hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3127.txt

Episode: 3127
Title: HPR3127: HPR AudioBook Club 20 - Quarter Share
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3127/hpr3127.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 17:30:02

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3127 for Tuesday 28 July 2020. Today's show is entitled
HPR Audio Book Club 20 Quartershare
and is part of the series HPR underscore Audio Book Club. It is hosted by HPR underscore Audio Book Club
and is about 152 minutes long, and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
the HPR Audio Book Club Reviews the Audio Book Quartershare by Nathan Lowell.
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.
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio. This is the Hacker Public Radio Audio Book Club.
I'm Pokey and I'm one of the members of our little round table here. And with me tonight is right below me on the list here is Taj.
What's good everybody?
Maybe you're supposed to introduce the person below you.
Oh, really?
Okay, X1111.
Well, with that kind of a stellar introduction, hi everybody. And next up is HPR15.
Yeah, how come I have the alphabetically lowest handle on come last?
I just, well, I guess depending on your definition of lowest, I believe X is much lower.
I think it's just because we went down and someone had to start it, so I did.
Oh, I just realized you're an algebra problem. We've been supposed to solve for X all this time.
Nope. I think X is beer. I'm just guessing. Maybe an IVA.
As usual. Now the handle comes from way, way back when I was a young dumb kid and didn't understand the delineations of different number systems.
The 1.101 is binary for 13. And X was, I needed to shovel it in front of it because my screen name couldn't start with a number.
And yeah.
Yeah, that's the same reason I'm not 5150 on X chat.
So, you know, you can play or, well, I guess chat in general. So you can, you can blame IRC for having to type out my whole name.
For me, it was AOL instant messenger.
Anyways, that book.
Yes, that book.
Hell yeah, that book.
What book?
Oh, I think we're looking at Trader's Tales book one quarter share by Nathan Lowell.
I think this is the first book I've, I've listened to of Nathan Lowell's that he wrote.
I think I've heard a couple other ones that he read, but this is the first one of his books I think I've listened to.
And it was just his job as a, an author and narrator I thought were well done.
No, he's read other ones that we've done, but we've done both shaman's tale and the other one about sort of which he sort of woman, he definitely wrote both of those.
Yeah, but I wasn't part of the book club at that point.
So I haven't listened to those.
Okay.
And so we don't sound silly with the other one I'm thinking of.
Are you thinking of the crown conspiracy?
We read that a while ago.
He didn't write that one out.
And that's the one I was thinking of that I have listened to that he read, but wasn't one of his.
The woman studying to be a witch.
We've done that one.
No, we didn't.
We didn't actually review that book.
Oh, I thought we did.
Nope.
That's um.
Oh boy, why can't I think of the name of that one?
It's very good, but I can't think of the name of it.
I guess I addressed it down there on my own looking for Nathan Low content.
Well, that's what we can do sometime.
You know what?
It's possible that we did it the first time before we stopped doing the audio book club way long time ago,
because I seem to only have from episode five on up in my list here.
So maybe we did way back then.
Stop.
Don't tell listeners we ever stopped.
That's that's a that's a secret thing.
No, we've been doing this all along.
We're judging by our backlog.
Maybe they might actually think that we stopped again.
Uh, yeah.
Whoops.
So this is probably my all time favorite audio book.
And as we were just saying before we started, we had to include that.
It's very difficult for me to listen to this book and not listen to the entire series.
They're just that compelling to me.
And I find the main character just so relatable.
It's I just love this book.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
I think this is the first time the audio book club has ever done a sequel prequel of another book that we've done.
Did you and did you do another one of Trader Tales at some point?
No, we did Charlman's tale, which is set in the same universe.
I didn't realize they would be connected in any way, which the first book doesn't go into that.
But that they are connected, which I didn't realize going in other than I thought they were like in the same universe,
but they're a little more connected than that.
Yeah, I think it's the first time we've jumped through series that way.
I mean, unless you want to count the the Star Trek continuing missions,
which was a series in and of itself.
But yeah, I believe it's the first time.
Yeah, I mean, we've done.
Oh, the one where all the magic was based on.
Different trees.
The one with the lawn mower.
Shadow magic.
Shadow magic.
I think we all read the second book, but we haven't done that one.
It's funny.
Funny story with that.
I listened to those completely separate from the book club because I joined well after you guys did those.
And I was going to suggest that.
And then I'm like, oh, wait, they already did it.
Yeah, shadow magic, maybe like my number two of all times favorite audio book.
I guess that's number two.
Yeah, that was a good series as well.
And not to say that everything in the quarter share series.
Is just incredible, but I have to agree with you, Pokey,
that perhaps this is just the introduction of this universe quarter share of the series.
Quarter shares my favorite.
Yeah, I don't know.
I've got so much to say about this book that I don't think will spoil it.
As far as relating to the main character, I think this book has a definite theme to it.
This book has definite lessons.
This book has life lessons that I've been able to take into my life and that have worked well for me.
It's just so great.
There's so many books that I've said it before.
And I'll say it again, there's so many books that are like a fish out of water story.
And because you have to introduce some conflict for the main character for there to be any plot at all.
This one took a different turn rather than than making him a fish out of water.
He was kind of ejected from his world.
His mom died and he had to get off a planet.
This is in chapter one, no spoilers here.
And how he handled it was so natural and so creative.
And you know that he was thrown into this world that wasn't his.
But he became part of it so well.
I think the theme of this book to me that the lesson to take from it is that a good person is worth their weight in gold.
And that anyone can be a good person.
Everyone has that potential in them.
And I think it's such a great lesson to take out of this book and into the real world.
And I think it's worked for me personally.
And you mentioned a good point poking the whole fish out of water because that is an old mean.
In science fiction that to explain, you know, this new world people are entering.
You have a character who for some reason this, this, this.
The experience is completely new to them.
And so that you.
You introduce.
The reader to his world by hat or her world by having, by having the character have all these new experiences.
And thus you explain.
The universe to the reader.
My favorite author of all time, Isaac Asimov was a master of this method.
And alternatively, we've had some books like this.
You don't explain.
What's going on.
And you, you know, everything's a mystery slowly revealed.
I would say it's simple.
That would be the TV series Babylon five where you really didn't know what that.
What was going on till the beginning of the second season sometime.
And lost. Well, in that case, I don't, I don't think producers and series ever knew what was going on.
Yeah, let's insert our usual JJ Abrams rant here and then move, move swiftly on.
Done.
I think I bailed it.
I think I may have just the stored audio of our standard JJ Abrams clip, but I may just drop it in right there.
Sounds like a great plan.
I think that's summed it up.
Actually, that was pretty, pretty efficient and topical.
I like it.
Actually, that's probably better than the real ending of the lost.
I'm suggesting right now we all meet together right here again sometime next January and discuss episode seven.
That sounds like a plan to me.
I don't really get ugly.
I don't know if I can do that.
I still haven't watched the Hobbit movies.
You didn't as much except for, you know, clotted being involved, which was kind of cool.
Oh, I know that's brilliant.
Wait, what?
Yeah, I've never known anybody of their own IMD page.
IMDB page before.
My understanding is that's why he moved to New Zealand to work on.
Yeah.
Well, he works for a company that does production stuff.
Graphic stuff for the Hobbit.
He's not directly employed by JJ.
I heard he played Bobo Baggins.
That's just a rumor going around.
He played Ballum.
If Ballum's spoken like shell scripts, that would be awesome.
So anyway, I want to look at this frame.
Who was it?
The Wilder by what we're talking about.
Excellent 101.
Anyways, that book.
Yeah, again, it's, it's so fantastic.
I mean, there's so many things in this book that, I mean, maybe I knew before or maybe I didn't.
But I think of Ishmael Wong when I do certain things now, like when a problem comes up specifically at work.
A problem comes up rather than ask somebody, you know, what the solution is.
I'll try to bring them a possible solution and say, is this right?
Is this the way to do this?
And people are really, really happy with you when you do that rather than say, hey, what do I do here?
Even if you're wrong, they're really happy that you, that you tried to bring them an answer instead.
And that's, that's something that I specifically took out of this book.
I don't, at least I think I did.
Like, maybe I did it before, maybe I didn't, but I always think of him now when I do that.
I'm going to try to make my next statement not sound as narcissistic and egotistical as it's probably going to come out as.
One thing about the character that I just instantly related to is he runs at a different speed than the other people in the crew.
And I've had that experience.
When I was in college, in college, before I got out of it, I worked in a warehouse job.
Wonderful people did great work.
We're great at their job, but that was their speed.
And my speed was faster.
And so it's just like that kind of people looking at you weird when you have a solution to a problem that they just haven't even begun to think about it.
I related to that because I'm like, I've been in that situation.
People are going to really get three heads. It's crazy.
And so that kind of endeared me to him instantly.
I could go on a whole tirade about how his education played into that, but that's, you know, a whole side story to go into.
But I mean, I found that to make that was the one thing that really made me relate to him like instantly within the first couple chapters.
Yeah, but seems like his academic career before, you know, joining the fraternity, he was at best, the ambulance student.
So he does say, he does have, you know, this, this town for tests, but this whole thing that they talk about.
Before before joining the ship, he really had no idea what he wanted to do in real motivation for the college.
So I'm wondering, you know, what his actual academic record before this look like.
My guess looked kind of like it's not so much his like knowledge.
It's the skills that he has to gain knowledge.
And there's a lot of research that goes into this kids who know how to learn can do better in any situation.
The kids that think they know a lot and don't know how to learn anything new.
It's just his, it's almost his flexibility and ambivalence towards any one particular thing has made him better.
More well-rounded, he's able to see more possibilities just because he knows how to learn things just because he wants to.
Yes, he, and going back to what you said about working faster than other people, I can agree and relate to that as long as we're not talking about physical speed here.
We're talking about clock cycles and yeah, this clock just ticks over a little quicker under certain situations and other folks and I relate to that as well.
I haven't worked with some other people that just not even know if it's at a faster speed or a different speed.
It's just running a different set of processes.
Sometimes where you think about a problem differently and I can totally relate to that where people just sometimes we even understand what I'm talking about.
You got to like back them up and talk about it from the beginning and you spend 10 minutes explaining what you're talking about and at the end they just go, I don't know, go ahead and try it.
You know, and something works and they still don't understand what's done and he's in that situation often.
Okay, I'll go ahead and talk and we don't have dead air.
I mean, we've always talked about a mumble. We ought to have this time out anymore.
If everybody hits the key once then somebody gets a flag.
Okay, you go ahead and talk and then everybody else is 30 second or 45 second delay.
But I think all of us here and a lot of the people on the list are ship have had similar experience.
It's a lot of its motivation.
I mean, you know, I'll go to intelligent people, doctors, lawyers, whatever and work on their computers and they look at me like, you know, I'm some sort of wizard from outer space.
You know, that I understand this stuff and it's like, well, it's not, it's not so much intelligence because I, you know, I may work for more intelligent than me, but it's, you know, it's what you're interested in.
And, you know, the things that you're, are your passion will come easy to you.
I just like the main character because he ends up making his bones, making good coffee.
You know, that that part should have been, you know, these, these probably two's favorite character of all time.
I heard it once said in an interview with Nathan Law, who's on TILTS, where people were impressed.
And I think the specific wording that they use was I never thought making coffee could be so interesting.
And, you know, I can agree with that except that, you know, I think making coffee is interesting.
But I've never thought somebody else making coffee was so interesting.
It reminds me that I need to do an update to my how I make coffee show because I've completely changed it.
And my coffee is now just shy of weapons. Great. I think bitch.
It's funny. You mentioned he was on TILTS. I didn't even know that. I guess it was like in the time I wasn't listening to them.
I went back because when we read a shot of Charlottesdale, the, what was it called, South Coast? That's what it was called.
That was the first time I'd ever read like a Nathan Lowell thing.
And I wasn't terribly impressed with it. So I guess I just kind of like didn't, before I knew it who he was, I just didn't pay attention to him.
And then after that book, I'm like, okay, he's really good at reading things. So I like this love his voice. I mean, that's a pretty thing.
But then I remembered he was on Linux reality like a long time ago. So I actually went back and listened to it again because I'm like, oh, now I dig this guy. I will actually pay attention to him.
It's just terrible, but that's what I did. And like so much of what he said in that interview, I was just like it instantly clicked.
The whole time I was reading these books, I was like, man, I want to play a role playing game in this universe.
And then it hit me. I was like, oh, yeah, this is great.
It was, yeah, exactly.
It already exists. It's called Traveler. And he mentions, you know, that that was one of the influences on him. And then like, just random things.
Like his doctor, I guess this doctor is in the same thing I'm studying right now. I'm working on my masters and doctorates.
It's like there are all these commonalities. I can see behind the scenes of the way his brain works on some of this stuff. And it's really cool.
I can also go back, I think, and if I listen to the South Coast again, I think I would appreciate it so much more after these books.
Oh, yeah, I just added my reading, my reading list.
The other book that 50 was talking about was not South Coast. It was Ravenwood was the other book.
It's not set in the same universe. It doesn't seem to be.
What I was about to say that, of course, it could be just these people are pre-space Traveler in Ravenwood. It's more of medieval type universe.
But, you know, at the universe where magic is real, so one could argue, well, you know, obviously then I don't think Nathan ever specific.
He may have in the later books specifically mentioned Earth at some point, but, you know, I think we're giving them a stand. This is this is in the future of the human race.
So somebody could say, well, there's no such thing as magical. Well, I guess not because he's not magic in South Coast sort of.
So maybe so you could eventually tie all these books together.
It mentioned I'm totally nerded on these books. I'm sorry guys, I went everywhere. He mentions on his site, which if you've not been to the solar clipper diaries or whatever it is, the site behind all these books.
He spells out the whole history from Earth to where they are now. And like all the like steps in between like, this is how we invented FTL. This is how we invented solar cells. This is this is why we spread out and stuff. It's really cool.
Now I want to read that because that's always one of the things I like to pick up in the sci fi universes is the wise and the how is of how did we get from this hunk of rock to a bunch of hunks of rock.
Don't do it. Don't go read that. We need to finish the show. I didn't write this second. Oh, no, but if you did, I totally believe it because that's what I feel like doing to wait till after the show.
We know what I just I'll just put it in the show notes.
Well, Nathan Nathan Lowell is the master of his own universe and you can decide what happens and of the power.
So you know, they can't come along with some somebody and say, oh, the last 30 years of novelizations never happened. Sorry.
Second JJ Abrams reference for this episode.
Yeah, there's only one problem with him being the master of that this universe is because he has stated in several places that there is another shaman tales book that he's working on.
There are three more isch male books that he's got ideas for and there are three more books that is a different crew set in the same universe and he's the only man that can write him and they're not done yet. That's the problem.
This is why we need brain to text editor, text editor interfaces.
No, this is why we need to send him money by his books. If he if we can fund him, if he can make a living out of this, he'll do more books.
And I will say, depending on your feelings on Amazon, I'm not great on it, but I use it.
I believe all the books are 499. I plot down for seven of them. I bought everything he wrote in the universe. No, eight. There's like a 99 cent short story thing that I also bought this set in the universe.
That is not much to pay for a guy that gave me this much entertainment.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I've got paperbacks from him as well.
Well, Paris is maybe like the game of Thrones guy, you know, we keep saying, oh, heck of you fans. I'm going to retire or he might die someday or something like that.
No, no, no, finish the books before you do.
Now, another thing that I found incredibly relatable with with isch male is how you know, in the first chapter, his mother died.
That I can't relate to my own still I think.
But anyway, his mom died and he's completely devastated and emotionally you would think that this is, you know, a huge trial.
And how he gets over it, though it never spells it out so clearly, but basically how he gets over it is by keeping himself occupied with his work.
And when I went through my divorce, you know, years and years ago now, that's how I got over it.
I took every service order that we had. I took service orders from other texts just to keep work and just to keep my mind busy because dwelling on it sitting around is the worst thing you can do.
So if you can work through an emotional problem like that, better for you, it's better for everyone around you to do.
And it's for me, it's the only way to get through that kind of stuff.
And that's how he did it.
And it's totally believable to me. It's totally, I bought every minute of that.
And, you know, I could see someone who'd ever been through anything saying, oh, he lost his mother and he never talks about it.
How did he ever do, you know, blah, blah, blah.
No, you work through it. That's just what you do. That's just what works.
Yeah, the same thing just happened to me in the last month or so as we lost a family pet.
And, you know, a lot of people ask me why I went back to work that day. I'm like, well, I can sit at home and mope or I can get to work.
Well, that part of the whole book, you know, we'll pay into Ken Fowler's philosophy that corporations are complete fucking bastards.
And that gets us our adult rating for this episode. Somebody had to do it.
Thanks 50.
Yeah, no problem. But, you know, that all the time, you know, his mother's a college professor pretty much not living the high life enough to get through to the next month.
The whole planet that he starts out on is a corporate university planet.
And I can't imagine what kind of university could cover a planet, but maybe we're maybe we're talking one of these planets, we're only 10% habitable or something like that.
No, no, the university worked for the corporation that ran the whole planet. It wasn't the whole planet, wasn't a university.
Yeah, that's okay. That's what I got to.
But, you know, essentially what meager amount of money that his mom still had in the bank.
And I'm surprised he had enough to go as long as he did. You know, I mean, he gets sued because the flying car she and her boyfriend were on, fell into an apple cider grove and took out an anchor.
And they said, well, we can't we can't put people back together enough to know who was flying.
So we're going to sue both the states and, you know, so you don't you don't have any money kid. And this is what he finds the only two ways for him to get off the planet is to join the Marines.
And I'd be I'd be kind of interested. I don't know if Nathan has that kind of bit.
But if maybe his other crew series that he's talking about might be, you know, going into Marines, that might be kind of cool in this universe.
But, you know, he's only got two ways off the well, three ways off the planet. He can he can wait till his money runs out and then the corporation will deport him and then charge him like what he couldn't earn in years and years and years.
And he would still be on another planet where there would probably be no jobs.
He can, you know, he can he can get a birth on a commercial freighter, which is what he does. And maybe we are exploring a little bit about what the book is about.
I can't imagine anybody listening to this hasn't read the book. Or he can join the Marines.
I believe the crew in the other series he's talking about are smugglers so that I'm instantly interested in that.
Yeah. Oh, that's better yet.
Where do I get this Nathan Lowes brain? And that's the problem. It's happened. It's driving me crazy. One of the thing. I mean, like we keep coming back to it.
And it's like, it sounds hokey, but it's ismail is such a relatable character because he's well written enough to what he's realistic. But at the same time, it's through all the books. But even at the end of this book, he's almost kind of mythical.
He's one of those like, you almost kind of hold him up as an example. And like my job is kind of the leadership job. I have to deal with some leadership issues.
And like I have a checklist in my brain of like, you know, what would Picard do? What what Optimus Prime do? You know, just kind of like these, you know, mythical leaders. And like I can totally fit Ishmael Wong like right in there and think what would he do? You know, and it would probably be a good decision.
I had that exact thought as I was pouring my beverage before we were before we started recording w w i w d.
I saw a picture that one of my friends who happens to be a bad dismissed or sent me. We always send each other religious things because you know I'm Buddhist and so, but we're still like this friends.
It was a picture and it said at the bottom, whenever somebody mentions what would Jesus do, remind them the flipping over tables is definitely an option.
And it's alting religious leaders.
Well, you know, one thing I really like about this series is because it is not Star Trek. I mean, I love Star Trek. Star Trek essentially energy is free. Energy can be turned into matter.
You know, unlimited resources. And you know, in this, no, it's capitalism. You know, they're simply sailing ships through space and they got to make a profit to keep going.
Yeah, that was the one thing about Ishmael that I can't relate to was how easily he turned from a kid with really no ambition into a completely unbridled capitalist. It took me a long time to learn capitalism.
I will save my comments regarding said things until after this.
Oh, right. Make a note of that thing. So I don't want to miss that. It's a general comment, but that's one of the symptoms of said comment.
Well, at least nobody hears doing predatory capitalism.
Right, right. Well, the planet, the, you know, corporate planet was all right. So let's run through the list of things to do before the spoilers recording quality.
Excellent. Excellent recording quality. When you find out how you recorded this, it's actually stunning that he got such quality out of it.
Did he use a zoom with like a hat clip? No, I don't know what he used for an actual recorder.
But the originally, he said the book was a gift for his wife. The audio book is a gift for his wife. He wrote it, took one of the right it.
And he sat out in his car, maybe in the garage, maybe outdoors. I don't know. That out in his car because there's only quiet place that he had and recorded it in his car.
Now go ahead, Taj, would you you said you knew what he was for a recorder?
In the interview that I listened to the other day, it's if he used one of the older I river.
If he three players slash recorders and just plugged a mic into it and recorded it in his car, which blew my mind as is the audio geek that I am.
I'm just like, how, how why did that should not work?
And my car record audio before after hearing him say that, say, oh, okay, I'll try that for this quiet place.
It doesn't work for me at all. I might as well be driving the car for all the sound deadening sitting in a car gives me.
I'm too fidgety.
Did anybody notice? I mean, it's been years since I've listened to quarter share.
At first, what started for me, it's seen kind of high pitched. I almost thought maybe they I'd got a sped up version or something.
Yeah, I listen to it sped up so I can't really comment.
Now, there was one chapter where at the beginning, it did have a slightly different sound quality to it.
A slightly different tone, but it was somewhere in the middle and it seemed to either I got used to it or corrected itself halfway through that chapter.
And it was the only instance of that. I don't recall it being any different pitch.
It may be a different pitch from what you remember the more recent book sounding like maybe he changed his techniques from the more recent ones.
Well, that's what I was thinking. I mean, oh, it's probably has been a year, probably a little more than a year since I've read the owner's share or listen to owner's share.
It didn't seem like the same voice.
The other thing I'll say about this is this is my mom's favorite audio book series as well.
And she says she listens to it every couple of months because he reminds her of me.
And you know, like Todd said earlier, this is not me thinking highly of myself.
I would bet that every mom think they're kid this way because it smells kind of, you know, the ideal kid.
You know what I mean? So I'd be surprised if anybody's mom didn't say, oh, he reminds me so much of you.
Well, Ishmael's kind of a achiever. I mean, he's not probably smarter than PEP or the rest of his friends, but you know, he just dives in and does this stuff.
Well, he has the long running advantage of not already knowing the answer.
Right. Exactly. And he's a good test taker, which I can totally relate to. I did really good in school on tests and never did good on anything else.
I just want to mention how brilliant the idea is of making the music all like traditional C chanties, because it totally adds to like the romance of this sort of book.
Like I get the same this short hand I use with my my wife is Carol acts on the road.
Anybody who's ever read that book wants to take a road trip like you fall in love with the idea of a road trip.
This may be fall in love with the idea of being like a merchant marine on like some kind of ship.
Even though I know it probably wouldn't be as is romantic as I'm making it out to be like just that that feeling that ambiance, the music I thought was perfect for that.
It just in tying space to the sea is something that's always happened, but it seemed a lot more realistic here than like your star tracker or sort of your more pop sci-fi where yeah, we have this naval thing, but really it's it's like a hotel on the sky like you worry about
anything you can get on and off and ever you want and everything happens in an instant like this was more sort of that.
Yes, it takes weeks to get where you're going and then weeks on the other end of where you're going like and just like that everything in a bottle tension in a good way.
Yes, and there is no dead weight on the ship every person who is there has a function and a duty and a purpose and they all serve a purpose in the story quite well also.
Well, literally no dead weight because weight is profit in this universe.
In this whole scenario, not scenario that the universe set up remind anyone else of lost and broncs is star drifter universe.
Yes, well, we mentioned that when we when we talked when we reviewed that there are certain things like there's no subspace radio so the only way you one planet communicates with another is where.
A ship comes from that planet and it does a data doubt.
In my head cannon if you hop through a wormhole there there's lost and bronches universe like on the other side like they're very close to each other which is you know just just different enough to keep them both interesting like but there's so many like just that feeling like that space opera kind of feeling yeah definitely between the two.
Yeah, I mean perfectly I would say and I said when we reviewed.
This you know and I'm not accusing him of stealing stuff but it would fit right in if his book was either before or you know 100 years before or 100 years after more likely after because they seem to have.
In space you know some some kind of reaction drive that they can use and fuels not such a big problem and I get the impression from you know Nathan Lowell's books now that the military ships they don't use sour sailing they you know they're all the time on action drive.
I was just happy that the physics of space travel was at least addressed in a primarily realistic manner like other than wormholes a lot of the technology is based in stuff that is actually feasible.
Yeah it's at least plausible and that you know that's what makes good sci fi is that it's plausible science.
We haven't said anything about the setting yet which is really strange so the whole setting of these books the whole idea behind them is that there's intergalactic trade that takes place on these merchant marine vessels that are propelled with solar sales the solar wind pushes them along very similar to sailing ships.
And when they get far enough away from the center of a solar system they get far enough out of the gravity well they can engage a jump drive which allows them to.
Jump through space faster than like travel which is a little bit inconsistent throughout the series and we can get to that after the spoilers but suffice it to say for now they have to get out of the gravity well and then they can jump to another system.
And it takes them weeks and weeks to sail out of the gravity well on their solar sales.
And one thing I want to throw in really don't see the mechanics of it to the third book so I wouldn't call it exactly a spoiler but space is so vast that you know.
Once you travel to another part of the galaxy that it's it's not like he at one point he takes a job and goes to the other in the galaxy and he's too far away to ever see his friends from the first two books or communicate with them ever again and I'm sure Nathan probably has a reunion in mind.
It would once again point people to the website because he has like the systems all laid out and you can see exactly where the planets are and how they relate to each other and it's just geekiness.
Please check the show notes folks.
Once again my next traveler game will be set in this universe.
Now it's at the Randis or is it is other website solar clipper dot com.
Should we spoil this thing yeah well pardon me while I go get my beer and then yes please.
Yeah mine may take me a minute so feel free if I'm not back to go ahead and talk around me.
It's easy enough to cut out dead air we'll just dead air to you guys get back where I can vamp and sing a song or something.
By all means okay I know what we can talk about while while they're heading away do you know the story behind the music in the series.
There's a story I did not know this.
Yeah it's not a real long story but the music in the first book is what he wanted to stick with for the rest of the series through all the series.
It was something he found on archive dot org but when he got into the second book he wanted to try to make a profit off the audio books.
And do so commercially but he he exhausted and he's a he's a he's a he's a so sad man by trade so he knows what he's doing on the internet.
He exhausted every possibility of getting in touch with the musician who made the music from the first book and couldn't get in touch with the guy and couldn't get permission.
Couldn't even find the guy never got a response in an email or anything like that couldn't find out who you know if the guy's dead what the estate was.
And couldn't get permission to use the music so from the second book on it's all public domain music it's all stuff from the 20s and earlier.
I know and listening to the interview that I did and now I gotta go back and find a tilt interview because I want to hear that.
He is all in unlike patio books and that sort of distribution method which which I love.
There are other authors that got to start that way and as soon as they started making money decided that wasn't the way they were going to go forward and good on them.
I mean that's their decision but I respect him highly for sticking to it and and just in that interview you made a comment he's like look I'm not going to make a ton of money on this.
I'm not too worried about it. I'm just going to put that there and you know if I make something on it that's good.
You know it is what it is it seems very similar to what lost in Bronx and in our interview with him.
Yeah it just shows how unfair our world is that they're such tremendously good authors as Nathan Lowell and lost in Bronx who just go on notice when they.
You know by all rights fully deserve to make a living writing and creating audio books they do it so well.
And how they don't get noticed is beyond me because everyone I've ever shared this book with this series or lost in Bronx for that matter has said wow that is fantastic how did you find such a fantastic thing and I know how I never heard of this.
One of the things we do at my school which like it's helpful in some ways in some ways it's not is a bunch of the teachers such as myself.
They've put boards on their doors and we constantly have what we're reading up and so like for all this you know for the last month I've had like all these books.
And you know I get other teachers why can't I be like those books must be really awesome if you're like tearing through you know six books in four weeks and most of them know that I'm not a fast reader.
And so like it's very nice for me to have interaction with you know real world people who are not you know hacker public radio or free culture people or you know just sort of our community and say no really this is on Amazon go check it out you know throw this guy some bones because it's good stuff if you're into it you'll dig it.
I don't know if anybody has what I mean that's the one downside with the whole.
Did you hear my break down yeah that was awesome yeah I know it's awesome that may be copyrighted we may have to mute it out no it's also but what was that saying.
Have a board to suggest books to to real people not not HPR people but like the whole him being on Amazon like for me it's not a problem I have.
If I've ethically chosen myself that Amazon sells me a Kindle book and thinks that they're running it to me and I strict the DRM off and I don't feel bad about it that is an ethical decision that I've made it is probably technically illegal still moral and I agree with it.
So I do it so I try to buy a paperbacks because I know the author gets a little more money out of that or at least I hope they do I could not find them available because that was my original intent and I didn't find any of the paperbacks.
So I bought them digitally and that's what I'm pointing people to is you know because pretty much everybody that I know that reads books as a Kindle you know just because they're the number one.
The bookseller I guess on the internet for better or for worse and I like that it gives us a way to contribute money directly to him I'm sure they get a cut.
But like when I went and bought I mean I bought probably at the end total was like 40 bucks for all the books which is ridiculously cheap for you know you can't go buy a six book series on the shelf for $40 in real space.
And I could literally drop another $40 on patio books and not feel bad at all about the money I spent.
Yeah and you can also donate through audio books it's something we always I always anyway forget to mention.
And that reminds me by the way the mute what I should have said before is the music that he chose for this first book James Karren is the musician who he can't get in touch with or couldn't get in touch with.
He's also worth looking up on on archive dot org because all his stuff is really terrific.
Yeah and I would think though that the donate link on potty of books dot com not that it's not worthwhile but I would take the line sure that's going to go to potty of books rather than to the author.
Which I'm okay with because they they're literally providing part of the service I mean that's why you know if I bought some from Amazon I know they're going to take you know whatever 20% cut I don't know what the deal is for providing you know the storage and stuff I'm fine paying that I just want to make sure that he gets something and to be completely honest I probably don't donate to potty of books on deaf is it is to support the service and I don't think enough people probably do I can't imagine that running at a profit.
Let me up and just say that that's not correct 50 potty of books does take a cut it is not the lion's share I believe it's it's small like five or 10% all right right for potty of books.
Yeah that sounds totally reasonable.
Yeah if you do look up James Karren on the internet archive you got to hear the song it's really really funny and fun and very well done.
It's it sounds at least as good as the lucky black at which is the theme song throughout Trader Tales 1 quarter share.
What's another task I need to do tonight sucks that dude like disappeared off the face of the air.
Yeah it does because if he could have if Nathan Lowell could have kept using his music for the other books it would have tied in a little more tightly just slightly.
And also his music is is really great it's it's all it most of it is just as good as the lucky black cat but.
Anyway it looks like 50 and X 1101 are back with their beverages who wants to start us off.
I'll go I've got this unique beverage that I'm actually eating with a spoon because well I think I've mentioned reviewed before on the on the book club talked about my appreciation for
favorite moonshine and none of the stuff in the store as it's good some homemade stuff that I've had.
But I've been enamored of the junior Johnson labeled brand and the ones of fruit in the bottom were actually bigger than the you know the regular junior Johnson.
So they're they're they're they're they're bigger because they're not counting the fruit towards alcohol content.
But this is one I've I discovered recently in one to try this is old smokey Tennessee moonshine and the difference is what the junior Johnson wanted fruits and bottom what you got later fruit in the bottom it's good it's you know I partial to the strawberries they also have a charity one.
And the straw you know the fruit just soaks up the alcohol and not I'm not saying just the whiskey I mean it's alcohol because I think it's like the old a worm in the bottom bottom of the key the bottle we was wondered about that back in college we said well I mean you know the worms not as big as
whiskey houses warm going to put you away like everybody says well I think it's because the fruit or the worm or whatever you know soaks up pure alcohol like 190 proof rather than you know the whiskey which is like 80 proof or whatever and I can tell you from those from the junior Johnson with the strawberry if you eat a couple strawberries out of the bottom of that thing you're ready for bad.
But I like about this smokey Tennessee moonshine as opposed it's it's in a regular court jar it's not a bigger court jar like the junior Johnson is but this one you like Martian cherries all the way to the top of the thing.
And yeah they are they are potent.
So you got you can't pour it out.
So it's basically a jar of cherries that's then packed with moonshine instead of syrup.
Essentially yes so you know I quite enjoyed this and after going to paint on I attended a seminar on infusions was essentially you know you put fruit or something about the jar and you pour usually either vodka or gin over it.
I'm not a big gin fan so I tried that I had all these court jars left over from this fake moonshine and I cleaned a few of them up and I tried three of them I put and this is going to sound weird but it was pretty good at the seminar cucumbers in one and sliced then.
And that was the juice off of that was pretty good it was cucumbers and oh I should know the spice I'm forgetting it but then they said okay then they were asked for light again and a little lemonade to it.
That's one way that's one way that's.
Exactly and then that they took the cucumbers and they added sugar vinegar and and and made them in ice box pickles and we all had pickles too.
But the other two things I tried and you would have thought they would have worked I tried to pie in kiwi and I bought the fruit and then it took me a week to get to it so the kiwi were pretty much fermenting themselves but I tried and they say put them in a jar whatever and put it in a cool place and I've had them there and I haven't tried the cucumber but I did try the kiwi and the
and the and the pie and they're only slightly flavored of that stuff suddenly in a few weeks more.
I've had it for weeks.
If you're doing that on your own 50 I would suggest not using citrus fruits try it out with some fruits that are not citrusy first
not because I have any specific knowledge about it I just know that citrus fruits act differently than regular fruits do.
Like if you put a citrus fruit in jello it won't congeal it won't harden the same.
You've got to kind of put it between layers and stuff like that just citrus fruits act a little differently sometimes.
Yeah I think you're right I think I should have maybe done my research a little better because you know right now what I've got is slightly fruit flavored macormac vodka.
The other reason I want to keep on the vodka is you know just a little more expensive I could get all these kind of flavored vodka's
and I may shut myself in the foot doing that because it's still the other day it's macormac.
You know maybe I would have had better results if I do just used absolute or something like that.
So I can only imagine that junior Johnson is in reference to the race car driver and like your of old is it licensed is the name licensed through his family or are they just using the name.
I assume it must be licensed somehow or is his family actually involved because that would be even cooler.
No I'm absolutely certain that's just a licensed name.
Cool I have to look up for some of those I'm kind of partial to strawberries myself.
My guy said man you take a couple of those strawberries and get ready for bed.
Supoke what are you drinking?
Oh I had to have a quarter share themed beverage myself this evening I have I have ice coffee though it's dressed up a little bit with some Zambuca.
I've always been kind of partial to hot coffee with black Zambuca in it and I thought I would try to see how well it worked with ice coffee.
And to my delight it works just fine though I'm using clear Zambuca not not black.
And here I thought you were going to say rum.
No no Zambuca is it's a lacours it's really sugary.
It tastes like black licorice and as a kid I really despised black licorice but you know you put it in a lacours and you kind of acquire taste for it.
I'm really partial like licorice now very often if you order Zambuca in a bar it's Italian lacours by the way but very often if you order Zambuca in a bar you'll get it.
You know it's like they'll pour the shot instead of putting in a shot glass they'll put it in like a Tom Collins glass and they'll put maybe three coffee beans at the bottom and you just kind of down those with it so.
Zambuca has kind of a long tradition of being mixed with coffee I believe and somebody else you know poured me one with with black Zambuca and hot coffee.
And I don't notice any different whatsoever between black Zambuca and clear Zambuca other than the color.
But if you've ever had maybe like your mixture if you egg your mixture tasted good it would taste like Zambuca.
Yeah I have to try that sometime because I'm kind of a fan of Uzo.
Yup now Uzo I think I've only had once I don't really remember it but I remember it being a black licorice flavor and that's a Greek beverage I believe.
It is.
So yeah thumbs up to ice coffee with Zambuca.
Keeping with the tradition of me being completely boring.
I have grapefruit juice, nothing special, but it's delicious.
That is all.
Excellent.
Did you hand-scrows it or is it from a bottle?
There was no squosing.
It came straight from the bottle.
All right, totally traditional.
Also keeping with tradition I have IPA.
Big shock to anyone who's listened for any amount of time.
Yeah really.
In fact I believe that was predicted while you're away from the mic IPA.
The IPA of the month is shipyards signature series 4x IPA.
Coming in at a wonderful 9.25% alcohol by volume.
The bottle I have in my hand is 1.1 pint and 6 ounces.
Holy smokes you're going to sleep well the night.
So here's what's I be you.
I don't see it on here.
I'll have to look at a minute.
Wow, that is a lot of beer at 9%.
You should have invited a friend over to share that with you.
I didn't fight my friends over.
You're just further away.
It's kind of hard to drink beer through a mic, bro.
I am looking to see if the IBUs are listed.
Judging by the taste I guess it's fairly high because it is kind of bitty.
I have absolutely no concept of IBUs that it doesn't mean anything to me.
Some beers I think wow this is really bitter and it's like oh 38.
And then other beers like wow this isn't bitter at all totally sweet.
Oh 38 like a alright whatever.
Well it depends on what kind of hops are in it.
What kind of molds are in it.
How how that flavors offset and it is.
I don't know if those are the same as the IBUs but it says 70 be used and that tastes about right.
Yeah, can you taste anything else beer.
I was gonna say through 70 no probably not.
That's kind of the whole idea of an IPA though is that you don't get to taste anything but bitter.
I don't know I've had a lot of them that the hops in it are more citrusy hops.
I'd a friend bring one over once that actually had a lot of grapefruit notes to it.
Which is odd that I liked it because I don't usually like grapefruit but the grapefruit with the flavor in the hops was really good.
That's neat.
Not strange because the citrusy notes usually come from the hops not not.
But no that's what it was coming from is there were it was the hops but the citrus notes you got were very grapefruit ask rather than a more you know lemony mellow citrus.
But it's gigantic and it's fantastic and I'm sure I'm going to be feeling really good hearing about another 15 minutes.
Excellent.
I'll just grab it down the one for us.
Thankfully for me I only got one.
It was a pint pint and a half.
I don't think he's going to have another one.
Yeah.
I bought this individually specifically for tonight because I've been looking at it in one of the local markets for quite a while.
And I kept passing it by and passing it by and I'm like I need something special for book club and it was reasonably priced so it came home.
Oh that's so sweet.
I also tried to do something special for book club but I've never bought one of those big seven to fifteen dollar pint bottles.
This specific brewery shipyard has the signature series that that's the only size they make them in.
Yeah.
There's a lot of breweries that will only you'll do their special stuff and only put it in you know a pint bottle and then charge a seven and a half bucks for it.
It's usually worth it though.
Yeah very often it is but you can you can go broke drinking beer to twerth it.
I hear that.
Hey something I forgot to add about mine.
If anybody ever does want to try you know San Boca and coffee.
You just make your coffee the way you make coffee.
Just the way you normally do it.
If you use cream and sugar do cream and sugar.
If you like it black to a black but do the exact same.
Don't change anything.
And then when you got your coffee all mixed up then pour yourself a shot or two of San Boca in there.
You know that might make my day to day life a little bit better.
Yeah don't do it in the morning not on your way into work.
This is not what I'm advocating.
It's you know just from time to time as a special treat.
Too late Pokey.
So who was it wanted to spoil this book so bad?
I guess probably the best spoiler point would be the encounter with the captain from the other ship.
Wait what did you say a captain from another ship?
That's like the third book in the series.
Is it like I told you I might be confused.
I thought there was the first book.
Oh that was that was definitely the almost definitely the second book.
Okay how about the Taylor?
The Taylor was in the first book wasn't it?
Second second.
Because that was when he was going out with the people he started hanging out with in the second book.
Now we've got spoilers for our spoilers.
This is getting out of hand guys.
Yo dog.
This is what happens when I go.
This is what happens when I don't start listening early enough.
I'm sorry.
I told you I might be inaccurate.
Well okay so the basic plot of this book then just to get everyone up to speed.
Ishmael's mom dies.
He ships out on a merchant freighter because it's the only way he can get off the planet without paying for it or joining the Marines.
He meets up with his friend Phillip or Pip who's kind of a kind of a.
Locker soul a slacker yeah a ship without a sale kind of kid and they kind of help each other along.
That teaches Ishmael what he knows about trading.
You know buy and stuff in one port and sell it in the next and Ishmael teaches Pip.
Basically how to take tests how to study for tests how to how to have some direction in his life and they influence one another.
All the other people on the ships on the ship.
You know wish them well and join in and help out and are helped by them at the same time and they set up this.
This co-op that allows them to sell their goods at flea markets in port rather than trying to sell you know on the down low.
Because there's all kinds of risk involved selling that way but at the flea markets there there it turns out in the end they're quite successful.
And that risk isn't just a theoretical risk because Pip the crap beat out of him and that's kind of what is the catalyst to getting them to.
Hey how do we do this in a way that doesn't end up with people getting beaten nearly to death.
Right he does get mugged and robbed and there's the one plot bullet that I can find in the entire series is getting mugged and having cash taken off of him.
It is the only mention that I can recall in any of the books.
Simply mention of cash every other transaction every other mention of money is always an electronic transfer so that may be a plot bullet.
Well you would I guess this is maybe just kind of trying to rationalize it but you would think that at something like a flea market they would have to have some kind of physical currency to trade for their physical goods
rather than doing electronic transfers.
I will take a little bit of a stance that is not the only plot bullet.
I think there is another plot bullet that gets used over and over and over again.
And even though I know it's a plot bullet I'm totally okay with it because the thing about these books is the plot is all character driven.
I mean there are occasionally something environmental that will but I mean most of it is driven by the characters and so there needs to be something to spur movement.
So sometimes there has to be a plot bullet wedged in to make it move forward a little bit but there's one that just keeps happening before you go there.
Before you go there.
I have a tobacco track. Did Pip actually have a cash taken off of him? I thought he had goods and it was the goods that were taken from him not the currency.
No, it's after the transaction. He's carrying cash and his money belt they say.
Oh that's right.
Before he gets the heck beaten out of him he says well I've only got five dollars in my wallet or five credits and hands it to him and then they beat the crap out of him and while he's unconscious they take his money belt.
Yeah, now I remember that.
And while they're at the when they come back from the flea market they mentioned specifically it's so much nicer doing transactions this way than dealing in cash.
So they're doing electronic transfers at the flea market as well for the most part.
I mean they don't mention cash again after Pip is mugged.
And that you're right that is interesting because if you wanted to transfer your cash to the you know to electronic means you'd have to go you know you'd have to go for the ship somebody at the ship and say hey I've got this stack of cash I would I would like it put my account.
Now throughout the series he just says that they they thumb the transaction so apparently there's a thumb print a fingerprint reader somewhere but.
And that's good enough for me I don't have a problem with that but now I want to hear about Todd just plot bullets go ahead and shoot plot bullet holes all through my concept of these books.
It's more bullet just keeps getting used it's it's it's a well-liked bullet.
I for the majority of the time everything that happens to Ishmael is based on his own work his own just like his creation except for and the first book is not the most egregious it actually happens a lot more later in the series.
The fact that don't look just happens all the time that this cat.
Things will work out mysteriously for the better on several occasions and I'm totally cool with it because it pushes the story forward it's not egregious enough to where I'm like really but this guy is is remarkably lucky and I'm not going to say not all of it is not his work.
Because most of the time I think is well constructed to where it is his work that gets into places but sometimes it's just like we're just going to push him over the edge of the look just make just to get him in the right spot for the next chapter.
But fortune favors the bold and fortune favors to prepare and he's nothing if not bold and fairly prepared.
Okay now I do not have the rest of the series fresh in my mind I specifically like I said I find it hard to listen to this book and not listen to the rest of them because I just want to start to keep going and going this time for the audio book club I listen to this book twice in a row.
I listen to it over the weekend while I was cleaning my shed and I listen to it again yesterday and today while I was playing a bed frame and so I've listened to it twice in a row recently so I don't have the other books fresh in my mind but that said I'm going to debate you here and say that the luck that happens to him is not such a plot bullet and not so out of the ordinary as to say that he's telling his own story of course.
He's going to use the highlight reel it's like if you go on Facebook and you you look at anybody on Facebook you think oh geez only good things ever happen to this person well of course it's all they ever want to paste on Facebook it's it's their highlight reel.
And that's why young kids are so damaged by reading Facebook they think that everybody else on on the planet is so glamorous and glorified but they're just showing you their highlight reel that's number one he's only going to tell you the interesting fortunate things that happen to him really but also as X1101 said he's abnormally well prepared he's as well prepared as well as he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to
tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you something like that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that he's going to tell you that you're going to tell you that I'm going to tell you that, you know, sorry he got back in his arms all
because you've been prepared for it.
So I'll use those two things to say that I don't believe
that he's so exceptionally lucky
and that that's such a plot bullet.
I mean, to further your point, it seems like
he has decent breaks.
He's just somewhere between smart enough
and naive enough to take them,
where someone who was either less intelligent
or someone who was raised in the lifestyle
might be a little more cautious.
And he's just like, eh, screw it, let's try this.
And it ends up landing really well for him.
Poki, who the hell are you following on Facebook?
Because everybody I follow on Facebook,
either they've lost their jobs or their parents are dead
or relatives are dead or something going on.
I'm not following anybody on Facebook.
I don't look at Facebook at all.
I don't belong to Facebook.
I just a couple of years back,
I went through some crap where my daughter
was following people on Facebook.
And I believe it was a cause of a depressive state
that she was in.
I fully blame Facebook and Snapchat and the like.
I was like, I'm gonna make the same thing.
Kids should not be on Facebook.
That's, you know, parents should keep their kids
off Facebook because, man, kids are so meeting
like, you know, nothing.
I mean, yeah, I took my lumps when I was in school.
My goodness, you know.
Kids in school, people, on the other hand,
people are develop a fixed kid because I can imagine
somebody's, you know, hanging myself
because something I said on Facebook.
Somebody said about me on Facebook,
but that's not the topic for discussion.
I mean, the school age kids
where are generally just terrible individuals.
I can remember people being generally horrible to me
and probably everyone else,
but I wasn't everyone else all through school.
And kind of don't like, don't look forward
to having to raise a kid in that.
I think it depends on, you know,
how big a place, how big a school with,
you know, my place in school was everybody expected me
to have a higher school than everybody else.
So I kind of wrote that, but, you know,
I took some crap, but, you know,
we had clicks and stuff that was not like the clicks.
You know, it's not like the jocks did not talk to the,
you know, people did well in school, we did.
Okay, you know, I will say we were probably
unkind to the people who either through genetic misfortune
or drug abuse could not follow a conversation
like the rest of us could.
I will fully admit that those people were not people
we sought out for companionship, but the rest of us,
you know, it's, yeah, there was like a job click
and a brain click or whatever.
It's not like you, you know,
we couldn't hang out with each other and have fun.
I'm gonna go back a little bit and then we were talking about
like the balance of know how and his naivete towards certain things.
Especially later, like, there were consequences to him
not knowing things and I like that.
That kind of, that's one of the reasons I don't mind
when I perceive to be like and everybody else thinks of crazy
is because there are consequences sometimes to it.
And so it's kind of balanced out,
especially I'm thinking later, like the fifth book,
there's some real super serious consequences to him
just like being completely aloof about like social dynamics
and things like that.
Well, this may apply to the whole series.
I mean, you know, a lot, at least in the first book,
there's a lot of them stuff about him being socially
and about contact with the other sex
because they're thrown into the place where they're all bathing
together and in the sauna together and such stuff.
But suddenly, I guess it must be the second book.
All of a sudden, he's Hugo Suave.
And in the third book, you know-
I think you mean Rico Suave?
Rico Suave, whatever, you know,
in the third book, after they get out,
after they all get out of the academy, you know,
and all these girls who are with them on the ship,
they just can't wait to stand in line.
I don't think it was the second, third and fourth book, man.
No, but I mean, just, I don't know.
I've always been the nice guy.
My friends always said, don't be the nice guy
because women don't respond to that.
And this is, we've completely gone off the rails,
so let's not talk about that.
Off the rails is where we tend to spend most of our time.
If we get on the rails, we're doing lucky.
If we get near the rails, we're doing good.
Yeah, usually we can't see the rails from here.
Around here, we have a saying for that kind of thing.
It's, you can't get there from here.
That you didn't say it right, though.
You can't get there from here.
Yeah, I'm not a native.
So anyways, we have a saying around here.
It's that book, though.
Well done, sir.
Well done.
And I would like to, for once it's not Pokey
pulling us back on topic, it's Taj.
Yeah, I'm busy using two fingers to type links
into the show notes.
You know, I love this series so much,
but I feel like I don't have that much to say
about first book.
I have one thing that I think,
and we kind of touched on it.
There are no wasted characters.
Like every character, even if they're not
super important to the plot, is fleshed out enough
to where I do not feel like I don't know a character
when they're being referenced or being spoken to.
It tons of times in sci-fi, I feel like,
oh, it's that one guy that had two lines a chapter ago,
and I don't really remember.
I just know he's the guy in the back of the science console
or whatever.
I never felt that way.
Like when somebody was introduced,
they were introduced and used in a way
where I pretty much instantly had a mental picture
of that person and he could recall them
just by using their name.
And so that was interesting.
And all the books are kind of like that.
There's somewhere, some characters, I think,
just because there's so many get short shrift in the series.
But really, almost every character
is really fleshed out in a way to where they make an impact.
There's no like throwaways.
Well, I think like all of us,
we can't believe Trader's Tale has not been a series
and was our TV series yet.
I can, it's too good to be a TV series.
Yeah, there are not enough lasers or explosions
for this to get on TV.
I mean, regardless of how good TV has gotten,
there's no way.
I mean, what was the,
they made the movie of the,
what was it called, the, the Horatio books?
Like, where does the name this from?
They made the one movie and supposedly it's a good movie,
but it's the books and it's really not ever needed
to be a movie.
Like, it was just gives a book and so the movie didn't work.
I kind of feel like that's probably
the same thing as this.
Wait, that's Horatio.
Horatio Hornblower is where the name Horatio comes from.
But this is Ishmael Wong and call me Ishmael
comes from Moby Dick.
Yeah, it's Ishmael Horatio Wong.
Yeah, I know, but the Horatio Hornblower,
they made a movie of one of the books.
And it like, the people who like the books
like the movie better by us is like,
now what's not a Gregory Peck movie?
Obviously, I barely know what I'm talking about.
So probably not the best person to ask,
but why not?
He was a good actor.
Let's say he was in it.
Are you thinking of, oh, what's his name?
And the other side of the world or whatever it is?
Trying to think of it was a sort of similar thing.
What I do know, it was a movie about a ship.
And one of the people on that ship was named Horatio.
That's where my knowledge ends.
OK, I want to say that Gregory Peck movie
was probably pretty good.
Far side of the world, what's a master commander?
Are you thinking of that one?
Possibly, I don't know.
Which I also liked.
But that's a far more modern movie.
I was thinking it was fairly modern
because I had heard about it.
Mastering Commander's Russell Crowe, I think.
Yes, it is.
That's who I was trying to think of.
Hopefully he doesn't sing in it.
I'm just saying it.
Well, what were we talking about?
What's the name of this book?
That book, though.
Because I had something pertinent to say.
I've completely forgotten it.
What was it you were going to say earlier,
touched that you wanted to wait for after the spoilers?
It was the whole one thing.
That's really what I was referencing.
OK.
So yet, the only luck seemed to be to me
that seemed fairly consistent was the luck in their training
and that he just seemed to be better at ending stuff
than everybody else.
But then in this book, I kind of noticed
he didn't really find any of it.
Everybody else said, hey, look at that.
And he kind of glombed on to it.
Well, I mean, just even it's strange that nobody else
has decided, oh, let's trade Wilkeys before.
I mean, he never did end up selling those, though.
No, he doesn't.
Oh, second.
Anyway, he, uh, the rest of the books.
That's true.
Crap.
I forgot what I was going to say.
Yeah, he said, well, I guess he couldn't have done too well
because he still has Wilkeys to give away in the last book.
Oh, I remember now, just the fact
that he even got a spot on a ship was luck.
I mean, it was partially because he's charismatic.
But really, he just got lucky because he was talking to somebody
and they kind of kind of kind of pitted him
and he had the right know how that they were like, yeah,
let me make it.
Yes, no, that was also really, really well-icplained
when she said, you know,
because she said, look, here's how it really works.
Is that if you get called, you'll get called last minute.
So be ready for it.
So that, you know, he was going to be lucky one way or the other.
It seems like he was lucky that the first ship that came in.
But even she said, look, there's three ships coming in.
So I mean, the only real spot of luck
seemed to be that it was that particular ship
where, you know, for instance, her nephew worked ship
and Captain Jacone happens to be this altruistic captain,
which does show through that's not a complete spoiler
for later books that comes up again.
But she's fairly altruistic in this book as well.
I mean, that was fortunate for him,
but I don't see that him landing a spot on a ship
was all that lucky.
Yeah, we got to remember later in this series.
He gets landed as second officer on this really crap
and corrupt ship.
Third, we're just going to keep doing that all night, aren't we?
Well, now a second because first officer will be second
in command and then was he was he was a boot third officer.
They used that phrase boot third till I was tired of hearing it.
Yeah, okay, I will, you know,
I have mainline.
Surrender to your greater knowledge that I wouldn't say greater knowledge
more recent proximity I've mainline this entire series
in the last week.
And, you know, of course, eventually by then book he shows up his
superior officers to be not efficient,
which is mainly like get some fired and corrupt.
I would just say as I head up to anybody who reads the rest of the books,
the book that we are currently referencing is rough.
It was hard to listen to some dives.
I mean, it was, it was totally worth it, but I mean, it was rough.
I can agree with that more.
I didn't want to keep listening because I'm like,
I know something awful is going to happen.
Something awful is happening and he's going to figure out what it is
and it's going to be terrible and it was,
but the conclusion of it, the way he pulls through it
really makes it worth it.
And I mean, it needs the awfulness for the conclusion to come through,
but that doesn't make the awfulness any less awful.
OK, when you started talking, I thought it was like you were saying,
oh, this first book wasn't written very well compared to the rest of them,
but you're saying you're saying that the what goes on in the third book
and there's not too much, that much graphic description.
And it doesn't need to be.
It's just really uncomfortable.
Right, he's in a situation in the third book where, you know,
he's the one good man among the, well, say among the officers
because there are other good people among the officers,
but he's not in a position where he can challenge the people
who are doing bad things.
So that book.
There you go.
That's what I'm talking about.
Thank you, Paul.
At least we're in the same series this time.
We didn't go too far.
You know, but you know, people may have just heard this the first time
and don't even know that there's sequels to this book.
You know, I had a feeling that we weren't going to be able to keep this
to one book.
At least no one is complained about how the final book ends.
That's, well, don't tell me.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
It's joke.
We don't even want to talk.
Don't even hint at that.
I have like five episodes left and I really, really tried to finish it
today, but I've been on, I've been stuck on this damn conference call
for almost all of my time at work for the last week,
mostly due to some other people's incompetence.
And it's really crap in my style.
Well, it's also not true because there is three more final books
that aren't done yet.
I know Nathan Lowell said the character of Ishmael Long will come back,
but he's not going to be the sexual character of a book anymore.
But when I say there's going to be three more, that gives me a lot of hope.
Yeah, I really like Nathan's writing style, as well as his reading style,
as well as his voice.
I think that's all excellent.
And you know, we missed on one thing earlier is that he does just enough
vocally to keep the character separate
without being the guy who does 100 voices.
They're just little things tone and pacing and mannerisms
that you can kind of tell who's speaking, even though it's all his voice.
Though he does screw it up once or twice in this book.
Yeah, a little bit, but there's a lot of characters in this book.
Yeah, there are, but it was funny because maybe twice he screws up Cookie's voice.
And that's weird because Cookie is probably the most distinct character.
And there's once or twice where Cookie just sounds like someone completely different,
like not even in the book.
Maybe Cookie's just one of those dudes that like just tries on different,
you know, mannerisms and accents, just a player.
Cookie is vocal chicken. He sounds like everyone.
And you know, his description of the book is that Cookie is this little wirely guy,
wirely guy, and that's not how I pictured him listening to the book.
No, he doesn't sound small with his deep voice.
You're right.
I mean, he sounds like this big jolly guy.
So I'm reminded of something I was going to say earlier
where I did find an inconsistency.
What I believe to be an inconsistency from this book to later books,
the cash was one.
The other thing was in this book, when Pip is describing his methods of trading
and how he figures out where stuff's going to go and how he weighs the options,
he mentions that when they get to the jump point,
that there's wormholes there that could lead to two or three different systems.
And through the rest of the books, there doesn't seem to be any mention of wormholes.
They have this burls and drive that lets them just jump from point to point.
And I believe, and I could be wrong,
but I believe in one of the books, they even jump to a midway point.
And so they kind of get to decide where they jump,
as long as they're jumping into a gravity well.
So I thought that the wormhole was a little inconsistent.
But later they...
I don't know about that because later in the book, they talk about,
you know, there's a midpoint jump point,
but there just happens to be no planet there to do commerce on.
Later in the series, they do explain that about how far a ship can jump
and how the burls and drives create wormholes and basically bend space
to get you from point to point.
But ships, the certain size, the certain amount of power can only bend like this much space,
which doesn't make sense.
If you're bending space, it doesn't matter whether it's a million units or one unit,
it's still just bent to no distance, I don't know.
What I mean, you know, that's the impression I have is that the military
with an unlimited budget, you know, they're not doing solar sailing there,
you know, flying around like Starfleet wherever they want to go.
Yeah, but it's...
They're definitely some kind of wormhole generator because later it becomes a big point
that they pop out at certain percentages closer than where they thought
or further away from where they thought.
So it's not like they're going to a wormhole that's stable and as always there,
they're creating these wormholes and then just kind of estimating where they'll pop out, I guess.
Yeah, and that's what I mean.
And Pip says that there are other wormholes that are already there.
And I'm glad you mentioned that.
They were talking about percentages because I wasn't sure if that was from this series
or from Lost in Bronx's series.
I couldn't remember if it was from one of the other, maybe it's even in both, but...
No, that's definitely from later in Nathan's series.
There was always a percentage, you know, you go in the jump point, you don't come out.
Right, right.
Okay, and so now here's the other thing that's never explained in the series.
And I questioned since the first time I heard it, was the solar sales themselves.
So according to...
to Ishmael, the solar sales are electronically generated.
So they're just kind of an electronic field around the ship.
And you can imagine like some big bubbles.
And they have a gravity keel as well, which I imagine is for steering the ship.
That's what keeps them straight and oriented to sail towards the solar winds.
And they use that technology to accelerate the ship out of the gravity well
into the deep enough space where there's no gravity around
and they can engage the Burleson Drive.
And all of that, I follow all that I accept.
However, after the jump, when they get back to the next solar system,
they use the gravity sales to go back in.
And that doesn't make sense to me.
To me, it would seem like, okay, well, let's divert all the power to the gravity keel
and let that pull us in.
But they consistently say they're using gravity sales to sail in.
It makes me think you could only push away from a star with a gravity sale
unless you're tacking in like you would do with real winds.
But then you need a flat plane.
And these things don't remind me of flat planes.
And they're not talking about course changes that are so dramatic
as they would be if you were tacking into the wind.
So what do you guys think of that? Anything?
I thought they did make it later in the book.
They were when they were going towards the sun that they had to tack.
And that's why you would have to have a keel because you couldn't tack
unless you had a really big keel that would say you got to keep on the same course.
Well, and it's not probably a straight linear trajectory.
There's probably an arc to it to where they can angle things to where they can get a
momentum to do that to move forward.
But no, I always got this impression that they were tacking into the solar wind.
And then, you know, so that the...
Well, probably depending on the jump point was that the route directly to the planet
would be on the inbound would be faster than the outbound.
Well, that makes no sense if they're actually tacking
because when you're tacking into the wind you're going pretty slow
because you're driving into it at angles.
You're trying to get a wind that's ahead of you to drive you sideways.
And then you change direction and go sideways to the other side.
But if you're sailing away from the wind you just put your sails out full
and put them like straight sideways 90 degrees to the wind and go very quickly.
And that doesn't seem to be what they actually do.
No, they never quite described trajectory in this.
So you don't know are they going straight out from the center of the solar system?
Are they spiraling out with the planets?
Are they going straight up away from the orbit of the planet?
It doesn't really say other than in one of the very, very later books
where they're back on their way in.
So I'm just not...
Not until it becomes relevant.
I'm just certain tacking into the solar wind is mentioned in a later book.
Now how you would do that?
How you would establish a keel with the solar wind is probably beyond anything that I could explain.
Yeah, I don't know.
I just didn't know if anybody else had any thoughts on it.
What he's trying to do is compare space travel to the old scooters of old and a pretty good job.
But I mean, we don't have the...
He doesn't have the tent. We don't have the tent to explain how it's done.
No, and I'm not saying that it ruins the story in any way.
You know, I'm just pointing out what I felt like was an inconsistency in it.
It kind of stops me and makes me wonder.
But not to the point where I'm like punching out, you know.
I have a feeling if we ask Nathan, he could explain it.
That just for some detail does everything else is.
I feel like he probably has an explanation.
You may be right.
All through the series, you know, we have things like, you know, except for the military, there are no firearms available.
Because, you know, well, you're going through TSA every time you go to the planet, you know, you get a blade through.
Because that's a tool for a sailor.
But there's, you know, there's no ray guns or anything.
You get the idea, maybe the military has that.
But maybe the police or whatever, but it's beyond anything that most civilians could do.
So all the violence through the series has either been people getting beat up or cut with a knife.
Space TSA is like the most depressing thought I've had all day.
Thanks, guys.
Yeah, because space TSA, they are, they're only pick people from the no, no fly list.
I'm sorry, brought Fox News into it again, you know.
I just, just vice in one show, you've brought Fox into it.
All right.
So this reminds me of something I was thinking of that I wanted to make sure I brought up.
And I wouldn't have otherwise.
One of the things about this book that I don't know how to put it.
I'd like to say relatable, but it's, it isn't.
It's the opposite of relatable. It's the way that I wish things were.
He gets on the ship.
And everyone on the ship is conscious of the fact that they're all on the same mission, regardless of their departments.
And it's been my experience in any workplace I've ever been in.
That departments, even for the same company, even when the overall goal is the same,
departments always seem to be competing with one another.
And throughout this series, and even in this book, people seem to be really open to the idea of,
oh, well, you know, if you pass this test and you get these qualifications and you're a good person,
we can move you on to this department where you can help the ship even more.
Which is the right attitude.
And I can relate to that part of it.
But in my experience, in the real world, in any workplace departments are like, no, we got a good person.
We are hanging on to them tooth and nail because it's so hard to find good people.
And we've invested time to train this person, et cetera, et cetera.
That's one thing I wish was more prevalent in the workplace and in the real world.
It seems to me that Nathan May has insights somehow into the Naval Mariners life.
As far as this book series has married that, even to the fact that, well,
there was a side pit couldn't pass a written test.
But, you know, with this potential supervisor going around and pointing out how do you fix that?
How do you fix that?
You know, he easily breezed through an oral test and showing the book and the story goes back to how far you'd have to go back to Salem days.
But all well and the old days, you know, you couldn't have a written test because your sailors couldn't read and write.
Now, I think I should think by the time we got into space that, you know, the average person could actually read and write.
But apparently this is some tradition is persisted throughout the centuries that you could perform an oral exam and do somebody or rating.
Being able to read and write, though, doesn't mean you're able to take tests.
No, I was not saying that.
I mean, I'm pretty good at test too, but there's people who aren't.
Well, I'm specifically thinking about the IT world where certifications kind of run wild.
There are, you know, some people who can read a brain dump, take a test, get a certification.
And so they just get stacks and stacks of certifications, but if you actually ask them to do the work, they're, you know, camped.
And then there are some people who can do the work, but could never get the certification for it because they're, you know, bad at test taking.
And then people in the middle who can do both.
Oh, yeah, I'm certain that there's people who could pass the test, but they could certainly do the job.
Yeah, that's the counterworms. I don't even want to open.
I was going to say I'm not sure what to say about that and I really can't speak to that because I don't even know if.
I don't know if, if taking an oral test is a tradition that's followed today.
So I don't know if, you know, assuming that it carries into the future is even the right assumption.
It may be just something that they, they re-instated, but I don't know anything about maritime traditions.
I think it might be with all the differences between language barriers and stuff like that.
I wouldn't be surprised.
The one thing they did bring in is Ishmael crossing the global equator and having to eat the cherry out of the naval of the supervisor.
Don't think that's in this book.
Well, because the only supervisor he has in this book is cookie.
And that would be scary.
No, that's kind of what 50s talk and about.
They, they do like the first time you cross the equator on a sailing vessel or not even doesn't have to be sailing vessel even modern day.
The first time you cross the equator, there's a.
Yeah, this is the shell carry and civilian.
Yeah, there's kind of a hazing that goes on and it doesn't always have to do with cherries and navels.
There's been other stuff I've heard of that people are told me about.
It's just usually you have to do crazy stuff, but you know, it's a hazing like any other hazing.
Yeah, it's something to do with Neptune always.
I'm from the Midwest. We have land.
I don't know anything about maritime traditions.
I'm from the Midwest, but now I can drive like the half hour and be at the ocean.
Not even half hour.
You pour peg walls, listen and go, what is this ocean you people keep talking about?
I mean, I work where they build ships.
So if peg wall drips in the ocean, can we hold them down?
You're in Kansas, man. Be my guest.
If you can reach him, it's all up to you.
It's all you.
I don't know. It sounds like a bunch of us are going to meet Ohio this year.
So if we can get ocean to Ohio, we might be able to make this work.
This is what I was this was talking about.
There is talk about some of the guys from
Linux lug cast kid dabbing peg wall and drag him to all of that.
And if they're going to do that, definitely I'm going to be there.
How many ounces of sea water can you bring on a plane now?
Like four.
I might be the one going to get him.
So if you could FedExinter UPS it to me.
I don't think there's any limit in the car.
So put it put in the spray bottle.
You can get him with it.
So wait, I could FedEx you like two liter bottle of ocean water.
If it means I get to baptize peg wall, sure.
Can you get 330 at the same time?
I mean, you know, get some aerosol cans.
You don't have to deal with all the kung fu stuff.
You're a Buddhist Baptist touch. That's that's shocking.
That's the one thing like I 330 was gone by the time I got here.
But it's like me and 330 are the same on so many levels.
We both do kung fu.
We're both Buddhist.
I feel like he left to make room for me.
I don't know what happened, but that's I don't feel.
There's only there's only room for one Buddhist kung fu do kung fu practicing Linux user in that area.
There can be only one.
There is no spoon.
Yeah, but the difference between you guys is while you may read for Chan, he posts.
Ooh, that's quite an indictment, sir.
And now I need to go sanitize my brain again.
All right.
So I said before, if you guys can guarantee me peg wall at OLF, I'm coming.
If you can, you know, if you can come, you guarantee me peg wall and 330, I may even pay you.
I say the rest of us just aren't good enough for you to show up 50.
I get that, but come on, man.
You know, no, no, I want to hang out with everybody.
It's just like, oh, I should not style myself this way, but you guys have seen 330 and and.
It's like that is almost like that first year at OCP live.
I was like the third, third member of the people hang out.
I'm not nearly as crazy as any of those guys.
So I don't know why, but.
I think I've said about all I can think to say about this audio book, except that.
If anyone hasn't listened to the audio book and they're still listening to this.
I will say absolutely go listen to it.
I recommend that 100%.
I listened to the entirety of it in a day.
And it's just it's unbelievably good.
Oh, and by the way, one thing I didn't mention is and you don't get a lot of it.
But there are lights in this book that are extraordinarily emotional.
Did anybody else kind of have to like choke back a couple of times where you know it's just something really.
You know a spectacular character showed through and that kind of thing.
Anybody else get that or is that just me because I'm getting old?
No, I'm right there with you and it keeps happening in all the books.
That's one of the reasons I like it a bunch.
Okay, good because I did get choked up a little bit a couple of times even.
Like when he says, oh, the captain asked him what are you going to name the co-op?
And he names it.
Oh, the, you know, mercantile exchange after the grandmother's name same thing.
Of course, we'll name it that.
I got a little choked up there.
There's several points throughout where I got a little choked up.
Maybe like I said, maybe it's just because I'm old.
But I'd like to think it's because the book is just that well written.
I'm going to go with.
Yeah, what was the, what was the, uh, they're treating the lowest from a kid or a person and all that kind of stuff.
What that was is the idea that whatever the ship is named after person or whatever is kind of considered the ship's spirit guide.
And one of the births on the ship, a full share birth carries that name.
And then they can use that birth, the, the profits that birth gets that that births mass allotment to do things for the crew.
The captain gets to this is, this is one of the privileges of being captain and they are not the, not the share or the money that the birth would get.
They said there is no, no financial kitty paid by the ship.
There, there happened to have been a budget in this book for specifically what they were using it for.
But I think that's because they seeded it.
Um, but yeah, it's for the, it's at the captain's use and the captain's discretion to do this.
Wait, the, it only got the mass allotment for a full share, not the pay.
Yeah, yes, there are no, no wages, no share payment, none of that.
Okay, I may have passed over that part.
There, there does appear to be some type of account or accounting that, that can be done.
Um, but it isn't like, it isn't like this birth is just sitting there collecting money and there's this huge fund over time when these things go unused.
It's just, it doesn't seem to be that way.
Uh, you know, if it was specifically in some of the later books, some of those captains would have taken advantage of it for, for less than altruistic purposes for sure.
Now, Punky, did you ever try to get a hold of the whole for this episode or not?
No, I didn't.
I didn't. I would have, uh, I would have been almost embarrassed, uh, to have him here while I gushed over his book in this.
I mean, I know, you know, I've, I've gushed over books with authors around before, but, um, I didn't be a whole nother level in this case.
And I, I don't know if I could have done that to myself or to him.
That was when we did, um, the Cory Dock draw book.
That was what I was concerned about is just fanboying so hard. It was kind of sad and pathetic.
And to an extent, I think we all did that with, uh, lost in Bronx's book.
I think the way we did it.
Of course, but this is great book.
Uh, but yeah, I, I concur with your decision, Punky, but, uh,
uh, get naced all at some time.
I think, you know, I think it'd be worthwhile.
I agree with what Todd was about to say.
Thanks for it.
Yeah, it's like, I think the way we did it with lost in Bronx was probably the perfect way.
Um, do it.
They haven't really heard it yet.
So we could say whatever we kind of want.
And we feel good and they feel good because they don't know what's happened.
And then hopefully on the other side, we'll find out when it airs if lost in Bronx is still friends with this.
Well, I also still enjoyed the episode we did with, uh, uh, city of masks where the authors showed up.
And we still a lot of fun because all of these, well, what did they really mean?
We could get right from the worst of mouth to use a phrase.
I totally agree.
Uh, at the same time, I don't think the, uh, Christiana Ellis episode would have gone.
Exactly the same if she weren't there.
Now I would have been the same because I loved it.
I got to work, but I get the impression that other people maybe held back a little who didn't like it as much as I did.
That reminds me of something else that I found interesting.
Did you notice in the later books in the series, there were a couple of.
Ships characters named after prominent people in the whole podio books community.
Oh, yeah, of course, that's fantastic, isn't it? That's, that's excellent.
Oh, I thought so too. I just, it was like, wait a minute, I know that name.
Yeah, yeah, there is it. Yes, you're right. There is a ship named the Christiana Ellis.
And then there was a crew member named after somebody else in the community.
Well, I don't know if I knew that or not. I don't know if I knew it and forgot it or didn't know it at all.
I don't remember who now. I should have written it down.
Now I wonder now I have to wonder. I really have to wonder because I bet it it's probably someone like was it.
It wasn't Scott Siggler. I would remember that it was the female name.
Oh, okay, then maybe I don't remember that because the only other person I could think of.
That it might be would be maybe Phil Rossi, but I don't think it was.
Alright, so I think I'm all out on this one. Anybody else get anything or should we figure out who's on the hook for our next book?
Well, let's wrap it up.
And I've got one if nobody else does.
Who's that? Do we know whose turn it is?
Well, I think this one, so it's not me.
I think I am. Do we ever take turns?
Theoretically, I think I am the least recent of the group to pick.
If somebody else has a pick, I will be happy to hold off because this is just one I enjoy it.
Not one I have specific attachment to.
I don't have a specific pick, but I did just think of one.
Well, I, and I'm sure be a good pick.
You know, when I, when I couldn't get the one we had for a claw too, I looked up.
Other books by Seth Kiddler and I key month of private property, but it's not so much a book is about a statement.
I think of values and such.
So if somebody else has somebody, something else they would like to suggest, I will stand in the way.
Well, I've got one I just pasted into the chat that I found really unusual and interesting and I would like the opportunity to listen to it again.
Oh, I have not heard this. I did not even know that this existed.
But when I see that author's name, I get kind of a little academic chub.
So it's weird and fun and the rest I'm going to say for a month from now.
I knew that when I saw the author's name, I knew both of those things already.
So are we sold? Can I say it?
This is the terrible business of salmon and dusk by Mike Bartlett.
And as I said, it's weird and awesome and weird again.
Yeah, Mike Bartlett is definitely out there and he's a, I've listened to a bunch of his audio books.
I liked them all, even the ones I didn't like.
I really liked and yes, he's hard to track.
His books are really hard to follow sometimes because you, just when you think you know what's going on, it gets weirder.
And I'm not sure that all of them are completely plot driven or if they're allegory or if they're just this author's hallucinations.
And that seems to be typical of almost all of his writing.
The only book he's ever written that I could truly follow the plot and not think of it as some type of allegory or weird statement might be underwood and flinch, which is an excellent, excellent audio book.
But it's super long. It would be like, wait, that's Mike Bartlett too.
Yeah, that was fantastic too.
Oh, yeah, it was, but that would be like, it would take us three months. It's such a long audio book.
That's three months worth of listening compared to our typical books. That's super long.
Yeah, I feel like that book, though the one I read, listen to was actually a double.
It was the first and second book in the series.
But I think that one book was as long as this entire series.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I can believe that.
And as good in completely different ways.
But yeah, he's totally fun and weird.
I guess this is the long way of the short way of saying what I just spent a long time saying is that I totally agree with you.
This sounds awesome.
The first time I listened to this, I think I missed a chapter or two where they came out of order because I was very confused.
And then I realized they were out of order. So I can't wait to listen to this again in order correctly.
So that'll be July 14th. Is that right?
Yes, July 14th would be the second Tuesday and July 8 p.m. Eastern time as is our usual.
You know, I'm looking at this and I think I have listened to this one because the names all seem familiar and unless they're in multiple books.
I think I have listened to this one and it's I'm absolutely willing to listen again if that says anything.
Well, I will be another year older by then and hopefully have some birthday beer.
I hope you get the same birthday present I got this year.
Yeah, that if your motorcycle we should birthday present that's not going to happen.
It was. Yeah, it was my wife said that motorcycles birthday, father's day and probably Christmas all rolled into one, which is perfectly acceptable.
Now we are taking a trip in the end of July. I'll be back just in time for the August book club.
But we're taking a trip in the end of July to visit my cousins in Kentucky.
So I've told everyone to just give me cash so that I can buy spices and bourbon.
That's all I want. I want to go buy spices and bourbon down in Kentucky.
What kind of spices are growing Kentucky?
Real close to where my cousins live, there's a pensies outlet and pensies is one of the better spice manufacturers.
So it's not that they're grown there is it's just a convenient place to buy them.
And the cousins are going to visit one of them is a cook.
Not professionally, but one of the best cooks that I know and that's saying something.
So I will be like, take me to your spice mecca and give him help me get spices.
Oh, excellent.
Spices here like McCormick is not the other one.
Yeah, McCormick isn't bad, but these just kind of blow it out of the water.
Like forever. I see all these recipes calling for smoked paprika.
And I just put paprika in. I'm like, yeah, there's no difference.
And then I got a jar and then I got a jar of spice packed smoked paprika.
And I'm like, no, not even close. This is so much better.
Yeah, and man, that's the brag. I've been having the
so visual dreams lately, like earlier this morning, I had this one where the earth has been taken over by aliens.
And I was a top, you know, enforcing the alien law.
I was also been surging trying to overthrow the aliens.
This sounds like this sounds like a side effect from too many of those shrub hair is 50.
I think you're right. I think you're exactly right.
That's going to say it sounds like you're taking chantics.
You know, you are not the first person I've heard say that.
What vivid dreams from chantics?
Yes.
Oh, yeah, I've heard people say that they, I mean, like really bad they had to quit taking it.
And I guess the only way to quit taking chantics is to start smoking again.
So it's the only way to get yourself off that pill.
Yeah, that's exactly somebody I knew was trying to quit smoking and tried the chantics for like two nights.
And he's like, nope, I will smoke rather than deal with this crap.
All right, so can we wrap this?
I'm good calling it.
All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening.
Thank everyone who participated.
The audio book club is for everybody. Please join us next month.
It's going to be July 14th, 2015 at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
We're in the hacker public radio room on the mumble server that is.
Oh, shoot.
What does it see?
Anybody got that off the top of their head?
So, Parker, he's not going to mention us by name.
Well, if we can get the server and I got the room, then yeah, I can mention the participants.
Is it ch1.teamspeak.cc, I believe?
Yes, that sounds right.
And yeah, thanks everyone who's been here.
51.50, Taj, X-1101, and I'm Pokey.
Thanks everyone for joining us and have a great month.
You've been listening to hacker public radio at hackerpublicradio.org.
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That looks like it could be interesting.
Yeah, I sold it today and I was like, yes, I will take it.
I haven't seen Daredevil yet, is it good?
Daredevil is fucking awesome.
It is basically, imagine if HBO got a hold of a Marvel property and it's still tied it into the MCU.
It's fantastic.
Oh, HBO does good work.
So this isn't just a rehash of the Ben Aff, Daredevil.
No, they tried very hard to intentionally, I think, in some way steer away from that movie.
Even though I still would argue that there are good things in Ben Aff like Daredevil movie.
There are not many, but there are some.
And they avoid some of them, I think, to a detriment.
But none of those good things are actually Ben Affleck.
He is, by far, not the worst part of that movie.
Seriously?
I must not know Daredevil very well then.
Honestly, the only movie I can remember enjoying Ben Affleck in was Dogma.
I was just about to say Dogma, it's the only movie he hasn't been able to ruin.
Maybe it's just because that movie is so irreverent to begin with.
Let's just hope he doesn't screw up Batman.
I don't think he will.
I think he actually will be little for Batman to do, so it'll be okay.
Is this Batman and Superman or Batman versus Superman?
No, it's Batman V Superman.
It's V because it's supposed to be like a trial, or at least that's the bullshit excuse they gave when they released the title.
Because I'm fairly certain that Comic Land, every time Batman and Superman have gone head to head, Batman wins because he's just smarter.
I just want to know why the fuck didn't call them with the world's finest, like it should have been.
So did you say Batman V as in versus Superman or Batman V as in he's the real one?
No, as in versus. That's the idea.
Okay.
Everything I see about the new DC, we're going to ape Marvel and make a contiguous movie property thing.
Just makes me want to punch things. I'm just like.
Next up on Oh my God, I can't believe I found this on Reddit.
So we didn't commit suicide. He's still around.
Honestly, that could pretty much be a show. Just go to the first page of Reddit and look for ridiculous things to talk about.
To be honest, I'm not sure why that isn't a show.
I would totally get down on that.
There's an infant in that bag at the one of his feet.
He looks so unhappy though.
It's like the whole third right didn't work out for me. I'm just going to run this subway and read my phone.
He looks oddly content though. Like yeah, this is life.
Looks great for his age. Geez. What's he eating?
The souls of the oppressed.
Oh, it's right. There's anything in the bag.
Honestly, for the show we had talked about, that might be a good way to get random inspiration.
It's just all the front page of Reddit. Hey, this looks crazy. Let's talk about that.
I mean, if we're going to go hold a whole hog on this, let's just have 14 of the show.
Just be around the bush. Let's go straight to the worst of the internet.
I am not sure my brain could take that.
Or more importantly, my fate, humanity. It's already so low that I'm pretty sure that that would just be the coffin nail.
Probably, probably.
Wow, wow, wow.
Hey, touch. I guess I'm going to show you.
He is.
Check out that picture.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure it is.
You're a pretty smart fella.
So is that sitting in your driveway? Please say yes.
That's no, no, no.
Mine's in the shed.
I'm very happy for you. And I hate you at the same time.
Thanks, man. I appreciate both of those things.
That's a picture of my bike, but for all intents and purposes, it is because it's identical.
Thanks, man. My wife bought it for me. She surprised me with it.
You should definitely re up with her for another like five-year contract.
That would work out.
Yeah, I'm working on it. Yeah, she found it.
It's a two. She found it on Craigslist. It's a 2009.
And the day we bought it, it had 61 miles on it.
What?
Listen, motorcycles are scary if you've never ridden one before.
And someone bought that bike and scared the shit out of himself.
And put it in his garage and saved it for me until I was ready.
I have won a slightly older.
It is sad and worse and yet funnier.
So up in Augusta, which is state capital, somebody bought a bike,
put like 20 miles on it, and then had a had a wreck and died.
And nobody rode the bike for like 20 years.
And then my best friend's brother bought this bike and fixing it up and riding it for a while.
And they were like, dude, you're not going to ride the death bike.
You are not going to ride the death bike.
And then he sold it and bought a new one.
That's good for him. He shouldn't ride the death.
I thought that was going to end with he turned into ghost riders.
He's not going to have to be ghost rider.
Now he avenges everyone who's ever been bullied on a scooter.
So just in case it makes it into the post show because pictures don't translate,
this is Suzuki Gladius SFV650.
And it means a lot to my wife and I because I used to have an SV650,
Suzuki SV650.
And this is the pretty much the next generation.
I don't know why they changed the name. They gave it a stupid name and that's really sad.
But they fixed every complaint I ever had about that bike.
And I didn't have many.
And the complaints that I did have weren't very serious.
I just thought of like minor improvements and they pretty much made all of them with this bike.
And it's fantastic.
They made the flywheel a little bit heavier.
So it tools along in first gear a little bit more calmly,
which the SV didn't really do.
They tweaked the fuel injection.
They gave it a 0-2 sensor.
So it goes into closed loop mode.
They stretch the wheelbase a little bit, which I think makes it a little more stable.
But the SV was plenty stable.
But it still steers nice and quick.
Actually, it's like it steers even quicker because I'm on lower on this one.
The seat is much lower, which I always loved the high seat.
But I was the only one who ever did because I have long legs.
But yeah, they fixed every and I just love the bike.
There's a lot of plastic on it.
It's got a beautiful steel tube trellis frame that wraps around the engine.
And I wish they didn't have so much plastic covering that up.
And they've got all the white that you see on that bike is plastic.
And it's just beautiful.
It's blue and white.
And my wife and I love it.
When we met, I had the SV.
And we went on a couple rides on that together before somebody crashed it for me.
We haven't really written since.
I bought one more motorcycle in the interim.
But we sold it pretty quickly because it was terrible.
Neither of us liked it.
I didn't like riding that neither to cheese.
So we sold it.
We just afford one for a long time.
And she started saving out and she's been saving for a while.
And I came home one night and she said, hey, surprise.
We have to go pick up a motorcycle this Saturday.
And she told me all about it.
And it was Monday.
And I said, nope.
For that price with that low miles on it will not be their Saturday.
So we went down to Dorchester, Massachusetts in the rain.
And I got on that bike and wrote it 100 and my 100 and I don't know about 110.
Well, how much was it?
60, 40.
About 100 and B miles.
I wrote it in the rain pouring, pouring, freezing rain.
I was shivering so bad.
I had a lot of water out of my boots and it's really the first time I've written in 10 years.
And we made it home and I've been riding it just a little bit here and there.
And it needs a little bit of work because sitting around will actually age some pieces.
I needed a new battery and there's a recall need the regulator.
So you did need to do battery to then?
I did put a new battery in it.
Yes.
And it probably didn't get except that the regulator died on us while we were out on the road.
And I mistook that for the battery because I turned the bike off and went to start it again.
It would not restart.
So we jumped on it and I rode to a motorcycle shop and we bought a battery.
And then as we were coming home, we were far away from home.
We did about 106 miles that day, which is a lot because we haven't written a while.
I used to do 300 mile days was a short day.
We do maybe 500 miles in a day.
Me and my riding buddy, but 150 miles and you haven't written in 10 years a lot.
So we were kind of far from home.
We put the new battery in it and we got home and just as I put on my blinker to turn onto my street,
the thing just completely died.
It had had no charge whatsoever and had to shut up the street to my house, which was good.
If it didn't die, I might not have known that that stator was bad.
The God, excuse me, is regulator.
I might not have known it was bad.
I might have written it somewhere real far away.
And it was good that it didn't die far from home.
So we got really, really lucky and it probably needed a battery anyway.
So I'm not not real unhappy about that.
That and it will for whatever reason probably because it had old fuel in it.
The O2 sensor needs to be replaced and covering that in a warranty.
Even those only a few hundred miles on the bike now because it's it's so old.
The state is a recar keeps saying state or it's a regulator regulator and rectifier.
It's they're replacing that because it's a recall.
It's cool that it was the newer version and it actually was better.
I find that anytime I buy the newer version or something, it's always worse.
They did that first time.
The first SV was virtually perfect.
And the second SV, they changed the design of it like from the ground up.
They completely redesigned the bike.
They used the same wheels and brakes and suspension, but the whole frame was different.
The subframe was different. The swing arm was different.
Assigning you name it.
They fuel injected it.
The original one was was carburated and a lot of things got better and a lot of things didn't.
And it was very it was almost the same bike and it had the same kind of power band.
So you'll often see multiple generations of SVs riding together because the engine's the same and the bike handles the same.
Even though they feel different.
But it was just, yeah, and I loved it.
Even though it was uglier than the first one and it didn't idle.
Well, like roll along at an idle didn't do that as well as the first one.
And it was taller and a lot of people found that uncomfortable.
I thought it was comfortable.
I loved the riding position on that one.
But this one's just beautiful now.
It's so much better looking than my other one, I think.
But I can't ride it until I get a new regulator.
Always sucks to have a toy.
You can't play with it.
Oh, I play with it. Don't let me.
Don't don't think I have any change the oil Saturday morning.
I cleaned up the shed to make room for it.
That's what I did Sunday.
I took everything out of my shed and rearranged it and hung stuff up so I could put this in there and have it nice and safe.
And now we know why your wife bought it for real.
Yeah, right.
Now she needs to buy something for my basement so I can get that cleaned out.
I still need to flush the brake fluid, secure old brake fluid, even though it hasn't written.
It's just it's really spongy and I don't like it.
Man, I can't believe it's that there that long and actually ran as well as it did to get you back home.
That's crazy.
Yeah, I got to believe that the only reason I made it home was because of the rain.
Because if that regulator heats up, that's when it begins to fail.
It just shorts out.
So it drains all the power coming off the alternator or generator on the motorcycle.
Just drains all the power out of the generator and doesn't recharge the battery and eventually just fails.
Which is what it did twice on Saturday.
And I think the rain keeping everything cool is the only reason I made it home.
What's up 50?
I want to apologize for my tardiness.
No worries, we're just talking about superheroes and motorcycles.
No different than normal tardiness.
Oh, did you get my email the other day, Pocky?
I don't believe I did.
Okay, well, I just got into the last published book review.
Went out on HPR and was on the hot Tuesday's book.
And I remember the time and everybody had so much trouble.
I thought you'd done something like finally put set up an RSS feed nurse to a different server.
I was wondering if you still had that around.
I don't remember seeing that email and I don't remember what I did.
I don't, geez, I don't remember what I did to get that to open correctly.
I'm the one who set up a separate RSS, but it was just on my local stuff here.
It's like clutches just been having trouble with feeds a generally late.
It seems like everything he does is as problem.
I don't know why.
Well, that looks hosted on a third party server.
I would say it's probably their fault.
I made a couple of attempts to download the whole archive.
I think I had about three usable files each time.
That's basically what Pocky ended up doing just a bunch of times until he got all of them.
50, if you need the files or you want them, let me know.
I can put them on my own cloud and then just give you a log in so you can get them and give it.
Yeah, thanks.
I'd appreciate that.
I would like to actually listen to the book before I listen to the second half of the podcast.
I was just, I was going to listen all the way through and I just cut back to the house when you guys were finishing up the beverage review.
And I figured, well, that's serendipity.
What did you think of my editing job so far?
Did I do okay?
Yeah, I thought so.
Okay.
And I need to do one.
It probably won't be too after harvest now, but I, you know, I need to do what I promised and get one in.
I'm also planning on going through and doing a couple of them in another month and a half.
My wife and daughter are going to be gone for two weeks and I'm going to have the house to myself.
And I'm going to go absolutely crazy and edit audiobooks.
Yeah, Mark, which ones you're doing because tomorrow is my last day at work for six weeks.
So I'm planning on going on an editing spree.
I see you've got two of them tagged to do their Taj and then I'll, as I start, I'm all Mark him.
Well, Taj, if you get to them all before we do, that's probably easier.
You let us know by email as you get each one done.
We've got a page up somewhere here 50.
Give me a second and I'll pull the link up.
I've got that page somewhere that they're all, they're all hosted on them.
That right there is where we've got kind of the ones that we've recorded and haven't edited yet.
Okay.
I spent part of the configuring at least a new to me at top that are that came in the mail yesterday.
This one that I was given after the fire.
If you can close and open the lid and the internal LCD will stay up for about three minutes and then it goes dark again.
So, but I did.
It shouldn't be too hard to fix.
I found out I could get the whole lead unit off the bay for about 30 bucks.
So I've got one of those coming, but I've really missed my Panasonic Toughbook.
I lost in the fire.
So, I got a CFDX C1 i5.
Pretty small laptop off of Ebay the other day and it came yesterday.
So, I've got men up and running on it this morning.
I was, I was going to leave a dual boot, but this is something I'm going to probably cover in a little bit of glove cast.
At least to give me something to talk about.
Used to be JKD frag was pretty good.
It was real good about this something I talked about years ago that I learned that you turn swap off.
So, that gets rid of all the swap files.
And then you run it through a third party D frag or like JKD frag and that puts all the wind stuff up at the beginning.
And then you can resize the wind's partition and make it pretty small.
Roughly a core for windows.
And, you know, leave enough room to re-enable the swap and for any expansion in the future and whatever.
And I ran it through four different D frags, you know, windows D fraggers that were recommended by life hacker and all of them.
None of this stuff was at the beginning of the partition.
It left all the system stuff right in the middle.
And I think all the data right at the end.
So, finally, I used Magic Jelly Bean key find to pull the key off for windows in case it's different than the one stamped on the bottom of the computer.
And save that over the network to the other computer.
And then just wipe the drive, which would be the best thing anyway, because only 250 gig and start over with man.
I always fear if I need windows, maybe I can install it to a flash drive or something.
That's pretty cool.
And then I had a custom machines I really wanted to get back today and I thought, well, let's make sure windows update is up today.
On the one must be something to do with update Tuesday.
The one which the whole problem with it was it acted like it had malware running up, because, you know, everything's incredibly slow.
And what turned out to be just a broken update.
Fortunately, I left windows update running long enough and it fits itself.
I thought, well, I didn't get back, you know, I wanted to grab the software that.
Oh, foolish IT software prevent doesn't necessarily prevent the encryption malware from getting on your computer,
but it does some like social engineers things to keep the user from doing things.
So, I mean, it's not like for the software, but it keeps you from doing things like.
Clicking on a link in an email that being an executable file.
Things crypto block. I got that on there and there's one. It's supposed to actually look for the profiles.
I looked at it again and and and I would suggest for any Windows user, but it's like, it's not free that it only works for about three weeks and then you got to pay 20 bucks.
So I didn't put that on there for.
And that's kind of what they're waiting waiting around for me to get time to do that.
So I thought, well, I'll do updates while I'm here and the one that, you know, successfully completed the update a week ago.
I mean, I shouldn't use in there that long.
I ran up when is update again today and it says, well, I can't update because this is an legitimate version of Windows.
And the week ago was so, but I rebooted it again and it's, well, I don't know, it's sitting there looking like it's trying to update.
At least it's not telling me it's not legitimate Windows any.
And the other one, finally, I got it started, started doing up, running an update. So it should be done by now.
I don't know what the first one if it's kind of learned on that.
Sometimes you kind of let them sit long enough and even though they don't show any progress, all of a sudden it pops up. OK, I'm done.
Take this opportunity to restate how much I so very much hate Windows in every way and their update is just one small part of that.
Though it's huge, it's a huge gripe. It's just one small part of all of the things that I hate about Windows.
I had one I think I've talked about before, maybe on this show that just would not, you know, do Windows update.
And the only thing that she really uses for is playing solitaire.
But, yeah, if it been somebody else's computer with this user, but I was on there like five hours on site.
You know, if she'd actually called me to do this other computer, I fixed it and tried to do as well to do updates and stuff.
And, you know, just would sit there and hang doing Windows update.
And, but if you go into, you know, all these solutions for this update, Microsoft must have, you know, 15 of these fix me.
You know, things where you don't, you know, you click on such a downloads and exe and goes through and then you try up, they know that didn't work.
I mean, and just this plethora of different things, try this, try that.
I've probably ever had that work once I've tried it about six different times. It's only worked once for me.
Oh, yeah, I'm not not a big fan of Microsoft's fix it takes. They hardly ever work right.
But if you look at, if you look into this problem, I mean, it's go here, go, I mean, there, it's never ending Google search.
Do this. Okay, do do this other thing. Now do this. You know, there's not one place to go.
Here's where we fix it. It's just, well, this worked for me. And there's like, you know, and I could, I was just down a rabbit hole that I was never going to get out of.
The interesting thing I found is nobody hates Windows systems as much as Windows admins.
Oh, I mean, look, well, anybody intact, you know, who do we know intact doesn't absolutely hate both Windows and Apple?
Oh, no, no, no, I talk about how much I hate Windows and then I talk to the Windows guys I work with and are like, oh God, that's not even the half of it.
That's not true. One of the heads of our tech department set in lectured me about how Windows is the best operating system and how no web browser will ever be better than Internet Explorer.
Okay, yeah, there is that type to who it's just, oh, Microsoft makes it. I want it.
If this were 2001 and he was coming off a Windows 95, I could buy that argument, but this is 2015. He's really, really dumb. I'm sorry.
I would say what Internet Explorer as far as vulnerabilities is probably better than was five years ago, but for somebody to sit there, you know, if if I managed somebody and they said to me, if a straight face, okay, maybe, maybe they might prefer Windows.
I'd be willing to give them that, but if somebody I employed came to me for straight face and said Internet Explorer, and I guess it's not going to be Internet Explorer anymore, but they said Internet Explorer is the best web browser.
I would say clean out your desk. I've called security. They will be here in five minutes.
Here's the problem. He's a manager. So like he's the one running all the detects in our department. Like he's in charge of all the technicians, which is ridiculous. And his whole argument was like, well, Chrome and Firefox and what runs certain sites, but I will run anything.
And I'm like, yeah, it will because Internet Explorer will run any shit you throw at it because it has no security whatsoever.
I'm like, at least Chrome or something be like, that looks so shady. I'm not going to run it.
Well, the downside of that with Firefox and I experienced this in the last couple of weeks is they made it much more difficult to access sites with self-signed certificates, but I'm like screw you occasionally. I actually need to do that for a legitimate reason.
And I had to go into the about config to turn it off. There wasn't even like a radio button that said, no, no, I really do know what I'm doing. Get the hell out of my way.
And that kind of idiot, pluralizing the Internet by both Mozilla and Google really bothers me.
Well, there is, I ran into this on the new laptop. And I've been getting for, you know, months now every time I run a flash video, but all I've said was this old version of flash.
Yeah, I know there's there's a command line to supposedly bring the flash to date networked a couple times. I did it today on my browser flash GTK for mine. I'm not sure if that necessarily worked or not. I haven't tested it.
Well, I first started cutting the problem four months ago with it telling me that my flash wasn't up to date. There's a separate man to update flash independent from your normal system update.
And that seemed to work a couple of times and that it can't. I'm going to hit a flash site. I have to tell Firefox. Yes, I'm the old insecure version of flash.
But, you know, if you if you hit one of these sites, it says you need to do this install this plugin to, you know, or update your flash and you follow that all the way to Adobe site.
It looks like it, you know, Adobe things you can install the current current version of flash on Linux, but they won't give you just like the dab or the RPM to download it.
Well, we'll do a straight download it throws it throws it through whatever the program is that it would run if you double clicked on a dab rather than doing it the right way from a man line and, you know, it fails every time.
So it's, you know, it's Adobe's problem too. I don't think I don't think they're supposed to have a current version of flash for Linux, but at least just let me download the dab or the RPM.
Yeah, but they don't care about us anymore. They already said they weren't giving us a current versions anymore.
They don't care about us because they're scared of us.
I mean, that's really what it's about.
Well, yeah, I'm not convinced at all that they're like, oh, only people are using windows and Mac because it's like if you look at all these embedded devices, what are they?
Like the Roku. What's it run on Linux? You know, it's everything that runs the software that flash needs is going to be Linux.
So they're still going to support it. They're just not going to use desktop users and somebody's going to be smart enough to backwards engineer.
I mean, it's not that big with the other main. Frankly, if flash would just die a horrible painful death, I would be happy.
Well, I they're trying. They're what they're trying to do is cripple Linux users for at least the, you know, the, the nubes who just want stuff to work and then they go to Linux.
Yeah, all flash doesn't work. We'll go back. I mean, yeah, obviously, it's an, it's intentional, but they're trying to do it where flash is still relevant.
They know they've only got a couple of years of flash being still relevant.
I've, I need flash for some stuff at work and I, I hate it and it's awful, but I don't have a choice.
And on my Linux workstation at work, I can use the official Google Chrome version, not the chromium, but Chrome.
And it's got built in flash player that just works talking about for one of them are security software vendor there.
The application interface. It's over the web, but it's a flash interface and it's slow and painful, but it's unfortunately still better than their HTML 5 interface.
And then for, or VMware with VMware 5.5 and up there really pushing their web interface and both of those are flash based and they both work pretty much out of the box.
And it's for me.
Well, see that's a trouble for anybody works in K 12 education. Most everything is in Java and what's not like testing programs and what's not built in Java's built in flash.
But yeah, I had this trouble today too that I had a Google Chrome download and installed and then I installed mumble and there was a conflict over libraries so to install mumble yet uninstalled Chrome.
See, this is one and like I'm two minds. I love the anarchy self organizing nature of the internet. Like I love that. But like the editorializing thing works because as much as I hate to say when Apple said we're not going to support flash, they killed it.
One company killed flash and you know what? It needed to die. It's terrible. You hear of all the security vulnerabilities and it was time for somebody to do it. They had the cloud to do it so they did it. And it's just like the educational stuff.
I, yeah, a lot of it's Java, a lot of it's flash. A lot of it now, which is ridiculous. I saw a couple of things we were looking at are unity. So it's like they're basing it off of a game engine because it has the export to different things.
So I mean, somebody will step in and take its place. It's just it will take time and there'll be another shitty technology to replace the shitty technology.
Anytime you're doing cross platform with the export button, it's going to be shitty technology just based on if you want something to run on a platform, code it for the platform. It's not that hard.
The interesting analog to this will see who wins. I mentioned it's just because I was revis, revisiting this article was written.
I came across this thing that Delta is trying to hide their information from all of the flight booking sites and especially the ones that are aggregators like kayak.
So I don't understand how that would work. They're trying to hide it from kayak and not from say price line or something.
I don't know how you would even do that. If if all kayak does is call price line and calls all calls all the other and then and then presents that to you.
Why? Why doesn't that reduce their market penetration, not increase it?
I was going to say I would think that I would think they've been shooting would be shooting themselves in the fuck but they don't they don't want to be competitive on pricing.
It's killing them to be competitive for 40 hours. So they're saying, well, you know, if you if you want to fly Delta, you better you better call Delta or Delta's website.
But they're also not competing on anything else. They can't shoot themselves in the foot because that would depressurize the cabin and then they would doubt it.
Actually, I saw this on Fox this afternoon or something and this is just because if I'm in the house and I'm not watching anything else, I flip it over Fox.
It gets me.
But they are something they were talking about with the TSA, you know, everything else is is give the pilots really underpowered scatter guns that would that would not shoot, you know, would not put holes in the aircraft skin to defend the aircraft.
How about we just not put guns and a pressure as can ever. Can we just all as a species agree that that is bad news?
Well, I mean, take out the terrors. Of course, you take out the passengers at the same time, but you know, at least you don't fly in any buildings.
My beverage is calling me. We got to start this book review so I can have some.
Yeah, and on that, of course, of course I've listened to this book before I did not get started on my second time.
So I hit about the first third, but I love this book so I think I can intelligently discuss about any part of it.
It's just maybe getting confused with the second book.
I've mainlined all six in the last four weeks. I'm gonna get all of it confused. I'm pretty sure I'm sitting here looking at the buddy of books pages looking at the chapter like synopsies just to make sure that I don't go past the end of the first book.
It's hard to take it.
Yeah, we both said that.
We started last week and I just I couldn't quite make it through the series.
It's hard for me not to listen to the entire series if I start the one book.
I was gonna call bullshit on that because I know you were like hanging out with me on Google plus like, oh my god, this book is awesome.
I am currently on, if my player level ever load, I'm on episode 26 of Owner's Share and I started last Monday.