the document to come back into it, and it was gone from my file list.

Christina: it was, I never saw it at

Brett: Aaron had to send me a link to my document to get back into it.

Christina: Then, and then it gets worse because the link that she sends, I’m already logged in on this web browser to Quip and I can’t see on the file list. I click in the same web browser, open up the same thing. That link that Aaron sent. I’m asked to log in again

Brett: Yeah, that’s what happened to

me too.

Christina: a different UI modality, like so, so it looked like it was a completely different backend.

So clearly this app has been abandoned and I don’t know why it still exists. And it’s one of those things where we’d, you and I, we’d used it for so long because this was just how we did everything and we liked aspects of it better.

Brett: it was. It was a nicer version of [01:06:00] Google

Docs. it was.

what it said on the tin.

Christina: and you know what I’ve like, I’ve shit on Google Docs a lot over the years and I still have like issues and things that I don’t like about it.

But, and, and I promise this has nothing to do with, with, with my current employer. I’m, I’m kind of down with Google Docs now. It has native markdown support. Like I write a lot of

Brett: Does it.

Christina: Yes,

Brett: All right, we’re switching next time. Next show. We’re doing Google Docs.

Christina: it, it finally has native markdown support. It also, you can export in markdown, but like I, all the time when I’m writing docs like at work, I just, you know, use markdown and, and, and do it. It has good shortcuts. It’s fast. Yeah. I mean, at this point, like a lot of the things that we’ve used Quip for Quip has degraded and

Brett: That was, that was the one reason I kept everyone on Quip was because at the end of the show, I could export the notes as Mark down, copy them into my automated setup and go, but if Google Docs didn do that, then fuck quit.

Christina: Yep. Sure can. And, and it’s, and it’s, it’s really, yeah. It’s, um, yeah.[01:07:00]

Brett: Alright. Well that was, that was an exciting, an exciting round of fuck Mary. Kill edition of Gratitude. Nicely done.

Christina: I

Get Some Sleep

Brett: Well, Aaron, I want to thank you for being here. I know your work schedule is crazy right now. Um, just kidding. No, it was so good to see you. It’s been a while.

And Christina, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you too.

Christina: I was gonna say, we haven’t, we haven’t seen each other in a long time, so I’m glad to, glad to catch up. I, I, uh, I hope, um, everything is, you know, goes better for, for everybody, for all of the job stuff. It’s, it’s hard out there

Erin: Thank you. Yeah, it’s

Brett: Yes. Good luck Aaron, and good luck to, good luck to be on not having to find a job. Let’s let everything work out for all of us. Um, that’s a, that’s a wrap. You guys get some sleep? Oh, did you have something to say? Aaron? I see you, you’re making a face like you’re [01:08:00] about to say something.

Erin: I was making that face, but I think, I think my, it was involuntary. I, I think maybe, uh, I was nervous about, because I know the sign off is kind of particular and it was occurring to me that that was what you were doing. And I You saw it. I have no poker face. I

Brett: Hey Aaron. Aaron,

Erin: no. Yes. Get some sleep. And this is where I do, I say Brett and Christina, but you address me.

So do I just say

Brett: You can just say get some sleep. We can all get some sleep.

Erin: get some rest, get some sleep, get some slumber, get some shuteye. I.