Speaker 1 (00:08):
Frank. I'm pretty sure that I just saved you off

James (00:11):
Bunch of money every single month. And you are so welcome.

Frank (00:16):
Are you taking credit for this, James? I love you. And maybe you should actually take credit for this. I don't remember the history of everything, but what are you talking about?

James (00:25):
I'm pretty sure that I said Frank we're in a global pandemic. Why do you have an office that you're never going into stop paying money and just work from your house? That's what I do. That's what you should do.

Frank (00:34):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's what we're talking about. Right? So for the last two weeks, um, your advice has made me do so much work, James, so much paperwork, so much physical work. Um, it's all for the better, I believe you. But yeah, this is something that I've been both proud of and embarrassed about for my entire career is that I've always paid for, uh, external office outside from my house.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
So I don't go insane was usually what I told myself. That's not actually why I got the office in the very beginning, but the pandemics changing everything you're right. Time to go. Yeah. And this is our obligatory work from home episode. Gosh. And, uh, you know, we're, we'll talk a little bit about, I think maybe why you had the office, but also maybe some of the changes that led you to abandoned such office and how you are shifted in this, in this time too. I'm actually very fascinated because when I first started working from home in the Xamarin days, it was a very large mental shift for me. And I was really lucky and privileged that a lot of what I did for work was travel. So even though I lived in Seattle, I lived out of a suitcase and a bunch of random hotels, kind of like, you know, up in the air.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
I was just zooming all over the place. And over the last few years, I've shifted more towards working from home, but I'd go into the office every few days. And that to me was always not much fun because it was far away and I'd take buses, the connector buses, and it was like two hours out of my day. I know that I'm literally complaining about commutes that people have every single day, but when you're used to working from home and you're like, gotta get on a bus for two hours, it's a big transition. And again, it's a free bus, super privileged going to thank Microsoft for the connector. Um, but now we're in a global pandemic and Heather and I are both working from home. And that has shifted a lot of also what I consider work from home, because work from it for work from home, pandemic is very different from work from home. So I kind of figured that maybe we could talk a little bit about that now that I've sort of set up some of what happened to you and what you're going through and sort of how hopefully I can contribute to this conversation. So you don't have to carry the whole thing, frankly. Does that sound okay? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I could talk for

Speaker 3 (03:00):
30 minutes about moving large obnoxious size pieces of office furniture in a tiny little rabbit car, but you know, we can talk about other things too. Um, it's so funny what you mentioned about the, uh, bus commute, because I think I'm a rational person when they decided I'm going to get an office outside of the house, they might get one perhaps nearby their house. So they have easy access to it. And all that I put my office far, far away from me across a giant Lake and a floating floating bridge that you have to cross. So I was living in one town and I rented an office and, um, Seattle and I forced myself to commute. I, for the artist's reason, I decided I want a commute and I am going to get on a bus. James. I think that's one of the dumbest things I've ever done in my life. But the good side of it is I got an office in a pretty cool spot of town and I loved going to the coolest spot of town and hanging out there all day.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah. I enjoyed your office. I've been there many, a times we've hung out there and it isn't a really cool, it didn't different part of town. So what I appreciate about, about going into an office is like, it's different than being at home, right?

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah. And I wanted the neighborhood to be different. So I was living in not suburban, but you know, suburban, trying to be urban kind of area. And I picked, um, do you remember, did I have a giant office when you met me or a little one?

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Oh, you know what? You are in the U district above, across the street from Thai Tom. The record.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah. Okay. Well, I've had two offices in that building. That's why I was asking,

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Got broken into the whole bill. Wonderful. Right. That's what I read. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
I lost a lot of good hardware in that sad times. That's a cost of an office and a cool spot, a town, unfortunately with giant windows that look out onto a street, just showing off all your fancy Apple hardware turns out that might not be a great idea. You know, small lesson learned in life there. But, um, I actually got an office for a completely different reason. I was working from home for three years to the point where I had like a desk in a bedroom, kind of working from home and that is the worst and it's going stir crazy. I wasn't going out to see friends. I was becoming a true hermit of myself. And so, um, my office became, I think we called it once an aspirational office, something like that. Um, but I actually had, um, legal reasons to do two. At the time I was running a consulting company. I had lots of employees and they needed a home base for everything to operate out of. So from the very beginning, although I was semi miserable home, working from home constantly, uh, for legal reasons, that's why I actually got an office.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Got it. Yeah. That does make a lot of sense. And it's nice to have a very separate landing spot for you. If you have clients over, for example, you may be, don't want them to go into your bedroom that right. You know, has, or your personal space. It's very different. Additionally, if you have, you know, calls and you're on video chat, you may not want everyone to see your background, which is often while you're either see a complete white wall behind me, or you see like a lattice behind me. So you don't know what's behind that, that, uh, that, that fence, right. Are you behind you? It's just your works, you know, work, uh, electrical stuff. And, but you don't see the, the living room, the bedroom, I think it's like that. And I agree that at home, at least there are some good places in some bad places for most of my life.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
My home office was in the, uh, I've had mostly open concept, kitchen living room areas. Cause I lived in very small places in Seattle, still live in small places in Seattle. And most of my places were just me and I would have kitchen desk, you know, living room. And, uh, that was always hard because it was so close to everything that I do. And the computer was always there. Kind of steering you in the face. And I think we've talked about this before, where, where I live now, it's the first time that I've had a dedicated second bedroom or I do split it with Heather, but she on traditional would go into the office. So it would just be me at home. And that's very lovely, um, to, to, to handle that. And even now I'm in, I'm in the office, but she's in billing, rare living room area. Cause we're both managers. So we're both on the phone all the time. So there's complications that are too, uh, which is funny, but so you needed it because you had employees coming over needed a landing spot for them, probably had clients. Uh, I believe you also had a video produced by Xamarin when I search. If I remember

Speaker 3 (08:03):
You remember that that was exciting. That was a crazy day. Um, I don't know who decided to do that, but someone at Xamarin called me and said, someone's going to come over and videotape you while you talk. And I'm like, great. I've never done that before. Seems really crazy. But that was actually a really fun experience. And you're right. That was in, I'm going to call that office number one, uh, the little office that was so nice. Cause it was in a cool part of town and it was actually cheap, like an actual cheap office in a corporate account. Can you imagine? Um, but that was, that was, yeah, exactly. It doesn't exist anymore. That was fun. Photographer came over and I was like, look, I'm using my office a professional thing because actually at that point, that's when I was doing less, um, consulting contractor work and started app development.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Look at that apps, you know, it's funny. Um, I was thinking how, when I go to like modern office buildings and the before times, you know, pre virus, uh, everyone would try to make their offices kind of homey, kind of comfortable bring in, you know, pictures of the family at a plant or something. I was the opposite. I would try to make my office as, as office space as I could. I wanted like I wanted the most generic everything and I wanted it to feel just like such a foreign place. And I loved it because I could concentrate there. Cause there was nothing interesting. There, there was nothing to do, but do interesting things on my computer. I think that's where I'm failing today. I'm surrounding myself with the interesting stuff. That's so distracting. Whereas before it was just, I just think like an empty wa it wasn't empty cause I love furniture and I loved decorating, but it was for all intents and purposes empty.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
And I love that creating that space. There is something about a focused location, which often can be your office. If you decided you're not going to bring too much in or a good example is a coworking space, which, who knows if those will ever exist again. But when I started at Xamarin, I had thought about, uh, in getting a coworking space and this is a, an area in which you rent desk for all intents, like you were renting a proper office, you had a door, you could shut the door. And, and it was a, it was an area that was all yours. It was all yours. The whole thing was, it's never perfect though. Like I had a call center move in next door to me once that was noxious and terrible. That was the weirdest. I don't even remember how long it was in my head.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
It was like 10 years. But it was probably like six months to nine months, whatever, like a short term leases. Um, yeah, I didn't, you have some guitarists and some other artists that would produce again. So this is how do I discuss this without sounding like a complete jerk? I don't know how I can tell this story, but there was a wonderful street band that decided to set up shop right below my window and actually across the street. So the acoustics were perfect. They were just coming right at me and their style of music involved playing the same song all day and the same loosey goosey, jazz style of like rush or one of those, Oh, almost at it or one of those bands. And, but it was all like freestyle rap also. So that lasted for three months and I thought I was going to go insane hearing the same song over and over and over all day long. Now I got to say that this is not a mutually exclusive, um, a thing that can occur in a, in a coworking building where you have a, not a desk or an office that you, you rent cars here at home and beautiful Washington. We have luxurious neighbors that just stomp around nonstop. And last night, 5:00 AM a crying baby

Speaker 2 (11:54):
All night. Just recognize next door,

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Little baby, cute little baby crying, baby. You should be able to flip through baby crying at this age,

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Crying it's right next to our head. It's terrible. Uh, but, but we have people stomping around all, all day. They quiet down around APM. But you know, there is that you have to think about that. It's just one additional thing because you're not in a space that is your office. I guess you could be in an office by the way, you could be a Mike. We could be at Microsoft and there could be things that are deterring us. So I guess no matter what you can't win is what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
But at Microsoft you'll have a manager. You can complain to the manager, they'll complain to their manager. When you're renting an office, you got the building manager and your right relationship with them. It's like, how much boots have you bought them lately? Have you sent flowers lately? You know, that kind of stuff. Um,

Speaker 2 (12:46):
You're like a, I feel like a coworking space, which I never investigated. I've gone to a few wee works to do presentations at and attend some, but I investigated it, but they're expensive. They're, you know, renting a desk area for permanent for like 350 bucks a month. I'm like, wow, it's so expensive in Seattle because you're in Seattle. Yeah. I, in that instance, I assume that there's some protocols because you're in and around people in general, but then I thought about it this way. One I'd have to be paying for this additional service when I worked at Xamarin instead of just working from home. But then you probably can't really leave your stuff there. That was always my issue. You could, but I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
No. Um, after moving out of this office, I found that I have been a complete pack rat for the last 10 years now. The, we works always came in, excuse me, in two different kinds of forms. There was like the communal workspaces and then they had private offices. And I said that in a way that you can see the scare quotes around it, right. Quote unquote, private offices. Cause literally James, the office walls were plexiglass.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
That's clean. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
So, uh, as much as I, um, I liked the idea of like communal kind of spaces, sharing your AR you know, getting to talk with other people. I guess I was personally looking for something else I was looking for. I don't know. I don't know what I was looking for a separate place. Some place quiet. Yeah. A door. But it's funny like the office I ended up in, I, you were definitely in the latest office and that one had cement trucks

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Going all day

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Long and had, um, a forklift driver that I think drove only in reverse such that it would always beep I don't think forward mode worked on this forklift. It was just always beeping all day. And yet I found it very frustrating for like maybe the first week, but at the same time, those became the sounds of my office. And I started associating them with work. I'm like, look, all these cement people are literally lifting rocks and crushing them. And someone else is speeding around backwards on a forklift. I should be working too.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
So you have been working there for how many years at this point, I'm going to guess we have known each other for five years.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
I think that's about right, right. Um, yeah, that question is actually a little bit important because they gave a little discount in may because of the virus and it depended on how long you've been there. So it's actually a little contentious issue. I need to find out exactly how long I've been there. But yeah, it's been a, and also I apologize to everyone for implying the time exists again. Of course, time does not exist right now, but technically on some old fashioned calendar yeah. About five years and you don't, I didn't think I was going to make it. But the last office I found ended up being a very sweet spot of, like I said, I was still around a buzz with people, but I was able to afford a larger space with lots of windows. And it was very freeing and messy and fun. Um, it was, it was great after paying a lot of money for a bigger space and a core part of town. This was in a more industrial part of town. What I guess I'm getting at is it's good to get out of the house.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
It is good to get out of the house, but you have decided to stay in the house. Am I correct?

Speaker 3 (16:21):
I have. I have. So it's funny that that was the segue. Um, but it wasn't really me. You convinced me, James, why did you convince me? Okay, so everything okay. Everything I just said is all true. I had, I mean, every word of it, but the really cold reality of it is even before the virus I was going in for probably four days out of a month and paying a lot of money to be able to go there for four days out of the month. And so the virus brought clarity as in, well, if I was going so rarely and I'm, uh, quarantining at home, then, uh, this really is a luxury and a luxury. That's not even a luxury because it's not being luxurious anymore. In fact, it was kind of turning worse as some luxuries go. It is becoming a guilt complex. You know, if you ever bought a boat, it starts as a luxury and then becomes a guilt complex. That's how it goes.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
It's true. In fact, you know where we're at right now, uh, Heather used to love the one or two days a month should get to work from home for her company. And now that we're working from home all the time and the neighbors, they moved upstairs just a little bit before the, before

Speaker 3 (17:39):
It's all about the neighbors. It's all. You could just start a SICOM at this point.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
I mean, when you think of it, you are kind of impacted by a lot of that, a lot of everything around you. So you think of the, the things that you were thinking of luxurious, which was, Hey, I'm super productive. Like my luxury is that I'm productive because I can save two hours out of the Workday to get up, do my routine, bang, get ready for the day. But when you're constantly interrupted by something, you're like, okay, well, this isn't luxurious. Maybe I should just go into the office. Right. And then you can't go into the office anymore. So you've got to adapt somehow, uh, by doing that, I think it's fascinating because kind of hopefully what you hear is that nothing is perfect, right? I think it's kind of what you make out of the Mo make, make out of it. At the end of the day is you kind of learn the niceties of that cement truck of that forklift of that two hour commute of the neighbors upstairs, stomping around.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
And sometimes you do that friends thing where we take a broom and bop on the ceiling, but you know, you can't talk to anybody because it's a global pandemic. I'm not going to go knock on the door. That that'd be inconsiderate. Uh, but I will not the ceiling on occasion. That's I don't know if they're rustling up there or something, but, uh, uh, you know, I, I don't hopefully sound a complaint because what is great about everywhere I've worked out of the three or four apartments I've worked from, from your place one time from your office one time, it's always great just to, to, to do something different right. Of, of try a new experience. And sometimes you find that one thing is more productive than the other thing. For example, I found that one of my biggest deterrence from working from home was natural sunlight.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Uh, I, even today I was sitting in the living room, uh, with Heather, but she has the blinds closed most of the day. And, uh, it's just very dark and I'm like, I can't, I can't handle this darkness. It's just too much for me, Seattle is dark enough. So I came back into the office and it's just a light. And in fact, I remember one of the key reasons I ended up leaving. One of the companies I, I didn't, I worked for was not, I had a great opportunity to Xamarin, but I'd go into the office and it's just very dark every day. And, uh, I moved to a place that was just super sunshine, the biggest windows, a one looking over the 99 highway. And, and I was like, why am I leaving this beautiful, natural sunlight every single day and going into darkness in the woods. And it was very depressing. So just these different environments can really impact you, which is kind of crazy. So even if you think like, Oh, work from home is amazing and this and that, there's all these different things that really can impact you at the end of the day.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
You know, I'm not a big believer in those color, light bulbs and things like that to set the mood. But I am with you when you say the natural sunlight, that's been a big deal for me. I I've had, um, many business partners and friends and a good friend of mine. I'm totally going to throw him under the bus right now, but love you. Um, he used to really black everything out. Like he wanted that hacker dark room, you know, we're, we're doing the codes. It should be. And he would buy like the sign out blinds. Like they're like just absolutely no, like can get through these, um, curtains, I should say, big, giant movie theater curtains. And I would notice every time I'd go there, I'd get a little bit sick. And it turned out like they were so powerful that the mold was growing on the backside of them because he would just never open.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
It was just like the most, you know, KV of cave kind of things. So that was a great lesson to get early in life of never let your apartment get that way. So I'm always trying to a price and everything up, but, you know, um, I was kinda lucky at the beginning of the virus, uh, CGP gray. Do you know that utuber Nope. Oh, he makes fantastic videos on a variety of topics. Uh, all kind of animated it's CGP grey. Uh, he had a fun one where I forgot the title was like, you are a spaceship or your apartment is a spaceship, but he was describing how, now that we're all quarantined with the virus, we're all stuck in our houses. How would you operate it as if it were a spacious? So you have dedicated spaces, too. This is the space for sleeping. This is the space for entertainment.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
This is the space for creation. And he kept pounding it in that you should not mix the spaces, you know, do not do the entertainment. And the workspace do not do the entertainment and the sleepy space, you know, don't mix your spaces. And it kept getting me to thinking, like, I feel like I've been through it all in the working from home, I've done the strict schedule thing. When the virus first came out, I loved it. It was adorable. People are like, here's how you keep a normal schedule during the virus. And I'm like, yeah, that's going to last for two weeks. You know, like everything you said earlier, because it's different. And I find that that's the thing that kind of keeps me the most sane is just, you can do something for awhile, but it's, it's gonna get on your nerves eventually. And then you got to change it up a little bit. That's why I'm not too afraid of losing this office because it's a change and I'm going to have a whole bunch of extra money every month.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah. Yeah. I have so many things to unpack in what you just said, but before we do that, let's thank our good friends over at sync fusion. Listen, when I'm working from home, I don't got time to mess around building a whole bunch of custom UI,

Speaker 3 (23:08):
The components. I just let it sink fusion, do it for me, seeing fusion has hundreds of thousands of beautiful controls and widgets and all the things that your applications need, whether you're building a Xamarin application for iOS, Android, or windows, or a blazer app, or an asp.net, or a viewer reactor, jQuery, or JavaScript, or a flutter about anything you want, when forms, they got it all, they got all the charts, graphs, and all the things that you could possibly need for your applications. In fact, one of my favorite features is all the different file formats and extensions they need. Like they have an integration with an Excel PDF, a word, and even PowerPoint PowerPoint in your app. Boom, drop that in from sync for you. And it's beautiful where you go to learn more. Let me

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Tell you, sync fusion.com/merge conflict. You can head their eyebrows, all their beautiful things, download their sample applications and boom. You're off to the races going, thanks to our friends over@syncfusionhadtosyncfusion.com slash merge conflict to learn more. All right, Frank, um, let me think here,

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Did you watch the video in the last two seconds while he were also speaking? Frank was doing,

Speaker 2 (24:10):
I was, you know, me, I was, I know this, I know this. I think I knows. Okay. So yeah. Um, I didn't watch the video, but I will say this is you're correct. I think on the mixing the spaces, cause we've been thinking about how to ensure that, uh, Heather has a good working space. We haven't really done a great job there because she has worked for like the kitchen table or from the couch. And I don't think it's great. I think it's good for her back. So we've been thinking in this, this, this week of how can we reconfigure that and maybe move her desk because again, we need walls to separate us. So what we're going to do is, is move her desk into a different room. Now there is a bed there, but we're going to put dividers in between it and see how that works.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Give it a trial run. I think it to be sort of flexible to figure out what spaces work for you. Because one thing that's that is happening right now is that she's, you know, it's still kind of open concept and there's a kitchen there. So whenever I need a water or I need to go get a snack, I'm kind of creeping around the corner. Like, is Heather on a call? I can I pop in right now? And then if she's not on a call, I want to talk to her, but she's working. You know what I mean? That's a problem. So, uh, there's, there's all of these other parts to this, this work at home. Once you enter this, either you work at home with another individual or, or, or you're working from home and that, you know, someone else, your roommate is there, right.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
You know, maybe they're working from home. Maybe they're not, how do you engage and interact with that? And so trying to find that own personal space that feels, and is your office space where you can detach, I believe is very, very important to do. And you know, we're lucky here we actually have different kitchen area. So we could, you know, we have the bedroom situation, doesn't work out because luckily I wake up first about 99% of the time and I can get out of there. Right. So then it's kind of like her space that, that doesn't work. We could always maybe put a divider up that divides part of the eating area away. So just move some cabinets out. And it's like a separate area to, to put it over there. But I think you're right that having the dedicated spot where it doesn't feel like you're at home is pretty important

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Or it's just a different party or home. So that mentally, when you enter that space, it's different, you know, in my pursuit to have the most boring office ever, I really wanted to cubicles, like there were at most three people working there at a time, but I just desperately wanted to cubicles. I thought it would have made it the most boring office possible. I didn't realize how expensive they are, but like even today I have a tiny little apartment and I still kind of want to put a cubicle wall up. So James just, just put it out there. Cubicles cubicle, walls, cubicle.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Those are good. That's what I first worked in, in Arizona.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
The only problem, sometimes they have desks attached to them. The expensive idea.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Those are the good ones. The only problem I have is we're both on calls all the time. Oh yeah. Thanks.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
You, you have like the two studio problem. Yeah. Hm. That's tough. Yeah. I it's tough enough for me all by myself, just dealing with myself. I can't imagine negotiating, you know, the command structure of the spaceship that you're on, who knows. Uh, but one of the ones I, um, I like about the not mixing it is, it's also like I don't do any entertainment stuff on my work computer on my main computer. If I want to do any entertainment stuff, I use my TV or an iPad on the couch or something and a physically different room than everything. And as I was saying before, I feel like every system you come up with is going to break down at some point, or at least for me, um, everything becomes old hat at some point. But I think that the separation system is one that I've kind of fallen into semi naturally. And it was just great having it kind of codafide by someone, you know, sometimes it just feels good where you feel like you're getting kind of closer. You're like, I'm not really miserable working from home anymore. I wonder what changed did I changed at the circumstances change, but it was nice to understand also that I had been building up this discipline of don't mix these worlds.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. Don't mix the two worlds together as much as you can. Sometimes it's inevitable based on your space, but even, especially with cheap divider

Speaker 3 (28:45):
With Twitter, I met, I'm sorry, like you go on your work computer and Twitter's there. It's like, Oh God, I should probably start blocking Twitter again on my work computer.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
This is true. And that's something that also is quite complicated. Uh, Heather does a great job of this where yeah. Her machines are she, she, I mean, she got like, because her work issues, her a machine and she's like, here is your machine. And she does a great job of not doing any personal things on there. And she does it. But even me, I'm just know I got, I got, I got, I got edge and Chrome and Chrome is my, my personal stuff. And that is over here. I'm like, what happened is bad. I've already messed up.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
So you are creating spaces. Yeah. So they cross pollination. Huh?

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah. I mean, it's there. So if I need to do some stuff like, ah, something's ha I need to order something on Amazon. Like, all right. Sounds good. Those are micro breaks, I think are also very important when you're working from home today at lunch, you know, uh, I used to do this. I used to be really good at taking breaks throughout the day when I worked at Xamarin because I was very, a lot of my job was independent. So I created my own schedule, did whatever I needed. We didn't have a lot of team meetings and I would go out almost every morning. I'd walk down and get a coffee in the morning and then I'd go out for a walk at lunch and either get a lunch or walk for a half an hour around the space needle area. And it was pretty excellent.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Uh, I did that. And then when I started to work from home, again, most recently, a lot of change. So I was in more and more meetings. Uh, I was, this is probably what a lot of people are getting zoom for teams, fatigue, right? Or Skype fatigue or whatever platform you're on. And I'm on calls all the time. There's all the day. And I'm a manager. So I'm on even more calls throughout the day. And having a very dedicated, like, Hey, I am going to go outside and walk right now and get some sunlight, put that on your couch, put on your calendar. Right. And block it off is important to do because there's so many days where I would look at my, you know, now my iPhone, but whatever device I had and you look at your steps and your steps are 20. And you're like, Oh gosh, I look at my bed, which is 20 feet away.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
And you're like, uh, at 6:00 PM, what happened? And this is probably something that's happening to a lot of people. And it definitely has happened to me. So today I'm like, Hey, you know, we ate lunch. And often what we do is we'll eat lunch really quick and then go right back to work. I was like, yeah, I got, you know, 30 minutes. You want to go walk to the park. So we walked down, the park came back and you know, we'll go do something again tonight. But it's important to try to, to, to do that. I don't know. Are you doing that still? Since you've cause you, so here's the thing is you, Frank had the office, which gave you the commute to actually go outside. So you could have been like, Hey, I'm going to go, blah, blah, blah. Or I'm a one we'll get outside, come back. You know, even though you're only doing that four days a month, but are you, are you getting out of the house or have you been impacted now that you're back at home full time? Like, has that altered your work remote, you know, strategy?

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah. Uh, this all goes back to what I was saying of, I can't do anything consistently like that. So I can't give you one blanket answer and I think everyone's going through this. That's why I said it was so cute with those people coming up with schedules in the very beginning, because they're going to last two weeks. And then the next thing you come up with is going to last a month. And then the next thing, a couple of maybe the last two months, but it'll get boring eventually you'll do it. So that's all to say that I've been doing everything during this whole virus thing. My sleep schedule is completely broken at this point, but I honestly don't care. Um, because I'm still getting plenty of sleep when I actually do manage to go find some sleep. Uh, plus it's afforded me wonderful opportunities.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Like, well, I'll give examples, but what I'm trying to say is like, I think it's okay to just be broken. At least if you're a single individual living by themselves, like who, who cares about schedules anymore at this point? So one of my favorite things to do is, um, I'm usually up by around 6:00 AM and I like to, um, go to the park and read a book or I one wheel around the Lake. The nice thing is most normal humans aren't awake at 6:00 AM. So there's no, there are no germ bags out there for me to run into. I'm the only German bag going around the Lake at the time. It's not actually true. Seattle has way too many early risers. Uh, but that's been, that's been kind of the most exhilarating schedule that I've had lately. And that, that definitely comes from the office.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
Cause I was so lucky I could just one wheel on over to the office and it was missing all my office one wheeling, you know, for the last month or so. And so that's why I just started going around the Lake changing things up. Um, I think, yeah, I think one of the reasons I also liked the office was it did give me schedule regularity. If nothing else I knew when the concrete trucks stopped and if the concrete truck stopped, I'm like, well, that was the end of one, normal Workday. I wonder if, uh, if I should stop my work day now, but now with the virus time doesn't exist. Who cares?

Speaker 2 (34:07):
What is time? That's a, that's a very valid point. Uh, yeah. You know, I, I, you are right. You know, we tried that in the very beginning of work from home is we put a half an hour,

Speaker 3 (34:19):
12 to 1230 lunch

Speaker 2 (34:22):
On both our calendar. That didn't, that lasted one long. Did it last one day? Yeah, exactly. So now it ends up becoming, you know, Hey, you know what time are you meet a wake up? And I make coffee. And then, you know, we both run into each other pre noon. I was like, what are your meetings today? And she said, I did my meetings. It's like, okay, well we're not sure

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Each other today. That's okay too, because yeah, I guess,

Speaker 2 (34:47):
And normal pre virus sounds, we wouldn't see each other all day, either way. Right. I believe that there's you have to be okay. In some, in some point I'm just saying like, we're just both working from home and it's okay

Speaker 3 (35:00):
If we both have different schedules. I think that

Speaker 2 (35:02):
That's a reality of the situation. Correct.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
Speaking as someone who is single, is it really healthy to be around someone all day long? That sounds terrible. So, yeah. Um, what am I going to miss about the office? It's, you know, I don't like working from coffee shops and that's not an option anymore. Maybe not for a little while. I'm actually curious if we'll ever see developers in coffee shops again, but that was never my thing. So I think my biggest fear about the office was I knew I get, I know that I get bored with everything after three months. So although working from home has been fine while, you know, the virus has been going on, will I get tired of it? And I have no coffee shop to go to. And the parking at the library is too expensive, but that said I could one wheel to the library. I love our library. You should work out at the library. Not any coffee shops. That's my recommendation. It's true. That's true. Well, they let us in. We'll never open again, James,

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Probably not. Well, cause you in either situation, the biggest issue always arises rather you're if the, if you're at the library or the coffee shop, which is at some point you will have to use the bath

Speaker 3 (36:15):
And right.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
You will have to give up that seat because in 2020, I mean, at least in Seattle

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Public restroom, can you imagine like multiple people are going to use that toilet?

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Like you gotta like pack up all your stuff because I'm not going to ask my neighbor. Hey, can you just watch my computer real quick? I've done it. How many I've done that so many times. And I do it. Sorry. I know. I mean, it just, it, I mean, you gotta, I guess I just trust people. I could, can you watch this? And they're like, all right, but it's kind of amazing. I mean, I want to trust people, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
It's fine. It's fine. It's really the coffee shop that I just can't stand because I'm not even, maybe I'm a little worried they're going to steal the laptop. I just feel weird. Just like leaving an empty seat there or something like that. But the one library I will do it is, um, the university libraries, no one there cares, only nerds are up in the engineering section of the library. So I feel like my stuff is pretty safe. Uh, at the university libraries, at least boy, this thing was a lot of work. And do you know, kind of the worst part of all this? Um, our dump was a little bit closed when I started and Goodwill was closed when I started. And I mentioned earlier, I have been a pack rat for the last 10 years. It seems, I can't believe the amount of stuff that I've run into.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
It feels like I was moving an entire apartment, moving this office just because I always had pretty spacious offices. How luxurious, how lucky of me and that meant I just kept putting things I didn't want anymore into boxes and keeping those boxes around. So now I am in the terribly unfortunate situation where my spaceship, my house, my apartment has been attacked by boxes. And I feel like a dragon sitting on this hoard of just, I don't know what to do with all this stuff. I'm just, I have stuff coming out of my ears, James, if you need any stuff, come to me first.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
It's time to offer up, just cut over to the offer up. I downloaded something from a download, the offer up app today. And I sold a, some stools, some Ben barstools and those kinds of stools. Got it. Yup. And, uh, barstools and it was weird. I mean, I sell stuff on Craigslist all the time, but I feel like doing it in an app that Craig feels still criticalist feels so, uh, old school and natural it's like, here's this, you know, I mean, I don't want to throw shade on Craigslist, but it's not like the most visually pleasing website in the world, but not trying to be it's exactly what it needs to be. And a downloaded offer up because I had a friend that uses it and I was like, I'm going to post the same thing on Craigslist and offer up. And, um, I liked that all the communication is in the app, but I feel like for you, Frank, since you have so much stuff, it's great because you can just be like, take a photo, click and up right. Done. What's the price done next, next, next, uh, that one that's pretty cool. So there's, there's ways of clearing it off and getting rid of it. But I think the nicest part is that you're going to save some money. Frank, that's going to be hopefully a positive out of all this. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (39:22):
I did. It. It definitely is. It's funny that that comes up at the very end, but obviously that's a big driver and all of this Seattle never gets cheaper. It turns out no matter how much of a recession we have, no matter what we do, we can't make this place cheap. Oh, well, I guess. Um, but so I just want to make sure everyone heard you, there's an app called offer up and I've seen these kinds of apps before where they're just trying to refine the experience of, you know, ideally what I want. I don't want to negotiate with anyone. I want to just be like, here's a price. And then in one hour I want the app to notify me. Um, Joe or Sally is going to come by and pick it up for $20 and I'll be great. That's all, that's the fall interaction I want. So I'm curious if the apps have gotten that good or if there's still a bit of work to do

Speaker 2 (40:09):
So I'll tell you this much, there is a button that says, uh, you can you say the condition? You give a description, there's a button that says from on price and you can say

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Price. I just don't want to deal with it. Like I want it to be an eBay like a one hour eBay basically is I guess what I'm asking for. Do we, do we always end our episodes by designing apps? I think that would, should be a tradition at some point. It's true how I would make this app.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Well, let's end this episode with a little listener feedback. We scoured our comments on merge conflict, RFM. Yeah. We read them people. We read them. We did that. And we went back into the archives of episode 200 and a, this was a fun one. I just want to address it because you may read the comments and not understand where this was, but Mike, to heat to hae a row one, one of his favorite episodes, which I forgot about talking about your office was when I visited your house, your apartment. And we just talked about robotic pro projects the entire time, because that's what we were staring at, which is fun.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
That's what the podcast should be. That's all, that's all we should ever do robots all the time.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
But Mike also said, he said, thank you for this show. This is episode 200, uh, years in. And I still love it. He said, I learned to live with the grid number as file names. And do you know that all of our file names are grids Frank? I had

Speaker 3 (41:36):
No idea. And I write podcast apps and I had no idea that you are doing good file names. It's cute. I love it.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Well, what if I told you I didn't do them in any way? It wasn't me, Frank. It wasn't me. Well, some nerd was involved. That's obvious because who would ever do a good file name? Our good friend, Dan Benjamin ding. Uh, now, I mean, so here's what happened, funnily enough, every single on my one drive, every single episode is in there's an episode folder. And then it's like episode two or three. And then there's an MP3 that says merge conflict, one merge, conflict to merge conflict, 200 dot MP3. They're all beautifully named Mike. They're so beautiful. But when I upload them, they become a grid. So unique identifier and their S three bucket, obviously. So, uh, you know, sorry.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Oh, okay. Oh, so actually maybe we should blame us three. That's just sounding like an S three thing. Sounds like an accessory bucket. Now

Speaker 2 (42:33):
The other one that I'll let you clarify. This is from episode two Oh eight. The one that just happened. Debbie WDC, detox, busted DTK hype. Our good friend, James Hutchison says, what is a Bodhi? Is it a beer? Is it a Seattle thing? What is a Bodhi?

Speaker 3 (42:48):
What is a, Vodi a Bodhi is a wonderful beer that I've been obsessed with for the last couple years. It's short for bodies' OFA, B O D H Zephyr. It's made by a local brewing company here called Georgetown brewing. And it's in a big orange can I like it? Cause it's, you know, I'm like, well, the Simpson's always had Duff, but you know, in the eighties they would have like the white canopy or that said beer on it. I kind of think of it that way. It's my like very simple branded beer. Uh, it's an IPA it's obnoxiously hoppy. It's obnoxiously alcoholically um, it's honestly kind of gross. It gives me the worst hangovers. Like I always have a headache, no matter how many I drink. Um, and yet I keep drinking them. So I believe that the hair also, um, addictive. Yeah. Should probably have a lawsuit or something.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Bodies' office. One of my, Oh, I mean, I like a man he's pale ale. That's my favorite pale ale. Uh, however, I do love a bodies' offer because you got me into the Bodhi and it just laid down in Georgetown brewing. You can do like tastings of like everything you get growler fills. Um, but when you go, you will see that the founders of a great Georgetown have an addiction with a movie called point break.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
It's a point break beer.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah. Like half of them are besides Manny. There's like the Banny and uh, the other person was like the founders, but Bodie Bodie is, uh, as a character

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Really is Bodhi. ZAFA a character.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Uh, I think it's just, what is the Zafar part? Okay. Let me see. Point break point. Obviously there should be Wikipedia entries on this thing. There should be. So you go there and they, they actually have like points. There's a bunch of other things that have point break references to it. Well, that's the thing is because, you know, counter Reeves is Johnny, Utah, which is another Georgetown. Oh, is it? Yeah. And then Bodhi is just Patrick Swayze his character. I don't think he goes by Bodhi ZAFA but I'm not sure if maybe that is his name. I'm not, I'm not full, but that's where it comes from. Interesting. I did not know that what a good lesson. So I think you can get this beer outside of Seattle. It gets some kind of distribution, but you'll probably have to go to your hipster beer store to find it.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yes. They call it if you want a little headache in the morning, but a really enjoyable time until then. Yeah. I think also, so Rogers is also is Roger and Manny. So Rogers was a Pilsner man. He is a pale ale. And then Lucille I think is also a point break reference, fine, just blowing my mind. And I know at least Johnny Utah and bodies' OFA are, I'm not 100% sure of the other ones. So I gotta clarify, but there are huge fans, a lot of the early bruise where we're point break references. Then we watched point break after going on the Georgetown brewery tour. And uh, yeah, I mean, it's funny that I say I get annoyed with everything after three months, but that's not true with food. I can eat the same food just over and over constantly. And it got to the point where there was a bar and as I walked in through the door, the bartender would pour me a bodies' office. So it felt pretty good having that kind of recognition and that much consistency in my ordering that I'd even have to ask for a drink as I walked in.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Oh, well, Frank, that's my recommendation. Did we just do six minutes of Georgetown advertisement there? I believe so. Yes. Go, uh, support your independent brewer, uh, wherever you're in in the world. Uh, I will crack a Bodhi tonight just for you from across the water. All right, everyone. Well, thanks for tuning in. I hope that you're working from home and it's being awesome. And if you have tips, maybe, maybe we have some good ones. Maybe we didn't leave them in the comments, merge conflict out of them. You can like write a comment there. You can also give us a review. We haven't had a review since February. It'd be sure be cool. If we had one, you know, now just open up that podcast app, write that review button five-star as people love this, that helps other people find this podcast and I'll just grow because who knows how Apple filters anything. It's a magical world of mystery, but that's going to do it for this week's merge conflict. So until next time I'm Jane's mom,

Speaker 4 (47:33):
[inaudible].