Laracon is Tomorrow 😬

Aaron

Today is the day before Lara Con. So maybe you're going to keep it short today because I'm practicing over and over and over. Feeling pretty good.

Colleen

Yeah?

Aaron

Yeah. I think I'm ready. I've been I've been practicing. I've broken it up into, like, 4 sections, and I've been practicing each one independently. And I think I've got it down.

So I'm gonna run through each one. I'm gonna run through the whole thing now over and over. So I it's a 40:40 minute talk, and I think I've got each section timed out to be just right. So hopefully when I put them together, it's 40 minutes.

Colleen

So how long would you say it has taken you to write this talk, Aaron?

Aaron

Yeah. So I took today's Tuesday. I took yesterday and today off of work and tomorrow off of work. And so it's hard to say because there was some supporting code that was required. Yeah.

So like that I'm going to be demoing. I had to first write the code. So that was a little bit, that was a little bit of time. I've probably, I spent all day yesterday and all day today. And then beyond that, like 2 weeks of nights leading up to it.

So it's gotta be 80 hours, including, you know, the programming and stuff. So a freaking ton. I mean, and Lyricon is amazing because they are paying the speakers, which is wonderful. And I think not too common, but, it definitely doesn't come out to a good hourly rate, but that doesn't like, I would do it for free. Don't, don't tell them that, but I would do it for free.

So I think it's all going to be worth it. And I'm like, as I'm given this talk, I feel like this is really good. I am, I am excited. I'm not, I'm a little bit nervous obviously, but after I, each time after I finish, I'm like, yeah, this is going to work. So I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Colleen

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a common misconception as you see someone get up on stage or virtual stage as it were, and they give this amazing talk, and the talk is 30 to 40 minutes. And I think it's a common misconception that they just write those in like 2 or 3 hours.

Like, the talks I have given, same 40 to 80, like, a tremendous amount of time goes into a good talk.

Aaron

Yeah. Because I'll give, like and I I'm able to base some of it on a talk I've already given and which helps tremendously, but I'll be talking through it and realize that this section's 14 minutes and it's gotta be 10. So now I have to change my examples to still get the point across, but cut down 4 minutes. It's like, man, this is not easy, but it's been, it's been a lot of fun and I'm super pumped and I'm very ready for tomorrow to be here and be gone. So my thoughts at 11 AM CST and then after that, it's just gonna be, just a huge relief.

Colleen

Awesome. Well, I mean, this is great. I just I just I know. So amazing. So I was looking for the time.

Sadly, I have a non changeable family event at that time. I know. I mean Blame.

Aaron

I

Colleen

was like, what are the chances I have this 1 hour block that is not flexible? That's good.

Aaron

It's on YouTube. You can watch it later.

Colleen

Yeah. It's gonna be it's gonna be recorded. Right?

Aaron

Yeah. For sure.

Colleen

Yeah. You

Aaron

just won't you won't have the butterflies with me watching it live, knowing

Colleen

it's not live.

Aaron

You'll know whether it went well or poorly. So,

Colleen

I know. So what's your plan for the rest of the day? Are you just going to be like,

Aaron

well, so for the rest of the day I am having, so I have the whole day off and I'm having a pizza right after I'm done. So I'm having, cause I'm going to watch, you know, I'm going to watch probably a lot of the rest of it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to have, Jennifer's cooking me a pizza for like, right when it's over, I'm going inside having a pizza and a big old drink.

I haven't had any alcohol since, January 1st. I usually go all the way to my birthday, which is February 14th, but I'm stopping tomorrow. So I'm going to have, I'm going to have pizza and a Margarita probably come back out to the shed, watch some more talks, just like look at my Twitter the whole time. And then Jennifer and I are going at like 3 or 4 o'clock. We're going to, a patio to have happy hour, us and the babies.

So, yeah. And then tomorrow night I'm not working. And then Thursday night I'm not working and next weekend I'm not working. So ready to have a little bit of my life back because it's, it's just all, it's all happening at once. Isn't it?

So yeah, that's Lyricon. Other things that are happening at once is, I think we're, I think hammer stone made its first money, Right. Did we actually get it yet?

No, I think it, no, it's the credit card. Yeah. That didn't get declined. There's some, some, you know, issue with it.

Yeah. I think because it was a large purchase and we're a new vendor, they declined it.

Yeah. So it's good that we threw it out there to get some people through that to work the kinks out. But yeah, I mean, yeah, we're, we're charging for it now, so that's cool.

Yeah, that's super cool. That's Neil. So Neil, our number one guy has been using, the Laravel and view 2 version. And I think he's Sean, you can speak better to this. I think he's still working on the front end for that, but he put Nova into production.

So I got the Nova version out there. He installed it and I think I tweeted it, said he spent like 30 minutes building filters and was done and he had it deployed. There were a few kinks around route caching and stuff that I sorted out, but he's live in production with it. And he said it saves his admin like hours and hours of work. So we're out there.

Sweet. Great.

Colleen

Yeah. Feels great.

Aaron

Feels super great. And I think Nova Nova is a great, easy route for us to get more and more distribution. So I'm super pumped about that.

I'm confused about how the flow is going to go with Nova. So Nova, you have Nova installed, it's in your app. And then when you go to add plugins, you so you're going to go through their process for adding a plugin, but there's no paywall between adding refine. Is there a paywall like. Correct.

So, Refined Nova is a separate package and it is free and open source, and it's just a bridge, basically. It's the part that links refine a Nova. And then Nova is a private package, that you can't install without paying for through unlock.sh. So the way that it works

You mean, when you say Nova, is it you mean like our, like refined?

Yeah, I meant refined. So refined and Nova are actually the same in that they're private and paid for. And so when you go to install refine dash Nova, which is the bridge package, it's gonna try to pull in hammer stone refine, and that's the one that requires a license. So you have to first pay for refine and set it up in your, composer dot JSON. And then when you install refine dash Nova as a dependency, it pulls in refine.

Does that make

sense? Yes. Makes sense. I get it now. Cool.

Yeah. And then someday I wanna see like, I looked at the Nova site and I couldn't find where I'm supposed to search for plugins in Nova. I'd love to see that.

Colleen

I don't

Aaron

know if there's, like, a link for that or if I have to, like, own Nova to to do that.

There's no, there's no marketplace built into like a Nova install and there's no marketplace, like first party Nova. It's very close to first party. I think it's nova packages.com or something like that. And it's run by agency titan. So I think it's nova packages.

It's nova something. 1 of them is right. And one of them is very wrong. Nova plugins is wrong. That's a WordPress.

No packages.com. Yeah. And so this is the one that I talked about maybe reaching out to them and seeing if, like, I, I, I think I listed us on here. Like if we search for refine.

Yeah. You

can see that you can see that we're in there. It's pretty underwhelming. I would like to reach out to Titan and pay them to, like, have sponsorship on the homepage or something. That's the thing I was talking about, I think a couple of weeks ago about sponsoring this site so we can figure that out later. So we have Neil using Nova.

We've got, this other team using Nova. I added them as a shared channel in hammer stone slack. So they're getting it integrated. He said that they love it so far. And then we have the PR agency.

I had a demo call with him, and he's in our Slack, and I haven't heard anything back from him yet. And I have another demo set up. Cause when I tweeted about it the other day, I said, DM me if you want to try it. And so I have another demo set up for, I think Friday. And Colleen, at one point you wanted to sit in on a demo, but then you had to do something else.

Do you want to sit in on this one?

Colleen

What time is it?

Aaron

Let me see what I told him. 9 AM CST. That's pretty hard for you.

Colleen

Can't do that. Yeah. I gotta get to school. Oh, wait, Friday. I might be able to do that on Friday.

Aaron

Nope. It says Thursday.

Colleen

I definitely can't, like, tomorrow? Wait, in 2 days, Thursday?

Aaron

2 days.

Colleen

Oh, I can't do it this Thursday. But I would really like to sit in on a demo.

Aaron

Okay. That's fine. I, I'm sure I'll have more. I've also thought I need to record. I need to record a 1 5 10 minute video showing, basically pitching it, doing the demo.

Colleen

Yeah. So can we talk about this? Because I think that's a great idea. Because so Sean Sean had asked me to put something together real quick for Zach who's doing some work for us. And so this morning just, you know, I just was like, oh.

And I used the phrase infinitely buildable query, like, 3 times, and I realized that I don't have a clean pitch. And so, like, as I was kind of just off the cuff making this video, it felt like I don't feel like I was hitting the high points well, and obviously, this is just internal for us. But Sure. Yeah. I think a demo video is a great idea because I think you really have a lot of exposure to what people are super excited about.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Colleen

And, that would be great for me too to

Aaron

see. Yeah. I think that's okay. That's good feedback because I think I think, as I've been giving these demos, I hear audible like, oh, cool. And like, wow, that that part's great.

And so I think there's there's a big opportunity to record different versions, you know, for people's different appetites and show those cool parts because putting it on Twitter with images, it's like, cool. You kind of get the idea. But there's so much more there that is cool for developers when you see the back end and the things that you do. And the one of the biggest things is, like, one of the things that people have been most excited about is the fact that we try to sit between, strict database and user intent. And so the whole thing with sometimes no columns should be true.

Sometimes they should be false, like that kind of thing. They've been really excited about the fact that we are giving their users a reasonable interface and not just presenting them with basically a database. Like it sits directly on top of your database and your user has to figure out, well, sometimes it's null, so I gotta put null in here. It's like, no, the developer has all that in their head, and then they can give the user a great interface without exposing implementation details. And they're always like, oh, wow.

That's amazing. And so I need to I need to record a a couple of videos showing, like, this is this is the power of it. We make it easy for you. So

Yeah. I got a whole bunch of follow-up thoughts and questions about that. So the so right now it is hard for us to like, we were talking about it. We're like, okay, should we just put a buy it now link, you know, on the page, like, for for Laracon? And I think that's a mistake right now.

That's what that's what we kind of talked about. And the reason is because like there's, there are a lot of things that we need to figure essentially automate ourselves out of the process upfront of like helping somebody understand how it works and overcoming the objections. Because I think we can get people to be like, oh, yeah. That's a feature that I would like to add to my site, or I've been working on that and it's hard, or I have a shitty version of that already that I want to replace. That part I think we can get, but then it's like, Okay, now am I gonna spend $1,000 on it?

There's a lot of steps in between. So eventually we gotta get to where we've automated as much of that as possible. So step 1, I think that it would be a mistake to start doing that now, like, full stop. I think that it would be a mistake to start trying to automate it away now. I think that every demo that we do is a learning opportunity right now, and we should keep doing those for a while until we reach the point where it's like really obvious.

And each demo is like, I know which part they're gonna get excited about. I know which part they need to hear. I know. And then once we're kind of in that flow, then we can record videos. And I like this idea of, like, a kind of video demo.

I'd like a zip message has this capability. It's basically like a video landing page kind of thing, where and then you start like a kind of video back and forth message. So it'd be like asynchronous demo calls. So maybe that's a path we could go down. But I really, I really like that, the idea of trying to figure out how we eventually automate our way out of it.

And so you think even now

it's doing our demos. Yeah. Definitely.

And so the help me understand that. You think the threat, or the the problem with doing a demo video now is people will watch that instead of want to talk to us and we miss out on the opportunity to learn more stuff?

Yeah. Like, I don't think we have the demo refines at all, like, to where it could be. Like, I think you are better than me and Colleen could do it, but I still think we're, like, I don't know, halfway there. Like, it'll we do it, like, 10 more times, 20 more times. It will probably at that point become apparent, like, what the what the demo videos need to be.

Okay. And how we might be able to start automating. Like, because okay. While you're doing the demo, it's not just gonna be the demo. You're also gonna be getting questions about like, well, I really need to see the SQL that this thing is gonna output basically because I don't trust the SQL.

Or, you know, we're so then we'll be like, okay. Write that down. They don't trust the SQL. Then we can figure out ways to, like, address that objection, like, on, you know, in our landing page and sales copy, in our email work, like, automation follow ups, whatever, whatever we do, like all of that, we can we can then sort that out. But first we have to actually know, like, what are the questions we need answered.

And it's kind of brilliant that we'll have, like, this ability to talk to people like this. I think it's a great opportunity.

Well, maybe I need to start recording the demos so that y'all can watch them afterwards.

I want to take notes. I want to, like, watch them and take notes. This is basically like basic customer research. I would love it.

Okay. So I will figure out, I think I can do that with ScreenFlow. I will figure out how to record me and them and the screen all at once so that y'all can hear what I'm saying, but more importantly, what they're saying back to me. Okay. That's a good note.

I'll figure that out and I'll do that for the one on Thursday morning.

Yeah. So it's also, I know it's like so much work to be doing the, like hand hold all the hand holding we're doing right now. But I think it's also like that's the phase we're at. That's the, that's actually like really good. Like it's our opportunity to do all this learning.

So it's be like, it basically, let's just keep doing what we're doing with very hands on, like, guiding people through things. And then from that will flow, like the obvious stuff that we could do to save ourselves time, I think.

Right. Yeah. Okay. I buy that. That makes sense to me.

I have been holding off on non Nova reaching out to vanilla Laravel View people still hold off?

Yeah. Hold off. So I'm stuck on the that we need a better customization and theming and docs. Like, it's just period. Like, I I mean, we could do a ton of hand holding.

Like, I need docs at all is what we need

for the Yeah.

For the front end if if we're gonna have theming. Like, I I was thinking that people would just like, kinda like what we have with Nova. Right? Like, Nova right now, we can just you drop it in and it's there's no configuration. It's just like you use this query builder and that's it.

And you That's amazing. Yeah. Right.

That's the best thing ever.

Yeah, exactly. And I thought that that would be what we would mostly be dealing with. But I suspect now after, like, a couple people looking at it and kind of test driving it that there's gonna be customization a lot. And so it's kind of like, okay, we can't really, like, start pulling people in on that until we can do some kind of customization, which is just, you know, it's waiting on me.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

Waiting on me. So as soon as I can get around to that, then then we'll be good to go.

Okay. That's fine. As long as we're still I just wanted to make sure because I have been holding off, and I wanted to make sure that was still the plan that we all agreed on. So that's good. And I will keep pushing as hard as I can down the Nova path, and I know that Nova 4 is coming soon.

And so I will hopefully be ready when they are ready with Nova 4. So hopefully that can bring us a little bit of, exposure and demo opportunities there.

Okay. I got a question for you after we're done recording about that.

Okay. Okay. Any, that's all I think the Nova stuff. Any, what else?

I did super basic changes to our landing page for Laracon. So that way we can collect email addresses. We have almost 300 now. We have like 300 on that mailing list, which is good. So that'll be how we can like start pulling in demos is from that list, I think.

And then, I, the next thing for me is finishing up the marketing site. So basically right now I have, I am doing too many things in parallel and so nothing is getting done, but everything is making, getting progress. So I'm stuck on the marketing site. So I'm just gonna focus on getting that done. That way we have that all configured and all of the SEO juice going from my old sites and like getting the email list ported over that stuff.

So I'm gonna finish that.

What were you gonna you were gonna

Colleen

do that.

Aaron

Trying to interrupt there.

Colleen

But but I need you first. Right?

Aaron

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Colleen

You gotta do this stuff. Okay. Yeah.

Aaron

What are

Colleen

y'all working on?

Aaron

Some hot wire stuff.

Colleen

Yeah. It's Okay. There's just some UI stuff, like, little little tweaks to the UI that are important and more complicated than I realized. And the Hotwire API, what's happening now at client, which is super good to see, but they're super confused about how to put this in different places than the place we have already put it. And the reason it's struggling, the reason there is some confusion is because of the way we've exposed it to the client with it becoming unstabilized and then stabilized.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Colleen

There's just some stuff that's not working correctly, and I think it's it's just something we need to sort out. So it's good we're sorting it out. Right? It's good we're seeing them try basically, you know, they've got this really bright engineer. He's great and he just ran with it and he ran into some things that now he's showing me and I'm, like, oh, yeah.

I can see why you were, like, why didn't that do what I thought it was supposed to be?

Aaron

Totally. Yeah.

Colleen

So but I need I really need Sean's help on that. So I'm I'm, I would like to have Sean first, and

Aaron

then Colleen get Sean first and then marketing site.

Colleen

We're gonna finish that.

Aaron

Oh. Yeah. And then also, like, I'm just done doing 80 hour weeks. That's that time of my life is over for a while. So that's just I ran ran out of ran out of physical steam.

That's the this weekend I realized I was like, well, that was it. I got it. I was like, I need to do work And then it just like, Nope, not happening.

I kind of thought that's what was happening. And that's why I was like, let's just, it's too late. Let's just use the site we have now. Just put some new words on it. And so I I think I saw that happen in real time.

And so I'm glad I'm glad we have something.

That isn't because of the burnout that I mean, I'm I actually burnout is the wrong word. Just I'm just tired. The, the, well, that is because the view 2, view 3 thing gonna not square is it just took so much time. And, again, too many things in parallel. That needs to just get pushed over the edge.

So, like, I need to get that I need to get that done. That way, I can free up Dave to put his stuff into there and move forward. He might even be able to help me, you know, with the Vue stuff. So we might be able to make some progress on that while I'm doing the marketing site. I mean, helping Colleen first and then doing the marketing site and then doing the customization stuff.

So the yeah. So I mean, that's just like the next 3 months is basically that. Like Yeah.

We had an episode. I think it was like episode 2 or 3 where it was when back in the day when it was just Sean and I, and it was called Too Many Open Loops. And that was, that was the exact same. The exact same problem is there were too many things that were open. And so it felt like we're not making progress on any, because we have to push 6 things forward slightly.

And I think that's actually when Colleen DMD me and was like, Hey, you guys sound tired. I was

Colleen

like, yeah, We are. We are tired.

Aaron

Do you remember that?

Colleen

I do remember that. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny.

Aaron

I think it's like a phase. It's a phase that companies go through, and we have to move out of it eventually. We're not it's just gonna be that way for a while and it's kind of necessary, I think. But the, like, at my day job, I am it's basically my job to help us move out of that phase because that's that's what we're doing. Like, coordinating everybody to, like, align on some sort of product strategy.

So that way, like, we know that, like, every effort that we're doing is lined up on some sort of bet that we're making on the product for the business and, you know, getting some sort of organization around like cycles and like having some predictability and that sort of stuff. But that's like, we're it doesn't make sense for us right now. There's too many we need to be way more adaptable than that. Right? That's that's very adaptable what I've described, but not as like, we got basically gotta be ADD for a bit, I think.

I mean, that's just how that's just how it is. Maybe why so many entrepreneurs have that I know at least have ADD because it's just part of the just seems like what you have to do at first.

Yeah. I feel like there's, like, there's a expansion point and then a contraction point, and it just you go through that over and over over. Like, you are doing all of these projects, and then you finish some and it comes back down and you feel great. And then you spin up 6 more, and then it comes back down and you feel great. And I feel like we're at the point, especially on the front end side, where we've got 4 things going in parallel.

And once we get view 2, view 3, monorepo, and react all done, it's all gonna come back to a point. And if you're gonna feel great, and then it's gonna spread back out again.

Yes.

Colleen

Yeah. So tangentially related. So I guess, Alexis Ohanian in the early days of Reddit, he had this theory on responding to customer support. Tell me if you've heard this. And instead of, like, picking the people at the bottom of the stack, if you were at the bottom of the stack, he would just let you go.

So some people, he responded to immediately. So half the people got amazing customer service and half the people got terrible customer service and no one I'd never heard this. I heard this yesterday on, one of the Bootstrapper podcasts I listened to.

Aaron

I did too, and I can't think of what which one it was.

Colleen

It was, and no one so no one got mediocre customer service. So your experience was either spectacular or terrible. And I thought that was such an interesting theory. Like, you're saying it's like, I can't give them all excellent customer service. And so instead of giving everyone mediocre, I'm gonna split it up.

Anyway, I'd never heard that theory before, but

Aaron

I hadn't either. That was so funny.

Colleen

That was funny.

Aaron

I think that if we, control our growth and charge right, charge the right amount, that we can give always excellent customer service

Colleen

just to get customers into the service. Right. Just to the

Aaron

I mean, Reddit. That's right.

Colleen

Like, was probably yeah. Reddit was probably a dumpster fire. Right? Did you even have you didn't even have to pay for Reddit. So now, obviously, high touch product, expensive product.

We will always have excellent customer service. But speaking of, like, too many open loops that made me think of that.

Aaron

Yeah. That's probably a symptom of that. That makes perfect sense. Like, you have to prioritize, so that's how we did it. Yeah.

Colleen

Yeah. Things are good in client world. I think I mentioned or maybe I didn't mention that we I kind of made some more concrete deadlines, ideas. And I like to work that way, like, I like to towards deadlines. I thought I had this really sweet optimization, and it's probably not gonna work out.

So it works fine, but like Tell

Aaron

me. I wanna

Colleen

know. So so you know how I'm building out the subqueries and I'm adding the nodes and I'm building out the ARAL nodes?

Aaron

Yes. So I

Colleen

have this fundamental problem because I don't pass in the initial query where subquery can be nil. So then I have to account for every time subquery could be nil. And this is not just in filter and it's in tracks pending relationship query. And in tracks pending subquery relationships, Aaron made Good. And I just start, like, Trent It's descriptive.

Track pending subquery relationship. It's descriptive. Dude, Cody. When I first saw that, I was just like, oh my. I'm anyway Oh my gosh.

So what happens is because query can be nil, it gets a little, not gnarly, but like in my recursive function, I actually have to check the class to see if it's what we call a select manager in ARAL, and a select manager is exactly what you think it is, select ID from whatever. Anyway, it works fine, but I thought I found a way where I could pass in initial query and make it work, and it's so close. And the only thing it can't do is our where clauses don't accept a closure. That's what we were talking about. I even talked to Pete about it yesterday.

I was like, he is the smartest Rails guy I know. So For sure. If this can be done, like, he will know the way. And he's, like, you can't

Aaron

So Herbell wins again.

Colleen

It well, okay. But what you're doing is is kind of nutty. No offense. But,

Aaron

Hey. Get out of here with that Laredo bashing. I don't appreciate that at all.

Colleen

Like, it's just so close because all I cannot do is I can't I can't join them with the correct query method as a return from what you're returning from the closure. And it's like so I'm like so close and I was sad about that. But, gonna give it a couple couple more hours because it would be so cool, but I don't think it's gonna work out.

Aaron

So you're definitely giving a talk at rails conf then because there are, like, 6 people that understood, maybe 5 people that understood what you just said, and you're one of the foremost experts now.

Colleen

Yeah. I think, you know, someone even commented on my Twitter question about that. I think ARAL, because it's a private API

Aaron

Yeah.

Colleen

People will reach for raw SQL. And, like, when you reach for raw SQL, that's worse. I mean, it really is. At least we still sit on top of the database, and and AREL's adapters will, you know, appropriately adapt for your database. So and the interestingly enough, the information out there is there's just no good new information.

So it's like trying to search for a needle in a haystack, trying

Aaron

to learn

Colleen

this stuff. So it's been really cool. Like, I I think it's just a really interesting space to be in. But anyway

Aaron

Well, that sounds exciting. I hope you crack it.

Colleen

I do too. Like, you know, and so it's that it's that trade off between, like, I don't wanna waste my time. Right? Time we just talked about. We're all busy.

And but but man, I'm so close. It would be so beautiful too because I can get rid of, like, all of these conditional statements. Like, it would just be really beautiful. So, anyway, that's what I've been up to, getting that, playing with that.

Aaron

Sounds exciting.

So I'm gonna do the client work. I'm gonna pay myself this time.

Colleen

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You should do that.

Aaron

Because I'm gonna buy I decided I saw you with Beth about it. I was like, I'm gonna buy a piano. That's what I'm

Colleen

gonna buy. What happened to this sauna? I thought you were gonna buy a sauna.

Aaron

Sauna is sauna is on the list, but piano Isaac's, like, almost 8. And, you know, he's gotta start thinking about musical instruments or musical family. So I thought maybe it would help him if he heard me playing piano. Also, I just really need that kind of thing in my life again. It's been a long time.

Do you play piano?

You guys don't know this about me?

No.

Oh, I was a very serious piano player. I practiced I probably put in I'm one of these, like, 10000 hours kinda, like like, I practice hours a day since I was 10.

Colleen

Really?

Aaron

And then I was a piano major in college.

Colleen

What?

Aaron

Yeah. I've never

heard of a piano major. That's not a thing.

Colleen

I'm so confused.

Aaron

Yeah. I reached a fairly high level of piano playing. I even had a, I was well known in the Suzuki piano community in Arizona, and I had students and all that stuff.

Yeah. What in the world?

Colleen

Dude, I

Aaron

feel like I feel like Sean doesn't do anything halfway. It's like, oh, I kinda like poker. I'm gonna be a professional poker player. Oh, I kinda like pianos. I'm gonna get real into the Suzuki community in Arizona.

Colleen

I mean, I

Aaron

was saying, I wasn't thinking that way. But I got I did that is the first time that I, like, saw the benefit of practice and doing incredibly boring, boring, boring work for hours and the payoff, and that has been with me forever. Like Yeah. That's it's again and then also, I was just talking with one of the former elite military guys about this that I was talking with. Like, so we think it's fascinating that, like because we do assessment and selection, and it is it is sort of like a mystery sometimes how people, like it's like they've never they think that they are expert in something.

Like, the metaphor like, the the the idea would be this. It's like, so somebody you know, some kid is asking their teacher, like, why do birds migrate in the winter? And the teacher says because of instinct. And then the kid's like, okay. Now I know why birds migrate in the winter.

Well, they don't know shit. Like, they just know the word migrate. Right? Like, they don't know I mean, they know high like, instinct. Like, oh, okay.

Whatever that is. They don't actually know why. So, like, there's, like, something that's beneficial of becoming, like, an actual true expert at something where you you go through the entire Dunning Kruger, you know, curve and you get out to the other end where you're like you can actually assess yourself and other people and you know kind of where you're at and you know, like, the amount of work that it took to get there and you know and then you can, for the rest of your life, you do that one time and then for the rest of your life, you can identify it and other people and then what you're doing and kind of gives you that clarity. So that was for me, piano was that. And also I just love I love performing and playing in front of people and doing all that stuff because that was good.

So, you know, when you're a kid, you get you like getting gold stars.

Colleen

Oh, fun.

Aaron

You go, like, play something that's, like, way beyond what most people expect a 15 year old to be able to play. That's always very, like, rewarding.

Colleen

Yeah. That's super cool. Wow.

Aaron

That's a great idea. Too.

Colleen

Oh, good. We met when

Aaron

we were 10. Yeah. We met when we were 10. We had the same piano teacher. She would always joke about us getting together and then yeah.

So she came to our wedding.

Colleen

Oh my gosh. You guys met when you were at 10?

Aaron

That's so cool. Yeah.

Colleen

Wow. That's adorable. Oh, my goodness. I feel like I don't I haven't met Beth, but I have this impression that she's, like, super cool. Is she super cool?

Aaron

She's a badass.

Colleen

Yeah. I just have a She's

Aaron

a Chicago public school teacher.

Colleen

That's exactly why. I'm like, she's a Chicago public school teacher. She's a badass, clearly.

Aaron

She could beat me up. I'm pretty sure.

So Not that kind of badass.

Colleen

So piano. I love it. I love that idea.

Aaron

Great idea. I'm pro pianos.

Colleen

Like, this is off topic, but it's so hard to teach your kids that, what you're talking about, Sean. Like, my kids so my husband and I are both were excellent students. My children are excellent students, but they're lazy AF because they're so it's so easy. Right? Like, it's so they don't have to do anything.

And the teacher's like, they're so brilliant. I'm like, no. He's lazy. Like, anyway, so I am also looking for something to teach my children. They actually have to work at things sometimes.

I like the musical instrument idea.

Aaron

Yeah. It's hard. And the practice so, like, this the the practicing method that we talk, which I still I still to this day does not I don't understand why more people don't do this for more things. But the idea in Suzuki was, like, you never well, at least my teacher and I this is pretty widely adopted in that community. But it was like you never practice wrong ever, which means that when you're learning a new piece, you you learn it one hand at a time and you play it incredibly slowly with a metronome.

So you're learning some piece. You've you know, and you start a metronome. You go 2 measures at a time. Metronome is super slow, and you do it well, so you're just hearing this like tink, tink, tink, and then 20 times you do the 2 measures with with one hand, and then you do it with your left hand, then you do it together, then you get to move on to the next one, you know, and then you get to ramp up the speed. But the point is that you never ever practice wrong.

And that was like the most boring thing ever, but I could learn these incredible pieces. And then when I would go to perform, no problem because I had it

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

So memorized. Like, there was no you're not allowed to use music when you go do, a Suzuki piano performance. Wow. It was always memorized and then Jeez.

Colleen

But I mean,

Aaron

you practice it that much and it's just memorized. Yeah. Yeah. I actually forgot about that. That's funny.

I also was terrible at reading music because of that. I was

Colleen

Yeah. I like that idea. I think that's a great idea.

Aaron

Super boring hard work, and then you see a payoff. Right. I don't know. That's, like That's

Colleen

that's why people don't do

Aaron

it because it's super boring and it's hard. That's why.

Colleen

Like, that will serve you for the rest of your life. Right? Like

Aaron

Learn how to be bored. Yeah. Yeah.

Colleen

Well, learn that you're not immediately gonna be good at everything. There are some things you're gonna have to work at. Right? Like, anyway, I think it's cool.

Aaron

Yeah. That's such an important lesson. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you figure out how to get your kids that lesson.

Yeah. They're

Colleen

not that lazy. I said, I immediately regret calling them lazy. They're not that lazy, but they don't really have to try that hard.

Aaron

Love you kids. Okay. I gotta get back to practicing last thing. Torchlight is now on laravelle.com. So torchlight powers, the syntax highlighting for laravelle.com,

which

is huge biggest one by far. I have lots of thoughts on that. We'll talk about that later. And update to us. Yeah, I think so.

I think they put a

Colleen

link in the

Aaron

Oh, that would be great. Can we can we put torchlight on the hammerstone domain? I mean, I'm only half joking, but, like, SEO wise, like

Yeah. Yeah. They do. On the, in the footer code highlighting provided by torchlight, which is insane.

Colleen

Yeah. Yes. That's a Yeah.

Aaron

I think we could. It might be too late. We'd have to ask Buckbee about that. But, yeah, great great things there. Excited about that.

We'll talk about that later. Update, my car got hit. Remember, Colleen? I told you my car got hit. So I think Sean, you were gone at this point.

My car got hit overnight while it was parked. Somebody hit it and drove off. It is possibly totaled.

Colleen

Oh,

Aaron

wow. They hit my, driver's side tire and the alignment was all wonky. And now it's at the Toyota. It's a 4 runner. It's at the Toyota dealership.

And, they said there's frame damage. So right now insurance has paid them, I think 35100 to take the body off the frame, which seems bad to start with. And then they're going to assess the frame damage. And if they can stretch and correct the frame, it'll be like 15 grand. The insurance will have to pay.

And so then at that point, it's insurance's decision whether or not they'll pay or total it. So either way, pretty crappy, because I'm either going to have to find a new car and I got a good deal. It's a used 4 runner. I got a great deal on it. And now you can't find cars anywhere.

No, it's

terrible time

to buy a car,

Colleen

buy a car,

Aaron

or I'm going to have a used car with a big old frame damage report on the CARFAX report. So pretty, yeah. Pretty crappy. So that's my update on my car. That's okay.

I gotta go back to texting.

Colleen

Let's

Aaron

end it there.

Colleen

Okay. Bye bye.