RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III 
Marc Backes [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: Hey, what’s up everybody? This is not Miami and not rum. If you were listening to the last episodes, you might be confused, but I am back,
[00:00:46] Robbie Wagner: so you get to hear my sexy voice.
[00:00:48] Robbie Wagner: And I’m here with Chuck as always.
[00:00:51] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You know who’s confused? It’s Robbie because we couldn’t live stream those. So nobody heard them live. They’re still in the backlog. The to be to [00:01:00] be released. Yeah. The internet at conferences is bad, Yeah, no one else is confused. Just, just Robbie. But I survived.
[00:01:08] Robbie Wagner: Things
[00:01:08] Chuck Carpenter: I’m not ai.
[00:01:09] Robbie Wagner: We have a guest today, mark Baez. What’s going on, mark?
[00:01:13] Marc Backes: Yeah. All good. Very good. Thanks for having me, Robbie. Charles.
[00:01:17] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Could you please give the folks at home a few sentences about who you are and what you do?
[00:01:22] Marc Backes: so yeah, as Robbie said, my name is Mark. I’m a software engineer. I’m currently a tech lead in a company in Germany based out of Luxembourg. , I work a lot with VJS and next, that’s about it.
[00:01:36] Chuck Carpenter: There you go. That’s it in a nutshell.
[00:01:37] Marc Backes: Short, short and sweet.
[00:01:41] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Now let’s uh, see if we can interview our friend Evan. Here.
[00:01:45] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm. All right. I’ve got something. We do all, we all have something. all right, so today’s whiskey is the Evan Williams Single Barrel. , it is 86.6 proof. So just [00:02:00] 43.3% alcohol for those who cannot divide mash bill of 78% corn, 12% rye, and 10% malted barley. , it is not aged stated on here. We might have different bottles in terms of the release.
[00:02:12] Chuck Carpenter: Mine’s a 2015, , aged until 2015 and then barreled on. Yeah, yeah. Barrel.
[00:02:22] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Mine says. Barreled on 2015. Wait, we can do some math. And, uh, bottled in 24, so that’s a little over eight years maybe. Yeah.
[00:02:34] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Eight and a half, nine
[00:02:36] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. So it is age dated, well not nine. ‘cause it’s just, it’s
[00:02:41] Marc Backes: on mine.
[00:02:42] Chuck Carpenter: nice. Ooh.
[00:02:44] Robbie Wagner: Oh. ‘cause it was like the last of days of 15. I see.
[00:02:49] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we have the same. Mark is lucky. He gets a, a different, , but you know, that’s because you’re in a whole other country and getting you whiskey is a [00:03:00] whole other adventure. So there is that. , by the way, today’s episode is brought to you by norland glass.com.
[00:03:07] Robbie Wagner: yes.
[00:03:08] Chuck Carpenter: Sure. ‘cause we’re episodes.
[00:03:10] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. ‘cause we drink out of them. Why not? So what we do is we just say company names and then we send them bills. Cool. All right.
[00:03:19] Robbie Wagner: by Nintendo.
[00:03:21] Chuck Carpenter: Send me a free switch. The switch too, releasing on June 5th, at least in the States.
[00:03:26] Marc Backes: the ar aroma is very like light. Like
[00:03:30] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, but you pick,
[00:03:32] Marc Backes: the, color, like,
[00:03:34] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, that’s pretty decent. I like that. Share for the people. It’s got a very like amber orangey kinda.
[00:03:42] Robbie Wagner: a little bit of fruit. I can’t put my
[00:03:44] Robbie Wagner: finger
[00:03:45] Chuck Carpenter: see. I feel like I’m getting lemongrass in the smell
[00:03:48] Robbie Wagner: well,
[00:03:48] Marc Backes: Yeah.
[00:03:49] Robbie Wagner: that’s
[00:03:49] Chuck Carpenter: or
[00:03:50] Chuck Carpenter: a dried apricot, perhaps.
[00:03:53] Robbie Wagner: We haven’t had a dried apricot in
[00:03:54] Marc Backes: It is like, like
[00:03:55] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:03:56] Marc Backes: sweet, like a,
[00:03:58] Chuck Carpenter: Definitely sweet.
[00:03:59] Marc Backes: or something [00:04:00] like that.
[00:04:00] Chuck Carpenter: hmm. hmm.
[00:04:01] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:04:02] Chuck Carpenter: I’m gonna prime the palate a little.
[00:04:04] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah. A lot of sweet upfront it seems like. Ooh.
[00:04:09] Robbie Wagner: getting the dried apricot.
[00:04:11] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Okay.
[00:04:13] Robbie Wagner: Or
[00:04:13] Robbie Wagner: maybe
[00:04:13] Robbie Wagner: a
[00:04:13] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know if he’s, yeah, now it’s wet, but,
[00:04:18] Marc Backes: Hmm, not sure.
[00:04:19] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I definitely get some of that brown sugar creme brulee that you’re mentioning, like right on the initial taste. . I still feel like I get a little like lemony, lemongrass, some kind of like citrus, like midway through. Interesting. Any, any other things you pick up there?
[00:04:36] Robbie Wagner: Are you asking me?
[00:04:38] Chuck Carpenter: Anyone really?
[00:04:39] Robbie Wagner: no. I don’t know. There’s something a little bit harsh somewhere.
[00:04:42] Chuck Carpenter: It’s got cinnamon on the finish and it does burn on the way down for like a lighter, under 90 proof. I’m actually surprised at the amount of heat in it. Not crazy, but it’s definitely there.
[00:04:55] Marc Backes: It’s okay,
[00:04:56] Chuck Carpenter: Well that’s, um, I.
[00:04:58] Marc Backes: than it smells
[00:04:59] Marc Backes: so. [00:05:00]
[00:05:00] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, for such a high corn. , also it’s kind of surprising like this, that’s where I pick up the sweet. There’s like so much corn in there. and then with like a nice eight year, , age, I’m not getting any woodiness or anything out of there, which is also a little bit surprising.
[00:05:15] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it’s an interesting one. I’m not sure. Where I’m feeling about it.
[00:05:18] Chuck Carpenter: But while we think about that, then I can quickly explain to the audience and to mark that we have a highly technical rating system that we apply to these tastings. So it’s from zero to eight tentacles, zero being horrible, spit it out, which you haven’t done yet, but maybe you’re just polite.
[00:05:35] Chuck Carpenter: four, just middle of the road. Not bad, not amazing, you know, would drink, wouldn’t really seek it out. And then eight is just, this is awesome. Clear the shelves. And clear the shelves. Meaning in this context is if you see it out at the store, you probably are just gonna buy everyone you see ‘cause it’s your favorite.
[00:05:54] Chuck Carpenter: Robbie, do you think you could apply said rating to this taste? [00:06:00]
[00:06:00] Robbie Wagner: do.
[00:06:00] Robbie Wagner: So are we calling this just a bourbon or what are we, what would we
[00:06:04] Chuck Carpenter: It is, yeah. And it is, yeah.
[00:06:06] Marc Backes: barrel. Barrel. Yeah.
[00:06:08] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:06:08] Robbie Wagner: right. So in terms of bourbons, I don’t know, the first, like of it is really good. I feel like it has a lot of good flavors going for it, but there’s something at the end that is throwing me off that I don’t like the aftertaste,
[00:06:20] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm.
[00:06:21] Robbie Wagner: not like a 100% pleasant experience. That being said, the initial stuff is very good, so. I’m gonna give it a five and a half I believe.
[00:06:31] Marc Backes: Nice. yeah.
[00:06:32] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Are you inspired, mark?
[00:06:35] Marc Backes: it doesn’t have the, the typical like bourbon taste that I expected. I, I do like it, it would be something that I would grab if, like, what should I drink today? One of my whiskeys, this one, nice choice, , could also be like. A little bit below daily driver or something like that. So maybe like a six.
[00:06:56] Marc Backes: I would give it a six out of eight. I, I quite like [00:07:00] it.
[00:07:00] Robbie Wagner: Yeah,
[00:07:00] Robbie Wagner: pretty
[00:07:01] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. I feel like this is at a slight disadvantage having been tasted behind the Double Double Oak Woodford recently, which these are not price comparative. So the plus side of this for a nice single barrel aged eight years, you’re looking at something around 60 bucks, I wanna say 50, 60 bucks to pick up.
[00:07:24] Chuck Carpenter: And so that’s nice. They are a little rarer, like Yeah, We were reading, , at the beginning around when it was, , barreled, when it was bottled. All of that is handwritten, so like that’s how small the batches are. Single barrel probably has 120 bottles give or take in it, so there’s that as well.
[00:07:41] Chuck Carpenter: , all of those things considered it is nice and like interesting. . Unfortunately. Yeah, like, like Robbie said, I like, I like the smell. That’s great. , the initial profile is kind of nice to me, but so far it’s not the first time I’ve had this, but it has been a while. , you have a cinnamon like punch at the end is kind of [00:08:00] not sitting great with me, maybe as it opens up, but I’m, right now I’m kind of feeling like it is above average.
[00:08:05] Chuck Carpenter: It is something that, you know, with the wax top and everything’s kind of nice. , I don’t know. I meant like a five, five and a half maybe. It’s kind of like better than average, but some other things I’ve had recently have really just like wowed me in comparison. So, eh, give or take with that one. Yeah.
[00:08:23] Robbie Wagner: affordable and available.
[00:08:25] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. That’s kind of what I say. It’s like a nice bottle, , to have with friends, but not amazing
[00:08:30] Marc Backes: to the collection, right? Like I would still.
[00:08:34] Chuck Carpenter: the, the collection in my liver. ‘cause that’s usually where I store them. Um, yeah, I don’t.
[00:08:39] Robbie Wagner: on the shelf and Chuck stores his in his body.
[00:08:42] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it’s, it seems to me, keeping me alive. I’m 147 and, uh,
[00:08:48] Robbie Wagner: think it’s like formaldehyde. It just keeps all the things at bay.
[00:08:52] Chuck Carpenter: yes, exactly. So anyway, so if I change that, I’ll let the folks know, [00:09:00] but for now I’m kind of like, I’ll just land on five and a half.
[00:09:03] Marc Backes: All right.
[00:09:03] Robbie Wagner: right. Sounds good. Other things that people might think are about a five and a half. Type script.
[00:09:10] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, not your height. He is taller than that. But you would think, you know,
[00:09:15] Robbie Wagner: well, I mean height jokes from you is, uh,
[00:09:18] Chuck Carpenter: I know it’s a, it’s a stretch,
[00:09:21] Robbie Wagner: aha.
[00:09:22] Chuck Carpenter: um.
[00:09:23] Robbie Wagner: All right. , so we have a few things that are hot takes more lukewarm takes at this point, but in TypeScript, do you use inferred types or explicit types?
[00:09:34] Marc Backes: I would say it depends. I would go, uh, inferred for many cases, but where it’s like important to see. like get from the context that you, which type you need? I would, I would go with explicit. yeah. If it’s not clear what you get, I would put it like I lean a little bit more towards explicit, obviously not for [00:10:00] everything.
[00:10:00] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it always depends, doesn’t it? Yeah.
[00:10:04] Chuck Carpenter: All right. Here’s the crazy one. This is really dividing the community at large, but tailwind or vanilla CSS
[00:10:11] Marc Backes: Yeah, tailwind all the way,
[00:10:13] Chuck Carpenter: here it is controversial. Take right here.
[00:10:15] Robbie Wagner: Is it though? I feel like
[00:10:16] Chuck Carpenter: Not really. Yeah.
[00:10:19] Marc Backes: what I like about Tailwind is, uh, that it sort of forces you to write cleaner components because you don’t want to repeat all that markup, right?
[00:10:30] Marc Backes: So, I didn’t like the idea of it. And then when I tried it, I was like, yeah, okay, this, this is very nice and you are, you are quite fast with it.
[00:10:37] Marc Backes: And as I said, it sort of forces me to cleaner components to like, okay, this is reusable. And really like, make a component for it and not just repeat it like lazily. So, uh, I, I like tailwind.
[00:10:51] Chuck Carpenter: That’s fair. Would buy the T-shirt.
[00:10:54] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, you could, they sell t-shirts.
[00:10:58] Chuck Carpenter: Yes, I know.
[00:10:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:11:00] something that I don’t think does have a t-shirt get rebase or get merge.
[00:11:03] Marc Backes: years and years I’ve been using Merge and I never really got into rebates. , so I would say merge,
[00:11:13] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm.
[00:11:13] Marc Backes: uh, probably
[00:11:15] Chuck Carpenter: you’re not gonna make senior on your next, , review. I know you’re a lead, but actually you’re not gonna make senior, you know, if you, yeah.
[00:11:22] Marc Backes: I can live with that. I can live with that
[00:11:25] Chuck Carpenter: That’s fair.
[00:11:27] Chuck Carpenter: what do you think about nested ternaries
[00:11:29] Marc Backes: Oh no, no, no, no, no. Don’t do that.
[00:11:32] Chuck Carpenter: No, don’t do that.
[00:11:33] Marc Backes: Don’t, like
[00:11:35] Chuck Carpenter: I
[00:11:35] Marc Backes: would only use ternaries when it’s like really short. And like easy to read and then even if it’s one line and then everything else. No,
[00:11:46] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. I
[00:11:49] Robbie Wagner: I used my first Nested Ternary the other day. I think the reason that this became a thing, which I didn’t even realize at
[00:11:56] Robbie Wagner: the time
[00:11:57] Robbie Wagner: cause I don’t use React, but I think it’s a [00:12:00] JSX problem where you’re trying to like decide what to render where, and you’re like, you want it to be a multi if statement, you can’t use
[00:12:08] Robbie Wagner: real IF statements ‘cause you’re in JSX.
[00:12:09] Chuck Carpenter: well, yeah, but you can do the whole component thing where it’s like Boolean and. The component and then if those are both true, which the component’s always true, but if your Boolean’s True, show this one so you can kind of separate it where it gets more readable. This is why people
[00:12:27] Marc Backes: say that re, that react is a mess.
[00:12:30] Chuck Carpenter: Right, you’re not wrong. Yeah.
[00:12:32] Marc Backes: Like the,
[00:12:33] Chuck Carpenter: it’s, I.
[00:12:34] Marc Backes: it can become messy. Like I’m, I’m not the reactive developer. I haven’t worked with React, I have just seen some React code and I was like, what are they doing here? Like, why is it like, it hurts my eyes, like from coming from VJS, it’s like, like the syntax is so clean and nice and then you look at the other at the React code and it’s like, oh my God.
[00:12:52] Chuck Carpenter: Right.
[00:12:53] Robbie Wagner: we feel the same way. Check out whiskey. Fun for a react was a mistake. T-shirt.
[00:12:58] Chuck Carpenter: Oh gosh. There we go. This [00:13:00] is just a plugs episode. So I’m gonna latch onto what you said there about like, you’re not a React developer, but like nobody’s a React developer, right. They are a JavaScript developer who predominantly I disagree that tool or something. Yeah. You don’t think, I mean, there’s jQuery developers too.
[00:13:19] Robbie Wagner: You could learn just react and not know what JavaScript really is. There’s a lot of people that do that. I feel like.
[00:13:23] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, I mean, I, I think people come into it being able to create things in React because that was a learning path, and then whether they, like you know, regressively go deeper into just the core language, possibly. But I don’t know. I just feel like when you brand yourself to a library or framework or whatever, I’m a Tailwind developer.
[00:13:43] Chuck Carpenter: No, but I use Tailwind to, you know, be productive and do some things Yeah.
[00:13:48] Marc Backes: I had a similar, uh, thing like, uh, I consider myself consider, or even still consider myself a view developer. I have worked with View for six years and, um, before [00:14:00] I just used Jake Query and stuff, now that I was looking for a new job. I was like looking for V View jobs and there’s not as many view jobs as React jobs.
[00:14:09] Marc Backes: And then, but then it says like, you need five years of experience in React. And then I’m like, okay, I, I have to discard this because I don’t know. And then I, I posted a tweet, uh, down the tweet, a post on X, like, like.
[00:14:22] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it’s still sweet in our view.
[00:14:24] Marc Backes: uh, asking like, how difficult is it to learn? And people apparently are like, like 80% were like, uh, yeah, you pick it up quickly and there was like 20% of no, like there’s no chance.
[00:14:35] Marc Backes: Like you have to really learn it
[00:14:39] Marc Backes: deep
[00:14:39] Chuck Carpenter: they’re they’re just gatekeepers. Right? You know, it’s like, sure, there are deep nuances to things that you could get into, but like is that 80 plus percent of the use cases? Probably not, and that’s the thing.
[00:14:52] Marc Backes: yeah,
[00:14:54] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, I don’t know what magic you, you know, at five years in that specific library versus, [00:15:00] you know, six plus years in another library.
[00:15:02] Chuck Carpenter: Just understanding like the difference in the syntax, right.
[00:15:06] Robbie Wagner: well these days it’s a lot more similar, like Modern View and Modern React are both kind of like, I don’t know what view calls it. I’m ignorant on that, but it’s like hooks based,
[00:15:15] Marc Backes: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:16] Robbie Wagner: it’s
[00:15:16] Marc Backes: Composable. Yeah.
[00:15:19] Robbie Wagner: so it’s like, it’s a similar paradigm. So like your mental model is probably very similar. , you don’t have to use JSX though, so,
[00:15:27] Marc Backes: Yeah.
[00:15:27] Robbie Wagner: JSX is not great, but
[00:15:29] Marc Backes: Like you can, but I dunno why you would VJ. S.
[00:15:34] Chuck Carpenter: Maybe it just as like a bridge technology, you know, like, oh great, I’ve been using React. Yeah. And you’re like, great, well like
[00:15:42] Marc Backes: Maybe,
[00:15:42] Marc Backes: yeah.
[00:15:43] Chuck Carpenter: take that out of the way, start my projects that way. And then maybe like move to, to not food for thought.
[00:15:49] Robbie Wagner: , do we care about any of the rest of these, Chuck, or should we just go
[00:15:52] Chuck Carpenter: Um, I don’t care about anything. Robbie, you know, this.
[00:15:55] Robbie Wagner: I, I, also have similar opinions, so
[00:15:58] Chuck Carpenter: Okay.
[00:15:58] Robbie Wagner: care about, you’ve [00:16:00] mentioned a few things you wanted to talk about, and I didn’t exactly know what this meant, so I wanted to dive deeper. Can you tell me what a real in quotes code base is?
[00:16:10] Marc Backes: Oh, yes, I know what you’re referring to. when you go on social media, especially on. on Twitter and you see like all these code that people post and like it, it makes you think, especially when you want to get into, let’s say software development or web development and you see this and then you get the idea that all the code looks like super clean and is super neat and. Flawless basically, real code or enterprise legacy stuff is like a whole lot more messy than that. that’s what I was referring to. Why? Why, why is that? we are not living in an, In an ideal world, right? So you have deadline and then another deadline comes, and then you have to take shortcuts.
[00:16:56] Marc Backes: And then there’s not necessarily immediately time to [00:17:00] fix the shortcuts. And then it stays in there. And then five years later you look at it and it’s like, you are like, what happened here? Like, why is this code so messy? And you don’t even remember anymore
[00:17:12] Robbie Wagner: Oh
[00:17:12] Marc Backes: who wrote this? Oh, it was blame me five years ago. today? Yesterday. Yesterday, I think I posted about, had to fix a bug where, , the cause was that the value, uh, a variable had a string undefined instead of real undefined on it.
[00:17:29] Marc Backes: So it, it’s like sort of some legacy stuff that happened somewhere and people in the comments were sort of hinting towards like, oh, how did you code this?
[00:17:39] Marc Backes: Was this code? Code by ai? Or like, just use this thing and like this piece of technology and we will make everything easier. But not if your code base is like 150,000 lines of code. You can’t just plug anything in there. And yeah, so. Ideal code versus [00:18:00] real world code different thing.
[00:18:04] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:18:04] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:18:05] Robbie Wagner: anytime a company starts actually making money and having users, you’re going to start cutting corners and having bad code and building up tech debt because you’re prioritizing what’s gonna make you the most money, not what’s gonna make your developers happy. So you always end up. Tons and tons of tech debt and like if you’ve worked at any company that is of a sufficient size, you’re gonna be like, who wrote all this?
[00:18:27] Robbie Wagner: It’s awful, but that’s just the way it is.
[00:18:30] Marc Backes: Yeah, it is what it is.
[00:18:32] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it works. That’s the thing is make it work is sort of the priority. And that’s when a lot of, deep in inefficiencies could happen, but at the end of the day, it meets the business objective. It works. That’s kind of the real world we live in.
[00:18:46] Marc Backes: Yeah, but I feel like often the, like, the point is not seen that, , the more tech that you accumulate, the more difficult it becomes to create new features and it, [00:19:00] the more easy it becomes to create issues it becomes very easy to to create bugs just because there is so much technical debt.
[00:19:09] Marc Backes: So. it’s important to stress, to management or whatever, to like start eliminating like, it’s okay to cut corners, but eventually it should lead towards getting fixed. At least if, if it’s like something like cutting hard corners, something like that.
[00:19:27] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I think that’s a, a big thing that I’ve always complained about is like nobody wants to prioritize and fund fixing the tech debt. like if you don’t, it’s just gonna become worse and worse Shouldn’t have to ask for permission to fix things. Like if you notice the test coverage is lacking on a thing, or you notice it’s using paradigms from five years ago and you need to update it to like new APIs or whatever, you should just be able to do that as part of your job as an engineer.
[00:19:58] Robbie Wagner: You shouldn’t have to be like, Hey, can I pretty [00:20:00] please update this? Like it should be just allowed as part of your job instead of this like, oh, I must only ship features in the Hackiest way possible.
[00:20:09] Marc Backes: I try to, to incentivize, not incentivize that, but motivate engineers to like, just if you see something that’s fixable quickly, just like, just do it. And uh,
[00:20:21] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s that. That’s kind of how it ends up working in the real world. Like asking permission is a difficult process with which to like negotiate and navigate even. You know, it takes a lot of time to play that game. So you need to sort of a, if you see things along the way, make improvements, and then conversely, like from a team side, you figure out clever ways to interwork what you need.
[00:20:46] Chuck Carpenter: If something needs a refactor, you try to be like, well, we’re touching it with this feature. Is that a chance to like. You know, do a bit of that work as part of what we’re already doing, getting heavy handed [00:21:00] approvals to like, , make major changes or refactors or add 30% more test coverage is a tough thing to like get product people to agree to, to get the business side to agree to.
[00:21:12] Chuck Carpenter: So I always kind of like ask for forgiveness to be honest.
[00:21:15] Marc Backes: can we take three sprints to refactor this?
[00:21:18] Chuck Carpenter: Right. Yeah. That’s always gonna be a no. Ooh. Yeah. Well, let’s defer that to Q3 and talk about it again, you know? And then of course by Q3, you have Q3 more features, objectives, whatever else coming into it. Yeah. We get, yeah, add ai. We’ve gotta add AI somewhere where, I don’t know, somewhere
[00:21:37] Marc Backes: yeah.
[00:21:38] Chuck Carpenter: that’s, uh, okay.
[00:21:39] Chuck Carpenter: Maybe the AI knows where we should add it.
[00:21:42] Robbie Wagner: yeah.
[00:21:43] Robbie Wagner: Related to this, you know, you could always take of your free time and do the things that you don’t feel like you don’t have time for during work hours. is that a good decision? Tell me about how you like, uh, maintain a good work life balance.
[00:21:59] Marc Backes: I used [00:22:00] to be like that. But then I noticed that the company doesn’t really care about it. And, , yeah, work life balance has become more and more important to me in the recent, let’s say five years, maybe tested with, with Covid. It’s just I used to be like the over the top, working into the night, like sort of guy Work-life balance. , now I, like, over the years, I’ve, I’ve gotten to a point where I work for, 28 hours a week for a pretty nice salary. I always prioritize that to like, sort of if I get a little bit less money, like I could get way more than I already do. By working full-time. But I think if you can or at least that’s, that’s me. If I can, I will prioritize time over money because money you, you, you will get money eventually, but the time you won’t get back. So [00:23:00] if I can. Use time I’m not working to do something cool or something fun, something that I enjoy. , I will prioritize, that, and I think it’s, , I felt guilty in the beginning because I used to do so much extra work that nobody was expecting. But I think it’s you, you just have to put your boundaries at one point. You, you just have to say, yeah, well, I’m. I would prefer if we can like, just not do it today, maybe do it tomorrow or whatever. Just not do overtime. this is my limit. Like I work until time, for example, 5:00 PM Which doesn’t mean that I won’t like do longer days at some point, but just if it’s necessary.
[00:23:43] Marc Backes: And, but, and it shouldn’t be the rule. It shouldn’t be like, oh yeah, like we have to, like, I shouldn’t pay with my time for the. screw ups in management. That resulted from, so,
[00:23:55] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, absolutely. It makes tons of sense, I [00:24:00] think like having boundaries there and deciding, like you said, you’re willing to do it when, when necessary, but like, what does necessary look like? And having like some convictions around what necessary is so that, that, Is not taken advantage of and in utilized when actually truly necessary.
[00:24:17] Chuck Carpenter: I also think it’s like different points in your career, like folks are more apt to work extra earlier in their career. I mean, some reasons are, it just takes them longer to figure it out ‘cause they don’t have the experience to get to the answers all the same. , so maybe sometimes that’s an artifact of, of guilt or.
[00:24:36] Chuck Carpenter: Desire to learn. , you spend a little more time, all of a sudden you did a 10 hour day or something like that. And then later in your career, the things that would’ve taken you eight hours now take you two hours or you’re more efficient. And so why should you be punished for being more efficient if you’re still productive in a different block of hours than someone else?
[00:24:56] Chuck Carpenter: It doesn’t make you, well, you should work twice as much now that you’re twice as [00:25:00] efficient. No,
[00:25:00] Chuck Carpenter: so that business gets. Twice as much from you, but pays you the same, you know? So,
[00:25:06] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. There’s also a lot of artificial urgency, like the, you know, saying, can we do it tomorrow? Thing, people will be like, Hey, I’m online right now. I’d like for it to be fixed right now. And you’re like, well, what happens if it’s not? What happens if I don’t work here anymore, starting right now? Like, you know, something will give and it will be okay.
[00:25:24] Robbie Wagner: The world will not end because this thing wasn’t done
[00:25:26] Marc Backes: Yeah.
[00:25:28] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:25:28] Marc Backes: think what happens if, if I, from now on I will be in the hospital for a month? What happens then?
[00:25:35] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:35] Marc Backes: Do. They won’t stop working. They won’t stop doing business, so
[00:25:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:25:40] Marc Backes: be fine. Like for sure. Yeah.
[00:25:43] 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 [00:26:00] read the 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.
[00:26:16] Marc Backes: I mean, it affects your health as well. not sleeping a lot, , thinking a lot about work.
[00:26:21] Marc Backes: Like, I, I try to, like, over the years, I, I can’t tell you how I did it, but I managed to like, after work, not think about work too much. Uh, unless it’s something like super, messy or something, I dunno. But I, I managed to sort of, after I closed my office door. I just don’t think about it. My wife is like, I can’t do that.
[00:26:42] Marc Backes: Like I, I, I am thinking all the time about like, I sort of manage to just mentally close that move on with my day and do after work whatever I want to do.
[00:26:55] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. That’s a skill I feel like I’m always thinking about work and then [00:27:00] like I’ll be at dinner somewhere and be like, oh yeah, that’s how I fixed that thing. I was thinking about it earlier, like, I never really can turn it off.
[00:27:08] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm. So Robbie’s still practicing. He needs to get on that train with you, mark.
[00:27:14] Marc Backes: I don’t know if it if it’s a good or bad thing though, because sometimes you, you just fix issues or walking like outside and then you’re like, oh, I can solve it this way. And then you go home and then you fix it. in my past, I just, . Woke up with a solution to something
[00:27:29] Robbie Wagner: Yep.
[00:27:30] Marc Backes: to some crazy, and then you, you like, you work two days on it, you got nowhere and then you just wake up with a magical solution and it ends up just working. haven’t had one of those in a while.
[00:27:41] Robbie Wagner: I’ve, I’ve dreamt coding many a time woken up and been like, oh, yeah, that’s, that’s what I wanted. But yeah. I totally agree that even if you’re still thinking about work, like the best way to solve problems is to step away from them sometimes. Like, go take
[00:27:57] Marc Backes: Yeah.
[00:27:57] Robbie Wagner: do something else. ‘cause if you’re just staring at a [00:28:00] thing, every time I’ve stared at a thing, it takes me like.
[00:28:02] Robbie Wagner: 15 hours to solve it. But if I like walk away, I can do it in like an hour or two. It’s like, oh yeah, that’s what it was.
[00:28:09] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, relax. Your mind does quite a bit. So, and you can even do that during work hours. So there’s that aspect of it too, is that sitting in front of your computer, there’s the misnomer of if my hands aren’t touching a keyboard, I’m not. Working or, or giving value necessarily, I can’t be monitored otherwise.
[00:28:28] Chuck Carpenter: That’s one of the downsides for some managers about remote culture is they wanna see you at the desk. But even when I worked at a desk, I sometimes would be like, I need a 15 minute walk. So I can just meant.
[00:28:39] Robbie Wagner: get way less done sitting at a desk in an office. ‘cause you have to pretend like you’re doing things. If you’re at home, you can just like do whatever you need to do for your process to get your work done. And as long as you’re getting work done, who cares how long it took you or what you were doing.
[00:28:51] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I mean, if you’re in the right environment, I think that helps a lot because I definitely had been in environments in an office even that [00:29:00] encouraged you to, you know, do what you need to do. Like, like I said, I, I’m gonna get up and take a 15 minute walk around, around the block and just mental break and see where that gets me.
[00:29:10] Marc Backes: if you’re working from home, it helps to have a, uh, if possible, to have a, a room that’s only for working. So you close the door and then you just remove yourself completely from the situation
[00:29:22] Marc Backes: so your mind becomes complete. Like if, if you working from the living room, um, I know not everybody. Can do this. But if you work from the living room and then you, you relax on the couch, like you still see, see the computer sitting there, and then you, you can’t, you, you,
[00:29:36] Marc Backes: you’re
[00:29:36] Chuck Carpenter: You’re thinking about?
[00:29:37] Marc Backes: it, it it won’t work. You have to remove yourself from the, from the situation completely.
[00:29:41] Chuck Carpenter: Com.
[00:29:42] Robbie Wagner: was a, a big advocate for not putting work email on your phone. however, I’ve done that now with my new job, but in my previous job I didn’t have it and it was great ‘cause I just couldn’t see anything. Like if, if it was urgent, someone would like ping me on Slack and, you know, force it to notify me or whatever.
[00:29:58] Robbie Wagner: But. was pretty nice [00:30:00] not seeing all of that after you were done for the day.
[00:30:02] Marc Backes: Yeah, I also don’t have it on my phone. Like if I leave my office, it’s, it will stay here until tomorrow. The issue will be there tomorrow. So it’s, if it’s urgent, someone would call me
[00:30:13] Chuck Carpenter: Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s true.
[00:30:15] Marc Backes: I won’t be happy about it, but they will call me if it’s really urgent. So.
[00:30:18] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, and that’s how they’ll know it. It must be Mark. It’s gonna be real pissed. I’m gonna call him now so that, you know, they, they make a decision there.
[00:30:28] Robbie Wagner: Oh. So, uh, something I’m curious about, you mentioned you’ve been using view for six years.
[00:30:34] Marc Backes: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:35] Robbie Wagner: made you decide on view instead of React? At the time I.
[00:30:39] Marc Backes: I think it was just a random decision, to be honest. Like I worked with, uh, jQuery, just like in the company I, I worked at, and then I, I, I went to a, a conference and they offered workshops and I was like, oh yeah, let’s take this. Like, I, I saw this VJS thing on Twitter, I, I just want to know more about it.
[00:30:58] Marc Backes: And then I learned more about [00:31:00] it, and then I started implementing that work, and then it just, I just stuck with it like. it’s just, it is just a random decision. if they would have had a React workshop, I would probably be working in React right now. So
[00:31:12] Chuck Carpenter: So it’s just about access and timing. Yeah. We need to diversify.
[00:31:19] Chuck Carpenter: I wanna know about this one. What do you think about Ryan Reynolds speaking at Post Con?
[00:31:23] Marc Backes: I mean, it, it’s insanely. Right, but is it necessary though? Like what is he going to talk about? Like, I, I just saw he’s going to speak. I didn’t see what he’s going to speak about. And may it doesn’t matter. Yeah.
[00:31:39] Marc Backes: But
[00:31:39] Chuck Carpenter: don’t think he’s going to speak about like API Testing tools?
[00:31:43] Marc Backes: like me.
[00:31:45] Robbie Wagner: him. I think he could get up there and do a really well informed speech about things for
[00:31:50] Marc Backes: No,
[00:31:50] Robbie Wagner: things.
[00:31:51] Marc Backes: uh, I, I could imagine him talking about, um, entrepreneurship. He has like his gin, , brand, like,
[00:31:58] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:31:58] Marc Backes: ventures [00:32:00] probably.
[00:32:00] Chuck Carpenter: Mint, mobile, uh, bunch of stuff.
[00:32:03] Marc Backes: Yeah. So I think it will be very cool, like, like it’s insanely cool to have this person speak there, but like, where do you get the funds from and what are you cutting? Because of it? Or is he just like a buddy of the organizer and he does it for
[00:32:19] Marc Backes: not that much money, but I don’t think so.
[00:32:22] Robbie Wagner: I think he’s the buddy of $500,000 is my guess.
[00:32:25] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, Yeah, right. Yeah. That’s a good friend to have.
[00:32:29] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:32:30] Marc Backes: I mean, at least tech conference are back, so it used to be very, very slim Pickens. But we are back at least.
[00:32:40] Chuck Carpenter: Are you going into any this year?
[00:32:42] Marc Backes: I am going to render Atlanta in June.
[00:32:45] Chuck Carpenter: Ah, yes.
[00:32:47] Marc Backes: of you gonna be there?
[00:32:47] Robbie Wagner: No, my wife is pregnant with twins right now and. At the latest, we’ll be giving birth by May 12th, so
[00:32:56] Marc Backes: okay.
[00:32:56] Robbie Wagner: won’t be there.
[00:32:58] Chuck Carpenter: Right. Little, [00:33:00]
[00:33:00] Robbie Wagner: Thank you.
[00:33:01] Chuck Carpenter: little tied up in that way, I guess. Twins?
[00:33:05] Marc Backes: Yeah, yeah,
[00:33:06] Robbie Wagner: went, what? Uh, two, two years ago, three years
[00:33:08] Chuck Carpenter: I think so.
[00:33:09] Robbie Wagner: ago. Who knows?
[00:33:10] Chuck Carpenter: Back when you were just an infant. Little Robbie. Yeah.
[00:33:15] Robbie Wagner: uh, yeah, we, we went a couple years back and it was, it was really fun. Definitely would recommend. ,
[00:33:19] Robbie Wagner: but yeah. I
[00:33:20] Marc Backes: I always wanted to speak there at least be there. , but I couldn’t justify the, the cost to just go and attend it, like alone. The flight is like. Too expensive to just go there.
[00:33:33] Robbie Wagner: yeah,
[00:33:33] Marc Backes: yeah, now I was invited to speak. get part of my travel reimbursed, so that’s nice hotel as well. So
[00:33:41] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that helps.
[00:33:42] Marc Backes: the, with the, trip to, to, uh, my in-laws in Mexico.
[00:33:46] Marc Backes: So that all works out Great.
[00:33:48] Chuck Carpenter: interesting. Your in-laws in Mexico, like Luxembourg to Mexico. There’s so many connections here that are very curious to me. And where are you from actually?
[00:33:59] Marc Backes: I am from [00:34:00] Luxembourg.
[00:34:00] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, okay. Well that makes that easy. I.
[00:34:03] Chuck Carpenter: And then you’ve, well, you’ve obviously been to Mexico before, I guess.
[00:34:07] Marc Backes: after university, I, I moved to Mexico for five years actually,
[00:34:11] Marc Backes: because
[00:34:12] Chuck Carpenter: Huh?
[00:34:12] Marc Backes: like, uh, I, I met someone in, where I studied in, in Austria. I met someone from Mexico and after. after I was done with my masters, they were like, Hey, you wanna come to Mexico and like, work stuff? And I was like, I have nothing to do.
[00:34:26] Marc Backes: I have nothing on my agenda. And I, I just
[00:34:30] Chuck Carpenter: Went with it.
[00:34:31] Marc Backes: And there I met my, my now wife, so
[00:34:34] Chuck Carpenter: That’s cool.
[00:34:35] Marc Backes: turns out great. And then we, we came back here.
[00:34:37] Robbie Wagner: I think there were like five languages. Your website said you were fluent in a Spanish. One of those.
[00:34:42] Marc Backes: Yeah, we
[00:34:43] Chuck Carpenter: Thought,
[00:34:44] Marc Backes: at home. Yeah.
[00:34:45] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:34:45] Marc Backes: Yeah, does.
[00:34:47] Chuck Carpenter: So you are speaking at render, they’re taking care of part of your travel, tying it into a very cool trip. So that’s a really fun,
[00:34:54] Chuck Carpenter: , have you learned to make tortillas yet?
[00:34:56] Marc Backes: Uh, yes.
[00:34:57] Chuck Carpenter: Nice.
[00:34:58] Marc Backes: fact, I did. Yeah.
[00:34:59] Chuck Carpenter: family and I [00:35:00] are planning to move to Italy in the summer. Another reason why I can’t go to render either.
[00:35:05] Chuck Carpenter: anyway, that’s like high on my list right now. I need to learn how to make tortillas ‘cause I live in Phoenix. We have access to great Mexican food here, Italy, you know, not so much great food otherwise.
[00:35:16] Robbie Wagner: word great with Mexican food in Italy. You definitely don’t.
[00:35:20] Chuck Carpenter: No, I don’t think I would. I, I did see some ingredients in grocery stores, but it looked like it was like, Ortega stuff that had expired 10 years ago, so I don’t, oh, yeah. None of that stuff.
[00:35:33] Marc Backes: tortillas. Yeah,
[00:35:34] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. yeah. No, no. Good stuff. So I was like, I’ll just make ‘em. I love a breakfast burrito, so that’s kind of my soft spot.
[00:35:42] Chuck Carpenter: But I need a good tortilla is the base for that. They, they have all the other ingredients, but I need a tortilla.
[00:35:48] Chuck Carpenter: I know.
[00:35:48] Robbie Wagner: tortilla. tacos.
[00:35:51] Chuck Carpenter: I would make corn tortilla breakfast tacos, but a breakfast burrito definitely calls for flour.
[00:35:56] Robbie Wagner: I guess burrito is never corn ‘cause it wouldn’t hold up.
[00:35:59] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:35:59] Chuck Carpenter: [00:36:00] I am glad you worked that out.
[00:36:02] Robbie Wagner: Listen, I get Taco Bell sometimes and it’s uh,
[00:36:06] Chuck Carpenter: Sometimes.
[00:36:07] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. No, it’s more of those crunchy shelled tacos that Mark is, uh, sneering his, his nose up at. Like, Hmm. No, his wife would be disappointed. , look, look.
[00:36:20] Marc Backes: it though, probably. I
[00:36:22] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Crunchy tacos can be good. They’re their own thing, but they’re like American food, right? Like they’re,
[00:36:28] Marc Backes: it’s, like, yeah, it’s TexMex. It’s still good, right? It’s
[00:36:31] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. your in-laws might feel differently, but I don’t know. I’m not gonna speak for them.
[00:36:37] Marc Backes: Yeah, for, for me, Mexican food is on the, probably the best food you can have in the world
[00:36:44] Robbie Wagner: yeah.
[00:36:44] Marc Backes: there. Like at least, very least in the top three. So
[00:36:48] Chuck Carpenter: I agree with that. I could definitely get that.
[00:36:50] Marc Backes: street street food. Like some, like some Truck where they cook with a ton of grease and you, you know, you’re gonna get sick of it. So [00:37:00] those are the best.
[00:37:02] Chuck Carpenter: Those are the tastiest gets get sick or not, and you can get like 20 tacos for like 10 bucks. It’s crazy.
[00:37:09] Robbie Wagner: All right, so I do want to move into some what not stuff. , this is kind of maybe not a hundred percent whatnot, a little bit tech related. I read 0% of your blog post about inbox zero, but I wanted to ask you about it on the spot. You can tell me about it. I don’t have to read it. So is inbox zero actually a thing you can do?
[00:37:29] Marc Backes: I do it every day. Yeah.
[00:37:31] Robbie Wagner: Really?
[00:37:32] Marc Backes: you just start by just marking all your emails or almost all your emails is. Done. Like from the, just accept the ones that are like, not older than a month. And then you just go, I did this, I did this, I did this. I reschedule it, or, uh, I delete it. I mark it as spam.
[00:37:51] Marc Backes: But every email has an action to it. Like, if you can’t do it right now, just reschedule it. Just remind me. Later, or you mark it as [00:38:00] done and there’s not much else to do. You mark as spam, you done, you delete it or you reschedule. There’s nothing else to do. And then when you just stay on top of that, you are like, let me just check. How is my inbox? Zero stats, 225 weeks in box zero.
[00:38:19] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm,
[00:38:21] Chuck Carpenter: that’s pretty solid.
[00:38:22] Robbie Wagner: I’m probably like, I don’t know how many weeks has email existed now? , All of those weeks been about like 7,000 unread emails,
[00:38:31] Marc Backes: Yeah.
[00:38:32] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:38:33] Robbie Wagner: can’t even get started. I.
[00:38:34] Marc Backes: mark, everything is done like from the last, like until like maybe two weeks ago. And then like, because if there was something uh, important about it, It will come back eventually or
[00:38:47] Chuck Carpenter: That’s a good point.
[00:38:48] Marc Backes: yeah. So. It’s like if, if, if you owe money to someone, they will write another email. So don’t worry about that too much. Just mark everything as done. And then you just go from the last [00:39:00] few. You are like, okay, I respond to this person, I reschedule, I mark it as done, and then it,
[00:39:04] Robbie Wagner: Okay.
[00:39:05] Chuck Carpenter: There you go.
[00:39:06] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Clear out. 6,000 plus. Yeah. Clean slate. Seems like a good way to go about it.
[00:39:12] Marc Backes: , superhuman for this.
[00:39:14] Robbie Wagner: Hmm.
[00:39:15] Marc Backes: maybe, maybe they can sponsor the episode as well and then you get free, uh,
[00:39:19] Robbie Wagner: they
[00:39:20] Marc Backes: free subscription. Yeah. But yeah, I mean like years ago I just got onto the hype train and I never left it, so I dunno if it’s worth. The cost, but I try to not think about it too much because I, I actually like how, how the software works, but you can probably do this with other email clients as well, so
[00:39:40] Robbie Wagner: I used it for, I don’t know, six months or so. It was very expensive, but it was like, everything had a keyboard command. It was
[00:39:47] Robbie Wagner: very like easy to use and keep up with, and I think they’re the best client. I just don’t want to give them
[00:39:53] Robbie Wagner: piles of money, so I don’t use them.
[00:39:56] Marc Backes: It’s like a nail vim for email, but [00:40:00] expensive.
[00:40:01] Chuck Carpenter: right. Yeah. Subscriptions for so much. I’m just like anti subscription lately. I just want like, can I pay you a flat fee and just get your software? Great. I.
[00:40:10] Marc Backes: I’m not a fan, but yeah. What do you want to do? Most of it is,
[00:40:14] Marc Backes: of anything is subscription.
[00:40:17] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:40:18] Marc Backes: Yeah.
[00:40:19] Chuck Carpenter: that’s right. So you could,
[00:40:25] Chuck Carpenter: oh man.
[00:40:26] Chuck Carpenter: So it says here in this, uh, internet document that you’re learning to be a pilot.
[00:40:31] Marc Backes: Yeah, that’s true.
[00:40:33] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Airplane’s, not helicopters. Right.
[00:40:36] Marc Backes: Airplanes. Yes.
[00:40:37] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. That seems better. Or you can, you know, boat pilot. No, that’s like, anyway, yada, yada. Learning to fly. You didn’t Yeah. Pilot things. Okay. Airplanes, not helicopters. Helicopters are scary.
[00:40:51] Chuck Carpenter: Like, that’s this crazy town. Not for me.
[00:40:54] Marc Backes: I don’t, I don’t trust helicopters.
[00:40:57] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. As you should not, , [00:41:00] how long have you been trying or working on, , pilot training?
[00:41:02] Marc Backes: Oh. Way too long. And I’m happy when it’s over. Since, uh, October, 2020. 2022, sorry,
[00:41:11] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, okay. I was gonna say woo.
[00:41:13] Marc Backes: uh, uh, flying,, like physically flying it for like, since like two years. and yeah, a lot of people will finish in like a year or less, looks like I’m a slow learner, first of all.
[00:41:25] Marc Backes: And second, the environment. Like there’s a lot of bad weather. If the weather’s bad, I can’t go fly.
[00:41:30] Marc Backes: If
[00:41:31] Chuck Carpenter: Right.
[00:41:31] Marc Backes: isn’t available, you can’t go fly. If the airplane isn’t available, you can’t go fly. the most challenging thing about all of this, actually, I think it’s like the most challenging thing I have done. Ever Not because it’s so hard to fly a plane. It’s you need like the patience. You really need the patience to, when you learn to, to drive a car. You just go with someone that has a car and you sit in there and then you just go and you can go as much time as you [00:42:00] want.
[00:42:00] Marc Backes: But here you really have to look that the weather is good, the airplane has to be there. The , instructor has to be available. You have to plan your flight, which takes to three, four hours each flight, and then It might still get canceled for, , some reason and like the patients like it get canceled again.
[00:42:19] Marc Backes: five weeks of rainy weather and you can’t go the patients you need to, to like suffer through all of that or to, yeah, it’s suffering when you can’t just advance in your training. you really need the patience. And I, I think I, I really learned to be more patience as well with the whole thing. And the whole thing, like the, like weather, like you can’t control the weather. Why be upset about it? you get sort of used to it, but it’s still like, I think it’s the hardest thing I’ve done because I, I’m not a very patient person. uh
[00:42:50] Chuck Carpenter: it does seem like a thing you want to get right? Yeah.
[00:42:53] Robbie Wagner: did they make you do a specific number of flights to like be done?
[00:42:57] Marc Backes: Yeah, yeah. There’s a, a [00:43:00] minimum requirement, but, , I need to be endorsed by my instructor to take the exam. So I can’t, like, for example, now, like I’m taking the last test, so I get the endorsement for my family exam, so I’m this short before. it. if you are not ready or safe in any aspect of it, they make you do more training, which is a good thing.
[00:43:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, for sure.
[00:43:26] Marc Backes: because I, I, I would just do this privately. I won’t go commercial or anything. So all I learn is now, like I, I won’t after that if, if I have some bad habits there. Uh, nobody will take them away from me, and so I want to be as good as I want. So I’m now like the minimum is 45 flying hours.
[00:43:46] Marc Backes: I have 130, so way over the minimum. But I mean, I’m, I’m happy that I will be safe out there, so,
[00:43:54] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that seems like a good concern to like continue on and like Absolutely. [00:44:00] Have a hundred percent confidence as to the best of your ability. Yeah,
[00:44:04] Robbie Wagner: go wrong, so yes,
[00:44:05] Chuck Carpenter: yeah.
[00:44:06] Robbie Wagner: something that is much lower stakes. Tell me about roasting your own coffee.
[00:44:11] Marc Backes: Oh yes. A random thing. Also, , at the end of last year, I was like, oh, it would be like so fun to roast coffee because I, I’ve been brewing my, uh, my own coffee at home for a few years now, since, since Covid actually, And I was like, oh, it would be so cool to roast in my own coffee. And then I, I did some research and it seems to be sort of also intensive to learn, like, not intensive, but. You can get it wrong quite easily, but I found a, uh, a very small roaster, also a high tech thing, like super geeky thing, like you can control it with an app. Like you can see the, the profile that it wrote, like in like temperature, how it goes and how it progresses during the few minutes that it roast the coffee.
[00:44:58] Marc Backes: And I was like, yeah, this [00:45:00] looks. easy enough for me to, to use this. So, because others are like, you just put it in and then you control the, the temperature by yourself. Like I’m not very capable there. I feel. like this thing you just, like, they even sell you beans and then you scan the beans and they give you a roasting profile for those beans, like the suggested roasting profile.
[00:45:23] Marc Backes: So you select it, you put in the beans, it roasts for you, you take it out. So it’s not that hands-on as others, but uh, you can still like adjust the profile and you get interesting results from it. it is just like a little fun thing to do. I use it a little bit as a, let’s say, personal branding thing at the conference.
[00:45:48] Marc Backes: I like every year, I love to go to VJS Amsterdam. It’s my favorite conference. I. Ever. I really love going there so by now I know many people in the community and I took how many, like [00:46:00] 40, I think 40 bags of self roasted coffee to just give away to, to my friends and people that I know there. And people love it.
[00:46:07] Marc Backes: Like it is what, like, now I’m gonna be the guy, like, hey, the guy that brings the coffee.
[00:46:11] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:46:13] Marc Backes: it’s a nice, a neat little marketing Uh, like personal branding trick to sort of like stick out, you dunno. Like will remember you for what?
[00:46:25] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:46:26] Marc Backes: told you, uh, before I, I’ve been, looking like for a new job.
[00:46:29] Marc Backes: I, I found a new job I can’t tell yet, which, but that job was also, uh, I think like influenced by random things. Like I, at VJS Amsterdam, I do like videos for the conference. Uh, with another speaker. Like we, we do it like since, for the year, for the last four years. And I think people like remember me and it’s not, of course not the only reason I got the job, but it’s like, maybe someone remember me because I, I know I interviewed people from the team like, you never know [00:47:00] who remembers you for what?
[00:47:01] Marc Backes: And it’s like, oh yeah, this guy. And I dunno, like, I feel like it’s that sort of The luck that I dunno, maybe like five years from now, I’m, I need something and someone is like, Hey, this guy, I remember you. Like, come on. Like, let’s, let’s see if we can do something together. I dunno.
[00:47:21] Chuck Carpenter: Every little bit like kind of helps in a way of like helping you stand out from a stranger for for sure. So community.
[00:47:29] Robbie Wagner: a business plan for you here though. Have you thought Oh
[00:47:33] Robbie Wagner: roasting coffee and selling it through a VIT plugin? You could be like an adjacent terminal coffee, but for view developers or VT developers, I guess anyone that uses vt doesn’t have to be view, but.
[00:47:45] Marc Backes: Yeah.
[00:47:46] Chuck Carpenter: It’s not, not the worst idea I’ve heard. You know, they try to do donations through that
[00:47:51] Marc Backes: coffee. I, I will buy them just I rewrite Dax. Hey, I will buy you for like five, five bucks.
[00:47:59] Chuck Carpenter: five, [00:48:00] I think they’re making more than five bucks. I don’t know. I could be wrong, but.
[00:48:04] Marc Backes: no, I think, I think it’s a nice, like, don’t think they get rich of it, but I think it’s a nice thing.
[00:48:10] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I mean there’s like 12 of them though, so the split can’t be great right now ‘cause we’ll see what they build up to.
[00:48:17] Robbie Wagner: I think they probably make more off of all of their like appearances and stuff than the coffee,
[00:48:23] Marc Backes: Yeah, but I mean the coffee is a great, like also marketing too, like, and it’s like a genius thing to like coffee developers, developers love usually coffee and then they just sell it through terminal. Like just the idea, the geeky idea behind it is just, it shows like a lot of creativity. So dunno. I know. And now have in mind a lot of people from the team that I know just because of the coffee and I’m like, oh yeah, like this must be a creative person. I dunno, I have that like in my mind, like, oh, these are creative people. Like [00:49:00] it’s, it’s a genius idea. It, you probably don’t get rich of it, but it’s a nice idea.
[00:49:05] Chuck Carpenter: it helps people stand out, like you were saying, and obviously they’re trying, you know, they’re pursuing their own separate things as well, so to kind of just have a thing to let people know more about them and what they’re doing. I mean, live streaming, the creation of the app was pretty cool.
[00:49:22] Chuck Carpenter: And then launching the coffee and yeah, that’s been like a series of very interesting tech-centric marketing. Moves.
[00:49:31] Robbie Wagner: All much more business savvy than I am.
[00:49:34] Robbie Wagner: But Turns out. Yeah. Well, you know, you’re a work four. They are a, I don’t know. Anyway, they’re, they’re not W twos,
[00:49:44] Robbie Wagner: I am not an idea man.
[00:49:46] Chuck Carpenter: right? There you go. Pluses and minuses. But then again, like, don’t undercut any of your ideas. Maybe you just roast coffee and take it to a conference. That’s also kind of a cool idea. Nothing wrong with that.
[00:49:57] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:49:58] Marc Backes: Yeah, you never know what comes out of [00:50:00] it. I dunno.
[00:50:01] Chuck Carpenter: Who knows? 10 years from now they’re like, oh, where’s that coffee guy?
[00:50:04] Marc Backes: thought about like, like selling, like start selling it, but then it’s the whole thing, like, because I handle food, I need like a special authorization from the government and then it’s like a whole thing and like I just do this in my kitchen. Like,
[00:50:19] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:50:20] Marc Backes: yeah, just, I won’t sell it. I will just.
[00:50:22] Chuck Carpenter: Set up a little stand outside of your house and like, you know, sell it there, people walking by.
[00:50:27] Marc Backes: Yeah, and hope nobody,
[00:50:29] Robbie Wagner: uh, that like they do the weed business in DC You can’t buy the weed, but you can buy a shirt and then they give
[00:50:36] Chuck Carpenter: Oh. A gift with Yeah. This is a thing with, yeah. With, with, uh, cannabis in Washington DC it’s only illegal to sell, but it’s not illegal to have it, and it’s not illegal to give it. So they would sell art and you get a free gift with purchase.
[00:50:50] Marc Backes: Yeah.
[00:50:51] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:50:51] Marc Backes: Wasn’t this a story of, , Jack Daniels back in, like in the beginning, like you, I don’t know what you had to buy, but [00:51:00] you got a free bottle of whiskey with it.
[00:51:03] Chuck Carpenter: Interesting. I don’t know that story, but now I wanna look it up.
[00:51:06] Robbie Wagner: made in a dry county, so I could see them not being able to sell it there if that was like the original
[00:51:13] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I, there you go. Dumbfounded on that one, but I definitely will look it up. Yeah, it sounds like a good story.
[00:51:19] Robbie Wagner: All right. We are about at time here. Is there anything you’d like to plug before we end?
[00:51:23] Marc Backes: not really. Maybe if you are at render Atlanta, come say hi.
[00:51:28] Chuck Carpenter: There you go. Come. Are you bringing coffee to Atlanta? Oh, nice. There you go. So that’s a seek
[00:51:36] Marc Backes: make some more coffee because there’s so many. people that I haven’t met before.
[00:51:41] Chuck Carpenter: right?
[00:51:42] Marc Backes: to stand out. Right?
[00:51:43] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah, that, that’s a good one there,
[00:51:45] Robbie Wagner: Chuck and I will have you leave some coffee with Kelly Vaughn. ‘cause I’m sure she’ll be there
[00:51:50] Chuck Carpenter: right?
[00:51:51] Robbie Wagner: take it from her one day.
[00:51:53] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Perfect.
[00:51:54] Marc Backes: Okay.
[00:51:55] Chuck Carpenter: All right, we’ll let her know. Please seek you out, , give you a whiskey from us.
[00:51:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:52:00] Cool. All right. Thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll catch you next time.
[00:52:04] Chuck Carpenter: Boom.
[00:52:04] Marc Backes: having me guys, and thanks for listening everyone.
[00:52:07] 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.