¶ We're Playing Doctor
You're listening to Mostly Technical, which is brought to you by Lara Jobs, the official Laravel job board, and screencasting.com, where you can learn how to create high quality screencasts Faster than others. Now, Ian and Aaron.
Okay. Welcome back. Another episode. Back on air.
Good to be back. Yeah. Missed missed one in the middle there. I got pretty sick, but good to be back.
You back you back in Powerful, feeling strong?
No. No. Not even not even a little bit. Oh, no. Yeah.
Over over the gut illness, at least. How about that?
Over the illness. Yeah.
Okay.
Over the illness. Got the got the stomach bug that ripped through the family.
Stomach bug's the worst.
Oh, dude. It is the worst. My older son got it first and threw up, like, 6 times, which is just the saddest thing in the world when a
kid throws up. Pitiful. Yeah.
They just look at you all sad, and then they throw up. It's like, nobody. And then my wife got it and was just kinda nauseous and never threw up and was over it in, like, 12 hours. And then I got it, and I didn't throw up. I got close, but I got stomach cramps for, like, 18 hours, and I've never had stomach cramps before. Oh my gosh. I wanted to die. Yes. I was, like, Writhing in pain.
Oh my god.
Like, out there were points where I was, like, on the floor in the closet curled up in Oh, I was like, what is happening?
Oh, you're really on a run here.
Oh my gosh. What is going on? So, yeah, that was bad. And then I had fever. I had fever for, like, 3 or 4 days. The kind of fever where you wake up and, like, your sheets are drenched with sweat. Well, it's kind of a weird combo. I feel like with the stomach bug,
the Fever. Like, maybe you have a little fever quickly, but you don't usually get the multi day fever with the stomach bug. I feel like that's
I know. That's what I'm saying.
Combo there. Wonder if you had 2 things at once. The way your luck's going, I'm guessing you had 2 different things at once.
I think that's probably right, the way my luck is going. And then, of course, I'm still in all this, like, just, like, excruciating physical pain, Where I can barely, like, lift my arms over my head and can't get up off the ground by myself. It's like, yeah, pretty, Pretty pretty bad.
Any luck there with figuring that out?
No. They they've they've diagnosed me with rheumatoid arthritis by Process of elimination, which doesn't give me a lot of confidence
Right.
Because I don't have The like, the blood tests to support rheumatoid arthritis. Right. And they're like, yeah. You know, in 20% of the cases, you don't have the blood tests, And we just diagnosed it anyway. I'm like, that seems convenient, doesn't it? So I'm gonna go get a second opinion.
Yeah. Definitely do that. You got it's so it's So hard because I had some health stuff going on when we had young kids, and it's, like, just, like, going to the doctor is just, like, impossible on top of Yeah. Kids and work and everything. It's it's so rough. But
So rough.
You know if they tested for Lyme disease? I know it's not big down There, but up here, that's a big thing. It has, like, those kind of symptoms sometimes. Like, I don't know if
you know about it, but it's like a tick borne illness, but it's really common
Of where I live and, yeah.
Then they, like, slam you with tons of antibiotics to, to patch you up. But,
Now, I have to test that. Test. It's more rare in the south, but it is spreading. So it is like more common than it used to be. It used to be Interested
exist down there, but, it is and I
don't know. You've traveled up north lately? I don't I don't know what call up you have.
Well, we went to we went to,
what's the Oh, you went to Vermont. Oh, yeah. Vermont is like a total hotbed of Lyme disease. Yeah. Like, you should definitely
get tested.
Mhmm. Like, if you have untreated Lyme disease for, like, Now it's been, like, 6 months or whatever, like, absolutely, or 4 months or whatever. Like, you could have those kind of symptoms.
Interesting. No.
We're we're playing doctor here on the podcast, but, so something to look into.
Interesting. That is a good Oh, that would be awesome.
Right. I
would love to I would love to have Lyme disease. That would be amazing.
Right. It actually can be quite serious. Of course, it's like there was a vaccine for for a little while, but then, like, whatever something happened, they don't sell it anymore. And I wish they'd just make a vaccine for it, but, I don't know. So no vaccine, no actual, like, Total cure. Exactly. But they do with a bunch of antibiotics. It usually patches you up. Like I've had it.
My son had it.
Really? Yeah. I wonder I didn't get that far with it. I didn't have that kind of pain. It was definitely different. Like, because the one of the things is you get a pa like, if you see the patch on you, it's like a
Uh-huh.
Circular, skin rash kind of thing. Like if you see that, then you just know you have it, but you only get that like 30% of the time or something. And also like Ticks bite you in weird spots where, like, it might bite you in your hairline or, like, wherever, and, you know, it's not even see it even if you get it. So, yeah, but it's kinda fever and stuff like that. But it's like some of these weird things.
It's like some people it's quite severe. Some people it's like, they live with it forever and don't even know. And yeah, But up here, like, everybody get like, when you have a physical, you get Lyme disease tested always, and, like, kids always get it tested. That'd be physical. Yeah. It's just like a thing you just do if you live in New York, Connecticut, you know, I think in Vermont and stuff, they would have it up there. So yeah. Interesting. Something to check out.
Okay. Well, I'm gonna ask if I can get tested for that because I would love an answer.
Right. Yeah. Especially since you don't have a solid answer, it's, definitely worth digging around in some other more Barfield things and just getting more more advice. Because a lot of times, you just gotta find the right doctor to, like, go down the right path.
It's doctors, man, they just don't Freaking care at all.
The whole systems are like, we're going to move, I think, to this, one of these. So, you know, I assume it's the same down by you, but, like, doctors now are just like, you got 7 minutes. Go. What can you tell me? And it's like, yeah. Like, okay. Like, here's my whole life story. Here's everything that's ever happened to me. I'm And a race through it. Right? And they're like, okay. Okay. Uh-huh. And then, like, okay. Here's some tests.
Get out of here and, like, onto the next one. So but they have the doctors where, like, you just basically pay more. It's like there's actual name for these things, but it's like whatever. It's like 250 bucks. Concierge. Yeah. But it's like, you get that hour with the doctor, and
it's like, yes. That's what
I want. And then, like, they can still refer you to specialists that are, like, Under your health insurance, so whatever. If you had to go to a specialist, they refer you, and that's fine. Or blood work is still your your health insurance. But for the, like, Day in, day out, I'm sitting down.
I'm having a physical. Let's go through some something that's going on with me or just in general. How's it going? Like, here's somebody who's gonna sit and listen to me for 20 solid minutes, and we can have a conversation instead of, you're just in the board, and they're just churning you out. And if you don't have, like, The obvious cancer or your arms falling off, then, you know, they're just like, get out of here.
So I don't know. We're thinking about doing that because our we have a $80 co pay anyway. So I'm like, well, $80 co pay or I Pay 250, and it's, like, once a year, like, I'm just gonna start doing that. But yeah.
So it might be worth Yeah.
Finding one of those types.
Yep. Yep. It's it's the worst. They, they come in. They stare at their computer the whole time, ask you
a couple of questions, write
a few things down, and then they're like, Okay. Well, it's probably this. I'll give you this medicine, and we'll see how it works. Come back in 3 weeks. I'm like, what? Right. Yeah. You haven't listened to anything I've been saying.
Yeah. I had some stuff. I got went down a whole path of, like, wrong medicine on the thing I had like this years ago, but it's like because they just start like, okay. Here, take this medicine. And you're like Yes. Is it even the right medicine? Like, there's not even necessarily Follow-up depending on what it is. Like, okay. Come back in a year, and it's like, it's gonna start taking this thing for a year and see if it works. Yeah.
So Yeah. Alright. Well, hopefully, Some progress gets made there, man.
Hopefully. Hopefully, I'll have Lyme disease. We'll see. So here's here's a question. You know? Well, let me start with setting a a a mutually shared understanding. You know how I always have good ideas that never backfire?
Yes. Perfect. That we we've established that on the show.
Yeah. Multiple times. So what if I took all of these tests, All of these dozens and dozens of blood tests that I've had, and I, like, put them on GitHub, Like, an an open source repo and then turn the Internet loose on it, and I'm like, what do you think I have?
Yeah. Well, I mean, have you tried the chat gbt version of
that? Yeah. I have, and I don't know, like no. Nothing interesting.
No. I mean, I why not? Like, oh, I mean, the worst case scenario is like the like, Somebody says, hey, you should go to this kind of doctor and you waste the damn day going to that kind of doctor and that's it. Like, it seems Reasonable? I figured
I figured I could nerd snipe some people who are like, oh, I bet I could figure it out.
You got another reach?
Yeah. They'll go, like, Super far into it. Maybe it ends up on Reddit and everybody, like, nerds out about it for a long time. And then
Yeah. You have these weird the thing is when you have, like, something that's not Totally standard. Right. It's like the whole system's not designed for that. Like nobody's like there's nobody in charge of figuring that out other than you.
And then so you have to go too. So, like, when I had a, like, this dizziness, eye issue stuff going on, which I didn't know was eye issue, like, it was just years of, like, well, flare kinda got worse. I'll go to They're they'll be like, go for a hearing test, whatever, this and the other thing. I and it's like, eventually, I stumbled on the thing it actually was, and you're like, oh, shit. But, you know, it took, like, 8 years or whatever
Right.
To do that. And then, yeah, maybe there's somebody out there. Like, one of the things I did is I wrote a blog post, and that blog post actually gets a fair amount of People on it because it's like, Hey, if you have these symptoms, like, here's a a weird diagnosis that, nobody is in the world's gonna give you if they're just like a regular eye doctor at your mall. Like, they're not up on this stuff. And so, yeah.
So there are just, like, weird things that go on with people that if you don't have the regular stuff, You kinda need to find somebody who can point you in the right direction, or you need to grind the doctor treadmill till you find the one that's willing to Dig deeper. So, yeah, I mean, I actually think that's a fine idea. Like, it's not even, like, you never got your DNA or whatever. It's like, whatever. Here's some blood test. Like, Yeah. What do you think?
Who cares?
Yeah.
Okay. I like it. Alright. I think I'm gonna do that and see what the see what the nerds of the Internet think. No. I'm gonna get a lot of bad. I'm gonna get a lot of bad.
You better be ready to filter.
Yeah. You gotta have, like, a
a strong filter up of, like, you're gonna get
I'm ready.
Especially if you're putting it on YouTube. I don't know if you're gonna go YouTube with it on YouTube channel or if you're gonna go that far with it or not. If you go that far,
like see.
You'll get some, you know, weird weird replies in there. But,
And I bet about 60% of the replies are gonna be about gut health, which I'm Right.
Right. It's good.
I don't know. That doesn't mean anything. Like, I don't know I don't know what you mean by gut health.
There's gonna be that stuff. There's gonna be, you know, are you sure you're not already dead? Are you sure you're alive? You're gonna already be dead. Like Mhmm. Right. Yeah. All this other stuff like, yes.
There's maybe gonna be, like, a 5%, like, how dare you have us do the work for you? What a privileged person you are. But Yeah. We'll see.
I think it can't hurt. I'm I'm not hurt. Right? Yeah. I think it's fine. This is
another this is another good Aaron idea. I think that's a good Speaking Speaking of good Aaron ideas, I am officially back on paternity leave as of today.
¶ Back on Paternity Leave
Oh, okay. I was kinda wondering about that. It seemed like this would be hard to not be on Paternity leave right now.
This is hard to not be on paternity leave. Yeah. So I I have 5 more weeks. We get a total of 12, and I was gonna, like, Take them later in the year Right. And just not not working. Yeah. So Back on paternity, already feeling a sense of relief of, like, okay. I can just focus on getting through this, Like, through over the hump with these kids and figuring out some of this health stuff.
Yeah. That's a lot. Even just even just on the kid, even putting aside the health stuff, just on the kid front, like, between birth and 3 months old, like, 3 months old is so much Better. Like, there's just gonna be a lot easier to deal with if you get another month or 2 under their belts here. Yeah.
You know,
3 or 4 months old or whatever they'll be with when you're done. Feel like that's probably a good move.
Yeah. Just just continually punched in the face. So I talked I talked to Holly yesterday, and I was like, And I'm I feel really guilty, but I've got to take the rest of this paternity. And she was like, why do you feel guilty? Take your paternity. So Yeah.
Do you have time off? Do you have time off? Would you take time off on top, you think? Or
I think, like, Technically, I could. You know, we have unlimited Right. PTO. Oh, unlimited PTO. That's not too weird.
I don't I don't I'm not a fan of the Unlimited people.
I know. I know. So I don't know, like, what
What's acceptable there? Like, you're you're getting punched
in the face. Does that mean
you could take 6 months off? Is that too much? Right.
Can you
take 3 weeks off? Can you take 2 weeks off? Like, those are much nicer to be like, you get x time off. Everybody knows what you get. Maybe there's extenuating circumstances where, like, have to work something out with somebody because they need more time, and then that's in the conversation you could have versus, like, the weirdo state.
But, alright. Well, it's an option, I guess, too. Yeah. If you need to, If you need, like, a little more time too, but they're gonna be a lot lot bigger and better there after even just a little more time. So Yeah. But 4 kids, man.
4 kids, man.
Gonna It's Gonna be a lot. It's too many
it's too many kids.
It's a lot of kids.
It's too many.
A lot of kids.
It's just there to
be done maybe you got eBay 1. Just eBay. They're Go down to 3.
Well, they're they come in sets. Yeah. I mean Right.
It's always that's a pair.
It it's there's There's just there's so many of them. Yeah. And the schedules are just, like Yeah. They're it's nonstop.
Yeah. It's nonstop.
It's around the clock Nonstop.
And I don't wanna demoralize you, but, here's a little story which might demoralize
you. Me.
Which is, So Valentine's day is Yeah. My birthday. My oh, that's right. Your birthday.
That's right. It's important. Yeah. Important context for this story.
So me and my wife, we're gonna go celebrate your birthday on Right.
Of first date.
Birthday. And, it's our 30th anniversary of our first date cause we started dating and she was a freshman in high school. So a long time ago. And so I've been trying to like figure out But something special to do. Right? And it's just literally impossible. Like, the the kids have stuff to do, like, trying to get them to school. And, like, if I'm trying to do an overnight, A single night, 1 night away. 1 night. One night with my youngest is almost 11.
And it's like, impossible. Like, it can't be done. It's like
I was trying to do it
as a surprise. I just told her this morning. I was like, listen. And we have this whole joke where, like, I try to do nice things for her and they don't work out, and then I have her about the nice thing I was going to do. And I was like, this is just another not another nice thing I was trying.
I've spent days trying to work this out. It's impossible. Like, I have no way I'm gonna be able to do this without including her because, like, there's just too many things in motion. So to have any chance of even doing it is gonna require both of us to, like, call in favors and, you know, all the stuff to make this one night happen. So, yeah, it's it's a lot. Having the kids, there's always somebody doing something. It needs to go somewhere. They're sick. Perfect. This or that. Like
So for at least the next 11 years,
We have we
you gotta keep me posted to let me know how long it goes.
My wife would try to get get back into the business and do some stuff, and But it's so hot. Like, from I think it was, like, something like early November to last week, I think it was. There hasn't been a single day Where the kids, at least one kid wasn't home. Like it's crazy. Like, because people were sick, then there was Time off, and there was holidays, and there was something else, and they had days off school.
Like, it's, like, unbelievable. They're just, like, always They're just there. Time.
They're just There.
They're there all the time. So Perfect. Yeah.
Good good to know. There you
go. Yeah.
Thanks. Awesome.
This kinda ties in. Should we
¶ Down There in the Danger Zone
should we do your, your your what
you put on the list here with the diapers? That kinda merge
Oh, yeah. Because I got some bad
news around that too for you. So we'll go we'll pull the bad news.
Yeah. Listen. Let me tell you. So I'm a pretty normal guy.
Oh, yeah. Sure.
Yeah. And, you know, I think I think maybe this is is weird. I'm I'm the only person I know that that does this. But I think this is the I think this is the reasonable position, and everyone else is unreasonable. Okay.
I've changed a lot of diapers. Okay? I've changed a or pro a lot a lot of diapers And continue to this day to change a lot of diapers. There's not been one well, I'll I'll say there are fewer than than a Handful. So fewer than 5 times that I've changed a diaper without wearing gloves. It's crazy. Or a single glove. We'll say a single a
single glove. I'm usually Michael Jackson it.
He's got the one glove. A single I'm usually a single glove.
Just the hot zone bulb, I assume.
Just the hot zone. Zone. Yes.
Yeah. I gotcha.
Every single diaper I have ever changed, save for a few rare emergencies, I've worn a surgical glove to change the diaper.
Wild. I I have to say I've ever heard of this.
The objective like, objectively, the most reasonable thing that you could do
Oh, man.
Is wear a glove is wear a glove When you're when you're down there in the danger zone. I don't understand why and people my friends make fun of me for this. I don't understand. I learned this because I saw it when we first I'd never ever ever in my life changed a diaper before we had kids. Why would I? Right. Why would I change a diaper? I don't need to change other people's other kids' diapers.
No.
At the hospital, they've got those gloves on the wall. Right? Mhmm. They've got 3 boxes of gloves, small, medium, large. Doctors walks in walks in, they put on a new pair of gloves. I see the nurses putting on gloves to change diapers, and I'm like, yeah. I'm doing that. I wanna I wanna touch that stuff. And so I'm grabbing I'm grabbing gloves off the wall. When we left, I took a whole box. My aunt paid a $1,000,000 to be here. I'm gonna take a box of gloves home with me.
Love it.
And then when we ran out, I just ordered more off Amazon, and I've never stopped. So I guess let's just start.
I assume I assume
I I feel like I gotta set the scene a little. I assume we're not
we're not a cloth diaper family. Let's just start there.
No. No. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Yeah. I agree. We can't deal with the clock.
Sorry to the earth or whatever, but nobody's got time for that. Right.
Alright. So we're we're the regular diapers. I have to say, I feel like I'm not totally opposed to this, but it does feel like an extra step, which I don't know if I love the extra Yep. Exactly. Although, I guess if you're going in, are you feeling like you then don't do you not have to hand wash post? Like, are you clean?
Oh, no. Still you still hit the you still hit
the, You still hand wash?
The pump. The The sanitizer next to the changing station post.
Yeah. Than a full hand wash.
Yeah.
Time wise, it's okay. You don't you don't have any issues with, like,
No issues.
Speed wise there? It doesn't hurt your tongue.
Speed wise. Pick them up, put them on the table Yeah. Open the drawer, put a glove on, change
What about
and you're done.
What about your wife?
Oh, no. She's She's She's hardcore. Natural. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No. Never never in her life she she didn't understand it.
Oh, no. I have to say I'm glad I'm out of the diaper zone. I mean, I guess I feel like we my my path to it was more like if you go with the proper wipe Technique.
No.
There's Fairly rare that you get it actually on your hands. Fairly rare. Rare? Not in the top
of my head. Fairly rare is enough Just for the record, fairly rare is is enough. Yeah. That's already that's already too much.
I don't I just I mean, if we're
talking blown
away by this. I haven't He considered it. Like, it does If we're talking a 1%
This says Texas. If we're talking a 1% chance, I'm I'm wearing a glove. Yeah.
Alright. I don't Yeah. Like a condom like situation here. You're going with the odds.
Sure. Yeah. In a way. Yeah. I just don't want there's You never know first of all, you never know what you're
gonna start.
My follow-up to this is so perfect. Okay. It is just so perfect. Alright. So When
I read this, here was my reaction. My reaction is that this whole, like, people get excited about being done with diapers. But that being done with diapers is sort of a lie that you're told as a parent, like that is this end zone of like, Once they're out of the diapers, right, then Mhmm. We're free, but it's really not true. Like, it's it's good to be out of diapers.
Like, you're sick of buying them. You're sick of throwing them out. Yeah. Like, So that part's all good. It's it's definitely a big moment and you are happy for it to arrive, but the wiping of the asses does not stop For a very long time after that. Yes. So you have lots of ass wiping to go. You have years of ass wiping. What? And this ass wiping is not gonna be on your terms like the diaper is the diaper is beautiful.
Like you pick them up, you put them down, they don't move you. You zip them around, you clean them up. It's great.
Yeah.
When you're just at target And the filthy toilet, and they have to go, and they're there, and you have to wipe them. What are you gonna do now with your glove situation?
Oh my god.
This is news. Adult like poop. Oh, it's terrible.
This is news to me. I'll be honest. I'll be honest. I thought at some point, you just transition out of diapers,
and you never see it again. Letting you in on the Secret. I hate
Yeah. This is not a good day for me.
That's even Yeah. You're a bad dad.
You're telling me a lot of things I don't wanna hear.
Oh, man. But it's True. They just poop in the worst places and they can't, and they need help and they didn't make it there. So now you're dealing with, like
Oh my
gosh. I wanna know that you're here.
Like, you got a underwear full of poop that you're dealing with. Like I don't wanna know any of this.
Oh, man.
Pulling over Tell me I'm gonna be in I'm gonna be in gloves For the next 10 years too?
I'm saying you're gonna have, like, people wear phones strapped to their belts. You're gonna have, like, that, but for, like, a glove Spencer, we were just like, boom. Nitrile gloves. Yeah. We're
good. Gosh. Well
Yeah. I'm excited to follow-up in a couple of years
too when the plans.
Well, I guess the I guess the oldest ones are close. Right? They're close. So if you get them out at night, we'll kinda follow-up fairly soon.
Yeah. We tried we tried already once, and it didn't take. And so we'll try again at some point. But yeah.
One little gross Tip, for as you exit the diaper phase.
Do I want it? I don't know if I, okay.
This is a good one. This is a good one. They make for the car. These potties that are, like, both flat and you open the potty, and then you use a gallon ziplock bag as worst thing I've ever heard
in my life.
And then if you emergency have to go poopy, it's a boom. You pop them on that thing. You seal up the little ziplock baggy. You're good to go. Yeah.
No. I refuse You're
gonna want that thing. This now. When they're when they're pooping in your forerunner, you're gonna be like, oh, I wish I had one of those ziplock bag coil.
Suddenly suddenly, I'm I'm I'm wondering if I'm cut out For any of this.
Maybe a little late now.
I don't know. Yeah. Like, I'm I'm kinda barely scraping by, and you're telling me it gets worse.
I don't know about worse.
It's it's it's better, but
there are still challenges. There are still challenges. It's like It's the same thing with when they're little babies and you're like, great. I put them down. You're like, this is I got I need them to walk because it's so much better when they can walk. They start walking and then they're into everything. And then you gotta watch them. They're walking in the road. They're doing this. So like that's its own new set of challenges.
And that's the same kind of thing with the pooping. It's like You you leave the one phase, and that's good and happy, but then you get the new phase as its own its own challenges that you have to deal with.
Well, I'll keep you up to date on my strategies because I feel like the nitrile glove from Amazon is a pretty good strategy, and we'll we'll see what I invent for the next
the next phase. Oh my gosh. Alright. Alright. Any other kids stuff we need to cover? Kids, otherwise, are they're they're doing alright?
Kids otherwise are doing are doing alright. Yeah. I think I think we're all good there. I have been working I'll I'll be I'll be curious to get your take on this. I've been working on you know, people are asking, like, hey.
¶ Suburban Dad Scale
How's it going? How are you doing? Right. And, you know, there's, like, a there's, like, a polite, a polite way to respond. So, like, hey. How's it going? How are you doing? Right. And then there's, like, the the suburban dad way of responding. There's, like, a I feel like there's a a suburban dad scale of Mhmm.
How you're doing. Yep. And I've kinda been I've kinda been, like I've been workshopping the suburban dad scale of how you're doing. At the top of the scale No. When you ask when you ask a dad at a barbecue how you're doing, top of the scale, living the dream. That's the top. That guy that guy is watching football. He's got jet skis in his driveway for some reason. That guy, that's the that's as good as it gets. Right?
Well, okay. I I so I already have a question because I do
feel like that is like it's like the ace. Like, the ace could be the top of
the straight or it could be the bottom of the straight. Like, I feel like it's a lot in the inflection. Like, you know, you could have the negative version of that inflected negatively, and you're like, oh, man. This guy's Way down in the weeds. He's he's hitting
lights right. Un ironic. Un ironic. Living the dream. Living the dream. Maxed out.
He's drinking beers. He's watching football. Beer.
He motors brass today. Food. Yeah. His team won. Cigar.
Yeah. Gotcha.
Exactly. Exactly. So below right below that still on the positive side is no complaints. No complaints. Alright. Right? That's still, like, he's not living in the dream.
His head's above water.
Yeah. His head's above water. We're still on the positive side of the line. Right. No complaints.
Alright. I like that there's only 2 I like that there's only 2
on the positive side of the line. Yeah. Alright. Then then below that Mhmm. How how how are you doing? We're making it.
Making? Oh, yeah. That's below the line for sure.
That's below the line. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's not
all the way that's not all the way down, but it's
like Yeah. You can still see light. You're not down in the depths, but it's not good.
But We're not we're not even You're not having complaints. Yeah. We're we're making it. And then at I think at the bottom is Well, the bottom has a range or the bottom has modifiers, but the the beginning of the bottom is hanging in there.
Right. Hanging in.
Right. That's the lowest. Right?
Hanging in implies, like, could you know that they're being nice about it? So it's like Right. Exactly. Is like, It's probably pretty bad, but it's, like, whatever. They're not suicidal yet, so they're hanging in.
No. But the but it has a scale. Right? So you're you're hanging in there, or you're barely hanging in there?
Yeah. Barely hanging Yep.
Right? And so that's that's, like, uh-oh. Uh-oh. Yeah. And then and then there's the the variable modifier of of man. Right? So Oh, no. You don't wanna hear the man at the end. Don't wanna hear you don't wanna hear man because and the longer the man goes, The worst the guy is doing. Right? So if you say, man, we're barely hanging in there. It's like, oh. That's But if you say, man, We're barely hanging in there. Oh, that guy is almost gone.
He might be getting divorced. It's like yeah. I feel like that's
It is Over. Yeah.
I'm with you.
So I feel like I feel
like that's got it at a scale. It's pretty solid.
The scale. Right?
Yeah. And
that's that's, like, that's polite. That's the polite way to respond at a barbecue. Like, how you doing?
Yeah. Have you ever had that so have you ever been doing so bad that you broke down the badness, So do you stick with the scale?
You know, if it's if it's actual friends, I'll I'll break it down. But most of the time, it's just it's the scale for
sure. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. It's all good.
And and the thing is, because if it's not friends, they don't wanna know. Why? Why is it that? Especially if they're especially if they're living the dream. They don't wanna know.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the living the dream.
They're just they're just ask I'd love to be a living the dream guy. Can you imagine?
He sold his business. Yeah. He's fly fishing during the day. Exactly. Yeah. He's working out 5 times a week. He's looking he's looking Walking
around in the yard looking at Stuff. What's he looking at? I don't know. He's just looking at stuff.
He's gonna do his plantings. He's getting ready. Oh, man. Plantings this year.
Okay. Well, good. Suburban Suburban Dad Scale.
I have nothing to add to that. I think I think you've you've dialed it in.
I thought about it a lot. I've been I've been thinking about it.
You've had time. Like, when you're rocking a baby or feeding a baby, you're like, let me figure out the scale.
Yeah.
I like it.
Alright. What do we got? What else do you wanna do here?
¶ Should I Gamble?
We got things. We got, I don't know. Do you want I wanna
hear about your poker tournament.
There's nothing much to this one. It was went down to the I wanna hear
how you ended up, like, at Surprise poker tournament. Because you DM'd me and you're like, hey. You can't record. I gotta I'm doing a poker tournament now. And I'm like,
what? Yeah. Well, so I was gonna go to a poke I had planned to go to a poker tournament. So I was like, whatever I had to push in the button to reset the database, all fricking beginning of winter and whatever that was over. And Then I was like, all right, I'm gonna go to poker tournament, kind of reset my brain.
I like the competition. I like the, like, using my brain in a different way from the like Internet technology stuff. Like, let's sit there with the other mutants who are like Right. Other weird stories and things that happen at the poker table. But then I got the COVID, so I'm sick with COVID.
So then that messed up me going to my poker tournament. So I was like, oh, forget. I mean, I couldn't go. I was like, so, okay. If I'm not go, Then I realized this, this was like a tournament series and that there was actually one more tournament I could go to if I like whatever I realized I could go. That's why I messaged you. I'm like, I can't afford. And so I'm like, all right. We're gonna head down this book of tournament. So I had down there.
I made it to day 2, so it was a multi day tournament. So I got through day 1, made day 2, lost focus, Sort of last focus, I was intentionally doing what I was doing, but it was just a little too it was a little too ambitious. I was making too ambitious of play. Got into a spot on the flop where I just had to go with it, so I went with it, and, I lost. So
That was it. Now it's out. Then took 2 minutes. Invite or, like, you have to qualify for the tournament?
Just pay money. This is the beauty
of the beauty of poker because it's like What's the buy in?
This one was, like, 2,000 or something like that. So it was
And what did you stand to to win? Like, what is the winner I guess.
I think the winner was, like, 400,000 or something like that. Oh, woah. Yeah. And maybe it's, like, 300,000.
The level at the level that you You exited at do you get anything?
I got nothing. No. I got
Oh, no.
Oh, I got nothing. Yep. That was a bummer. So Yeah. But it wasn't too exciting. I don't know. Like, I've been trying to, I wanted to play more tournaments because this is gonna be my year of tournaments. I think that's why I'm currently thinking about it. I'm kind of bored of the cash games. Like I know how to beat the cash games, which is nice.
You just go there and win money, which is fine. Not every time, but the majority of time, but, but also kind of boring. So trying to get better at tournaments, tournaments are more where like the glory is in poker. This is kind of like, so I don't know. So I was trying to warm up.
Might go at w s o p, which is, like, the big tournament series, the, like, famous tournament series in the summer, but I don't know the play, you know, in these tournaments to have like larger buy ins, like the players are very good And they're very studied and there's all these tools now to study and programs and things like that, which I don't have time to delve as deep as obviously a professional poker player does. So, Yeah. So I don't know. This one was not too exciting. I was a little, little disappointed.
I did. However, then, so I try to keep my comps up. So I get the free rooms, the free rooms make it nicer to go play the poker tournaments, could be up to like pay for the room kind of Another fee. And so I won, like, $3,000 playing roulette. So there we go.
What?
So yeah. That was good.
So you came home up?
I was up. That was fun.
That's amazing.
Yeah. That was pretty good. I had a nice little run on the roulette table. So That's crazy. Roulette is my alternative to poker because there's Zero thinking. Like, everything else still has similar thinking. No thinking. Pick a number. Okay. Pick a number. Let's see if it hits. Great. It does. Awesome.
Woah. So what's what's your strategy there? Do you do red black? You do pick, like, an actual individual number?
What? Yeah. You gotta pick a number.
Don't don't don't don't don't
like the red black.
Don't do that to me. What about what do I know about gambling?
I mean, you can pick red black, but, like, it's no fun. You gotta you gotta have some Take some risks. Pick a number. Pick a couple numbers. Put the money out there.
And that's what you do. Pick a couple individuals.
Numbers. Yeah. Yeah. I have, like, ones that I usually pick my birthday, my wife's birthday. You know, I'm always the full old man status. Like, I got my my handful of numbers, right, that I pick. Yeah. I'll do a couple other random ones. That's it. And then
You hit the winnings. You hit enough of those to get 3 grand to win 3 grand?
Well, because It was that so
Should I gamble? Is You
should gamble. We gotta get you gambling. We'll get you gambling. Don't worry about it. So there's, like there are these so if you go to a table that's, like, I don't know what the minimum is. Usually it's like $50 a bet, which is not $50 on a single number. It's not across all your bets. Some table is $50 If you do that, you can play it a better table, which has only 1 0, which is a superior table to the other 1, 2 and 3. Yeah. No.
Right. So you get better odds, blah, blah, blah, blah. It pays more to you basically. So it's almost it's the, one of the better That's because it's like losing not too much to the house. So you could play for almost a.
Sure thing. That's what you're telling me.
You're a sure think I'll lose money, but I also have an ulterior motive, which is to get free rooms. So I get the free room.
Free, technically. Yeah.
Great. I'm paying I'm paying the house rate on a low rate game, and it's like balances out, because the rooms are actually quite expensive at some of these places. So, yeah, you know, the free room is nice. And you win sometimes, which is nice. I had some dinner, had a nice steak, Then I came home. This is oh, this was my first long trip in the EV, so that was a little bit of an adventure.
Oh, wow. So that was good.
I made it. I made it there and back, stopped, both direct. I didn't I could've made it there without stopping, but they don't really have a good charging setup there or whatever. So I was like, well, I'll just stop. So I have energy the way back, and then I stopped the way back. It was fine. Like, ran in Dunkin' Donuts and got a tea. Took, like, 15 minutes. Hit the road. That was good. No problem.
That's great.
Yep. The way home I stopped in this, like, outlet mall thing that has a charging station. So it was there. I walked around that quick just to do something, come back out. There's literally a SWAT team surrounding a band. Dogs are barking like police dogs. It's like a whole situation. Don't know what was going on, but somebody was getting arrested for something. There was some kind of.
You didn't say to watch?
I mean, it was kind of over when I came back It seemed like they had arrested whoever they were arresting, and they were, like, just securing the scene. Like, they were going through the van and stuff, but there wasn't didn't seem like there was any more action to be had. So So you just threw
your discount merchandise in the truck and drove off.
I I didn't buy any discount merchandise to be fair. But, yeah. Man. Drove off. Just drove off. I don't know. I haven't and then the other night, I had a yesterday, I went skiing and got stuck on a trailer for 20 minutes. It's cold up there.
Because because skiing sucks.
So I drag everything.
I'm thinking about you the whole time. I'm dragging all the shit.
Yeah. At least the kids could carry their own stuff, so it's it's better. But still you're dragging heavy skis and all this stuff. This is where snowboarding is far superior because just like you wear comfy boots And then The boots are great for snowboard. It's like Yes. I don't have all this other stuff. The skis, you have 2 poles and 2 skis and Yes. Heavy, terrible boots and all this stuff. So whatever, but I was snowboard. So I get all my shit dragging it around, whatever.
It was a nice little day at the mountain. Other than getting stuck in lift, That was that snowed, which was rare and yeah, it was good. That was good day out in nature in the winter, which is nice, but, Yeah. That's kinda been my action. Not not as exciting as as your action.
Yeah. I'll take your action over my You guys just
get skiing. Wait. You drag these 4 skiing. It's gonna be awesome.
I'm just I'm I'm just telling you now there's no chance. There's there's just no chance. I'm just not gonna do it. Neither will Jennifer. Jennifer just won't
Do it. Does she ski? No. No. Yeah. That hurts your odds too. Poor kids.
Living in Texas with 2 parents that don't really care to ski.
Yeah.
They these these poor kids. Yeah. There's
a When they go to college, maybe they'll
They'll go to college and ski with their friends, and they'll be the bad ones just like I was the bad one, and it's like, it's fine. You still have fun. Doesn't matter.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.
Alright. You wanna talk once?
¶ ONCE & Campfire
Sure.
What do you think? They released it
Yeah. On Campfire. Exactly what I thought it would be. Yeah. Fun. So it's not that It's like, I don't think anybody's gonna really, you know, replace a real instance of Slack. Maybe a few people are. What do
you mean they're gonna replace a real instance of Slack?
I just don't think a lot of people are gonna do that. I think some people are gonna replace it for things that they shouldn't have been paying slack for to begin with. And some people are gonna, you know, as far as I can, like 90% of the people I didn't see talk about it are literally just going through the code, To see DHH's code Yeah.
Which is all I which is what
I thought the majority of sales would be, and they seem to be that. Yeah. And then, you know, there's some people who maybe were paying for Slack for communities, which is a total rip off. And So, yes, maybe they'll replace it on. I mean, I don't think, like, Salesforce is awake at night being like, oh, man. This 299 with no support app is gonna, like, Kill us. Like, and then, fine.
Yeah.
I don't think any business people are ever gonna think about it. Like no regular business person's gonna be like, boy, let me see what alternatives are to slack and come across this and be like, yeah. This is the thing. I get to go to IT and beg them to install this thing that's got no support and blah blah. Like, Not nobody wants that.
It's not a thing. People are buying as a business process tool. So I think people who want free just go to Teams or whatever, like, since they're already paying Microsoft. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know. I think it's kinda cool. Okay. It looks, you know, it looks a little base camp has that certain way of Designing things that I don't super love. It always looks a little underdone Everybody
or a little their designs. Yeah.
Cartoony. Yeah. I don't I don't super love it, but I appreciate that they're doing something different. Same with the Cybertruck. Don't love the way it looks, but I'm glad somebody's trying something. But I think it's great. I think the way they've set it up is I think it's, I think it Has no email. It has no Right. I think it's a SQLite database. Yep.
And so they've done a lot of things that are, like, dependency free, Which I think is really interesting and helps their whole, like, you can self host this shit. Yeah. And I have seen, you know, not normal businesses, but Communities, are a big one that have been like, yeah, we we're definitely gonna move to this because Slack is, you know, prohibitively expensive for our communities. Right. And I think that's
cool. Yeah. But I mean, you could also use Discord. You could have also used,
Have you used Or
or whatever. Whatever the what is the other one that's, like, a forum?
Discuss is the, web based forum. Yeah. Discord is the one for degenerate gamers. We're so
Right. Yeah. Discord. I like Discord. I think this course alright. You don't like this?
No. Discords terrible.
Yeah. I don't think yeah. I think it's
Discord is is chaotic. There's you it's impossible to use. Really? Discord is discord is Slack. No. It's not like Slack. It's way, way worse.
I mean, if you use it, I I if I I never use it beyond just like I'm in here Asking a question or, like, I'm typing something just, like, into a chat box. Like, I'm not doing anything fancy, but it's fun.
No. It's terrible. I'm surprised. I think young people like Discord.
Yeah. If you're doing a community site, I feel like to not do an underscore is actually probably not a good move overall because like that's where everybody else's community sites are. And now Yeah. I have to remember to go to your one slack alternative thing instead of just being in discord and seeing your icon there next to all the other icons of all the other communities I'm part of. So I feel like that's kind of a negative, a pretty big negative, honestly, of, like, running a community site, on some off purpose server somewhere, but
Yeah.
You know, obviously, it depends. And, like, geeky tech people are a little bit different. Yeah. They're gonna go to that weirdo Slack because that's where people hang out, whatever. Fine. But I don't know, like if you were doing a game game chat thing, but of course you're doing discord, or even if you're doing like, even with brand new people, I feel like Discord's gonna be better. They're more likely to already have it, blah blah blah. Like, it has a mobile app, which people like.
Yeah. I'm curious I'm curious when I'll get invited to my first Weirdo Slack. My first campfire. Not going to?
Not gonna happen?
You don't think so?
Nah.
Not gonna happen?
I don't think it'll happen. Maybe 1.
I don't know.
Has it happened yet?
Hasn't happened yet. I think woah.
People are just sitting there just Looking at DHH's code, man. They're not they're not they're not running things on this thing.
I think conferences could could do it. It could be good for conferences to Spin up something, have a bunch of people join, and then and then tear it back down.
I
don't know. I mean, that community
tools. Like, it's got Obviously, no moderation tools. Like, I don't know. Okay. I guess.
You know, it's pretty bare bone. You're so down on it.
I'm not I'm not down on it, but I'm it just is what it is. Right? Like, I think it's not I think it there the home page is still one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen compared to what they ship. Like, it has nothing at all to do with what they ship. It's totally wrong still in everything they said. What they ship doesn't make it right. It's still wrong And whatever. I don't think you're gonna see like, oh, man. This thing maybe I'll be wrong. Who knows?
I just don't think you're gonna be like, oh, every Slack community is now one of these things. I think and it's also inevitable that the ones that go on it are gonna someday be like, yeah. You know what? With the guy who maintained the server, he's gone And nobody knows how to log in to the server. And now what do we do?
Oh, we're just gonna move to Discord because that's the obvious thing to do. Like, I I don't know. I just think, like, that's, like, We've we know how this works. We've seen on premise software. Like, we know we know the answers. It's like people have Pretending that they forgot. See, people out there are talking about, like, this is sub revolution. Like, we this is, like, full old manuals at cloud, I guess. But, like, we know what happens. People don't want to run their own servers.
They don't want to. Like, are the can you come up with some niches that want to? Yes. You can. Can you tell me how your use case is special flower, and you're gonna take care of it like little baby? Fine. Right. But, like, otherwise, nobody wants to do that. It's terrible. Everybody knows it's terrible.
That's what I was
Everybody's gone. Who's a coder has gone in and looked at that server that you haven't forged. You don't even remember why you spun it up. It's Italy named and you're like, it's 6 PHP versions old and it's Laravel 5. And you're like, what the hell am I gonna do with this thing?
Like, it's the same exact thing. Like, nobody's gonna wanna deal with this to save no money if you use Discord or A few bucks if you use Slack when you already can use Teams for free probably anyway. Like, so just a weird value. That's fine. And it some people will use it, and that's great. I'm not down on it. Fine. But, like, it's not revolutionizing anything. Not replacing the clock.
That is and so is that the is that the sticky wicket for you? They claim they're revolutionizing.
Yes. Of course. If they were like, we're just like, hey. We Had some time, and we thought this would be cool. Fine.
But you think that the claiming that it's a movement. Right.
Yes. They have to make everything a movement. Right? Like they always have to make everything's a movement. Like, we can't just do this thing and like, we do it because it's right for us. It's like, no, We're doing this thing. Everybody should do this thing. This is the way the world is going when it's obviously not the way the world's going. It's just, It's never been a worst time to host your own server. Like, literally, I guess the worst time ever.
And tomorrow is gonna be worse than today. Every day is worse than yesterday in terms of hosting your own servers. Like, It's there's just more attack vectors than ever. There's more people who can attack you than ever. There's more automation in attacking you than ever.
There's more like solidification of what people should do and why they should attack you to steal money from you or to ransomware you or all these things. It's all bad and not like, and this, we will lead into a thing that happened to me this week where we signed up for a service. We pointed a CNAME At their, you know, some URL they gave us and whatever we stopped using the service forever ago, they'll cut the story short. It's more complicated than this, but basically They lost control of that domain. And somebody bought that domain essentially and redirected this sub domain.
We had pointed at them To some bad site where you download stuff. It wasn't an attack that us. It was like, it was more at this original service Where, had a lot of people pointing inbound to it with sub domains from good domains, and they realized that they could redirect those and point them at whatever they want. They point them at Wow. You know, some hacky download stuff.
Smart. And Google Webmaster Tools notified us that, like, hey. The the you know, URL on your site is pointing to malicious stuff. Maybe you've been hacked or whatever, which, you know, you should all sign up for Google Webmaster Tools if you haven't because it actually does Some nice things like that even though it's very googly and they don't help you and it's kinda horrible in the actual implementation, but, ultimately, it did tell us about this. So, yeah, there's just like you know?
So whatever. I just I, you know, removed the DNS entry and fixed it, and that was that. But, Still, like, there's just people looking to do shady stuff all the time. And, why do you wanna be responsible for protecting anything from the shady people? Like, I want the lowest.
I do it for our customers and that's it. And I don't want to do any more than that. The nothing I don't want to do anymore at all. Like that's the most I want to do. And I don't even want to do that, But I definitely don't wanna do, like, I have a chat server somewhere that I'm responsible for securing.
I saw you I saw you talk in your own your own book again when DHH and crew got a a DDoS attack, and they put Cloudflare
¶ Cloudflare! Cloudflare!!
in front of them. Cloudflare.
And you you quote you quote tweeted and said everyone should use Cloudflare for everything. And I almost responded and said, you should disclose that you're an investor in Cloudflare.
Oh, Cloudflare. Blair use it.
It's the best they'd safety HH.
If it gets D HH who doesn't want to run anything on the internet anymore and Everything's offline. He manages everything himself and his little whatever from Malibu or whatever. Even he uses Cloudflare. So just go use Cloudflare. It's so much better. It's amazing. DJ's actually Yes. Tweeted at me.
I don't know
if you saw that. He he was a little frumpy with me. He was frumpy with me.
I'm good.
Shocked. I know. And I didn't get all into it with him, whatever, but, like, he thought I was saying well, I thought he was saying, and I think he was saying this, but whatever. Because I had said something in my quote tweet about like, they're going to like ramp up servers with their host or whatever. And everybody Says to me, like, that's stupid. You don't ramp up servers for a denial service attack, which, yes, I know that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But that's why he said he said that they were going to their Their colo provider and getting their help, which a colo provider is not gonna do diddly swap for your DDoS attack. Like that's not what they do. Like They might have some little half ass load balanced firewall thing, but that's not gonna do anything. So I assumed he was going to get more which I thought was weird, but that's what he said.
So whatever. So then he was like, I didn't, you know, whatever. That's stupid. We wouldn't do that. I'm fine. Like, so I didn't go back and forth with them on it, but I get that you don't that's not what you do for DDoS. What you do is you get Cloudflare, which is what he did, which is great.
I can't believe I missed the the E and DHH combo.
Yeah. We had a little combo.
Well, that's exciting. We should have him on the show.
Wait. I guess we should someday. That would be kind of fun.
That would are you kidding me? That would be so much fun.
That would be fun. I don't know. Have DHH on here. Jason, Jason Fried. I generally agree with Jason Fried. D HH. He's a little, he's a little much. He's like always like, you know, just always selling, But maybe someday. Maybe someday.
Maybe someday. Once once we're bigger.
Once we're bigger. We gotta be big enough. We gotta we gotta approach him, Mano a mano. We gotta be equals. Yeah. We'll get there.
Alright. Anything else?
No. I'm good. It was a not a barely technical. The people will be
barely technical, barely technical.
All right. Thanks everybody. Aaron, get back to these kids here. So follow us on mostlytechnical.com, mostly tech pod on Twitter, mostly technical podcast at Gmail. And, we will be back to you soonish, next week or 2, how things are going. Talk to you soon.