The Haters Were Right

April 15, 2025

Ian and Aaron discuss upcoming travel to Miami & Vegas, Aaron's new 'Dead Drop" command, the future of Fusion, & more. Sponsored by: Bento - https://bentonow.com/ WorkOS - https://workos.com/ Native PHP for Mobile - https://nativephp.com/mobile Laracon US 2025 - https://lrvl.co/mostly Chapters: 00:00 Rebounding 11:26 Heading To React Miami 15:41 Vegas Baby, Vegas 22:36 Dead Drop 31:55 Update on Fusion 57:38 Ian's Computer Follow Up 01:02:26 Projects, Hobbies, & Time
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Transcript

Aaron
00:00:00 – 00:00:02
Hello? Good morning, Ian. How are we doing?
Ian
00:00:02 – 00:00:03
Doing great.
Aaron
00:00:03 – 00:00:09
Great. Wow. We don't get a great very often. No. What's so great?
Ian
00:00:09 – 00:00:16
Well, there's nothing in particular. No. Just things are going well. Gallbladder's gallbladdering. Kids are good.
Ian
00:00:16 – 00:00:17
Wife is good.
Aaron
00:00:18 – 00:00:19
It's good to be, Ian.
Ian
00:00:19 – 00:00:20
It's good to meet me right now.
Aaron
00:00:20 – 00:00:29
Well, you know, just as a exercise in contrast, all of my kids have thrown up in the past twenty four hours. All four.
Ian
00:00:29 – 00:00:31
So Oh, boy.
Aaron
00:00:32 – 00:00:35
Not as great over here on this side.
Ian
00:00:35 – 00:00:36
You manage that?
Aaron
00:00:36 – 00:00:44
Oh, man. I don't know. It hasn't hit me yet. Knock on wood, but I'm afraid it's it's gonna get me. Oh, it's too good.
Aaron
00:00:44 – 00:00:45
It always gets you.
Ian
00:00:46 – 00:00:48
Yeah. The baby's throwing up.
Aaron
00:00:48 – 00:00:57
Oh, dude. I was driving around the babies yesterday Yeah. Because it was like, we gotta we gotta separate these kids. We gotta get somebody out of here.
Ian
00:00:57 – 00:00:58
The body and the bunker.
Aaron
00:00:58 – 00:01:10
Jennifer was feeling nauseous. It was just like, alright. I'm taking the little kids. We're gonna go for a drive. And I heard from the back, and I turned around, and my youngest daughter had just vomited all over herself in the car.
Aaron
00:01:10 – 00:01:10
I
Ian
00:01:10 – 00:01:11
was like,
Aaron
00:01:11 – 00:01:25
oh, and you know that I am, like, I am very sensitive to that sort of thing. Right. And so I'm back there. I've got my shirt over my nose. I'm, like, trying to wipe her off without literally vomiting myself.
Aaron
00:01:26 – 00:01:38
Like, I'm wiping her off, and then I step outside and dry heave a little bit, and then I come and wipe her off again. Just, like, absolute worst thing in the world. So I'm glad you're happy. That's awesome for you.
Ian
00:01:38 – 00:01:46
They've been sick or this you thought they were in the clear still and, like, had they already thrown up, or was this the first throw up of the younger one?
Aaron
00:01:46 – 00:02:05
I think this was the first I thought we were out of the woods. I think the littlest boy threw up a few days ago or maybe two or three days ago, and I thought, okay. Everybody else is kinda just feeling sick. And then she threw up, and then last night, overnight, the older two kids threw up. It's just like, god dang it.
Ian
00:02:05 – 00:02:09
Man, car throw up. That is like Oh. That's bad.
Aaron
00:02:09 – 00:02:10
That's bad. Bad.
Ian
00:02:10 – 00:02:12
Remember once I got a car throw up story.
Aaron
00:02:13 – 00:02:14
I don't know.
Ian
00:02:14 – 00:02:14
College.
Aaron
00:02:15 – 00:02:17
K. K.
Ian
00:02:17 – 00:02:31
My best friend, and we're out, and his girlfriend was really drunk. And we're like, alright. We're taking her home, and I knew it's gonna end poorly. I was like, okay. She's in my front seat.
Ian
00:02:31 – 00:02:44
She's like, I'm gonna throw up. I'm like, go go out the window or open the door. I'm like, trying to pull over and tell her. She just throws up in the on door panel and down into the side, like, under the seat and all. You know what I mean?
Ian
00:02:44 – 00:02:50
So that I may oh, man. Aaron's losing it right here. If you can't see this, it's worth that. Yeah. You
Aaron
00:02:50 – 00:02:52
can't you gotta stop. I will actually
Ian
00:02:52 – 00:03:01
screw up. So I may so he was like, the best part of the story is my friend my best friend. He's like, alright. Let's clean it up tomorrow. And I was like, dude, let's clean it up tomorrow.
Ian
00:03:01 – 00:03:11
What? I was like, we're going to the car wash right this second, and you are gonna clean this stuff out of from under my seat. Like, we're not leaving it till the next day to ferment.
Aaron
00:03:11 – 00:03:14
Clean it up tomorrow is maybe the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Ian
00:03:14 – 00:03:20
It's terrible advice. Don't clean it up tomorrow. Oh, man. I love a good
Aaron
00:03:20 – 00:03:21
car.
Ian
00:03:21 – 00:03:21
We gotta
Aaron
00:03:21 – 00:03:24
we gotta switch subjects before we lose any remaining listeners.
Ian
00:03:24 – 00:03:31
So your family, everybody's fine. They're they're they're rebounding, and they're rebounding. Sick soon, but you'll work out.
Aaron
00:03:31 – 00:03:40
I'm gonna get super sick. Good news is we found a nanny. Finally. Right. We had game.
Aaron
00:03:40 – 00:03:44
We're back in the game, and she starts today. Good luck. Have fun.
Ian
00:03:46 – 00:03:49
Yeah. Just handed her four sick kids. Exactly. Yeah. Here you go.
Aaron
00:03:49 – 00:04:01
We found somebody that is just amazing. So our au pair went back to Germany A Few Weeks ago, and we had since then, we hired two nannies, and they both backed out.
Ian
00:04:02 – 00:04:03
It's crazy.
Aaron
00:04:03 – 00:04:11
One I know. One backed out, like, three or four weeks before she was was supposed to start, and one backed out, like, two days before she was
Ian
00:04:11 – 00:04:11
supposed to start.
Aaron
00:04:11 – 00:04:21
Wow. And I think part of the problem was we were selecting for flaky people by being like, hey. We want twenty hours a week. Yeah. And so these people were like,
Ian
00:04:21 – 00:04:21
right now
Aaron
00:04:21 – 00:04:29
you can fill in. Yeah. I'll fill in my time elsewhere. And then the first one was like, hey. I found a better fit, which I think means full time.
Aaron
00:04:29 – 00:04:37
And then the second one said, hey. I was on, I was on a leave of absence from work, but now they're requiring I come back.
Ian
00:04:37 – 00:04:39
And I'm like Why are you taking this job then? What
Aaron
00:04:40 – 00:04:55
what were you thinking? So Oh. This person, that we got is incredible and, is working more than twenty hours a week. So we upped our criteria, to keep, to get better candidates, and we got her.
Ian
00:04:55 – 00:05:02
Out. Yeah. Yeah. We always we never had a full time nanny type situation, but we did do a bunch of babysitters. And then, like, yeah, they're always flaking out.
Ian
00:05:02 – 00:05:11
We had to have a stable of them. Right? You can't just have, like, one because they're never that stable. So we'd have, like, three or four in rotation and yeah. So let's business dad this a little bit.
Ian
00:05:11 – 00:05:19
Okay. Because you're you made a hire. So how did you go about hiring? Maybe I don't know what what what's the pay setup? Is it hourly?
Ian
00:05:19 – 00:05:20
Give us a little of the business. That's a
Aaron
00:05:20 – 00:05:31
good question. So we went about hiring, via Facebook groups. Oh, okay. Instead of there are websites like care.com.
Ian
00:05:31 – 00:05:33
Care Com. Yep. I've used that.
Aaron
00:05:33 – 00:06:15
I think I would I think I would always especially for, you know, taking care of our children, I would always prefer some sort of connection to somebody that we know. And so we started with, Facebook groups for, like, you know, Lake Highlands babysitters group or, like, Preston Hollow moms club or something like that. So just, you know, towns that are nearby us where all the moms hang out. And so we did that, and we found some pretty good candidates through that. But what ended up being where we found this one is, my wife's sister knows somebody, is a grandma at our church.
Aaron
00:06:16 – 00:06:35
Me and, we go to the same church as Jennifer's sister and brother-in-law. And so this grandma goes to the church that we go to, and she said my daughter or I'm sorry. My granddaughter just moved from wherever to Dallas, and she wants to be a full time nanny. Does anybody know anyone? And so, just her sister told us that she met this grandma, and we're like, great.
Aaron
00:06:35 – 00:06:46
She goes to East Side where we go. Let's meet this girl. And she's amazing and wants to, like, spend her career doing childcare. It's like, perfect. That is exactly what we want.
Aaron
00:06:48 – 00:06:59
And so then the question becomes, do you want full time? And her answer is, yes. Of course. Like, I'm trying to make a career out of this. Like, I want this to be my livelihood, not just, like, some fun thing I do.
Aaron
00:07:00 – 00:07:09
So, yeah, lots of you know, as if as if the weight of the world could not grow heavier, we now have a full time employee.
Ian
00:07:09 – 00:07:16
You got a full time. Right? You kinda have to because otherwise, if you do part halftime, she's gonna have another halftime somewhere else.
Aaron
00:07:16 – 00:07:16
Correct.
Ian
00:07:16 – 00:07:24
And that's that the pull of that halftime is always going to be to you know, if they could just flip the switch and then you're done, then you're out, obviously. You're the one who's auto out if
Aaron
00:07:24 – 00:07:33
that's gonna change. Or it's like, hey. Can you can you stay an hour late because the kids are sick, for example. And she's like, no. I gotta get to my other job.
Ian
00:07:33 – 00:07:34
Right.
Aaron
00:07:34 – 00:07:40
Yeah. But with this with this setup, she's very flexible because we are her only
Ian
00:07:40 – 00:07:41
Right.
Aaron
00:07:41 – 00:07:43
Source of income. And so it's like, great.
Ian
00:07:44 – 00:07:46
You love another mouth to feed.
Aaron
00:07:46 – 00:07:54
Oh, I just got rid of one German, and now I'm adopting another American. Like, what's going on over here? Oh. But good news. Great news.
Aaron
00:07:54 – 00:08:17
Right. My four Runner, we're selling it, which is sad for me because my four Runner's awesome. But I am taking what was, the au pair's car, and before that was Jennifer's car. So when we had another set of twins, we bought the minivan and then kept Jennifer's, VW for the au pair. So now my four Runner is gone, which is sad because it was totally awesome.
Aaron
00:08:17 – 00:08:19
But that's good. That's money in the bank. We're getting that back.
Ian
00:08:19 – 00:08:24
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. So what kind of VW is this? Like a Jetta or, like, a Atlas.
Ian
00:08:24 – 00:08:26
An Atlas. Oh, that's, like, a big SUV. Right?
Aaron
00:08:26 – 00:08:26
Is that the
Ian
00:08:26 – 00:08:27
biggest or the medium?
Aaron
00:08:27 – 00:08:32
It is, I think the Tiguan is the smaller version, and the Atlas is the bigger version.
Ian
00:08:32 – 00:08:39
Alright. So the four Runner is gone just because the Atlas is, like, kind of a little better if you have to tell the kids kinda.
Aaron
00:08:39 – 00:08:45
Atlas has more seats. I mean, it's not quite as badass, but it has more seats, and that's the stage we're in.
Ian
00:08:47 – 00:08:48
I love the sacrifice stage.
Aaron
00:08:48 – 00:08:49
Uh-huh. Yeah.
Ian
00:08:50 – 00:08:54
Alright. So forerunner's gone. Money in the pocket. That's Money
Aaron
00:08:54 – 00:09:05
in the pocket. Soon, I handed it over to my brother, my oldest brother, who is a car selling savant, and he's gonna sell it for me. Nice. So that's good. That's money in the bank.
Aaron
00:09:05 – 00:09:14
We took, the au pair off of car insurance, off of the YMCA, off of the cell phone plan. That's good. That's good. That's a little bit of money in the bank there.
Ian
00:09:14 – 00:09:18
And you don't have to pay for these things with the new person. So they're on their own for a change
Aaron
00:09:18 – 00:09:35
in the direction. They drive their own car. They live in their own house. And then I think we're not gonna send the youngest babies to any sort of, like, childcare now because it was going to be, we'll hire somebody part time. We'll put the youngest ones in school part time, and then it kinda all evens out.
Aaron
00:09:35 – 00:09:53
But now we're not gonna do that because, you know, we don't need Jennifer and this nanny to just be sitting around, you know, playing Mahjong during the day when there are no kids there. So so we're gonna make it work. We're gonna make it work. And on an unrelated note, it's, please sponsor the show. Just you know?
Aaron
00:09:53 – 00:09:56
And maybe prices have gone up. I can't say for sure.
Ian
00:09:56 – 00:10:02
But Hey. Why not? Why not? Why are these the main prices? We should actually put that on the sponsor's page.
Ian
00:10:02 – 00:10:09
Like, Like, sponsor like, your nanny could, like, wear, like, a tag, like a poker player on TV or something. You know? Totally. Bento tag on
Aaron
00:10:09 – 00:10:09
there. Uh-huh.
Ian
00:10:09 – 00:10:11
Around the house, shopping.
Aaron
00:10:12 – 00:10:23
Yep. I like that. So how are we gonna pay her? That's still an open question. I don't know if we're gonna do the full, like, household employee schedule or just pay her straight.
Aaron
00:10:23 – 00:10:30
I I don't really know. We might have to, like, actually set up Gusto payroll for our household, which is insane.
Ian
00:10:31 – 00:10:37
I think there might be some metrics that we don't have that. Go quite that far. There is something I forget how it all works where you're can
Aaron
00:10:38 – 00:10:38
Yeah.
Ian
00:10:38 – 00:10:49
There's some kind of household thing or something. Like, otherwise, you have to, like yeah. I don't know. But then she's got I guess I mean, you know, so I wanna talk about it's not a podcast, but it's also, like, is it under the table? Is it above aboveboard?
Aaron
00:10:49 – 00:10:56
We would never do anything, that is illegal and then say it out loud on the show. Definitely not.
Ian
00:10:57 – 00:10:59
Definitely not that series of events.
Aaron
00:10:59 – 00:11:01
No. No. No. No. Of course not.
Ian
00:11:01 – 00:11:05
Okay. So I think we got a picture here. So she's starting today, you said. Right? So
Aaron
00:11:06 – 00:11:08
she's Starting today. Home. She's there right now.
Ian
00:11:08 – 00:11:13
Alright. Yep. Nice. Well, good luck with that. That sounds sounds like it's all worked out for the best.
Ian
00:11:13 – 00:11:14
I feel like
Aaron
00:11:14 – 00:11:14
I think so.
Ian
00:11:14 – 00:11:17
Those other two were clearly unreliable. So you're already
Aaron
00:11:17 – 00:11:19
Clearly through that. Gonna be helpful. Yeah.
Ian
00:11:19 – 00:11:24
You've already had two bad hires out of the way. Third one's a charm. Yeah. I think we're
Aaron
00:11:24 – 00:11:25
good. Idea.
Ian
00:11:25 – 00:11:30
Yeah. Nice. So you're going away this week. So you're gonna be safe, and you're going away.
Aaron
00:11:30 – 00:11:41
If if I if I retain all of my bodily fluids, I'm going away. If they start coming out, I'm staying home 100%. I'm not getting on an airplane to Miami to go throw up in Miami.
Ian
00:11:42 – 00:11:59
So there is just nothing worse than being sick when you're away from home. Like, that is top tier just suffering. Just like you're in a hotel room sick, especially with the excreting bodily fluids type of sickness. It's just like that is just it's brutal. Hate it.
Aaron
00:11:59 – 00:12:04
Brutal. So the slightest inkling of sickness, I'm staying home.
Ian
00:12:04 – 00:12:05
You're out. Yeah.
Aaron
00:12:05 – 00:12:12
I cannot risk. Cannot risk. But, god willing, I will travel to Miami on Wednesday
Ian
00:12:13 – 00:12:14
I like Miami.
Aaron
00:12:14 – 00:12:26
For React Miami, which You're going back to us all. I'm going to Dax's house. Going to Dax's house. Good. From the from the arms of one no man into the arms of another no man, I am going to Dax's house.
Ian
00:12:26 – 00:12:28
Man, I wanna be at Dax's house.
Aaron
00:12:28 – 00:12:30
I know. Well, you should've gone.
Ian
00:12:30 – 00:12:33
So I should've gone. Yeah. You weren't gone. This is new. Right?
Ian
00:12:33 – 00:12:36
This is I just saw you tweet about this. I'm like, what's he doing?
Aaron
00:12:36 – 00:12:45
No. You just you know, I just haven't told you yet. So I don't tell you everything, Ian, because sometimes sometimes they're gonna say, what are you doing that for? And I'm like, I don't I don't need to tell him this one.
Ian
00:12:45 – 00:12:47
So that's No. No. You're going to his house.
Aaron
00:12:47 – 00:12:54
No. It's too late. I'm telling you. Yeah. So I was on a podcast a a little while back called Whiskey Web and Whatnot.
Aaron
00:12:55 – 00:13:12
And, you know, just doing the podcast thing, hanging out, having fun, being a man of the people. And after the show was over, they were like, oh, man. One of the cohosts of this show can't go to React Miami anymore because he and his wife are having twins. And I'm like, oh, that's, you know, great. Exciting.
Ian
00:13:12 – 00:13:13
Know about that?
Aaron
00:13:13 – 00:13:19
Yeah. And I said, well, you know, if you want me to come as your cohost, let me know. And he's like, really? Sure. Why not?
Aaron
00:13:19 – 00:13:35
Boom. And so I'm going as a podcast cohost for a podcast I'm not on. And they're paying for my flight in my hotel, and I got a free ticket to React Miami. So gonna go hold down the podcast booth and, I don't know, yuck it up with the React people.
Ian
00:13:35 – 00:13:37
Now are you do you're doing a show there, I see.
Aaron
00:13:37 – 00:13:43
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm cohosting with the, the guy who's not having twins.
Ian
00:13:43 – 00:13:50
So you're just doing that for a couple hours or whatever it is, and then you're just you're free agent cruising, or is there other responsibilities as part of the show?
Aaron
00:13:50 – 00:13:54
Cruising. Walk around, grab some sodas, wave at some people. That's about it.
Ian
00:13:54 – 00:13:57
What day is that? When are you going tomorrow? Wednesday. Wednesday.
Aaron
00:13:57 – 00:14:09
Okay. Wednesday morning. And then, unfortunately, I fly back late Friday night just because weekends are tough with childcare. So better better to be home and wake up at home on Saturday morning.
Ian
00:14:09 – 00:14:10
Be ready to go.
Aaron
00:14:10 – 00:14:11
Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
00:14:11 – 00:14:15
Well, that sounds good. I've been wanting to guess React Miami. It feels like I don't know. I feel like that's a spot. You know?
Ian
00:14:15 – 00:14:28
React Miami is it's always a thing each year, and that's the only conference I'd say I'm I'm sort of quasi jealous in the sun you know, like, I wanna go to that. That's what I wanna go to. I hear about all the conferences. I don't wanna go any of them. I never, for one, give any of them even a one second thought.
Ian
00:14:28 – 00:14:29
I'm like, I don't care about them.
Aaron
00:14:29 – 00:14:48
I'm I'm a little I'm a little bit scared because I think React Miami is just like it seems like ninety seven percent party and 3% React. So and, actually, I'm scared of both of those percentages. That's too much react, and that's way too much partying. I don't yeah. It'll be fun, but it'll have to be, I'll have to have my wits about me.
Aaron
00:14:48 – 00:14:49
You know? Yeah.
Ian
00:14:49 – 00:14:51
You're gonna have to be prepared for anything at all times.
Aaron
00:14:51 – 00:14:52
I am. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
00:14:52 – 00:14:56
Yeah. Yeah. Prime there, I assume. You got your Adactus House. Yep.
Ian
00:14:56 – 00:15:03
That's gonna be a scene. Yeah. I need, yeah, I need video. I need first person reporting. I need live tweeting or whatever.
Aaron
00:15:03 – 00:15:06
There gonna be a lot of a lot of, Laravelians there.
Ian
00:15:06 – 00:15:08
I know. That's what I mean. They're all there.
Aaron
00:15:08 – 00:15:10
Friend of the show, Will King, is gonna be there.
Ian
00:15:10 – 00:15:11
Gonna be there? Oh, yeah.
Aaron
00:15:11 – 00:15:16
Tell me. Be there. Yep. So it should be fun. It should be it should be a good time.
Aaron
00:15:16 – 00:15:18
I think Taylor's on a panel there.
Ian
00:15:18 – 00:15:21
Taylor is going out here, yeah, for a part of it anyway.
Aaron
00:15:22 – 00:15:31
Some sort of open source panel. I think Joe Tanenbaum, Leah, I forget who else from the Laravel team, but I feel like a lot of them are going.
Ian
00:15:31 – 00:15:34
They got that conference budget now. You know? They're out there.
Aaron
00:15:34 – 00:15:39
Know. Gotta spend gotta spend that Excel money getting to these conferences, man. Keep it in the family.
Ian
00:15:39 – 00:15:41
Event. Yes. That's right. Where are
Aaron
00:15:41 – 00:15:43
you going? You're going on a trip? Yeah.
Ian
00:15:43 – 00:15:44
I'm going to Vegas.
Aaron
00:15:44 – 00:15:45
Vegas, baby.
Ian
00:15:46 – 00:15:56
Vegas. Got invited with a few Laravel people to WrestleMania. So I'm gonna see a WrestleMania, which only one day. WrestleMania is two days. Who would have thought WrestleMania is two days?
Ian
00:15:56 – 00:15:56
So
Aaron
00:15:56 – 00:16:03
I wouldn't have thought anything about WrestleMania. I would have thought it was three hours. I I don't have no idea what WrestleMania even is.
Ian
00:16:03 – 00:16:19
It's two days, and each day is, like, five hours or something insane like that. So I'm only going to one day. I gotta I inherited a ticket, and so I'm going for one of the two days. But, I'm gonna hang out. And then I got permission from the boss to tack on
Aaron
00:16:19 – 00:16:21
two days. I know I know where this is going.
Ian
00:16:21 – 00:16:35
I got a couple days tacked on to the beginning. Now if I thought about React Miami, it could have been interesting to swing by React Miami and then go to Vegas, but whatever. Everything's booked. I'm not doing that now. But so I have a couple days of poker slash maybe a little photography slash maybe a little go out to the desert.
Ian
00:16:35 – 00:16:38
I don't know. Some combination of those things. I will be doing
Aaron
00:16:38 – 00:16:41
four hands. To the desert. I love the desert. That mean?
Ian
00:16:41 – 00:16:42
I love the desert.
Aaron
00:16:42 – 00:16:44
Why do you love the desert?
Ian
00:16:44 – 00:16:48
So great. Have you ever been just out into the desert? Just go out there?
Aaron
00:16:48 – 00:16:53
Of course not. Oh, it's so good. It's so bad. Of exposure. What do you what do you do in the desert?
Aaron
00:16:53 – 00:16:56
There's nothing in the desert. That's the whole thing about the desert.
Ian
00:16:56 – 00:17:12
That's the best part. There's nothing out there. It's just like tumbleweeds and mountains, and it's great. And then you could go I went to Mount Charleston 1 Year, which is mountains outside of Vegas, and there was snow. It's, like, it's a hundred degrees in the desert, but it's, like, snowing and snowing.
Aaron
00:17:12 – 00:17:14
Fundamentally different than a desert, is the mountains.
Ian
00:17:14 – 00:17:16
In the desert.
Aaron
00:17:16 – 00:17:17
No. The mountains are
Ian
00:17:17 – 00:17:20
in the desert. Yes. Yeah. It's, like, thirty minutes outside Vegas.
Aaron
00:17:20 – 00:17:33
No. Vegas desert talk sounds interesting. Unless you're, like, unless you're, like, doing, you know, dune buggies or something like desert racing. That sounds super fun. But going to the desert because of the biome is not really
Ian
00:17:33 – 00:17:34
was great.
Aaron
00:17:34 – 00:17:35
It's not really on my list, to
Ian
00:17:35 – 00:17:42
be honest. Red rocks. Like, they're all red and purple and crazy colors. Yeah. We gotta go out to the desert to see that.
Aaron
00:17:42 – 00:18:01
Here's here's the only note I have on the desert. When I am when I am fabulously wealthy, which is just around the corner at this point Yep. I will buy some some down on its luck land. Maybe it'll be desert, and I will terraform it back to back to the garden. That is the goal.
Ian
00:18:01 – 00:18:04
That's the goal. That sounds expensive if you do that in the desert. I don't know if you're aware of this.
Aaron
00:18:04 – 00:18:07
No. That's why I gotta get fabulously wealthy first.
Ian
00:18:07 – 00:18:12
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you should go to the desert. It's fantastic. I don't know.
Ian
00:18:12 – 00:18:21
I'm sort of my only thing is I'm not know if I'm in the mood to rent a car. You know? Like, the whole renting a car thing is just annoying. Like, you gotta jump through the hoops and go get the car and blah blah blah.
Aaron
00:18:21 – 00:18:25
That's a big part of renting a car is you gotta go get it. That's the rule. It's like, wow. What am I
Ian
00:18:25 – 00:18:35
doing here? I gotta get the car. Drive out of the strip area, whatever, blah blah. I'll get through the traffic. So I'm I'm asterisking if I'm actually gonna go out to the desert this time, but I would like to go dune bugging or something like that.
Ian
00:18:35 – 00:18:37
I haven't I've actually never done that.
Aaron
00:18:37 – 00:18:38
So maybe that'll be fun.
Ian
00:18:38 – 00:18:43
Super fun. Yeah. I've gone to the desert and shot guns once.
Aaron
00:18:44 – 00:18:45
Very text and I do.
Ian
00:18:45 – 00:18:48
Guns. Yeah. Yeah. So that was cool. But yeah.
Ian
00:18:48 – 00:18:52
So that's my thing. Ah, this rack Miami. If I knew you were gonna be there, I definitely would have swung by.
Aaron
00:18:53 – 00:18:55
Sorry. Maybe next year.
Ian
00:18:55 – 00:19:00
This, podcast booth, is this like are you going to be publicly on display, or you're gonna be there?
Aaron
00:19:00 – 00:19:13
Oh, man. No. I think it's, like, part of the show. I think we're, like, are set up. We are officially set up as part of the React Miami, like, agenda to have a podcast booth outside the little thing.
Ian
00:19:13 – 00:19:16
When are you recording? Wednesday or Thursday? Thursday, I think.
Aaron
00:19:16 – 00:19:19
I think it all starts on Thursday. A little harder.
Ian
00:19:19 – 00:19:20
Man, I wanna I kinda wanna swing by the
Aaron
00:19:21 – 00:19:25
Dax's house is on Wednesday, so think about it. House on Wednesday. Mhmm.
Ian
00:19:26 – 00:19:31
Man, I just switched all this too. See, if I had known this, I could have switched to go to Miami First.
Aaron
00:19:31 – 00:19:33
Do you wanna be a yes man?
Ian
00:19:35 – 00:19:42
I'm gonna have to think about this. It's probably not gonna happen, but I'm gonna actually give it some thought and see if there's any way that can happen. That would be awesome. Swing by. Swing by my doctor's house.
Ian
00:19:42 – 00:19:52
That's all I need. They I never I don't like flying this way. I don't like being anywhere for, like, one day. Find it very annoying. Even, like, going to Vegas since it's so far, that was part of my pitch to the boss.
Ian
00:19:52 – 00:19:59
And she knows I feel this way. Is that, like, I really truly hate traveling far and only being there like three nights or whatever.
Aaron
00:19:59 – 00:20:04
You've been building up this lore your entire marriage just just so you can spend more time in Vegas.
Ian
00:20:05 – 00:20:05
It's true.
Aaron
00:20:05 – 00:20:06
Well, you know you know, Vegas.
Ian
00:20:06 – 00:20:07
Are true.
Aaron
00:20:07 – 00:20:10
My thing you know that thing I have about not wanting to be somewhere
Ian
00:20:10 – 00:20:11
for a time.
Aaron
00:20:12 – 00:20:12
I see.
Ian
00:20:12 – 00:20:13
It's true, though.
Aaron
00:20:13 – 00:20:16
As you're you're familiar with this. I've been saying it for years.
Ian
00:20:16 – 00:20:22
I have been saying it for years. Because you get there, you're exhausted. The first day just told me that. Right? You know?
Aaron
00:20:22 – 00:20:23
I'm not in charge.
Ian
00:20:23 – 00:20:30
Everybody out there knows. But you do what you gotta do. I don't know. I gotta think about this. Man, I could change everything, Danny.
Aaron
00:20:30 – 00:20:32
That was going somewhere.
Ian
00:20:33 – 00:20:34
I'm just, like, so distraught now
Aaron
00:20:34 – 00:20:35
because I
Ian
00:20:35 – 00:20:36
kinda wanna go around.
Aaron
00:20:36 – 00:20:39
Do and then that was it. It didn't go anywhere else.
Ian
00:20:39 – 00:20:42
That's it. I'll tell you. I mean, that's just a statement of fact.
Aaron
00:20:42 – 00:20:42
You just
Ian
00:20:42 – 00:20:43
gotta do what you gotta do.
Aaron
00:20:43 – 00:20:44
That's amazing.
Ian
00:20:44 – 00:20:52
Man. Alright. So we're gonna play some poker. It's gonna be four card poker, two card poker. I will report back how the poker goes.
Ian
00:20:52 – 00:20:52
I will
Aaron
00:20:52 – 00:20:56
not update the poker. Keep keep your logbook so we can we can know how you did.
Ian
00:20:56 – 00:21:10
I'm gonna do some photography. I've never done I'm into the photography, but I've never really brought my proper gear and, like, photographs Vegas properly. So that's gonna be also part of this trip is some serious street photography in Vegas. So we will see how that goes. Hopefully, that
Aaron
00:21:10 – 00:21:15
Well, I look forward to checking in on the photos on Blue Sky. That will be very, very exciting to see.
Ian
00:21:16 – 00:21:21
As I go. Alright. Let's do some ads. Pay for the show. We gotta pay for this babysitter.
Aaron
00:21:21 – 00:21:23
We gotta pay for this nanny.
Ian
00:21:23 – 00:21:30
We gotta do it. So, you could be your ad could be right here. Sponsor the show. We do have some new sponsors this week. Thank you to everybody.
Ian
00:21:31 – 00:21:38
But yeah. So first off, old time friend of the show. Old time spot original sponsor.
Aaron
00:21:38 – 00:21:39
Original sponsor.
Ian
00:21:39 – 00:21:45
Forever spa I think it's sponsored every month so far and is set up to sponsor months into the future.
Aaron
00:21:45 – 00:21:48
All should learn from this, by the way. You should all learn from this.
Ian
00:21:50 – 00:22:04
He gets brand advertising. Bento. Our friends at Bento, the refreshingly faster email marketing platform, Manage all your marketing email. It takes care of everything. Obviously, you've heard Aaron talk about it and sing its praises many times.
Ian
00:22:05 – 00:22:29
But just an amazing way to manage all your email newsletters, all that kind of marketing engagement. They do a great job with that. So check out Bento at bentonow.com. And WorkOS auth kit, Laravel twelve's new starter kits include WorkOS auth kit. Future proof your authentication stack with the identity layer trusted by OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, and Vercel.
Ian
00:22:29 – 00:22:33
Check them out at WorkOS.com. Just a good domain.
Aaron
00:22:33 – 00:22:34
That's a good domain.
Ian
00:22:34 – 00:22:39
Thank you all for sponsoring. Alright. What's up next here? You did a packet. You did I don't know.
Ian
00:22:39 – 00:22:41
Was this a it wasn't a package by one
Aaron
00:22:41 – 00:22:45
of the package. No. No. It's just something that has an awesome name that I just don't know.
Ian
00:22:46 – 00:22:50
Awesome name. That's why I was using the first. I was like, oh, this team did a package. This is great. I love this name.
Ian
00:22:50 – 00:22:55
And I was like, wait a minute. I think he just built this for himself. That's all. Like, Kim, why did he just build this for himself? What about for me?
Ian
00:22:55 – 00:23:04
This is the first thing you've built in, like, a year now that I wanna use. You're building all the terminal stuff. You're doing all this other stuff. You built something awesome, but there's there's no package for this one.
Aaron
00:23:04 – 00:23:07
Oh, amazing. It all comes back to Ian.
Ian
00:23:08 – 00:23:10
Yeah. Alright. Come on.
Aaron
00:23:10 – 00:23:13
Alright. This is good. We got it. We can do a whole segment on this. Alright.
Aaron
00:23:13 – 00:23:23
Here we go. Yeah. So I built a thing, for Laravel, for us, for me and Steve to use. Yes. And it's called dead drop, which is just like
Ian
00:23:24 – 00:23:28
this is an awesome well level name. This is, like, a soft well level name.
Aaron
00:23:28 – 00:23:32
Cold war coded. Fantastic. Spy coded. It's just, like it's so
Ian
00:23:32 – 00:23:34
awesome. So good. Fantastic.
Aaron
00:23:35 – 00:23:52
The idea of dead drop is, well, in in real life, well, in spy culture, you know, that I'm super deep in spy culture. So let me just look up real fast what dead drop actually means because I'm so deep into spy culture that I can just say how to play. Here we go. One person
Ian
00:23:52 – 00:23:54
drops something, the other person picks up.
Aaron
00:23:54 – 00:24:13
Something that I know definitely is, a dead drop is a method of espionage trade craft, cool already. It's okay. Used to pass items or information between two individuals via a secret location. By avoiding direct meetings, they can maintain operational security. So pretty cool.
Aaron
00:24:13 – 00:24:14
That's pretty cool.
Ian
00:24:14 – 00:24:15
That's very cool. We love a dead
Aaron
00:24:15 – 00:24:40
drop. Yeah. So, dead drop, the the command that I built, it is not a package, communicates from production your production environment to your local environment via an isolated, like, disk, basically. So, like, s three, r two, b two, something like that. So that's the idea of the dead drop is that, like, the two code bases aren't actually talking to each other.
Aaron
00:24:40 – 00:24:56
Production is putting a zip on an isolated disk, and then local can read that isolated disk and see if there are any zips there. So you can't actually, you know, get into production or anything like that. So it's very, very safe. But the idea is Okay. Take an adoption.
Aaron
00:24:56 – 00:24:57
Just like a dead drop.
Ian
00:24:57 – 00:25:03
Point of a dead drop is so they don't even see each other. They don't need the key to talk. They don't pass each other. One person dropped
Aaron
00:25:03 – 00:25:10
an x. And see if somebody chalked an x. And if they did, then you grab what's in the mailbox, and then you leave. Exactly.
Ian
00:25:10 – 00:25:11
Know who the other person is.
Aaron
00:25:11 – 00:25:12
Don't even know.
Ian
00:25:12 – 00:25:13
Okay.
Aaron
00:25:13 – 00:25:42
So dead drop, the Laravel command, what it does is in production, it will gather up, some subset of your database. And so that could be, problematic records, and you're, like, trying to pull them down and test why this certain situation is happening, or it could just be, data that you need to, like, it could be, like, CMS like data. Right? So you're in production and you're like, let me add in our case, let me add all these videos. These videos belong to these modules.
Aaron
00:25:42 – 00:25:54
These modules belong to these courses. Let me upload thumbnails. Let me, you know, yada yada yada. You're doing all this work, and then you get to your local environment and you're like, well, I kinda need all that data. Like, I need all the course data so I can design the course website.
Aaron
00:25:54 – 00:26:36
And so, the dead drop command in production allows you to write, you know, whatever queries you want using Eloquent, and then it'll go grab all of those records and put them into a ZIP file, that it then puts onto this configured disk that, the only purpose of that disk is to hand off these ZIP files. Then on your local machine, you can run, dead drop load, and it will go look at that same disk and list out all the zip files. And you can say, I wanna load this one into my local database. And then it'll pull that down, unzip it, run the migrations, and insert all the data. And so on the production side, there are hooks to, like, clean out, you know, user emails and passwords and that kind
Ian
00:26:36 – 00:26:38
of stuff. This is the best part.
Aaron
00:26:38 – 00:26:52
Then on the loading side, there are also hooks to, like, replace stuff. So let's say on production, you strip out all passwords. And then on local, you say, hey. Anytime we're loading a user record from dead drop, set the password to password. Yeah.
Aaron
00:26:52 – 00:27:34
And then, like, you can just log in as anybody. So that's what it does. A few clever things is one, in production, it will do it will run Laravel's schema dump. So, like, you get a snapshot of the database as it is in production, the structure of the database so that then when you load it locally, even if you have new migrations, it's going to recreate the production schema exactly, then load all of the cleaned production data, and then run whatever local migrations you have. So you don't end up in this situation where it's like, well, my local database is three migrations ahead, and now I can't load the dead drop because it doesn't match anymore.
Aaron
00:27:34 – 00:27:46
Yep. So yeah. So you can set this up to, like, generate a new drop every you know, overnight if you need to. I just run it manually because we don't we don't I just SSH in and run it manually
Ian
00:27:46 – 00:27:47
and create
Aaron
00:27:47 – 00:27:53
a new one, and it just doesn't matter. So, yeah, super cool. And maybe it should be a package.
Ian
00:27:53 – 00:28:06
I think so. I think this is, like, something I've never seen a package for and that, like, everybody needs at some point, right, usually, anyway. And because even, like, when you do the seeding and stuff, you know, it never is you can never really get it quite right.
Aaron
00:28:06 – 00:28:07
Like, it's still
Ian
00:28:08 – 00:28:24
Always and and to even make it close to right is always very complicated, if if you have a an app that actually does anything kinda serious. And so, yeah, sometimes the production data is just the way you need to look at things. But then, like you said, like, that was the part that really struck me. I was like, oh, man. But then he's dumping the production.
Ian
00:28:24 – 00:28:30
How's yeah. That would be. I was like, oh, he's figuring that out. He's not dumping the production. And even, like, in terms of the private data and stuff.
Ian
00:28:30 – 00:28:56
So, yeah, clear out the passwords, clear out the emails, click names. If you had other types of things, like, I could imagine, like, like, in my case, what I do is, like, well, we could, like, get rid of, you know, ticket history, and, like, you could use, whatever whatever the tool's called. Like, can you remember a faker to, like, you know, make just fake data in there or whatever? So but, like, but you still have all the connections, which is always the part where you're usually messing with stuff anyways. Like, all of these relations are messed up or whatever.
Ian
00:28:56 – 00:29:05
Blah. So, yeah, that's all the stuff that's really hard to seed. So to have all that there, especially if you have a bunch of tables and stuff, like, be really cool. Yeah. I like that.
Aaron
00:29:05 – 00:29:30
So the this originally came from back when I was at the property tax firm. I built, a version of this for us back then because we would have we would load all this county level data. Right? So we're loading in, you know, millions of records from these different counties of, like, you know, this house has this structure, and these structures have these features, and these features have these amenities. And so we've got, like, you know, we've got, like, six levels of relationships.
Aaron
00:29:31 – 00:29:48
We have, you know, 50,000,000 houses because we've got it over five valuation years or whatever. Yep. And then you're trying to, like, test something locally. You know, an agent will come to you and be like, hey. You know, when I try to value this property against this property, something bad happens.
Aaron
00:29:48 – 00:30:13
And you're like, well, how am I supposed how am I even supposed to start with that? And so I wrote this this, command where you could say, like, alright. Given an address, let's pull, like, all of the records within one mile of it, and Mhmm. Then we'll download those. And so then you can run these valuation, like, tests basically locally without pulling down, you know, 50,000,000 records.
Aaron
00:30:13 – 00:30:30
You just pull down, like, 30,000 records in this zip file, and then you can test this stuff locally with all of the data that we've loaded in from our, you know, third party providers. So it's incredibly useful. And maybe with such a cool name, maybe it does deserve to be a package.
Ian
00:30:30 – 00:30:40
The name alone. Yeah. That was the other great thing I I, that you have in there is, like, being able to just take a segment of the data. So if you are just using it for, like yeah. Debug something or even just as like, hey.
Ian
00:30:40 – 00:30:55
We wanna have this for certain testing types. Occasionally, it's like, well, don't pull down all hundred million records or whatever. Just give me two days worth because that's fine or whatever. And, obviously, you still need, like there's business aspects to this, right, of, like, who's allowed to do this and making sure Right. Yeah.
Aaron
00:30:55 – 00:30:55
Care and
Ian
00:30:55 – 00:31:03
all that stuff, whatever. Like, that's up to yeah. That's up to you to figure out. But, like, but, yeah, in terms of you're a part of it, like, I don't know. I feel like it could be a I don't know.
Ian
00:31:03 – 00:31:18
Maybe nobody would want this, but I feel like this kind of thing that people people just do it dumbly now. Right? It's like, well, I'll just take a snapshot of the database. And they have this whole snapshot of the database with all kinds of stuff in it that people shouldn't have on their hard drives and, like, and your man and it's a big, huge thing.
Aaron
00:31:18 – 00:31:22
And it's three gigabytes, and you yeah. Yeah. You're like, I don't need all of
Ian
00:31:22 – 00:31:32
this. Yeah. Yeah. So whereas if it's just a little more streamlined, it's more secure. It's not like people pretend they don't need this because it's insecure, but actually then they do need it and they do do it.
Ian
00:31:32 – 00:31:47
They just do it in the insecure way when they actually have to do it. And whereas if you just plan for it and just had it set up, then you could just do it properly instead of doing it the bad way, which is what you're gonna be forced to do at some point anyway. So, yeah, I don't know. It's got such a good name. I mean, it's I hate to
Aaron
00:31:47 – 00:31:48
have name.
Ian
00:31:48 – 00:31:51
Give you another open source package to maintain, though. That seems problematic.
Aaron
00:31:51 – 00:31:59
But Seems problematic. Yeah. It does seem problematic. Let's stay on open source, and let's talk about Fusion.
Ian
00:31:59 – 00:32:00
Okay. What about it?
Aaron
00:32:00 – 00:32:04
So here's where I'm at. I don't know I don't know if it's gonna keep going.
Ian
00:32:04 – 00:32:07
Fusion. What what remind me what Fusion is. Which one is Fusion?
Aaron
00:32:07 – 00:32:09
The Silicon EU 1. The
Ian
00:32:10 – 00:32:11
Oh, yes. Okay. Yes.
Aaron
00:32:11 – 00:32:12
Come on.
Ian
00:32:12 – 00:32:13
Too many of them.
Aaron
00:32:13 – 00:32:14
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
Ian
00:32:14 – 00:32:15
I never I didn't I didn't
Aaron
00:32:15 – 00:32:17
know that. She's already got Vegas on the mind.
Ian
00:32:17 – 00:32:20
He's barely even here. Drop on the mind. I'm like, this
Aaron
00:32:20 – 00:32:21
is a name. It's a great name.
Ian
00:32:21 – 00:32:29
Okay. So fusion was the the connecting, React View. All on the PHP side. Yeah. Well, you yeah.
Ian
00:32:29 – 00:32:32
You started Vue. Yep. Okay. So so what's going on?
Aaron
00:32:32 – 00:32:35
I feel I I feel torn, Ian.
Ian
00:32:35 – 00:32:35
Okay. I
Aaron
00:32:35 – 00:32:37
feel torn. So let me just tell you.
Ian
00:32:37 – 00:32:37
On this.
Aaron
00:32:37 – 00:32:38
Spent a long time on this.
Ian
00:32:38 – 00:32:40
Lot of effort. Lot of stress.
Aaron
00:32:40 – 00:32:46
Lot of sleepless nights. Lot of stress. Okay. Released it at Laracon EU. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:32:46 – 00:32:55
The release went well. Seemed exciting. K. Reception, I think, was, I think, predominantly negative just from, like, onlookers. Right?
Aaron
00:32:55 – 00:33:00
From people being like, what the hell are we doing? We you know, we're reinventing whatever from February.
Ian
00:33:01 – 00:33:03
Yeah. We got LiveWire. Right. Right.
Aaron
00:33:03 – 00:33:11
So from from the looky loos, reception was just massively negative, which I'm fine with. I don't mind looky loos.
Ian
00:33:11 – 00:33:12
Sometimes that happens when you're
Aaron
00:33:12 – 00:33:17
Sometimes that happens. Yep. You know? That's fine. I can convince myself that they just don't get it.
Aaron
00:33:17 – 00:33:18
I I can get there easily.
Ian
00:33:18 – 00:33:19
Right.
Aaron
00:33:19 – 00:33:30
From the people that I think matter, to me at least, reception has just been meh. Nobody's really asked about it. Nobody's like, hey. I really wanna try this. It's Right.
Aaron
00:33:30 – 00:33:34
Nobody nobody has pushed the ball forward at all on in terms of interest.
Ian
00:33:35 – 00:33:35
Yep.
Aaron
00:33:35 – 00:33:55
And this is if you'll recall, this was, I I laid out a few scenarios before I released it. One was, I hope people either really hate it or really love it, but I hope nobody is, like, lukewarm. And I do remember that. People hate it and other people are lukewarm. Right.
Aaron
00:33:55 – 00:34:04
Yeah. So, like, the the people on the Internet hate it, which is fine. Again, don't super care about people on the Internet, unless you're listening to the show, in which case I care about you deeply.
Ian
00:34:04 – 00:34:05
We love them. Yeah.
Aaron
00:34:05 – 00:34:29
Love them. And then everyone else has just been kinda like, this is you know, Aaron's doing something weird again. And some people close to me really don't like it, which was surprising and a little bit hurtful. And so it's like, do I wanna push forward on this thing that is a huge was already a huge amount of work, is a huge amount of work? Mhmm.
Aaron
00:34:30 – 00:34:56
So I have a couple of thoughts. One is Yeah. It seems like everyone is circling this idea. So this is going to happen one way or another, this this, like, bringing the front end and back end closer together. Laravel just released Wayfinder, which I haven't really dug into, but seems spiritually similar to this, in that it unites the front end and back end a little more tightly with this way finding feel stuff.
Aaron
00:34:56 – 00:35:01
Yeah. It feels a little more, Ziggy to me, which I don't know if you've used it.
Ian
00:35:01 – 00:35:02
Thought it was. Yeah. I have. Yeah.
Aaron
00:35:02 – 00:35:16
So it feels a little bit more Ziggy to me Right. But with a little bit of, like, TypeScript, you know, kinda niceties and stuff on top. Mhmm. So that is heading that direction. I saw somebody released something.
Aaron
00:35:17 – 00:35:47
I forget who it was or what it was, but it was very similar to, like, Wayfinder, Inertia, Fusion, all kinda, like, conglomerated together. So I feel like this is, in the cultural zeitgeist of we need we need to tie the front end and back end closer together in Laravel land if we want to win over the, you know, the JavaScript people because they're used to a certain, you know, developer experience. That's fine. So culture is headed this direction. So I don't feel, like, personally responsible to make it happen.
Aaron
00:35:48 – 00:36:00
The other thing is I don't want to do a React version. Like, I I just I think it needs to be done. This is the problem. I think it must absolutely be done.
Ian
00:36:00 – 00:36:01
Yeah. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:36:01 – 00:36:17
I don't wanna do it. And what I'm seeing is I'm I'm I think I'm seeing a little bit of, like, and I felt this way many times before. I'm seeing web dev changing and leaving me behind a little bit Right. Which has happened multiple times, and I've been fine. So I'm not, like, worried about that.
Aaron
00:36:17 – 00:36:18
But Right.
Ian
00:36:19 – 00:36:19
It
Aaron
00:36:19 – 00:36:37
does seem anecdotally like everyone is moving away from Vue and to react in the Laravel ecosystem. That has been true in the broad ecosystem for years, forever. Right. But now, you know, cloud is written in React. Nuno's all on about React.
Aaron
00:36:37 – 00:36:46
I'm seeing I'm seeing even Steve Baumann, who's, like, my diehard view options guy. He's like, I guess I gotta learn React now.
Ian
00:36:46 – 00:36:47
Alright.
Aaron
00:36:47 – 00:36:54
And everyone's going to TypeScript. And it's just like, guys, I don't wanna do this. Like, I I don't wanna I don't wanna play this game. I have no
Ian
00:36:54 – 00:36:55
I have
Aaron
00:36:55 – 00:37:09
zero interest. I'm excited for React Miami. I have zero interest in learning React and TypeScript. And I know that makes me sound like a fuddy duddy, but, like Yeah. I got stuff I gotta do, and I don't I don't I don't wanna futz around with React and TypeScript.
Aaron
00:37:09 – 00:37:24
I just wanna build stuff with Vue and Laravel. So that's another thing. It's like, boy, I'm building in a space that is rapidly shrinking, and that is the Vue space. Even Evan Yu even Evan Yu isn't focused on Vue.
Ian
00:37:24 – 00:37:28
Really? What's he doing? He's on Vue. He's on Vue. Now or whatever.
Aaron
00:37:28 – 00:37:41
I think Vue does, like, the, all things to all frameworks, and so it's a much broader ecosystem. And then he's got a whole developer tooling company, v zero, I think. No. Voidzero. Y'all gotta come up with better names.
Aaron
00:37:41 – 00:38:08
Voidzero is a whole, like, developer tooling company. Yeah. And so I think Vue is just kinda like, that was my implementation of my first thing, and now I'm building the underlying thing that's actually much bigger, and I don't super care about Vue. That may be an unfair characterization, but it is, it is a an impression that is in the market. So whether or not it is true, I have seen many people say that this is true.
Aaron
00:38:08 – 00:38:24
Like, Evan is moving on from Vue to Vue because React was one, and Vue is pretty important across the whole ecosystem. So Yeah. I feel like the I don't know what I don't know what a good metaphor is. Maybe the the soldier in Japan that didn't realize the war was over and he just kept
Ian
00:38:24 – 00:38:25
fighting, you
Aaron
00:38:25 – 00:38:27
know, for, like, twenty seven years. Right.
Ian
00:38:27 – 00:38:29
You're on some little island out there. Yeah.
Aaron
00:38:29 – 00:38:39
Yeah. I'm on there just fighting for the kingdom, and everybody's like, my brother. The war's been over for two decades. So I feel a little bit silly there. What else?
Aaron
00:38:39 – 00:39:03
Is there anything else? I I think that's I think that's mostly it. I think my feelings are, there are a few people that seem interested, but not very interested. The majority of people didn't like it, and most people the vast majority of people don't care at all. And so I'm like, is this a good way to spend my limited time?
Aaron
00:39:03 – 00:39:06
And I think the answer is starting to lean towards no.
Ian
00:39:06 – 00:39:13
Yeah. I think that makes sense. I mean, I think you you had a hypothesis, I would say. Right? Mhmm.
Ian
00:39:13 – 00:39:19
Which is that if you're hardcore PHP only, Lara only, there's already LiveWire. Right?
Aaron
00:39:19 – 00:39:19
Right.
Ian
00:39:19 – 00:39:31
And that's probably the best tool for that. Correct. And then if you're a React person and you wanna get connected in more with the back end and Laravel, what's going on? Like, what are you gonna do? Mhmm.
Ian
00:39:31 – 00:39:53
And so I think then there's two paths. And your hypothesis was they're going to kind of want to really dig in on the Laravel side and on the PHP side and get into that. But I think the reality might be that that's not true. And that the Laravel people want to bring the react people in more than the react people want to be in. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Aaron
00:39:53 – 00:39:53
Do you know
Ian
00:39:53 – 00:39:54
what I mean?
Aaron
00:39:54 – 00:39:54
Force
Ian
00:39:54 – 00:40:06
that out. Yeah. So it's more like, okay, How do we make using a Laravel backend super easy for the React people so that they don't have to think about the backend because they don't wanna think about the backend and they're still not thinking about the backend. Right? So it's like, okay.
Ian
00:40:06 – 00:40:25
Let's have Ziggy, Wayfinder type things that let you connect and to the types are correct and whatever, blah blah. You're still probably gonna have some other developer build the back end, or maybe eventually you do do it yourself and you're kinda doing the bare minimum, like, just to have a back end. But you're not actually trying to do everything in the back. You're trying to do as little back end as possible. Right?
Ian
00:40:25 – 00:40:31
Like, you're a React guy. You wanna get into the back end just a bare minimum to save some shit to the database, and that's kinda it.
Aaron
00:40:31 – 00:40:34
Shovel off the request to Supabase is what you actually
Ian
00:40:34 – 00:40:34
would want.
Aaron
00:40:34 – 00:40:36
You don't even wanna save stuff to the database.
Ian
00:40:36 – 00:41:00
Layer right between Supabase and and your stuff. So now if that hadn't been the case, that, like, then I think your thing fusion would make perfect sense as that in between thing, but maybe that's not the case if you're not seeing people interested in it, you know? And I think I think it's not totally fair now. On the other hand, is that really what this really requires to really know is for you to go to the mattresses for two years with it. Right?
Ian
00:41:00 – 00:41:08
And be like, you're giving conference talks. You're at all the conferences talking about it. You're improving it. It's getting better. You're chipping away.
Ian
00:41:08 – 00:41:25
You're at React Miami giving a talk about this thing. Right? Like all that work to, like, convince people that this is the way you should be writing React apps, and you should learn Laravel to do it. And look how powerful this is when you know both sides of this, and this tool makes it really easy and all that stuff. Right?
Ian
00:41:25 – 00:41:25
So, like
Aaron
00:41:26 – 00:41:27
That's a change the world campaign.
Ian
00:41:28 – 00:41:39
Right. Which I think is what's required to convince people on that level. You know? And then maybe if, like, Laravel Inc had adopted it and been like, yeah. This is, like, we wanna go we wanna put our full backing behind it, and we'll be the people who do that part.
Ian
00:41:39 – 00:41:49
Right? Like Yeah. That would be different too. But But if that's not gonna happen, then you being the person who does that, feels like that might not be worth a couple years of your time. Doesn't gotta be
Aaron
00:41:49 – 00:41:49
worth a couple years.
Ian
00:41:49 – 00:41:59
Payoff is for you on the other end of that necessarily. Right? Because, like, I mean, we know a lot of people with big open source packages, and they spend all their time being like, how am I gonna make money off this big open source package? Right? So, like, if the goal is
Aaron
00:41:59 – 00:42:02
And then they live in fear of other big open source packages.
Ian
00:42:02 – 00:42:03
Yes.
Aaron
00:42:03 – 00:42:05
It's just a fear based existence.
Ian
00:42:05 – 00:42:08
It's entirely fear. And, you know, if you want to tell
Aaron
00:42:08 – 00:42:12
them you're constantly out there fighting for your share of the market. Yeah.
Ian
00:42:12 – 00:42:25
I mean, we've talked to obviously, like, people are taking your open source thing and doing some commercial thing off of it, and that's totally legal. Right? And all this stuff. So, like, you're constantly battling, which I mean, listen. I think you would be very good at that.
Ian
00:42:25 – 00:42:39
I think it's actually in your wheelhouse to do such a thing. I think you could be on YouTube. Right? And, like, you know, doing talks. Like so I think you would do an awesome job with it, but I don't know if you should do an awesome job with it right now for this.
Aaron
00:42:39 – 00:42:45
Right. Is that the is that the best use of those skills?
Ian
00:42:45 – 00:43:05
Right. And just the flat out time, you know, is this the even I guess I am a little more on the side of, like, I don't think the React people really wanna write PHP. And so if that's true, then I definitely think this is not a good thing to do it with right now. Maybe that's not true. Maybe you can convince them that's not true and all that kind of stuff, but there might be other open source things in the future you wanna do.
Ian
00:43:05 – 00:43:27
It's like you only have so much time. Right. And so if you put two years into this and it actually turns out to not be the thing and you're not told die hard believer in it, if you're not willing to go to the mattresses for it, right, because you totally believe that this is definitely the best way and everybody should be doing it this way, then probably it's not a good use of your time. Right? Because there's gonna be other opportunities that you miss because you're doing this and all that kind of stuff.
Ian
00:43:27 – 00:43:47
And I also don't think it ties in super great with, like, your courses, at least as they currently stand. So it's not like That's I'm gonna make this my platform to just be content for to sell courses on because you're not doing a bunch of React courses, right, and all that stuff. And you don't even have the Laravel course yet and all that. So yeah. So it doesn't hook in with the existing the commercial side But
Aaron
00:43:47 – 00:43:48
there's so well where aligned.
Ian
00:43:49 – 00:43:51
Yeah. I think that's probably true.
Aaron
00:43:51 – 00:43:59
Yeah. I think that's right. And I think, I think part of the realization recently is I'm becoming very tired of web dev
Ian
00:44:00 – 00:44:00
Yeah.
Aaron
00:44:00 – 00:44:10
Twitter and the web dev culture. Like Yeah. I've had I've had to go through and do a fresh round of mutes because I'm just like, I don't care about this, actually. Right. Yeah.
Aaron
00:44:10 – 00:44:26
And I think that is a that's like a realization about myself is I I don't really wanna fight the good fight on Yeah. This is how you should build apps. That's like turns out I I don't wanna convince people about that. Don't wanna talk to them about that. Don't wanna do that.
Ian
00:44:26 – 00:44:28
Because you are becoming business Aaron Francis.
Aaron
00:44:28 – 00:44:29
I think I am.
Ian
00:44:29 – 00:44:32
Business Aaron Francis wants to figure out how I can use these tools
Aaron
00:44:33 – 00:44:33
I think so.
Ian
00:44:33 – 00:44:47
Increase my income. And there's not, like, there's not a lot of space in that for, like, let me, you know, have a holy war with No. Web dev Twitter about the best way that they should all be building their product. Like, that's a whole energy
Aaron
00:44:47 – 00:44:47
No.
Ian
00:44:48 – 00:44:55
Drain and battle that's gonna be hours in nasty Reddits with people calling you a dickhead and, like, all this stuff. Right?
Aaron
00:44:55 – 00:44:58
Fighting on Twitter with framework maintainers. Right.
Ian
00:44:58 – 00:44:59
Like, all this stuff.
Aaron
00:44:59 – 00:45:00
Wanna interact with at all.
Ian
00:45:00 – 00:45:02
Yeah. And, Telling
Aaron
00:45:02 – 00:45:21
me why signals are good or bad, and I'm like, what are signals? Like, that's the kind of stuff where it's like, everybody has an opinion on whether, you know, fine grained reactivity or, like, zero sync engines, and I'm like, guys, I don't care. I just I don't care. So And it doesn't matter.
Ian
00:45:21 – 00:45:31
That's the thing. In in terms of business, Erin Francis, it doesn't matter because it's like, hey. HubSpot still has PHP four code in it. Okay? Like, you know, and we've been update actually, last year, we've updated a lot of stuff.
Ian
00:45:31 – 00:45:38
But, like, still, there's still chunks of it that are definitely much older style PHP. And guess what? It doesn't matter at all. It's totally fine. Doesn't matter.
Ian
00:45:38 – 00:45:51
Like, nobody cares in least bit. People pay the money and they're like, great. It does the thing we want to do. Doesn't matter at all. So it's like, if your identity is wrapped up in all that kind of stuff, then it matters to you a lot, and you're like, oh, it's all gotta be squeaky clean and perfect.
Ian
00:45:51 – 00:45:58
But that's if you wanna be in the different place, which is I want a successful business, then all those things mean a lot less. And it's like, what
Aaron
00:45:58 – 00:46:07
do you mean? Care about. And in terms of, in terms of this part of my life, all I care about is having a successful business. Like, I did
Ian
00:46:07 – 00:46:07
a YouTube idea.
Aaron
00:46:07 – 00:46:27
I did a YouTube video unrelated to fusion or anything. I did a YouTube video, I think, maybe Thursday, Friday. Somebody commented yesterday, PHP is dead, bro. And I just, like, I just kinda reflected for a second, and, of course, I responded something snarky. But I I said I reflected for a second and was like, I just really don't care.
Aaron
00:46:27 – 00:46:56
Like, I just really don't care to, like, try to tell this guy that PHP is not dead. Yeah. And so I, you know, I, you know, I've I've, you know, battled with him for a second and was like, alright. Well, you're anonymous, so I don't have to take anything you say seriously because I have no idea who you are. But it just made me think, like, I I am so happy just hanging out with the people that like PHP and like Laravel, and we can all just talk about how awesome it is and how much we love it.
Aaron
00:46:56 – 00:47:17
And I'm so happy to go and, like, be on podcasts and go to conferences and, like, be the PHP guy and be like, I love Laravel, and I'm happy to tell you why. But I like, being on the Internet and trying to actually convince other people, like, get in little debates with people versus being on the Internet and just talking about the thing that I like, which is
Ian
00:47:17 – 00:47:17
Yep.
Aaron
00:47:17 – 00:47:26
Laravel, those are very different things. Trying to convince someone that they should like Laravel versus here's all the reasons I like Laravel. Those are totally different things.
Ian
00:47:26 – 00:47:27
Totally different.
Aaron
00:47:27 – 00:47:29
I don't wanna do one of those. I wanna do the other.
Ian
00:47:29 – 00:47:35
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I just think, there's only so much time. There's only so much energy.
Ian
00:47:35 – 00:47:48
Even if there's things anything you can kill, it's like, you know, I've been doing that. It's like anything you can kill off. It's just lowers the cycles even if it's just floating out there. Right? And but because it's like the bug reports build up and new Laravel versions come out.
Ian
00:47:48 – 00:48:06
Out. Like, everything just constantly adding every extra package you have, every extra product you have, all these things, they're all add to the stress and the time and all the stuff. And yeah. And sometimes this is what we do as founders, though. It's like, I've gone off and built other products in these last twenty years several times, and none of them have been very successful.
Ian
00:48:07 – 00:48:12
But, you know, then you shut it down or you sell it off. Right? And you keep going.
Aaron
00:48:12 – 00:48:13
It makes you realize keep going.
Ian
00:48:13 – 00:48:39
Oh, the main thing I do is actually, like, that's the thing that's profitable and worth working on. But sometimes you have to, like you meant need the mental detour of, like, I'm gonna go over here for four months and, like, do this other thing. But then you come back and you're like, oh, the main thing I have is working, and that's kinda cool, and people like it, and they they pay me money for it. And, the other thing was very, you know, hypothetical and Cathartic. Yeah.
Ian
00:48:39 – 00:48:40
Cathartic. And, like
Aaron
00:48:40 – 00:48:42
You do come back with higher clarity. That is
Ian
00:48:42 – 00:48:43
true. Yeah.
Aaron
00:48:43 – 00:48:55
And that's a good thing. You know? That that is a good thing. And I will say part of the process of exploration is learning that you're gonna throw a lot of it away. And, like, that has to be okay.
Aaron
00:48:55 – 00:49:06
I will say for me, the hard part is the guilt. I just feel guilty. I'm like, oh, man. This is so embarrassing. I can't believe I, like, did this thing, and now I'm not gonna do this thing.
Ian
00:49:06 – 00:49:06
Yeah.
Aaron
00:49:06 – 00:49:18
And I can go and stand up on stage all day long and talk about, you gotta put stuff out there. If it doesn't work, that's fine. Keep going. But then when it's me, I'm like, man, I remember how much this sucks. I hate doing this.
Aaron
00:49:18 – 00:49:29
Yep. So that's the hard part for me is, like, what are people gonna think? I feel so guilty. I feel ashamed, but it's you know? Gotta practice what you preach and just move on.
Aaron
00:49:29 – 00:49:31
Keep going. Just gotta kill it.
Ian
00:49:31 – 00:49:38
I think that feels like the right thing. And if somebody wants to take it over, you know, that's fine, of course, and all those kind of things. But, like yeah. I mean, obviously
Aaron
00:49:38 – 00:49:50
I'm much more excited about solo, the CLI stuff that you hate, than I am about fusion. Yeah. Because there, it's like it's almost like preaching to the true believers. It's like Right. This is not I'm not trying to win anybody over.
Aaron
00:49:51 – 00:49:58
I'm giving people that I know something that I think will make their lives better. I'm not trying to convince somebody to join our our tribe, you know?
Ian
00:49:58 – 00:50:04
Well, yeah. It's just a useful tool. Right? And I feel like you have some other things like that. What is it like Sidecar or whatever?
Ian
00:50:04 – 00:50:11
Sidecar. Name of all your things to like. That was a good name. But, you know, it's like, here's a tool. It's useful.
Ian
00:50:11 – 00:50:21
It's kinda very standard open source stuff. Hey. I'm busy. When I get around to updating it, I update it. But, you know, I'm not making a big commitment to you necessarily.
Ian
00:50:22 – 00:50:28
I'm not like you you know, there's just a difference where it's like, hey. Write your entire front end whole Yeah.
Aaron
00:50:28 – 00:50:29
Application on top
Ian
00:50:29 – 00:50:30
of this thing love of
Aaron
00:50:30 – 00:50:32
that I sorta care about.
Ian
00:50:32 – 00:50:40
You're implying there. And that and then that that's why you have resistance too. Right? It's because people are like, Like, first of all, I can't even try it. How do I even try it?
Ian
00:50:40 – 00:50:53
Like, I have to build a new app to try it effectively. I know you'd said that there's some ways to use it. But, like, the reality is you have to build a new app to try this thing. And so right there, it's like, I only do that so often, so I can't even try it. Then, okay, I'm gonna go out of my way to try to use it.
Ian
00:50:53 – 00:51:01
Well, then I have to get learned up on it. Has it been updated recently? Oh, it doesn't look like he's worked on it in in two months. That that's still giving me bad vibes. Not not even gonna try it.
Aaron
00:51:02 – 00:51:03
Two months, so it's dead. Yeah.
Ian
00:51:03 – 00:51:08
Right. It's dead. So, like, you have to be like, oh, you wanna see three days. Right? Two days today, twelve hours ago.
Ian
00:51:08 – 00:51:18
Like, that's what you have to be. Right? If you wanna build this into this is a thing that everybody uses. And I just think, oh, man. I just feel I mean, I feel like stressed just talking about it.
Ian
00:51:18 – 00:51:18
It feels like someone
Aaron
00:51:19 – 00:51:22
Boy. Okay. Imagine how I feel stressed and guilty. Yeah.
Ian
00:51:22 – 00:51:28
Exactly. Yeah. So I I think, like, get if you're gonna kill it off, killing it sooner is definitely better.
Aaron
00:51:28 – 00:51:28
Like
Ian
00:51:28 – 00:51:41
Yeah. Because why do stretch it out for six months and all that, you know, and just gonna be then there will be some more real users, and then that makes it even harder. And you're not really into it.
Aaron
00:51:41 – 00:51:43
I hate disappointing people, Ian. Yeah.
Ian
00:51:43 – 00:51:44
I know. I know.
Aaron
00:51:44 – 00:51:46
I'm reading a book on on stoicism.
Ian
00:51:46 – 00:51:47
And I love stoicism.
Aaron
00:51:47 – 00:51:54
I know. Fan. Apparently, so does Taylor. So I'm reading this book. I'm also reading a book, I forget by who.
Aaron
00:51:54 – 00:51:56
The courage to be disliked. It's very
Ian
00:51:56 – 00:51:59
interesting. Nice. Interesting. Well, that's probably up your alley there.
Aaron
00:51:59 – 00:52:04
Trying to shed some of my, like, I care about what other people think of me. But this is a big part
Ian
00:52:04 – 00:52:05
of it.
Aaron
00:52:05 – 00:52:06
Don't wanna let don't let people down.
Ian
00:52:06 – 00:52:19
Listen. There is a reason why I've been around the open source community now for a long time, and I don't really have any public packages. Like, because I don't want any public packages. Yeah. Because I don't want to deal with anything we've just talked about.
Ian
00:52:19 – 00:52:27
Like Yep. I don't want people depending on me. I don't want people being like, why didn't you do this? I don't want people being like, you're an asshole. Like, I don't want them to deal with any of that.
Ian
00:52:27 – 00:52:44
I just wanna stay in my nice little world when nobody ever calls me names, and I sell them things for money, and it's great. And I can contribute to open source in other ways. I'll help run a conference. I'll have this podcast that we talk about open source stuff on a lot. Like, I'm happy to do all those things, but I do not wanna be the maintainer of an open source product.
Ian
00:52:44 – 00:52:52
And that's very deliberate because I just yeah. I it's too much it's too much stress. It's too much overhead. It's awesome that people do it. Definitely not for me.
Ian
00:52:53 – 00:52:53
Yeah. So
Aaron
00:52:54 – 00:52:57
You might you might be right on this one, business dad. You might be right.
Ian
00:52:58 – 00:53:03
I think there's a middle ground. I think especially for you, like, it's great content. Right? You need things to talk about. Uh-huh.
Ian
00:53:03 – 00:53:13
But I think it's just, like, rightsizing that whole element of things. Because when it's these other tools that are just you're when it's a useful tool package, there's not that many people calling you an asshole because they're like
Aaron
00:53:13 – 00:53:13
Correct.
Ian
00:53:13 – 00:53:21
People who wanna use it and get enjoyment out of it are using it. Everybody else is ignoring it. Great. That's perfect. You're not, like, shoving it in people's faces.
Ian
00:53:21 – 00:53:29
Right? You're not going on podcast being, like, you gotta change everything you're doing. You're an idiot if you don't do it and creating all this stuff. It's like, no. You're just putting stuff out there.
Ian
00:53:29 – 00:53:34
People like it. They don't like it. Whatever. You like it. That's all that kinda matters, and you can talk about it and all that stuff.
Ian
00:53:34 – 00:53:35
So yeah.
Aaron
00:53:35 – 00:53:37
We may have we may have an answer here.
Ian
00:53:37 – 00:53:47
There we go. It might be. It might be. Well, you'll have to update us, but I think that makes sense. I think that it makes sense what you're talking about here, and it might be time to, set it set it loose.
Aaron
00:53:47 – 00:53:47
You know?
Ian
00:53:47 – 00:53:48
Let it go. It was
Aaron
00:53:48 – 00:53:55
and we gave it the old college try. Yep. That's what I'm always on about. And I don't think this one worked, and that's okay.
Ian
00:53:55 – 00:53:57
Yeah. That is okay. It was cool.
Aaron
00:53:57 – 00:53:58
It was cool.
Ian
00:53:58 – 00:54:02
To follow you streaming while you build parts of it and anyway. And
Aaron
00:54:02 – 00:54:08
Gave a good copy. Yeah. Yeah. Bunch of interesting code is out there. I did some very interesting things.
Ian
00:54:09 – 00:54:14
You never know. That might be useful, some of that stuff at some point. Who knows? Yeah. So you learn stuff.
Aaron
00:54:14 – 00:54:21
Live and learn. Well, there you go. There's the real there's the real insight on the show for you. That's this is the real stuff.
Ian
00:54:21 – 00:54:24
Alright. Let's do another another round of ads. You gotta pay the bills.
Aaron
00:54:25 – 00:54:34
Pay the bills. I got somebody at the house charging me hourly. I gotta pay. Alright. This week's episode, another another new sponsor.
Aaron
00:54:34 – 00:54:41
Two new sponsors. So I got the new sponsor corner. This is great. Alright. Native PHP for mobile.
Aaron
00:54:41 – 00:55:05
Turn your Laravel project into a native mobile app ready for the App Store in minutes with native PHP for mobile. Check out nativePHP.com/mobile. And this is honest to goodness iOS and Android applications built with Laravel. We can talk about that later. The other sponsor, big sponsor, friend of the show, Laracon twenty twenty five.
Aaron
00:55:05 – 00:55:17
I will be emceeing this conference, so please come. Laracon is calling all web artisans. Come to Denver, ready to level up. Leave, ready to ship. We must ship.
Aaron
00:55:17 – 00:55:37
And they've given us a short link, Ian. We gotta talk about the short link, but they've given us a short link, which is very good for trackability. Very hard to say on the air. So y'all please check the show notes. But for Laracon twenty twenty five, please visit lrvl.co/mostly.
Aaron
00:55:37 – 00:55:38
Oh. It's crazy, man.
Ian
00:55:39 – 00:55:40
We might have to work with them on that a little bit.
Aaron
00:55:40 – 00:55:47
We're gonna have to work on the short link. So thank you to Native PHP and Laracon for sponsoring the show.
Ian
00:55:47 – 00:55:49
We'll both be there. So come on out.
Aaron
00:55:49 – 00:55:56
We'll both be there. We'll both be there, and there may or may not be a mostly technical event happening. We'll see.
Ian
00:55:56 – 00:55:59
Maybe. We're working on something. We'll see if it happens.
Aaron
00:55:59 – 00:56:06
Keep keep your eyes peeled because there may be a little a little mostly technical thing y'all can RSVP to at some point soon.
Ian
00:56:06 – 00:56:09
At the very least, there's gonna be loads of stickers. There's gonna be us, you know, with
Aaron
00:56:09 – 00:56:09
the stickers.
Ian
00:56:10 – 00:56:20
And, you know, we'll be happy to meet all the listeners for sure. I love when the listeners, come say hi. That's always really cool to meet meet listeners in person. It's one of my favorite things. So I only say a lot.
Aaron
00:56:21 – 00:56:30
Tying it all together, the native PHP crew will be at Laracon, so it's just gonna be a big a big sponsor fest. So come see everybody at Laracon twenty twenty five.
Ian
00:56:30 – 00:56:39
I don't have any time for it, but native PHP is a thing that I think, like, if I had time, if I didn't have this business or if I sold the business or something, like, I that would be kind of a cool thing to dig into. I don't know.
Aaron
00:56:39 – 00:56:40
Basically, super cool.
Ian
00:56:40 – 00:56:44
Yeah. Build some mobile apps, but not have to learn anything new. Seems kinda cool. So
Aaron
00:56:44 – 00:56:53
See, there's there's somebody that was like, I'm gonna do it, and I'm just gonna, I think I think I wanna go out and convince the world this is the way to do things.
Ian
00:56:53 – 00:57:10
Well, yes and no. You know? Because it originally, I believe I could have my history totally wrong, but I believe Marcel started it. And then Simon kind of took it over or maybe they started together and then Marcel kind of dropped off a little bit and I think he's back involved a little bit, but there is a little bit of a, like, it got kicked off and then one of the
Aaron
00:57:10 – 00:57:10
groups kind
Ian
00:57:10 – 00:57:11
of pulled back and then
Aaron
00:57:11 – 00:57:13
Kicked off and then it kind of dipped for a while.
Ian
00:57:13 – 00:57:14
Yeah. So it's a lot
Aaron
00:57:14 – 00:57:16
And then I feel like Simon has taken on lead on that.
Ian
00:57:16 – 00:57:20
So maybe But he definitely seems to wanna, like, he's gonna
Aaron
00:57:20 – 00:57:20
This is his
Ian
00:57:20 – 00:57:23
thing. Gonna fight the fight. Yes. Simon is on
Aaron
00:57:23 – 00:57:23
board like thing,
Ian
00:57:23 – 00:57:27
and I'm I'm gonna make this happen. I'm gonna make it a thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
00:57:27 – 00:57:28
It seems to be working.
Ian
00:57:28 – 00:57:32
Like, that's what he's doing. He's literally paying money to help push
Aaron
00:57:32 – 00:57:33
it more. Right?
Ian
00:57:33 – 00:57:33
A thing.
Aaron
00:57:33 – 00:57:38
Yeah. Yes. So So yep. Nativephp.com/people.
Ian
00:57:38 – 00:57:39
Connection there.
Aaron
00:57:39 – 00:57:41
Perfect connection. Alright. Got anything else?
Ian
00:57:41 – 00:57:48
I got a I got my you know, last week, we talked about my reorgoning reorganizing my computer. Yeah. All still going very well.
Aaron
00:57:48 – 00:57:49
Okay.
Ian
00:57:49 – 00:57:54
Everything I said last week still applies, but I've had to make one change, which I had to drop Safari.
Aaron
00:57:54 – 00:57:56
I would think so. Tell me more.
Ian
00:57:56 – 00:58:05
I was very disappointed. I was liking Safari. Safari itself is fine. I thought maybe it would be, like, the extension situation, but that was fine. Had all extensions I needed.
Ian
00:58:05 – 00:58:27
I was very surprised the root cause of why I had to drop it, which is its performance is often poor. And I remember it being like, that was one of its benefits. It was like it rendered faster than Chrome a lot of the times. But, yeah, quite a few websites, like, where it would just hang and do weird stuff, and Chrome doesn't really have any of those issues anymore. Pretty rare.
Ian
00:58:27 – 00:58:27
So
Aaron
00:58:27 – 00:58:29
So what did you go did you go back to Chrome?
Ian
00:58:29 – 00:58:38
Yeah. I just went back to Chrome. For a while before this, I'd been on Arc, which I do like, but also has some weirdness and stuff. So now I'm just back on pure Chrome.
Aaron
00:58:39 – 00:58:41
Hard it's hard to beat the incumbent. It really is.
Ian
00:58:41 – 00:58:43
It really is. Yeah. They've made it very good.
Aaron
00:58:44 – 00:58:51
So Steve was asking me he was like, how does Ian do dev tools in Safari? Because Safari's dev tools suck. And I was like, I actually don't know.
Ian
00:58:52 – 00:59:05
Well, so this is the other thing. This was sort of a medium reason. At first, I was like, that was one of my other things. I was like, well, dev tools is like I know it's not as good, and maybe that's gonna be a huge problem. So I poked around on it a little bit in beginning, and it was fine.
Ian
00:59:05 – 00:59:30
I was obviously, it's not as good, but it was fine. And then I have been doing more with dev tools in the past couple days. And it is like it's like stupid stuff. Like, you refresh the screen and, like, if you're in dev tools, like, it doesn't bring you back to the element that you were on before the refresh, which is usually what you wanna do because, like, you change something and you wanna be on the same element. So there was some stuff like that that was getting to me too.
Ian
00:59:30 – 00:59:38
So, yeah, dev tools, I don't know if that would've pushed me over the edge because my dev tool usage is kinda like you know, I'm not programming every day. So That's what I
Aaron
00:59:38 – 00:59:42
told that's what I told Steve. I don't know how much he's dev tooling. I'll be honest with you.
Ian
00:59:42 – 00:59:58
Yeah. So I am in there, but it's not like, oh, every single day I'm in here. And so it's, like, abusive and tear if it's, like, not optimal, I probably live with it, or I could just fire up Chrome for when I'm doing that kind of thing where I really need the optimal dev tools, whatever. No big deal. But, so that wouldn't be on its own the cause, but that was another negative.
Ian
00:59:58 – 01:00:10
But the main cause is just, like, a month's sites and things are slow and, like, like, I can't have things are slow. Things are slow is, like, a total deal breaker for me. So back to Chrome. Going with a two browser Chrome setup where I have
Aaron
01:00:10 – 01:00:11
Like, different profiles?
Ian
01:00:11 – 01:00:22
Two different profiles. Yeah. Ah. Which was one of the things probably the best thing about ARC is that you could have multiple profiles, but in one window, basically Yeah. With two tabs that kinda went between the profiles.
Ian
01:00:22 – 01:00:32
So that was nicer, I would say, than these two window situation. But right now, I'm on two window situation. Because I do kinda, like, keep be on a lot some sites I'm logged into the same site with different profiles or whatever.
Aaron
01:00:32 – 01:00:32
So it
Ian
01:00:32 – 01:00:40
is nice to have the separate profiles. So yeah. So that's why I'm not getting too exciting. Welcome back. Chrome.
Aaron
01:00:40 – 01:00:42
There's no getting away there's no getting away from it.
Ian
01:00:42 – 01:00:44
I know. It's roped gin.
Aaron
01:00:44 – 01:00:45
Yep.
Ian
01:00:45 – 01:00:48
Apple, they have all the money in the world. Just what's going on there?
Aaron
01:00:48 – 01:00:51
I don't know. But they're they're starting to slip. I'll be honest.
Ian
01:00:51 – 01:00:52
They are slipping a little bit.
Aaron
01:00:52 – 01:01:00
It I think seen most clearly in their software quality. Hardware is still just top notch, but their software is just bad.
Ian
01:01:00 – 01:01:14
Yeah. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it bad, but it's it's it feels like they have the resources to do the limited number of really important apps they do. Like, they should be super high quality, and they're not super high quality all
Aaron
01:01:14 – 01:01:14
the time.
Ian
01:01:14 – 01:01:26
You know? And so it's like, that part is weird, that yeah. I don't know. It just feels possible. Like, if I had trillions of dollars, I feel like I could build out a sufficient number of software engineers.
Aaron
01:01:26 – 01:01:30
I would terraform so much desert with trillions of dollars. Are you kidding me?
Ian
01:01:30 – 01:01:34
I just like too fresh to be, like, come out and be like, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna terraform desert. That's
Aaron
01:01:34 – 01:01:38
what I'm doing. Sick of this stuff. We're gonna terraform Nevada. Nevada. Like, yes.
Aaron
01:01:38 – 01:01:41
Sign me up. I'm an Apple employee now.
Ian
01:01:41 – 01:01:48
Oh, man. I would you know, working at Apple would be cool. Like, there's a couple companies I would like to work at. Apple would be one of them. Like, being part of the bigger thing Mhmm.
Ian
01:01:48 – 01:01:50
That would be kinda cool. Like, work at Apple.
Aaron
01:01:50 – 01:02:01
I don't know. I feel like you'd you'd feel I I think you'd just be inside the board, would just feel really like I mean, Apple, Google, Microsoft, all of those, it's just gonna be bureaucracy.
Ian
01:02:01 – 01:02:08
Yeah. But if they start me at a certain level, like, I wanna be up high enough where, like, I'm doing WWC. Like, I'm doing five minutes.
Aaron
01:02:08 – 01:02:15
I mean, I I too would love to be an executive at Apple. I didn't understand that's what we were talking about. Yeah. Executive. Yeah.
Aaron
01:02:15 – 01:02:18
That'd be great. I would love that. Sign me up. That's awesome.
Ian
01:02:18 – 01:02:26
I don't wanna be like a project lead inside the No. Pages, department or whatever. No. I mean, I don't know what you got. You got one more update, it looks like.
Aaron
01:02:26 – 01:02:39
I got I got one more update. So, you know, I was talking about digging a basement slash idea. Digging a, like, an underground garage. And, you know, all my haters were saying you can't do it.
Ian
01:02:39 – 01:02:40
You can do anything with money.
Aaron
01:02:40 – 01:02:42
Good call by the haters, I'll say.
Ian
01:02:43 – 01:02:44
No. No.
Aaron
01:02:45 – 01:02:47
Turns out the haters were right on this one.
Ian
01:02:47 – 01:02:48
Taking l's today. Left.
Aaron
01:02:48 – 01:02:53
I know. I'm just I'm packing them all into one episode so we can get them over.
Ian
01:02:53 – 01:02:59
Oh, what's going on? Why? Why no why no why can't you dig out your all under your house and build a garage? What what could be wrong?
Aaron
01:02:59 – 01:03:03
I can. I can. Okay. I totally can. That's the thing.
Aaron
01:03:04 – 01:03:13
It comes back to it comes back to, is it worth my time slash money? Okay. And I think in this case, it is not. I think it is not. Quotes?
Ian
01:03:13 – 01:03:15
Like, give us a little we need some details here.
Aaron
01:03:15 – 01:03:16
I did some research.
Ian
01:03:16 – 01:03:16
Okay.
Aaron
01:03:16 – 01:03:43
So I I visited a few, local websites that that do it. I watched several YouTube videos. I talked to GPT deep research for a long time. And it's just terribly, terribly expensive, like, 304 hundred dollars of square foot, and potentially potentially even more depending on, you know, what kind of soil they find when they get down there. Something.
Aaron
01:03:43 – 01:03:49
Or if they find no soil and find only stone. You know? Oh, yeah. Okay. And okay.
Aaron
01:03:49 – 01:04:00
So here's here's kinda the way it went down. I've been you know, we're in this house less than a year. I'm trying to figure out how are we gonna, you know, how are we gonna make this a home for the next fifteen years. Right?
Ian
01:04:00 – 01:04:00
Right.
Aaron
01:04:00 – 01:04:11
So I'm like, I gotta have a master plan. I need a master plan. Obviously, gotta have a master plan. So I'm thinking, alright. Well, you know, maybe I'll dig out a garage, or maybe I'll build a garage.
Aaron
01:04:12 – 01:04:35
You know, we have a garage, but it's very small, and it's open to the alley, which is open to a major road. And so it's like Okay. Our driveway alley, I'd walk four four or five, six lane road. And so it's just kinda like we're we're exposed to passersby, which is fine, but we would rather be, like, insulated and protected from the big scary city.
Ian
01:04:35 – 01:04:35
You know what
Aaron
01:04:35 – 01:04:35
I mean?
Ian
01:04:35 – 01:04:46
I got a question. Alright. You know what you're doing? An alley implies usually a space between two buildings, but doesn't sound like there's a start like, what what is this alley? Is it a a little road?
Aaron
01:04:46 – 01:04:50
Down down here in Texas, no two buildings are next to each other. So That's
Ian
01:04:50 – 01:04:51
what I was thinking.
Aaron
01:04:51 – 01:05:03
Yeah. So what's this alley? Like. So the alley separates, it's basically like a frontage road or a a an on ramp, but for just our driveways. So, like, there's the five lane.
Aaron
01:05:03 – 01:05:20
I I don't remember how many lanes it is. I think it's maybe four lanes of big road behind our backyard. This is just, like, massive road, and then there's a sidewalk next to that road, surprisingly. And then, there is an alley. K.
Aaron
01:05:20 – 01:05:29
And then all of the driveways on our street open out to that alley, and then you drive down the alley and then out to the ax like the
Ian
01:05:29 – 01:05:30
Oh, that's a weird setup.
Aaron
01:05:30 – 01:05:34
Big road, basically. So you're not, like, pulling out onto a four or five lane road.
Ian
01:05:34 – 01:05:36
So I thought you had a cul de sac, though.
Aaron
01:05:36 – 01:05:39
That's the front of my house. Okay. So my front
Ian
01:05:39 – 01:05:40
door where the driveways come off.
Aaron
01:05:40 – 01:05:42
No. No. No. No. Oh.
Aaron
01:05:42 – 01:05:52
So the front door opens to the cul de sac where all the children are blowing bubbles. Right? The the garage opens to a Dallas sized thoroughfare, basically.
Ian
01:05:53 – 01:06:01
So there's, like, no reason for anyone to ever go down the cul de sac practically other than, I guess, delivery people, like Yep. Or guests if they're gonna park in the cul de sac. Our
Aaron
01:06:02 – 01:06:18
direct neighbor, their driveway opens to the cul de sac, cul de sac, but the other neighbors, none of them have driveways that open to the cul de sac. Interesting. That's alright. This one neighbor that's kinda on, like, the very beginning of the cul de sac, but they don't have alley frontage at all.
Ian
01:06:18 – 01:06:19
Right.
Aaron
01:06:19 – 01:06:23
And so their driveway opens to the cul de sac, but everyone else opens to the alley.
Ian
01:06:23 – 01:06:28
Okay. Alright. This is very strange. Alright. So you got you got a garage, but it faces the alley.
Aaron
01:06:28 – 01:06:37
Garage faces the alley. A more private setup. Fence between so there's a fence. Our yard is fenced in in the back. Our yard is fenced in.
Ian
01:06:37 – 01:06:38
Oh, that's good.
Aaron
01:06:38 – 01:06:44
Because you got the driveway. Driveway is not. Right. And so the driveway is open to the alley, which is open to the big road.
Ian
01:06:45 – 01:06:47
K. What about fencing in the driveway doing the gate?
Aaron
01:06:47 – 01:07:00
That's what we're gonna do. So the fear is, you know, Jennifer's in the driveway late at night unloading kids and some some passerby is walking on this big thoroughfare and walks into the driveway and is like, give me all your money. You know? That's the fear.
Ian
01:07:00 – 01:07:00
Okay.
Aaron
01:07:00 – 01:07:19
So My thought was, okay. Well, if we're gonna, like, do something, let's build a master plan and figure out exactly what we wanna do, and then we can do it step by step. But there was no step by step of let's build an underground garage.
Ian
01:07:19 – 01:07:20
Nothing. Yeah.
Aaron
01:07:20 – 01:07:25
And so the the sheer enormity of it began to overwhelm me because it was like move
Ian
01:07:25 – 01:07:26
before I did that. Yeah.
Aaron
01:07:26 – 01:07:34
I think so. That's that's where we landed. Right. So the sheer enormity of it is, like, I need a master plan. The master plan is enormous.
Aaron
01:07:35 – 01:07:46
The master plan is too big. I can't do anything because I have to do everything, which is a common failure pattern for me. Can't do anything because I have to do everything. And then it's just like this loop forever of, okay. Gotta make a plan.
Aaron
01:07:46 – 01:07:56
Well, the plan's too big. Can't do it. Oh, gotta make a plan. Don't have a plan, and then just round and round we go. So what I decided is, let's just take digging a garage off the table.
Aaron
01:07:56 – 01:08:21
What happens if we decide just, you know, to be normal for once and say, we have a garage above ground where the humans live? What if we also lived on the surface above ground? So now the master plan is much simpler and much more, mentally approachable because it's piecemeable. So now the master plan includes, like, put a gate over the driveway. Oh, okay.
Aaron
01:08:21 – 01:08:25
That seems doable. That's not a quarter million dollars.
Ian
01:08:25 – 01:08:25
Right. That's,
Aaron
01:08:25 – 01:08:28
like, $4,000, and maybe I'll
Ian
01:08:28 – 01:08:29
I can be a little more than that, but Yeah.
Aaron
01:08:29 – 01:08:40
I'll do it myself. It'll be fine. Of course. Maybe we replace the fence, and then we start doing some landscaping, and then we start doing some, you know, some gardening. And, like, okay.
Aaron
01:08:40 – 01:08:45
Well, that's a lot easier. I could do that. You know, I could Yeah. Bite off a piece of that every weekend instead of, like
Ian
01:08:45 – 01:08:46
Those are projects.
Aaron
01:08:46 – 01:08:49
Those are projects. That's not a six month excavation and
Ian
01:08:49 – 01:08:50
foundation underpinning.
Aaron
01:08:50 – 01:08:51
It's not
Ian
01:08:51 – 01:08:53
a construction. It's just
Aaron
01:08:53 – 01:08:55
I don't need I don't need commercial engineers
Ian
01:08:55 – 01:08:56
to have the equipment.
Aaron
01:08:57 – 01:08:58
No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
01:08:58 – 01:09:14
I don't need a sign off from a licensed anyone. So Right. Feels better. Feels like a little bit like giving up the dream, but, you know, I don't I don't think it probably would have been that much fun, after about two days into digging. I think I would have been like, what a this is I've I've done it again, haven't I?
Ian
01:09:14 – 01:09:20
This is so much risk. I don't know. Does your insurance cover if they, like, wreck half your house? Like, you know, lots of stuff there. You know?
Ian
01:09:20 – 01:09:24
Yeah. Yeah. And now what about selling this house?
Aaron
01:09:24 – 01:09:25
We just bought it.
Ian
01:09:25 – 01:09:27
People sell things they just buy? No.
Aaron
01:09:27 – 01:09:29
No. No. This is a good house. Okay. It's a good house.
Aaron
01:09:29 – 01:09:30
Because
Ian
01:09:30 – 01:09:32
it seems like maybe you're a little iffy on location now.
Aaron
01:09:33 – 01:09:51
The location has always been a moderate concern, and the plan has always been to close us off from the large street somehow. Yeah. So this is this is always been in the plan. This is, a very good house in a very good neighborhood, and I think Okay.
Ian
01:09:51 – 01:09:54
The neighborhood in general isn't bad or anything like that.
Aaron
01:09:54 – 01:09:56
Oh, no. The neighborhood is Okay. Ideal. Yeah.
Ian
01:09:57 – 01:10:02
So it's just, like, truly rando situations you're kind of just hedging your bets on. Not like
Aaron
01:10:02 – 01:10:03
Yeah. Totally.
Ian
01:10:03 – 01:10:05
All the time, there's weird people wandering around.
Aaron
01:10:05 – 01:10:12
No. I Like, I we have a problem yet, and, honestly, it's Dallas. Nobody walks. So it's it's fine. K.
Aaron
01:10:12 – 01:10:18
No. The neighborhood is super ideal. The elementary school is in the neighborhood. It's full of young families. It's, like Right.
Aaron
01:10:18 – 01:10:29
Super perfect. Best friends are building a house, like, three doors down. So it's like, we're not going anywhere. And if we do, it'll be somewhere else in this neighborhood. And at that point, it's just like, it's a lot of transaction costs.
Aaron
01:10:29 – 01:10:33
And then, also, I don't have that much money. I can't I can't afford another house right now. Are you getting it?
Ian
01:10:33 – 01:10:37
It. Hey. If you make money on this house, you just redid it. It's gonna be worth more than you bought it for.
Aaron
01:10:37 – 01:10:39
No. So many transaction costs.
Ian
01:10:39 – 01:10:40
You love transactions.
Aaron
01:10:40 – 01:10:43
I do love transactions, but not transaction costs.
Ian
01:10:43 – 01:10:45
You love holding multiple houses at the same time.
Aaron
01:10:45 – 01:10:46
No. No. No. No. No.
Ian
01:10:46 – 01:10:47
You love all these things.
Aaron
01:10:47 – 01:10:59
No. No. No. So the project list, on the home front has become more approachable. And, you know, Ian, it's all a mental game.
Aaron
01:10:59 – 01:11:14
Everything's a mental game. And I you just gotta play the game right. And I think breaking it down into this approachable list has helped me helped me mentally. Also, just releasing some of that fusion guilt helps me mentally. So we might we might be into a good place.
Aaron
01:11:14 – 01:11:17
We've been in some bad places. We might be into a good place.
Ian
01:11:17 – 01:11:30
Well, this is I mean, we've talked about this on the show before, but as a person slightly older than you, with kids slightly older than you, I do think it's very, you know, just I mean, you are right on the precipice of the kids needing a lot of time.
Aaron
01:11:30 – 01:11:31
Like I know.
Ian
01:11:32 – 01:11:51
And where they're not it's not they can't just put them over here, and then they stay there because they can't walk or they can barely walk or you can gate them in or whatever. And then they're gonna wanna do stuff. You have all this time suck is coming very, very quickly. And this is big projects, things that aren't giving you value in some way. Like, these things, they just can't coexist.
Ian
01:11:51 – 01:12:14
Like, it's, like, impossible. So the more you can get rid of stuff that isn't adding and the more you can streamline things and more you can make your projects achievable rather than, like, too far out there, I think you're just gonna be in a much better place because, yeah, it's just a lot of time. Like, you are really right there where it's gonna be a tremendous amount of time. And there's kinda no way around that unless you're gonna give up on, you know, aspects of that end of things, which I know you don't wanna do. Right?
Ian
01:12:14 – 01:12:14
You don't
Aaron
01:12:14 – 01:12:15
wanna do the
Ian
01:12:15 – 01:12:19
kids' soccer games. You're like, you don't wanna be working on fusion instead of being at the soccer game on soccer
Aaron
01:12:19 – 01:12:20
or whatever.
Ian
01:12:20 – 01:12:25
Right? Right. Zero. So so that's that's valid. And there will be some of those times anyway because you run your own business, and it's like, well Right.
Ian
01:12:25 – 01:12:33
We're shipping this course. It's gotta be done by this date. I'm gonna miss the soccer game because it has to happen. It literally has to happen for this thing. Okay.
Ian
01:12:33 – 01:12:37
Fine. But, like, you want those decisions to be the ones that, like, you okay. I have no choice.
Aaron
01:12:37 – 01:12:37
Yeah.
Ian
01:12:37 – 01:12:42
It's for the business. It's it's providing us the ability to do all the stuff we're doing. Okay. So I'm gonna make this sacrifice. Right?
Ian
01:12:42 – 01:12:53
But, like, when you get into, like, sacrifices for optional things or things you're misguided on or, like, that's all terrible. Then because you still have the required ones, but then you also have now you've added on all the other ones that are
Aaron
01:12:53 – 01:12:54
Yep.
Ian
01:12:54 – 01:12:55
Time wasters. So
Aaron
01:12:55 – 01:13:01
But here's here's the other side of that here's the other side of that coin is I don't want to blunt my ambitions at all.
Ian
01:13:01 – 01:13:02
I know. It's hard.
Aaron
01:13:02 – 01:13:09
I don't wanna I don't I don't wanna just, like, aim lower. That is the hard part for me. Yeah. But I don't wanna aim lower.
Ian
01:13:09 – 01:13:20
In. Right? Like, it's like, I do think you probably need to finalize some clarity there on, like, what the ambition is. Because I do think you're a person who likes to build a lot of of stuff. Like you like to build things.
Ian
01:13:20 – 01:13:32
Right. And you have to be involved in new things, but I think it's gonna be super hard to square that circle. As you have four kids getting older and they want you and need you and all this stuff. Right. And financial commitments, all that stuff.
Ian
01:13:32 – 01:13:55
It's like, you know, you might just have to be like, listen, this is building this business and being the gosh darn best web development course creators in the whole world. Maybe that's the ambition. And then that can be a more focused guiding light there. Right? Versus like, you know, when you get off on a side tangent and then it takes a lot of your time and then it doesn't pan out, like, that pulls away from the family stuff.
Ian
01:13:55 – 01:13:59
It pulls away from the business stuff, potentially. Again, it's hard because sometimes it's awesome. Right? And then
Aaron
01:13:59 – 01:14:00
Sometimes it's awesome.
Ian
01:14:00 – 01:14:15
Yeah. It's hard to know. But I think it's like you you and you've already started working on this. Right? Like, percentage of the time that goes towards new things, picking new things that don't require, oh, if I do this, it's gonna be three years of nonstop, like, evangelizing it.
Ian
01:14:15 – 01:14:26
Right? Like, that's gonna be a hard thing for you to take on. But if it's like, hey. This is a side thing and how it turns out is, like, it's a it's a business little side thing, and I can hire people and they can run it. Right?
Ian
01:14:26 – 01:14:34
Like, there's those kind of things. Or, again, like, open source is really hard because, like, hiring somebody to run your open source stuff is just a pure money loser for the most part.
Aaron
01:14:34 – 01:14:35
Totally.
Ian
01:14:35 – 01:14:49
You know? And they're definitely not gonna evangelize it. Like, you could hire somebody to maintain it. You're probably not gonna be able to hire somebody to it. And so, like, yeah, I think maybe just we're having, like, a new set of filters before you get off on a new thing maybe just to see, like, where it fits in might be a a thing.
Ian
01:14:49 – 01:15:05
You know? But, but it's hard. Like I I said, I've totally done this exact thing where I was like, I'm gonna go build, you know, a survey tool. And, like, I go off and build it, and it takes six months. And then we have a few customers that kinda floats around and, you know, never becomes, like, a big revenue source or anything like that.
Ian
01:15:05 – 01:15:07
So it happens, definitely.
Aaron
01:15:07 – 01:15:19
But It does happen. It's painful learning experience. But I don't know. I think my my, instincts and filters are getting refined, which is good. Yep.
Aaron
01:15:19 – 01:15:35
But I don't wanna lose the thing that's like, let's go do something crazy and see what happens. But I think choosing better or different or, differently shaped crazy things to see what happens is probably the direction that I should go.
Ian
01:15:35 – 01:15:48
Yeah. Just things I could do double duty because I I feel like you could come up with so many cool crazy things that are, like, related to your core business, you know? Right. And that it's a course in a totally different style that's completely insane, and nobody's ever done this. Great.
Ian
01:15:48 – 01:15:48
Right. Where it's like
Aaron
01:15:48 – 01:15:50
And that's the stuff that I want to think about. Right.
Ian
01:15:50 – 01:15:54
You know? That kind of stuff. Even the course platform you're building. You're building this course platform.
Aaron
01:15:54 – 01:15:54
That's great.
Ian
01:15:54 – 01:15:56
Gonna be able to pull content out of that.
Aaron
01:15:56 – 01:15:56
That's great.
Ian
01:15:56 – 01:16:11
Maybe you even sell it someday or whatever. Like, this but it's tied in with, like, the mainline business, and, like, that all works together. It's not detracting too much from the mainline stuff. So, yeah, I feel like that all that kind of stuff all works. But, yeah.
Ian
01:16:11 – 01:16:19
Like, things like the open source, pretty hard, I think. Or just yeah. Just Excavation. Woodworking. Excavation.
Ian
01:16:19 – 01:16:27
Like, you know, woodworking for yourself as a break. Yes. Woodworking turned into a business maybe gonna be hard to justify, you know, like, just things like that. Who knows?
Aaron
01:16:28 – 01:16:31
The continual death and rebirth of Aaron Francis.
Ian
01:16:31 – 01:16:38
Yeah. That's all your first year as entrepreneur. Right? So you're gonna it's gonna take you some time to, like, you're gonna make mistakes along the way. That's how it goes.
Aaron
01:16:38 – 01:16:42
Make mistakes of ambition than mistakes of sloth. You know? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
01:16:42 – 01:16:45
Exactly. I'd rather die trying than have never tried it all.
Ian
01:16:47 – 01:16:51
Yeah. Well yeah. But he's still yeah. Well, I don't know about the dying part. We don't want to die
Aaron
01:16:51 – 01:16:56
at all. You know? Yeah. We don't want to die. If you're gonna die, I'd rather die try.
Ian
01:16:56 – 01:17:02
Realize you're on the path of death, and maybe you need to get off that path before the death part. That's the thing.
Aaron
01:17:02 – 01:17:05
That is the thing. Don't don't die. You know?
Ian
01:17:05 – 01:17:11
Don't die. And you gotta have other things you do. That's what I think. Like, getting things in more the hobby zone. Like, this has been a big thing for me.
Ian
01:17:11 – 01:17:29
Like, I do poker. You know? I do photography. Like, having some hobby zones can also be the place where you have some of that creativity Yeah. And newness where you can learn something new without it having to be a business or having to be something that even you have to justify to other people and things like that.
Ian
01:17:29 – 01:17:29
You know what
Aaron
01:17:29 – 01:17:34
I mean? Having to justify to other people is exhausting. Right. I'm so tired.
Ian
01:17:34 – 01:18:01
So I think having those kind of things, which often get abandoned very quickly because it's like, well, that's, like, an easy thing to get rid of because there's no time for it. Right? It's like that's optional, but sometimes it makes more sense to ditch some of the work side stuff that's more tangential and keep the hobby, because it does give you a place to have different sorts of experiences, but without the weight of they must make money or yeah. Where people are gonna value the Internet.
Aaron
01:18:01 – 01:18:06
Two thoughts. One is I don't super want hobbies. I just want to win. That's all I want.
Ian
01:18:06 – 01:18:07
I just want to win.
Aaron
01:18:07 – 01:18:07
That's why
Ian
01:18:07 – 01:18:09
I do poker. Yeah.
Aaron
01:18:09 – 01:18:37
But on the other hand, I think, having a hobby that is also productive, I think, is good for me. So I think designing and building parts of this backyard, whatever fence, you know, garden, potentially pool someday. Like, just reading about Texas landscaping and drawing out, like, where would this go? Well, this seems like a bad idea. Let me do this this time, and, oh, let's go fix the fence.
Aaron
01:18:37 – 01:18:50
I can go do that. Those feel like that feels like it could be a hobby that still feels productive to me. Because I I don't wanna I don't want like, I just gotta keep going. You know?
Ian
01:18:51 – 01:19:03
I think that another way I would frame that perhaps is, like so that is actually more hobbyist, and it is still also obviously, you're improving your home and you're adding to its value. You're adding to enjoyment of it. And you're, like, into gardening. Right? You're gardening.
Ian
01:19:03 – 01:19:13
It's like it's more like gardening is your hobby. Right? Like, you can frame it that way. I think if you were to read, like, biographies of successful people that a lot of them do have hobbies. Like, not all of them.
Ian
01:19:13 – 01:19:31
Some people have been on the, like, I just I literally only work, but I do think a fair number of them have have hobbies. Hobbies are important. I think this is the thing I'm kind of a believer in. So yeah. But I think double dipping with that, that's still more it's almost on the hobby end more than the productive end.
Ian
01:19:31 – 01:19:38
It is, like, productive, in terms of improving the house, but it is, you know, like, you're fidgeting around and you're learning stuff and you're improving.
Aaron
01:19:38 – 01:19:43
That's what I I just wanna fidget learn. Really don't. Yeah. That's literally all I want is to make But you're
Ian
01:19:43 – 01:19:51
not gonna make money money. It's like with poker. I make money, but that's I don't do it for the money. It's like Right. I like the competition, and I like the skill.
Ian
01:19:51 – 01:20:12
And, like, these are the parts of it that I actually get enjoyment out of more than, like, the money is, like, kind of the scorecard of the enjoyment. And this kind of thing is the same thing. It's like, yes. Your house is becoming more valuable presumably by doing this stuff. But if you just really get into it and, like, you're into all the different plants and you know all the different plants and you're into making you're gonna make a path around here and, like, whatever.
Ian
01:20:12 – 01:20:23
And, like, that's also just a way you could be out there digging a path, and you're not gonna be as much thinking about, like, all the stressful stuff and whatever. It's gonna be that, like, little reprieve from whatever it is you're working on for work.
Aaron
01:20:23 – 01:20:29
And and this is a big thing I've been thinking about. I want my kids to see their dad working.
Ian
01:20:30 – 01:20:32
Yeah. Not the thing I haven't done well
Aaron
01:20:32 – 01:20:38
in that situation. Computer Yeah. Away from them. They've got they've got no idea that dad works. You know?
Aaron
01:20:38 – 01:20:47
And I want I wanna be like, hey. Come outside and pretend, you know, to help me dig this hole because your dad is a worker, and I think that's a good thing.
Ian
01:20:47 – 01:20:59
Yeah. And it's really hard when you work on the Internet to Yes. Pull those things in. That's where like, the photography has been good on that front because it's like, hey. I've and we look at the pictures, and we have printed books and, like, all this stuff.
Ian
01:20:59 – 01:21:18
Obviously, for much of my, like, kind of when I've been into photography, it's pictures of them. So now it's kinda cool because it's, like, you're, like, a stupid thing you were doing, but it's, like, an actually, like, almost professional level photo of them doing something cool instead of just, like, half point at the ceiling, like, you know, random picture. And, so that's kinda cool. But, yeah, it's hard. Like, poker, obviously, doesn't play exactly.
Ian
01:21:18 – 01:21:30
There's, like, dad goes away, and he plays poker. We don't know, you know, what he's doing there. And, yeah, work is like yeah. Because, like, yeah, I'm just looking at the screen. You see me looking at the screen, and you see you see the back of the screen, and that's kind of that's kinda it.
Ian
01:21:30 – 01:21:41
So I don't have a good solution for that one, but, yeah, I think, like, the idea of working in the yard or other types. Again, hobbies with woodworking for yourself. It's like, hey. Let's cut up some boards and, like, build a thing or whatever. Right?
Ian
01:21:41 – 01:21:42
Like, that's all cool stuff.
Aaron
01:21:42 – 01:21:45
You you know a lot about woodworking. That is exactly how it goes. Yeah.
Ian
01:21:45 – 01:21:59
I did one work one woodworking project ever. Me and my middle kid built a, like a, like a workbench for our garage, and that was that was so much fun. A couple weeks ago, I think I told Jamie, I kinda wanna do another woodworking project with
Aaron
01:22:00 – 01:22:01
thing, man.
Ian
01:22:01 – 01:22:01
Yeah.
Aaron
01:22:01 – 01:22:02
That's it. That's all you gotta do.
Ian
01:22:02 – 01:22:09
What I wanna build, but, like, the wood the workbench is great, and we use it all the time. It's gotten so much use. That's like, oh, man. We built that. Crazy.
Ian
01:22:09 – 01:22:10
And people actually use it. Amazing.
Aaron
01:22:10 – 01:22:11
It's a good feeling.
Ian
01:22:11 – 01:22:15
Yeah. It is a good feeling. So I think you're on the right track here, man. I'm excited.
Aaron
01:22:15 – 01:22:15
We'll get there.
Ian
01:22:15 – 01:22:17
Excited for the Anne Francis empire.
Aaron
01:22:17 – 01:22:30
We we will get there. It's a series on the ride. A series of fits and starts, but at some point, someone will accuse me of just stumbling into success. That that will be that will be when I know I've made it.
Ian
01:22:30 – 01:22:33
There you go. Who is this guy? He just showed up one day.
Aaron
01:22:33 – 01:22:39
He just showed up out of nowhere. Must life must be easy for him, and then I will just be so happy at that point.
Ian
01:22:39 – 01:22:41
I have it all documented. This is the beauty of the podcast.
Aaron
01:22:41 – 01:22:42
All documented.
Ian
01:22:42 – 01:22:44
Go listen to these hundred episodes.
Aaron
01:22:44 – 01:22:47
In the gory details. It's all right here.
Ian
01:22:47 – 01:22:50
Alright, man. Well, have a good trip. Say hi to Dax for me.
Aaron
01:22:50 – 01:22:50
I will.
Ian
01:22:50 – 01:23:00
I wish I was there. I will. Unless I find a way there, which is probably not gonna happen, but I'm intrigued. But say hi to the crew. And, yeah, and we'll we will be recording next week.
Ian
01:23:00 – 01:23:02
We'll be a day late, everybody. So day late, probably.
Aaron
01:23:02 – 01:23:05
But not a dollar short. It'll be better than ever. Short.
Ian
01:23:05 – 01:23:06
Well, lots of stories to tell.
Aaron
01:23:06 – 01:23:09
Yeah. Yeah. Hope hopefully, all good ones.
Ian
01:23:10 – 01:23:21
Alright. Follow us over there. Mostlytechnical.com has all the links to all the stuff you need as well as to the sponsorship if you wanna sponsor the show. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next week.
Ian
01:23:21 – 01:23:22
Later.
Aaron
01:23:22 – 01:23:22
Yep.
Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos, and generally try really hard.

If you ever have any questions or want to chat, I'm always on Twitter.

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical.