RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III 
Dax Raad [00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.
[00:00:27] Intro: I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.
[00:00:36] Robbie Wagner: What’s up everybody. Welcome to your favorite podcast today.fm
[00:00:41] Robbie Wagner: with your hosts. Oh,
[00:00:46] Chuck Carpenter: about tomorrow? Is it even good? I may not even live till tomorrow. So there’s nothing as promised.
[00:00:51] Robbie Wagner: it’s always a real possibility, but yes, the joke was because we have one of the hosts of tomorrow FM, I guess that’s not the official show name, but that is the thing that [00:01:00] everyone sees.
[00:01:00] Dax Raad: I think we’re like concerned, we’re like, do we just refer to us tomorrow? I think we’re dropping the whole name. So just backstory. This wasn’t a podcast that me and Adam started together. if you guys don’t know, Adam, when he gets into something, he’ll spend 1 or 2 months in like a frenzy going deeper into it than anyone ever has.
[00:01:20] Dax Raad: He’s So when he was like, Oh, I’m going to like, do stuff online. He, of course had someone design, like a full set of designs and graphics and music for a theoretical podcast that he might do one day. And then a year later he was like, Hey, I have all this stuff. Like, do you just want to make a podcast together?
[00:01:41] Dax Raad: Yeah. So I was like, okay.
[00:01:43] Chuck Carpenter: let’s make our conversations public. So yeah. I mean, you’ve been on before, but let’s say today is the first episode for a listener and folks are live streaming right now. Why don’t you give a little intro as to who you are and what you do.
[00:01:56] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:01:58] Dax Raad: I am, don’t really know [00:02:00] what I am anymore. I guess I’m, I’m a traditionally a software engineer, but the type of work I do has gotten weirder and weirder over the last couple of years. Uh, primarily work on a framework called SST it’s open source, do a lot of open source work. but then do just a bunch of weird content stuff for the software engineering community in general.
[00:02:20] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You’re like a professional Twitter poster. I guess you schedule a lot of stuff, because it just
[00:02:26] Dax Raad: I’d never schedule, I’d never use that
[00:02:29] Chuck Carpenter: You
[00:02:29] Chuck Carpenter: just, you just think about it and do this? I’m quite surprised. You feel, it seems like you’re a planner.
[00:02:35] Dax Raad: No. If you look at my tweeting patterns, you’ll see that I’ll tweet like, Five things within like three minutes of each other. And it’s usually because I’m just sitting there for an hour like reading stuff, And then I’ll just be like, Putting stuff, Just posting stuff off of whatever thoughts I have.
[00:02:51] Chuck Carpenter: Alright.
[00:02:52] Dax Raad: Yeah. That’s My
[00:02:54] Chuck Carpenter: Interesting. That’s
[00:02:54] Dax Raad: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that that was a perception. Good to
[00:02:57] Chuck Carpenter: From me, but you know, I’m stupid. So, [00:03:00] uh, today, though, let’s uh, speaking of stupid, this is the only thing I know anything about, so let me just shine for a moment. today we’ll be having the Glenmorangie, A Tale of Tokyo. It’s a highland single mount scotch.
[00:03:13] Chuck Carpenter: It is not age stated, but is 92 proof, , which is higher for Scotch. I kind of, I like that. That was part of it. , and then it’s been aged in bourbon, sherry, and mizunara oak casks, which is a particular kind of oak. We had like a bourbon or something finished in those kind of casks, didn’t we, Robbie?
[00:03:31] Robbie Wagner: We’ve had Mizunara once or twice. We, uh, have had Amberana as well.
[00:03:37] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, well that’s, no.
[00:03:39] Robbie Wagner: it’s all confusing. It’s all wood.
[00:03:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, so it’s just, , bourbon is traditionally an American oak, and so this is just a different kind of oak that they used. A lot of scotch normally is, , aged in, , used bourbon barrels also, so American oak tends to get associated with a lot of different scotches.
[00:03:56] Chuck Carpenter: So with this one, they’re using a couple of different things for finishes, [00:04:00] and then a different, , oak altogether from Japan, ergo the Tokyo thing. But, , for those watching in the streaming, I actually selected this. For, picked it for you, Dax, for a couple of different reasons. One, and I mean this in the nicest way, you’re a little bit of a bitch when it comes to
[00:04:15] Dax Raad: Yeah,
[00:04:16] Chuck Carpenter: I wanted something with like a smoother finish to it.
[00:04:18] Chuck Carpenter: And I saw this design, like this box, and it reminded me of those silk, either silk
[00:04:24] Dax Raad: Yeah. No,
[00:04:29] Chuck Carpenter: um, yeah, I don’t know. There you go.
[00:04:32] Dax Raad: it’s perfect. I, yeah, the box is really cool. I’m going to keep it. it looks nice. So
[00:04:38] Robbie Wagner: these double walled fancy glasses from Norland. Check them out if you want some. We’ve always had these, but now everyone has them as they come on the show.
[00:04:47] Chuck Carpenter: and if you are lucky enough to be a guest, you get this and whiskey.
[00:04:52] Dax Raad: So it’s a double wall to prevent like my hand temperature from affecting the
[00:04:57] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, so inside it says
[00:04:58] Robbie Wagner: a difference.
[00:04:59] Chuck Carpenter: [00:05:00] Inside it’s a traditional Glencarne shape, which is that sort of tulipy thing, which is supposed to give you the aromas while capturing some of the alcohol, so it’s not like so burny and harsh in your nose, and then double wall so that you’re touching it. You can hold it normal without having that whole like, I’m warming up the whiskey, and so it does stay room temperature.
[00:05:21] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know, science or something.
[00:05:22] Dax Raad: Yeah, and last time I was here. I proactively put ice in it and that was like a big no no. So this time well, it wasn’t a big no no. You guys were nice about it You were like, well you can if you want to but I wouldn’t Hmm
[00:05:35] Chuck Carpenter: this is that try it as it intended out of the bottle and then have it the way you want it right like and that way you almost get two tastes so you try it like that way this ascotches in general will recommend tasting them with like a few drops of water and then ice if you like they’ll say that like introduces oxygen a little faster and all of that it’s just they have a lower proof and [00:06:00] for me i want i you know i want to kind of stay Around 90 proof at least.
[00:06:04] Dax Raad: Hmm I see
[00:06:07] Robbie Wagner: So I’m very curious if my dishwasher fucked up or what scents you guys are smelling, because I’m getting a lot of like wet dog and bananas. I don’t know if anyone else is.
[00:06:18] Dax Raad: what getting that at all. I’m actually getting some , like fruitiness like a dried fruit
[00:06:23] Dax Raad: yeah that’s what I get to I would say dried fruit it mostly smells like
[00:06:27] Robbie Wagner: cup is dirty.
[00:06:28] Chuck Carpenter: it smells like alcohol. also.
[00:06:31] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, there’s definitely booze in here. I’m not gonna lie Yours was sealed when you got it, right? So Robbie wasn’t able to like put something in there
[00:06:39] Dax Raad: Well, I didn’t look too hard
[00:06:42] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, yeah, I get a little bit of like very light like orange soda almost like orange crush kind of very light though Not super sugary and then almost like a maple. Like a little bit of creme, well not creme, but like a little, I don’t know, like charred maple.
[00:06:58] Robbie Wagner: Getting like cinnamon.[00:07:00]
[00:07:00] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm, maybe something spicy on the finish there. I don’t know. Dax, thoughts? Feelings?
[00:07:06] Dax Raad: like as you guys said that when you were like orange soda, I was like, oh, yeah, totally That’s what it is. And then he said cinnamon and I was like, oh, but you know what? That’s definitely what it is so I
[00:07:14] Dax Raad: think i’m just
[00:07:15] Chuck Carpenter: also. It’s all of the above. The power of
[00:07:17] Robbie Wagner: Alright, hold on, let’s
[00:07:18] Chuck Carpenter: when it comes to
[00:07:19] Robbie Wagner: Uh, cheesy gordita crunch. You getting
[00:07:22] Dax Raad: ha ha
[00:07:23] Dax Raad: ha
[00:07:24] Chuck Carpenter: That is funny that there’s like crunch crunch rap kind of things so there’s little side note as we have some sips and think about this There’s a guy that I follow on Twitter that does these little cooking videos and half of them He does where it’s like Cody while getting hammered and what he makes and then other ones are just normal legit Cooking things gordita corn Crunch wrap, but he did it with like chicken caesar and oh man, it looks amazing He made his own tortillas did these little like parmesan crunches that he put in there and then just throw anyway Yeah, cody something if you like cooking things.
[00:07:58] Chuck Carpenter: I really love cooking [00:08:00] content Like I don’t cook as much as I watch cooking.
[00:08:02] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t do either. I don’t watch it or do it.
[00:08:06] Chuck Carpenter: you make like loose meat sandwiches or whatever that is but
[00:08:09] Robbie Wagner: Do you always call it loose
[00:08:11] Dax Raad: Loose meat? Oh my,
[00:08:13] Chuck Carpenter: Well, the rest of the world calls them Sloppy Joes, but he makes, like, some
[00:08:17] Dax Raad: Oh, I thought you meant like deli meat.
[00:08:19] Dax Raad: I thought you were referring to deli meat as loose meat.
[00:08:22] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. There is a such thing as called a loose meat sandwich that is like that, but it, you, you make Sloppy Joes and call it something else.
[00:08:28] Robbie Wagner: we call it hot beef, but you always call it loose
[00:08:31] Chuck Carpenter: that’s better.
[00:08:33] Dax Raad: Honestly, yeah, I haven’t heard of any of this stuff before.
[00:08:36] Chuck Carpenter: No? You don’t want some Hot
[00:08:37] Chuck Carpenter: beef?
[00:08:37] Robbie Wagner: they both are very
[00:08:39] Dax Raad: I mean, I eat hot beef every day,
[00:08:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that’s true. Twice a day. Robbie’s gonna come over in April and make you some hot beef.
[00:08:49] Dax Raad: I’m going to have to get that cleared first
[00:08:50] Robbie Wagner: we could share it with everyone.
[00:08:52] Chuck Carpenter: Go ahead and share his hot beef with everyone, especially Ken Wheeler. He needs a little hot beef to chill out.
[00:08:58] Chuck Carpenter: okay, anyway, [00:09:00] let’s talk about this. Let’s bring it back, kids. , so we taste things, we taste things, any citrusy things, some spice, I don’t know. any other unique thoughts there?
[00:09:10] Robbie Wagner: mean, it tastes better than scotch usually does. Um,
[00:09:16] Chuck Carpenter: and doesn’t really possess those like mossy or smoky qualities to it.
[00:09:22] Robbie Wagner: Okay. So they do it, right?
[00:09:24] Chuck Carpenter: There you go. They make whiskey without the E. Well, Robbie, would you like to rate it?
[00:09:29] Robbie Wagner: Sure.
[00:09:31] Robbie Wagner: Our highly technical scale. is zero to eight tentacles. Zero being the worst throw it away. Four being middle of the road and eight being the best thing you’ve ever had to clear the shelves, never drinking anything else. And I will say it is not an eight. , it’s not bad though. Like I said, for scotches, it’s pretty good.
[00:09:49] Robbie Wagner: I’ve had like maybe two or three scotches that I’ve actually really liked. So this one is not one of those, but I don’t dislike it. So I’m gonna say four
[00:09:59] Chuck Carpenter: Middle of the [00:10:00] road. Okay. Interesting. , Dax, do you have feelings?
[00:10:03] Dax Raad: this is just so hard. Cause I just don’t drink a lot. So what am I supposed to say? You know,
[00:10:08] Chuck Carpenter: Whatever you want, as if you’ve ever been told what to say, are you kidding me?
[00:10:12] Dax Raad: it’s good. Like I, I wouldn’t mind having more of it. So
[00:10:17] Chuck Carpenter: say what it is now, I would suggest put your ice in there, have a little bit of it later, and then if it changes, let us know.
[00:10:25] Dax Raad: so the rating is between one through eight or you just do one, four or eight.
[00:10:29] Chuck Carpenter: One through
[00:10:30] Robbie Wagner: to eight,
[00:10:30] Chuck Carpenter: is here.
[00:10:31] Dax Raad: Oh, oh, three. Okay. Yeah. I would give it a five. I would say, I would say it’s pretty good. Yeah.
[00:10:35] Chuck Carpenter: What did you give it?
[00:10:37] Dax Raad: A five.
[00:10:38] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, a five. Okay. Well, interesting from the both of you. , okay. So I’ve had a few Glenmorangies. I have definitely had other Highland Scotches. Macallan is one, probably the more popular ones and commonly available. this is better than a just normal Glenmorangie. I think it’s actually pretty weak in the lower proof of side, side of things [00:11:00] and probably, Just less strong flavors.
[00:11:03] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, I also thought deli meat.
[00:11:04] Robbie Wagner: I just realized we can share things
[00:11:06] Chuck Carpenter: we can do this. This is cool Oh, there is a whole thing. Yeah, we’re obviously not professionals at this Well, that’s great to hear. Alright, I’m gonna bring that up. Anyway, , I actually think it’s better than a 5, though. I think if, uh, this particular one, , I think a casual scotch drinker would find, like, pretty delicious to have.
[00:11:24] Chuck Carpenter: I wouldn’t mind having it with, uh, maybe a cube or two of ice myself, because I think chilled, that citrus flavor would really come out and become a bit more refreshing. , I think it was like a hundred bucks a bottle, so not cheap, but not crazy. The Kind of fun to have around. I don’t know, I feel like it’s a six.
[00:11:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I’d reach for it again. Especially, uh, just to offer someone something a little different, but easy to drink. Booyah.
[00:11:49] Robbie Wagner: have some super not hot at all hot takes.
[00:11:54] Chuck Carpenter: Wait a minute, I want to acknowledge this whole LaFroigue is legit, like, John, I respect [00:12:00] your opinion, you should, whatever whiskey you like is the best one for you, but I have tried to go down that path a couple of times, and it is just a peat bomb that punches me in the face very hard.
[00:12:11] Chuck Carpenter: alright, hot takes.
[00:12:12] Robbie Wagner: You put this in, but I’ll ask rails or Laravel.
[00:12:15] Dax Raad: I haven’t used either. So That’s not true. I have used both, but only to get it working for SST. I find, I’m sure there’s great parts of rails, but it’s just not for me. Like the level of abstraction there is really crazy. And I’m sure once you like understand all of it, it feels pretty normal.
[00:12:33] Dax Raad: But, , the dimension of the optimized for. I’m not super into, uh, what I’ve liked about Laravel is I use their docs all the time, just to understand. Here’s like the wide range of things that application needs. Here’s ways you can implement it. , I use it as like a research thing. I’ve been there a bunch of times just to, just to research, , just other ideas on how to do certain things.
[00:12:56] Dax Raad: So I probably have a little bit more affinity for Laravel. I just could [00:13:00] never get the Ruby train.
[00:13:01] Chuck Carpenter: well, who lets you drive their Lambo too? Don’t think I don’t know this is a paid endorsement.
[00:13:08] Dax Raad: Taylor did not let us drive his Lambo. That was not his
[00:13:10] Dax Raad: Lambo
[00:13:11] Robbie Wagner: No, that’s a different Lambo Oh. to their show, uh, by
[00:13:16] Chuck Carpenter: Not all of them. Do you think he listens to ours? Do you think he’s listened to any since the last he was on to now? I would, I would wager
[00:13:24] Dax Raad: listen to any podcast period, so
[00:13:27] Robbie Wagner: you listen to your own or
[00:13:28] Robbie Wagner: no,
[00:13:29] Dax Raad: okay
[00:13:31] yeah, so I think, uh, yeah. Laravel probably go with that.
[00:13:35] Chuck Carpenter: That’s fair. I think that’s an excellent point that you make there though Like what is a true web application framework or what do you need for a full fledged Web application Rails and Laravel, I think, actually are good representations of those. So, maybe one has better docs, but,
[00:13:49] Chuck Carpenter: I mean, I know what you’re going to say here, too, Robbie.
[00:13:52] Chuck Carpenter: New York or Miami? Okay. New York or Miami?
[00:13:56] Dax Raad: Oh, this is really hard. It’s not an easy answer. New York in the [00:14:00] summer to me, best place in the world, but it’s wise I’ve ever been, , if you’ve spent a but it’s kind of a double edged sword because in the summer, you’re like, this is the peak, like, this is so great. You’re loving every day. And then it transitions into fall, which is also pretty nice. People love fall in New York and winter, which is such a stark contrast from summer. Like everyone is just running from building to building huddled up.
[00:14:26] Dax Raad: Like it’s just a totally different environment and it’s really bad. So that fall from, The summer to the winter is pretty brutal and then you just spend 4 months inside pretty depressed getting a lot of work done,
[00:14:38] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:14:39] Dax Raad: but you get a lot of work done. You don’t get a lot of work done in the summer. So you kind of break even there, , whereas Miami, I just I’m just happy all year round.
[00:14:46] Dax Raad: It’s actually the worst weather right now because I measured by whether or not I can go outside of my underwear and the past couple of weeks. I have not been able to,
[00:14:54]
[00:14:54] Robbie Wagner: Is it like 60 degrees?
[00:14:57] Dax Raad: yeah, it was, it was, uh, even in the, in the high fifties the [00:15:00] other day, you know,
[00:15:01] Dax Raad: brutal,
[00:15:02] Dax Raad: deadly, even.
[00:15:03] Chuck Carpenter: Especially in the morning, nobody looks good in that. You’re not impressing anyone. Walk out in your underwear in that cold. Well, see, like, good for you, though, because in the desert, it gets really chilly. It was, uh, we had a low of, like, 35 the other day.
[00:15:19] Chuck Carpenter: Monday, I think it was. We have about two weeks of real cold, and then, you know, of course, it, like, it’s 71, and it was 40 this morning, but
[00:15:26] Dax Raad: yeah, it’s, it’s crazy how, cause I, I spent my whole life in the northeast. So obviously I understood winter and I just spent the last three years not in the northeast and I’m totally incapable of handling even a little bit of cold already. So.
[00:15:39] Chuck Carpenter: you acclimate quickly.
[00:15:42] Robbie Wagner: yeah, it’s been brutal here. Like tons of snow. I think the windchill was like 10 today or something. Pretty cold.
[00:15:50] Chuck Carpenter: People love the
[00:15:51] Dax Raad: that’s bad. I don’t like that. I don’t like those numbers.
[00:15:53] Chuck Carpenter: you. No.
[00:15:54] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. All right. This is another, this one is. Yeah. Actually very easy I would think but let’s see [00:16:00] meat or vegetables
[00:16:01] Dax Raad: well, yeah, I’m going to go with meat. Vegetables are just the things you have around the meat, you know.
[00:16:06] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah. You have to pick one thing. The meat eats the vegetables for you. That’s the whole point, right?
[00:16:15] Dax Raad: What I always say to Adam is, uh, You know, vegetables are alive too, they just can’t run away from you. So it’s, in a way, it’s even more messed up.
[00:16:23] Chuck Carpenter: Just ask him why he’s eating his food’s food. Why are you eating the food’s food? That’s weird.
[00:16:28] Dax Raad: The messed up thing is i’m pretty sure my ancestry going back like 10 000 years has been 100 vegetarian and I just like broke the combo by eating two steaks every day yeah, I mean I have a side of broccoli every single day with the With the steak so I don’t die.
[00:16:43] Dax Raad: But yeah, obviously i’m gonna go
[00:16:45] Dax Raad: with the
[00:16:45] Robbie Wagner: steaks every day So do you like season them different or like do you just not get tired of that same flavor?
[00:16:52] Dax Raad: So SIG is one of those things where it’s so easy to make, it’s like such a basic thing. It’s a single ingredient. , there’s not too many different ways that you [00:17:00] can. These in it, there are, but like, you know, nothing that crazy.
[00:17:04] Dax Raad: But there’s, you can get to such a crazy level of precision with how you make it. So I got really into just experimenting with every single combination of thing. And when you’re doing it every single day, you can really drill down to. Oh, I did this different and it resulted in this, uh, so you can kind of really nail down what works well for you and like what you actually like.
[00:17:23] Dax Raad: So I’ve gotten to a point where the steak that I make to me is like the best, one of the best possible meals that I personally could have. It’s better than 90 percent of restaurants I would go to. So because of that, every single day, it just feels like. Like a big treat.
[00:17:38] Chuck Carpenter: So is it more about process and, like, how delicious that is, and less so, like, you’re not, like, doing the carnivore diet and trying to, like, look at health metrics and, and this change?
[00:17:50] Dax Raad: I actually am interested in that too. I’m gonna get blood work, I think next week. ‘cause I’ve been doing this for three or four months. So I want to get blood work to see if I’m, if I’m dying or not. Uh, I [00:18:00] feel great, but, you know, I don’t think it, I don’t think I’d feel any different yet or feel bad if this was bad for me that quickly.
[00:18:07] Dax Raad: But, uh. Yeah. So it’s, it is part of that. I was curious. I’ve done, I pretty much have been doing keto for years and years and years. I’ll do like, a bunch of months on and a few months off and I’ll go back and forth, but I never fully did this, like straight up meat heavy approach. so like the health effects aren’t anything new.
[00:18:25] Dax Raad: It’s like effectively the same as keto, but, uh, the taste effects are, are pretty nice.
[00:18:30] Chuck Carpenter: deliciousness is, is a good, good enough reason. I saw that Brian Johnson documentary recently though, the whole Don’t Die. And then of course he’s all over Twitter too with a bunch of metrics and all that kind of stuff. It’s like, kind of weird but also His nighttime erections, nighttime erection counts, things like that.
[00:18:48] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:18:49] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. sorry he’s not taking applicants for that, but uh, anyway. Sitting there. One more boner. I don’t know. There it is. Yes. Okay. Mark it down again.
[00:18:58] Chuck Carpenter: it’s interesting in [00:19:00] general, especially when I’m in like the other side of that and thinking about, I think about it some. I have no desire to go down an extreme path like that, but maybe do a few things better.
[00:19:09] Chuck Carpenter: Wouldn’t be horrible.
[00:19:12] Robbie Wagner: where’s the Apple Watch boner tracker? That’s what I want. It’s in the new one. It’s in the new
[00:19:16] Dax Raad: You can’t wear it on your
[00:19:17] Dax Raad: wrist been on. Yeah, it’s connected. You know, uh, what is the ring that was like popular? It’s just
[00:19:23] Dax Raad: Aura? The aura ring?
[00:19:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah, it’s just slightly larger. The Aura
[00:19:27] Dax Raad: Just slightly
[00:19:28] Chuck Carpenter: I want to announce our This episode was brought to you by the Aura Cochrane.
[00:19:36] Robbie Wagner: It doesn’t exist yet, but it might.
[00:19:37] Chuck Carpenter: It might now. Robby’s the first tester. He’s, I think, the youngest of us. He’s got the most Anyway, okay, that devolved a little bit. And, well, you know, you, you keep agreeing to do this with me. I don’t know what to say. I do, okay, for real, like,
[00:19:55] Chuck Carpenter: talking about, like, refining a process of something that you’re super interested in.
[00:19:59] Chuck Carpenter: Some of [00:20:00] your technological opinions, which we’ve gone down that path a little bit. Anybody can spend five minutes and see you 40, you know, 45 different tweets where you will rant about how stupid everyone is and you might be right. So, you know, you’re a perfectionist in many ways. What are you bad at though?
[00:20:15] Chuck Carpenter: What are things that you just like no idea or just have failed at.
[00:20:19] Dax Raad: I’m a horrible singer,
[00:20:21] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Well, probably not what you were expecting, but, uh, in terms of with that voice
[00:20:25] Chuck Carpenter: is yeah. With that voice. I’m surprised, but
[00:20:28] Dax Raad: I’ve had random people come up to me and be like, Oh, are you a singer? Like, are you a, I forgot what type of singer has a deeper voice. Alto. So I don’t know what it is. I’ve had people just randomly ask me that, but no, I’m a horrible singer.
[00:20:40] Dax Raad: I have horrible control over my voice and it’s just not good. It’s not very good. in terms of what else I’m bad at, I don’t really know. I think that’s it. I’m pretty much literally good at everything else.
[00:20:52] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. The one thing you can’t really control, you have to be bad at
[00:20:56] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, exactly. This is just a genetic thing. I’m bad at being tall. [00:21:00] Like, that’s true, you know? Uh, like, are you a bad driver? Are you,
[00:21:05] Dax Raad: I’m definitely one of those people that, that is absent minded, like I’m not like with it a lot of the times I’m like forgetful and I’m like, I’ll like lose myself and realize 30 minutes later, I was supposed to be doing something else. I’m surprised I made it on time to this thing. I’m usually like an hour late to meetings.
[00:21:21] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, well, you know that I know where you live, so
[00:21:25] Dax Raad: Yeah, well, I saw this, you guys sent me this bottle and these glasses, and I was like, I’m going to feel really bad if I am late. So
[00:21:33] Dax Raad: that worked on
[00:21:34] Chuck Carpenter: funny, though, that you never feel bad about is not inviting Robbie to your house. I love that he never gets the invite and he’s like, should I just come? Like, yeah, I
[00:21:42] Robbie Wagner: I’m just gonna come anyway. I assume it’s fine.
[00:21:44] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Dax did say, like, he’s invited, I just thought you’d tell him.
[00:21:48] Chuck Carpenter: And I was like, no, no, no, I’m gonna really milk this. So,
[00:21:51] Dax Raad: No, I, I, I explicitly don’t invite him.
[00:21:53] Chuck Carpenter: yeah.
[00:21:54] Dax Raad: That’s how it’s on purpose. And he comes anyway, and it’s really awkward. And so what am I going to do about it?
[00:21:58] Chuck Carpenter: sort of, yeah. Like, he showed up, [00:22:00] he goes, you know, you’re hosting, you’re busy, you can’t get rid of him. He knows this and takes advantage.
[00:22:06] Dax Raad: Are you guys coming this year?
[00:22:09] Robbie Wagner: Mm-hmm
[00:22:09] Robbie Wagner: Mm-hmm
[00:22:09] Chuck Carpenter: actually going to have quite a, quite a spread set up. I guess we can, uh, for those who are, , on the live stream and who, in a few weeks people will find out other than that. so we’re, the theme is going to be rum, react and ramblings. Thanks, Michelle. And we’re going to have like a nice setup.
[00:22:26] Dax Raad: Oh, wait. Rum. That’s brilliant.
[00:22:29] Dax Raad: Because Miami’s all about the rum.
[00:22:31] Chuck Carpenter: Exactly that too, so it
[00:22:33] Robbie Wagner: And we’re all about the alliteration.
[00:22:35] Chuck Carpenter: we’re about alliteration, we like reasons to make t shirts, and, uh, so yeah, we’re gonna have like a good setup there, so.
[00:22:43] Dax Raad: Yeah. This is dad makes mojitos, but he uses Sprite instead of, uh, That’s what tonic was when I’m using the tonic water, I guess. And it is, it is really good. It is very good.
[00:22:55] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, I could fuck with that. I mean, there’s lime in there anyway, so why not a lemon lime [00:23:00] soda? Like, that’s, um, okay.
[00:23:02] Dax Raad: I’ve also seen him drink a mixture of condensed milk and Sprite, so I maybe, you know,
[00:23:11] Robbie Wagner: Hmm. Well,
[00:23:12] Chuck Carpenter: put the lime in the coconut, why not in, like, milk? I don’t know, right? You know that song, you put the lime in the
[00:23:17] Chuck Carpenter: coconut? yeah,
[00:23:18] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, so maybe that also works with, like, milk or something, I
[00:23:21] Dax Raad: and he, he was having it for breakfast too. It was like a morning
[00:23:24] Dax Raad: drink. I tried some of it and I was like, this tastes, and it tasted really good. It tasted really, really good, but having a whole thing of it is.
[00:23:31] Dax Raad: Is a lot.
[00:23:32] Chuck Carpenter: Right.
[00:23:33] Robbie Wagner: Can’t see. Dodds said, Sprite and eggnog, I think. Right.
[00:23:37] Dax Raad: Hmm. Kind of
[00:23:38] Robbie Wagner: Somebody said that. And I was
[00:23:40] Robbie Wagner: like, that sounds gross, but I should try it, I guess.
[00:23:43] Chuck Carpenter: I mean, I like Kent, he’s a very nice guy. I’m not sure I’m gonna take that kind of advice from him, so.
[00:23:49] Dax Raad: Yeah.
[00:23:50] Robbie Wagner: that could happen?
[00:23:52] Chuck Carpenter: I, you know, and I’ll dump a little booze in there, yeah.
[00:23:55] Robbie Wagner: Yeah,
[00:23:56] Chuck Carpenter: So,
[00:23:57] Chuck Carpenter: Hey guys! This’ll be great! No, [00:24:00] that’s not even how his voice is, and that’s rude, and
[00:24:01] Chuck Carpenter: I’m
[00:24:01] Robbie Wagner: no.
[00:24:02] Chuck Carpenter: Alright, go to the next question.
[00:24:05] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, so you had a, I think it was today, a super giant tweet about conferences and all the things that are wrong with them. just wanted to get you,
[00:24:14] Chuck Carpenter: Well, I found that to be a reaction tweet, by the way, of something else that you read, but we’ll see if you want to say yes or no on
[00:24:20] Robbie Wagner: listen, I’m, I’m not up to date on every single tweet, but, , I wanted to get a little bit about your feelings there around like what’s wrong with conferences and, is react Miami an exception?
[00:24:31] Dax Raad: yeah. So, I mean, the thing I was reacting to, I just, I didn’t look too deeply, but I’d seen like a few posts from people being like this conference. They’re shutting down and other ones. I’ve just heard vaguely of a bunch of conference shutting down. I think Kent had a post yesterday. Hey. he highlighted something in some article.
[00:24:47] Dax Raad: I don’t know. I, I didn’t read the thing, but it had, it got me thinking. And we’re actually talking about this as a team at SST a little bit about how we felt about this stuff. yeah, I think the, what’s been weird for me [00:25:00] is I’m not someone that goes to a lot of conferences. At least historically, I have not gone to many.
[00:25:04] Dax Raad: , but more recently I have, um, And the sponsorship side was always so bizarre to me because I have a company that on paper should be sponsoring conferences, like every dev tool company does this, and this is like a very traditional thing, but it just never made any sense to me at all. you know, these conferences, the floor for sponsoring is probably like 5k. Why would I pay 5k for to be like a logo alongside a bunch of other logos for a conference of 500 people that are just randomly going to show up there there’s like, they’re not like very specifically tied to anything that I’m doing. So the ROI on that just never made sense to me. And I’d always see.
[00:25:45] Dax Raad: Companies just reflexively be like, we raised around. That means now we, you know, sponsor conferences. and it can kind of make sense if your challenge is we need to let people know that we exist and you sponsored literally every single conference for a year, you’re probably going to achieve that goal, but [00:26:00] in terms of achieving it effectively or efficiently, it doesn’t make any sense at all to me.
[00:26:04] Dax Raad: So the sponsorship side is always something that I found weird. And then once I started going to them more in person, I realized like, wow, there’s like, ahead of time, you imagine yourself. I’m going to go to the talks when you’re there. The vibe is more. Oh, I like, I really should go to the talks, but I don’t want to, because I just want to hang out with all the people that are here.
[00:26:23] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, basically.
[00:26:24] Dax Raad: like, if you literally look around, you can sense that energy, like people aren’t really paying attention, you Most of the talks aren’t very captivating. There’s a few people that come on and really entertain and they do a great job and people are really focused, but it’s, it’s the minority.
[00:26:37] Dax Raad: so that just got me thinking like, what is, like, what is this? Like really? We’d all just want to hang out together and we want to find a way to fund it. So we don’t necessarily have to pay to do that. , I mean, a lot of people still pay personally, but a significant number of people have their company pay for it.
[00:26:53] Dax Raad: And they’re not going to pay for you to go hang out a city for a couple of days. It’s a little bit easier to. It feels more appropriate and proper for [00:27:00] everyone if you’re like this is a conference with like talks and education and training and So it’s like a weird fake Situation, and I think it’s developed a lot over the past couple of years when there’s been just a lot of money from the dev tool side of companies, again, spending that money on sponsorships, exacerbating the fakeness of it.
[00:27:20] Dax Raad: Uh, and now as that’s receding, these conferences are like, Hey, what the heck? Like, we’re not able to exist anymore, but it’s cause it like never really made sense in the first place. So if we want this to continue to exist, we need to like re imagine it or. And I actually check all these boxes and we can’t pretend that everyone was going, because. Oh, we really wanted to see the talks and the talks were so good and the company’s really one of their employees to see the talks. Yeah, it just really wasn’t that.
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[00:28:26] Robbie Wagner: I think the sponsorship thing is interesting because yeah, I agree. I think maybe just when money was free and it was a tax write off to sponsor things, it’s like, all right, just throw it at it. And then we’ll get a little bit of SEO if we like sponsor everything and our link is everywhere. But it’s like, I have this same, it’s kind of analogous to like restaurants in my town.
[00:28:46] Robbie Wagner: Cause like. Great Falls like is a small town where I am, but like nearby is a big like, like Reston is nearby and there’s like tons of restaurants and stuff there. And so I guess everyone goes to those and not the ones here. And so like the rent for a restaurant here is like 15, [00:29:00] 000 a month. And I’m like, I see like a person in this restaurant all day.
[00:29:04] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know how you’re paying that rent. So I’m like, I guess maybe it’s like if you’re a chain or a local chain or whatever. It’s just advertising It’s like you see the logo and like you think about it later and maybe that’s worth it And maybe that’s the same for conferences. I don’t know
[00:29:19] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:29:20] Chuck Carpenter: it’s the Law of Averages.
[00:29:21] Dax Raad: yeah, yeah, and that’s totally fair for companies that are much later stage where your goal is, uh, branding. You want to be associated with things that are cool. It’s a lot more abstract, a lot more intangible. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it makes sense for them. I never got why the pre product market fit companies are looking for users.
[00:29:43] Dax Raad: That’s the number one problem. Why they would sponsor it and then fly out their team to go, like, kind of get the attention of 30 people that you grab in like a conference of 500 people total. Right. yeah. So I, I think there’s a lot of like. Whenever we make, and like, I’ve made [00:30:00] tons of mistakes like this in my career, it’s embarrassing to look back on how stupid it is.
[00:30:04] Dax Raad: So I just don’t think we talk about how silly a lot of it was. , but yeah, it just never really made a lot of sense.
[00:30:10] Chuck Carpenter: It felt like conferences like 15 years ago were very focused, single-track You like, knew you were gonna, you know, learn ABC things talks used to
[00:30:21] Robbie Wagner: go deep and now
[00:30:23] Robbie Wagner: they
[00:30:23] Robbie Wagner: don’t
[00:30:23] Chuck Carpenter: and I knew I was going to walk away learning something new and then part of me going there was to bring it back to my team and share that knowledge and that was sort of like the exchange and we’re like, well, okay, we said, you know, if six people on your team and if we do six different conferences, we’re really like mind-melding across these very specific subject matters, but then, yeah, I think it has become a little bit silly because I feel like for many conferences, It is community over actually learning something new lately, and then, you know, where’s the ROI on that?
[00:30:56] Chuck Carpenter: I’ve always heard that sponsorships were not well. We know, we had a [00:31:00] company that sponsored too and what did that get it you know, that, did that turn into any paid contracts? Probably not, so, you know, it’s just about putting your logo there and feeling like you got to a level, I guess.
[00:31:09] Dax Raad: And that can make sense if you’re like, I am a more established company and I want this type of thing to exist. So I’m like, it’s almost like a charity thing. It just, to me, it just never really made sense for the earlier stage companies to be doing that. And then in terms of the talks themselves, like I said, I didn’t go to conference for most of my career, but I did watch a bunch of talks online. So I do recall there being like really important talks that had a big impact on My understanding of something or my exposure to something, or me just heading down, like I would, I remember certain things I watched and I headed down like a certain path for years as a result of that talk.
[00:31:42] Dax Raad: it’s just not the majority. And especially now that this stuff is a lot more available online, there’s just a lot more. stuff available on the internet. If you want to learn something outside of literally having to go to a conference, it’s now competing with that. So, , the bar is even higher in a lot of
[00:31:56] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I think that’s interesting because it feels like there [00:32:00] is like kind of a career path where folks, because you’ll see some repeat names at this conference, this conference, this conference, I speak at, you know, 5 to 10 conferences per year. So it’s almost like a career path to go and do these talks on repeat.
[00:32:15] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, it’s like more marketing than development, which I thought was always. Kind of odd and you have this whole process for like submitting talks to various conferences and hoping to get in to talk about like your little thing but also really develop personal branding. It’s almost like that. It’s like I want to get out there so I can become a known entity and be more valuable in that way rather than I’m invited to a conference because I’ve done these incredible contributions and did this new feature.
[00:32:42] Chuck Carpenter: And now I’m going to show you all that thing.
[00:32:44] Dax Raad: Yeah. Yeah. I, I really, I really fight specialization like that. when you become a professional conference speaker, and I’m sure there’s exceptions to this, but there’s just a limitation with the depth that you can go into. [00:33:00] And we see this, even just at our company, , like we don’t have someone that’s a full time.
[00:33:04] Chuck Carpenter: Devereux.
[00:33:05] Dax Raad: DevRel, yeah, it’s been so long. I literally forgot the word, full time DevRel, but I think we’re effective at the role of DevRel because all of us directly work on the thing. There’s nobody that is like a professional DevRel that can do what we do, because. Your responsibilities are limited.
[00:33:22] Dax Raad: Like the company you’re at, like isolates you in a certain way and you can only kind of work in that zone. So I feel that same way with like, getting too much into the specialization Speaking at conferences, , yeah, the best talks I’ve seen, the ones that I can remember are people that gave a talk as a side effect of their work.
[00:33:39] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Absolutely. Those are the most effective ones and the ones where I would, think I would reference offhand when I used to go to EmberConf on a regular basis and like there was some real themes in talks every year for that for a while. You had like these keynotes that were releasing features in the core library, but then you also had folks who were [00:34:00] doing add ons that were just super cool, like, uh, I don’t know, offhand like Ed Faulkner doing, uh, structured programming, you know, concurrency. That was
[00:34:09] Robbie Wagner: Concurrency was makti,
[00:34:11] Chuck Carpenter: Ah, okay.
[00:34:12] Dax Raad: it’s funny you say Ember because one of the talks that I, you know, I was referring to the ones that had a big impact on me was from Ember Conf. I think it was a talk about, I don’t know who it was. I don’t really remember too many of the details, but. He walked through building an app that would run.
[00:34:31] Dax Raad: On a spacecraft orbiting the moon and how, like, for certain times of the day, it would be on the other side where it can’t send a signal back to earth.
[00:34:42] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Orbit JS.
[00:34:44] Dax Raad: Yeah. So yeah. And then orbit, uh, was
[00:34:47] Dax Raad: like a library associated with it. Yeah. I don’t think he was the one giving the talk though.
[00:34:51] Dax Raad: I did use orbit a bunch after that talk. but that was like my aha moment for. Like local first, which I’ve been doing for years [00:35:00] now. , but that was like, had, you know, had, had a huge impact on me. So talks can be super influential, but again, I didn’t go to the conference. I just saw it
[00:35:08] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it was available online later and you come across that for that like kind of use case. Yes.
[00:35:14] Robbie Wagner: We used to orbit with swatch. I feel like there’s not really anything that touches the breadth of stuff it will do with like the ease of developer experience that it has. like syncing everything to, you can use like local storage or indexed DB or like all kinds of stuff and then like, you know, update your actual, , backend whenever you have service again and all of
[00:35:34] Dax Raad: Yeah. was swatched like a Jason API server thing?
[00:35:37] Robbie Wagner: It’s a, um, color picker thing, but yeah, the, the back end was JSON API.
[00:35:42] Chuck Carpenter: The back end is what I use SST. One of the things I’ve used SST for. And so, like, that’s a long time ago. , early days when it was called, like, serverless stack or whatever, you know, when and the docs they had was like my introduction to, like, trying to do the right thing with that. And I was [00:36:00] using the serverless framework and then started adding that in.
[00:36:03] Chuck Carpenter: And so swatch actually uses that. But yes, watch is like a, , menu bar color picker app.
[00:36:07] Dax Raad: Oh, okay. Nice. Nice. Yeah. That’s another thing. JSON API. Uh, really, really great concept that’s just underused entirely. I just don’t think people, I mean, I think the naming is not great because it sounds like a description as opposed to it’s literally like an actual thing. But, uh, yeah, they’ve thought through the spec.
[00:36:27] Dax Raad: Yeah, they’ve thought through all the scenarios and any scenario you’re going to run into, there’s probably a way to do it in the spec. , yeah. So that whole world is super interesting. And I was in there for, for a bit. unfortunately, it just isn’t just, it never grew beyond a little circle.
[00:36:40] Dax Raad: It’s in,
[00:36:40] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, they’ve had a big marketing problem forever. You know, I don’t know how you solve that. Things that are cool just are cool because they are. Like, you were there at the right time and it took off. Like, like GraphQL was this huge thing. , and they say, Chuck, your volume is really low.
[00:36:55] Chuck Carpenter: I’ll try and turn it up. I’m probably too far away from the mic, too. You know how this thing, you gotta eat
[00:36:59] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, [00:37:00] let’s make sure you move positions a lot and change your volume a lot. So it’s really easy for editing later
[00:37:05] Chuck Carpenter: Perfect. Yeah, we’ll change the volume completely. Listen, we, we pay people for a reason.
[00:37:12] Robbie Wagner: Yes,
[00:37:12] Chuck Carpenter: uh, maybe we need, you know, flip media. Apparently he’s good at these things. I’m not sure. He’s probably too expensive for us.
[00:37:19] Dax Raad: It’s quite in demand. Yeah,
[00:37:21] Chuck Carpenter: and that, you know, he’s like looking for cool people to work with, Robbie. Not guys who wear Viorey hats.
[00:37:29] Robbie Wagner: Hey, my wife got me this hat.
[00:37:32] Chuck Carpenter: It definitely doesn’t big viorey, Adam’s a big viorey person,
[00:37:37] Robbie Wagner: Oh Yeah, I is nice stuff. I have some too. Yeah, it’s cozy. I just, it looks kind of pink, and looks, it’s very not Robbie. So it just throws me off a little bit. Yeah, well, I’ve been trying to be more presentable with my hats like I usually do the beanie But I feel like that’s a little sloppier. So
[00:37:55] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I’m a little slobbier. [00:38:00] Uh, yeah, I was on a crazy diet last week, so everything hits me a little harder this week. Anyway,
[00:38:06] Chuck Carpenter: , Oh, okay, so where does React Miami fit in this paradigm of
[00:38:11] Chuck Carpenter: vacations?
[00:38:12] Dax Raad: to be honest, I don’t think it’s really any different from what I’m describing. I think the one mitigating factor is I think we were talking about yesterday, but why do conference organizers bother? Like, why do they bother doing all of this? What’s the motivation? I don’t know. I think react Miami is a little bit unique in that there is this underlying motivation for it to exist in that, , Michelle, myself, a bunch of other people that are involved, there’s not a big intersection with the tech in Miami.
[00:38:37] Dax Raad: And we’re all very motivated to kind of increase and grow that and do whatever we can to make that happen. , so we want to just bring people here. Whether that means talks, whether that means hanging out, like whatever. There is the way that we can make that work. , we’re pretty motivated to make that happen.
[00:38:52] Dax Raad: and the thing I think we’ve been able to do a little bit, and this is like, I mentioned this in my tweet a little bit. React Miami, find our tickets, [00:39:00] right? If you’re a sponsor, like I said, 500 people there, you’re paying thousands of dollars, probably not worth it. But if the conference itself has crazy visibility online, and you’re actually leveraging that side of it, then you’re starting to see a little bit more value in, um, in what you’re paying for.
[00:39:17] Dax Raad: So we try to do stuff there that is, uh, you know, unique and can might go viral and kind of is, is in everyone’s feeds. And it’s been effective. , Michelle was telling me that she was in a call with Google with a sponsor, and she was about to start explaining to them like, Oh, like here’s, you know, Our reach on social, et cetera.
[00:39:36] Dax Raad: And there’s interrupted her being like, no, no, we know we all have Twitter. Like we see you guys every year. So,
[00:39:41] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah, we got it.
[00:39:43] Dax Raad: yeah, so like, I think, at least we’re able to sell the side of, I say, wait, Michelle’s like doing 99 percent of it. I’m like not really involved besides just being there and doing one off things here and there, but the conference is able to kind of punch a little bit of [00:40:00] above its weight beyond just what’s literally happening, happening there.
[00:40:03] Dax Raad: So, yeah, and we have some stuff planned this year as well. We’re doing, I think it was announced. We’re doing another episode of, uh, terminal feud at the end. , the terminal team will be there all week and we have some stuff planned, some new things we’re going to, we’re going to launch. Adam did all the work and did a hundred percent of the work for it, but we’re all going to launch it together,
[00:40:22] Dax Raad: uh,
[00:40:22] Chuck Carpenter: And Prime just shows up because he’s too fucking famous now.
[00:40:27] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:40:28] Chuck Carpenter: He’s just like, hey guys,
[00:40:31] Chuck Carpenter: here’s my mustache. Yeah, I’ve practiced his
[00:40:34] Chuck Carpenter: a little more. I’ll, yeah, I’ll continue to do that a little bit when
[00:40:38] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. We gotta work on the mustache game before we go. You think you could grow one between
[00:40:42] Chuck Carpenter: a mustache. I mean, I look like, uh, like a French parody. Like, it’s not, it’s not a good thing.
[00:40:49] Chuck Carpenter: I did, , Movember one time, like, with the official org, and I was raising money and all this stuff, and I, I raised enough to get, , invited to, like, this event in D. C., and it [00:41:00] was, like, cool, so I go to it, and then I get nominated for, , Worst Mustache of
[00:41:05] Robbie Wagner: ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! ha! Ha ha ha
[00:41:07] Chuck Carpenter: I was one of three, and I did not win, but I was real pissed about it.
[00:41:12] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, I was like, Okay, so I’m just not doing this anymore. Thanks. Like, that’s how you felt about it.
[00:41:19] Dax Raad: They’re like, thank you, now we’re gonna make fun of you.
[00:41:21] Chuck Carpenter: Exactly, they’re like, thanks for this money, and thank, prostate cancer sucks, but so does your face. So, yeah, uh, I’m not gonna grow a mustache, I’m just gonna go ahead and put it up there.
[00:41:32] Chuck Carpenter: If you want to be that guy, Robbie, you definitely can, and I’ll just do, like, move your mouth and I’ll do the voice. And then we’ll just kind of figure out that kind of thing.
[00:41:40] Robbie Wagner: That would actually be
[00:41:40] Chuck Carpenter: but um, it would be, I’m, I’m, up for that. I mean, we’re gonna
[00:41:43] Robbie Wagner: I just need to lose like 50 pounds and work out some more between now and then.
[00:41:48] Chuck Carpenter: Just, uh, stop eating food. Let’s just say Taco Bell is off your diet for a little
[00:41:52] Robbie Wagner: Well, I might’ve,
[00:41:54] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, two
[00:41:55] Robbie Wagner: yeah, I can get behind that.
[00:41:56] Chuck Carpenter: I do want you to ask him this next question, because maybe he
[00:41:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:42:00] Yeah. I just put a bunch of stupid questions in here. Cause Chuck was busy and didn’t write notes. I said, uh, can you help me set up my router? Cause you’re talking about
[00:42:10] Dax Raad: Oh, yeah. I probably can. If you’re having trouble, trouble, if you’re worried about, you know, getting the max speed,
[00:42:18] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, no,
[00:42:18] Dax Raad: dive on it
[00:42:19] Chuck Carpenter: you have to have the right tables and the right port, too, right? You learned that, like, not all the ports are fast enough. Yeah, I did, I actually did get that one,
[00:42:27] Robbie Wagner: yeah. It’s not intuitive, because I also have an Eero, and
[00:42:30] Robbie Wagner: like, the ports, I don’t know if the, the models are the same, but like mine, the faster ones are not port one and two it’s port three and four or something. And I’m like, so I had everything in like the first couple of ports, like these gotta be the better ones.
[00:42:44] Robbie Wagner: And then I finally read the back and I was like, Oh shit. Okay. Yeah.
[00:42:51] Dax Raad: too. Also like for mine, when I plugged it straight from the modem into the hero, it was like disconnecting. Constantly into the fast report. It was [00:43:00] like it would like flip between 2. 5 gigabit back down to one and then it was a weird thing And I had to put a switch in between to get it all working I’m like, there’s no way random people that just buy this service are like getting it in this right?
[00:43:12] Dax Raad: It’s impossible
[00:43:13] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, nobody reads instructions, because they’re like, Ew, there’s four ports, just plug in. Like, I don’t need to read a thing that says one is different.
[00:43:20] Chuck Carpenter: have
[00:43:21] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. They had a software bug too, where mine was just slower. Cause I, I got like, I upgraded before I should, I got like the seven, the like, fancy
[00:43:29] Robbie Wagner: newest one,
[00:43:30] Dax Raad: I’m on the
[00:43:31] Robbie Wagner: it was not ready, it was just like, it was slower than the, the six I had before, and I was like, That there’s no way that it like I just swapped it out and it’s slower because it’s supposed to be faster And they’re like, um, have you tried, you know plugging directly in like of course i’ve like that’s not what I want it to be like the wi fi 7 is faster because it’s faster wi fi guys like
[00:43:50] Chuck Carpenter: Don’t you need Cat7 cables, too? And you need to verify that they’re Cat7,
[00:43:55] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, no, they just have to be Over cat 5 they have to be cat 6 plus [00:44:00] I think 6 will do up to like 5
[00:44:01] Chuck Carpenter: or
[00:44:01] Robbie Wagner: gigs I think Something I don’t know. Yeah, seven and eight and I think there might be a nine now Like those are all overkill for the next 50 years. I feel like
[00:44:11] Chuck Carpenter: Well, when AI takes our jobs, maybe we can be hardware people, because AI doesn’t have hands. Like, I’m fine. Like, I’ll be, like, a
[00:44:18] Robbie Wagner: It it’ll have hands by then don’t worry
[00:44:20] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that’s true. There are robots, and I don’t know. They are overlords. I’ll be dead by then. It doesn’t matter.
[00:44:27] Robbie Wagner: you guys have plans if uh, all of software goes away? What would you do?
[00:44:32] Dax Raad: , I was actually just talking to Adam about this today about telling him about what my next business is going to be. And it’s not directly in software. I’m gonna, I am really enamored with this idea of purchasing, buying a company that does manufacturing here in America, because they’re all owned by people that are retirement age.
[00:44:53] Dax Raad: And you know, anything about successful, small business, the kids are never able to take over. Like they [00:45:00] always sell the business. So I want to identify, one that’s like the right fit. And I want to manufacture very specifically, drone parts. Because there’s a certain set of parts. Even if you like bring drone manufacturing to the U S.
[00:45:15] Dax Raad: there’s a bunch of parts that are still only really purchasable from China. And like, that feels like the right narrow scope to focus in on and build. A business that can build those and then really focus on automation and see where you can expand to from there. So I’m very much in on like kind of building physical stuff.
[00:45:33] Chuck Carpenter: I think that’s a good spot to, to go into, and that’s an interesting niche where you’re predicting ahead where there’ll be a greater demand or necessitation, possibly with tariffs or something, to, uh, source locally, that’s, or,
[00:45:48] Dax Raad: Yeah. I, I figure that it’s going to be, and it already is like a big military need. And it fits. In the military supply chain, we can’t be buying our parts from, from China. So, I think there’s a [00:46:00] big need. And like I said, it’s like a part, it’s not like a whole thing. So you can kind of ease your way into manufacturing it.
[00:46:06] Dax Raad: And, but the goal would be to be like a much bigger player in manufacturing in
[00:46:11] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Get, get something that’s in the black and then start to expand it.
[00:46:14] Dax Raad: yeah, so that’s probably, that’s what I’m doing next in the next 10 years or so,
[00:46:19] Chuck Carpenter: Okay.
[00:46:20] Dax Raad: whether or
[00:46:20] Robbie Wagner: I think physical things. I think physical things are definitely, like, if you don’t have something making a thing that people can touch and feel, get on that right now. Cause, uh, that’s something we’re gonna need.
[00:46:32] Dax Raad: Yeah, it’s hard to compete with, like, once you have that going, like, there’s not going to be an overnight technology that obviates a physical thing as much as it happens with
[00:46:41]
[00:46:42] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I released an entire npm library that I wrote none of the other day, so I’m worried about my career.
[00:46:48] Dax Raad: software.
[00:46:53] Chuck Carpenter: I think that, just uh, I mean, you got to take full credit though. So
[00:46:57] Chuck Carpenter: there’s that.
[00:46:58] Chuck Carpenter: And look like a genius until people, [00:47:00] uh, to
[00:47:00] Robbie Wagner: No one uses it. It was more of a proof of concept. Like it was a license checker thing for like P and PM will tell you if your licenses comply with like, or it just gives you a list of the info. So then I’m just like parsing that info to say like good or not. But I was like, Hey, I don’t want to think through like how to check all of this.
[00:47:19] Robbie Wagner: Like chat GPT, you know how to do it. It was like, yeah, dog. I was like, all right, cool. I’ll just publish that.
[00:47:25] Chuck Carpenter: There you go. But the part where you had to figure out how to publish it, you had to do. You have to add the secret to your environment variable. And that’s
[00:47:35] Dax Raad: something that we can’t trust AI with.
[00:47:37] Robbie Wagner: Yeah
[00:47:38] Chuck Carpenter: Don’t give AI your secrets at this
[00:47:40] Chuck Carpenter: point. Here’s my bank account. can you, uh, handle my budget? Sure can. Move
[00:47:46] Dax Raad: I, I,
[00:47:47] Chuck Carpenter: Okay.
[00:47:47] Dax Raad: I do literally that, but it’s been fine so far.
[00:47:51] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Keep us updated.
[00:47:53] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, what are the safeguards on that? Yeah,
[00:47:57] Dax Raad: just hoping that nothing bad [00:48:00] happens.
[00:48:00] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, Claude or chat GPT.
[00:48:02] Dax Raad: I’m mostly on Claude. I just started paying for the, uh, really crazy, expensive. Chat GPT one, the 200 a month one, just to see, I’ve already canceled it, but I wanted to see what the deal was and see
[00:48:15] Robbie Wagner: how much better could it. be
[00:48:16] Dax Raad: it’s meant for a completely different type of workflow because it doesn’t, it takes minutes to respond.
[00:48:21] Dax Raad: So it’s not the type of thing where you’re like having a back and forth conversation on it. It’s more like. I’m going to write up something complicated and it’s going to come back to me with a, like a large result. So I I’ve been trying to use it to research videos that I do. I’m like, I want to make a video on this topic.
[00:48:38] Dax Raad: Here are the points I want to hit. I hear the things that I’m curious about, , make like a video outline for me. And it does do it. I just can’t tell if it’s any better than just using the normal model. Um, Yeah, and I, and I ultimately don’t, it’s not good enough where I’m just like, Oh, cool. I’m just going to use that.
[00:48:58] Dax Raad: I read it and [00:49:00] that gives me new ideas and I basically make my own. , so it’s helpful in the process, but it’s not literally doing all the work for me, where if it did do that, I keep paying. But
[00:49:09] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I think it’s a long way from doing literally all the work on anything It gets like 80 there on everything which is like good enough for most things. But yeah, it’s it’s If it gets to 100 percent correct all of the time, we’re in big trouble. We don’t want that.
[00:49:24] Dax Raad: I, I think the expense, this is called a one pro, whatever it’s called. I think all it is doing is automating. If you’re really good at prompting an LM and you’re really good at using them, it kind of automates some of those strategies, right? So like it will prompt it with something, then auto prompt it with like, are you sure?
[00:49:43] Dax Raad: And I’ll make it introspect on specific things, which is why it takes minutes to reply, but it’s like, it’s like a hack to not have to be good at understanding how these things. Things will work. So it’s like a, it’s like a meta thing. It’s, it’s an LLM for your LLM in a lot of ways.
[00:49:57] Robbie Wagner: I wish they would just make them [00:50:00] less confident. Like my biggest problem is that it goes Hey, this is the answer. This is a hundred percent right here. You go run it done. And you’re like, actually, did you think about this? It’s like, Oh, you’re right now.
[00:50:10] Robbie Wagner: Here’s the real one. A hundred percent done. Yeah. Why don’t it just be like, Hey, , I think this might be right.
[00:50:16] Robbie Wagner: Maybe you should try it and validate that this works. Like, be a little more humble. Don’t be like, I got
[00:50:21] Dax Raad: Yeah.
[00:50:22] Dax Raad: a lot of times I’m asking about like very obscure AWS behavior. I’m just like, what happens in this type of scenario? And it does reply to me with confidence and it’s usually what I want to hear. And sometimes I’m just like, this is way too good to be true. And I say, are you sure? And it’s like, You’re right.
[00:50:39] Dax Raad: I just made that up. I just know when it’s too good to be true. It’s like, what? They have the exact API for the exact thing that I need. No, they don’t.
[00:50:49] Chuck Carpenter: No, they don’t. No, but wouldn’t it be great? Have a good day. Thank you for your buddy.
[00:50:56] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I guess one, one final thing, kind of related to like [00:51:00] AI taking jobs and whatever, what do you think people should be learning if they want to continue to get jobs and stay relevant over the next five years or so?
[00:51:08] Dax Raad: I was saying this other day where I, I’ve like stopped giving career advice. And I’ve, I’ve kind of stopped. It’s like, as I’ve gotten more experience, I’ve just had less and less. Career advice to give I think one part of it is because Just as your career goes on like the way you look at your career is very different from someone At a different phase that you have access to things that they don’t so the way you think about it all is totally different And number two like my personal career has just gotten really weird to the way I think about things.
[00:51:35] Dax Raad: Just I don’t think They’re broadly applicable so I can really only speak to like what i’m happy about and what You But me to where I am again, it’s like very narrow and not really general for most people but I think the key thing is No matter what space you’re in no matter what you’re doing You have to feel like you’re [00:52:00] going a hundred times deeper than everyone else around you It doesn’t really matter if it seems to make sense at all It doesn’t matter if it’s like oh it’s worth going deep in this because of xyz A lot of times just the fact that you went deep is enough because so few people Make it to that point, and the outcome of it is always good.
[00:52:20] Dax Raad: It’s Never predictable, but it’s always good. And we talk about this a lot as a team If we take something to an extreme, every time we’ve done this, something great came out of it, but it was impossible to explain ahead of time. Why? so most recently, not most recently, but the last thing I can think of that fit, this is, uh, both for terminal and for SST, we went crazy deep into understanding.
[00:52:41] Dax Raad: Terminals and fancy codes and multiplexing and how that whole world works. again, not something that makes a lot of sense. Like terminal technology is from like, what, probably 50 years old now. It’s very old stuff, not obviously relevant. , but it did lead to us launching a coffee shop in the [00:53:00] terminal, , which, you know, led to a lot of other really weird opportunities.
[00:53:03] Dax Raad: Uh, it actually weirdly solved one of our biggest problems in the SST dev experience. Which led to like a whole other set of things being solved. So yeah, just the fact that we went really deep on this and really understood this just unlocked a bunch of stuff. And I’ve just seen that over and over in my career.
[00:53:19] Robbie Wagner: Cool. something and dive deep because you never know. I think it’s like we just don’t have predictable outcomes at this point, right? So just like find passion and dive deep.
[00:53:29] Robbie Wagner: Yep. Sponsored by Amazon. One of the leadership principles. Dive deep.
[00:53:34] Chuck Carpenter: He would
[00:53:35] Chuck Carpenter: know,
[00:53:36] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, it is.
[00:53:38] Chuck Carpenter: he
[00:53:38] Dax Raad: Okay.
[00:53:38] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. But yeah, we’re about at time. , are there things you would like to plug or mention before we end?
[00:53:44] Dax Raad: no. I
[00:53:45] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, everyone you work
[00:53:48] Robbie Wagner: a podcast
[00:53:48] Chuck Carpenter: on. Yeah You don’t have a company. You don’t have a podcast
[00:53:52] Dax Raad: have a podcast tomorrow. Dot FM. I, like I said, I sell coffee in the terminal at stage terminal dot shop. and yeah, there you go.
[00:53:59] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. [00:54:00] And if, uh, and if you have an error in that, just ping him directly and then he’ll tell you how to make it
[00:54:04] Dax Raad: Yeah, actually it’s also open source. So actually just fix it for us. Just
[00:54:08] Chuck Carpenter: I did not do that. I just was like, I can’t, I can’t check out and you’re like, oh yeah, do this and this. Okay.
[00:54:13] Dax Raad: that was all Adam. That was Adam’s fault. He also works on most of it. So it’s always going to be his fault, but you know, we’re
[00:54:20] Dax Raad: still going to blame him
[00:54:20] Robbie Wagner: him either way
[00:54:21] Chuck Carpenter: Fuck that dude. Just kidding. Please come on.
[00:54:25] Robbie Wagner: Yeah
[00:54:26] Outro: You’ve been watching Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Recorded in front of a live studio audience. What the fuck are you talking about, Chuck? Enjoyed the show? Subscribe. You know, people don’t pay attention to these, right? Head to whiskey.fund for merchant to join our Discord server. I’m serious, it’s like 2% of people who actually click these links. And don’t forget to leave us a five star review and tell your friends about the show. All right, dude, I’m outta here. Still got [00:55:00] it.