Back in the Saddle

Aaron

Okay. We're recording. So we missed 2 weeks. 1, because we were at retreat in Denver, and 1, because Sean was on an airplane, and Colleen and I couldn't get our mics to work. So now we're back.

Welcome back, everyone. I have people working right outside my door on a new deck. So if I have to mute, I will, but hopefully the noise won't be too loud.

Colleen

Awesome.

Aaron

Colleen, how was the big demo?

Colleen

It was good. I think demoing Query Builder is never as exciting as what everyone else is working on because most people don't use it and don't care. But for the people who use it, they're very excited.

Aaron

That makes sense. Wait. What do you mean?

Colleen

So I just some of the front end UI updates I've made. Also, I've refactored all the highest money through queries to use sub selects or joins, so you can pick. You can't pick at run time, but, like, as we as we spin up a big database and actually test it and index it and stuff, I'll be able to switch between them till I find out which one is better. And so I demoed that. Again, no one was really excited to see, like, 20 lines of SQL, but I was excited.

Aaron

I'm excited for you. That sounds exciting.

Colleen

I know you would have been excited. Everyone else is like, okay. Cool. Cool.

Aaron

I don't understand. That's great.

Colleen

I'm pretty happy about my sub select refactor, especially like I said. So now you have the option to do either one. So I did that.

Aaron

That's wild. Good for you.

Colleen

Yeah. And then I showed them where we're trying to go with kind of the nested filter thing that we've been talking about and the path forward there. And again, I went last, so they were probably tired.

Sean

Why did they always make us go last? That that was, like, we always last.

Colleen

Can I go first while people are excited?

Sean

Yeah. That's the worst time to go. Everybody's like, I

Colleen

It was like right at 1 o'clock too. Right? So I'm like, well, I wanna I didn't you know, I wanna present. I don't wanna be forgotten about. So I think it's important to share, but it was, like, right, like, like, 2 minutes left in the meeting.

So I was like, I'm now the person who makes us go over too. So, yeah, I'm popular. What can I say?

Aaron

Yeah. You should ask to go first next time.

Colleen

Yeah. I should. I have to wait when I get, like, something really cool.

Sean

Yeah. Once again, this is making me so happy that you're here and doing that mainly because I don't have to do that that meeting that you just did. And I did not like that meeting.

Colleen

It's gotten a lot better because people have a lot more to demo. Like, before it was more of a status update before, you know, the project was very mature. And so now it's actually cool because you can see what people are working on and how your stuff can fit into their stuff.

Sean

Mhmm. Nice.

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. And we're so sectioned off that a lot of it, you know, a while ago, a lot of it wasn't important to us. And so it was just like waiting around. But now that you're a little bit more integrated, I'm sure it is a little bit more engaging.

Colleen

Yeah, totally.

Aaron

Nice. How beyond just the meeting, how's it going over there at at client?

Colleen

It's great. I finally feel like this week, I have gotten into my flow state with these guys.

Aaron

Great.

Colleen

And it I just have done it all week, and it's been awesome. Like, I'm just loving it. Like, I'm back into the loving it part. So that's been really good.

Aaron

Was that just a function of time, or did something change?

Colleen

I think it was a function of wrapping my head around all of the stuff we have going on on the front end Mhmm. Because we've got, you know, 15 different files I have to amass into my brain and figure out when something breaks or the apply button's grayed out. I'm like, why is the apply button grayed out? That's a jerk. So I feel like it was a combination of the past couple weeks I've just been super I mean, we've been traveling.

Right? So Mhmm. I've just been busy with all the things and so now that I finally have the context, the full full stack context of it, it's been really good.

Sean

And if it makes you feel better, like, I mean, I wrote the front end and I still often felt that way about the front end

Colleen

Makes me feel a lot better.

Sean

Come into that code base and I would be like, alright, how is this all working again? But then, I swear, like, that is that is the best that I could do in terms of solving that particular problem with a bunch of stimulus controllers and code rendered on the server. Like, that that was the least spaghetti thing that I could come up with. It's not a good fit for that. Like, that tool is not the right tool for the job, for sure.

Although, I did the same thing with the view front end. The I think if Aaron was looking at the Aaron's looking at the view front end, then it's melts his brain, I think, which again

Aaron

It does melt my brain, but not because it's wrong, but because it's, like, super advanced front end y stuff. And it's just I'm like, what is going on here?

Sean

It's very abstract.

Aaron

Yes. It is.

Sean

Although the Which Cool. The, the the code for updating the blueprint is now identical to the for for the view version, it's identical to the Hotwire version.

Aaron

Oh, that's nice.

Sean

Yeah. Underlying everything, it's the same, basically. Oh, that's helpful.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that, I think one of the things we discovered at retreat is that concept of faceted search instead of query building. And I think, like I've mentioned, I think that static Sean's static mode is gonna be perfect for faceted search. And I think we can do a ton of content around faceted search.

And I didn't really even, like, know that those words were what we were describing for a long time.

Sean

Yeah. So yeah. I spent a lot of time designing a an early faceted search. This was, like, 12 years. I don't know.

Feels like a 1000000 years ago, 10 years ago, something like that. And at the time, that was a relatively new concept. And so we spent a lot of time thinking through that feature. And there's there's a lot of potential, you know, work that we could do there on the front end alone. On the back end, So, like, that is a thing which, like, I feel like we don't have as much to offer.

So, like

Aaron

Flush that out for me.

Sean

Well, so mostly, I think on a faceted search, you're just looking through one model. So you're I mean, there's probably some, you know, relationships, but, like, more like our we're not gonna be doing refinements, like Mhmm. On a Correct. View where you're gonna be doing, faceted search. So so we have less to offer, I think.

But on and and then the I mean, I guess there's there's maybe something we could consider. Like, right now we allow our users to build up configuration, like, build up a filter basically declaratively on the back end. So you don't have to touch the front end, and then you just drop this one line in and boom, there it is. This this doesn't fit that paradigm that we have now. Like, the because you would probably just want everything to be visible to begin with.

So we could do that. We could do something like that where they could still build it up from the back end and then boom, here's a static filter. But, again, probably when you're doing a fasted search, you want to have way more control over the front end versus, like, when, you know, drop the query builder at the top of the page, you know, which would be kind of the common place you'd put that. A fastest search, maybe maybe you want it at the top of the page. Maybe you want it on the side.

Maybe you want it in a big mega drop down thing. Maybe you want you know, like, there's a there's a million ways to go about that. So and then the other thing is, I think in terms of back end, fastest searches, like, there are solutions. Like, I would say, Algolia is the one that comes to mind, like, immediately. It's like a solid, like, back end solution to doing really, really fast faceted search, which would typically be, I think, the the main problem you would run into in implementing something like that, other than on the front end, would be on the back end would be needs to be fast.

Because as you're clicking on something, you need those results to, like, pop up as fast as possible. So how do you do that? So it's a different problem, which we we do not solve. So that's why I would say, like, in terms of us and the faceted search space, we have more to offer on the front end potentially.

Aaron

Mhmm. Yeah. I would agree with that. I hadn't thought about the immediacy thing and the fact that Algolia basically does faceted search.

Sean

Yeah. I mean, that doesn't mean there's not room for somebody else to do something like Algolia, but that that's not really I don't know if that's us. You know what I mean?

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. And the query building is so much harder, so we might as well lean on that since we've done that. So exciting news for all of us is I'm helping I think we can say his name. I'm helping Keith do his query builder implementation, this next week.

So

Colleen

Nice.

Aaron

This is one of our Internet friends who, actually, this is our first customer ever. We have a picture of me, Sean, and Keith from the DC retreat in 2019 where Keith paid us for an early version of refine. And then he took that and took that, like, way back in 2019 and built kind of his own version, and then built another version, and then came to me this last week and was like, hey. Can you just can you just do this for me? Like, can I pay you to do this for me?

I was like, yeah. Absolutely. So I'll be getting him set up with the actual refined package, because he's a Laravel user. And then also doing kind of the Colleen thing, which is, like, integrating it into app app land. So I think this is gonna be fantastic.

It's gonna help, like, one, I think it'll flush out a few sharp edges, and 2, it's gonna be, like, really exciting to have the pipeline all there. Like, we're gonna have to have it, you know, the package hosted and composer installable and everything. And once that happens, it's like, okay. We're we're, like, right there.

Colleen

Does he have a custom front end you're gonna integrate with?

Aaron

Yeah. So I asked him if he needs the Vue front end, and he said no. So that's gonna be one of the

Sean

His front end's better than ours anyway. I mean, it's not like ours is bad, but his is, like, real fancy. It does a ton of stuff.

Aaron

I think his is real native to his app.

Sean

And also really exactly. Like, really hardwired to his app. Yeah. Exactly.

Aaron

Yeah. So I'll have to that's one thing I'll I'll need to figure out pretty quickly once I'm in there. So I'm taking 2 days off of real work, taking 2 days of PTO, and hopefully I can get, you know, 75% of it knocked out. And then I'll spend, you know, nights and weekends finishing up the rest. But it's great, man.

I mean, we've all known this as a problem for a long time, but to have Keith build too on his own and then come back and be like, can you just do this? It's like, yeah, I can. I can just do this. So I'll be excited to report back next week. How, how that went.

Colleen

Yeah. That's super exciting.

Aaron

And then hopefully that gets us, like, right to the finish line on being able to soft launch it to other people. So that transitions nicely to Sean. Do you wanna give us the view rundown?

Sean

Yeah. I have to reload in my brain where I'm at with that. I I think I was yeah. I was working on refinements, and I was pretty close to getting that piece done. So that's where I'm at with I'm closing refinements, which would leave me with doing inline errors and oh, yeah.

I wanna add I'm thinking, like, I'm just moving towards feature parity with what we did at client. So that would mean I need to add the ability to put, like, categories in the drop down and prefixes and suffixes so it reads a little bit better. And I don't know. I think that's what I'm I'm, that's what coming up on is that. And then, you know, I gotta package it all up and

Aaron

Mhmm.

Sean

And then, yeah, it's it's there. So it's real close.

Aaron

That's great. And I think we could, I mean, I think we could go without the prefixes, suffixes, categories if we wanted.

Sean

Yeah. I think so. And then, yeah, I have been writing more tests like I had

Aaron

Oh, nice.

Sean

Some I forget. So in between, like, when I was really cranking on this and today, I've had I traveled for, like, a week and a half or more. It was almost 2 weeks of travel.

Aaron

Yeah. Where did you go after Denver? Did you go somewhere for a job?

Sean

Then I

Aaron

went from a job. Pauline. You you

Colleen

hung out.

Aaron

Yeah. I went together.

Colleen

We did. We did.

Sean

Yeah. You see the room that she's in? So Mhmm.

Aaron

We would

Sean

do these podcasts and I've seen her in this room and I'm thinking, oh, that sucks. Like, she's got this cool place, you know, in San Diego, but it must be so small that she has to, like, work in her bedroom. That sucks. No. That's like an extra bedroom on top of her garage.

It's like it's her own office.

Colleen

And she

Sean

has, like, a kitchen over to the side of herself.

Aaron

I absolutely thought this was your master bedroom.

Colleen

Oh, my god. Me too. And you have screen. That's so embarrassing. No.

It's not embarrassing at all. We have a whole apartment. This is our whole apartment.

Sean

Here. We're getting the tour. Oh, wow. Kitchen, which has mostly Lego projects happening. Uh-huh.

Closet.

Aaron

Couple of guitars, a piano.

Colleen

Yeah. It's got a, kitchenette and a bathroom and a door, but it's completely isolated from the rest of the house.

Aaron

Okay.

Sean

And, like, right out there is this whole, like, really nice outdoor space that they've got and which basically doubles the square footage of the house because it's San Diego, so you could just live out there. Yeah. Yeah. It's super nice. I met Colleen's whole family.

They introduced me to, pop rock Oreos, which was awesome. What?

Aaron

We're obsessed. Disgusting.

Colleen

Pop rock Oreo is different. It is disgusting. It's just

Sean

the most American way. I love it. They're actually American Oreos. They have, like, red, white,

Aaron

and blue and dillies Of course.

Sean

And popcorn. Of course they are.

Aaron

That sounds horrible.

Colleen

I brought

Sean

a whole bunch home for Isaac and Beth, and they

Colleen

Oh, that was so funny. My husband gave him a whole sleeve. He was like, oh, you've never had these? Take a whole sleeve of them home to your family. You must take them home.

Sean

And then Isaac proceeded to eat basically all of them before we noticed while we were watching a movie. That was

Aaron

Is this, is this, like, a real collaboration of Pop Rocks and Oreos, or is this something Colleen y'all invented?

Colleen

No. No. It's a real thing. You can the America Oreos that they had at 4th July have Pop Rocks in cream parts, like, or something. I don't know how it happens.

It's like a magical

Aaron

pop horrible.

Colleen

In your it's so much fun, Aaron. So it's so funny because my kids will eat 1, then they'll come up to your ear. And they're like, listen

Aaron

to me. That's my nightmare.

Colleen

Yeah. So

Aaron

fun. Mouth sounds. That's my nightmare.

Sean

Oh, so, yeah. I had a had a fun business trip. I got to go meet Colleen and her family, which was so cool. And then I stayed at they put we had to stay in a hotel. I guess, maybe there's some requirement government requirement that because it was a government was paying for this trip that we had to stay at some particular hotel that meets some requirements.

Anyway, the she put us up in some place called the Moxie, which was like, man, I I Jamie? It was bizarre. I I've pulled up to it at first and was, like, is this my hotel? Like, I was really confused. I kept thinking this can't be it because I keep I keep walking by it.

Like, that's not it. Because, like, it's right next to, like, the hustler, and then, which apparently they have retail stores, which I didn't know. So I'm like, alright. Like, there's that there, and then next to it is the Moxie, which is just a bar. And I'm like, well, that's not it.

And they keep walking, like, where did it did I just accidentally type an address and it thought, you know but, no. It was so you have to go in and it's a bar. Like, it's you go in and you check-in at the bar, and then you go up to your room, which is in quotation marks European style aka incredibly small.

Aaron

Oh my god.

Sean

Like, you have to sort of, like, kinda shuffle around, you know, to get into the bed and stuff. And then the and the you know, the clientele are just people staying at the hotel just to party. So just all night long, just drunk people just yelling and, like, some, you know, drunk guy coming, like, deciding to play music really loud on his phone or whatever at 5 o'clock in the morning and tried to get into the room next door to me, but was too drunk to figure it out for, like, 5 minutes. Just Sounds brutal.

Aaron

Yeah. It sounds like an old saloon or something.

Sean

I think, like, I'm still kind of recovering from that. Like, I didn't I was so sleep deprived. When the first weekend I got back, I didn't even realize, And then I slept for, like, 12 hours. It was, yeah. Anyway, it was it was also it was funny.

Not ideal. I'll stay someplace else next time.

Colleen

Yeah. I was gonna say, there's a lot of nice hotels in San Diego, and I'm sure they have government rates. So you should tell your admin, like, no.

Sean

Not that

Colleen

No non Please. No non brand name brand hotels again. Thanks.

Aaron

And then, Colleen, you're going on another trip or already went

Colleen

on Tomorrow. I'm flying to Mexico. Tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow. Yeah.

I'm flying through Dallas.

Aaron

Exciting.

Colleen

In the early days, I thought I had lunch, but we can't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm flying through Dallas to Mexico tomorrow.

Aaron

And how long are you there for?

Colleen

A long time. Till Thursday? I flew back Thursday.

Aaron

Oh, wow.

Colleen

So Saturday to Thursday. Yeah. It's quite a long trip. So it's gonna be epic. It's it's real fancy.

It's kind of funny. I think this conference, like, I actually went into my storage locker and pulled out black pants from 2 years ago that I have never worn. Like, I haven't worn, like, real pants in 2 years.

Aaron

Yep. But,

Colleen

like, there's all these fancy events, and I don't know if it's, like, dressy fancy, but I was, like, I should probably take them just in case. So that's been hilarious trying to be, like, oh, how does one dress for a professional event? I don't even remember. It's been

Aaron

so long. Who remembers?

Colleen

Who knows? So, yeah, it'll be great. They have all these events planned. They have, like, a famous chef, and there's gonna be a party and a boat ride and a hot air balloon ride. Like, it's gonna be ridiculous.

Aaron

That's amazing. So who who of our friends are going? Michelle's going. Right?

Colleen

Michelle's going. Andrew might not be able to come because of his broken ankle. He's not sure.

Aaron

Oh, yes.

Colleen

I know, Which is a bummer. Corey was gonna come, but he is not coming now, which is a bummer. So I think if the people we know, like, in our group, it's just me and Michelle.

Aaron

Well, that'll be fun.

Colleen

Oh, yeah.

Aaron

You guys like each other, so that'll be fun.

Colleen

Yeah. It'll be super awesome. Super excited.

Sean

It's good to at least know one person.

Aaron

Absolutely. It's always

Sean

so hard to go to a conference when you know nobody.

Colleen

Zero people. Yeah. It's it's always been a friend. Yeah. I totally agree with that.

Like, it's always nice to have one person, you know.

Aaron

So That's why I went out on such a limb at my first micro comp and stayed with Josh Pickford having not known him at all. And this is in 2012. He posted on MicroConf board and was like, hey. Does anyone wanna share a room? And I was like, I don't know anyone.

I don't I should if I do this, I'll have a buddy. And so I did, and it worked out great. And I had a buddy.

Colleen

Yeah. It's always good.

Aaron

But, yeah, it's that whole, like, okay. Well, the, you know, the conference activities are over for the day. Like, y'all go to dinner on your own. It's like Right.

Colleen

And then you're like, oh, no.

Aaron

I've gotta, like,

Colleen

find people and

Aaron

be like, hey, who are you going with? Can I go with you? It's like, oh, this.

Colleen

Yeah. Whenever I do tech, the Ruby or Rails conference, I always I know people now, but, like, in the early days before I knew people, I always signed up to be a guide, because it was, like, an a group of people. Like, do they have a guide scholar program? And so it's, like, a group of people where there are their planned events for that group. So you eat lunch together, and, you know, you do social events together.

Aaron

Smart.

Colleen

And that's always nice. But, yeah, it's hard to go by yourself to these things.

Aaron

Yeah. Feels like high school, like, going to a new high school all over again. Like, who do you sit with at lunch because you don't need anyone?

Colleen

I don't know anyone. This is awesome.

Sean

Yeah. But it's like, who do

Aaron

you you don't even know

Sean

who do you wanna sit with. Like, you know

Colleen

That's a problem. Right?

Sean

Like, at at a conference, like, some of these people are, like, yeah, I would definitely like to be spending time with them and other people you but you don't know. So you have to just, like, go try. It sucks.

Colleen

And the worst is when you, like, cold introduce I've done this before where, like, you cold introduce yourself to someone, you sit with them, and they're terribly boring. Or you have, like, nothing in common. And then you have to sit there and finish Rinkless. What'd you say? It happened.

Aaron

Oh, man.

Colleen

And then you have to sit there and finish your lunch because you don't wanna be rude. I feel like I've made a terrible mistake. Oh,

Aaron

that's amazing. I'll tell you what, it was a frigging blast to be together in Denver and just like hang out and then to watch YouTube pick on each other about being excited about ideas or not being passionate or not.

Colleen

I'm not sure how that became a thing, but it was,

Aaron

it just made me so happy. I had such a, such

Colleen

a It

Sean

was because everybody everybody was, like, shocked when Margaret was talking and she was like which by the way, Margaret gave me this compliment and said that I have a really nice voice for podcasts apparently. So thank you, Margaret. But the yeah. I was like, really? Okay.

I thought I mumbled, but she thinks that I don't. So awesome. So Margaret was talking and people were asking her, like, does that, you know, she's talking about what she wants to do in the future. She's kinda like reinventing herself. And she's like and people were asking her, like, does that does that make you excited?

And she was like, yes. And I couldn't I couldn't really tell. And then I was also like so I asked her, do you do you care about being excited or something like that? And everybody was like and she's like, yes, of course. And everybody's like, what?

And then I said, well, I don't care about being like, I don't it doesn't matter to me to be excited. Like, I get excited, but I don't it doesn't it's not important, you know? I'm not, like, seeking that. So, you know, if somebody asked me if it was that's not like a criteria. Excitement is not a criteria I would use to, like, choose to to do something, like, long term or whatever.

And and everybody was, like, jumping on me for that. Buck b, for what it's worth, is also like me and doesn't doesn't care about that. But, yeah, then Colleen just started giving me shit the whole time about, like, being excited.

Colleen

Because I just fundamentally do not understand. Like, I just don't get it. Everyone. Yeah. I think

Aaron

I heard Colleen at one point ask Sean, do you ever get excited about anything?

Colleen

I did not.

Aaron

Oh, I think you did. I think you

Colleen

actually did.

Sean

Did. Did.

Colleen

For sure. Probably did. That's why I had to introduce Sean. So I never introduce people I work with to my family ever, but I had to introduce Sean to my family to let him know that I love him.

Sean

Oh, thank god.

Colleen

Because I was giving him such a hard time all weekend.

Aaron

Oh, man. That was fun.

Colleen

It was fun. We were talking to Aaron when he, Sean was here that we should, once things get going, like, we should try to get together more than once a year.

Aaron

Absolutely. Yeah. I would love that.

Sean

Yeah. Like, the 3 of us.

Colleen

Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Aaron

Is that

Sean

what you mean?

Colleen

Yeah. Definitely. I meant the 3 of us. Yes. I meant the 3 of us.

Yeah.

Sean

Yeah. And we could probably do we don't have to do, like, a multi day. If we just, like, pop out for, like, a day, like, stay over the night stay overnight, like, 1 night and then most of the day together somewhere kinda in the middle. Yeah. We got twins there, so we could even maybe make our way to Dallas.

I know

Colleen

that's a pretty big be the baby.

Aaron

Absolutely. And I got a brand new deck. We can all hang out and barbecue. Yeah.

Colleen

I love that idea, actually.

Aaron

No. That would be great. I would love I would love to do that. I think it's such a, it's like such a mental and emotional boost to, like, be together in person, which I think we've always all known that, but pandemic plus the nature of our friendship is that we started as internet friends. It's like, Oh yeah.

Being together in person is really great.

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. So that was fun. Anything else, Sean? I know you gotta go soon. So anything else we need to cover?

Colleen

Aaron, I wanna talk to you. We don't have to do it on the podcast about all that SQL. I just brain dump to you.

Aaron

Yes. We can do that.

Colleen

These nested inline filter stuff. We need I would like to talk about that. But

Aaron

Okay. Let's do that after because that beats railing radio.

Colleen

No worries.

Sean

Yeah. My only other updates real quick, just general awareness for you guys would be, oh, god. I'm gonna start saying situational awareness in my real life. Please don't.

Colleen

Yeah. You are.

Aaron

Please please don't.

Sean

They say essay. FY

Colleen

No. I'm

Aaron

not I'm not interested in these acronyms. Please no.

Sean

I was like, I realized I just almost said it right there. But so, yeah. I'm gonna I'm I'm in the process of essentially shutting down planning for aliens or just putting it in deep hibernation. I'm gonna move all my properties in the most SEO effective way to point towards our stuff. And then so that'll give us, some good SEO juice.

My sites are still are still ranking way better than the the Hammerstone stuff right now. So that should be helpful. And then, yeah, what else? Oh, yeah. Vue person.

So I'm wrapping up finishing the Vue thing. I need to embark on my journey of finding another Vue developer part time to

Aaron

Okay.

Sean

Pick up the Vue work. So so actually, I don't know. I should have said, I'll say this upfront in the next podcast, so we'll start doing that because I think there's a good chance there might be a good fit for someone listening to our podcast now because we need a part time view developer to pick up maintenance and, you know, new features and stuff that we're gonna be putting into the the Vue component.

Colleen

Yes. So

Sean

that way free me up to work on the longer term marketing stuff that we talked about at the retreat.

Colleen

Perfect.

Aaron

Perfect. Okay. When the time is absolutely upon you, put a tweet out, and I can also retweet it because Vue and Laravel have a huge

Sean

Yeah. I can't I can't start now because I don't have the time to possibly manage that. So

Aaron

Yeah. No worries.

Sean

Once I gotta finish up, so that way we have a thing. And then once I'm done with this first version, then then it's time. Perfect.

Colleen

Okay.

Sean

Cool. And I gotta go pick up the kids. So Alright. That's it.

Aaron

Drag on. See y'all.

Colleen

See you.

Sean

Oh, wait. I'll stay here so we can load it. I forgot.