Episode: 2434
Title: HPR2434: Cybrosis
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2434/hpr2434.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 03:01:18

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This is HPR Episode 2434 entitled, Zidrosis.
It is hosted by HPR Audio Book Club and is about 99 minutes long and can remain an explicit flag.
The summary is, the HPR Audio Book Club discusses Zidrosis IPC, Herring.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hey everybody, this is Taj, I just wanted to jump in here real quick before the episode
started and kind of give everybody heads up of what's going on.
You may have noticed that there has been a pretty big hiatus for the Audio Book Club and
that we just came back last month with our first episode.
We have lots of episodes that are already recorded that we've just been very negligent
and getting out.
So while we will mention that the next episode and we are going to release each episode one
month apart to give everybody the opportunity to go find the book and listen to it so you
can at least know what's going on in the episodes.
We will not have a live discussion because that has already happened.
So unfortunately that's just kind of the nature of what has happened.
As we get closer to new episodes, we will let you guys know and then you can jump in and
be part of the conversation.
But with that, here we go.
Hello and welcome to today's episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today we've got another Audio Book Club and I'm Poki.
I'm one of the panelists here today and the other panelists with us are Taj.
What's good everybody?
And X1101.
Howdy folks.
This month we'll be reviewing Cybrosis by PC Herring and I have to apologize up front
for dropping the ball because I don't even think I sent out the announcement on this one.
So we may be the only three people who know that we were doing this one and I greatly apologize.
This whole month has slipped my mind.
I even, X1101 even sent me a text to say, hey, recording tonight because I'm late.
So I can believe you forgot about it.
So oh, you're just earning your name again.
Yes, absolutely.
And let's be honest, you're not 5150 late.
So you get that going for you.
All right, all right, not bad.
Yeah, so here at the Audio Book Club, the Hacker Public Radio Audio Book Club, we all
listen to an audio book.
It's going to be ones that we picked are all going to be freely available so that it's
inclusive to anybody.
There should be no cost to the audio book.
And then we meet together on a mobile server on the second Tuesday of every month and we
review the audio book.
The first part of the show, we don't do any spoilers.
So if you haven't listened, feel free and I haven't listened to the audio book, feel
free and listen to at least that much of the podcast.
We take a break in which we review a beverage of our own choosing each week.
Sometimes folks pick alcoholic beverages.
Sometimes folks pick non-alcohol beverages and some folks, I don't know, maybe do a mixer
or something.
I don't know.
And then after the beverage review, we continue with our review of the audio book, but then
we include spoilers.
So at that point, you may wish to stop listening until you listen to the audio book.
If you choose to listen to the audio book, if you don't choose to listen to the audio
book, go ahead and have a spoil for you, I guess.
I don't know.
What do you guys think?
How'd I do?
That's a pretty good summary.
That's about right.
Cool.
I should script it or something so we can get through it without forgetting anything.
This is our 13th episode.
I think I have that figured out by now.
Yeah, I like the spontaneity.
Cool.
So, X1101, this was your pick for an audio book, so let's hear what you thought of it.
It was a book so nice I listened to it twice, but that's a good start.
I listened to it initially, took him about a week, digging through it, and I thought it
was a good action-packed story in a genre I at least kind of enjoy, decent or better
writing.
I thought the voice acting was really good.
And I'll add in here, the genre was sci-fi.
This is definitely a sci-fi action, almost thriller, maybe.
And it's kind of a sub-genre of that called cyberpunk.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
I haven't figured out 100% what cyberpunk is, I thought maybe cyberpunk was more
punk.
Yeah, one of my favorite cyberpunk books is Snowcrash by, and now the author's name completely
slips my mind.
So if you want me guys' nose, tell me otherwise I'm going to look it up.
Neil Stevenson.
Thank you.
Neil Stevenson.
Yeah, I have to listen to Snowcrash, I've never read that one.
It's really good, though.
And Taj may appreciate this explanation of it, but I feel like the endings to his books
are always follow the same vein as some of the things you find in a math textbook.
The remainder of this proof is left for the reader as an exercise.
Or in his case, the remainder of this story is left for the reader as an exercise.
I think the only book I've ever read by him was how the name of it is slipped my mind,
but I felt the old book was a textbook.
Was it Cryptonomicon?
No, no.
You should give that a read as well.
Quick Silver.
I read Quick Silver, and it felt like reading a history book with a little story thrown
in to keep you a little more engaged.
But it wasn't cyberpunk, and it wasn't the book review in this week either.
Yeah, so Taj, what did you think of this one?
You said you were dying to hear what everybody else thought?
Why is that?
Um, my kind of feelings about the book were, it's okay, I don't know.
It's a genre I typically really like, and I just kind of felt mediocre on it.
Like, it reminded me of just like a guilty pleasure like that.
One like sci-fi TV show that you know, is it good?
Like you know that it's not going to win any awards or anything, but you'd still watch
it because you can't enjoy it anyways.
I was enjoyable.
Like, I don't regret reading it, but I just wasn't, didn't hit me all the way.
Like, it was, it was a good read, but just kind of mediocre to me.
Yeah, and I'm on the, uh, the other end of the spectrum, I, I did not like this one.
As I mentioned towards into the last show, and I probably shouldn't have, this one just
didn't do it for me.
And I, I usually do like sci-fi, so it wasn't the genre thing cyberpunk.
If this is cyberpunk, then yes, I do like cyberpunk as well.
There's a couple others that I could think of that I really like, but this one just didn't
do it for me.
Well, I'm sorry to have picked a book that wasn't a, wasn't a Grand Slam here.
Well, no, that's kind of the whole point is to have a discussion.
So they can't all be like Grand Slam's, and you can't always pick a book that everyone's
already listened to and agreed that it's great to let's do it.
No, I mean, this is, uh, you know, it's what it is.
It's, it's not the first book that we've had that, you know, every panelist didn't like.
And sometimes when every panelist loves the book, it gets a little boring.
So no, no, we got that at all.
I think there's definitely enough in it that there will be some debate as we go on with
this book.
All right.
Well, let's, let the debate begin and this is a, a pre-spoiler and the, the first thing
I didn't like about it because it was the thing that just could not be escaped.
I didn't like the, the, the voice of the voice actress.
It just, to me, the entire way through the book, there was some affectation of her voice
and I don't know what would cause it, but it just kept reminding me of someone chewing
gum.
It felt like she was maybe popping her jaw at the end of her sentence, is there something
like that?
But it just, and it was nothing you could, no, no, no, as you could hear, it was just
an affectation of her voice and it, it was like cheese graters in my ears and I, I wish
I knew why, what it was or what was affecting me about it, but I couldn't take it.
And it's funny, I didn't hear that at all.
I'd say in general, like the, the sound production of it was probably one of the best produced
things we've listened to, at least since I've been on the shows.
It was really well done.
It was really well mixed like it was all the levels were the same.
The only thing that drove me crazy is the, the, like, wooshy sound that in between, basically
where you would have your, like, ellipses in the page or your little line that would break
apart, like, inside the chapter, every time that happened, I wanted to punch somebody
in the face.
It sounded so annoying.
It drove me crazy.
Yeah, and it was really good audio quality, which sometimes can enhance something you don't
like about an audio production.
So, you know, I, again, this is just me not like it's, I'm not saying it's a bad book.
I'm not saying that the reader was bad in any way or any of the acting was bad in any
way.
It's just just something I didn't like and I can't really put my finger on exactly what
or why, you know, I think one of the, the cool things about the way it was done is also
one of the determinants to it or it could be is the fact that obviously the author went
out to the community, which is awesome and said, Hey, guys, can you do these voice parts
for me?
Which is awesome because most of these people have experience doing, you know, some sort
of, you know, recording, whether it be a podcast or whether they actually do voice acting.
So, like, one of the characters is voiced by our own alum, Kristiana Ellis, who was on
an episode.
In every time I heard her voice, like she's playing a completely different character
than Space Casey, but just imagining Space Casey every time she came on.
Yeah, I had a hard time picturing her, like, her voice in an Asian woman.
You know what I mean?
I guess I'm going to disadvantage because Space Casey, I didn't, that was the first
episode of the book club that I had heard, but I hadn't listened to the story.
So I stopped at the beverage review and so yeah, I think they all do a good job.
I don't think anybody is terrible at acting.
Actually, I think a lot of doing it sort of the way that it was done, almost like an audio
drama, having different, the different characters have different voices, which is a little different
than just your straight audio, but really helped because a lot of the people were really
good actors, which made a big difference.
But when you did have the one person, not in particular calling anybody out, but just
saying, when you get to that one person that maybe isn't as good an actor of everybody
else, it really sticks out.
Yeah, I have to say, and if, if lots of Bronx were here, he would be able to define them
better than I can.
And he has before, and they just don't stick in my brain, but, you know, of the different
types of audio books, the one with a full crew of actors for each individual part, and
then a separate part for the narrator, I think is my favorite of all of those.
It's better, I think, than like a full on audio drama where there is no narration, and
it's better than a single theater trying to do all the voices, usually.
Some readers are really good at that.
But typically I do like having the separate voices, and it's never bothered me, even in
audio books where people say, like, oh, it sounded like they were in different rooms,
or they were on different equipment, or they just weren't interacting.
They were, that's never bothered me, I've always, I've always kind of preferred the different
voices.
And I think that's not even a problem with this book.
I, whoever sat down and did the mix on this book is somebody who knows what they're doing,
like it sounds very professional.
There's very few times where there was some thing that was poking out where I'm like,
oh, this was, this was different, you know, obviously I know going in that these people
were not all in the same studio, but I think that probably the best that could be done
in that situation was done.
So I think the audio production was really good.
Yeah, I think we're in full agreement on that.
And it sounds like you guys just know a lot more about audio engineering than I do, because
you know, I go into this and I just hear a book.
I don't hear any of this stuff.
Well, you're also listening at double speed, aren't you?
Close to.
Yeah, a lot of that is hard to pick up on when you're at double speed, just because all
the tones and the pitches are going to be changed anyway.
And a lot of your background noises kind of get softened out like air and stuff like
that.
You don't always notice though the sound effects can become grating at double speed or
at higher speeds.
But yeah, a lot of times it kind of, it'd be like looking at a picture through a frosted
lens, you know?
Well, the other thing is I've always been guilty of having an overly active imagination.
And so whether I'm reading or listening, I can do a good enough job just being in the
story that sometimes the medium being less than 100% perfect doesn't usually affect me
as much as it does other people.
Yeah, and I have like a broken imagination.
I keep trying to fix it, but I'm just terrible at visualizing settings no matter how well
they're described.
And I think I said that before in the show, but I do enjoy people's voices and especially,
you know, vastly different voices and different accents and stuff have always enjoyed that
kind of thing.
So maybe I listen a little too closely to those.
Well, if you have a problem in visioning settings, you should read some Ayn Rand.
She goes on ad nauseam about the settings, and I'm sure that you would get a picture
in your mind in painstaking detail.
No, I get sleepy.
That's the trouble.
I fall asleep to stuff like that.
I thought everybody fell asleep to Ayn Rand.
But I actually read two of her books.
One of them I did have to fight to stay awake through, but it was because it's a mountain
of the book.
I'll argue that Anthem is a good book.
I hate the idea of Anthem, but it's a good book.
Yeah, I read that in my honors English class in high school and loved it.
And then I proceeded to read Fountainhead, which was a good story, but it was just so
long.
Also, still not the audio book we're talking about.
What is it with you guys and wanting to stay on topic tonight?
It's piezo's so late.
We got to try to finish up at a decent hour for you working people.
By the way, I'm just going to get it out of the way.
Star Trek, Marvel Comics, Batman, Cthulhu, and what am I missing?
Star Wars.
We'll just say we covered everything.
We're good.
Don't forget Firefly.
Shit.
Firefly.
I think that pretty much covers all the basics.
Well, no, because he mentioned earlier that it was a guilty pleasure.
So I'll have to say far escape as well.
And I think we throw a D&D reference in and then I think we may have hit all the bases.
Yeah, I forgot a D&D.
I have not watched one episode of Far Escape, but it wasn't my thing.
But I think it's one of those things that I just didn't give enough of a shot.
I should go back and try it.
I might not have even mentioned the right one.
I think far escape was the one that was actually decent.
It was the other one that was the guilty pleasure, the weird one.
It was the weird one.
Far escape is muppet in space, so that's the one you're thinking of or not.
Poke it, sci-fi.
You're going to have to be more specific than the weird one.
There was like a dead dude and a woman and I think the spaceship was alive and they
were like disembodied Android heads on screens or something like that.
What?
Yeah, that's the one.
I used to love that.
I didn't see many of them, but I love the ones that I saw.
It was weird.
It's on Netflix and I've had people recommending it to me like crazy, so I might have to
let it snow bubbling further up in my queue.
Isn't that like, maybe I'm just completely making this up?
Isn't that like a Swedish show or something like it's totally from somewhere else?
Well, if Sweden were in Australia, then yeah, that would make sense perfectly because
it's upside down and weird and fishy.
Done.
So I'll add some more.
Anyway, it's back to the book.
Yeah, I liked that the story moved along pretty well.
It didn't linger too bad.
You know, sometimes a story can just kind of drag on and on.
I thought the pacing was really good.
And it moved quickly enough to keep me listening, even though I didn't, even though it wasn't
for me, it was not one that I turned off.
It wasn't, you know what I mean?
Like, I kept going because all right, I would like to see how this turns out.
So I was engaged.
Yeah, there wasn't a lot of time spent on just exposition.
It was things happening.
Though I did think the flashbacks could have been done better.
I thought they were maybe artificially mysterious.
If you know what I mean?
Like the author held back on them more than was really necessary to try and draw out some
kind of tension there.
And that I didn't care for.
Well, I felt like the tension was tension.
She was really feeling.
Yeah, and she would have been too.
I mean, because of all the, you know, the body mods she went through and somewhat, I
don't know, memory loss and just, yeah, she was definitely under tension the whole time.
And the whole time she was in the middle of this mystery.
But I don't know.
I don't think that the flashbacks helped me to experience that.
I think so much of the thing that it helped me experience was her state of mind.
You mean Batchit Grazy?
Yes.
So we've got that shit crazy robot girl.
Sounds like half the enemies I've ever watched.
Yeah, it just that alone was enough to take me out of the story at a lot of points where
like, you know, Batchit crazy super cyborg isn't disabled in any way or, or, you know,
under any closer or just here to run with this kind of thing.
I mean, I know it's, it's necessary for the plot of the story.
But I don't know, just so much in this story made me think, but that's really not how
things would happen in a real world or a real bureaucracy or even if I were in charge
of the thing, you know, there's several points that I would like to make to that that
I think would be better made after into the spoiler section because too many details.
I was going to say the same thing.
Yeah, it's a detail heavy one.
Some of them we've gone on for, you know, well over half the show without spoiling anything.
And this one I think is not much to say about it without spoiling it.
Except that I also didn't like that the one guy's name was tech guy because no one could
remember his name like seriously.
And how speaking as a tech guy, why would you be okay with that?
Well, no, for a long time at work, I just told people my name was phone guy because I know
they'd never remember my name, you know, what they saw me in six or eight months and I,
you know, didn't mind being a phone guy like my job, but, but yeah, this is not a thing
like where I was working at where I'd work and, you know, you might not see me for six
or eight months and you're over there doing your thing, but this is like an office setting.
Everybody's in the same building and yeah, really nobody knows his name, but just it was
like, it was like, wow, that's really disrespectful to any tech guy alive, you know.
I guess I didn't know that you were a phone guy analog or VoIP or both or small signals
little of everything. Yeah, I even had a set of tin cans, literally had a set of tin cans
on a string, but yeah, everything from that up to, up to, I never did VoIP at work until
I have worked on it.
Astrosk is a beautiful, terrible nightmare of a wonderful piece of technology.
Yeah, I know I tried getting into it a little bit and just ran up against the hardware
limitations and that kind of thing, it's hard to work with without the right hardware.
No, it's hard to work with even with the right hardware.
Yeah, it's good stuff, but anyway, yeah, I didn't like that the guy's name was tech guy
that bothered me. Yeah, that did feel artificially, and now I'm not coming up with good word,
artificially kind of distancing him from them even more.
It seemed like it was one in a long line of like quasi-clean shades that the guy that
is named after what he does. I mean, it's kind of like your big muscular dude on the team
being named Tank.
Yes, but Tank is a decent enough nickname, tech guy is awkward, and he's also like her
confidant. You know, you think she'd know the man's name after him knowing her deepest secrets,
and I mean, literally her most intimate of an atom is.
So we've got, now that you mentioned it, it does kind of hit a lot of the stereotypes
really well. No, like when I said like, it sounds like half the enemies I've ever seen in
my life, it's kind of true. I kind of feel like this, whoever wrote the book, I forget
his name. I kind of feel like PC Harry. I'm kind of like, man, you are a big anime fan
because there's a lot of things, and I'm not even like a huge anime dude. I've seen some,
then I like the good stuff. I don't like the bad stuff, but a lot of it is just like,
oh, that's where that came from, and oh, there's where that came from.
She was the MD police officer.
Where the chick from ghost in the show.
Hensie now. I stopped. I'm told I should.
So we've got very good voice acting, fairly good sound quality, and hitting way too many
scenario types. Anyone have anything else in the non-spoiler section?
Let's spoil it.
Yeah, I'm racking my brain. I can't think of anything.
But I'll go ahead with your beverage.
A couple of weeks ago, my lovely wife and I took a little weekend getaway up to Bar Harbor,
and we were in one of the little coffee shop there.
It's pronounced Bahaba.
Yeah, I may live in Maine, but I still speak Midwest English, where we pronounce all the letters the way they're written.
Yeah, right. Well, up in Bahaba, you pronounce all of them except for the R's.
But are you pronouncing the R's? Just not where they're written.
That would be Bra Harbor, and that's not right either.
I guess I was thinking about the way people here pronounce the name of our state capital.
The name of the capital is Augusta, and it turns out to Augusta or something ridiculous.
Yes, it can.
Anyway, we're in the coffee shop spending way too much money on coffee, and I look in the cooler section,
a little cooler there, not looking to get anything out of the cooler, because it's been a coffee shop.
I want coffee, but I saw Mountain Dew live wire.
And this is the only time I have seen it in the state of Maine.
This was introduced the last two summers I lived in my parents' house before college,
and I fell in love with it, and then it was only during the summers, and then I couldn't get it.
So the last several years my mother has bought a 12 pack of it and brought it up to me,
and I found some, and I had to buy it, and save it, and share it with you guys.
Virtually.
What is it?
It is Mountain Dew's take on Ormstoda for a lack of a better description.
Oh, okay.
The description on the bottle says, live wire do sparkle with natural and artificial orange flavor.
Okay, and there really shouldn't be lack of a better description, because that's why you're here.
So it's still carbonated.
That's good, because I haven't opened it.
It's got a nice pleasant orange soda nose to it.
And it's everything I remember it being.
It's got most of the citrusy sweet of the Mountain Dew, but it's not any of the sharp lineliness.
It's a nice mellow orange.
It really does taste like you took half of a Mountain Dew and half of an orange soda and combined them.
And then there's just a little couple drops of magic that makes it better than that.
Wow, I haven't had a Mountain Dew in probably a decade.
Is it like ridiculously sweet?
Well, for one who doesn't drink soda more than a couple of times a month, yeah, it is.
I used to live on Mountain Dew, but what high school and college age nerd didn't at the time.
This guy right here.
Okay, well, not all of this can be water drinking all the time forever.
I didn't bring water this time, okay?
Wow, but I mean, it's, it's, if you drink soda all the time, you're not going to notice it,
but for someone who spends his whole life drinking, you know, now water or like bitter beverages,
coffees, teas, dark beers, this is really syrupy, but it's like drinking a bottle of nostalgia.
So that's my review.
Well, I for one did bring water this week because it's all I'm drinking today.
We've got a bottle of water.
Our town has a wonderful water plant.
That's a good job.
Makes good taste in water.
Come right out of the tap and we put a filter on our tap so that it's even better.
And it's, we got it like a big old charcoal filter under the sink.
And I drilled a hole in my sink to put the tap off of that.
And that's what we got.
It's good.
Warm or cold.
It has a nice water reflator with no other metallic tastes or anything.
Kind of minimally, we have like mineral tasting water up here in the northeast because of all the granite,
but I happen to like mineral waters.
So that's, that's pretty good.
Searching desperately here for the name of my water filter that I can only halfheartedly recommend
because it's kind of a pain in the ass.
It's got two great big carbon charcoal filters, which are great.
But the way that it's plumbed in is pretty bad.
It uses like the water comes into the valve, which is up at the faucet.
And then it goes back down to the filters and then it comes back up to the faucet.
So it's, it's not under any pressure and it makes it come out really slow.
And it doesn't always turn off exactly right.
And it's kind of a pain in the ass of a filter.
And it was expensive.
And you got to change the filters every six months, which is about 50 bucks for a pair.
So I have a hard time wholeheartedly recommending it, though it does make good water come out of the tap.
So I don't know.
Maybe it's maybe three stars.
I think that's what I gave it on Amazon.
A lot of discussion around my Amazon review of it if I could ever find it.
But that's my beverage review for this week.
All right. Well, guess that leaves me today was kind of our first late autumn.
Kind of Midwest dark rainy windy days.
So decided to come home and kind of the same thing.
I don't know what one did kind of with the comfort.
So I got my big old latte mug and I filled it up with some Swiss miss hot chocolate mix.
And that's when I'm rocking tonight.
Cool. I think I like Swiss mess.
I think of the hot chocolate.
That's the one that I have that that's the one that I like the most.
It's the one that comes in a big can at Costco.
So that's what I have.
Does it come in dark chocolate?
Does it come in chocolate?
It is chocolate.
Dark chocolate.
Not that we have.
I think this is just the chocolate kind.
That'd be honest.
It's not the best, but it'll do.
It's very comforting.
Okay.
Sorry to interrupt you there, but the I just found it.
The water filter that I.
I found I give it two stars on Amazon.
It's the aquasana a Q 4500 complete under counter water filter system.
So if you know what you're getting into.
If I knew it was getting into I wouldn't have rated it so low, but they.
They weren't.
Real honest or or completely forthcoming about.
You know how the thing that the water runs and drips for a while and how it came out slow and all that kind of stuff.
So and it doesn't come out cold either because there's so much plumbing involved.
It just it never comes out cold.
You got a.
You got to put it in the fridge after your your town with it.
So that was it.
Aquasana a Q 4500.
And Poke you had said something about wanting to talk about your bulletproof coffee while we were in the beverage review.
Area. Oh, yeah, that's right.
Well, I would say it's more your bulletproof coffee because you're the one who's actually making it the way they recommend making it with like a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of coconut oil, but.
I wasn't one that brought it up and I was going to say as a semi beverage review, I was going to recommend a brand of coconut oil that is.
Some went low cost compared to the other ones and also tastes good because I haven't found.
There's a lot of them that don't taste good at all that there's one in particular that's really disgusting and it's not even inexpensive.
It's actually expensive, but I did find it a good cheap one that is readily available seems to be all the different grocery stores around here and it tastes good.
And it's the spectrum brand coconut oil and if they're all virgin coconut oils, but the unrefined one is the one that you would want to put in your coffee and that one's actually really good.
I think that's actually what I have in my cabinet. They had just picked it up the local store.
And I'm checking Google image search now to see if it's the one I just bought.
Yeah, I've tried a couple different brands. There's one in particular better body food and nutrition. That one was disgusting.
It tasted like they put it tasted like they shipped it and used 55 gallon motor oil drums. It was just it had a lot of flavor to it, but it had a lot of heavy, oily flavor to it too.
And it was really bad and me and my daughter both gave us like a stomach ache to eat it or to drink it.
And we just we wound up we couldn't do it anymore. We had to stop and I had to buy something else.
And there's another brand that comes in a little square tub that's pretty good too.
But I think it's a little more expensive maybe on par with the spectrum, but it does taste good but not quite as good.
The spectrum really has a nice like savouryness to it.
It enhances coffee rather than damaging it.
I actually found I do have a jar of the spectrum. I bought that as my second jar because I have one that I'm about a third or a half the way done with.
And it was considerably cheaper where I found it than what I had paid for my last jar of it of coconut oil.
So once I finished my first one, that's what I'll be using, but I use about a teaspoon of each, not a tablespoon.
Oh, and then I run it through a blender and it produces this nice creamy actually looking at it after the blender runs.
It looks just like a just poured class of Guinness with all of that action still going on in it.
Oh, that's really neat. Yeah, if I had a blender, I probably try it that way, but like I said, just stirring up butter in your coffee.
It does not, it does not obviously doesn't dissolve because it's oil based, but it doesn't even go into a very good suspension for more than a few seconds.
But the coconut oil, I'll stir that in and put some cream in there and it sort of does tend to float to the top, but my coffee mug is watertight.
So I can, I can just shake it up a little before taking a sip and it tastes good that way.
And yeah, I like that the coconut oil in the coffee does make me feel a little bit more alert and does give me a little bit more energy in the morning.
I'm not reaching for a snack quite so early and not been cutting out sugar anyway.
So I'm not really craving the sugary snacks and the star cheese snacks as much.
And see, I feel like it makes me sharper mentally.
Yeah, a little bit and that's what everybody, that's what it's advertised as the goal is to be a little bit more mentally sharp with the coconut oil and the butter in there.
It's almost like giving the boost from the coffee, but not ever getting the caffeine crash afterwards.
Todd, you're about to say something there. I think we walked on you though.
I'm just going to say you guys keep talking it up and maybe eventually I'll get my predisposition to not like you get out and try it.
Well, I mean, if you've, if you've never tried it, then yeah, go ahead and try it. But if you try it and don't like it, I don't let it try to change your mind.
That's not going to work. The next one, one, one, I was just about to say that I did hear, might have been Joe Rogan.
I think I heard from him. He said that the coconut oil kind of elongates the caffeine high.
It kind of, it takes the peaks off of it and mellows it out and makes it longer so that you don't crash and that it kind of boosts you.
But I'm not so sure that that's what's going on. I think it has more to do with the medium chain triglycerides that it's loaded with that your body uses as fuel.
I think that's more to do with it, but I have heard it explain that way.
Well, I mean, I don't know what it's doing chemically. I just know how I feel.
I don't, I don't feel like I get a caffeine crash. I don't feel like I'm dragging by two o'clock in the afternoon.
I don't even usually, you know, the last week because of the time change in EST going on, notwithstanding.
I've been staying up later, feeling sharper and, you know, not dragging in the next morning before I get my coffee into me.
Yeah, one thing I noticed since drinking coffee with coconut oil in it is that I usually only drink one big cup of coffee a day, probably 16 ounces or 14 ounces or something like that.
But I noticed when that thing's gone, I wish I had more and I didn't use to care once it was gone. It's like, all right, great. Coffee time's done. But now I like, I could take a mug of coffee with me all day, and I'd be fine with that.
Yeah, I can remember the, the looked you gave me when I was raving about coffee at Northeast Linux Fest, but man, that coffee was like a spiritual experience.
Oh, yeah, don't get me wrong. I love good coffee. I just, I usually can't drink it past a certain point in the day or I get jittery than I don't want to be up on that either.
Between my body chemistry, my brain chemistry and overexposure for the last decade, I have to drink a lot of coffee before it's, I have that problem.
Yeah, I got to drink a lot of coffee before it wakes me up, but I don't have to drink a lot for it to keep me up. You know what I mean? Like at night, I just, if I have it, if I have coffee after like 5 p.m., I just, I'll toss and turn on night.
It won't, you know, keep me out of bed and jumping around. It just won't allow me to sleep.
So I think that, and here I'm going to commit to it on, on air.
I'm going to do a follow up to my how I make coffee, discussing how I make my bulletproof coffee.
Oh, bitch. Did you hear the HPR that just was on on how to make coffee? I got a mention.
Dave Morris, yeah, I did. I listened to that. I ended up working from home last week, so I didn't listen to so many podcasts. I took the opportunity to listen to some music at a high volume instead.
So I was catching up on podcasts this morning and that was on in the queue and listen to that. I chuckled a little bit.
Yeah, that's funny. I listened to it this morning too. Was it today's episode? Cause I'm a little behind.
I think it was yesterday's. Today's was actually a 51 50 episode.
Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm still, I'm still behind, but yeah, that was a good one. Now what, what was up with this coffee maker?
Was it like a vacuum coffee maker or something?
No, I think that was, it was his coffee bean storage that was a vacuum, which, which I've read some negative things about what he was doing, pumping the air back out.
When I did a lot, I did some digging on it and the research I found said that that actually was worse for the beans to continue to depressurize them because it pulls the oils right out of them.
I would imagine that the vacuum to atmospheric pressure transition that the, that doing it cyclically like that would, would not be good because you're pumping all the air out.
And as soon as you open it, you're getting a fresh batch of new oxygen. I think you'd be better off just keeping the air that's in there as undisturbed as possible. But I, what do I know?
I know I keep my beans in the freezer, which I've read some things about, but I've had good results in it. I take it out of the freezer enough to scoop my couple scoops out into my coffee grinder and then right back into the freezer it goes.
So the beans that are in the freezer don't come up to root temperature and go back down and come up and go back down very much.
Yeah, that'd be bad. That's death to a muscle loader. I can imagine what it would do to coffee.
I do know that the last couple pots out of the end of the bag are never particularly impressive though.
Yep, same with a can of coffee. Alright, so who wants to spoil this thing?
I think I do. Taj, you ready to spoil the crap out of this?
Well, as always, silence is consent on the mailing lists and here I guess.
I think Taj might be having some audio trouble. He's dropped out a couple times. Yeah, it looks like it.
I don't know audio, but a network trouble rather because he's just completely disconnected from the server. This is the second time.
And before you got here, he was having some problems hearing me. I assumed it was on my end, but it might not have been.
Hey, Taj back. Yeah, I got dropped out on what happened.
I'm ready to move into spoilers. You alright with that? Let's do it.
Alright, so where do you want to start?
I think I want to circle back to the point you were making about, you know, not how it would work under a bureaucracy.
The biggest point I wanted to make there was the bureaucracy she was part of seemed to operate well enough off the reservation that could probably get away with doing it that way.
Yeah, it was independent or mostly independent. It was kind of like a secret over a watch of all the other departments as well, but yeah, you're right.
A secret secret agency.
Yeah, but once again, going back to cliches, we have the cliche of the rough and tumble secret agent that gets to break every rule and everybody's okay with it because they're effective.
I was just like, as soon as that first lecture between her and breaks, I guess her boss, he's like, I went off the reservation or whatever.
And then he's like, oh, but you get things done. So we're going to let it go. I was just really okay.
And wasn't he the stereotypical secret agency boss, you know, the cigar and the bourbon, the fancy leather chair and the field experience and the fatherly and the pretending to be getting mad and then you're like, oh, whatever, we need to get you done.
Yeah, I just imagined it was like a big old bushy mustache just like totally almost like a cartoon character.
I did. This is one of the reasons I love doing the book club is because you guys always point out things that I just don't see, but now that I'm thinking back on it this way, you really this book was just was a bunch of stereotypes strong together with a really good story wrapped around it.
Yeah, I don't always see the stereotypical stuff either or maybe I'm just forgiving of it sometimes.
I mean, all the time, sometimes stereotypes bother me and cliches bother me, but you know, it doesn't, doesn't always the one that got me in this was the villain, the bad guy who was, you know, the stereotypical super hacker who could, you know, just hack in and do it every wanted in no time whatsoever.
And, you know, just at will it seemed he could access computer systems just, you know, very hand wavy and that kind of thing. It was, you know, and what he was able to do via code, you know, imposing his will on the real world.
And, you know, in a way that nobody else even came close, even though he wasn't the guy that invented it, they invented it, but it was all felt very contradictory to me.
I don't know most of the tech was stuff that he at least did the initial specs on.
That's another thing that I was the science doesn't check out if you're the guy that's designing this stuff, nobody ever who is funding you it's going to let you be.
Oh, yeah, I'm totally going to be the one that tries this.
Well, I don't know, man, me nobody seems to believe in hit by a bus except for like Linux people.
And, you know, not even Linux people in general, I mean IT people wish that people believed in don't get hit by a bus, but, you know, I've worked in a lot of IT departments where there's no depth to anything, which means no vacations or.
Yeah, and the secret secret agency, I didn't even think of that as being cliche until you just brought it up, but it makes me think of a book that I read recently, which is really old considered one of the first modern.
Sci-fies is a book called Triplanetary by, oh, it's an eE Smith, I think it's a guy's name, Doc Smith, he goes by.
And even in that book, they've got this secret agency that just allows their agents to break the law all the time, if it's for a good cause, and it was like it was really old and it was like to me that was, you know, golden age of, you know, USA and freedom and all this kind of stuff.
It's like from the 30s and 40s, and I just, I found it kind of sad that that mindset was okay back then, and it kind of embedded it in sci-fi at that point, I think, where you have that, you know, secret agency who can get away with things because the public would freak out if they knew that kind of thing.
No joke, that was totally the audiobook I was going to recommend the next time.
I didn't know it wasn't an audiobook, I read it.
I read it years ago, because I read the whole Linsman series, so obviously that's the beginning of it, but yeah, I haven't heard the audiobook, there's actually two different versions, but I saw it the other day, which is reason too, because I actually like the Linsman books, this can't be an old as they are, and I was like, oh, we should totally do that first one, because I'm kind of like it's kind of a train wreck to read, because it's so back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
And I don't know which version of it you read, there's two versions of it, and I just kind of what is a weird experiment, just recommend it for the audiobook club and see how it turns out.
I think that's what we'll do that, and if you can find it, then we'll definitely do it. I read the good version, by the way.
Which one's the good version?
Well, the one Pokey read.
Yeah, I missed that one, which one was it?
I'm not sure, I got it, I think it was free on Amazon, I read it on the Kindle.
Circling back to your point about the government agencies that just kind of get away with doing whatever they want, I don't know how much network television or anything, either of you guys consume, we consume a lot of a via Netflix.
And one of the things I've noticed on all of the crime drama du jour, whichever one you happen to be watching, where the cops are the good guys, as is fairly obvious most of the time.
You seem to be rooting for them to not wait for a warrant to just go and do the things, or you know, oh, those terrible criminals, they're demanding a lawyer and how dare they, and it's just these people who expect you to respect their rights under the Constitution are all the sudden terrible because of it.
Well, I mean, I have a lot of friends that are in law enforcement, so I can relate to that in a certain degree, but at the same time, I'm always the first person to like be in their face and be like, no, that's not the way where I'm sorry.
I respect what you do, but no, no, no, we're not going down there.
And it reminds me of there's some show, I don't, I don't watch like TV that's actually on like I'm kind of like you, I'm a Netflix guy, other than like couple shows that geeky things are wrong, but there's some show where there's a computer in it like predicts crime or something like it's kind of like minority report light or something.
And the creator, when all the NSA stuff dropped, the creator came out and he's, you know what, we made this show thinking there's no way any of this is actually possible that the government would have this much information turns out we're pretty right.
This is terrifying.
I guess the point I was making was it almost seems like it's attempting to make a cultural shift to make people accept that that is accepted behavior among law enforcement is to not pay attention to these documented civil rights.
Maybe I'm reaching there, but it feels like some subliminal messaging there.
Well, it always feels like sci fi authors when they when they do that or when they represent law enforcement that way, it's almost like they're saying, hey, this is right around the corner.
And whether you need to be warned of it or just aware of it, be aware that it's right around the corner.
But really, you know, as as Corey doctor, I might say it's here now and that's why it's being written about because it needs to be thought about now.
I would argue it's not brainwashing.
I think it's just inherently on dramatic to stop in the middle of everything and go deal with due process.
That is not an inherently dramatic thing.
So it's easier to just skip over it and say, okay, we're just going to hand wave this for the sake of plot.
But they don't hand wave it in.
Oh, well, we have a warrant. It's oh, we're not going to worry about getting a warrant.
It's I would be completely okay if they hand wavied stuff, but hand waved it so that the things that needed to happen had just happened.
But it's well, we know there's these things we should do, but we're not going to do them.
And it's just going to somehow be okay anyway.
Okay, so I said, but I've made all the references at the beginning, but I'm going to make one now.
Does anybody watch Gotham?
No, I'm sorry, I don't genny TV anymore.
I'll wait till it's on Netflix and then I'll really enjoy the crap out of it.
So it's basically just like a cop show in Gotham City before Batman's Batman.
But there's literally in this episode, one of the cops goes, hey, do you have that bunch of blank warrant sign by that judge?
So I can go ahead and fill some out.
That sounds about right.
I've been watching Arrow, which is based on green arrow.
And he's Batman with a bow and arrow and no problem killing people.
Do you want to watch my wife go on a frickin tirade bitch in that show?
She's like, for some reason that I don't understand it will never understand.
She's probably the world's biggest green arrow fan and she hates that show.
She can't stand it. She's like, he's not the great arrow.
I would assume that, you know, if you like something, don't watch the TV show because they're not going to do it right.
For someone who not a green arrow fan, I think it's a very entertaining show.
It's Batman life.
I don't know. Batman has this problem with killing people. He doesn't.
No, but recently he does. So now he's just Batman again.
Yeah, I just started season two where he does all of a sudden have the problem with killing people like so.
He's Batman with a fancy bow and arrow.
Anyways, back to the book.
So we've got this government agency that has the potential to be off the rails and an agent who is definitely at least.
Mostly off the rails in in no small part because she had a horrific accident lost her husband who would want her husband.
And then got turned into a semi human and then there's, you know, the almost required discussion of, well, am I a person or am I property?
So basically Robocop.
Yeah.
It was it was a lot of Robocop with without.
I don't know. I hate to say it, but without the reasoning like she just she made some crazy decisions that were completely illogical.
And I thought that was the cliche thing that bothered me about it was, oh, let's trust the bad guy because we're confused about what the good guys said.
It's Robocop, but without the one of the things that I thought was a big point in Robocop was even the governments for sale and took the highest bidder.
One of the things that I thought about was when cyberspace or whatever his actual name is I forgot because I wasn't actually interested.
Whenever he was like tell your story about why he went berserk and like it was something in his implants that went crazy.
Obviously he's still crazy. Right. So that problem hasn't been fixed or it has or he isn't interested in fixing it.
So maybe a lot of her is that same problem just not fixed.
Maybe it's fixed a little bit so she's not as crazy, but she's we've already established she's in the realm of batshit crazy.
So is how much of that is her and how much of that is the tech.
I think it was her because he even told her look this stuff made me go crazy and she was like dammit that makes you trustworthy in my book.
I can relate to that.
I also think part of it was the biological portion of her brain you know going through a huge loss and you know for most of the books she kind of hit wish she had died and not having that same reality check plus being a super human plus.
Being able to get away with it would mostly lead you to being off the rails.
Yeah, but most people when they go off the rails are somewhat aware of it and they take that opportunity to get grounded.
You know what I mean? They kind of find out where things went nuts and you know let's let's get back to square one kind of thing where she was like.
Oh yeah, everything's that should crazy I'm just going to go and break all the laws because now I'm a law breaker you know.
Or even more ridiculous is when she finally does show up at the like mansion and then he tells the story she just instantly 180's like everything's I'm just going to give all this up I'm just going to be happy to live here.
I'm kind of like I would buy that if you did some work on it, but just having her instantly switch is just strange I don't know where that came from.
Well, there was there was the plot bullets that worked with that.
Then that was not a plot bullet that was lazy writing I'm sorry to say it.
Yeah, because the books not that long you could totally put another chapter in and done some work with that and it would have been granted.
It's still would have been a whiplash, but it would have been a little more so whiplash than it was because I was just like.
I was just can't just knock over the back of the head and drag her out of there like this is dumb.
Well, so what you're saying is with another chapter with the work it could have been moved up to a plot bullet.
I guess if you recall that yeah, let's do that.
I had another pet peeve about the action scenes in the book.
I think in general the action scenes were okay, they were fairly well written.
This is just maybe specific to me because of my background as being a martial artist since like the time I can walk.
There's one move then in every fight scene somebody nails this one move and it's a very specific move.
So I feel like either the guy knows some martial arts or has seen this move in something and he really likes it.
And it just keeps happening and it's good guys get it back guys get it.
Somebody gets this move in almost every fight scene and it drove me crazy towards the end of the book.
I was literally waiting for when is somebody going to throw this move.
And which is that?
It's where you basically it's called in in Japanese is called a Tomonagi, which is it's a sacrifice throw.
It's kind of like from judo juditsu and like you put your foot in somebody's chest slash stomach area.
And you fall back and you throw them over top of you.
And like it is it's a super cool move, but it's really impractical like in a real fight.
I at least I feel so because you're literally falling down on your back to throw somebody else.
Now if you can get up and get on top of them after that, that's great.
But there are much better ways to handle that situation than that.
That would be good in judo where all you have to do is throw them out of the ring and you win.
But yeah, you're right, if you got to get back up again, that's trouble.
Yeah, and it just seemed like I can't have a thing.
It was almost, I don't know, it's just a paint by numbers fight scene.
Like, okay, I got to have the flashy move because that's what it would be in a movie.
If this was a movie, what would I want to see in the fight scene?
And it's just, I don't know, maybe it's just because of the way my brain works.
I'm just like, no, you wouldn't do that.
Especially if you're like super powered, why would you do that?
Like the whole point of that move is to use somebody else's force against them.
If you can make as much force as you want, why would you do that?
Just walk up a portion of the face.
But in almost all the fight scenes, she was fighting other people who were super powered.
And she, her super powers were malfunctioning.
So she wasn't just this invincible badass anymore.
She, you know, couldn't just win all the time.
All he's got you there, Taj.
What are you going to say?
You're wrong.
Ooh, love love.
I mean, I understand.
I'm totally cool with that move existing.
If you pulled it off, like, it has a point.
Like, it wouldn't have been preserved in kind of the history of martial arts.
If it wasn't, a move that could be used.
Like, there's a place for it.
I just have a problem with that place being in almost every fight scene that happens.
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you.
I was just pointing out that she couldn't just make as much force as she wanted.
So it could have possibly been useful for her to use her opponent's force against them once.
Maybe not in every fight she was in.
I picked a different that last fight where she's like, at her worst,
she summons all the strength she has for one last fight.
And then does that.
So you said you kept waiting for it.
Did he have a particular name for it?
Did he call her particular thing or just describe it the same way again and again?
Or how was that?
I don't even think it was described the same way.
But maybe because I'm very much when I'm listening or reading something like I visualize it.
Like, I kind of think of, you know, if I was a director, how would I shoot this movie?
Sure. Sure.
So like, fight scenes to me that being me, that's kind of what I like.
And so like, I'm thinking, and every time he describes it,
when people describe fight scenes, I instantly start thinking, how would that be blocked?
How would, how would that fight go down in a movie?
Because movie fighting is totally ridiculous, but it's fun to watch.
And so every time it happened, I'm like, damn it.
He just did another Tomanagi.
That's the same move.
It just kept happening.
I don't know.
And really, I'm probably making it a bigger day.
It probably happened like three times in the whole book, but it seemed like it was enough that I noticed it
and I kept waiting for it later in the book.
Like, the last couple fights scenes, it doesn't happen.
And I was actually like, I'm kind of surprised it wasn't there.
But there are only really three kind of knockdown dragout fights, too.
Bear point.
Oh, no, there were, no, there was more than three.
There was the huge one at the beginning.
There were three like huge, huge fights.
You're right.
There was the one in the beginning where she destroyed half the city.
And there was the one in the middle where...
The her apartment.
Oh, right, her apartment.
Is it the one her apartment?
Yeah, her apartment where he comes and attacks her and they end up going out the window again.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, you're right.
And then the one that was at the headquarters and ranged all over her back to everywhere.
I guess that's what I meant by the three big knockdown dragout,
cyborg versus at least partial cyborg.
Big fights.
Yeah, you're right.
And we're strong on that one.
But there were a bunch of other fights.
Then did she do it in the like the sparring fights and stuff, too?
To how did you notice?
Even FK, FK for a second.
Oh, I missed that.
Sorry.
Typing on a different screen here.
How many computers do you have in front of you?
No, no, I changed the tab.
I was doing the show notes in the etherpad.
Ah.
Yeah, I, I got a back pedal here and agree even stronger with the point that Taj made about how she kind of just flip flopped her opinions throughout it with on just a word, you know what I mean?
You know, let's be rich here forever.
Okay, I'm ready for that kind of thing.
I found it unbelievable when it happened and it took me out of the story and I get that.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was explained later as being part of the virus, right?
Where she was like overly susceptible because of the virus that she had.
But it's still not being explained at the time knocked me out of the the believability of the plot.
Well, see, I felt like it was supposed to be outside the realm of normal because it was.
And, and that's why Chen is there to kind of anchor that someone other than the narrator and the main character.
Saying just going along with it, someone saying, wait a minute, this doesn't make sense.
And then explaining, oh wait, she was, they said that she was like dope with some extra chemicals or something that was messing with her brain.
It wasn't the virus, I don't think, but it was something he was giving her that made her more susceptible to believe him or something.
Yeah, and, you know, like it all works out in the end, just didn't work for me two thirds of the way through the book.
You know that and the, the as we discussed the cliched, you know, destroy half the city, but we're super secret we can remain super secret.
So we'll just write that one off, you know that that doesn't work for me either.
Yeah, they do have a, there are quite a few kind of hand wavy will because we need it to sort of moments.
So how predictable did everybody kind of feel the book was.
Well, not 100% or else those things that were so out of place wouldn't have felt quite so awkward, but yeah, I mean, that's kind of the risk you run when you were, you know, when you do something that's a little stereotypical or cliched, you run the risk of being predictable.
And then, of course, on the other side of it, when you're not, you know, when you, when you completely avoid any kind of stereotype or cliché, you run the risk of being unbelievable.
So it's a fine line that an author has to walk and I can't, I can't fault the guy for not hitting it for me specifically, you know what I mean, because either way somebody's going to be unhappy.
So as long as he's happy with it, that's what counts.
Overall, it was still an entertaining story.
Yeah, totally. Like, I don't, I don't regret reading it. I think it was, it was fun.
You know, I would walk, I don't know if I'd read it again, but I mean, it was one of those things that I enjoyed doing it.
I just felt like for me as soon as, and it doesn't happen, probably less than halfway in the book, the first time they mentioned, and they mentioned it in passing.
He says, she's the second cyborg. I'm like, that's the bad guy. I called it. There it is. That's, that's, that's the end of the book. And so like, for sure, it was so little that that's, that's totally what's going to happen.
I was going to ask, is there, was there anything else that you thought was real predictable? Or was that it?
The whole thing did feel a little formulaic, but entertaining nonetheless.
I mean, we've talked about my level of my books and copy books are basically really super formulaic. So Bob Rose was superheroes. So I mean, I'm not against formula.
It's stereotypical. I can enjoy that for what it is. And I did. I enjoyed it. It's, you know, when we're sitting here and nitpicking it, it's, it's kind of easy to start pulling at the least threat on it.
There's a lot of, there are, there are some places I feel that it was a little lazily done. But I mean, some of my favorite books are, you know, just kind of that pulpy dime novel kind of deals that are, you know, they were written literally to get paid by the word. So I mean, people would write some crazy stuff. But if you embrace the crazy, it's a good thing.
I use one year word when you can use three hell just make up a couple.
It's, it's interesting that you say that that we're, you know, nitpicking it and pulling away the threads. And we probably, I think we get into this discussion every time we do the audio book club, but you're right.
And sometimes like Durban Tizer said, this book is so good. All we can think to talk about is the nitpicky little stuff. But with this one, I don't know, maybe it's, maybe there's so many books that are so outstanding.
We're maybe expecting, you know, this, this audio book perfection every time. And when something's not perfect, you know, just perfect. Maybe, maybe I get to nitpicky with it. I won't speak for anyone else on this. But, you know, I did say right from the beginning. This is me that didn't like this book. It's not that this book was bad. And I pointed it out. You know what I mean?
Now, I mean, if I, I feel like if you had a running total of the amount of nitpicks we have, it's probably pretty consistent, regardless of how well we like the book, how well we didn't like the book.
We were just, we're critical. And I think when, for me, the reason I like the audio book club and the reason I like being on the audio book club is when I'm listening to something now for that, I listen to it in a different way.
I'm thinking about it kind of meta thinking, well, what am I going to say on the show, you know, when we do the show on this, what am I, how am I going to analyze this or what am I going to say. And I think that that makes me enjoy things a lot more things that I'd
wouldn't necessarily have liked. I kind of like more because of the discussion we had about it and some things, you know, like this, I totally enjoyed this. I thought it was fun, but at the same time, us sitting here and I don't want to say dip picking it, but we're just pointing out some things about it. I don't think it cheapens what it is. I think it's just we, we all kind of looked at this. I, well, for me, we looked at it in a different way, because we knew we were going to come to the show and talk about it.
And I would say in general, people who are disposed to be either on the audio book club or listening to it are detailed oriented people. I mean, at least for me, that's my day job is I'm detailed oriented. And, you know, when you bring that kind of a mindset to bear on anything, you're going to find something.
Yeah, and I find that things that bother me about books are a hell of a lot stickier than the things that I like. And that kind of stresses me out when I'm listening to an audio book, because I really try to remember the things that I liked so much and wanted to compliment, but if I don't take notes on them, they just they don't stick, but the things that that I didn't like about it do those are the things that I remember and I feel bad for that. And I'm going to try to work on that.
I agree. It's it's weight ease. I mean, that's just in general life. You remember the bad things. You don't remember the good things as well. So maybe that should be like our, you know, hacker public radio audio book club New Year's resolution, besides make a hacker public radio episode every year. Maybe we should make notes of the good things we want to talk about.
I am completely on board with that resolution.
So what did you guys think about the scenes because it was like a couple of them in the like the mainframe room where he was at the back.
I was trying to hack into the whole system by getting it, you know, access to these main frames. What did you guys think about that whole scene in particular?
Well, I started laughing to myself as soon as I said mainframe. So what is this 1976?
Are they still use mainframes where I work, but they're the old antiquated thing that feeds in data to these new useful things?
Well, aside from word mainframe, because come on, people are going to use it. And you know, when it's a centralized server, they're going to think of it that way. And there's no, I don't really have a problem with that. I just the action in that scene.
Maybe it was too non-stop and maybe it just was too unbelievable, but it was like every time it cut away to, you know, another scene and then cut back, it was just it was less believable than than previous.
And I was just totally listening to that portion of it just to get through it. I just I was completely out of the story for that whole sequence.
I think every time they actually touched a computer, my suspension of disbelief had to go up a bit, because specifically I'm thinking about when she sees the virus and she's looking through it.
And she sees this whole like page she scrolling through pages and stuff. And I'm like, first of all, even if that was English, you couldn't read it.
But it's code. So I mean, it had people who could probably read code as fast as they can read English, but like, what are you data? Like you can just fly through pages now. And my understanding was, is it your brain to say, and like, that's what you had before.
Like it has a change to make you super smart all of a sudden. I don't know.
It's funny. I was able to suspend my disbelief in that part. I just figured she could read code. Why not?
Um, see, I didn't think that at all. Almost all of her approach to technology was very not what I expected.
If she very much was a, a user of the technology, she did not, you know, understand or really embrace it.
Other than it makes me faster, it makes me stronger.
Yeah, but the code was really well commented. That's what she was reading through.
This part makes her crazy. This part makes me super believable, but they come on.
This makes her crazy. This makes her sick. This makes her arms not work. This makes her arms feel heavy.
This makes me super believable.
Yeah, putty bug checked at the poor person that he tested this code out on first. Wow.
I can tell you by reading this book. This is her code. This is her programming.
If rules then break else punch.
Go to go to 10.
One of the things that I did notice is every time she'd like interface with the computer, he did the virtual where it used her subconscious to build things.
I thought that was a cool change of like the snow crash thing or I forget what they call it.
And Neural Mancer like the whole virtual representation of computer stuff.
I like the idea of building it out of her own subconscious. I thought that was a cool idea.
Well, in I've not read Neural Mancer. It's on my list, but in the matrix, they always call it the construct and it was kind of similar to that where
but it was more machine driven than mind driven. This was your brain inherently making sense out of what was there rather than the computer presenting something for you to interface with.
That reminds me I was going to ask to see if I know when this was written what date.
No, I don't I'm sorry.
Because I think I mean this is I don't know I feel like if this was written in 2005.
It's a little more acceptable than it is if it was written in like 2010.
I don't know that five years difference makes it huge and like they're all carrying around PDAs.
I'm just like really PDAs. They got their Palm Pilot.
Well, why not do those things are so much better than cell phones. It's not a Palm Pilot. It's a it's a like an N810.
Yeah, but those are two very different things.
But you're telling me 10 years from now somebody comes up with a PDA and calls it a PDA. People are going to want it.
No, but I think it may be 50 years from now when we all just have implants.
Yeah, we're probably going to want something high powered that we can carry in our pocket and easily upgrade.
That'll be a cell phone. Screw you.
And they're carrying around PDAs if they have like those ball and holographic displays that like come up on their forearm.
Why do you need a PDA? That's way more awesome than anything you're rocking in your pocket.
Well, you got to have the PDA and so that you can copy his entire database to it in just a few minutes.
Have you seen the prices on SSDs?
I'm more concerned with the data transfer rate.
I think that USB 12 it works.
I want to step back for a minute and now you're saying that the whole constructing was so neat.
I think that that just put for me a finer point on something that bothered me all throughout the book is that she was not able to directly interface with her implants.
And she was not able to use her implants to directly interface with other computers.
It was like, wouldn't that be the first thing that you plug into this shit?
Let her interface with and the bad guy could do it.
He had an implant in his arm that let him interface with any computer system.
And he was directly interface with his implants.
It just that bothered me.
You missed the part where they said that her implants were made by Apple and the bad sideboard his deep jobs.
All right, gotcha. Sorry.
Yeah, all her implants were in WMA.
She has a DRM deliver.
That was in our last book man, the guy with the implants from High Life.
Or two ago that was lost in Roxas book.
Okay, I was gonna say, how do we get to High Life from Call of Cthulhu?
Just go with it.
Well, that's how everything looked so inside out and backwards and acute when it was obtuse.
It was incompatibilities with the High Life drivers.
Nonuclidean implants.
I don't know, I've been told I'm acute even though I'm fairly obtuse.
Really, not even rotten tomatoes or anything.
That was a really bad joke and I know it.
I was trying to concentrate on saying nice things.
I didn't want to fall into the realm of bad jokes.
I was just gonna leave it be.
I live in the realm of bad jokes.
Enough to chase people out of the chair.
That's what we do.
That's that's par.
So yeah, I think that's about all I have on this one.
But because I'm trying to be nice, I won't get into the motorcycle chase.
Oh, please do.
That was just too cliché too early on for me.
I think that might have been what did it.
That might have been what set me off or lit the fuse of not liking this one was that just totally egregious action-packed unrealistic motorcycle chase.
I'm sorry.
Snowcrash has a much, I thought it was a much better motorcycle chase.
What did you think of that one, Tush?
Yes, but snow like the thing of going into snow crashes is you have to realize that snow crashes.
Half a cyberpunk novel and half a set tire of cyberpunk novels.
I mean, your main character's name is literally hero protagonist.
So I mean, you're going into a book like that.
You have to just kind of check your expectations of the door.
I was gonna say even the matrix had a better motorcycle scene.
I do not remember that.
It's the second one.
We all try to forget it.
Was it the second one with the motorcycle seeing the motorcycle chase, which is dodging cars and stuff.
I think it was.
I don't know.
I've tried to forget all three of the after watching all three.
I've even tried forgetting the first one.
I don't think I've ever.
I will still argue that the first movie and the second movie are brilliant.
And the second one less of the first.
But you bet that third one in and like literally your main characters disappear for 30 minutes.
Like they're not in the movie for 30 minutes.
There's some serious problems.
I kind of wish they would let.
I think that that movie should be remade.
I think they should remake the first nitricks.
And I think let somebody else do it and it could be 10 times better.
I heard the third one described as the writers were grasping at straws trying to pull the threads of the story back together and they missed all of them.
But we can get a lead actor who has more than one facial aggression.
Yeah, I won't get into that.
But you know what though?
If you guys, if anyone hasn't seen the animated matrix movie, that's worth watching.
That was really good.
The DVDs that's got all the various anime shorts that all go together.
Yeah.
Now I.
Yeah.
Actually, for me, if you want the second movie to make any sense, you kind of have to have seen the animated movies because there are some things that make no sense without it.
And there was a game that was in there too that unless you had seen the anime tricks, you're like,
what?
Who?
Why?
Oh, that's right.
And the game was supposed to be an essential part of the storytelling as well, which I think is a mistake, but anyway.
The game was only kind of crap.
Oh, I just mean it's a mistake to make a game essential to your story because not everybody who's going to watch the movies a gamer.
So they're going to miss that part of the story.
Yeah, you'll alienate a non-trivial portion of your audience.
Yeah, everyone who saw the third movie.
Well, no, I figure if you stick through it long enough to see the third movie, you may also be a gamer, but.
Yeah, anyway, I don't know.
Portage keeps getting taken out.
It's all that flat land.
Yeah, that'll do it.
The wind just picks up and blows his internet over.
I can't really say much.
I'm a flat lander by nature, by birth, anyway.
That means the 5150s Wi-Fi, too.
Just wind picks up, knocks it right over.
Does he have some kind of a whisk?
He used to.
I don't know what his setup is now.
He's got pretty fast internet now.
And he may still be on that.
It's, yeah, point to point Wi-Fi.
My folks are on something like that.
It works well places where it's mostly flat.
Yeah, I think 5150s trouble was always.
Because he didn't, he didn't have the receiving antenna for that system in his house.
He had it in a small outbuilding and then he was connected to the house through Wi-Fi.
And then probably had a Wi-Fi repeater with routing built into it and stuff.
And it was just too many, too many links in a wireless chain.
I always thought he could fix it just by running a wire to the house, but I guess it was far.
Sounds like a little bit of a Rube Goldberg to me.
Yeah, yeah, which is the most fun, but doesn't always work the best.
At one point, I was ready to take some vacation and run out there and reinstall the wire for him.
What is this vacation time?
Yeah, I know, right?
I'm the new guy. I get 10 days of vacation time.
Oh, that's rough.
No, I had some pretty good vacation at my last job.
So my advice, when you find a new job, negotiate that more than starting vacation?
Oh, yeah, for sure. That's, that's, I mean, the big one right now is going to be money.
I can't, you know, go back to making like nothing.
You know, I was making real good money at my last job, but yeah, that's first.
And I'll take that over vacation at this point, just because the, the bills all build up.
But you're right that starting vacation is no good.
Well, in my first job out of college, the way they did it was you accrued one more day every year,
whereas it seems like the industry standard is you don't get more time until you've been there five years, ten years, 15 years.
And so that just feels like forever to not have vacation time.
Oh, I forget what the accrual was at my last job.
But it was great because they just, they said you've got, you know, I think it started at 15 days.
You could 15 days, you know, use a few of them as days, use a few of them as vacation days.
And we won't really care, you know, as long as there's coverage and nobody complains, nobody really ever complained.
And it was great. And I think at the end, I was up to probably four, maybe five weeks.
Well, that's the one saving grace is I have two weeks of vacation time and an additional two weeks of sick time.
And the sick time can roll over infinitely. So that's nice.
Well, that's pretty good. Yeah, we were only allowed to roll over I think 40 hours a year.
And they didn't buy any of it back. If there was more than, if you had more than 40, they wouldn't buy your time.
And that was, that was obnoxious. I'm sorry.
It surprises me that they can get away with stuff like that.
It's usually lack of funds that cause you not to take vacation time.
We're on a whole kerfuffle of that stuff at work at this point. They've changed the way they do vacation.
So it's going to, your time's going to expire. So you had to use it up by the end of the year.
But then we've got project deadlines. So we can't miss those. So take vacation time.
But don't take any vacation time and get all your work done.
Yeah, we had something like that towards the end too.
Boy, so if the listener can't tell, we're really stalling here cause Todd's dropped off.
And I mean, like six minutes ago and we're stalling, trying to wait and get him back on.
But I'm not sure if he's coming back at this point. Yeah, it has been a spell.
The listener won't notice because all the dead air is, you know, just deleted out of it and edit it out.
So I might not seen that long, but I mean, it's, it's now over seven minutes.
Next one, one, one, type something into the ether pad because I think he runs it out of his house.
So that'll tell if this is, tell us, us, if his internet is up or not.
Okay, line one.
Okay, that's third color.
Well, he's there enough to correct my punctuation.
Oh, wow, he says it, he's in mumble and it looks to him like we dropped off.
Yeah.
Yep.
I can has a mumble.
Wait, we just mumbled on for the last five or six minutes, just killing space till you came back.
Oh, I'd like you to think guys think so highly of me.
Thank God for ether pad. Nice work, Todd, you saved the day and you weren't even here to do it.
And of all the days for my cape to be in dry cleaning.
I've got a cloak, will that help?
Only for larping.
No, I just wear it because it gets cold out and while I'm a nerd.
So I'm assuming all those times that I hit the speak button, it was like, hey, you guys there?
Are you dead? What happened? I guess none of that got recorded.
Nope.
No, at 920, it says you disconnected.
Wow, I'm going to wild.
That's what we were saying. We were really stalling.
We were talking about vacation time.
Everybody who listens to the episode is going to love that.
How we may even just delete it. It wasn't even all that interesting.
That would require editing. We don't do that.
I haven't done any editing. I'm way behind, by the way.
You would think with all this unlimited free time and no distracting budget that I'd be able to get some shows posted.
But you know, I'm way behind them. We could sorry, guys.
It's all good. So did we finish the episode or are we still going?
I think we're waiting for you so we could wrap it up.
Unless, unless x101, you've got anything to add to it.
No, not really.
Okay, so then I guess Taj has picked our next audio book.
You want to tell us a little bit about it?
Yeah. Well, we kind of both picked it, I guess.
As soon as you brought it up, I was like, damn it. That's what I had in mind.
Random number theory.
Well, or, you know, we're just both awesome.
And we thought of the same thing, which I tend to think.
Or it's just a glitch in the matrix.
The infinite monk theory.
Okay. Yeah, probably that last one.
But you know what they say? An infinite number of monkeys pounding on keyboards.
Still can't exit them.
Oh, them jokes.
And I'm a Vim user.
I'm a glutton for punishment. I use Emax.
I was going to say they got org mode down though.
Yeah, but how do you have enough hands to push escape control meta alt and shift all at the same time?
Infinite monkeys x101 infinite monkeys.
I has infinite monkeys.
So anyways, the book.
Feel like that's my catchphrase this week.
Wait, there's a book.
Anyway, back to the topic.
So we're talking about the triplanetary, which is the first book in a series of books.
Although it wasn't written to be the first book in a series of books.
It was retroactively added to the series.
Yeah, I was going to say I was going to mention that it wasn't the first.
It was he he found a good story in there in a good way to retroactively tie it in.
Which if you're reading the story is blatantly obvious, which is one of the reasons I want to hear it as an audio book.
Because I'm I'm interested to see how it transfers.
I love the lens and series.
The whole series.
It's obviously very dated, but it is so.
It's one of those things that if you read articles about the people who make a science fiction that during the 80s and 90s kind of that range.
It's one of the things that they all mentioned.
It was kind of an influence.
And you can really tell once you get into the series that a lot of people read this and really loved it.
Sorry, I was just going to say that I had no experience with Lensman.
I had no idea what it was.
And when I first heard about it, it was on a podcast where somebody was just talking about and how awesome it was.
And it took me a good deal of time just to figure out what he was even talking about because.
There's no book called the Lensman.
There's the first Lensman, I think is one of them, but this there's no way to tell that this book has anything to do with the Lensman series.
Just by by reading the description of whatever I actually had to go to Wikipedia to find out that it was the first one that I should read because he did retroactively add more than just this story.
It was a weird timeline that went on that was adjusted later.
Yeah, and for anybody who's listening who doesn't like understand what the Lensman is.
If you're at all familiar with DC comics and the Green Lanterns, the Lensmen are pretty much the Green Lanterns.
It's been, I mean, pretty much the Green Lanterns were obviously copied from the idea of the Lensmen.
But it's that but set in kind of that pulpy 1950s sci-fi kind of feel.
So I mean, it's really retro.
I love it.
I think it's good.
Triplanetary is not very representative of, I can't say that word today.
It doesn't represent the whole series very well, but I think because it is the one that is in the public domain.
I don't think the other ones have made it to public domain yet.
Or maybe some of them haven't on all of them.
It's just I was just searching around Libravox the other day looking for things and it just jumped out that made that it would be something cool to listen to.
This is an awesome pick and I'm having a hard time not saying more about it now.
Yeah, why have to talk off the mic because you've read it.
So I'm interested in that at least.
Well, no, everything I have to say would be pre-spoiler, but that's still next episode.
So good.
Hey everyone, thanks for listening.
Join us next time.
It's a cliffhanger.
Duh-duh-duh.
Heck, I probably radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the Infonomicon Computer Club.
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