RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III [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.
[00:00:27] Intro: 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: What’s up everybody? Welcome to another edition of Men Growing Beards. It is the season for your favorite podcast, and my dogs have decided right now is the time to assault each other under my chair.
[00:00:50] Chuck Carpenter: That’s, uh, as. As requested, I think welcome everyone. And, uh, I’m not growing a beard though. So we just started out with two truths [00:01:00] and a lie, and that was the lie, which is I just shaved today. In fact, uh, getting print, whoa. Well, Robbie’s fallen asleep. If you’re only hearing this in audio, he has fallen asleep.
[00:01:13] Chuck Carpenter: It’s, uh, he’s getting older, but you know, mostly on the inside.
[00:01:18] Robbie Wagner: with sleep. I’m excited the new Apple watches will do sleep apnea diagnoses, so, uh, hopefully I can
[00:01:25] Chuck Carpenter: I am, I am here for their like, nice leap into like medical assistance devices. I mean,
[00:01:34] Robbie Wagner: they need to be FSA eligible though
[00:01:36] Chuck Carpenter: So wait, that’s not just a, a software update, it’s, is it a hardware update
[00:01:41] Robbie Wagner: it only works on the nine and 10, whether that means they have special hardware that enables it or they’re just being jerks. I’m not sure.
[00:01:49] Chuck Carpenter: Do you have sleep apnea?
[00:01:51] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know. I went to get a sleep study done, uh, and like. You know, you’re supposed to sleep right. During a sleep study. I like didn’t sleep ‘cause I like the pressure was on [00:02:00] telling me to sleep and so then I couldn’t sleep.
[00:02:02] Robbie Wagner: So like, I was like, I know there’s gonna be inconclusive results. I didn’t sleep any, so I’m not even gonna go get the results.
[00:02:08] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And you like, you like, can’t have any drinks or anything too. They want you to be in a like completely natural state. No
[00:02:15] Robbie Wagner: and you can’t have, uh, you can’t have the TV on like I had the TV on, which like. Got my brain to stop going and I went to sleep and they’re like, uh, nope. You gotta turn the TV off and like get ready for bed and like do it the right way. And I’m like, oh God. So
[00:02:30] Chuck Carpenter: Like this is the right way. Can you just study this and fix that? Whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah, those are kind of annoying. I did that and ended up not having sleep apnea and going down a long, windy path of never really solving it, but I had like a surgery and all kinds of stuff, so that’s, that’s fun. Like my airways were getting blocked from living with cats and being very allergic to them.
[00:02:54] Chuck Carpenter: So that’s a
[00:02:55] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I live with dogs and I’m very allergic to them, but you know what? I’m not [00:03:00] allergic to.
[00:03:01] Chuck Carpenter: Um, gin. Whoa, there it is. Oh, you haven’t snapped the cap. That’s,
[00:03:09] Robbie Wagner: Oh, no.
[00:03:10] Chuck Carpenter: uh, Robbie. On this show, we typically recommend that you open the bottle first. This one shouldn’t be tricky, so it comes with this. Cool. Yeah, it comes with this, uh, I don’t know, shot glassy measuring
[00:03:23] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Are we supposed to drink it out of that?
[00:03:26] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, you could, I, uh, I don’t think I’m gonna, but I guess you could like say you’re camping or something. And that’s how I envisioned
[00:03:35] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I’m camping and I had room for the big bottle of whiskey, but not a tiny glass.
[00:03:42] Chuck Carpenter: for a class. Well, you know, this episode is brought to you by aged and or which they have this fun travel kit that I. Typically we’ll use, so it’s got a nice little container. It’s got this glen Carn like glass. It’s got a little, little jar for your [00:04:00] brown that you can put in there and then you know, you just like tuck that in.
[00:04:03] Chuck Carpenter: So it’s a fun travel one. And that’d be great for camping. You know, you can get like a nice whatever. I will use the measuring thing just to see. By the way, we’re having str of hands. Second chance single barrel, single malt Colorado whiskey. Is a prime barrel pick. So it is cask strength as well, and it is 114 point 16 proof.
[00:04:27] Chuck Carpenter: So it’s a little kind of a strong one.
[00:04:30] Robbie Wagner: A hundred
[00:04:30] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, H
[00:04:31] Robbie Wagner: what was that? 114 point 16.
[00:04:34] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Isn’t that
[00:04:35] Robbie Wagner: it’s so specific.
[00:04:37] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that’s what I was like, wow, that’s an extra decimal place that I might have rounded up or down or
[00:04:42] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I need more decimal places. I want to know the next most significant digits.
[00:04:49] Chuck Carpenter: 5, 7, 8, 4, 2, blah, blah, blah. So the mash bill’s a hundred percent malted barley. It is aged four years and seven months. So this is a, this is nice. Very [00:05:00] specific one, and we’ll just get to it, I guess. You know, this is what we do, this is how we do it. This is what you get in the live feed. So you’re welcome and do a little more music.
[00:05:15] Chuck Carpenter: Interpretation.
[00:05:16] Robbie Wagner: Hmm. It smells like malted barley.
[00:05:21] Chuck Carpenter: I actually get a little more of a like peanut brittle.
[00:05:25] Robbie Wagner: Oh, I just filled mine too much, but it like, it smells kind of like. cut down a field of wheat and like it got a little mildewy before you like, brought it in to dry, like
[00:05:39] Chuck Carpenter: then you call that process malting. What is malting, you know.
[00:05:43] Robbie Wagner: Malting is where you sprout the seeds before you use ‘em.
[00:05:48] Chuck Carpenter: Excellent. Good. You paid attention to one of those tours? I didn’t.
[00:05:51] Robbie Wagner: Well, it’s because, uh, I was going to make my own whiskey and so I learned some about some things and then never did that.
[00:05:59] Chuck Carpenter: And, uh, don’t [00:06:00] worry, federal government, he has not proceeded with that process, uh, much to my chagrin and encouragement To the contrary, he doesn’t want to go to prison or something. I know. Stupid.
[00:06:11] Robbie Wagner: I wouldn’t
[00:06:12] Chuck Carpenter: other things to worry about, you know? You would not. Yeah.
[00:06:17] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I hear
[00:06:18] Chuck Carpenter: beautiful bare bottom.
[00:06:20] Robbie Wagner: uh, prison is very low.
[00:06:22] Chuck Carpenter: The what?
[00:06:23] Robbie Wagner: The bobas election in prison is, is very, uh,
[00:06:26] Chuck Carpenter: You like that stuff?
[00:06:27] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Oh
[00:06:28] Chuck Carpenter: the little
[00:06:29] Robbie Wagner: Not the, okay. Not the, not the legit ones. I like the, I’m a child ones that are like a little thing of strawberry juice wrapped in like plastic or something. Instead, I don’t know how they stay, like they don’t pop, but like, that’s, those are the ones I like.
[00:06:45] Chuck Carpenter: familiar with that. And,
[00:06:47] Robbie Wagner: I, I’ll, I’ll show you when you come out. We’ll, we’ll get some boba. Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
[00:06:50] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. All right. I, I will try that and then I would maybe try to introduce that to my children. I’m not gonna bother with the ones I don’t even like, but back on the whiskey [00:07:00] I, this has like, you know, those whopper candies, so maybe this is on the
[00:07:04] Robbie Wagner: ‘cause it has the word malted.
[00:07:06] Chuck Carpenter: Malt in it, right? Yeah. It kind of has a little bit of like chocolate nutty maltiness
[00:07:12] Robbie Wagner: When they said malted, they actually meant they used normal barley and then they just threw some malt powder in there.
[00:07:20] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, there you go. Yeah, so it makes milkshakes good. Why not brings the boys to the yard? This has definitely got some spice to it though. It’s interesting for a malted whiskey. It’s
[00:07:30] Robbie Wagner: saw, I don’t have anything that I’ve picked out as a note at all, but that’s, I’m just gonna taste it and see
[00:07:34] Chuck Carpenter: Are you feeling okay? Perhaps the change of season not doing well for you?
[00:07:39] Robbie Wagner: there’s a little bit of dried apricots.
[00:07:43] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm mm-Hmm. Well then this is delicious. This is an eight. Then obviously.
[00:07:47] Robbie Wagner: no, there is some kind of like citrusy,
[00:07:50] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, like finish to it. What do I wanna say? And almost like an artificial, like if you had like
[00:07:57] Robbie Wagner: Like peach
[00:07:57] Chuck Carpenter: orange, yeah, yeah. Peach [00:08:00] drinks. Right. But those are pretty good actually. But yeah, that’s a
[00:08:03] Robbie Wagner: Peach rings are fire.
[00:08:04] Chuck Carpenter: fruit. Yeah, the fake fruit. Those are, those are my wife, Sarah’s whom you know. But our one listener would, uh, just, you know, for clarity’s sake, my wife Sarah’s favorite.
[00:08:18] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, just hello to no one. Oh,
[00:08:20] Robbie Wagner: I was just, just saying hi.
[00:08:22] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, just in case we’re rambling on, let’s kind of get back to whiskey a little bit. So, dear listener, you already know this, but I feel like it’s just a thing we have to do. We have a highly stringent rating scale from zero to eight tentacles, zero being terrible for middle of the road, eight, amazing, clear.
[00:08:42] Chuck Carpenter: The shelves never go without a measuring thing again. This one might be. Hard to clear the shelves on though, since it’s a barrel pick and very limited. That said, Mr. Wagner, what do you think?
[00:08:54] Robbie Wagner: It’s pretty good for me. Like an a hundred percent malted barley, I would expect to be [00:09:00] kind of trash. But it’s actually pretty yummy for that mash bill. Very intense on the wood and like, seems like it’s been finished for a while. I don’t know. I, I think it’s powerful. I think it’s good. It doesn’t have any of the peat or crap you wouldn’t want from a scotch, so.
[00:09:19] Robbie Wagner: Hmm.
[00:09:20] Chuck Carpenter: Crap.
[00:09:22] Robbie Wagner: I wanna say I’m gonna give it a six solid
[00:09:26] Chuck Carpenter: Um, yeah, this is, there goes our Scottish listenership, so probably half of Europe as well, potential sponsors removed. I mean, being honest doesn’t pay, but anyway, all
[00:09:37] Robbie Wagner: there are some scotches I like and if you wanna send me one that doesn’t suck, I’ll give it an honest review.
[00:09:43] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, we’re kind of like top gear Europe, not like top gear us, like we are not swayed by sponsorship dollars. We’ll still cash that check. But yeah, so from, and I’ve had regular str of hands. I don’t recall like being. [00:10:00] Blown away by it. I know it’s somewhat popular in some circles, especially for like Colorado whiskeys, but I was like, me and I, I, I think it’s not pricey, but it’s on the higher end for like your middle of the road whiskeys.
[00:10:15] Chuck Carpenter: This one I think was only like 75 bucks or something of that nature. So I’m always apt to pay more for like single barrels, cast string things, whatever else. That’s a little more rarefied error as they would say. Yeah, I find this tasty so far. I’m gonna try it with some drops and see if that changes things.
[00:10:33] Chuck Carpenter: I’m really more of a, I’m not blown away, but for a single malt American Single malt. Single malt, it’s not bad. I don’t know. I wanna say five and a half. Not bad. Worth having, wouldn’t say go outta your way for it.
[00:10:48] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I haven’t had a ton of American single malt, so not a ton to compare it to, but. Nothing super bad to say about it.
[00:10:55] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, there’s the Del Bach one here in Arizona, which is like probably the [00:11:00] most popular Arizona distillery. They do some very interesting stuff and I think their stuff is pretty good and unique. So I would maybe reach for that before this. It, it’s a little smoother than this too, so this has got some bite on the back end and I know it is higher proof, so we’ll see.
[00:11:15] Chuck Carpenter: So that changes once I put some water
[00:11:18] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I’m appreciating the hug today though. It’s a nice fall day. Got like 73 outside or something, like not hot anymore. So I’m here for it, got to drink up before I go, uh, play basketball later, so, um
[00:11:33] Chuck Carpenter: hmm. Nice. Yeah, it’s uh, it’s under a hundred all week here. Yesterday was a bit cooler, but it’s still like low nineties today. I think we’re gonna still hit a hundred next week or something. But I am
[00:11:46] Robbie Wagner: you chose to live there.
[00:11:48] Chuck Carpenter: I did, I made a lot of choices that, uh, I have to second guess and potentially regret on the backend and maybe we can talk about that later.
[00:11:55] Chuck Carpenter: But that said, yes I did because little people are [00:12:00] hard and that was a sacrifice for a little bit. But there, you’re getting a little older now, so get the fuck outta here is what I think. Yeah. So what do you wanna talk about now?
[00:12:08] Robbie Wagner: Before we jump into topics, I totally missed my first thing, which, uh, anyone that’s listening, I. Check out whiskey Do fund that’s, uh, FUND because sometimes when we say it, it sounds like we’re saying do fun or like there’s a d on the end fund,
[00:12:27] Chuck Carpenter: Fun.
[00:12:28] Robbie Wagner: go there. And then also for the like couple people that are hanging out with us right now, if you want some free tickets to All Things Open, you can check out.
[00:12:38] Robbie Wagner: Uh, probably shouldn’t read this off ‘cause it’d be a nightmare to try to type all this. I’m just gonna post it in the chat so if anyone sees it and wants a free ticket. You can grab it. We’ll post it, uh, elsewhere later, but anyone that’s hanging out with us now gets to do it. So
[00:12:54] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, that’s kind of nice. Yeah. How many of those do we have?
[00:12:57] Robbie Wagner: tickets,
[00:12:58] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, good point. I saw that you [00:13:00] put that at the top of the notes. I had no idea what it meant. And here we are. Although we do have an ad that runs that says, you know, whiskey do fund, and I’m hearing reports of hats, t-shirts, and something else
[00:13:13] Robbie Wagner: We also have an ad about all things open, which we should maybe change to say like, use this, uh, and, ‘cause even when this is done, there’s a 20% off one. I don’t know if you read Todd’s email at all yet.
[00:13:26] Chuck Carpenter: I haven’t
[00:13:26] Robbie Wagner: so this is all news to you, but yes, he was like, here’s five free tickets for whoever you want, and then here’s unlimited 20% off tickets.
[00:13:33] Robbie Wagner: So we’ll share that for sure in the, uh, ad. Maybe we record another, another one of those.
[00:13:39] Chuck Carpenter: Fair enough. I’ve got some time ahead of me. Maybe we do that.
[00:13:42] Robbie Wagner: Cool. Cool.
[00:13:42] Chuck Carpenter: Technology is wonderful
[00:13:48] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Tell us, tell us about the technology you’ve been working on most recently.
[00:13:51] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Yes. How have I spent, well, I mean, where do I start? We talk about, I want to talk a little bit about [00:14:00] Shepherd Js Shepherd, the
[00:14:03] Robbie Wagner: are you mispronouncing? Intro js?
[00:14:08] Chuck Carpenter: not unlike intro js or driver js. There are a few out there, I mean.
[00:14:15] Chuck Carpenter: And you know, you’ve also worked on said library. In fact, before I did.
[00:14:20] Robbie Wagner: many moons.
[00:14:21] Chuck Carpenter: Many moons. So there was an experiment in my life, particularly over the last, I don’t know, eight months or so in trying to look at that library and take it from a developer centric code configured JavaScript, like dumb JavaScript library, but very accessible.
[00:14:43] Chuck Carpenter: All of those things. Don’t need to totally pitch that, but So was approached by a company to the big experiment was this, can a popular open source library become a successful SaaS company?
[00:14:57] Robbie Wagner: And the answer is it depends.
[00:14:59] Chuck Carpenter: Well, [00:15:00] it depends a hundred percent, let’s say that. Right? But if you expect it to happen in six months, I’d say ‘cause like you have to actually kind of start building a product and launch it if you expect it to happen in six months or less.
[00:15:12] Chuck Carpenter: The answer is absolutely no. And make sure that you are very clear and expectations with those partners. What outcomes must happen before they are willing to fund it beyond that point. Yeah, I would say that more than anything. So. You know, you and I have run an agency for a very long time. We have dabbled with internal r and d projects here and there.
[00:15:33] Chuck Carpenter: Never went down the path of exploring it with Shepherd because I don’t think we had enough conviction to build a WY wig, but these partners approached and, and seemed to have the conviction. To actually have a product roadmap, decide what’s gonna happen there, and then support it, fund it, work somehow or another on that.
[00:15:54] Chuck Carpenter: And, uh, I think some of those expectations were, and perhaps I didn’t [00:16:00] meet their expectations as well, or it just was the community itself. All that is, yeah, they, I, I welcome them.
[00:16:07] Robbie Wagner: so I think there’s a lot of issues with this. One being if you really want a thing to succeed, you need a lot more research designs upfront. Game plans, not just like, let’s throw money at it and hope it works. Then also, even if you just wanna throw money at it, you need to throw more money at it.
[00:16:27] Robbie Wagner: If you have enough money for one person full time and the rest of the team is not helping you out and they’re just hoping that you’re gonna magically make them a pile of money, that’s not great. Like you need support from the whole team. Like that’s how, you know these startups that make it, they have a whole team of people that’s got equity skin in the game, and they’re all working as hard as they can to make as much money as they can.
[00:16:47] Robbie Wagner: I know, okay. We need to spend a ton of money on like our website needs to have like cool animations and be different than everyone else’s website and make you feel important when you’re using it. And like it’s not just another SaaS product designed in like [00:17:00] Tailwind ui, which Love Tailwind. No, no Shade on that Tailwind ui though.
[00:17:04] Robbie Wagner: A lot of people use it. A lot of websites are starting to look the same. So yeah, I think you really, really need like that it factor, like people have to think it’s cool and then it will work and I don’t know how to like. Get that it factor or we would have piles of money. But I’m just saying like without a plan for that, there’s pretty much no way you’re gonna succeed.
[00:17:23] Robbie Wagner: Unless your product is like super, super, like fills an amazing need, then you don’t necessarily need all of that. Like super base kind of has both things. Like it fills a great need and they have great design and marketing and like all this stuff. I’m trying to think of something that like, like AWS console fills a need.
[00:17:43] Robbie Wagner: Doesn’t look nice, but like you have to use it, right? So if it’s kind of the only game in town and it’s like dope, then it doesn’t matter. But if you’re one of 20 tour libraries that are pretty popular, and the only thing really going for Shepherd is that it’s like the [00:18:00] only one that has been free in open source the whole time and hasn’t tried to make a product out of it.
[00:18:05] Robbie Wagner: I think the people that star it and you know, use it and love it. Love it because of that and like, aren’t that into the community? Aren’t that into paying for it? They’re just like, I want the free one because like,
[00:18:16] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, because I’ve been configuring it in code the whole time. And that’s the other thing too, is like who are your customers?
[00:18:23] Robbie Wagner: Mm-Hmm
[00:18:24] Chuck Carpenter: our users are developers. I.
[00:18:26] Robbie Wagner: mm-Hmm.
[00:18:27] Chuck Carpenter: much, and folks at least who can do enough to get the, you know, these things going very basically. So perhaps they don’t want a feature rich option, that’s why they’re not paying for one.
[00:18:39] Chuck Carpenter: And, uh, differentiator there are pretty tough, which is why I kind of thought like, okay, a wy wig is, is not table stakes because that’s all over the place. What other things might start to work? Like, okay, you don’t wanna deploy. To add steps. Okay, we’ll kind of let you do that. But you’re still [00:19:00] doing it in code.
[00:19:00] Chuck Carpenter: It’s not a full on wizzywig analytics ‘cause you wanna know what’s happening. That’s the only reason why you put a tour in usually to. You know, improve a, you’re, you’re fixing a problem. Oh, we have, our app is complex. We have adoption issues, we have churn issues, whatever else. You’re usually using it to address a particular problem that you’re aware of.
[00:19:21] Chuck Carpenter: So you should measure that. You know, that problem is happening and then you want analytics to tell you whether this thing works or not. So that was like one attempt at it. But again, it was sort of like me of a year ago, never thinking about building a Shepherd app. Speaking with this company and thinking, great, we’re gonna come at this as a team with a consensus, and I’ll work hard on it.
[00:19:45] Chuck Carpenter: Like, sure, I’m gonna do a hundred percent. Of my time, perhaps. Are you gonna do 30% of your time, 50% of your time? What is this? You’re go to market experts. You must understand the marketplace, how to find fit [00:20:00] and all of those things. And that just kind of didn’t turn out to be true. I think there was just expectations on both sides that weren’t clear enough and some assumptions there.
[00:20:09] Chuck Carpenter: And the moral of this story is that Shepherd Pro, the SaaS application goes away because it’s not filling a need. People sign up, don’t really use it. So no problems there. And we regress back to our roots and kind of what it was, which is it’s an open source library that you can use for this purpose, and that seems to work.
[00:20:31] Chuck Carpenter: People are happy with that. We’re happy with that.
[00:20:33] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I mean the test suite has been passing for many, many years now since I added it when there were no tests when we inherited it.
[00:20:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, right, exactly.
[00:20:42] Robbie Wagner: through switching from pre-ACT to spelt, like, that’s the power of test driven development. Like you have a good test suite. You can switch frameworks and all of your tests will still, you know, there’s some stuff you have to fix, but like if they all pass, you’re like probably fine to just switch it.
[00:20:56] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, in general, it’s kind of like feature, complete. You know, in many [00:21:00] ways, but I’m sure there are like little things we could continue to tweak, but for the most part it’s kind of feature complete. It’s very accessible. That’s great. We could probably take that some steps further using the dialogue, the actual like dialogue
[00:21:14] Robbie Wagner: are using it, but like not, we’re not using the modal one. It’s a catch 22. ‘cause we want to cut a hole in an SVG to like show what you’re showing. The, the modal dialogue graze everything out. So you can’t do that. So like lose all the other stuff. I wonder if you could do the modal dialogue but not show the modal behind it.
[00:21:36] Robbie Wagner: Like get the focus trapping out of the box, not like delete a few lines of JavaScript we have for that and then still roll your own modal implementation. That would be cool if that’s part of like the H TM L spec for that. I don’t know.
[00:21:47] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I think that takes a little, little deeper diving into it. I’ve just played with that dialogue modal element a little bit and used it for very like straightforward reasons. Not necessarily for attachment reasons, but isn’t there like [00:22:00] a attach API to?
[00:22:02] Robbie Wagner: Yes. Um,
[00:22:03] Chuck Carpenter: that would be cool. Let’s use HTML for
[00:22:06] Robbie Wagner: it doesn’t work in like anything but Chrome right now, I think. Um, so you need a lot of polyfills. Um, Adam Argyle talks about it a lot, so he’ll let us know when it’s ready.
[00:22:15] Chuck Carpenter: exactly. Just stay tuned to him and his podcasts and uh, that’s where you get real information anyway, everywhere else.
[00:22:22] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. If you’re bad at CSS, you can, uh. Listen to bad at CSS. If you are good at CSS, you can listen to the CSS podcast
[00:22:29] Chuck Carpenter: straight up CSS podcast. Yes. Uh, right from the source. Yeah. So like little things like that I guess could be a thing, but it is kind of on its own kind of feature, complete. We are planning to also simplify. We have a, a number of like wrapper. Libraries like a React one and View and Angular and everything else.
[00:22:52] Chuck Carpenter: And like none of these frameworks really add enough sugar wise that kind of makes it worth it to maintain. So we’re gonna switch [00:23:00] that to recipes. I think, uh, recipes and tutorials and everything else is kind of like the way forward around that particular library. I did think about like, wouldn’t it be cool if you were work building a Shepherd tour and.
[00:23:16] Chuck Carpenter: You could use like a Chrome extension to like do a couple of things and it would do all the configuration for you. Like it might take out some of the guesswork around like, like it would kind of show you a little preview of what you’re, you’re selecting and all of that. Anyway, I don’t know. That’s like one fun thing.
[00:23:34] Robbie Wagner: Before we changed everything, there was like a cloud flare app that did some wizzywig stuff.
[00:23:40] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, right. And they got rid of CloudFlare apps or
[00:23:44] Robbie Wagner: that did. I think, uh, I think you can still go to it and like do some stuff, but it, most things break, so it’s hard to see like, what did this do before? And like try to replicate how it worked because it just doesn’t work.
[00:23:56] Robbie Wagner: But. Yeah, I mean I think there’s [00:24:00] probably some demand for that, but like I think most of our users are JavaScript developers and they’re fine to configure it in the app. Like then you have full control over it too, instead of like, I have this give and take. We haven’t fully removed it from the API, but it’s like there’s an advance on thing that everyone loves to use and it’s like advance on a, click on this other element or whatever.
[00:24:21] Robbie Wagner: And so you can be like, all right, well I clicked this other element and like I have some bug with advance on. I’m like, dog. Use tour next. Good. Like you don’t need to ever advance on just when you know the thing has happened, just call Tour next. Like, so I want to kind of remove that, but I haven’t, ‘cause it’s not causing a ton of problems.
[00:24:38] Robbie Wagner: So it’s just kind of
[00:24:39] Chuck Carpenter: Right. It’s just every time it bubbles up, like once every couple years or something. Yeah, somebody’s using it in a way that’s like, yeah, that’s there, but that might not be the best way. And that depends. Yeah. And that’s sort of the point, right? It has a very good open, API, it’s dumb and all of these logic things that you want for like [00:25:00] the state and what, what your users have done and all of that is.
[00:25:04] Chuck Carpenter: Is really the job of your app and it’s not the job of Shepherd to know things about your users in order to show or not. And I think that was another thing I struggled with. Like, okay, if we’re gonna like integrate into analytics and stuff like that, then what are cohorts or groupings or whatever else, and should we have some of that logic that gets captured and starts to like make decisions on what you see and when and all of that.
[00:25:30] Chuck Carpenter: And I was like, conflicted on that because for the longest time and I I, and now I’m not conflicted at all ‘cause like fuck it. All of that logic should be in your application and this. Extra thing shouldn’t be another place that you’re paying a monthly fee in order for it to decide, you know, to show a tour.
[00:25:48] Chuck Carpenter: What tour does it have, four steps or eight steps or whatever else. That’s all up to you because the API is exposed to let you do those things, make it smart. You could make it to where like you get all of [00:26:00] your Tor configuration from your API and it’s localized based on that and everything else. It’s like that’s the place for that shit.
[00:26:07] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, and if you are not doing it yourself in your app, you’re losing a lot of control. Like we get a lot of questions about, okay, I have a single page application and wanna change routes and then like have the tour start back up or whatever. And I’m like, have you considered just making two tours
[00:26:25] Chuck Carpenter: Yes.
[00:26:26] Robbie Wagner: What logic we would need to do to support everyone’s bespoke single page app, like setup instead of you just controlling the tour when you want and having as many tours as you want and advancing them and prevising them, like prevising advancing and what is the opposite of advancing? I don’t know.
[00:26:43] Chuck Carpenter: Backtracking back, I
[00:26:44] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:45] Robbie Wagner: You know, controlling that whenever you want versus like trying to rely on, advance on, or like. Trying to have us build in all the logic to like, alright, well when you switch routes in your Angular two [00:27:00] application, we need it to like restart. Like
[00:27:03] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:27:03] Robbie Wagner: it’s much easier if you just have full control.
[00:27:06] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. The good one that I do like is before show promise. If you have like weird things loading in at different times
[00:27:12] Robbie Wagner: my heart before Show Promise was what I added first. It was in coffee script still. Uh, we didn’t have it at all. And I was like, Hey. Having no way to do, like decide when this should show sucks. Like can we add this? Just throw whatever promise you want in it, and you decide when the promise resolves and then it’s good.
[00:27:31] Robbie Wagner: Like, yeah. My boss at the time was like, oh, I can’t believe they accepted your PR for that. Like this library with all these stars. I’m like, I’m trying to say I’m not good. Like, what do you.
[00:27:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You know, that’s, that’s your constant struggle for, for whatever reason, and I’ve worked with you for a long time, so I don’t really understand where this comes from, but a lot of people try to convince you you’re not good.
[00:27:51] Robbie Wagner: The problem that I do have is a perception issue because I have a little bit of, uh, abrasiveness or like, uh, maybe arrogance that’s not, [00:28:00] maybe not quite the right word, but like, it’s just like, it makes people not love what I’m doing and so they want to find a way to tear it down and like say, Hey, this guy’s not good and we shouldn’t promote him ‘cause I don’t like him.
[00:28:11] Robbie Wagner: And like arbitrary bullshit. Where I’m shipping, like, you know, all of the code and, or like if, if the argument is you’re shipping too much code, okay, well then I just helped five other engineers ship all of the code and they’re still like, ah, you’re not doing shit. I’m like, okay, whatever. Doesn’t
[00:28:27] Chuck Carpenter: like what you’re doing. So here’s the thing. If you were like a kid right now, I think that you would be on the spectrum,
[00:28:35] Robbie Wagner: Yes. No, I, I totally agree with that, and
[00:28:38] Chuck Carpenter: but you know, what does that even mean? I’m no doctor,
[00:28:40] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know how adults get tested for that. And even then, it doesn’t matter. Because then if you just wave around, Hey, I’ve got like some amount of A DHD and or autism or whatever, and then like, like that doesn’t get you anywhere. Everyone’s like, oh, cool.
[00:28:54] Robbie Wagner: Like, I guess we’re supposed to accommodate him because of that, but like, we’re not gonna do anything different. We don’t like that guy. [00:29:00] So like, you’re kind of fucked.
[00:29:02] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, yeah. But then it maybe gives you the sympathy card up for, you know, some sort of like consideration. I don’t know. I agree with that too though, like,
[00:29:10] Robbie Wagner: It doesn’t
[00:29:11] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Well definitely not at
[00:29:13] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, at some companies maybe, but
[00:29:16] Chuck Carpenter: Well, to put a bow on that story is we’re going back to developers, developers, developers.
[00:29:23] Chuck Carpenter: That’s who matters. And careful who you trust,
[00:29:28] Robbie Wagner: ask Amazon,
[00:29:29] Chuck Carpenter: careful who you trust, good people with. I don’t want to like totally shit, like good people, good intentions. It wasn’t their wheelhouse, you know? Like just get things in writing and have clearer expectations, I think. So lessons learned.
[00:29:42] CTA: This just in! Whiskey.fund is now open for all your merch needs. That’s right, Robbie. We’re hearing reports of hats, sweaters, and T-shirts, as well as a link to join our Discord server. What’s a Discord server? Just read the [00:30:00] prompter, man. Hit subscribe. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and tell your friends about our broadcast. It really does help us reach more people and keeps the show growing. All right, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
[00:30:15] Robbie Wagner: We’re all learning and we’re all making mistakes, and we all have no fucking idea. Like I think that is one of the, the big lies of humanity in general. Like till you’re maybe like 18, you’re like, wow, adults like really know what they’re doing. Like all my teachers are so smart and like everyone has these jobs and they go there every day and then like everyone is like, oh my God, I don’t know how to do my job.
[00:30:38] Robbie Wagner: I’m going to figure it out today. Like.
[00:30:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And then, then like the next day there was sort of like, I, I don’t know how I got through yesterday.
[00:30:45] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:30:46] Chuck Carpenter: I’m gonna try that again today. See what happens. Yeah, that is a funny thing. ‘cause I can remember younger and working with, uh, you know, just in college or whatever, working with adults in their thirties and forties, and I was just like, wow.
[00:30:58] Chuck Carpenter: You know, at that point, [00:31:00] different times I would be like. Y you know, you’ve made it through all this life, but in some ways we’re the, we’re the same. Like, what? That’s weird. And then you reach that point and you’re like, man, we, we all are just living a story. We tell ourselves a story and you believe it more and more as you get older and, but it’s not that different.
[00:31:19] Robbie Wagner: Nope. Yeah, I mean, the scary part of that is like surgeons like, you’re like, Hey, cool. Yeah, I, I’ve done like one surgery and, uh, I think I know how to do this when I’ve done a lot of theoretical surgeries,
[00:31:32] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah, I read a lot of books. I practiced surgery on like, you remember that surgery game that was on? Like, what were those things? The Nintendo dx? Yeah, that operation. And then there was a game where you did surgeries, which was actually kind of cool, but it was all like cartoony or whatever. Uh, it was like a Nintendo DX game.
[00:31:51] Chuck Carpenter: I really liked that one. It was one of my iterations of gaming, but uh, I don’t remember what it was called, something surgeon or whatever. But it was kind of fun ‘cause that was a touchscreen thing and [00:32:00] you had to like really get it right or you would hurt someone or cut, you know.
[00:32:04] Robbie Wagner: I
[00:32:05] Chuck Carpenter: And it would be harder and harder surgeries
[00:32:07] Robbie Wagner: I could never do operation. I would always hit the side.
[00:32:10] Chuck Carpenter: yeah.
[00:32:11] Chuck Carpenter: I was decent at that. So anyway, all that is to say, I’m also very happy though that at the end of the day, through all of our business ventures, we’ve managed to hold onto our branding. And we’ve entertained all kinds of different options. And there were times where like this could be sold, that could be sold and whatever else, and goes away and then like shit doesn’t work out.
[00:32:31] Chuck Carpenter: And we lost all of the assets. Like I like our branding across things and I’m glad we get to keep it. So if anybody wants to buy Whiskey, web and whatnot, just bear in mind we’re keeping that fucking logo.
[00:32:43] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s maybe one thing we’ve done well. Swag, merch, logos, persona for like various shit. We can do that. We can’t necessarily make that shit popular, but we can make it look fucking dope. That’s like,[00:33:00]
[00:33:00] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, well, I think a lot of it is timing. So I hearkened back to just not that long ago at Big Sky Dev Cuff in Montana, basically HTMX, conf and uh,
[00:33:13] Robbie Wagner: thing.
[00:33:14] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, same thing Carson was talking about that like where, you know, timing is also sometimes a big part of things where if you’re persistent long enough and then that opportunity comes up during that persistence, I’ve actually heard this too, and like other things, like a podcast or whatever, and comedians talking about like, how was that person more famous than you and you’re funnier and blah, blah, blah, you know?
[00:33:36] Chuck Carpenter: But the fact that they’re just like putting their stuff out there and the right thing hits at the right time, and that’s kind of what it is. So.
[00:33:43] Robbie Wagner: and, and if you’re consistent, you know, our. Show has a fairly consistent vibe. So like if one episode were to get, you know, a hundred million listens or something, then people would be like, huh, I should check out the rest of the episodes. Like, I think you get a lot of that. Like if, if everything you put out is consistent and good [00:34:00] quality, then people will listen through your back catalog once you blow up.
[00:34:03] Robbie Wagner: And that just perpetuates the, like more and more
[00:34:07] Chuck Carpenter: You have that gateway, whatever the gateway was for you, for you two listeners, whatever the gateway was. Like if you go back through the ca, oh, okay, I want more of this now. Great. And yeah, you start to get more of it. That’s a very good point.
[00:34:21] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:34:22] Chuck Carpenter: So tell me about, uh, your commute.
[00:34:25] Robbie Wagner: Oh God. Oh man. Yeah. So let’s see. Today is Wednesday. I guess this was Monday. Chuck sends me a thing that’s like, Amazon mandates five days a week, and like I work there and hadn’t heard
[00:34:37] Chuck Carpenter: I was gonna say I love that I broke that news to you ‘cause it was starting to blow up everywhere. I
[00:34:42] Robbie Wagner: I was like. Wait, maybe someone was like, engagement farming. This isn’t actually happening. They were just like, you know, fake news story.
[00:34:49] Robbie Wagner: Like, and then I like looked around the channels on Slack at Amazon and like it was real. So they’re like, yeah, they, they told CNBC before they [00:35:00] told anyone internal to Amazon. Like, what the fuck? Like, I don’t care. You know who you think you are about what’s right and wrong with RTO and whatever. You tell your employees a major announcement before you tell the general public.
[00:35:14] Robbie Wagner: That’s
[00:35:14] Chuck Carpenter: that’s the right thing to do. Even if it’s like it’s coming out today at noon. You have like a 9:00 AM all hands. And deliver that information. Like you can defer it, but not at all is really fucked up. But I mean, that kind of seems to be the, uh, status quo there. Like, they’re just so big. They’re too big, they’re too big to fail, you know?
[00:35:35] Chuck Carpenter: Right. And they’re, they’re putting out like, you know, I feel like Amazon’s site. Even like in spite of the conveniences it brings has become like fucked up in, in various ways. There’s like all these third party resellers on there all the time, so you never really understand, and a bunch of them are basically like taking Temu and then like reselling that at a more
[00:35:58] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I [00:36:00] respect the game, but it’s very annoying if you wanna buy anything consumable. Not even just for you. Like any supplements, any dog foods, any, anything that could have bad shit in it is likely to have bad shit in it if you order it from Amazon. This supplement, I may have told this story on the podcast before, but I, I used to like not be a fat piece of shit and I would like do some workouts and, uh, so I had this
[00:36:26] Chuck Carpenter: When was this? I don’t believe it.
[00:36:28] Robbie Wagner: well it was in college so I was younger and I like.
[00:36:32] Robbie Wagner: Had more stamina. I did the insanity workouts a bunch. Um,
[00:36:36] Chuck Carpenter: That’s what she said.
[00:36:38] Robbie Wagner: and to power that I, I took some supplements. One of them was like this thing that was just supposed to give you more energy. It kind of really wasn’t specific about how it did it, but you took it and you were like, whoa. Yeah. Like, hell yeah, I can like do so many workouts.
[00:36:53] Robbie Wagner: And then a couple months later I got an email from Amazon that’s like, um. Yeah, the FDA has analyzed the ingredients [00:37:00] of this and this is heart medicine. You should not take this. And I was like, damn. So like, yeah, there’s like a lot of that happening. ‘cause they care more about making the money instantly and figuring out the consequences
[00:37:13] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, of course.
[00:37:14] Robbie Wagner: As we all would at that scale. If you were like, listen, if we tested everything, it would cost us $10 million a day in like lost profits. We should just like figure it out later. I would probably also be like. You write $10 million a day is a lot. Let’s figure it out later. But like, as the, not like corporate evil overlord, you’re like, that’s fucked up.
[00:37:36] Robbie Wagner: You should like care about your consumer some more. And like, but that’s not the way
[00:37:40] Chuck Carpenter: Well it’s, it’s food though, so I mean, that’s the thing about supplements, which is really weird. I find it’s strange that supplements are not regulated when they’re still ingested. Right? Like everything else we put in our bodies to a degree, it’s like has a level of
[00:37:54] Robbie Wagner: in that your label is supposed to say what’s in there unless it’s a [00:38:00] proprietary blend and you’re trying to like hide and that’s the
[00:38:03] Chuck Carpenter: happens all the time. That is the problem. There’s tons of that, that’s all over the place. And then, you know, there’s tons of stories of that, of like, yeah, there was a long time ago. I, I also did like bodybuilding, like style training for years before I did like the CrossFit thing and whatever else.
[00:38:20] Chuck Carpenter: But like, and so the supplements that I would take were they pride themselves and that they had them. Regulatory, like they did their self-regulation and you know, they had all these tests and certifications and stuff you could see on their site. And this was a
[00:38:35] Robbie Wagner: then if you order that from Amazon, there’s no guarantee they didn’t fake it and send you a thing that looked the same.
[00:38:41] Chuck Carpenter: For sure. So that’s the whole like container refill sort of scam of things where it’s like, this is sold, sold by RAD Sports and Rad Sports. Dumped out the good shit, put it in this other stuff, resealed it and sent it to you. That like that, that could happen. I mean that’s a problem in whiskey circles.
[00:38:56] Chuck Carpenter: Like as whiskey prices have gone up and up and, and people will [00:39:00] buy. Bottle. Old bottles used bottles, empty Bottles of pappy were like all over eBay for a long time actually, before they finally shut that down too. And that’s what was happening is they were buying all these bottles of Pappy, putting other stuff in there, resealing it, sell it for a thousand dollars.
[00:39:16] Chuck Carpenter: So, and no one’s the wiser ‘cause nobody gives a shit, but
[00:39:20] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. And because it’s not as good as you think, so it’s hard to tell. You’re just like, Hey, this is supposed to be good. But anyway, yeah. Where?
[00:39:31] Chuck Carpenter: true. I don’t, I don’t know if I’ve ever had like a whiskey where I’ve been like, well, we’re still talking about your return to office and how upset you are. So I do think it is related to that. And I was just talking about like holistically overall, like for me, my experience with Amazon has been kind of strange and janky and then gets more expensive or like.
[00:39:51] Chuck Carpenter: Amazon Prime was the greatest thing ever when I lived in the city and I was ordering stuff all the time and it was like, well, yeah, it totally makes sense for free [00:40:00] shipping and it actually comes quick and everything else now it’s like higher price. The shipping times are a bit longer than they were and yeah, I guess it’s technically free unless I wanna pay to get it faster now per shipment.
[00:40:11] Robbie Wagner: well the problem they’ve hit is they don’t price match easily anymore. ‘cause that used to be the thing is like I can order it and have it like later today and then I can care about whether it was the best price later. ‘cause if I see like, oh shit, this is a hundred dollars cheaper over here, then I would just message them.
[00:40:26] Robbie Wagner: They’d be like, you write and refund you the money. But now they’re like, Ooh, yeah, there’s all this red tape and like, you can’t get like, and I’m like, well, I’ll just send it back then and then buy it again. Like. What the fuck? But yeah, they, they’re just like not as accommodating as they used to be. So I don’t know where I was going with that, but, um,
[00:40:45] Chuck Carpenter: service has changed. Everything’s kind of changed, and they have a lot of people locked in for convenience. I mean, I think it’s like, it’s much of like why Walmart is popular because it’s cheap and convenient, right? It’s not necessarily better in any way when you go [00:41:00] there. It’s a lot of like really shitty, janky stuff, but everything’s
[00:41:03] Robbie Wagner: online marketplace, like very similar to
[00:41:06] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I’ve seen where it’s similar ‘cause I’ve like tried to Google for things and then it would come up at Walmart, but then it would be like walmart.com but sold by someone else and
[00:41:15] Robbie Wagner: Mm-Hmm, yeah.
[00:41:16] Chuck Carpenter: marketplace there.
[00:41:17] Robbie Wagner: Yep. It’s basically exactly the same as the way Amazon operates. And like, they have similar subscriptions where you can like, you know, get free shipping, quick shipping, you can get them to like, you know, leave it right in your garage just like you can at Amazon, like.
[00:41:30] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah, I, I pulled that back. I was like, it sounds good in theory, but I don’t really have a problem with like porch theft
[00:41:37] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I like the option if you’re like, I mean, I guess it doesn’t
[00:41:41] Chuck Carpenter: someone having garage access
[00:41:44] Robbie Wagner: it doesn’t matter for you because it’s like super hot there, but. For me if I’m like, oh, it’s gonna be like really cold or really rainy, or like, you know, there’s a reason I want you to put it in the garage. I like having that option.
[00:41:58] Robbie Wagner: But yeah, I, I’d have only chosen it [00:42:00] like once or twice because there was something I really wanted to be in there. But otherwise it also like restricts what day you can do it. Sometimes I wanna charge you money for it. I’m just like, it’s not worth, like just give it normal.
[00:42:10] Chuck Carpenter: just a bunch of testing and whatever. What are you willing to pay for? And if you become willing to pay for it as a prime member, then they’re gonna start to like regress that from the membership. I, I mean the, I know that they give you, maybe if I used it more too, like I don’t use Amazon music.
[00:42:26] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t store a thing. I don’t use their cloud stores. I don’t a lot of things. So maybe that would make it more compelling. But the prime video can be good, but it’s very hit and miss. Like there’s some, they had some really great like sports documentary things. I think it’s like all or nothing was a big one and it’s like a different team.
[00:42:47] Chuck Carpenter: And every season for soccer I found that interesting. The boys is on there and I’m like into that.
[00:42:53] Robbie Wagner: Well, I have a conspiracy theory not in the, uh, I media [00:43:00] aspect.
[00:43:00] Chuck Carpenter: They’re vaught actually, that’s the thing.
[00:43:02] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know what you’re saying. Anyway, I’m gonna continue what I was saying. Uh, theory is that all of their products, like, uh, cloud storage or. Music or whatever, like are intentionally not that great so that you will use someone else who’s done a great job and is then hosting all their shit on AWS.
[00:43:21] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Right.
[00:43:22] Robbie Wagner: it’s like they were the end all, be all of everything that no one else would use AWS and they would lose tons of money. So they’re like, there’s some incentive to not to like, you know, still ship a lot of stuff, make it pretty good, but not be the best so that people will have an alternative that still makes them.
[00:43:38] Robbie Wagner: Honestly, probably more money than the like $10 a month for whatever, you know?
[00:43:43] Chuck Carpenter: think, yeah. I’m gonna pull this thread a little bit and there’s like kind of twofold on it. Yeah. One is, I’ve always understood that AWS has very thin margins, right? Like they aren’t charging you out the ass. They are just offering a lot of products that are a byproduct of what they. [00:44:00] Use internally, they need that infrastructure and then decided we can resell some of this.
[00:44:05] Chuck Carpenter: That’s okay. So we want IT professionals across the world to help us maintain this infrastructure. So the margins are small so they’re not incentivized. So build a better console or whatever. Like make it a great customer experience that’s user friendly and whatever else. ‘cause they also have the whole, like you become certified in using their proprietary shit, which is very funny too.
[00:44:28] Chuck Carpenter: Interesting things there that that’s a whole like facet of their business. So that’s why other companies can more easily like build on top of or add their own margin. Hey, they’re great consultants in that sense, add their own margin. Versal makes access and usage of AWS more user friendly to the developer community.
[00:44:47] Chuck Carpenter: Not terrible. Right. Like whatever. So that’s one facet of it that I’ve understood is that the margins are fine. So they’re not incentivized to like get more people to directly use it per se [00:45:00] now, but they want companies to build a business on top of it. That’d be great. And then coming back to your whole discussion about like return to office and some of your complaints there, I saw this like post the other day and someone who I guess is a recent employee of Amazon and is like.
[00:45:16] Chuck Carpenter: All of this is a well thought out plan that is multi-step because during a pandemic there was money, and prior to that there was money scaling up and it was like a tax advantage. To be in a particular way and now the tax advantage is somewhere else and they spin it as it’s good for culture and blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:45:37] Chuck Carpenter: We’re, we’re more startupy and we’re gonna do all these things that kind of either are layoffs or we try to push towards layoff, like push towards people quitting. ‘cause the quitting is cheaper than
[00:45:51] Robbie Wagner: Oh yeah. Make no mistake. That is the goal. They want everyone to quit because if they fire people, the multi-tiered system, if you’re doing [00:46:00] everything right and they wanna fire you, you gotta get Pipped first. Then you have like six months or however many months to improve that and like show you’re doing better.
[00:46:09] Robbie Wagner: And somewhere during that process if they realize you’re not doing better, they’ll try to like offer you more money to like just get the fuck out. We don’t want you here. Like here’s money to leave. All of this costs them a lot of money to ultimately then have to pay your unemployment or severance or whatever at the end.
[00:46:26] Robbie Wagner: And they don’t want that. They want you to just leave voluntarily. And so if they can make it as hard for you as possible, then you’re much more likely to just do that. I understand how that would work. And I understand the pressure, like being a CEO and having your board members who are like, look, I’ve only got $3 billion.
[00:46:45] Robbie Wagner: I would like to have four. So like, can you make that happen? How can you do that? Well, we can get everyone to quit and that’ll make us tons more money. ‘cause like, you know, Amazon salaries are high. If you get, I don’t know. 10,000 people to quit of your 1.5 [00:47:00] million employees and they’re all senior plus engineers.
[00:47:02] Robbie Wagner: You just made, I don’t know, $500 million, whatever, like, and it’s like, shit. All right, cool. Well, let’s like pocket. Good, good job team. We’ll each take 10 million of that and let’s go our separate ways. Like,
[00:47:13] Chuck Carpenter: exactly. Yeah.
[00:47:15] Robbie Wagner: I can understand how that like board meeting would go. I hate that. That’s a thing though.
[00:47:20] Robbie Wagner: Like I, I think there should be some sort of wealth cap. Like you should be able to be wealthy as fuck. But then you should be capped at that. Like if you’ve got a hundred million dollars, you just don’t make any more money.
[00:47:29] Chuck Carpenter: not the American way though.
[00:47:31] Robbie Wagner: But like what do you need? Like there you can buy everything. Is there anything you can’t buy for like $50 million?
[00:47:38] Chuck Carpenter: the former president used to grab people by the pussy. Like there’s just a
[00:47:41] Robbie Wagner: What do you mean used to?
[00:47:44] Chuck Carpenter: I, I mean, he looks pretty old. He’s just grabbing a golf
[00:47:47] Robbie Wagner: don’t know. I
[00:47:47] Chuck Carpenter: or whatever else. I don’t know. I don’t care.
[00:47:49] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t care about his sexual habits, like Good for you. But I’m just saying that like the moral standards and good for the community in a global economy has changed in massive ways. And that’s just not how it [00:48:00] works.
[00:48:00] Robbie Wagner: morals. There’s no
[00:48:01] Chuck Carpenter: no, no. If you could
[00:48:02] Robbie Wagner: one of the big advice things is like if you can just not care about any other humans, you can probably make a lot more money. Like you can screw over people left and right and win the game and then retire early, but
[00:48:16] Chuck Carpenter: Unless you’re p
[00:48:17] Robbie Wagner: it?
[00:48:18] Chuck Carpenter: don’t fuck kids don’t fuck kids, don’t fuck dogs. Like, don’t do those things for money. Okay. Like there, there’s the level I think I.
[00:48:27] Robbie Wagner: I think like you should try to be, you know, morally correct on every front. I don’t think there’s, I don’t know. I mean, I guess there’s, everyone has their price. If there was, if someone was like, here’s a billion dollars to like, fuck
[00:48:40] Chuck Carpenter: You fuck a
[00:48:41] Robbie Wagner: other people. No, no, no, no, no, no. I’m saying like, if you would.
[00:48:47] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. There are. There are way,
[00:48:48] Robbie Wagner: gray area. If it’s like, listen, you know, here’s $10 billion, like an insane amount of money, never work again. All my friends never work again. All my family never works again. And you just like have to [00:49:00] make these hundred people’s lives terrible. They’re all gonna be like unemployed, sell their houses.
[00:49:07] Robbie Wagner: Well, I don’t know them. Maybe I say yes because I don’t know them and like it’s a get out of everything right now. Free card for me, but like. There needs to be some kind of laws around that, or there needs to be software engineers union like.
[00:49:23] Chuck Carpenter: Well, I think the latter is more likely and
[00:49:25] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:49:26] Chuck Carpenter: I think as, I mean especially like this current job market and whatever else, there’s so many layers to unpeel there about different things that you said.
[00:49:35] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:49:36] Chuck Carpenter: So I think exactly what you’re talking about, which is generational wealth happens, has happened, will continue to happen in futures.
[00:49:46] Chuck Carpenter: That that does exist. Somebody gets opportunities to change their life and their family’s life and whatever else, and sometimes they definitely fuck people over to to get there along the way. Now, you know, you’re not [00:50:00] just Joe Schmo walking down the street. Somebody stops you and is like $10 billion just to go fuck a fuck over a bunch of people in that building over there.
[00:50:07] Chuck Carpenter: Like it doesn’t quite happen that way, but it definitely is like when your path crosses that opportunity. And that you see that downside, people definitely make that choice. Families that kind of founded this country to a degree did some of that, right? You’ve got these generational old money, whatever, wealth.
[00:50:26] Chuck Carpenter: They were like kind of wealthy people in Europe who came over. And created an opportunity from nothing. You think that like, that didn’t fuck over, like communities of people. It absolutely did because you had like, classism isn’t something that was just invented recently and you know, this last decade, like that’s been around so Rockefellers and whatever else, like fucked over people to, to get that kind of generational wealth.
[00:50:52] Chuck Carpenter: And that just to me speaks to like. It’s basically the capitalist version of like the aristocrats [00:51:00] or whatever, right? Like, oh, that was, you know, ordained by God into birth. People became kings and made Dukes and whatever else. That’s all bullshit. That’s just, just that was the medicine to keep, keep it down basically. Yeah, don’t question this. You’d like, you’d like God, right? Well, God said that guy’s your leader, so make sure he’s good to go forever and he might, you know, ensure that you have a terrible life the rest of the time. But since you love God, you’ll make that happen and well, you know, whatever. And many other ways.
[00:51:30] Chuck Carpenter: So going some weird paths on this one, but that happens. So if you put yourself in a place, listen, let’s be honest here. If somebody was like, listen, Robbie. We’re gonna give you $5 million. Just gotta fuck over Chuck. Like, just fuck him over. Like we want all the ship shape, shepherd things, everything else.
[00:51:52] Chuck Carpenter: We want it all. And we just want you. ‘cause I’ll tell you what, I will do it to you. If somebody gave me $5 million, I, I’m gonna find a way to [00:52:00] sign it. I, I like you. I like working with you,
[00:52:02] Robbie Wagner: of you do that. And then I give you a couple million, like, you know, I think, I think if there was any amount of goodwill in any of
[00:52:11] Chuck Carpenter: I would probably do
[00:52:12] Robbie Wagner: then it would like be fine. Like if, if Andy Jassy were like, look, everyone’s coming to the office five days a week. We realized that fucking blows.
[00:52:20] Robbie Wagner: Here’s an extra $200 a week for your commute expenses. I’d be like, cool, bro. Like you
[00:52:26] Chuck Carpenter: love it, but thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Like that you’re changing
[00:52:29] Robbie Wagner: yeah. On
[00:52:30] Chuck Carpenter: especially the life of a young family.
[00:52:32] Robbie Wagner: it is. The opposite because they own the building, so they could give us free parking, but we pay for parking to come in there every single day and like Yeah, and And I get the reasoning because they would go, look, we have 1.5 million employees.
[00:52:47] Robbie Wagner: If you gave everyone free parking, we would lose a hundred million dollars a year.
[00:52:52] Chuck Carpenter: give everyone free parking. How about just at this fucking place that you make people
[00:52:55] Robbie Wagner: I know. I’m just saying, like I get the, I get the why behind all of it, because [00:53:00] there’s some board meeting where they’re like, no, we can’t do that. That’s so much money.
[00:53:03] Chuck Carpenter: yeah.
[00:53:03] Robbie Wagner: But like grow a pair and like care about a human at once in your life, like.
[00:53:09] Chuck Carpenter: and capitalism has grown to a degree where there is no consideration of, because either the stock market and fiduciary responsibility, which is something they always fall back into, like a CEO’s job, is not to make your life better or care about what they do for you. It’s to make more shareholder value.
[00:53:27] Chuck Carpenter: That’s it. And that’s all I give a fuck about any move they
[00:53:30] Robbie Wagner: the board, not not the shareholders.
[00:53:32] Chuck Carpenter: Exactly. They don’t care about employees. They care about the board. Who in turn cares about the shareholders, who in turn cares about the cash flow coming in and the value. So
[00:53:44] Robbie Wagner: Well, this got really heavy and we’ve gone pretty long on this. Good news for today. Interest rate cuts.
[00:53:51] Chuck Carpenter: yes.
[00:53:51] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I
[00:53:52] Chuck Carpenter: How many points was it?
[00:53:53] Robbie Wagner: I don’t Did you, you didn’t see, I didn’t see either. Hold
[00:53:55] Chuck Carpenter: didn’t either. No, I was doing other things. I had to quickly eat a cane’s [00:54:00] to my chagrin, a cane’s chicken sandwich, and then run a few errands before we
[00:54:04] Robbie Wagner: uh, half point. Hell yeah. All right. So I was listening to Bloomberg Radio yesterday and I’m an old man and we’re like. Yeah, if they cut it more than 0.25 points, they’re just signaling that like they know something we don’t, and the economy is terrible and jobs are terrible and like there’s a reason to make this really high.
[00:54:24] Robbie Wagner: So we think it’s gonna be 0.25. So maybe there’s bad news around the corner, but like
[00:54:29] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
[00:54:30] Robbie Wagner: here for the police, cut it a lot and let me refinance my house so I can stop being fucking poor.
[00:54:35] Chuck Carpenter: Unemployment has to be pretty big. There’s been constant layoffs for like over a year.
[00:54:40] Robbie Wagner: It’s gotten to like four point. 5% now I think it’s like, it’s not terrible, but that’s a lot of people, you know, based on however many people live here now, I don’t even know, like it’s not great and I think that the solution is not to have more people unemployed. Like I don’t understand why that’s always our solution, is like, let’s just make it hard for
[00:54:59] Chuck Carpenter: [00:55:00] Apparently I quit a job. I don’t have whatever consultancy money and got my project defunded. So, you know, I’m really trying to be poor. I
[00:55:11] Robbie Wagner: Well, let’s, let’s look out on the bright side. We have a full reset. We can do whatever now.
[00:55:16] Chuck Carpenter: Can, will are doing, yes, we’re doing what we feel is best leading the charge and I don’t know, let’s just see what, what can developers do?
[00:55:26] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:55:27] Chuck Carpenter: How about that we can go to market, not feel weird, not be forced into a product hunt, launch, and other things.
[00:55:35] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I don’t know. With our last few minutes here though, I want to talk about, uh, the Halloween plan. You got a family costume this year.
[00:55:44] Chuck Carpenter: Yes, we always do, unfortunately, ‘cause I really don’t want to. But uh, hopefully we, we are winding up to, I mean, when you have like babies, it’s kind of cute because like you dress the baby up as something, and of course like you’re holding them or whatever. Even like toddlers, it’s sort of like [00:56:00] you’re involved because like they can’t navigate any part of the world on their own.
[00:56:04] Chuck Carpenter: So you’re a part of the costume in that sense. But the last couple of years I’ve been like really, again, like. And kids are five and eight, like they don’t care and they wanna do their own thing. And so, I don’t know, but Sarah’s holding it together for as long as possible. The latest obsession is Harry Potter.
[00:56:21] Chuck Carpenter: Actually, my son’s been reading the books and 20 million every other thing. That is Harry Potter. So we’re do, I’m Voldemort. He’s obviously Harry Potter. This is a story that has bored Robbie out of his
[00:56:33] Robbie Wagner: No, sorry. My dogs have been insane. They’re usually upstairs with Caitlyn, but they’re down here with me right now, so one’s just whining at me.
[00:56:42] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t care, and let them down, but, uh, are you gonna drink? Fuck that. So, yeah,
[00:56:47] Robbie Wagner: be like Harry Potter? Or like the, like fighting as,
[00:56:54] Chuck Carpenter: I haven’t really watched the movies. I mean, I kind of watch them with the kids, but uh, like as my son finishes a [00:57:00] book, then we watch the movie. So I guess there’s some, we’re only like to the third one, so there’s not a
[00:57:05] Robbie Wagner: yeah, we have a similar system where Caitlyn is reading the books and then I watch the movie with her when she finishes.
[00:57:11] Chuck Carpenter: Perfect. Yeah, that’s basically the same thing. It’s good that she’s working on her reading. We know there’s no hope for you. Yeah. So family thing, I’ll be rushing back from all things open in order to participate ‘cause I don’t want to be divorced. how about you?
[00:57:26] Robbie Wagner: We’ve been asking Finn, and he has, he’s never consistent. So the one thing that is consistent is he will be an angler fish. And whether the rest of us are sea creatures or Mickey Mouse characters is up in the air. He’s like, I wanna be an angler fish and I want you to be Mickey and mama to be Daisy. And I’m like,
[00:57:48] Chuck Carpenter: Those, that’s not the couple,
[00:57:50] Robbie Wagner: But like
[00:57:50] Chuck Carpenter: I mean, maybe they do in a progressive Disney world where like,
[00:57:53] Robbie Wagner: there’s an angler fish that’s like
[00:57:55] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, they want to date outside of their species and
[00:57:59] Robbie Wagner: I don’t mean those [00:58:00] two. I mean like the Angler Fish doesn’t go with a
[00:58:02] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah. Like that’s not at all. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like not the fact that they’re not characters that are actually together, but
[00:58:09] Robbie Wagner: yeah. No, that I don’t care about. Like we could be any characters all from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or all from like the ocean. Like we could
[00:58:16] Chuck Carpenter: Come inside. It’s fun. Inside.
[00:58:17] Robbie Wagner: know. Yes. I’m aware. We, we’ve heard the song many times. Yeah. That’s it. He gets to watch that on trips.
[00:58:26] Chuck Carpenter: go. That’ll be goofy
[00:58:30] Robbie Wagner: I know that’s, that’s my go-to as well. He’s like, he’s like, I think dada is goofy. And I’m like, go.
[00:58:38] Chuck Carpenter: nice. Exactly. And Goofy’s like the best character. ‘cause he is not really clear what he is. It’s like he looks
[00:58:43] Robbie Wagner: Is he a dog? Maybe,
[00:58:45] Chuck Carpenter: what the
[00:58:45] Robbie Wagner: yeah. Why does
[00:58:46] Chuck Carpenter: That’s what happens when you fuck dogs. This is it. The moral of the story is don’t fuck dogs. You end up with goofy.
[00:58:51] Robbie Wagner: God. Okay. That’s a good note to end on I think. Oh yeah. [00:59:00] Thanks to
[00:59:00] Chuck Carpenter: wait to put this on
[00:59:01] Robbie Wagner: that hung with us for a bit. A reminder to check out whiskey.fund. We’ve got memberships there where you can join our Discord. You can get discounts on merch proportional to your membership tier. It doesn’t really say that on the memberships, but like.
[00:59:14] Robbie Wagner: Bronze is a lower percentage off than the diamond. Like figure it out if you, if you try to buy one, but you know, hang out with us there. Buy some merch, support us. Come to all things open. Use the link to get free tickets if you were hanging out and saw that. Uh, be posting the 20% off one as well. And we’ll be doing a lot of, uh, live episodes there.
[00:59:33] Robbie Wagner: Hanging out. Maybe have some exclusive stickers and shirts and things for folks. If you wanna come get one and just say hi. Um,
[00:59:42] Chuck Carpenter: at the brown. Or other libations.
[00:59:45] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, Chuck. Chuck will order a flask of whatever it comes with from Amazon and we’ll just all drink it. And
[00:59:51] Chuck Carpenter: formaldehyde. This is how I stay so young,
[00:59:54] Robbie Wagner: yeah. Anyway, anything else you wanna say before we end? Chuck? I
[00:59:59] Chuck Carpenter: [01:00:00] but we’ll be tuna.
[01:00:01] Robbie Wagner: All right.
[01:00:02] 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 it.