Waking Up 💩, Learning and Pivoting, Serverless Apps, and the Committee on Entertainment
Dax, fix your headphones. Hey. Hey. Dax. Dax.
Speaker 2:Oh, shit. Have you been here for
Speaker 1:a while? Is this
Speaker 2:not working again? God damn it. Oh, there we go. I can hear you.
Speaker 1:I've been talking to you for a while. How long? About two minutes. I only been recording for a few seconds, but I just sat and talked to you while, you couldn't hear me. It was fun.
Speaker 1:It was fun to watch you just in your element like you didn't know I was watching. You're just like surfing the web or whatever you're doing?
Speaker 2:No, I got these working finally.
Speaker 1:Oh, did you? Is that what that was?
Speaker 2:I tried to turn them on.
Speaker 1:That was them working. Oh, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That was them working. That was me not working, but they were working.
Speaker 1:So much to talk about. Let's start. You go first.
Speaker 2:Well, the most immediate thing is I woke up I usually wake up at seven and I woke up at 05:30 today and it was because like around 05:00, I was like I kind of woke up a little bit and I was like, it kind of smells like poop and I was like
Speaker 1:Oh, no.
Speaker 2:I'm probably like just imagining it and I can sleep through anything so I just went back to sleep.
Speaker 1:Liz really needs to get that checked out. Just our old Zuko.
Speaker 2:I actually was like, maybe it, you know, was one of us. And then Liz was like like twenty minutes later, she woke up and she was like, it smells like poop. And I was like, goddamn it, if we both smell it, it must be real. And we opened the, she pulled out her phone and she looked on the camera because we have a camera and so Zuko sleeps in my office which is this room. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we have a camera in the back corner there. And he was just sleeping nicely and we couldn't really see anything.
Speaker 1:We were like, okay, are we imagining it?
Speaker 2:Then she like scrolled back to the history and then you can see him like get up and just take his shit in front of the door.
Speaker 1:So in front of the, like, front door or in front of your bedroom door?
Speaker 2:No. He The My my my office is closed while he sleeps in here.
Speaker 1:Oh, he's he's locked in there. Gotcha.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then he like poop right in front of the door and he does this thing where he like spreads it around. I It's like this weird thing where he like I think he doesn't wanna get in trouble so he tries to like do something. Like
Speaker 1:hide it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. But like it It's just makes everything always this weird pattern where it's like the mound and there's like surrounded by like streaks of like I don't I don't even know to explain it. Like it's like streaks coming out from the mound but like all around it perfectly. So I feel like he goes there and like Woah. Draws a line from the center out, like, all around it for some reason.
Speaker 2:I don't know why he does that.
Speaker 1:You can smell it from your bedroom,
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's a big dog and then A nice obviously, big this room was just a disaster because it was closed and there's like no ventilation in here, really. Like, there's they kinda have my window opening.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is it better now? I mean, have you gotten the
Speaker 2:smell out? Yeah. Most of it and, I mean, I like, part of me probably just got used to it. Burning incense sticks really helps with this type of It like really drastically fixed it. Liz is on a run right now but she's gonna go pick up some like more heavy duty cleaning supplies.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's gonna look like you're trying to get rid of a body or something. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's maybe worse, maybe more difficult.
Speaker 1:But the other
Speaker 2:thing is his like poops haven't been super solid lately like Oh, no. It wasn't like yeah. If it was a solid poop, would it actually to be honest, like a solid dog poop is pretty easy to clean. It's like a little like spot left over, it's fine.
Speaker 1:Sounds super easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. This was definitely somewhere in the middle on that on that spectrum of stools.
Speaker 1:When I said we had a lot to talk about, this was not on my punch list of things. Yeah. But that is I know how that can take up a day. I mean, it can just kinda like dominate your thoughts for
Speaker 2:a day
Speaker 1:when you have to deal with something like that first thing.
Speaker 2:I mean, we very explicitly got him because we were like, let's like work up to having a kid. And this was like a little simulation of like having to wake up randomly and dealing with poop. I
Speaker 1:don't think I've ever had to deal with anything that bad with my two children. So Really? I mean, not like feces all over the floor and spread around.
Speaker 2:But I imagine there's, like, a lot
Speaker 1:of poop getting in places. So there and I can remember times, like, the blowouts where it just, like, the diaper wasn't big enough and it just shoots up the back. That stuff's really gross. You kind of forget about it though. It's funny.
Speaker 2:No. You get used to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I the moment, you think, like, this is the worst experience of my life and I'll never forget it. And then, like, a few years later, I don't know, they're cute. Maybe just kinda get over it.
Speaker 2:My friend has a story where in the middle of the night, half asleep, he like like, right at the beginning with his first kid, so he didn't know like all the little tricks. He lifted her up like this in front of to like hold her in front of him.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:And she peed directly into his mouth.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a tale as old as time. You've seen that in the movies even. Like, they hold up the baby and it just pees on their face. But in the mouth, that's that's tough.
Speaker 2:Never hold Never hold baby. In front yeah. But, yeah, that was my morning.
Speaker 1:Well, that sounds like a fun morning. It does not sound like a fun morning. I actually woke up, like, an hour and a half earlier than normal, which sounds like is that what yours was, like, an hour and a half early? Is that what you said?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I woke up I normally woke up by 05:30, I was up at four just like bright eyed, could not sleep anymore. So I got up.
Speaker 2:Are you excited about something?
Speaker 1:No. That's the thing. Like, normally, like, if I have a hard time sleeping, it's because of the thing I'm ready to to work on. I wouldn't say I'm gonna particularly like, I'm excited about each individual thing I'm working on now. Like, I'm excited generally about my work, but I'm not like there's not a thing that's, like, gonna get me out of bed.
Speaker 1:So it was kinda weird. I haven't had that feeling for a bit. I don't love it because I used to sleep, like, six hours a night a lot. Like, I just I would prioritize time in my office working over health. And I felt like I could do that for a while.
Speaker 1:Like, I could I could do a few months of six hours at night and be fine. But the more I've, like, read the science and the papers, your favorite studies, I know that you love the studies, it's just, like, not good for you to to not give yourself enough sleep. So I hate doing it. But when you can't sleep, you can't sleep. If like, in that moment, I'm not going back to sleep, so I might as well get up.
Speaker 2:I, I never have ever had that problem of like not being able to sleep.
Speaker 1:Oh, really?
Speaker 2:Like, I fall asleep immediately and I can really stay asleep forever through anything, an earthquake, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Interesting. That sounds like a superpower. Like, I fall asleep fast. Yeah. Casey hates how easy I can fall asleep because it takes her a lot of she has to, like, work out really hard in a day.
Speaker 1:If she doesn't have a really good workout, then it's hard for her to fall asleep at night. Just her mind is very active, like a puppy. I always can fall asleep. Like, if I lay down my head on a pillow, I will fall asleep. But I've had a hard time staying asleep especially as I get excited about things.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Speaking of waking up, I think it reminded me of this thing. So I think the most scared I've ever been in my life was, so I was it was when I was living in New York. I was asleep and it was around like five or 6AM. It was like the loudest explosion I have ever heard, like a super super loud like explosion and like the windows were rattling and I was like, oh my
Speaker 1:god, we like you hear that?
Speaker 2:We were hit by a bomb or like nuke went off. And like, think a few weeks before that, like that, I don't know if you remember like some some, I think it was like a chemical plant in Lebanon exploded and I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do remember that.
Speaker 2:That's like a crazy huge explosion, right? Like, I imagine being completely asleep and then just Waking up to the explosion ever. And I was just like, what the and then but it didn't seem like I couldn't see anything. There was like nothing visible. And it was just as like really weird, they call it like a bomb lightning or something.
Speaker 2:It's like pretty rare.
Speaker 1:Woah.
Speaker 2:But it's like this crazy crazy loud lightning thunder situation. But it is like the
Speaker 1:loudest Like it just hit really close
Speaker 2:to you? Everyone, like everyone in Downtown Manhattan had the same experience. Like it's that loud. I don't even know where it hit. It might not even been that close to me but it
Speaker 1:is Yeah. Like
Speaker 2:I heard the crawler
Speaker 1:arm kind showing off
Speaker 2:of lightning. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wild. I've never heard of this.
Speaker 2:Terrifying to wake up to. I was like, oh my god, I'm gonna die. Like, I wake up and I see like the World Trade Center right right right from my window, like, that's where I live and I was
Speaker 1:like Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, like, it got hit or something.
Speaker 1:Like the new one, you mean? Yeah. The new one. Yeah. Just you you pointing out like the the anytime like I learned of a new a new thing that I feel like I should have known, like that knowledge gap, especially like a natural phenomenon.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of have you heard of a moonbow?
Speaker 2:No. Never heard of that.
Speaker 1:So there's another kind of rainbow that happens at night, like in the moonlight. It's like purple and blue, and it only happens in Hawaii. And you're gonna have to look it up because I can't remember the science behind It it's mind boggling that there's, like, a specific rainbow that only can happen in one little island in the world. But it's called a moonbow, and we discovered it. We were when we went to Maui, we were doing the drive up Haleakala.
Speaker 1:It's the, like,
Speaker 2:the mountain up over clouds. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That was a good time. We're driving up at night. I mean, like, in the early hours of the morning before the sun is up. And we see this what looks like a rainbow, but it's like purple and it's it doesn't look
Speaker 2:Like around the moon?
Speaker 1:No. It's like a this is shaped like a a rainbow would be like on the horizon.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:And we're like googling, like, in the world is that? Like, what is a rainbow at night? It's a moonbow. It's wild. So I think it I think it's only Hawaii.
Speaker 2:I can't believe Hawaii exists. It's just like every it just has every crazy thing possible.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like a moonbow now. Like, it already has volcanoes, has a crater, like
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think doesn't Maui have, like, every one of the different climates or something? It has some crazy climate diversity. Like, different parts of Maui experience all these different micro climates.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I think we've talked about this before, but my main memory was thinking, like like, on that that drive that you did, you could stop anywhere and just walk into the woods and you'll come across something that would be like the main attraction somewhere else. Like, just like the most beautiful waterfall you've ever seen but that's just
Speaker 1:like Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:A side thing in Maui.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did. We talked about the road to Hana probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was a good time. Okay. We actually have stuff to talk about and we're just we're just like just we're small talking
Speaker 2:but like
Speaker 1:there's there's things. Well, you sent me a message yesterday about Boomi. Let's talk about that because I was sad to hear. Well, maybe not sad to hear. I wanna hear your
Speaker 2:So me and Liz were talking yesterday and we are probably gonna pivot from not probably, we're definitely gonna pivot from what we had been working on. I feel like in the past year, I've learned so much about mostly myself, like like a little bit about business but it's like 50% about business but like 50% also myself. Again, it's not anything new, of course. It's the thing I was complaining about the other day, like every time I go to start a company, I'm like, I've learned all the lessons and then you like really learn them again. And you're like, this time I really understand it.
Speaker 2:But it's all stuff that you've heard a million times before but like, I hit a threshold of like, true like understanding with it and a lot of that was like kind of in conflict with what Boomi was. Yeah. So would say like some of the fundamental things, you know, again, it's like mostly Liz working on it full time, like I just kind of worked on it here and there. But even with that, I had like this interesting side by side comparison where I had all this work that I was doing for SST and I was work I had this work that was doing for Boomi and the quality gap is like insane. It's like the stuff I do for SST is so so so so much better.
Speaker 2:And fundamentally, the key difference is that it was a product for myself. I built the stuff I built for SST is for myself. Yeah. And the level of motivation I have is just like, it doesn't it's like, you can't even compare it. And then two, just like, I don't need to spend a bunch of time understanding the user.
Speaker 2:Of course, I have questions here and there that I talk to people about but Yeah. Fundamentally, like, I know, like, I really deeply understand, like, is needed and what's good because I'm just building it for myself. Yeah. And if you step back, choosing to not build for yourself means you're, like, crazy, like, it's a crazy handicap that you're just accepting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The communication barriers, like, you you're gonna now have to get all that information from someone else and that reduces the friction and the lossiness of communication.
Speaker 2:And then beyond that, it's it's a prod like what Boomi so just for context, what Boomi was originally or is right now is it's a product for a specific type of like healthcare type business. Liz used to work at companies that were in this category. So if and you think that's good and it is good because she has a lot of content what's needed, but she no longer works at those companies. Yeah. So she's no longer a user using our product every single day, right?
Speaker 2:Yep. So it's interesting because I would say actually most people are not users of their own product. I think most companies build for some kind of niche and there's no it's like weird to expect your employees to like somehow need the product.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2:So I don't think it's like a universal thing, everyone has to do this but just in my personal situation, I've just seen this like crazy gap between these two and I'm like, I'm basically saying that I'm choosing to build a business where the product is gonna be 10 times worse and that like just doesn't doesn't click.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Then the second thing is, so Jay is I mentioned before, Jay's been reading the Henry Ford book and there's this line in there that he mentioned and it's just like stuck in my head for the past two months. And I feel like it explains so much of a lot of the challenges I've had in general, not just at at this company but like just widely.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he says that, his advice is if you're an inventor, go work on something everyone can use. And it's so simple but I'm like, that's actually clicks with me a lot. Like, I wanna build something where every single one of my friends can use it. It's not like this weird niche thing that Yeah. Only some of my friends can use.
Speaker 2:Yep. And like, Liz brought up in a different way where she was like, I don't ever wanna be at a party and have someone ask what we do and then have it be this
Speaker 1:like Eyes closed over.
Speaker 2:Really complicated thing you can't really explain. It's not even that that's boring. It's like we couldn't even explain the previous thing because it was so like in in a weird niche.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because the person you're talking to doesn't have the context. Just like you don't really Yeah. Have the context to the same thing you're you're talking about.
Speaker 2:So it's like a proxy for like if you can feel comfortable explaining to someone at a party, that's a good proxy for like are you building something that's like fairly universal? Yeah. And obviously it's a spectrum like the most extreme end of the spectrum is like building a phone. Like that's something that everybody in the world literally would have. But even something like SST is way broader than a lot of stuff that I've worked at, right?
Speaker 2:Because Oh yeah. The target there is like potentially every developer in the world. Like there's not Yeah. We we have to like be amazing to actually hit that but there's a shot at hitting every developer in the world. So I've like really learned that this idea of focusing on a niche is not what I wanna do.
Speaker 2:And the one clear mistake we did and this is probably the biggest lesson is everyone knows that when you get started, you have to scope down your products to be an MVP. Mhmm. It's very easy to do that by scoping down your market instead of scoping down your product. Oh. So one thing we did, we kept scoping down like, oh, instead of like serving all of healthcare, we just serve like this one specific part and then like in that we just kept slicing it down and that's how we got to like a theoretically simple MVP but the reality of that is like, you just kinda eliminate your future, like, dude, like, don't have anywhere to go.
Speaker 2:And Yeah. Your product actually doesn't even get that much simpler. Like, it's still, like, a really complicated product. So it's just, like, it's so obvious in hindsight, but it's like Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:What we actually do is figure out a simple product.
Speaker 1:It's like, it's a complicated product for a small group of people. So it's kinda like the worst of both ends. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. It's not the worst situation because this isn't the type of the benefit of doing this type of thing is like the revenue per customer is a lot bigger. So it's not like Yeah. We like did all this for like a $10 a month customer, right?
Speaker 1:No, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think the decision we made was with our existing customers, there was an opportunity to continue building what they wanted and we would like grow even just like the existing customers we have, they would just start paying like four or five times more. Yeah. But we decided, okay, we're not gonna chase that because even if we do that, there's like no clear way to like get a lot bigger. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's that like will be the same amount of work as anything else that has like a much bigger opportunity. Yeah. So we have actually some ideas for the direction we wanna go. Like now that like, I'm able to define all these constraints of it has to be a product that I'm gonna use, it has to be a product that a lot of people can use. Maybe not every single person but you know, a lot of people, they might not like it but it could actually make sense for them to use.
Speaker 2:So we have some some ideas in that. But those constraints have been really helpful.
Speaker 1:So that's the that's the the next move. That's what I was kinda gonna head to is what's next like
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Doesn't have to be specific things you're gonna work on but like, you're just gonna sort of like find a new market, new product, but generally, like, build a SaaS type thing. Is that the
Speaker 2:We're not actually sure because, like, the reality is is, like, Liz can work Liz is on this full time. Like, that's like a full time there's a lot of resources that we can allocate just like her full time effort. So it can be anything and we're considering some stuff that's like a little bit weirder potentially. Oh. But the thing that I mean, I can just share what what's clicking
Speaker 1:for Yeah. I didn't wanna pry too hard because I I guess it's like already a pretty vulnerable conversation. I didn't wanna make you like spill it all out but
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah yeah. No. So okay. So this is something that okay. So the idea that's really clicking for us is it's funny because it's not novel at all and it's been tried a million times before, which is just a personal finance app.
Speaker 2:There are a million, we've all tried a million, we got really excited to use it for the first month and then just went to shit and then we never like, really kept track of stuff. And we're all all the back of our head like, I really should keep better track of this and we never do.
Speaker 1:So my immediate reaction is like, there there was like Mint so long ago
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And it took off, didn't it? Like, Mint did really well. It got acquired, I think, into it maybe. Then there have been, like, big ones since then. So it seems like every five years, there's like a new one that is the one.
Speaker 1:What's the one that Rocket Money is pretty big?
Speaker 2:I use I use Rocket Money, which was which was true, Bill, and it got acquired by Rocket Mortgage and became Rocket Rocket Money. So I would argue that like
Speaker 1:So there's acquisition potential.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But I more specifically, would say once a product is acquired, I don't think it's gonna ever be better than it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like it's always from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. But even so so I currently use Rocket Money and I think I okay, so one, this is the reason this is a good choice is like, I'm very disorganized in a lot of parts of my life but this is one of the areas where I'm like like a crazy anal person. Like I'm like, I'm like very good about this stuff. I love money, as I said many times before. I have just what I need is actually very simple and I've never found the right product.
Speaker 2:And Rocket Money is close because it happens to have some of the features that I need and does things in the way that I need. Yeah. And I honestly genuinely, I actually like learned some stuff from using the app. Like I've developed new habits from using the app that are actually good. So I would say it's like well executed.
Speaker 2:But the reality is is there is no linear for this category. No one has done like
Speaker 1:The amazing product.
Speaker 2:Amazing experience, right? Yeah. So that's one and I've seen that I can achieve that when I care about the thing. Two, here's like a very classic issue that I don't know why no one's really I haven't seen anyone try to solve this. You connect your personal finance, you connect your bank accounts, you connect your credit card
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Get it
Speaker 2:all set up. What do you see? You see a pie chart and in the pie chart, it says 30% shopping category. Every single thing in there is all your Amazon charges. Because everything from Amazon
Speaker 1:Then we get more granular.
Speaker 2:Into that.
Speaker 1:So It's true.
Speaker 2:So we think that's like a nice initial hook of just like so we have a friend where, she's also like really it seems like really like crazy anal about this stuff. Yeah. She literally downloads her Amazon order history as a CSV every month and like manually categorizes each Wow. Yeah. So now you add the concepts of LLMs that can just can just say, hey, here are like the 20 possible categories.
Speaker 2:Here's the item description. Here's the item name. What category is it? It's probably gonna do a pretty good job.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:So just having something that lets you connect Amazon and then say, okay, pipe this into a So you connect
Speaker 1:your Amazon account? I didn't even know you could do that. You can't.
Speaker 2:So that's the Oh, okay. It involves like screen scraping and stuff but Gotcha. Whatever. That's that's you can that's an obstacle you can get over.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Have a bunch of destination just like Zapier, right? Like here are my sources. I want to have an always updated Google Doc with this stuff. And that's like an in like a really small initial thing.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And from there, can like add more sources, we can add more destinations, and then we can kind of build slowly build like a full type of thing that just just for me and Liz, like just for me and Liz, what we need to run our household. Yeah. So that that's like kind of exciting for us because there's like just the other thing that I realized is when you have an idea, you wanna be drowned by like other ideas that you wanna do on top of it, right? Yeah. You have an idea where it's like, you're not immediately thinking of like a 100 things you wanna do, it's maybe not the right thing.
Speaker 2:Whereas with this, we're like, we have this other problem, we have that other problem. Like, there's just so
Speaker 1:much yeah, thing layer stuff on top forever. Yeah. So my initial thoughts. First, I mean, obviously, category could be every person. I mean, that's every person.
Speaker 1:Right? Every adult? Yeah. Two or second, whatever I said, I don't know. So I think, like, when Mint did this so long, long ago, they had to, like they would have had to, like, build out all the integrations with the banks.
Speaker 1:Right? And today, there's, like, Plaid. It's just, like, connected that's awesome. That's just such an advantage to be able to build all the actual useful stuff on top without all the plumbing.
Speaker 2:Do you know how Plaid started?
Speaker 1:They just started screen scraping also. They would just like have a web
Speaker 2:browser that would just type in your password and log in
Speaker 1:to Are you the serious?
Speaker 2:Was no like 2FA and stuff back then. Even even today, I think a lot of their integrations are still powered that way because they still ask for your password.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Yeah. You put it in your credentials.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Like, there's no OAuth. Like So
Speaker 1:they're actually just like headless browser opening the thing and are you serious?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It just
Speaker 1:Thought it's so much more sophisticated than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I've seen like, most of my my current bank Mercury, they actually implemented OAuth or some some kind of flow. It it does seem like it's OAuth and I'm like, duh, like, obviously this is how it should work. Like, why am I sending my password to Plaid? Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah. It's yeah, it's so much easier now than it was. And they like also do they also like try to like clean up the transactions and stuff. That's another thing where every single one of these apps, you do need to override some of the auto categorizations. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's always like kind of annoying to set up and I I like the idea of connecting all my stuff in one place and cleaning up the transactions in one place and then piping it to wherever I need it. Like Yeah. I wanna create a view that's like all transactions over $500 whatever for this thing. I want everything in that view to go to a Slack channel so I can see the transactions as I come in. Maybe I wanna go to a spreadsheet, maybe I wanna do whatever, like so I Yep.
Speaker 2:There's just like a lot of things that I personally need.
Speaker 1:So this might be, way beyond what you're thinking in terms of scope. But if you got into business stuff and could replace QuickBooks for me, that would be great. I'd give you all the So
Speaker 2:that we also considered that concept because that was another clear pain point I have like just and we've talked about this before, like I've tried so many different, self employed type like invoicing expense tracking products and I just keep flying back to QuickBooks because at least I know how it works. Yeah. But yeah, with this, I actually wanna see if I can get rid of the expense tracking at least in QuickBooks. I If I have everything perfectly categorized and I can just create a view that's like just transactions for my business card and then get like a report broken down by category, like just that's literally what just goes into your tax form. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. And then all I would need is like an invoicing invoice tracking thing which is like, I can find like some other Yeah. Minimal invoice tracking product for that.
Speaker 1:Man, hate that I hate seeing the charge every month for QuickBooks
Speaker 2:It's so expensive.
Speaker 1:It's so expensive and I'm just trapped. I just know I'm gonna pay it for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:It's stuck. I know.
Speaker 1:And it's just not a good product. It's just a mess.
Speaker 2:It's just so bad. Yeah. Intuit, their whole their their freaking trifecta of how it's like they own Mintz, they own QuickBooks, they own TurboTax. It's
Speaker 1:like It's the worst.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's just the pain. But but yeah, like, as we're talking, there's like a million million little little ideas.
Speaker 1:I'm excited. I'm excited for you guys. It's it's like moving I just love moving into a new house like or just moving into a a new to you house. Like, there's something about the feeling of a big change in life where you're kinda like entering new territory. Just love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's great. Plus like we've in a lot of ways, we've kind of been in denial for a while, because I just don't think the product we built was very good and I think it took us a while to like say it out loud.
Speaker 1:I can't I can't say anything. I've never seen it. So I mean, I'm not a I'm not a doctor.
Speaker 2:There's no reason for you or anyone else on planet to ever see I mean, it's it's kind of interesting though because it ended up being more of a consultancy. Like I I built like a very very generic product. Yeah. And it doesn't really need that much upkeep and Liz uses it to like almost consult with these customers, like help them do operation stuff. And she's like a consultant that comes with her own product.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So that's nice and that's like a nice fallback like, you know, she can always kind of explore that and she has like a weird specialty in this area. But it's just not like a business that's gonna be giants. And that's that's like a big thing that again, I've like always shied away from being like I've had this weird thing where I've always like would see these giant companies and I would kind of be like, oh yeah, that's probably never gonna be me, like who am I to do something like that. But lately, I've just really understood that you might as well shoot for something big because it's not any harder. Like, it's always hard no matter what it is and like, you actually don't need anything that special, really.
Speaker 2:Like, I've just seen like how stupid are and like, there's a very level success, like, regardless of that.
Speaker 1:So The bar is low. I did it just reminded me like, you're you're kinda like going into this maintenance mode with this app. Serverless apps do really well on maintenance mode
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:In my limited experience. Like, built I built a thing in the health care kind of dentist dental space. But it's like three years ago. Yeah. I think it was three years ago.
Speaker 1:Built like this app for managing it's like this big dentist office here that they have it's like a giant. It's nuts. But they manage all their patient. Like, the doctor needs them now. They whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Hygienist is cleaning them now and they just kinda, like, manage their whole whatever office workflow. So I built this app and it's all serverless stuff. I think, like, they went live with it three years ago, there's been like twice. It's maybe like every year when daylight savings happens.
Speaker 1:There's like a dependency on some stupid library that, like, their appointments disappear for two hours and then they come back. And then I guess I've never fixed it because I think that happened again this year. Anyway, that's like that's it. I mean, it's a I mean, it's one office. It's not like this giant deployment where there's just, like, bigger potential for things to go haywire.
Speaker 1:But it's pretty incredible. That was not my experience at least early in my career. Maybe part of it's just getting later in the career. But early in my career, I remember building these for people and it broke literally every month and like, just constantly having to take care of something.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We were actually talking about this exact same thing yesterday because when I was first learning serverless, I built like Calendly alternative.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Funny, like I should have just doubled down on that because cal.com came out and like became huge. Yeah. That was stupid of me.
Speaker 1:There's a few of those too, SavvyCal, sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah yeah But I would have made it open source, which was like the key key thing. And this new whatever thing we work on is also gonna be open source as well. Just again, just from like a so people can look at it and not for
Speaker 1:like Yeah.
Speaker 2:Any actual reason. But Yeah. We were talking about this yesterday yesterday too because this was when I was first, first it was my first attempt at doing anything serverless and I did everything pretty much wrong compared to how I do it now. Despite that, like, it's still up and it works and it's weird how that's like such a if it was such like a novel experience that, wow, like this thing could just continue to exist like without like, I forgot that it even existed. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and it's still fine and the same thing that you said like prior to that, I I would need some kind of monitoring up, I would need some kind of like memory alerts on for something or like Yep. Yeah. Something would kind of grow and then need to be restarted. Like it's just there's a maintenance burden was always there and it's crazy that I just have forgotten about this thing and I can still go to that URL and it works perfectly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What some might say it's the future.
Speaker 2:I think it is. Yeah. I think we're past that. I don't know. I still see people I still see debate over it.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:I mean, I yeah. I have like input that I would love to provide at some point when I've cleared it with my employer. I mean, just in terms of serverless and scaling and costs and like I don't know. I don't see a lot of the cons that you would traditionally think like, oh, don't use serverless because it's really expensive at scale or it's really whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't think any of that has affected us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm excited for you to able to talk about that more because I think so many I think the one thing that bothers me is there's kind of this these like platitudes almost that everyone says Mhmm. Where I mean, it's one of the things that you said like, oh yeah, like when you start, you use serverless and then when you get bigger Right. You can brief. And that seems like a measured smart person take.
Speaker 2:Like, you're not saying it sucks, you're saying like, oh yeah, I use it here and then I don't use it there. Yeah. But like, you're just making that up. Like, no. I don't think that's like a real thing.
Speaker 2:It just sounds reasonable because it's like fifty fifty on both sides. So people are like, it's true. The reality I think is actually kind of unreasonable which is no, like 95% of things never need to change. And it's actually the weird exception that does need to maybe rework itself at some point. And yeah, think the stuff that you work on, there's a bunch of like narrative violations like that where it's like, well, we're doing the or like the exact opposite of what you're saying makes sense at like Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, at at this amount of traffic. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see all that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Most people it's like, oh, yeah. You you'll switch off a serverless once you hire, a dev a DevOps team. It's like, why why is that a requirement?
Speaker 2:Why when you grow, do you
Speaker 1:have to hire a DevOps team? Also, you can manage your your clusters and stuff. Like, what if you didn't have to?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's just eventually you wanna like get the cost down or like it's like generic stuff like that where I'm like, okay, I know that you've actually never been in a position to make that decision because it's just like a random thing that just sounds like it makes sense. Yeah. Another one I hear constantly and I talk about this a lot where whenever a company talks about, especially like a smaller company talks about their process, like maybe they don't do certain things, maybe they don't have like a stand up or maybe they like don't do pull request reviews. Got love what they're called, PR reviews?
Speaker 2:I've had them in so long, I forgot what they're called.
Speaker 1:PR reviews? Is that right? Yeah. It sounds weird to
Speaker 2:me. Okay. Yeah. Always people being like, oh yeah, that works for you but it won't work when you're at like 200 people. And I'm like, okay, why the hell is that an assumption that you need to Yeah.
Speaker 2:As you get successful, you're also gonna have hundreds Two of 100 people. And to illustrate to what extreme that this happens in, this happened to the linear people. So like a couple weeks ago, so Linear has been a lot more public about talking about how they build their company. And there's so many of these like violations in there. Like they don't they do a lot of things that are just so different from how their companies operate.
Speaker 2:And they posted about it and again, you can't say anything to them because they just crush it on the product. Undeliverable is amazing, is it not questionable? They make money, they make a crazy amount of money for the size they are. They're just so successful in every dimension. They talked about their process and of course, there was a whole bunch of people being like, oh yeah, that'll work for you for now but like, you know, you'll see when you get so someone from Notion was like, some sales person that Notion was like, oh yeah, like we tried doing that but then after a certain size, here's all the reasons why it's not gonna work for you.
Speaker 2:And they were just like, like like, fuck off. Wait. The the funniest part is the current head the COO, the operate the COO at Linear Yeah. Worked at Notion. So someone at Notion is, like, explaining to it it's just like you cannot escape this.
Speaker 2:Like, people will always try to tell you what's best for you. And, like, even someone like Lanier can't escape that. The Lanier founders can't escape that. Like, we're all screwed. Like, people are always gonna be telling us that, oh, that's cute but it's not really gonna work, you know.
Speaker 1:Just yeah. It just pays in the modern age to have some some discernment and judgment to be able to think for yourself and just yeah. Just get off Twitter. It's just people I don't know. The the the Twitter mob that has opinions on all the things.
Speaker 1:Can I tell you like a this is totally totally jumping ship? Is that okay? Okay. This is like privilege problems or something. I don't know if I need to explain This
Speaker 2:is my favorite category of things.
Speaker 1:So I'm I'm building a home theater. And we had a home theater in our last house. And we spent all of our time in there. Granted, we didn't have kids yet, but, like, watch stuff all the time.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Loved our home theater. And as I go about specking out and ordering equipment and, like, figuring out what this theater is gonna be last time I had, like, a company do it. This time, I'm just doing it because they just they didn't do a very good job. And I just knew when they said certain products were gonna be good, they weren't, and they wouldn't be. Anyway, I'm so just taking matters in my own hands.
Speaker 1:It's kind of a fun hobby for me. But I've ordered a like, this 140 inch Stewart film screen. Amazing, like, fantastic screen that I'm very excited about. Acoustically transparent. So you put your your left center right channel speakers behind it.
Speaker 2:Behind it. Oh, cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We and that's what we did in our last house. It was a dragonfly AcoustiWeed screen, but basically the same idea. Acoustically transparent. You put your center and your left and right speakers behind it, and those get mounted in the wall.
Speaker 1:So I've ordered a screen, and I've ordered my LCR speakers. So my my front speakers. Nothing else yet. And yesterday, talking with Casey, okay, this is just it's gonna sound like a spousal, like, dispute conversation. And that's, I guess, that's kind of what it is.
Speaker 1:But but it's it's on my mind, and I just I feel like I need to get
Speaker 2:it out here.
Speaker 1:We're talking through the theater, and she doesn't want it be surround sound. What is a home theater without surround like
Speaker 2:Oh, no. Without surround? My god. This would, like, drive me insane because I love surround sound. I love it so much.
Speaker 1:I'm just so into sound. And, like, spatial audio is such a cool thing. You get the Atmos speakers up in the ceiling.
Speaker 2:And just top. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. Like, the feeling of hearing something behind you when you're watching a movie. Yeah. In her eyes, we should have this 140 inches screen and this amazing projector. And then maybe, I don't know, just put a soundbar up below the screen.
Speaker 1:Would that work in in the theater? No. Well, it wouldn't because I've ordered speakers. But also, please know, this is what's gonna happen, Dax. Could you convince her that it's good?
Speaker 2:Wait a Hang on.
Speaker 1:What's her
Speaker 2:what's her reasoning? Is it just like a complexity, a price thing?
Speaker 1:No. No. No. She's very sensitive to sound. And I know this, but we had a theater, and she loved it.
Speaker 1:I just turned things up too loud, but if I can change. I really can't. I can I cannot feel it? She says I like to feel it, and I do. I like to feel it.
Speaker 1:But I will I'll convince myself that I don't like to feel it. But it's gotta be around me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Know mean? Exactly. So you the you're not trying the thing that's amazing about surround sound isn't the loudness, it's the immersion.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's what I'm It
Speaker 2:doesn't need to be loud even if it's just like a little bit of because I mean, we had a even in our previous apartment, we had rear speakers and like, they would be pretty quiet but you would just hear like just stuff going on there every once in a while and it made a big difference, immersion thing. So it sounds to be loud.
Speaker 1:So she cites our previous theater that the rears were too loud and you couldn't hear the dialogue. And I'm like, yeah, that was their problem. They messed it up. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They didn't they didn't do a good job. I'll do a good job. But then she says she doesn't like surround sound. It trigger it she it bothers her.
Speaker 1:Just sounds around her trigger.
Speaker 2:Wait. So do the rear speakers go in the wall? Yes. Okay. So just put them in the wall and she won't know they're there.
Speaker 2:I
Speaker 1:mean, you're banking on that she doesn't listen to this podcast, which she doesn't. But but also that she can't hear anything behind her.
Speaker 2:Just be just be like, oh, that's like real life noises. Those bullets are actually flying around outside of
Speaker 1:your house. That's funny.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's tough, though, man. That's like
Speaker 1:I don't know what to do. Yeah. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:For me, the whole effort is not even is not worth it if we're
Speaker 1:in the steps. This huge screen coming. We can't have this giant visual, this amazing picture, and no audio. The audio is so important.
Speaker 2:It's It's more important.
Speaker 1:A bigger part It's more important than the visual. Yeah. More immersive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:She disagrees, but that's what I say. I So don't know why I told you all this. I just need you to solve this problem for me.
Speaker 2:Liz is also sensitive to sound and it's got worse after COVID and actually got worse for all of us, I think. Because I think we just we I remember I don't if I shared this already but again, we loved to go into the theater. Big thing me and my friends always did.
Speaker 1:Yep. Same.
Speaker 2:We couldn't do it during COVID. So then once the theaters opened back up, the first movie we saw there was King Kong versus Godzilla, which is like the loudest movie you could possibly go to, in IMAX also.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:And we I like couldn't stand like the last twenty minutes. Like I felt Oh, like so it was loud. Like was just so so so loud.
Speaker 1:Well, you're not you're not helping me here, Dax. This is not helping my kids.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the thing. It's that's just a theater thing. That wasn't like Yeah. A universal
Speaker 1:We can control a volume. We can turn it down. That that argument has not worked so far though.
Speaker 2:My point in saying this is that I can be empathetic to that because I've like Okay. Seen how annoying it is. But yeah. It's not a loudness thing. It's it's really not.
Speaker 1:It's a Yeah. It's no, it's a quality.
Speaker 2:It's a it's a that once they're in there, it's gonna become a loudness thing. So this whole thing is about trust at the end No. Of
Speaker 1:You convince me of it and then they're here. You have all of it set up and then you can turn it up when you want to. And I'm saying like, what if I wanna listen to it when it's loud? Maybe maybe Aison wants to listen to it loud, but like just the two of us. And then when you're here
Speaker 2:Yeah. When she's here, just turn off the rear speakers if that's a problem.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's brilliant. Oh, I knew I should tell you this. You'd have an answer. That's the answer.
Speaker 2:We can turn on physically unplug them too to, like, prove that
Speaker 1:they're I unplugged mean, no. Because they're in the wall. That would be very hard.
Speaker 2:Well, but they go into the receiver. Right?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. But she could Okay. So she'd go She's gonna like in a whole another room behind the theater.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's not that she would literally do this but
Speaker 1:Okay. Just Gotcha.
Speaker 2:Just she has control over what happens.
Speaker 1:But I could also just have like we could just have like a stereo mode and you just like, we turn on stereo mode when she's in the theater. I love it. Okay. Thank you. I think you solved my problem.
Speaker 2:If if that fly if that is a reasonable compromise for her.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:Because I
Speaker 1:think it's
Speaker 2:about trust.
Speaker 1:Have any sound coming behind her. It will all be in front of her. I I couldn't even explain to her, like, why a soundbar would not do justice for a video like that. She's like, what? You can hear it?
Speaker 1:Like, you'd be able to hear the the words. Who cares? Oh my god.
Speaker 2:Like, you know there's
Speaker 1:more to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Know. I know.
Speaker 1:To her, it's just like, can I understand what they said? Cool. But it's it's good.
Speaker 2:We Me and Liz have this thing where we joke we, like, have, like, these joke titles for each other and like for our different areas of responsibilities and I'm the master of entertainment.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice.
Speaker 2:So I just or is it master of am I we have a few different things. I know a master of time and that it's my job to get us to places on time. Oh, yeah. Because Nice. She cannot do that.
Speaker 2:But also master of entertainment. So anything in this category, she just is like, does not Yeah.
Speaker 1:You got it.
Speaker 2:She checks out entirely. Mhmm. And I just try to deliver, a good experience for everyone.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've apparently, I've broken that trust at some point. So I am not given the master of entertainment, label.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's now it's now a what's it called? It's now a committee of entertainment.
Speaker 1:Yes. It's very much a committee. Committee. I can hope that it's a committee, it may not be, it may still be a master, I'm just not the master.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Damn, that would, I I can really empathize with you in this situation because I can really imagine like how desperately I would want the best setup and, like, someone saying I can't have it would just yeah.
Speaker 1:I I have always had, like, a huge emphasis on audio. Going back to literally my first job ever, I was a lifeguard in high school. And I used literally all my money that summer on a car stereo. Like, put every dollar I earned as a lifeguard into this car stereo, and it was incredible. Now I sound like a total nerd.
Speaker 1:I was the guy in high school that cared about his car
Speaker 2:But Is that nerdy? That doesn't sound nerdy to me.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Maybe it's not nerdy. I don't know. It I was just super into sound. I'm, like, listening to this is nerdy.
Speaker 1:Like, James Taylor. Like, super nerdy, like, old people music. But I just loved good audio. And then every computer setup, every, like, entertainment setup we've ever had, we've had giant awesome audio. And it's just hard.
Speaker 1:It's hard not to have that. And she knows that. She's using it against me. She knows that I've always invested in this. She thought I regretted
Speaker 2:it though.
Speaker 1:She's like, think of all the times you've put all that money into audio and and then like, look, did it really pay out? I'm like, yes, it did. I loved every bit of it. She thinks I regretted because I one time I said that
Speaker 2:it was stupid that I put
Speaker 1:all my money into a car stereo when I was in high school, and it was stupid. I still loved it. I wouldn't do anything differently. Doesn't mean it wasn't stupid. But
Speaker 2:You're like, I should have invested in Apple stock. Right? Exactly. Yeah. No.
Speaker 2:The audio makes a huge difference and I maybe this isn't obvious but for watching movies, the immersion, it's like the audio will go 10 times further Oh, for than video. You Yeah. Could even have like a ten eighty p thing if you have good audio, like it will feel pretty insane. But also, like, just get a four k thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Oh, man. Projectors have come projectors have come so far in the last few years. Like, we built ours, like, ten years ago and that just the amount of projector you get for the money now is is kinda I
Speaker 2:mean, that pixel shifting thing too, like, that's what we have in our bedroom. I know it's not like the full four k, but the pixel shifting four k projectors are like a third or fourth the price. Yeah. And like, it's really hard to tell the difference between that and like authentic. I mean, it's just that like, and we also have the the the short throw.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Because we
Speaker 2:don't like, for us, we got that as a good flexible setup because this is when we're going back and forth between Miami and we're like, no matter what house we live in, there's gonna be some wall.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you if you don't know you're gonna have a dedicated like full length space, then that's way more flexible.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this like short throw four k projector covers our whole wall and it like looks
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Looks fantastic. And it wasn't even that expensive and yeah. Like, you're never gonna get a TV that size.
Speaker 1:And I actually before, like, before we started building what is going to be the theater, I I thought, like, maybe we'll just put a TV in there. Like, get a TV big enough. Like, I don't know. Do they make huge TVs these days? And then then just, like, I can chill and not do the whole theater thing and, like, obsess over it.
Speaker 1:But then it's like that room, that wall, they're not TVs big enough. They really aren't. You can't get a TV that like fills that wall and it would just look super mousy and and then the room, like, you'd be so far away from it. So and then once you start on the projector route, it's you're all in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We did invest in like a really good TV a couple years ago.
Speaker 1:We have
Speaker 2:like a really good OLED one. That was also a shocking thing because I cannot believe how thin TVs have gotten.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like the TV we have, it's an LG OLED, just one of the LG ones. It's it's like too thin. When we were transporting it, the, from from New York, the movers spent like twenty or thirty minutes wrapping it because it is like super super thin. It is like almost paper thin. It's like thinner than your phone, like thinner than any other electronic device you have.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, do they need to go this far?
Speaker 1:Like, is
Speaker 2:there like a benefit to go this far? Because I don't need it to be Yeah. This thin at
Speaker 1:It There's like so many things that can improve each year.
Speaker 2:It literally flexes. Like, if you like lift it, it like bends and stuff and I'm like, it just feels so delicate.
Speaker 1:That's the OLED specifically, right? Like, can't do that with like an LCD. Yeah, yeah, exactly. With OLED, they can make them super thin.
Speaker 2:And it does look cool against the wall but And we did do like a flush mount and everything so it's like right up against the wall but Nice. Oh, you know what we also got? We also have the the rear lighting behind the TV.
Speaker 1:Oh, is that nice?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It actually is really nice like
Speaker 1:It's like connected to the like it knows what the picture is showing it, colors based on That's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So like, so that this looks like whatever colors at the edge of the screen and like Yeah. That part of So spills over. Yeah. Especially when you're when you're watching like a really stylized movie and like you turn off all lights, like it looks very cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's obviously a similar effect to a projector because a projector is, like, emitting a lot of light and covering the whole wall anyway. But, yeah, it just kinda makes it feel bigger than it is.
Speaker 1:I love movies. I love, like, the theater. I always did. Mhmm. Casey's just so not into it that I I find myself, like, caring less about it every year.
Speaker 1:But now it's kind of been, like, perked back up just this putting the theater together. It's it's I'm remembering how much I care about movies. Yeah. It is like a giant waste of time and like objectively, she can point that out and it's like, I guess so. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're not really like interacting.
Speaker 2:Compared to what? Do you guys not talk during movies? Like, me and Liz talk constantly the whole movie.
Speaker 1:I'm not really a big movie talker. Yeah. I'd rather like watch
Speaker 2:the movie. Well, I mean, okay. Some like when we're at the theater, we definitely are not talking as much. It's usually like No. It's bigger movies.
Speaker 2:But at home, we're like just talking
Speaker 1:You just about talk through it, And you can pay attention. You can like know what's going on or do you just not care?
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny because yesterday, so very specifically me and Liz love talking through movies and that's like something that we like enjoy doing together and we've talked about that a lot. But yesterday she was like, you know what, I'm gonna be honest, I'm tired of pretending that I can both talk and pay attention to her. So, yeah, certain scenes like, definitely if if it's like very critical to the plot, like, I think we'll have to quiet down for but Yeah. I have no issue with it. But yeah, I I can recognize it's challenging.
Speaker 2:But we also always have subtitles on so like Oh. Me talking isn't obscuring. Yeah. I see what you're You're
Speaker 1:reading and I just I I don't turn on subtitles. But also, like, trying to read and have a conversation and keep up with the plot. No. I just can't do it.
Speaker 2:Oh, really? Oh, it's very I feel it's very I think it feels pretty normal.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think you're just kinda prioritizing, like, the relationship, the communication more than the entertainment, which is good. It's just like
Speaker 2:Well, I'm saying that's why it doesn't feel like a complete waste of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I got you.
Speaker 2:It's a blame. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good.
Speaker 2:But I've also we're also kinda going through a little bit of a shift with our movie stuff. So I think, for a while now, I feel like I've I've seen every movie I wanted to see.
Speaker 1:But only because I had this weird thing where
Speaker 2:to be honest, we were we definitely watched good movies but only like obviously good movies that were like extremely mainstream, like a Christopher Nolan movie that, of course Yeah. It's like gonna be a fantastic movie but also like everyone's gonna see it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Like a Netflix special, movie where there's, some hiking and that girl No. Not like that.
Speaker 2:Unbreakable. Don't I don't really understand
Speaker 1:what a good good movie. Like, where you know it's really gonna be good. No.
Speaker 2:I I I don't even wanna talk about that. Like I can't really I like don't even understand the thought process behind that.
Speaker 1:I don't either. I honestly don't. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But so and then the rest of movies we watch are kinda like junk food movies where like, you know, not necessarily good but they're like easy to decide to watch. Yeah. And I've had this weird mental block where I knew there was like a massive set of like genuinely good movies that I know that once I was sorry to watch them, I would really deeply enjoy. But as like weird mental block of like choosing those movies, we I'd always be like, let me pick this like easier to choose movie instead. Like, I know what what to expect.
Speaker 2:But we finally got over that in the last month and we've been using my friend really got into this app, Letterboxd, which is like, just like the app for like movie, nerdy movie people. Okay. And it's helped me discover like like genuinely really good movies. And we've just been watching stuff off that and it's like, wow. We're There's like a huge collection of like awesome stuff that we just haven't seen.
Speaker 2:So we've been going through that and like watching like really good movies. And when you think of a really good movie, you like imagine something kind of boring. But some of these are like comedy, some of these are like really funny, like, just kind of really excellent stuff. So yeah, it just feels like we have like a reawakening for
Speaker 1:You said it's called Letterboxd? And it's just like gives you recommendations?
Speaker 2:No. So their thing is it's not algorithmic at all. So there's not a single portion
Speaker 1:It's editorial.
Speaker 2:That is algorithmic. It's all user generated stuff. So Oh. It's just like there's like a culture on the app and it's like a pretty good culture. Like, it's not like so pretentious where it's just like these weird obscure movies that, you know, you have to like be a film major to understand why it's good.
Speaker 2:But it's also like just really good stuff that I think is also pretty accessible. Like people make these lists of like people just like think of these like interesting categories of movies and I'll make lists for them so you can then like explore like stuff in that category for a while. Yeah. I've just found just really really good stuff. It hasn't been hard to find stuff there that I've really enjoyed and so we've just been going through that.
Speaker 1:Okay. I'm gonna check it out because we're terrible at picking movies.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We watched one yester or two days ago called, it's called The Banshees of Insuren or it's named after his Irish town and that takes place in the nineteen twenties in Ireland. But it was so brilliant because the premise is, it's a super small town, extremely simple life, like everyone has their farm, they go to the pub, 2PM, everyone knows each other. Yeah. There's no decisions to make in life, like you know your job, you know your role, everyone's like really happy and it feels like it it seems like an amazing peaceful life And there's these two guys, one's an older one, one's like more our age and they were friends and they would hang out every single day.
Speaker 2:And randomly one day, the one friend was like, I don't wanna be friends with you anymore. Don't talk to me ever again. And they're trying to understand like what the hell is going on and like, he explains that he has this extremely modern feeling that just is so out of place in this time, which is this isn't the best use of my time. I have a limited amount of time left. How can I maximize like
Speaker 1:Oh, wow?
Speaker 2:What I spend my time on? Is talking like making small talk with you for hours? Is that a good use of my time? No. He's like a violinist.
Speaker 2:He's like, I wanna like, I should be spending my time, like, creating great works of music and like, he's like hyper optimizing like every single
Speaker 1:day. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:And it's so crazy out of place in this society where like, the question of like, what are you supposed to be doing with your time does not even enter people's minds. And he like is he's like, you can tell this guy's depressed because it's entered his mind and he's thinking about the stuff. And the other guy's like obviously very upset. And it's like this brilliant like exploration of this concept and it's like so relevant to and it's it's a comedy, like it's it's pretty funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It just makes you think about how much yeah. Maybe it's like our circles, the the higher achiever types.
Speaker 2:I mean, just everyone has so much choice in every single thing in their life and like just contrast contrast it it with with all all these these people people that just seem so happy despite having no freedom. Yeah. It makes you like think about, yeah, we can talk about this more another time but like Liz found this philosopher that like this is his whole thing and she was explaining this to me after we watched the movie where he like talks about how there's so much depression and anxiety. Even when we do things that are traditional, we like turn it into this like stupid way of looking at it like, we're always like self improving or like, you know, working or like anything we do is an act of like optimizing ourself. Yep.
Speaker 1:Yep. Even when we're trying to like mimic the times of old, like, community and with yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. It's always We're kind of faking
Speaker 1:it all and it's all just like for self improvement.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this guy this this guy, this philosopher is like, really against social media and he's not on it at all.
Speaker 2:And Liz feels like it explains literally, like, she's actually had a lot of these thoughts herself and I feel like it feels like it like perfectly puts words to this. And this movie coincidentally happened to kinda I I feel like it definitely It seemed to me like that was a theme. I don't know if we were projecting that onto it but like to me, the the joke was that this is just like a super modern dude in like this weirdly traditional world.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Uh-huh. Oh, okay. So that is a topic for another day because this is something Casey and I, think we've talked
Speaker 2:about it. But we talked about a lot, like,
Speaker 1:just modern struggles in terms of our very connected world. I really have to pee and I wanna talk for longer because I have more I wanna talk about. But we're gonna have to save it because I just have to really pee. I really have
Speaker 2:to pee. Pee and come back if you wanna keep going.
Speaker 1:I could pee and come back. Do you wanna keep going? Yeah. Keep let's keep going. Okay.
Speaker 1:Just pause. Okay. I'll be
Speaker 2:right back.
