mergeconflict315
===

[00:00:00] James: All right. Frank, many people, including ourselves have always said that it is beta summer, this summer in which all you do is continuously try to update your software and test out all the latest betas. But Frank, this summer's a little bit different because this summer is a summer that we sit down. And try to do something different to keep us entertained.

So today what I want to do is talk about the summer doldrums and how we as engineers find different sorts of activities to keep us entertain, to keep us going, to keep the creative juices flowing the day in the life of James and Frank during the month of July, 2022, AKA. We've run outta topics, Frank 

[00:00:59] Frank: I, you know, this is bad.

I think we're even repeating ourselves. I believe we did a show like 30 years ago where we talked about how unproductive we are in the summer, when there's a million things we should be doing, but, you know, it's just too. Hot to do anything. I'm pathetic. I'm a whir. I get it. But you know, it's hard to work when you're hot.

Um, but that's, that's not a full excuse. It's just, it, it is a little overwhelming, all the betas keeping up with everything. And I was doing such a good job, keeping up with everything that I am kind of taking a little bit of a break, but that's not true either. I have app releases coming out, but overall, yeah, I'm, I'm a mess.

I'm a mess. I'm not getting anything done. 

[00:01:39] James: I, I am like you, I. Sit down. And I look at emails and I look at logs from customers and I look at my backlog and I'm like, I don't wanna do any of this. . And then. 

[00:01:57] Frank: It happened on my Twitch show. I, um, like the Sunday comes up and usually like for my Twitch show, I just try to think of like, what's the most ridiculous project I could work on.

And that's what I do that week. You know, I just do like, what, what is something I never normally work on? And I just got to a point where I was like, oh my God, there's a billion things I could work on, but I just couldn't decide on any of them. I thought I was just having a bad day, but you're right. Let's blame it on the summer.

let's blame it on the doldrums, 

[00:02:22] James: the doldrums. So Frank let's get away from the keyboard. Let's talk about things that you've been doing in your life that bring you joy, bring you happiness. Do you have something or do you want me to start it's up to you? 

[00:02:34] Frank: I I'm. I'm I'm gonna I'll I'll start. Um, this is, I've been talking about this on Twitter, so I apologize.

And I don't remember if this came up in the podcast, but did I tell you I rebuilt my one wheel? 

[00:02:44] James: Ooh. I saw a tweet on your Twitter, but I have not seen. Anything else or knew why you were doing that? 

[00:02:54] Frank: well, I, I wasn't very descriptive or anything. So you, you probably didn't miss much, but it was something that's um, I I've needed to do for a while.

I bought this like big battery for it. Over a year ago. Yeah, like a year and a half ago. And it's just been sitting on my shelf. I'd never installed it. Um, I had the, the tire kind of blow out on it. It, things were literally falling off of it. It was in a little bit of rough shape. It it's been up to 1300 miles and one night I just decided enough is enough.

Uh, this cannot stand. I must fix all this. And I deep dove. I tore the whole thing apart. I've only done small dis assemblies of it, but this was like, I'm breaking all the like caution warranty things, you know, I don't care. I'm taking knives to everything and I'm just bolt for bolt tearing the whole thing apart just to figure out how everything works.

And boy did, I make a bunch of mistakes and all of that, but I had a great time and I managed to get my new battery in and oh my God, that was a whole ordeal. We could talk about that for a half hour. 

[00:04:01] James: Wow. That is crazy. So you did. And it's happening. Have you, and you took it on the road. Yeah. You didn't blow up.

[00:04:09] Frank: It did not blow up. And oh my God, it was bad because I had to, I, the polite engineering term is remanufacture the battery housing. And what that actually means is I took PLIs to it and just kept tearing plastic parts out until I could fit the bigger new battery in there. Battery, which you're not supposed to have to do that stuff, but I just couldn't figure it out.

So I just tore the whole thing apart. And I was always a little bit nervous cuz it's a high voltage, high power battery, you know, it's not gonna kill me probably, but it's not gonna feel good either if I, if I hit myself with it. So I was a little freaked out the whole time. Um, I disassembled it incorrectly the first time, but I even got so inspired.

I painted it. I cleaned out all the bolts. I put lock tight on everything. The, the, the painting was fun. I like it when I get to do painting, 

[00:04:58] James: talking about painting, which is kind of hilarious too, is that we actually have been doing a ridiculous amount of painting around the house, even though we did paint the entire house like two years ago.

Um, we did Deckery painting mm-hmm and Deckery painting is really fascinating. Cuz as a software engineer, I know how things. , but I don't know how anything actually works in the house. Like, I don't understand like how the wood like works and like how the cement and like, why things do things like, how does that water faucet work?

I don't why I don't actually know, like, there's, there's certain things like how does, how does this backflow for the irrigation work? I don't know. It's there and houses are very FA cause you have to two different types of parents. I. You have the parents that are like my parents that are like, and this is a house and they don't teach you anything about it.

and then you have another type of parent that's like, I'm gonna get you actively involved in everything that's happening in the house. So you are successful, um, when you buy a, buy a house or get a house or an apartment or anything, but decks are interesting because. The person that had purchased the house before I painted the deck, which means the wood is kind of end of lights.

The last thing you can do is like paint it. So we're just like, we wanna repaint, just touch it up. And then we go to the paint shop and the paint shop. Guy's like, ha ha, ha, ha. That's not gonna work. Here's what you need to do. So the paint guy is teaching me all about how I'm gonna, like you think painting like, oh, I just buy some painting.

I painted and he's like, no, no, you're gonna do it wrong. Nope, 

[00:06:34] Frank: you gotta sand it for five years. First. You gotta sand it. Once. Use, use a fixed sander. Then you gotta use a thinner sander. Then you gotta make wishes. You have to engrave your initials on it. Then are you allowed to prime it? At that point. Well, did you prime your 

[00:06:50] James: deck?

No need to prime it, cause it was already painted. The previous paint is the prime. nice. I 

[00:06:56] Frank: like that hack life hack 

[00:06:58] James: life hack. So we did, we did that. We did some light sanding. We did some brushing. We, you have to, you have to hose it down, really clean it, and then you have to let it dry for two to three days.

And he is like, yeah, he's like here now, now son, you're gonna want. To paint it right away. You're gonna look at your deck and you're gonna say, wow. After, after three hours, that looks dry. He's like, no, it's tricking you. It's not dry. Cuz it's wood and wood takes two to three days to dry in like heat to be bone dry.

He's like, it's gotta be, it's gonna look bone dry, but it's not bone dry. It's like don't and don't don't don't you do it. I know you're gonna wanna do it. Set a timer for yourself on your fancy apple watch there. For two to three days and then you can paint it. So then we paint it. It looks great. Um, so 

[00:07:45] Frank: funny, sunny.

Yeah. Sunny. You look like the impatient type over there. Yeah. I, I love that lecture. Uh, I wish the, I had gotten that lecture when I was painting the one wheel. I, I let the paint dry upwards of 30 minutes. That, that seems like a reasonable amount of time. it's funny. We're we're in the awkward weather phase right now, which on the day I decided to.

Meant a ton of wind mm-hmm . And so I'm trying to paint this thing. That's mostly going fine. I mostly find a spot where there's not much wind, but then all the little junky things from trees are also landing on it. So I can't imagine like doing a whole deck where you have wind and trees and just basically everything falling apart on the deck.

Are you supposed to cover it or something when you paint it? Nice. 

[00:08:29] James: Yo, just let it 

[00:08:30] Frank: go. You know, if a leaf lands in it, the leaf was meant to be 

[00:08:33] James: there. It's part of your deck now. 

[00:08:37] Frank: so you did that. You, you accomplished that? 

[00:08:39] James: I did accomplish it over two days. Um, we did it with have a pretty big deck and, uh, yeah, it looks beautiful.

It's it's, you know, it's what color? It's better. It's a light gray. 

[00:08:49] Frank: Okay. I'll. 

[00:08:51] James: Oh, wow. We, we already had painted the trim and the railings black. So it's kinda like this black railings with this tree. It was like brown before. So it was a much better cohesion in general. Our house is white. So it kind of like, you know, matches nicely in that regard.

[00:09:05] Frank: So, mm, if you stuck with black and white, it could have been a piano house though. You introduced gray. So now you have to have, you gotta stick with that. Gray. If you have gray anywhere else, you have to tone match that gray. Perfect. 

[00:09:15] James: Exactly. Yes. So, 

[00:09:17] Frank: so I went with the black and white theme on the one wheel.

Ooh, I, uh, I did not, well, I only had three kinds of spray paints, uh, white metallic, and. Pink and I didn't have the confidence to do pink. So I just went with a, a plain old white, uh, once I read the can that said, uh, the silver paint is not meant for outdoor use and that's the only place one wheels go. So I didn't do that one.

Um, managed to put mine all together. And the new battery actually does last for a long time. And so my summer avoiding work activity has been a lot of one wheeling around the city. It's the most perfect thing to do because like the heat's terrible. We've already said that, and at least you can have the wind in your hair.

You're a bicycle. Have you been bicycling everywhere to keep the wind 

[00:10:08] James: in your. I have been my, my, the, the, the air has been flowing through my locks of hair, my long, long hair. Um, yeah, that's the other thing I've been doing is getting back on the bicycle and cycling as much as I possibly humanly can. And when it's real hot, you get real sweaty.

Um, but this, uh, weekend. My sister came up and, um, some friends in town, we did a 60 mile bike ride, which is about a hundred kilometers folks. And that's of course, as. Little as I think we went because my apple watch kept locking and it kept being a butt and, uh, just kept pausing it. And then eventually it's like, oh no.

After an hour. Oh, you're still P peddling. Okay, cool. Like you're good now. So yeah, we did 60 miles. It was about. Three and a half, four hours total. Um, I think the elevation gain was like 2000 feet, so it wasn't crazy, but still some uphill stuff. Mm-hmm I did this last year and did it again this year, so it's kind of my big kickoff to July, you know?

Hey. I don't got anything to do this weekend. I might as well ride my bike 60 miles and get all sweaty and then get really hungry and eat and drink a bunch, uh, celebration, which is fun. And yeah, that was really good. We, my, like I said, my, my sister and brother-in-law were in town, so they stayed this weekend and it was kind of nice to do that.

And then, yeah, cycling has been my jam even like where I'm just like, I need to go to. Home Depot. I'm just like, I'm riding my bike. And then Heather be like, you know, you can just drive there in five minutes. Like, I don't care, ride my bike 40 minutes. I'll be back in an hour and a half. Bye. You know, like it's happening.

Uh, it just makes me joyed. I think the, the, the things that I look for in the summer are the things that bring me joy. So you're talking about your one wheel and getting out there. And there's many of things that bring me joy, but cycling brings me a mass amount of joy. So whenever I can get onto a bicycle onto the streets, And doing anything.

It, it doesn't matter if I'm just going a mile or two down the road to go do something. I'm just gonna ride my bike over there. Cause I just, I just love it. It's really, really good. And I, um, I have two bikes, so people are curious of what I, what I ride. I got two by shot, got four wheels. Frank got four wheels, not one wheel.

[00:12:18] Frank: It's such a cheat, you know, like you can go over bumps without having to like, hold your breath and completely balance yourself and become one with the air. Yeah. It's, it's a big cheat having two whole wheels. Yes. You know, you're privileged over there. I am. I did, uh, you know, I, I, I was gonna say, um, I was gonna brag that I can now get 20 miles on my one wheel.

Whoa. And then you're all, like I did a 60 mile ride. I'm like, okay, I can't do 60 miles on it, but my legs are pretty much dead. You, you wouldn't think you have to do much just standing there and riding a thing. But my legs are pretty dead after definitely after 20 miles on those things. So, oh yeah. I think 60 miles on a bike is kind of the comfortable upper limit.

I remember. As a kid, I'd do like a hundred mile ride and then. Not leave my room for a day to recover. so were you, uh, was it all nice breezy, easy, not easy, you know, but, uh, pretty good. You were staying in shape all winter on your fixed bikes. I'm sure it was pretty. It was good. 

[00:13:18] James: It was good. The last time I did.

Last year I did 52 miles this year or 54 miles this year. It was like 64 miles, I think. Cuz we got kind of lost a little bit um, but uh, GPX files they're sometimes a little bit hard to, to navigate around, but um, yeah, it was good. The last, it got little really warm at about one o'clock. So that's when we were finishing last half an hour was all a pill and kind of a, a slow and steady.

Grind. There was one point where I had to say, I was talking to myself and I'm like, keep pedalling James, push down, pull up, you know, as like talking to my legs, like keep going. Um, so that's been, that's been a, the doozy, a fun, uh, adventure, if you will, into the. In the cycling world. Um, have you been lo go ahead.

[00:14:07] Frank: I was gonna interrupt, uh, lo local thing, sorry, everyone. But, um, was there a Seattle to Portland ride this year? Did we miss. Do you ever have ambitions to 

[00:14:16] James: do something like that? Oh, no, I'm done. And what Frank is referring to is the year in which I was in the best shape of my life, where I rode from Seattle to Portland, the STP, the Seattle to Portland bike ride.

Um, and I did it two days. So I did 140 miles the first day and then 65 miles, um, the second day. And no, it is still going one of the. It's it already, it's actually July 16th. So, 

[00:14:44] Frank: Ooh. Yeah. Okay. By the time this show comes out, it will have happened, but yeah, it 

[00:14:48] James: will have happened, but that was a glorious ride.

It was, I did that seven years ago. Very peak. Um, I did a century to train for, I had some za folks up from SF to, to ride down with me. Um, that was fun. That was super duper good. And. Yeah, 

[00:15:06] Frank: I think at this point, once in a lifetime thing, it's sounding like I'm good. 

[00:15:09] James: Yeah, I'm good. after doing this, like the 60 mile, like I would've to do a lot of training, a lot of stuff.

I know Pierce has been doing a lot of stuff, but I'm just. I'm good. I think I'm just good. Yeah. I'm good. 

[00:15:20] Frank: Yeah. Nothing to prove over here. Well, that's good. I'm glad you're sticking to the bikes. No new apps. No new bike apps though. So like you were, you were doing the fixed bike, so we got an app out of that, but even no new, like riding around app 

[00:15:34] James: yeah.

That's the other thing I thought about doing in the summer. So the fascinating part about the summer, even though it is sort of the du drums, is that. I in the winter can be the doldrums too. Right? Cuz now it's like wet or snowy or whatever and you know, what are you gonna do? You can't one wheel around.

I'm not cycling. There's other activities. That's the crazy part about the summertime is that I do not work on I, I last time I did a summer side project. Ooh. App, I, I. 

[00:16:07] Frank: Yeah, I guess they don't happen though. Hmm. Yeah, you're right. You got me there. I don't really start big app projects in the summer. That is interesting.

I never considered that. Uhuh. I tend to work on my balance spots. during summers. I always notice, like I usually go a year between working on each one or, you know, making a massive improvement and it always happens in the summer. I'm starting to see the stars align 

[00:16:30] James: is what I'm. Yeah, my big thing this summer that I wanna get back into now that I'm on iOS 16, beta three, which fixes my Regal movie app, which used to keep crashing and just launching it right now.

And it works is, uh, movies in TV. I think that is kind of weird because there's movies and TV, which you would think that's a fall activity, but I actually kind of think it's a nice summer activity. Um, to like cap the night off with, because I like to enjoy the day all the way until the eight or nine o'clock and then say, Hey, we got a half an hour, we got an hour here.

Or what I like to do is cap off, um, like a lunch time, say, oh, I'm gonna take an extended three hour lunch today and go to the movies, you know, during the hottest point, then you get free AC mm-hmm , uh, which is a pro tip. And, um, right now, There's a few things happening. The bachelor and bachelorette, or the bachelorette is starting back up, which is very exciting.

That just happened yesterday. Um, but there's a bunch of movies that are coming out that are like really exciting. Like Thor came out. Um, what else came out? Um, Elvis came out. I wanna see that the Jurassic world. I want to go see that light year. I want to go see that there's never been a time in the last two years when there's actually been more than one movie that I was actually interested in seeing

So I think that right right now, it's, Hey, let's finish those series. Let's do these things where we were perusing more like let's commit to something or commit to watching a new thing and enjoy the day up as much as humanly possible. And it's like, okay, like we actually have minimal time. So we're very, we're very, uh, intentional about what we're watching at night.

If you will. Whereas in the winter you're just kind of flipping, oh, it's another cooking show. I'll just watch 25 episodes of. 

[00:18:22] Frank: Well, it's funny cuz it's, it's light so long. Now that by the time like the sunsets, I actually am tired. Whereas in the winter, the sunsets and you're like, the day just got started, you know, I just woke up.

Uh, so you don't have those things. I theaters are a weird one. Movie theaters are a weird one for me. Um, I'm a hundred percent agree with you. They have great air conditioning. Mm-hmm life hack. Good, good idea. I will definitely keep that in mind and go to more of those. I do like the kind of, um, COVID response that now everything's like assigned seating, which means you don't have to show up to the show early anymore.

You can just show up like, A half hour after it starts. And then you can miss all the thinkers and all, unless you wanna cool down or something like that. So I actually, uh, thanks. COVID don't say that. No, I didn't say that, but, um, it's, it's nice that at least we got the European style of science seating and they are a little more enjoyable.

I did, um, I haven't been, I've gone to a few movies, but hasn't been quite my thing yet. I did like a tourist day in Seattle. Ooh. I wanted to find a public playable piano. My COVID skill that I've been picking up is teaching myself piano. Oh wow. And, but I don't have a real piano to play. So I wanted to find a real piano around town to play and that I I've completely failed.

At that quest, I'm still working on that quest, but what it's turned into is I just keep going to famous places here in the city and I keep paying very expensive museum prices, and I'm just acting like a tourist in my hunt for a public piano, but also just kinda enjoying the city. You know, it's fun to be able to look at your city from a fresh perspective.

Did you know that we don't have the experienced music project anymore. We have something else called Mo pop Mo pop Mo pop museum of popular stuff. Mo pop . Yeah. uh, which is kind of fun now. Um, so it is, it I'd still say a good. Three quarters or a half of it is still music, but, uh, they have a sci-fi section and what's fun.

And new is a horror section. And I really enjoyed the horror section of Mo pop. So I've been having fun, being a tourist. 

[00:20:36] James: Nice. I think that's a great, um, a great perk because there is so many more hours in the day that we've also been doing that we've been thinking about, okay, like now, you know, after work, it actually is visible and we have some time, like, what brewery do we wanna go on?

What, you know, restaurants do we want to try? What are we gonna want it to actually do inside of the city as well? So that's a great additional point. The other thing we've been doing is into your museum. is the local library, your local library. Mm-hmm . Did you know that they often have, um, I dunno about all the ones in Seattle, but at different towns, they have, um, museum passes and they rent them out just like they rent out a book, but obviously you don't have to return them, but let's say you want to go to the Mo pop or some other one.

If they have that in their repertoire, like maybe it's like the modern history museum or other things like that. You go and then you reserve a ticket and it's free. So you can like go to museums for free. So we've been doing a lot of that this summer as well. There's a lot of, um, like outdoor museums or things like that.

Um, but have like indoor outdoor things. We, we all been doing that too, which is really, really fun. 

[00:21:51] Frank: Yeah, indoor outdoor things near water. the, the, the outdoors not so great in the, in the, anything above 85 degrees is when I start becoming a big complainer. But yeah, we can do the outdoor things once in a while.

Um, by the way, if anyone in Seattle is, is listening and is in Seattle, knows where there's a public piano, please Twitter me. there used be a bunch just sending out the request. 

[00:22:13] James: There used to be a bunch in the parks, especially during. I don't know when, but there used to be a bunch in the park now they don't 

[00:22:20] Frank: survive.

Um, I remember the last one I saw near a park near me. It was put out there a few people played it, it got a little bit of graffiti on it, then it got broken and then it got smashed and then it got crazily distributed around. So it was a real Inglorious death of a very nice piano. It was very sad. Thanks.

I think that's why we don't see 'em in parks anymore. we are a very irresponsible people. Darn us. 

[00:22:50] James: Ugh. What else is on your list of things that keep you joyful and happy in the summer? 

[00:22:57] Frank: Oh, absolutely nothing. No, uh, there is one I, I have to resume and I'm I'm, this is more of a guilt one just because I miss it.

Not, yeah, that's not guilt. I just miss it and I haven't been doing it. Uh, I broke my shoulder last year, last April. And up till then, I was doing a lot of kayaking. Mm-hmm and kayaking is the best way in Seattle to stay cool. because none of us have air conditioning or anything, and it's a lot cheaper than a museum.

So go get yourself a hundred dollars inflatable, kayak, and get out on the water. That's what I keep telling myself, but I really haven't been doing it very much, uh, since my shoulder and I, and for no re no physical reason, my shoulder's. It's a little wimpy, but it's fine. And, uh, I just need to start resuming that one.

Honestly, we had a bit of a late summer. Uh, the air stayed pretty cool there for a little while, but now that it's heating up, definitely gonna have to be out on the water more. 

[00:23:50] James: Yeah, we have both kayak, inflatable, kayaks, and inflatable, standup paddle boards. Uh, and yeah, that it's like, go time. We kinda got them at the end of season last year.

So this year that's sort of our big, we should go do this, but then it's hard cuz then you know, like I could cycle, I could hike, I could do this. You almost have too many things to do. Oh. 

[00:24:06] Frank: But this one's ideal because you can go very slow and we found wonderful places where you can just dock maybe buy a beer or two, and you're allowed to take it away from the dock and bring it out on your kayak with the oh nice legal we checked 

[00:24:22] James: international waters.

[00:24:23] Frank: No, it's just some, uh, there is a specific license people can get for allowing the alcohol to leave. Um, wow. Since you're on a boat or something, it's a weird one, but, uh, it's maritime law, man, where we're a drink in town with a fishing habit. 

[00:24:39] James: Maritime law. I like it. That's funny. oh my goodness. 

[00:24:44] Frank: It's just find water.

I, I used to go sailing that's one. I would, I hope to pick up again, but, uh, since COVID we haven't been doing any sailing either. I think all my skills are out. You know, you, you get used to like staying on a boat as it's all shifting around. I'm pretty sure I would just fall straight off the boat right now.

[00:25:03] James: yeah. Um, I'm gonna tell you about the last thing over here. Now. This is probably a super. Maybe boring episode for people then maybe you've made it 25 minutes in. You're like, wow, this is actually interesting learning about James and Frank. Probably not, but maybe , I'm gonna say about the last thing 

[00:25:17] Frank: that don't talk yourself.

I'm excited for this. 

[00:25:19] James: it's a staple in the Pacific Northwest. This is a, uh, Washington and Oregon thing, and it doesn't seem like a thing until you get into it, which isms you know about. McIn. 

[00:25:33] Frank: Oh, golly. I, I feel like I'm about to fail a local knowledge test. The name is so familiar, so please describe it.

And at the one minute, mark, let me say, oh yeah, I know what that is. Yeah. So 

[00:25:44] James: the McIn Amans uh, are a series of hotels, breweries pubs event spaces that were, are, are usually. Original historic buildings. Um, and it's family owned and they make their own beer, wine, cider spirits and coffee. And they've been around since 1983 and they have 50 plus properties and there's pubs these historic hotels that used to be like the one that we just stayed in was like a Mason's lodge or whatever.

Um, the. Uh, where the Donnet fringe was at, that was in MC Miniman a crystal ballroom, uh, in Portland. That was one. That's why I know 

[00:26:30] Frank: the name or, sorry, that's the 52nd mark right there. But yes. So of course I know me. No, I didn't know. It was such a large chain. Exactly. I just thought it was exactly. Yeah.

Okay. So please continue. So it's 

[00:26:41] James: a big chain and here's the cool thing about it is that every property is extremely unique there's properties that were like old schools that were old railroad stations that. We these masons lodges like all sorts of different things and they're all over Washington and Oregon.

And the great part about it is that the properties are all unique, but then they have all these amazing artists that create unique art that brings together the history of the building or the pub or whatever it's in. And, and, and the, the area that it's in too. And then on top of that, The real thing where you're like, okay, James, you're talking about hotels and a pub that doesn't seem excited.

Cause they had this thing called the MC minivan's passport. Okay. Now this is what is mind blowing? The MC minivan's passport is, um, it's like $30 or $35 and they give you a physical passport book and the whole it's genius. Right? It's just like, it's just a genius thing. Great. Well, the whole idea is that.

You're set to discover all of the properties, but also all of the different things at those properties, these properties have hidden pubs. They have hidden speakeasies, they have hidden rooms, rooms, they have all this art. So the passport is unique because at every location there's always like a task or a thing to find, um, out there or a 10.

So it might be. You know, do a wine tasting or see a show or find this room or find this piece of artwork. And then for each location, when you, um, you collect stamps and when you finish the stamps, um, you get a prize. So for example, we recently just did one where we got a, um, like this really, really hefty, cool bottle opener.

And then this, this leather Kozy, and then the other one we got was like a, a t-shirt for the, you know, the place. And eventually you build it up and you unlock like free stays and concert tickets and all this other stuff, all from $35. Granted you're giving them money back because you are, you know, doing stuff, but it's genius.

It's like, it's like a, it's like a Chucky cheese, but spread out across multiple states. Um, and exploration is genius. 

[00:29:04] Frank: It's a giant adult scavenger hunt. That's what you joined. Yes, yes. 

[00:29:08] James: Yeah. So obviously besides geocaching, which we geo cash all the time, we make minimums cash, if you will. So yeah, it's really, 

[00:29:15] Frank: I have a terrible feeling like I'm going, I'm vaguely interested in this.

This does sound a little bit fun. I, I hope you didn't just gimme a new hobby, but it does sound very fun. I have to ask the boring 20, 22 question, uh, are, do all the secrets still work in COVID times, or have you noticed any problems with any of the secrets? You know, like I imagine like the speakeasies might be shut down or something.

[00:29:39] James: Uh, so they were during COVID time and then what they had was like, you could like do a trivia thing or whatever. If you found it, then you'd get the stamp. But we are just like, no, we want the real thing. We're gonna wait. But now at this point everything's pretty much open up. So. Two years ago. Yeah. All the little tiny speakeasies were, were closed, stuff like that, but now things are open.

You're good to go. Yeah. Um, that's 

[00:29:59] Frank: fun. That's pretty cool. Um, there's uh, okay. Let me preemptively apologize for what I'm about to say there , there's a whole bunch of Buddhist temples around the world. Hmm. And somewhere there's a list of 16 to 19. And again, I apologize to everyone I'm getting all this wrong um, but kind of.

Accident. I didn't know what I was doing. I've been to a bunch of them. I've been to maybe six or seven of them now, like a good chunk of the list. And I was thinking, wow, there is my adult scavenger hunt for the rest of my life. I'm not a Buddhist , but I most definitely wanna complete this scavenger hunt of going to, uh, these places.

To all these different temples around the world, it is the greatest excuse for traveling. And it's funny, like that's all you're trying to do is just give yourself the lightest little excuse to go do something that that's me trying to find the public piano downtown and ending up at all these other places.

Whenever I travel, I try to give myself like a, a silly little mission. When I traveled to Japan, I was focused on, you know, let's go see every castle in Japan. You can't do that. There's a million of 'em, but, uh, you know, it's fun to have those goals. Anyway, I. Try for a Buddhist temples, and now I'm also gonna have to throw in these bars.

Great. 

[00:31:14] James: yep. There you go. It's pretty cool. Um, anyways, that's 30 minutes. I feel about 30 minutes of stuff. Frank, we're gonna have a real topic next week. Do you promise pro promise to people? What do you think. It 

[00:31:24] Frank: would be bad to overachieve on an episode where we're talking about underachieving . Um, so , Hey, we can talk about a million things.

I'm doing crazy things with Maui right now, man. We can always talk about that kind of stuff, but it was fun talking about what's actually going on, which is a lot of dealing with heat and trying to find things to stay entertained. 

[00:31:45] James: That's true. We've always said on this podcast, this is our lives, you know, our lives in a podcast.

So if you look at the 300 plus episodes, You know, 80, 90% of those are because those are the things that are happening, right. That we're into that we're watching that we're attending that we're trying. So it's not just another news podcast that we try to put out every single week. We try to give you the insight into two, two interests of hopefully two interesting developer lives.

Um, well, Frank, thank you for coming on this journey for episode 316, I think, is that correct? Oh my gosh. 

[00:32:19] Frank: It's a good number 3 

[00:32:20] James: 16, 3 15, even better. Nice. 

[00:32:24] Frank: More round number 15, multiple by three. Great. Yep. Sounds nice. all right. Three 16. Eh, you know, again, I could live without 

[00:32:32] James: it. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's gonna do it for this week's merge conflict.

If you have topics or other things that you want us to investigate, go to merch conflict. Dom hit that contact button. Shoot us an email. We'd love that. Or hit us up on Twitter at James Montera clam. And that's gonna do for this week's merch conflict until next time. I'm James Monte mag. And 

[00:32:48] Frank: I'm Frank Kruger.

Thanks for listening.