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AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT Of Gross Irregularities and Medical Incompetence in the Early Clinical Trials of AZT By Lynn Gannett 2000 Please keep in mind that these two write-ups represent only the "tip of the iceberg," and for everything that is recorded here, there are literally dozens of other examples that I could give. My information is NOT included in John Lauritsen's book on AZT, simply because neither of us had heard of each other at that time (although I wish we had!). His book documents information related to the Phase II studies of AZT, whereas I was involved with the Phase III studies (ACTG 019). But it was all the same kinds of shocking nonsense, incompetence and fraud. In addition to ACTG 019 (which was the major study at that time), I also worked on other studies of AZT and ddI (ACTG 002, 016, 020, 081, 116, 117 and 118). Some of these studies included other drugs, such as pentamidine. I was somewhat young (and naive) at the time, and didn't quite know what to make of what I was witnessing, or what to do with the information that I had documented, having NEVER witnessed anything even remotely similar. In fact, at that point in my life, I didn't even realize that human beings were even CAPABLE of this kind of corrupt, insane, self-motivated behavior. If I had known then what I know now, I would have been much more persistent in my attempts to report this information to the NIH. I don't even have a single letter – my communication with them was done entirely over the phone. Which means they could simply deny that these phone conversations ever took place. All I have to offer as evidence that I DID REPORT THIS TO THE NIH AND THEY DELIBERATELY IGNORED MY INFORMATION is my personal testimony, and some handwritten notes that I took at the time (this was in the Spring of 1990). I may be able to locate at least one witness who could corroborate my story (the NIH site monitor for Syracuse). But the way that I look at this is that it's never too late to report this to the NIH, AGAIN. And the important thing is that I still have ALL of my original documents (an entire box full of material) which I tried to share with them in 1990. I have precise names, patient numbers, dates, lab values, memos, etc. I KNOW that my information is accurate, because I was so thorough and meticulous (not to mention HONEST) in my record-keeping. That's why they hired me – I'm an extremely detail-oriented, "numbers" person. Thus, all of my information could, in theory, be verified by referring to the original research forms and NIH documents from that time period, which must still exist and (theoretically) could be obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Ideally, my second attempts to report this could lead to a Congressional Investigation. That is certainly what I will be calling for. The seriousness of my allegations certainly warrants such an investigation. For the NIH to knowingly ignore serious and credible DOCUMENTED reports of gross scientific misconduct coming from someone working on the INSIDE of these trials – if that doesn't constitute scientific "fraud," I don't know what does. Especially when we look at the real-life gruesome outcome of this deliberate refusal to even INVESTIGATE my allegations to see if there was any merit to them (along with all of the other glaringly obvious, telltale signs and warnings coming from around the globe, which were also ignored at that time) – all of this intentional "blindness" on the part of the NIH, the FDA, Burroughs Wellcome, etc., led to the unnecessary and unimaginable suffering of countless individuals (of both "HIV+" people and their loved ones), and the unnecessary deaths of (in my view) tens of thousands of people. This dreadful holocaust continues to this day. Parks Mankahlana, couldn't have summed it up better when he said "...the profit takers who are benefiting from the scourge of HIV/AIDS will disappear to the affluent beaches of the world to enjoy wealth accumulated from humankind ravaged by a dreaded disease." Knowing what I know "first hand" about AZT, and knowing how it should NEVER have received FDA approval under ANY circumstances, this is one of many reasons why I am especially grateful to the members of the Perth group, Peter Duesberg, John Lauritsen, Celia Farber, Anthony Brink and many others for the outstanding work that they have done in documenting the case against AZT. *** I was an eyewitness (and later a whistle-blower) to gross negligence and fraud in the Phase III clinical trials of AZT (1987 to 1990). I've been saying to people for years that AZT was NEVER proven to be safe or effective. From the particular studies in which I was involved, it would have been impossible to prove anything. The data was such a mess! I now realize that AZT is a deadly poison. All "AIDS drug" trials since that time have been based on the same flawed model. The big difference is that now there is even LESS meaningful oversight, and even MORE of an economic incentive for physicians to enroll patients. And recent drug trials have also been characterized by an absurdly brief follow-up period (24 or 36 weeks, for example), and effectiveness is often said to be determined by "surrogate markers" which have never been proven to relate to actual clinical health and/or increased survival. But, the early AZT studies were like the big "granddaddy" of all of this ensuing insanity! I did not know John Lauritsen at the time that he wrote his book, AZT: Poison by Prescription (1990), but I later told him that, if I had known him at that time, I could have given him several additional chapters for his book! In this book he meticulously documents serious fraud which took place at other participating hospitals (I was in Syracuse, NY), particularly at a hospital in Boston. When I first read John's book, it was like reading my own autobiography! Talk about deja vu! In spite of what I witnessed, I was not aware, however, of the deeper problems within "AIDS science" until many years later. It was in 1997 that I first heard about the views of the "AIDS dissidents." After educating myself regarding the many unexplained and nonscientific paradoxes and absurdities of the orthodox "HIV/AIDS" model, and after studying the alternative views proposed by the various "AIDS dissidents," I started doing public speaking on this topic. I especially want to share my story with as many people as possible about the fraud which I witnessed firsthand in the early AZT trials. I always tell people that if the general public knew what I knew about AZT, this so-called "drug" would be banned immediately. *** My name is Lynn Gannett. As the Data Manager for the first two years and seven months of the NIH-sponsored AIDS clinical trials conducted at the Syracuse, New York, clinic (September 1987 to March 1990), my belief is that the data which came from the Syracuse site is ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS! I would NEVER trust my health or my life to the results of this so-called "research" or in the hands of these so-called "medical professionals." I can only speculate that if these things occurred at this site, that similar things may have and in all likelihood did occur at the other participating sites. The things that I witnessed at this clinic would HORRIFY any reasonable observer. The level of medical incompetence, unprofessionalism, unethical, dishonest, corrupt, illegal and immoral behavior was shocking and inexcusable. The data was so inaccurate and so full of holes that I often compare it to Swiss cheese. I felt like I was trapped in the middle of an awful movie about "mad scientists." If there was a "rule" that could be broken - they broke it! The following examples outline some of the most egregious examples of what I witnessed: * The Principal Investigator, an MD, and the Study Coordinator, an RN, showed a huge interest in enrolling as many patients as possible on studies (which would entitle them to more money and perceived prestige) and showed little interest in the research itself - specifically in the integrity, accuracy and completeness of the data. * The Study Coordinator (and other medical staff responsible for study patients) often displayed a significant lack of understanding and unfamiliarity with the study protocols and important memos concerning their implementation - as though she had not even read them, or had totally misunderstood and misinterpreted them, even in instances pertaining to terminology and procedures FUNDAMENTAL to the protocol itself, often months after the study had been underway. e.g. In what I consider to have been the most serious, disturbing and grossly incompetent situation that I witnessed, which came dangerously close to resulting in death, and unquestionably resulted in extreme unnecessary suffering, PID #110434, a black, obese, diabetic, HIV+ female with a history of serious heart problems, experienced severe hematologic toxicity from the 081 study drug (AZT), which had progressed to a GRADE IV toxicity by week 24 and resulted in her coming into the emergency room with "severe shortness of breath, fatigue and weakness," and required her to be hospitalized for a total of five days. BECAUSE NO ONE, DOCTOR OR NURSE, SHOWED ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR, KNOWLEDGE OF, INTEREST IN OR RECOGNITION OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EXPLICITLY-DEFINED TOXICITY (ADVERSE REACTION) AND DOSE MANAGEMENT STEPS AND PROCEDURES OUTLINED IN THE PROTOCOL, instead of being taken OFF the AZT due to the Grade IV toxicity, her dose was reduced from 1000 mg/day to 500 mg/day, in complete violation of protocol requirements which explicitly require DISCONTINUATION of study drug. Additionally, early Grade I and Grade II toxicities should have indicated the need for interim lab monitoring of Hemoglobin, especially with this patient's complicated medical history, but instead this patient had NO lab work performed between week 20 (13DEC89) and week 24 (10JAN90), even though she was in for a pentamidine treatment on 20DEC89 and could have easily had a blood sample drawn. At some point during this time interval, her original medical chart was "lost," never to be found again, requiring a new chart to be made up, which subsequently obviously lacked significant information concerning her medical history. I was shocked, outraged and horrified when this whole situation occurred, and documented this gross medical incompetence and blatant violation of protocol requirements as carefully as I could because I wanted everything to be ON RECORD so that no one could later deny it or cover it up. (See attached memo dated 01FEB90 and lab flow chart showing toxicity progression.) * Patients were ROUTINELY enrolled who failed to meet eligibility requirements, especially when it came to specific required lab values and test ranges (i.e., within the required number of days prior to enrollment). There are many, many examples. Below are a few (also see attached 05OCT89 list of 081 screening lab eligibility failures): e.g. In the most blatant example, PID #110264C, a female partner of an HIV+ male, was enrolled on study 019 and took study drug for THREE weeks before it was discovered that she was actually HIV NEGATIVE! (The Elisa came back as a false positive but the Western Blot came back negative.) The test results date predated her enrollment on study date. She was also on oral contraceptives at the time, another eligibility violation. E.g. You might think that this would be the last time a patient would be enrolled without an HIV+ test result "in hand" - not so. PID #110316's HIV+ test results are dated 06JAN89, ONE MONTH AFTER his enrollment date (05DEC88)! e.g. Other patients had been routinely enrolled without HIV+ test results documentation available, often based simply on referrals from other physicians. An example is PID #110153H, a referral patient from Binghamton who, to my knowledge, has no HIV+ test results in his chart TO THIS DAY! After a year or two of my repeated requests to the Study Coordinator for this information, she finally obtained a LETTER ONLY from the referring physician "verifying" his HIV+ status, who also apparently had no supporting documentation. * There were COUNTLESS unreported (meaning unreported on the research forms) diagnoses, opportunistic infections, symptoms, concomitant medications, and adverse reactions. Except for "symptoms" (which were asked for at every visit), these significant things (which each REQUIRE reporting) should have been reported on one of several "as needed" or optional case report forms used to track this information - an extra step which was rarely taken. I often observed, as did the RTI (Research Triangle Institute) site monitors, this unreported information recorded or mentioned in the patient's regular medical chart. E.g. From the 22JUN89 site monitor's report: "Of the six protocol 002 charts which were reviewed for the first critical event verification, four reported death as the first event even though at least one OI [opportunistic infection] has preceded the death. These OI's were not reported. In another instance, it was impossible to determine what had happened to the patient between the time of randomization and death because the records were missing." * Incorrect lab tests were ROUTINELY ordered (either required labs omitted or unrequired labs ordered by mistake), and the wrong prescriptions were ROUTINELY written (for example, 1200 mg/day instead of 1000 mg/day). When I questioned these and other similar mistakes, I would be chastised by the Principal Investigator and/or Study Coordinator for being too "nit picky" or for inappropriately questioning someone's medical "expertise" since I did not have (nor did my position require) a medical degree. * Medical lab results were ROUTINELY transcribed incorrectly onto the research forms by the Study Coordinator (who I suspect may have dyslexia - at the very least, she does not have the "detail-oriented" type of mind necessary for this type of research position). * Syracuse had an unusually high and excessive rate of "no shows" (often meaning "not even scheduled to begin with") and "not dones" compared to the other clinics. * On a regular basis, I would have to REPEATEDLY request data from the Study Coordinator, and we routinely missed deadlines. E.g. There was one group of approximately 90 (!) forms which were "missing" for over a year and a half. When these forms were eventually "found," mostly blank, the Study Coordinator filled in much of the information with, in most cases, no supporting documentation or progress notes in the charts. I have always believed that this data was just "fudged" or made up, because there would have been no other written record of these things (such as vital signs). * Informed consent forms were ROUTINELY backdated, sometimes weeks or even months after enrollment. E.g. In at least one instance, a patient was asked to sign (and did sign, along with the Principal Investigator and Study Coordinator) an informed consent form for the WRONG study (PID #110076A signed an informed consent for study 116 but was being enrolled on study 117). * The Principal Investigator and Study Coordinator displayed such open hostility and contempt toward the site monitors that there was a high turnover (4 different site monitors in a 3-year period). These site monitors could have easily uncovered this corruption if they had done their jobs carefully (which the first 3, at least, did NOT do) and over an extended period of time. * On March 21, 1990, after attempting unsuccessfully for over one year to address and resolve these SERIOUS issues with the Principal Investigator and Study Coordinator, and after watching in horror as the situation worsened severely with the implementation of the DDI studies (see attached memo dated 19MAR90), and after being retaliated against in many vicious and mean-spirited ways by both the Principal Investigator and Study Coordinator merely for repeatedly raising these issues and insisting on some type of corrective action, I felt compelled, in good conscience, to resign my position as Data Manager and immediately report this critical situation to the RTI site monitor. E.g. After reporting this to the site monitor, she checked with her boss, who in turn checked with her boss, and the decision was made to launch a "special audit and investigation" of the Syracuse site by the program office. I was asked to mail copies of all of my documentation supporting my claims to the site monitor. In a 27MAR90, 1:40 PM, phone call, the site monitor told me that her boss "never heard of anything of this magnitude," and referred to the situation as "uncharted waters." E.g. In a 27MAR90, 4:00 PM (later that same afternoon), phone call with Carolyn Fassi, who called me from NIH on behalf of Dr. Kantz, she thanked me for bringing these issues to their attention and said it would be unnecessary for me to forward copies of my documentation to the site monitor or to NIH. She also stated that they "can't act directly" based on my claims or supporting documentation, that they would "keep a close eye" on the Syracuse site, that they "won't use my information against the site or me," and ended by saying that he (Dr. Kantz) "may not even need to call me, except to clarify something." In other words, "don't call us, we'll call you." I never received a call from their office or anyone else associated with these studies again.

Politicians are in a state of mind where they are not interested in fixing the problem, which means that the fix on the backend is going to have to be more aggressive and draconian. The damage the debt does is, in many ways, invisible to the average person. We have had decades to fix the debt problems but politicians have failed to do so. If we made these changes to something like Social Security years ago, we could have fixed it without affecting anyone depending on the system, but that is not the case anymore. If you look at where we're headed, we will continue to see lower growth in the economy going forward. Economic growth, mobility, and income growth will be slower than it otherwise would have been. One of the real major concerns has less to do with economics than it does with national security. The US will not have the economic dominance that it had in the past that secured its geopolitical place in the world and will find itself falling behind places like China. We need to begin thinking more about the long-term changes in the nature of work due to technology. We need a social contract that reflects and recognizes these changes so people can work effectively and productively with the changes that are happening more and more rapidly. As our fiscal health weakens, our ability to meet the challenges of this century is greatly diminished and we will be dangerously weak for it. Modern Monetary Theory says that you can't default when you borrow your own currency., which is true, but just because we can't default, that doesn't mean we have a healthy economy. MMT recommends fiscal policy to control inflation, which means basically raising taxes. The trouble with that idea is that there aren't any politicians willing to raise taxes, let alone cut spending or both. MMT proponents don't understand the dangers of inflation. Inflation can wipe away your entire savings and create an economic recession that is difficult to escape and painful for everyone. Borrowing during the downturn is not an example of MMT being correct. MMT is dangerous because it's so seductive. Who doesn't want to be able to spend as much as you want indefinitely with no consequences? But just because you want it to be true that doesn't make it true. Economists need to be unbiased and neutral when it comes to political ideology. There are politicians in power right now that recognize the threat of the national debt, but there are also groups that are working against the effort. Many politicians are willing to do the right thing, but they can't do it in isolation. There is no point in having people who are willing to do the right thing get destroyed politically without achieving anything. Part of the problem is that the national debt does lend itself to grassroots outrage. Ideally, there is some leadership at the top to champion the cause.There are a lot of great members in congress and there's a real chance for them to come together, but we are going to have to figure out how to come together as one country to solve these big problems if we want to see them rise to that challenge.   Mentioned in this Episode: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget - crfb.org

Chris gives the deets on that new new – (he joined a startup!) and laments about the back button being so complicated. Steph talks about extracting an untrustworthy service and likens the scenario to making a Pixar movie. You don't wanna miss this hero's journey! Eric Bailey's bunny updates (https://twitter.com/ericwbailey/status/1389332217088851971) Katrina Owen's Therapeutic Refactoring Talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4dlF0kcThQ) EnjoyHQ (https://getenjoyhq.com/) User research platform Aurelius (https://www.aureliuslab.com/) also a user research platform Dry Monad (https://dry-rb.org/gems/dry-monads/1.3/) (part of dry-rb (https://dry-rb.org/)) Previous Bike Shed discussing dry-monads (https://www.bikeshed.fm/243) Railway Oriented Programming (https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/rop/) Bike Shed "Seeking Calm" Episode (https://www.bikeshed.fm/279) Previous Episode Discussing Multi-Step Forms (https://www.bikeshed.fm/295) Discussion thread on Inertia repo re: back button cache (https://github.com/inertiajs/inertia/issues/247) Transcript: STEPH: Yes, I was getting text messages from you where you were like, “Go on without me.” CHRIS: [laughs] Leave me behind! STEPH: [laughs] No developer left behind!! CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Steph, how's your week going? STEPH: Hey, Chris. It's been a very busy week. There's been a lot going on. But the most delightful part of my week has been that Eric Bailey, another thoughtboter and also a former guest on this show, has a tiny, little baby bunny living in his backyard, and so he has been sharing updates about this little baby bunny. In fact, he's been sharing some pictures on Twitter as well. So I'll include a link in the show notes so other people can experience the joy. Also, the name of the bunny gets me every time. But they have named the bunny “Corndog.” CHRIS: Checks out. It seems like a very obvious name for a small bunny. STEPH: It gets me because that's such a big name. I don't know why it's a big name, but it feels like a big name for a little bunny. CHRIS: I can say yeah, it's a cornball. Yeah, that's a large name. And so a tiny bunny is a...it's like Little John from Robin Hood. It's perfect. STEPH: [chuckles] I kept referring to him as Corn Nugget, I guess, because of size. But yes, it's not corn nugget; it's Corndog. [chuckles] So watching Eric's little bunny has been delightful and a wonderful addition to the week. How about you? How has your week been? CHRIS: My week has been great. I was off on vacation last week (so you had a guest on), which was fun to just take a week off and reset the system. But actually, this week has been interesting. It was my first full-time week with a new startup that I have joined. I think, yeah, that seems to be the truth in the world. So a bit of a shift from what I've been doing for the last year and a half, almost something like that. The reason there's hesitance in my voice is because I've actually been working with this organization for six months-ish, depending on how you count it. I've been having conversations, and then it's slowly grown over time where it was just conversations, and then it was an afternoon a week, and then one day a week, and then two, and three. And finally, we decided we think we've got an idea. We've got a thing that we want to build. And so I am the developer on this team, but we are an early-stage startup trying to build something. I'm now full-time on the project. I rotated down the other projects that I was working on from a freelance consulting perspective, and now I'm trying something new. So it's a very different vibe. Even though I'd been working with the organization for a long time, this week just felt so much more real. And there was so much more space, so much more room for activities, having a full week to actually work on things. So yeah, it's very exciting, it's very new, it's very early stage, so all of those things are true. But there are a lot of great aspects to that, and I'm super excited about it. STEPH: That is some big news. That's a big change too. Well, I guess with consulting, there are the stresses that go into consulting and then changing projects and managing the projects that you're taking on. But then to joining a team and such an early startup team too...anytime, someone says startup life, I'm always like, well, tell me more. How calm is the startup life, or how uncalm is this startup life? CHRIS: It's somewhere between calm and uncalm, I would say, but in a, I would say purposeful and intentional way. I was looking for...this has largely been true over the entire time that I was freelancing, but freelancing was a way for me to keep the lights on, and stay engaged with tech, and continue working, and frankly, have more conversations and meet more organizations. But I was looking for something that I could engage with a bit more. I was looking for, largely, something like this. So it definitely is occupying a different space in my head than, say, any individual consulting client where with consulting, I was pretty rigid, you know, these are the hours that I'm working. When I'm off the clock, I'm really not thinking about it too much. I'm responsive if I see an incident or something like that or if the database falls over; I'm going to look at that on the weekend but otherwise, largely not doing anything. Whereas with this project, I'm somewhat purposefully allowing it to have a little bit more space in my head off-hours, that sort of thing. And I'm more invested in the work. It's not just a thing that I'm doing, but it's a project that I believe in. It's something that I want to exist in the world. And so, I'm engaged with it in a different way in that manner. I'm also engineer number one, so I'm choosing all of the technologies and setting the standards. Thankfully, there's a lot of good thoughtbot material out there that I can link to, which is great. But yeah, so it's mostly within the context of what I think startups can be. The expectations and the way that the team is working is very reasonable. And I think it's more for my own self. I'm allowing it to occupy a little bit more of my space, but in a fun way so far. STEPH: Well, along that line, in terms of choosing the tech stack and starting greenfield, I am curious to hear more about the type of project that you're going to be working on. But I'm also recognizing y'all may be in stealth mode. Is that where you're at, or can you talk a bit more about the type of work you'll be doing? CHRIS: We're stealth-ish right now, I would say, partly because we're likely in the process of rebranding, and renaming, and things like that. So partly it's just like, oh, I probably shouldn't say that. But at some point, this will become public, and so at that point, I can probably be a little bit more open about it. But at the end of the day, we're building a financial product, FinTech sort of thing. And the tech stack is relatively straightforward. I'm actually using my preferred tech stack is...I got to choose, so it's Rails, Inertia, and Svelte with some TypeScript because why not? And I love it, and it's fantastic. I continue to believe deeply in that tech stack. So, yeah, that's most of what I think is good to say now. But I think over the coming weeks, I'll be able to say more and share more. And I certainly will be able to talk about the details of building and growing a team and things like that. STEPH: Awesome. Yeah, you answered my other question too. I was going to ask what tech stack you chose. CHRIS: I chose the tech stack, the one with the acronym, which I don't even know...the STIR stack I think we went with or something. STEPH: I was about to say I don't remember the acronym. [laughs] CHRIS: I think I never committed to an acronym previously, and then that was the one that got thrown around on the internet. I think I just was like, in the next episode of The Bike Shed, I'll choose an acronym so STIR, why not? STEPH: I like it, causing a stir. CHRIS: But yeah, so it's a pretty sizable shift in my life. But frankly, I don't even know exactly the shape that the coming weeks will have. So it will be interesting to report back as things evolve and as new concerns and considerations come up. But, yeah, we'll save that for future weeks. For now, what else is up in your world? STEPH: Yeah, it's been an interesting week. There have been really two things on my mind, so one of them has been focused on writing a task that's going to process a sizable CSV. And then it's going to essentially enqueue a bunch of jobs and send off a bunch of data to other third-party systems. So that's been a big focus of the week. The other topic is what I'm going to call extracting an untrustworthy service into its own service. And I know that's a bit vague, but I've got both of those topics. So which one would you want to hear about first? CHRIS: I definitely want to hear about both. But because you veiled it in mystery and said, “An untrustworthy,” that one's just going to call to me a little bit more. So yeah, what about this extracting and untrustworthy service? What more can you say there? STEPH: Good question. I'm glad that you picked the mysterious one and started there. That feels right. So this is a part of our codebase, and it's very related to also the task that I'm writing. So to provide a bit of context, this particular portion of the codebase manages a big part of where we are sending data from our application over to third-party systems. And it's a very important feature of our application. And it's also probably one of the gnarliest sections of our application in terms of there are tons of conditionals based on which type of service we're sending to or the discreet customer that we're sending it to, and any particular preferences that they need and how we're sending that data. And then there's also just a lot of room for ambiguity and errors. And when we are sending that data, was it actually successful? And what if it was successful, but we still got back error messages? What does that mean? Is that successful with warning? And so there are just a lot of unknowns. It's also one of the less tested areas of the codebase. So even though it's important, we really don't feel confident making changes at this point until we've added some more test coverage. And testing it can be a beast because right now, we really just want to add some security around that section of the codebase. So we're often going for high-level tests, which are then our slower tests, but then also means it's hard to test the more granular aspects of that code. This is that untrustworthy section of the code in terms that we're a bit skittish to make changes, but yet it's a very active part of the codebase, so not the best place to be. But we also recognize that this part of the codebase would be really well-fitted to live outside of the application. It really doesn't need to live with the rest of the application. And there are other services that need to be able to talk to the service as well. So instead of having it grouped together, which -- It's funny. I see your eyebrows go up when I talk about -- For people who can't see, Chris raised his eyebrows when I talked about extracting this to another service. [chuckles] CHRIS: That doesn't sound like me at all. I don't ever… STEPH: [chuckles] And since we do have other services that need to be able to pull data or to talk to this particular portion of the codebase, we are looking to then move it out into its own application, so that way, it can stand alone. It can focus on this one task, and then other services can benefit from it as well. And there's been an interesting discussion around, well, we need to make changes to this codebase. And we also have some recognition that we need to make improvements. Do we go ahead and go heads down for a bit and improve the section of the codebase, add more test coverage, get to understand more of what this code does, where the risks are? Or do we go ahead and extract it in its current form to the new greenfield space and just essentially port it, and then we work on it from that space? And so, there's been a conversation around which one do we do first? And I'll tell you my thoughts, and then I'd love to hear yours. As one of the primary individuals that's been working in this codebase, my stance has been let's leave it in place for now because I want to build some confidence around what this does. So I really want to have some confident understanding about the requirements, about when we extract this, what is that going to look like? But also, I feel like I'm in a place where I'm starting to understand the beast enough that I want to continue that progress and add some testing around it before then we just move it to this new location. And I can't decide if that's one of those decisions where like, I just feel too close to it, and extracting it feels risky to me. So I feel like we're adding on this extra level of complexity. Like, this is already code that's hard to understand. And then we're going to add this network connection on top of that where then we have to talk to it in a different way. And in my mind, that's adding another level of risk and another level of having to debug this service. So my current approach is let's leave it in place. Let's try to identify some low-hanging fruit. Let's go ahead and add some more tests. And I feel pretty good about that decision. I'm curious, what are your thoughts? CHRIS: I have a bunch of them. The first is that the story that you're telling here feels like the hero's journey of software development. Like, all right, we got this gnarly bit of the code. It's super important. It's super complicated. It doesn't really have any test coverage for historical reasons that are complicated, but here we are. What do we do? That story feels so true. It feels like there are nine Pixar movies about it if Pixar made movies about writing code, and they would be great movies. STEPH: That's amazing. [laughs] I would watch those movies. CHRIS: I think of it like Katrina Owen's therapeutic refactoring, which I feel like is probably my most referenced...It's one of my two most referenced talks that I bring up on the show all the time, but it is almost exactly about that sort of thing. We've got this gnarly piece of code. It's super important, but nobody really knows how it works. But we know it does work, which is an interesting bit. And so to the question of would you extract as is or would you try and shore it up before you extract it? I am 100% on the side that you are on, which is let's shore this thing up before we move it over. Because moving it over, like you said, that's going to add the additional complexity and failure modes of network latency, network timeouts, async disconnects, whatever, any of those complexities. That's another set of failure modes that you'll be introducing or just complexity and things that you have to think about. So that feels complicated. Also, there's probably a poor analogy that I have in my head. But imagine that you're moving, and your bedroom is just a complete mess, and you're like, oh, there are some old to-go food containers over there. And I haven't done my laundry in a couple of weeks. I'm just going to throw it all on a blanket and take it to the new house, and I'll figure out what I want to keep on the other side. It's like, that doesn't feel like the right move. I would definitely throw some things out before I move to a new house. So I definitely lean in to let's clean this up and understand it so that when it's in the new place, we have a slightly more contained, understood, manageable version of the software to try and extract to a service. STEPH: I feel very judged for my moving style. CHRIS: [laughs] I mean, obviously, with software, you're doing the one thing. But did I just describe exactly how you move house? STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: To each their own now, you know, whatever works for you. STEPH: No, I'm with you. I'm definitely the person that's going to clean up first before I put stuff in boxes. I'm going to try to give away as much stuff as possible. CHRIS: It's a great time to just figure out what's true in your life or what's true in your software. I am intrigued. So yes, I did raise my eyebrows when you mentioned extracting a service and other services talking to each other. In particular, the way you described this piece of the system, I would be surprised if there weren't data requirements and/or transactional consistency things that you wanted to uphold. And that's one of the main things that causes me concern when we're extracting services is if this thing still needs to know about a bunch of different pieces of data and if it's going to make multiple updates to different records where if one succeeds and the other doesn't, we should roll back the whole thing. You lose all of that by moving to a service. And so that's where my broad…like, I'm always going to question if we're going to surface this. So I'm intrigued. Is this thing a very functional piece of your system where some data comes in, some stuff happens, and you get data out at the end of the day? Or is it more operating on related data within your system and potentially updating records after the fact? STEPH: Yeah, that's a great point. For this area of the codebase, it does feel more functional in terms that we have data, and we essentially want to notify other people that we have this data, and then we want to share it with them. So there is still that coupling of where we need access to those values. So if we're sending it over to the new system, either that new system needs to be able to read from the same database, or we have to send all of those details over to the new system. So then it can build up the message and then send it over to the other third-party systems. So it feels more functional, but there are still some of those requirements that we need to think about. CHRIS: Okay. That definitely clarifies things. And I wouldn't say that I have a unified theory of services. But what you're describing feels like the type of service that I'm more open to. It sounds almost like a SendGrid where I want to deal with all of my application data. And then I send a bunch of structured data over to SendGrid, and their job is to send an email and retry as necessary or send a text message or even do a voice call if it's Twilio or something like that. And so they're really good at those weird things and the failure modes that exist in those communication channels. But that's not logic that I need to live in my app. And so what you're describing there definitely makes sense as something that could comfortably be extracted to a service and not have more complexity be introduced by that. You did mention something about services talking to services and other things. So is the idea that this would be extracted, then other parts of the system would also use it to communicate out messages or something like that. STEPH: Yeah, one of the motivations for extracting this is because we have another application that also wants to perform similar behavior. So now we have two applications that need to do similar work, and they feel more in that line of functional work where it would be great if we could share this. But it doesn't fit in the space that we want to extract it in regards to extract it to a gem and make it shareable. It feels more appropriate for it to be its own service and then also capture. Because the other nice thing that we want to include that we're doing now as well is we want to capture feedback from whenever we are sending that data over to other systems. We want to know, hey, how did it go? Did you give us back that successfully, but maybe with some warnings or some errors? Maybe you accepted the data, but then you also gave us a response about something else. I think one really important question to consider is when is it trustworthy enough to extract? Because we know we're headed down this path. So at what point are we ready to then go ahead and extract this over to its own service? And that was the more interesting conversation because I think those who were in favor of extracting it now had the concern that we can't add test coverage in its current form. So my first response was if I need to make changes and I can't add test coverage, I will sound the alarm, and we will reconsider. But my goal right now is to turn this untrustworthy service into a little more trust. Just dial up the trust a little bit further, and then we can port this over. So then, as we do add some network complexities on top of this, we will at least have more faith and understanding the underlying behavior of the system. But then we still want to understand that it's not going to be perfect. And we're not going to wait until it's perfect before we do extract it. But that's the tale or the mysterious extracting an untrustworthy service. So I think it will be an interesting journey. And it was a very interesting conversation that I was excited to have your thoughts because I know you and I often lean so far away from extracting stuff to a service that it was an interesting conversation to have around; well, this code is a bit of a mess. When do we start to tackle that mess? CHRIS: I like that you didn't even frame it necessarily in terms of that, but I still definitely got there. I was like, wait, wait, wait, but let's actually talk about whether or not. But this is definitely the sort of thing that I think makes sense to consider as a service extraction. I think the question that you're asking around when do we feel good enough in its current state to do the extraction? That's right on the line of art in the software world as opposed to the science of this is how we connect HTTP. So I'm very interested to see where you get to both with that question and how you actually make that decision and then how the extraction goes. And I imagine this will be the sort of thing that goes on for a bit of time. So it feels like we could make a mini-story arc that'll span a couple of episodes, and you can follow the characters on their journey. This is the Pixar movie. We're making a Pixar movie. STEPH: We're making a Pixar movie. They're missing an entire genre for their Pixar movies. If they just appeal to developers, that'd be wonderful. I'm so in for that. We should write Pixar. CHRIS: There are more developers every day, so think Hackers meets Up. That's what we're going for. We're just going to fuse those two together. It's going to pull at your heartstrings, but it's also going to talk about hacking the Gibson. It's going to be great. STEPH: Oh man, you reached for the most heartfelt one going for Up. That one has the toughest beginning. [laughs] CHRIS: That's what I'm going for here. STEPH: For anyone that hasn't seen Up, you can go watch the beginning of it. Just be prepared. CHRIS: And if anyone hasn't seen Hackers, also be prepared. [laughs] STEPH: Which is me. I haven't seen Hackers. CHRIS: All right. You still haven't. All right, that's a thing we need to work on. STEPH: [chuckles] CHRIS: But cool. Okay. So we're going to work on the Pixar movie. You're going to update us because we need to actually gather the information. But yeah, we'll come back to that in future episodes. But shifting gears just a little bit, actually, I have a couple of things, two small things, and then one more sizable thing that is more just like, I'm confused. So yeah, we're going to go in that order. Thing number one is, we are, again, it's a very early-stage startup that I'm working with. And part of what we're doing that I really like is that we are talking to potential customers, potential end-users of the application doing lots of user interviews, which is a thing that I have more from a distance seen often. But now, because we're actually working as a distributed team, we're remote because that's the nature of the world right now. We'll probably meet each other in person at some point, but that's down the road. But all of these conversations are happening over Zoom calls, all of these user interviews. And so I made the suggestion that we use a tool to actually manage those. And so we're using a tool called EnjoyHQ, I think is the name of it. There's another similar tool called Aurelius. We can put the links in the show notes for both of those. But what it does is it basically makes the video available after the fact. I think it automatically transcribes it, and then it allows you to annotate and add notes and things like that, which is great for aggregating this body of information that we're collecting over time as we do all of these user interviews and start to tag common themes that we're seeing. And bringing them together will also allow us to revisit them. But for me as the developer, I've been to a few of them, but not as many as the rest of the team. And what's great is I've now taken to...as I'm doing more mundane…cleaning up email or whatever sort of tasks, I will just put on one of these videos in the background at 2X. And what's great is I can now just hear literally the voice of the users of the application. What are the words that they're choosing? How are they talking about it? What matters to them? What doesn't matter to them? What do they get really passionate about? And it's been just such a wonderful thing to have available. It's almost like a podcast of our app that we're building, and it's like, that's awesome. STEPH: I love that. Yeah, I would love to be able to hear from people that are using the application. And like you mentioned, just turn it on in the background so that way I can process what they're saying. But then, I don't know, depending on what they're saying, maybe it needs full attention or otherwise, maybe you're able to just absorb little bits and pieces while you're hacking away on something else. And now I've got the word hacking stuck in my mind. [laughs] CHRIS: It's the best word to describe what we do. Yeah, there's definitely a version of someone should be reviewing...someone's actually doing the interview, so they're going to be very close to it. And then there maybe is a secondary someone's watching it closely and trying to glean, and categorize, and all of that. And I could potentially be any one of those, but I really like this version of this is just a background soundtrack that I'm exposing myself to so that I'm all the more immersed in the problem space that we are working on. And it's one of the things that I fundamentally believe about software development is developers shouldn't be hidden in the corner just writing code. We should always care about what the end-user wants, and what better way to get there than to actually hear their voice and hear the words that they're using. So this is a magical little trick that I have now found that I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. STEPH: Funny enough, I had a similar experience this past week where I realized I was feeling very disconnected from the people that are using the application and also the people that are setting priorities for the work that our team is doing. And that is something that I'm very accustomed to with thoughtbot that we always want to be part of the team. We're not necessarily just we can churn through a backlog. But we also really want to be in touch with product decisions, and share opinions, and then also be in touch with users too. So I had some similar revelations this week where I realized I was feeling very disconnected where I was picking up tickets, and I was like, I don't really understand why this is great or how this is helpful. And so, I shared that with the team, and someone encouraged me to attend a specific meeting. And that was wonderful because then I got to hear from the people who were creating those tickets and then giving them a high priority because something was urgent and why it was urgent. And having that insight was huge to me. And I realized that it was incredibly motivational as well. Because then I'm like, yes, okay, I understand how this is going to impact someone. And I'm now very encouraged to get this done. CHRIS: I think that idea, that ethos of wanting to get into the user persona and understand that better is a very strong thoughtbot ideal. So it's unsurprising both of us share that. But yeah, that was a really great thing and particularly a tool that facilitated that in a really straightforward way, which I appreciated. Another thing that I used this week, which I've talked about at length in a previous episode, so we can link to that episode, but it's a project called dry-monad. So there's dry-rb is the collection of, I think, a set of gems, but dry-monad is one that allows for defining sequential tasks, so tasks that you have to do a bunch of steps in order and the outcome of a previous step will be the input of the next part of the process. So it can fail in a bunch of ways like, okay, fetch this thing from the network and then look up a user based on that. And then get the user's profile, which may or may not exist, and then assuming that all of that's gone well, actually persist to this new record, to the database. And they're really finicky to write that sort of sequential processing. And so I actually had written that thing manually. And part of it was I'd wrapped the whole thing in a database transaction, but I was trying to make it so that if something went wrong, I would manually roll back the transaction. And then I wanted to return an object to the caller that indicated that things had failed and an error message or something like that. And that was actually really hard to do because of the way transactions work. The mechanism that I was using was apparently deprecated in Rails. And so the whole thing was just kind of confusing, and it was a bit messy in the code. And I knew in the back of my mind that dry-monad exists. I've used it before. I've really enjoyed it. But I was trying to minimize the amount of new technologies that I'm bringing in this early on in the project. It's like, yeah, I'll bring that in when I need it. But finally, I was like, you know what? I think I've reached that point. I grabbed it, brought it in, and I haven't worked with it in a while, but I was very quickly able to refactor my class to use dry-monad. It cleaned it up immensely. The tests remained identical, which was really interesting. I didn't have to change anything on the test side. And one of my tests was failing before and then passed because of the introduction of dry-monad. And yeah, it was just like a win-win-win, and also the fact that I was able to revisit dry-monad as a library and just get running with it again was really interesting to me because it is a bit complicated and interesting in how it works. But again, I was able to just sort of pick it up and run with it. So that was wonderful. And I will now all the more staunchly suggest that folks reach for that when they have more complex, procedural type code that they need to write. STEPH: I remember you highlighting dry-monad before in previous episodes and talking about the pain of writing that sort of procedural code, but then we also want to return something helpful. And I looked at it briefly, but I haven't used it. But now that you are reminding me of it, I'm very interested in it because I agree that process is difficult to write, at least in Ruby it's difficult to write. I understand the hesitancy that you have around bringing something in that's new. But then if you recognize that it's going to be a theme in your application around this is something that we're going to do a fair amount, and we want to do it in a clean, efficient way, then it starts to feel more reasonable to say, “Okay, I'm bringing in something new, but it is representative of how we want to handle this step or this type of process in our application.” So it's not just bringing in a gem to handle one small area of the code, something that we could have written, but it is elevating our process and our system. CHRIS: Yup. Indeed. In this case, these are command objects within the system. That's actually the name that I got from the creator of the project. That was his suggestion on Twitter as to what to call these objects. And it's a pattern that I do want to encode and has become the standard within the application for any of these more complex processing tasks. So, again, we'll link to the previous episode. I talked about it in more depth and the ideas behind it. Railway Oriented Programming is a phrase that's used, which talks about how to sequence failures or successes and whatnot together. And there's some good material behind it, more general, but yeah, wonderful, little library. STEPH: What is Railway Oriented Programming? I'm not familiar with that term. CHRIS: That refers to the sequential processing that I was describing. So imagine that you have a bunch of different steps where first you fetch from the network to get this record, then using what you got back, you look up a user in your database, then you fetch that user's profile. Then you do something else. Each of those steps along the way could fail. And so the railway metaphor is the track is going forward, but if at any point you branch off the track because of a failure, then you're in the failure track, and that's a different thing. And so it's a very...the dry-monad or other similar Railway Oriented Programming or monads generally I think is the actual...it's the words in there. And I wish it wasn't in there because it's such a complicated word. But that idea is the fundamental, underlying thing that's going on there. And it is conceptually somewhat complicated, but if you don't try and think about the category theory behind it, and you're just like, well, I want to do a bunch of stuff, and it may fail at any point, and I want to return either a success message with everything having gone well or an error message at the point that it failed and stopped processing, then that's what this thing does, and it's fantastic at it. STEPH: Okay, cool. Thank you. CHRIS: You are welcome. And I think there's a bit more in the previous episode as well. So if that sounded interesting to anyone, I think I rambled more in a previous episode about it and probably better because I feel like I was more prepared that time than this time. STEPH: Well, along those lines of running a process and then being able to fail at any moment, I'm going to circle back to that other topic that I highlighted where most of my week has been focused on writing a task that is processing a CSV, something probably a number of us have done at some point in our career but processing a number of rows, and then sending and queuing jobs to then send data to a third party system. And it was really interesting less so because of the processing of the CSV and then enqueuing jobs. But it was more of the reporting that went behind it and the process that went into writing this task. So Joël and I were pairing on this task. Joël being another thoughtboter and also a former guest on this show. And we had an interesting process of where we started with one, let's do the simplest thing. Let's get it done. Let's also check through the CSV because you're often going to find stuff that doesn't align with what you expect it to when it's a CSV that's provided from an external source. One of the risks that we highlighted right away was how are we going to get the CSV on the server? Because we just have this one CSV that we need to run. We don't want to add it to the repo, and we can't generate it ourselves. So how are we actually going to get the CSV in a place that we can run this in a production mode? I learned that I could pass a CSV as standard input into the Rake task. So then I could actually run it locally because we're using AWS. So I could inform AWS to run this task, but then I could actually stream the CSV into the task that way. And that was really nice because then we no longer had the question of how are we going to get this file on the server? CHRIS: That's interesting. I didn't know...Yeah, the streaming of it from local to remote is an interesting one. On Heroku, I will typically open up a bash prompt, so Heroku run bash. And then, I will curl the file down onto the server and then run it locally. But that's an ephemeral dyno. It may die at any point. There are various things that could go wrong there. So that's always interesting. I imagine a similar thing could be done, but I don't know, actually, if you can directly stream into a Heroku dyno like that, which is an even more straightforward one because I end up having to bounce a file off of a random. Like, I'll often put it in a Gist or a Pastebin or something like that. And then I'll curl it down to the server, and yeah, this is interesting. STEPH: Yeah, I'm also not sure the specifics of how it would work with Heroku. But it was a really nice process for us to be able to use versus having to then read the file from, like you mentioned, curl it from somewhere else and then be able to parse it that way. Two other things that were top of mind for working on this task is one, item potency. You're going to rerun it, friends. At some point, your task is either going to bomb, and it's going to err. And then you're going to have to triage and run it again. Or whoever requested that you run this task and they said, “Oh, it's just temporary. We're just going to run the once,” that's not true. You're going to run it again. So keep in mind how to make that safe, that you can rerun it. And then that won't be its own scenario that then you have to triage and figure out. CHRIS: Item potency is one of those critical ideas, and I just wish the word were different. I feel ridiculous every time I say it. And I feel like I have to push my glasses up on my nose, and I'm like, well, have we considered item potency for this? But it's such a good idea. And it's the sort of thing that...you're totally right. Every time you're doing this sort of thing, it is something that you should consider. And we use GET requests, and they have rules about it. And it's such a good idea and such an important idea. And I just wish the word were different so that I felt more comfortable using it in polite conversation. STEPH: [laughs] I don't know why… and this may be sharing too much of myself. But the song Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie the Under Pressure song has been in my head. But I've been replacing the under pressure part with item potent. So it's [singing] under pressure, and I've been [singing] item potent. [laughter] And that has just been my song for the week. CHRIS: You've normalized it enough for me now that I'll just hear you singing it every time, and I'll be like, this is a nonsense word. We're fine. We can just go – [laughs] STEPH: That's what I'm here for, to turn technical terms into nonsense. [laughs] CHRIS: It's really what this show is about at the end of the day. So you are our hero. STEPH: I just have to work on more lyrics for the song. I really just have that one line, that one hook. [laughs] CHRIS: Now I just want to scrap the rest of the episode and just come up with lyrics to item potent. [chuckles] But maybe we don't do that. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: Maybe that'll be after the credits B-roll, something like that. STEPH: The other way I do phrase that question is I'm like, what happens when it fails? And that always feels like a safe way. Because if I ask someone like, “Hey, is the item potent?” It feels more natural for people to be like, “Oh, it's fine. It doesn't need to be.” But if you say, “What happens when it fails?” It's harder for someone to say, “Oh, it's never going to fail. [laughs] There is nothing that could go wrong.” So it feels like a more intentional question in regards to how are we going to handle this when we need to rerun it? The other part that really came in handy was the fact that we spent more time on the reporting as well. So we really wanted to know what happened when we are processing all of these rows. So were there any invalid rows? And if we do encounter an invalid row, do we want to just stop processing and stop right there, or do we want to keep moving? Do we have any rows that didn't match, a row in our database, and how do we capture those? And because it's item potent, maybe we want to capture skipped rows so then that way when we rerun it, we can see okay, well, we skipped, you know, a thousand rows because we'd already run them before. And all of that reporting has been so handy because we're also using this to triage. Like, hey, we're sending a bunch of messages to this third-party system. We reach out to that third-party group, and we say, “Hey, we sent you all of this. This is how it went. Let us know how it went on your end.” And then, we can have a more collaborative discussion around what happened on their end versus what happened on our end, and then we can make tweaks to each system. So overall, it felt more of that run-of-the-mill task where you're going to write a Rake task, you're going to parse a CSV. But something about the reporting really resonated with me because in the past, when I've written Rake tasks, I've leaned more on the this is temporary, so it's okay if it's not great. But the reporting has been so crucial that from now on, I always want reporting from any Rake tasks that I run, and I want to know what happened. And then I also want to be able to rerun it. And I'm very wary of any time that someone says, “Oh, this is temporary,” because then I also think that leads to interesting discussions around testing. Because initially, when we started this, we were under some pressure. Hey, that goes back to my song. We were under some pressure for writing this particular task. And then the question came up: do we want to test it? And to be frank, testing a Rake task isn't great; it's not fun, which is one of the reasons we get out of a Rake task as quickly as possible and put it into a class. So that was also one of the drivers or one of the conversations that went against, like, oh, this is temporary. So it's okay if it's not the best code. It's okay if it's not tested. And then I was more of an advocate for, like, well, I don't feel good about this. And I'm rerunning the Rake task every time I want to confirm that the changes that I've made are correct. And so once I hit that manual labor point where I'm like, okay, I'm testing this. I just don't have automated tests for this, that then I actually started adding test coverage around it. CHRIS: I'm so excited that we have transcripts, particularly for that last minute that you were just talking about, because I feel like that was a mini master class in software development. And more generally, there's been almost like a poetic something to the two different topics that you've brought up today are the sort of mundane, very real things that actual software development is made almost entirely of. It's not often that we're just starting with a greenfield app and building a new thing. I happen to be doing that this week, but it's rare. It's going to be over very soon. And then I'm going to be in the world of oh; we have to backfill a bunch of data. How are we going to do that? Or we have this portion of the code that, frankly, we should have been testing more, but we didn't. How do we deal with that? And these murky, gray areas where there isn't a clear answer and you have to go with intuition, and you have to...a bunch of the things that you just listed as these good heuristics that you have around how you think about software. I'm just really excited for the transcript to that because that was awesome. STEPH: I'm so glad you enjoyed it because I think it's not until right now where I'm processing this and talking about it with you that it is...I was trying to think earlier, like, why is this so interesting? Why am I so excited to bring this here to this conversation? And I think it is for the reasons exactly that you said, that it does feel like one of these...this is a mundane task. We write a task; we process some things; we send some data. We do that all the time. But then it's all the other bits around it, and the other ways that we've been bitten, and how we avoid those scenarios, and then how we identify a risk like when someone says, “Oh, it's temporary. It's fine.” That part, I think, is always the very interesting aspect of writing software. CHRIS: Do you consider this sort of stuff the distraction from the work or actually the work? And in my experience, this makes up a lot of the work. And treating it like what you were saying about testing like, “Yeah, that thing where you're telling me that it's going to be temporary and we probably don't need to test it, I've been told that before,” and I just want to spot-check that real quick. Or what you said of the when I was manually testing, and I crossed a threshold where I'd done that enough, that now adding a test harness around that totally makes sense. It's worth the investment at that point. Those little heuristics that we build up over time are the things that are hard to get. And so, yeah, I love that conversation. STEPH: I really like how you also asked and then responded to that question around is this distraction, or is this the work? And I am wholeheartedly with you that this is the work. This is the part of the work that I do find interesting, and knowing when to make those trade-offs, and when you've hit a decision point, and which direction you're going to go, and being able to recognize something that otherwise could have been a fire. It could have been much worse in terms of if we'd built a task that wasn't robust. Because of course, then the second time that I ran it, you know, emphasis on the second time that I ran it because we needed to do it again to process more data. It erred halfway through, and I panicked in the moment. But then I was like, oh yeah, this is fine. We planned for this. This was in the game plan. So it goes back to that we want the calm execution. We want to plan so we are back in that calm state. We want calm software. And this feels very in line with how do we make this more calm? CHRIS: I love that theme that you're bringing up there, which I think is a theme that we've touched on a bunch of times. I think we actually have an episode called Seeking Calm. And I think that little title there, as much as I love the nonsense titles that we have for most of the episodes, that one I think really captures the theme that a lot of what we talk about is in orbit around yeah, we want it to be calm. We don't want things to be on fire every day. And what does it look like to build software with that in mind? STEPH: Yeah. I also love that theme. And I like that it's something that we have surfaced and then really stuck to because it resonates deeply with me. But that's pretty much all I have for my Rake task adventure. What else is new in your world? CHRIS: Well, I have one more hopefully quick thing. I'm going to try and boil this down to its essence, but I ran into, let's call it, a subtlety. It's not an issue. It wasn't a bug per se. But looping back to the previous episode that you and I recorded together, we talked a bunch about multi-step forms, which was a great conversation in and of itself. But I eventually completed the feature that I was working on, put it up for acceptance. And the product manager who was reviewing it highlighted a couple of different things. They recorded a video which, as an aside, I love that as a way to do acceptance and show what's going on and talk through it. There were a couple of smaller issues, which I was able to resolve very quickly, but there was one more interesting one that I've extracted this as future work because it was too complex to try and solve in the moment. But basically, what's happening is imagine that we have a two-step form. So there's the first page of the form. The first form that you see is for your name. So it's just an input that says, “Name,” and you fill in your name and then you hit continue. That posts to the server. We save off that data. And then, we redirect you to the next page on the form, which is, say, phone number. So two steps. We start with name; we go to phone number. What happens if you type in your name, you hit continue, everything processes correctly. You end up on the phone number page, but you hit back. What do you think happens? STEPH: I would expect to go back to the name field and probably expect my name to be populated but would also be fine if it's not. CHRIS: I like that you would be fine with the fact that it's not, if it's not, because it's not is the answer. And what's unfortunate is so if someone goes back, they will see the unpopulated form, so not filled out. But if they reload at that point, we will serialize down the value and pre-fill the input with their saved data. And so that inconsistency is not great. It's all the more unfortunate because as I tried to resolve it, I'm like, oh, okay, this feels like a solvable thing. I just need to tell Chrome, “Hey, if someone hits the back button, do a better thing than what you're doing.” I needed a way to instruct Chrome or whichever browser because this should be a standards-level thing. And there are things in the HTTP spec about this. So there's the Cache-Control Header is one of the headers that you can send down with a response. And there's a bunch of different values that can be in there, no-cache, no-store. There's also the…I want to say it's the max-age, or I think it's Expires. That's a different header. But you can set it to have an expiry that's just already expired. There's also a Pragma, which you can say no-cache. Some of these are standard. Some of these are not standard. Chrome ignores all of them. Chrome's just like, “Nevermind.” So the idea is that those headers are intended to inform intermediate proxies. Say you have a caching layer, so you're using Fastly or CloudFront or something like that. When that service fetches the page from your backend, from your actual, say, Rails app, then it will look at that header and say, “Should I hold onto this for a little while or not? Is it public, or is it private? What should I do as an intermediate caching proxy?” Ideally, Chrome would also look at those and say, like…there should be a version of me being able to tell Chrome, “Listen, if someone hits the back button, please go to the server and ask for it.” Like, I'll take the second of latency that that introduces in navigating back because I always want to show them the correct data. Unfortunately, I have not found a way to do that. There's a bunch of things on Stack Overflow and other places of JavaScript solutions where I can listen to the window.popstate event and then force location.reload. But that feels like a pile of hacks that I don't want to get into. It feels like it will be very inconsistent between browsers. So I am still searching for a solution. But I would like to figure something out here. As a more pointed version of this to try and explain an example where this could happen, imagine that you've got the header of your application, and in it, you have a sign-out button. And so that sign out is going to delete to the session's endpoint. So you're deleting your session. And after that, you get redirected to the login form. If you then hit back, you will be taken back to the browser's cached version of the previous logged-in state page that you were at. This is probably fine in a lot of cases. If you reload, you can't do any nefarious action at that point because you are logged out. But you are seeing potentially sensitive information. So imagine that you log in in a cafe, you go through Gmail, or whatever, or your bank, then you log out, you walk away. If you leave that page up and someone hits back, they can now see what was on the page. And part of that particular version, I read a bunch of backstory about that on the Inertia repo because someone posted this as an issue against Inertia as a framework. And the Inertia team...and I really love how they handle these sorts of things. So they were very kind, very welcoming to the issue but also said, “Actually, we're doing...like, this isn't us. But let's talk about it,” and gave a ton of detail and went through the HTTP spec. And it's a fantastic issue as a read. It's like a fun bedtime reading sort of thing to learn about how the internet works. But the Inertia crew really, really cares about being spec-compliant and doing the right thing. So, unfortunately, this is outside of their purview as well. But yeah, I don't have a solution, and it makes me sad. STEPH: I liked that second example that you provided because I feel like I see that one more commonly when I'm on an application, and I don't know why. But I hit back, and then it shows that I'm signed in, and I'm like, that's a lie, I'm not signed in. I also really appreciate how Inertia is responding so kindly and welcoming to folks and then providing such thoughtful responses. That sounds immensely helpful. I don't know, yeah, I am also interested in this. It's something that I haven't worked with in a while, so I don't have any grand ideas at the moment. So I'm also curious if other people have run into this and how they've approached it. CHRIS: Yeah. If we're being honest, partly I wanted to share this with you, but also I wanted to say this into a microphone, and then hopefully someone out there on the internet knows an answer. I've tried, I think, all of the normal things, all of the different variations of headers. I haven't actually poked at the JavaScript things yet, but that's probably the direction I'm going. But if anyone out there has an idea, I would absolutely love it. I think in my mind, the ideal version of this is if I'm making GET requests and I'm clicking around on a page, it's perfectly fine for Chrome to use its cache version of the previous page because, sure, that's fine. It may actually be stale just based on it's been a few seconds, and something's changed on the server, but I'm willing to accept that. But if I've posted, or patched, or deleted, or done any action that by definition should be changing data on the server, then I would love for a way to invalidate Chrome's back cache, so its version of the pages that it's restoring when I'm hitting back. I'd love that as the heuristic to get to. I don't know if I can get there. My sense says chrome's like, “No, I want to go fast. That's all I care about.” [chuckles] I'm like, all right. Well, I get that vibe but -- STEPH: Yeah, that's a nice, succinct way to say that if I've changed data, then I want to invalidate that browser cache, so then we don't show them a fresh page and we actually show them the name that they entered on the form. CHRIS: As we know, though, cache invalidation is one of the very easy things to do in software development. So I'm sure my naive, quick idea is very easy to implement and will have no edge cases of its own. STEPH: Well, this will be our parallel Pixar movie. We have one that we highlighted earlier, and this will be the other one, The Cache Buster. I'm not great with titles. [laughs] This will be our other Pixar movie. CHRIS: Buster the Lonely Cache. Yep. STEPH: All right. Well, in parallel, we'll work on Buster the Lonely Cache. Is that the name of this? CHRIS: Yep. STEPH: Cool. We'll work on that script. And in the meantime, I'll also think about it if I encounter this or come up with some ideas and share them with you. And then also if other people have any ideas, that'd be fantastic. CHRIS: That would be fantastic. STEPH: Yes. Please write in to help Buster with the lonely cache, which, wait; I don't get it. Why is it the lonely cache? CHRIS: Because the cache has been busted and evicted. So he's got no friends. There's nothing...There's no data left. I don't know. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: I came up with it real quick. I don't stand by it. It's not a great idea, but we'll workshop it. It'll be fine. STEPH: That's true. Yeah, we'll go through it. I'm asking too many questions for a very quick creative. We're in the creative space, not the critical space. But please write in to help Buster figure out [laughs] the lonely cache or how to bust the cache. Oh, goodness. I'm done with my jokes for today. I'll try to stop. CHRIS: I believe that's a perfect note. Shall we wrap up? STEPH: Let's wrap up. Show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. CHRIS: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. STEPH: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or a review in iTunes as it helps other people find the show. CHRIS: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us @_bikeshed on Twitter. And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: And I'm @SViccari. CHRIS: Or you can email us at hosts@bikeshed.fm. STEPH: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. All: Bye. Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

Hello everyone, it's Crian and I am back with another episode edited my way. What way is that, I am not sure but let's roll with it. Today we are going to be bringing you games, games and more games. Some of these may not be coming out soon but we still want to get you fired up about 2021 and 2022. The title of this week's episode is: “E3 Games, Trailers and Reactions”. It was recorded on June 22nd, 2021. Today each person has picked two trailers that have come out in the last week. They will briefly introduce the game, afterwards, we will watch the trailer. You won't be able to watch the trailers but all the links will be in the show notes if you are on Android. We apologize to Apple podcasts listeners. You will have to manually google the trailers because Apple doesn't allow links to be posted in show notes. Post trailer watching, we will give you our reactions, thoughts and whatever two cents we have. Ideally, we are going to do eight trailers but we will see how much time we have. We run a bit out of time today so keep an eye out on social media for next week's podcast episode. Games Covered Today: 1.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xYQBtNTjoQ (Somerville) 2.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi-MRZBP91I (Breath of the Wild 2) 3.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDNq9f_UpRw&t=2s (Elden Ring) 4.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbOkUWJeVfI (Slime) Rancher 2 5.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g7z18cveBQ (WarTales) 6.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksEsK4SUanM (Survival Machine) 7.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRX3EqCyB1c&t=14s (Babylon's) Fall    

Nutrition in Breeding Dogs with Dr. Gayle WatkinsDr. Gayle Watkins, founder of Avidog and Head of Education at Good Dog, joins host Laura Reeves for a fascinating and informative conversation on the nutrition requirements for breeding dogs. Watkins addresses raw feeding, kibble and specific nutrient requirements, especially calcium:phosphorus percentages, that enable the animals in our breeding programs to be successful in conceiving and raising their litters. “We don't have a lot of really good research on optimizing nutrition for breeding animals, either stud dogs or bitches, and we have a lot of myths,” Watkins said. “If you are in the US, you need to feed an all-life stages or growth and reproduction diet to your breeding dogs. Ideally, that is also for stud dogs, but we don't have much information on that. Definitely your bitches, as they prepare to breed, while they're being bred, during pregnancy and during lactation. Adult maintenance food is inadequate for reproduction. It is not designed for reproduction. “Dogs are scavengers … think about the stuff they eat! But breeding animals, we're asking those bitches to do so much. They not only have to create puppies, they have to maintain their own body while that's happening and they have to maintain their brain. So I think we have an obligation to not do homemade foods with our breeding bitches. “I'm a big fan, if we can find those foods that are also certified by AAFCO through feeding trials. The all life stages feeding trial covers just prior to being bred, pregnancy and it covers their puppies for 10 weeks. So it's a big feeding trial and that food has been tested as much as it could possibly be tested.” Watkins continues with specific recommendations on additional micronutrients, fatty acids, probiotics and other supplements. For previous Pure Dog Talk episodes on breeding topics with Dr. Watkins, click https://puredogtalk.com/podcast/11-dr-gayle-watkins-nutrition-of-the-dam-canine-nomograph-and-puppy-immunity-2/ (here), https://puredogtalk.com/podcast/14-dr-gayle-watkins-2-breeders-guide-to-neonatal-puppies-2/ (here), https://puredogtalk.com/podcast/17-dr-gayle-watkins-transition-period-in-puppies-part-3-2/ (here) and https://puredogtalk.com/podcast/20-bomb-proof-your-puppy-dr-gayle-watkins-4-2/ (here). Support this podcast

In episode #1772, we talk about why acting rich is the easiest way to go broke! There is a difference between being wealthy, and being rich, and we explore what that means in terms of sustainability and financial safety. Ideally you do not want to be living beyond your means to impress others, so listen in to hear a few tips for some better lifestyle choices! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:25] Today's topic: Why the Easiest Way to Go Broke is By Acting Rich. [00:29] What does it mean to 'act rich'? The difference between being wealthy and being rich. [01:16] Making sure your income is greater than your expenses and making space for saving. [02:15] Adding unnecessary stresses onto your life in order to compete with others. [02:55] The importance of making sure you have a margin of financial safety. [03:28] Focus on a comfortable and sustainable life rather than other people's opinions. [04:09] That's it for today! [04:12] Go to marketingschool.io/live to meet Eric and Neil in person!    Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:   Charlie Munger Warren Buffett   Leave Some Feedback:     What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.     Connect with Us:    Neilpatel.com Quick Sprout  Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel  Twitter @ericosiu

Discussing our (T and Corn's) lack of match prep and some last minute things we did to try and make up for it. Ideally you want to be training months in advance for big matches, but often life throws some curve balls. There's some discussion around multi-discipline and the training constraints it adds for competitors.  ——— Please also listen to the bonus episode on the proposed FCA amendments if you haven't yet, it's important. https://www.gunshow.co.za/episode/proposed-amendments-to-the-firearms-control-act (https://www.gunshow.co.za/episode/proposed-amendments-to-the-firearms-control-act) Join the group here for more information on #WTTGS Drill of the Month. https://m.facebook.com/groups/2717495845147518/?ref=group_browse (https://m.facebook.com/groups/2717495845147518/) And again, a huge thank you to Zero Mike Bullets and FlatPack ALPHA for the prizes. ——— DVC Technologies http://dvctech.co.za/ (https://dvctech.co.za) | https://www.facebook.com/dvctech/ (https:// www.facebook.com/dvctech) Zero Mike Bullets https://www.zmbullets.co.za/ (https://www.zmbullets.co.za) FlatPack ALPHAhttps://www.facebook.com/flatpackalpha/ ( )http://www.flatpackalpha.com/ (http://www.flatpackalpha.com/) ShootingStuff https://www.shootingstuff.co.za/ (https://www.shootingstuff.co.za) Guns@Work https://gunsatwork.wixsite.com/gunsatworkrange (https://gunsatwork.wixsite.com/gunsatworkrange) Rocksteady Gear https://www.facebook.com/rocksteadyGear1/ (https://www.facebook.com/rocksteadyGear1/ )| https://instagram.com/rocksteady_gear?utm_medium=copy_link (https://instagram.com/rocksteady_gear) Be sure to contact Garrett or Sasha for a discount for ZM bullets!

How To Run A Business? Business Coach | Executive Coach See 1 of 100 New Videos on this topic & more. In fact, our research specifically proves 8 Critical Success Factors for small & medium-sized businesses. Visit www.BestBusinessCoach.ca for more info. Or https://www.members.bestbusinesscoach.ca/success-research/ for more on the research behind it.  Transcript: Well, all a business is: A person/group of people solving a problem, experienced by another. Via a product/service. That's it. It means: You have a group doing something, to solve a pain experienced by someone. And doing it at scale. A great analogy I like to use is: I call a business a "Black Box". Let's say this is a dentist's office. On one side, people are crying & in pain. Put them into the black box, it will fix all their problems. [relating to their teeth.] On the other side of the box, they come out happy and satisfied. This is what a business is. So, how do you run a business? To run a business, A) You need to have a problem to solve. B) Identify people having the problem. C) Solve the problem for them on win-win terms. That's what it is. I've also heard a couple of rules of thumb. Like for a company, you need 3 key people. 1. Product Person. -A person involved with the product/service. -In charge of quality control. 2. Finance & Operations Person. 3. Marketing & Sales Person. All 3 are different. That is one thing I've heard about how you run a business.   Last year, I hired 7 different research teams. To go through all the scientific literature availabl,e to find out: What are the Critical Success Factors for Small & Medium-Sized Businesses? We found 8. 8 critical success factors. 1. Self-Efficacy. 2. Strategic Planning. 3. Market Intelligence. 4. Marketing Strategy. 5. Sales Skills & Strategy. 6. Money Management. 7. Business Operations. 8. Business Intelligence. 1. Self-Efficacy. When you wake up, do you plan your time well? Do you get things done on your to-do list? Are you effective at communicating your ideas? If you hired someone to perform a role, but they fail to do so. They are not effective in their responsibilities. Self-Efficacy is the ability to have: Energy, skills & capacity to get things done, To communicate effectively. To collaborate with others towards goals. This is the self-efficacy factor. It's leadership, team work, communication, time management, etc.. 2. Strategic Planning. You might be the best swimmer. But if you jump in a pool with no water, you'll get hurt. You don't want to invest in something that is disappearing. Strategic planning makes you diligent. To understand the landscape. What are the other options out there for consumers? What are the problems consumers are having? Where are things in the industry going? Supply chain considerations. Labour market conditions. What is your strategic plan for bringing something bigger, faster, cheaper, newer to the market? 3. Market Intelligence. This is part of strategic planning but a little different. It's about knowing who the market is. What pain point are they experiencing? What's happening in the market? It's having a connection to the reality of their world. You don't want to use resources on making a product. Then realize your product is already obsolete. There are a lot of products launched & failed because they were too advance for society. It is not only about marketing. It's also understanding the situation of the industry. 4. Marketing Strategy. You need a way to communicate with people at scale. Identify interesting facts about what you do. Help educate people. Find ways to bring them into your world. So you can communicate & interact with them. Marketing is about connecting at scale. Through mass emails, producing content, ads, etc. Then narrows down to where you have sales. This is where you'll have intimate talks. Speaking to them 1:1. 5. Sales Strategy & Skills. This can be different for different price points. Different products & services. Or different severity of pain requires different sales strategies. If you have the right strategy but the wrong salesperson, you won't get results. Or if you have a good sales person using the wrong strategy. It's not going to work. Sales Strategy & Skills go hand in hand. 6. Money Management. Money is to a business like gasoline is to a car. Money is not everything but it is an accelerator. To buy more resources or hire more staff. It's a way to measure how many people you've helped. The concept is: Do something for society, with limited resources to create abundance. Making the most out of limited resources. That makes a business helpful to society. Because it creates MORE value. [Sum is greater than the individual parts] If you run out of money, your movements' limited. You can't invest. You can't market your product/service. You can't keep up. Money management is very important. 7. Business Operations. This involves things like: Meeting rhythms, hiring processes, training processes. All things holding your company together we consider business operations. 8. Business Intelligence. This is about the feedback loops. It's about knowing how you're performing. Knowing each angle of your business. Knowing if your customers get what they want. Knowing how efficient your process is. How's your marketing doing? It's the feedback loops to let you know how you're performing. There are leading & lagging indicators. Sales are a lagging indicator. Because it's based on the quality of your marketing, follow-up. The interaction with your sales rep & quality of your service. Plus you need satisfied customers to get repeat sales & referrals. In the beginning, Find someone willing to pay to have a problem solved. Getting sales to prove people are willing to pay to have it done. Then build a sustainable means to continue it cyclically. Ideally for years, and for many many many more people. That's how you run a business. If you want more information on topics like this, Go to www.BestBusinessCoach.ca.

Thank you for tuning into the Friday show. Today, I talk about running and explain how to increase your mileage without getting injured. Since it's estimated that 82% of people who take up running get hurt, it makes sense to train appropriately and avoid doing too much, too fast, too soon.In this episode, you'll hear from me on:My Seven steps for Injury-Free RunningLook after your feet. Roll the arches of your feet with a Runga mobility ball for at least five minutes each day. Space your long runs at least five days apart to give your body a chance to recover between runs.Walk before you run. Make sure you can comfortably walk the distance before you run it. Ideally, I recommend walking 10000 steps per day for 30 days before you start jogging.Remember to nose breathe. Nasal breathing forces you to keep your speed and intensity at a sustainable aerobic pace. Plus, it keeps you in the proper heart rate zone and prevents the build-up of lactic acid. Keep your eyes on the road ahead. To maintain good form and prevent your head from wobbling, keep your chin slightly tucked down and focus your gaze three meters in front of you.Keep your glutes strong. Since the glutes help stabilize the body, strengthen them by practicing Rear Foot Elevated Split Squats, Glute Bridges, and Kettlebell Swings.Strengthen your core. Adopt a daily movement practice, such as power yoga, or do some Side-Planks, Bird-Dogs, and Curl-Ups to keep the body symmetrically strong and stable. Exercises such as Get-Ups, Death by Carries, and One-Arm Kettlebell Carries are also great for building core strength.Support the show (https://www.coachjoedi.com/joe-recommends )

Today's topic is cheddar cheese. That's right. It's time for another trivia podcast and this one is all about cheddar cheese. Is your mouth watering yet? I must say that I make a fantastic cheddar cheese and I hope you get to try it one day. I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. I appreciate you all so much. Before we get started on the cheddar facts, let me give you an update on what's going on at the homestead. Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates If you are listening to this podcast sometime in the future, your date marker is that we are in the middle of June. Almost at the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. That the crops are starting to come in already. We are continuing the overwhelmed portion of the year. It starts in spring and continues right on through the fall. Planting, weeding, harvesting, and storing food. Along the way, the animals need additional care. Breeding cycles, milking twice a day, and flies. Always the flies. This year they are particularly high in population. Large dumps of wet rain at the perfect time of year for the propagation of flies is making the animals miserable.   Cows The artificial insemination process has officially begun. The first step is to get all of the cows that are being bred to cycle at nearly the same time. This is especially important for a dairy. Ideally, the calves will be born within days of each other. In the first few days, the cows produce a thick nutritious milk product called colostrum. It is high in fat and most importantly, it is filled with the antibodies the calves need to survive and thrive. We can save that milk for making cheese or fulfilling herd share obligations. It must all go to the calves. And there is a lot of it. We save it in jars and cans and gradually dole it out to the calves. Once we get into keeping the milk, we get to keep every single drop of it until this backlog of milk/colostrum is consumed. Then we share the awesome milk with the calves and we get less milk for making cheese and herd shares. The reason that we need the births to be close together is the timing of who is in colostrum and who are we milking. We milk two at a time. If the calves are close together, then it is easy to just milk everybody the same. If that doesn't happen, then we end up milking out the ones who are in the stage of producing milk we can use and then lastly, we milk out those who are still producing colostrum. Again, ideally everybody produces their colostrum all together and then we can get on with just milking everybody and not worrying about stopping, pouring up the milk and then starting again for colostrum milk for those late birthing cows. This is our second year of AI. So far, it is going well. Tomorrow, the placing of the sperm happens. Then we wait for three weeks to see if anyone comes into heat again. Of course, we hope that everyone takes on the first try. But how often does that actually happen? I don't know. Again, we are new to this process. Sheep The sheep are still grazing safely right outside my living room window. I think we are past the predator issues for the moment. We are still looking for a dog to add to the homestead. I don't ever want to go through that kind of predator loss ever again. Lambert is in there with the girls. Perhaps we will have lambs again in the fall. Quail I don't think I said anything about the quail in the last podcast. That's a first, right? Well, the first batch has been processed – well we kept almost all of the girls. They filled out the breeding groups that were missing a hen, replaced one complete breeding group that was older and the remaining 10 we kept for extra eggs. They are all laying pretty well at this point. The second group that was a really small hatch, only 19, is now in the penthouse growing. They are growing like weeds. We did lose one and so there are 18 up there on the left side of the grow out cage. Again, the right side of the grow out cage has the extra hens we kept to lay eggs for us. Now we come to the third batch that are in the incubator. There are 72 eggs in there and they go into lockdown in two days. Two days after that, we will begin to hear some peeping. Let's pray that we have a better hatch rate this time. We shall see. Garden The biggest news I have at the moment is the garden. We planted lots and lots and lots of peas. I wanted them for the farmer's markets. Well, I got my wish. There are soooo many peas out there. Today, instead of trying to pick from each plant (which I did a few days ago), I decided to just pull up the plants, peas and all. I needed to get the plants out because the tomatoes are planted right in front of them and they will need that trellis soon. It was really quick and easy. I now have piles of plants with pea pods hanging off of them. After I finish this podcast, I will be out there pulling the pods off of the plants. And the plants I pulled up today was only half of what is out there. The beans are doing really well. I would like to get a bit of time to go out there and fill in the blank spaces where a seed here and there did not sprout. But even if I don't get that accomplished, I'm going to have lots and lots and lots of beans and crowder peas. There two beds of peppers. One is a wonderful bell pepper called California Wonder. Those plants produce beautiful large green bell peppers like you find in the grocery. If I leave them on the plant, they will eventually turn red. The red ones are really sweet. The other peppers are Italian pepperoncini. I'm going to pickle them. I'll probably sell the pickled pepperoncini at the farmer's market. Oh, and I think there are a few banana peppers out there. I don't know what I will do with them. Perhaps, pickle them as well. We shall see. The onions look fabulous. I'm not sure how much longer they have before they are done. It's easy to tell with onions. The green tops will just fall over, dry out and turn brown. That the indicator for when it is time to dig them up and cure them for storage. Fruit and the Orchard The strawberry plants look great and there were lots of strawberries. However, something was eating them and we haven't gotten very many for ourselves. That's yet another project that got on to Scott's “To Do” list. Fix up some kind of barrier to keep out the squirrels, rabbits, birds, etc that are eating the strawberries. He just doesn't have the time right now. More on that later. I checked the blueberries a few days ago. There are a lot fewer berries than last year. That is likely due to the bee hive dying off. We really relied on them to pollinate everything. This year we were dependent on the bumble bees for all of our pollination. One thing I noticed while out checking the blueberries and blackberries was that we finally have a few apples coming on this year. I don't really know how old these trees are, but we have been anticipating apples and pears for a while. Looks like the apples are coming this year. Yay!! Creamery The creamery is on hold yet again. Scott is off doing other things. Mostly gathering hay. We tried to grow our own hay for a year or two and just found that it was simply not worth it for the small amount we need. Maintaining the equipment is always a challenge. Better to let someone else have those headaches. The person who normally supplies our hay is growing his cow herd and the lack of rain at the appropriate time led to a smaller than usual harvest. So I got on Facebook and found a couple of places where Scott could get hay. Unlike the previous arrangement, which was quite close and the hay was delivered right to us, Scott is having to haul the hay here. These are large round bales. He can handle eight bales at a time. It is a time-consuming task that requires days and days and days to complete. In between, he is prepping the cows for the AI appointment and doing most of the milking tasks. He helps me on Mondays with making cheese and spends quite a bit of time cleaning up the large cheese vat and the large utensils. I handle the small stuff. On Friday and Saturday morning he does the entire milking routine by himself as I am at the farmer's market. The creamery will get back on the schedule soon, I'm sure. Speaking of making cheese, It's time for me to get to the topic of the day. Cheddar cheese. Cheddar Cheese Let's start with the basics of describing this great cheese. It is a relatively hard cheese. Ours is off-white and the stuff in the store is usually orange. Cheddar cheese originated in the English village of Cheddar in Somerset. Now it is produced all over the world. Background In the UK, cheddar is the most popular type of cheese, accounting for over half of the country's annual cheese market. It is the second-most popular cheese in the US. The most popular is mozzarella. In the US the average annual consumption of cheddar cheese is about 10 lbs per person. In 2014, the US produced about 3 billion lbs of cheddar cheese. The term cheddar cheese is widely used and has no protected designation of origin even when the UK was part of the EU until 2020. Many cheeses have a protected designation of origin name. Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) is the English name for an identification form used by the EU that is meant to preserve the designations of origin of food-related products. This labeling was created in 1992 and its main purpose is to designate products that have been produced, processed and developed in a specific geographical area, using the recognized know-how of local producers and ingredients from the region concerned. PDO The characteristics of the products protected are essentially linked to the terroir. That is a French term used to describe the environmental factors that affect a food or crop's unique environmental contexts, farming practices or growth habitat. Collectively, these contextual characteristics are said to have a character; terroir refers to this character. The EU's regulation is meant to guarantee the reputation of regional products, adapt existing national protections to make them comply with the requirements of the WTO and inform consumers that products bearing the PDO logo respect the conditions of production and origin specified by this designation. The regulations cover all sorts of foodstuff like wines, cheese, hams, sausages, olives, beers, fruits, vegetables, breads and animal feed. Foods such as gorgonzola, parmigiano-reggiano, asiago cheese, camembert de Normandie and champagne can be labeled as such only if they come from the designated region. There are other requirements. In the case of camembert de Normandie, not only is it required to be produced in the Normandy region of France, it must also be made with raw milk from Normande cattle. History Cheddar originates from the village of Cheddar in Somerset, south west England. Cheddar Gorge on the edge of the village contains a number of cheese caves, which provided the ideal humidity and steady temperature for maturing the cheese. Cheddar has been produced since at least the 12th century. Financial records of King Henry II from 1170 records the purchase of 10,240 lbs. Charles I also bought cheese from the village of Cheddar. In the 19th-century Somerset dairyman Joseph Harding was central to the modernization and standardization of cheddar cheese. For his technical innovations, promotion of dairy hygiene, and volunteer dissemination of modern cheese-making techniques, he has been dubbed “the father of Cheddar cheese”. Harding introduced new equipment to the process of cheese-making, including a device for curd cutting call a “revolving breaker”. The “Joseph Harding method” was the first modern system of Cheddar production based upon scientific principles. Together, Joseph Harding and his wife were behind the introduction of Cheddar cheese into Scotland and North America. His sons, Henry and William, were responsible for introducing the cheese production to Australia and facilitating the establishment of the cheese industry in New Zealand. According to a USDA researcher, cheddar cheese is the world's most popular variety of cheese, and it is the most studied type of cheese in scientific publications.   Cheddaring Process “Cheddaring” refers to an additional step in the production of the cheese. After culturing, cutting, cooking and draining, the cheddaring begins. It is a lengthy process of stacking and turning slabs of curd. The curd is then milled or broken up into small pieces again and salted before being placed in a press. The press forms the final shape of the cheese. The cheese is kept at a constant temperature and humidity level. Special facilities or a cheese cave as mentioned before are needed to complete this part. And it will mature for anywhere from three months to two years or more. Character of Cheddar Cheese The ideal quality of the original Somerset Cheddar was described by Joseph Harding in 1864 as “close and firm in texture, yet mellow in character or quality; it is rich with a tendency to melt in the mouth, the flavor full and fine, approaching to that of a hazelnut”. Cheddar made in the classical way tends to have a sharp, pungent flavor, often slightly earthy. The texture is firm and can be crumbly. Cheddar cheese aged over one year should also contain large cheese crystals consisting of calcium lactate. Cheddar can be a deep to pale yellow color, or a yellow-orange color when annatto is added. Annatto is extracted from seeds of a tree. Originally it was added to simulate the color of high-quality milk from grass-fed Jersey and Guernsey cows, but it may also impart a sweet, nutty flavor. Clau d'ville Cheddar We don't use annatto in our cheddar cheese. We produce a beautiful light cream-colored cheddar cheese. Bright, citric flavors at the six-month mark complement a smooth, creamy texture. As each cheese approaches it's first birthday the pineapple notes give way to a deeper, more savory cheese with a buttery, malty finish, offering a delightful taste sensation. At six months it is smooth and almost creamy. Aged a year or longer, it becomes deliciously crunchy, crumbly and tangy. Pair it with a fruity Pinot Noir, a strong ale, apple liqueur or cider, or a vintage port. Our cheddar is currently only available via our Herd Share program. If you are listening to this in 2022, this statement will be out of date. We plan to be in our inspected facility in early 2022. Final Thoughts That's it for today's podcast on Cheddar cheese. The homestead is moving along nicely. We are moving into the summer routine. The animals are doing their thing, eating grass out in the fields. The gardens are flourishing. And the work continues to keep us on our toes. It is healthy activity and we appreciate the opportunity to share our journey with all of you. I hope you enjoyed the Cheddar cheese information and we look forward to serving your cheese needs in the future. If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts or whatever podcasting service you use, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. If you like this content and want to help out the show, the absolute best way you can do that is to share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content. Let them know about the Peaceful Heart Farmcast. Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace. To learn about herd shares: Visit our website Herd Share page To share your thoughts: Leave a comment on our Facebook Page Share this show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram To help the show: PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW for Peaceful Heart FarmCast on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music, TuneIn or Spotify Donate on Patreon Website www.peacefulheartfarm.com Patreon www.patreon.com/peacefulheartfarm Facebook www.facebook.com/peacefulheartfarm Instagram www.instagram.com/peacefulheartfarm Locals Peacefulheartfarm.locals.com

Ideally, you should start delegating tasks as soon as possible. This could mean the moment you hire your first employee or, if you already have employees, the moment you start feeling overwhelmed or like you're burning out. But if you've been running your business for a long time, the exact moment to start delegating might not be so clear. In fact, you unknowingly might have blown past that point already.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-business-journey-podcast/id1552627136 (Apple Podcasts) | https://open.spotify.com/show/4oIVk1IyDWLd5vCsWjPW8N (Spotify) | https://rebeccaricephoto.com/020-transcript (Transcript) We've got another episode of the Business Journey Podcast to share with you today! Today, we're diving into another one of my all-time favorite topics: how to book mini-sessions with no client base. It's one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to mini-sessions - that you have to have a huge client base for these sessions to be profitable. But, it's a lie! You can totally have successful mini-sessions, no matter the size of your client base. And today, we're going to walk through some super practical tips to help make sure you have profitable mini-sessions wherever you are in your business. Build Your PortfolioIn order to reach and book new clients, you have to have a portfolio that you can use online. From a consumer's standpoint, they're going to want to book with someone they know is an expert. For us, that means we need to actually have photographs that are ours to show off on our websites and social media platforms. An easy way to build your portfolio? A model call! Post in your local community groups with a date and time you need a family for, offer some digitals in exchange for their time and now you've got a session you can use to advertise! I usually do a few families so I can make sure I'm diversifying my portfolio, too. The same goes for your actual mini-sessions with themes. You'll need photos to advertise them so have a model call so you can photograph your set! Have a Home Base for Your ClientsWhen I say "home base", I really mean a centralized spot that clients and potential clients can go to be able to see your work and get in touch with you. Ideally, this should be your website. But if you're not quite to that stage, a strong Facebook or Instagram page would suffice. Now, I totally get how terrifying that sounds. We aren't web designers! We're photographers! The good news is that so many website platforms have templates - like Showit and Wix. So, you're not out there all alone trying to design a website. Remember to keep it simple to start. You need a home page, a portfolio page, and a contact page. That's literally all you need to start with - and done is better than perfect, so get that site up! Advertise Where Your Ideal Clients AreSo many business owners get swept up in the idea that they have to do every single thing when it comes to marketing. But the truth is, you need to focus on where your ideal client actually is. Think about where your ideal clients hang out: Mom's groups on Facebook? Instagram? Pinterest? Once you know, put your energy in that direction and location. A big piece of advice for marketing is to exhaust all of your free options first. I'll be the first to say I love my Facebook ads now but when I started my business, I wouldn't have been able to understand them and get the most return for my money. So start small and where you know your ideal audience is - and you'll be amazed at how you can start making connections there! Appear in High DemandThis step is vital for booking clients with little to no client base. I learned this one from my mentors and I think it was a HUGE turning point in my business. From a consumer's perspective, people want to work with someone who's in demand and good at what they do. So make sure you look like you're in demand! All this basically means is share constantly - no one has to know if it was a model call or free session of your sister's kids. Stretch out whatever you've got as long as you can! You can share the final images, behind the scenes - like editing or at the session, before and afters, while you're scouting the location... you get the idea. Booking mini-sessions with little to no client base is way easier than it seems! With these four tips, you'll find your business is going from slow to booming in no...

Today, I am blessed to have here with me John Schott. Establishing himself as one of South Florida's most groundbreaking and pioneering leaders in the health field, John set himself aside from the pack with the opening of his restaurant and retail space, Lifefood Gourmet, South Florida's first gourmet raw food restaurant. His food and health services have touched the lives of high profile celebrities, athletes, and executives. He is also very mindful of the value of giving his time and service for greater causes by volunteering his time to various charitable causes, implementing nutritional youth outreach programs and to teaching underprivileged children about healthy cooking and lifestyles. John leads workshops and detox retreats in Florida, New York City, and South America.  He has attained certifications such as Iridologist from NY Center for Iridology based on Bernard Jensen Iridology, Lifefood Culinary Chef & Phoenix Fastician from Jubb's Longevity Live Food Culinary Chef from NYC. John has studied closely with the top pioneering authors & practitioners for the last 10 years in the alternative health field. His knowledge of and experience with detoxification, nutritional cleansing, wellness & lifestyle coaching has led him to create a model evolving from a decade of apprenticeship, self-study, and hands-on application with hundreds of clients. He has in-depth insights into areas of health pertained to nutritional timing (or “ time conscious" eating), Gerson Therapy, and other alternative healing modalities & longevity strategies. John has created health and performance programs for some of the world's highest performance professionals. In this episode, John Schott opens the show by diving deep into his journey and why he started in the health space. Then, we jump into using a foam roller and lacrosse ball to relieve pain properly. Later, John gives us the scoop on his book, Rewilding Covid: Natural and Practical Health Solutions for Optimizing Your Immunity During the Coronavirus Pandemic and Beyond. Tune in as we chat about the importance of grounding, how movement can change your life, and why breathing correctly is critical for overall health.  90 Day Detox Program with Ben Azadi, Dr Mindy Pelz, Dr Daniel Pompa & other detox specialists. Limited Spots Available. Learn More Here: http://www.ketokampdetox.com Order Keto Flex: http://www.ketoflexbook.com -------------------------------------------------------- / / E P I S O D E   S P ON S O R S  PureForm Omega Plant Based Oils (Best Alternative to Fish Oil): http://www.purelifescience.com Use ben4 for $4.00 off. Upgraded Formulas Hair Mineral Deficiency Analysis & Supplements: http://www.upgradedformulas.com Use BEN10 at checkout for 10% off your order.  Wild Foods Superfoods. Receive 20% off your order by using the coupon code KETOKAMP at checkout over at https://www.wildfoods.co/ Paleo Valley beef sticks, apple cider vinegar complex, organ meat complex & more. Use the coupon code BEN15 over at https://paleovalley.com/ to receive 15% off your entire order. Text me the words "Podcast" +1 (786) 364-5002 to be added to my contacts list.  [00:30] All About John Schott & How He Started In The Health Space John's story has always been about helping humanity. On John's health journey, he explored vegetarian diets and vegan diets. In fact, he was vegan for almost seven years. One day, John found peace and realized that the only thing you need is to love. It made him double down on the practice of wellness, health, and vitality. The concept of health is so important and so fascinating that John is still passionate about it after all these years. The health space is a great place to be right now because a lot of people are waking up to it finally. [12:00] How To Use A Foam Roller And Lacrosse Ball Properly Hamstrings usually get very tight. So, put the lacrosse ball on a hard chair under the most tender points of the hamstring, and let your muscles sink into it. As you sink into it the ball, you're basically pinning that trigger point. Also, you will be alleviating the calcium deposit. Sawing away at a foam roller is not the best approach. Instead, use the pin and shear method on your foam roller. Using a foam roller or lacrosse ball is better after a workout rather than before. [20:50] Why John Wanted To Write A Book About Covid Honestly, John didn't want to write a book about Covid. However, the book is what we need because of Covid. When John says Rewilding Covid, it means taking your health into your own hands. Rewilding means tuning ourselves back into the wild aspect of what makes us a real human. Plus, it means that you're mimicking basically what our ancestors did naturally. For John, being wild means having freedom. Ideally, we will all wind up being in control of our spirit. “We are wild humans at heart.” -John Schott [31:40] The Power of Human Adaptability During Covid The one thing that we can control is how we interact with our environment and how we adapt. One of the most fascinating things about humans is our ability to adapt. As our environments change, we have to change with the environment. We need to help our body become more resilient, stronger, and better. Even if there is a virus in our environment, we know how to make changes and adapt. [38:55] What Is Grounding And Can It Improve Health? The beautiful thing about grounding is that it's free. We have generations and ancestral templates of being connected to the magnetic frequency of the Earth. The Earth has a pulse and a magnetic frequency that's anti-inflammatory, restorative, and rejuvenating. With grounding, your body can breathe, and your cells can breathe. For ten minutes each day, take your shoes off and put your feet on the bare ground. When grounding, you will feel less stress. [43:15] John Gives Tips On How You Can Become More Resilient Weave in movement throughout the day, as much as you can; it is very critical for overall health. John says that walking is very underrated. Going for long walks is extremely healthy, and it is restorative. Sometimes, what you need is more restoration. If you sit for long periods of time, stand up every thirty minutes and shake it out. Once that body starts feeling strong and good, it affects the way you think. When people have clogged limbs, and they're not able to detoxify properly. So, get moving! [45:20] The Importance of Proper Breathing For Overall Health Oxygen is life! Most of the time, people have cold hands and feet because they are not getting proper oxygen to the extremities. Sometimes, reproduction, libido, and the drive that we have for life will get challenged because of the lack of oxygenation. The way we breathe and what we're breathing is fundamental. Do deep diaphragmatic breathing through your nose – never through the mouth. Get good quality plants to help oxygenate the air. AND MUCH MORE! Resources from this episode: Check out John's Website: http://schotthealth.com/ Follow John Schott Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnalexanderschott/ Get Rewilding Covid: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08YRMF99Z/benazadi-20 Join theKeto Kamp Academy: https://ketokampacademy.com/7-day-trial-a Watch Keto Kamp on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUh_MOM621MvpW_HLtfkLyQ 90 Day Detox Program with Ben Azadi, Dr Mindy Pelz, Dr Daniel Pompa & other detox specialists. Limited Spots Available. Learn More Here: http://www.ketokampdetox.com Order Keto Flex: http://www.ketoflexbook.com -------------------------------------------------------- / / E P I S O D E   S P ON S O R S  PureForm Omega Plant Based Oils (Best Alternative to Fish Oil): http://www.purelifescience.com Use ben4 for $4.00 off. Upgraded Formulas Hair Mineral Deficiency Analysis & Supplements: http://www.upgradedformulas.com Use BEN10 at checkout for 10% off your order.  Wild Foods Superfoods. Receive 20% off your order by using the coupon code KETOKAMP at checkout over at https://www.wildfoods.co/ Paleo Valley beef sticks, apple cider vinegar complex, organ meat complex & more. Use the coupon code BEN15 over at https://paleovalley.com/ to receive 15% off your entire order. Text me the words "Podcast" +1 (786) 364-5002 to be added to my contacts list.  *Some Links Are Affiliates* // F O L L O W ▸ instagram | @thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2B1NXKW ▸ facebook | /thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2BVvvW6 ▸ twitter | @thebenazadi http://bit.ly/2USE0so ▸clubhouse | @thebenazadi Disclaimer: This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast including Ben Azadi disclaim responsibility from any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not accept responsibility of statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or non-direct interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.

Nothing is more frustrating than when you're giving your all to your nutrition and workout plan, yet progress seems to have stalled. Should you cut carbs? Should you add more cardio? Should you take a fat burner? There's so many unknowns and we often make the plateau even longer by sabotaging our progress. So, I made this Minisode for you to troubleshoot when the scale won't budge and you're doubting your efforts. You run through each of these and you should have at least a *better* idea of what is causing the plateau than before. Ideally, you have an "ah-ha" moment, adjust, and continue making progress — gotta watch to find out. Hope it helps! Submit your question here: https://forms.gle/T94afcNxyrviH3we7 **PS: If you could rate and review the podcast, it would mean the world to me and it would help get the word out to others just like us so we can continue building this amazing, one-of-a-kind community.** WATCH this Minisode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/KDCyKuSvwbA Connect with Matt: [Free] 30-Day Ultimate Physique Development Manual: https://bit.ly/UltimatePhysiqueDevelopment Hire Matt For Coaching: https://mattmcleod.org/online-coaching Twitter: @mattmcleod6 Instagram: @mattmcleod6 Website: https://mattmcleod.org ---- Produced by: David Margittai | In Post Media Website: https://www.inpostmedia.com Email: david@inpostmedia.com Social: @_margittai © 2021 Matt McLeod

Meet Aaron Abke Aaron Abke was born and raised as a Pastor's Son in the Silicon Valley of California. He desired to work in Church Ministry like his father and went to college at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Music and Theology. He spent one year working as a full-time worship pastor at a church in San Jose until eventually, at 23, he felt called to leave his religion and pursue a deeper and more authentic spirituality.    At 27 years old, Aaron Abke had a dramatic spiritual awakening that changed the course of his life. He was working as a signed Fitness Model in San Francisco and competing at the National level in men's bodybuilding at the time. He completely walked out of his former life to dedicate his life to seeking how to return to that state of Self-Realization permanently.    Aaron's passion is teaching Unity Consciousness and Spiritual Awakening with the world, and he does so today via YouTube, Social Media, MasterClasses, and Workshops, primarily teaching through texts such as "A Course In Miracles" and "The Law of One". Aaron believes that Unity Consciousness and freedom from the Ego is the next evolutionary leap for mankind and is available for anyone who truly desires it.    The Ego Wears Many Masks Aaron is an expert in 'A Course in Miracles' and talked a lot about the trappings of the ego. As he defined it, the ego is any time you are in the I, me, mine arena. It's our identity that we cling to; that isn't really who we are. Guilt is an anchor point of the ego, as is judgment. The ego is the mental activity of identifying with the function of the working mind. Identity and suffering is really the ego cracking the whip to carry out its orders. As 'A Course in Miracles' states, the ego is whatever is not Love. As a reference point, we talked about the basic understanding that we are Love and that all we truly are, is the witness. The spiritual ego, which takes on a different costume of sorts, is about I, me, shame, and judgment, often about others as it relates to spiritual matters.  Forgiveness is the Way Forgiveness is a step-by-step destruction of the ego and allows for true oneness. Through forgiveness, we can heal by letting whatever is causing upset, to release. The important aspect is not to judge this and just to forgive. As is said in 'A Course in Miracles,' nothing real can be threatened. We're often equating ourselves with the unreal, believing things are real (which he calls transitory illusions), and you can't ever satisfy these identities. All identification is harmful, and what is needed is a shift in consciousness is going from judgment to discernment.  Open-Hearted Freedom If you want true freedom, you need to come to the altar of life with broken-hearted humility and Love. In other words, whatever I love, I heal. Our goal and aim are to come with an open heart towards EVERYTHING. We're always becoming. Mother earth has offered us so many options to become love. Understanding we are one means you can't point fingers at others because you realize that you are the world. Don't look at others. It's our obligation to wake up and change ourselves and to become Love. Ideally, as many of the masters who have walked our earth have taught, judge nothing, and meet all with loving compassion and forgiveness.     Final Thoughts Aaron Abke reminds us that the teachings in books such as 'Law of One' and 'A Course in Miracles' teach us how to separate ourselves from the ego and remind ourselves that we are one with all that is. Becoming conscious of these thoughts awakens us to new concepts to put into practice in our daily lives, helping us to live in the light of forgiveness and compassion.    Sacred Connection As always, this community is a sacred, safe place built on love and acceptance. It was created to help you evolve and expand into your highest self. Please share your wisdom, comments, and thoughts. I love hearing from you and learning how you are being your truest, you-est you. Please join us in our Facebook group The You-est You® Community for Soul Seekers Join host Julie Reisler, author and multi-time TEDx speaker, each week to learn how you can tap into your best self and become your You-est You® to achieve inner peace, happiness, and success at a deeper level! Tune in to hear powerful, inspirational stories and expert insights from entrepreneurs, industry thought leaders, and extraordinary human beings that will help to transform your life. Julie also shares a-ha moments that have shaped her life and career and discusses key concepts from her book Get a PhD in YOU.   Here's to your being your you-est you!   Connect with Aaron Abke Website: aaronabke.com Facebook: @AaronAbke Instagram: @aaronabke/ YouTube: youtube.com/aaronabke     Enjoying the show? For iTunes listeners, get automatic downloads and share the love by subscribing, rating & reviewing here!   *Share what you are struggling with or looking to transform with Julie at podcast@juliereisler.com. Julie would love to start covering topics of highest interest to YOU.   You-est You Links: Subscribe to the Podcast  Learn more at JulieReisler.com Become a Sacred Member at the Sacredology® Membership Join The You-est You® Community for Soul Seekers on Facebook Subscribe to Julie's YouTube Channel Book Julie as a speaker at your upcoming event Amazon #1 Best selling book Get a PhD in YOU Download free guided-meditations from Insight Timer Julie's Hungry For More On line Program (10 Module Interactive Course) 15 Days Of Gratitude To Change Your Life on InsightTimer

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Northside Hospital Gwinnett needs a $400 million expansion simply because it's become too crowded, according to a state filing last week by the facility's parent company.Last month, Northside Hospital filed a letter of intent with the Georgia Department of Community Health to build a 10-story patient tower at its Lawrenceville facility, the largest hospital in Gwinnett. A second filing on June 2 reported by Atlanta Business Chronicle explains why.Northside Hospital Gwinnett's "inpatient utilization" — essentially, its occupancy — has hovered between 80 and 85 percent over the last few years, according to the filing as reported by the Chronicle. Ideally, inpatient utilization for a teaching hospital should be 70 percent.SOURCE: www.Patch.com

One key to growing your business: Sales calls that give valueI definitely fall into the camp of not having any regrets because all of the fuck ups and failures and totally embarrassing & cringe-worthy experiences I've gone through has gotten me to where I am now…But I did do a mental exercise the other day & ended up thinking about “What do I regret not doing sooner in my business”And there were a good 5 things that I identified as key elements that would've gotten me to a successful, scalable, profitable business in 2 or 3 years instead of 10.I'll take you through all of them in time but one I really want to highlight today is sales.It's one thing that I know limited my earning potential - being unwilling to do sales calls.Probably beyond even that was not realizing that I should be doing sales calls in the first place.A massive perspective shift I had relating to this was going from thinking of myself as a marketer, as a freelancer, to thinking of myself as an agency owner - a business owner.I see this over and over again with service providers. They love their craft - they love being a healer or graphic designer or coach, and they totally identify with being that identity - that service provider identity.And it IS important to be obsessed with your craft - to think the work you do in the world is insanely important and transformative & so interesting & fun!But to not identify first and foremost as a business owner is causing you to have a bottleneck in your business.And a part of being a business owner is focusing on marketing & sales.And a part of growing a business as a service provider is doing sales calls.So many people want to avoid this - to go straight to launching a course or program instead of getting good at sales.But the way to most easily grow your business & to hit success quickly in your business is to fall in love with sales calls.Is that a stretch??At least to be willing to consistently prioritize doing sales calls.To get comfortable doing sales calls.Maybe you call them discovery calls or initial consultations… but they're still ultimately sales calls.So let's start with a little affirmation to open you up with this:I am open to prioritizing sales calls.I am open to sales calls being fun.I am open to sales calls being of deep service to my potential clients.The truth is that sales calls are money generating activities.One big action item I have the magical people do in the Alchemical Business Intensive is to cut the fat out of their business.To cut out the shit that doesn't matter.We can talk about systems and automations and delegating all day long. I love all of those things so so much.And hiring a team & delegating things off your plate is a sexy sexy thing. It makes you feel powerful & like a boss.But.If you're hiring & delegating and building systems for things that don't actually make a large impact on your business then you're just wasting time. And you're wasting other people's time. And you're paying people to waste time.Yikes.So first - you got to get clear on what actually matters & what actually moves business forward in your business.And that is on you.You may be tempted to do research and take more courses and (procrastinate) in the most innocent and seemingly productive ways…But if you have generated sales in your business, then you know how to make more sales. Just do more of the shit that worked.And if you haven't generated sales in your business then you need to commit to experimenting and taking action and doing the hard & potentially triggering things.Like reaching out to real humans to schedule some fucking sales calls!When you're below capacity in your business - as in you can take on more clients - then your first order of business is to focus your attention on marketing & sales. And of course delivering stellar work & results.But cutting out the fat in your business looks like cutting out the things that are not bringing you more clients & bringing your clients more results.If you're a service provider then that is most likely getting people onto sales calls with you. At least if you're charging enough & selling larger packages & higher end offers. Which is a great way to go & focus on if you are starting out or if you're below 6-figures or even multiple-6-figures in annual revenue.So what happens when you cut out the fat & you just start focusing on the needle moving, revenue-generating, results-creating activities?As in you stop spending hours a day on Instagram & instead focus on relationship building?Time & space opens up.And you may be tempted to FILL that time & space.As the laws of nature will encourage you to do.But let's not do that, okay?On the most practical level you need to be reserving enough space in your calendar to serve the number of clients you want to serve.What I mean by that is if you have 5 clients right now & you want 10 clients. You really do need to reserve space in your calendar for those 5 additional clients.Or else you'll be on this teeter-totter see-saw of marketing versus fulfilling.Filling up time with marketing & then getting a boat load of clients, and then all of your time is filled with delivering client results & you neglect your marketing efforts & then you don't have a pipeline of clients gearing up to work with you so you have to then focus on marketing…And back and forth of stressful playing catch up.When you really just needed to be more potent with your time. To cut the fat. To proooobably raise your prices…(But that's a topic for another day)So let's go back to sales calls. The one thing I “regret” not committing to earlier on in my business.Sales calls are all about your relationship with your work & your relationship with your potential clients.RELATIONSHIPS are a key component in building an In Flow Business & when you don't double down on relationships then you will feel icky in your business, in your marketing & with your money.Sales calls are you having a conversation with someone who is interested in working with you. They want what you have to offer & they want the transformation you are an expert in giving.Sales calls are only icky if you don't believe in what you're selling - so there's some mindset homework for you right there.Sales calls are icky when you aren't talking to the right people - you're selling an eskimo a fan, instead of selling an eskimo an insulated jacket.Sales calls are icky when you feel like you're TAKING something away from someone & you believe that your potential clients' money is more valuable to them than the transformation you provide. That you are causing harm to them by taking their money.But you are a heart-centered intuitive magical person.You are doing incredible, life-altering work in the world.You would not be like a used car salesman that is pushy & is lying about the car's features or mileage.You have an offer that you're selling, a service that you're selling, and honestly… it is not your decision to decide whether or not your potential clients decide to pay you.Sure, you can choose not to work with someone because you get red flags on your end… but you making a clean offer & then waiting for their response is not fucking up to you.Your responsibility is to instead get reaaalllllyyyy clear on the value of your offer & you need to get reaaalllllyyyy clear on who it is perfect for.You have a responsibility to demonstrate the potential future reality for your potential client if they decide to work with you.Okay?SO let's get into some Sales Call best practices.In an ideal world your prospect knows of you already. But it's not required.Ideally they were referred to you.Ideally they are already a fan of your work & they read your articles & emails & listen to your podcast.They already know, like, and trust you.If that's the case - sales calls are very easy.You're just quickly connecting to be clear about the nuts and bolts and to feel each other out in a 1-1 setting.A step away from that ideal scenario - you gotta think about the level of awareness your prospect has:* Unaware. These are prospects who don't realize they have a problem. They simply don't know a better way exists. If you have a new product that addresses a major drawback of previous solutions, most of your prospects may be at this level.* Problem Aware. Problem aware prospects know they have a problem, and have some idea of what that problem is, but they may not completely understand it. They haven't dealt with this problem before. They're totally unfamiliar with possible solutions.* Solution Aware. Solution aware prospects know about solutions like yours, but don't know your specific product or service. If your company isn't well known in their industry, they may not have heard of you.* Product Aware. These prospects know your product, but haven't bought it. They're familiar with what other people in your industry are offering. They're just not sure if your solution is best for them.* Most Aware. These are your best customers – your multi-buyers. They're brand loyal. They're enthusiastic about you. They read your emails & watch your IG Stories & all the things.I gotta say - don't go after Unaware people. It's an uphill battle.The easiest sales calls will be the ones with the Most Aware, Product Aware, and sometimes Solution Aware level people.So let's look at some stats…92% of buyers find a meeting valuable if you provide industry/market insights and give them a new perspective and help them better understand their needs. 92%!(HubSpot)This is in stark contrast to the fact that only 20% of people value conversations with salespeople. Or, put another way, 80% of people find a conversation with a salesperson to be useless.(Gartner)So here's your big differentiator. Give the people what they want.Instead of just talking about pain points and desires & painting a picture of their future… (which is standard sales call flow) … Give value - give information - change their perspective.Go out there & try this out for yourself - prepare for a call by doing some research. & you're the expert - you're the thought leader - so ask yourself - what big perspective shift can I give my potential client?This is how you up your sales call closing rate.This is how you deeply serve your potential clients whether or not they buy from you.This is how to feel really good about doing sales calls.Excited to do these calls!Because you'll see the transformation you're able to give people before they even hire you.The sales call is valuable in and of itself.So…I haven't talked about sales before on this podcast!What a fun topic.And it's a big one.So I'll leave you with a final bit.So much of this is mindset. If you believe your offers or services are the shit & your people would be crazy not to buy from you then selling becomes real easy.And you can create any belief you want.Creating new beliefs is a skill you can develop.Building relationships is a key part of doing business - with yourself, with money, and with your clients + potential clients.This is a major part of the framework I teach in the Alchemical Business Intensive.When you actively build relationships then you build a larger pool of people who are already a YES before they even get on a call with you.And when you give value through changing a prospect's perspective on a sales call - you are giving them what they WANT & you will convert more people from potential clients to actual clients.And guess what.We're starting to enroll people into the next round of the Alchemical Business Intensive that starts in October.If you join before mid-July you get a bonus 90-minute 1-1 call with me & you get premier access to our resource library, including sales call trainings, and our 28-day marketing cycle training.There are a limited number of spots available so head on over to thedirtyalchemy.com/abi to learn more & apply.After you apply I'll reach out to schedule a call with you to see if it's a good fit.See you next week everyone!

About GuyGuy Raz is a Sr. Systems Engineer at ExtraHop with previous experience as a Network Engineer and Solution Architect. Guy is one of the SMEs leading the unique ExtraHop approach to cloud-native NDR for the hybrid multi-cloud enterprise. Before joining the Sales Engineer team, Guy was one of the ExtraHop Solution Architects, responsible for conducting deep technical and business discovery sessions, assisting in troubleshooting and problem resolution during war-room and security/network investigations, and developing strategies for acquiring high-value data from the wire; requiring in-depth technical understanding of L2-L7 networking principles.Links: https://www.extrahop.com/ https://extrahop.com/demo TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It's an awesome approach. I've used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there's more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It's awesome. If you don't do something like this, you're likely to find out that you've gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It's one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That's canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I'm a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more, visit lumigo.io.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Once a year in San Francisco, if I find myself being overly cheerful, all I have to do is walk up and down the RSA Expo Hall and look at a bunch of vendors talking about how their on-premises product kind of sort of works in the cloud, and then I'm not overly cheerful anymore. One notable exception to this is a company called Extrahop. I've spoken about them before and on this promoted episode, we're going to dive a little bit deeper. Today, my guest is Senior Systems Engineer Guy Raz. Guy, thanks for taking the time to speak with me.Guy: Thanks, Corey, happy to be here.Corey: So, for those who have not caught previous episodes, or heard me ranting from the rooftop about it, at a very basic level for folks who have not even, I guess, dip their toes in the RSA space because they, you know, want to be happy with their lives, what is ExtraHop?Guy: ExtraHop is a cloud-native approach for analyzing wire data. Historically, customers have, kind of, looked at TAP SPANs, but with cloud, there's a ton of ways of getting this natively. You know, AWS, GCP, Azure give us ways of collecting this data. ExtraHop is a platform for analyzing that network traffic and, in real-time, providing context to application and security teams.Corey: So, when you take a look at that from, I guess, the perspective of security, it's easy to sit here and say, “Oh, so how do you wind up thinking about security in a place or time of cloud?” Because there's an awful lot of ways to view it: you can go down the path of, “Ah, I'm going to just use all the first-party tooling from my provider, and that's it,” which, that could be fair. Alternatively, you could go down a different path of, “I'm going to just go ahead and buy whatever they'll sell me at RSA,” which is great because the hardest part there is the booth attendees not making actual cash register sounds with their mouths when you walk past with an open checkbook. But security always feels like a thing that's kind of an afterthought. It's something that is tied too closely, on some level, to this idea that you're never going to be secure, so you may as well just give up. It's also something people only care about after it's been a little too late, where they really should have been caring about it. How do you see that?Guy: It's a really unfortunate space, but you're absolutely right, Corey, there. What we end up seeing as a lot of customers, and just the industry as a whole tends to be an afterthought when it comes to cloud. They assume cloud-native solutions or built-in free solutions have their best foot forward, have their best instance in mind. And that's not always the case. There's a lot of, like you mentioned, built-in solutions that these cloud providers can give us.And while a lot of them are kind of scratching the surface of what security in the cloud can provide, there's a lot that it kind of leaves unanswered. And the unfortunate thing is, the cloud journey isn't always the easiest. There's a lot of lift-and-shift, there's a lot of refactor, and sometimes the security portion of that gets put on the side street until it becomes a priority or an event happens.Corey: So, given that you can effectively not even swing a dead cat anymore without hitting 15 different security vendors all claiming to do everything you'd want, start to finish, what makes ExtraHop different? How do you approach security that's differentiated from the rest of the, I guess, entire security industry?Guy: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think my favorite part, and one of the reasons I love our product is the data stream that we collect. Network data is a huge source of information that's just sitting there silently, kind of, waiting to be consumed and analyzed. In the old on-premise environment, there were legacy packet capture solutions, or ways of grabbing this information from a SPAN or a TAP. But it's still the same data stream as we go to the cloud, it's just a slightly different way of collecting it.So, the biggest thing that I would encourage people is, use the data that's there. The network traffic is passing your infrastructure: it's EC2s hitting your S3 buckets, it's RDS instances going through a load balancer to a Lambda function. It's all just traversing through infrastructure that you just don't own anymore, but getting that information is a huge differentiator. You're talking about every packet of every transaction being analyzed in real-time at a cloud-scale, which, you know, you need a smaller instance today—it's smaller today—you need a bigger instance tomorrow, it just auto-scales up.Corey: Now, back in the world of data centers, I agreed an awful lot with what you're saying, as far as looking at the network as the first point of, I guess, the arbiter of truth, for lack of a better term. And, on some level in cloud, I feel like I've drifted away from that. Now, back in our days at data centers, you don't know what's running on these systems; you don't know what various engineers are shoved onto them, but generally speaking, you can mostly trust the network. Please don't email me. So, once you move into a cloud world, everything sort of changes a bit.You don't really have to think about any of the layer 2 networking, and most of the layer 3 networking sort of goes away, too. Plus, let's be very realistic; from the perspective of the virtual machines you're running in a cloud environment, everything beyond that is kind of a lie. There's a bunch of encapsulation, you're higher up the stack, you're not on hardware anymore so, on some level, it always felt that, eh, networking is not really the same thing in the cloud environment. I can ignore it. And I have to admit, back when I first started talking to you folks, I was something of a skeptic.And then you, more or less, made me change my perspective through a very sneaky approach of spinning up a test account for me with ExtraHop, and now I get it in a way I never did before. Is that aha moment common to the, I guess, the cloud-native set, or do most people come into this with a much more rational and reasoned approach to networking in the cloud?Guy: I would say it's both. We have customers who are familiar with the type of information we can provide going through their cloud journey, or are starting their cloud journey and they want the same type of visibility. But for our net-new customers, when we hit that whitespace, that aha moment comes, and it's so much fun to see. Someone who had no idea what this type of data can provide; they're used to legacy telemetry or log information. So, that aha moment is something that, as someone who gets to interact with customers, is one of my favorite parts of the job. And I would say it's fun to play with and show that.Corey: Now, I want to be clear that, again, in the interest of full disclosure, now, since I've put this in my test account, ExtraHop is now the second most expensive consumer of AWS services. But it's not as bad as folks might think. It's using a VPC mirror in order to look at traffic, and that costs me the princely sum of somewhere between $10 and $11 a month. And that doesn't really vary, regardless of how much traffic I shove through this thing. It's not doing a whole lot in the AWS account; if I didn't know that was there and that's what it was doing, I would ignore the spend line entirely. How does this work? What are you doing in order to get access to seeing what is happening, “On the wire,” quote-unquote, in a cloud environment?Guy: Just focusing on AWS for a second, since that's what you called out. It's using a native built-in functionality that Amazon provides. It's called VPC packet mirroring. It's super simple: you deploy an ExtraHop collector into your VPC, you set that up as a destination of your traffic, and then you configure what's called a monitoring session in VPC. You can say I want it to do based on these tags, I want it to send traffic based on this subnet—or any there combination of—and it just kind of works. You know, it's beautiful.And where we're kind of taking this to the next step is using some intelligent Lambda automation to ensure that anytime a new instance gets spun up, whether it's tagged, untagged, deployed into a different VPC, or is a different instance size, it gets automatically added into this data feed. So, you know, you talk about the ephemerality of the cloud and how instances can spin up and spin down almost instantaneously, as soon as an instance is up, before it even gets any traffic sent to it, traffic is [laugh] coming to the ExtraHop, right? We'll see IMDS traffic, we'll see instance metadata, we'll get the ENI information, all just by sitting there, passively listening.Corey: One of the things that I found particularly, I guess—appreciated about your entire approach is I didn't have to change anything about what was actually running in this account. I didn't have to teach the EC2 instances that something else was going on. I didn't have to reconfigure anything on an application basis. This was purely done in the underlying VPC configuration. It was done without any downtime whatsoever.And I feel like that is an understated benefit for an awful lot of tooling. “Oh, just go ahead and roll this thing out to all of your environment.” Like, yeah, there are tens of thousands of instances and VMs scattered throughout our entire estate. Exactly how long do you think we're going to spend on this? You don't have that problem here, and it's kind of nice.Guy: It is really nice. And not to take anything away from some agent solutions because they do have their [crosstalk 00:09:46]—Corey: Oh, I will, but please go on.Guy: [laugh]. But this approach to security and monitoring in the cloud, to your point, Corey, is seamless. Application owners don't know it's there. It doesn't add any added load. I'm a former network engineer. Troubleshooting different instances or different virtual machines, the first thing I used to do is turn off those agents, right? Is this consuming CPU resources? Is this slowing down my agent? That's no longer the case in cloud. That's no longer the case with this network-based approach.Corey: I'll also point out that it always feels like there's a false dichotomy when we're talking about security vendors. And it either feels like, oh, you're in a bunch of data-center style environments, you're migrating into the cloud, but basically today, your environment is a bunch of VMs, and maybe a load balancer or an object store. And a lot of tooling speaks super well to that use case. But then if you take a step back and look at well, the lie that all these companies love to tell themselves, and I'm no more immune to this than they are, to be very clear here, but we all tell ourselves this beautiful lie which is after this next sprint ends, then, then we're going to go ahead and pay off all of our technical debt and things are going to be done properly with a capital P. And it never happens, but it's the lie we tell ourselves.And we make financial decisions, in some cases, tied to that false vision of, “Well, why would I wind up embracing something that is aimed at that particular use case because once we wind up going full-on cloud-native and embracing our provider of choice, all of this stuff is going to change?” What I like about ExtraHop is, all right, assume you're in that mythical born-in-the-cloud world where you have a significant estate that everything runs on top of these higher-level services. ExtraHop is still there, still working, and still doing exactly the sorts of things we're talking about here. No matter where you are on that transformational journey, it feels like there's an answer here. Is that accurate? Have I been gargling the marketing tea too heavily? What's the story here?Guy: No, that's pretty accurate. And it doesn't really matter where you are on your cloud journey; security can't be foregone for the sake of this cloud instance. We see this day in, day out. You know, if you subscribe to as many news alerts as I do, it's a scary world. Just even recently this past weekend, we had a—not our customer, but there was an attack against an oil pipeline.That came through a cloud vulnerability. IAM account leakage, and service accounts, and open S3 buckets. It's a scary part of this cloud journey. We want to make sure that we're scaling, we want to reduce our physical footprint, but we can't forgo the security and the trust that our customers have in our applications. And that means that having an approach to security in the cloud needs to be top of mind, regardless of where you are in that cloud journey.Corey: I think one of the, I guess, biggest concerns in the security space is very similar to what I deal with in the cost optimization space, which is people care about it only after they really, really, really should have cared about it, on some level. Now, over in the billing world that I live in, people generally have a failure mode of, “Well, we spent a little too much money,” and that is generally a very survivable thing. I used to say—tongue-in-cheek, only I was being completely serious—one of the reasons I went with AWS billing as my direction of choice was that no one is going to come and call me at two o'clock in the morning with a billing emergency; it is strictly a business hours problem. Security is a very different world. But if you screw up the bill, you spent too much money.If you screw up security, well, your company's name is mud, you could try and pull a SolarWinds with a ring of ablative interns to wind up trying to pass the buck off onto, but in practice, you're probably losing a CSO and a few other high-level execs as a sort of token offering to the market gods. And it's painful, and I'm hard-pressed to name a company these days that has not suffered at least some form of data breach somewhere. It almost feels like it's a losing game.Guy: It's not a losing game, but it is a post-breach world, right? It's not a question of, if you get breached. It's more a question of what security holes have been left open, and what can they collect from these holes? And minimizing that attack surface is obviously critical, but understanding the damage and reacting to it as fast as possible is just as important. And honestly, that's, kind of, my favorite parts about the cloud.You know, I can see something like a suspicious transaction, or a large increase in web traffic, and then fire off an API to Lambda that says, “Deploy the security group onto this instance.” That whole process takes milliseconds. So, the reaction time that we have with the cloud vastly surpasses what we ever had in the data center. And yeah, you're right, maybe that adds up costing a little bit more, or creates a slightly higher bill because we called a couple Lambda functions, but no exfiltration of data; no loss of customer information. You can't trade that off, at the end of the day.Corey: The thing that always, I guess, sort of bothered me about various breaches or various security reports is whenever companies will say definitively, “We have never suffered a security breach,” that might mean that they are absolutely on point—though, you always have this probabilities question—but it could also mean that they have no effective visibility or effective logging, and that is the dangerous part. It's similar to this idea of back once upon a time in the early days of unbreakable Linux, when Oracle was pushing that and they said, “It is unhackable.” The entire internet proved them wrong within hours because everything can be broken into at some point. It's just a question of how high do you raise that bar? Ideally, a little bit above random people just scanning S3 buckets.Guy: Yeah, and you know, that's really scary, kind of, the data that we get to see when—you know, you called this earlier that aha moment. Because we're an always-on solution, we get to see the hygiene of the network, too. I can tell you when someone hit an insecure S3 bucket, or an IAM role logged in at two in the morning that it never has before, or someone sent an API command to Lambda to spin up another instance at two in the morning, using a service account that has admin permissions. It's a scary world in the cloud, and making sure you have that surface covered gets you to those aha moments quicker.Corey: This episode is sponsored by ExtraHop. ExtraHop provides threat detection and response for the Enterprise (not the starship). On-prem security doesn't translate well to cloud or multi-cloud environments, and that's not even counting IoT. ExtraHop automatically discovers everything inside the perimeter, including your cloud workloads and IoT devices, detects these threats up to 35 percent faster, and helps you act immediately. Ask for a free trial of detection and response for AWS today at extrahop.com/trial.Corey: One thing that I do want to draw a little bit of attention to as well, having kicked the tires on ExtraHop for a few months now, I keep forgetting that I have it in place. And the only time I really get reminded is that $10 a month for that attachment to the VPC that I see on my bill when I go over that thing with a fine-tooth comb because of who I am and what I do. My point being is that I have instances in that account that are doing a bunch of relatively strange things from time to time. And the behavior is not consistent from day to day. One of them has an IRC bouncer hanging out on it because I used to spend a disproportionate amount of my time on freenode, and it does a whole bunch of different things that looks super weird.And every time I wind up pointing a typical security product at it, it starts shrinking its head off—if it can even get that far into it—of, “This thing is clearly exploited. Shut it down, shut it down, shut it down.” And none of that happens. I mean, this thing looks very weird on the network, I'm not going to deny otherwise. This is my development box.When I'm on the road—remember back when we used to travel places?—and I would just be connecting from an iPad and remoting into this thing, and then I would have it do all of the things I would normally do on a desktop computer. But it doesn't make noise. Now, to be clear, I also have a somewhat decent security posture on this thing so it's not a story of it getting actively exploited and it should be making noise. But it just doesn't say anything. It just sort of sits there quietly in the background. And it works. Whenever I log in, I have to click around to make sure it actually is still working because there's nothing on the dashboard where it's just giving you noise to talk about noise. Why is this such a rarity?Guy: [laugh]. So, your environment is probably pretty secure. I imagine you're not deploying hundreds and thousands of containers and EC2s and spinning up all this type of data, but—Corey: No. It's tiny, I spend 50 bucks a month on this account.Guy: So, it's not atypical, the behavior you see. You know, I've been in POCs and proof of values where we deployed the ExtraHop, and it doesn't see too much. And so one thing I've started doing for a lot of my customers is deploying a lab for them. Do you trust that something like an ExtraHop will see ransomware? Do you trust that ExtraHop will see credential harvesting, and lateral movement, and exfiltration?Or are you using your ExtraHop to troubleshoot your web applications? Let me spin up a lab for you, throw some workloads in there. We'll drop a Kali instance or a Kubernetes cluster and show you what an attack surface can look like. Not to scare or, kind of, build on what customers are experiencing, but knock on wood, I don't want any of my customers to be attacked, but I also have to build that confidence that if or when something happens, they're covered.Corey: Back when I first had ExtraHop demoed for me, I was convinced it was going to be garbage, let me be very honest with you. And the reason was that the dashboard looked like it was demoware. It was well-designed, well-executed, it had a very colorful interface. It felt like bossware if I'm being perfectly honest. My belief has always been, you either get a good interface that works and is easy to use and navigate within, or you get something that looks super flashy when you do a demo on stage somewhere, but it is almost impossible to wind up effectively nailing both of those use cases. And then I started using this and I am having to eat those words because you actually did it. You wound up building something that looks great and is easy to navigate. How much work did that actually take? I mean, is that where all the engineering on this product has gone?Guy: We really appreciate it. Our UX team and our engineering group work very, very hard. We spend more on R&D and research than we do on a lot of our marketing and front-end sectors and it shows. The product kind of speaks for itself. And the experience that you're describing with the easy-to-consume UI, with the data to support that experience behind it is our goal. And I'm happy to hear that you're enjoying it in your lab.Corey: I just did a little poking around while I have you on the phone, and if I dig deep enough, it does tell me that there's some weak ciphers in use. And every single one of these things is talking to an AWS-owned endpoint, which is, first, a little bit on the hilarious side, since I keep this thing current. Awesome. Secondly, the fact that I had to dig for that and it wasn't freaking out about it. There are no alerts; it doesn't show up on the dashboard.I had to really start diving into this. Because, yeah, it's good to know if I'm doing some sort of audit activity, it's good to know if I need to dive in and look at these things, but it doesn't need to wake me up at two in the morning because, “Holy crap. The Boto3 library isn't quite using the latest cipher suite.” How much tuning did this take?Guy: Not much. So, there is a learning period, as with any application that has a backend on behavioral analytics. But most of my customers, usually two to three weeks after we start seeing a data feed, are in a state of excellent tuning. Very little manual tuning required, the system will learn normalities, it'll learn behaviors, and it'll flag anomalies, kind of, on its own. So, the same experience that you're having where you're running a compliance scan, or you're running an audit, or you're trying to look for, in this world where—I'm going to make a joke here—we all have free time, and you have the time to go look at, you know, “How do I clean up some of these hygienic issues that are not currently causing me heartache?” The data is there. That's the beauty of the network is some of your users may be familiar with Wireshark, or something like a tcpdump. There's boatloads of data in. There are thousands and thousands of data points you can analyze though. If you want the data, it's there, but like you said, no reason to wake you up at two in the morning unless we see things that are super critical.Corey: Encrypt everything sort of becomes the theme, especially when Amazon's CTO slaps it on a t-shirt, and then in some cases charges extra for it; but that's a diversion. What is the story as you start seeing more and more traffic wind up being encrypted at a bunch of different levels? In fact, I'll take it a step further. With the rise of customer-managed keys and things like KMS in the AWS world, does that mean that ExtraHop is effectively losing visibility beyond just the typical TCP flow?Guy: So, ExtraHop is unique in the space that we have the ability to decrypt TLS 1.3 data. It came out a couple years ago and it's a way of encrypting traffic between servers and clients in a manner that isn't as breakable as historic encryption mechanisms were. We can parse that data, we can ingest those decryption mechanisms, we can—in real-time, without being a man-in-the-middle so we're not breaking any of this trust chain that you have to explicitly build to the internet in a lot of cases, or you don't have to upload any of your private keys to the ExtraHop. So, it's a super unique approach for how we can unpack that envelope.This goes back to when we were kids, and we all got those Christmas presents and you check the box and you try to guess what's inside. And maybe you're right, maybe you're not, but until you open that wrapper, you can't really know what's being said. So, something like a hidden database transaction underneath a web call just shows up as a web call when you're not unpacking the envelopes. Decryption is an underrated feature, in my opinion, and I would—you know, true security posture team should probably have something where they can look inside those payloads.Corey: This is where it starts to get a little weird, too, because, on some level, great, the whole premise of TLS is that my application talks to something far away—or nearby. It doesn't really matter—but there's a bit of a guarantee that from the point it leaves that application and hits the encryption side on the instance to the other end, there should be no decryption there. The only way I've ever seen that get around that is effectively man-in-the-middling these things, which in some level, “Oh, decrypt all of your secure traffic in the name of security,” always felt a little on the silly side.Guy: Not only is it silly, it's a little harder to manage when we talk about cloud because those man-in-the-middle decryption mechanisms typically involve building explicit trust so that they can decrypt the traffic, and then the client and the server both agree that, “Yeah, sure. You can read my information. You use your own certificate. I don't care.” That gets harder to do as you start talking about containers, as you start talking about ephemeral instances.Sure, you can build a golden image of a container and make it trust your IPS—which most people should have—but you still have to have the ability to see this traffic when you're bypassing certain metrics. If you're bypassing traffic back to your data center so you can [unintelligible 00:24:45] your point of sale application, or if, maybe, you're a multi-cloud environment where you have to pass from cloud to consume all of your data space. You still have to be able to see that data to understand what's really being said during the conversation without always being able to break that trust chain.Corey: One thing that I want to make very clear I call out because otherwise, I am going to get letters on this. This is a promoted episode. You folks have paid to sponsor. Thank you. It is appreciated. But I want to be very clear you buy my attention, not my opinion. I know I've been, sort of, gushing about what ExtraHop does, and how it works, and how I view these things, but that's not because you're paying me to do that. I am legitimately excited about the product itself.This is one of those things where it finally is giving me visibility into something that I understand from my olden sysadmin network admin days combined with how I know the cloud works today, and I'm looking at this and the strange spots that I see of, “Ohh, I would improve that a bit,” there aren't that many and they're not that big. This is something that is legitimately awesome, and I would encourage people to kick the tires and see what they think.Guy: Yeah, we appreciate that feedback, Corey. A lot of us are previous users. I myself, you know, before coming to ExtraHop, used ExtraHop at a previous job and that was one of the big reasons I came to work for the company is I believe in the software. A lot of our people here and we have long-time-term employees believe in what we do. And our goal is to build this partnership and trust with our customers, too, so that they have the same experience that you do. It's a fun product to play with, and kicking around and tires is fun and we'd love to show you.Corey: When you start talking to folks who are going through their, I guess, ExtraHop journey of discovery—don't ever use that term. It sounds awful—what do you find that they are getting the most confused about? What do they misunderstand that would be helpful for them to have more clarity around?Guy: There's a lot of what ExtraHop can provide when it comes to data ingestion, and data collection, and even data aggregation, but where a lot of my customers fall in the confusion space tends to be in, “Do I care about this data? Should I care about this information?” And that really falls down to the individual user's responsibility. A security team cares about all of it, whereas an application team may only care about the website's performance, or the network latency, or the error rates. And it spans the gambit.So, one thing that I do with a lot of my customers is weekly training sessions, or give them access to videos that we've recorded in advance so they can self-teach. As an engineer myself, I hate when people talk me into things: I like to play, and I like to see. So, let me give you a guide, you want to play with it, kind of poke the toes, kick the tires, have fun, that seems to get customers excited, and again, back to that aha moment a lot quicker. There's so much data that gets exposed, and sometimes it can be overwhelming. But when it comes to visibility, it's all stuff that's useful at the end of the day.Corey: If people want to learn more, where can they go next? How do they begin this journey? And of course, mention me just because every time someone talks to a sponsor and brings my name up, the reflexive wince is just my favorite look in the world.Guy: Yeah, so definitely mentioned Corey's name. [laugh]. We have online demos where people can play with the lab, you go to extrahop.com/demo. We also offer AWS trials if you want to actually deploy one and see what it looks like in your environment for a period of time. And we have teams all over the world, from the United States, EMEA, APACs, that are happy to help answer questions, help deploy, and help automate a lot of this, whether it be through something like a CloudFormation template, or Terraform scripts, whatever infrastructure as code language you choose to use.Corey: Excellent. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really do appreciate it.Guy: Yeah, Corey, it's been a pleasure talking to you. And I'm looking forward to maybe having another one with you in the future.Corey: Oh, I would expect so. I'm curious to see what happens next. Guy Raz, senior systems engineer at ExtraHop. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice and an insulting comment that will no doubt get flagged by ExtraHop as being something that shouldn't be on the network.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Can't talk to me? Then fine-tune your stack, fam! The stack is one of the foundational components needed for A TON of movements and for restoring movement, but what if you are struggle bus with this concept? What if you can't get a full exhale or get the expansion you need? Or maybe you don't even know where in the ribcage we should even see movement! Don't worry fam, ya boy big Z has you covered. If you want to beef up your stack, and your conversation with Zac, then check out Movement Debrief Episode 153 below! Watch the video here for your viewing pleasure. If you want to watch these live, add me on Instagram. Show notes Check out Human Matrix promo video here.   Here are some testimonials for the class.   Or check out this little teaser for Human Matrix home study. Best part is if you attend the live course you'll get this bad boy for free!  Want to sign up? Click on the following locations below: August 14th-15th, 2021, Ann Arbor, MI (Early bird ends July 18th at 11:55 pm!) September 25th-26th, 2021, Wyckoff, NJ (Early bird ends August 22nd at 11:55 pm) October 23rd-24th, Philadelphia, PA (Early bird ends September 26th at 11:55pm) November 6th-7th, 2021, Charlotte, NC (Early bird ends October 3rd at 11:55 pm) November 20th-21st, 2021 – Colorado Springs, CO (Early bird ends October 22nd at 11:55 pm) December 4th-5th, 2021 - Las Vegas, NV (Early bird ends November 5th at 11:55 pm) Here's a signup for my newsletter to get nearly 5 hours and 50 pages of content, access to my free breathing and body mechanics course, a free acute:chronic workload calculator, basketball conditioning program, podcasts, and weekend learning goodies.  Prone hamstring curl troubleshooting - This video goes through a simple way to help you get more out of your prone hamstring curls. The Difference Between Spinal and Pelvic Motion - This post outlines how to differentiate moving the spine as one unit vs creating relative motion at the pelvis. Ribcage expansion vs rib flare Question: With normal breathing appears should get expansion of all ribs, but yet With the stack it appears as though you should not allow ribs to flare out. So in a sense no expansion of ribs?  https://youtu.be/H4JS3IK0JnM Answer: Oh fam, don't you worry. I want them ribs to get #expandedAF. The key point here is we want to differentiate where the expansion is coming from. Ideally, during the stack, we should see multidirectional expansion in the ribcage when we take a breath of air. In fact, the following areas should expand: Buckethandle - Ribs will move outward and upward (predominantly lower ribcage) Pumphandle - Front ribs should move forward and upward Posterior expansion - Back ribs should move backward and upward Slight elevation - The ribcage will lift upward slightly as a unit, as the scalenes are a primary muscle of inspiration Slight depression - The ribcage will stretch downward slightly as a unit because of the pull from the abs. As you can see, the ribs move just about everywhere! This movement, however, is different from the ribs moving forward (aka the rib flare). Ribs flared AF :) With the movements listed above, you get relative motions occurring among the ribs. So the ribs will separate to make room for the increased air in the lungs. With a rib flare, we don't see this as much. Instead, the ribcage migrates forward and upward as a unit. Imagine the thorax translating forward. That is the rib flare, and it is often accompanied with increased tension in the accessory muscles. Compensations during the exhale Question: As a narrow infrasternal angle, I am going to be taking a long relaxed exaggerated sigh. However, I get to a point where nothing is happening or I actually feel like my sternum is collapsing inward causing almost an out of breath sensation. Any idea what this might be? We want to be seeing the lower ribs dropping down correct? What if upon an exhale they don't move? https://youtu.be/O9bYviWlk4Y Answer: You think you have a full exhale, but you have no idea. This is the diary of someone who needs help getting a full exhale. (gah I'm old) But don't worry, fam, it's totally common. Ideally, the deeper abdominal muscles compress the lower ribcage in all directions, assisting the diaphragm in full ascension. There are two big tells that let you know you have this position: The ab wall will get smaller, especially the lower abdomen region. The lower ribcage will drop downward and inward. If you don't have these two points, then a full exhale is not attained. The sternal collapse is a compensatory strategy to attempt to get this full exhale. Here, the rectus (damn near killed us) abdominis contracts, pulling the sternum downward. This can help create a pseudo domed position of the diaphragm, but you do not get changes in the lateral ab wall. You also can't get the complete air evacuation out that you normally would, as this altered shape change pushes air posteriorly and inferiorly, limiting posterior diaphragm ascension. Rectus damn near killed us. The worst! (Photo credit: Hitchcock, Edward, 1793-1864; Hitchcock, Edward, 1828-1911) To mitigate these compensatory strategies, we need to emphasize the ab wall getting smaller and the ribcage dropping. To get the ab wall smaller, the best way I've found this is to just utilize a self-manual cue. Put your hands right below your belly button, and do your darndest to get the abs to get smaller. The second point is the get the lower ribcage to drop. If you get the abs moving but the ribs don't, then you need some help. The Beatles got a little help from their friends, but you, my fine fam, are going to get a LOT of help from your arms. That is, you are reaching. Reaching is like icing on the stack cake, as it can promote the ribcage shape change desired by affecting the upper components of the ribcage. Depending on your infrasternal angle archetype, you have one of two options to start with. For narrow ISAs, you'll want to reach forward, as this action will bend the ribs by generating anterior and posterior compression. I like doing these unilaterally, with a move like a hooklying tilt with a one arm reach: https://youtu.be/-GwHrk0zmc8 For wide ISAs, an upward reach (around 100-120° shoulder flexion) can be quite useful. A move like this supine hip extension move can be a great choice: https://youtu.be/NIt5Ass84VQ Reaching during the stack Question:  What if the medial borders of the scaps were NOT flush with the ribcage, could then a reach at 90º be useful for posterior expansion, ribcage retraction, and getting those medials borders to find their nice cozy home along the ribs? https://youtu.be/jJAZp-NeZoY Answer: The big thing to watch on this lack of flushness on the ribcage is that it often accompanies the thorax migrating forward. If the thorax goes too far forward and you have lost the stack (and subsequently, the inability to talk to me), then you will not get posterior expansion. However, I've been known to manually pull the medial border off of the ribcage to encourage posterior thorax expansion, and it can be quite useful. Yet, it's really fricken hard to perform this action actively. UNLESS.... you create a relative motion between the scapula and humerus, aka scapular internal rotation. How do you do this? I'M GLAD YOU ASKED! If you can externally rotate the humerus without moving the scapula, this creates a relative internal rotation at the scapula. If you have internal rotation at the scapula, the scapular external rotators (which cover the dorsal rostral area) will be eccentrically oriented, which can allow for posterior expansion. A great way to achieve this action is by performing armbars with screwdrivers: https://youtu.be/EbgUI2jjN-4 Making prone and supine more comfortable during the stack Question: I find it uncomfortable in the prone and supine position for the stack. Any tips? Answer: If these positions are hurting, then there is an inability to express movement options, hence the increased pressure in respective areas. In the prone position, gravity is pushing downward, which can drive more anterior orientation. If your backside is concentric AF, then it may be that this position pushes you even more forward. Problems ensue. The prone solution? Take yourself out of the anterior orientation. This action can be done by either putting a few airex pads underneath your stomach, or even lying over a swiss ball. An airex pad underneath the stomach is s quick way to restore the anterior orientation. The same issue can cause problems in supine. If you can't reverse the posterior concentric bias, then there may be increased pressure in the sacroiliac joint and upper back. The solution could be the same. Placing a pad or wedge underneath the pelvis can help encourage the posterior orientation that you OH SO DESIRE! Side planks for the deconditioned? Question: When working with wide ISAs who are deconditioned and older, will you give them side planks right away? I worry about the shoulder. Answer: Side planks can be great for creating the lateral compression needed to make wide infrasternal angle presentations dynamic. The issue, however, is that you need to be able to produce enough force to get yourself into position. Otherwise, you are going to overload the shoulder. That said, you can still get the benefits of "side planks," you just need to regress them. Simply not lifting the body up in the air, instead pushing through the arm, can create a lot of benefits without as much load. https://youtu.be/b-m54cWG95s If that's too much, then you can bear weight through your hand like so: https://youtu.be/fHkQJ_IdwH8 If even that is too much, you can simply lie over a swiss ball to create some lateral compression: https://youtu.be/1j_9eJZRkDA Neutral pelvis or posterior tilt? Question: Neutral pelvis vs posterior tilt stack. Which/when? https://youtu.be/5PxboQFisRg Answer: While we cannot say what true "position" the pelvis is in, there are some indicators that can let us know if we have a good orientation during stack coaching. The key is to orient the pelvis in a manner that allows the viscera to bob up and down as we breathe; restoring sacral dynamics. Your key indicator that you are in a good spot is perception of the glutes and hamstrings contracting WHILE keep the pelvis and thorax stacked atop one another. If you have that, you are in a great spot :) Too much rectus abdominis during exhales Question: What kind of cues would use for someone who keeps kicking in rectus abdominis? Answer: The rectus (damn-near killed us) abdonimis kicks in when we can't get a full exhale. You'll see that when the following stuff happens: the sternum depresses the belly gets bigger the pelvis translates forward If you see these things, you can bet your bottom dollar that your stack is whack! Here are the keys to focus on to derectusify (technical term) the stack: Keep the exhale slow and drawn out Feel the lower belly get smaller Drive upper cervical extension Choose good positions that minimize rectus activity (e.g. sidelying for wide ISAs) Stacking during rotation Question: How do you ensure that you have a stack during rotation? Answer: The most important piece is to ensure that you aren't bending as a unit when you reach. Winging during front planks Question: If I try a front plank and the scaps are winging, what is going on there? Answer: If the scapulae are winging, the thorax is falling WAY too forward, which creates space between the thorax and the scapula. To create space, you need to push the ribcage backward while achieving a full exhale. Less air in the front, more air in the back. Too much lower back during the exhale Question: I have a client who uses erectors to complete the exhale. Any tips? Answer: You need to put the back muscles into an eccentric orientation so they don't create the exhale. Choosing some of the positions mentioned during the prone and supine portion of this debrief can be useful. Cueing out of overtucking Question: Any tips on client who overtuck during the stack? Answer: I usually start with this person arching their back excessively, then slowly unarching out of that position. This helps them isolate the movement to the pelvis. Sum up The ribcage should expand in all directions during the stack, not migrate forward as a unit. A full exhale should entail the ab wall getting smaller and the lower ribcage dropping downward. A reach can help facilitate a fuller exhale. Scapular internal rotation can promote posterior expansion. Prone and supine can be more comfortable by positioning passively into a posteriorly expanded position. To reduce rectus abdominis overactivity, keep exhales slow, ab wall small, and chin away from neck. To reduce overtucking, arch then unarch  

On this episode, Ileana and Rob explore the fascinating, bridge building, personal story of Meghan Stevenson-Krausz, one of Latin America's leading Venture Capital Investors, and leading advocates for female inclusion in the Latin American entrepreneurial economy. Meghan's vulnerability is incredibly authentic and inspiring. In sharing some not often publicly discussed parts of her journey, she shows us how some people's conditions may literally predestine their later paths. Meghan's work and impact today, traces back to her childhood in a multicultural, multi-religious family growing up in West Philadelphia, a historically diverse neighborhood. Our conversation takes us from her youth to present day, while highlighting a few of Peru's hottest up & coming founders alongside Meghan challenging the systems of "white privilege". Meghan seems much more like a "one woman movement" than a typical VC and she inspired us to do more and be better as we all strive to build sustainable vibrant entrepreneurial economies in the Americas!  Enjoy this conversation with one of the young leaders in Latin American venture capital and entrepreneurial economy building! Please follow and connect with Meghan via these links: Twitter: @meghan_sk Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/meghansk Websites:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/inca-ventures/about/  https://www.inclusivx.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/weinvest-latam/ We're so grateful to you, our growing audience of entrepreneurs, investors, builders, influencers and those interested in the entrepreneurial economies of Latin America and the marginalized/under-represented entrepreneurial communities in the USA! Ideally, Season Two will bridge you between these two deeply interdependent worlds. Plug in, relax and enjoy some Spanish, English and a fun dose of spanglish as always. Please subscribe, follow and review as it helps others find the show. Share with friends and repost to your social media so we can help more entrepreneurs grow and discover new opportunities. Also don't forget, to please click on the "listener voice message" link in show notes, to submit your own personal questions or comments about anything you're thinking about or need help with, to be featured on future episodes. We're here to help inspire, educate and empower you, so that you can build the future! Salud y Gracias! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mentorstoday/message

Show #1105. If you get any value from this podcast please consider supporting my work on Patreon. Plus all Patreon supporters get their own unique ad-free podcast feed. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Sunday 6th June. It's Martyn Lee here and I go through every EV story so you don't have to. FIAT POISED TO BE ALL-ELECTRIC AUTOMAKER BY 2030"It was a little over a year ago when Fiat unveiled its new, all-electric 500e. Fiat CEO Olivier François has already confirmed that a hotter electrified Abarth version is in the works, but now we have confirmation that far more electrification will enter Fiat's lineup. In fact, the Italian brand intends to go completely electric before the end of this decade." according to Motor1.com: "As for Fiat's electric ambitions, though the 500e looks quite similar to internal-combustion-powered versions of the iconic small car, it's actually the first car from the brand built from the ground-up to be an EV. Manufactured in Turin, Italy, the 500e features a 42 kWh battery powering a single electric motor good for 118 bhp (88 kilowatts). " https://uk.motor1.com/news/512093/fiat-all-electric-automaker-2030/ VOLKSWAGEN CONSIDERS AN IPO FOR THEIR BATTERY DIVISION"Volkswagen is considering an IPO for its new battery division. According to Chief Technology Officer Thomas Schmall, this does not involve individual plants but the entire cell business." reports electrive: "By 2030, Volkswagen plans to build six new giga-factories for cell production with its partners in Europe alone, at a cost in the double-digit billions, as the Group announced at its Power Day in March. According to [Chief Technology Officer Thomas Schmall] Schmall, this is enough to equip more than five million cars with batteries. For China and the plants on the American continent in the USA and Mexico, further factories would probably be added if VW also wants to rely on the standard battery cell there. https://www.electrive.com/2021/06/01/volkswagen-considers-an-ipo-for-their-battery-division/ UK FIRM'S UNIQUE EV DESIGN COULD BOOST RANGE BY 30%"A London-based start-up has revealed an innovative electric car design solution that, it says, could allow for 30% more range per charge.  Page-Roberts, founded in 2019, aims to "dramatically upscale EV efficiencies with cutting-edge engineering solutions that deliver design elegance." says Autocar: ""Pointing to the added height, extended wheelbase and "structural complexities" of a conventional 'skateboard' arrangement, Page-Roberts posits that a vertically oriented power pack could improve the design, user experience and manufacturing cost of electric cars. The battery would be positioned between two rows of opposite-facing seats, in an arrangement that, Page-Roberts claims, is "far more compact" than existing designs. It would also allow the car to sit lower, be more aerodynamically efficient and weigh less." https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry-news-manufacturing/uk-firms-unique-ev-design-could-boost-range-30 VOLKSWAGEN TAKING OVER A GREEK ISLAND WITH ITS EVS, GOVERNMENT SUPPORTS THE MOVE"Late last year, Volkswagen announced it would be “investing” in the Greek island of Astypalea by converting the island's mobility infrastructure from ICEs to EVs. With around 1,500 ICE vehicles on the island, there was no odor of eco-friendly goodness." says autoevolution: "The five-year plan is meant to transform Astypalea into the first “smart and sustainable island” among the Greek provinces and act as an example for the rest of Greece. It's also a platform for study, helping Volkswagen understand a myriad of factors that will surely affect a transition to an electric society.  Astypalea is currently a mostly diesel-driven island, as very few alternative energy sources have been set up except generators. But Volkswagen seems to embrace this as it offers a perfect laboratory in which to test all subsequent stages of a transition." https://www.autoevolution.com/news/volkswagen-taking-over-a-greek-island-with-its-evs-government-supports-the-move-162575.html NISSAN LAUNCHES FLAGSHIP ARIYA EV IN JAPAN"Nissan Motor has started taking preorders in Japan for limited editions of its first new battery electric car in a decade. The Japanese carmaker is pinning hopes on the Ariya, its first all-electric crossover SUV, to pep up its EV range." says Nikkei Asia: "Nissan said it would also do more to attract customers unfamiliar with electric vehicles, opening a website on Friday to allow Ariya preordering and virtual driving using augmented reality technology. Nissan's chief operating officer, Ashwani Gupta, told Nikkei Asia in a recent interview that the Japanese carmaker is set to share close to 70% of key EV components with its alliance partners, France's Renault and Japan's Mitsubishi Motors, to lower EV production cost." https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Nissan-launches-flagship-Ariya-EV-in-Japan NISSAN POSTPONES ‘ARIYA' LAUNCH DUE TO LACK OF CHIPS"Nissan is postponing the market launch of its new electric model Ariya by several months due to the ongoing chip shortage. The Japanese domestic market is to be served first, so an export to Europe in 2021 seems rather unlikely." according to electrive: "When the Ariya was first unveiled in July last year, Nissan had announced that it would be on the market in mid-2021. Now the company announced that only a limited edition of the Ariya will be available for launch in Japan from “this winter”, for which pre-orders are now opening there. Reservations for the Ariya in Europe, the USA and China will be possible “later this year”. Nissan does not reveal when exactly deliveries to export markets are to start. That Nissan has chosen to start with the simplest model rather than the top-of-the-line four-wheeler in the face of the chip shortage is likely due precisely to the lack of semiconductors: The smaller battery with fewer modules requires fewer electronics" https://www.electrive.com/2021/06/04/nissan-postpones-ariya-launch-due-to-lack-of-chips/ EV STARTUPS RACE FOR A 'GOLDEN TICKET' ORDER"The future of a bevy of commercial EV startups seeking investor capital through blank-check IPOs rests largely in the hands of a small group of big companies such as UPS, FedEx, DHL and Amazon. With each carrier having tens of thousands of vehicles in its global fleet, an order from a package delivery giant can launch a startup on the road to manufacturing scale and profitability, and serve as a marketing tool to win orders from other big customers." reports Autmotive News: " Some startups already have their golden ticket. Arrival, which went public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), has an order for up to 10,000 vans from UPS. The Arrival electric test van decked out in UPS' distinct brown livery is popular with drivers at the package delivery giant's facility in London's Kentish Town district. During a demonstration of the van by Luke Wake, UPS vice president of maintenance and engineering, several drivers asked: "When can we drive one?" The van's battery pack will allow UPS to add automatic doors for drivers and LED lights in the back to help drivers find packages more quickly. Such features can save seconds per delivery -- which add up as UPS delivers 2 billion packages annually." https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/ev-startups-race-golden-ticket-order TEXAS BID TO IMPOSE SPECIAL STATE TAX ON ELECTRIC VEHICLES FAILS — FOR NOW"An effort to impose what amounts to a special state tax on electric vehicles fell short of the finish line in the recently concluded legislative session, although the reprieve from new road use fees might be temporary." saus Austin American Statesman: "That's because debate about the issue largely focused on how much and when — not if — owners of electric and other vehicles that aren't powered by gasoline should pay. The possible fees are likely to come up again in 2023 during the next regular session of the Legislature, if not before then in a special session. the legislation, which would have set the fee at $200 annually for most electric cars, calling it nearly double the amount many drivers of equivalent conventionally powered vehicles pay in gasoline taxes each year." https://eu.statesman.com/story/business/2021/06/02/texas-senate-bill-state-tax-electric-vehicles-fails-for-now/7490493002/ QUESTION OF THE WEEK ANSWERSRajeev NArayanI think for most workplaces, 7.2 kW or even 3.8 kW Level II chargers would suffice. In just a few hours these chargers could offset the commute to and from work also, for the cost of just one DC fast charger, you could buy several level II chargers.  If these were more common, it would make EVs an option for people who do not have access to charging at home. Ideally it would be nice if workplaces got incentives to help offset the cost of installation, and for adding solar to help charge vehicles. Some places here in San Antonio simply contract with Charting companies, unfortunately they typically charge about 31c/kWh, and install just a few chargers to maximize profits. I would prefer if workplaces install their own chargers and either provide free charging or charge less exorbitant prices. Shahad ChoudhuryWe need more, slower chargers at workplaces. My work is limited to 8 chargepoint plugs because of the grid connection, but it only takes a couple hours to charge up most EVs on them.  This led to lots of frustration and wasted time (pre lockdown) when people moved their full cars, since multiple other people are all rushing down to try and get the spot when they're notified Barry WolfFor USA: run many (at least 10% of spaces) 20 amp circuits to the parking lot, with one circuit per parking spot, using 4 conductor cable but make each circuit a 120 V circuit (extra unused conductor enables 240 V service in the future). Charging at either 12 amps or 16 amps @ 120V for eight hours will provide ~11 kWh or ~15 kWh, respectively, of energy during the work day. This will provide30 to 60 miles of range, depending on EVSE amperage and car efficiency. Either have people bring own EVSE or provide L1 EVSEs.  Karl CramerI'd be happy if every workplace parking lamppost had an outdoor GFCI rated plug socket at its base. Since were there for 8-12 hours anyway we can get a long slow charge that's better for our battery life anyway. Ron BarberI assisted in the specification and configuration of the chargers at my workplace 2.5 years ago. One site of about 600 people we installed 14 Level 2 chargers (7.6kW or 3.8kW if both of the pair in use). A second location has about 1200 people and 24 Level 3 chargers. The units are from ClipperCreek which has provided excellent service. There is no charge to using the units but we ask people to use for only 4 hrs per session. It can vertebrae a point of contention with the number of EVs more than tripling since install.I also developed hardware and software to monitor the chargers and provide a web site for status.  The charging power is a bit low but some constraints on available power near the parking lot, but I did take a survey prior to speciation (about a year in planning) and collected commute distances and EV types to analyze average charging times needed. The system has proven to be well utilized. Michael ClasquinLots and lots of 240 volt sockets  that we can plug our granny chargers into, weatherproofed if necessary. Eight hours on a granny charger will get anybody home.  Stephen TroyerI think the type of charging at workplaces should be slow charging or bi-directional.  High speed chargers don't make as much sense at a work place because they'll run when demand on the grid is high, and because the average work day is long enough to get a charge from flat to full at a slow rate.  Bi-directional charging could make a lot of sense because then all those cars could help meet the peaks in demand and then put power back in before the end of the employees' work day so that they have plenty of power for the round trip home and back.  QUESTION OF THE WEEK WITH EMOBILITYNORWAY.COM What noises, if any, should electric vehicles make (inside or outside the vehicle) Email me your thoughts and I'll read them out on Sunday – hello@evnewsdaily.com   It would mean a lot if you could take 2mins to leave a quick review on whichever platform you download the podcast. And  if you have an Amazon Echo, download our Alexa Skill, search for EV News Daily and add it as a flash briefing. Come and say hi on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter just search EV News Daily, have a wonderful day, I'll catch you tomorrow and remember…there's no such thing as a self-charging hybrid. PREMIUM PARTNERSPHIL ROBERTS / ELECTRIC FUTURE BRAD CROSBYPORSCHE OF THE VILLAGE CINCINNATIAUDI CINCINNATI EASTVOLVO CARS CINCINNATI EAST NATIONALCARCHARGING.COM and ALOHACHARGE.COM DEREK REILLY FROM THE EV REVIEW IRELAND YOUTUBE CHANNELRICHARD AT RSEV.CO.UK – FOR BUYING AND SELLING EVS IN THE UKEMOBILITYNORWAY.COM/

The theme this week on the One Minute Retirement Tip podcast is: Get These 4 Things Right For A Successful Retirement.  What are these 4 things? They’re known as the 4 L’s of retirement and the concept was developed by retirement researcher, Dr. Wade Pfau. The 4 Ls of retirement are longevity, lifestyle, liquidity, and legacy. Today, we’re focusing on liquidity.  Liquidity is all about maintaining an emergency fund and extra savings that are set aside for emergencies and other curve balls that will inevitably come your way in retirement. This could include supporting elderly parents when you didn’t plan on doing so, a house fire, flood, or lawsuit, or absorbing the impact of an unexpected death or disability.  According to the creator of the concept of the 4 L’s, Dr. Wade Pfau, “Such assets [for emergencies] must not be earmarked for other goals, as unexpected contingencies relate to anything falling outside of the planned retirement budget.” So while most of planning for retirement is about planning for what you expect to happen, the plan can go sideways pretty quickly when the unexpected happens, which is why it’s so important to maintain cash, so you can cover most of those inevitable unexpected events that will come up during your 20-30+ year retirement.  There are no guarantees in life. And that’s the hardest part of planning for retirement, but that doesn’t mean it’s futile. It just means you’ll need to have enough of a cushion, that’s liquid enough to provide for those emergencies.  The other challenging part about this is we don’t know anything about how much we’ll need to unexpected expenditures. You might have $50,000 or $500,000 of unexpected expenses in retirement.  With all that in mind, how much should you have set aside in cash to cover your liquidity needs in retirement. Too much in cash can drag down the overall returns of your portfolio, but too little in cash can cause you to sell assets, perhaps at the worst time.  Ideally, my recommendation to clients is to have enough cash on hand to cover their basic needs for 6 months. So if your basic spending needs are $3,000 a month, you’ll need $18,000 in cash on hand. In addition to that, I recommend another 12 months of your portfolio withdrawals  in cash to cover those big emergencies and allow you to stop your portfolio withdrawals if the stock market and your portfolio take a nose dive. Notice I said portfolio withdrawals, not your total monthly expenses. So if you withdraw $2,000 a month from your portfolio, you’ll need another $24,000 cash on hand.  That’s it for today, but before you go, I’m planning an upcoming weekly theme on the podcast of “ask me anything”! What’s weighing most heavily on your mind right now as you approach retirement? Submit your question to me, I’ll pick 5 of my favorites, and answer them on the podcast. Just send me an email to ashleym@truenorthra.com. That’s ashleym@truenorthra.com, and even if I don’t pick your question to answer on the podcast, I’ll do my best to reply and send you an answer anyway. Thanks for listening!  My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.  --------- >>> Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2DI2LSP >>> Subscribe on Amazon Alexa: https://amzn.to/2xRKrCs >>> Visit the podcast page: https://truenorthra.com/podcast/  ---------- Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, retirement income planning, retirement income sources, retirement income, retirement income withdrawal, retirement spending strategies, how long will money last in retirement, do I have enough to retire, retirement lifestyle

This week Kim gives us the download about her West Coast road trip from Seattle to Los Angeles, California. Planning a West Coast Road Trip Driving from Seattle to Southern California takes about three days if you want to take the scenic routes and make stops along the way. Ideally you will take 10-14 days for this trip. However, if you have less time you can drive from Seattle to Southern California and then fly home. The best way to take the trip is from north to south (Seattle to LA) versus south to north because you will have better views and the scenic pullouts will be on your side of the road. Try to plan no more than four hours of driving time a day to leave plenty of time for stops and attractions. There are three main routes that you can take once you are in California. The fastest route is on Interstate 5. Highway 1 is the coastal route which is the slowest but most scenic. Highway 101 will still take you through vineyards and farms with some scenic attractions but it is faster than Highway 1. You can start in Seattle or Portland, Oregon. If you start in Seattle, cut over to the Olympic Peninsula where you can see the Hoh Rainforest, Rialto Beach, Ruby Beach, and the famous tree of life before hitting some of Washington's small beach towns like Long Beach and Ocean Shores. On Kim's trip they drove straight to the Oregon border and stayed the first night in Astoria, which is a neat little town where the Goonies was filmed. You can also visit the Naval Maritime Museum. If you are traveling in the summer of 2021, keep in mind that many restaurants are still understaffed or not fully open so plan accordingly as these small towns get very crowded and overwhelmed with tourists, especially on the weekend. A few other stops in Oregon should include: Cannon Beach with Haystack Rock, Tillamook Creamery, Devil's Punchbowl, and the Oregon Dunes Recreation Area, and Agate Beach. Kim stayed her second night in Klamath on the Oregon/California border (be aware that there is major road construction going on in this area.) On the Oregon coast, check the tide charts to know when the high and low tides are because it can make a big difference in the experience. Try to avoid weekends in the small touristy town as much as possible. Google will also sometimes give predictions on when the busiest times are for attractions, which can help plan your itinerary. In Northern California, Kim stopped at the drive through tree in Klamath, Trees of Mystery, and Avenue of the Giants in the Redwoods. On the third night, Kim stayed in Ukiah, CA. The next day, Kim and the girls stayed in a glamping tent at Safari West and got to do the drive through safari. Kim then spent two nights in Monterey (read all about things to do in Monterey) and did an e-bike tour with Mad Dogs and Englishmen and visited Pacific Grove, staying at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa. In Monterey, Kim recommends eating at Rio Grill, Alta Bakery, and Lucy's on Lighthouse, which is a hot dog stand with a skateboard theme. Keep in mind that highway 1 is often closed by Big Sur because of landslides so always check ahead to see what is open and take Highway 101 as an alternate. You can drive as far south as Bixby Bridge, but be careful and stay within the boundaries when taking a picture. Lily Valley is another great stop where wild calla lillies grow. If you are going to hike to the Hollywood sign, look for options for a four-mile hike, versus the six-mile hike from the Griffith Observatory, and go mid-week if you can. There is then so much more to do in Southern California but what Kim did would be at least a 7-8 day trip. Read Kim's Olympic National Park itinerary Read all about Kim's West Coast Road Trip itinerary and tips Read Tamara's tips for driving from San Francisco to Cambria on Highway 1 [00:00:00.060] - Kim Tate Today, we're winding down the West Coast.   [00:00:14.880] - Announcer Welcome to Vacation Mavens, a family travel podcast with ideas for your next vacation and tips to get you out the door. Here are your hosts, Kim from Stuffed Suitcase and Tamara from We3Travel.   [00:00:29.820] - Tamara Gruber Today's episode is brought to us by Safe Travels Kit, which does exactly what it sounds like and it helps keep you safe when you're traveling, whether it's on an airplane, a train or even in the car, it is all in one little pouch that includes a seat cover and a pillowcase and sanitizing wipes and a face mask. What I love about it is that it's super soft. So, Kim, the material, you know how sensitive my skin is, but if I'm going to put my face on a pillow case, I want it to be like super soft and comfortable.   [00:00:57.660] - Kim Tate And I love that part. And if there's anything that we've learned in this last years that there's a lot of germs out there and now I'm even more like not wanting them to touch me, definitely.   [00:01:07.950] - Kim Tate I can't even imagine using one of those airplane pillows at this point where you're never quite sure if they actually changed that white little non soft cover that they put over them.   [00:01:18.450] - Tamara Gruber Definitely. So this is very easy to pack in your carry on. It's actually sold on Amazon as well as you'll find it in many of the Brookstone airport stores or in Bloomingdale's. But you can find it on Safe Travels, Kit.Com, and we thank them for their support.   [00:01:35.360] - Tamara Gruber So, Kim, I know that your West Coast road trip feels like probably ancient history by now, but I know that we wanted to come back to it and really do a deep dive because so many of our listeners have planned on doing some type of California or West Coast road trip.   [00:01:52.010] - Tamara Gruber So I thought it'd be really helpful if we could, you know, talk about what you've done. And I know that you've done this trip quite a few times. You have a lot of knowledge to share. But can you fill us in, I know you did, what, two weeks down back in April from Washington down to California. But give us an idea of what was your overall itinerary like?   [00:02:14.890] - Kim Tate So in this trip, yeah, we had two weeks, but part of that was because we were going to hang out with friends at the end of our trip and then spent three days getting home. So I would say for this trip, we just focused on mainly driving along the Oregon coast and California coast a bit and then headed over and near Santa Barbara where we stopped, which is kind of the southern central. It maybe is considered like the northern tip of, I consider central California.   [00:02:44.140] - Kim Tate But some people might think it's kind of So Cal because it's near L.A. But I think of L.A. is kind of the northern part of SoCal. So anyways, that was a long ramble. So I would say we spent 14 days, but of that, we took about a five day, five to seven days to drive down. That's the timeline. I think that there's a few options. Like you said, we've done this trip quite a bit.   [00:03:07.850] - Kim Tate When we were going to Disneyland and spent a few days in Disneyland and we actually did a one way car rental and we drove from Seattle down and just did kind of the California coast and then stayed in Disneyland for a couple of days and then flew home to help save as much time as possible. So I definitely think that's an option for people. This trip, we actually did some of the Oregon coast and then California coast, which again is adds time and all of these things.   [00:03:34.360] - Kim Tate You just have to think about how much time you have. And then another option, if we had a lot of extra time and didn't want to spend as much time like in California being a tourist in California, if that makes sense, if you're just in it for the road trip, then adding the or The Washington Post, which is basically Olympic National Park, the Olympic Peninsula and a few of the Washington Southern Washington coastal beach towns, that's another option as well.   [00:03:59.020] - Kim Tate So I think if people are looking at a timeline, then it's going to depend on how much time you have on how much you can do.   [00:04:07.120] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, like what things you need to skip or whether you're taking the highway or the coastal route. And I mean, obviously the point of this is to see as much of the scenic parts as you can. So nobody wants to spend all of their time on the interstate. And I definitely think if people are from not from that area. So if you're coming from the East Coast, like us you would want to fly in and then just do it one way.   [00:04:29.530] - Tamara Gruber And if you did that, do you think which do you like better? Do you like the north to south or the south to north?   [00:04:34.510] - Kim Tate This is a huge, huge tip I have. And this I actually wrote this in my West Coast road trip post. I think north to south is the only way to go. Absolutely. And the reason I say that is for two reasons. One, the driver's most always going to be focused on the road and for safety reasons. I think that's good. So I think it's good that the passenger gets to look out and can have a phone and take pictures if they want.   [00:04:56.260] - Kim Tate But the bigger point that I think north to South works is because all the turnouts are on the, you know, far west side of the highway. And so if you're headed on the right side of the road, you are easily you have easy access to enter and exit the pull out into the lane of traffic as opposed to trying to cross traffic, which on busy you know, travel day is not a busy route like that. It actually can make a huge difference and kind of be a safety hindrance.   [00:05:22.780] - Kim Tate So I think north to south is the way to go.   [00:05:25.990] - Tamara Gruber Absolutely. I've only done, you know, a piece of it, you know, from basically San Francisco down to Central Coast. And I would totally agree. Definitely the better option, you know, from a driver and a passenger standpoint.   [00:05:41.200] - Kim Tate Yeah. And I think a few other tips for just planning when people are thinking about this is this is the kind of route where you really need to allow a lot of spontaneity and stopping time. And so our first time we did this and I mentioned this before, we way over packed our drive times and we were looking at, you know, five hour days and stuff and then with stops and getting started and going in the morning and then traffic and winding roads.   [00:06:08.080] - Kim Tate We we were getting into our next stop like at 7:00 or 8:00 at night sometimes. And it was just brutal. And so this trip, I tried to make sure that no day was longer than four hours and my target time for drive time each day was around three hours. So that's something to keep in mind that really, I think makes a difference in planning. It's not your typical, you know, open highway type road trip planning. It's a very I mean, you want to take it slow and easy.   [00:06:35.080] - Kim Tate I'm sure some people would even want to do, you know, a couple of days in one place and then an hour and another day and, you know, take it really slow. But for us, I found the three hour mark, kind of the sweet spot.   [00:06:46.270] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I mean, if you have the ability to do slow travel and you can take, you know, the summer. Yeah. And that's wonderful. But otherwise, yeah, you have to have some trade offs. But it's good that you gave yourself that extra time this time, especially since you were the only driver to. But it well I guess Lizzy could have driven, but it gives you, you know, a nice little break and it makes it much more relaxed.   [00:07:07.720] - Tamara Gruber I hate that feeling of like I'm usually the one that wants to stop so the other people don't like mind skipping as much, but I hate that. Feeling of like missing out, you know, is something I really want to do, like how many times am I doing this trip? And so I hate like having to skip things that I wanted to do. But I also hate that feeling of like stress, like, are we going to get they're going to get there is going to be too late.   [00:07:29.530] - Tamara Gruber Everyone's going to be so hungry, you know.   [00:07:31.990] - Kim Tate Yeah, it can be horrible. And I'll just mention, like for people planning who are and pretend that people that maybe are not aware at all, even with all the extra time I had and trying to allow all this time, I still made some choices to shorten the trip. And so this is I'll give this little tip and information. I think people need to know that there's three main north south routes along, mainly along the California section. But this sort of applies to the Oregon and Washington, a little Oregon and Washington, the one and one on one, are kind of the same through a lot of it.   [00:08:04.780] - Kim Tate So it's not as noticeable. But once you get past the redwood forests of Northern California, you kind of start having this choice of Highway one is what hugs the coast. That is the one that, you know, is right there on the coast. And it's extremely slow going, but it's extremely beautiful. And then you have the 101 that kind of juts over. And that's when you start to get into like wine country and some of the agriculture area.   [00:08:31.180] - Kim Tate And you'll notice that the 1 and the 101 kind of travel together until you hit San Francisco and they kind of merge in a little bit together again. And then they split off again. And you're you're left with that same choice of the coastal routes versus the a little more. It's still coastal and not coastal, but it's still close to the coast in a way. But anyways, that's two things to know, that there are those two routes and they do separate.   [00:08:54.040] - Kim Tate And it's a very different driving experience over time as well as visual like what you're going to see. And then, of course, Interstate five is the main interstate that runs north and south all the way up to the California border, to the I mean, the Canada border to the Mexico border. So for us, we went down along, you know, the one and then we actually cut over to the 101 because between like Santa Rosa and San Francisco, the one, it's beautiful.   [00:09:20.410] - Kim Tate And there's some cool things to see. And like just north of San Francisco, you have Muir Woods, which is, you know, I've still never spent a lot of time on that side of the route. But it does add, you know, probably a couple of hours to what you would plan if you just went the 101, which is a little bit faster and more heavily trafficked. And then on our way home, we just drove by five the whole way because at that point we were just hurrying to get home.   [00:09:48.850] - Kim Tate So when people. Yeah. So I just wanted to give you a heads up that there's three main routes that people need to think of. One's going to be your slowest. So if you want to do the one the whole way, you really need to allow a lot of time.   [00:10:00.700] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, we've done part of the one. And I know what when we moved back up to San Francisco, we did the five and it was like, how did we just do that? And what, like an hour or two while the other took all day. And even that was kind of scenic because you go through so many like agricultural, like giant farms. And we realized like we're so much produce comes from. But yeah. So let's dig into your trip a little bit.   [00:10:23.650] - Tamara Gruber So what like what was your first day like, where did you stop along the way. Like if you can walk us through some of your itinerary would be great.   [00:10:31.240] - Kim Tate Yeah. So I think that like I said, if people are wanting to do this and they're not they don't live on the West Coast, Seattle is a great starting point. You could also do Portland, Oregon. That would be if you don't care about the Washington section of it. If you do want to do Seattle, you can do Seattle and then cross over onto the Olympic Peninsula and do your Washington side of the road trip, which is where you're going to see like the HOH Rain Forest.   [00:10:54.130] - Kim Tate You're going to see some of the beautiful, like beaches like Rialto Beach, Ruby Beach, a few things on the Olympic Peninsula. You'll see that famous tree of life that some people maybe have seen. And then you'll come into a few of the popular little Washington State beach cities. I think Long Beach and Ocean Shores are two of the main ones right there, the the border. And then you can also cross there's a really cool bridge that you can cross into.   [00:11:19.300] - Kim Tate But our first day we just drove I5 straight down to the Oregon border and then crossed over. And we stayed overnight in Astoria, Oregon, which we've been to before. It's kind of a neat little town. People may be familiar with it because of its famous for being the place where they filmed a lot of The Goonies.   [00:11:37.690] - Tamara Gruber That's what I thought.   [00:11:38.860] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly. And they definitely have a kind of a seaside. They have a beautiful naval, kind of a fun Naval Maritime Museum. That's cool. So if you have a kid that is really into ships or even an adult that's really in the ships, that's a neat place. And the actual it's really neat to think because Astoria sits at the mouth of the Columbia River, which is a major, major, you know, like through route. And they have these pilot boat captains.   [00:12:05.410] - Kim Tate And it's one of the most rigorous piloting, I don't know what you would call it, like waters. There's a lot of sandbars and a lot of heavy. Tides and currents, and so it's a very you know, it's you have to have a lot of skill and experience to be able to pilot a boat and help get the barges in and out of that that little Columbia River mouth. So it's kind of cool to learn about that history. So I think a story is that is cool that way.   [00:12:31.440] - Kim Tate It's definitely a little bit of a grungy, you know, small northwest town. It's got some limited dining experiences, especially, you know, like we've talked about on our episodes. We hit there on a Saturday night and our dining experience was a headache. So just a heads up, if you are planning summertime trips around some of these smaller coastal towns, you really need to think ahead of your dinner time planning shows early. No, it's mostly just because there's only a few restaurants and then they have all these tourists that come in.   [00:13:05.490] - Kim Tate And so you have, you know, to wait for an hour to order or they're a small little restaurant and so they have five tables. And so people are waiting to just get takeout, even if there's just a long line, because you only have if you don't want fast food, you only have like three restaurants to choose from to find food. So it's just kind of a tricky situation with that. So just a heads up on some of those.   [00:13:27.360] - Kim Tate You know, the weekends, summer weekends we were traveling during spring break can just be a bit of a headache. We waited about an hour, just under an hour to order our food. And then it was another 40 minutes to actually get the food to take back to our hotel room. So, yeah.   [00:13:43.250] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. So some angry people at that point.   [00:13:46.440] - Kim Tate Yeah. And we had that same experience in Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula when we did our Olympic National Park trip in August of 2020, we had the same thing where those smaller coastal towns are just not used to it. And so on the weekends when you have a bunch of tourists that come in, they just really flood the few restaurants that are available and they just are so small they don't have a lot of seating area. And then their take out program gets really bogged down.   [00:14:11.460] - Tamara Gruber So, yeah, and we should mention that we did do an episode on your Olympic National Park, a trip last year, so people can look that up. And I'm sure you have a post on your website about it too. I do too.   [00:14:22.170] - Kim Tate Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So our first night was in Astoria, but we just basically got in there at night and that was probably the longest little stretch of our our drive, you know, of our trip. And then the next morning we set out and I had all these great. This is where you have to be, you know, fluid with a road trip. I had all these great plans. And of course, we're on the Oregon coast.   [00:14:42.270] - Kim Tate It's going to be awesome. We were going to go to Cannon Beach and see the famous Haystack Rock, which, you know, we had never really seen. And it was disgusting whether it was blowing blowing winds like, you know, you're holding white knuckling the steering wheel. So when the you know, the winds, the rain is blowing sideways and it's just gross. So my day for that day was a little ruined because I had all these plans.   [00:15:04.380] - Kim Tate So we were going to see Haystack Rock. We skipped we drove over there and kind of looked at it. But no, we didn't get out and hang out on the beach at all. And then we also were planning to go to the Tillamook Creamery, which is we've been to before. And it's really it's so funny because we went to years and years ago, it was actually when me we were headed down to California on this road trip for Mia's fifth birthday.   [00:15:25.080] - Kim Tate So that gives you an idea. It's almost, you know, ten years, nine years and it's gone through. Evidently, everyone figured out that it's an awesome destination because they have fully made a whole tourist attraction museum tour system. And on a Sunday, it was jam packed with wall to wall, people waiting outside to get in because they had limited entrance. So we skipped the Tillamook Creamery because we didn't want to stand in line for hours outside.   [00:15:55.170] - Kim Tate There's also a famous stop along the way called Devil's Punchbowl, which we skipped because of the weather. And then we finally we're going to end right around the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. And again, because of the weather, we skipped that. So we got in really early to our, you know, best Western basic hotel in Reidsport. Oregon was where I kind of picked because it was near those dunes. And I thought it would be a fun a fun stopover, but it did not happen.   [00:16:22.380] - Tamara Gruber So, yeah, I it's so hard. Like we talked about, like, you know, letting go of things. I think, you know, you're a photographer. Like we both, you know, do this for work. It's it's sometimes it's not even just about missing seeing something, but it's like, oh, we had these dreams of like the pictures that you're going to get and, you know, how are you going to use them and you know all of that.   [00:16:41.340] - Tamara Gruber And then you're like, yeah, now this does not cooperate at all. I've had so many of those experiences where it's like, oh, I'm going to get these epic photos. And you're like, yep, nope, that's not happening. Yeah, but I think I find it interesting, like what you're saying about Tillamook, because I feel like in general, like agritourism has become so much more popular. You know, it's just something that is, you know, of a lot more interest.   [00:17:02.670] - Tamara Gruber And I really I think it's smart the way a lot of these farms and, you know, other makers have turned it into, you know, another revenue stream for them. You know, so it's interesting, I remember one time we were staying for a week on Cape Cod and it was pouring rain, so it's like opening the summer, like what are you going to do? You look like indoor stuff. And we're like, oh, let's go to the Cape Cod potato chip factory.   [00:17:25.940] - Tamara Gruber And we stood outside in line, you know, with an umbrella overhead for like an hour. Yes. Get into like this potato chip factory where basically all we did was like shuffle down a hallway and like, look at the machines working. Yes, we know. Yeah, they went to the gift shop. But I'm like, you could have gone to the grocery store and bought like five different flavors, like, why did we do this?   [00:17:44.070] - Kim Tate Yeah, yeah. That's what I was thinking. That's why we skipped Tillamook, because we kind of know already. I mean, it had been improved. So we thought, oh, it'll be neat to see it. And but you do you kind of just walk and you get to see the factory and, you know, the machines working. But it you know, it was a Sunday, too. So I was like, well, it's probably not really in operation right now because most of those factories also are just, you know, the the next day.   [00:18:06.740] - Kim Tate Yeah. So anyways, we skipped it and. Yeah. Just kept going. But yeah, I think that's, that was our, that was our idea is like, oh it'll be nice, go inside and have those inside things since it's such a gross day. But everyone had that same idea here. But the next the fun thing was this was where I talked about once we got to our hotel, since we're there early, I kind of started looking the next day to see if there were any, you know, like dunes on that stretch on our next day out.   [00:18:31.490] - Kim Tate And that was where I found that one random all trails where it was like some weird trailhead that held ten cars. And we went and it turned out to be this awesome, cool sand dune that we spent an hour at. So I think that, you know, it is fun when you can have those kind of things.   [00:18:47.120] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, it's nice. You can find, you know, find something that you didn't plan on that makes up for the things that you missed.   [00:18:53.690] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly. And I think that's cool. You know, that would be something for people to know about, like the Oregon coast that I know California has it as well. There's you know, Pismo Beach is known and famous for their dunes. But that is something to just be known that Oregon is known for. And then as we made our way sort of south, we did, like I said, that scenic. It was like this scenic corridor that I saw from road trippers.   [00:19:14.930] - Kim Tate And again, it's just on the road, basically. And you just turned off. We just turned off and parked and did a little hike. And it's where you start getting that feel a little more of the California, you know, rocky coastal feel of stuff. But it's cool because in Oregon, it was still very Pacific Northwest with lots of, you know, evergreen trees. And so it was kind of a neat feeling as you move south and just see a little bit how things start different, differing, a little.   [00:19:42.650] - Kim Tate It's cool.   [00:19:44.000] - Tamara Gruber It makes me kind of want to see that landscape. But, yeah, one of the things about the summer is like, Glen, no matter what we do, like, I need a different landscape. I'm super excited about the trips that I have coming up around New England. And, you know, really, I can't wait for it, but I really want just a different landscape. And I remember years ago when Hannah and I were driving through central Oregon and we landed in Portland, we did a little bit of the Columbia River Gorge.   [00:20:07.130] - Tamara Gruber And then we started driving down to Bend and just driving through those forests, the pine forests of those towering trees. It's like we just don't have that here. And so, yeah, I'm picturing that as you're talking. Yeah. Like the redwoods and everything. Just kind of it's exciting to be in one of those types of forest. They're just so. Like magnificent.   [00:20:25.910] - Kim Tate You know, it is it's a really it's a cool part of nature and it's fun.   [00:20:30.170] - Kim Tate And when you do the whole coast, like, you know, Washington, Oregon, and then you make your way down into California, it's neat just to see, you know, when you're doing it on one trip like that, it's fun to go, wow, you know, things really start changing and feeling different. And it's cool. It's neat and fun. So, yeah, but then we so we kind of stayed overnight, right at the.   [00:20:51.140] - Kim Tate It's kind of funny how this happened too, because we ended up staying overnight in Northern California, a place called Klamath, California. And the cool thing about that, that you know, how you everyone's mind you get lucky on something is there was major road construction. And this is something to keep in mind, you know, on these smaller routes. And it's where it's, you know, the piloted car allowance. Do you know where they it's only one lane open.   [00:21:15.470] - Kim Tate And so they'll have like a truck that guides the, you know, northbound through and then the truck running right around three.   [00:21:21.530] - Tamara Gruber So I've experienced that before.   [00:21:22.930] - Kim Tate Yeah. So you know what I'm talking about. Well, we were crossing and it was right along the Oregon to California border and we were crossing and we didn't have any weight at all. We were like the fifth car and we got picked up on the next pilot and it was fine and didn't think anything of it. And then the next morning, like where we we're when we were getting out of the we were checking out of our hotel that we stayed at, they had notices all about like Oregon border, you know, construction and two hour delays.   [00:21:51.470] - Kim Tate And so I was like, oh, my goodness. So that's something to keep in mind also is that when you're on those two lane highway routes, you have to really be mindful of construction and stuff because they that route, Highway One is so susceptible to landslides and, you know, erosion where they have to close the road down because they're doing major repairs. So it's just something to keep in mind and. We lucked out being, you know, kind of at the end of the day and doing that crossover.   [00:22:18.210] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, well, it's funny, we were just talking, you know, on a recent episode about how bad the roads are and how much they need them fixed. I was thinking that today as I was driving Hannah home from school and there was road construction, two places that I had to, like, detour around. And I was like, you know, our roads are terrible, but why do they have to fix these?   [00:22:37.360] - Kim Tate We get all mad. Really, right? Can it just happen magically? Yeah. Yeah.   [00:22:43.380] - Tamara Gruber Well it sounds like that good that you avoided that. At least you got a good start.   [00:22:47.730] - Kim Tate Yeah. So I do think that, you know, something to keep in mind is like weekends right now in this season of local road trip travel that I feel like people are doing weekends. If you can avoid weekends as much as possible, it's definitely the thing to know, especially on those small, like touristy coastal towns. It seems like a lot of locals are going to them as well and are doing things on the weekends so that you're getting tourists as well as locals that are just getting out of their house and trying to do something.   [00:23:16.020] - Kim Tate And so just a heads up to people if you're planning a vacation at all, that's involving like smaller towns are road tripping, trying to avoid the weekends because that's something I noticed, not the most surprising.   [00:23:27.720] - Tamara Gruber Everyone is so excited to do anything and everything. Yeah. I mean, I found any little thing that we try to do is, you know, it's busy. Everyone is excited to be out of the house.   [00:23:38.680] - Kim Tate Exactly. Yeah. We have that experience. A couple places that I can mention, but definitely something I noticed. So as I said, we moved into Northern California and we were susceptible to billboard advertising, which how many people can actually say that? I didn't even know they worked anymore. But evidently when you have a 14 year old kid in your car, they can still work because my daughter saw this trees of mystery mentioned on the billboard as we were getting ready to cross into California.   [00:24:06.160] - Kim Tate And she's like, I really want to do that. You know, I always see that. And I you know, I never let them stop because I've always got the schedule planned. I'm like, no, we don't have time. And so this time, since I did try and allow more flexibility, I called them and they the last entrance was like four or something. And they said we probably wouldn't make it in time. And so I told me I was like, well, let's go do we'll do the drive thru tree, which I had planned for in the morning, and then we'll do the trees of mystery thing in the morning.   [00:24:32.310] - Kim Tate We'll just drive back up because it was about a ten minute is about ten minutes away from the hotel. So we backtracked a little, but it wasn't a big deal at all and that worked out perfect. So I would say try and have some flexibility with your planning, if you can at all. But it actually paid off because and here's another tip for people. We if you do like Google, if you do a search for Google, like for the destination.   [00:24:56.310] - Kim Tate So, for instance, I did the tour through Tree in Klamath, California, and I had navigated to it or something. And sometimes you'll see Google will give you like it's busier than normal or they'll have you seen that where they give you a little line graphs and tell you how busy it is? Well, I noticed that on the daytime, like in the mornings, it's very busy, but in the evenings it's not busy at all. And I was like, well, this will actually work perfect.   [00:25:21.870] - Kim Tate We'll go in on that Monday evening, get the pictures and do it because it's still fairly light out, you know, until 7:00 p.m. or so and do that. And then the next morning, it gave us time to go to Trees of Mystery. And we drove up and had no wait. And while we were there taking pictures, only one other car showed up. So that's the other thing to think about are some of these things. If you can actually, you know, eat somehow and then really use that, I would say it's the final two minutes, kind of it's like the five p.m. to seven, eight, especially in the summers.   [00:25:50.610] - Kim Tate You can really push it to eight or nine with the longer daylight. I think that's a sweet spot of like avoiding a lot of crowds if you if the places are operational and open.   [00:26:01.320] - Tamara Gruber So. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like typical dinnertime. Yeah, no. So if you can either eat earlier or eat late, but just make sure that places are open, especially in small places like that. But that's good.   [00:26:12.780] - Kim Tate Well it's funny, the road trip routes, people kind of get to their hotels by four or five p.m. and they're kind of done for the day they go eat. And I mean, that's sort of what we would do. So then if you add something in during that time or go back out from your hotel, which is what you know, we did it, it really can pay off.   [00:26:28.590] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. It's funny that you mention, though, the the roadside like advertising, because I actually like that part of road trips where it's advertising a an attraction, you know, and not just, you know, whatever business or lawyer, you know, fill up at Shell. Yeah. Yeah. So when we were driving to Steamboat Springs, I was probably about two hours on this like smaller road. And I can't even tell you how many signs it had to be like one hundred signs, just like every, you know, whatever number of feet advertising this one, like cowboy hat and cowboy boots off.   [00:27:06.450] - Tamara Gruber So when we were in Steamboat Springs, we we had lunch there and then we walked around a little bit before we went to the ranch. I'm like, we have to go into this. Or I mean, they put so much effort into it, like not and we walked in and Glenn was like I'll be next door, I was like, OK, but I had to at least check it out. Yeah, exactly. Kind of like the wall drugs or, you know, of those sort of tourist attraction kind of places.   [00:27:29.170] - Tamara Gruber I don't know. Yeah. It kind of makes me happy to see those kind of things.   [00:27:32.050] - Kim Tate Yeah. There was another one in like southern Oregon that we kept passing signs for. That was like a wildlife drive through park thing. And the girls were like, oh, that's cool. And, you know, so, you know, it seems like that's the thing to do for some of those those attractions is probably how they get a lot of people. But again, that's where I say having some flexibility and not over scheduling your drive times allow you those a little bit of ability to be a little more spontaneous, which I think makes a road trip because and we've talked about this on our road trip thing where you needed to decide if the road trip is going to be just about getting to a destination or if the road trip is going to be a the the trip of itself.   [00:28:11.770] - Kim Tate Right.   [00:28:12.370] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. So so I'm getting from you, though, that the trees of mystery is worth skipping, whatever that mystery is.   [00:28:20.290] - Kim Tate I think it depends. It was definitely like it's a little pricey. It's like 20 dollars a person. So but if you we had fun. It's like rope walks and then you take like a little gondola way high on a hill. And the look from the hill isn't anything fun. But the girls had fun riding in the gondola and I mean, walking through the bridges, through the trees is fun.   [00:28:44.530] - Kim Tate And the girls liked that. But it's short. And I mean, I think I'd be more comfortable at the ten dollars per person mark. However, you know, I don't regret going. And the girls enjoyed it. And it was a good way to stretch your legs and stuff. And it's kind of a fun way to it's a quirky roadside attraction. It was the one thing where we saw it definitely was attract a lot of out-of-state tourists. We saw a lot of out-of-state plates in the parking lot.   [00:29:09.550] - Kim Tate We did see a lower mask compliance, just like passing people because it's outdoors and stuff. And this is where the outdoor like if you're vaccinated. So it I think it just attracts like it's an outdoorsy type place. So I could see that it could get really crowded on a weekend. Yeah. We definitely by the time we left, so it was good because we got up early because we are and like I say, we were only ten minutes away from our hotel.   [00:29:31.990] - Kim Tate We got up early, went there and it was it was great. I mean, we weren't like maybe it seemed like there was five other people there same night we were. But when we came out, it was just packed. And so we probably were leaving around eleven ish and we got there around nine thirty and. Yeah. Yeah. So that gives you an idea of just earlier the better for that thing. Right. Yeah. So then we entered into the redwoods as always that we've been to before.   [00:30:00.190] - Kim Tate We did notice something weird, like the main exit I normally take because I wanted to drive along like the Prairie Creek Road. They had that closed for some reason. So I went south and I could have come back in from the north route. But I don't know why they had it closed for any reason. But we decided to skip that little leg of it and just kept going. But here's something to think about. If you are doing a coastal trip and this is something that I mentioned in my Olympic National Park Post, and it also matters.   [00:30:28.360] - Kim Tate On the Oregon coast you really need to become familiar with tide charts when you're on the West Coast. And I'm sure the East Coast is the same thing. But it it makes a difference when you're expecting these great like things. One of the things we looked at that I wanted to do is called Agate Beach, and it's supposed to be a really popular place where you go and you can walk along a pretty beach and find these really cool Agate rocks and kind of collect some if you want.   [00:30:54.370] - Kim Tate And we found out, though, as we were coming through and looked at the tide schedule, that we are going to be there basically smack dab at high tide. It seems like it's not finding any rocks. Yeah. So we wouldn't and so I pulled in and it was a ten dollar. I thought, well, we'll still go look and see, but it was ten dollar, you know, park admission. And so I asked the they had a actually they had a park ranger on site there.   [00:31:17.560] - Kim Tate And so I asked if they had a you know, if it was even worth going down there. And he was like not really, not during high tide. So just something to keep in mind that if you're doing any like beach visits and things like that, that it can really make a difference depending on the tide charts.   [00:31:31.810] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, I feel like I saw that recently. Someone had posted something somewhere about the sea glass beach that you had gone to in the past, much in the past.   [00:31:40.270] - Tamara Gruber And they were super disappointed with it. And I was like, oh, that's interesting because someone else, you know, really liked it. So clearly it's a different experience, depending on if you're there, you can actually collect sea glass or not.   [00:31:51.430] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that makes a difference. You know, we had the same thing, like with tide pools, like when the tide pool, when things are really high, the tide pools aren't as cool, you know, because sure, you can't walk out and see all the pools. And so you want to visit during low tide. And then something to keep in mind is it's always good when you look at the charts, you always kind of want the tide to be leaving as opposed to the tide come.   [00:32:13.520] - Kim Tate And because if you happen to go around like a jut that seems like it's dry at the time, but the tides coming in, suddenly you turn around to go back to where you parked or whatever, and it used to be a beach and now it's, you know, two feet underwater. And so that's just something to keep in mind when you're doing an app for that or just just the weather app that shows you the the tides as well. I just do Google searches and I click on one of the websites that does the tides.   [00:32:39.530] - Kim Tate I don't use just a general weather one. I definitely do like a specific, but I don't have an app. I'm sure you could install an app. I just do a Google search for it and I just search for the destination. So if I'm like I beach or it was called some park, you know, tide schedule and you can normally find a few different ones and I'll show you. And there's, you know, it'll show you like low tide times.   [00:32:59.030] - Kim Tate And based on the chart they give you, you can easily figure out if the tides leaving or the tides coming in. And then we kind of the big thing we did was the Avenue of the Giants, which is one of my favorite parts of the Redwood Forest. And so we still did that. And even though we've done the redwoods a lot in, the girls are just kind of like your mom. I don't need to do any hikes. And I accepted that.   [00:33:20.330] - Kim Tate I was like, yeah, we've done a lot of like walking in the redwoods. We still pulled over. There's a lot of little turnouts and we still pulled over and tried to get kind of some fun, you know, like tree road drive shots, like tree road pictures. That's a tip is you know, that would be another thing that if you're there at night, like between five to seven, it would look so much better because with the sunlight dappling through the trees, it looks pretty.   [00:33:42.170] - Kim Tate And it seems like it would be really pretty on like in photos. But it's not it doesn't look right at all. You definitely want the darker, moodier shot for those kind of shots. But sorry, that's a little photography talk. But we did have one little stop where we went and kind of explored a little. And there is this awesome big tree that the girls climbed on. And I got a fun picture on that, that you guys might have seen.   [00:34:02.120] - Kim Tate Those of you who follow me on Instagram. Yeah.   [00:34:04.340] - Tamara Gruber And reminded me of a shot that you and I had when we were in Santa Rosa.   [00:34:08.450] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was even bigger than that tree at the Armstrong Woods in Santa Rosa. So it was kind of cool, but it was pretty epic. It was funny because I was taking these pictures with Lizzy and all of a sudden I'm like, Mia, where are you? And then she's like, I'm up here like thirty feet in the sky. It was crazy. But yeah. So we did the Avenue, the Giants, and then we went and stayed at a hotel just for the night to prepare for our two little kind of partnership things.   [00:34:35.120] - Kim Tate So we the next day we headed into Santa Rosa. This was a funny I'll just share with people our little tip, because this is something fun that I want to share. We so the weather in Seattle is normally pretty moderate. I mean, we don't even have an air conditioner at our house that I think, you know. You know, that summer we hadn't had major harsh hot weather yet from this road trip. Mm. Especially being on the coast.   [00:34:59.450] - Kim Tate Well, we stayed overnight in a place called Ukiah, and that was where we had kind of moved away from the redwoods in the coast. And we started moving inland at that point. And we woke up the next morning and we slept in it was asleep and day and got in the car and started driving. And it was boiling hot. I think by the I think when we left just before noon, the it was about seventy two or seventy three and then the temperature was going to hit like 81 or 82 that day.   [00:35:26.780] - Kim Tate And we started driving and we're all like sweating and the air conditioner is not working. Like I'm literally like my shirt sticking to my back and we're like, oh my goodness. And I'm trying to get a hold of Paul. I'm driving or trying to call Paul. And he's in meetings all day. And he's normally my I'll be I'll admit, like he's definitely the car guy for us and the fix it guy. And we then decided, like, what am I going to do?   [00:35:50.060] - Kim Tate And so I asked me to help look up a Honda dealership because thankfully this was a really short drive into Santa Rosa and there was a Honda dealership there. So I called them and said, here's the situation. We have a busy road trip. Like, I don't have any time, do you have any time to get in and look at it and maybe be able to fix it if it's something easy and they're like, yeah, go ahead, bring it on in.   [00:36:09.410] - Kim Tate And I said, OK, we'll be there in forty minutes. We're on the road. And so then we pull into this Honda dealership and they tell us that it's a five hundred dollar diagnosis fee, like just to diagnose. I'm not even to fix it. And Lizzie jumps on because she's learned from her dad, she jumps on YouTube and she types in like a Honda Odyssey air conditioner not working. And she finds this YouTube video that she starts to watch.   [00:36:34.850] - Kim Tate And in it, the guy talks about a Fuse, you know, they call it a Fuse. It's actually called a relay, I guess, or something. But she learned she's like, Mom, I watched this video. And there's just you take the you open the hood and you take off this lid on this thing and you use some pliers and pull out this thing. And I'm going, oh, great. You know, OK. And so we've sure enough find an auto autozone.   [00:36:54.860] - Kim Tate I get a hold of Paul. Finally, he has a short break and he's like, yeah, just go ahead and try it. And, you know, I've got another Mini I can't talk. And so I'm like, OK, great. So I'm going to the AutoZone and Lizzy and I just are watching this YouTube video. And so we talk to the AutoZone. They don't have any pliers or anything we can use. They try and sell us a fuse puller, because of that point, Lizzy keeps calling it a Fuse, and so we buy this Fuse puller, we go out there and open it all up and are like, this doesn't fit. This is not what it is. And so we go back in and return that and ask the guy like, can we just borrow some pliers? Because Lizzie said that's what the guy used on YouTube. And we buy the had to buy pliers for ten dollars.   [00:37:30.710] - Kim Tate And sure enough, we pull the piece, the part out that the guy recommended and take it into AutoZone. Do you guys sell this part? Nope, they don't sell it. So then we call Lizzy actually gets on the phone calls the Honda dealership that just told us they'd charge us five hundred dollars to diagnose it and asks if they have this part. Sure enough, they have the part for thirty four dollars. So we all hop in the car and drive back over to the Honda dealership, going to the parts department, buy the part in the parking lot.   [00:37:56.240] - Kim Tate We swap out this little Fuse relay and put it all back together, turn on the car. We have air conditioning. So instead of spending five hundred dollars plus, you know, they probably would have charged us seventy dollars for the part and another hundred dollars for to install it. We came out of there having Lizzy empowered about fixing her own car, our own car problem, and then also only spending thirty four dollars.   [00:38:20.780] - Tamara Gruber Yeah I think that's amazing. When you shared that story I even told Glenn and Hannah and we were all like, wow, we were so impressed with, with Lizzy and you guys are figuring that out. So awesome job. So Paul should be very proud of you.   [00:38:33.740] - Kim Tate He was, he was so excited. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. And he was a little, you know, worried, like, did you keep the did you put it all back together? You sure? You know, like a little a little concern, but we're like, no. And so it Lizzy is very proud of herself to which I think was was a lot of fun. But just a heads up for you guys. YouTube can teach a lot.   [00:38:52.910] - Kim Tate I feel bad sometimes for the parts departments, but my goodness. Or I mean not part the service departments of car places.   [00:38:59.360] - Tamara Gruber But it's helped me with my washing machine when I've had.   [00:39:02.010] - Kim Tate Yes, yeah. We fix so many things on YouTube. And I was so happy that Lizzy, you know, learn from her dad to look it up. And yeah, that was her thinking.   [00:39:09.230] - Tamara Gruber So empowering.   [00:39:10.340] - Kim Tate Yeah. So sorry guys. That was a little side note, but we did make it to Santa Rosa finally. And then, you know, we had air conditioning and we headed over to Safari West, which you and I have been to. And I think we talked about it on the podcast whenever we talked about our little getaway to Santa Rosa. But Safari West is a it's an accredited zoo association. It's part of the ACA and it's a wildlife park that, you know, is works towards conservation and education about primarily African animals.   [00:39:41.360] - Kim Tate And it's pretty cool because you can camp there overnight and they have these amazing, you know, like really luxury Botswana camping tents. And Tamara, you and I have stayed in one and we got to stay with the girls and had a great time.   [00:39:56.270] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, they're really nice tents, too. It's gorgeous. Yeah. I was always I was very impressed. I mean, I've now done a few different glamping tents and I would say that they were the best. I was. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Better than under canvas even which I would put maybe second. Yeah. Yeah. Really. Like although I did do a really nice one at KOA that had electricity and he and a bathroom with like a rain shower kind of thing, but not a super, super nice because where else in the U.S. can you stay in that tent and then step out onto your porch and look at giraffes.   [00:40:29.600] - Kim Tate Yeah. And that's where, you know, you you and I, we had a different they were like fully booked when they hooked us up for our stay. And so we were in a different location. We were up on a hillside. And I definitely like you and I had the better cabin and it's worth it. I think they cost probably about fifty more dollars to stay at that lower location. But for reasons of sound and just accessibility to the main lobby areas and then the view of the giraffes, I think the Antelope Valley is what those ones were called and it was well worth a little bit of extra, but they're definitely the premium.   [00:41:00.380] - Kim Tate I love all the linens they have, like you said, like the heating blankets. And it's you don't and they've got the space heater, whereas, you know, under canvas you're kind of dumping you have to manage your own fire to make heat. And then I also like that it's got two plugs in the bathroom. So you do have some electricity and then you can also turn on the shower like a normal shower with under canvas. It's a pull chain shower.   [00:41:22.160] - Kim Tate So. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was it was so nice. And I love it there because you can truly do, you know, like a getaway where they've got the restaurant, they serve you breakfast and then you can have dinner there as well. You can even arrange lunch if you want it. And then you get to do this, you can do this wildlife tour, which is about two and a half to three hours, and they drive you around and you get to see see all the different animals.   [00:41:44.540] - Kim Tate So it's really fun.   [00:41:46.460] - Tamara Gruber Do the girls really love it? I mean, they haven't been before, so now they haven't.   [00:41:50.630] - Kim Tate They loved it. Yeah, they thought it was cool. And they're excited about the they of course, really loved the giraffes and then they just had fun. Once we moved to the top, we weren't on the top in the giraffe section, but once we moved up to the top later on, they had a lot of fun. And when we were lower on, the ostriches came over in like we're really close to me.   [00:42:06.860] - Kim Tate And she thought it was so fun. And we just sat there and kind of looked at them up close and personal and it was pretty cool. So I think it's great and the food there is really good I mean, we had a great time and with it being covered right now, they've got it where you get to order your breakfast in advance and they have, like kind of your tent. You have a section you can set out for dinner and everything is just spaced well and you're eating outdoors.   [00:42:28.380] - Kim Tate And it just felt really nice. And relaxing, I think is the big thing is it's just a really relaxing type of trip, I will say, which you and I experienced. Mara, you do have to look at the temperature, especially the overnight temps, because when you go to bed at night, it can get cold fast. And then when you wake up in the morning to go into that bathroom, you keep the door to the bathroom close because they keep it kind of airflow for smells, I think, or something.   [00:42:51.540] - Kim Tate But it's really cold. So when you if you choose to take a shower in the morning, it's icy, the water's warm, but the room is just really cold.   [00:43:00.600] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, I had that when I did my glamping stay in New Hampshire and I think it was early October, but I was freezing, absolutely freezing. And I had like a little space heater in the bathroom and the warm shower. But it's still like it was harsh stepping out of it. Yeah, well, it sounds like a neat and fun, very different thing for California. So, yeah. So now you're like, you know, heading like out of Northern California to central California.   [00:43:27.810] - Tamara Gruber What was your next, you know, day?   [00:43:29.340] - Kim Tate So the next stop after Santa Rosa is passing through San Francisco and we almost always have driven across the Golden Gate Bridge. But on this trip, this was where we wanted to go swing by and just see the UC Berkeley campus. And so we actually went across the other bridge, which I don't know if it's the Oakland Bridge or if it's just some other bridge. I'm not sure which bridge it's called, but it was a pretty nice bridge as well.   [00:43:50.490] - Kim Tate And it just passed is kind of a little more east than the Golden Gate Bridge. And we drove through the Berkeley campus and then got back on the road and we were going to go to Santa Cruz near Santa Cruz place called Watsonville. There's the Martinelli's cider. And we've done that cider tasting there and we were so excited to do it again. But before we left, I made sure to check and I realized they're not even doing the tastings because of covid.   [00:44:16.620] - Kim Tate And so we didn't stop, you know, because it's all closed down. So thankfully, we figured that out before. We actually because it was a little out of the way, but not too bad. But we determined that. And we just made our way to Monterey, where we spent two nights in Monterey, and that was kind of the last part of our trip. So I think you've done more of the central coast, like from Monterey down you go through Big Sur and all of that.   [00:44:39.690] - Kim Tate Cambria, there's a lot of beautiful stuff that as you get ready to come in, like Ventura and Santa Barbara and stay along the coast there, the highway one was closed at Big Sur. So Monterey was kind of sort of the most the main the southernmost, most section that was still open. And so we headed over after Monterey, back over to the 101 and then headed down to stay with our friends.   [00:45:05.700] - Tamara Gruber So what do you do in Monterey? Did you go to the aquarium?   [00:45:08.160] - Kim Tate We did not. The aquarium was still closed, so they had not opened yet. But we actually did a couple of things. So we did a bike tour. So we kind of did an E bike tour, which was fun with a company called Mad Dogs and Englishmen. And so we headed out in the morning, met them, and they actually have a new little spot right there in Monterey on Cannery Row. And so you can park at the hotel.   [00:45:32.910] - Kim Tate They do free valet parking for the tour guests, which was a huge perk. And you can then get on your little E bikes. And they took us around like part of seventeen mile, seventeen mile, you know, Pebble Beach. Yeah. And only part of it though. And then we headed back around and came through some of the town and they just would stop occasionally. And of course Pacific Grove where they had the beautiful purple flowers just along the coast and just gave us some little tips and had some pretty stops along the way.   [00:46:00.930] - Kim Tate And it was E bikes, which is yeah, it's gorgeous. And it was kind of a cold morning. So I actually ended up buying like seventy dollar hoodies for the girls because both of them somehow managed to not get the message to wear coat because I guess it had been so hot, you know, at their other things. So we stayed at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa, which is just kind of remodeled, I think, not remodeled.   [00:46:24.240] - Kim Tate The the rooms have been upgraded. So more of a soft linens upgrade and kind of refashion. And it looked really nice. And so we we stayed there. They are like fully open and have a couple pools open and then they also have a golf course there. So they at night they do these fire pits, kind of communal fire pits. But if one group's already there, you're not you're not supposed to go into it, if that makes sense.   [00:46:46.660] - Kim Tate So it was kind of a central it was a good jumping off point because we stayed there and then went around and did a few things. So that was good. We did drive down to the famous Bixby Bridge, which we just wanted to take a look at that.   [00:46:59.550] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, but I saw you guys there.   [00:47:01.920] - Kim Tate Yeah. And they're really they're trying to, like, not encourage travel there. People are just insane. So it's really limited parking, of course, but then they have these big, big rocks to try and. Encourage people to stay in, like right along the parking area and just look at the bridge and the coast, but I mean, these people are insane. They're like climbing over the rocks and climbing, like off the ledge, a little bit of the you know, because it's a it goes to the ocean and people have gotten hurt there and people are not caring.   [00:47:32.630] - Kim Tate So they're not necessarily encouraging that. But I just encourage you, if you're going to go to Bixby Bridge, make sure you stay safe on the ground. That's next. The parking area. And don't try and go get that perfect Instagram shot, which is what I saw. All the crazy people that were doing it were kind of going past that section. But sorry, I'm doing a so it's really a shame. Like how many things have turned into that?   [00:47:54.980] - Kim Tate Like, because of Instagram, I was going to get like this shot and it's it's definitely not worth taking your life in your hands.   [00:48:04.280] - Kim Tate So right near that is a place called Garrapata State Park.   [00:48:09.920] - Tamara Gruber I stopped there. That's beautiful.   [00:48:13.310] - Kim Tate It's beautiful. Beautiful. And they actually have a beautiful you can go, they have a white sandy beach area that you can hike down to and they also have not too far from there are really famous spot called Lily Valley which is where all these wild calla lilies grow. Wow. And it's kind of along a stream that empties over into the ocean and along this little streamy valley is this calla lilly Valley. It's just insane of all these wild calla lilies. So it's kind of a popular little tourist spot.   [00:48:41.030] - Kim Tate And we hiked around there and all the wildflowers and just kind of the it's like a cliff beach of a sort. So you're you're up a little higher and then you kind of look down on the white sand beach and the waves, it just seemed like a really nice place to hang out. And I think the parking lot is very the parking is limited. And you could see that it's probably really popular and can get busy.   [00:49:03.440] - Tamara Gruber So, yeah, when we stayed in Carmel, we we stopped there like on our way down towards Big Sur. But then we had also done like a day hike or, you know, like a spent part of a day at Point Lobos State Park, which is another gorgeous spot right now.   [00:49:19.130] - Kim Tate Yeah, that's that's a really popular spot. We didn't go there, but yeah, I could tell that was popular. There was people like hiking out to the highway from the from the park entrance. They marked it closed because there was no parking. I mean the park was open but you couldn't drive in there.   [00:49:32.460] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, I was full. I love that part of the coast. It's really beautiful. And it's so especially if you can if you can. I know some other people do like kayaking tours are where you can see otters and things like that. So there is definitely a lot to do if you, you know, for people that want to spend. Yeah. A couple or a few days in that area.   [00:49:49.040] - Kim Tate Well, in the Monterey Bay Aquarium is amazing and really cool. But like I said, that was it was closed, but it was opening. It was opening in May. So it will be reopen soon. And I have to say, I'll give a couple shout outs to food places in Monterey just because this is one place I know we're getting a little long, but one place that I really had some good experiences, one place we ate at was called Rio Grill, which it's kind of cool.   [00:50:09.530] - Kim Tate You can tell that they have kind of made their sidewalk and outdoor seating area and it was quaint. They had, you know, heating the heaters going and they had created kind of a wall of sorts from the parking lot with plants and. Yeah, fence. And it just looked great. So they did a good job at that. And the food was delicious and they were so helpful. Mia had ordered something and felt like she was like she started eating it.   [00:50:34.490] - Kim Tate They thought it was safe. But she's like, no, and it's normally eggs will do this. It wasn't nothing. But she's like, no, it doesn't seem right. And so they were like, oh, no problem, let's get you something. And so she took a Benadryl and then they got her something different. And it was so awesome. And the food was delicious and they were so friendly and so helpful. And then there's also a really famous bakery in Monterey called Alta Bakery.   [00:50:58.280] - Kim Tate And we stop there for breakfast the next morning before our bike ride. And I have to say they had some amazing things. There's a huge line normally waiting outside to place your order and stuff. So you do have to allow a little bit of time. And finding parking can be a little tricky, but it was an awesome little spot. And then lastly, I want to give a shout out to a place called Lucie's on Lighthouse, which was a hot dog joint that's got like kind of a skateboard theme.   [00:51:22.460] - Kim Tate And basically they have all these crazy hot dogs that you can get all these different, whatever it's called, you know, like toppings and stuff. So a little bit about that. It was really awesome. Sound fun. Yeah. And so for Monterey, we went, like I said, to our friend's house and that was kind of it, and that was in Ojai. And so we didn't really do much else. We did some day trips.   [00:51:45.950] - Kim Tate We hiked the Hollywood sign, which was a pretty epic fun thing to do. And that was about a I think it was just over four mile hike, round trip and, you know, some great views of L.A. It was not t

Coach Chris joins her fellow Performance Dietitian Sarah Heckler to talk about how to make the perfect snack. Sarah is also Manager of The Fueling Edge, a healthy meal service in the Triangle, NC area dedicated to making fresh, ready-to-eat meals and snacks for athletes and busy professionals. First, we talk about the components of a healthy snack. We encourage people to have at least two foods in a snack, combining protein, fat and/or carbohydrate. Ideally, it's great to have a fruit or veggie, but the purpose of a good snack is to keep your blood sugar balanced and energy steady. While fruits and veggies are certainly healthy, when paired with a protein or fat, like nuts or cheese, then you'll avoid being "hangry" later on.We also talk about:why eating like a kid isn't a bag thingwhat "weird" snacks work for uswhat our favorite store-bought snacks aregreat road-trip snackswhy snacks don't have to be complicatedSarah's super simple snack rubric (great for families!)how to teach your kids about healthy snackingour go-to-protein-rich snackswhat's always in our pantries and fridgesAs Sarah says, "Snacks can be as high end as prosciutto and melon, or it could be as simple as a piece of string cheese and a hard boiled egg. There's really no rules beyond something that tastes good to you."Get our NEW Healthy Snack Cookbook HERE with 21 super healthy snack recipes for a variety of dietary preferences including plant-based, dairy-free, gluten-free, nut-free and more. Everyone will have options and inspiration with this book! Plus, get 40 Healthy Snack Ideas for every more inspiration and variety to add to your routine.  Or try our NEW Endurance Edge Cookbook with 45 quick and healthy recipes HERE. Get 25% off The Fueling Edge protein bites using code PODCAST. Valid in June 2021. Limit one use per customer. Stock up, freeze them and save! 

In conclusion... Look we all have our preferences when it comes to dating. Ideally, people should date responsibly. We can specifically define what is responsible dating from one person to the next but at the end of the day, there is a such thing a too young or too old. Other factors come into play and one of those main things is the maturity level of the person you choose to date. Happy dating! It's been a great opportunity for us to learn and connect with so many colleagues, new listeners and friends! Listen to our podcast by subscribing here: https://the-king-and-eye-life-podcast.simplecast.com/Tune in live every Wednesday at 7:30 PM EST  on YouTube: The King & Eye Life Podcast - YouTube  and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SunSoulX369Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kingandeyelifepodcast/Follow us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/KingAndEyeLifePodcastStay in touch with us via email or hangouts: kingandeye369@gmail.comSupport this podcast: Pay $KingAndEyeLife on Cash App

27 May 2021 | Podcast 184 This week, I'm answering a question about how to get started with and, more importantly, maintain a productivity system.   You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Email Mastery 2021 Course Download the FREE Areas of Focus Workbook More about the Time Sector System The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Episode 184 Hello and welcome to episode 184 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. A common type of question I get asked is one around building and maintaining a productivity and time management system. It's not so much about how to do it—after all, there are thousands of books and videos on this subject—it's more about taking what you have learned by reading those books and watching those videos and turning that knowledge into a functioning system that works for you. Now, before we get to the question, I would like to point out that June—which starts tomorrow (or Tuesday depending on when you listening to this podcast) is a 30-day month. Another golden opportunity for you to establish a habit. So, I thought I would suggest something.  In the book, Think And Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill tells us to take an idea (or a goal) that we want to accomplish, and begin and end every day imagining you have completed it successfully for thirty days.  Now the trick to doing this is to write down your idea or goal onto a piece of paper, or in your digital notes app, and read it out loud at the start and end of your day. As you read out your goal, imagine you have successfully accomplished it and really feel the emotions you experience by completing it.  The purpose of doing this is to engage your subconscious mind. That is the part of your mind that uses your knowledge and experience to come up with solutions to problems and gives you steps to take to accomplish goals and solve problems.  Remove all negative thoughts, only focus on the positives—the feelings you have when you accomplish your goal or successfully develop your idea. If a negative thought comes up, such as; I can't do that, or that's impossible, remove it. Replace it with a positive thought. At the end of June, you will have programmed your brain to seek ways of making whatever your dream, goal or idea happen. Try it. What have you to lose? Now, back to the show and that means it's time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week's question. This week's question comes from Alan. Alan asks: Hi Carl, for years I have been reading books and articles about productivity and how to become better at managing my time. I've taken your courses, and I've even been on a Getting Things Done Fundamentals course. Yet, despite all these courses, books and articles, I just cannot make a system work for me. I can do it for a few weeks, but I soon find myself falling back on bad habits. Do you know how to make one of these systems stick? Hi Alan. Thank you for the question. Firstly, I should tell you that you are not alone with this problem. I come across this a lot in my coaching programme and I get many comments on my YouTube videos about it.  With anything like creating and using a system, you need to start small. Radically changing the way you do something will inevitably result in falling back into old ways. It's just the way the human mind works. We love routine and we evolved habit building to help us achieve that.  You see, there are so many distractions going on in our world—they've always been there. It started out on the savannah thousands of years ago when we needed to stay alert to the dangers that were all around us. If we did not have a way of automatically putting one foot in front of another or breathing in and out without thinking, for instance, our brain would soon be overloaded with stuff. That's why we developed habits. Habits are formed in our subconscious mind and that's the part of the mind that does not know the difference between doing something that is good for us and doing something bad. It's amoral and completely objective. What you feed it will be taken in and returned to you in whatever form it is acquired. That could be a habit or it could be, as I mentioned a few moments ago, a solution to a problem you are experiencing. Understanding this helps us to take steps to develop the right habits and strategies, but it also means we have to do things in small steps and allow enough time for them to grow.  So, becoming more productive, and as a consequence better at managing our activities in the time we have each day, means we need to build the right habits in the right sequence.  So, first up, build a morning routine. Now, this does not have to be elaborate or take too long. If you give yourself anywhere between twenty and thirty minutes to start with, for a series of positive, high impact activities that you consistently begin your day with you will be on the right track.  Let's look at an example. Let's say you always begin your day by visiting the bathroom and then making a cup of coffee, those are the first activities to add to your morning routine. Start with something you already automatically do.  Now, the next steps need to be something new. For instance, you could spend two to three minutes doing some stretches. Begin with your neck, then shoulders, and move on down your body. Slowly stretch out your limbs one by one.  Once you have done your stretches, take your coffee to a quiet table, preferably near a window, and spend ten minutes writing in a journal. Your journal could be digital or paper, it doesn't matter, just write out your plan for the day and a few thoughts you may have in your mind in that moment. Be strict about the time. Only do this for ten minutes.  Finish with looking at your tasks and your appointments for the day and then start your day.  In total, that routine should not take you longer than twenty minutes.  Now, the key to making this work is you commit to doing that for twenty minutes every morning for at least 30 days. Do not add anything nor take anything away. Just start your mornings every day like this for thirty days.  To ensure this happens, do it on weekends as well as weekdays and you must make sure you have time for it every morning. So this means if you have to wake up early for a Zoom call, you wake up with sufficient time so you can do your twenty minutes before the call.  Now, if you fail, and skip a morning, you must go back and start again. You want to string together a minimum of thirty days doing the same thing every day. You cannot modify it or change it in any way. After thirty days, you can change it slightly, but this first step must be consistent.  Now, moving to your productivity system and embedding this. If you have taken the COD course, you will know the three basic components of all great productivity systems. Collect everything, spend a little time organising what you collected and dedicate the largest part of your day doing the work you set yourself.  The key habit you need to develop is collecting. If you are not collecting everything meaningful that comes your way, it won't matter how elaborate or sophisticated the rest of your system is, you won't trust it so you won't use it. Develop the habit of collecting first.  To do that, take a look at how you collect your tasks right now. Do you do it consistently? If not, why not? You need that answer because you will need to change the way you collect so you are consistent.  This often means you need to review how you collect on your phone. This is the one tool you are likely to have with you everywhere you go so this will be your primary collection tool. Make sure that you have whatever task manager you use set up in such a way that collecting something is quick and easy and there are no barriers.  Since a lot of us are now working from home, you may find you need to do this with your computer too. I noticed over the last year or so, my primary collection tool has become my computer so I have a keyboard shortcut set up to add tasks quickly from my computer.  Again, give yourself thirty days to embed this habit. If you feel uncomfortable pulling your phone out when you are with people to add a task, get over that discomfort. Practice until it becomes automatic.  Now for the end of the day. This is another part to turn into a habit and I have discovered is also the most difficult to build. We are usually tired at the end of the day and when we are tired, we are less mindful about what we are doing and more prone to distractions. Again, developing a habit will help you. Just like brushing your teeth and washing your face before getting into bed, which you habitually do, you want to be spending around ten minutes reviewing your task list and calendar for tomorrow. Ideally, you will flag your most important tasks for the day while you do this.  Now, as you brush your teeth and wash your face, you can connect your ten minutes reviewing your task list and calendar to these activities to create a “habit stack” as James Clear would call it.  And as with your morning routines, do this every day for at least thirty days without ‘breaking the chain'. It is possible to develop this habit at the same time as you develop your morning routine, but if you find you struggle, then just focus on getting your start of the day right first.  For the rest of your work, you must avoid over-complicating things. Complexity is the death knell of any productivity system. It might look cool and pleasing to see a load of beautifully organised project folders with sub-folders breaking down each step of the project. But these kinds of structures are a nightmare to maintain, take far too long to organise and become holes where tasks go to die never to see the light of day again.  The reality is you only need to know what you must do today. You do not need to know anything else. Tomorrow is not here yet, and next week is too far away and there's so much that will change that if you are trying to plan out beyond a week, you'll be wasting your time because everything will change before you get to next week.  Here are a few observations that will help to simplify your system: Stop sending emails to your task manager. Doing that creates duplication. People like Earl Nightingale (if you've never heard of him look him up), Winston Churchill, and Albert Einstein, never added “reply to X's letter” into a task list. They allocated time each day to reply to their mail. Learn from these incredibly productive people.  Know what your “must-dos” are each day and spend the majority of your time focused on completing those. Relegate your “should dos” and “would like to dos” to the end of the day. Most of these you will find sort themselves out anyway.  Be clear about what it is you want to accomplish each day. If you are not starting the day with a clear plan you will fail to get anything meaningful done.  Keep your task manager as clean and tight as possible. Be very strict about what goes on there. When you fill your task manager with trivial things, it soon becomes bloated and makes doing your planning sessions a lot longer than it needs to be.  What you want to be thinking is in terms of sessions of work. This is where you have time for doing your errands, chores, communications and project work. You may need to keep this flexible, and that's okay—all you do is schedule this time when you do your daily planning session.  Look, massively successful people from the likes of JD Rockefeller and Henry Ford right up to Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson, focus their attention on the important things and never allow themselves to get lost in reorganising their lists or wasting time searching for the best productivity systems. We know what the best productivity system is. Ivy Lee demonstrated this to Charles Schwab over a hundred years ago.  Select your six most important tasks for the day, the day before and when you start your day, begin from the top and focus all your attention on completing the first task. When you complete it, move on to the next one and so on. This system still works today and it allows sufficient flexibility to deal with emergencies and client requests promptly and effectively so you can quickly get back to completing your list.  If you don't manage to clear your list, roll over the tasks you did not complete to your list of six the next day. This is essentially what the Time Sector System is built on. Focusing your attention on the most important tasks for the day and if you cannot complete them, roll them forward to another day in the week. All that really matters is your most important work for the day and making sure you do that.  Every successful person you meet will use a form of this system today. Tony Robbins and Sir Richard Branson use it, as did Jim Rohn, Earl Nightingale and Andrew Carnegie in their day. If it's good enough for these people, then it's good enough for you.  Hopefully, that helps, Alan. Thank you for your wonderful question. You probably can tell I'm quite passionate about this subject.  Thank you for listening and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.   

The Best Ways to Keep Your Machine Clean: CPAP Wipes, Soapy Water, and a Little TLCA CPAP machine helps those who struggle with sleep apnea or similar conditions to breathe easier and sleep better. Sleep apnea is a serious health condition known to cause frequent disturbances throughout the night, and people with this condition have to deal with frequent sleep disruptions. They can never achieve the full rest their bodies need.With a CPAP machine, the user can receive a continuous supply of steady oxygen through their nose and mouth. This air supply alleviates many of the symptoms of sleep apnea as it keeps the airways open throughout the night. It can significantly assist sufferers in getting a full night's sleep so they can greet the day with renewed energy and vigor.  What Does a CPAP Machine Do?Specifically, the compressor associated with your CPAP machine works to create a continuous stream of pressurized air that travels through the necessary tubing. This system then supplies your airways with constant oxygen, allowing your airways to stay open for longer. The airstream also works to move or prevent blockages, so you don't have to wake up repeatedly to clear your throat. Your CPAP machine handles that for you. It directly combats sleep apnea symptoms and similar sleeping disorders that would otherwise disturb you throughout the night.How to Take Care of Your CPAP MachineAs we mentioned above, maintenance is essential. Thankfully, we aren't talking about complex engineering. All your CPAP machine requires is a little housekeeping. Listed below are some of the best ways to keep your machine in top condition. Use CPAP WipesCPAP wipes often come in easy-to-use dispensers, so you don't need to worry about drying them out either. Simply pull one out each morning, gently cleanse your CPAP mask, and get on with your day! What You Should Never UseNow we have covered what you should be doing with your CPAP machine, let's cover some of the don'ts. This will help you avoid some potentially costly mistakes and improve your CPAP machine's overall quality. Bleach: Not only will this harsh substance damage the silicone of your mask, but it will also potentially irritate your skin if not rinsed properly. It is safer to avoid it altogether.Hand Sanitizer: Though they have proven to be the savior in various situations, hand sanitizer is not as great for CPAP masks.Antibacterial Wipes: Like the two entries above, antibacterial wipes are simply too strong to use on your CPAP mask. There is a reason CPAP wipes exist—they contain the right ingredients. Don't overdo it with your machine!You should also be careful with where you place your machine too. Direct sunlight is a no-go, as the excess heat can cause engineering faults. Additionally, don't place your machine near curtains or similar fabric obstructions. It can block the airflow and prevent it from reaching optimal function. Ideally, your machine should be in a shaded, level spot that is not too close to any other furniture.Final Thoughts: Keeping Your CPAP Machine HealthyBy far, the easiest way to keep your machine clean is through the use of CPAP wipes. They can arrive in various pack sizes, and you only need to use a singular wipe each morning. One pack could last you up to two months! Try to fit your mask-cleaning into your daily routine, and soon it will become second nature.  Support the show (https://wellawaresystems.com/)

This week, Dan is joined by fellow AgileThought colleague and return guest, Andrea Floyd! Andrea is an enterprise agile transformation consultant at AgileThought with over 25 years of experience in software development and management. She is an innovator who has led multiple organization-wide scaled agile implementations, and she has also architected innovative solution strategies and roadmaps across many frameworks (including Scrum, Kanban, and the Scaled Agile Framework).   In their conversation today, they discuss delivering value using Scrum — what it looks like, why it is important to focus on, how to introduce the concept of value delivery in the product life cycle, and how to begin measuring the value of what you’re delivering.   Key Takeaways Why is delivering value using Scrum important? People want to know why they’re doing what they’re doing (and understanding how they are delivering value using Scrum answers that question) Understanding what value you’re bringing ensures that you’re working on the right thing/s at the right time In order to make certain business decisions, it is key to measure: “Are we getting the outcomes that we’re seeking?” and, “Are we actually making a difference in the eyes of our customers or users?” Do they see and feel what we’re providing and delivering in terms of capabilities is valuable? How and when to introduce the concept of value delivery in a product life cycle: There are a few entry points to consider At the organizational leadership level, they need to be outlining what they feel is valuable to the organization If leadership outlines what is valuable to the organization, everybody is able to check in with that Someone at the top of the organization should be setting the alignment (and allowing it to cascade down through the organization) At a product or a project level, you should start thinking about delivering value by encapsulating it in features (and having those features be on your product roadmap [which will then inform and drive your product backlog]) At a product or team level, apply your focus to talk about value at the feature level (think about the mechanisms to timebox features) Tips, tools, and techniques to measure the value of what you’re doing: Answer the question: “Have we moved the needle in anybody’s world? How so?” Organizations should be embracing transparency and trust so there is more access to communication (and so people know the context they’re operating in) Consider looking at how you do your portfolio management and have that work be hand-in-hand with investment decisions (which then will influence how you organize around the work or the product) Leverage techniques in work management tools (such as Jira, Azure DevOps, etc.) where you can put effort at a feature level (just like you would do at a story level) Use some form of relative sizing to forecast based on what you know today If you are able to do feature points, map the features on the product roadmap Leverage product goals to help your team ensure that the emergence of their product backlog aligns with the product goal Use product goals to help you focus on the right items (in the right sequence) in your backlog, and refine those features so that your team can communicate to stakeholders and leaders how they are doing as they move forward Leverage timeboxing — it is critical You should be able to explain to your team why you are working on something (if you can’t, push it down on your backlog until you can) How do we know when a feature is ready to be consumed by a team? It is important to have a definition of “ready” so that the team is on the same page Ideally, you have fields that indicate the state of readiness a feature needs to be at before it’s eligible for consideration to begin working on Ask: “What does ready look like for a feature?” and “What information needs to be present?” Collect data and measure: “Are we getting value out the door?” and “Are we getting value into the hands of our customers or users?” There should be a level of accountability on the people that are responsible for refining the backlog (if you want to make the cut, make sure that everything is clear) Tips regarding features and value delivery: Business decisions have to be made — that means you’re going to have to get comfortable with forecasting (and forecasting gets easier with the more data points you can reference) Having an understanding of velocity is important because it is helpful in forecasting and understanding if you’re biting off more than you can chew Andrea recommends having your product roadmap at a feature level and having a strong partnership between the product ownership and the team to help forecasting at a feature level Andrea recommends having the roadmap be based quarter-by-quarter, one year out How to know when you’re done with a feature: Use the definition of “done” at a release level (this is where you can articulate what features are eligible for release based on the release definition of done)   Mentioned in this Episode: Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 132: “Waterfall to Scrum: How to Measure the Value of Agility with Sam Falco” Jira Azure DevOps The Scrum Guide Azure Coaches’ Corner Ep. 118: “Big Room Planning 101 with Andrea Floyd” Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 29: “How to Combat Cognitive Biases for Effective Agile Teams”   Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

Host Ian Hartitz breaks down Odell Beckham's fantasy outlook ahead of the 2021 season. Ian breaks down how OBJ's brief tenure in Cleveland has been incredibly unlucky, and the decrease in fantasy production has been more of an issue with volume than efficiency. The idea that this Browns offense is better without OBJ is preposterous; don't let Baker Mayfield's on/off splits confuse you. Ideally, we get the version of Mayfield that comfortably works from inside the confines of the system WITH a coverage-shifting talent like Beckham. Ian closes things out with brief notes on Jarvis Landry and an explanation on why OBJ is worth targeting at his present ADP.

About ChaddChadd Kenney is the Vice President of Product at Clumio. Chadd has 20 years of experience in technology leadership roles, most recently as Vice President of Products and Solutions for Pure Storage. Prior to that role, he was the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for the Americas helping to grow the business from zero in revenue to over a billion. Chadd also spent 8 years at EMC in various roles from Field CTO to Principal Engineer. Chadd is a technologist at heart, who loves helping customers understand the true elegance of products through simple analogies, solutions use cases, and a view into the minds of the engineers that created the solution.Links: Clumio: https://clumio.com/ Clumio AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-ifixh6lnreang TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by ChaosSearch. As basically everyone knows, trying to do log analytics at scale with an ELK stack is expensive, unstable, time-sucking, demeaning, and just basically all-around horrible. So why are you still doing it—or even thinking about it—when there’s ChaosSearch? ChaosSearch is a fully managed scalable log analysis service that lets you add new workloads in minutes, and easily retain weeks, months, or years of data. With ChaosSearch you store, connect, and analyze and you’re done. The data lives and stays within your S3 buckets, which means no managing servers, no data movement, and you can save up to 80 percent versus running an ELK stack the old-fashioned way. It’s why companies like Equifax, HubSpot, Klarna, Alert Logic, and many more have all turned to ChaosSearch. So if you’re tired of your ELK stacks falling over before it suffers, or of having your log analytics data retention squeezed by the cost, then try ChaosSearch today and tell them I sent you. To learn more, visit chaossearch.io.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you’ve built anything from serverless, you know that if there’s one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it’s that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications.It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You’ve created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more, visit lumigo.io.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I’m Corey Quinn. Periodically, I talk an awful lot about backups and that no one actually cares about backups, just restores; usually, they care about restores right after they discover they didn’t have backups of the thing that they really, really, really wish that they did. Today’s promoted guest episode is sponsored by Clumio. And I’m speaking to their VP of product, Chadd Kenney. Chadd, thanks for joining me.Chadd: Thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.Corey: So, let’s start at the very beginning. What is a Clumio? Possibly a product, possibly a service, probably not a breakfast cereal, but again, we try not to judge.Chadd: [laugh]. Awesome. Well, Clumio is a Backup as a Service offering for the enterprise, focused in on the public cloud. And so our mission is, effectively, to help simplify data protection and make it a much, much better experience to the end-user, and provide a bunch of values that they just can’t get today in the public cloud, whether it’s in visibility, or better protection, or better granularity. And we’ve been around for a bit of time, really focused in on helping customers along their journey to the cloud.Corey: Backups are one of those things where people don’t spend a lot of time and energy thinking about them until they are, I guess, befallen by tragedy in some form. Ideally, it’s something minor, but occasionally it’s, “Oh, yeah. I used to work at that company that went under because there was a horrible incident and we didn’t have backups.” And then people go from not caring to being overzealous converts. Based upon my focus on this, you can probably pretty safely guess which side of that [chasm 00:02:04] I fall into. But let’s start, I guess, with positioning; you said that you are backup for the enterprise. What does that mean exactly? Who are your customers?Chadd: We’ve been trying to help customers into their cloud journey. So, if you think about many of our customers are coming from the on-prem data center, they have moved some of their applications, whether they’re lift-and-shift applications, or whether they’ve, kind of, stalled doing net-new development on-prem and doing all net new development in the public cloud. And we’ve been helping them along the way and solving one fundamental challenge, which is, “How do I make sure my data is protected? How do I make sure I have good compliance and visibility to understand, you know, is it working? And how do I be able to restore as fast as possible in the event that I need it?”And you mentioned at the beginning backup is all about restore and we a hundred percent agree. I feel like today, you get this [unintelligible 00:02:51] together a series of solutions, whether it’s a script, or it’s a backup solution that’s moved from on-prem, or it’s a snapshot orchestrator, but no one’s really been able to tackle the problem of, help me provide data protection across all of my accounts, all of my regions, all of my services that I’m using within the cloud. And if you look at it, the enterprise has transitioned dramatically to the cloud and don’t have great solutions to latch on to solve this fundamental problem. And our mission has been exactly that: bring a whole bunch of cool innovation. We’re built natively in the public cloud; we started off on a platform that wasn’t built on a whole bunch of EC2 instances that look like a box that was built on-prem, we built the thing mostly on Lambda functions, very event-driven. All AWS native services. We didn’t build anything proprietary data structure for our environment. And it’s really been able to build a better user experience for our end customers.Corey: I guess there’s an easy question to start with, of why would someone consider working with Clumio instead of AWS Backup, which came out a few months after re:Invent, I want to say 2018, but don’t quote me on that; may have been 2019. But it has the AWS label on the tin, which is always a mark of quality.Chadd: [laugh]. Well, there’s definitely a fair bit to be desired on the AWS Backup front. And if you look at it, what we did is we spent, really, before going into development here, a lot of time with customers to just understand where those pains are. And I’ve nailed it, kind of, to four or five different things that we hear consistently. One is that there’s near zero insights; “I don’t know what’s going on with it. I can’t tell whether I’m compliant or not compliant, or protecting not enough or too much.”They haven’t really provided sufficient security on being able to airgap my data to a point where I feel comfortable that even one of my admins can’t accidentally fat-finger a script and delete, you know, whether the primary copy or secondary copy. Restore times have a lot to be desired. I mean, you’re using snapshots. You can imagine that doesn’t really give you a whole bunch of fine-grained granularity, and the timeframe it takes to get to it—even to find it—is kind of a time-consuming game. And they’re not cheap.The snapshots are five cents per gig per month. And I will say they leave a lot to be desired for that cost basis. And so all of this complexity kind of built-in as a whole has given us an opportunity to provide a very different customer experience. And what the difference between these two solutions are is we’ve been providing a much better visibility just in the core solution. And we’ll be announcing here, on May 27, Clumio Discover which gives customers so much better visibility than what AWS Backup has been able to deliver.And instead of them having to create dashboards and other solutions as a whole, we’re able to give them unique visibility into their environment, whether it’s global visibility, ensuring data is protected, doing cost comparisons, and a whole bunch of others. We allow customers to be able to restore data incredibly faster, at fine-grained granularities, whether it’s at a file level, directory level, instance level, even in RDS we go down to the record level of a particular database with direct query access. And so the experience just as a whole has been so much simpler and easier for the end consumer, that we’ve been able to add a lot of value well beyond what AWS Backup uses. Now, that being said, we still use snapshots for operational recovery at some level, where customers can still use what they do today but what Clumio brings is an enhanced version of that by actually using airgap protection inside of our service for those datasets as well. And so it allows you to almost enhance AWS Backup at some level if you think about it. Because AWS Backups really are just orchestrating the snapshots; we can do that exact same thing, too, but really bring the airgap protection solution on top of that as well.Corey: I’ve talked about this periodically on the show. But one of the last, I guess, big migration projects I did when I was back in my employee days—before starting this place—was a project I’d done a few times, which was migrating an environment from EC2-Classic into a VPC world. Back in the dark times, before VPCs were a thing, EC2-Classic is what people used. And they were not just using EC2 in those environments, they were using RDS in this case. And the way to move an RDS database is to stop everything, take a final snapshot, then restore that snapshot—which is the equivalent of backup—to the new environment.How long does that take? It is non-deterministic. In the fullness of time, it will be complete. That wasn’t necessarily a disaster restoration scenario, it was just a migration, and there were other approaches we theoretically could have taken, but this was the one that we decided to go with based upon a variety of business constraints. And it’s awkward when you’re sitting there, just waiting indefinitely for, it turns out, about 45 minutes in this case, and you think everything’s going well, but there’s really nothing else to do during those moments.And that was, again, a planned maintenance, so it was less nerve-wracking then the site is down and people are screaming. But it’s good to have that expectation brought into it. But it was completely non-transparent; there was no idea what was going on, and in actual disasters, things are never that well planned or clear-cut. And at some level, the idea of using backup restoration as a migration strategy is kind of a strange one, but it’s a good way of testing backups. If you don’t test your backups, you don’t really have them in the first place. At least, that’s always been my philosophy. I’m going to theorize, unless this is your first day in business, that you sort of feel the same way, given your industry.Chadd: Definitely. And I think the interesting parts of this is that you have the validation that backups occurring, which is—you need visibility on that functioning, at some level; like, did it actually happen? And then you need the validation that the data is actually in a state that I can recover—Corey: Task failed successfully.Chadd: [laugh]. Exactly. And then you need validation that you can actually get to the data. So, there’s snapshots which give you this full entire thing, and then you got to go find the thing that you’re looking for within it. I think one of the values that we’ve really taken advantage of here is we use a lot of the APIs within AWS first to get optimization in the way that we access the data.So, as an example—on your EC2 example—we use EBS direct APIs, and we do change block tracking off of that, and we send the data from the customers tenancy into our service directly. And so there’s no egress charges, there’s no additional cost associated to it; it just goes into our service. And the customer pays for what they consume only. But in doing that, they get a whole bunch of new values. Now, you can actually get file-level indexing, I can search globally for files in an instance without having to restore the entire thing, which seems like that would be a relatively obvious thing to get to.But we don’t stop there. You could restore a file, you could go browse the file system, you could restore to an AMI, you could restore to another EC2 instance, you could move it to another account. In RDS, not an easy service to protect, I will say. You know, you get this game of, “I’ve got to restore the entire instance and then go find something to query the thing.” And our solution allows you direct query access, so we can see a schema browser, you can go see all of your databases that are in it, you can see all the tables, the rows in the table, you can do advanced queries to join across tables to go [unintelligible 00:10:00] results.And that experience, I think, is what customers are truly looking forward to be able to provide additional values beyond just the restoration of data. I’ll give you a fun example that a SaaS customer was using. They have a centralized customer database that keeps all of the config information across all of the tenants.Corey: I used to do something very similar with Route 53, and everyone looks at me strangely when I say it, but it worked at the time. There are better approaches now. But yeah, very common pattern.Chadd: And so you get into a world where it’s like, I don’t want to restore this entire thing at that point in time to another instance, and then just pull the three records for that one customer that they screwed up. Instead, it would be great if I could just take those three records from a solution and then just imported into the database. And the funny part of this is that the time it takes to do all these things is one component, the accidentally forgetting to delete all the stuff that I left over from trying to restore the data for weeks at a time that now I pay for in AWS is just this other thing that you don’t ever think about. It’s like, inefficiencies built in with the manual operations that you build into this model to actually get to the datasets. And so we just think there’s a better way to be able to see and understand datasets in AWS.Corey: One of my favorite genres of fiction is reading companies’ DR plans for how they imagine a disaster is going to go down. And it’s always an exercise in hilarity. I was not invited to those meetings anymore after I had the temerity to suggest that maybe if the city is completely uninhabitable and we have to retreat to a DR site, no one cares about this job that much. Or if us-east-one has burned to the ground over in AWS land, that maybe your entire staff is going to go quit to become consultants for 100 times more money by companies that have way bigger problems than you do. And then you’re not invited back.But there’s usually a certain presumed scale of a disaster, where you’re going to swing into action and exercise your DR plan. Okay, great. Maybe the data center is not a smoking crater in the ground; maybe even the database is largely where; what if you lost a particular record or a particular file somewhere? And that’s where it gets sticky, in a lot of cases because people start wondering, “Do I just spend the time and rebuild that file from scratch, kind of? Do I do a full restore of the”—all I have is either nothing or the entire environment. You’re talking about row-level restores, effectively, for RDS, which is kind of awesome and incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone talking about that before. How does that map as far as, effectively, a choose-your-own-disaster dial?Chadd: [laugh]. There’s a bunch of cool use cases to this. You’ve definitely got disaster recovery; so you’ve got the instance where somebody blew something away and you only need a series of records associated to it; maybe the SQL query was off. You’ve got compliance stuff. Think about this for a quick sec: you’ve got an RDS instance that you’ve been backing up, let’s say you keep it for just even a year.How many versions of that RDS database has AWS gone through in that period of time so that when you go restore that actual snapshot, you’ve got to rev the thing to the current version, which would take you some time [laugh] to get up and running, before you can even query the thing. And imagine if you do that, like, years down the road, if you’re keeping databases out there, and your legal team’s asking for a particular thing for discovery, let’s say. And you’ve got to now go through all of these iterations to try to get it back. The thing we decided to do that was genius on the [unintelligible 00:13:19] team was, we wanted to decouple the infrastructure from the data. So, what we actually do is we don’t have a database engine that’s sitting behind this.We’re exporting the RDS snapshot into a Parquet file, and the Parquet file then gets queried directly from Athena. And that allows us to allow customers to go to any timeframe to be able to pull not-specific database engine data into—whether it’s a restore function, or whether I want to migrate to a new database engine, I can pull that data out and re-import it into some other engine without having to have that infrastructure be coupled so closely to the dataset. And this was, really, kind of a way for customers to be able to leverage those datasets in all sorts of different ways in the future, with being able to query the data directly from our platform.Corey: It’s always fun talking to customers and asking them questions that they look at me as if I’ve grown a second head, such as, “Okay. So, in what disaster scenario are you going to need to restore your production database to a state that was in nine months ago?” And they look at me like I’ve just asked a ridiculous question because, of course, they’re never going to do that. If the database is restored to a copy that backed up more than 15 minutes or so in the past, there are serious problems. That’s why the recovery point objective—or RPO—of what is your data window of loss when you do a restore is so important for these plannings.And that’s great. “Okay then, why do you have six years of snapshots of your database taken on an interval going back all that time, if you’re never going to ever restore to any of them?” “Well, something compliance.” Yeah. There are better stories for that. But people start keeping these things around almost as digital packrats, and then they wind up surprised that their backup bill has skyrocketed. I’m going to go out on a limb presume—because if not, this is going to be a pretty awkward question—that you do not just backup management but also backup aging as far as life cycles go.Chadd: Yeah. So, there’s a couple different ways that are fun for us is we see multiple different tiers within backup. So, you’ve got the operational recovery methodology, which is what people usually use snapshots for. And unfortunately, you pay that at a pretty high premium because it’s high value. You’re going to restore a database that maybe went corrupt, or got somehow updated incorrectly or whatever else, and so you pay a high number for that for, let’s say, a couple days; or maybe it’s just even a couple hours.The unfortunate part is, that’s all you’ve got, really, in AWS to play with. And so, if I need to keep long-term retention, I’m keeping this high-value item now for a long duration. And so what we’ve done is we’ve tried to optimize the datasets as much as possible. So, on EC2 and EBS, we’ll dedupe and compress the datasets, and then store them in S3 on our tenancy. And then there’s a lower cost basis for the customer.They can still use operational recovery, we’ll manage that as part of the policy, but they can also store it in an airgap protected solution so that no one has access to it, and they can restore it to any of the accounts that they have out there.Corey: Oh, separating access is one of those incredibly important things to do, just because, first, if someone has completely fat-fingered something, you want to absolutely constrain the blast radius. But two, there is the theoretical problem of someone doing this maliciously, either through ransomware or through a bad actor—external or internal—or someone who has compromised one of your staff’s credentials. The idea being that people with access to production should never be the people who have access to, in some cases, the audit logs, or the backups themselves in some cases. So, having that gap—an airgap as you call it—is critical.Chadd: Mm-hm. The only way to do this, really, in AWS—and a lot of customers are doing this and then they move to us—is they replicate their snapshots to another account and vault them somewhere else. And while that works, the downside—and it’s not a true airgap, in a sense; it’s just effectively moving the data out of the account that it was created in. But you double the cost, so that sucks because you’re keeping your local copy, and then the secondary copy that sits on the other account. The admins still have access to it, so it’s not like it’s just completely disconnected from the environment. It’s still in the security sphere, so if you’re looking at a ransomware attack, trust me, they’ll find ways to get access to that thing and compromise it. And so you have vulnerabilities that are kind of built into this altogether.Corey: “So-what’s-your-security-approach-to-keeping-those-two-accounts-separated?” “The sheer complexity that it takes to wind up assuming a role in that other account that no one’s going to be able to figure it out because we’ve tried for years and can’t get it to work properly.” Yeah, maybe that’s not plan A.Chadd: Exactly. And I feel like while you can [unintelligible 00:17:33] these things together in various scripts, and solutions, and things, people are looking for solutions, not more complexity to manage. I mean, if you think about this, backup is not usually the thing that is strategic to that company’s mission. It’s something that protects their mission, but not drives their mission. It is our mission and so we help customers with that, but it should be something we can take off their hands and provide as a service versus them trying to build their own backup solution as a whole.Corey: This episode is sponsored by ExtraHop. ExtraHop provides threat detection and response for the Enterprise (not the starship). On-prem security doesn’t translate well to cloud or multi-cloud environments, and that’s not even counting IoT. ExtraHop automatically discovers everything inside the perimeter, including your cloud workloads and IoT devices, detects these threats up to 35 percent faster, and helps you act immediately. Ask for a free trial of detection and response for AWS today at extrahop.com/trial.Corey: Back when I was an employee if I was being honest, people said, “So, what is the number one thing you’re always sure to do on a disaster recovery plan?” My answer is, “I keep my resume updated.” Because, on some level, you can always quit and go work somewhere else. That is honest, but it’s also not the right answer in many cases. You need to start planning for these things before you need them.No one cares about backups until right after you really needed backups. And keeping that managed is important. There are reasons why architectures around this stuff are the way that they are, but there are significant problems around how a lot of AWS implements these things. I wound up having to use a backup about a month or so ago when some of my crappy code deleted data—imagine that—from a DynamoDB table, and I have point-in-time restores turned on. Cool. So, I just roll it back half an hour and that was great. The problem is, there was about four megabytes of data in that table, and it took an hour to do the restore into a new table and then migrate everything back over, which was a different colossal pain. And I’m sure there are complicated architectural reasons under the hood, but it’s like, that is almost as slow as someone who’s retyped it all by hand, and it’s an incredibly frustrating experience. You also see it with EBS snapshots: you backup an EBS volume with a snapshot—it just copies the data that’s there. Great—every time there’s another snapshot taken, it just changes the delta. And that’s the storage it gets built to. So, what does that actually cost? No one really knows. They recently launched direct APIs for EBS snapshots; you can start at least getting some of that data out of it if you just write a whole bunch of code—preferably in a Lambda function because that’s AWS’s solution for everything—but it’s all plumbing solution where you’re spending all your time building the scaffolding and this tooling. Backups are right up there with monitoring and alerting for the first thing I will absolutely hurl to a third party.Chadd: I a hundred percent agree. It’s—Corey: I know you’re a third-party. You’re, uh, you’re hardly objective on this.Chadd: [laugh].Corey: But again, I don’t partner with anyone. I’m not here to shill for people. You can’t buy my opinion on these things. I’ve been paying third parties to back things up for a very long time because that’s what makes sense.Chadd: The one thing that I think, you know, we hit on at the beginning a little bit was this visibility challenge—and this was one of the big launch around Clumio Discover that’s coming out on May 27th there—is we found out that there was near-zero visibility, right? And so you’re talking about the restore times, which is one key component, but [laugh]—Corey: Yeah, then you restore after four hours and discover you don’t have what you thought you did.Chadd: [laugh]. And so, I would love to see, like, am I backing things up? How much am I paying for all of these things? Can I get to them fast? I mean, the funny thing about the restore that I don’t think people ever talk about—and this is one of the things that I think customers love the most about Clumio—is, when you go to restore something, even that DynamoDB database you talked about earlier, you have to go actually find the snapshot in a long scroll.So first, you had to go to the service, to the account, and scroll through all of the snapshots to find the one that you actually want to restore with—and by the way, maybe that’s not a monster amount for you, but in a lot of companies that could be thousands, tens of thousands of snapshots they’re scrolling through—and they’ve got a guy yelling at them to go restore this as soon as possible, and they’re trying to figure out which one it is; they hunt-and-peck to find it. Wouldn’t it be nice if you just had a nice calendar that showed you, “Here’s where it is, and here’s all the different backups that you have on that point in time.” And then just go ahead and restore it then?Corey: Save me from the world of crappy scripts for things like this that you find on GitHub. And again, no disrespect to the people writing these things, but it’s clear that people are scratching their own itch. That’s the joy of open-source. Yeah, this is the backup script—or whatever it is—that works on the ten instances I have in my environment. That’s great.You roll that out to 600 instances and everything breaks. It winds up hitting rate limits as it tries to iterate through a bunch of things rather than building a queue and working through the rest of it. It’s very clearly aimed at small-scale stuff and built by people who aren’t working in large-scale environments. Conversely, you wind up with sort of the Google problem when you look at solving it for just the giant environments. Great, that you wind up with this overengineered, enormously unwieldy solution. Like, “Oh yeah, the continental saw. We use it to wind up cutting continents in half.” It’s, “I’m trying to cut a sandwich in half here. What’s the problem here?”It becomes a hard problem. The idea of having something that scales and has decent user ergonomics is critically important, especially when you get to something as critical as backups and restores. Because you’re not generally allowed to spend months on end building a backup solution at a company, and when you’re doing a restore, it’s often 3 a.m. and you’re bleary-eyed and panicked, which is not the time to be making difficult decisions; it’s the time to be clicking the button.Chadd: A hundred percent agree. I think the lack of visibility, this being a solution, less a problem I’m trying to solve [laugh] on my own is, I think, one area no one’s really tackled in the industry, especially around data protection. I will say people have done this on-prem at a decent level, but it just doesn’t exist inside the public cloud today. Clumio Discover, as an example, is one thing that we just heard constantly. It was like, “Give me global visibility to see everything in one single pane of glass across all my accounts, ensure all of my data is protected, optimized the way that I’m spending in data protection, identify if I’ve got massive outliers or huge consumers, and then help me restore faster.”And the cool part with Discover is that we’re actually giving this away to customers for free. They can go use this whether they’re using AWS Backup or us, and they can now see all of their environment. And at the same time, they get to experience Clumio as a solution in a way that is vastly different than what they’re experiencing today, and hopefully, they’ll continue to expand with us as we continue to innovate inside of AWS. But it’s a cool value for them to be able to finally get that visibility that they’ve never had before.Corey: Did, you know, that AWS users can have multiple accounts and have resources in those accounts in multiple regions?Chadd: Oh, yeah. Lots of them.Corey: Yeah. Because—the reason that you know that, apparently, is that you don’t work for AWS Backup where, last time I checked, there are still something like eight or nine regions that they are not present in. And you have to wind up configuring this, in many cases, separately, and of course, across multiple accounts, which is a modern best practice: separate things out by account. There we go. But it is absolutely painful to wind up working with.Sure, it’s great for small-scale test accounts where I have everything in a single account and I want to make sure that data doesn’t necessarily go on walkabout. Great. But I can’t scale that in the same way without creating a significant management problem for myself.Chadd: Yeah, just the amount of accounts that we see in enterprises is nuts. And with people managing this at an account level, it’s unbearable. And with no visibility, you’re doing this without really an understanding of whether you’re successfully executing this across all of those accounts at any point in time. And so this is one of the areas that we really want to help enterprises with. It’s, not only make the protection simple but also validate that it’s actually occurring. Because I think the one thing that no one likes to talk about in this is the whole compliance game, right? Like—Corey: Yeah, doing something is next to useless; you got to prove that you’re doing the thing.Chadd: Yeah. I got an auditor who shows up once a quarter and says, “Show me this backup.” And then I got to go fumble to try to figure out where that is. And, “Oh, my God. It’s not there. What do I tell the guy?” Well, wouldn’t it be nice if you had this global compliance report that showed you whether you were compliant, or if it wasn’t—which, you know, maybe it wasn’t for a snapshot that you created—at least would tell you why. [laugh]. Like, an RPO was exceeded on the amount of time it took to take the snapshot. Okay, well, that’s good to know. Now, I can tell the guy something other than just make something up because I have no information.Corey: So, you’d have multiple snapshots in flight simultaneously; always a great plan. Talk to me a little bit about Discover, your new offering? What is it? What led to it?Chadd: I love talking to customers, for one, and we spend a lot of time understanding where the gaps exist in the public cloud. And our job is to help fill those gaps with really cool innovation. And so the first one we heard was, “I cannot see multiple services, regions, accounts in one view. I had to go to each one of the services to understand what’s going on in it versus being able to see all of my assets in one view. I’ve got a lot of fragment reporting. I’ve got no compliance view whatsoever. I can’t tell if I’m over-protecting or under-protecting.”Orphan snapshots are the bane of many people’s existence, where they’ve taken snapshots at some point, deleted an EC2 instance, and they pay monthly for these things. We’ve got an orphan snapshot report. It will show you all of the snapshots that exist out there with no EC2 instance associated to it, and you can go take action on it. And so, what Discover came from is customers saying, “I need help.” And we built a solution to help them.And it gives them actionable insights, globally, across their entire set of accounts, across various different services, and allows them to do a whole bunch of fun stuff, whether it’s actionable and, “Help me delete all my orphan snapshots,” to, “I’ve got a 30-day retention period. Show me every snapshot that’s over 30 days. I’d like to get rid of that one, too.” Or, “How much are my backups costing me in snapshots today?”Corey: Yeah, today, the answer is, “[mumble].”Chadd: [laugh]. And imagine being able to see that with, effectively, a free tool that gives you actionable insights. That’s what Discovery is. And so you pair that with Clumio Protect, which is our backup solution, and you’ve got a really awesome solution to be able to see everything, validate it’s working, and actually go protect it, whether it’s operational recovery, or a true airgap solution, of which it’s really hard to pull off in AWS today.Corey: What problem that’s endemic to the backup space is that from a customer perspective, you are either invisible, or you have failed them. There are remarkably few happy customers talking about their experience with their backup vendor. So, as a counterpoint to that, what do the customers love about you, folks?Chadd: So, first and foremost, customers love the support experience. We are a SaaS offering, and we manage the backups completely for the end-user; there’s no cloud infrastructure the customer has to manage. You know, there’s a lot of these fake SaaS offerings out there where I better deploy a thing and manage it in my tenancy. We’ve created an experience that allows our support organization to help customers proactively support it, and we become an extension to those infrastructure teams, and really help customers to make sure they have great visibility and understanding what’s going on in their environment. The second part is just a completely new customer experience.You’ve got simplicity around the way that I add accounts, I create a policy, I assign a tag, and I’m off and running. There’s no management or hand-holding that you need to do within the system. The system scales to any size environment, and you know, you’re off and running. And if you want to validate anything, you can validate it via compliance reports, audit reports, activity reports. And you can see all of your accounts, data assets, in one single pane of glass, and now with Clumio Discover, you get the ability to be able to see it in one single view and see history, footprint, and all sorts of other fun stuff on top of it. And so it’s a very different user experience than what you see in any other solution that’s out there for data protection today.Corey: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more about Clumio and kick the tires for themselves, what should they do?Chadd: So, we are on AWS Marketplace, so you can get us up and running there and test us out. We give you $200 of free credits, so you can not only use our operational recovery, which is, kind of, snapshot management, similar database backup, which is free. You can check out Clumio Discover, which is also free, and see all of your accounts and environments in one single pane of glass with some awesome actionable insights, as we mentioned. And then you can reach out to us directly on clumio.com, where you can see a whole bunch of great content, blog posts, and the like, around our solution and service. And we’re looking forward to hearing from you.Corey: Excellent. And we will, of course, throw links to that in the [show notes 00:29:57]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I appreciate it.Chadd: Well, thank you so much for having me. I had an awesome time. Thank you.Corey: Chadd Kenney, VP of product at Clumio. I’m Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you’ve hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with a very long-winded comment that you accidentally lose because the page refreshes, and you didn’t have a backup.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

In your Recruitment / Search Business, you need 1. The role, T&C's signed. Ideally retained and high fee 2. The matching candidate, top 2-5%, probably passive, and a direct match for the client, role and culture. Whether you're a Recruitment or Search business, there is a finite number of candidates who are qualified for that role. As a Recruitment / Search Business Owner or Desk Owner, you need to know what that number is AND have them in your ecosystem. We live in a digital age. Getting all of those in your ecosystem is a must, without it. You are behind the curve ball from the start. You are old school. Candidates should not be complex, but we're making it complex. Getting them the Recruitment 4.0 way is the methodology - watch how and why The Laptop Recruiter™. As a recruitment entrepreneur, you need to be aware of what your constraints are. But candidates really shouldn't be one. Don't complicate getting candidates. Comment your thoughts below! Andy Whitehead - The Laptop Recruiter™

On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast, we have some catching up to do with the news. Topics includes American banks offering bitcoin through custody with NYDIG, Chinese miners suffering a crackdown from authorities, Blockfi's very expensive affiliate payout error, and trying to untangle the mess of Elon's tweets about bitcoin over the past few weeks.For the first time, customers of some U.S. banks will soon be able to buy, hold and sell bitcoin through their existing accounts, according to crypto custody firm NYDIG. The company, a subsidiary of $10 billion New York-based asset manager Stone Ridge, has partnered with fintech giant Fidelity National Information Services to enable U.S. banks to offer bitcoin in coming months, according to the two firms. Hundreds of banks are already enrolled in the program, according to Patrick Sells, head of bank solutions at NYDIG. While the firm is in discussions with some of the biggest U.S. banks, many of the lenders that have agreed to participate are smaller institutions like Suncrest, a California-based community bank with seven branches. 'œWhat we're doing is making it simple for everyday Americans and corporations to be able to buy bitcoin through their existing bank relationships,' Sells said. 'œIf I'm using my mobile application to do all of my banking, now I have the ability to buy, sell and hold bitcoin.' '" https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/05/bitcoin-is-coming-to-hundreds-of-us-banks-says-crypto-firm-nydig-.htmlCryptocurrency miners, including HashCow and BTC.TOP, have halted all or part of their China operations after Beijing intensified a crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading, hammering digital currencies amid heightened global regulatory scrutiny. A State Council committee led by Vice Premier Liu He announced the crackdown late on Friday as part of efforts to fend off financial risks. It was the first time China's cabinet has targeted virtual currency mining, a sizable business in the world's second-biggest economy that some estimates say accounts for as much as 70% of the global crypto supply. Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi on Monday suspended both crypto-mining and some trading services to new clients from mainland China, adding it will instead focus on overseas businesses. BTC.TOP, a crypto mining pool, also announced the suspension of its China business citing regulatory risks, while crypto miner HashCow said it would halt buying new bitcoin mining rigs. '" https://www.reuters.com/world/china/crypto-miners-halt-china-business-after-beijings-crackdown-bitcoin-dives-2021-05-24/Elon Musk tweeted about bitcoin. On May 12th, he tweeted a few paragraphs, announcing that Tesla would no longer be accepting bitcoin as payment for its vehicles, citing concerns about bitcoin's emissions and environmental impact. He also clarified that 'œTesla will not be selling any bitcoin'. Later, in response to someone suggesting that Elon is choosing doge over bitcoin, he suggested 'œIdeally, Doge speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down.' Following up with 'œFor those bad at math Up pointing backhand index, 100X higher transaction volume with 100X lower fees means total fees earned stay same. Low fees & high volume are needed to become currency of Earth.' Bitcoin twitter, to put it formally, had a fucking meltdown over the next few days. In response to one of many threads freaking out about Musks comments (this one by Peter McCormack), Musk tweeted 'œObnoxious threads like this make me want to go all in on Doge'. Musk continued to mock his bitcoin critics, citing his experience with PayPal as relevant domain expertise, repeating the old 'œBitcoin is centralized in China' FUD, and responding 'œindeed' to another tweet speculating how upset people will be when he dumps all his bitcoin and goes all in on doge. Markets responded by continuing their downward slide which had started from the first anti-bitcoin tweet, this time spurred on by further speculation that Tesla & Musk had sold their bitcoin. Later that night, Musk tweeted 'œTo clarify speculation, Tesla has not sold any Bitcoin'. One week after the initial tweet, and with bitcoin having tumbled nearly 40%, Musk tweets that 'œTesla has diamond-hands', followed by 'œCredit to our Master of Coin'. He also find time to troll Michael Saylor several times during this all, calling him 'œSaylor Moon', saying he should wear her costume for Halloween with a bitcoin tattoo on his upper thigh, and then in response to a typical Saylor bullish tweet, a meme of a man looking in the mirror saying 'œIt's not the bull market, you really are a genius'.Nasdaq.com reports, BlockFi made a massive blunder that resulted in the crypto lending and trading platform accidentally sending out large sums of Bitcoin to some users. The platform was running a promotion that saw it offer up stablecoin cryptos tied to the USD to users. However, it made the mistake of sending these promo bonuses to users in Bitcoin instead. As a result, some users saw massive amounts of BTC added to their accounts. First off, BlockFi might not be able to get some of that Bitcoin back. One user was sent 700 Bitcoin worth about $28 million. They immediately withdrew the funds. Now BlockFi is threatening legal action against this user. They're also offering up $500 for the return of the BTC

Shopping auto insurance: Ideally, you need to compare to find the best deal. Clark breaks down auto insurance shopping services, highlights The Zebra, helps you navigate the lead generation aspect and understand independent vs captive insurance agents. You can do this! // There are many pitfalls with online ads and purchasing - tactics used by companies to bait you into buying services and goods you don’t want or need. Know when you’re being manipulated online. Ask Clark topics include: 7 ways small business owners can reduce their tax bill / Will a Hybrid Car Save You Money? There's An Easy Way to Find Out Want more money advice? Sign up for Clark’s free daily newsletter! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are three steps to get to emotional liberation that Marshall Rosenberg describes in his book. Eric and I discuss each step and as we do that we are both learning more about what it means to find that emotional liberation. We don’t have control over someone else’s feelings or emotions.  We can’t change how someone feels about something. We can have awareness of our own feelings. We can change or control how we feel, react or respond. Ideally we want to communicate effectively to connect in a way that lets the other person know how we feel and that their needs are important as well. Let’s Walk through these stages together to gain a better understanding.   Resources:https://about-nvc.tumblr.com/post/98642157391/from-emotional-slavery-to-emotional-liberation-the https://orncc.net/article/moving-towards-life-serving-responsibility-nvcCONTACT INFORMATION:Email: Livingconnected.nvc@gmail.comInstagram: livingconnectednvcFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/LivingConnectedNVC/Website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1153175 Music is brought to you by: https://www.purple-planet.com/

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris respond to a listener question about how to know if we're improving as developers. They discuss the heuristics they think about when it comes to improving, how they've helped the teams they've worked with plan for and measure their growth, and some specific tips for improving. Rails Autoscale (https://railsautoscale.com/) Rubular regex playground (https://rubular.com/) The Pragmatic Programmer (https://pragprog.com/titles/tpp20/the-pragmatic-programmer-20th-anniversary-edition/) Go Ahead, Make a Mess by Sandi Metz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi3DClfGuqQ) Confident Code - Avdi Grimm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8J0j2xJFgQ) Therapeutic Refactoring - Katrina Owen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4dlF0kcThQ) Refactoring, Good to Great - Ben Orenstein (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC-pQPq0acs) Transcript CHRIS: There's something intriguing about the fact that we're having this conversation, but the thing that's recorded just starts at this arbitrary point in time, and it's usually us rambling about golden roads. But, I don't know; there's something existential about that. STEPH: It's usually when someone says something very funny or starts singing [laughs], and then that's when we immediately: record, record! CHRIS: I've never sung on the mic. That doesn't sound like a thing I would do. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So Steph, how's your week going? STEPH: Hey Chris, it's going really well. Normally I'm always like, wow, it's been such an exciting week, and it's been a pretty calm, chill week. It's been lovely. CHRIS: That sounds nice actually in contrast to the "Well, it's been a week," that sort of intro of "I don't know, it's been fine. It can be really nice." STEPH: By the time we get to this moment of the week, I either have stuff that I'm so excited to talk about and have a little bit of a therapy session with you or share something new that I've learned. I agree; it's nice to be like, yeah, it's been smooth sailing this whole week. In fact, it was smooth sailing enough that I decided to take on something that I've been meaning to tackle for a while but have just been avoiding it because I have strong feelings about this, which you know but we haven't talked about yet. But it comes down to managing emails and how many emails one should have that are either unread that are just existing. And I fall into the category of where I am less scrupulous about how many unread or managed emails that I have. But I decided that I'd had enough. So I used a really nice filter in Gmail where I said I want all emails that are before 2021 and also don't have a user label, so it's has:nouserlabels because then I know those are all the emails that I haven't labeled or assigned to a particular...I want to say folder, but they're not truly folders; they just look like folders. So they're essentially like untriaged or just emails that I've left hanging out in the ether. And then I just started deleting, and I got rid of all of those that hadn't been organized up until that point. And I was just like yep, you know if I haven't looked at it, it's that old, and I haven't given a label by this point, I'm just going to move on. If it's important, it will bubble back up. And I feel really good about it. CHRIS: Wow, that is -- I like how you backed me into a corner. Obviously, I'm on the other side where I'm fastidiously managing my email, which I am, but you backed me into that corner here. So, yeah, that's true. Although the approach that you're taking of just deleting all the old email that's a different one than I would have taken [chuckles] so, I like it. It's the nuclear option. STEPH: Okay, so now I need to qualify. When you delete an email, initially, I'm thinking it's going to trash, and so it's still technically there if I need to retrieve it and go back and find it. But you just said nuclear option, so maybe they're actually getting deleted. CHRIS: They're going into the trash for 30 days; I think is the timeline. But after that, they will actually delete them. The archive is supposed to be the place where you put stuff I don't want to see you anymore. But did you archive or delete? STEPH: Oh, I deleted. CHRIS: Oh, wow. Yeah. All right, you went for it. [laughter] STEPH: Yeah, and that's cool. And it's in trash. So I basically have a 30-day window where I'm like, oh, I made a mistake, and I need to search for something and find something and bring it back into my world; I can find it. If I haven't searched for it by then in 30 days, then I say, you know, thanks for the email, goodbye. [chuckles] And it'll come back if it needs to. CHRIS: I like the approach. It would not be my approach, but I like the commitment to the cause. Although you still have...how many emails are still in your inbox now? STEPH: Why do we have to play the numbers game? CHRIS: [laughs] STEPH: Can't we just talk about the progress that I have made? CHRIS: What wonderful progress you've made, Steph. [laughter] Like, it doesn't matter what I think. What do you think about this? Are you happy with this? Does this make you feel more joy when you look into your email in the Marie Kondo sense? STEPH: It does. I am excited that I went ahead and cleared all this because it just felt like craft. So I have taken what may be a very contentious approach to my email, where I treat it as this searchable space. So as things come in, I triage them, and I will label them, I will star them. I will either snooze them to make sure I don't miss the high actionable emails or something that's very important to me to act on quickly. But for the most part, then a lot of stuff will sit in that inbox area. So it becomes like this junk drawer. It's a very searchable junk drawer, thanks to Google. They've done a great job with that. And it feels nice to clear out that junk drawer. But I do have such an aversion to that very strong email inbox zero. I respect the heck out of it, but I have an aversion; I think from prior jobs where I was on a team, and we could easily get like 800 emails a day. My day all day was just triaging and responding to emails and writing emails. And so I think that just left a really bitter experience where now I just don't want to have to live that life where I'm constantly catering to what's in my inbox. CHRIS: That's so many emails. STEPH: It was so many emails. We were a team. It was a team inbox. So there were three of us managing this inbox. So if someone stepped away or if someone was away on vacation, we all had access to the same emails. But still, it was a lot of emails. CHRIS: Yeah, inbox zero in a shared inbox that is a level that I have not gotten to but getting to inbox zero and actually maintaining that is very much a labor of love and something that I've had to invest in. And it's probably not worth it for most people. You could convince me that it is not worth it for me, that the effort I'm putting in is too much effort for not enough reward. Well, it's one of those things where I find the framing that it puts on it, like, okay, I need to process my email and get it to zero at least once a day. Having that lens makes me think about email in a different way. I unsubscribe from absolutely everything. The only things that are allowed to come into my email are things that I will act on that actually deserve my attention, and so it forces that, which I really like. And then it forces me to think about things. I have a tendency to really hold off on decisions. So I'm like, ah, okay. I can go see friends on Saturday or I can do something else. Friends like actual humans, not the TV show, although for the past year, it's definitely more of the TV show than the real people. But let's say there's a potential thing that I could do on the weekend and I have to decide on that. I have a real tendency to drag my feet and to wait for some magical information from the universe to help this decision be obvious to me. But it's never going to be obvious, and at some point, I just need to pick. And so for inbox zero, one of the things that comes out of it for me is that pressure and just forcing me to be like, dude, there's no perfect answer here, just pick something. You got to just pick something and not wasting multiple cycles rethinking the same decision over and over because that's my natural tendency. So in a way, it's, I don't know, almost like a meditative practice sort of thing. There's utility there for me, but it is an effort, and it's, again, arguably not worth it. Still, I do it. I like it. I'm a fan. I think it's worth it. STEPH: I like how you argued both sides. I'm with you. I think it depends on the value that you get out of it. And then, as long as you are effective with whichever strategy you take, then that's really what matters. And I do appreciate the lens that it applies where if you are getting to inbox zero every day, then you are going to be very strict about who can send you emails about notifications that you're going to receive because you are trying to reduce the work that then you have to get to inbox zero. So I do very much admire that because there are probably -- I'm wasting a couple of minutes each day deleting notifications from chats or stuff that I know I'm not necessarily directly involved in and don't need action from me. And then I do get frustrated when I can't adjust those notification settings for that particular application, and I'm just subscribed to all of it. So some of it I feel like I can't change, and then some of it, I probably am wasting a few minutes. So I think there's totally value in both approaches. And I'm also saying that to try to justify my approach of my searchable inbox. [laughs] CHRIS: There are absolutely reasons to go either way. And also, to come back to what I was saying a minute ago, it may have sounded like I'm a person who's just on top of this. I may have given that impression briefly. I think the only time this has actually worked in my life is when Gmail introduced snooze both in the mobile app and on the desktop. So this is sometime after Google's inbox product came out, and that was eventually shut down. So it's relatively recent because, man, I just snooze everything. That is the actual secret to achieving inbox zero, just to reach the end of the day and be like, nah, and just send all the emails to future me. And then future me wakes up and is like, "You know, it's first thing in the morning. I got a nice cup of coffee, and this is what you're going to do to me, past me?" So there's a little bit of internal strife there within my one human. But yeah, the snoozing is actually incredibly useful and probably the only way that I actually get things done and the same within any task management system that I have; maybe future me will do this. STEPH: I think you and I both subscribed to the that's a future me problem. We just do it in very different ways. But switching gears a bit, how's your week been? CHRIS: It's been good, pretty normal, doing some coding, normal developer things. Actually, there's one tool that I was revisiting this week that I'm not sure that we've actually talked about on the show before, but it's Rails Autoscale. Have you used that before? STEPH: I don't think I have. It sounds very familiar, but I don't think I've used it. CHRIS: It's a very nice, straightforward Heroku add-on that does exactly what you want it to do. It monitors your web and worker dynos and will scale up. But it uses a different heuristic than -- So Heroku has built-in autoscaling, but theirs is based on response time, which is, I think, a little bit laggier of a metric. Like if your response time has gotten bad, then you're already in trouble, whereas Rails Autoscale uses queue time. So how long is a request waiting before? I think it's at the Heroku router; it goes onto the dyno that's actually going to process the request? So I think that's what they're monitoring. I may be wrong on that. But from the website, they're looking at that, and you can configure it. They actually have a really nice configuration dashboard for configure between this range, so one to five dynos at most, and scale in this way up and in this way down. So like, how long should it wait? What's the threshold of queue time? Those sorts of things. So they have a default like just do the smart thing for me, and then they give you more control if your app happens to have a different shape of data, which is all really nice. And then I've been using that for a while, but I recently this week actually just turned on the worker side. And so now the workers will autoscale up and down as the Sidekiq queue -- I think for the Sidekiq side, it's also the queue time, so how long a job sits in the queue before getting picked up. And there are some extra niceties. It can actually infer the different queue names that you have. So if you have a critical, and then a mailer, and then a general as the three queues that Sidekiq is managing, you really want critical to not back up. So you can tell it to watch that one but ignore the normal one and only use -- Like, when critical is actually getting backed up, and all the other stuff is taken over then -- Again, it's got nice knobs and things, but mostly you can just say, "Turn it on and do the normal thing," and it'll do a very smart thing." STEPH: That does sound really helpful. Just to revisit, so Heroku for autoscaling, when you turn that on, I think Heroku does it based on response times. So if you get into a specific percentile, then Heroku is going to scale up for you to then bring down that response time. But it sounds like with this tool, with Rails autoscaling, then you have additional knobs like the Sidekiq timing that you'd referenced. Are there some other knobs that you found really helpful? CHRIS: Basically, there are two different sides of it. So web and background jobs are going to be handled differently within this tool, and you can actually turn them on or off individually, and you can also, within them, the configurations are specific to that type of thing. So for the web side, you have different values that you can set as the thresholds than you do on the Sidekiq side. Overall, the queue name only makes sense on the Sidekiq side, whereas on the web side, it's just like the web requests all of them 'Please make sure they're not spending too much time waiting for a dyno to actually start processing them.' But yeah, again, it's just a very straightforward tool that does the thing that it says on the tin. I enjoy it. It's one of those simple additions where it's like, yeah, I think I'm happy to pay for this because you're just going to save me a bunch of money every month, in theory. And actually, that side of it is certainly interesting, but more of my app will be responsive if there is any spike in traffic. There's still plenty of other performance things under the hood that I need to make better, but it was nice to just turn those on and be like, yeah, okay. I think everything's going to run a little better now. That seems nice. But yeah, otherwise, for me, a very straightforward week. So I think actually shifting gears again, we have a listener question that we wanted to chat about. And this is one that both of us got very interested to chat about because there's a lot to this topic, but I'm happy to read it here. So the overall topic is improving as a developer, and the question goes, "How do you know you're improving as developers? Is your improvement consistent? Are there regressions? I find myself having very different views about code than I did even a year ago. In some cases, I write code now in a way that I would have criticized not too long ago. For example, I started writing a lot more comments. I used to think a well-named variable obviated the need for comments. While it feels like I'm improving, I have no way of measuring the improvement. It's only a gut feeling. Thanks. Love the show." And this comes from Tom. Thank you, Tom. Glad you enjoy the show. So, Steph, are you improving as a developer? STEPH: I love this question. Thanks, Tom, for sending it in because it is one that I think about but haven't really verbalized, and so I'm really excited to dive into this. So am I improving as a developer? It comes down to, I mean, we first have to talk through definitions. Like, what does it mean to become a better developer? And then, we can talk through metrics and understanding how we're getting there. I also love the other questions, which I know we'll get to. I'm just excited. But are there any regressions? And also, in my mind, they already answered their own question. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So let me actually back up. So how do you know you're improving as a developer? There are a couple of areas that come to mind. And for me, these are probably more in that space of they still have a little bit of a gut feeling to them, but I'm going to try hard to walk that back into a more measurable state. So one of them could be that you're becoming more comfortable with the work that you're doing, so if you are implementing a new email flow or running task on production or writing tests that become second nature, those types of activities are starting to feel more comfortable. To me, that is already a sign of progress, that you are getting more comfortable in that area. It could be that time estimates are becoming more accurate. So perhaps, in the beginning, they're incredibly -- like, you don't have any idea. But as you are gaining experience and you're improving as a developer, you can provide more accurate estimates. I also like to use the metric of how many people are coming to you for help, not necessarily in hard numbers, but I tend to notice when someone on a team is the person that everybody else goes to for help, maybe it's just on a specific topic, maybe it's for the application in general. But I take that as a sign that someone is becoming very knowledgeable in the area, and that way, they're showing that they're improving as a developer, and other people are noticing that and then going to them for help. Those are a couple of the ones that I have. I have some more, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. CHRIS: I think if nothing else, starting with how would we even measure this? Because I do agree it's going to be a bit loose. Unfortunately, I don't believe that there are metrics that we can use for this. So the idea of how many thousand lines of codes do you write a month? Like, that's certainly not the one I want to go with. Or, how many pull requests? Anything like that is going to get gamified too quickly. And so it's really hard to actually define truly quantifiable metrics. I have three in mind that scale the feedback loop length of time. So the first is just speed. Like, how quickly are you able to do the same tasks? So I need to build out a page in Rails. I need a route; I need a controller. I need a feature spec, those sort of things. Those tasks that come up over and over: are you getting faster with those? That's a way to measure. And there's an adage that I think comes from biking, professional cycling, that it never gets any easier; you just go faster. And so the idea is you're doing the same work over time, but you just get a little bit faster, and you're always trying that edge of your capabilities. And so that idea of it never gets any easier, but you are getting faster. I like that framing. We should be doing the same work. We should never get too good for building a crud app. That's my official stance on the matter; thank you very much. But yeah, so that's speed. I think that is a meaningful thing to keep an eye on and your ability to actually deliver features in a timely fashion. The next one would be how robust are the things that you're building? What's the bug count? How regularly do you have to revisit something that you've built to change it, to tweak it either because it doesn't exactly match the intent of the feature that you're developing or because there's an actual bug in it? It turns out this thing that we do is very hard. There are so many moving pieces and getting the design right and getting the functionality just right and handling user input, man, that's tricky. Users will just send anything. And so that core idea of robustness that's going to be more on a week scale sort of thing. So there's a little bit of latency in that measure, whereas speed that's a pretty direct measure. The third one is…I don't know how to frame this, but the idea of being able to revisit your code either yourself or someone else. So if you've written some code, you tried to solve a problem; you tried to encode whatever knowledge you had at the given time in the code. And then when you come back three months later, how easy is it to revisit that code, to change it, to extend it either for yourself (because at that point you've forgotten everything) or for someone else on the team? And so the more that you're writing code that is very easy to extend, that is very easy to revisit and reload that context into your head, how closely the code maps to the actual domain context I think that's a measure as well that I'm really interested in, but there's the most lag in that one. It's like, yeah, months later, did you do a good job? And so the more time you spend, the more you'll have a measure of that, but that's definitely the laggiest of the measures that I have in mind. STEPH: I love that adage that you shared that it never gets easier, but you get faster. That feels so relevant. I really like that. And then I hadn't considered the robustness. That's a really nice one, too, in terms of how often do you have to go back and revisit issues that you've added? CHRIS: You just write code without bugs; that's why you don't think about it. STEPH: [laughs] Oh, if only that were true. CHRIS: Yeah, if only that were true of any of us. STEPH: To keep adding to the list, there are a couple more that come to mind too. I'd mentioned the idea that certain tasks become easier. There's also the capability or the level of comfort in taking on that new, big, scary, unknown task. So there is something on the Teams' board where you're like, I have no idea how to do that, but I have confidence that I can figure it out. I think that is a really big sign that you are growing as a developer because you understand the tools that'll get you to that successful point. And maybe that means persuading someone else to help you; maybe it means looking elsewhere for resources. But you at least know how to get there, which then follows up on your ability to unblock yourself. So if you are in that state of I just don't know what to do next, maybe it's Googling, or maybe it is reaching out for help, but either way, you keep something moving forward instead of just letting it sit there. Another area that I've seen myself and other people grow as developers is our ability to reason about quality and speed. It's something that I feel you, and I talk about pretty often here on the show, but it comes down to our ability to not just write code but then to also make good decisions on behalf of the company that we are working for and the team that we're working with and understanding what matters in terms of what features really need to be part of this MVP? Where can we make compromises? And then figuring out where can we make compromises to get this out to market? But what's really important then for circling back to your idea of revisiting the code, we want code that we can still come back and trust and then easily maintain and make updates to. And then I feel like I'm rambling, but I have a couple more. Shall I keep going? CHRIS: Keep going. Those are great. STEPH: All right. So for the others, there's an increase in responsibilities that I notice. So, in addition to people coming to you more often for help, then it could be that you are receiving more responsibilities. Maybe you are taking on specific ownership of the codebase or a particular part of the team processes. Then that also shows that you are improving and that people would like you to take leadership or ownership of certain areas. And then this one, I am throwing it in here, but your ability to run a meeting. Because I think that's an important part of being a good developer is to also be able to run a meeting with your colleagues and for that to be a productive meeting. CHRIS: Cool. I like that one. I think I want to build on that because I think the core idea of being able to run a meeting well is communication. And I think there's one level of doing this job where it's just about doing the job. It's just about writing the code, maybe some amount of translating a specification or a ticket or whatever it is into the actual code that you need to write. But then how well can you communicate back out? How well when someone in project management says, "Hey, we want to build an aggregated search across the system that searches across our users, and our accounts, and our products, and our orders, and our everything." And you're like, "Okay. We can do that, but it will be hard. And let's talk about the trade-offs inherent in that and the different approaches and why we might pick one versus the other," being able to have that conversation requires a depth of knowledge in the technical but then also being able to understand the business needs and communicate across that boundary. And I think that's definitely an axis on which I enjoy pushing on as I'm continuing to work as a developer. STEPH: Yeah, I'm with you. And I think being a consultant and working at thoughtbot heavily influences my concept of improving as a developer because as developers, it's not just our job to write code but to also be able to communicate and help make good decisions for the team and then collaborate with everyone else in the company versus just implement certain features as they come down the pipeline. So communication is incredibly important. And so I love that that's one of the areas that you highlighted. CHRIS: Actually speaking of the communication thing, there's obviously the very human-centric part of that, but there's, I think, another facet of technical communication that is API design. When you're writing your code, what do you choose to expose and make accessible to collaborators? And I don't just mean API in the terms of a REST API that people are heading, but I mean a class that you have in your system. What are the private methods, and what are the public methods? And how do you think about the shape of it? What data do you expose? What do you not expose? And that can be really impactful because it allows how can you change things over time? The more that you hide, the more you can change. But then, if you don't allow your collaborators to access the bits that they need to be able to work with your system, that's an interesting one that comes to mind. It also aligns with, I don't think you were saying this exactly, but the idea of taking on more amorphous projects. So like, are you working within a system and adding a new feature, or are you designing a system? Are you architecting? The word architect that role can sometimes be complicated within organizations, but that idea of I'm starting fresh, and I'm building a system that others will then work within I think this idea of API design becomes really interesting in that context. What shape do you give to the system that we're working within, and what affordances? And all of that. And that's a very hard thing to get right. So it comes from experience of being like, I used some stuff in the past, and I hated it, so when I am the architect, I will build it better. And then you try, and you fail, and you're like, well, okay, but now I've learned. And then you try it, and then you fail for different reasons. But the seventh time you try, it may be just that time you get the public API just right on the first go. STEPH: Seven times's a charm. That's how that goes, right? CHRIS: That is my understanding, yes. STEPH: I think something that is related to the idea of are you working in a structured space versus working in a new space and then how you develop that API for other people to work with. And then how do you identify when to write a test and what to test? That's another area that you were just making me think of is that I can tell when someone has experience with testing because they know what to test and what feels important to test. And essentially, it comes down to can I deploy with confidence? But there are a lot of times, especially if you're new to testing, that you're going to test everything, and you're going to have a lot of probably useless slow tests. But over time, you will start to realize what's really important. And I think that's one of the areas where then it does start to get harder to measure yourself as a developer because all of our jobs are different, and we work with different tech stacks, and we all have our unique responsibilities and goals. So it may be hard to say specifically like, "Oh, you're really good at X, Y, and Z, and that's how you know that you're improving as a developer." But I have more thoughts on that, which we'll get to in a moment where Tom mentioned that they don't have a way of measuring improvement. Shall I go ahead and jump ahead to I have no way of measuring that improvement, or shall we talk about regressions next? CHRIS: I'm interested in your thoughts on the regressions question because it's not something that I've really thought about. But now that he's asked the question, I'm thinking about it. So yeah, what are your thoughts on that? STEPH: My very quick answer is yes, [laughs] that there are regressions mainly because I respect that our brain can only make so much knowledge readily available to us, and then everything else goes into long-term storage. We can access it at some point, but it takes additional time, or maybe it takes some practice to recall that skill. So I do think there are regressions, and I think that's totally fine that we should be focused on what is serving us most at the moment and be okay with letting go of some of those other skills until we need to refine them again. CHRIS: Yeah. I think there's definitely a truth to true knowledge and experience with, say, a framework or a language that can fade. So if I spend a lot of time away from JavaScript, and then I come back, I'm going to hit my head on a few low ceilings every once in a while for the first couple of days or weeks or whatever it is. It was interesting actually that Tom highlighted the idea of he used to not write comments, and now he writes more comments, and so that transition -- I think we've talked about comments enough so our general thinking on it. But I think it's totally reasonable for there to be a pendulum swing, and maybe there's a slight overcorrection. And you read some blog posts that tell you the truth of the world, and suddenly, absolutely no comments ever that's the rule. And then, later on, you're like, you know, I could really use a comment here. And so you go that way, and then you decide you know what? Comments are good, and you start writing a bunch of them. And so it's sort of weaving back and forth. Ideally, you're honing in on your own personal truth about comments. But that's just an interesting example to me because I certainly wouldn't consider that one a regression. But then there's the bigger story of like, how do we approach building software? Ideally, that's what this podcast does at its best. We're not really a podcast about Rails or JavaScript or whatever it is we're talking about that week, but we're talking about how to build software well. And I think those core ideas feel like they're more permanent for me, or I feel like I'm changing those less. If anything, I feel like I'm ratcheting in on what I believe about good software. And there are some core ideas that I'm just refining over time, not done by any means, but it's that I don't feel like I'm fundamentally reevaluating those core ideas. Whereas I am picking up a new language and approaching a new framework and taking a different approach to what tools I'm using, that sort of thing. STEPH: Yeah, I agree. The core concepts definitely feel more important and more applicable to all the future situations that we're going to be in. So those skills that may fall into the regression category feel appropriate because we are focused on the bigger picture versus how well do I remember this rejects library or something that won't serve us as well? So I agree. I am often focused more on how can I take this lesson and then apply it to other tech stacks or other teams and keep that with me? And I don't want that to regress. But it's okay if those other smaller, easily Google-able skills fall to the side. [laughs] CHRIS: Wait, are you implying that you can't write rejects just off the top of your head or what's…? STEPH: I don't think I could write any rejects off the top of my head. [laughter] CHRIS: Fair. All right. You just go to rubular.com, hit enter, and then we iterate. STEPH: Oh yeah. I don't want to use up valuable space for maintaining that sort of information. Rubular has it for me. I'm just going to go there. CHRIS: I mean, as long as you have the index of the places you go on the internet to find the truth, then you don't need to store that truth. STEPH: A moment ago, you mentioned where Tom highlights that they have different views about code that they wrote, even code that they wrote just like a year ago. And to me, that's a sign of growth in terms that you can look back on code that you have written and be like, well, maybe this would be different, or maybe this is still a good idea, but the fact that you are changing and then reevaluating, I think that is awesome because otherwise, if we aren't able to do that, then that is just a sign of being stagnant to me. We are sticking to the knowledge that we had a year ago, and we haven't grown since then versus that already shows that they have taken in new knowledge. So then that way, they can assess should I be adding comments? When should I add comments? Maybe I should swing away from that idea of this is a hard line of don't ever do this. I think I just have to mention it because there is one that I always feel so deeply about, DRY. DRY is the concept that gives me the most grief in terms that people just overuse it to the point that they do make code very hard to change. All right, that's my bit. I'll get off my pedestal. But DRY and comments are two things [chuckles] that both have their places. CHRIS: I don't know if your experience was similar, but around DRY, I definitely have had the pendulum swing of how I feel about it. And I think again, that honing in thing. But initially, I think I read The Pragmatic Programmers, and they told me that DRY is important. And then I was like, absolutely, there will be no duplication anywhere, and then I felt some pain from that. And I've been in other systems and experienced places where people did remove duplication. I was like, oh, maybe it would have been better, and so I slowly got out of that mindset. But now I'm just in the place of like, I don't know, copy and paste not now, there was a period where I was like, just copy and paste everything. And then I was like, all right, I think there's a subtle line. There's a perfect amount of duplication, and that's the goal is to figure out that just perfect level. But for me, it really has been that evolution, and I was on one side, and then I was on the other side, and then I'm honing back in. And now I have my personal truth about duplication. STEPH: Oh, me too. And I feel like I can be a little more negative about it because I was in the same spot. Because it's a rule, it's a rule that you can apply that when you are new to software development, there aren't that many rules that are so easy to apply to your codebase, but DRY is one of them. You can say, oh, that is duplication. I know exactly what that is, and I can extract it. And then it takes time for you to realize, okay, I can identify it, but just because it's there, it doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Perfect duplication, I like it. CHRIS: Coming back to the idea of when we look back on our code six months, a year later, something like that, I think I believe the statement that we should always look back on our code and be like, oh, what was I doing there? But I think that arc should change over time. So early on in my career, six months later, I look back at my code, and I'm like, oh, goodness, what was happening there? I was very much a self-taught or blog internet-taught programmer just working on my own. I had no one else to talk to. So the stuff that I wrote early on was not good is how I will describe it. And then I got better, and then I got better, and I hope that I'm still getting better. And it's something that probably draws me to software development is I feel like there's always room to get a little bit better. Again, even back to that adage of it doesn't get any easier; you just go faster. Like, that's a version of getting better in my mind. So I hope that I can continue to feel that improvement and that ratcheting up. But I also hope that that arc is leveling off. There is an asymptotic approach to "good software developer." People in the audience, you can't see my air quotes, but I made air quotes there around good software developer. But that idea of I shouldn't look back probably this far into my career and look back at code from three months ago and be like, that's awful. That dude should be fired. I hope I'm not there. And so if you're measuring over time, what does your three months ago look back feel like? Oh, I feel like it's a little better. Still, you should look back and be like, oh, I probably would do that a little bit different given what I know now, what I've learned, but less so, I think. I don't know, what do you think about that? STEPH: Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm also realizing I haven't looked back at my code that much since I am changing projects, and then I don't always have the opportunity to go back to that project and then revisit some of the code. But I do agree with the idea that if you're looking back at code that you've written a couple of months ago that you can see areas that you would improve, but I agree that you wouldn't want it to be something drastic. Like, you wouldn't want to see something that was more of an obvious security hole or performance issue. I think there are maybe certain metrics that I would use. I think they can still happen for sure because we're always learning, but there's also -- I may be taking this in a slightly different direction than you meant, but there's also a kindness filter that I also want us to apply to ourselves where if you're looking back three months ago to six years ago and you're like, oh, that's some rough code, Stephanie. But it's also like, yeah, but that code got me to where I am today, and I'm continuing to progress. So I appreciate who I was in the past, and I have continued to progress to who I am today and then who I will be. CHRIS: What a wonderfully positive lens to put on it. Actually, that makes me think of one of -- We may be getting into rant territory here, but we talk a lot about imposter syndrome in the software development world. And I think there's a lot of utility because this is something that almost everyone experiences. But I think there's a corollary to it that we should talk about, which is a lot of people are coming into this industry, and they're like one year in, and the expectation that one year into a career that -- The thing that we do is not easy as far as I can tell. I haven't figured out how to make it easy. And the expectation that someone's going to be an expert that early on is just completely unreasonable in my mind. In my previous career, I was a mechanical engineer, and I went to school for four years. I actually went to school for five years, not because I was bad at school, but because I went to a place that had a co-op. And so I had both three different six months experiences working and four years of classroom education before I even got any job. And then I started doing things, and that's normal in that world. Whereas in the development world, it is so accessible, and I really feel like that's an absolutely wonderful thing. But the counterpoint of that is folks can jump into this career path very early on in their learning, and the expectation that they can immediately become experts or even in the short order I don't think is realistic. I think sometimes, when we talk about imposter syndrome, we may do a disservice. Like, it's not imposter syndrome. You're just new, and that's totally fine. And I hope you're working in an organization that is supportive of that and that has space for that and can help you grow in a purposeful way. In my mind, it's not realistic to expect everyone to be an expert a year in—end rant. STEPH: Well, I would love to plus-one your rant and add to it a little bit because I completely agree. I also love the phrasing that you just said where it's not that you have imposter syndrome; it's just that you are new and that team should be supportive of people that are new and helping them grow and level up. I also think that's true for senior developers in terms that you are very good at certain skills, but there's always going to be some area of the web or some area of software development that you are new to, and that is also not imposter syndrome. But it's fine to assess your own skills and say, "That's something that I don't know how to do." And sometimes, I think that gets labeled as imposter syndrome, but it's not. It's someone just being genuine and reflecting on their current skills and saying, "I am good at a lot of stuff, but I don't know this one, and I am new to this area." And I think that's an important distinction to make because I still want -- even if you are not new in the sense that you are new to being a software engineer, but you still have that space to be new to something. CHRIS: Yeah, it's an interesting, constantly evolving space. And so giving ourselves a little bit of permission to be beginners on various topics and for me, that's been an experience that's been continual. I think being a consultant, being a freelancer that impacts it a little bit. But nonetheless, even when I go into organizations, I'm like, oh, years in technology that only came out two years ago. That's pretty fresh. And so it's really hard to be an expert on something that's that new. STEPH: Yeah. I think being new to a team has its own superpower. I don't know if we've talked about that before; if we haven't, we should talk about, it but I won't do that now. But being new is its own superpower. But I do want to pivot back to where Tom mentioned that I have no way of measuring that improvement. And I think that's a really great thing to recognize that you're not sure how to measure something. And my very first honest suggestion if you are feeling that way is to go ask your manager and ask them how they are measuring your improvement because that is their job is to understand where you're at and to understand your path as a developer on the team and then helping you set goals. So since I'm a manager at thoughtbot, I'll go first, and I can share some ways that I help my team measure their own improvement. So one of the ways is that each time that we meet to discuss work, I listen to their challenges, and I take notes; I'm a heavy note-taker. And so once I have all those notes, then I can see are there any particular challenges that resurface? Are there any patterns, any areas where they continuously get stuck on? Or are they actually gaining confidence, and maybe something that would have given them trouble a couple of weeks ago is suddenly no big deal? And then I also see if they're able to unblock themselves. So a lot of what I do is far more listening, and I'm happy to then provide suggestions. But I am often just a space for someone to share what they are thinking, what they're going through, and then to walk through ideas and then provide suggestions if they would like some, and then they choose a suggestion that works best for them. And then we can revisit how did it go? So their ability to unblock themselves is also something that I'm looking for in terms of growth. And then together, we also set goals together, and then we measure that progress together. So it's all very transparent. And what areas would you like to improve, and then what areas would it be helpful for thoughtbot or as a consultant for you to improve? And then if I am fortunate enough to be on a project with them and see how they reason about quality and speed, how they communicate the type of features they're most comfortable to work on, and which tasks are more challenging for them, I also look to see do people enjoy working with them? That's a big area of growth and reflects communication, and reliability, and trust. And those are important areas for us to grow as developers. So those are some of the areas that I look to when I'm helping someone else measure their own improvement. CHRIS: I really like that, the structured framing of it, and the way that you're able to give feedback and have that as a constant, continuous way to evaluate, define, measure, and then try and drive towards it. Flipping things around, I want to offer a slightly different thing, which isn't necessarily specifically in the question, but I think it's very close to the question of how do we actually improve as developers? What are the specific things that we can try and do? I'm going to offer a handful of ideas. I'd be super interested to hear what your ideas are. But one of the things that has been really valuable for me is exploring different languages and frameworks. I, without fail, find something in every new language or framework that I then bring back to the core things that I'm working with. And I've continued to work with Rails basically throughout my career, but everything else that I'm doing has informed the way that I work with Rails and the way that I think about building code. As specific examples, functional programming is a really interesting frame of mind, and Elm as a language is such a wonderful, gentle, friendly, fun introduction to functional programming because functional programming can get very abstract very easily. I've also worked with Haskell and Scala and other languages like that, and I find them much more difficult to work with. But Elm has a set of constraints and a user-centric approach that is just absolutely wonderful. So even if you never plan to build a production Elm application, I recommend Elm to absolutely everyone. In terms of frameworks, depending on what you're using, maybe try and find the thing that's the exact opposite. If you're in the JavaScript space, I highly recommend Svelte. I think it's been very informative to me and altered a number of my opinions. A lot of those opinions were formed by React. And it's been interesting to observe my own thinking evolve in that space. But yeah, I think exploring, trying out, -- Have you ever used Lisp? Personally, I haven't, but that's one of the things that's on my list of that seems like it's got some different ideas in it. I wonder what I would learn from that. And so continually pushing on those edges and then bringing that back to the core work you're doing that's one of my favorite things. Another is… It's actually two-fold here. Teaching is one, and I don't mean that in the grand sense; you don't have to be an instructor at a bootcamp or anything like that but even just within your organization trying to host a lunch and learn and teach a concept. Without fail, you have to understand something all the better to be able to teach it. Or as you try and teach something, someone may ask you a question that just shakes the foundation of what you know, and you're like, wow, I hadn't thought about it that way. And so teaching for me has just been this absolutely incredible forcing function for understanding something and being able to communicate about it again, that being one of the core things that I'm thinking about. And then the other facet sort of a related idea is pairing, pair with another developer, pair with a developer who is more senior than you on the team, pair with someone who is more junior than you, pair with someone who's at the same level, pair with the designer, pair with the developer, pair with a product manager, pair with everyone. I cannot get enough pairing. Well, I can, actually. I read a blog post recently about 100% pairing, and I've never gotten anywhere close to that number. But I think a better way to put it is I think pairing applies in so many more contexts than people may traditionally think of it. People sometimes like to compartmentalize and like, pairing is great for big architecture design, but that's about it. And my stance would be pairing is actually great at everything. It is very high bandwidth. It is exhausting, but I have found immense value in every pairing session I've ever had. So, yeah, those are some loose thoughts off the top of my head. Do you have any how to get better protips? STEPH: Yeah, that's a wonderful list. And I'm not sure if this exactly applies because it's been a while since I have seen this talk, but there is a wonderful talk by Sandi Metz. I mean, all of her talks are wonderful, but this one is Go Ahead, Make a Mess. And I believe that Sandi refers to or highlights the idea of trying something new and then reflecting on how did it go? And that was one of the areas that I learned early on, one of the ways to help me progress quickly as a developer. Outside of the suggestions that you've already shared around lots of pairing that was one of the ways that I leveled up quickly is to iterate quickly. So I used to really focus on the code that I was writing, and I thought it needed to be perfect before my colleagues could review it. But then I realized that the sooner that I would push something out for feedback, then the faster I would get other more experienced developers' input, and then that helped me learn at an accelerated rate and then also ship more frequently. So I'd also encourage you to just go ahead and iterate quickly. We talk about with software in general, we want to iterate on the code that we are pushing up for other people to look at and then give us feedback on and then reflect on how did it go? What did we learn? What are some areas that we can improve? I feel like that self-evaluation is huge, and it's something that I know that I frankly don't do enough because one, it also prompts us to appreciate the progress that we have made but then also highlights areas where I feel strong in this area, but these are other areas that I want to work on. CHRIS: While we're on the topic of talks that have been impactful in our journeys of leveling up as developers, I want to quickly list three that just always come to mind for me: Avdi Grimm's Confident Code, Katrina Owen's Therapeutic Refactoring, and Ben Orenstein's Refactoring from Good to Great. There's a theme if you look across those three talks. They're all about refactoring, which is interesting. That tells you some stories about what I believe about how good software is made. It's not made; it's refactored. That's my official belief, but yeah. STEPH: Love it. That's also another great list. [laughs] For additional ways to level up, there are some very specific areas where it could be maybe do code katas or code exercises, or maybe you subscribe to certain newsletters, stay up to date with a language, new features that are being released. But outside of those very specific things, and if folks find this helpful, then maybe you and I can make a fun list, and then we could share that on Twitter as well. But I always go back to the idea of regardless of what level you're at in your career is to think about your specific goals, maybe if you are new to a team and you're new to software development, then maybe you just have very incremental goals of like, I want to learn how to write a test, or I want to learn how to get better at PR review or something very specific. But to have real growth, I think you have to first consider where it is that you want to go and then figure out a way to measure to get there. Circling back to some of the ways that I help my teammates measure that growth, that's one of the things that we talk about. If someone says, "Well, I want to get better at PR review," I'm like, "Great. What does that mean to you? Like, how do you get better at PR review? How can we actually measure this and make it something actionable versus just having this vague feeling of am I better?" I think I've ended up taking this a bit more broad as you were providing more specific examples on how to level up. But I like the examples that you've already provided around education and then trying something outside of your comfort zone. So what's coming to mind are more of those broad strategies of goal setting. CHRIS: I think generally, you need that combination. You need how do I set the measure? How do I think about improvement? And then also ideally a handful of tactics that you can try out. So hopefully, we provided a nice balanced summary here in this episode. And hopefully, Tom, if you're listening, you have gotten some useful things out of this conversation. STEPH: Yeah, this was fun. We managed to take this topic and make a whole episode out of this. So thanks, Tom, for sending in such a great topic. CHRIS: Frankly, when I saw the topic, I was certain this was going to happen. [chuckles] This was an obvious one that was going to fill up the time for us. But yeah, with that, I think we've probably covered plenty here. Should we wrap up? STEPH: I'm sure there's more, but sure, let's wrap up. CHRIS: The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. STEPH: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHRIS: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review in iTunes, as it really helps other folks find the show. STEPH: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us @_bikeshed or reach me @SViccari on Twitter. CHRIS: And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: Or hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. CHRIS: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. Both: Byeeeeeee. Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. Thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

Ideally, people who engage with you commercially will value what you have to say. In order to build a profile and a presence, it is extremely important to be engaging and connecting with your chosen industry and audience in order to gain traction and trust. On this episode of Killer Media Sales, Hosts Alex Whitlock and Russell Stephenson address the pitfalls of some salespeople who spend too much time in the shadows, and explore how you can take small steps in your day to day operations to engage your chosen audience, build awareness of your profile, and enhance your image. They also identify the risks of not engaging with stakeholders, the value of continued online presence, as well as looking at a few case studies within the Momentum Media team of people who have successfully made a name for themselves. Tune in to hear this and much much more on the Killer Media Sales Podcast.

Livestock guardian dogs is a natural follow-on to the previous podcast about coyotes. At that time, we weren’t really willing to make that step. However, after speaking with other sheep herders, we’ve decided it is time. This is a really big step for me. I truly still feel quite uncomfortable about my ability to properly care for a dog. I don’t really know what my block is in this regard, but I’m jumping in there and I’m going to move past it. I believe some of that revolves around the years that we could not have animals that require daily attention as we were only here on the weekends. It’s an old mindset that no longer applies. I’ve learned to care for lots of different animals. I can do livestock guardian dogs. I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. I appreciate you all so much. If you want to help us out with our mission to provide local, nutrient dense food and heal the earth, please share this podcast on your social media with those interested in following the sustainable homestead life. That’s the best way to help us grow. Now on to our stories. Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates Let’s start with some updates on the homestead. If you listened to the last podcast all about coyotes, you know that we have been having some predator issues and we lost a significant number of our sheep. We believe we have that under control for the moment. After lots of discussions and soul searching, we have decided to get a dog. After I give you the normal updates on all of our wonderful homestead livestock buddies, I’ll go into that topic in detail. But first, let’s get you caught up on what’s going on around here. Sheep As noted in the last podcast we lost over half of our sheep and lamb population. In fact, we lost all six of the lambs born this year. I let Scott talk me into having a fall crop of lambs. So, Lambert is back in with the girls. We shall see how that goes. We’ve never had lambs in the fall, though it is quite common. All of the sheep are now in the back pasture again. The cameras we put out night after night indicate that there are no longer any predators coming into the area. We will be getting a dog anyway. They will eventually return and we want to be prepared. Cows I’ve completed the registration process on all of our girls. We have three registered Jersey girls and five registered Normande girls. The breeding season is upon us. In mid-June we will start the artificial insemination process once again. There are still a few details that we haven’t worked out in that realm. Depending on the conversation we will have with the vet will determine whether we try using embryos. The implantation of an embryo enables you to pick all of the genetics of the calf. The mom simply carries the fertilized egg in embryonic form. I don’t know much about this yet. More to come on that. Calves The twin calves are back in the calf pasture and we’ve added Virginia to the mix. I don’t know if I talked about that last time. Virginia was sneaking in and stealing Cloud’s milk. Cloud is already supporting two calves. A third, especially a yearling, would be way more than she could support. She has a significant percentage of black angus genes and does not produce as prolifically as the other dairy cows. Butter could support three or four calves. She produces well over six gallons of milk per day. We are still eagerly anticipating the birth of our last calf via Violet. June 10th is just around the corner. I can’t wait. The late birth may eliminate her from being in the breeding rotation for next year. After birth, it is a minimum of six weeks before she can be bred again. And that would put her insemination at the end of July and the subsequent birth date would be late April. I think we may give AI one try, perhaps two. A second attempt would have her delivering in mid-May. That is pushing it. But it just might work to get her back in sync with the other cows. Ideally, they all need to give birth from mid-March to mid-April. This is all so much more complicated than I ever imaged. The cheesemaking process demands that you have lots of milk. And to have lots of milk, the cows need to give birth at the same time. Without that piece, you can have many weeks of small amounts of milk in the spring. If they all give birth within three weeks, that’s ideal. The Garden The weather has delayed us in planting the garden. I’m finally ready to get the beans in the ground. It was only a few days ago that the temperatures were back down into the 30’s at night. The soil needs to be consistently warm for summer plants to grow. I think we are finally there. Look for more news on that in the future. The strawberries are doing well. I went out there an checked on them this morning. There is one strawberry starting to turn red. And there are thousands of others that are white. It’s so exciting to see so many berries out there. Do you love strawberry jam? We sure do. The blueberries are finished blooming and the blackberries have just started. All over the place are lots and lots of white blossoms. The wild blackberries and wild rose are in full bloom. If you live in the area, I’m sure you’ve noticed the clouds of white flowers everywhere. If you are brave and want to pick wild blackberries later in the summer, take note of where those flowers are blooming. Growing up in NW Georgia, we would suit up every 4th of July holiday weekend and go blackberry picking. You had to have long sleeves and no shorts because of the thorns. And in Georgia, it was best to have some way to keep the chiggers off of you. Chiggers are also known as red bugs. And they are a pain. Are you familiar with them? Unless you live in the south, probably not. Chiggers or Red Bugs They are arachnids. The red-colored larvae are so small – only 1/120 to 1/150 of an inch – that you cannot see them with the naked eye. They hang out in tall grass, weed patches, and underneath trees. Any brushy or thicket – such as blackberry bushes can house them. I grew up with the popular belief that they burrow into your skin. Not true. They attach to your skin. They like tight places like in your armpits, around your waistband, etc. If they are not removed, chiggers will remain on your skin for about four days. How do you keep them off? We took several steps when getting ready to go blackberry picking. As I said, long sleeves and pants. We also treated our clothing with insect repellent. We did use those that have DEET – and they are safe enough if you only put it on your clothes and not on your skin. And today there are DEET-free alternatives. Wear boots and tuck the pant legs into them. Then pull your socks up over the pants leg. Double protection there. But it is needed in that area as walking through the brush and bushes is a significant hazard to picking up these little guys. Once you return home, get in the shower immediately and use lots of soap while they are still wandering around. Launder the clothes in hot water. That’s a little side note not at all related to livestock guardian dogs. Let’s get on to that topic. Livestock Guardian Dogs There are many breeds of livestock guardian dogs and they have been used by shepherds and farmers for centuries. They are bred and trained to instinctively protect their herd from predators. The breeds can be crossbred with other livestock guardian dogs, but crossbreeding with any other breed ruins the innate ability to be a great livestock guardian dog. I can’t stress this enough. This topic comes up over and over again when I am looking on Facebook. People ask about this all the time. And the answer is always the same. Your German shepherd is not a good LGD. Great Dane and Dobermans do not make good livestock guardian dogs, and on and on. You can’t breed a livestock herding dog with a livestock guardian dog and get a good outcome. You ruin both sides of that equation. Herding dogs have wonderful instincts but they are completely different than the instincts of a guardian dog. Breeds We are looking at several different breeds. The Great Pyrenees is probably the most well-known livestock guardian dog. They are quite popular in the US. Other breeds we are considering are the Akbash and Maremma. The Great Pyrenees originates from the Pyrenees mountains of Spain and France. The Akbash is originally from Turkey. And the Maremma is native to Italy. There are more than a dozen different breeds from various parts of the world. The thing they have in common is their breeding for livestock guardian instincts. Some are better in one or another area. It depends on what you are looking for in your particular situation. What Makes a Good Livestock Guardian Dog? They need to be large and strong. Typically, they are very comfortable living outdoors, though they should still have a dog house or some other kind of shelter. Developing a strong bond with livestock is essential. We are looking for a peaceful demeanor unless a predator comes around. They we want them to move into action quickly. These dogs like to mark their territory. Most of them are very vocal and can bark a lot. You want that. One of the vendors near me at the market says that she can tell when new lambs have been born by the sound of the bark. The dog will be right there with the lambs, waiting for her to come and see to the new lambs. These dogs love to work, and truly need a job to stay occupied. I know a lot of people want to have them as pets, but they can really be a handful if kept couped up in an apartment. Even a nice sized house and yard can be problematic. They need acres and acres to roam and patrol in order to be happy. They need animals to protect to be truly happy. Other Breeds Some other breeds you may have heard of include: Anatolian shepherd, a Turkish breed; the shaggy Komondor from Hungary is sometimes referred to as the mop dog. You’ll know one when you see it; there is the Tibetan mastiff, an ancient breed used by the nomadic tribes of Nepal and Mongolia; The Karakachan is known for acute senses and a strong bond with the flock. There are just so many. How to choose? These guys actually become part of the herd. They are always with the livestock, integrating into the workings of the homestead. Some routinely check the perimeters of the property, others like to keep watch from a high vantage point. They are not going to run off after bunnies and other small animals. They will stick close to the flock. Even after chasing off a predator, they will quickly return to their animal charges.   What Do We Need in a LGD? There are quite a few things that we have thought about so far and likely more to come. We are looking for an adult dog that already has some experience with livestock. After getting one adult acclimated to the homestead, we will likely add another that is in the puppy stage. We want to understand all the ins and outs of training as well. So, the first one needs to already know what it’s doing because we sure don’t. After the flock is protected, we can move into learning how to train one from start to finish. These dogs mostly live 12 to 15 years or so. We will likely need quite a few over our lifetime. They are big dogs and that is a little intimidating for me. Even while still in the puppy stages, under two years old, they will be very large dogs. These are intelligent and headstrong breeds. We have the land and livestock to keep them busy – and they need that to keep them out of mischief. If they get bored, unwanted things can happen. In a household, chewing up things is not uncommon. Again, I don’t think we will have too much difficulty with that, but you just never know how rambunctious your animal might be. Puppies vs Adults Puppies simply cannot be left on their own. They need time to mature. The teen stage can be particularly horrible for most. They are just so big but they are still puppies at heart. A dog under two years of age can easily severely hurt of even kill the very livestock they are meant to protect. Again, we are going for an adult dog in the beginning. It is much easier for a puppy to learn if it has an adult mentor. They absolutely need proper socialization training. Without it, they can potentially be very dangerous. Their sheer size and strength mean that they can cause serious injuries to people or other animals. They can inadvertently injure small people or children during what is considered quite routine play for them. Many breeds, even as adults, have difficulty with protecting birds – chickens, ducks, turkeys and so on – as they like to chase them as many have inbred instincts to kill them. We will be looking for which breeds can be trained well in this area as we intend to have chickens soon. Caring for a LGD The next thing I want to talk about is caring for them. This is my greatest area of insecurity. Almost all of these dogs are long-haired and need to be groomed at the very least every month. What do you think it will be like bathing a dog this big? Better get one that enjoys it. It would be impossible to handle a one-hundred-pound dog that didn’t like having a bath. I’ve look at some of the breeds that don’t have as thick of a coat. But they need the thick, long coats to help protect them from predators and the elements. Some even have mane-like fur to protect their neck and shoulder region from the teeth of predators. It requires more effort from us, but in the end is worth the investment. There are a few things out there in the interwebs that I have found to be myths. I think the worst one is that you can’t be friends with your dog. Making friends with a livestock guardian dog does not mean he won’t do his job. These are not house dogs and they have no such desire. They do however, love treats as much as any other dog. I mentioned earlier about cross-breeding with herding dogs. Even worse is the idea that a herding dog can be a good livestock guardian god. Nothing could be further from the truth. Herding dogs have a completely different function. They are small and can easily be overwhelmed by large predators. Their job is to chase animals, although in a controlled way. Inevitably, they will tend to kill animals when bred with LGDs. Not a good thing. How They Think These dogs will bark at people that visit but will not bite. Their instincts are to attack only if there is a threat. Again, the difference between an LGD and say a Doberman. That Doberman may attack without provocations. Not so with the LGD. If a stray dog comes around, they put on a great show but will not harm the dog unless an actual threat is perceived. If there is no threat, they leave the dog alone, perhaps escorting them off the property. The same with humans. Most livestock guardian dogs learn to enjoy killing wild predators and may even hunt them. They know the difference between a domestic dog and a wild animal. Final Thoughts I’m so glad that we have peace on the homestead again. For the time being, all is well with the animals. The garden is moving along slowly but steadily. That means more time outside in the sunshine. It’s good for the soul. Yeah, get that vitamin D. The perfect livestock guardian dog will be found and our animals will be protected. We will progress through yet another learning curve in caring for animals on the homestead. It’s all a cycle. One after another, after another. It’s a beautiful thing. And yes, I’m still intimidated. But I will get over it. I’m going to love having a dog. And it will be the best dog on the planet receiving the best care available from our loving hearts. If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts or whatever podcasting service you use, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. If you like this content and want to help out the show, the absolute best way you can do that is to share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content. Let them know about the Peaceful Heart Farmcast. Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace. To learn about herd shares: Visit our website Herd Share page To share your thoughts: Leave a comment on our Facebook Page Share this show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram To help the show: PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW for Peaceful Heart FarmCast on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music, TuneIn or Spotify Donate on Patreon Website www.peacefulheartfarm.com Patreon www.patreon.com/peacefulheartfarm Facebook www.facebook.com/peacefulheartfarm Instagram www.instagram.com/peacefulheartfarm Locals Peacefulheartfarm.locals.com

Summary: In today’s episode, we debate the difference between online privacy and online anonymity. It seems we may have the 2 confused in today’s culture. Where does privacy end and anonymity begin? And how does all of it affect us as advertisers? We discuss the difference between privacy and anonymity, the “Big Brother” fear that drives us to desire these things, and how maybe the lack of anonymity is a good thing.   Top 2 Curtain Pulls in this episode:    Understand the difference between Data Security and Privacy We often say one but mean the other, and in reality what most Americans are fearful of is the security of their data. Stories of stolen identities are pervasive these days, driving many to desire anonymity online and in real life. Privacy does not mean anonymity, and what we need to have is an awareness of the overreach that is innately linked to all those “Terms & Conditions” contracts that we never read.  There is no “Golden Rule” of Privacy online. There is no objective Privacy Truth. So it’s up to us to learn from our history, to maintain that balance of power and ensure that it does not go unchecked. We need to be protected in a reasonable way, to have a strong awareness of what data we’re giving up and when. It’s up to us to decide how privacy plays a role in our lives online.    For more tips, discussion, and behind the scenes: Follow us on Instagram @AgencyPodcast Join our closed Facebook community for agency leaders About The Guys:  Bob Hutchins: Founder of BuzzPlant, a digital agency that he ran from from 2000-2017. He is also the author of 3 books. More on Bob:  Bob on LinkedIn twitter.com/BobHutchins instagram.com/bwhutchins Bob on Facebook Brad Ayres: Founder of Anthem Republic, an award-winning ad agency. Brad’s knowledge has led some of the biggest brands in the world. Originally from Detroit, Brad is an OG in the ad agency world and has the wisdom and scars to prove it. Currently that knowledge is being applied to his boutique agency. More on Brad: Brad on LinkedIn Anthem Republic twitter.com/bradayres instagram.com/therealbradayres facebook.com/Bradayres Ken Ott: Co-Founder and Chief Growth Rebel of Metacake, an Ecommerce Growth Team for some of the world’s most influential brands with a mission to Grow Brands That Matter. Ken is also an author, speaker, and was nominated for an Emmy for his acting on the Metacake Youtube Channel (not really). More on Ken:  Ken on LinkedIn Metacake - An Ecommerce Growth Team Growth Rebel TV twitter.com/iamKenOtt instagram.com/iamKenOtt facebook.com/iamKenOtt   Show Notes: [2:08] Bob introduces today’s episode by catching us up on some recent news. There’s a lot of buzz on the internet about privacy, with names like Facebook, Google, and Apple duking it out over privacy rights. There are those in the government that are sick of the games, and there is a lot of validity to that frustration. As individuals we have a lot of information about ourselves online, and we don’t know where that information begins and ends. Most people are trying to fight for anonymity- which is near impossible on the internet.  [3:59] Bob states his opinion regarding this argument. “If we’re going to engage and function with other human beings, online or offline… if I go out in public and I do these things (go to the grocery store, etc) then I give up certain rights and freedoms to enjoy that luxury and that benefit that I get.”  [5:18] Brad asks “Do you think more Americans have this philosophically deep charge that the government, the world doesn’t need to know who I am?” He tells us about a client in Romania, where they are more used to their privacy being infringed upon by the government in their daily lives. They are not as concerned about who has their data and what’s being done with it, because they already assume ALL of their information is out there and out of their control.  China recently launched a new digital currency that will allow them to know every single charge of every person in their country.  [7:17] Bob challenges anyone who might say “Wow China is awful for doing that,” saying that here in the US we basically do the same thing every time we swipe a credit card, it’s just not a centralized source of information.  [7:47] Bob helps us define privacy, for the sake of clarity in today’s discussion. There is a difference between data security and privacy, in that the overreach isn’t innately a bad thing but not having an awareness of that overreach is the problem. His definition basically says “Don’t bother me, leave me alone. Don’t invade my space.”  [9:45] Bob continues, saying that consumers must have an awareness of what they’re signing up for when agreeing to terms and conditions. It’s really no different than entering into a mutual agreement with a grocery store. You walk in, get what you need, pay with cash or a digital payment method, and in exchange the grocery store keeps a record of your receipt and what you purchased for their own inventory and stock purposes. Downloading an app or singing up for a “free” service online isn’t ever really free.  [12:35] Ken says that some people view privacy as essentially wanting to be invisible. But that’s not how things work in this physical reality- we’re all human beings and we can’t be invisible. In fact, if any of us could potentially walk down the street with invisibility there is a lot we could get away with and a lot of trouble we could create. Having a physical identity in this world keeps us all in check, and that goes a lot deeper than just a government ID.  [13:39] Ken continues, “My point is, on the internet- that kind of happened right? We have the ability to be invisible, we can bully people, we conceal stuff…” So in a lot of ways, complete privacy and anonymity are actually really unhealthy.  [14:59] Bob tells us about a psychological term called the online disinhibition effect that means when we go online we become a different person, which helps to further disengage us from the ramifications of what we are saying and doing online. [16:10] Brad asks “Do you think that this privacy is different for different generations?” For example, would younger generations have a different grasp on internet privacy and not mind as much overreach, where older generations don’t think about the ramifications of posting on your vacation and letting the world know that your house is empty.  [19:45] Bob “I think online privacy means you don’t want someone hacking into your account and taking your stuff. In other words, it’s the opposite of being left alone.”  [20:48] Brad talks about privacy from a uniquely American perspective. There is a greater and deeper fear for a lot of people in the US that there is a larger government body at work that is looking to centralize everything, that this underground organization is looking to strip us of our God-given rights to freedom.  [23:24] Brad continues, asking if this is what we’re seeing the beginnings of in China with the move to a centralized digital currency.  [24:03] Bob talks about the “Us vs Them” mentality that is pervasive in the US, saying that often we consider ourselves the heroes and paint ourselves in the best light possible. He talks of another perspective, saying that sometimes it may be true that the government really has our best interests at heart. Some people who think this way are okay with their information being out there, because everyone else’s is too.  [27:44] Bob “We have to be careful when we say we want privacy online when we really mean complete anonymity, which ultimately leads to an environment that I would argue is not healthy at all. I don’t want to engage with people that I don’t know who they are, where they are, what kind of people they are.”  [28:45] Brad talks about the last 10 years of data collection that has taken place, only to have it suddenly stripped away and giving us even less information about who we’re marketing to.  [29:14] Bob talks about human’s eagerness to believe that there is something behind the curtain pulling the strings, and how we are continually drawn to a worldview that supports that deep feeling. We live with an open- eyed awareness of the threats to us, evolution has served us all well. This awareness can be a strength but also can be very unhealthy.  [30:13] Brad asks Bob about his ideal world of privacy “Ideally, what would you give and take? And what would that look like? How would you be able to control your own privacy so that you can give away as much as you want?”  [30:48] Bob keeps it simple, saying “I opt toward common sense. Anything that you wouldn’t do in the real world, don’t do online.” He gives some basic advice for maintaining privacy in the real (non-online) world. Shred bank statements, don’t send your financial information via email, use your common sense and think about how you’d handle the same information in a digital format.  [32:50] Brad talks about Apple’s efforts at maintaining privacy for their users with double encrypted messaging applications and the ability to use a uniquely created email instead of your personal email address.  [33:50] Brad wonders what Facebook plans to do as laws and regulations around privacy change- when so much of their revenue comes directly from advertising and then the ability to advertise as well is diminished, where are they going to turn next? Brad has heard of Facebook’s intentions to move into the podcast space, which is a healthy diversification strategy for the times.  [34:58] Bob encourages anyone who does believe that “Big Brother” is out to get them to ask themselves “Who is benefiting from me believing that?” If you can truly be honest with yourself and see that there is likely someone else who is pushing that narrative and benefiting from it.  [36:08] Ken talks about the concept of complete anonymity, saying that ultimately there is no “Golden Rule” when it comes to internet privacy- there is no objective Privacy Truth. So it’s up to us to learn from our history, to maintain that balance of power and ensure that it does not go unchecked. We need to be protected in a reasonable way, and be aware of what we’re giving up and when we are giving it up. 

Brandon Handley 0:00 All right, and welcome back. Welcome back to we are on Sreekumar. Rouse, are you ready to succeed, unconventional strategies for achieving personal mastery in business and life. Last we left off, we're in chapter eight, you always act in your self interest. And we finished up we did a little bit of the dropper camera exercise. And we got ourselves, I told you, there's a couple pieces in here that I think are really exciting, really cool, really cool concepts to think about. And that is the idea that the universe is a force multiplier. So if you're not familiar with what a force multiplier is, in military parlance, a force multiplier is something that greatly enhances the effectiveness of any weapon or military tactic. Bombs are effective, absolutely. precision guided bombs are more effective, really sure are. precision guided bombs that are led to their exact destination by a spotter on the ground with a laser targeting device are order of magnitude more effective. The ground spotter is a force multiplier, and because of him, that's, you know, infinitely more powerful, right? So the idea that we're gonna look at today is kind of the idea of new apply how you can how you can apply this, this force multiplier for your own benefit. We've seen it earlier happen that to the degree when we went through the gratitude practice, or PTO, maybe you didn't listen to the other ones, and you've already got a gratitude practice, then you've seen through that gratitude practice that there are going to be more things showing up for you in your life that are, Unknown Speaker 1:56 you're just more grateful for. Brandon Handley 1:59 The thing is that this happens both ways. This happens with your negativity, as well. And this can happen most often we see this in maybe the workplace, he refers to going through kind of talking about an I hate my job area, and you know, just listen, we all we all, you know, kind of hate our jobs and, or for some reason or another. But then the idea is, you know, basically what you're doing is you're sending these signals out to the universe, to give you more of kind of what you're asking for the idea of the universe being a force multiplier, always take a look at it in the way that the tourist field, right, this kind of, you know, energy that surrounds you that comes in and out and in and out. And now, we'll deal as it comes out of a core, right comes out of us kind of a core, you're sending it out and it goes out it gets bigger and bigger than it slips right back in and just really does the job real real well. And, you know, just just gets right back to you. The idea again, of the what you send out to universe returns. Another person that comes to mind as I think about this is neville goddard, if you haven't checked out neville goddard, lots of great content. old, old school mystic, well, you know, from the 1900s, or the 2000s, whatever, how are you? How have you worked that stuff out, but he's got a really good lecture called sow seeds of success, I've just recommend that you check that out. The idea, again, is that you're going to be sowing seeds of success in your mind versus these seeds of negativity. So see yourself being successful, see what you're doing as successful. And eventually, they're, you know, that breeds success. So how to treat your job and make your job fuel a little bit more rejuvenating. Essentially, if I recall correctly, the idea is, you're gonna go through your day. And you're going to look at doing things in a way where you catch the moments that you're grateful for, maybe you got some cool people that you really like working with, maybe you got a place where you can grab some coffee, maybe there's a water cooler, I don't know, maybe the bathroom is clean. Maybe maybe the heat, it's warmer, when you go into work that is at your house, or vice versa. During the summer, it's cooler during the summer and just right for yourself. So the idea to, again, focus on what's right in your in your place of work. And just do it as often as you can. The other idea, too, that he mentions in here is that there's a vast web of connections, right with customers, vendors, communities, the public, the government, that you're a small part of right, everything that you do at your job really kind of goes out into the world anyways, regardless of how you do it. You know, it's going to kind of go out They're beyond you anyways. And most of the times we get caught up thinking about how it's, you know, you are just caught in this trap. And woe is me. And we talked about the me centered universe earlier. Well, now you're looking at this and I use, you know, how do you how do you make whatever it is that you're doing, beneficial for the rest of the world. Unknown Speaker 5:24 And Brandon Handley 5:26 one of the ways that I was able to do that in a previous job was to, you know, I got all pissy right. Before the book, I was like, Oh, I do is hit keyboards and click clack, click clack, I do is press buttons. And I was like, No, I mean, that's not what I do. What I do is at that point in time, I was selling hardware to internet companies that were providing the internet. And I was like, what I'm really doing is, I'm really helping to build the internet out there, making sure that like, everybody's got faster, better internet. And then we can do things like I'm doing right now share out videos, watch these videos communicate with each other from afar. So once I changed my perspective on what it was that I was doing, I was able to do with more ease, it was definitely easier for me to do my job. And I did it with a little bit more joy. He says the cathedral story, which I think is one that a lot of people are familiar with. And it's basically the idea of there's, you know, an architect walking or walking along a dusty road. And he comes up to three guys who are building out a cathedral talks to the first guy, first guys like, Hey, can you see what I'm doing here, I'm breaking rocks, because I do it, I do it to get paid, right? That's just my job is why I get paid to do. The second guy goes, I'll make the small stones that will go into the wall of the building. So I do it so I can feed my family, right, it's a little bit more purpose and a little bit more vision of what he sees himself doing there. The third guy goes, I'm hoping to construct this wonders Cathedral you see before you, when it's finished, people come from many countries to gaze upon its Marvels. So that guy sees the entirety of what it is that he's a part of. The architect comes back a few years later, and he's looking for each one of these guys, the first guy that was just crushing stones, he, he kind of passed off, I know he grew up, had a little family just kind of passed off away. And then the second guy, he he was able to find him and he was able to do you know he was doing, he was doing work. And he was living in modest comfort. And maybe he wasn't like super imaginative, but he was still known, well liked. And then the third guy, well, the third guy, he he was, he was famous and everybody knew who he was because you know, he just did everything he did with that kind of gusto. So the the gist of it is don't break, don't break, the rocks are going to all be a part of the team that builds a cathedral. And when you think about it, no matter what it is that you're doing, you're part of something much larger than yourself. And if you can find the purpose, but a purpose within what it is that you do, and how it gets out into the world that makes it all that much better. He also has an awesome line recorder has this great line in here that even the water bear in a caravan contributes to its success. And when you think about it, it's just like it's it gets so frustrating. And there's certain times when you're in a role. And you don't feel like you're playing the role to the best of its abilities, but you're still a part of the team, right? No matter who you are, what you're doing is part of the team makes it function as a whole. As the team that wins. It's never a single individual who makes it all happens. So no matter what you think about even the water bear in the caravan contributes to success. So always think about that one. So what can you do the kind of helps you, you know, bring a little more vitality and enjoyment into the role that you're doing. One of the one of the things that he recommends osric more recommends is that you learn a new skill in the part of the job that you enjoy. So I don't know, for me, part of what I have been able to do in previous positions, even though it wasn't my exact role was programming, and being able to code something. So you know, I spent about a month like learning different types of code and automation. So learning a new skill in the part of the job that you enjoy for a month at a time he recommends the other you know, do other things you so if you do that for a year, you know it's going to kind of pass by pretty quick and you're going to be kind of more in demand for exactly what it is that you're what you're interested in what's up but you go through these exercises where you know you find a new skill and you want to do that it's something that you enjoy and you just start learning a couple great places that you can do that are at Udemy place I love is Coursera I've taken plenty of courses there that are just fantastic. You know, everything from there's happiness studies International, the International Business School like India, learning how to learn parental studies, business, finance, psychology, whatever you're looking for you, there's a good chance you can find it, there are other ones I've taken over, there are sales, there's a great sales course over there. So anything that you're looking to do to improve in yourself, that's a great resource, Coursera Udemy, Khan Academy, as so many different places that you can go to. So it says here, let's see what else, you know, essentially, you'll have an increased job satisfaction. He says, for about two reasons. One, you've acted in your self interest. But you've also expanded your understanding of self interest. And what you're really doing is using the law of increase and knowledge of the universe's force multiplier, to your advantage, right. It's pretty awesome how it all works out, and you can definitely kind of find yourself in enjoying your job and your life a little bit more. So do this, do this. And you know, at the beginning, you might feel like you're acting out a play, and it's not you, you might feel a little alien. And, you know, listen, the whole act as if thing and the best way I like to think about it is, you know, who's the future you that you, you see, that you're trying to resonate with, you know, viewer to project an image of who you want to be to the future. And you see that, you just close that gap resonate with that and start being that person today. You don't have to wait to be that person at a later date, you can do it anytime that you decide you're willing to just start that. You know, Tim, was it. So he says to like, you know, kind of do it like it's a method acting right? First, you may feel out of sorts, overtime, you will absolutely sink into your role. Think method acting. And the deal is just don't break character. If you're not familiar with method, actors just deal they, they just practice being that character for such a long period of time. So the other one, I think, is really a sneaky, clever one that he puts into, are you ready to succeed in chapter eight is this new take on networking, basically, you know, just to talk about the the idea that traditional networking is filthy, we go to these networking events are either to your, Hey, I know somebody that's going to be there that can do something for me, hey, there's going to be somebody there that I need to make a connection for me over to this person or that person. And to be honest with you, that gets like it's super exhausting, gets super tiring. And in the end, you don't you don't feel like your best, right, you can go you can go to some of these events. And do this, I've done it. And I've just come out of there just feeling tired and exhausted. And as if like I didn't, I wasn't nothing has dried, there wasn't a benefit to what I did not to myself were the people that that I was, quote unquote, trying to network with. The idea though, is to exercise and the idea is to pick five people that you'd like to cultivate, or they can be anywhere they can be people you already know. They can be friends or relatives, business acquaintances are fellow hobbyists. And really, you want to figure out like, what is it about that person that resonates within you, kind of jot that down. And then you know, let them know how they've impacted you and your life and shoot them a note, be 100% sincere right from your heart. And if it's not, if it's not from the heart, it's really not going to work out. Ideally, you're going to find a specific way that what it is that you do or have the capability to do, can benefit them and offer some of that to them. One of these that he recommends is that you learn through a company newsletter that an executive in another department is trying to organize a group to adopt an inner city basketball team, offer to join him and also to recruit others. So what can you do that just really helps somebody along their journey. So you can reach out to them any way you want. emails, super easy, Facebook, Instagram, anywhere, anywhere, anywhere, you can connect with these people and you truly you know, are looking to make an effort to help others. That's gonna make all the difference in the world. And when you when you do this, when you go through these exercises, when when when you when you act from this place of sincerity when you go to help these people in a truly genuine way. You're going to actually end the day, feeling energized lead this process of going to help others in a way that is, you know the benefit to it, but that's not really why you're doing it yourself. Somebody else grow or flourish are participating and helping that happen. And that's generally just going to, it's going to make you feel good, right, it's going to make you feel good. And at the end of the day, you can end up being actually more excited and more filled with energy than, than any other time you go to a networking event, the traditional way, and just kind of burn yourself out. And the idea is, you're not really trying to form any specific network, right, this network is he talks about goes this, you know, if you're trying to form a network, it's going to require much effort and gameplay, right, that's what I was talking about filthy hands, it's kind of like, your network will form with little conscious thoughts devoted to it, and it will be exceedingly strong. And I can tell you, from firsthand, going through this exercise, it leaves them at least in part and doing doing some of this stuff where you reach out and you sincerely help others with without any expectation of return. I think that's key, right, your your or without any expectation of them, you know, how they receive whatever it is that you're delivering. So first of all, you get to feel like really good to do what you're doing, because for some reason, it just feels good, you're doing the right things for the right reasons. And then, you know, if, if isn't received in the way that you'd you would hope that it was received. That's okay. Like, it's really okay. You know, don't don't sweat it, just know that you did the right things for the right reasons. And Unknown Speaker 16:37 be cool with it. Brandon Handley 16:39 And I can tell you, again, from personal experience It Like It, it, it's awesome, right, you're gonna get you're gonna get something in return. And it doesn't even necessarily have to be from that person. Or any anything that you're directly involved with, it could come from any other different space. And, and you'll, you'll again, feel I want to say powerful, but like really just feeling that you're, you're alive, right? You're doing something that that's, that's a way to not necessarily it is it, I guess we look at us making a living, right, you're making a living in that way. So I'll leave you with this. The idea is a virtuous circle beats a vicious cycle any day. And that's a great line out of that. And that new take on networking would be again, a virtuous circle beats a vicious cycle any day, get rid of the traditional networking, and try to incorporate this sincere network building where you can go find people that you're excited to be around, find people that you really want to help out, and help them be successful. For the reasons that are to just simply see them be successful, what can you do to help them out. So that's gonna do it. We finished up chapter eight on this one, and we've only got one more chapter to go and I'm looking forward to finishing that up with you. I certainly finished it up myself. I'll go through with the notes together. But it just really enjoyed you guys hanging out with me going through this journey. And looking forward to sharing. Like I said, chapter nine and once this course starts with Sreekumar, sharing kind of what I've learned through there. Alright, take it easy. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

This one was a battle! The audio on the intro was messed up, so I clipped it out to spare you... that being said, enjoy! Brandon Handley 0:00 Let's hop into it. Let's hop into it. Part Two, the first part here talking about the chapter eight, you always act in your self interest. Everyone does, right. So the opening talks a little bit about how you essentially carry a lot of guilt and blame, you know, everywhere that you go out, and he talks, he lists a number of different ways that you do this. And, you know, a couple of different ways that you'll do this would be, you know, kind of beating yourself up for bingeing a Netflix series that, you know, you shouldn't have bins, or maybe, you know, you've gone off off of that diet that you've been working on, or maybe there was a was an important interview, that didn't work out quite the way that it was. And then there's another one. So you blame yourself for all those things. And then, then there's the other piece of blame, right, where you blame your parents for kind of who you are and where you are today. And things like that, or your spouse's significant others, and other people who may have ruined your lives, right? Children, relatives, co workers, it's all their fault. They just talks about the idea that these are really terrible burdens to carry. And I love the idea that he talks about when you're carrying those that you're not free to pick up some of the better things in life and keep it short. You know, the good news is really, you can let go of these things. And we're going to walk through a little bit of how that gets done. So we start off with the idea of laws of nature, and the idea that they are fixed, and immutable. Right. So gravity is an example of a law of nature. And the idea of it is that you really don't blame gravity when something happens. And the story that he tells in this book is the idea that you've gone out and you've got this magnificent camera, you're out there taking pictures, next thing, you know, you turn around, and you drop the camera, right? you're you're you're you're going to be upset first show what show you're going to be like, man, maybe I should have gotten that. Maybe I should have gotten that insurance, I but the thing is, you're not going to be pissed at our gravity for doing what is just done, right? Ideally, you're gonna you're gonna work to shape your life around gravity and kind of what happens in it. And, you know, so how does that look, you know, that looks like you've got a, you've got a strap right? around that super expensive camera, it's around your neck. So you know, you do you at your house, your ceiling has a certain pitch, so that the water, the snow goes off in a certain direction, you know, at the park of a car, can we park in the car at the top of the hill, use the emergency brake, and you've got the parking brake, all these all these are examples of ways that you shape your life around this natural law of gravity, talks about the idea that there is another natural law. And that is the law of self interest. And once you learn a little bit about what this law of self interest is, you will cease blaming others and you will cease flaming your self, quite exciting to know that there's a way to release these things that you've kind of been putting out there on everybody, including yourself. So what is the law of self interest, the law of self interest is, drumroll please, everybody, at all times, always acts in his or her perceived self interest. All right? Again, everybody, at all times, always acts in his or her perceived self interest. Now, you may disagree a little bit, you may list out all the different things that you do for everybody else. That the Justice though is if you look at it directly, you're going to realize that what you do is because you you got like this schematic, you've got a blueprint, you've got the certain way that you believe that you need to be one of those ideas is being a parent and creating that lunch for your child in the morning. And you know, I've certainly done this, but you know, the the outside, you know, we see, well, you know, I'm doing it because I want to have a healthier lunch I want to I want X, Y and Z to happen. But the truth of the matter is, is that I'm doing it because I have this certain way that I feel like I am and in order for me to fit within this. This paradigm. Then I've got it I've got to do I've got to make this lunch and I'm doing it and really almost as much as my self interest is anything else. You know, another place that another place that you'll see this is, you know, maybe there's a hard luck story going on maybe, maybe there's a hurricane or there's a relief fund. And hey, you know what you go when you donate to that, because it makes you feel good, makes you feel good to give. And it's because it's because you've got yourself and this certain category of the idea that you're a compassionate person. And in order to act within that schema, within that certain degree, you've got to donate otherwise, I mean, you're not that person that you feel like you are, right. So again, you are working within your own self interest, even if you are out there giving to others, right, you're giving to others, because that's what you feel complete who you are, that, you know, that makes you feel like you're a good or better person. And, you know, it's really not a secret that the idea of philanthropy is to cater to the egos of the wealthy, by demonstrating that they can make a difference. Right? Truthfully, you're still acting in your own perceived self interest. And once you once you realize this, it can become, he says, a wonderful, and liberating, even if it doesn't seem that way first, because at first, you're still kind of you're walking, you're walking through your own. You're kind of walking through your own minutiae, as it were, was that is that right? I don't know, I don't know if that's exactly the right way to say it, is the idea. So if you act like this, if you're acting like this, in your own best perceived self interest, and everybody's doing it, you, you can kind of stop feeling guilty about it for yourself, and then you can also start to see it in the, in the, in the through through that lens, realize that, yes, that person may be doing it in their self interest, but everybody does. So you can kind of stop beating them up for it, right? Like, you know, blaming, you know, your parents for doing what they've done. And, again, a lot of times, as a parent, I can tell you, like, I don't want my children to do X, Y, or Z. Because sometimes that's almost a reflection on me. And, or B because, you know, I'm raising them to be a certain way. And, you know, if they, if they don't, you know, kind of do that, then do I withhold something from them, right. And then so later in life, they're gonna blame me for, you know, for example, my youngest son wants me to take take them to do like, axon is like, nine. I was like, well, maybe maybe not. Right, but, you know, come to a point later in life where he's like, you know, I could have been an amazing actor or something, my father, but he'll have to understand that I was just looking out for his, you know, kind of all the self interest, right? So in terms of when it when it comes time to blame your parents for anything, they're really just out there doing even though it's their best interests, are they looking out for you, too, anyways, you know, gets convoluted, I guess, if if you if you kind of walk it all out with the the the general ideas like everybody is acting in that same way, right. So if your parents were doing it, back, then it just let it go. You're doing it now, I promise you, you got a little sloppy in there. But I hope you followed the gist. The idea really is, again, everybody's doing it, you're not the only one, don't beat yourself up for yourself, if you do it, and don't be somebody else up for doing it. Right? Just kind of understand that, you know, they're they're working it out Unknown Speaker 8:47 in their own way. Brandon Handley 8:49 So it talks about the exercise of kind of dropping the camera. And the idea is, you know, take a take a moment and think about three things you regret having done what should have and why didn't eyes, think of how when you did them, you were acting your proceed best interests. And today, with greater maturity, you may see clearly what you did not then that that you thought was in your best interest, but really wasn't just kind of goes to the idea of my Angelou line, you know, do do your best, do your best until you know better really is kind of what it boils down to. So we'll pause here on chapter eight, you always act in your self interest everyone does. And I will come back to it and we'll finish it up. We've got two more sections on it that I think are probably a couple of my favorite two. When I when I first saw them and even even when I first saw the residual continuous impact of them. By my fourth time of reading this book has been in itself a force multiplier. So we're going to the universe is a force multiplier. And we're also going to do a new take on networking. Come on back Chapter Eight. Get that right back on boy. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The first human use of the wind to power boats most likely occurred in about 3,000 BC. This was a major improvement in travel over walking and animal drawn carts. Three or four hundred years from now humans may send a robotic space probe to a nearby star using a light sail as big as the state of Texas. Ideally it would deploy its giant solar sail near the Sun perhaps as close to it as the planet Mercury. This would give it maximum initial thrust. After it gets far from the Sun it could be pushed along by a powerful pinpoint laser beam. Theoretically it is possible to achieve a fraction of the speed of light through this means.

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph share a speedy step to restart your rails server and chat about accessibility improvements and favorite a11y tools. They also dive into a tale of database switching and delight in a new Rails query method that returns orphaned records. Restart Rails server via tmp/restart.txt (https://twitter.com/christoomey/status/1387799863929212931?s=20) WebAIM: Constrast Checker (https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/) IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker (https://www.ibm.com/able/toolkit) axe™ DevTools (https://www.deque.com/axe/browser-extensions/) AccessLint (https://accesslint.com/) Assistiv Labs (https://assistivlabs.com/) An introduction to macOS Head Pointer (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/an-introduction-to-macos-head-pointer) Rails date_select (https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/DateHelper.html#method-i-date_select) Rails strong_migrations (https://github.com/ankane/strong_migrations) Ruby RBS (https://github.com/ruby/rbs) Sorbet - Ruby Type Checker (https://sorbet.org/) Scout APM (https://scoutapm.com/) Rails 6.1 adds query method missing to find orphan records (https://blog.saeloun.com/2020/01/21/rails-6-1-adds-query-method-missing-to-find-orphan-records.html) Transcript: STEPH: People put microphones in front of us. That is their fault, not ours. We just show up. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. Hey Chris, happy Friday. CHRIS: Happy Friday. STEPH: How's your week been? CHRIS: It's been great. I did something that is wildly overdue, but I got a new chair and one day in. But it's also a very familiar chair because it's basically the same -- I think it's the same model as we had at the thoughtbot office. And it's nice to have a chair that is reasonable. And I think my old chair was maybe ten years old or something, deeply embarrassing and absurd like that for such a critical piece of infrastructure in my house. STEPH: I mean, I guess depending on if it's a good chair. I don't know what the lifespan is of a good chair. [laughs] CHRIS: I would not describe it as such. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: I think it was like $100 at Staples. It was a fine chair. It served me well for many years. I'm very slow and cautious with what I consider to be large-scale purchases. I hate the idea of having a thing that I've spent a bunch of money on, but I don't actually like. And these are very solvable problems. But I just tend to drag my feet and over-research and do all those sorts of things. And so finally I was just like, nope, we're going to get a chair, got a chair. Cool. Now I have a chair, and it's good. It's got all of the adjustments, which is what makes it very nice. I'd say Steelcase Leap is the model for anyone that's interested. STEPH: That's funny. I tend to do the same thing. I tend to drag my feet until I get desperate enough that then I'm forced to make a decision and buy something. I do have an oddly specific question. Do you like chairs with or without the arms? CHRIS: Oh, with the arms. STEPH: Really? CHRIS: Yeah. STEPH: I am team, no arms. CHRIS: Where do your arms go if there are no arms to put on the chair? STEPH: They're always on my lap or on my keyboard. So I just don't rest them on the armrest. CHRIS: Interesting. I feel like that would put -- I've definitely had small bouts of RSI strain fatigue in my forearms. And so I'm very purposeful with how I'm bracing my wrists. I have a little wrist rest that I put my hands on when I'm using my keyboard because the keyboard is slightly raised up because I have a nonsense mechanical keyboard, of course. STEPH: Delightful, not nonsense. CHRIS: Yeah, I love it. I would never trade that in, but I have to make it work and not actually sacrifice my body for a clackety keyboard. [chuckles] But yeah, I think I need some more support for my arms; otherwise, there's too much pressure on my wrists, and things are breaking at weird angles, and that's been my experience. I'm intrigued by the free-flying no arms on the chair approach that you're talking about. This particular model has nine degrees of freedom on the armrest. So I'm able to bring them in and forward and at the exact right height so that they perfectly meet my arm where it would naturally be, and that seems good. That seems like the thing that I want. STEPH: That makes a lot of sense. But yeah, I'm team no arms. Every time I have them, I can't get them at the right comfortable spot. And I like the freedom of where I can quickly get up and out of my chair and not have arms in the way, which sounds like a very small improvement in my life, but yet it's what I want. CHRIS: I just like the idea of you sitting there and being like, I need to be able to make a quick escape at any moment; who knows what's going to happen? And I need to be able to run the other way. STEPH: If there's a gnarly bug, I got to be able to run. I can run away quickly as possible. [laughs] CHRIS: But in other news, so yeah, new chair that's great. I also recently embraced something in the Rails world that I have known about I think for forever for the entire time that I've worked in Rails, but I've never really used it, which is the tmp/restart.txt file, which my understanding of it is if you touch that file, or if that file exists, Rails will recognize that and will restart the server in development mode. And I think I've always known about this, but I've never used it. And I recognized recently that either I was trying to use a gem that I'd added to the Gemfile, but my server didn't know about it. So I was going to do the thing that I normally do, which is kill the server and then restart the server so CTRL+C and then CTRL+P in my terminal and hit enter, and then wait a bunch of minutes and get distracted, all of the bad things there. And I was like, wait; I remember that there's a thing here. And I don't know why I haven't been doing this for years. It's so much better. I actually went the one step further, and I configured a tmux binding so that tmux prefix and then R will touch tmp/restart in the local directory of the tmux session. That's been very nice, I will say. So I keep moving between branches. And I have environment variables that I need to reload or config initializers that I've made a change to, and I want to load that in. Or a gem that I've added to the Gemfile and I've now installed, but the server doesn't know about. All of these are just so quick now. And why wasn't I doing this the whole time? STEPH: I saw that you mentioned this on Twitter a couple of days ago, and I was so excited. But at the moment, I bookmarked it for later, but I didn't have time to actually really check it out. And I'm so glad you're bringing it up because I actually just tried it while we're chatting. So I started up my Rails server, and then I did the touch tmp/restart, and this is amazing. This is awesome. I'm very excited. CHRIS: It just does the thing. STEPH: It just does the thing. CHRIS: Yeah, it's so nice. [laughter] STEPH: Yeah, this is fabulous, almost as good as the pending migrations button. Not quite because that's a very special button, but this is also up there. CHRIS: It's a very, very good button. [laughs] I really got very enthusiastic about that button, didn't I? But I stand by it. It's a very good button, and this is a very good file. But this file has existed for so much longer, this workflow. And so many times, I have restarted the server and have been annoyed that I had to do it. And my brain just had this answer available. I didn't read a blog post and relearn this thing. I've always known it. And it was this one particular time that my brain was like, "Hey, you know how we're always annoyed by having to restart the server? You know there's another answer, right? I know that you know it because I'm your brain, and I'm telling you this." [chuckles] This is my weird internal monologue. So I'm very happy to be on the other side of that and to share that with as many people as possible who may be, like me, know about this but haven't actually leaned into it, small things that make the Rails world very nice. STEPH: Well, I'm glad you internalized it and then surfaced it because this is not something that I had heard of before. So I'm very appreciative of it. This is going to be great. CHRIS: Happy to share the wealth. But yeah, that's some of the stuff that's been up in my world. What's been going on in your world? STEPH: It's been a rather busy week. Most of that week has been focused on improving the accessibility of existing pages and forms, which is an area that I don't get to spend a lot of time, but each time I do, I really would like to be a pro when it comes to accessibility. Well, that's probably a long journey to become a pro. I would like to become more knowledgeable in terms of accessibility because it is so important. And while working specifically on these accessibility tickets and improvements, I've discovered a few helpful tools that I figured I'd share here. So one of the tools that I've started using is a color contrast tool. It's created by WebAIM or web accessibility in mind. And a number of our headers in our application have a white font that's on a background color, and we were getting warnings that this isn't very accessible and that there's not enough contrast. So with the Contrast Checker, you can provide the foreground color and the background color, and then it's going to tell you that contrast ratio. So if you're wondering, well, what's a good ratio? That's a great question. And the W3C Accessibility Guidelines recommend a contrast ratio of 4:5:1 for normal texts and 3:1 for larger texts. Larger text is anything that's typically around 18 px, 18.5 px, or larger. So the color contrast tool has been really helpful because then that's been very easy that we give the blue that we're using, and then we can just darken it a bit to improve that contrast. And then we apply that everywhere throughout the app. The other tool that I've been using that I'm really excited about it's a browser extension called the IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker. Is that something you've heard of or used before? CHRIS: I have not heard of that. STEPH: I would love to know what you currently use for accessibility, and I'll circle back to that in just a moment. But for this particular browser extension, I'm pretty sure they have it for multiple browsers. I'm using Chrome. So I've installed the Chrome extension. Once you have it installed, you can open up the browser console and then tell it to scan the page that you're on. And then it generates a really helpful report that has all the high-level offenses, which are called violations. It also has warnings and recommendations. And then if you click on a specific issue, then the right-hand area shows a detailed description of the offending HTML, what's wrong, why it's important, which I really appreciate that part, and then a couple of examples of how to fix it. So it's been a really nice way as we are working to improve the accessibility of form. We actually have feedback to know that we are making progress and that we are improving the accessibility of that particular page. And then circling back, I'm curious, do you have any particular tools that you use when it comes to improving accessibility or any standards that you tend to follow? CHRIS: Yeah, this is a very apropos question. I'm working on a new project now, and accessibility is definitely something that I want to consider on every project, but it's all the more so important for this particular project, or it's something that we're, as a team, collectively really embracing early on and wanting it to be a core focus of how we're building out the application. That said, I will say that I'm accessibility aware but far from an expert and still very much learning. But some of the things that I have used are the axe DevTools. I forget what the acronym actually stands for there, but we can certainly include a link in the show notes. But those are DevTools that allow you to, I think, do some color contrast checking actually in the browser just right there, which is really nice. There's also AccessLint, which is a project that scans pull requests and, where possible, does static analysis of the HTML. And that's actually by some former thoughtboters. So it's always nice to have that in the reference. There's actually a new tool that I've been looking at. I haven't actually tried it out yet, but it's from a company called Assistiv Labs, Assistiv without an E interestingly at the end. But their tool is, as far as I can tell, it allows you to use screen readers and other tools but across various platforms so that you sort of turn on -- It's very similar to if you've ever used an emulated Internet Explorer session because you're working on not an Internet Explorer machine, but you want to make sure your site works in Internet Explorer, same sort of idea, I believe. But it allows you to do the same approach for accessibility. So using a screen reader or using what the native accessibility technologies are on various platforms and being able to test across a wide range of things. So that's definitely one that I'm going to be exploring more in the near future. And beyond that, there are a handful of static analysis-based tools that I've used. So Svelte actually has some built-in stuff around accessibility. Because they are a compiler, they can do some really nice things there, and I really appreciate that that is a fundamental concern that they've built into the language, and the framework, and the compiler, and all of that. And I've also used ESLint A11y, which is the acronymnified version of the word accessibility. But that again, static analysis, so it can only go so far. And unfortunately, accessibility is one of those things that's hard to get at from a static analysis point of view, but it's still better than nothing. And it allows you to have a first line of defense at the code as you're authoring it. So that's a smattering of things. I've used some of them. I'm interested in others of them. But this is definitely an area that I'm going to be exploring a bunch more in the near future. STEPH: I like that you brought in the static analysis tools because that's the other thing that's been on my mind as we're making these accessibility improvements; that's been great. And we can run this particular browser extension to then check for warnings or issues on the page but then looking out for regressions is on my mind. Or as we're introducing new pages and new forms, how do we make sure that those are up to standard if someone forgets to run that extension? So I really like the idea of -- There's AccessLint that you mentioned, which will then scan PRs for accessibility improvements. That sounds really great. I'm also intrigued if there's a way to also -- I don't know if maybe tests are a good way to also look for any sort of regressions in terms of changes that we've made to a page. I don't know what those tests would look like. So I'll have to think on that some more, but I think some people at thoughtbot have thought about it. CHRIS: My understanding is the testing library suite of testing frameworks, so it's like testing library React, testing library, et cetera. It's primarily used in the JavaScript world, although there is Cypress, which is more of a browser-level automation. But it fundamentally works from not exactly an accessibility but a -- It doesn't allow you to do DOM selectors. It really tries to hide that. And it says, "No, no, no. You're not going to be digging in and finding the class name of this thing because guess what? A user of your application can't do that." What we want are – Typically, it's like find by label or find by things that are accessibility available or just generally available to users of your application. So whether it's users that are just clicking around or if they're using any sort of assistive technology, the testing library framework forces you in that direction. You can't write a test if your code is inaccessible tends to be the way it plays out, and it really nudges you in that direction. So it's one of the things that I really love about that. And I actually miss it when I'm working in a Capybara test suite because, as far as I know, there is not a Capybara testing library variant of it. And really, at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of functions to allow you to select within the context of the page. But again, it does it from that standpoint, and I'm all about that. STEPH: Yeah, that's really nice. That's a good point. Yeah, I don't think Capybara has that explicitly. I know that you have to use specific parameters. Like, if you want to access something on the page that is hidden, that's not something you can just do easily. You have to specify: I'm looking for an element that is hidden on the page. But otherwise, I don't think it goes out of its way to prevent you from doing that. There is an article that this conversation about accessibility made me think of. There's a really fun blog post written by Eric Bailey, who has been or who is a champion of accessibility at thoughtbot and has written a lot of great content around making the web more accessible. And in addition to publishing with the thoughtbot blog post, he has written for a number of publications. And the article that comes to mind that he published on the thoughtbot blog posts is An Introduction to macOS Head Pointer, and we'll link to it in the show notes. But he does a great job walking through what the head pointer is on macOS and then how to use it. And he uses his eyebrows to essentially move the mouse and then click on certain buttons or click on certain links on the screen. And it's incredible. So if you need a little bit of accessibility and joy in your life, I highly recommend checking out that article. CHRIS: Yeah. Eric has absolutely just been such a fantastic champion of accessibility. And he's definitely someone that I think of constantly as being -- I think he's involved with the Accessibility Project. He writes on CSS Tricks. He's around the internet just being the hero we need because accessibility is such a critical thing. And I'm a deep believer in the idea that accessible applications are better for everyone. And I so appreciate the efforts that he's putting in out there. Thanks, Eric. STEPH: Thanks, Eric. And then, on a slightly separate note, I have a slight complaint that I'd like to file. And this one is with Rails specifically. And I'm filing this complaint with the understanding that I'm also very spoiled in terms of Rails does so much, and I'm very appreciative of how much Rails does for me and for us. But specifically, while working on accessibility for a date of birth form field, so it's a form field with three different selects, so you have your month, day, and year. And while creating this, there's a very helpful Rails method that's called date_select, where then you can generate all three of those select fields. And you can even specify the order in which you want them generated, but this particular function doesn't have a way to make it accessible. So you can generate a label for each option that's in the select dropdown. And there's no parameter. There's nothing you can pass through. It doesn't automatically generate it for you. So I was in a spot where I was updating a form that's using the Rails dateselect. I can't use dateselect and make an accessible dropdown selection for date of birth. So instead, what I had to do is I had to split it out. I had to move away from using dateselect, and instead, I'm using selectmonth and then selectday and selectyear because from there, I then can pass in; in my case, I'm using aria-label to provide a label because I don't actually want the label to show up on a screen, which could be another accessibility concern because we do have the birth date label for those three sections. But then we still want at least each text field to have a label, even if it's only visible to screen readers. So then that way, if someone is selecting from year, they understand they're selecting from year or for month they're selecting from month. So by using selectyear and selectday and selectmonth, I could specify the aria-label as month, day, or year, but I couldn't do that with the dateselect. And I just realized that there's probably a number of date of birth forms out there that aren't accessible because us Rails developers are leveraging this existing method. So it just seems like a really good opportunity to improve date_select to be able to pass in a label or generate one automatically. CHRIS: Wow. I'm surprised that's the state of the art that we're currently at. I really wonder if there have been conversations or if there are fundamental limitations because I'd be surprised if such a core piece of the Rails world someone hadn't brought this up in the issues. What's the story there? Because I'm guessing there's a story there. Although flipping it around, I wonder -- I've never loved that input sequence; as an aside, like three different selects, that's not how I think of my birthday. My birthday is one thing. It's not three things that we smash together. But I wonder are we at a point now where IE 11 usage is so small that we can use a native date_select input and then have a polyfill -- And then I start to trail off because I don't know what the story is for. Like, I think Safari doesn't do a great job, and I forget where it's at right now. And what about mobile Safari? And wouldn't it be nice if everything was just easy and everybody kept up? [laughter] But that's an aside. But yeah, that's part of my question here, is like, can we just not use that thing at all? Like, the three select dropdown version of picking a date of birth because, man, that's my least favorite way to do it. STEPH: Yeah. I'm with you. I'm also curious if there is a story behind this and also if anyone has a different opinion, and I'd love to hear it. Because this has been my experience in digging through the docs is I would date_select, and I could not find a way to pass in a label or have one generated to make it accessible. So then that prompted me to use the three different methods, which, by the way, is fine. It made me stop and pause to think this is the method that most people recommend the usage of in terms of creating those three different select fields for a date of birth or for any particular date that you're supplying; it does not have to be a date of birth. So it also surprised me that then we couldn't make it accessible. So yeah, I was a bit miffed in the moment. [laughter] I had to walk myself back and be like, well, if I want to make the world a better place, I should help make the world a better place. And that started with changing the code in this codebase. But then also it means looking into Rails to see if there's an improvement that I could help with there. CHRIS: This is what we do: we take our moments of miffed, and we turn them into positive action in the world. This is what we want to see. [chuckles] STEPH: I figure the least I can do is share a blog post or something on Twitter that shows what it was before and then using the new dateselect functions because that is reasonable, although working with a form is a bit different. It got a little tricky there in terms of making sure that each value for each select field is still being passed within the expected nested parameter. And some of that was available in the public API for selectyear and select_day, but it's not as well documented. So I'm like, well, this seems to be intentionally public, but it's not documented, so I feel a little nervous about using this. Yeah, that's it. I just wanted to share my annoyance with Rails [laughs] or the fact that it made me work so hard to have a date of birth field. CHRIS: You joke, but that's a lot of why we use Rails is because we want these common regular things that we're doing to be as easy as possible, to require as little code on our part as possible but also this sort of thing like there's a lot of subtlety and stuff. Accessibility is one of those things that I want a framework that has security, and accessibility, and ease of use, and all of these things just baked in, so I don't have to think about it every time. It turns out having a date of birth, or generically any date field, is going to come up in web applications a lot, it turns out. And so having all of that stuff covered is frankly what I expect of a framework like Rails. So I'm totally on board with your being miffed here. STEPH: Yeah. Those are all really valid points. So I'm with you. What else has been up in your week? CHRIS: Well, we've been leading up to this, I think, for many weeks. I did a Rails 6.0 upgrade a while back, and a big reason for that was partly just to get on the current version of Rails but also because I wanted to open the door to database switching, and finally, this week, I tackled it. And let's tell a tale because there was a bit of an adventure, if we're being honest. Fundamentally, all the stuff there makes sense. I'm happy with the end configuration, but there was a surprising amount of back and forth. I broke the app more times than I want to actually announce on a podcast, but I broke it only for a brief period of time. It's fine. It's fine. Everybody's fine. [laughs] I feel a little bad about it, but these things happen. But yeah, it was interesting, is how I'll describe it. So fundamentally, Rails just has nice configuration for it. So at a high level, you're introducing your config/database.yml. Instead of it just being production is this URL, you now say primary is this replica or follower, whatever you want to name it is this. So you have now two configurations nested within your production config. And then in your ApplicationRecord, you inform Rails that it connects_to, and then you define a Hash for writing goes to the primary, reading goes to the follower. And you have to sync those up with the thing you just wrote in the config/database.yml but fundamentally, that kind of works. That makes it possible in your application to now switch your database connection. The real magic comes in the config environment production file. And in that, you specify that you want Rails to use a database resolver that says GET requests go to the replica, and anything that is not a GET request goes to the primary. So anytime you're writing data, anytime you're changing data within the system, that's going to go to the primary. And there's also a configuration that, as far as I can tell, gives a session affinity. So for the next two seconds after that, even if you make a GET request subsequently right following it, so you make a right, you POST, and then immediately after that, you do a GET. Like, you create an object, and then you get redirected to the show page for that object, Rails will continue to go to the primary. I think it's probably using a cookie or something to that effect, but you can configure that time span. So you can say like, "Actually, we see that our follower lags behind a little bit more, so let's give it a five-second timeout where all requests for that user will then go to the primary." But otherwise, once that timeout clears, then you're going to switch back, and you're going to go to the follower, and all GET requests will happen to the follower. And that's the story. You have to configure that, and then it works. STEPH: I always love when you start these out with "I have a tale to tell." I very much enjoy these adventures. And you also answered my question in regards to if you immediately just created something, but then you do a fetch that's very close to after you just created it and how that gets rendered. So that was perfect. CHRIS: Frankly, the core configuration is very straightforward, and it's very much in line with what we were just talking about of; this is what I want from Rails: make this thing very easy, hide the details behind the scenes. But as I said, there's a bit of a tale here. So that was the base configuration. It sort of worked but then immediately upon deploying it to production -- So we deployed it to staging first just to test it out. Staging was fine, as is often the case. Increasingly, I'm leaning into Charity Majors' idea of you got to test in production. You're testing in production even if you say you aren't. So once it got to production, we started seeing a bunch of errors raised or a handful of errors. And they were related to a handful of controller actions, which are GET requests, so they're either show or index, but in them, they were creating, or they were trying to create data. And so we were getting an error that was read-only connection error or something to that effect, ActiveRecord read-only, I think, was the error class. And that makes sense because I told it, "Hey, whenever you get a GET request, you're going to use that follower." But the follower is a read-only database connection because it's a follower, and so it was erroring. It was interesting because when this happened, I was like, wait, what? And then I looked into it. And it's frankly fine at all the levels. It is okay to create a record in a GET request as long as that creation is idempotent. You create if it doesn't exist, and then from there on, you use that same one. That still fits within the HTTP rules of idempotents, and everybody's fine with that, except for the database connection. Thankfully, this is relatively easy to work around. You just need to explicitly within that controller action say, "Use the right database, use the primary." And the way I implemented that, I wrote a method within ApplicationRecord that was with right DB connection, and then it takes a block, and you yield to that block. It's basically just proxying to another similar thing. And it's very similar to wrapping something in a transaction; it sort of feels like that. It's saying just for this point in time, switch over and use the primary because I know that I'm going to be having some side effect here. STEPH: Wow. That's so fun. I'm sure it was not fun for you. But as me hearing the story later, that's fun in regards to I hadn't thought about that idea of you're telling all the GETs you can only go to the read, and now you're also trying to create. I am feeling nervous in terms of local development. So if you're working on a new controller and if you have a fetch or GET action, but you're also creating something, you haven't seen another controller that is demonstrating that strategy that needs to be used. Is it just going to work locally? I imagine it does because it was working for the other code that you were running that didn't yet have that strategy in place. So I'm feeling nervous in terms of someone could easily miss that. CHRIS: I think there are a couple of different questions in what you just said. So let me try and answer all of the ones that I think I heard. So for local development, your database/config.yml is still going to be the same as it was. So you're just connecting to database namedevelopment. There's only one of them; there's no primary follower. So this is a case where you have a discrepancy between production and development, which is always interesting. And maybe that's something to poke at because ideally, I want as little gap there as possible. But this is one of those cases where I'm like, eh, I don't think I'm going to run two databases locally and have one be a follower. That feels like too much to manage. Under the hood with that right DB connection method that I talked about where you want to explicitly opt-in, in the case that we're in development, I just yield directly to the block. So instead of doing the actual database switching at that point, the method is basically saying, "If we're in production, then switch to the primary and yield and if we're not in production, then just yield." And so it'll just run that code, and it'll connect to the only database. More generally, I have the connectsto configuration; I wrapped that. So that's in ApplicationRecord where you're saying, "Hey, connect to these databases based on this logic," that is wrapped if we're in production check as well. And the same thing in the top-level configuration that says -- We're getting ahead of ourselves in the story because this is the end state that I got to. It's not where I started, and I screwed some stuff up in here, but basically, all of the different configuration points, my end result was to wrap them in a check that we are in production. STEPH: Okay. Sorry if I rushed your story. I was already thinking ahead to how could we accidentally goof this up? That makes a lot of sense for the method that's with right DB connection, that method that then it's going to check if we're in production, then we can use a primary follower strategy; otherwise, just use the database that we know of. So that helps a lot in answering those questions. And then we can pause and then get to my question later. But my other question that I'm curious about is what helps us prevent the team from making this mistake in terms of where we're adding a new controller, we add a new GET action, and we are also creating data, but then someone doesn't know to add that strategy that says, "Hey, you are allowed to go to the primary to also get data but also to write data too." And I'll let you take it away. CHRIS: I don't know that I have a great answer to that one if we're being honest. As I saw this, it was very easy to find -- I think there were three controller actions that had this behavior in the system that I was working on. They all threw errors. It was very easy to just wrap them in this extra method and fix that, and then we're good, and I haven't seen that error again. As for preventing it from new instances of this behavior, I don't have a good answer other than potentially you share this information within the team and then PR review. Ideally, someone's like, "Oh, this is one of those things you've got to wrap it in the fancy database switching logic." Potentially, and I don't actually think this would be possible, but there's a chance that RuboCop or other static analysis type thing could look inside any index or show action and say, "I see a create or an update or any of the methods." But again, Rails is so hard to do static analysis on that I would be surprised if were actually feasible to do that in a trustworthy way, probably worth a poke because this is the sort of thing that can easily sneak out. But potentially, my answer is, well, it'll blow up pretty loudly the first time you do it. And then you'll just fix it after that, which is not a great answer. I'm open to that being a mediocre answer at best. STEPH: [chuckles] Yeah. That's a fair answer. Just because I pose a question, I don't know if there necessarily is a great answer to it right away. And disseminating that information to the team to then having the team be able to point that out also sounds very reasonable but then still hashes that danger of someone overlooking it. The static analysis is an interesting idea, sort of like strong migrations. As you're introducing a new migration, strong migrations will do a wonderful job of showing you concerns that it has with the migration that you've added. And this is all just theoretical dreams and hopes because, yeah, that would help prevent some of those scenarios. CHRIS: It's interesting now that this is the second time we've discussed static analysis in this very episode. Clearly, it's a thing that I want more of in my world, and yet I work in languages like Ruby that are notoriously difficult to perform static analysis on. STEPH: I had a moment today writing a method that was currently just returning a string each time but then I was about to update that method. I was looking for a way like, well, maybe I don't always want a string. Maybe I actually want a Boolean here. But in the other case, I want a string. And the person I was pairing with they're like, "You could return -- [inaudible 29:31] Boolean in one case and then a string in the other case. Like, this is Ruby." [laughs] I was like, true, but I feel bad about it, and I don't love it. And we just had a phone conversation around that. If you're in the Ruby world following the more functional programming or type strictness and where you're returning specific types or trying to return a consistent type, it's ideal. But then also in Ruby, it's like it's Ruby, so sometimes you can finagle the rules a little bit. CHRIS: YOLO, as they say. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: Yeah, I'm definitely interested to see where projects like Sorbet and...I forgot what the core Ruby typed thing in Ruby 3.0 is called, but either of those. I'm really intrigued to see where they go and how the Ruby community either adopts or doesn't. I wouldn't be surprised if that were part of the outcome there. I've been impressed with the adoption of TypeScript and JavaScript, which is also a very, very free language, not quite to the degree that Ruby is. But yeah, it remains to be seen what will happen on those fronts. But continuing back to our saga, so we've now had the read-only error, we've fixed those, just wrapped them in blocks, and said, "Explicitly connect to the primary." So the next thing that I did after that, I realized that my configuration was a little bit flimsy is probably the best word to describe it. I was explicitly creating a new environment variable with the URL, the Postgres URL of the follower. And so I was using that environment variable to define where the URL like the Postgres URL of the follower database -- But I realized if Heroku comes in and does any maintenance on that Postgres instance, it's possible that the AWS IP address or other details of it will actually change and so that Postgres URL will no longer be valid. So that's one of the things that I rely on Heroku for, is to maintain my databases for me. But they will update, say, the DATABASE_URL environment variable if they change out your database. But now, I had broken that consistency. And so I'd set us up for somewhere down the road this will break, and I realized that because Heroku reached out and said, "Hey, your follower database needs maintenance." And I was like, oh, no. So, I tried to get it from -- It turned out, in this case, it didn't actually change. They were able to swap it out in place, but I wanted to add a little bit of robustness around that. And so I actually reached out, and Dan Croak, former CMO of thoughtbot, actually had written a wonderful blog post about how to configure this and particularly how to configure it in the context of Heroku. And he described how to use the Heroku naming scheme for the environment variables. They happen to have colors in them. So it's like Heroku Postgres cyan URL or orange URL or purple URL. And so he defined a scheme where you set an environment variable that describes the color, and then it can infer the database URL environment variable from that. And then went the one step further to say, "If that color environment variable is set, then treat as if we are configured for database switching. But if it is not set, even if we're in production, pretend like we don't have database switching," which that was another nice feature that I hadn't built in the first place. When I first configured this, I just said, "Production gets database switching. And if we're in production, then database switching is true," but that's actually not something that I want. I want to be able to say, "Upgrade our follower," at some point or do other things like that. And so I don't want to be locked into database switching on production. So that was a handful of nice configurations that I wanted to get to. Unfortunately, when I tried to deploy that switch, man, did it break. It broke, and then I was like, oh, I see I did something wrong there. So then I tested again on staging. Staging was fine. And then I went to production, and it broke again. And this happened like three times in one day. I felt like a terrible programmer. I had no idea what I was doing. Turns out that staging and production had different environment config files, and so their configurations were fundamentally different. They also had a different configuration for the database level. So one of the things I did as part of this was to clean those up and unify them so that staging was production with some environment variables to config it, but identically production, which is definitely a thing that I believe in, and I want basically all the time. I don't think we should have a distinct staging environment config that is wildly different. It should only vary in very small ways, basically just variables that say, "This is where the database is for staging," but otherwise be exactly configured as production. So I eventually got on the other side of that, fixed everything, have a nicely Heroku-fied color-based environment variable scheme, which is a bit of a Rube Goldberg machine, but it works. And I was able to hide that config in one place. And then everything else just says, "If there is a database follower URL defined, then use it." But yeah, so that was the last hard, weird bit of it. And then the only other thing that I did was I realized that this configuration was telling the Rails server how to behave, but there are also background jobs. And this application actually happens to have a ton of background job traffic. And so I did a quick check of those, and there were a handful of background jobs that were read-only. A lot of them were actually sending data to external systems, so to analytics or other email marketing or things like that. And so constantly, as users are doing anything in the application, there are jobs that are queued that aggregate some information, maybe calculate some statistics, and then push it to another system. But those are purely read-only when those jobs execute. And so I was able to add another configuration which said, "Use the read-only connection and configure that to wrap those particular sidekick jobs." And with that, I think I have a working database switching configuration that will hopefully give us a lot of headroom in the future. That's the idea, that's the dream, but we will see. STEPH: That is quite the saga between having GET requests that create data and then also the environment inconsistencies, which is a nice win that then you're able to improve that to make those environments more consistent. And then the background jobs, yeah, that's something that I had not considered until you just brought it up, and then being able to opt-out of the database switching sounds really nice. In regards to moving in this direction, you're saying gave you a lot of headroom for this; when it comes to monitoring performance, is there anything in place to let you know how it's doing? CHRIS: I love that I knew that this was going to be your question. I love that this is your question because it's a very good question. And unfortunately, in this case, it's actually somewhat unsatisfying. So as is my typical answer for this, we're using Scout as the application performance monitoring tool on this. And I was able to go in and monitor what it looked like a week ago, what it looked like after I made the change, and it was a little better. And that's all I can say about it. But that's fine. The idea with this, and at least in the way I was thinking about it, is this should get better at the margins. On the days where we have a high spike in traffic, those are the days where the database is actually working hard. They shouldn't make the normal throughput of the application that much higher in the regular case; it's for those outlier instances. To that end, though, I did analyze it. And so the average response time got 2% to 3% better in that week-by-week comparison, which was fine. The 95th percentile response time, so starting to get out to those margins, starting to get to the long tale of where stuff gets -- a couple of requests came in at the same time, and the application had to try a little harder, those got 8% to 9% better. That shape of improvement where for most requests, nothing really changed for some of the requests that used to be a little bit slower; those got a little bit better. That's the shape of what I would hope to see here. And it remains to be seen. This application has particular traffic patterns where they'll encourage a lot of users to be using the app at the same time. And historically, those have been somewhat problematic, and we've had to really work to shore up the performance in those cases. That's where I'm really interested to see how this goes. It would be hard to replicate those traffic patterns at this point. So I don't have a good way to really stress test this, but my hope is that for those cases, things will just hum along and be happy. STEPH: That makes a lot of sense and something that would be hard to measure, but the fact that you already see a little bit of improvements that's encouraging. CHRIS: But yeah, certainly, if I get a chance to see what that looks like in the near term, I will respond back and let you know how this has played out. But overall, now the configuration seems pretty stable. I think we're in a good spot. Hopefully, we won't have to do too much proactive management around this. And ideally, it just buys us a little bit of headroom. So that is certainly nice. But with that, with your wonderful question getting to the heart of the issue, I think that wraps up the saga of the database switching. STEPH: Well, I appreciate you sharing that saga. That's really helpful. I've been very excited to hear about how this goes because I haven't gotten to work on a project that's going to use database switching just yet. And now I know all the inside baseball. I'm trying to use sports metaphors here as to how to do this for when I get to work with database switching. CHRIS: Sports de force. CHRIS: Along the lines of new stuff, there is something I'm excited about. So in juxtaposition to my earlier statement or my earlier grievance where friends don't let friends use dateselect in regards to trying to keep the web accessible, I do have some praise for something that's being added in Rails 6.1 that I'm excited about. And it's a really nice method. It's a query method that can be used to find orphan records. So if I'm writing a query that is then looking for some of these missing records, so if I have my table -- I didn't come with a great example today, so let's just say we have like table A and then we're going to leftjoins on table B. And then we're going to look for where the ID for table B is nil, so then that way we find where we don't have that association that it's missing. And so leftjoins does this for us nicely. And then I always have to think about it a little bit where I'm like, okay, I want everything from table A, and I don't want to exclude anything in table B if there's not a match on the two. And so then I can find missing records that way or orphaned records that way. The method that's being introduced or has been introduced in Rails 6.1, so anyone that's on that new-new, there is the missing method. So you could do tableA.where.missing and then provide the table name. So there's a really nice blog post that highlights exactly how this method works, so I'll use the example that they have. So for where job listings are missing a manager, so you could do JobListing.where.missing(: manager), and then it's going to perform that leftjoin for you. And it's going to look for where the ID is nil. And I love it. It's really nice. CHRIS: That sounds excellent. That's definitely one of those things that I would have to sit down and squint my eyes and think very hard, really anything involving left_joins otherwise center. Any joins always make me have to think and so having Rails embrace that a little bit more nicely sounds delightful. STEPH: Yeah, it sounds like a nicety that's been added on top of Rails so that way we don't have to think quite as hard for any time; we want to find these orphaned records, and we know that we can use this new missing method. CHRIS: On the one hand, I feel bad saying, "I don't want to think that hard." On the other hand, that's literally our job is to make it so that we encode the thinking into the code, and then the machines do it for us. So it's kind of the game, but I still feel kind of bad. [laughs] STEPH: Well, it's more thinking about the new stuff, right? Like, if it's something that I've done repetitively, finding orphan records is something I've done several times, but I do it so infrequently that then each time I come back to it, I'm like, oh, I know how to do this, but I have to dig up the knowledge. How to do it is that part that I want to optimize. So I feel less bad in terms of saying, "I don't want to think about it," because I've thought about it before. I just don't want to think about it again. CHRIS: I like it. That's a good framing. I've thought about this before. Don't make me think about it again. [chuckles] STEPH: Exactly. On that note, shall we wrap up? CHRIS: Let's wrap up. STEPH: The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. CHRIS: The show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. STEPH: Thanks, Mandy. If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review on iTunes as it really helps other people find the show. CHRIS: If you have feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @bikeshed. And you can reach me @christoomey. STEPH: And I'm @SViccari. CHRIS: Or you can email us at hosts@bikeshed.fm. STEPH: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. All: Bye.

You're listening to the Westerly Sun's podcast, where we talk about news, the best local events, new job postings, obituaries, and more. First, a bit of Rhode Island trivia. Today's trivia is brought to you by Perennial. Perennial's new plant-based drink “Daily Gut & Brain” is a blend of easily digestible nutrients crafted for gut and brain health. A convenient mini-meal, Daily Gut & Brain” is available now at the CVS Pharmacy in Wakefield. Now for some trivia. Did you know that Rhode Island's own Jane Stuart was a prolific American painter, best known for her miniature paintings and portraits? While many of her portraits were copies of her father's best works (including George Washington), she was an accomplished artist in her own right and when she moved to Newport, she became the first female portrait artist there. In 2011, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. Now, we turn our feature story…. In a sure sign that summer is almost here, Rhode Island opened some of its state beaches this weekend. Scarborough North and Roger Wheeler state beaches — both in Narragansett — are now open weekends only, weather permitting, until Memorial Day, according to a statement from the state Department of Environmental Management. All state beaches will officially be open daily starting May 29 and will last until Labor Day. “Accessibility to outdoor recreation venues where families and friends can relax and share special times is part of DEM's mission,” department Director Janet Coit said in a statement. “After the year we've all had, we're glad to open two popular state beaches early so that Rhode Islanders can get outside and enjoy themselves when crowds are light." To help reduce the amount of time beachgoers spend at the entry booths once the beaches open, the agency is encouraging Rhode Islanders to buy season and daily flex passes online or in advance. A little fun in the sun is exactly what so many need. To enjoy to the fullest, remember to get your vaccination. For more on this story, and all things Southern Rhode Island, head over to westerlysun.com There are a lot of businesses in our community that are hiring right now, so we're excited to tell you about some new job listings. Today's Job posting comes from the Ocean House in Westerly. They're looking for a floor sommelier. Ideally, you have experience and a sommelier certification and are great with people, and can be an ambassador for the club's standards. Pay is up $11.50-$30.00 per hour with tips. If you're interested and think you'd be a good fit for the role you can apply using the link in our episode description. https://www.indeed.com/l-Westerly,-RI-jobs.html?advn=9173240314393757&vjk=f736966246302b21 Today we're remembering the life of Catherine "Kay" Cayer, 97, who passed away peacefully on May 6th. She was the wife of the late Joseph Cayer. Kay was Born in the Bronx, and After her high school graduation, she accompanied her endeared teacher and her husband to White Plains NY. Mr. & Mrs. Shoaf would summer in Rhode Island and that is when Kay met Joe as he was looking for his "lost" beagle. They married in 1947. Kay was a homemaker and a natural caregiver and her closest friends were her newly acquired sister in laws. Kay would spend many days with nieces and nephews who hold the fondest memories of times spent with the energetic and loving Aunt. As the "City girl" turned country Kay easily made the transition. She loved all animals both wild and domesticated and would watch birds at their feeders in pure contentment. Fresh garden vegetables were treasured and thoroughly enjoyed. She loved music, Country, Classical, Polka and even the occasional Alice Cooper. She leaves her daughter, granddaughter and many, many nieces and nephews. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in her name to your local animal shelter. Thank you for taking a moment today to remember and celebrate Kay's life. That's it for today, we'll be back next time with more! Also, remember to check out our sponsor Perennial, Daily Gut & Brain, available at the CVS on Main St. in Wakefield! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

10 May 2021 - Podcast 182 This week, how can you improve the productivity of your team or company? That's the question I am answering this week.   You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Email Mastery 2021 Course Download the FREE Areas of Focus Workbook More about the Time Sector System The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Script Episode 182 Hello and welcome to episode 182 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. This podcast and many others tend to focus on the individual rather than the group and this is likely because changing an individual's habits can be easier than trying to change a group's habits. But that does not mean changing the way a group operates is impossible. With leadership and a commitment from the group as a whole, significant positive changes can be made and very quickly.  So that is what I shall be addressing this week.  Now, before we dive into the answer, I'd like to urge you to download a copy of my free Areas of Focus workbook. The cornerstone of all effective time management and productivity systems is knowing what is important to you. If you do not know what is important to you, you will soon find yourself serving the interests of other people and their interests are never going to be fulfilling to you.  Once you know what is important, you can then build these areas of your life into your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks ensuring that you are bringing balance into your life. Time spent on your relationships and family, your career, your health, wealth, experiences and overall purpose are a lot more important than most people realise. That balance gives you the sense of freedom and wellbeing that so many people lack in their lives today. The download is free and I will not be asking you for your email address or any personal information. I just want you to discover what is important to you so you can build your life around what you want, and not what other people want.  So if you have not done so already, head over to my downloads page on my website—carlpullein.com and start working your way through it. Okay, it's time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question:  This week's question comes from Mark. Mark asks, Hi Carl, I manage a team of sixteen people and we are all struggling to stay on top of the work handed down to us from head office. There's a mixture of customer support, admin tasks and sales and it is just piling up and we don't seem to be getting anywhere close to clearing our backlog. Do you have any productivity tips for teams that might help?  Hi Mark, thank you for your question and for reminding me that productivity is not only about the individual, but also about the team.  To answer your question directly, yes there are and there are quite a lot of them.  First up we need to deal with communication. How does your team communicate with each other? With the seismic changes in the way we work that has happened over the last year, one of the key areas that have a profound impact on a team's productivity is in the way the team communicates.  One of the issues I've come across numerous times is the number of channels a team can communicate. There is the phone, email and instant messaging of course, but over the last twelve months, there have been additional channels added. Slack, Microsoft Teams and even messaging within project management software such as Salesforce and Trello.  That's a lot of communication channels a team member needs to navigate and with so many channels to check there is going to be a time cost and a risk of something important being missed.  A leader of a team needs to designate one channel for team communication. Ideally, this channel should be a purpose-built channel. By that I mean, if you are using an app like Trello or Google Docs, while they do have a way to add comments and messages to documents or tasks, these tools were not designed to be a complete solution for communicating.  Instead, you would be better served if you designated one purpose-built communication tool for all your team's communications. Apps like Microsoft Teams, Twist or Slack have been developed for teams to work together and they have the added benefit for team leaders to see what's going on without the need to be constantly interrupting team members asking for updates.  Within these apps, you can create various channels, so in your case, Mark, you could have a separate channel for customer support, sales and admin as well as any other area your team is responsible for.  This way you and your team can quickly see what's going on, ask questions and assign responsibility for the different tasks that can be involved.  With these apps, Teams, Twist and Slack, you can add on your favourite task manager as an extension. For instance, if you use Todoist, you can get the Todoist add on for Teams and Slack so any task that is assigned to you, you can quickly add it to your own to-do list. And as Twist is made by the people who develop Todoist, their integration is excellent.  Next up is ownership. One reason why so many tasks and issues within a team fall between the cracks—so to speak—is because no one has taken ownership of the problem.  While modern technology does help us to get more work done more effectively, it only works if the people using the technology take responsibility for what goes in it. So, if there is a customer with a problem, then someone in your team needs to take responsibility for that customer.  I've been on the receiving end of a customer support team that has no such responsibility, so each time I communicate with the team I get a different person who is using the same script as the one before. Now not only does support management by computer input damage the relationship with the customer (we are humans we like to work with other humans and not machines) it also leaves your customer support team feeling unfulfilled because they get no sense of accomplishment if all they are doing is picking up where someone else left off and then passing the problem on to the next person in the shift.  Give someone responsibility for each task—whether that is a customer support issue, a sales lead or some admin task that needs doing for head office. That way there is ownership and accountability and your team will be much better engaged in the process and their work.  Next up is meetings. Meetings are the antipathy of productivity because while you are holding a meeting nothing is getting done. Sure, decisions may be made, but more often than not, a team with good leadership will always have excellent decision-making processes anyway.  And while decisions are being made, you will often find no one is willing to take responsibility to see that the decision is carried through.  Now, while I do accept a limited number of meetings are unavoidable, they should be kept to a minimum. Each decision made in a meeting must be given a DRI—a Designated Responsible Individual to see through the decision and make sure whatever needs to happen happens within the allotted time. That way you have accountability and your team are empowered to make sure the work gets done.  And while on the subject of meetings, meetings should be limited to thirty minutes. There are two very good reasons for this too.  If you hold thirty-minute meetings these things will happen immediately. First, people will always arrive on time. One of the reasons you get people joining meetings a few minutes late is because with a typical hour-long meeting there is an expectation of small talk at the beginning. So there's less sense of importance for the first five or ten minutes.  In thirty minute meetings, people sense that the meeting will start on time and get straight to the point.  Secondly, because the time is limited, people get to the point much faster. There's little digression, and things stay on point.  You should always have an agenda and make sure people get that agenda at least 24 hours before the meeting so they have time to prepare. And if, as the leader, you discover someone in your team did not prepare, call them out for their lack of preparation. You will only need to do this a few times before your team soon learn they must prepare.  Whenever I talk with individuals about their time management troubles, the most common reason for backlog and overwhelm is not the volume of work they have but the number of meetings they are expected to attend. So reducing the number of meetings you hold just makes sense from a productivity point of view If you want to improve your team's productivity make all meetings voluntary. When you do this two things will happen.  Firstly, you give greater flexibility to your team to make judgments on whether they can or should attend a meeting. Trust that your team know whether they could contribute something significant to the meeting or not. If they feel they cannot, then allow them the flexibility to decline the meeting invitation.  Secondly, and more importantly, you make the meeting organiser accountable for the content of the meeting. If a meeting organiser frequently runs disorganised and ineffective meetings, people will stop attending their meetings. This will put pressure on them to improve the way they hold their meetings or better yet, stop holding meetings. This is similar to me writing a blog post on a specific topic and find I don't get any readers. That tells me the topic has no interest and I need to change the topic or make the writing more compelling. I am forced to improve either way. The same happens once you make all meetings voluntary. The quality of your meetings will improve significantly.  Finally, implement the Time Sector System. While I create the Time Sector System for individuals, it works brilliantly for small teams. Our work and priorities are moving incredibly fast these days. What might be a priority today could easily become obsolescent next week. The idea behind the Time Sector System is you focus on the work that needs to be done this week.  Now what I am about to say will seem counter to what I said about meetings, but there are two meetings a leader should have each week. The first meeting is held on a Monday where the team decides what needs to be accomplished this week. When you get agreement on this by the team and everyone is clear about what must happen to accomplish those goals and what their tasks are that will help accomplish those goals your team will be hyper-focused on getting their important tasks completed.  The second meeting is held on a Friday, where your team report on their progress and discuss any issues or delays and what needs to be carried forward to the following week.  The purpose here is to be clear about the work that needs to be completed that week. New inputs can be discussed in either meeting and decisions made about when these tasks should be done—this week, next week, this month, next month or longer term.  Using this method, the team leader needs to have a place where the team's overall objectives for the quarter and the year are and what needs to be done and when in order to achieve these. To ensure all team members know what the overall purpose and objectives are, a shared Kanban board can help. Applications such as Trello, Asana or Meistertask are all great tools that can do this job well and responsibility for each project can be assigned to team members.  Again, as with tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack or Twist, the team leader can see instantly where a project is and what still needs to be done so there is less following up, and a lot more doing going on.  So there you go, Mark, those are the ways a team can dramatically improve its overall productivity. It begins with accountability and ownership. If nobody owns the task and is not directly responsible for it, then backlogs will develop.  If communication channels are all over the place, things will inevitably get missed, so make sure you and your team agree on one single communication channel. And restrict the number of meetings and trust that your team know what they are doing and leave them to get on with doing it. Work gets done when people have the time and space to do the work, not when they are in and out of meetings all day satisfying a manager's need to micro-manage. I hope that has helped, you Mark and thank you so much for your question. And thank you to you for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.   

I came across Kristen Youngs’ YouTube channel while I was exploring the popular no code Bubble.io platform. At first, I thought she was creating the typical tutorial videos channel around this very popular app building platform, but as I explored more, I realized she was building a very unique business behind the scenes. I think most of us in the client services or consulting space, long to have an additional stream of income that isn’t directly tied to our consulting hours. You’ll often see a digital download, a one-time course, or a finely-tuned productized service that effectively optimizes our work effort to profit margin ratio. But what Kristen and her partner are building at coachingnocodeapps.com is something of a hybrid. It’s a coaching series, a course, and recurring consulting for customers that need help building out their Bubble app. In the WordPress world, this might be like selling a web design course for Elementor while you do monthly check-ins to help your clients build out new pages or add new functionality. Needless to say, I really like this model. Kristen brings the knowledge in today’s episode. I’m going to leave you with this one question to ponder as you continue on…what do you think the most challenging part of her business is? You’re listening to the Matt Report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter at mattreport.com/subscribe and follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet, please share this episode on your social media! We’d love more listeners around here. Episode transcript Kristen Youngs Matt Report Podcast [00:00:00] This episode of the Matt report is brought to you by mal care. Learn more about Malik here at Dot com. You’ve heard me talk about mal care before, but they’re back with some interesting updates. Not only are they the WordPress plugin with instant WordPress malware removal. Well, let me read some of these features. [00:00:15] Deep malware scanning. They know about malware that other plugins don’t. Number two, that one click malware removal process makes it super easy to remove from your WordPress website and number three, a new feature called auto bot ultra defense system. Okay. I made that ultra defense system part up, but get this, it automatically blocks the bots hitting your website. [00:00:35]So, not only does that protect your website, but in the long run, it’ll improve speed of your site from not letting those bots through the doors. Check out mal care at care.com that’s mal care.com. I don’t want to be a malware specialist. You don’t either check out mal. care.com. thanks for supporting the show [00:00:56] This episode of the Matt report is brought to you by gravity forms. One of the [00:01:00] most trusted longest lasting oh geez. Of the WordPress product space, gravity forms. 2.5 has arrived. All new builder experience, tons of certified developer. Ad-ons. And the most accessible form plugin in existence. If you’re doing complex form stuff on your WordPress project, user registration, storing data, connecting them to other automation workflows, you know, not to look any further than the plugin I’ve been paying for since 1997. [00:01:25] Okay. Maybe not that long, but it’s the first plugin I ever bought and happily renew every single year checkout gravity forms, 2.5, all new builder experience. At gravity forms.com. That’s gravity forms.com. [00:01:39] I came across Kristen Young’s YouTube channel while I was exploring the popular no code bubble.io platform. At first, I thought she was creating the typical tutorial videos around this very popular app building platform. But as I explored more, I realized she was building a very unique business behind the scenes. I think most of us in the client services or consulting space long to have an additional stream of income [00:02:00] that isn’t directly tied to our consulting hours. You’ll often see a digital download a one-time course or a finely tuned productized service that effectively optimizes. [00:02:09] Our work to profit margin ratio. But what Kristin and her partner are building at coaching no-code apps is something of a hybrid. It’s a coaching series, a course, and a recurring consulting for customers that need help building out their bubble app. In the WordPress world, this might be like selling a web design course for Ella mentor. While you do monthly check-ins to help your client build out new pages and, or add new functionality. [00:02:33] Needless to say, I really liked this model. Kristen brings the knowledge in today’s episode. I’m going to leave you with this one question to ponder as you continue on, what do you think the most challenging part of her business is? You’re listening to the Matt report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder, subscribed to the newsletter at [00:02:51] port.com/subscribe and follow the podcast on apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet. Please share this [00:03:00] episode on social media. We’d love more listeners around here. [00:03:02] Kristen: [00:03:02] I am the co-founder of a company called coaching no-code apps, and we essentially help entrepreneurs, business owners, people who already have existing businesses or people who are looking to launch new businesses. [00:03:15] That are app based. We help them go from their idea stage to having that first version app that they can either launch within a business and help scale their operations or launch as a brand new business. And they don’t need any coding backgrounds, no technical skills in order to do that. [00:03:37]Matt: [00:03:37] We chatted in our, pre-interview talking about like how excited I was when I first discovered bubble. And I was like, Hey, coming from the WordPress world, this is in my eyes. I was like, this is going to be like a page builder. I can just drag and drop things around and I could build myself an app and I’ll, I’m going to be a superhero. [00:03:52] And I was like, wouldn’t it be nice to connect up to a rest API of WordPress or like my podcasting host company [00:04:00] and get this data. I was like, how do I do that with bubble? And I started like researching it. I started doing it myself and I was like, God, no way, am I going to be able to do this by myself? [00:04:09] And then I found your video and I was like, Oh man, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff to this, no code. And this bubble thing is there, like one thing that really sticks out. In your engagement with customers, that same feeling that they share with you, thought this was going to be easy and Oh my God, I’m going to need your help with this. [00:04:27] Is there like one or two things that you come across every day with this stuff? [00:04:30]Kristen: [00:04:30] Yeah. And I think it’s less about specific technical functions and more so just because when people hear about no code. They think that it’s going to be easy. And I think it gives the impression that you can kind of just come on board, whatever platform it is, and have a custom application up and running within, maybe a few hours or a few days. [00:04:58]A lot of people, they don’t [00:05:00] realize how complex the thing they’re wanting to build actually is. And so anytime you want to customize anything, you have to actually know how to do that on a platform. And even though you’re not coding there, you still have to understand development, processes, development strategies. [00:05:19] You have to understand how to. Explain what it is you’re even trying to do, or even ask the right questions. And when you’re coming in without a technical background, I think it’s just kind of like all of a sudden, a surprise of, okay. There’s, there’s no coding, but there are still technical components to this. [00:05:37]Matt: [00:05:37] When we chatted, you mentioned that one of the things that you do is it’s not even before we even get to like development in the scope of, most listeners of the show might be thinking like we scope out websites, we scope out e-commerce sites. We scope out, small ish web apps, and we get that from the customer for you. [00:05:55] It’s like, how do I extract this idea? From this person coming to me, [00:06:00] like, how do I get that out of their head and put this on to paper before we even start talking about, the technical requirements, bubble, web flow, like whatever tools you might want to use. How do you pull that idea out of your head? [00:06:11] Do you have any advice for people who might be in the WordPress world designing and developing for WordPress? [00:06:17] Kristen: [00:06:17] Yeah, that is a really great question. And I think that’s honestly, half the battle is someone coming in. [00:06:25] And I think that’s where there’s a lot of disconnect with development agencies, or even if someone is building their app themselves is they have an idea, but they don’t necessarily know how to correctly explain it to someone. They don’t even know what that idea should look like when you’re actually looking at a website or an app or something like that. [00:06:46] And I think, we personally have a system and a process in place where you can kind of think about every single one of the features or, the pages or whatever you want to have on your app [00:07:00] or your website. And then start going through and scoping out what are the must haves? What are the should have, could have the won’t have, so which version do you need to put these specific features in? [00:07:15] And I think, and this is in reference to the Moscow matrix where you’re essentially thinking through, okay. What’s a feature or a functionality that a user must have in order to achieve their number one goal or the number one goal that your app or your site is there to help them achieve. [00:07:32]What, what features aren’t, maybe aren’t necessary, necessary to reach that goal, but are necessary to reach that goal in an ongoing matter, like over and over and over again consistently, how can you make that? Maybe more convenient or maybe more user-friendly or something like that. [00:07:49] And so you kind of take an entire idea and it doesn’t really matter if someone can explain it in a technical way or not. As long as they know what a user needs to be able to achieve, then [00:08:00] you can start breaking all those features down into. I really like testing phases. Can you accomplish goal number one, can you accomplish goal number two? [00:08:09] And you can kind of expand like that from there, really? Regardless of which platform or tool that you’re using, [00:08:15]Matt: [00:08:15] what what’s the majority that your customers come to you? With in as preparation. And I’ll preface this with my own experience. Quite literally when I used to run a web design agency day to day, people would just have all of the ideas up into their, in their head and that’s all they had and they just come to me and just like vomit this stuff out and all over my desk [00:08:36] or it’d be like the literal back of a napkin. Is there, is there a common thing that people come to you in the no-code world with? Is there, is there something really meta is there a no code tool for no code buildings that even exists? Should it exist? How do you like to have this, these ideas delivered to you? [00:08:52] So you could scope out a project when you were doing projects day to day? [00:08:56]Kristen: [00:08:56] Yeah, that’s a, that’s a really good question too, in terms of [00:09:00] trends. I think it spans across the spectrum. You just described some people that are coming in and they know what they want to achieve. But they don’t know how that’s going to be achieved in terms of features. [00:09:13] Yeah, they might, they might have an end goal, but they just don’t really know what needs to be in place. And then some people come in and, they’ve spent the past year, wireframing things out already hiring designers. And they have everything, but the functionality and I think. The, the ideal is a happy medium where you, what you want to achieve and, generally what you need in order to get there, but, spending a year or more, which I often see, and you maybe have before, too. [00:09:47] Spending that much time planning something out before you even start building this first version, which you, you technically can build pretty quickly if you, if you know how right. No code tools [00:10:00] are there, you spend all that time planning. There’s just, you can be leaps and bounds ahead of where you, where you are now, if you had just kind of gotten started before going that far. [00:10:11] So the answer to your first question is just. Happy medium would be ideal, but I do see both. I see both ends of the spectrum in terms of cool. [00:10:21] There’s not one specific one that comes to mind, although I think that would be interesting, but I do like to see people putting together kind of like. [00:10:33] Business model canvases. We have a process when someone’s coming in to work with us, where they fill out a form that kind of translates over to something like that, where you nailed down each main component of, the app or the site or whatever it is you’re building. And that can be helpful in, in kicking off a project. [00:10:52]Matt: [00:10:52] Yeah. Yeah, I guess people could even come to you. Well, w we’re going to get into your business model these [00:11:00] days. Cause you’re not building apps for a majority of your business. Isn’t about building apps for clients anymore. It’s about training and education and coaching, but I guess with the. [00:11:11] The way that bubble is maybe people used to come to you with like half made apps and they were just like ice. I sketched us out in bubble. Please help me finish this. Has that ever been something that’s come about? [00:11:21]Kristen: [00:11:21] Yes, it certainly has. And it actually still is. And I think it just kind of goes back to people, come in and no code is just it’s associated with DIY. [00:11:33] And so people come in and they start going down the DIY path and then they get to a point where they actually start thinking about bringing users on board. And they’re like, I don’t think this is, I don’t think this is going to work. I need to take a better approach. And so they take some steps back and then either, bring someone on board, join us, something like that to actually move forward with more concrete steps. [00:11:56]Matt: [00:11:56] So explain the business model that you [00:12:00] and your co-founder operate under. Again, like I just mentioned a second ago, it used to be building apps for folks. And if it still is, what’s the percentage of that, but you, you shifted to training and coaching coaching. I’d love to understand why you did that and why you made that transition. [00:12:17] Right. Cause there’s a lot of folks who listen to this who were like, I would rather just teach people how to use WordPress instead of building them, their websites. [00:12:23]Kristen: [00:12:23] Yeah, it’s it was an interesting transition from us. And right now we’re not doing any development ourselves, so we’re not taking on any outsource type projects. [00:12:35] We’re just training and coaching. We have some standalone courses and training, but we also have a training. It’s like a mentorship program where we work directly with these entrepreneurs and they’re the ones building their apps, we’re coaching and training them. And. The, there are a lot of reasons why we switched to doing that. [00:12:56] But first and foremost, it just came down to [00:13:00] the client’s results, both in the immediate and in the longterm. We were looking at app development and with no code tools, there’s so much more availability now for people to launch their own apps. But it’s, it’s certainly not free. And so when people are coming in and they’re outsourcing to no code app development agencies or freelancers, it’s still a big investment. [00:13:27] And we kept seeing people where they would have the first version of their apps in hand, but there’s been no testing on their side. No, no initial test users brought on because. They don’t have, they don’t have the app yet. And so they can’t do that during development, they get the app. And then, as soon as you start testing your first version, you have immediate iterations. [00:13:51]Like you bring one user onboard and you’re already going to have things to change. And so that would start happening and then they, [00:14:00] they still can’t manage their apps, even though it’s built on no code, no code platform potentially. And so it kind of felt like we were. Handcuffing people to us in a way by giving them an app, but then them having not really any idea of what to do with it from there. [00:14:19] And so we decided to start enabling people to build their own apps so that they could have more control both in the immediate, because, going back to the question you had asked about taking an idea out of someone’s head and actually building what they were envisioning. It’s so hard. It’s so hard to do that. [00:14:41] And, even with the best intentions and no matter how hard you try, there’s still going to be some disconnect between what was living in their head and then what they see in front of their face, at the end. And so we started training people to build their own apps, so they can number one. Get their own processes out of their mind and build them exactly how they [00:15:00] wanted and then actually be able to do something with the app afterwards on their own really quickly with a lot of flexibility, a lot of control, if they want to hire junior developers to bring them in house, they can, but they still have the control and they have options. [00:15:14] And I think that’s the most important thing. And the, the results in terms of how many people were actually launching their apps. And bringing people onto their apps, bringing users on, and then growing their apps that went way up. And that’s why we made the full transition. [00:15:30]Matt: [00:15:30] I would also probably imagine that as when you were doing that, when you were building apps for folks, we’ll just say you were an agency, right? [00:15:37] You were just, you were running that agency model customer came to you. They had a problem. They wanted you to solve it. They probably put you up against a bunch of other agencies and RFPs. There’s all that BS of an agency you just don’t want to deal with in the long run. And then it’s also like expectations. [00:15:54] I’d imagine that. Customers with these apps probably are, are. [00:16:00] Are trying to monetize this app. I’m just guessing here, but at least for those customers that want to, as an app, maybe they thought well, look what I built in bubble. It took me like a weekend. So I should only have to pay somebody, a few more weekends to finish it. [00:16:16] And the. The expectation was we’re probably way lopsided, which isn’t different. So, which is not so different to the WordPress world for customers that used to knock on our door. And they were like, well, I bought a $50 theme from ThemeForest. My website is only, only, you only need to do that 10%, that 10% should just be a few hundred bucks. [00:16:33] Right. Did you, is that an experience that you saw and you just really wanted to get away from? [00:16:37]Kristen: [00:16:37] It’s absolutely something we experience. I think people. They don’t know how development works when they’re, when they’re first stepping into this space, they don’t, they don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. [00:16:51] They don’t know how to even really ask for, they don’t know how to ask about quality. They don’t know how [00:17:00] to expect or set the right expectations around quality or cost or timeframe. None of it, because they’re so disconnected from the processes that are actually happening. And so. Usually what happens is they just read something somewhere. [00:17:15] They see someone’s pricing and then maybe they think that’s the norm. Like you said, they, buy a $50 template and they think, okay, well this is easy. This should be a really quick fix, but there’s just, like with any, anything with any market, any type of service, there’s so much variation. [00:17:34] And so, yeah. Having. Have in, in making this transition that we have and having training versus development services, it also has allowed us to kind of. Package up what we’re offering, which also helps with pricing structure. There’s, we don’t have this long list of services that we [00:18:00] offer or, it’s not like we’ll build this for this much, this, for this much of this, for this much where it’s just like a bunch of numbers out there. [00:18:06] It’s you’re going to learn how to do this one specific thing. So you can achieve this one specific result. And it’s, it’s a lot easier to. Price that as well, without so much variation, too, if that makes sense. [00:18:18]Matt: [00:18:18] , that was actually a perfect segue into my next question is cause you can really start to maximize and optimize your internal process to serve these clients so often. [00:18:27] And I am fully guilty of this and, and maybe you are too. When I started out in my agency. I would just say yes to everything. Of course I can do that. And it was like, yes, give me the money and I will build it for you. I don’t care what you’re asking for. I’ll do it. And then you start finding, as time marches on you start to find more technical clients or, or, or bigger budget clients. [00:18:49] And then suddenly you find yourself like implementing an intranet in a university, and then there’s all of these things you’ve never experienced, never thought of. And you’re like, Oh my God, I’m. Over my [00:19:00] head in this project. And I only priced it for 5,000 bucks. Right? So in your world, you can kind of remove that stress of, I don’t know, an insurance, a mega insurance agency comes to you and they’re like, Hey, we want to build an app using bubble and you can say, perfect. [00:19:17] I’ve got this way that I train and educate people. You don’t need to know. Maybe SOC compliance and all of this stuff that goes into that sector of insurance, because you’re just training them on how to launch this thing. You don’t have to be responsible maybe at the end of the day of how they secure data and all of this stuff. [00:19:36] Am I getting that fairly accurate? [00:19:39]Kristen: [00:19:39] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s. It is when the, when the client is the one who’s building their apps and these different responsibilities are, are on their shoulders because we are helping them to create their app. But you can, you can be coming from lots of different [00:20:00] industries and you might have different regulations of your own that we have. [00:20:05] No experience with, but as long as you know what they are, and if you’re building an app that relates to them, you probably should, then, you can handle those aspects and. I think it makes it so much easier and so much better for the client too, because you don’t need to, as a client, you don’t need to find someone who does know all of these really niche things specific to your industry, which, makes your options just really narrow. [00:20:35] And so I think you, you definitely hit that on the head there. [00:20:39]Matt: [00:20:39] I’m redoing my bathroom or I’m planning on having my bathrooms. We’d done in my house and I’m out there getting quotes and I’m like every other web person who’s ever come to us and be like, well, I just watched this on YouTube. [00:20:48] This should be easy. I’m just looking at everything I don’t know about this stuff. And I’m just looking at the quotes that are coming through. I’m like, how did we get to 40. A thousand dollars when I’m looking at this guy on [00:21:00] YouTube, who did it in a half an hour, you know what I’m like? What’s the difference. [00:21:03]Let’s, let’s I open a pry, opened the business a little bit, your business. That is what have you learned since you first made the pivot to let’s call it purely education and coaching from, the days of past where you’re doing the consulting work from where you started education, maybe like price points. [00:21:21] What have you learned in that? Like how have you gotten better at that? How have you maximized that whole process for the business? [00:21:27]Kristen: [00:21:27] Hmm. That’s interesting too. I, I think the, one of the ways that we’ve looked at it is, what’s involved in the training in terms of the outcome. So. When you’re doing training, yes, you can be offering hourly services, but we’re offering more of a package service. [00:21:48] And so when you’re looking at training and you’re not charging by the hour, it’s helpful to look at the, the outcome that you are enabling your clients to achieve. So what’s the result [00:22:00] and what’s the general value of that result. And so we can. You can have standalone training, training, videos, training, tutorials, courses, things like that, and the client’s outcome or the student’s outcome is going to be better than if they are just watching free tutorials. [00:22:20] Ideally, it’s going to be better than if they’re doing something in a complete DIY way. But it’s not going to be as good as if you’re working hands-on with them. And so. Pricing that obviously lower than if you’re working hands on with them is a good starting point, but that’s really how I’ve looked at it. [00:22:41] And then, when we first launched our, our program where we’re working with our clients directly, it’s, we learned so much after that. And there were so many iterations with that, that. Initially, it’s like you look at the result that you’re intending to help a client [00:23:00] achieve. You have to go through a first round of testing, like a beta round, just like you would with your app or a website or whatever it is you’re doing. [00:23:07] And then you have to look at the results from there and then you add on iterations and you see, okay, do those enhance the results? And what value can I attach with that? And that’s kind of what we’ve done over time is just, how can we make this better? And now what is that worth? And what’s the value that’s tied with that. [00:23:25]Matt: [00:23:25] Is there one thing you’ve experienced that you remove from the offering of today that maybe you started with like unlimited revisions and then you realize, Oh God, this is the worst idea ever, because they never stopped asking us about these iterations or revisions. Is there one thing like that you’ve removed. [00:23:40]Kristen: [00:23:40] Not like that. Not in the sense that there was one thing that we just offered way too much of, we have removed at time because we realized that more is not. Better in, in all situations more is not always better. And so I think [00:24:00] when you are helping a client or creating training, instinctually instinctively, you just want to add more and more and more and try to pack it with value, but it can end up just kind of muddying things and confusing people. [00:24:16] And again, going back to the outcomes, they just. It’s harder for them to get there. And so a lot of the changes we’ve made is just stripping it back, removing the noise, taking away the things that aren’t like, they, they look like good additions and they sound like good additions, but they aren’t really serving a solid purpose. [00:24:35] And so we just stripped things back so that they can take the simplest path forward and just achieve the, the easiest outcome. [00:24:44]Matt: [00:24:44] I think one of the most challenging things of a coaching business or consulting business and especially when you start to intermingle I dunno what I’ll call digital deliverables. [00:24:55] Like you’re delivering, you’re probably reviewing somebody’s like bubble account or [00:25:00] whatever other apps that you, that you consult with. So you’re doing that. You’re you’re, you’re probably helping them scope. These projects out, but then there’s the coaching aspect? Like the mindset, like how do we pull these ideas out? [00:25:10] I think one of the hardest things in these types of businesses is staying connected to a customer. And keeping them engaged, especially a student, if somebody’s here and they’re a student trying to learn, it’s like keeping them going, keeping them engaged. How do you do that? Like how do you keep people going in let’s say a coaching program, like your most entry-level customer who might flake off and be like, Oh God, this whole thing isn’t really, for me, like, how do you keep them going? [00:25:37] Zoom calls circle apps. What do you do to keep them connected? [00:25:40]Kristen: [00:25:40] We do, we do a lot of things because that’s such a common thing you see, because no matter how motivated someone is, everybody’s a human. And so everybody’s going to have other things going on in life and, and that pull them away. And a lot of it is just communication. [00:26:00] [00:25:59] So constantly staying in touch with people. I think that’s one of the biggest things that we learned is that. When someone sets out to launch an app or, or launch a site or a business or anything there, no matter how excited they are about it, they’re going to have a hard time getting there by their own self motivation and self-will, and no matter if they invest in doing it, no matter if they set aside the time, it’s just hard to do. [00:26:29] And so. Staying in constant communication with them, whether that be in, in groups or an email or on calls, which we do all of tracking them, like literally tracking how they’re doing, how active they are, which milestones they’re achieving. We do that, holding them accountable, yes, they’re coming to you and they’re paying you for your help, but we don’t see it as them just. [00:26:57] Paying us to help them with their app. We see it as [00:27:00] them also coming to us to be held accountable and to have someone there saying, Hey, you’re not making enough progress. You need, you need to take this step or you need to do this thing by the end of tomorrow or something like that. So I think just setting expectations, setting boundaries, and then committing to those yourself helps the client commit as well. [00:27:20]Matt: [00:27:20] What tools do you focus on with the coaching? And the training side of the business, is it, is it just bubble? Will you take anyone that has a no-code tool or, or is that how you found your way to hyper-focus on a customer, but also a way for you to scale the business in the future? Like maybe you don’t do web flow now, but in the future, you’ll have a web flow module. [00:27:39] I’m simplifying it, but is that how you look at it and what are the tools that you’ve primarily primarily focused on? [00:27:45]Kristen: [00:27:45] So we, we use bubble at the hub of everyone’s app. So anyone who is working with us is using bubble. Now they might be adding on other tools and other apps. On top of that, but the [00:28:00] hub of their app lives on bubble. [00:28:02] And the way we look at it is less. So which tools should we teach and more. So which existing tools are the best fit for the types of apps our clients are building. And so I don’t see us necessarily adding on just more platforms, just for the sake of having more platforms. If there was at some point a better platform for the types of apps our clients were building, then we could potentially switch over to another platform, but we’ve chosen bubble just because it’s, it’s such a powerful platform and there are so many capabilities on it and it really serves our clients really well. [00:28:43]Matt: [00:28:43] What are those types those most popular types of apps that folks build people in the WordPress space might be, they’re not used to hearing about bubble or what public can achieve. What are the handful of most popular apps that people build with it? [00:28:55]Kristen: [00:28:55] There’s a lot of different types of apps. [00:28:57]You’ll see marketplace [00:29:00] apps dashboards, internal systems, any. Any, any type of app, really? I think less so specific on the type of app. We see people who are wanting to be able to really customize what they’re, what they’re building. And that’s one of the things that bubble is really great for. [00:29:22] It does have a higher learning curve, but the higher learning curve is there because the platform gives you so much power. You, you can. Build your own database. You can build your own front end. You can build your own logic. So when people are wanting something that is not cookie cutter, that’s not template and that’s not so out of the box. [00:29:42] And they just want to create something that is really specific to their own needs, to their own market, their own situation. That’s where we see people coming, coming to bubble. Even if the, the app itself is. Pretty simple. Even if it’s just a really [00:30:00] simple marketplace app, for example, it’s the customization and the capabilities that it gives you that we see as being one of the really big benefits and draws. [00:30:09]Matt: [00:30:09] Bubble seems to me like it’s like, it’s like the most note, it’s the most code, no code tool that’s out there because from my experiences, like I started looking at what I could do with bubble as a hoop, what is a little bit difficult for me. And then I found things like glide apps when it’s Hey. [00:30:25] Make an app from a spreadsheet. And I’m like, ah, this is more my speed. Like these are some gotchas out there in the, in the no code world. Right. These things that look super easy, even easier than bubble. And you’re like, Oh, this is very limited to what I can achieve with or achieve with. [00:30:39]Kristen: [00:30:39] Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s exactly it. [00:30:41]Matt: [00:30:41] I want to talk a little bit about like marketing the business and standing out. I found you through, through YouTube where you put out a lot of free content and it’s not just like short stuff. You have some long form content here. [00:30:54]And you’re putting a lot of effort into it. Is YouTube the best channel for you to market in and find [00:31:00] people to funnel into the business. [00:31:01]Kristen: [00:31:01] We like using YouTube. We have various places where people are coming in. People are finding us. We like YouTube because it’s so fitting with what we do. [00:31:14] It’s so visual. Video is just great for that. We also. I just like video. I like connecting with people in that way. I use YouTube a lot and I just think video is such an excellent marketing tool. And so it’s something that we’ve put a lot of time into and, and built up and it’s worked well for us. [00:31:36]Matt: [00:31:36] Your most popular video the indepth bubble.io tutorial, how to build any type of app, 183,000 views published two years ago. Some might say, wait, you’re giving away the content that you that you’d otherwise be coaching somebody to do. Obviously I know the obvious answer to that, but how do you set. [00:31:56] How do you get your mind around free content? Like how do [00:32:00] you sit with your partner and say, here’s what we’ll do for free? And here’s the content we’ll put out in only the coaching course. Let’s say [00:32:07]Kristen: [00:32:07] there’s, there’s not one specific process that we have for that. I think our mindset has always just kind of been, what’s going to help people and. [00:32:20] There are always, always going to be people who are only ever going to use the YouTube content and that’s it. And if the YouTube content is there and it’s helping them more so than if they were just to kind of click around and try to figure it out themselves, then that’s, that’s great. There will always always be people who still want to pay for a more hands-on experience. [00:32:43] No matter how much free content you put out. Like there, there are just people who will always do that. Even if you put, 99% of your content out there for free, there’s still going to be people who want to pay to work with you. And if you can provide someone value with your free content, and [00:33:00] they’re the type of person who do want that a more in depth experience or that more hands-on experience. [00:33:06] And if they find even a little bit of value from some of your free content, Then who are they going to ask when they need that higher level experience? So they’re going to come to the person who has helped them initially. [00:33:17]Matt: [00:33:17] Yeah. And so it’s so hard for people that. Might be in your position or just starting out in your position and they’re starting to think, okay, maybe I can get into coaching and digital downloads. [00:33:28] And then you sort of wrestle with, do I put this content out for free? Do I have it paid? And then largely it’s put it out for free because anyone that you’re really trying, like anyone who. You’re wrestling with, so they just pay you a dollar to learn something. You don’t want them as clients. You want the client to say, saw what you did. [00:33:50] That was amazing. I never want to go down that path, just take this money and teach them, how to do it right. Or how to put this together, give me a structure around this stuff. And [00:34:00] those are going to be your best glance, which I’m assuming you’ve found, over the course of this time. [00:34:04]Kristen: [00:34:04] Yeah, absolutely. [00:34:06] It’s people, they see you doing it. So that builds trust with them and that they know that you know how to achieve what they want, but if they just want an easier path to get there versus trying to do it on their own, then yeah. It’s an easy way for them just to say, Hey, I saw you did it. Can you help me do it? [00:34:27] And yeah, those are great clients for sure. [00:34:31]Matt: [00:34:31] One of the final questions here. The WordPress world loves WordPress because it’s open source because we can kind of control it. We can move it around. We can put it on any web hosts. We’re not locked into anything. I’m curious if your clients have. Any take on the ownership of committing to two bubble, or if you have any thoughts on sort of that open source take on ownership and portability, do your clients, or number one, do you have any concerns [00:35:00] about that with the no-code and bubble world and into your clients? [00:35:02] Have any concerns like that? Either? [00:35:04]Kristen: [00:35:04] That’s a good question. And yes, there are clients and just people in general. People actually all the time who asked about it. I think it’s a thing that just comes up constantly. And it’s a big fear that people have. And I think it just stems from them. It’s like you’re making a commitment to build your thing on a platform and well, what if that platform goes away or what if it changes somehow, then what’s going to happen? [00:35:35] I don’t personally have concerns about it because. Yes. If you’re, if you’re building an app on bubble, any platform where you don’t have the source code and that goes away, then you, you have to do something. But it’s just, I just think it’s so, you’re not, [00:36:00] you’re not stuck. You have somewhere to go. You, you already have your app idea. [00:36:04] You already have. Your app and most platforms they’re going to let you, they’re probably going to help you if, if something happened to them. So let’s say that bubble went out of business. Well, they’ve already made the commitment that they would release the source code. At least that’s what it says in their documentation. [00:36:24] They would release the source code to all of their users so that they could go somewhere else and host their apps. And with bubble specifically, You you’re paying for the convenience of the platform and you still own your data. You can still monetize the app. However you want it. It’s still your app. [00:36:44] You’re just paying for the convenience. And so the way I look at it is if you are scared that something is going to happen to the platform and you don’t have access to your source code and you, and you don’t use the platform because of that. What are you going to do [00:37:00] otherwise? Are you going to outsource to traditional development agencies? [00:37:05] Are you going to find some other way to build it? And the difficulty of doing that, is that going to hold you back from building the app at all? And I think that’s what a lot of people don’t realize is that yeah, you’re, you’re building something on top of a platform. But you’re actually able to build and launch an app and a business really, really easily, relatively speaking because of it. [00:37:29] And so look at the pros and cons like, look what you’re actually gaining from this. And if something happens again, you, you have options. I think if you get to the point where you have this, this app, you have users, something happens. You need to change platforms. If you’re at the point where you do have your users. [00:37:50] Like your, your business has scaled and look thinking forward to the potential of something like that happening. It seems like a really massive problem, [00:38:00] but every problem that could happen seems really big until you’re there and something has happened and you just solve it. You just do the thing you need to do. [00:38:09] You take the next step. And a week later, a month later, a year later, It’s that problem is so minuscule now that that’s kind of how I see it. [00:38:18]Matt: [00:38:18] Have you ever had to deal with and WordPress agency folks or freelancers, whatever, and know the problematic WordPress web hosts, where they like, they know the website’s always going to go down and their customers are going to call them. [00:38:31] How, how, how has the reliability of bubble been. From you as somebody who used to do the consulting or the actual development work, is anyone ever knocked on your door? Hey, my apps running slow and you’re like, I can’t really do anything. It’s just bubble. Right? Has that ever happened to you and how have you navigated that? [00:38:45]Kristen: [00:38:45] Yeah. The bubble, the bubble of team has always seemed to be very open in their forum and emails and things happen. It’s usually less, so bubble [00:39:00] related it’s often has to do with just, AWS, something happens. And so that affects bubble or, or something like that. And, I just think that no matter what platform you use there. [00:39:12] There can always be issues. With bubble I’ve at least seen that they’re very forthcoming and vocal and quick to fix things when they do happen. And they also are improving and expanding the platform in a lot of ways. And they’re just really communicative. And I think that’s one of the benefits is that it’s not like. [00:39:36] A silent platform, or it’s not like a platform with no face or a voice behind it. You know who the founders are, you see their names in the forum, you see, and you see all of this. And so I do think it builds a sense of trust. And my experience has had been positive, even when things do happen. [00:39:55] Matt: [00:39:55] Awesome stuff. Kristen, Young’s coaching, no code apps.com. Go to the [00:40:00] coaching. No-code apps.com. Click on the start, my free training up at the top. You can just dive right into learning some bubble. Goodness. If you’re listening, if you’re a WordPress developer out there an agency, there’s nothing wrong with complimenting your skillset with this no-code stuff. [00:40:15] I’ve certainly Dove in, got a little scared, back out a little bit, go to as far as setting up an air table. And I was like, okay, I’m feeling good. I’m feeling good. But check it out. Coaching, no code apps.com Kristen, anywhere else, folks can find you to say thanks. [00:40:29]Kristen: [00:40:29] No, that’s it just had to, yeah. [00:40:31] Coaching no-code apps.com and you can reach us there. [00:40:34] Matt: [00:40:34] Awesome stuff. Everyone else, Matt report.com. airport.com/subscribe. To join the mailing list. Don’t forget to check out the WP minute.com podcast for all of your WordPress news in under five minutes. See you in the next episode.

This week on the podcast, Dan Neumann is joined by frequent guest of the show, Quincy Jordan, a Director in AgileThought’s Innovate Line of Service.   The last time Quincy was on the show, they spoke about the excursions you take along an Agile journey and what those look like. Today, they’re taking this discussion one step further and exploring how to maintain the work that has been done along an Agile journey.   On the “other side” of an Agile transformation, we want the work that we have done to stick. In this episode, Quincy shares his key tips for maintaining an Agile transformation once it has gotten to a place of sustainability, how to shift from a transformation team to an environment that has Agile Champions, why you should be implementing Communities of Practice, and the role that leaders play in communicating and instilling the practices formed during the transformation.   Key Takeaways What are transformation teams and how do they fit into maintaining the Agile transformation? A transformation team is critical to the health of an Agile transformation Transformation teams are almost like Scrum Masters to the transformation itself Once the thinking has changed and you’ve arrived at the part of the Agile journey where you’re only looking to maintain what you’ve achieved, you don’t necessarily need the transformation team When disbanding the team it is important to have Agile Champions to lead and guide the Communities of Practice (which are key in maintaining the way of thinking around continuously learning [and unlearning] based on the current needs and problems you are looking to solve) Members of the transformation team can join the team of Agile Champions or become Agile Champions for other teams of practices Be cautious in disbanding the transformation team too soon as you may revert to the old way of doing things Have a succession plan for your Agile Champions to maintain the new way of thinking Quincy recommends 3‒4 Agile Champions for a single Community of Practice The role communication plays in Agile transformation maintenance and continuous learning: Communication is beyond critical to maintaining the transformation — especially coming from leadership (Quincy recommends no more than monthly communication from leadership) An important aspect that leadership has to remember is that everyone does not know what they know (gaps in communication occur when leadership assumes that everyone knows what they know) It’s important for the leadership team to reinforce the new way of working and what it needs to look like Reinforce desired behavior by highlighting “bright spots” (i.e. when you see the behavior you want, point it out) Trust and build empathy (when trust is absent, the “ugly truth” of what’s happening in a project gets buried vs. when trust and empathy are present, the whole team works together toward solving the problems that arise) Maintain and bring transparency into the work How to reinforce the ways you deliver and maintain a value-driven perspective: Ideally in the transformation, the organization has adopted a value-driven perspective vs. merely tracking To maintain this, have dedicated teams Shift the mindset of having one specialist for one job to one of building an overall team competence Implement rolling forecasts with quarterly revisiting Maintain the perspective of funding so that you don’t revert to this notion of going to go down to a granular level (i.e. figuring out how much a particular thing is going to cost 12-months down the line between a 2‒5% margin) You want to maintain a way to fund investments and evaluate that funding earlier on (and on a quarterly basis) It is good practice to leverage OKRs to maintain a transformation (because you’re being clear in a simplistic way on what your objectives are and how you’re going to hit them) Closely align your portfolio based on your current dedicated teams and any planned dedicated teams   Mentioned in this Episode: Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 129: “Excursions Along the Agile Journey with Quincy Jordan” Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath    Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

With the recent release of the US Census we are getting a picture of the upcoming demographic time bomb facing the country. The 2020 census revealed that there are 331 million US residents, which represents a 7.4% increase since 2010. This is significant since this period is the second slowest rate of growth we have experienced as a country since the Great Depression and roughly half the growth rate we experienced during the 90’s. When you combine the lower birth rate and declining immigration with a rapidly aging population, it indicates that we are entering a period of substantially lower population growth. If it stays this low, it could mean the end of American exceptionalism in this regard. The US population has always outpaced the growth of other developed countries but that’s no longer the case. This means that the US is losing one of its major competitive advantages. The question is why we are experiencing low population growth? Fewer births and more deaths reflect a reality where more people are delaying child bearing and delaying marriage, as well as a rise in drug and endemic-related deaths. The average age of Americans also continues to rise because of this trend. The current birth rate of America is 1.7, which is below the threshold for the replacement rate of 2.1. Historically, the answer to this demographic quandary has been immigration, but we haven’t seen the immigration levels we’ve had in the past. Fewer birth rates in Mexico and a generally improving economy means that the historical source of the majority of immigration is lower than usual. The growth rate of our nation is as tepid as it’s ever been at any point in our history, and we are likely to see a slowdown of economic output as a result. We have more people above the age of 80 than we do below the age of 2. There will come a time when we sell more adult diapers than baby diapers. With fewer people in the country producing fewer goods and services we will see a lower GDP over time. Other countries are facing the same issues and have begun offering incentives to young people to encourage a higher birth rate. From an economic perspective, we are going to have a hard time funding social safety nets and entitlement programs for citizens of the US. Ideally, every generation is bigger than the previous generation. It should look like a pyramid with more younger people at the bottom but the current reality is an inverted pyramid. With 78 million Baby Boomers, there are not enough younger people working to support Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This means that we will need massive infusions of cash to pay for these programs. The only real solution for retirees facing this sort of demographic time bomb is to save in tax-free vehicles. If you’re one of the 95% of Americans that have the majority of their money invested in tax-deferred vehicles, it’s time to take advantage of today’s historically low tax rates. Given Joe Biden’s position on taxation, you probably have until 2030 to get most of the heavy lifting done. 2030 will be a perfect storm. Demographics, underfunded entitlement programs, and economic events will converge and could lead to a depression the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years. We cannot ignore demographics because in many ways they describe what the future will look like.

Most people have a strength differential between their two boards, and don’t address this well - so as the weaker one becomes stronger, the stronger one gets in on the act and also gets stronger! But ‘bad sides’ do eventually become ‘good sides’, leaving the rider very confused. Ideally any asymmetry fix would involve both sides of the body, but the rider’s limited ‘brain space’ might make this impossible for a long time. The horse has two boards and three thirds just like the rider. If he were symmetrical, sitting on him would be like sitting on an oil drum, but he may have one long back muscle that’s like a flat roof whilst the other is like a sloping roof. The issues of steering are not yours alone - the sloping roof temps your seat bone on that side to slide away from the midline.

You already know the importance of first impressions. But for podcasters, they’re tricky to make because we don’t get to lead with our audio! Instead, when new listeners come across our show online or in an app, they’re deciding if they want to listen based on visual factors. Listen for 5 simple ways you can make a great first impression both visually and immediately after listeners decide to hit play. In this episode, Travis talks about: How first impressions are meant to qualify the right listeners (this includes letting the people your show isn’t meant for know to keep scrolling!) Podcast Art - Generally the first thing people see, it needs to be big, bold, and beautiful. You have to make sure it works scaled down to thumbnail size. Title - A title needs to be easily searchable and quickly understandable. Think concise and don’t get too cute with it. Description - Why the description needs to be about the audience, not about you. And how that first line needs to be enough to explain the show, because a lot of people won’t read past it. Audio - Once people hit play, you need to continue to make a good impression to keep them listening. Crisp, clear, professional sounding audio is a must. First Minute - It has to be gold! Ideally, it hooks people in by telling them exactly why they should listen to the full episode. Memorable Quote “My audience is the most important person in my world.” Links to Resources I just launched the Podcast Builder Club! This membership has all my courses and trainings in one place! You can choose what podcasting subject you want to learn about and start growing your show. Follow me on Instagram @poddecks for daily tips to level up your show! DISCLAIMER: Some of the links in my emails are affiliate links, which means I will make a small commission if you click them and make a qualifying purchase, at no extra cost to you :) *I hereby solemnly swear to only promote products and services I actually love and use in my podcast, business, and everyday life!

Author and educator Jessica Lahey joins us to talk about: The great backfiring of "helicopter parenting" The problem with viewing our children's accomplishments as a measure of our own success How many of us can unwittingly look to our children to provide the feedback we need to feel like we're doing our jobs well, and how this ultimately hurts us both Ideally we want to raise our children for independence, equipping them to live in the reality of the world. But, HOW? SHOW NOTES & LINKS: https://www.onairella.com/post/228-the-gift-of-failure SUPPORT THE SHOW: as a Patreon or on Amazon The conversation continues...join me on Instagram. WANT MORE? 085 Interview with My Son (Age 15) 086 Imperfect Parenting - What You Said 165 Raising Independent Children