Whiskey Web and Whatnot: Web Development, Neat

A whiskey fueled fireside chat with your favorite web developers.

129: A Deep Dive into Managed DNS with Jeff Cronstrom

Join hosts RobbieTheWagner and Charles William Carpenter III as they welcome Jeff Cronstrom, a DNS specialist with experience dating back to the 90s and the founder of CloudfloorDNS. In this episode, they dig into the ins and outs of managed DNS, the benefits ...

Creators and Guests

RobbieTheWagner
Charles William Carpenter III
Jeff Cronstrom
RobbieTheWagner
Charles William Carpenter III
Jeff Cronstrom

Show Notes

Join hosts RobbieTheWagner and Charles William Carpenter III as they welcome Jeff Cronstrom, a DNS specialist with experience dating back to the 90s and the founder of CloudfloorDNS. In this episode, they dig into the ins and outs of managed DNS, the benefits it provides, and the distinguishing features of CloudfloorDNS.

The hosts also engage in lively discussions about technology, touching on various topics such as PHP, Python, DevOps, and the role of DNS in web development. Alongside the tech talk, the episode features a whiskey tasting session with Fort Hamilton rye whiskey.

Key Takeaways

  • [01:45] - Whiskey Tasting and Discussion
  • [11:00] - Hot Takes on Tech Topics
  • [27:07] - Deep Dive into CloudFloorDNS
  • [31:41] - Web Application Firewall and Cloudflare
  • [32:02] - Domain Registrations and DNS
  • [32:27] - Google's Shift from Domain Registration
  • [33:53] - Roles in Tech: Network Engineer, System Administrator, and More
  • [35:32] - The Rise of DevOps and DevSecOps
  • [36:28] - The Importance of Security in Development
  • [36:59] - Patch Tuesdays and Software Updates
  • [39:05] - The Syntax Podcast and Sentry.io
  • [39:49] - The Microsoft Debate
  • [42:59] - Boating and Fishing Adventures
  • [48:50] - The Phoenix Lights Mystery
  • [52:11] - Homemade Drink Smoker and Carpentry Skills
  • [54:02] - The Simulation Theory and Solar Flares
  • [53:30] - Choose Your Own Adventure Website Idea
  • [55:30] - Closing Remarks and CloudfloorDNS Plug

Links

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:05] Robbie: What’s going on, everybody? Welcome to Whiskey, Web, and Whatnot with myself, RobbieTheWagner, and my co host, as always, Charles William Carpenter III.

[00:00:14] Chuck: Given my ugly sweater, I actually want to be called David Beckham today. So,

[00:00:19] Robbie: All right, David.

[00:00:20] Chuck: yeah, thank you. Just Becks for short, and then I’ll work on my British accent. See where

[00:00:26] Robbie: Please, please don’t. Our guest today is Jeff Kronstrom. What’s going on, Jeff?

[00:00:31] Jeffrey: Hey, what’s going on guys?

[00:00:33] Robbie: Hey, not much. For the folks at home, can you give a few sentences about who you are and what you do? And

[00:00:40] Jeffrey: Yeah, so as it says, my name is Jeff Kronstrom. I’ve been doing DNS since the late 90s, and I run a company called CloudFloorDNS. I’m kind of like an internet plumber of sorts, I guess. You know, in a, you know, simplistic way.

[00:00:59] Chuck: [00:01:00] Yeah, I think we’ll end up digging into that a little bit more about what is cloud DNS. I mean, in general, I think everybody knows what DNS is, but it just stops us from typing numbers.

[00:01:12] Jeffrey: Exactly. Try to

remember all the numbers.

[00:01:17] Chuck: Can you imagine? like, I think of like stickers on cars and stuff for like, and people have like links to their Instagram or their website for the plumbers or whatever else and instead it would just be numbers that I would forget.

[00:01:32] Jeffrey: Yeah, especially IPv6. Some previous companies I would remember all are IPv4 blocks, but now I just don’t even bother.

[00:01:40] Chuck: Now wait till it’s eight. No, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a thing. Well, see here, I know why you’re really here and that is to try some whiskey. So let’s talk a little about that. Today we’re going to have the Fort Hamilton rye whiskey. It is aged four years, 90 proof distilled in New York. And it was like a big [00:02:00] deal that it is an Eastern rye meaning what was it?

It has no. There’s something missing. There’s, oh, no corn in the mash whatsoever. So an Eastern American rye style, which has no corn in the mash. I don’t know. We’ll at least it’s their own distillate, so we’ll go with that.

[00:02:16] Robbie: that’s interesting.

[00:02:18] Chuck: Yeah. Robbie’s a big fan of rye, so every time we kind of approach one of these, he’s like, he’s got an extra judgmental, like, bit in his mouth. See, we do the fancy foley work too, just so you know.

[00:02:36] Jeffrey: So,

[00:02:38] Robbie: like a Korean barbecue to me. Hmm. Hahaha.

[00:02:45] Chuck: Hmm looks like you got a proper Glen car in there

[00:02:48] Jeffrey: yes, DRAM. I also, I also like to try a Tumblr because you get a little different smell out of that.

[00:02:57] Chuck: I like that. We [00:03:00] finally have a professional on the show.

[00:03:02] Jeffrey: Well, this is kind of funny. A previous company I used to work for had a whiskey room.

[00:03:10] Chuck: Oh, wow

[00:03:11] Jeffrey: a special button you had to push on a server that was cut. You push the power button and it would open the door.

[00:03:18] Chuck: What

[00:03:19] Jeffrey: go in there and all kinds of whiskeys and other liquors.

[00:03:24] Chuck: Are they hiring sounds

[00:03:27] Jeffrey: They’re no longer around.

They got acquired. But,

[00:03:31] Chuck: And, and, and that got shut up and nobody’s, nobody’s doing that anymore. Bummer though, that’s like some like Webster house kind of stuff. It’s pretty cool. Okay, I’m getting a little like dried figs.

[00:03:43] Jeffrey: was going to say raisin.

[00:03:45] Chuck: Okay, see, we’re, we’re in the same vicinity. Hmm.

[00:03:54] Jeffrey: Almost a little toffee. [00:04:00] Pepper.

[00:04:00] Chuck: definitely, definitely some peppery little toffee is a good one. Yeah, I would.

[00:04:06] Robbie: Yeah, it’s like a leather shoe full of peppercorns. Hahaha.

[00:04:13] Chuck: was gonna kind of say like maybe like tobacco leaf a little bit.

[00:04:16] Robbie: Hmm.

[00:04:17] Chuck: don’t know Definitely something else like going there, but it’s interesting It’s different. I’m pleasantly surprised. I would say. Oh, the mash bill here is 90 percent rye and 10 percent malted barley. So All right

[00:04:35] Robbie: Yeah, it’s got a weird, something weird in the aftertaste. I don’t know what it is, but,

[00:04:41] Chuck: Okay. Here’s here’s my Arbitrary descriptor of, of the day you know, when you choose something like juicy fruit or whatever for a little bit and then it loses its flavor probably 35 seconds later and like whatever is remaining there [00:05:00] kind of on your tongue. It’s a little like that for me.

[00:05:02] Robbie: yeah. It’s like a little unpleasant, but not exactly.

[00:05:06] Chuck: Yeah, like.

[00:05:08] Robbie: Hmm. Hmm.

[00:05:12] Chuck: Is what it was put there to fix in the first place? That’s true. Yeah, I don’t know. There is, but it’s interesting. Not bad. It is a different array of flavors there. Jeff, what do you normally drink? I think we talked about this briefly when we were talking about you coming on the show, but

[00:05:29] Jeffrey: So, my favorite whiskeys are single malt scotch. And then next would be Rye’s and then Bourbon’s. As far as go to for any of them scotches, I really like the Lafroix’s, like a triple wood. It’s got a nice briny, smoky flavor to it. You know, for the peated, smoky type of whiskey. Single Malts. And then, on the kind of the more mellow side of that, [00:06:00] maybe like, an Obon. Not really sure which one, but they’re usually on the milder side.

[00:06:07] Chuck: Okay.

[00:06:08] Jeffrey: Rise Piggyback is one. There’s a staple.

[00:06:13] Chuck: Whistlepig one?

[00:06:14] Jeffrey: That’s a Whistlepig one Mm hmm.

[00:06:16] Chuck: yeah, yeah.

[00:06:17] Jeffrey: And then I feel like Bourbons, you know, you get the, you know, angels out of Envy or Blanton’s. Some of the sweetness I don’t like as much in the Bourbons. I like

[00:06:29] Chuck: Mm hmm.

[00:06:30] Jeffrey: something more, more along the rise than,

[00:06:33] Chuck: Yeah, little, little, little kick, little bump in that. That’s the thing at 90 proof or below, a Bourbon is just gonna be super mellow, maybe even almost too much, and the sweetness is, is, is there. I need, like, some of that burn to kind of round it out. And so the Rise, at least, will give you a little kick around that, even at the lower proof. Yeah. Well, so We have a very highly specific and technical rating system. [00:07:00] Just for fun, we like to give all of the things we try a bit of a rating. 0 to 8 tentacles. Tentacles because of an octopus like character that is like the mascot of the show. So obviously 0 is horrible. Four, middle of the road.

And eight, being amazing, clear the shelves. Robbie and I, since we drink so many, we tend to kind of like, put them in categories. So we’re just gonna rate this against other eyes that we really like. But you can feel free to do it any way you choose. But it’s nice to kind of like, put it up against what you like. Robbie, you wanna go first? Set the tone.

[00:07:34] Robbie: Sure. Yeah, you already know what I’m going to say. If you’ve heard previous episodes, this is not as good as Sagamore, which is my gold standard for Rai. So I’m going to give this one a four, I think.

[00:07:46] Chuck: Hmm, four, okay. Just middle of the road for you. What do you think? What do you think, Jeff?

[00:07:52] Jeffrey: So, I like it. It’s got some body to it. It’s it’s not an eight. I would probably give it [00:08:00] a five and a half.

[00:08:01] Chuck: Yeah, I think that’s kind of fair. Yeah, I do think it’s interesting, and it, and you know, and who knows as it opens up and whatever else it might start to like Mellow out a little on the finish But for you know a simple mash bill. I think it’s very interesting I definitely would come back to it have some more.

I can’t recall offhand the price point of this. I do tend to like Bear in mind price point to like, you know, if you are mediocre for 80 bucks Like I feel like that’s kind of lower than something that punches above its weight for 40 I don’t remember where this was maybe like around 60 bucks give or take

[00:08:41] Robbie: Sounds right.

[00:08:42] Chuck: Yeah, and so and I think it’s different and interesting for that.

It’s got a decent story around it. So Probably like you I feel like I’m between a 5 and a 6 like better than average not amazing but It’s worth trying. I don’t know. I’ll just land there. 5. [00:09:00] 5. It is 5. 75.

[00:09:02] Jeffrey: I did look up what, I didn’t know what Fort Hamilton was, but if you look that up, there’s an interesting story behind what this is kind of modeled after. You know, the old war with the HMS Asia.

[00:09:18] Chuck: Oh, interesting.

[00:09:20] Jeffrey: yeah.

[00:09:20] Chuck: Yeah, that’s kind of

[00:09:22] Jeffrey: So it’s got a cool story behind it if you look the history up on what that is.

And what did it say? The Hearts of Oak Militia.

[00:09:31] Chuck: Hmm. Yeah, that’s interesting. I wonder if the brand is like tying that story in more like on that. I remember looking briefly on their website, but it was like hard to get details about the whiskey itself there. So. You know, then you’ll look at, well, I got this from, I believe this came from DaWineSpot, which is also out of New York.

And yeah, and they’ll have some things there about like Mashville and, and, and whatever else, but their website was difficult to navigate. [00:10:00] It was easy to get to. Thank you, DNS.

[00:10:03] Jeffrey: perfect. So you didn’t tell me this was going to be an ugly sweater party. I would have joined.

[00:10:11] Chuck: that’s true. That’s completely by accident too,

[00:10:14] Robbie: Yeah, we did not plan this.

[00:10:16] Chuck: No, no, we just both have, you know, bad fashion sense potentially. I don’t know. I this morning went to a thing at my kid’s school where they were singing, you know, they’re just in pre k and then my son is in second grade and so, you know, they kind of sing some Christmas songs or whatever else.

So I thought I would get in theme.

[00:10:36] Jeffrey: It’s perfect. Yeah, we had a, an ugly sweaty sweater party a couple weeks ago at this boat club I belong to, so I got my one ugly sweater

day in this season so far.

[00:10:48] Chuck: Well, there we go. We can talk about boats later on. Robbie loves boats or at least pretending to love boats. I don’t know. I’m not sure.

[00:10:55] Robbie: we can talk about that later. Let’s not get too into that right now,

[00:10:58] Jeffrey: Part of the what not.

[00:10:59] Robbie: touch on [00:11:00] that.

[00:11:00] Chuck: Okay, so we will, we will talk a little bit about hot takes, maybe. We’ll have some hot technical takes. Some of these we kind of, borrow from Twitter. Tech Twitter tends to talk about a lot of random You know, argue with whatever DHH says, where you shouldn’t build, do any build steps for your front end assets, or, you know, crazy things like that.

Do you want to take the first one, Rami?

[00:11:25] Robbie: Sure. You’ve switched all these up on me. I don’t even know what Gemini is, so I’m going to just get rid of that and say chat GPT or Bard.

[00:11:35] Jeffrey: I have never used BARD. I’ve used GPT quite a bit. It’s pretty cool what it does. I’ve been playing around with the image generation lately, and

it’s really really cool what that can do.

I’m just kind of blown away, but it’s weird how sometimes the words it spells are wrong. How did it get that wrong? In an image, I mean, it can spell them [00:12:00] correctly in the text, but image text is

[00:12:03] Robbie: Yeah. The images tend to like. I guess it’s like the text based one where it hallucinates, kinda. Because sometimes you’ll get, like, an extra finger on the hand, or,

[00:12:13] Jeffrey: Hmm.

[00:12:14] Chuck: yeah.

[00:12:15] Robbie: Like, when I do sorry, my dog’s just busted in here. When I do the ones for the podcast, I’ll get, like, I’ll tell it, Be drinking whiskey and podcasting, and it’ll, like, swap the, like, There’ll be a whiskey glass on the mic stand, and, like, They’ll be holding the mic or something, and, like, And then there’ll be, like, a straw into the, like, It has weird things, but it is incredibly good at most things.

[00:12:36] Chuck: it’s, it’s disturbing though that you can’t be like, now, same image, but swap those two things.

[00:12:42] Robbie: Oh, I know.

[00:12:43] Chuck: over and you’re

[00:12:44] Robbie: I know,

[00:12:45] Chuck: close.

[00:12:46] Jeffrey: You’re supposed to be able to do that.

[00:12:48] Chuck: I have never been able to do it successfully. And maybe that’s some sort of like setting or prompt thing that we

[00:12:54] Robbie: it even confirms with me, I’ll be like like a person’s wearing a hoodie, a zip up hoodie, and I’m like, make the [00:13:00] hoodie unzipped, and he goes, okay, here’s a new one where the hoodie is unzipped and it’s still zipped up, and I’m like, no, you just told me it wasn’t, but like, it totally is, so, yeah,

[00:13:10] Chuck: But you still have to be polite to it so it doesn’t kill you later,

[00:13:12] Robbie: oh I know, I say please every time.

[00:13:14] Chuck: Right, there you go. Have manners. Gemini is Google’s reboot of theirs.

[00:13:20] Robbie: Oh, cause Bard did so badly?

[00:13:23] Chuck: right, yes. I thought, well, is Bard the, yeah, Bard was their first one. So that was like, it’s kind of a reboot of theirs. And doesn’t, yeah, doesn’t Microsoft sort of have one?

Anyway, I don’t use Grok

[00:13:34] Robbie: Everyone has one. Yeah, I was just going to ask, you don’t like Elans?

[00:13:37] Chuck: me or, or Jeff? Eh,

[00:13:42] Jeffrey: and I don’t use Microsoft products as much as I can possibly

[00:13:46] Chuck: well there we go.

[00:13:48] Robbie: ha ha ha. Yeah.

[00:13:51] Chuck: that. Yeah, anybody who used Win like Windows 95 is, is for sure

[00:13:56] Robbie: 95 was pretty stable though.

[00:13:58] Jeffrey: life, it was 98 [00:14:00] things went real bad.

[00:14:00] Chuck: Right, and then was it XP after that or

[00:14:03] Jeffrey: or 2000, and

[00:14:05] Chuck: don’t know. I think I had

[00:14:06] Robbie: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:11] Chuck: times. Alrighty, so then here’s a good one. PHP or Python?

[00:14:18] Jeffrey: So we have a lot of our stack in PHP. PHP is super simple. A lot of people know it. Python is also super cool. A lot faster. There’s a lot more things you can do with it to just prebuilt libraries or just about everything. So I think it really depends on what you’re doing with it.

[00:14:37] Chuck: Would you say, at least around 2015, would you say that Python is for little girls? So I found this old tweet that you had put up and that’s what kind of what prompted this like funny question

[00:14:51] Jeffrey: I did that. I don’t even remember, but.

[00:14:53] Chuck: Yeah. Yeah. I can, I’ll send you. Yeah. Python is for little girls dash lol.[00:15:00]

[00:15:00] Jeffrey: That’s funny.

[00:15:01] Chuck: Yeah. Yeah. So, but I do appreciate like you trying to have a real response and I’m not sure like how much you’re involved in like the modern JavaScript ecosystem or whatever else

[00:15:12] Jeffrey: So, yeah.

[00:15:13] Chuck: we keep evolving it to make it more and more complex to a lot of people have made jokes this year that with react server components, we’re essentially just doing PHP.

So maybe we just go back to server frameworks, you know, server. Rendered web frameworks,

[00:15:32] Jeffrey: So, yeah, I don’t get involved with, with, you know, JavaScript, React, and, you know, all those frameworks. I listened to some other of your podcasts and what they’re talking about, you guys were talking about. I’m like, I have no idea what they’re talking about. I know what they are, but I

could not talk coherently about them.

[00:15:49] Chuck: You know, I, some would say, and perhaps even me you’re probably better off where you’re at, you know, like you go down this path of complexity [00:16:00] that is.

[00:16:00] Jeffrey: Mm hmm.

[00:16:01] Chuck: Unwinding it Unnecessarily is there’s plenty of times recently. I’ve thought about like, all right I’m just gonna boot up a Django site and build off of that.

Maybe I don’t know move on get off my lawn

[00:16:15] Jeffrey: you’re continually learning new things, right, when,

[00:16:19] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:16:19] Jeffrey: when that happens, which can slow you down, but you’re supposed to do things faster because it’s so much better, right? Mm

[00:16:27] Chuck: So it’s ironic. And as soon as you get comfortable, there’s like 15 new things and you’re like, should I try it? And then I was like, I would have been done in an afternoon if I wasn’t using these four new things. I’ve definitely found myself in that place recently.

[00:16:42] Robbie: Oh yeah. Overengineering is a big problem. Like, people like to just use the cool shiny thing and like layer on tons of layers of abstraction to it and it’s like, okay, so everything is server rendered now. Is it any faster or different or [00:17:00] better than PHP has always been? I don’t think so. I think the only benefit is that it’s all JavaScript.

So like you don’t have to context switch your syntax, which is nice, I guess, but I don’t think it’s a benefit enough to use an unproven server side rendering thing when so many other things have server side rendered for so long.

[00:17:20] Chuck: We’ve trained such a large swath of a workforce. In JavaScript and react. And how are we going to leverage that? I think that’s part of it, honestly,

[00:17:32] Robbie: Mm

[00:17:33] Chuck: folks who don’t have true, like maybe not even computer science fundamentals, but like an understanding to be enough of those, to be able to pick up other languages a bit easier.

And when, what, you know, to build is this thing in this syntax and that’s kind of it, how do we leverage that across the board? To make things.

[00:17:56] Jeffrey: hmm.

[00:17:56] Chuck: I, don’t know. It’s the best guess that I have. Obviously, there’s no like real [00:18:00] signals of if that’s what it is or not, but it feels a little that way.

[00:18:04] Jeffrey: Yeah, that’s interesting, I mean, because, you know, PHP’s running all server side, and a lot of the JavaScript’s running. Client side. So,

[00:18:16] Chuck: And now they’re running it server side though. That’s the big thing is React server components, which is the whole, it was like isomorphic for a bit. You know, they have a bunch of different terminologies, but essentially allowing that. On server hydration and pushing that all up. So JSX becomes just straight HTML and then you have Loops after it hits the client.

So we’re saying, you know, I don’t know but The the stats that I had read this year was that WordPress powers 64 percent of the internet or something worldwide So there’s still that

[00:18:52] Jeffrey: mean, do you guys run any WordPress sites? Or just in things that you have built yourself with [00:19:00] React or

[00:19:01] Chuck: So I haven’t touched WordPress in probably like 15 years Thankfully for me, I have no problem with the link, like with PHP as a language or anything around that. But like this, I mean, it almost falls to some of the same issues around like, this is a CMS, mostly a blog engine that got like pumped up because of one click installs and then plug in ecosystem that allows you to do more and more and more from like, you know, a website to a web application.

But yeah, we’ve, we’ve probably built a lot of things on the client heavy side, aside from like APIs and stuff. And I even think that is getting, it has been messy for a while.

[00:19:46] Robbie: yeah, I haven’t used PHP in a while, but when I did use it, I didn’t use WordPress with it. I would like, we sprinkled in a little bit of JavaScript. This was like, I think it was like prototype, like before [00:20:00] jQuery was kind of the clear winner. We would use that to like do a couple little interactive things or whatever, which I think is like the right balance.

Like even if you want to use React now, you can just use PHP or whatever. And then. If you want to make a little piece, like extra reactive, you can use react or whatever JavaScript library.

[00:20:17] Chuck: Yeah, we did that with Well, I was working, it was primarily a NET shop and then jQuery and MooTools was another one at the time that added that sort of like DOM interactivity.

[00:20:32] Robbie: I forgot about that.

[00:20:34] Chuck: MooTools, I know, it’s great marketing. Yeah, Moo, it’s just fun to say, so somebody should bring that project

[00:20:42] Jeffrey: Reminds me of 2Cows.

[00:20:44] Chuck: oh yeah, that’s funny.

Yeah, so there was a real cow thing going on, you know what it was, it was the vegans, the vegans stopped it. They were like, did you ask their permission to use this in [00:21:00] your library? I don’t know. I think that’s the

[00:21:03] Robbie: Oh boy.

[00:21:04] Chuck: All right.

[00:21:04] Robbie: All right. Get rebase or get merge.

[00:21:08] Jeffrey: We’ve always been merge just because I get merge requests. They want me to, to authorize them. I authorize them merge and, but we don’t have a big development team. So it’s not like, you know, you’ve got 50 people going and working on a project. So it’s fairly simple. So, yeah,

I don’t have any philosophy around it.

[00:21:34] Chuck: Just get the code in.

[00:21:37] Jeffrey: Get the code in, you know, merge it and deploy it.

[00:21:43] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:21:44] Chuck: it out there. That’s the.

[00:21:46] Jeffrey: yeah, from what we have isn’t super complex. I mean, we have quite a back end, a lot of different components, but it’s not like, quite a continual deployment process like other companies have.[00:22:00]

Like, so, recently, my company just split off from a larger public company and they had a much, much different, you know, CI, CD that we didn’t get involved with.

We had our own kind of group within their GitLab, which then we had to migrate out and put into our own, but,

[00:22:19] Chuck: Did you still, are you still using get lab or no? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:21] Jeffrey: yeah.

[00:22:22] Chuck: Yeah, yeah, they’ve got a nice like pipeline set up and kind of all in one product

[00:22:28] Jeffrey: Mm hmm. Yeah, we enjoy it.

[00:22:31] Robbie: Yeah. We use get lab.

[00:22:33] Chuck: There you go self hosted or cloud there’s

[00:22:37] Jeffrey: Self.

[00:22:38] Chuck: yeah, there you go I was trying to come up with some terms that might apply to like Network and security and administration things. I know a little bit about red team blue team What do you think? Red team, blue team? That’s, that’s my,

[00:22:57] Jeffrey: I mean, it’s very cool to [00:23:00] do Red Team, Blue Team, and then there’s Purple also, but,

[00:23:03] Chuck: whoa. Tell us about purple. Yeah.

[00:23:12] Jeffrey: but It’s, it’s fun to try to break in, do Red Team. And on the offensive, I mean, I don’t try to break in.

We, we test a lot. But you know, we’re always on the offensive. So, um, you know, it’s more, more blue for us. And security is first and foremost, because when you’ve got servers all over the internet, especially DNS servers that are you know, sitting out in your, your edge you got to protect them. And nowadays with DNS security, you have to be pretty vigilant.

I mean, we get attacks all the time. So, you know, probably three years ago, maybe I deployed a product called DNS dist, it’s a DNS [00:24:00] firewall load balancer, and it, you can dynamically do blocks on. Abusive IPs. It’s an incredible product by PowerDNS. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:24:18] Chuck: around the, around DNS are an artifact of like the customers you have specifically? Like, are they targeting those customers or are they just saying, Oh, maybe this, This cloud product is you know, let’s just check vulnerabilities or something.

[00:24:36] Jeffrey: I don’t think, I mean, some of the, some of the, Traffic we see come in can be a vulnerability scan. Those are usually smaller. Whether, you know, they’re doing pen testing, things like that, but other attacks that come in when, you know, there are hundreds of thousands of queries a second, then, you know, there could be, you know, some botnet looking for a way and looking for certain hosts or.

What [00:25:00] have you and you know, they find hits on hosts and then they try to attack those hosts and so we’re kind of like the forefront before they actually get into the person’s records to see what’s valid, what’s not, and then they can continue their attack from there. But when we see these come in, we can automatically block them or, or we can actually go and say, Hey, I just want to cut the queries per second down for this domain name.

At this particular site down to, you know, say, 10, 100, 1000 queries a second, so that, you know, quenches all that bad traffic.

[00:25:35] Robbie: So, I don’t know a lot about how botnets work, but I’ve listened to a few episodes of Darknet Diaries, so I’m basically an expert. But yeah, I was listening to one today where they were talking about, like, how they just hijack a ton of machines to make the botnet or whatever and then attack stuff.

So, if you block all the IPs from those machines, but then they were actual legitimate machines and, like, they get control back of them, how [00:26:00] does that work? Like, can you give them access back?

[00:26:02] Jeffrey: Oh yeah, so we have dynamic blocks that can happen. And then if we don’t see any traffic that’s exceeded a certain threshold for certain amount of time that block it’s automatically dropped. And so when there’s a botnet out there, they used to try to target the DNS servers directly. Now, because of the size of Cloudflare’s public DNS network, Google’s, Quad9 all of these, all of these public DNS servers just take these queries from the botnet.

And, you know, you’re querying that one, any cast IP address of say 1. 1. 1. One, but on the backend, they’ve got hundreds of servers or thousands across the globe and oops. And they we see these, these requests coming from multiple different IP addresses on there, on their blocks. [00:27:00] And you know, for some of those we have to whitelist those because they’re actually valid.

So it gets a little tricky sometimes. It takes a little hand holding, but we have automation around that, so if we have to put in manual blocks, we can do that easily as well. Or manual interventions, we’ll call it. So we on the back end, we run salt. And we can easily deploy across our entire network very quickly.

[00:27:26] Chuck: So I think this is a good sequitur right into, okay, so what exactly is cloud floor DNS? Cause it sounds like it’s managed DNS with all of these kinds of things that I would have to do myself if I wasn’t utilizing your service, right?

[00:27:42] Jeffrey: Yeah, I mean, to try to run your own DNS, I mean, yeah, you can do it, but we have a global footprint for anybody that’s not familiar with any cast. It’s a way of publicly announcing [00:28:00] your IP address space by a BGP. So you’re, you’re announcing the same IP address space from everywhere around the globe, wherever you have a point of presence, a POP, then you’re announcing the same IP address.

So, what happens when you do that is when somebody looks up a domain name that’s on the platform that we are authoritative for, it will go to the closest server to them or whatever their public DNS server is. It will, that public DNS server will find the closest service to them just via BGP routing. So trying to do that yourself, I mean, you’d spend a ton of money. You know, typically people would run two DNS servers doing it themselves at two different places. It’s going to be slow where, you know, I think our average in the milliseconds, something like that. So, so yeah, we run a global DNS [00:29:00] network, a unicast and anycast network. So we run a lot of domains. We have a lot of controls, geo, capabilities for country and state level in the United States.

We have another service called Traffic Director that announces certain IP addresses for certain host names, given, like say if you hit West Coast, we can have West Coast IP addresses returned for people’s websites or APIs, whatever. It’s kind of like how a CDN would run.

[00:29:33] Chuck: You’re

[00:29:35] Jeffrey: yeah, we do domain registrations.

We do secure forwarding like HTTPS redirects or also branding via HTTPS. So if there’s a back end, sort of a I gotta say a white label portal of some sort, and you want to put your own domain name on it. We [00:30:00] can do that to, you know, via Let’s Encrypt will go automatically register the cert for you. And then somebody types in say www.

portal. com will keep that in the browser, but pull from a different origin. similar to a CDN also.

[00:30:18] Chuck: right.

[00:30:19] Robbie: Hmm,

[00:30:19] Jeffrey: you can either have it do that, whether the proxy effect or completely redirect.

[00:30:24] Chuck: So these are all like enterprise level services though, right? Like this isn’t like, yeah, I Oh, I have a podcast website. I probably don’t need managed DNS in the same way.

[00:30:36] Jeffrey: yeah, it all depends on the traffic and stability and things like that. I mean, some DNS, but if you want to do anything with it that might not be the thing. Cause we also monitor websites we do failover. So if one site goes down, go to another one, we can load balance the records. We’re kind of like a niche [00:31:00] DNS company.

So you need certain services, then we can do that. Yeah,

[00:31:05] Chuck: You got a guy.

[00:31:07] Jeffrey: you got a guy. Gotta have a guy. Or a girl.

[00:31:11] Chuck: Yeah, that’s true. Be inclusive

[00:31:13] Robbie: yeah,

[00:31:14] Chuck: or they, I don’t

[00:31:15] Jeffrey: Them.

[00:31:16] Robbie: and anyone, yeah,

[00:31:17] Chuck: Any, any being with these skills. Sorry, Robbie, you were gonna say something?

[00:31:24] Robbie: I was just going to say people have probably heard of Cloudflare. So like, is it similar to what Cloudflare does on like, compare and contrast, I guess, like, what’s, what’s the difference?

[00:31:36] Jeffrey: Well, Cloudflare. I mean, you can’t touch Cloudflare. They’re huge. They have an unbelievable WAF, the web application firewall. We have a simple WAF, which the same forwarding product, this branding product is built off of, but it doesn’t have the bells and whistles that they have and the reporting. I mean, that just takes a huge undertaking to, to do [00:32:00] that.

Cloudflare. It’s similar. I mean, I used to know some of the guys at Cloudflare, because I’ve just been in DNS for so long that somebody that used to work there had said, Oh, we’re never going to get into domains and DNS or anything like that. But now they’re doing DNS and domain registrations. And I mean, why not?

[00:32:20] Chuck: I think everybody’s doing registration at this point. I feel like there’s like, so many places where you can do registration

[00:32:27] Robbie: not google anymore

[00:32:28] Chuck: yeah. Yeah, they sold it to shot, no, what was it?

[00:32:33] Robbie: I didn’t realize they sold it. I thought they just shut it down

[00:32:36] Chuck: Well, they kind of shut it down and pushed everybody over to one of those like, you know, WYSIWYG site builder things.

What was the big one? It’s not Wix, but it’s

[00:32:46] Robbie: wix is the only one I know of

[00:32:48] Chuck: It was like older than that. And it’s not Shopify, but it is like, I don’t know, my wedding website was on that, which would have been like 2015. [00:33:00] Anyway here or there, doesn’t matter.

[00:33:02] Robbie: the not

[00:33:03] Chuck: The not? No,

[00:33:05] Robbie: that’s that’s what wedding websites are on now.

[00:33:07] Chuck: Yeah, wedding wire. My wife worked for a wedding wire way back in the day in DC.

Yeah. Anyway, tangential side thing. So yeah, I think we have a grasp a little bit around managed DNS and having that as a service and where some of those benefits are and having like the right nuance that you need.

[00:33:27] Jeffrey: Yeah.

[00:33:28] Chuck: Yeah, so I was going to say, is there a way with, I guess it wouldn’t really make sense, I guess, right?

Like it’s called cloud floor. It has to be other people’s computers. I can’t run cloud floor on prem, right?

[00:33:43] Jeffrey: No, no, you have a portal or API access and that’s all you need.

[00:33:49] Chuck: Yeah. Okay. We kind of make sense. I think we’re like so here are some other things. So in We always like to talk about in the web aspect, right? Anything that makes the web, the web, [00:34:00] like, we’ve spoken to recruiters and project folks and everything else like, okay. I don’t think we’ve talked much about like.

So you have a network engineer or a systems administrator or tech tech support specialist like What are the differences between those roles which are you know, I think fundamental to making the web exist

[00:34:25] Jeffrey: Well, for a logic company, they’re very segregated. You’ve got specific roles, network engineers, system engineers and things like that. We’re not a logic company like that, so you’re wearing different hats. You know, system engineers could be doing some you know, portal updates and PHP one day, and then, you know, maybe they’re working on a database the next day.

And then some of the support can overlap between people with expertise in certain areas. So, it, in, in our world, there’s multiple roles that [00:35:00] each plays, you know, there’s not cookie cutter. Alright, this is your position, this is what you do. Larger companies. Which I’ve only worked for a couple larger ones and

[00:35:11] Chuck: I bet not Microsoft

[00:35:13] Jeffrey: nope, no, one public company and one other one before that, which was a little bit small, only like, I forget how many people they had five, 600 people.

So yeah, but I prefer the smaller companies kind of, um, you

[00:35:32] Chuck: Yeah, that’s fair and then have wearing many hats the jack of all trades I feel like a bunch of those roles that I described to at least in like Software development for the web have been rolled into this thing called DevOps now or platform engineering. That’s another one, too That gets mentioned a bunch and it’s sort of like same thing Repackaged remarketed or something[00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Jeffrey: Just something to make it maybe sound a little bit better. DevOps, DevSecOps, and

[00:36:05] Chuck: Hmm yes, yes

[00:36:07] Jeffrey: Is that real? I don’t know. I

mean,

[00:36:10] Chuck: it’s real in terms of, like, the work people have to do, but, like, do, does it need another definition that doesn’t fit under any previously determined umbrellas? Maybe it’s folks that are really smart and they’re like, how do I increase the band for my salary? know. Is it possibly that?

[00:36:28] Jeffrey: I mean, everyone, anybody doing development should be aware of security. That in my mind, I mean, if you’re developing, you get a. know what’s going to be able to either break your program or break into your program. You just have to have a security mindset

[00:36:44] Chuck: Yeah. I would say that I think, as a whole, that There is probably less of that than there should be. And it’s probably more dangerous than it’s ever been.

[00:36:56] Robbie: Yeah

[00:36:57] Jeffrey: you look who has what is it called? [00:37:00] Patch Tuesdays? Who does that?

[00:37:03] Chuck: I don’t know. I’ve never even heard of this.

[00:37:06] Jeffrey: Really?

[00:37:07] Chuck: Yeah. See, this is why we’re bridging the gap here.

[00:37:11] Jeffrey: So I listened to another podcast, Internet Sands with Johannes Ulrich. And I think it’s every, for, one, one Tuesday a month, Microsoft has a patch Tuesday. And they release hundreds of patches.

[00:37:28] Robbie: Hmm.

[00:37:30] Chuck: Oh, a scheduled release too, that’s like, unheard of in the CICD world, what?

[00:37:37] Robbie: one time.

[00:37:38] Jeffrey: Mhmm.

[00:37:38] Chuck: we’re constantly throwing out patches. Yeah, right. Yeah, for like, installed software in that way though, it’s like, not possible to ask someone every morning to reinstall before you start your day. Yeah.

[00:37:53] Robbie: true. I do that with VS Code because I use the nightly one.

[00:37:57] Chuck: Oh, do you? Yeah, I don’t do that,

[00:37:59] Robbie: Restart to [00:38:00] update every morning. Sorry to derail what you were saying there.

[00:38:03] Chuck: That just sounds like not fun. I, I put off updates forever, so I’m probably the most insecure person. Both emotionally and within, like, the work that I do. So, there’s that aspect. Yeah, I’m always like, later, later, restart later. I don’t know, I’m doing a thing. I can’t stop for your things. Except for Zoom.

Zoom is the worst. Because you start Zoom, and if you haven’t had it open or whatever, and you’re like, oh, I need to open it, get on a meeting, inevitable, it’ll be like. Downloading and installing updates first.

[00:38:34] Robbie: Yep.

[00:38:36] Chuck: Anyway, this is why we drink.

[00:38:38] Jeffrey: You know, I’m getting orange peel now.

[00:38:41] Chuck: Ooh Okay, so that could be where some of the bitterness comes from too, right?

If you get like peel then you get the citrus, but then you also get some of that bitterness in the skin yeah, I’m actually well, I’m also drinking a water that has a citrus [00:39:00] light tinge of citrus flavoring so

[00:39:02] Jeffrey: I like that syntax.

[00:39:04] Chuck: Oh, yeah. Have you heard of that podcast? We were, we’re mentioning podcast syntax is syntax. fm is one of the most popular tech podcasts. And they’re now part of sentry. Do you know sentry. io? The whole like, yeah observability.

[00:39:22] Robbie: and exception monitoring or whatever. Whatever they say.

[00:39:25] Chuck: Is that what they say? Is that what they think?

[00:39:26] Robbie: I forget what their ad read

[00:39:28] Chuck: Error exception monitoring. Yeah. I mean, if you say it into a nice mic, it all sounds good. But anyway the nice folks at Syntax gave us these things, or at least this is what I picked. I don’t think Robbie

[00:39:38] Robbie: I got shirts.

[00:39:39] Chuck: yeah, you got shirts. I got a nice Yeti tumbler.

Make sure I’m hydrated. And at a great price, which was zero. there you

[00:39:49] Robbie: Well I do Wanna say, Speaking of bitterness, What’s the beef with Microsoft? Tell us about that.

[00:39:57] Jeffrey: So, I wouldn’t call it a beef. [00:40:00] I guess, I stopped using Well, I haven’t been able to completely get away for certain reasons, which I can talk about if we want to. However, I stopped using Windows in the late 90s, early 2000s. And I would fight with drivers on Linux, on laptops with Linux. And because I’ve been kind of working on Linux systems, backends, I mean, you can do whatever you want through a CLI with most things on Linux servers.

And Windows consoles weren’t great. They would crash and just, I mean, for gaming they were great. But. Other than that,

[00:40:42] Robbie: Yeah. Cause they’re the only thing that games run on.

[00:40:46] Jeffrey: Yeah.

[00:40:47] Chuck: That’s kind of it.

[00:40:49] Jeffrey: and once Mac’s changed to a BST kernel, I switched over to a MacBook. And that’s what I run now.

[00:40:55] Chuck: There you go. This is a common story throughout

[00:40:59] Robbie: Mm hmm.[00:41:00]

[00:41:00] Chuck: Is you know, Rage quit Windows until you win a game. And then, here you go, you’re just kind of forced into it because there’s just no workaround that is useful. And you know, you play Oh, go ahead.

[00:41:14] Robbie: I was going to say the have you installed the Linux subsystem on windows before?

[00:41:20] Jeffrey: Never, no.

[00:41:21] Robbie: Cause that, that gets around it. You can use Linux right inside.

[00:41:25] Jeffrey: But why

would I want

[00:41:27] Robbie: you don’t have to use PowerShell and stuff. It’s

[00:41:29] Jeffrey: run it

[00:41:29] Robbie: part of it now. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know why, like, they should just abandon all of their core functionality and be like, you know, Unix is the way let’s, let’s do that.

[00:41:40] Chuck: Right. Yeah. Unify on Unix? I mean Because like moving forward, everybody hates teams. Everybody hates most of their products, except for the new stuff, mostly the ones that they bought from someone else. Right? Like we’re in the ecosystem. If you’re on GitHub [00:42:00] NPM, they own that too, right? So packaging thing, VS code.

So it’s a very pervasive quasi IDE, depending on how you configure it.

[00:42:10] Robbie: Anything you can game on, PC’s,

[00:42:13] Chuck: And that’s kind of. That’s, that’s the stopping point. All their legacy work, people are like, garbage.

[00:42:20] Jeffrey: Yeah.

I know, because we have, we keep around one virtual Windows machine just to compile some NET stuff, and that’s it.

[00:42:29] Chuck: Yeah. Yeah. And NET folks though, do like it a lot. I mean, I guess in the same way that like Laravel folks really like PHP,

[00:42:40] Jeffrey: Mm,

[00:42:41] Chuck: NET folks really are like C sharp is amazing and you can do some things with that, but like, I don’t know, I’m not sure. I might’ve been burned too hard to go back. To some of those things, ever.

[00:42:54] Jeffrey: I can understand that.

[00:42:56] Chuck: Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s fair, though. I [00:43:00] think I know where we might end up going with this one. But we’ll just If you weren’t in tech, what career would you choose?

[00:43:08] Jeffrey: That’s tough. I’ve thought about this before, because, yeah, you ponder on these things sometimes. Before I was in tech, I was a carpenter. I built

[00:43:21] Chuck: Like me.

[00:43:22] Jeffrey: Big additions. I had one of my projects featured in Better Homes and Gardens way back in the

[00:43:26] Robbie: Oh, wow.

[00:43:27] Chuck: that’s cool.

[00:43:28] Jeffrey: I had gotten my company online. I was, this was like mid 90s, I think.

I was putting my company’s projects online with Microsoft Project when I was still using Windows.

[00:43:41] Chuck: Oh, right,

[00:43:42] Jeffrey: And and then this magazine had picked up. That I was doing this, and they did an article on me that I was, you know, using this tech and construction, and I was like, that’s kind of cool. So, I kind of got tired of doing that, so I kind of [00:44:00] switched my hobbies and careers around and went into tech and just kind of did carpentry as a hobby.

[00:44:06] Chuck: Oh, interesting.

[00:44:07] Jeffrey: that’s one possibility. I could go back and just do finish work or, or say interior work on boats and yachts and electronics and things like that on boats. Or I could move down south and just do charter fishing.

[00:44:22] Robbie: Ooh.

[00:44:23] Chuck: Ooh, yeah.

[00:44:25] Jeffrey: so I do that a little bit up here where I am in the northeast and on the north shore of Massachusetts.

So just some chartering here and there for

[00:44:37] Chuck: Yeah, you could you could winter down south and keep that going, too. Yeah.

[00:44:41] Jeffrey: hmm.

[00:44:42] Chuck: So, is fishing a big, yeah, is fishing a big reason why you you, you do boating, or?

[00:44:50] Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s one of the reasons. I love fishing. And my family and I, we love going to the beach too, so we’ll take our boat to the beach and hang out and [00:45:00] see our boating friends and go away on trips and

[00:45:03] Chuck: It is a real commitment, right? Like, once you decide that boating is your thing, like, all

[00:45:09] Jeffrey: Mm hmm.

[00:45:10] Chuck: leisure activities are like, well, let’s, let’s boat and eat and boat and whatever. You know, this is like an association thing, tangential, like, association to it.

[00:45:19] Jeffrey: No, it’s a huge community. Like, we walk down on our dock where we have our boat, and everybody’s happy. I mean, nobody that goes down to their boat’s like, oh, like, ugh, why am I even here? Oh my god. It’s like, no, you’re at your fucking boat. Have a good time. Ha ha ha ha.

[00:45:36] Chuck: Even if you’re fixing your boat, is it okay?

[00:45:39] Jeffrey: Yes, but you’re allowed to swear as much as you want.

[00:45:43] Chuck: Hmm. Yeah. The boating community accepts all,

[00:45:47] Jeffrey: Mm hmm. Yeah, you can tell when somebody’s working on their boat because of the vulgarities coming out of the inside of it.

[00:45:54] Chuck: So is it a powered boat? A sailing boat? What kind of boats?

[00:45:59] Jeffrey: [00:46:00] So, a sailing boat’s too slow for me, and you can’t fish off it very well, so it’s a power boat.

[00:46:05] Chuck: Okay, yes. That’s true, actually. I’ve I lived in D. C. for a while, and we had family friends in the Chesapeake, who had a home in the Chesapeake Bay, and they had, like, a, a fishing boat. You go out, and you definitely, you need the power to get through some of that, too.

[00:46:20] Jeffrey: hmm. Yeah, because we have our boat on a river, and on the outgoing tide, we have some really strong currents, and It can get very tricky, and if you’re in a sailboat, you’re not moving very fast.

[00:46:34] Chuck: Yeah, no, not at all. Turns out you’re you’re at the mercy of weather patterns.

[00:46:40] Jeffrey: Oh, absolutely. Ha ha

[00:46:43] Chuck: have a little trolling motor, but that’s not, that’s not going to do

[00:46:46] Jeffrey: ha

[00:46:46] Robbie: Yeah, it takes forever. I’ve only been on a sailboat a few times and it’s It takes you so long to get out to the ocean that you’re just like, I’m done by the time I get there. Like, let’s just turn

[00:46:56] Chuck: let’s just turn around. We finished all the beers. Let’s go [00:47:00] back. I want to get a sandwich. You know, anyway, that was, I don’t know what accent that was. They just

[00:47:08] Robbie: Yeah, I’m not sure.

[00:47:09] Chuck: Yeah. Turns out I have multiple personalities. I’m talking about that on a different episode, but

[00:47:16] Robbie: So do you do any kind of like long distance trips on, on your boat or have you?

[00:47:23] Jeffrey: Hmm, yeah, the farthest I’ve gone is probably about a hundred miles, I guess.

[00:47:28] Robbie: Okay.

[00:47:29] Jeffrey: we live north shore where the Merrimack River comes out of Massachusetts. And I think the furthest we’ve traveled is down to Martha’s Vineyard, down around the hook of Cape Cod.

[00:47:43] Robbie: Okay.

[00:47:44] Jeffrey: yeah.

[00:47:45] Chuck: of fun.

[00:47:46] Jeffrey: Yeah. We regularly go out to Provincetown, which is at the tip of the Curl of Massachusetts.

It’s about 60 miles, I guess. Yeah. I see a

[00:47:58] Robbie: imagine there’s a lot of [00:48:00] marinas and things to go to in that

[00:48:02] Jeffrey: There are, yeah. Just during the summer though. I

[00:48:09] Chuck: need a different kind of boat. One that goes through. Or just

[00:48:14] Robbie: One that goes on land.

[00:48:16] Chuck: Yeah, one that goes on land. One that is an airplane that takes you somewhere else where it’s warmer.

[00:48:21] Jeffrey: that.

[00:48:21] Robbie: Yeah,

[00:48:29] Chuck: know, mixed.

lakes up north, actually, but,

[00:48:32] Jeffrey: and you’re in

[00:48:33] Chuck: I live in, yeah, I live in Phoenix.

[00:48:35] Jeffrey: Okay. Speaking of Phoenix, how long have you been there? Were

[00:48:44] Chuck: I was there like 11 years before almost like 12 years. Yeah. Like 11 years. Why?

[00:48:50] Jeffrey: you there during the Phoenix Lights?

[00:48:53] Chuck: No, I’m guessing. Cause I’m not sure what you’re referencing

[00:48:58] Jeffrey: I

was doing it

[00:48:59] Chuck: was [00:49:00] just,

[00:49:00] Jeffrey: was doing a data center install one time in Dallas. I forget what year it was. It was probably mid 2000s. And I had met somebody there that was living in Phoenix, and she had seen the Phoenix lights.

[00:49:15] Chuck: I don’t even know what the Phoenix lights are.

[00:49:18] Jeffrey: If you look it up, there’s some people that saw all these lights over Phoenix in a pattern. They think it was some sort of a spacecraft.

[00:49:26] Chuck: Oh,

[00:49:27] Jeffrey: the, even the mayor or. I think it was a mayor that had seen it as well. Hmm.

[00:49:36] Chuck: you a little context here. So I moved here in 2000 the first time. Mid 2000s, let’s say 2005 or something. I would have been very social and too drunk to care or think about those things.

[00:49:52] Jeffrey: Understood.

[00:49:53] Chuck: Yeah, I wouldn’t have known. I don’t know. I was in Scottsdale. There were a lot of lights. And a lot of other things.[00:50:00]

I don’t know.

[00:50:00] Jeffrey: Hmm.

Yeah, they were interesting you know, people that worked in the data centers they were interesting, but they had signs outside the data centers, and Dallas had you know, no sidearms allowed.

[00:50:13] Chuck: Right, yes, yes, that, that tracks. This is the Wild West. And so, there’s a bit of that around. There’s a lot of lifted trucks and aggressive driving and some other things too. So, and the fact that sidearms can be carried, you’re sort of like a, Cool, thanks, no, sorry, you cut me off. I’m just gonna move on with that. Anyway, pluses and minuses, like anything else. But, it is very nice in the winter, where temperatures are mid 70s. I, I moved from, like, the Cincinnati area the first time. And when I had my first Christmas here, I didn’t feel bad at all, because it was me and my t shirt during the day, and I called back family and was like, Yeah, I’m just sitting out getting a little sun.

Oh, it’s snowing, I’m [00:51:00] sorry. There’s ice on the road? What is, what is ice again? I kind of forget. Pluses and minuses.

[00:51:06] Jeffrey: nice. Yeah, I used to love the

[00:51:09] Robbie: I just just looked it up. It says the Phoenix lights were for skydivers with pyrotechnics on them.

[00:51:17] Chuck: Huh,

[00:51:19] Robbie: They’ve solved it. Yeah.

[00:51:20] Chuck: they solved it.

[00:51:23] Jeffrey: That’s interesting.

[00:51:25] Chuck: That makes sense. I did skydive here, actually. I don’t remember what year it was, but at least a decade ago,

[00:51:33] Jeffrey: So it was you.

[00:51:34] Chuck: It was me, actually. It turns out I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know the chaos I was going to cause. I was just asked to go do this thing and hold a flare. Seemed fine to me. Listen, at the end, there was a bottle of whiskey in it. And we all know that’ll get me to do a lot of things. Including this podcast, you know? Like, Robbie keeps sending me bottles of whiskey, I show up, we’re good to go.

[00:51:59] Jeffrey: [00:52:00] Perfect.

[00:52:00] Chuck: It’s a, yeah, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. pop.

[00:52:06] Robbie: Yeah, that you didn’t hear that. I’m just gonna pour a little

[00:52:09] Chuck: No, I hope that, yeah.

So I saw that you made a homemade drink smoker. Is that still in play? How’s that working out for you?

[00:52:17] Jeffrey: It is, I still have it. However, when one of my friends saw it, he bought me a real one.

[00:52:23] Chuck: Oh,

[00:52:24] Jeffrey: that was, mine was a prototype, but it never made it past the prototype.

[00:52:28] Chuck: right?

[00:52:29] Jeffrey: so, he ended up buying me a real one that came with a torch and everything, and they’re quite nice when you make them old fashioned.

[00:52:36] Chuck: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we got gifted one a few years ago, actually. And yeah, it was, the torch is super nice, that’s like the, that, that’s half the battle right there is getting that like nice torch, but I was wondering like the, the homebrew version if that was just as good or not actually pay,

[00:52:53] Jeffrey: It works just as well. You know, it’s just if you want to take a little time to try to make one yourself, you [00:53:00] can, but it’s much easier to buy the whole kit. You get the torch, the little thing, and

[00:53:05] Chuck: you know, but if you have the carpentry skills, you can, it’s a little more renewable too,

[00:53:10] Jeffrey: It is, yeah, and I’ve got little shops in my basement to make whatever I want, so that helps.

[00:53:18] Chuck: yeah, yeah, for your next career or two,

[00:53:21] Jeffrey: Yeah, you never know.

[00:53:22] Chuck: you don’t,

[00:53:25] Jeffrey: You don’t know. I mean, if we have a solar flare and it wipes everything out, what are we gonna do? I

[00:53:32] Robbie: Yeah, I think about that. Like if there were no internet, do I actually want to still live? I don’t know like

[00:53:37] Jeffrey: mean, I love, love technology and the internet. I mean, there’s so much out there.

[00:53:44] Chuck: Yeah, I mean, if we were equalized as a civilization to where like no one had it, not just me, like you punish me and take it away, well, that feels a particular way. But if as a civilization, it were wiped out and we are all just like reset a little bit [00:54:00] and do think about that sometimes. That’s interesting.

[00:54:02] Jeffrey: Yeah, so you’ve heard about the theory, like the simulation theory. If there was a huge solar flare and we were in a sim, would that affect it?

[00:54:14] Chuck: Hmm. I would think so.

[00:54:17] Robbie: Yeah

[00:54:18] Jeffrey: Unless the, you know, the flare was part of the simulation.

[00:54:22] Chuck: Well, and there we go, right? So someone has to pull us out of the matrix at that point, right?

[00:54:28] Robbie: or if the You know the software is good enough to not like to mask the effects like Who knows? Yeah.

[00:54:36] Chuck: Hmm one can only hope maybe or not. I don’t know that movie didn’t yeah, that’s not the

[00:54:43] Robbie: The Matrix?

[00:54:44] Chuck: either. Yeah, I Just want to read books again all the time Choose your own adventure. I

[00:54:51] Jeffrey: Yeah.

[00:54:52] Chuck: things as a kid if I could go back where that was like entertainment for a kid That’d be amazing.

That’s the stuff. I would love to offer to my children [00:55:00] He’s like, look at this. This was amazing. Yeah. Books. They like books. They’re okay with books, you know, but they just, They have a lot

[00:55:07] Jeffrey: You can make your own adventure website, right?

[00:55:10] Chuck: Yeah. All right. Well, you and I will do that. Can you set me up with some DNS?

[00:55:15] Jeffrey: Oh yeah. Hit me up.

[00:55:18] Chuck: All right. You know, careful what you ask for. Cause I, cause I do follow up,

[00:55:25] Jeffrey: Absolutely.

[00:55:26] Chuck: you know,

[00:55:27] Jeffrey: We’ll get you

[00:55:28] Robbie: All right. We are about at time here. Is there anything that we missed that you’d like to mention or stuff you want to plug before we end?

[00:55:35] Jeffrey: Now I think we talked about most everything. And I’ll just mention Cloudflare DNS again. Domains, DNS. Forwarding. Certificates. A lot of things web.

[00:55:50] Chuck: all things web, the web doesn’t exist without that because nobody wants to type and remember numbers. Let’s just remember that.

[00:55:59] Jeffrey: [00:56:00] No.

[00:56:00] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:56:01] Jeffrey: are hard. Names are easy.

[00:56:03] Chuck: Booyah.

[00:56:04] Robbie: Yeah. That’s why they did it with streets. Yeah.

[00:56:14] Jeffrey: I like that.

[00:56:15] Chuck: Yeah, it was clever.

[00:56:16] Robbie: All right. Thanks everyone for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe. Leave us some ratings and reviews. We appreciate it and we will catch you next time.

[00:56:23] Chuck: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.