FounderQuest
FounderQuest
Our Ops Are Smooth Like A Jar Of Skippy
Show Notes:
Links:
Micromort
Noblesse oblige
Josh's dotfiles
GitHub Code Spaces
Full Transcript:
Ben:
Yeah. I've been holding out for the new MacBook Pros. The M1 is pretty tempting, but I want whatever comes next. I want the 16-inch new hotness that's apparently supposed to be launching in November, but I've been waiting for it so patiently for so long now.
Josh:
Will they have the M2?
Ben:
Yeah, either or that or M1X. People are kind of unsure what the odds are.
Starr:
Why do they do that? Why did they make an M1 if they can't make an M2? Why do they have to keep... You just started, people. You can just have a normal naming scheme that just increments. Why not?
Josh:
M1.1?
Ben:
That would be awesome.
Starr:
Oh, Lord.
Josh:
Yeah, it would.
Ben:
M1A, Beachfront Avenue.
Starr:
So last week we did an Ask Me Anything on Indie Hackers, and that was a lot of fun.
Josh:
It was a lot of fun.
Starr:
I don't know. One of the most interesting questions on there was some guy was just like, "Are you rich?" I started thinking about it. I was like, "I literally have no idea." It reminded me of when I used to live in New York briefly in the '90s or, no, the early '00s. There was a Village Voice article in which they found... They started out with somebody not making very much money, and they're like, "Hey, what is rich to you?" Then that person described that. Then they went and found a person who had that level of income and stuff and they asked them, and it just kept going up long past the point where... Basically, nobody ever was like, "Yeah, I'm rich."
Josh:
Yeah. At the end, they're like, "Jeff Bezos, what is rich? What is rich to you?"
Starr:
Yeah.
Josh:
He's like, "Own your own star system."
Starr:
So, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm doing pretty good for myself because I went to fill up my car with gas the other day and I just didn't even look at the price. The other day, I wanted to snack, so I just got a whole bag of cashews, and I was just chowing down on those. I didn't need to save that. I could always get another bag of cashews.
Ben:
Cashews are my arch nemesis, man. I can't pass up the cashews. As far as the nut kingdom, man, they are my weakness.
Starr:
I know. It's the subtle sweetness.
Ben:
It's so good. The buttery goodness.
Starr:
Yeah, the smoothness of the texture, the subtle sweetness, it's all there.
Ben:
That and pistachios. I could die eating cashews and pistachios.
Josh:
There you go. I like pistachios.
Ben:
Speaking of being rich, did you see Patrick McKenzie's tweet about noblesse oblige?
Josh:
No. Tell me.
Ben:
Yeah, we'll have to link it up in the show notes. But, basically, the idea is when you reach a certain level of richness, I guess, when you feel kind of rich, you should be super generous, right? So noblesse oblige is the notion that nobility should act nobly. If you have been entrusted with this respect of the community and you're a noble, then you ought to act a certain way. You got to act like a noble, right? You should be respectful and et cetera. So Patio was applying this to modern day, and he's like, "Well, we should bring this back," like if you're a well-paid software developer living in the United States of America, you go and you purchase something, let's say a coffee, that has basically zero impact on your budget, right? You don't notice that $10 or whatever that you're spending. Then just normalize giving a 100% tip because you will hardly feel it, but the person you're giving it to, that'll just make their day, right? So doing things like that. I was like, "Oh, that's"-
Josh:
Being generous.
Ben:
Yeah, it's being generous. Yeah. So I like that idea.
Josh:
That's cool.
Ben:
So-
Starr:
So it's okay to be rich as long as you're not a rich asshole.
Ben:
Exactly. Exactly. That's a good way to bring it forward there, Starr.
Starr:
There you go. I don't know. Yeah. I think there's some historical... I don't know. The phrase noblesse oblige kind of grates at me a little bit in a way that I can't quite articulate in this moment, but I'll think about that, and I will get back with you.
Josh:
Wait. Are you saying you don't identify as part of the nobility?
Starr:
No.
Ben:
I mean, I think there's a lot of things from the regency period that we should bring back, like governesses, because who wants to send your child to school in the middle of a COVID pandemic? So just bring the teacher home, right?
Starr:
Yeah. That's pretty sexist. Why does it have to be gendered? Anyway.
Ben:
Okay, it could be a governor, but you might get a little misunderstanding. All of a sudden, you've got Jay Inslee showing up on your doorstep, "I heard you wanted me to come teach your kids."
Josh:
I don't know. I'll just take an algorithm in the home to teach my kids, just entrust them to it.
Starr:
Yeah. Oh, speaking of bringing things back, I told y'all, but I'll tell our podcast listeners. On Sunday, I'm driving to Tacoma to go to somebody's basement and look at a 100-year old printing press to possibly transport to Seattle and put in my office for no good reason that I can think of. It just seems to be something that I'm doing.
Josh:
Do you like that none of us actually asked you what you were intending to do with it? I was like, "Yeah, just let me know when you need to move it. I'm there." I just assumed you were going to do something cool with it, but ... Yeah.
Starr:
I appreciate that. I appreciate the support. I'm going to make little zines or something. I don't know.
Josh:
Yeah. If I get a lifetime subscription to your zine-
Starr:
Okay, awesome.
Josh:
... that would be payment.
Starr:
Done. Done.
Josh:
Cool.
Ben:
Yeah, sign me up, too. I'll be there.
Starr:
Well, I appreciate that.
Ben:
I mean, who could resist that invitation, right, because you get to... If you get to help with moving that thing, you get to see it, you get to touch it and play with it, but you don't have to keep it. It's somebody else's problem when you're done with the day, so sounds great to me.
Starr:
There you go. Well, I mean, if you read the forums about these things, this is one of the smaller ones, so people are just like, "Ah, no big deal. No big deal. It's okay." But I was happy to hear that there's no stairs involved.
Ben:
That is the deal-breaker. Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah. But it-
Ben:
If you ever get the friend helping you to move their piano, you always ask, "Okay, how many flights of steps," right?
Starr:
Yeah. Oh, I just thought of something I could do with it. I could make us all nice business card to hand out to nobody.
Ben:
Because we're not going anywhere.
Josh:
I just think of my last six attempts at having business cards. They're all still sitting in my closet, all six boxes of-
Starr:
I know. People look at you like, "What, really, a business card? What?"
Josh:
Yeah, like all six generations.
Starr:
Yeah.
Ben:
I hand out one or two per year. Yeah, just random people and like, "Hey, here's my phone number." It's an easy way to give it to somebody.
Josh:
Just people on the street?
Ben:
Exactly. Like a decent fellow, "Here you go." Thank you.
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
It's like, "I've got 1000 of these. I got to justify the cost somehow."
Josh:
We got to move these.
Starr:
We could start invoicing our customers by snail mail. I could print a really nice letterhead.
Ben:
I think we have a few customers who would be delighted to receive a paper invoice from us because then they would have an excuse to not pay us for 90 days.
Starr:
Yeah.
Josh:
Isn't owning a printing press like owning a truck, though? Once people know you have it, everyone wants to borrow it.
Starr:
It's going to be pretty hard to borrow for a 1000-pound piece of iron.
Josh:
Well, they're going to want to come over and hang out in your basement and do their printing. This is the Pacific Northwest, like-
Starr:
It's their manifestos.
Josh:
Yeah. They got to print their manifestos, lists of demands.
Starr:
They don't want the establishment at Kinko's to be able to see.
Josh:
Right.
Ben:
I don't know. It's got to put you on a special kind of watch list, though, if you have a printing press in your home, right? All of a sudden, some people are really interested in what you're up to.
Josh:
It's like a legacy watch list.
Ben:
I'm just flashing back to, yeah, in the 1800s when cities, towns would get all-
Starr:
There you go.
Josh:
Well, yeah, because they're like-
Ben:
The mob would come out and burn down the printing press building and stuff.
Josh:
If you wanted to be a propagandist back then, you had to buy a printing press and then you get put on a watch list. That just never went away. They're still looking for those people. They just don't find as many of them these days.
Starr:
Yeah. It's so inefficient. It's not the super efficient way of getting the word out, though, I hear, unless you want to be one of those people handing out leaflets on the side of the road.
Josh:
Well, you could paper windshields in parking lots.
Starr:
Oh, there you go. Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah, that's how they used to do it.
Starr:
No, look at my beautifully hand-crafted leaflet that you're going to throw in the gutter.
Josh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben:
I think you just settled on what your next adventure's going to be after Honeybadger. You're ready to put this business aside and focus on printing up flyers for your local missing cat.
Starr:
There you go. There you go. Band flyers, that's big business.
Josh:
But you could get into fancy paper. That's a whole thing up here. It's pretty cool, actually.
Starr:
Yeah. I don't know. Really, I was like, "Oh, it'd be cool to have a big thing to tinker with." I'm learning about myself that I like having just a big physical project going on, and I'm pretty... Like, I built this backyard office, and that took up two years of my time. Ever since then, I don't have a big physical thing to work on, so I'm thinking this might fill that niche, that niche, sorry. I read a thing that's like don't say niche, Americans. Niche.
Ben:
I don't know, Starr. Maybe you should think of the children and then think about 50 years from now when you're dead and Ida's cleaning out the house and she's all like, "Why is there this printing press?"
Starr:
Oh, there you go.
Josh:
Have to move it.
Starr:
They'll just sell it with the house.
Ben:
There you go.
Starr:
Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is, is that it is wider than the doorway, so I would either have to dissemble it partially or take out the door. I put the door in, so I know how to take it out, so there is a good chance the door's coming out because I have less chance of messing something up if I do that one. But we'll see.
Ben:
Echo that.
Starr:
Well, thank you.
Josh:
You should've put one of those roll-up doors in there.
Starr:
I should've, yeah.
Josh:
Those are cool.
Starr:
What was I thinking?
Josh:
You really did not plan ahead for this.
Starr:
Yeah. I mean, walls are really only a couple of thin pieces of plywood, and you can just saw through it.
Josh:
Just a small refactor.
Starr:
Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
And that would-
Josh:
Did y'all see that someone listened to every episode of this podcast in a row?
Starr:
I know. I feel so bad. I feel so bad for them.
Josh:
Speaking of-
Starr:
We're sorry. We're so sorry.
Ben:
I was feeling admiration. I'm like, "Wow, that's impressive," like the endurance of it.
Starr:
I just think we would've made different decisions.
Ben:
I don't know. But not-
Josh:
Maybe it's pretty good. I haven't gone back and gone through it all and never will, but-
Ben:
Well, I mean, not only did they say they listened to every episode, but then they were eager for more. They were like, "When are you getting done with your break?" So I guess-
Starr:
There you go.
Ben:
... that net it was positive, but-
Josh:
We must not be too repetitive.
Ben:
Must not.
Starr:
Stockholm syndrome.
Josh:
We're sorry.
Ben:
Well...
Starr:
I'm sorry. I don't have anything informative to add, so I'm just going to be shit-posting this whole episode.
Ben:
Well, I've had an amazing week since we last chatted. I kept reflecting on how I couldn't remember anything that I did over the past whatever months. Well, this past week, I can remember a whole bunch of things that I did. I've been crazy busy and getting a bunch of little things knocked out. But today, today was the capstone of the week because I rolled over our main Redis cluster that we use for all of our jobs, all of the incoming notices and whatevers. Yeah, rolled over to a new Redis cluster with zero downtime, no dropped data, nobody even noticed. It was just smooth as-
Starr:
Oh my God.
Josh:
I saw that.
Starr:
Awesome.
Ben:
It's going pretty good.
Starr:
Just like butter?
Ben:
Just like butter.
Starr:
They slid right out of that old Redis instance and just into this new... Is it an AWS-managed type thing?
Ben:
Yeah, both of them were. They all went on the new one, but... Yeah.
Josh:
It's, what, ElastiCache?
Ben:
Yep. Smooth like a new jar of Skippy.
Josh:
I saw that you put that in our ops channel or something.
Ben:
Yeah. Yeah, that's the topic in our ops channel.
Josh:
So it's the subject or the topic, yeah. We're making ops run, yeah, like a jar of Skippy.
Starr:
Why isn't that our tagline for our whole business?
Ben:
I mean, we can change it.
Starr:
I don't know why that's making me crack up so much, but it is.
Josh:
Skippy's good stuff.
Starr:
Oh my gosh.
Josh:
Although we-
Ben:
Actually-
Josh:
... usually go for the Costco natural brand these days.
Ben:
Well, we go for the Trader Joe's all-natural brand that you have to actually mix every time you use it. I prefer crunchy over creamy, so, actually, my peanut butter's not that smooth, but... You know.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
It's okay. But, yeah, I love our natural peanut butter, except for the whole churning thing, but you can live with that.
Starr:
We're more of a Nutella family.
Ben:
Ooh, I do love a Nutella.
Josh:
Ooh, Nutella.
Ben:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), that's good stuff.
Josh:
We made pancakes the other day, and I was putting Nutella on pancakes. I did this thing, like I made this... We have one of those griddles, like an electric griddle, and so I made this super long rectangular pancake, and then I spread Nutella on the entire thing, and then I rolled it so that you have this-
Starr:
You know what it's called, Josh.
Josh:
What is it called?
Starr:
That's called a crepe.
Josh:
So it's a crepe, but it's made out of a pancake.
Starr:
It's a Texas crepe.
Ben:
Texas crepe.
Josh:
Yeah, a Texas-
Starr:
A Texas crepe.
Ben:
Yes.
Josh:
Is it really a Texas crepe because that's... Yeah, so, I-
Starr:
Oh, no, I just made that up.
Ben:
That sounds perfect, yeah.
Josh:
Well, it is now.
Ben:
Yeah, it is now.
Josh:
It is now, and I highly recommend it. It's pretty amazing.
Ben:
Throw some Skippy on there and, man, now it's a... That's awesome.
Josh:
Peanut butter's also good on pancakes.
Starr:
That's why people listen to us, for our insights about business.
Ben:
Yeah, there was this one time, speaking of pancakes and peanut butter...
Josh:
How did we get on pancakes? Like, oh, yeah, ops.
Ben:
This one time, I went over to dinner at some person's house, and I didn't know what dinner was going to be, but we got there and it was breakfast for dinner, which I personally love. That's one of my favorites.
Starr:
I knew that about you.
Ben:
So they're like, "Oh, I'm sorry. Hope you don't think it's weird, but we're having breakfast for dinner." I'm like, "No, no, I love it." So eggs and bacon and waffles, and so I'm getting my waffle and I'm like, "Do you have some peanut butter," and they're like, "Oh my goodness, we thought you would think that was way too weird, and so we didn't have the peanut butter." They whipped it out from in the counter. It's like, "Oh, shew, now we can have our peanut butter, too." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, peanut butter on waffles, yeah."
Josh:
Everyone had their hidden peanut butter.
Ben:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
And that's how you level up a friendship.
Ben:
There you go. So, yeah, the week was good. The week was good. Bugs got fixed, things got deployed, and, yeah, just a whole-
Josh:
Yeah, you had a bunch of PRs and stuff for little things, too, which-
Ben:
Yeah. And got some practice with the whole delegating thing, got Shava doing some stuff, too. So, yeah, just all-around super productive week.
Josh:
Nice. I got Java to run in a Docker container, so my week's going pretty good.
Ben:
And that took you all week?
Starr:
What do those words mean? I don't...
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
Was your audio cutting out? I don't know. I just heard a bunch of things I don't understand.
Josh:
Well, for your own sake, don't ask me to explain it.
Starr:
Yeah, it's like better not looked at.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Why would you subject yourself to that sort of torture, Josh?
Josh:
Oh, well, because running Java on an M1 Mac is even worse.
Starr:
Oh my Lord.
Josh:
Well, actually, running it, period. But, yeah, like just our Java package. I mean, I've spent half this podcast ranting about our packaging, so I don't need to get too deep into it. But every time I release this thing, it's like it just doesn't work because I've forgotten my... I've changed my system, and Java and Maven package repository are just like that. So I figure if I can make some sort of reproduceable development environment using Docker, then in two years everything will just be smooth as a jar of Skippy.
Ben:
Skippy. Yeah, yeah.
Starr:
Well, I had a chance to-
Josh:
I reckon.
Starr:
I had a chance to dig into some numbers, which is one of my favorite things to do, and so... I don't know. There was this question that was just bothering me, which was... Well, let me just back up. So we've had some success, as you guys know, in the past year. We've almost doubled our rate of new user sign-ups, not new user sign-ups, like conversion to paid users. We've doubled our paid user conversion numbers, rate, whatever you call it. And so, obviously, revenue from users has gone up as well, but since we are a... Our plans are basically broken down by error rates, right? So what happens when people upgrade is they get too many errors for their plan. It says, "Hey, you should upgrade if you want to keep sending us errors," and they do.
Starr:
I had this weird situation where it's like I wasn't sure... In our system, revenue from users was coming just from whatever plan they picked when they signed up, and so I was wondering, "Well, what if they sign up, and then a week later they upgrade? That's going to be counted under upgrade revenue instead of new user revenue," which, really, it really kind of should be. So I got to digging, and I found that it doesn't really make that big of a difference. Some people do upgrade pretty quickly after converting, but they don't... It's not really enough to really change things.
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
Then, also, just sort of offhand, I took a little sneak peek. I've been running this experiment to see if lowering our error quota for our basic, our free plan, it would increase conversions. So I took a little sneak peek at the data. It's too soon to know for sure, but so far the conversion rate, I think, is going to end up being higher, which is what I would expect, so that's good, and-
Josh:
Nice.
Starr:
Yeah. And when we're done, I'm going to look at sign-ups just to make sure that they are still in line.
Ben:
Yeah. Anecdotally, I've seen a smaller window from trial to paid conversion. Well, not trial, but freemium to paid conversion. I've seen people who are signing up, getting on the basic plan, and then within some short time period they're actually going to a team plan.
Josh:
Oh, that's good to know.
Ben:
That's happening more often than it was, so... Yeah. So that's-
Josh:
Cool.
Ben:
I'm just saying the same thing Starr said but without real data.
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, we need a little bit more time to see how things pan out, too, because it's... One thing I figured out that I will share with our readers, our readers, I'm used to doing the blog posts, I'll share with our listeners that I figured out that you really have to pay attention to, on free plans especially, is comparing conversion rates between time periods. So if you make a change and then you wait for a month of data to come in and you're like, "Okay, let's look at the conversion rate for the past month after the change with the conversion rate for the time period before the change," that is really an apples to oranges comparison because on the one hand you've had people who have maybe had a year to upgrade versus people who've had a month to upgrade. So you have to be really careful to make it apples to apples, right, where you only compare... If you have a month worth of users on one side, you compare it to a month worth of users on the other side, and you only count the conversions that happened in that time period.
Josh:
Makes sense.
Starr:
Yeah. So, anyway, that's just my little freebie data analysis thing for our listeners.
Josh:
We should have Starr's weekly data science tip.
Starr:
Starr's data corner.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Love it.
Josh:
Yeah. We could move the podcast to segments. We've never done segments. We could introduce segments if we need to spice things up on FounderQuest.
Ben:
Yeah. Totally. Well, speaking of spicing things up, I had a brilliant idea this morning.
Starr:
Oh, I want to hear it.
Ben:
Yeah. So one of the things that I keep an eye on is how much we spend on hosting because that's a good chunk of our expenses. We always want to make more money, and one way to make more money is to have fewer expenses. So I had this brilliant idea on how to cut expenses. We can chop our AWS bill in half by just not running everything redundant.
Starr:
There you go.
Josh:
Brilliant.
Starr:
Would you say the AWS is the sixth Honeybadger employee?
Ben:
Yeah, pretty much.
Josh:
Yes. That's a good way to put it, actually.
Starr:
Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Well, in the early days, before we were paying ourselves a full salary, I remember we budgeted 25% for Starr, 25% for Ben, 25% for Josh, and 25% for hosting.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah, I don't think we ever exceeded the 25%, which is good. That would be a bit high. So, yeah, AWS is like our sixth employee.
Starr:
Yeah, it's funny because do we even have other expenses?
Josh:
No.
Ben:
I mean, salaries is definitely the biggest one, and our health insurance is not cheap either.
Starr:
Yeah.
Ben:
Advertising.
Starr:
I was thinking like marketing, advertising. Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah. Advertising and marketing, that's the next one.
Starr:
That's the next 25%.
Josh:
Can we make AWS our seventh and eighth employee, too?
Ben:
Eventually may. Yeah, I did some... Oh. Oh. So I told you my great success that I had this morning. Well, your comment just now about AWS made me think about the one failure, just amazingly huge failure that I had also this week, migrating a bunch of data from Redis to DynomoDB. So we have this situation where it's one of those seemed like a good idea at the time kind of thing where we're doing a bunch of counting of people and individuals that hit errors, and we're counting that in Redis. I'm like, "Okay, great," because Redis has this INCRBY and it's easy and it's atomic and, boom, you're done, and I just never paid much attention to it until a few weeks ago, and I was like, "Yo, you know what? That's actually a lot of data in there, and we're keeping that forever, and so it's probably better to put it someplace that's not Redis." So I'm like, "Ah, I know. I'll do DynamoDB because it has an increment thing and...
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
So I put a table together, and I wrote a migration script, and I migrated a bunch of data. It took two days. It's great. Everything is beautiful. Had buckets of data inside DynomiteDB, and then I went to go query it, and I'm like, "Oh, I can't query it that way because I don't have the right index." Well, that sucks. All right. So you can't create a local index on DynomiteDB without recreating the table. I'm like, "Okay, well, that sucks. I just lost two days worth of data migration but oh well." So dump the table, recreated it with the index, and started redoing the data migration, and I'm like, "Yeah, it might take two days, no problem." So I check on it every half-day or so, and it's not going to be getting done after two days. Three days go by, and I'm checking the work backlog, and I was like, "It's just flat."
Ben:
Turns out because of that local index, now Dynamo can't really write fast enough because the way they do the partition throttling and stuff because we have some customers who have huge chunks of data. So their partitions are too big for Dynamo to write very quickly. Hot partition keys is the problem. So I just gave up. I'm like, "All right, fine." Drop the table again, recreated it, and now we're just double writing so that, eventually, given six months from now or so, it'll be there and I can replace that thing in Redis.
Josh:
Nice.
Ben:
So this is my life, the ups and the downs. So, yeah.
Josh:
And just waiting six months.
Ben:
And just waiting six months.
Josh:
Yeah. That's funny, but that is kind of a pattern in the business. In some cases, we need to just wait for the data to populate itself, and we just have to basically wait our retention period because data tends to turnover and then we can drop the old database or whatever.
Ben:
Yeah. Yep. But, luckily, nobody noticed my big fail, so it's all good. It didn't impact the customers.
Josh:
I didn't notice.
Ben:
So, yeah, busy weekend.
Starr:
I noticed, but I didn't say anything because I wanted to be nice.
Ben:
Thank you, Starr. Appreciate that.
Starr:
Yeah, I [inaudible].
Josh:
Starr was over there just quietly shaking her head.
Ben:
Just judging. Just judge-
Starr:
No, sorry.
Ben:
So, Josh, I'm going to get back to this Java thing because I'm curious. I remember, I don't know, a year ago or something, we're kind of like, "Maybe we should just not when it comes to Java anymore." So I'm curious what prompted this renewed activity to do a new release.
Josh:
Well, I don't know. I figured... I don't know. Didn't we say we were just not going to do any releases?
Ben:
Yeah, it just-
Josh:
It's not high on my list of development. We're not spending a bunch adding stuff to it, but there are dependency updates that have been getting merged in. I merged the Dependabot PRs and stuff. There's something else. There might be some small PR or something that someone submitted that was sitting there on release, and I just can't handle just unreleased code sitting on the pane. So it's just one of those things that's been sitting on my backlog halfway down the list just gnawing at me every week, so I figured I'd dive in and at least get some sort of quick release, relatively quick release process down so we can just continue to release dependency updates and stuff, like if there's a security update or something, so...
Ben:
Yeah.
Josh:
Some people still do use it, so I want to make sure they're secure.
Ben:
Make sure they're happy. Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah. But, yeah, that's a good point. We are not treating all platforms as equal because we just don't have the resource, so we need to focus on the stuff that actually is making us money.
Ben:
Yeah. Yeah, it's tough when very few of our customers are actually using that for it to get a whole lot of priority.
Josh:
That said, we have already put a lot into it, so as far as I know, it works well for the people that have used it.
Starr:
So are y'all encouraging our customers to do more Java?
Josh:
Yes, switch to Java. Then switch to Sentry
Ben:
Ride a wave.
Josh:
... or something.
Ben:
So I've been contemplating this new laptop showing up, right, whenever Apple finally releases it and I get to get my hot little hands on it. I've been thinking, well, the one big downside to getting a new laptop is getting back to a place where you can actually work again, right, getting all your things set up. Some people are smart, like Josh, that have this DOT file, this repo, on GitHub, and they can just clone that, and they're off to the races. I'm not that smart. I always have to hand-craft my config every time I get a new machine. But I'm thinking-
Josh:
Oh. Take the time.
Ben:
So, yeah, I'm not looking forward to that part, but GitHub has released Codespaces, and so now I'm thinking, "Ooh, I wonder if I could get all our repos updated so that I could just work totally in the cloud and just not even have a development set-up on my machine." Probably not, but it's a fun little fantasy.
Josh:
Well, then you could have any little... You could work on your iPad.
Ben:
Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah, I don't even need a laptop. Then I could save the company money. That's brilliant, Josh.
Josh:
Yeah. You could work at the library.
Starr:
Yeah. It's like, "So your main ops guy, I see he's primarily working from a five-year-old iPad."
Ben:
At a library.
Starr:
In a library.
Josh:
An iMac.
Starr:
When he gets paged, he has to run to the nearest Starbucks and get that wifi.
Josh:
Yeah. I got to say, having your DOT files all ready to go and all that is pretty good. Also, I've got my Brewfile, too, so all of my Homebrew stuff is automated in that.
Ben:
Well, that's clever. I never even thought of that.
Josh:
It does make it very quick to bootstrap a new machine.
Ben:
Yeah. Maybe I should take this as initiative to actually put my stuff into DOT files repo and get to that point.
Josh:
Careful, though, because you might... I've had four computers between your current one and now, so you might end up switching more often because it's easier to do it.
Ben:
Appreciate that warning. That's good.
Josh:
Yeah. Speaking of the M1s, I love the M1 MacBook Air that I have. But the battery has been... I don't know what happened, but the battery was fantastic, I don't know, first few months. Ever since then, it's been kind of like it hasn't been lasting. I've been surprised at how fast it's draining, and I go and look at, whatever, the battery health stuff, and it says that health is down to 86% and the condition says it's fair, which does not make me feel warm and fuzzy.
Josh:
It has 50 cycles, so I think it might be defective, and that sucks because otherwise this machine is maybe one of the best Macs I've had. I guess... Yeah. I've had a few compatibility issues with the architecture, but it's not too bad. I mean, I'm not a Java developer at least, so...
Ben:
Yeah, I think you need to take that in for a service because that is way soon for that kind of degradation.
Josh:
Yeah. I might need to do something.
Ben:
That's a bummer.
Josh:
Yeah. I don't know. I might have to ship it in because I think our local Portland Apple Store is shuttered currently.
Ben:
All those protests?
Josh:
Yeah. It's got eight fences around it and stuff. Downtown Portland's a little rough these days.
Starr:
Yeah.
Ben:
Well, I mean, you can always take the trip out to Seattle.
Josh:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Or there's other... I forget. There's an Apple Store that's not too far outside of Portland. It's where I bought this, so I could take it down there.
Starr:
Yeah. I'm sad now because I bought my second MacBook from that store in Portland.
Josh:
Yeah? It's a good store.
Ben:
Speaking of you coming out to Seattle, I was thinking the other day that maybe we should do a company-wide get-together sometime soon. Be fun to see everybody again in-person.
Josh:
It would be. Now that we're all vaxxed, we're all super vaxxed. I don't know that Starr is even down for that, though. I'm just looking at Starr.
Starr:
I don't know. Like, I-
Josh:
You don't look like you're too stoked on that idea.
Starr:
I don't know. I'm just-
Josh:
What with Delta lurking.
Starr:
The problem is, Josh, is that you have not been reading nursing Twitter.
Josh:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Starr:
So I don't know. Yeah, it's doable. Currently, I think the CDC just released a thing that said vaccine efficiency of preventing COVID infections... It's very good still at preventing bad, I don't know, disease, health problems, whatever, keeping people out of the hospital. It's very good at that. With Delta, it's about 65% effective at preventing infections, and so if you get infected, you can transmit it to other people.
Josh:
Right.
Starr:
Yeah. So it's not impossible. It's just like we're just back to this fricking calculus where every possible social interaction you just have to run it through your spreadsheet and your risk analysis and... Ugh.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
It's like, "Are you worthy of the hassle? No. Sorry, can't make it."
Starr:
Yeah. Yeah. It's like, "Okay, so what's the probability that meeting with you is going to send my child to the hospital? Okay, that's low enough. Sure."
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
It's just such a weird world.
Josh:
Wouldn't it be funny if when you get into your car in the morning, it reads out the probability of you dying in a car accident?
Starr:
Oh, yeah. Do you know about millimorts?
Josh:
No.
Starr:
Oh, you should go Google millimorts. A millimort is a one in a million chance that you will die, and so there's tables and stuff that you can find online that have different activities and what the number of millimorts is about them. So you can compare, and you can be like, "Okay, so going skydiving has this many millimorts as driving so many miles in a motorcycle."
Josh:
That's awesome. Okay, we have to link this in the show notes because I want to remember to look this up-
Starr:
Okay. I'll go find it.
Josh:
... so that I can depress people.
Starr:
I think there was a New York Times article, too.
Ben:
Yeah, I totally have to see this because I just signed up for a motorcycle training course and I'm going to get my endorsements so that I know exactly what kind of risks... Though that's probably part of the course, where they try to scare you out of actually getting your endorsement. They probably...
Josh:
By the way, I'm really glad my morbid humor or my morbid joke landed because for a minute there-
Starr:
Oh, I'm sorry, it's a micromort.
Josh:
Oh, a micromort. Okay.
Starr:
I was like, "Isn't milli 1000?"
Josh:
Minimort, like-
Starr:
Milli is 1000.
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
Yeah, that grated at me. I know. My old chemistry teachers are just giving me an F right now.
Ben:
Yeah, I got to see that.
Josh:
Well, I'm sure you'll be all right, Ben. I mean, the risk of a motorcycle is much higher than a car, but you just can't think about that all the time because the fun... I'm sure the fun is much...
Ben:
[inaudible].
Josh:
It's worth it.
Ben:
It's worth every hazard. Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah. The risk is worth the reward.
Ben:
Yesterday, I just hit 250 miles on the odometer on my scooter, so loving that. It's a lot of fun.
Josh:
That's cool.
Starr:
That's a lot of miles for a scooter.
Josh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Starr:
I guess you just love to scoot.
Ben:
I love to scoot. Well, there you go, Starr. There's our happy ending after that slight dip there.
Starr:
That slight delay into reality.
Josh:
I like the dark humor. I don't know. It's always a gamble, though, with depending on... Yeah. But I think, Starr, you're always down to get dark.
Starr:
Oh, yeah. I'm down with the darkness. All right. Well, should we wrap it up?
Ben:
Let's wrap it.
Starr:
Okay. This has been a very witchy episode of FounderQuest, so if you liked it, go give us a review and... Yeah, if not, just keep listening to us. Make it a hate listen. You got to have a couple of those in your line-up.
