Ep. 466: "Crypto Joe"
Fortune favors the brave.
Hello.
Hi John.
Hi Merlin.
How's it going?
You know I was having a little trouble getting started.
You?
And uh...
And it was because you want a little tech talk right at the top?
You know what?
I have a new policy.
I have a lot of new policies.
One of my new policies is you take new knowledge where you can get it.
So please.
Yeah.
Tech talk right at the top.
Beep boop.
You know, I've got a hardware here.
It's by a company called Apogee.
Oh.
And my hardware is a box.
Let's try and keep it family friendly.
Okay.
Okay.
And, uh, and, and so I was trying to talk to you via the internet.
And I couldn't, I could see that the boxes were communicating, right?
This happens to you all the time, right?
And how could you tell?
Because there was like a bloop, bloop, the line was jumping?
Yeah, the line's jumping.
You tap on the microphone, the lines are jumping.
You know, you do this, you say that, you bonk it on the side of the couch.
Everything seems to be connected.
Situation normal, all looks good.
Except I can't hear anything.
Mm-hmm.
Headphones are plugged in.
You know, I've been in this game a long time.
I know you want to check to see if the headphones are plugged in.
You know from cans.
So I turn it off and I turn it on again.
Okay.
Still doesn't solve the problem.
So I unplug it.
I unplug the box separate from turning it off and turning it on again.
Still a problem.
So I'm looking at it.
I'm looking at it.
It's a box.
It's got a giant knob.
And then I notice...
Right above the headphone icon, there's a little tiny blue square.
I had to take my glasses off to see what it was.
Had a letter M inside.
This feels like a clue.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like a Sandra Bullock movie where pie shows up on your screen.
Maybe there's something deeper going on, deeper in your stack, as John Syracuse says.
Right.
So what do you think the M means?
Wait, so you take off your glasses.
You see a blue square.
Is this in like a menu bar?
No, no, no.
It's on the hardware box.
It's a little LED, an LED light on the hardware box that says M in tiny little.
I know some of our listeners are like, I know, I know.
Well, of course there are.
That's what they do.
I know, I know.
Is it mono?
No.
Good guess.
Okay.
Is it momentarily?
Nope.
Okay.
Nope.
That's a further off guess.
I don't want to blow my third wish.
What was it?
Well, my suspicion was it was mute.
Oh, that's good, John.
It's mono or mute.
If this were Family Feud, those would be the top two.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Survey says.
A hundred people surveyed.
You see a blue square with an M in it on an apogee.
Like I say, I'm not new.
I've been in this game.
It's not your first day.
Oh, it's not.
So I'm like, mute.
Okay, so it got muted.
It was not a functionality I even knew about or would have ever tried to use.
I don't need a mute, as everybody knows.
Don't you?
If I'm going to cough, if I'm going to sneeze, it's right in the mic.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I meant existential.
Oh, no, I definitely need mute.
To be muted.
I need to be unplugged.
I need to be rebooted.
I need to be in a snow-covered city.
New York City, right after a blizzard, when there's no sound.
Oh, I hear the sleigh bells jingling.
It's so peaceful.
So I say, all right, you...
box got muted somehow but there is no button for mute you don't see there's because there's probably hardware there could be hardware mute or there could be software mute right there you go and this this is this is what makes this tech talk because up till now it's just been you know this is just normal chit chat on the bus
But it's a box that requires that you have a software.
The box has buttons and knobs.
That's what makes it hardware, John.
But then you go in and the software is what determines what the buttons and knobs.
Your hardware has a software.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
And the thing is, there are boxes, hardware boxes that just have all the buttons that do the things.
that do the same job, but this is got the software.
It's kind of like embedded video.
You remember when that was, when everybody was talking about embedded video, what they mean?
Oh, you know, like every time I've started.
So, so I realized this week, I can't be on Twitter.
But, but I was, I want to believe it.
I was on there a lot for a while.
And what I, what I decided was that, you know, every third thing now is an ad and you can tell it's an ad because the only things in my Twitter feed that have embedded video are ads.
Yeah.
Oh, so if you see, you don't even need to scroll down to where you see that little tiny, tiny, tiny promoted.
If you see something about crypto or user-generated content and it's got what you're calling an embedded video, you think, oh, that's probably not, I don't know, somebody that you follow.
As soon as I'm scrolling down.
You should quit following Crypto Joe.
The only things that have video that I'm actually following, you can tell right away because is it a scene that
Is it a Star Wars or a cat?
No, that's not me.
Is it a picture of a commercially available drone dropping a digitally printed grenade on top of a Russian tank?
Then yes, I'm probably following that account.
Is it any group of like young, happy people just, you know, like climbing into a Volkswagen or investing in crypto?
Now that we're back to normal, get in your VW and buy some Ethereum.
That's exactly right.
And so I have started.
I don't know.
This may be common.
Everybody might be doing this.
Mm-hmm.
But I have started to block every ad.
That's the only exercise I get.
Do you do this too?
Block them.
I do.
I do.
Just in passing, before we hear from people, there are at least two extremely good iOS apps.
Twitter apps that I do like and I use, Tweetbot and Twitterific.
But I still find myself mostly looking.
For me, there's just days where all of a sudden, like you're describing here, there's days where I don't see any promoteds.
And then there's days where it's like it does feel like every third or fourth toot.
And, and, um, yeah, I don't, I don't want to, I don't like to be unkind and there are, there have been, but yes, yes.
For a while I would block every one of them, but then I wondered if that was powering some kind of bot, just my activity.
You know what I mean?
Like captchas, like, but, but no, there's, there's, it's,
I want to block all of them.
And it's the same way as like when you hit the down button to get an elevator and it's probably not connected to anything.
I just think if anybody is collecting that data and there's one good person in the company, they go, wow, this one guy who used to be considered a high value user of our platform seems to block all this bullshit.
Maybe we should do something about that.
I have this mental picture.
I still think of Twitter as being... It used to be so cute and so little.
It was like a little puppy.
I think of it as being on a single floor...
In a building in downtown, you know, in sort of the Mission District.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
It's an open plan office where an industrial elevator- Are people throwing balls and listening to techno, John?
That's right.
And they've got M&Ms and cereal and dispensers against one wall.
Oh, right.
They've got- It's over there in the Foosball District.
Foosball.
Industrial elevator that opens right into the space-
Um, the person that's, that's working reception is also like running the, the, the betting pool or whatever, you know, just a local, just local friendly friends.
Oh, they don't have like a, they don't have a dedicated barista.
No, there's no, you don't have to have a badge.
You don't have to beep your way through a door.
It's just Twitter.
Yeah, it's Twitter.
Hey, we're just throwing foosballs.
Just imagine hearing an engine nation.
And then I see over in one side, there are the people, and they're all new.
These are the younger people.
The older people have been working there a long time.
Oh, they're all wearing wizard hats and stuff.
But the young people, the new people who have recently been hired to sell advertising, they're all over in one corner.
And they've got headset microphones on and they're talking, they're selling ads.
Closing deals.
Hey, hey, hey, you know, let me get you on this platform.
Like Twitter's really blowing up.
I think your company- What do I need to put you in this crypto video today?
Exactly.
And what I think of as I block those ads, I think of myself as playing-
a multiplayer video game against those people, right?
Or maybe they get, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like a first person shooter.
Maybe there's a blip, blip, blip.
You hear a pop-up on all of Ooga, Ooga.
Everybody says, oh no, John Roderick blocked an ad.
And then they were going to want to go pursue that.
Well, because they cannot possibly keep finding new customers faster than I can block
Bacardi and, uh, crypto Joe and, uh, you know, and, and what all these, all these banks are weird.
I don't know where they think I'm, who they think I am.
Like an entertainment property where you can follow this, you click here and then you, you register to like, um, win a Buick or something.
If you, if you follow us for updates on, on, on Morbius three, the reckoning.
Okay.
But so I imagine there's about 30 people selling ads for Twitter.
Everybody knows each other.
Everybody knows everybody.
Everybody knows each other, what their hangups are, what they eat for lunch a little too loudly.
Maybe what the name of their of their they friend or spouse partners.
And they all they all have stand up desks, but they can also lower them and sit at them.
But and so everybody's kind of like the breakout room if you need to.
Yeah, and there's a little nap cube.
I imagine there's a nap cube, right?
A little shush area if you need a little nap.
Chelsea's sleeping.
They are selling so many ads, and they're high-fiving each other, and I'm blocking them faster than they can sell them.
But it turns out they keep selling.
John, you're outnumbered at least.
Yeah, well.
You're trying to not even be on Twitter.
Yeah, that's crazy.
You know, it's so funny you say that.
Jokes aside, I have thought something kind of close to that.
It does feel like, and that's a joke I've made for five years.
The only aerobic energy I get is blocking assholes.
But I know exactly what you mean.
Yeah, I don't know how it works.
I think part of it is what they call economics, which is like when the price is right, people will buy almost anything.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
So Crypto Joe might be getting a sweet ass deal.
I met a guy just a few weeks ago at the Army War College who was a banker, a brick-and-mortar banker, and he said, when we went around everybody introducing each other, he said, I'm starting the first brick-and-mortar crypto bank.
This is before the crash.
This is three weeks ago, right?
Like two weeks, a week before the crash.
He's there and he's in a beautiful suit.
The whole week he's wearing beautiful suits.
Probably purchased for crypto.
He's about my age, but he's been in banking the whole time.
And he's like, it's about time that the world realized that crypto is just another currency.
And we're going to put, thank you.
And we're putting up a bank and, and, and we're about to launch.
You walk, you walk, this is a, you say brick and mortar.
It's going to be a physical building.
It's not going to be in like a second life or something.
You're going to walk in there.
You could park somewhere and then walk into the crypto bank.
And then you, you buy crypto, you do other bank things.
Is there a crypto ATM?
Are you getting a crypto mortgage?
That's like, he's got, he's got a whole platform around.
Yeah, I think it's crypto mortgage is what we're talking about.
And when I say brick and mortar these days, like that has lost all meaning too.
And I just feel like anything that has a website that ends in not IO or RU is brick and mortar, right?
It's like, oh, it's got a dot com.
Yeah, brick and mortar used to be a specific, I take when I used to hear brick and mortar, which I think is not a terrible term, but to me that meant, it not only said that this was a physical business,
or even primarily a physical business, it was a way of saying, hey, look, Walmart has a website where you can find where their stores are, but you can't buy a kiddie pool on there.
It's a brick and mortar.
So, you know what I mean?
It's not that they don't have any web presence, but they certainly aren't, you know, online first.
I don't think you could have a crypto bank that wasn't online first, if you know what I mean, given that crypto only exists online.
I mean, how long has it been now, John?
You know, I don't like banks.
I don't like money.
I mean, I like money.
I like having money, but I don't like dealing with money.
I don't like dealing with banks.
I remember the first time I walked into my brick and mortar bank in the city of Tallahassee, Florida, and there was somebody standing at a lectern, like the hostess or like the maitre d' or something at a hoity-toity restaurant.
And they were like, how may First Union Bank help you to
How may I direct your call?
Well, and of course, I'm there to cash a check or make a deposit or that kind of stuff.
Because these youngs today, you can't tell them the ATMs didn't used to be everywhere.
And you can just count on an ATM always being there.
I came up at a time where you had to go to the bank on Friday before three to cash a check.
Otherwise, you didn't have cash that weekend.
That's a separate story.
So I talked to the money sommelier.
Yeah.
And I say, oh, I just need to cash a check or I need to get some money.
Were you aware that you could go out to the ATM and do that at one of our at our ATM here or any of our other looking?
Do you remember when that first happened?
You walk into a bank like a person and the money sommelier says to you, ask you what you need and then tell you you should do it somewhere else.
Well, and that became a whole business model, right?
That's what I'm saying.
That's what I'm saying.
Well, crypto first.
Well, first of all, it's not really, it's not anything.
You're not really buying anything, which I mean, that's okay.
That's, that's how a lot of money works.
That's what money is in some ways.
But, but you know, what, who would walk, is it trying to,
Did you get any more info from this suit fella?
Because I'm wondering what... I mean, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if you really did think that through and you said, okay, well, now you're kind of actually in the real estate business.
Like Walgreens, for example, Walgreens for a long time was mostly in the real estate business.
It just wasn't obvious.
Because Walgreens... Sears, too.
But like Walgreens in particular didn't have like, like McDonald's, you buy a franchise a lot of the time.
There's what we call, you know, corporate stores and they call them stores, not restaurants because they know better.
But the idea was you could become a franchisee.
But my understanding was with Walgreens, one thing they did was like buy the property underneath the store.
And that was a big part of kind of what they did, how their model worked.
I don't know if that's true, but that's what I've heard.
In this instance, in this economy, you're telling me you're going to go on to one of those big streets with tall buildings in New York, and you're going to run out space from the Compass Company, which is also really hurting now because of real estate.
You're going to go get a store, a bank.
Maybe it's a bank that failed, like one that should fail, like Wells Fargo or Chase or all the other ones.
But now there's a space available, and Crypto Joe says, I'm going to hang my shingle here.
For what purpose over just being online?
I believe the one has coffee.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's just it was there was a long, slow, gradual walk up to crypto being considered a legitimate financial product.
And, uh, and, and, and my friend at the, that I met was, um, was part of this process of like suit and tying it.
I remember the first time there was some Swiss bank that, uh, that,
was offering in addition to like hiding all your ill-gotten gains.
Probably credit Swiss.
I think they've done a lot of kind of crazy stuff, right?
This was a couple of years ago and there was a banker that was saying, I'll manage your crypto portfolio for you.
Oh, nice.
And I've thought about that a lot since then.
Like you would turn over your wallet to this Swiss banker and
And then the banker, I guess, would then—then you wouldn't have to worry if you were going to forget your password or whatever.
He was going to remember your password for you?
Yeah, but I don't have money and I don't have investments, but it's my understanding you're getting something I believe is called an index fund.
And that's what they just say—
We kind of try to cover the whole board with a certain number of bets, like kind of weird roulette, but like the odds will ever be in your favor because you've done this.
But then you can get to the next level up.
It's not like having your own like personal Jordan Nelson.
Oh, but this seemed different.
He's not leveling resources.
Well, it feels like that's what my new friend was doing.
This old guy, the Swiss guy was saying, if you already have Bitcoin, which is the, at the time that I read this ad, the only people that had Bitcoin were the people that already had Bitcoin, right?
There was nobody that was like, how do I get into this?
You know, I spent 200,000 Bitcoin on a pizza or whatever.
Those people.
And he was saying, they spent 200,000 Bitcoin on a pizza.
Oh my God.
He was saying, let me, I'll just, like, I work at a bank.
Let's call this something that a bank does.
And I hadn't heard that from anywhere else except for this crazy thing.
But the new person, I think he's doing what you're saying, which is in addition to having some of your retirement over here in Fannie Mae's and 401ks, we'll also diversify over into Ethereum.
Right.
And you can have that touch on your Roth IRA.
And on top of it, then the actor Matt Damon says the fortune favors the brave.
So you're going to disperse your amenities in ways that the paper, the waterfront.
And that's what Crypto Joe is going to do for you.
Yeah.
Now, I don't want to speculate because of all the people that I met, I did not spend, and it's strange to say, because it seems like a person I would have zeroed in on.
Like, tell me more.
One of those, like, standing in line at the lunchroom conversation.
It's something you don't know a ton about.
Yeah, but you don't know a ton about in terms of recent information.
I love the, this is another operationalization thing I'm doing, is trying to like update my priors, as they say on political Twitter.
If there's something I think I know about, and I gotta go, that goes in this pile, I'm trying to like update, okay, but have I revisited that thing?
I'm pretty sure I understand.
That's a great opportunity.
Crypto Joe, you know, in the same way that you come in to offer you some Capital One coffee, and he could walk you through where we are right now with crypto and why there's so much value to Crypto Joe handling your wallet.
The thing is, it
would have like today, if I met him today, I would absolutely, I would absolutely push him up against the back of the elevator and say, I'm not letting you out of this elevator until you tell me what the, you know, tell me all about your business model.
Yeah.
You better talk faster.
You're going to be a liquidity event.
Even a month ago, even three weeks ago, whenever I heard crypto or heard talk of crypto,
you know i had that i think not uncommon slight feeling of resentment that i didn't buy it when it was 50 cents a piece slight confusion at wondering whether or not this is a thing that even at sixty thousand dollars i should buy because it's going to be worth a million dollars tomorrow um but also an understanding that like well i guess all money is fake and we're just not even pretending anymore
Are they talking about fiat currencies?
The real fake currency?
A little bit of like...
This is just another sign of the apocalypse.
He's the one guy I didn't talk to because there was no part of it that was going to make me feel good.
Because he's a booster of it, right?
He's going to tell me yes to all those things.
Yes, it's going to be worth a million dollars.
Yes, you should buy it today.
Yes, all of that.
That's smart.
I didn't want to hear any of those things, so I just didn't want to talk to him about it.
Now, two weeks later...
When I'm full of all of this Gen X schadenfreude about it, like, oh my God, you guys all lost your shirts.
I feel so bad.
then I would have... But then, you know, you don't want to talk to a guy when he's down, or especially when he's like, no, I think you should still... I think you could... I agree with you, John, from the standpoint of being a human being.
But on the other hand, I think when they're down might be when Crypto Joe... When he's down, Crypto Joe might be his most hilarious.
Absolutely hilarious, but... He's going to be... You like to mention that scene with Kevin Bacon in the movie Animal House.
I think that's kind of what you're going to get.
Well, like the first time I bought a house when my mortgage broker who had this giant office with
like vintage guitars in the corner who high-fived me every time I walked in the room and who told me, why are you buying a $385,000 house?
We could get you into an $880,000 house.
You can't afford not to.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
And he was like, I've never in my whole career
Uh, I've never seen a better time to buy than right now.
Well, that sure sounds a lot like 2006.
That was December of 2007.
But you remember that?
Like they talk about us in the big short and like, or all the things about, you know, that era and how people were, you know, no, I know this is well-trodden territory, but we seem to have already forgotten it.
They would give loans to people with not only no proof of employment, no proof of income, no proof of credit, no proof of anything.
And it would be a usurious loan that they could never in a million years actually repay.
And then we wonder why people don't have houses anymore.
That was me.
I had no income.
Did you do it?
Did you go all in for the 800?
No, I said, that's crazy.
I said, you're not supposed to buy a house unless you can put 20% down.
And he said, pish posh.
That's what it was in San Francisco.
That was at least 20% down.
Yeah.
And I said, listen, I am, you know, I come from a long line of people who put 20% down, good sir.
And I'm not going to put 10% down.
Who do you take me for?
And I certainly will not get a bridge loan.
I've scrimped and saved.
And he was like special 60 year convertible.
Yeah, right, exactly.
And, you know, I said- Gives you a lot of flexibility.
Harumph, harumph, harumph.
Where I come from, we call it I-5, and when Mount Rainier is in the sun, we say, the mountain is out, and I'm putting 20% down.
And he was like, whatever, if you hate money, and then- You feel like a delightful hayseed going in there with your overalls, and you're chowing on some, we'll stalk a wheat, and you're like-
I may not know where the crows sleep at night, but I know how to do 20% down on a 30-year fixed loan.
Nine months later, he was working as a greeter at Fred Meyer nine months later.
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But I had my house and I never lost it, you know?
I never lost it.
The thing that happened to me this morning, though, is that I realized.
I don't know how you do it.
I realized that in order to get my computer to talk to the box, I was going to have to go into the software and I didn't know where to find the software.
Now, this probably never happens to you.
You think you might have to crack the encryption?
Well, no, it's that, I think, over in your little menu bar, how many icons do you have?
Oh, you don't want to know.
I have, well, can I tell you something, buddy?
I use, it's not an ad, I'm not going to mention the name, but I have a utility that lets you manage how many are shown by default, and then when you mouse over your menu bar,
There's all the ones then that are like secondary.
And then there's a third level of ones you want around but don't want to see.
That's how many I have.
Whoa.
I'll send you a screen grab.
It's a lot.
Well, so I don't have that many because I don't want to know.
Bright and tight.
So you got Siri.
You got maybe Bluetooth.
I don't have either of those things.
Oh.
I have mail.
I have contacts.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
You're talking about up in the white area above the other area?
Oh, not that area.
No, the side area.
The area that has the little boxes.
The dock, that's right.
Notes, maps, you know, that type of stuff.
And so what I didn't have was a little bubble that
that, uh, wanted to talk to my box and I didn't know where to find it.
So I went up to the, I went up to the magnifying glass spotlight search and I put in the name of the box.
Nothing came up or no, no, no, that's not true.
It's something from the web came up like, oh, do you want to buy one of these?
No.
So I went over to the finder and I opened up a finder window and I put in the name of the box.
Nothing, nothing.
And I'm searching around, so I go onto the web.
Now, all this, you're down in San Francisco trying to call me on the phone.
And I'm on the web, and I'm searching tutorials.
How do I unmute?
This will happen this morning, John, in the time where we were going to record, and then you had a problem?
You did all this in that time?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How do I unmute my Apogee?
And it takes me to some YouTube videos, which I was not going to watch.
And then it took me to the user manual, but it did not take me to- I was going to guess Reddit.
I was going to guess you get YouTube videos and something called Reddit.
To Reddit, yeah.
You get Wikipedia and now you get Reddit.
And then you go in there and you find out there's a post where somebody says, I need help with something.
And there's a post right under from a guy who says, you're posting wrong.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
I have Reddit permanently blocked on all my servers.
I have an extension for that if you want it.
Oh, thank you, please.
Also, is there something that blocks Pinterest?
Because I never want to see it again.
Are you kidding?
I wasn't going to actually say this because I don't know if this is actually a bit, but I have a, I will tell you, so letter U, U blacklist.
U blacklist, okay.
U blacklist when you get Google returns.
Under every return, you'll see, and I'll show you this, you get a little thing that says block this site.
And so I don't see Pinterest at all.
Oh.
Wow.
The big ones are for images anyway, because I steal a lot of images.
It's part of my job.
I steal every image on this show pretty much.
I try to use Wikipedia, but I'll steal from a young kid.
I don't care.
But like, yeah, I don't ever want to see Facebook or Pinterest because I'm not on Facebook.
I've been deactivated for probably coming up on 10 years.
Congratulations.
And Pinterest, it's just, you know, I just get in there and it's all garbage.
And if you do get a Facebook thing, you're seeing, you say, hey, Google.
Oh, geez.
never mind stop stop stop okay you get um somewhere over on the gary's van site right now somebody is making a post saying do you know how easy it is to turn off siri well that was actually i have three different voice devices in in voice shot do they ever talk to each other yep you can do it used to be you could make them fight each other but but the um no what i was gonna say was so when you go in and do this hey this is a tech corner
do you go in and when i'm searching for images you know whether it's for uh short for for here or uh what judy dench looked like when she was young woof you just you go in and you can see one of your selections under tools is large only show me large images and i say oh hey
Could you just show me large images?
And then it shows me a large image from Facebook.
But guess what?
It's just a puffed up, pixelated, shitty JPEG that's been blown up in size.
And it's not what I would prefer.
So you go and you get your U block list.
And I'll send you a link to that if you want.
And then, yeah, then you won't see that anymore.
And you won't see returns.
Like when you do a return on something you like to search on a lot and you see a lot of bullshit, block, block, block, block.
And that means you're not going to see like this fake Polish site that like all due respect to the polls.
They're wonderful people.
They've been through a lot, but like, I don't want to see where some, where some poll like scraped a page from a shovel blog.
And now that's in my results.
No, no, no, no.
I don't even know what a shovel blog is, but I don't want that.
I don't want that for sure.
I mean, I know the name, but you know, the thing.
Well, so this was the problem.
So I knew the name.
I tried to look up her number.
And John, if I could say, John, there's a clock on you here, right?
Yeah.
This is not a thing where you have all day to look at pull scraped shovel blocks to try and find how to mute the software for your hardware.
You got shit to do, man.
I got Merlin Mann on the other side of the line.
And, you know, if you don't get him while he's hot, you know, he's going to fly off, right?
Merlin's going to go, go, go.
I got a lot going on today, John.
I got so much shit going on.
I was making Apple Siri shortcuts while I was waiting for you to fix your mute.
I got a lot of things going on.
I was doing that.
I was trying to update my smart scale.
I have so many things going on.
But I'm also pulling for you.
You know what I'm saying?
I'm here as long as you need.
Can you get your smart scale to yell at Siri?
That might take a firmware flash that I don't have the cards for right now, but I think you can get almost anything to talk to anything, especially if you're skipping your Lamictal, if you know what I mean.
So anyway, eventually I found out that you're not supposed to say that you are trying to
Find your Apogee Quartet.
Okay.
Because the Apogee Quartet software is called the Apogee Maestro 2.
Oh, that's smart.
That's smart branding.
Because you don't want to get stuck with the Maestro 1, you know?
Nope, nope.
Maestro 2 electric boogaloo.
Okay.
I talked to some young person the other day.
I forget what it was.
It was on some thread.
And they said something, something to Electric Boogaloo.
And somebody else in their comments said...
Made some then further reference to the movie Electric Boogaloo.
Yeah, Breaking 2.
And the young person who had quoted it said, I actually have no idea what Electric Boogaloo means.
Oh, this is me and my kid.
My kid knows references to everything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If you say anything to, you're supposed to say Electric Boogaloo, but I have no idea where it came from.
Because it rhymes.
Yeah.
And I loved it.
I love that very much because it's like, yeah, okay.
And I feel like, wasn't that briefly like a white supremacy meme?
Yeah, the Boogaloos.
I think the Boogaloos might be, I get confused about all the different groups of sadly failed sons.
But I think one of them, I think the Boogaloos of memory serves, they have machine guns and Hawaiian shirts.
Yeah.
That was it.
The Hawaiian shirt one.
Which sucks because my kid is super into Hawaiian shirts because of the show The Boys, like dressing like Billy Butcher.
I think it's a goddamn shame that these nimrods, these wide-hipped wonders in their khakis have taken away such a beautiful thing.
It used to be for gay men.
I remember when this was going down originally, I was like, they cannot take my vintage Hawaiian shirts.
I do not seed them.
And also, all of the Hawaiian shirts that those ding-dongs are wearing, they're all from Target.
They're not even Hawaiian shirts.
They're not Aloha shirts.
Oh, Target's got so many.
Didn't you teach me a new name for that?
We don't use that word anymore.
Isn't there a term that the folks on the islands use?
They don't call it a Hawaiian shirt.
No, they say Aloha shirt.
It's an Aloha shirt.
Aloha shirt, okay.
Yeah.
And in the great state of Hawaii, it works as business wear.
People in Beijing probably aren't saying Chinese food.
Probably not.
You know, in France, they call them frites, not French fries.
And also, they're from Belgium.
Like Hercule Poirot.
I wanted this not to be a political show, so I don't want to get into the freedom fries.
I'm so sorry, John.
I'll cut all that out.
So you were trying to get unmuted, and you're running around like a...
like crypto Joe with his head cut off trying to get this fixed.
And I can't, you know, given what you're describing here, even with me interrupting you, it's remarkable to me that you got this accomplished in the space of like fewer than 10 minutes.
Well, because, because like my confusion only powers me now.
You're powered by confusion.
I'm powered by confusion.
Holy shit, John.
So I pulled up Finder.
You're going to be unstoppable.
And I put Maestro 2 into the Finder search bar.
Okay.
And it brought up Zilch.
And I was like, now I know this is wrong because I know I have somewhere buried in this computer Maestro 2.
And then I realized that the way that you use Finder is that over on the side, the left side, you have to choose what the Finder is looking in.
Yeah.
Is it this folder?
Is it the whole Mac?
And then you can also say, like, I want images or I want whatever.
Yeah.
Right.
And for whatever reason, it has...
drop box at the top of where i searched and that's not true and drop box and you know what if you move that it'll come right back up because that's how that's how it works but i did eventually realize i need to search in applications i searched in applications there it was my search i opened it and there was a very shabby little virtual mixing board
And I went over to the, to the channel and there was an, a similar blue M button
that no one had ever clicked.
No one had clicked this.
How did it happen?
It clicked itself.
It clicked itself.
Do you think it's sentient?
It clicked itself.
I have no idea, but I clicked it, and all of a sudden, the whole world came alive, and I could hear the Skype ringing of you calling me.
That's a nice feeling.
Except now I had 11 different panels open.
that I had to close each one thinking that the Skype window was going to be right behind this one that I'd opened to find, you know, to search.
And I was closing.
I was getting up there to the red dot.
Close, close, close.
And the Skype was going, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
Close, close, close.
And then there had been a pop-up ad that had gotten in there somehow.
Close, close, close, close, close.
And then I got to Skype right as you hung up.
Oh, man, now I feel bad.
I felt like I waited a pretty good amount.
You did, you did.
I was working on my shortcut waiting for you to answer.
I was working so hard to get there, and it felt like I was running through a tunnel.
It felt like a dream.
It felt like I was on Willy Wonka's boat.
Or like an Indiana Jones, like maybe there's a portcullis coming down, and you're going to need to slide under it and grab your whip.
That's right, and there are darts going back and forth, and I'm like, I'm coming, Merlin, I'm coming!
No time to argue.
But it just kept getting further away, and I was like, no!
Now I've got Apogee Maestro 2.
Apogee Apogee Aperture.
What do you think will happen in Maestro 3, John?
Do you think there'll be any other new additions?
What's crazy is I probably should have upgraded to Maestro 3 a long time ago, and that's why the mute button auto-clicked itself, because it's the beginning of a system-wide failure.
You can only blame yourself.
Yes, exactly.
If you had upgraded, then maybe you wouldn't have lost all your data.
You fucked up.
This happened to me the other day.
Google.
decided that it didn't like my credit card anymore.
And I, and I appreciate that.
Sure.
I don't like my credit card.
And I, and I was like, okay, well I'll change.
And they were like, you're going to lose, sorry, your Google one subscription can't re up and you're going to lose all your data.
And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Settle down.
Don't, you don't have to go all the way to Defcon five.
Yeah.
Cause you just asked nicely.
I mean, I'm a gentleman.
And so I was like, okay, all right.
And so I'm trying to navigate their whole,
system that I'm sure makes perfect sense to them.
And I get in there and I put in my new cat and my new credit card.
And then it says, and it's one of these things where, you know, you, you fill out a thing.
You're like, what happened?
Why isn't it going?
And there's some little tiny red asterisks.
Oh, because you skipped a field?
Yeah, or something like that.
But it's not blatant.
It's not like, oh, it's just some tiny little thing.
No, no, you're playing a different video game.
Now it's more like a traditional puzzle.
Because now you've got to go scroll through the page and see what thing you missed.
And you better not get it wrong, because then it's going to think you're fraud.
It's Legends of Zelda, right?
Now it's just like, oh, there's the mist.
So I get in there, and it says, we need to confirm...
That you are who you say you are.
Do you?
Before we can accept your money to not cancel the product that we forced you to buy in order to live in the world.
Seems a little hostile.
And I felt that way too.
And at first I said, this all feels like a phishing scam.
Like, since when does Google...
And here's how they wanted to verify my identity.
They wanted me to send them a copy of my driver's license.
Okay.
And I said, that's outrageous.
And so, of course, of course, because I let confusion be my guide.
That's your power.
I ignored it.
Yeah.
And then they sent me another thing.
Or no, then I went on, you know, using Google as I do every day.
And they keep throwing things up like, well, you're going to lose all your emails.
Okay, so at least in that case, it isn't just in your email.
I mean, like, for example, this is why...
To me, the greatest indication that someone either doesn't know me or is a fraud person is when they ask me to do anything over the phone.
Like, nobody calls me.
What are you doing?
And the easiest way to end it is to just say, what's a phone number that I can call to reach you?
And then they're gone.
Right.
So like the thing is though, and it's hard though with emails and especially this is the way phishing works.
It's like you get flustered and this is, you know, inside of companies now they test people with this.
They do inside my wife's organization.
They test you to see if you'll respond to phishing things.
Yes.
And it's like, oh my God.
So I guess that's supposed to make you extra careful because then you're going to get a call from Susie in HR that you failed, failed at phishing.
But, but like, but yeah, you can, you can try and copy and paste the link.
But the best thing is when you go to the place and go there and see if there's some kind of a little red bell that says you fucked up, you're going to lose your Google one.
You're getting that everywhere, though.
That's what I did.
I closed out whatever email I'd gotten, and I went in directly through the system to make sure.
And sure enough, there was the little red bell, and there was the whole, you can't do this.
And I tried to put my credit card in there.
Like, we can't accept your credit card.
Just send them whatever they asked for.
Just send them.
And of course I did the old man things where I was like, is there a number I can call?
I'd like to speak.
And the thing is, I know that they have live chat.
I know there's live chat.
So I was like, let me live chat with somebody.
Well, I can get to the bottom of this really fast.
And the live chat kept directing you back to sit on the couch in the front of the fraternity.
Say the names.
Yeah.
No, no, I won't.
I won't do it.
It's amazing how much you've learned from that problematic movie.
Grocery cards are for more than shopping.
Is it sensual or sensuous?
Do you put the 15-year-old girl in a grocery cart?
It kept redirecting me back to bots.
It was just like, oh, have you tried our website?
And I'm like, ah!
Did you know that?
Our power went off three times.
Last night on the whole block, like 3,000 people lost power.
Of course, I thought it was because we blew a fuse.
It's the middle of night when we're sleeping, and Madeline's like, oh, what happened?
What'd you do?
Why'd it blow?
And I'm like, I don't know.
I don't want to change it.
And I looked, of course, I thought to look outside.
It was just totally pitch black on the whole block.
It's so often this thing where you're like, can I just get some help with this?
And like, did you know?
Hey, hey, Internet company, my Internet is out.
And I'm like, were you aware that you can find this information online?
I'm like, well, I know that's a possibility when your Internet isn't broken.
But yeah, I know.
I know that in 2007, it was important to tell people.
The money sommelier.
It's all over again.
You're talking to the hostess of the bank.
I just as I'm sitting here talking to you, I was looking at the Skype thing and there was a little icon.
There's a little bubble next to the chat box.
Like, oh, there's a message for you in Skype chat.
So I went over and I looked and all there were, were, uh, was a message from you saying, take your time.
And, but there, but the still then over to the side, there was an, there was a little icon that had, uh, that had a, uh, a thing saying there's a message for you.
And so I was like, from who, who's messaging me through Skype.
And I went over and clicked on it and it said, send Skype credit.
And it's banking.
It's Crypto Joe trying to get me to start using Skype as a way to send money to people.
Oh, sure.
I got so much.
I used to just use it to make podcasts, but then I realized it could be a social network where people I didn't know could contact me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To ask for money.
Yeah.
Russian teens in my area.
And it felt it felt very much like this.
My my dealing with Google for like for lasted over a week because they also throw up a thing where they're like, well, maybe you should just clean out your inbox of all these big files that you don't want.
You better do that before you lose your Google one.
That's right.
And so I was like, oh, okay.
So I spent 15 minutes over there deleting old emails from the New York Times.
Yes.
And then I looked and they were like, you got rid of one megabyte of emails and you're 20 gigabytes in arrears.
It's warnings all the way down.
So eventually I sent them a copy of my driver's license to prove my existence.
Yeah.
And Google said...
This takes a week to process.
You now have an open ticket.
And two days later, a different group of 30 young people sitting on the single floor of the open plan office that is Google headquarters...
sent me an email saying, we have canceled your Google One.
Oh, my God.
Really?
And I followed the... I clicked on the link, like, do you want to do something about it?
Click here.
I clicked on the link, and they were like, we have an open ticket for your identity.
That's a hell of an operation they got there.
And I was like, you're like the biggest company or one of the three biggest companies, and this is it.
The one who is almost without...
I would have to say that like when all things considered where we are right now, Google is regarded by most people who know as the company who is best at this stuff.
The best, the best one.
They're the ones I trust.
At the scale, at the like, at the integration between different parts.
Like you shouldn't, you shouldn't have the like, you know, five blind men touching an elephant problem with, with, with Google.
When people wave their hands and go, Elon Musk, I go, thankfully, I don't have anything to do with that ding dong.
And I lean back into the soft enveloping arms of Google and I go, but my friend Google will never betray me.
My friend Google will give me all the information and they give me my free emails.
And when people are like, Apple, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, I do use them to get to Google, my big furry friend.
Yeah.
And now there's an open ticket somewhere, and I don't know what happens next.
Well, okay, so... Do I stop getting emails?
Do I lose all of my New York Times emails?
Oh, you should upgrade to Google, too.
No.
Electric Boogaloo?
Okay.