The Arisode

[INTRO]

[00:00:10] AR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Enjoy the Vue. I'm Alex. Today on our panel, we have Tessa.

[00:00:17] T: Hi.

[00:00:18] AR: And Ari.

[00:00:20] AC: Hello.

[00:00:20] T: Wait. What? Who's that?

[00:00:23] AR: Oh. Tessa, you don't know this, but we've had another person that's actually been on the show pretty regularly for quite a while. I don't know that you've met her, so we're going to actually –

[00:00:36] T: Oh, my God. I'm so embarrassed. EmbARIssed. No, that's really bad.

[00:00:41] AR: We're going to introduce Ari this week, because some of our listeners may not know who Ari is.

[00:00:46] AC: I want to say, I just felt super left out, because everyone else currently on the show got their own episode, and I didn't. I was like, “You know what? My turn. Me.”

[00:00:55] AR: Yeah, basically.

[00:00:57] AC: Actually, that's not entirely how it went down, but close enough.

[00:00:59] AR: Yeah. Yeah. There may have been bribes, some intimidation checks were made. Anyway, we're talking about Ari today.

[00:01:11] T: What is an intimidation check?

[00:01:13] AC: I thought like a dexterity check?

[00:01:17] T: What is a dexterity check? What are all these checks?

[00:01:19] AR: It's a Dungeons and Dragons thing, Tessa.

[00:01:21] T: Oh, my God.

[00:01:22] AC: I’ve never even played any of this.

[00:01:23] AR: Nerd. Nerd.

[00:01:26] AC: You just lost your nerd creds. I’m just saying.

[00:01:29] T: I mean, I didn't have any nerd – I'm cool.

[00:01:32] AC: Okay.

[00:01:34] AR: I see.

[00:01:34] T: None of the viewers are going to –

[00:01:35] AR: Wait a minute. If you’re the cool one, if you're the cool one, what does that make us?

[00:01:40] T: You pointed at yourself and said nerd, but nobody listening to the show is going to see you pointing. Just sounds like you call the nerd 30 times for no reason.

[00:01:53] AR: Wait. Let's talk about Ari. Ari, welcome to the show. Tell us about yourself.

[00:01:59] AC: Thanks for having me.

[00:02:00] T: Welcome, welcome.

[00:02:02] AR: How did you get into programming? What bring you to the show?

[00:02:07] AC: I was making minimum wage. Okay, minimum wage by Colorado standards, which at the time was $10 an hour. Working for my family. I don't know if this, but working for your family generally does not make you like your family more.

[00:02:27] AR: Shocked and surprised.

[00:02:31] AC: Yeah, I was working at the family quilt shop, cutting fabric, folding fat quarters, fun stuff like that.

[00:02:40] T: What’s a fat quarter? None of that skinny quarter BS for me.

[00:02:46] AC: A fat quarter is when you take half a yard and cut it in half. It's a quarter of a yard, but it's wider.

[00:02:53] T: Right. It's more of a squarish shape, than a slim rectangle, right?

[00:02:57] AC: Yes, exactly.

[00:02:59] T: Is the other one really called a skinny quarter? Or is it called something else?

[00:03:02] AC: It’s just a regular quarter.

[00:03:04] T: Okay. I don’t know. Who buys that anyway?

[00:03:13] AC: Yeah. No, I can tell you lots about cutting fabric. For example, if you are cutting an extra wide backing fabric, which is folded over multiple times, the only way to do it properly is the snip and rip. Otherwise, it will get off bias.

[00:03:29] T: Okay. Now tell me if I'm cutting faux fur correctly, because I always turn it over so that the woven side is on top, not the furry side. Then I use a rotary cutter and try not to snip all the way down to the fur, so I don't get that weird, truncated edge. Alex has a lot of thoughts on cutting fur.

[00:03:46] AR: My bigger question is, why is Tessa cutting – Why is Tessa making furry things, is my bigger question.

[00:03:55] T: We used to have a Halloween Vue meet-up, when that was a thing.

[00:04:01] AC: Another cut faux fur, but we did have Minkee, which is it's basically faux fur. We just had special scissors that we use for it, that we're angled, which made it easier to keep the bottom edge on the flat surface with the high pile. I love how our listeners to this who are like, “Nobody actually cares about cutting fabric.”

[00:04:28] T: I mean, it takes me back to my store working days when we had a pair of stainless steel, completely stainless steel, Ginger, the German sewing brands scissors to cut ribbon to wrap our cakes and stuff. We were always dulling our cheap plastic handle scissors. I was like, “Let's get this one nice pair.” Somebody came in in a hurry, wanted their order right away. Everything had to have the same ribbon. I told the customer, we only have a little bit of ribbon left. It's not going to be enough. They were like, “It's okay. That's fine. Whatever.”

Five minutes in, she decides I'm too slow. I told her, “Hey, we're out of the ribbon. What do you want to use instead?” She comes around to behind the counter, and then she grabs the scissors and she's like, “I'm going to do it myself.” I turned, I looked down the hallway and I see my boss watching. He's hiding behind the door. His face peeking out. Then after she left, he was like, “Why didn't you stop her?” I was like, “She had 8-inch stainless steel blades in her hand. Why didn't you stop her?” Anyway, what a tangent.

[00:05:39] AC: Yeah. We use $80 KY scissors. Yeah. Okay, those of you who had crafting mamas know this. You do not use the fabric scissors for anything else. Unless, you want to die.

[00:05:57] T: I've been reading recently, that's a myth, but I don't believe it.

[00:06:01] AC: It is not a myth.

[00:06:02] AR: My wife has not – No, it's not. My wife has not – has never really threatened to me, except once I accidentally touched the fabric scissors. I didn't even pick them up. I touched to them, and she said, “Don't touch the fabric scissors.” I went, “Okay.” They have a big label on them. I know which ones they are now.

[00:06:22] T: I actually got a second pair of my lightweight fabric scissors, because I like them so much, but for paper, but I didn't label them, which is a mistake.

[00:06:31] AC: Oh, no.

[00:06:31] T: I know.

[00:06:33] AR: All right.

[00:06:33] AC: Yeah. Anyway, I worked at a quilt shop. I would also manage some of the content on their website. I was getting frustrated one day, trying to do a layout. You know the constraints of the content management system, just it wasn't what I wanted. I was like, “I should just figure out how to do this myself,” because I noticed that there was an option to just input raw HTML. That was where it started. Turns out, I liked it. Then I remembered that somebody – actually, a couple people that I used to play well with, had done some program that was closest to where I lived. I went and I looked it up. It was a boot camp, a six-month boot camp.

I decided to take a workshop through that school, and I found myself losing time as you do with ADHD hyper focus. It was like, “Oh, okay. This is what I'm supposed to do.” Because I knew that with my ADHD, it had to be something that yeah, that I could hyper focus on. Otherwise, I was going to hate my life.

[00:07:46] T: WoW is a game.

[00:07:48] AC: Oh, World of Warcraft.

[00:07:50] T:  Wow, that's what I call MMO RPGs.

[00:07:56] AC: Yeah. I used play that at a very high level. I've not done that in quite some time. Probably never will again. Yeah. I did a boot camp. Oh, wow. It has been five years this month, since I started boot camp.

[00:08:15] T: Congratulations.

[00:08:17] AC: Time flies.

[00:08:19] AR: Yeah. Time does fly.

[00:08:22] AC: Oh, I should mention. In high school, I did take Visual Basic .NET class.

[00:08:31] T: Really a pro.

[00:08:33] AC: Yes.

[00:08:34] AR: You were very forward-looking. I mean, that's all the rage now, is Visual Basic .NET.

[00:08:41] T: I mean, we are all on the net, right? I feel like, I remember you mentioning that you have a background in other kinds of engineering though, right? Like Mechi or something?

[00:08:55] AC: Yeah. I went to college for mechanical engineering. That did not work out. The reason that didn't work out was – so I went to a school that had a mandatory coop program. You would alternate work terms and school terms every other term.

[00:09:14] T: Every other. From the first year? Wow.

[00:09:15] AC: No. The whole time. It was literally a co-op school. The whole time, you would work half the time, which also meant, it generally took people five years to get through. I was working for a tier one automotive supplier, a supplier of axles and drive shafts. It was a large company, a Fortune 500 company. As it turns out, my lack of filter doesn't lend itself well to a corporate environment.

[00:09:52] T: I mean, I feel like, safety is important with cars right? With the air conditioner and stuff. You want to make sure that air is clean.

[00:09:57] T: Oh, my God. Tessa. What happened was, so I was actually very good at my job. My boss loved me. In fact, normally, you rotate departments after two terms, but my boss had made special arrangements for me to come back for a third term. There was a company-wide meeting. At the end, they opened it up for questions to the CEO. I asked if they had any plans on improving the code program, because as it stood, they weren't attracting the best and the brightest, because they didn't – Honestly, compared to a lot of other co-ops, the pay was not competitive, and it was clearly designed for local students, and not people like me, who my home was Washington and this was in Ohio. Trying to find a three-month lease was really hard.

Yeah. Turns out, that is not something that is particularly acceptable in corporate culture. I became known as that co-op. As well as things where like, all of the engineers thought it was awesome. HR had a very different opinion.

[00:11:08] T: Oh, that's interesting.

[00:11:10] AC: Two weeks before I was supposed to go back for another work term, I got a phone call, saying that I was being let go due to chronic tardiness. Now, mind you, I walked in at the same time every day as this other co-op, and he still had his job. Then as it turns out, that essentially got me blacklisted from the automotive industry. I had wanted to be an automotive engineer. That was that. Lost all ambition to be a mechanical engineer at that point.

[00:11:44] T: That sounds really tough.

[00:11:46] AC: Then I floundered for a bunch of years in my 20s. I didn't start boot camp until I was 30. There's still hope. All you not really that old people, but older people.

[00:12:01] T: I thought you were 20 this whole time. You look very young.

[00:12:03] AC: Ha, ha. If you do the math, you'll figure out, I'm 35. It's okay, because Alex is a couple months older than me, so I'm not the oldest here.

[00:12:16] AR: Yeah.

[00:12:15] T: That's all that really matters.

[00:12:18] AC: Exactly.

[00:12:18] AR: I'm the old man in the podcast. I’m the cranky, crotchety old man.

[00:12:22] AC: I was so happy when you joined, because it meant I was no longer the oldest.

[00:12:28] AR: Get off my lawn.

[00:12:29] T: See. You were probably born – you were born the old man.

[00:12:35] AR: I was born. My mother even says, “You were born middle-aged.”

[00:12:42] T: What is a tier one company? What does that mean?

[00:12:45] AC: A tier one automotive supplier means that you're supplying directly to the manufacturers. A tier two would be suppliers for tier one company. Let's say, pinion seals for a differential unit. That would be a tier two supplier. They would supply the seals.

[00:13:10] AR: Those are words.

[00:13:12] AC: Yes.

[00:13:13] AR: Yeah. I even recognized those as words. 

[00:13:15] AC: Tier one, we supply assembled stuff.

[00:13:20] AR: Okay.

[00:13:21] T: I know what cars are. I took Java once. How did you get from that to this? Why are you on the podcast? How did all of this come to be? A few Goldberg Machine.

[00:13:40] AC: That is a great question. Literally, all of it stemmed from a single conversation I had. I was walking to the reception after the first day of VueConf in 2019. Is that right?

[00:13:59] T: I think so, because I was just listening to the episode where we were talking about, was it 2019 or 2018? It was 2019.

[00:14:06] AC: Yeah. I think, it’s 2019. I blocked, came in by myself. Then I hear this super familiar voice. It was the voice of Chris Fritz. Because at the time, he was on another podcast that I listen to avidly. I recognized the voice. I was like, “Should I talk to him? Oh, my God. Do I talk to him?” Super nervous, because even though he's actually just a super normal person and very nice. Seems famous or whatever. I’d be like, “Are you Chris Fritz?” He's like, “Yeah.” Then we started talking. I am not entirely sure why he thought I was interesting enough to be a guest on that podcast, but he did.

Then a week after I was a guest on that podcast, he and Ben Hong invited me to be a regular panelist on that podcast. Then eventually, we left that podcast due to differences. We just didn't feel the level to which the guy who ran that podcast valued all humans, that was compatible to how we value humans. We decided to strike out on our own. Yeah, that's how I ended up here. It's really weird that yeah, one conversation is how that happened.

[00:15:34] T: Yeah. Now you're stuck with us. Sorry.

[00:15:36] AC: Oh, no. Now I’m stuck talking to y'all every week. It's funny, because that conversation was literally 10 minutes before the first time I ever talked to Tessa.

[00:15:47] T: Oh, wow. I don't think I ever heard that part of the story before.

[00:15:51] AC: Yeah. No, I talked to Chris and then went inside to get food. We met in the food line.

[00:15:59] T: Yes. I was like, “Wow, this person is very gregarious and extroverted. Not at all shy. She likes to party.”

[00:16:09] AC: Which is funny, because it's not true. I know, I fake it well. I do. I remember telling you that we'll never talk again, because I don't know how to maintain friendships.

[00:16:23] T: Yes. I clearly remember that. Then I saw you the next day, and we hung out again. I was like, “Okay. I guess, this is a different Ari from yesterday.”

[00:16:33] AC: Yeah. Made a liar out of me. I'll take it.

[00:16:38] T: Betrayed.

[00:16:39] AC: Oh, no.

[00:16:40] T: Yeah. Sounds like, being able to go to a conference can potentially open up a lot of opportunities.

[00:16:50] AC: Yes. I was very lucky. That I actually got a scholarship ticket from then was known as Vue Vixens. That was how I attended. What I did was apply for the scholarship ticket. I was like, “Okay. If I get it one way or another, I'm going to figure out how to get there.” As it turns out, your employer is a lot more likely to pay for the travel if they don't have to pay for the conference ticket. Just pro tip. That was how I did that. I would have gone into debt just to go to that conference, because I was just so excited about it.

[00:17:29] T: Yeah. I remember, I wanted to go to the 2018 one, which I think was the second one. I was told, I didn't ask early enough. I think, he asked six months in advance. I was like, “I want to go to the third one. I don't know how I can.” Luckily, I was speaking so I was able to go. Otherwise, I don't know how I would have gone. Also, one thing that I don't get is speaking of employers, I feel like, a lot of places, their learning budget is a $1,000. That includes, if you want to go to a conference.

[00:17:55] AC: Which is the entire ticket. Yeah.

[00:17:57] T: Right. Then it's like, who pays for the hotel and the travel?

[00:18:01] AC: Yeah. If you get a free ticket –

[00:18:04] T: No, honestly. Yeah.

[00:18:07] AR: It's funny. I realized, I'm the only person on this podcast who has not actually attended a VueConf in person.

[00:18:15] T: Well, it was really nice having you on the show.

[00:18:17] AC: Yeah. Sorry. Bye. That's a prerequisite.

[00:18:20] T: It’s a known.

[00:18:21] AC: Sorry, but geez.

[00:18:23] AR: No. I've missed every single one. 

[00:18:27] AC: Does it have to be a VueConf for cool things to happen?

[00:18:29] T: If you're just going to need to get critiqued and hosted in Georgia.

[00:18:34] AC: Because Alex wouldn't be here if it weren't for a conference.

[00:18:37] AR: That's true.

[00:18:38] T: Is it true?

[00:18:38] AR: Yeah. There was one conference where I met all of y'all at the same time. All y'all. All at once. Just kicked in the door, and I was like, “What's going on?”

[00:18:50] AC: He was like, “Hey, what’s up? Your friend.”

[00:18:51] AR: Y’all were like, “Ah!” Then that was it. That was the entirety of it.

[00:18:56] T: Nobody gave me the backstory that we are retconning in and now I feel lost.

[00:19:05] AC: Yeah. All that to say, if you ever had the opportunity to attend a conference, you definitely should. Another great way to go to a conference for free is to be a speaker.

[00:19:20] T: That's the easy way.

[00:19:22] AC: Yeah. I'm not going to say that’s the easy way. I learned that the hard way that that is the worst way to go to a conference for free, because you do not get to enjoy it.

[00:19:33] T: I feel like, you have to get used to a lot of rejection. We did have an episode, where we talked about how to. No? You can't hear me?

[00:19:42] AR: You were cutting out there.

[00:19:45] T: Because I was scrolling our site at the same time. Yeah, because I was trying to find this episode number.

[00:19:55] AR: We need to get you a different hotkey for mute and unmute.

[00:19:58] T: Honestly, if I could use the function key, I would, but it doesn't detect it, which is really annoying.

[00:20:05] AC: It’s what I use.

[00:20:06] T: Even as a modifier, it won't detect it.

[00:20:09] AC: Weird.

[00:20:12] AR: A lot of keyboards have the function key implemented as a internal macro key, as opposed to a thing.

[00:20:20] AC: Yeah. No, when I didn't have the function key available, I used the tilde key, which was really awkward, if I was accidentally –

[00:20:27] T: Typing.

[00:20:29] AC: In a text. Yeah. That’s something which is [inaudible 00:20:32].

[00:20:32] T: A long of time taking out the key. On Mac, I had to change the control as well, because I've never gotten it to detect the function key on an external keyboard. Anyway, yeah. I think, oh, I just closed it. I looked it up and then I closed it.

[00:20:47] AR: We have an episode previously about giving conference talks, that we will link to in the show notes.

[00:20:54] T: Yeah. I think, in that episode – in the episode where you talked about applying to speak at conferences, which is episode 39. We talked a bit about how to enjoy being at a conference, which is in and of itself in art.

[00:21:08] AC: Yeah. Step one, don't be a speaker.

[00:21:13] AR: Unless, you like speaking in front of people.

[00:21:16] T: Honestly, I enjoy speaking. Or there's a quote that one of my teachers likes to say. I forgot what it was. It's from a writer and she says, “I hate writing. I love having written.” The feeling just after you finish your talk is so good.

[00:21:30] AC: See, that's what everyone kept telling me would happen. I felt so dead inside after. That was my moment of, “Nope, this was not worth it.” I mean, okay, it was worth it, in terms of, I got to meet a lot of amazing people. There was this guy, Alex. He was okay.

[00:21:52] AR: He is a bit of a jerk. Yeah. I don’t know.

[00:21:58] AC: No. For me, the whole experience – Months of freaking out ahead of time, for not feeling good after was – Yeah.

[00:22:12] T: I will also say, and this is not to say that speaking is for everybody, but especially from the organizer perspective/, I guess, evenly from the organizer and speaker perspective, the setup that you're speaking in also contributes a lot to how good or bad you feel giving the talk. Because I've definitely had talks where I was like, “Oh, that feels awful,” afterwards, or I feel nothing afterwards. A lot of times, I could link that to one stage, or context I was speaking in, versus another.

[00:22:44] AC: Yeah, it turns out, I didn't like preparing the talk, though. I really did not like that.

[00:22:50] T: Talks is just – oh, it’s so hard.

[00:22:53] AR: It is.

[00:22:53] T: I'm going to do another one this month. Actually, I'm not looking forward to it.

[00:22:58] AR: Yeah. I have to put together a talk actually, about Vue. I need to put that together. Thanks for reminding me.

[00:23:07] T: Back to Ari.

[00:23:09] AR: Back to Ari. You went to a boot camp. What stuff did you learn while you were at the boot camp? Were you just straight mainlining Vue.js and that was it? That's been your entire life? What else you got going on?

[00:23:27] AC: I didn't touch Vue, until after. Well after. Not well after, but a while. It was a full stack bootcamp. We did the –

[00:23:41] T: Angular.JS?

[00:23:42] AC: NEAP stack.

[00:23:45] AR: The MIP stack.

[00:23:46] T: Eew. Meat?

[00:23:48] AR: MIP? As in the sound that bicker.

[00:23:51] AC: No. NEAP.

[00:23:50] T: The thing you eat. The thing you eat.

[00:23:52] AC: Node Express, Angular and PostgresSQL.

[00:23:55] T: Oh, I thought it was meat.

[00:23:57] AC: I should specify, Angular.JS and Postgres.

[00:24:02] T: Yeah. Angular.JS. NEAP.

[00:24:05] AC: Yeah. It was Angular 1.6. It did have components. Yeah. It was the version of Angular.JS that most heavily – was the part that actually inspired Vue to begin with. Then after that –

[00:24:29] T: Oh, it wasn't the pre-component version?

[00:24:31] AC: No. No, I had components. Thank you.

[00:24:34] T: No, no. Sorry. That inspired you, I meant.

[00:24:37] AC: Probably both. Yeah. Then after that, when I got my first job, I worked with Polymer. No. Which actually, it also – there were parts of Polymer that we're very familiar in Vue. Yeah. It was like, all the things I liked about Polymer, and then all the things I hate about Polymer were fixed with Vue. Yeah. I started using Vue when I finally convinced my boss to let us move away from Polymer and do a rewrite. Then it was up to our team of two to pick a new framework. I did most of the research and did –

[00:25:35] AR: Were you the person who did all the group project stuff, and then somebody else finally showed up?

[00:25:44] AC: Well, I mean, it was an agreed upon labor split. I did the research. Then I was like, “Hey, check this out. What do you think?” Yeah. I read the documentation. That was when I was sold on Vue. That and it was just super easy to get a WebSocket set up with Vue. Yeah. Whereas, I never actually got it to work properly in Angular.

[00:26:16] T: Did you find Vue through a Google search or something?

[00:26:19] AC: I had heard of Vue. The first time I heard of Vue was actually, one of my instructors was talking about it. It was, Vue 2 was released a month or two before the end of my boot camp. We were getting ready for our capstone projects. For a capstone project, we had to use a new technology. I went with Angular 2 at the time. Yeah, regrets. So many regrets. That was a nightmare.

[00:26:53] AR: You were like, “Oh, I've been learning Angular. I can totally pick up Angular 2. This should be easy.”

[00:26:58] T: Well, you meant Angular.JS and Angular really, if we're going to be pedantic, which we are.

[00:27:02] AR: Oh, yes. That's true.

[00:27:03] AC: No. The Angular CLI was a release candidate at that point, which meant there was not a lot of documentation around deploying with a full stack application. I had to figure that out on my own, which I did. I mean, I felt pretty proud of that, but wasted a lot of time. All of these things went horribly wrong the night before I was supposed to present my capstone. 6 a.m. rolls around, I'm in tears, because it won't even load anymore. Yeah. It was a whole mess. That was how I conquered my fear of failure. It really was tough.

[00:27:43] AR: What you're saying is you can conquer your fear of failure by using Angular 2. Got it. Okay.

[00:27:50] AC: My instructor encouraged me to give a presentation anyway, even though I didn't have anything to present. What I presented instead, was I started with what I set out to do. What I actually did, and what I learned along the way. Which, honestly, at the end of the day, that's really what development is, is that process. It’s pretty much never actually about the end product, at least not from a growth perspective as a developer. Yeah, it was good to learn early that things will go catastrophically wrong sometimes. Because it does happen.

[00:28:37] T: How did you find Vue, Alex?

[00:28:39] AR: How did I find Vue? I had a co-worker who was like, “Hey, take a look at this thing.” I was like, “This doesn't make any sense. What is it? What? How does this – What? You just assign a value and it updates the thing? That doesn't make any sense.”

[00:28:52] AC: Yeah. It seemed too good to be true, right?

[00:28:55] AC: Then, yeah. Really like that. That's not how programming works. You can't do that.

[00:29:00] AC: It's supposed to be harder. Come on.

[00:29:02] AR: You can’t do that. It doesn't work like that.

[00:29:04] AC: You have to work for it.

[00:29:04] AR: Yeah. This is too easy.

[00:29:06] T: You got nerds night.

[00:29:07] AR: Then I spent some time playing with it and making a little simple thing with it. I was like, “This is weird. I don't know.” Then I was reading more about it. We were like, then we got the opportunity. It was build a – We had a small client who was like, “We need a page that pulls in a list of things, a list of locations, and then display it on a map.” That's the whole page. We were like, “Let’s do it in Vue. Let’s see if we can do it in Vue.” It’s a one-page application. Let’s do it in Vue. See what happens. So we did.

[00:29:46] T: Meow, meow, meow.

[00:29:47] AR: Mee, mee, mee.

[00:29:49] AC: Let’s see what you sound like.

[00:29:50] AR: Pedantic.

[00:29:52] T: A one-page, or a single –

[00:29:54] AR: Yeah. That was my first intro. If I were to ever go back and look at that code, I would be horrified, because I can still remember everything that we did wrong there. I can't even see the code anymore, but I know. I just know.

[00:30:10] AC: Now imagine, you had to maintain the first Vue application you ever wrote for two years. Yeah. So many regrets.

[00:30:19] AR: I would have rewritten it, honestly. That probably would have been [inaudible 00:30:23].

[00:30:24] AC: We didn’t really have that. Because, it was hard enough to convince them to let us rewrite it once. They weren't going to let us rewrite it twice. Now, it's someone else's problem.

[00:30:37] AR: If you're listening to this episode, other person whose problem it is, sorry.

[00:30:41] AC: I'm not sorry.

[00:30:43] T: I was going to predict that Ari was not sorry.

[00:30:47] AC: Not sorry.

[00:30:51] T: I don't even know what happened to the first Vue app I wrote, because I was working on this thing called Angular Code Lab, which was some open source like, learn Angular from Google thing. Then, the guy running it was like, “Hey, let's make a Vue one,” but nobody wanted to work on it. I started working on it. Then he was like, “Hey, let's start a Vue meetup.” Literally, my intro – I mean, a classmate was using Vue at Vox. Is that where Michelle works? Vox, Verge, Box?

[00:31:20] AC: Box.

[00:31:22] T: Some media company. Yeah, I think Vox. Some media company, starts with a V. I heard about it, but my first time using it when I was working on a class to teach people Vue and running on Vue meetup.

[00:31:35] AC: Yeah. Then, I've been lucky enough to now have had two jobs, where I got to use Vue on a daily basis.

[00:31:42] T: Yay.

[00:31:43] AR: Nice.

[00:31:45] T: Okay, but enough about Vue. Let's hear more about you. Who are you? What do you do, aside of programming stuff?

[00:31:56] AC: I like to binge watch TV a lot and play video games. That is basically it. I am innately extremely lazy.

[00:32:09] T: I'm laughing, because I accidentally opened the document where you bought Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. Thank you [inaudible 00:32:17].

[00:32:18] AC: Yeah. That's what I do.

[00:32:21] T: Okay. Speaking of how do either of you feel about the beginning of a video game? Because I feel like, it's hard for me to start new games. A big portion of why it's hard is because I hate that beginning part. It's either I already know how to do everything. Let me freaking do the thing. Or, I don't understand anything. Then I just give up on the game dishonored. How do you two feel about starting games? I could not get past the doc.

[00:32:50] AC: I think, like a lot of people, a lot of neurodiverse people, I tend to play the same games over and over again. Yeah. I guess, yeah, I'm not a big fan of the beginning of games.

[00:33:08] AR: I like the beginning of games. Part of it is that my time to play video games is first thing in the morning. I wake up, I make my cup of coffee, and I play video games. I'm not awake. The beginning part of video games, very important for me. What is this thing in my hand? It's a controller. I think it has buttons. Sure. What does this button do? I don't know. It doesn't do anything right now. Okay, cool. It'll tell me eventually. I'm fine with it. I like the beginning of video games. I'm that weirdo.

[00:33:45] T: Ooh. I was going to, because that leads into my next question. I feel like, this also relates to documentation, which is do you prefer beginning of the game tutorials, where they limit the buttons that work, and then they unlock them as they teach you the abilities, or games where they tell you how to do things one by one, but you can do all of them immediately and just play around?

[00:34:08] AR: I think, it depends.

[00:34:09] AC: Yeah.

[00:34:12] AR: Because there are games, like fighting games, I hate fighting games. I hate fighting games, where it's like, if you do this combo, and you press three buttons, and then swipe your D pad in this direction while pulling a trigger. If you don't do it in the right order, then it doesn't do anything. I'm like, “How am I supposed to –” I just mash buttons. I don't care. I'm never going to figure out those combos, right? That is not helpful to be able to – I don't care if I can do all the things in the world at that point.

[00:34:42] T: Yeah. I feel like, earning new abilities is different to you can't run yet, or you can't jump yet, but it's not something you have to earn. It's just like, we didn't teach you yet, so you can't do it yet.

[00:34:50] AR: I think, if narratively it makes sense. There are certain games where it's like, you start off. And oh, you've fallen from a great height and you are hurt Therefore, you have to trudge along, and you can't run, because you're trudging along. Then the first thing that you get to is, here's how you pick up an item. It's a health potion. You take the health potion. Ah, you're feeling better now. All right, now let's go over here, but faster, because now we can run. Makes sense. If it's just like, “No. You can’t run. I haven't taught you that yet.” I don’t like that.

[00:35:24] T: I don't know how I feel about starting off a game not being able to run, even for a narrative reason. Is there anything more tragic than not being able to run and then two hours into the game, learning that there's just no run option? You have to walk slowly everywhere. Luigi’s Mansion.

[00:35:40] AC: Or two hours later, realizing there was a run option the whole time and you've just been wasting your life. That’s the worst.

[00:35:49] T: When the run option is clicking the joystick or something, or having to hold something down.

[00:35:53] AC: Oh, I hate that.

[00:35:54] AR: The worst is getting three quarters of a way through a game, and discovering that there's actually a fast travel system.

[00:36:00] AC: Oh, yeah.

[00:36:04] T: Okay. In Wind Waker, was fast travel actually fast travel? I feel like, no matter how you traveled in that game, it was just annoying.

[00:36:13] AR: I didn't play that one.

[00:36:15] T: Yeah, we know. I think you had to sail into a hurricane or something.

[00:36:21] AR: With that, Ari, where can people find you on the Internet?

[00:36:26] T: Oh, my favorite answer.

[00:36:27] AC: Well, as the long-running joke goes, you can find me on Twitter @gloomylumi.

[00:36:34] AR: Great. We will be sure to send people – If people have comments for Ari, please direct your messages to @enjoythevuecast. Now, it's time for this week's picks. Tessa, would you like to go first?

[00:36:54] T: No, but I will. I picked Squid Game, because I finally started watching it. We talked about it during one of Oscar’s episodes. I guess, it's a Battle Royale type game. I mean, I only have a very indirect understanding of what Battle Royale was about. It's like, everybody's competing. They don't really say only one can win. I'm assuming only one, or a handful can win game show, TV show. It's not a game show. It's a TV show about a game, but there are people watching it like a game show. Yeah, it's a Korean show. There was some big discussion on Twitter a couple weeks ago about the accuracy of the subtitles. So far, I haven't really seen any big issues. There are definitely shows I've seen where the subs are really off. I mean, they seem fine to me. I obviously didn't read the details of the critique, since I hadn't watched it yet. I'm not finished with it. Everybody's talking about it, so here we are, Squid Game. Let's go.

[00:37:59] T: Awesome. Ari, do you have any picks this week?

[00:38:02] AC: I do. Let me go with a less intense TV show. Love On the Spectrum. It is technically a reality show. I would say, it's more like docu series, personally. Anyway, it is about – It follows several people who are on the autism spectrum in their quest to find love. Because autism is a spectrum, the people on the show very much cover the spectrum, which is nice to see representation. I will say, so there are two seasons out now. The first season, little sad. Second season was a lot happier. We'll just say that.

I definitely cried in the last episode of the second season. When you watch it, you'll probably know why. It was very cute. Yeah. Highly recommend it. It's just a good – you don't have to think too hard watch. Yeah. When you don't want to think it's a good thing to watch, but also makes you feel good about humanity. I like that, because humanity itself makes me feel bad about humanity.

[00:39:29] AR: All right. This week, my pick is, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of this, but Kongen befaler. I've previously picked Taskmaster, which is a game show in the UK. You have five comedians who come on and perform tasks for the taskmaster over a season. Then the one who does the – who gets the most points, wins the taskmaster’s golden head They have a Norwegian version of this. It is just as good. It's just not in English. We're watching it with subtitles currently. It's pretty fantastic.

[00:40:13] T: When you play games, you like to play games that are work. When you watch shows, you like to watch shows where people are just working.

[00:40:21] AR: Yeah. I mean, the tasks that they do are just ridiculous. There's one where it's – they've set up a large area and they have a few walls and some cinder blocks and a fountain and whatnot. They've lined up ducks on various surfaces. The task is knock over all the ducks. The fastest wins. Your time starts when the first duck gets knocked over. Oh, and you have to stand behind a line to do it. Watching people try and figure out the best way to do it is hilarious, because they’re comedians.

[00:40:59] T: Dream job alert.

[00:41:02] AR: Yeah. For real. Having them do it in Norwegian is even funnier. Yeah. That is my pick for this week. All right, so our final question for our guest is, Ari, tell us about your headphones.

[00:41:18] AC: No.

[00:41:23] AR: Okay.

[00:41:23] AC: I don’t like them. So no.

[00:41:27] AR: No, they're terrible. Great. Okay, cool. Done.

[00:41:28] T: Well, can we at least warn listeners what kind to not get?

[00:41:30] AR: Yeah.

[00:41:31] AC: Okay. They're not the worst. They're not the best. My scalp is very sensitive, and they hurt my scalp after a short amount of time. They’re MPow something. They're cheap Beats knock offs. They get the job done. I like that they're Bluetooth, but they also have a wired option. They're good for travel.

[00:41:52] AR: All right, and there we go. That's all for this week's episode. If you aren't following us on Twitter, head over and find us @enjoythevuecast. Be sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite pod catcher of choice. If you have time, and the inclination, feel free to leave a review, unless it's a bad review, in which case, don't.

Finally, remember, the first rule of Vue Club is, be sure to tell at least five, or six different colleagues about Vue Club. Thanks for listening. Until next time, enjoy the vue.