157: Italian Culture, CSS, Remote Work, Gen Z Career Advice, and more!

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.

I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.

[00:00:36] Robbie Wagner: Whiskey Web and Whatnot is brought to you by.

What’s going on everybody? Welcome to Whiskey Web and Whatnot with your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and Charles William Carpenter III.

[00:00:49] Chuck Carpenter: Si Carlo? Something like that.

[00:00:53] Robbie Wagner: Carlo.

Carlo, yeah. I guess, I guess that would be the Italian equivalent.

[00:00:56] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I’m not sure I should have figured that out first. [00:01:00] Alas, here we are.

Hi Laura. Hi Laura. Anyway, something about your hosts and no guests or guests and hosts. I am Carlo, your Italian sub hosts. Now, just a fun fact for everyone. I am overseas in Italy and we are trying to find out how these podcasts go when we separate ourselves even further.

[00:01:24] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, we’re uh, gonna be doing mostly whatnot today.

There’s, we don’t even have the same whiskeys, but That’s okay. We’re just gonna hang out. We’re gonna talk about Italy and a little bit of tech. I just had a quick tech thing from a, um, blog post I did, but. We’ll start with whiskey. We are not gonna talk a ton about it, but we can just say what each of us have.

I have one of my tried and true favorites if this will show. Here we go. The old

Forester. Old Forester. 1920.

[00:01:53] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yes, there you go. That’s a jam. Always good. There’s nothing to be ashamed about there. Highly recommended. Usually in the [00:02:00] $60 range. Pretty delicious. The 1910 is also fairly good too, and I The amass of selections in Como, Italy.

I mean, I’m sure there are more if you can dig a little deeper, but I have a family, he didn’t go to Georgia’s house. I

bet he has

a lot in his collection. Mine, he’s probably a scotch drinker or something, I dunno. Oh, that’s true. You know, he is so like separated from Kentucky at this point, so I’m just having some bushmills.

Pretty much your normal Bush mills, I don’t know what the age would be. There’s no age statement of course, but a bunch of like import labels and everything else. It is a 40 mo, 80 proof, 40%. There we are. I haven’t even had it yet, although I have opened it. So

[00:02:37] Robbie Wagner: is this an

[00:02:37] Chuck Carpenter: American? It is not. It’s an Irish whiskey actually.

So there was a couple of American, what’s funny is that this was like 18 euros basically. There was a few scotch options. I just wasn’t really feeling up to that. And there were some bourbon options, but like some really, you know, not great things. Like there was a Jim Beam, like white label. There was some flavor, Jack Daniels and some other gross [00:03:00] stuff that actually was more expensive than this.

So I just kind of, nah, not, not for my, not for my Euro, not

[00:03:07] Robbie Wagner: for my socialist dollar. Yeah. Yeah, I was just curious ‘cause we were talking before I hit record that like at least parts of the label are in Italian and I was like curious about, you know, if you’re importing an American whiskey or whatever. It probably wouldn’t have anything in Italian, I wouldn’t think.

[00:03:26] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know. I think the importers do some of that. Like where they might have their own labeling, they’ll put in put on at that point it says drink responsible. If you’re in a brand, they might be, yeah. Drink responsibly. Bevy. Respons. Yeah. Italian’s bad enough as it is, but you know, there’s a little bit of info on there, but yeah, I think they probably, because nothing else is Italian on there and then there’s like some kind of tax label over the lid.

Aside from that, I’d say not much to it. Let’s have a taste. It smells like, you know, those like [00:04:00] before, like okay, you have your, like say when you’re a little kid or growing up whatever, and you, you know, you get a Vix cough thing ‘cause those work really well and then, but like there’s always like some uncle or grandparent or whatever else, like gives you the stuff that works when they were little and it has like a slight and it’s like orange maybe honey ish.

That’s what it smells like to me.

[00:04:21] Robbie Wagner: Hmm. Interesting.

[00:04:23] Chuck Carpenter: Smells like an old cough drop. I think we’ve

[00:04:24] Robbie Wagner: done, we’ve done this 1921 on the show at some point, but, Mm-Hmm. A note that I probably don’t think I mentioned last time we tried it, I just tasted it and I got notes of, I don’t even know what you call ‘em, the, are they pixie sticks?

Like the things with the,

[00:04:38] Chuck Carpenter: like

[00:04:39] Robbie Wagner: powdered, does that often break your voice

[00:04:41] Chuck Carpenter: Pixie sticks? Yeah. I don’t know. I, I believe so. Yeah. So they little sticks with powder and pour in your mouth or whatever. Six or

[00:04:49] Robbie Wagner: give or take, I forget

[00:04:50] Chuck Carpenter: how long

[00:04:50] Robbie Wagner: they are, but you know. Yeah. Depends

[00:04:52] Chuck Carpenter: on if you’re talking to your wife or not.

[00:04:54] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. But I got notes of that somehow. Like powdered or like fun [00:05:00] dip, like that powdered candy.

[00:05:01] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, interesting flavor. Huh. That makes me wanna circle back and have that in my mind. ‘cause I loved those things as a kid. I would just like crush them. They were so

[00:05:10] Robbie Wagner: messy and kind of useless, but, oh yeah. I remember getting like 10 in a group and just ripping all the tops off and like Mm-hmm.

Just eat ‘em off. There

[00:05:18] Chuck Carpenter: was the other candy too, that was like a little packet of powder, like that. And then you had this like dipstick that was like, yeah. Fun dip. Yeah, fun dip. There you go. And you would just like dip into that. That was another kind of fun one too. But, uh, yeah. Those sticks tasted gross though.

Mm, yeah. Yeah. They were basically, they were de eating the powder. It was like, you can eat this, but you probably don’t want to. Yeah. So the bush mills has a very like, lemony flavor to it though. So kind of along the lines of, and then it gets kind of a burn, gets a little harsher on the other side, especially for an 80 proof.

So I’m quite surprised there, but not bad, I would say. I’m not rating it obviously, but it was like, it’s okay. The fact that it was like less than 20 euros, less than, you know, probably [00:06:00] like 20 bucks speaks to, you know, its quality to a degree. Not terrible. I’m not, yeah. I would put it in the middle of the road.

I, I could have done worse.

[00:06:08] Robbie Wagner: All right. And we could do an official try at another

[00:06:12] Chuck Carpenter: time and Yeah. I’ll rate it, but Exactly. We need to get on the same level. I will affect you with this like strange, I’ll send you a bag of these old throat candies Alright. That don’t really do anything and you have to have like eight of them and they’re like, it tastes like medicine.

Why don’t I feel better? I

[00:06:28] Robbie Wagner: don’t know. Yeah. I mean that tended to be a thing I guess. Like before there was so much chemically medicine, I was actually watching, um, the, the food that built America.

Mm.

Yeah. And they were talking about Dr. Pepper and you know, how that was made in a drugstore and stuff and Yeah.

How they would just like Coca-Cola as original formula was coke, cocaine, and heroin and like. Flavor. Yeah. So of course people loved it. Yeah. Because it was addictive. Yeah. It

[00:06:57] Chuck Carpenter: was

[00:06:57] Robbie Wagner: very useful as a

[00:06:59] Chuck Carpenter: energy [00:07:00] booster.

[00:07:00] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. It was like you took all these flavors and just put hard drugs in them. Mm-Hmm. Which I guess you kind of had the same thing, but like without as much hard drugs in like those kind of, not that medicinal before you got the like modern science-based drugs.

[00:07:17] Chuck Carpenter: Right. I mean, and bear in mind though too, like the quantities of cocaine wasn’t necessarily like hitting up two lines, you know, like it was, you know, but I’m sure it affects your

[00:07:26] Robbie Wagner: brain to for sure. Be addicted

[00:07:28] Chuck Carpenter: to it though. Yeah. Yeah. The way that you would like have light bits of, you know, caffeine or whatever, and something like, it would’ve been like a light amount giving you something.

I don’t know what heroin would’ve done for you, but you know, opium used to be a normal drug used for medicinal purposes, mental health things and some other stuff too, gets abused like anything else, you know? And then it just becomes a poster child for a problem, I think like. Meth is probably like a drug that never had any like real purpose.

Right? Like cocaine was used I think in surgeries or something. Yeah. Well, meth is kind of a modern,

[00:07:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:08:00] like you had to have some other drugs first that you made it out of like P Sudafed or Yeah. Something. Right. So

[00:08:06] Chuck Carpenter: it was like a way to like, I can make my thing that ruins my life, I guess. I don’t know. Yeah.

Yeah. LSD was a truth serum created by the CIAI think, or something like that.

[00:08:18] Robbie Wagner: Hmm.

Is that the one that people microdose and say it makes them like, yes. Better. Yeah. Yeah. Opens up the neural

[00:08:24] Chuck Carpenter: pathways and makes them more productive and better critical thinkers. I don’t know. I mean, it’s an interesting, I need to get theory.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, I’m intrigued, but I’ve like never had the risk factor for it. Like, right. Like I’m either, well, I’m coworking somewhere, I can’t really like freak the fuck out ‘cause of a bad experiment. Or like, kids, you can’t talk to Daddy ‘cause he thinks you’re trying to eat him. Like, I don’t know.

I mean, I guess that sounds like a funny story, but Yeah. You have to do it supervised with like Yeah. Someone who can stop anything bad from happening. Right. Microdose is supposed to like, not put you in that [00:09:00] quite, you know, you just see things a little different, but you don’t necessarily see things. I don’t know.

I read a New York Times article years ago, so I’m basically an expert. Yeah. You know, I didn’t read the article, so. Right. You just heard this from some somebody San Francisco adjacent or something.

[00:09:15] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I don’t know. I’ve, I’ve occasionally read a few things. I just don’t, don’t do a ton of reading. Yeah. But yeah, I do do some writing.

I, uh, yeah, wrote a blog post. I guess by the time people hear this, it will have been. Several weeks or a month or more since it was written, but I encountered this weird problem. So we’re working on Star Pod, which is like a, like it’s supposed to be easy podcast website. So you give it like your RSS feed, little bit of info like, are you on, you know, what’s your Apple link?

What’s your host name? Stuff like that. Like mm-Hmm. Very minimal, less than like 50 lines of stuff to configure it. And it just all works. But one of the things in the design is it’s very gradient based. So there’s like a SVG [00:10:00] icon, and when you hover it, it should go from being like gray to being a gradient color.

Mm-Hmm. And so I was like, oh, cool. Like, you know, I’ve done lots of hover SVG things before you changed the stroke or the fill. Like, should be fine. Right? No, not, not a thing. Like CSS with gradients seems like, I don’t know if they’re working on this. I’m completely uneducated. We should ask Adam or Jay or somebody who knows CSS pretty well, but.

You would think when you hover stuff, there should be some kind of spec for a gradient that you want it to fill in instead of just solid colors. So this is what happened. I tried the naive approach. I was like, I’m gonna do fill in stroke with a gradient, not a thing. Didn’t work. I found an article about like, put the linear gradient in the SVG and then like turn it on with like as you hover, it’s like, okay, so I did that and that worked, but then it just abruptly turns the color, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like, oh, like transation, you don’t [00:11:00] get the fade. Yeah. Yeah. So the ultimate solution, and you can read the blog post at Robbie, the wagner.dev if you’re interested, is to use CSS custom properties, which I had never used before and I still honestly couldn’t tell you exactly what they are or why you’d want to use them other than this.

But the one thing they do give you is every value you set on them can be transitioned from one value to another. So you essentially use these custom properties and then pass them in as variables to your linear gradient function. And you say, when I start, they’re both gray and when I hover it, I want them to both turn like the start and stop color of my gradient.

And then you get that on your SVG. You use like SVG mask on a diviv with that as the background color. Oh, yep. And then it, it’ll do that and it fades in. So we now have nice fading things. If you go to star pod.dev, you can check out what we’re working on and hopefully that’s something maybe by the time this airs, we’ll have [00:12:00] switched our website to it.

We’ll see.

[00:12:01] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah. Okay. I know what’s happening here. This is the astro theme that you’ve been working on? Yes. Is Astro and Tailwind, both my happy places. Right, exactly. This is how you like get professional fulfillment in life. Yes. Not that you don’t appreciate a paycheck, but there are certain things that you’re like, I wanna do A, B, or C and your job is like, Hmm, we’re gonna go down like an l and m kind of path.

So we’re a little far away from what you’re asking, but hey, here it is. So yeah, you definitely should, uh, event, I forgot you were working on that till you mentioned that. So it’s funny that you had this very specific use case that wasn’t required of your profession, but anyway. Yeah, it sounds cool. It does kind of make me think of one topic that I saw a little bit about online and I was thinking about some better for us to talk about than argue about on Twitter.

Outta context is like the [00:13:00] era of, I think the era of. Hi. The Taylor Swift tour that yes, that actually, and I’ll tell you about how Taylor Swift ruined my day the other day, but inadvertently, but she’s still in blame. So 10, 15 years ago when you were working on the front end, while you might have some uh, logic here and there, obviously we were bringing jQuery in, we were doing all these other things, but we were also like masters of interface creation.

Like something like that, you kind of would know a bunch of, I have this CSS toolbox, I know all these things about like semantic, HTML, and I know like, and I know things about accessibility, I know about metadata for someday, you know, machine scraping. But in the very short term, you know, we have services that take in these things and like, you know, in a news organization and all of that.

And it’s like in a time where like we fight over [00:14:00] fucking frameworks for a web app. Like, I think there’s so much nuance that is missed and obviously I think that’s why like folks like Jay and Argyle and like are like, you know, Yuna whatever, like when we see Chris Coy or whatever, when we see them like be very detail oriented in the craft of display, which obviously is like a simple way to kind of put it.

We’re all fucking wowed by that now because none of us get to play in that playground in any sort of regular basis. Like we’re always on someone else’s timetable. Like yeah, that’s kind of a shame. I guess that’s kind of where I was going with it is like there is so much of like that art that is like, because for a while we got brow beaten by engineers who were like, you don’t do anything important, like business logic and tables back here, you know?

And then now we’ve shifted

[00:14:49] Robbie Wagner: that, but then we’ve lost so much. Yeah, I think it’s a twofold problem. One is, I. CSS has grown so much. It’s impossible to know it. Like you can do [00:15:00] fucking sign and co-sign and stuff in CSS now math. Yep. Yeah. So like it’s just become like, you used to be able to know those couple little tricks and be like, Ooh, look at me.

I know these tricks and whatever. And now it’s like so huge. There’s no way you could learn it all. So people don’t try, they’re just like, I’m sticking with my framework or whatever. Yeah. Like little things. ‘cause I don’t do a ton of css. ‘cause Well, one, a couple reasons. One, I don’t love it to begin with.

But then two, we don’t use tailwind at work, so I don’t ever change any style. So you didn’t win. I thought you were making it. I thought you had like a PR or something. It’ll, I think it’ll happen, but it’ll be years. Like there’s so much other stuff we have to do. Yeah. So anyway, I had to truncate some text, right?

Like an ellipsis on the end. In a flex container, try it. The flex container will always bust out of the thing ‘cause it’s flex. It’s like I’m flexing. So you like, okay. Well actually it’s a flex container, but it [00:16:00] also has like another element in it. ‘cause it’s easier if it’s just the text. Yeah. But there was an image in front of it which was throwing everything off.

Like there was a CSS Tricks post about it that was like, here’s how you do it. You just give it like a men with zero and that’ll fix that weird problem. Nope. But there was like a, it’s probably an old article thing. It was like with zero and men with a hundred percent. Hmm. On like a bunch of the elements down the chain.

I couldn’t tell you exactly why or where, but like some combination of that made it work and Wow. Like stuff like that one. Why don’t more people know that? Or like, why couldn’t I find a better article about it? And two, why do we even need that? Why can’t the browser be like, you know what this flex container which ends at, it’s like, it’s several like parents up.

Hmm. But there’s a definitive end, so why won’t it just stop at that and then truncate it? Yeah. Like there should be an option for if you’re gonna overflow anywhere up the chain, just truncate it. Hmm. But that’s not a thing, so Yeah. [00:17:00] No, it’s not a thing.

[00:17:01] Chuck Carpenter: And then you gotta figure out a hack around it or programmatically handle it, which would also be super annoying.

[00:17:07] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s JavaScript libraries for it because it’s such a hard problem.

[00:17:11] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. But on the plus side, well that’s, you know, sort of been the hammer throughout time and then it’s taken over, which JavaScript can do this for you. But you know, as the browser APIs have improved and CSS has become better, obviously you have an edge case there.

It’s not all a panacea. And you know what, at least you didn’t have to try it out on IE eight, so there’s That’s true. That’s true. Nobody tests on safari, so.

[00:17:38] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, actually I haven’t tested it on Safari now I’m worried. ‘cause you have to, is that a thing? Yeah. Yeah. We have to support Safari.

[00:17:46] Chuck Carpenter: Nice. Well, you know, say the, and just desktop Safari, not Safari?

Or do you have to support both?

[00:17:53] Robbie Wagner: It’s technically both, but like, we’re not very responsive for mobile. Like it’s a really bad experience on mobile, but you could [00:18:00] use it if you wanted. So I think if you asked the designers, they would say, yeah, you should check both. But yeah, you know, it’s not super important.

Nobody’s complaining.

[00:18:08] Chuck Carpenter: So like, they’re like, fine. Oh yeah, I saw the Wondery signed armchair expert that Dak Shepherd. Oh, did

[00:18:15] Robbie Wagner: they? Yeah. I don’t keep, I don’t keep up to date with everything they’re doing. No, I don’t. They news have these big podcasts and I’m like,

[00:18:21] Chuck Carpenter: Ooh. Yeah, yeah. No, just ‘cause Pod News had something about it like.

One of those like random ones that we keep track of hoping to ever be featured in at some time. But, uh, yes, when we’re

[00:18:33] Robbie Wagner: acquired for billions of dollars, billions will be mentioned.

[00:18:36] Chuck Carpenter: Billion. Are you assuming syntax got billions? ‘cause I’m gonna say that’s probably high.

[00:18:40] Robbie Wagner: No, but I’m assuming things that Onery acquires probably make 50 million plus.

Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, armchair expert was a pretty popular and famous, or is, he’s not dead right? Yeah, yeah. They’re like, or I guess not acquired, but they signed like an exclusive agreement for Yeah, exactly. 10 years or whatever. Yeah. And then you can [00:19:00] do subscriptions and stuff

[00:19:01] Chuck Carpenter: to get the episodes earlier.

Something else, you know? Yeah. I, I have listened to a couple of that one, but it, it really highly depends on who the guest is for me. Uh, do they always have a guess? Uh, the only ones I’ve listened to, yes. So, okay. I don’t know, but the only ones I’ve listened to, so just goes to tell you.

[00:19:21] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I don’t really listen to a ton of podcasts.

I did start listening to a Wondery podcast, I think it’s called Red Handed. Mm. It’s like two British ladies telling you about crimes and things that have happened and how people got caught. Okay. Or like, yeah, what, what happened basically. So it’s, it’s pretty cool. I like true crime and like mystery. So you’re a crime junkie person or no?

Yeah. Yeah. Every show I watch is like either crime based or like suspense or like thriller style. Like, is this to get ahead of your wife? ‘cause I’m

[00:19:51] Chuck Carpenter: always saying like that, you know, Sarah listens to a ton of those, so she definitely knows how to kill me and get away with it. And then like, maybe you’re like, well, I [00:20:00] also know how to be killed and, and you would get away with it.

So I’m, I know what to avoid.

[00:20:06] Robbie Wagner: Well be informed, I don’t

[00:20:07] Chuck Carpenter: think, for your own safety.

[00:20:08] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I don’t think Caitlyn listens to them, but I, I dislike stuff like that. It’s not all exactly the same genre. I guess I’m watching The Stranger right now. I dunno if you’ve seen that Show The Stranger. Mm-Hmm.

[00:20:21] Chuck Carpenter: No, I was gonna make a cra.

Yeah, no, I was gonna make a crass joke about the stranger. Did, did you ever have that like stupid teenage joke about the stranger? Yes, I’m aware of what. Okay. All right. So I won’t, I won’t expand. Anyone can ask me offline anyway. No, I’m not

[00:20:38] Robbie Wagner: familiar with that. So, yeah, but it’s pretty good. It’s like this stranger comes up and like drops secrets on people and like blows up their lives and stuff like that kind of show where it’s like, you know, mystery and suspense, I guess.

Oh, you know, very nice suspense. Yeah, suspense. Suspense. What syntax shirt do you have on? Just the pocket [00:21:00] one. The logo It, it has nothing on the back. I don’t think so. Did you see I thought they had new ones. Yeah, they did another release NASCAR look or whatever.

[00:21:07] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, which I was very tempted to get, but like I have a lot of black T-shirts, so it’s like kind of the only

[00:21:13] Robbie Wagner: downside.

So I was like, I don’t love these T-shirts either. They’re like very. What’s the word? Like they’re a nice brand, I think. Yeah. But they’re like, they’re just not very soft. They’re like, they feel like an old T-shirt. And that’s, I think on purpose Yeah. For like the brand vibe they were going for. Yeah. But it’s not my comfiest shirt, so I see.

Yeah.

[00:21:33] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know. I, I, I think I, that tracks with the webmaster one I have and it’s kind of like a little acid washed and stuff, so it has that sort of nineties vibe to it. But yeah,

[00:21:43] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know. So if you would like a comfy shirt, head to whiskey fund, get some nice merch that’s maybe less quality printed, but the shirt is more comfy.

[00:21:52] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. That’s this, this is an obsession of Robbie’s he has with like printing, getting shirts that are super comfy. [00:22:00] ‘cause that comfort matters more than cool. If you’ve ever seen him in person, you would know This is true.

[00:22:06] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I’m wearing vori pants right now. Oh yeah. I, I think that could be a potential thing.

Like if AI takes my job and like. You know, very little time. I could maybe be a screen printer. I was, I wanna dabble in like some kind of handmade goods that are like, yes, a robot can print that. But like there still is some human element to Yeah, setting up the machines and like doing that. Making some whiskey, making like, I don’t really love like brewing beer, but a lot of people like beer.

So maybe I could do something. Maybe you could brew mead or like cider or something else. Yeah. So, yeah, one of my friends does mead, so maybe I can learn from him.

[00:22:46] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Do you have space in your latest abode for like, I could find workshops in crafting this? Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. I bought a T-shirt in Como actually.

So the football team [00:23:00] here, soccer team, uh. For most of us. And this is like in, you can’t see it if you’re listening. Sorry. Yeah. So this is like em, you can barely see it. If there’s like a weird glare on the top, what does it say? Well, it’s also fading away, so it’s kind Oh is it? That’s on purpose. Yeah, it’s on purpose.

‘cause this would be the sun coming down and this is the stadium here. And so this is the mountains behind. Yeah. So it’s like a picture and they cut words out of it. Yeah, yeah. So it’s masking like you were saying. So it would be like an SSG mask. There you go. S vg mask, right? In real life. Yeah. The club here was recently promoted to Syria, which is the top level in Italian football.

And this is I think like, you know, dialect for We Are Como. And that was kind of cool, but it’s like, oh, you know, the kids these days, like this is like a medium shirt. It’s like super baggy. I guess. That’s like that style is coming back. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:23:53] Robbie Wagner: it’s Gen Z is doing a lot of interesting things. Looks a lot like shit I wore in like eighth [00:24:00] grade, but.

You know, it’s fine. Whatever. Yeah. It’s back to like the mom jeans style.

Mm-hmm. Which we talked

about before was like became mom jeans. ‘cause people that were moms that was in style when they bought all their jeans and then it was like, and then they just kept those jeans. So it’s like just become a mom and you’re like, you know what?

I need to buy these jeans. I need some jeans with a higher waist. No. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s interesting, I read something, so I don’t usually read like full articles, but I’ll read like a synopsis of like, like a newsletter that tells me about a lot of different things or something. And they were talking about how Gen Z basically doesn’t wanna work at all.

Like they expect to make infinite money for no work, like day one on the job. Mm-Hmm. Like promote me to CEO today and just give me all the money and I’m also not gonna do any work. Yeah, no. And like everyone that has to work with them that isn’t Gen Z is like, oh my God, I hate all of these people. I mean, I’ve

[00:24:51] Chuck Carpenter: heard some whispers of this, but I also feel like.

Every generation tends to complain about the other ones below them. Like [00:25:00] that’s true. You don’t know what I have to deal with different, right? Yeah, it’s different. And yeah, that accelerant of difference has changed quite a bit. So I’ve seen some examples of what feel like expectation, but then I don’t know, like they gone through a different world up until this point.

Right. Like even. Yeah, everything

[00:25:19] Robbie Wagner: is so instant for them. Like yeah, they grew up starting with like TikTok as their like first social media. Yeah, yeah. Like, not like later on and it’s like, okay, everything is within 20 seconds and it just happens for me right now. I

[00:25:34] Chuck Carpenter: don’t have to wait for

[00:25:34] Robbie Wagner: anything.

[00:25:35] Chuck Carpenter: Basically the kind of culture that tons of us embraced during Covid where we were like, okay, can’t really leave for anything or don’t wanna leave for anything, or whatever else, and it’s sort of like everything is accessible to me. I can watch like 80% of the movies I wanna see and I can order all the food and I can order my groceries and I can, you know, find, I can Amazon everything I need like instantaneously.

So like [00:26:00] context is completely different. So. You know, I just try to be a little bit more sympathetic around the whole, okay, maybe you got a, you got a little taste of reality and it wasn’t what you were, you know, it wasn’t what you were raised to believe or what you’d experienced all the way up until that point.

Who knows? You know, so, yeah. They don’t wanna work. That’s fair. I don’t wanna work. You don’t wanna work. What are you talking about? Like, that’s true, you know, given, well, no,

[00:26:25] Robbie Wagner: I think that’s, that’s not true actually. I think everyone wants to work just, you don’t want to do the work that you’re paid to do, per se.

You may want, you want to have enough money to unlock the potential to work on what you would prefer. Yeah. Versus just what your company forces you to do.

[00:26:45] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I’d say, okay, I wanna do lots of things. I don’t necessarily want to do all the things I have to do in order to meet my responsibilities and things like that.

Like, you know? Right.

[00:26:57] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Like given infinite money, I [00:27:00] would travel a ton.

[00:27:01] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,

[00:27:01] Robbie Wagner: sure. And then, but it, in downtime I would probably, I guess I wouldn’t even wear, I would probably just play a ton of Diablo. ‘cause that’s like a job. I don’t know.

[00:27:10] Chuck Carpenter: I

[00:27:10] Robbie Wagner: think it, I would a lot

[00:27:11] Chuck Carpenter: and I would have like, I would play games in between.

Yeah. You know, like, that would be awesome. I’d be going to do the things and experiencing the world I want, I wouldn’t be locked in a fucking basement. I would just be like, cool, well, while I’m here I’m gonna, oh, I got a 10 hour flight. I’m gonna play what FIFA for six hours. So I don’t know. Yeah, I, I, it’s just funny ‘cause I’ve like seen that argument, like, millennials are the worst, blah, blah.

Oh, now Gen Y is blah, blah, blah, blah shit. Now it’s Gen Z and you know, everybody. And then all of us. Yeah. Maybe it’s

[00:27:41] Robbie Wagner: just people of a certain age. Yeah, like they’re, when they’re going into the job market, like I think your brain isn’t fully developed till you’re like 24 or something. Yeah. So they’re probably just not at that point yet and they can’t deal with real life.

So it’s like, it seems like they’re whiny, but it’s really just they haven’t fully matured yet.

[00:27:59] Chuck Carpenter: I think [00:28:00] there’s a big like glut of folks though too, and I mean, it started happening a while ago. It wasn’t quite a problem for Gen X. I don’t know how much millennial, I mean, I think it started happening in the tail end millennials, where like just having a degree wasn’t good enough to get a better job, right?

You would be like, oh, okay, I’ve gotta go work some manual labor thing, or fast food, or be a server or like whatever, unless I get a college degree and then I get a professional job. And it was just as simple as that didn’t really matter. Go get a degree. Prove you can finish that thing. Now you get an opportunity.

[00:28:37] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:28:37] Chuck Carpenter: Obviously you, you specialize.

[00:28:39] Robbie Wagner: So it was saturated that like everyone had a degree, so then everyone needed a master’s degree. Yeah. And then it became, people don’t care about the degrees anymore. ‘cause everyone has like insane amounts of degrees to the point where like someone will have like a PhD and wanna be hired for a thing and they’re like, you have too much experience.

We can’t, we can’t hire you for this. Like, we can’t pay you that much. Yeah. And like, it was [00:29:00] actually detrimental to a lot of people. Right. So I think really the, the way we’ve kind of pivoted back, and I think this will be true going forward is four years of school isn’t necessarily the way to go. You need, like, I.

Pick a thing you want to do. Maybe that’s two years, maybe that’s less. Maybe it’s an apprenticeship. Like whatever. Yeah. Just pick a, a trade and learn that instead of just like, yeah. Learning for learning’s sake to have a piece of paper

[00:29:24] Chuck Carpenter: and also like

[00:29:25] Robbie Wagner: eliminate

[00:29:26] Chuck Carpenter: the, like flawed, the, uh, ideology that whatever you choose at 18, you have to do for the rest of your life.

Like, yeah. What you do have to do is figure out how to sustain life on your own. And if you’re the MM-Hmm. Not like I want to be a doctor or an architect or whatever. At this point, you’re not really sure. Totally fine, but how are you gonna navigate those waters? Like, are you gonna go and start at the bottom and become, you know, a, a cook somewhere?

Are you gonna be a garbage man? Oh no. You can make some money being an electrician. There’s a trade school. Go down that [00:30:00] path Doesn’t have to be forever, but it does give you an opportunity to like pay the bills and figure that out. Oh, okay. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, not quite for me, but I didn’t go buy a lifted truck and you know, whatever response, all these responsibilities, I can manage a transition.

Let’s do that now. I know I want to be a lawyer. Fucking a go down that path,

[00:30:21] Robbie Wagner: you know? Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s true.

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[00:30:56] Robbie Wagner: I think my dream job is [00:31:00] probably owning a little shop in Italy that’s open one hour a day. ‘cause that’s how they work. Yeah. Like you go in and you, you have your espresso and your.

Pastries or whatever in the morning, and then you like open your shop work for a couple minutes, then you have a four hour lunch, then you come back, work for a couple minutes and you’re done for the day.

[00:31:20] Chuck Carpenter: Right, right. And you have the shop and you could just be like, great, I’m gonna take the best coffee home with me or whatever.

Yeah. It’s funny because we are in like a more of like a little village, like a small town, 20 minutes outside of Como. And it does feel like this, like there’s town to town, but there’s a lot of like space in between. There’s a lot of mowing to be done. If you want here. I know you love that. You know, and there’s like, I mow for

[00:31:44] Robbie Wagner: an hour and a half yesterday.

I don’t

[00:31:45] Chuck Carpenter: like that. Yeah. There’s, you know, a bunch of pizza joints, although there’s like a bunch of pizza and kebab places now. It’s like a combination shop. They have kebabs. Oh, one shop. Yeah. In one shop you can get like your pizzas, you can get kebabs, you can get a kebab pizza. [00:32:00] It’s very interesting. I was just gonna ask

[00:32:01] Robbie Wagner: if you get kebabs on the You can.

[00:32:02] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, you can. Which I had experienced in England before, but that was a little more obvious. And then like here, it’s like, okay, you can get one of these pizzas with, with kebab on it.

[00:32:12] Robbie Wagner: I find that interesting, like the whole cuisine thing, because Italy has, and maybe not like where you are or like in smaller villages or whatever, but in the bigger cities, they’re pretty like focused on, we’re gonna have the exact same food at every restaurant.

Mm-Hmm. Except for like, you know, fancier places. Like if you go to a Michelin star place or place with a tasting menu or whatever, like, but then otherwise it’s like same food everywhere. But you’re very close to, like, everything on the Mediterranean has a lot of diverse food. So you would think there would be more crossover like that, but there’s like, Nope, we make this.

No, yeah, I was gonna say it

[00:32:45] Chuck Carpenter: is like that kind of everywhere. And while there is other cultural foods, it is mostly either like, yes, there’s Lebanese food because we have a bunch of Lebanese people who live here and so they come and eat there. But for Italians, I’ve had [00:33:00] this conversation a few times with friends and it is like an interesting thing.

‘cause we, you know, we’ll be like, what do we want to have for dinner? What kind of food do we want to have? Oh, we’re having tacos tonight. We have whatever else. They don’t really think that way. They’re just like, it’s like it will be Italian food. Yeah. And they don’t say, we’re having Italian tonight, we’re having food.

And they think of it in that context, in that menu. Is it pizza, is it pasta? Is it like a big meal? And we’re having multiple

[00:33:26] Robbie Wagner: courses like, so that’s an American, is it an American thing to like operate the other way? Or is it. I dunno, are there other countries where people, like in Germany or like the uk, are they like, you know, what kind of cuisine do I want?

Or are they just like, you know, whatever. So

[00:33:42] Chuck Carpenter: I think it’s very much an US thing, but there are like inbetweens, you know, like in Spain when we’d like, oh, let’s order, I was staying with friends there, Spanish people, and they, we were like, let’s order a pizza. And they were telling me different ones and they were like, we have this one with wet tuna on it.

[00:34:00] You know, that’s not what they called it. Ooh. Wet. I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve been to Spain, but like tons of meals. You’ll get like a side salad and then it’ll have just what looks like is you didn’t drain the tuna very well and you just put a scoop of that on there. Oh. And it’s kind of wet and they put that on the pizza.

Mm-Hmm. And like in England you can get beans on your pizza, right? Like, so it’s like sort of, you can get different foods, but then they always like. Put in their little cultural blip. I don’t know. And it’s maybe because kind of ruin the experience. Yeah. The states is such like a hodgepodge, so we, you know, we kind of like, yeah, this is pizza, this is taco, whatever.

Never to shell the two mix unless you go to Taco Bell. But that’s a whole other whatever thing that, that could be for dinner tonight. Mexican pizza. Yeah. Depending on how much 19, 20 you have. So yeah. It is kind of a funny thing like food wise, like, and I have like mostly had like pizza every day. [00:35:00] Pasta all the time.

Gelato a bunch of days. Like it, it does ring true to a degree. And you’re just like, that’s the easier food to get and it’s pretty good. So like why not? Even if you go get mid pizza, it’s still pretty good pizza.

[00:35:14] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I wouldn’t, I don’t complain about that except for like. And I’m sure you’ll get to this point being there for like a month, but like Mm-Hmm.

Several weeks into that, you’re just like, God, I really need a taco. Like Yeah. Or something different. Just a break from the same flavors every day. Because even if it’s in different form factors like pizza and pasta and I guess you could do like a, a steak or like Mm-Hmm. Depending on where you’re at or like what?

Or if you’re cooking at home, you can do whatever

[00:35:42] Chuck Carpenter: you want, obviously. Well, that’s it. Yeah. So bear in mind that’s what we are integrating into it. So like we are trying to say, it’s like at home where we have dinners most of the time at home. Yes. We like go out here and there. If we’re like doing something, we’re trying to just like, what would we do a normal day?

And we’re not trying [00:36:00] to really engage in tourist activities or whatever else like Yeah. So we totally can really embrace living there.

[00:36:08] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:36:08] Chuck Carpenter: And make other things and like, sure, enjoy what’s here, but go to the grocery store, what is available. It is funny because you’ll go to like a decent sized grocery store and it’ll be, normally you have like the.

Pasta aisle. Right? And they have your sauces and pasta and sauce and whatever else, and that’s just like one aisle. Somehow they’ve stretched this out to like five aisles of things. Like, oh yeah. You know, you have all, I love pasta love. And then you have, yeah. Oh man. I mean, I’m not unhappy. I think like, this is great food and food quality’s so good, and I just feel different.

Like, oh, you know, I eat a full plate and everything. Yeah. And I eat a full plate, and a lot of times I would feel bloated and I just don’t feel bloated. I don’t feel like stuffed and like that is a, a nice difference and a nice feeling, but, you know, anyway, all that is to say is like, oh, I want tortillas.

Yeah, they will sometimes have those actually, [00:37:00] but it’ll be like shitty old El Paso or something of that nature. Yeah. But it’s not impossible to go down that path. Even in this small town. There’s one Mexican place, but we’re afraid to try it. But I mean, it is available, like there are some things there.

You should try it so that you can report. I know. I can report back. I know. I think I might have to, but I’ll probably have to do it alone. Yeah. There’s also like some sushi places here and there’s a place called the old. I can see that being good.

[00:37:23] Robbie Wagner: There’s

[00:37:23] Chuck Carpenter: some, some decent fresh fish. Absolutely. So that’s probably decent.

And again, you know, all multicultural populations, not just Italian people. So yeah, there, you know, there’s a few different ones, but what was the other? That I, oh, the old Wild West looks hilarious. What is that? It’s basically like what they think like typical American food is. I haven’t been there yet. I still, I want to go, you know?

So it’s like a big like wild west cowboy experience and over the top like ridiculous things like burger, like this or whatever. I had one, well, I’ve had one burger somewhere, an Italian burger. It was okay. [00:38:00] And then I’ve had McDonald’s once and the Big Mac was actually kind of good. I don’t know, like, because they have to use real meat because they are using like fresher produce and stuff.

I was like, this

[00:38:12] Robbie Wagner: isn’t bad. Yeah, I imagine it costs more then, or maybe with the conversion rate. Like it’s hard to really say, but yeah, I’m not sure.

[00:38:21] Chuck Carpenter: That’s a great question. It wasn’t too bad. So I wanna say a happy meal was like. Or euros, give or take. I remember that. And that gets, you know, them a burger, some fries, apple saw or like apples and a drink.

So yeah, it’s not bad. I don’t remember what the Big Mac was. Yeah, it was actually pretty decent. Oh, you know, so we’ve gone twice, but I only eat once and two times we got food for the kids. So when I got the Big Mac, we were actually in Switzerland. So where I’m at now, in like 25 minutes, I can go to a town up in Switzerland and we [00:39:00] went up there to like check it out and go to a different restaurant and a whole bunch of things, like you said, things are closed.

It’s still Italian culture up there. So we just like, we got stuck in a traffic jam and they closed at three and then opened back up at seven for dinner service. So we missed that. And then we ended up like getting McDonald’s just to get food. For the kids and they’re like, fuck it. Let’s just get something and be done with this.

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yes. You have many Italian questions on here, so I don’t know how much I’m addressing. They were just, yeah, I mean they’re not, we don’t have to cover ‘em. I was just putting random shit on here. Well, I can easily say, so the obsession with bottled water is a, it’s cheap. It’s like 40 to 50 cents easily for a liter and a half.

[00:39:45] Robbie Wagner: Well, not at a restaurant though.

[00:39:46] Chuck Carpenter: Oh,

[00:39:47] Robbie Wagner: yeah,

yeah, yeah. That’s true.

You put a premium there. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves and like, yes, we’re probably paying more overall for a meal in America because like everything’s more expensive and you’re paying the tip, which you’re not doing [00:40:00] most of the time there.

Right. But most places don’t even give you a chance. Which is interesting. Yeah. The, the very touristy places do. ‘cause they’ve caught on to the fact that they can rip you off for more money, but Yeah, for bad food. Yeah. So it’s like they come up and they’re just like, you know, do you want still spark or for some water?

Yeah. Naturality or Frite. Yeah, if you want to be a bitch, you can be like, I want tap water. Yeah. But like, no one does that. I haven’t witnessed anyone do it, so I’m just kind of like, it’s kind of interesting ‘cause you know, the Romans like kind of invented clean drinking water and it’s always been good water for a long time.

But they’re obsessed with drinking bottled water and I don’t get it. I don’t know. I,

[00:40:41] Chuck Carpenter: I do know that it is safe to drink. That’s not a problem. Yeah, I’ve read that before, but I don’t really know anything about their sanitation system. But so Italian, so the reason why they’re into bottled water is they’re into springs and the source, ‘cause they want minerals, they want [00:41:00] natural, like Mm-hmm.

Bottled at the source kind of stuff and you’re not gonna get that

[00:41:04] Robbie Wagner: through the sanitation system. Okay. So it’s really all it is. They’re all like actual spring stuff. It’s not like the American bullshit where they take tap water and filter it and sell it to you. No, no. There’s all these different brands

[00:41:14] Chuck Carpenter: because they’re from different springs.

Okay. And then apparently there’s a whole like underground subset of springs that are thought to have different medicinal purposes. So if you’re feeling this, you drink water from this one area and that will help you more. So yeah, they have a whole bunch of like bla behind it, but makes Okay, makes sense.

The fact that makes sense to don’t like rape you over it. Like, oh, Perry Hayes, $5 for 16 ounces. Like

[00:41:40] Robbie Wagner: you

[00:41:40] Chuck Carpenter: actually

[00:41:41] Robbie Wagner: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I make all of my money back at breakfast when a cappuccino and a croissant is like one euro. I know. Yeah. I’m like, like, okay, this would’ve been easily like $12 in America.

So I’m cool with it. And

[00:41:57] Chuck Carpenter: it’s all fresh baked and like, oh yeah, everywhere. [00:42:00] Even when the coffee’s just, okay. It’s still good. It’s kind of like the pizza, like it’s like, eh, but it’s still good. Yeah,

[00:42:06] Robbie Wagner: yeah. Yeah. I don’t know why we insist on doing things poorly in America. I mean, I guess it’s money based, but like if you just have that little like espresso percolator that everyone has in every house in, it’s kind of mocha.

Yeah, whatever. I’m just educating our listener, our listener’s interested. And so like that stuff you could put, like if you have a decent coffee at all, especially if you’ve fresh ground it, like it tastes amazing compared to anything you could have like from Starbucks or anything like that.

[00:42:34] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, well Starbucks is all about the flavors and all the additions, right?

Like that’s true star. Like how many people do you know that actually go to Starbucks and just get like a black drip coffee more in espresso? Not a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So most people aren’t like addicted to that. They’re addicted to all the other aspect. It’s like I’ve got this walking dessert that’s covered in a cup.

Nobody knows. I dunno. [00:43:00] Yeah. The American way. Yeah. You think I’m prospering? I’m actually getting fatter by the second. Just ‘cause they’re like high calorie and everything and, and you know, if, hey, if Starbucks is your favorite coffee and you have just the coffee, then good for you. But if you’re doing all these other things to it, then you can kind of do anything.

[00:43:23] Robbie Wagner: It’s not hard to, I mean, everyone’s different. Like there’s probably people that have had a lot of good whiskey and have Jack Daniels and they’re like, this is just what I like. Yeah. I mean, that’s okay. Good for them. It just, yeah, it’s not me.

[00:43:35] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It’s not me. In some ways I wish it was me because that, that choice is easy.

Great. Just doing the thing I like, I’m gonna keep doing that.

[00:43:46] Robbie Wagner: I was listening to, uh, the episode with Michael from Prime Barrel. Mm-Hmm. He was, uh, talking about, you know, like how everyone should just, like, whatever whiskey they like and stuff and yeah, it’s, it’s, he mentioned [00:44:00] like the, your palate evolves too, so you like, like rise.

If you, if you started having a ton of bourbon and then you have some rye and you start gravitating towards that, like if, like it’s similar with anything really. Like, like when you first have red wine, I feel like most people are like, this is not great. And then you have it a few times and you’re like, actually this is pretty good.

Just ‘cause it’s like, it’s very harsh if you’re not used to it. But once you start having it a lot, you get used to like, the harshness goes away and you can appreciate all the other flavors. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:30] Chuck Carpenter: Like your, your tongue and palate aren’t sucker punched. And once you get past that a little bit, can I get

[00:44:37] Robbie Wagner: something else?

It’s

[00:44:38] Chuck Carpenter: funny that you say red

[00:44:39] Robbie Wagner: wine ‘cause I poured all of it all over my keyboard a little while ago. I don’t know if you noticed. No, I didn’t. But that’s

[00:44:45] Chuck Carpenter: good for you for keeping it together. It sounds like there’s some duress. Could have been. Yeah. I

[00:44:50] Robbie Wagner: was just kind of like, you know, I hope it wasn’t your

[00:44:53] Chuck Carpenter: Kinesis super split Crazy.

I know you don’t use that keyboard, but you know, [00:45:00] maybe you’ll

[00:45:00] Robbie Wagner: have to Oh yeah, no, it didn’t get on. I also don’t, it was just on the uh, like the rest here, this keyboard here. I see. Okay. So it’s like, it’s pretty gross. I need to like throw it away. Yeah. That looks disgusting.

[00:45:12] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Anyone on YouTube should be, maybe they’ll send you a new keyboard.

Anyone? Yeah, basically send them a keyboard

[00:45:19] Robbie Wagner: because it’s fucking sad. I need to really, I. Like, invest in learning to type and use the keyboards that don’t hurt my wrist. Yeah. Yeah. Because I, I type with like, like these fingers, like I don’t use these ‘cause they’re weak, so I’m not doing the like right way to do it.

Like prime would be ashamed in me. I’m ashamed of you a little bit, but

[00:45:42] Chuck Carpenter: just more so I think not just in general. Yeah. This is the travel keyboard, which isn’t sexy or fun, but it is very, it’s like an Apple keyboard. Yeah. It’s small. Like the footprint is small. Like how small can I do what we’re doing right now and make it effective and then, you know, scale that up or [00:46:00] whatever.

That’s kind of where I’m at with it. Yeah. ‘cause I mean my Kinesis 360 gaming one that just tense up. That one is my best one for being productive and having

[00:46:12] Robbie Wagner: pretty comfortable wrists. Yeah, I think that’s the key. ‘cause like the, the other ones where they’re like the 360 where it’s got, it’s like concave and it’s got like, everything’s kind of in different spots.

Like I think what you really want is just to be a little bit separate, but the normal layout. Yeah. And then you can just

[00:46:30] Chuck Carpenter: type up normal. Yeah. I probably said the wrong one. The 360 is the one with the weird concave and all that fun stuff. Mine is a normal like split keyboard and you can tent it at different levels.

It’s a gaming one that they have. Mm-Hmm. And you know, it’s just plugin too. It’s also not like all bluetoothy or whatever else, but I mean, which honestly

[00:46:48] Robbie Wagner: is the big reason I don’t use, well also ‘cause I can’t type fast. But the 360 is Bluetooth only.

[00:46:56] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.

[00:46:56] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. And so I have this very like first world [00:47:00] problem, right?

That like I have this desktop. And a laptop and I want to be able to switch what’s plugged in my, all my plugged in peripherals with a push of a button. And you can’t with that. So that’s like, it’s kind of a non-starter. Mm.

[00:47:15] Chuck Carpenter: I thought you

[00:47:15] Robbie Wagner: could, you can’t plug those, you can only plug them in for charging.

You can’t plug them. It just for charging, I believe. Oh, I haven’t, I haven’t tested that theory, but I think it’s just for charging. Yeah. You just, you say it, you don’t know. Well, yeah, I do that a lot. I just take things that, you know, assume that I know, but yeah. Okay. Um, fair enough. So you said you were gonna be staying somewhere else in a couple days or something.

Are you like moving into area? Yes. We moved tomorrow morning

[00:47:44] Chuck Carpenter: to Lao and that is on the West Bank of the lake, probably about 20 minutes up from downtown Como. So it’s, it’s

[00:47:54] Robbie Wagner: gonna be closer to things in general. So you’re like purposefully trying further away and, uh, [00:48:00] closer to town. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:48:02] Chuck Carpenter: exactly. Just those two things to just kind of get a feel for it and see, well, like we tried here because we have friends that like live in the town next to us.

Mm-Hmm. And so we thought like, okay, we’ll get a feel for what it’s like to be closer to them and what there’s do around there and everything else. It’s all very nice. It’s just kind of rural, less

[00:48:23] Robbie Wagner: walkable, kind of rural. Yeah, that makes sense. So did you get your, uh, you know, tiny manual car to drive around?

No, it’s a GLC. Okay,

[00:48:32] Chuck Carpenter: so it’s the Mercedes. Yeah. I mean there is a lot of Mercedes there too, I guess. There is. Yeah. And so it’s a, you know, mid-size SUV. I just wanted to have something that was gonna be enough. We didn’t bring like a ton of luggage, but it is for a month and it is for a family of four. Yeah.

Checked three bags, you know, just trying to like, make the most of it as we can. So, yeah. Just for all of us to have a place to sit and the bags and everything to work. So, did not get a tiny car. ‘cause I don’t think [00:49:00] that’s what we have. If, uh, I

[00:49:01] Robbie Wagner: guess if you’re in the country it’s a little different. Yeah.

In the cities they will not like, they, it’s very hard to rent a, like anything bigger than like a Fiat 500. Yeah. Because they’re like, depending

[00:49:13] Chuck Carpenter: on the city you’re in

[00:49:14] Robbie Wagner: too. Especially as you

[00:49:15] Chuck Carpenter: go south and stuff, like things can get real narrow and weird. Mm-Hmm. Rome is tough for that. This is probably the biggest car that I’ve rented here and it’s not crazy.

We went down to Milan for a couple of days and I was even driving and you know, the El Central, you know, the. Center of town and near Duomo and everything else. So, you know, it was a little tight, but it wasn’t crazy. Parking wasn’t bad in a parking garage. Can’t trust anybody on the street parking. Don’t recommend.

No. Yeah, that was totally fine. We’re going to Naples next week actually and we’ll be taking a train off. Driving there is interesting. No, yeah, I have done that before actually. But, you know, broken it up. But it’s like an eight plus hour drive. Like we’re gonna take the high speed train, you can [00:50:00] do it four hours.

[00:50:00] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that, that’s insane to me. ‘cause we were trying to get to Monto Chino and then back to, I don’t know. Yeah. To Naples I guess. I don’t know. It was like, it didn’t seem that far. If you take the train from like Florence down, it’s like so fast. Yeah. And then if you drive, it’s like double the time and I’m like, how in the world, like I guess the train is just really fast, but I.

A

[00:50:23] Chuck Carpenter: train’s really fast.

[00:50:24] Robbie Wagner: Doesn’t have to stop

[00:50:25] Chuck Carpenter: anywhere. There’s tolls, there’s whatever along the way. Like there’s actually some nice highway or interstate or whatever they call it, but it does slow you down in parts and change and, Mm-Hmm. Speeds change or whatever

[00:50:38] Robbie Wagner: else. And the trains just, yeah, we drove from Florence down to Mancino and then to Naples.

So we experienced a lot of that. It was fun ‘cause my friend that was driving went through the toll thing and it like didn’t take his money or something and like he had to like talk to the lady and he’s just like, no Italian, no Italian thing. Oh. Trying to talk to her. And she was like, uh, like this. [00:51:00] I dunno.

We eventually figured it out. We like, I need to watch the video. Someone videoed him doing it for the laws. But yeah. And then you get to Naples and like there’ll be a maybe two-way street and there’s like. 70 cars parked on like each side somehow. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it like triple parked and you’re like, how, how do these people do this?

Like it seems very stressful. I guess they’re used to it ‘cause they live there, but, well, yeah, when you’re in the

[00:51:25] Chuck Carpenter: south it’s, it’s a different driving strategy. So it’s just something that I learned that you have to assume that all of the like traffic directions are suggestions. Mm-Hmm. And people are sort of taking that in mind, but they’re also just kind of going and you just have to like assume things are gonna go fine.

That everyone

[00:51:47] Robbie Wagner: is taking every opportunity. Exactly. Because a person, they’re gonna walk out, if there’s a car they’re gonna drive in front of you. Yep. Every single time.

[00:51:53] Chuck Carpenter: Totally.

[00:51:54] Robbie Wagner: And if you just drive with in that

[00:51:56] Chuck Carpenter: way, then it all just kind of works out. It’s the beautiful chaos. [00:52:00] Yeah. The South has that quite a bit, so it’s much more challenging to drive there.

For sure. How do you think the internet has fared

[00:52:09] Robbie Wagner: for us here? You know, it’s interesting because when we stayed in Venice, we had like 300 MBPS, like Yeah. Pretty good. And literally everywhere else was like non-existent.

[00:52:21] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.

[00:52:22] Robbie Wagner: And not just that, but when you do finally get like some, okay, internet, like, I mean even like five or 10 M bps, if not a ton of people are using it, you could stream some stuff or whatever, but like, then you go on, you log into Hulu and it’s like, no.

Yeah, you can’t use it. ‘cause you’re not, I don’t know if it’s just ‘cause you’re out of America or if it’s because Italy specifically, but like you can’t watch anything so you have to like VPN back to the states and it’s even slower. Right. And like it’s a whole thing.

[00:52:50] Chuck Carpenter: Well, you know what the answer is, it depends.

I do think there’s inconsistent connections and I think there’s also inconsistent [00:53:00] opinions of the connections. ‘cause I’ve asked a few different times about like how high speed or Oh yeah, totally. High speed. Yeah, high speed or whatever. So here I’m at the Airbnb and it is okay, you know, it could be worse, could be better.

It’s about a supposed to be a hundred MBPS, but I also think it fluctuates quite a bit. So there’s times where it’s like a

[00:53:20] Robbie Wagner: maximum

[00:53:21] Chuck Carpenter: for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It’s times, it’s rocking times where it’s not. It’s funny ‘cause it’s like. Decent equipment and everything else, but you just never know. I found some like coworking spaces, and again, it’s kind of like up or down, but there’s a, a chain over here called Regis, R-E-G-U-S.

They have

[00:53:38] Robbie Wagner: that at here too. Oh, okay. I’ve never been to one, so I’ve never, never been to one. But near me in Alexandria, when we lived there, that was like a office building. Ah, nice. So

[00:53:48] Chuck Carpenter: tried that here. Been a few days there, tried their wifi and just plugged in. Was able to like hard wire in and that was actually pretty decent.

So I was pretty happy with that. If I was here on a permanent [00:54:00] basis, that would be a great space. Pour another, ‘cause that’s how, that’s how we fuck around here. Drink

[00:54:06] Robbie Wagner: it out of the bottle. Ken Wheeler style.

[00:54:08] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You know, I, I guess I could like, here you go, this for you bro. He’s our one listener. I don’t know why.

He

[00:54:17] Robbie Wagner: shows up in at least two of the new videos. We have the uh, like trailers and intros and outros and stuff. Him drinking out of his basil bottle. No, basil Hayden’s his bitch bottle. That’s fine.

[00:54:28] Chuck Carpenter: I’d tell him. So, yeah, I mean it’s hit and miss. Honestly, if I lived up here, I would just get starlink be done with it.

Wouldn’t mess with infrastructure. Yeah. So

[00:54:37] Robbie Wagner: yeah, that’s relatively consistent. Yeah.

[00:54:40] Chuck Carpenter: If you get the RV version right, you’re able to like set your region too, which kind of solves your VPN problem. So it’s like two

[00:54:48] Robbie Wagner: birds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that being a problem because it’s not like hard set. Mm-Hmm.

So Hulu is like, okay, if you change locations you can do that [00:55:00] four times a year or whatever. Oh. And so it’d be like, oh, you’re in Chicago. And I’m like, actually I’m in Virginia. But I was like, oh, I don’t care. I’ll just say, okay. And like keep watching tv. And then that happens like four times in a week period.

And then you’re like, uh, excuse me. My TV doesn’t work because you’re dumb. And starlink hasn’t moved. It just like it uses different satellites so it doesn’t know where it’s at. That’s not my problem. That’s your problem, you know? Yeah. And they have a way to override it. It’s a problem they know about. So like Hulu hardcoded in like you’re in Virginia and it’s just always like that.

Oh, that’s nice. Because that wouldn’t help you. So you still have starlink now? No, no, not anymore. Did you sell it? But I think it’s still hard coded. So like it used to switch. If you went to like California, it would bring up like the California news, but now it’s just always the Virginia news. Like, well, that’s nice though.

So

[00:55:49] Chuck Carpenter: yeah,

[00:55:50] Robbie Wagner: it’s kind

[00:55:50] Chuck Carpenter: of nice. Did you get rid of it or are you holding onto it just in case you move again?

[00:55:54] Robbie Wagner: I sold it, well I tried to sell it to a guy that my dad knew up at Scout [00:56:00] camp and like they’re in the middle of the woods and like needed some internet, but then he like quit his job. So like I never got money for it, but I don’t have it anymore.

Okay.

Yeah. Well, sounds like a Robbie problem. It’s all right.

[00:56:11] Chuck Carpenter: It’s a bummer.

[00:56:12] Robbie Wagner: But anyway, it’s kind a donation

[00:56:13] Chuck Carpenter: to the scouts. Yeah. There you go. You should write it off. There you go. Yeah, I mean, I think that would solve a lot of problems here. I mean there’s, there’s towns that have incredible infrastructure.

There are town that don’t give a shit. You know? It

[00:56:26] Robbie Wagner: is what it’s, but I think it’s, I think that’ll solve a global problem if they can get starlink right And like not produce insane amounts of space junk, but have it all work. Yep. You could just, Internet’s done. We don’t need to run wires anymore. Just everyone has satellites.

[00:56:41] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, because we don’t have cheap labor anymore. And cheap labor is what built the infrastructure of America. ‘cause we’re, you know, expanse, America’s far too big to ever do that again. Yeah. And even other places it’s hard too. So it’s like hit and miss here. Great experiences, bad experiences. Sometimes they put [00:57:00] fiber in the middle of nowhere and sometimes you can be in the middle of a city and you get shit.

So it’s hard to say. Even like bad cell service, the middle of mil lawn and all of a sudden I’m on 3G

[00:57:09] Robbie Wagner: I’m like, really? Yeah, that’s because that neighborhood was probably like, you’re not putting a cell tower on our building. Yeah, maybe. Uh, oo boo

[00:57:18] Chuck Carpenter: bty. So my son is like, regained interest in soccer while here, like seeing the stadiums and stuff, like seeing the stadium here in Como and all of that.

And he’s like. You know what? I actually like this and I was playing some games because the Euros are going Copa, America’s going, there’s like big international tournaments. So he is like, yeah, I think I’m kind of interested in this again. So I’m like, cool, we’re gonna be in Milan. Let’s go to the sense hero.

Like that’s actually the first place in Europe that I saw a match. And yes, we can’t go see it match ‘cause it’s the summer, but we can go and take a tour and that’ll be cool. It’s a giant stadium and you walk out and you see the pitch and it’s gonna be awesome. It’s gonna blow his mind. [00:58:00] So we book a tour and go and then find out that they’re setting up because it’s the summertime.

So you know, they use the stadium for other things. Guess who’s there Touring. Yeah. Nice. So it was like Thursday and her concerts over the weekend, like two or something like that. I don’t know. And so they’re like letting us know we’re gonna still do the full stadium tour, but just like when we go into inside, you can’t take videos or pictures.

There’s something with Taylor Swift, like you just can’t like document set up. Well is that the V too? But you do it anyway. Oh right. Well I mean there was nothing to see there. That’s not what I gave a fuck about. I wasn’t there for her. So thinking like we’re gonna walk out and see this like amazing pitch and Yeah.

You know, I imagine you get to walk on the field normally, but there’s probably no field. You don’t, you never get to walk in the fields because, oh really? The groundskeepers are fucking insane at all these [00:59:00] places. ‘cause they put all this, but like you put a huge stage out there. I guess she pays enough money that, yeah, she pays enough money, they can just start over.

So anyway. Yeah. And there was like this whole like metal floor and stage and all this bullshit and it was like, well, I was really going for that nail at home moment for Aiden and my son, and nah. Didn’t work out. Yeah, that’s unfortunate. Yeah. So she ruined my day and uh, you know, I expect some sort of, I, she’ll probably like refund our tour ticket.

Yeah. It was

[00:59:35] Robbie Wagner: like 80 euros. Honestly, I think if you sold the story the correct way and she somehow heard about it, she definitely would. But it’s probably

[00:59:44] Chuck Carpenter: true. She’s never gonna hear this, so No, she was never gonna hear this. And the reality is, is yes, what you’ve said is like, you know, her fans have come to her.

I watch, I, I’m not gonna lie, I watched the documentary with my wife. And I was like, I have a newfound respect for her in the sense of she’s [01:00:00] such an artist involved in so many like steps of her craft. Oh, like producer and directs and, yeah. Yeah. You like the songs or not like she’s doing it. She’s not a machine.

Like I respect

[01:00:12] Robbie Wagner: that. So yeah, I respect that hustle around it. Yeah. They changed like the VMAs, like they do all awards constantly, but then there’s like commercial breaks and you miss some. Yeah. And the ones you used to miss would be like directors and like, ‘cause people care about the artists. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, ‘cause Taylor Swift directs her own stuff. They do the director one, like on. ‘cause I know she’s probably gonna win that. Right.

[01:00:32] Chuck Carpenter: So like, so they’re like, that’s

[01:00:34] Robbie Wagner: a good

[01:00:34] Chuck Carpenter: thing. Yeah. Didn’t Billie Eilish do some of that stuff too? Like she was involved with some production and the Another one stuff too.

Yeah, another one who’s like a full on artist and all, almost like a Renaissance artist because you’re like doing multi-med. So you’re really kind of covering more Once they invent helicopters though, you know, that’s when they really get the awards. Yeah. So you were asking though, and I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna address this.

[01:01:00] You were asking some about like shows and VPNs and all that kind of stuff, because I have had my dance with that because I’m trying to watch the acolyte and House of Dragons.

[01:01:11] Robbie Wagner: I haven’t started the new season yet. Of which one? I just realized how bad House Dragons. Yeah. Glasses. I know we’re like towards the end of the episode now, but

[01:01:18] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, they’re bad.

I would’ve told you later, I, I tried that one episode so I know like, mm. Yeah, it doesn’t work out. Unfortunately. Still the rest of my face stays the same, but, so let’s see here. Four Acolyte. I don’t believe I’ve had any issues like that has actually just worked out and I’m right here on my iPad. I can tell you, go on.

Disney Plus doesn’t really care and they, they respect that you are a person. Travel. It’s interesting because they own Hulu. Hulu doesn’t work. Disney Plus works. I know. Yeah. It’s fucking a little weird. So it’s like, if I wanna watch a new episode of the acolyte, oh, well, Taylor Swift, the eras toward Taylor’s version is available here.

So I don’t know if the [01:02:00] catalog changes or whatever else, but I’ve been able to watch like the new ones. Not a problem now. Max and House of Dragons has been a pain in my fucking ass. So it’s like. It was weird because when I first set up and then I was able to download an episode here and like for whatever reasons the app didn’t check or whatever, got that and I came back to the next one.

I was like, cool, new one’s out. I wanna watch it. And it was like, no, you can’t do that. So it was like, cool, I’m gonna get on A VPN. And it was like, looks like you’re on A VPN and we don’t support those. I was like, fuck you. So then I was like, you got smarter. I got smarter with the VPN because you can just like pick a general United States.

But then I picked Phoenix and it was like, oh, you’re back in Phoenix. Cool. We know that. And then it let me download, but like that was annoying. So yeah, I have A VPN and when I got specific with my VPN, which tells me like in the future, I would just like, I need to put my own [01:03:00] setup in Tucson before I was to move, just so I can have like a more permanent home base.

Right back to your actual house. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like. I’m no longer gonna be dealing with a service. Like now I’m using a service. But if it’s just my own that I can tunnel into and do my stuff, like that’s cool.

[01:03:19] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. That’s an option On Eero, there’s like a little toggle to just like, I want to access my network from outside.

Okay.

[01:03:26] Chuck Carpenter: While, while in Tucson we use the arrow. So there you go. Just turned it on. Done, done. Speaking. Done. We are, um, are we done this episode? Has this been an hour? An hour and seven minutes?

[01:03:37] Robbie Wagner: It feels like you’re annoyed with me and you don’t want to talk anymore. I don’t have any friends here here to speak English.

Don’t want too long because people will stop listening. Not that they listen that much to begin with, but,

[01:03:48] Chuck Carpenter: alright, fair enough.

[01:03:50] Robbie Wagner: I can watch the acolyte. I guess. Well, maybe we can still hang out, just not. Not on here anymore.

[01:03:58] Chuck Carpenter: So just for everyone to [01:04:00] know, this is the first time where I have been ahead of Rocky and forced him to record early

[01:04:07] Robbie Wagner: and uh, it feels nice.

Luckily it’s a Friday ‘cause if we started at 3:00 PM on a Wednesday, I would still have a lot of work to do. But I mean, fuck it. We’re done for today. That’s what it feels like. It’s like

[01:04:20] Chuck Carpenter: I’m

[01:04:20] Robbie Wagner: a little drunk. Can I

[01:04:21] Chuck Carpenter: do more? I dunno. I’m gonna

[01:04:22] Robbie Wagner: try. Yeah, yeah. The problem is a lot of the folks that I’ve been working with are on the West Coast, so they’ll probably be like, Hey, you wanna still do some work?

And I’ll be like, nah, nah, I’m good.

[01:04:34] Chuck Carpenter: I’m on the East Coast, bro. It’s Friday. Hey, you just go like this. What is that? Can’t, you can’t even do it. Which it’s a gang sign. I can’t tell which I. Which finger is why the fuck? It doesn’t matter. Okay, so I’ll, I’ll show, I’ll show you. The middle finger is up and the index finger points that helps my hand doesn’t work.[01:05:00]

Can you do this right? Yeah.

[01:05:03] Robbie Wagner: That one that’s

[01:05:03] Chuck Carpenter: easy. Okay. I’m just checking. Okay. Alright, well let’s, uh, wrap it up for the listeners. All right, right here. Thank you. One of us has a hit, one or two listeners

[01:05:13] Robbie Wagner: that are left with us here. We appreciate you listening to our babblings. Please tune in next time for hopefully some more structured content about tech things, possibly with guests, possibly not.

I don’t know what’s gonna be after this one, but we will see you then. Boom. Boom.

[01:05:29] Outro: You’ve been watching Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Recorded in front of a live studio audience. What the fuck are you talking about, Chuck? Enjoyed the show? Subscribe. You know, people don’t pay attention to these, right? Head to whiskey.fund for merchant to join our Discord server. I’m serious, it’s like 2% of people who actually click these links. And don’t forget to leave us a five star review and tell your friends about the show. All right, dude, I’m outta here. Still got [01:06:00] it.