Episode: 2462
Title: HPR2462: AudioBookClub-14-Triplanetary-(First-in-the-Lensman-Series)
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2462/hpr2462.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 03:41:56

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This is HBR Episode 2462 entitled for the O-Book Club 14 Trip Laneteries
First in the LN7 series and is part of the series HBR or the O-Book Club
It is hosted by HBR or the O-Book Club and is about 117 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summer is in this episode
The HBR or the O-Book Club discusses Trip Laneteries
First in the LN7 series by EE
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code
HBR15 that's HBR15
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at an honesthost.com
Let's knock them ports.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today again we've got another Hacker Public Radio audio book club
Poké and I am one of the members of this round table
and joining us all today is Taj.
What's good everybody but I think really it's more of a triangular table at this point.
It's a twerkle. No we need one more for a squircle.
All right anyway we also got X1101. What's up dude?
I am coming to you live from the frozen raining mid-coast.
Yeah it is freezing rain tonight. It's going to be ice by the morning.
Tomorrow's going to be a bitch to get to work. Get up early.
Is mid-coast a word? Is that a thing?
Yes. So it's kind of like Kentucky and nobody outside of the areas I've ever heard of that.
I thought the mid-coast was the part of my shirt that sticks out where I wish it wouldn't.
Boom boom.
Damn I just showed just started and I've got three of those from you guys already.
I'm not on a roll.
Taj, this was your book. Why don't you explain to people in cases they've never heard before?
What is the audiobook club and how does it work?
The audiobook club is a gathering of fine individuals who have chosen for the past month to
partake in an audiobook that is freely available. This one came from Librevox.
And we decided to get together on patch Tuesdays of every month that discussed set audiobook.
We do so by the beginning of the episode. We'll be spoiler free commentary on the book.
Then we will all partake in a beverage and review that said beverage for a nice little
animation. And in the end of the book, we will spoil the Everloven, but Jesus out of the book and
tell you why you should or should not have enjoyed it.
Nicely done my friend. Very well. I will add that at the very least we have fine individuals
because all hacker public radio listeners and show hosts are welcome to participate.
But on a really good night, we just get a room full of nerds.
Same plan. Well, I don't know. Not everybody has to be a nerd to be a fine individual.
Just if you step it up another notch, you go from fine individual to nerd. That's the way I see it.
I second that opinion. Fair point.
So our book was Triplanetary by E.E. Air quotes Doc and Air quotes Smith.
And this was pretty cool and pretty historically significant, right?
I think so. Yeah.
Yes, it is.
So Todd, you got a better grasp on this than I do. Why is it historically significant?
This is the first book in a series of books that is called the Lensman series.
It was written kind of, I know this I think was originally written in 38, but then it was kind of
cont in to the Lensman series because it was written before that. And then he went back and
added some to make it part of that series. It's just one of those things is really super
influential to most people who made science fiction that people are age grew up with.
If you read interviews with a lot of people somewhere along the line, they will mention reading
Lensman and being super influenced by it. Star Wars is a big example. DC Comics, the Green
Lantern Core is basically a gigantic ripoff of the Lensman. I know for me, the way I came into it
was Babylon 5. The guy that wrote that J. Michael Stravinsky talks about Lensman, like it's the
Bible. I mean, it's a lot of people have read it. It's just super influential.
I got a lot of Star Trek out of it, not so much Star Wars.
It definitely is space opera, like in the best sense of the word. I read it begrudgingly
because I was like 50 sci-fi, but now I actually have this weird appreciation where I really dig
retro sci-fi mainly from reading this and just really liking it. The only thing I think that
these books suffer from is there are so many things that these books came up with that everybody
else has used and now everybody's like, oh, I've seen that a million times. Well, this is
probably the first place that happened. Yeah, that kept me going through parts of it that
to me, I had that 50 sci-fi feeling and not when I heard the audiobook, but when I read it,
because I had read this on the Kindle a while back before I even knew it was available as an
audiobook. And that kept me going, you know what, this is probably the first time I'd like to see
where, if not where some other stuff came from, because maybe I'm not good enough to pick that out,
but maybe I could recognize something, maybe something would be familiar to me, and it'll feel
like some new sci-fi. And then I'll know that it came from that. It's not so bad in this book,
but the later books, there's a lot of stuff that's just like, oh, people just flat out rip this off,
like hardcore. But isn't that how all of sci-fi works? Does somebody does it? Everybody else thinks
it's cool and rips it off terribly? Things how all of art works? Agreed. I mean, shoot, that's how
technology works. You know, I mean, the first guy that ever does something, you know, he gets
to call himself a scientist, and the second guy who does it, he gets to call himself an engineer,
the third guy who does a thing gets to call himself a technician, you know, and the fourth guy's
just a line operator or a mechanic, you know, I mean, everything's kind of like that.
I mean, I have to make our Star Wars reference for the evening, but I mean, John Williams made a
living ripping off other people's music and making it sound awesome, so I mean, that works.
I have another one in my notes too. I don't get the reference, but that's okay.
It's a music nerd joke. Anybody?
When I was in music school, we used to sit around and listen to John Williams soundtracks and
like set and pick out like little motifs and things and be like, oh, that's from this,
this symphony here. He just, he reuses a lot of other people's ideas. And I mean, he does
brilliantly. I mean, all his music sounds great. That's great for movies and whatnot, but he
definitely borrows a little bit in the sounds like pocket bells rant.
Give it goodby. Give me Danny Elfman any day. Depends on when Danny Elfman.
Now, I don't seem to care. Danny Elfman is Danny Elfman. I'm very happy with Danny Elfman no
matter when it came from even Oingo Boingo. Especially Oingo Boingo. In fact, especially Oingo Boingo
on the Gong show. Well played, Sarah. Well played. I'll just be over here being too
young to get the references. When we're done, Google Oingo Boingo Gong show. And if it touches you,
you then will like everything about Oingo Boingo. And if it doesn't, you will not like anything
about Oingo Boingo. It is absolutely the touchstone for Oingo Boingo. It's, it's their definitive
work. Get off my lawn. I'm an excited boy when it comes to Oingo Boingo. I'm sorry.
So anyway, it's back in this book. Wait, there's a book. Squirrel. Gonna be one of those shows.
In true HPR audio book club fashion. I have notes this time.
All right, he got one that's not a spoiler.
We've kind of covered a lot of it. And a lot of the other ones are spoilers.
But I guess my notes say that the
Star Trek and every other sci-fi ever. I did see a lot of the green lantern in this. And
I watched that movie, The Green Lantern. The one with that guy that kind of looks like Ben Affleck.
Does that work? Well, I don't know. I'm not a Ben Affleck fan. So I would rather see that guy in
all of his roles. I just didn't like Ben Affleck. But anyway, that one and the guy that
spoiler turns yellow at the end of that movie. I could just picture that guy has the villain
and any peek in this. That would be Sinestro for anybody who's watching at home that is screaming
into the movie. Yeah, you're sorry. You're allowed to hate me for not getting or liking the
Green Lantern thing or pretty much any DC comic for that matter. No, if you didn't like the
Green Lantern movie, you're in you're in with all the Green Lantern fans. So you're good.
Oh, right on. Okay. I enjoyed it as a movie. I did not enjoy it as a comic book transition
into a movie. And for reference, I believe his name is Ryan Reynolds.
The guy that looks like Ben Affleck. Yes, head fourth, he shall be known as not Ben Affleck.
What wait, all right, hold on. Why are you guys laughing at me? Is that a stupid thing to say? Am I
making some error here that I don't know about? I don't see the resemblance, but that's completely
okay. I'm just gonna refer to him as not the guy who plays Batman.
Okay, because I don't mind being laughed at. I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I just,
sometimes I like to know why. I hovered a chuckle. So I wanted to chuckle so I pressed the button.
Okay, fair enough. I don't know. I thought that this book was cool, not just for its
historical significance in literature, which it was cool for that.
Dan Carlin is a guy to listen to his podcast and he has said in the past that you can get anybody
interested in history, even though most people hate history, if you get them to look into the
history of the thing that they already like, because everything has history. So, you know,
most people don't like history because it's always political history, but it's not going to people
generally don't like politics. But if someone's a fan of racing, get them to study racing history,
or a fan of cosmetics, study cosmetic history, or in this case a fan of literature,
get them to look a little bit into literary history, and I thought it was good for that.
But it was also good as a window into like the time that it was written and the different
morality and ethics, and in a lot of the similar ones as well, but just the kind of general
outlook on the world that at least this author thought that people would relate to.
I think you have a great point because I would love to sit down and read the pre-Lensmonary
right, because that was done in 38, and I don't remember, I think it was at 45 or 40, it was,
it was post 45, I think when it was rewritten for Lensman, I'm dying to know how much of a change
between that point, because I think there's some things in the book that should have changed,
or if they did change it, I'd love to see how they changed, or if it didn't change it all.
Just thinking for a moment about other sci-fi books and having had rewrites, not that long ago,
I read another classic sci-fi book that I kicked myself for having not read 10 years earlier,
but a stranger in a strange land, and I think I've found an original copy before the rewriting
had to do. Oh, is that digital? Will it be a link?
I'm sorry, no, not a, he did, the original one is the one you can find now.
When he originally published it, they had to cut like a third of the book out,
because the story as it's published now, it was just a little bit a lot over the top for the
sensibilities at the time, and it's publisher made them cut like a third of the book out,
and I think I found one of those is what I mean. When was that written, is that our next audiobook?
I don't know if there's an audiobook at all of it, while we're talking, I will go find out.
Cool, that would be cool if two episodes in a row of the conversation just suggested the audiobook,
rather than us pre-planning it. We have reached emergence.
So, I don't know, I'm going to try to, I think I can touch on this without
getting into spoilers, but I felt like a lot of this book felt kind of muddled and kind of confused,
just because so much of it felt like pre-World War II, and then things were thrown in there that
felt post-World War II, and you could feel at certain points that kind of time-spanded.
Did you notice that, touch? My understanding is that all of that was added for the rewrite.
They're all the stuff before actually all that stuff, basically before World War III was added
after the, when he did the Lensman rewrite, but yeah, there's a definite shift, and really those,
I could, you could totally cut those chapters out, and I'd be okay, except for one, I don't
want to spoil it. We'll get in there when we spoil it. There's a chapter in there that I think
is really good. Oh, we all are, don't cut any of them. I would disagree.
Okay.
I think the core of the story is in the back half, and I think that that was always the story,
but yeah, there's a definite thing, and I think it's interesting, because we could say how
it kind of echoes the time that it was written, but I also think that it is in some ways
insanely predictive of things that are still occurring, that bothered me greatly.
Yeah, for sure, and that's a great point, and you're absolutely right, but maybe I didn't make
my, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make. I didn't, I wasn't referring to the plot line
at all. I just meant that the, like, maybe some of the technologies that he invented for the book,
I just think a lot of them maybe wouldn't have been thought about before World War II, and then
post-World War II, they were so obvious, maybe like he couldn't have avoided using them,
like that kind of thing. I'm interested now, because I'm curious just to which one you're thinking of.
I don't know if I have specifics, though. I don't know, Fission, maybe.
Yeah, they're real big on the nuclear talk, which I mean makes sense for the time. I mean,
it would basically be like to me anytime you have 50 sci-fi, and it talks about nuclear,
it's the same thing as if I go pick up a novel in the store today that sci-fi, and it talks about
using dark matter to like do things like it's just the hot word that nobody actually, we kind of
barely understand that people just use the cell call. Yeah, and when they do that, I always picture like
Captain Nemo from the Disney 20,000 leagues under the sea with the, you know, the, the Fission is
just kind of lighting, illuminating his face. You know, that's what would happen, you know,
just a little light. It'll be okay, everything will be safe. Yeah, already to get the window open,
and you're showing the guy, you know, here's how it's powered, and he opens the little,
the little window when he looks through like that's that's kind of what I picture
in a setting like this book where it's thrown about like like that, because it really is
just the magic of this book. The plot bullet is Fission. Bring it back.
Mantid XX01, go port knocking. No, I was looking for Stranger, and it is not freely available.
Oh, that's too bad. Okay, we'll have to do something else, but we'll worry about that later.
Is it public domain, or is it still copyrighted?
As far as I can tell, it's still copyrighted because when he died in the copyright
relapsed and that his wife renewed it, and that's how they published the
now famous version of the book, the original rendition of it. While I'm glad that happened,
I wish it was in the public domain. No, no disagreement.
Yeah, that's too bad. Yeah, I'm going to have to look in that later, because I've heard it a couple
of times. I've never read it. So I mean, I don't think we ever actually just kind of went around
to said like what were your feelings about it? We've talked about it kind of like, I mean,
I said before we start recording like I like this, and I enjoy listening to it, but my enjoyment
is very much colored by the books after this. I think it's probably for me the weakest in the series.
So I'm kind of lukewarm on it, and I'm interested just like just shotgun approach. How do you
guess feel about it? I really liked it, but I really liked it as a 40s or 50s era space opera
with the guy reading it and the quality of the recording, which I liked, by the way,
and I'll come back to that in a moment, I kind of felt like I was just sitting around the family
radio waiting for this episode to come on for, you know, all of them in a row, but I really enjoyed
listening to it. Yeah, I think, Todd, you probably hit the nail on the head with lukewarm.
It was, it's difficult to frame my opinion squarely around the audio book, having read
the text version first, and recently as well. It was only very recently that I read it.
And when I read it, it felt like required reading, because I had heard a couple of times,
you got to read the lens, been secrecing the world, and it's not for as well known as it is.
It doesn't seem to be all that well known, like I had a hard time finding the lens,
Wikipedia seems to be the only authority on it out there, other than, you know, just
you Google for it, you find conversations. So just to even find the stuff,
was not the easiest thing, or was not as easy as I was expecting it to be. So when I found this,
it's like, okay, this is the first one, I'd like to read the first one. And had I known that it
wasn't the first one, that that was a retroactive change, I might have just skipped it.
So I kind of plotted through it, you know, waiting for it to get to the awesome. And this never
really gets to the awesome, it gets good. And like you said, some of the preamble chapters,
I think one of them in particular is the best one in the book. And I'd like to hear if we're
thinking of the same chapter. But it's, it was good. It was good enough to keep reading.
But I wouldn't call it a page turner, and I wouldn't call the audio book
appointment listening, either. It was not like every like, oh, I can't wait till I finish my
topical podcast so I can get to, you know, my, my, my entertainment here, my, my serial fiction.
It wasn't like that. Like it has been with many of the books we've reviewed, or many of the audio
books we've reviewed, excuse me. Yeah, I agree. Like it is kind of like a very well-known secret, I guess,
that people talk about it all the time. It's very hard to find things about it. I know if you
Google Lensman, like all that really ever comes up as the anime, which it's on YouTube, you
can watch it if you want. It's, it's atrocious. Especially if you've read the books, it's atrocious.
I mean, it's cool. If you just watch it, like, and say, okay, this is just a, you know, 70s anime that,
you know, is spacey and has stuff in it that might be cool. It's, it's all right. It's not great,
but it is not the Lensman from the books. But I, I am typically, I try to avoid Libravox a lot of
the times because I've been burned on a lot of readers. And I tend to find that the audio quality is
not as good as it is at other places, but I thought the audio quality was good. And he did, he did
a pretty good job. I take issue with some of his pronunciations of things, but you know, this
nothing to be, to be too upset about. I, I know if I had not read this before in paper, I,
there's one word that he says that I would have never known what it was if I had not read the book.
If you complain about this guy's reading, I'm going to hit you with a heart and pipe because
he's done so much reading on Libravox. If you, like, click on his name, he's got tons and tons
and tons of books. This guy's just, he's a community guy and he's a giver. And that's awesome.
And yeah, I'll hit you in our R and pipe if you mention it again.
Now he's all, I mean, like, the whole thing is really good. And it's really subtle. That's
what I like. I actually enjoy it. Like it's, I do kind of get that like audio drama vibe,
but without like over the top-ness. Like he kind of does voices, but he doesn't really. It's kind
of like, I'll just change my selection a little bit and that's good enough. And I kind of dig
that. I think it's cool. It's a cool touch. But yeah, the R and thing drove me insane constantly.
Well, that's, that's I think more what I meant about the audio drama was just his, his tone and his
pacing gave me that kind of feel. And I only had one little quirk I found with the audio.
There was one of the back half of the chapters where there was a little
blip or something happened where the recording wasn't smooth, but one in a whole book is
fine. And I fully admit, if I'm going to talk trash about Liebervox without like putting
my own ass on the line and doing some reading for him, but that's not that cool. So I will
wear that. Yeah, no, I said, yeah, no, I hate saying that. Anyway, it was a good reading. It
definitely was the, I did, did not agree with the way he pronounced the word iron. And I didn't
agree with a couple other pronunciations at the time that I can't even think of now. It's only
because iron is, is a central figure. It's almost a character in this book that you notice it
because it gets said a lot. As far as the rest of his reading, I thought it was, it was good.
He, he came very, very close to that old timey radio feel. And I'm not sure if he was going for
that or if it just came natural to him, but I certainly enjoyed it. And as far as the audio
quality, the recording quality was fantastic. The only thing I noticed and it was not the same
thing that X 101 that you noticed. Somewhere along in the middle of the book, I noticed that the,
the recording would go silent or he would stop speaking. And there was noise in that silence.
And it was not always the same noise. It was different stuff. At the end of one episode,
almost sounded like a record needle had gotten to the end of the record. And it was just kind of
popping. And another one there was, it sounded like typing was going on on a, on a mechanical
typewriter almost, it almost sounded like keys hitting the, you know, the keys to hammers hitting
the paper. It was weird. It was so, so faint. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been listening
on an ear, but I wouldn't have noticed it in the car or anything. But I wasn't sure if that was
going on or if he was trying to, you know, do something in there just for fun, but I found it
interesting. Interesting is good. It was a non-seqator, that's for sure, but an interesting one.
Please, like we don't go to non-seqators like every 30 seconds. I'm not complaining. I'm not
complaining at all. It's just something odd that I noticed. Another thing, did anybody else have
any trouble with the download? I didn't. Nope. Okay, I had trouble with the, I downloaded the
zipped version where you get all the files in one, you know, zipped one.zip. And it wouldn't
unzip. It had errors. And I downloaded it and it gave me errors unzipping it. So I, you know,
moved it and tried it again and it gave me errors again. So I deleted it and downloaded it again
and it gave me errors again the second time. And I used it a different downloader each time,
so I don't think it was on my end. And I was just having to use my favorite Firefox plugin,
down them all, and grabbed the individual files with it and they were all fine. But yeah,
that the zip file just was giving me errors. And see, I listened to everything. I listened to the
stuff with, um, as the RSS feed. So I wouldn't have had the same experience at all. I'm pretty sure
I downloaded the zip and it worked fine. So I don't know, mileage may vary. I guess it must be on my end
then. Blame fair point. Oh, I can blame fair point for a lot this month. There's a rabbit hole.
We won't soon come out of my internet was down for over a week. And there were several long
and angry phone calls to fair point who did not handle the situation well at all. Are you talking
Comcast level bad or just bad? I have never had the kinds of problems with Comcast that I have had
with fair point. Now I haven't dealt much with Comcast. It's mostly been if I'm helping someone
who'd spend them because I don't think I've ever had Comcast myself. But no, it was bad. I called up
complaining about an outage. And the first, the very first thing that they did that pissed me off
right from the start, they would not even call it an outage. And, you know, the fact that my
bill is paid and my internet doesn't work, it's out. That's an outage. They would not tell me
when a technician was going to have a look at their system on their end. And until that happened,
they could not tell me when a technician was going to make a if or when a technician was going
to make a site visit out to my house. And to the best of my knowledge, they did not fix it.
It came back up and may or may not have been something I did here. I'm not sure because I did
do something. And it worked the next day. I didn't think it had come back up the night that I
was messing with it. But yeah, they pissed me right off just by not even telling me if or when
a technician would be able to look at it. The only thing they told me was it would be at least
24 to 48 hours before a technician would have a chance to look and tell me whether or not a
technician was coming out to look at it. I'm pretty sure if my internet was off for a week by
the time they got here, I'd have like dreadlocks and be covered in mud and wearing deer skins and
devolved into grunting. I mean, I know that's like a first world thing, but it wouldn't go well.
Yeah, I have an Android phone, but it's real slow and real small hardware. It's not the kind of
thing that I can type out emails on, so a lot of things just didn't get done at my house.
Anyways, that book. That book, man. Sorry. I didn't mean to do that.
Oh, I totally just chucked a grenade and watched it happen. Yeah, you knew my internet. What's
that would we've been talking? And to be fair, at my last job, I dealt enough with fair
point that I'm fairly comfortable making fun of them anytime the opportunity arises.
Hey, me too. Same thing at my last job.
Whew, I'm ready for a drink after that fair point, Grant.
All right, you'll have to excuse me while I go and fetch mine.
Was was there more to say, breeze, boiler? I mean, to force us into our intermission.
Nope, I need a drink too.
No, I think we got it. Okay.
Touch, have you got your drink ready to go? Let me wait. Let me guess. Is it iced tea?
It is not iced tea. Lemonade. It is not lemonade. Oh, let's see. You might have a fancy bottle of
fruit juice. It is not fancy. Holy smokes. I, all right. I struck out. What do you got?
I am boring as always, but, you know, enjoying it. I have a, well, head. It's gone already,
but I had a glass of grapefruit juice. Oh, all right. That's cool.
I haven't heard anybody say that in a long time. Grapefruit juice seems to have
faced out. It's, I don't know, I, every once in a while, I just get a hanker in for it.
And so we were at the store today and I saw it and I was like, hey, that would be nice this evening.
So that's what I picked up. That's because that's your right big bottle of it or like a,
like a big jug of it, like a gallon-ticing or small. It's one of the, it's like a local
like juice place that makes all kinds of juices. I don't know where the fruit comes from because
obviously they don't grow many grape fruits in Indiana. But it just comes in like a gallon,
like no, just pick it up and bring it home. So that's pretty good.
Just thinking about drinking like the grape juice makes me want to put on lip balm.
Wow. Yeah, it's just, it kind of just attacks my lips. It's good stuff. I like grapefruit juice,
but yeah, it's making my lips feel dry and cracked already.
Nothing like that citric acid don't remind you of all those little microscopic cuts.
Yeah, that's exactly right. Do you cut it with anything or just drink it straight?
Straight up. It's the only way to go. Oh, straight up. Oh, so you shake it and strain it.
I just poured out the bottle and put it in the cup.
Well, that's straight. See, one of my nerderies is mixology and they're straight and straight
up are not the same thing. I have been educated. Yeah, everybody thinks that straight
up is straight and it isn't straight is just straight straight up means you shake it with ice
and then you strain the ice out of it. So it cools the drink off and doesn't water it down very much
where straight is not cooled and on ice waters it down. But it's useless to correct anybody
because everybody gets it wrong. I will probably never get it wrong again because I'll have
little space foggy in my brain saying don't that's not right. This is how people become educated.
Well, I spent a lot of time in college competitive drinking and you know, I learned how to
mix some drinks and wanted to do it right. I've got a couple of books on mixing drinks and that
was one of the things that they wanted you to get right before they moved on to the next lesson,
you know. So basically you're telling me that you study more about mixology and college that you
did actually which was the study. Well, yeah, I thought you knew that. I thought it went without saying.
Well done. Well, there's a time and a place for everything and it's called college.
All right, what's your drink X-1-1-1?
Tonight I'm sharing with you all a gift from a good friend of mine. This is Goose Island's
2014 bourbon county brand stout, stout aged in bourbon barrels. Damn. This is 13.8% alcohol by volume,
12 fluid ounces. Holy smokes you're going to make it to the end of the show? 13.8?
Maybe. That's impressive. Did they tell you how old the bourbon barrels are? How many years
did the bourbon flavored them? It doesn't, I don't think. This has developed in the bottle over 5 years.
Okay, that's cool. All right, most importantly, can you taste the bourbon?
Well, let's start with how it smells. It smells almost like a rich chocolate syrup.
You can taste the bourbon and the smoke, but there's a lot of chocolatey stout flavor still.
Dude, I'm getting shivers. I want one of those. What was the you and I, or maybe it was me and Bill,
had one in Boston that was almost this good, that tasted like a bourbon ale that was basically bourbon,
but at 8%. Yeah, I was in on some of that. That was the Kentucky brewery. I think it's
the name of the brewery, Kentucky brewery, bourbon barrel. I think that was the bourbon barrel
ale and later I found in a bottle the bourbon barrel stout, which was awesome. Yeah, this is definitely
a stout, but that's not Kentucky brewery, right? No, this is by Goose Island out of Chicago.
Oh man, it sounds so good. Yeah, and I found the same thing. The bourbon barrel ale was
one of the top two or three beers I've ever had and the bourbon barrel stout blew it out of the water.
Now, my friend who gave this to me said they only sell this one day a year. They sell it on
Black Friday and they sell out because they only make a little bit of it and it sells out.
And he gave me a bottle a week or so ago and I decided to save it to share with you fine folks.
That is a true friend. Keep that guy around. Oh my god, this is so good.
Hi, so jealous. That sounds phenomenal. If I hadn't had that bourbon barrel stout,
I wouldn't have anything to compare it to because nothing really even compared to that as far as
the complexity and the balance and the bourboniness of it. And yeah, that sounds awesome, dude.
Congratulations on scoring one of those. I swear in my head, Kenan, I thought you just said
when you finished that sentence about how good it was that you said I'll be in my bunk.
I might have, I might have.
For all you listening at home that Firefly reference right there,
how that went to the drinking game, bingo thing, whatever you're playing.
All right, time for mine or are you going to share more because I'm listening if you want to.
I'm still there with you.
It's multi and chocolatey and very strong.
It may be just a hair suite for my tastes, but that's mostly how.
Yeah, and I come from drinking, especially for Guest Island, they make an English style IPA
that I was either in the 30s or the 50s on the IBU scale. So I mean, it's bitter and this is
completely the other way. Nice. How is it for carbonation? It's got to be kind of low
carbonation and smooth with the flavor like that. Low carb, very smooth. There's no head at all.
That's pretty good. That's awesome. It looks like I'm staring at a glass of cola
only considerably better. Yeah, I like when a beer won't allow light to pass through it.
Pokey, were you the one who recommended double bag?
Yes, I recommend double bag to everyone ever speak to.
I had it. I enjoyed it.
Yeah, that's that's my go-to beer. I mean, there are definitely like fancier beers, but
not all you can't drink all of them any time of year, any weather, all six of them in the same
night if you're in that kind of a mood, but double bag you can anytime, many plays, it's appropriate.
I mean, long as you don't have to drive because it is a double and it does have a fairly high alcohol
content for beer, but yeah. Well, one day I got five IPAs and that and it was a nice
change of pace in the middle there. That's pretty cool. Yeah, to see that, that's one of the things I
like about it the most is that you can drink several of them without tiring of them and I
I cannot do that with with bitter beers at all. Well, I got a bunch of different ones and that
was a really interesting thing to drink, you know, three or four or five IPAs in a row.
Kind of getting, well, this one's got these notes different than that one and it was it was
interesting and a lot of fun. Oh, yeah, next to an IPA, double bag would would taste pretty
multi. All right, go for it, Poké. What are you, what are you sharing with us tonight?
Okay, I found one that was a really nice pleasant surprise. It's, it's, it's definitely a,
it's a micro brew and it's a micro brew price, but at least it's not a craft beer price and
it's really, really drinkable and it's from a brewery that's that's fast becoming one of my
favorite breweries. Smutty knows brewing company and this one is their winter ale, which unfortunately,
I'm not going to be able to get it all year round, but this one's just really, really nice.
It was really surprised, not really surprised because Smutty knows has been, you know,
everything I've tried from them has been been good, but it was really pleased that how good this
one is. So it's, boy, it's an interesting flavor. I'm going to describe this one. I need another
sip, hold on. So it, it feels kind of thick for an ale, but it's, it's almost a porter of an ale.
It's, it's darker than an ale. It's thicker than your standard ale. I mean, it's, you know,
that's probably pretty standard for a winter ale. It's, it's nice and multi. It's, it's got a real
kind of caramel sweetness to it. Not like a, not a real sugary sweetness and, and you know,
sometimes you get a real sweet beer is almost like a honey sweet, but this isn't. This is more like
a caramel, more like a, like a browned butter kind of taste, which is really smooth and, and soft
feeling in the mouth. And just it feels thick. And it still got some suds to it. It's, it's not like,
you know, towards the, the stouts and the porters, it, it feels more like an ale, but thicker.
And just more substantial. And it's, uh, it's making me really happy.
Seems like we're betting on the house one night in the drink department.
Yeah, it's got a interesting smell to it. I,
boy, I almost want to say it smells like your grandma's attic, but in a good way.
Kind of, kind of dusty and, um, you know, like cardboard boxy, but not that old nasty
dust and, and, you know, cardboard box has been dried out, but just that kind of, kind of,
hey, there's something good coming out of this box, you know, almost like, hey, that's where the,
that's where the Christmas ornaments are. That, that kind of box. Hey, grandma, what's this book called
triple anitary? Oh, that's, that's the book that we're about to spoil, sunny. Okay. I nearly did a
spit take with my stout, and that would have been very upsetting. But I didn't for us.
But I didn't so.
Sorry, bruh. Yeah, I appreciate it. I would have appreciated you trying that hard to get me some.
All right, touch. Best chapter of the book. I love it. I don't know if it's a best chapter of
the book, but it's like the one that, like, I constantly remember, and I can never, it's,
it's the chapter I can never remember what book it's from, but it's from this book,
is the one during World War II, the Siberians, like, where the weapons guys that are, like,
testing stuff. I love that chapter. Like, it's, it has nothing to do with anything else other than
showing how, like, awesome the kinesens are. Um, but I just love it. Like, I could read that all day long.
Yeah, I thought that one's great too. And you said you didn't like the rest of the other ones.
I thought a good close second was the gladiator chapter. I really enjoyed that one.
Of all the history ones, I think that's probably the, the best. Um, because I mean, when it was
rewritten, you know, World War II just happened. So I mean, I guess he was, you know,
World War II was being modern. Um, I, I despise the Atlantis chapter. Yeah. I, I have no idea what's
there. I have no idea why Atlantis is some dukelier civilization that everybody else forgot about.
I mean, I still get it. Yeah, as if there's no such thing as fallout and it doesn't have a half-life.
Oh, it's like, it's science fiction or anything. Oh, wait.
Whopper. Yeah, I'm totally with it. And you're right. And the kinesens thing was awesome. And
I need to ask a question about this because if I didn't just miss it, then somehow something
that I thought was very important got edited out of this book. And having to do with the kinesens and
with the, what the red haired. So in, in the book that I read, I remember very distinctly early on
when the, um, the good super aliens, uh, said they were going to, you know, create these bloodlines,
the ones that they were going to do on Terran and remind me to get back to that. The ones that
were going to do, uh, they would have a male named kinesan in every generation and also, um,
a line that would produce females, uh, occasionally or whatever, but no kinesan would ever
marry a red haired female until, you know, they decided that the, the super being was going to come
from them. And I don't remember hearing that in this book, except much later on, maybe,
oh, I don't know, maybe three quarters of the way through it felt like it was later. And it was
only in passing. It wasn't spelled out clearly like that, like the text version that I read. Unless
I just missed it. I mean, it's extremely important to the later books, um, those two bloodlines.
I don't know if they actually, I don't remember, it's hard for me to like separate what's this book
and what's the other books. Um, it's, I don't know if they explicitly spell it out in this book
that that's what's going on. I mean, they, they'd say that it's a breeding program kind of like
their own little version of eugenics, um, to create these two bloodlines to, to create basically
the second stage linzenman, um, later. So, but I don't know if it was specifically spelled out in
this book, but it may be on the Wikipedia, you might, might have been thinking about that.
No, no, no, it was specifically spelled out in the text version. I remember it thematically.
It's been a long time since I read the text version. How about you X 1101, does any of that ring a bell
to you? Um, it's hard to say I'm also reading through the rest of the series now and it's hard to
again distinguish which was which? Yeah, okay. Yeah, I, I, I mean, maybe it was
something that was, you know, pasted into the version that I read at some point or maybe it was
edited out of this version. It's something in the revisions. It was there on point and isn't now
and I thought it was, when I read the book, it felt so critical that when it wasn't in the audio
version, it felt like a glaring omission to me. So, I don't know. I wonder if Sam Kennisin is in that
bloodline? Uh oh, are you guys still there or did my internet just screw up again?
Nope, I hear you. I hear you. Okay, all right. All right. Um, another question I had for you
guys. Maybe you guys can help me with this because your bolts seem much more well versed in sci-fi than
I am. Why does he call earth? What is it called? Terran? I forget the exact name. What is that
reference? Because I've heard it once or twice before, but I think only in literature and I don't
get why that's done, why he doesn't just say earth. I wonder the same thing.
Uh, Tara is Latin for earth. So I'm assuming like, I know in Star Trek, they call, they call it
with Tara, Tara or Tara a lot of times. Um, I know that in these books, they're, they call it
tell us which tell us, sorry, thank you. That's, that's interesting. I don't know where they came from,
but yeah, they, they call it, they, they have, um, this book has interesting names for like, um,
things like, like the columns, people, salarins, people from our solar system, um, which is kind
of cool because I mean, it's, um, multiple people on multiple different planets. So you stop
thinking of yourself as being from a planet. You start thinking of yourself from the system,
which is kind of interesting. So laryn's was cool. I did like that. I did all being the sun. Um,
and, and I, it was better than earthlings that, you know, the word earthlings, if that was in
this book, it would have been just two 1950s sci-fi. Um, so I definitely prefer Terence to earthlings.
Well, to, to, to Larian's, is that what you said? It wasn't Terence. That was my mistake.
No, no, no, but I've seen Terence instead of earthlings. And I prefer that. It, it, because
your earthlings just feel 50s bad sci-fi. I like humans. No, no, no, humans. You gotta get the
full Ferengi in there. Either one's fine. There has to be some rule of acquisition about bad
Ferengi, um, accents. It doesn't have to be Ferengi. It can be robot, human.
Sorry, the first thing I went to was quirk. Yeah, and I didn't mean to say robot either. I'm
meant to say robot. Robo, what? Hi, robot. Tip of the hat to another podcast. But if you guys have
ever heard the, uh, the onion radio news anytime that guy says, robot, I laugh my ass off the
way he says it is, is, is, is, is sterical to me. I thought they discontinued that because I listened
to that years ago. And then it's like the feed stopped. No, they didn't discontinue making them.
They just discontinued making the feed work. If you go check, you can manually download them.
Well, that sucks. Yes. Yes, it totally defeats the purpose of RSS feeds and podcasts. It's,
it's, they've completely devolved into something that I just can't, you know, find the time to go,
listen to, excuse me, listen to it. And I've got, I've got the onion in my RSS feeds and every now
and then I send something to my wife because it's just too ridiculous not to. But if you use the RSS
feed, you don't, they don't get hits on their ads. So they don't make any money.
Uh, yeah, that's a good point. You're saying this, um, no, I take that back though.
The way that the RSS works is you get headlines, you don't get the full article. So I skim the
headlines, find what I want and then hit the link into the, to their site. Oh, that's, that's
enough. The onion headlines is all I need. I don't need to read the articles.
Can I just rant about how that is the dumbest thing ever? I hate what sites do that. And usually,
no matter how much I like the site, if they start doing that with the, with the RSS feed,
I boot them straight out of my reader. Do what? Just give you the headlines? Yes, I hate that.
I mean, I don't know. I mean, you don't read ours. I do not read ours. And that's why the thing
that I hate is when they span the article across multiple pages and you have to click so that they
get another ad click. Oh, yeah, drives like the five page articles. I do like when they tip you off
going into it. And they say the top five things that you can't live without knowing from now on,
they that you can just skip it that that much. I'm glad they warn you ahead of time.
This is going to be a slideshow with 50 ads all around it.
Sounds like somebody needs ad block.
Well, that's the thing. I do have ad block and it makes it all that much more pointless,
less pointful. It's just entertaining.
Too lazy to set up ad block. Another just not go.
You're too lazy to install a Firefox plugin that blocks all of the ads.
No, because they're like certain places I want to go that like I want them to get red ad revenue
because I like those people and it's like to go in and set up the exceptions for everything.
It's just like I'll just look at them. That's fine.
You just train your brain to do the ad blocking for you.
I'm pretty good at it. You forget I have fair points. It takes more time to load a web page with ads
over fair point. I wonder if you can get them over to this important knocking and get that figured
out for you. Oh man. I'll knock your port, mister. Right back on the topic.
So here's an interesting connection that I saw. I don't know. So first of all, have you
either of you seen new Star Trek? Yes. Yes and no. Red matter.
And it's just as dumb here as it is in Star Trek.
Did you see it? Or am I reaching too far there?
I don't know. Maybe. I could see maybe being. See, but that would require JJ Abrams to actually have
read one's meant, which I'm not sure happened. By the way, total aside, Star Wars trailer.
I feel like I'm the only person in the world that's like,
me. No, you're not good. I just said me when I found out there was a Star Wars trailer when you
said Star Wars trailer. Nicely done. I'm a huge Star Wars fan. And no matter how terrible it is,
it's still going to be shut up and take my money. But that doesn't mean I won't leave the theater
very depressed afterwards. No, see, I'm an Empire Strikes Back fan, but really that's it.
I'm more worried about me going in and actually being good. And that will probably piss me off
more than because I can write it off if it sucks. And you blame Disney. Well, not even Disney.
I can blame JJ Abrams because he screwed up Star Trek already. Here we go. You blame Abrams.
I'm going to blame Disney. All right, fair enough. But it's like, and I'm pissed off about them,
just like jettisoning the EU. But if it's good, then I'm like, damn it. I have to like this now.
I also am very upset about them singing the EU because between me and my sleeping child,
there's a bookshelf. And that bookshelf is packed too high and too deep with the EU.
You know, all that time, there was nothing there, but the EU and all your real fans, you know,
read it and learned it. And then you're just like, yeah, you know, whatever money, we're just
going to throw it out. Well, they were such good stories. They could have had to do no work
script writing, gone to the shelf of EU books. I'm like, hmm, this one made it and been done.
Because every fan of the EU, basically, when they said, hey, let's make episode 7, 8, 9 go,
you better do air to the empire. Just do it. Just make those into movies and you're done.
It'll make tons of money. It'll be great. Which air to the empire? That was the crazy clone of the
Jedi. That's the Toronto trilogy. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, that was amazing.
Right. Imagine that is like an actual trilogy of movies.
But there's not enough force and all the movies are about the Jedi and the force and stuff.
And there's not enough of that.
I think people are, I think people are fed up with the force at this point. And it was cool,
but as soon as they explained it in the midi-chlorian thing, who even wants to hear it anymore?
And the Star Wars universe has so much more going on for it. It's such a rich, you know,
social, political universe that they have so much more room to play in.
But that's just a boring aspect of it. That's the only really interesting thing
that stays continuous throughout the first three movies. Actually, even all six movies,
though, I really don't really consider that the other three. But anyway, yeah, the political
thing is the cool part about those stories. But it's for an American audience, so why would you
include that? And that makes sense that why you would like empire then, because that's the one's
the least space magic and it's all actual action and politics. And it's dark.
Well, yeah. But not dark for dark sake. It's dark to make it feel more real.
And Lucas actually didn't direct that one. That's why it's good.
Last thing on Star Wars, the only good thing that has come from the new canon is
I've been watching that Star Wars robings. No, go away.
The new Star Wars Rebels cartoon. I've been watching that with my kiddo. And I can just tell,
like it was a bunch of dudes that were setting around going, we didn't make a new Star Wars cartoon.
We watched a lot of Firefly and it was really good. So let's just make Firefly and set it in space
and make it for kids. I said it in Star Wars and make it for kids. Firefly was already in space.
I know. But it's interesting, but it's still not worth jessing everything else.
I'll have to, when that comes to Netflix, I'll have to watch it because I've watched a lot of
clone wars, which has been good.
Anyway, it's back at the book. I did have one other Star Wars thing that's on point.
No, David, I said back at the book.
This is, he's going to bring us back.
Yeah, this is book. For some reason, the Iron Extractors made me think of the Death Star.
Yes, I will second that.
How?
It blows up planets.
That's not what they did at all.
I know. It was a bad segue, but I don't know why.
It's in my notes and I remember having a mental connection there.
A lot of the ships are like described as being spherical.
So it kind of makes sense to me.
Yeah, that's true. The supership is spherical.
It made me think of cowboys and aliens.
Yeah, now that you mentioned that, I hadn't thought about that, but yeah.
I haven't seen that, so I have no idea.
Oh my god, it's wrong with you. It's like the greatest movie.
Oh, see, I would have said it's decent.
But for Hollywood, that's an achievement as a decent movie.
Yeah, that's what I mean. It's cowboys and aliens and nothing more.
Well, truth and advertising works sometimes, I guess.
Yeah, yeah. It's, you go into a lot of movies,
you know, expecting one thing, and when it's something, you know, with a title like
cowboys and aliens or, you know, uh, well, I can't even think of any.
Robocop. Robocop. Sure. Yeah, yeah.
You come out of it going.
Well, no, actually, Robocop was pretty good.
But there are some that you come out of it going.
I think you tried to do a little too much with that.
And cowboys and aliens is not that.
They did just enough and it worked.
It was very well balanced.
It was exactly what it, it was advertised as being.
And if you like cowboys and if you like aliens,
that's what you got in, in just the right doses.
I will have to check it out on your recommendation.
It's not, I don't, don't check it out in my first recommendation when I out first,
that it was not the greatest movie ever.
It's just cowboys and aliens, that's all.
I'm totally cool with that.
I mean, if that's, if that's the what's on the 10 and that's what I get, I'm good.
You know, I got the point.
Okay, so I'm going to bring something up from the book.
So this is written in 38.
I went and just looked.
Can we talk about how much like,
how many times like city level destruction happens?
And this book is rewritten like literally right after the first atomic weapons.
And like, I'm wondering if he looked at that and was like,
oh my god, what am I going to do with this?
Or like, like, how did that play into that?
Because it's huge.
Like they literally level like tons of, I mean, they blow up a city.
They're actually the blow up two cities.
Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh.
Sorry.
And then they like,
released biological weapons on one and like entire population.
Like, it's like serious.
People complain about movies where they like blow up cities.
Like these guys were legit.
Like, they were like, we're not playing around.
We're just going to blow things up like by the city.
And then they shake hands and yeah, totally chill afterwards.
Like, yeah, there's one agent say,
oh, you know, they get back to earth and be like,
hey, we signed a treaty.
That's not the most egregious thing.
It's like, dude, you put me in a cage.
You've braided me around.
You polked and prodded me pretty much torturing me.
But you know what?
I kind of, I feel you.
I got, I respect you.
Yeah, the whole time he was, he was, uh, what do they call that syndrome?
Were you sympathized with your stockholders?
Thank you.
Yeah, it's like, he went into it with stock home syndrome.
Well, they describe him as being very, you know,
analytical and detached in most things.
And, you know, while it doesn't excuse the behavior,
if you find another not quite as advanced as you civilization,
that takes some special effort to communicate with,
I can't understand seeing that as a novelty.
We do it to, we do it to apes and stuff.
But he is real chill with like, he's like, yeah, I'm cool with you.
But like, literally a couple of hours or a couple of days before I think, actually,
a couple of days before I just like threw like toxic chemicals into your cities and killed
probably millions of your people.
But, you know, we're still cool.
Yeah, but it wasn't to the dames.
He's, he's across between at 20s gangster and a, uh,
greaser from the, the jets and the sharks and it's, that, that was weird.
How we got to transform when he was with, uh, Cleo.
But him killing all those fishes was completely impersonal.
He was simply trying to get away.
It wasn't like, he hated them, was out to get them,
wanted to kill them.
It was simply his only way to get how to get away.
Yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm just talking about me, like, I'd be pissed.
There would be some malice in it for me.
So I think it would be hard to just separate that, but these professionals.
So maybe, maybe he's good at it.
The other thing that like, it drove me crazy when I, when I read the book the first time,
was Cleo, like, how like, 1940s woman she is and how like, oh, I have to be protected
and all this stuff.
And then at the end of the book, like the last chapter, she's like, I'll throw bombs.
I'll shoot things what you want.
I got you, like, I got you back.
Let's do this, uh, that was, I thought it was interesting.
And it's another thing I wonder if that changed between the two, um,
writings or if that was constantly the thing.
I was okay with that because she was a naive kid.
But by the end of it, you know, she had virtually gone through boot camp.
And she's just the exact right age where you could go through boot camp
and make that kind of a transformation.
I mean, she's going like full on Sarah Connor at the end of this, which is kind of cool.
Ooh, nice Terminator reference.
Have it have one of those in a while.
Do you mean never have to say it just for the reference?
No, I mean it.
Like, she's like, when I was reading it, I kind of read it as like,
you know, I'm done just waiting around.
Like, let's, let's get something done so we can get out of here.
Like, she's, she's fully willing to like play whatever role needs to be
done to get out.
Like, it's not a, to her, like, I think her more is not malice.
Her is just like, what has to happen to make this work?
And I'm down.
So I would understand her being more cold and calculated about it than I would cost again.
Okay, I have one more Star Trek reference to just slip in here.
And that's, did you see Star Trek Voyager?
Yeah, I actually liked Voyager.
And I know a lot of people didn't like that one, but I enjoyed Voyager a lot.
Yes.
I have a lot of nostalgia because it premiered when I was a kid in elementary school,
when I watched it all the way through till it's my watch did real time as it aired.
And so for me, that's the most nostalgic Star Trek from anybody.
This reminds me very much of the whole Captain Proton hollow drama.
The Tom Paris always has gone on.
I agree.
And that also proves that you were very young.
Or it reminds you of this.
Yes, that's more accurate, but seeing as I saw that one first,
this made me think of that, which was probably based on this.
And now I can't tell which way my pointer is going because my brain's broken.
I got a real flash Gordon feel from this whole book.
I never could get the flash Gordon thing out of my head.
And I never even seen flash Gordon.
It just it felt like that the whole time.
One of the things that I have constantly wondered about this.
And it's been it's been in the works.
Oh, often on again for years since I've like found out about this series of books.
How has somebody not picked this up as like a huge franchise and started like just pumping out
movies? I mean, you'd have to change a lot of it because obviously some of the stuff seems
cliche, even though it's kind of like this is where it began. But I mean,
there is so much in these books that you could turn into movies that would be awesome.
I can't believe it's never gotten off the ground.
Well, you said they made an anime out of it.
So maybe someone in that world owns the rights to it.
There are actually up until a couple of years ago, they were working on a Linseman movie.
And actually it was the guy like I said at the beginning,
a JMS the guy that created Babylon 5. He was the writer for it.
And so he was because he's a huge fan.
And so he was writing it and then it fell through.
Like I don't know for whatever reason they decided to not make the movie.
But were they going to have were they going to have not been aflaken it?
That would be awesome.
But I would love to see like this is one of those things that like if you could remake a book.
These would be cool books to remake.
Even if you did do this a movie just to like rewrite them.
The same stories but just like with modern sensibilities.
I think it would be very interesting.
I think people would enjoy them a lot.
Because people enjoy them even with the barrier of it being older and canically shay and kind of
kind of sticky a little bit in some spots.
Just to kind of update it would be cool.
Whoa, 330 reference.
I made a 330 reference and I didn't even realize it.
Yeah, yeah, sticky.
Oh, I didn't realize that was a 330 thing.
That's okay.
It's 330, we'll get it.
It's an audience of one.
It's fine with me.
We'll take it.
I mean, let's be honest, we know that our audience is one anyways.
So you will, you know what?
If it's included in the drinking game and he's the only one that takes a drink,
I'm still happy with it.
So 330, take a drink for the sticky.
I could have formalized the drinking game on the wiki sometime.
Well, you can't just put it on the wiki.
There's got to be some kind of
program that'll print out your card for you.
So it's got to, you got to randomize the card.
Isn't the HBR Audio Book Club drinking game just basically turn on the HBR Audio Book Club?
I thought it was the Audio Book Club bingo.
I didn't, it wasn't a drinking game, right?
It was bingo.
Either one.
We can have drinking bingo.
Yeah, yeah, we could do that.
So what did you guys think about, now this, I'm going to go
to the place that I always find interesting is the politics and the morality of this.
What did you think about when they were talking about
was kind of in the commissioner, is that who he was?
Virgil Sands is the guy that you're thinking of.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so there was that one chapter where they're in his office and he gets the call from the guy
who's, you know, an agent who's found some group of pirates and
he's like, and he was even a martian that he was talking to and he wasn't even a human.
He's like, do you know, do you think, do you think we should let him live and bring him to trial or not?
And the guy's just like, not, he's like, you're right, just kill them all.
And the author, the narrator, you know, so the author did this through the narrator spelled out
in no uncertain terms, his admiration for a man who can wield that kind of power and be above
the law. And like, I just found that disgusting. I really did not like that part.
I didn't like what it said about the author.
I didn't like what it said about that time period in our history.
If he was indeed representing our, the sensibilities of his time,
that it was really, really uncomfortable with that almost as, actually, even more uncomfortable
than I was with the V2 gas and that being used as a, as a common weapon.
And that was not the only example of it.
It was just the most egregious one.
X-1-1-0-1. How far are you into the next book?
Like chapter two.
Virtual Sam's is extremely important to the Lensman series.
So yeah, I'm getting that.
Um, he, the, he's almost like straight up J Edgar Hoover.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm trying not to spoil thanks.
Only without address.
Well, I guess, I mean, as he's portrayed in triplanetary, he's like straight up J Edgar Hoover.
Right, you can tell when the, um, this is hard to talk around.
There are certain criteria that are very important to what, um,
the Ariseans feel are, um, people who are worthy of helping them.
Um, Virtual Sam's meets all those criteria.
That's what they're looking for.
So it's, it's interesting that, yeah, I agree with you.
I think that like him making that call in that office is terrible and horrendous.
But, um, that's what they're looking for.
Yeah, I kind of got that. I mean, they're, they're, I kind of got that they,
they appreciate that quality that a person can wield that kind of power and yet control it.
Um, but the way the writer approached it really seemed more like
he was admirable the man who can wield that kind of power.
Um, there didn't seem to be much emphasis on the control at part, which wouldn't have made it much better.
But it was, um, it stood out for its absence, you know, it was, it was like, you know, it's standing
in the corner, Bueller, Bueller, self-control, self-control. It just, he didn't put a fine point on it,
stuck out. I'd be interested to see like how,
um, how popular these books are outside of America, because these books are very American,
like they are written for American sensibilities. Um, and I mean, it kind of makes sense the time
that like these were written. It was like, rah, rah, rah, America's invincible. We go over, we do
what we got to do, you know, um, so it was a different time. So I could see where that, like,
politically, I, I think people back then may have appreciated that kind of, just in general,
more than we do today. Yeah, it said whole attitudes of, well, we know what's best because,
well, because we're who we are. Marka.
Okay. Thank you for picking that up.
I'm not sure that that's any different, though, than how we as a society act today,
there are still groups that at least act like and get away with being completely above the
now side of the law. They're just a little subtle about that. We call those people assholes.
I ran into that a lot at my previous job. Guys who you just could not explain a situation to,
you know, like you just couldn't talk to them about what's going on in the Middle East because,
oh, dude, bomb them all. Don't worry about those people. You just,
I don't know, it's just not where I come from.
Isn't that how we get all that started in the first place? I'm just saying.
Yeah, well, there's no cure for it, except for more of it, I guess.
Well, violence is like XML. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it.
Usually I use that line in reverse because we're talking about XML, but it works just as well that way.
Yeah, it's truth.
All right, another parallel I got with much more modern fiction is the breeding program in this
and keeping the family lines separate until they were ready for the, you know, the penultimate
families to me was doing. These guys are trying to breed more deep.
Yes, that's essentially exactly what you're trying to do.
I totally missed that and that's funny because usually I think of
Dune as the source of being ripped off, not the destination.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And totally the movie version of Dune, screw that book version.
You have a check.
You will repent for your sense there.
Actually, I really dig the David Lynch movie. I think it's awesome. It's just not the books.
But I will sit and watch the Dune movie anytime it's on TV. It's awesome.
It has staying a petrature hair. I mean, it's awesome.
I have seen it so many times because I cannot turn it off if it's on.
And like my brother and I were raised, we raised each other on that movie.
And I never read the books as a kid. So I only got the movie. And it's fantastic. And if you ask
anyone who ever didn't read the book, what they thought of the movie,
typically they like the movie if they can get over like the gross parts and the weird parts.
And isn't that the whole movie? Yes.
That's what makes it awesome.
See, I read the books and saw the 2000 movie. I think I saw the 1985 movie once and couldn't stand it.
Wow. I like the miniseries. It's good.
Yeah, but if you read the books first and especially if you read the books and then saw
the miniseries first, you wouldn't like it. However, if they had named it something else,
if they had named it a racus, or if they changed all the proper nouns to something else,
I bet you would have liked it. Except you would have said, hey, this is totally ripping off certain
parts of doing. Yes. But I say the same thing about a certain set of albums by a certain band.
Well, this is a great album. It's just not great as compared to the rest of the things that they've done.
I'm thinking about it. I think the first Blu-ray I ever bought was the David Lynch student movie.
Because I thought it would be awesome to see that in the high-deaf.
But if it was recorded in low-deaf and then you watch it in high-deaf, what happens there?
I believe it was re-done. It looks really good. There was some kind of jiggly-puggerated one on
the make it look good. Well, if it's on film, film is essentially high-deaf anyway. It's only ever
the conversion to video or to some digital format that brought it down to, you know,
brought the resolution down if they if they did it from the source film if they have it. No,
that's going to be high-deaf anyways, isn't it? Yes. I think actually the film goes past high-deaf.
I think it actually you can get a lot higher resolution if you want it.
Speaking of film, did you guys hear that they're filming the next James Bond movie on film?
Again, they're going away from digital. Yeah, well, that's because Sony taught them that it's
much easier to get all your movies stolen if they're undigital. Man, that's like the third
Sony jab this time. This is awesome. And that means we're showing restraint.
It's also the third really tremendous Sony break-in over just dumb security moves that I can
remember in the past 10 years or so. And okay, I have to rant a moment about Sony.
This is something that's really kind of stupid. Before you do, were you referring to the kinks
because Beverly, Beverly, no, and I Beverly, Muswell Hill Bill East was an awesome album. I
have to totally disagree with you if you're talking about the kinks. No, I was talking about the
new stuff from Metallica. Oh, hey Metallica. Sorry, carry on. Well, I'm sorry for you.
Where was I going? Rant against Sony. Yes, mildly technical rant. I'm a PlayStation 3 owner.
I use it primarily to watch Netflix, but I do also play some video games on it. The dumbest idea
ever is for them to use my sign-in to their network as the keychain for my sign-in to all the other
services I sign up for. Because when their network's down, that means I can't sign into anything.
Yeah, that's pretty dumb. I just won't forgive them for owning Spider-Man.
It's the worst idea in the history of really bad Sony ideas.
Well, wait, isn't that exactly what Google does?
But Google rarely goes down. Sony obviously has issues in that area.
Well, sure, you're complaining about the network model, not the uptime model. I mean,
yes, Google has six nines and Sony has three. So that's the part that sounds like what you're
upset about. But I guess when I go to a site and I sign in with Google, I've made that choice.
The only time I made a choice with the PlayStation was owning the PlayStation.
I've put in my credentials for other things, for Netflix, for YouTube, for Hulu, for Amazon.
But I can't use the accounts I've set up that aren't related to Sony at all unless I can sign
into the PlayStation network. So it's the difference is if I go to a site and I choose to sign up with
Google, that is me advocating that responsibility to Google because I chose to. This is them using
sign-in to their network as the keychain to get to all of my other credentials that I've already
put in, but they're locking through my sign-on to their network.
Well, okay, that's the AOL model and that worked pretty good for a while. You might be too
young to remember that. I remember all these funny coasters I got in the mail.
I remember collecting some of the tins that they sent out just because I figured I might have
a use for those someday and people were already well beyond the point of throwing all that shit
away. So I thought they might be a little collectible and I have no idea what happened to them.
Did you make a, um, would burner out of them or something?
No, they would make a decent alcohol stove though, um, methanol.
All right, my Sony ran so far. I just, that happened to me the other day and I was really pissed off.
Fair enough. So you probably would have hated AOL too then.
I didn't have to use it much except for the messenger, but even that was awful.
You know, I got the point. How's about the science in this book? Were you guys
able to just look past the huge flaws in basic engineering?
You mean like Fissionable Iron? No, I figured that was Magic Plot Bullets. I was okay with that. No,
I'd mean like all of the surrounding system, like all they had to do was get more power out of
the iron and then their shields got stronger. I mean their screens, sorry, not their shields.
Their screens got stronger and their rays got stronger. Like to say nothing about power
conductors, fuses, you know, any of that stuff. It just more power and also they were just able to
generate limitless power as if Fusion created electricity, not heat, you know.
Well, I think one of the other things is it's like how they were like, oh yeah, we just saw
this stuff that some aliens, you know, we just saw like 20 minutes ago, but we already got it ready
and it's bolted into the ship right ago. Like we're not going to test it. Let's just do it.
The turn around that thing was real quick. Yeah, it was. And how the spaceship broken space
and they're like, oh, we'll just build some new generators out here. How did nothing mind you?
They couldn't even land. They have a 3D printer. They'll be all right.
We have no material, no supplies, no spares, no back us, but we got electricians and engineers
and they're on the job. See, but I guess that's something that always bothered me again to the
Star Trek universe where they had the replicator, but they could never replicate anything useful.
If my ship's broken, I can't replicate parts for it, but dammit, I'll replicate me a sandwich.
Sandwiches are important, man. That's that's he's my favorite Earl.
If I could get my 3D printer printed sandwich, that would be pretty badass.
And he'd be the most disgusting sandwich ever. It would be like
Mars a pan and broad dough.
Never mind. I don't want one now.
Yeah. What could you shoot through that thing that would taste like anything?
And it would like the only flavor that it would have is, you know, maybe there's like a mixing
compartment where it would put, you know, like a the powdered noodles and noodles packet and just
I'm not. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to 3D printed food. I think that's the
that's the ultimate sign that that the middle class is dead and we're all just the bottom dwellers.
I don't know. I can't wait for lab ground meat. I think that'd be awesome.
I'm not with you on this one.
You can always grow the best steak. I have to worry if I get it. You just grow it.
Yeah, but, but, but feel is the best steak because of the mistreatment. That's what makes it so tasty.
So you mistreat cells instead?
Abuse. No, it's getting nothing to do with mystery. And you say that lab ground meat is going to be the
best thing ever. Try some first and then let us know how that how that goes for you.
Oh, I'm sure it tastes like snoburger right now, but I mean, look, look at there. I mean,
if we can make iron-fishing the bowl and we can fix our spaces,
when they break, we can make lab ground meat that tastes like meat.
Is allotropic a word? I'm going to look that up.
If not, he sure likes using it. And no, soylent is not something I'm going to try.
Thank you very much. I figured you could run the 3D printer.
Dude, I watched the documentary about that stuff and I was just like, nope. Oh, thank you. I like eating too much.
Yeah, everything you're right about is like, wow, I'm too busy to eat. I am never, never too busy to eat.
And everybody who says that is a giant tool.
Also, I like cooking and food and flavor too much to ever be too busy to eat.
My stomach is testament to this.
Allotrop is a word. It's when a chemical element can exist in two or more different forms,
such as how carbon can be a diamond or carbon-suit or graphite.
So basically, whenever it's liquid, he's calling it an allotropic, okay?
So regular iron is ice-9 and the other iron is like water.
But somehow, turning it liquid makes it red, too.
Yeah, as if it were molten that threw me off.
Science. Man, I can't believe I screwed up a ice-9 reference. That one could have won for the episode.
And for all your kids playing at home, if you don't get it and go look it up and you discover who
that's from, don't bother. God, I hate Kurt Vonnegut.
What? How do you hate Kurt Vonnegut?
It's garbage. It's all garbage. The only thing that that man has ever written that aren't garbage
are nonsense. Man, I thought we had something broken.
Oh, come on. Give me an example.
First of all, I'm over here being too young to understand the reference.
First you trash, dude. Now I'm up on it. What's going on, man?
Well, it's Star Wars. I don't like Star Wars.
Fair, fair enough. I mean, granted, there hasn't been much to sway you to want to like Star Wars
for like, you know, 20 years or so. So closer to 30, man.
Most of, most of the good things about Star Wars were over before I was born.
Sorry, man. Well, that's okay. My favorite album is Record of the Year I was born.
And I saw them live and they were all like old men and it was weird.
Open, make good music. There's plenty of old men that can make good music. There's Willie Nelson.
I think that we're going to have to admit that you and I have a different definition of good
music. I am not saying you're wrong. I'm simply saying you and I have very different definitions
of good music. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And you know what? I have always said, and you know,
so I may be taking a hypocritical point here, but I have always said that, you know, just because
I like something doesn't mean it's any good. And just because something's good doesn't mean I have
to like it. I've always had odd tastes in music. Most of my favorite music this week, anyway,
involves either synthesizers or at least two bass pedals. Like I said, you may want to check
out Oingo Blingo on the gong show. Are there synthesizers involved? Not in that particular
performance, but as I said before, it's their defining moment for sure.
Everything that they did after that point was simply an attempt to synthesize that point. So,
yeah, you could dig it. Anyways, back at the book. Yeah, I was just trying to remember what else
I could talk about. I think I brought up all the things I had meant to bring up.
So, as people who have never read the books, how confusing was some of it? Like, did you feel like
there were parts missing that you didn't get? No, no, I don't think so. Like I said,
as someone who did read the book, there was that big part missing, but no, I don't think anything.
You mean, well, there was the kind of weird absence of the Martians and the notions that they
had mentioned, but only that one guy said one word. And I thought that was like, he could have
gone some neat places with that. Other than that, I don't know what you might be referring to.
I'm just curious because I mean, the reason I found this audiobook is I was just
like trolling around looking for something. And I was actually in the back of my head. I had
a couple of years ago went to one of the used bookstores and I found this really cool,
like two book giant, like real hardbound book, really nice books of the entire Lensman series
and like hardbound book. And I was like, man, I would really like to read those again,
but I don't have time to actually set how to read them. So I was like, well, these are old enough.
They're probably public domain. So I went looking for all of them. The only one I can find is
Triplanetary, which is sad. I wish the other ones were audiobooks. But just as somebody who has
read them and going back, I always wonder like, am I seeing things or understanding things because
I've read the other or are there things there? Because I mean, there are obvious things that set
up, but I don't think you have to know them. So it's just it's a curiosity thing on my part.
Because he obviously went back and rewrote it and knowing the connections that would have to
the later books. I don't know all the other words that just came from you. The only thing that
that I can relate to is at the end of the book where Virgil Sam's was like, oh, we need a new
sign. We need a new symbol. Something that can't be duplicated and can only be used by
by the Triplanetary people, which was obviously alluding to the lenses. And if you didn't know
there were future books, you might think that that were left unaddressed and not in a way that
seemed like it was setting you up for a sequel. Other than that, no, I'm not real sure.
If anything was was grigiously missing.
Cool. Just like I said, it was just curiosity on my part. I thought it ended really weird.
Like it almost seemed like it ended in the middle of a chapter.
Well, I think that's probably because that was the book it was serialized. It was like magazine
articles, kind of like the old amazing stories where actually that might be where it was published.
And like the whole my understanding is the whole back half of the book with
cost again and them and all that was already written. That's what was actually published.
It was the stuff before they got added on later.
Yeah, no, I just yeah, I know they're doing it again. It was that one line of hers like right
at the end where Cleo was just like, well, I don't think I'll ever get used to them.
And it just ended there. It was like, really, you're going to you're going to finish up
like an I love Lucy episode or something like, you know, a punchline without a joke.
I don't know. I didn't quite it didn't seem to fit or I didn't understand it maybe.
You mean you're going to end the novel on a vaguely bigoted comment? That's cool.
It's not the worst ending I've ever seen.
No, no, not at all.
No, I'm looking at you Neil Stevenson. I'm looking at you.
No, on the whole it was wrapped up nicely. All the bases seemed to have been covered. It just
was a strange line to end it on. He was getting paid by the word and he figured he had enough
to buy what he wanted. Okay. I don't know that for a fact. I just said that. Yes, I know. That's
obvious. Yeah, I don't know. It's a weird book that I don't think I'll ever get used to.
Well played, Sarah. Well played. Yeah, it'd be better if we just ended on that, but we can't. But
no, I again, you I think you hit it right on the head when you said it was, you know,
you were lukewarm on it and I'm lukewarm on the book. I did like it. It was worth reading. I'm
glad I invested the time in it. But more as a study of history than for its sheer entertainment value.
Anybody else final thoughts? I enjoyed it. I'm reading the rest of them, but I enjoy it because
it's nice to see where science fiction has come from. So it might not be me disagreeing with you.
Yeah, I think you have to I think reading it, you have to do some mental hand waving to make it
like cognitively jive. No, but I mean, like I really like the books. I think now this one,
like I said, triple and Terry, I think is the worst of all of them. I mean, it definitely feels like
a kind of a rushed throw together and bolted onto the beginning of the series to make some
characters later. I mean, they're really, I don't even think there was a reason, but that's
monetary. I mean, because you could completely not have those characters introduced in this book
and they work just as fine and the books afterwards. But if you dig it, go read the rest of them
because they get better and then they get worse again, like most series. But you know, it's everybody's
got a little different taste. Like I said, I'm kind of lukewarm on it myself.
If if all right, so that's interesting because X 1101 is reading the next book in the series and
you've already read the next books, would you recommend the next books in the series? And
if so, which it sounds like you would, but I'll let you answer. But if so,
assuming that the rest of the books are the yardstick by which this is measured, how many
feet and inches would you rate this book up against the others?
If the others are like a foot, like the best is a foot. This is my yard.
My yard. There are yard. We'll give you more increments from that. But whatever you like, use any
scale you like. No, we're going with the foot because I don't want a math. I get paid to math.
I don't want a math anymore. If the best book is a foot, this is maybe like four inches.
Like it's it's really it's a significant drop in quality.
Oh, okay. See, I was thinking I thought you might say seven inches or eight inches out of a foot.
The other ones are more put together than this. Like this feels like very collusion to me, like
this story. The other ones have more of a through line. Now, obviously, the other books are written
completely out of order. The next book in the series, First Lensman was written after
triplanetary was well, basically, it was written at the same time he wrote triplanetary.
So like, First Lensman wasn't even one of the original books. The third book was the first book.
So I mean, you can kind of tell too, like the quality kind of moves around a little bit.
You can kind of if you didn't know that they were not written in that order, you would tell
something was up. I don't think you could tell that they weren't written in order. But it's
interesting. I mean, there's there's enough in the books to you. One of them you will probably like.
What's a decent enough endorsement, I guess?
Like, I really like First Lensman. I think it's a good book. The next one. A lot of people don't,
because they're like, it was just bolted on, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think it's a good book. So
cool. All right. So do we have a book picked out for our next audio book club? If you guys don't
have any suggestions, I've got one that I think would be interesting. I think that's agreeable.
X-1-1-1, did you have a suggestion or anything? So I don't want a 70-weeks to tell this. I can wait.
Nope. All you. All right. Here's a book. I've been waiting to do. I've wanted to do it since
the audio book club started. But I felt like we needed to mature a little first in our
kind of our format, not as people. I think we're mature enough or immature enough to handle just
about anything that comes across. But I thought this one was a really good story, but it's a
tough list. And I'll tell you, going into it, the audio quality is really poor. And you really
have to concentrate on it to hear it and understand it. It's a totally foreign setting,
but I think that is part of what made the book so interesting and the story so interesting.
And it's, I'm dipping back in here to podiobooks.com. And this one is called City of Masks. And it says
it's by Mike Reeves, McMillan, and that's a hyphenated last name. And all I really want to say about
it because I think the conversation about it could be good. But all I want to say about it is
that I thought the story was really good. And the audio quality was really poor. And so I think
it's going to be a challenge to listen to because of the audio quality. But I think that the
story's worth it. And I'd love to hear what other people have to say about this one. And I don't
think a lot of people would get through it if it weren't a quote unquote assignment.
Sounds good. Yeah. Does it? No objections? All right. I can deal with some bad audio as long as it's a
good book. And, you know, that's just my opinion. Like I said about music, just because I like it,
doesn't mean it's good. I mean, I think it's good. But I'd love to hear what some other people
think about this one. Well, you don't like curve on it. So your judgment is a little suspect.
Fair enough. Fair enough. And I do like when you go boy and go.
But I like the Green Lantern movie. This is just going to be the episode of arguing about this.
Thanks everyone for listening. And thanks again to you guys for being here and being part of
the audiobook club. No, we're enjoyable as always. All right. Thanks everyone for listening.
Have a good night. Peace.
Poor knocking. And we're out.
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You're just looking at the servers up. I totally host my server like a week and a half ago.
And I thought it was catastrophic. Oh, I feel very fortunate that the servers up. I'm very
grateful for sitting that up every time it's working. Regardless of what may or may not have happened
in my absence. That's actually the first thing that went through my head. It's nice to have
other people rely on your stuff. When I set up my server, I didn't know shit about doing server
so I was just like, I'm going to try this and just fumble around. I'm still in that space.
You know, every once in a while, I'll just make a stupid mistake. I made a stupid mistake.
The first thing that went through my head is I have to have this fixed by the next
audio book cover. We will have notes. The first rule of being a server admin Taj is before
you edit a config file, you back it up. It wasn't even a config file. So I wanted to try a Jitsi
meat, which is like hangouts, but you know, free and I own it. Yeah, yeah. I remember the
floss weekly about Jitsi and being a phone guy, I was kind of enamored with it.
Yes, it's like, it's like what, but free. I'm sorry. It was shifting my headphones just at the
wrong point. It's basically Google hangouts, but free and like you self-host it. So like a lot of
the stuff you can do with Google hangouts, like multiple people and record your desktop and
cheer your desktop and all that stuff you can do with it. So I was like, oh, I'm going to set this
up on my server. This is badass and I actually got it to work. But I didn't know what engine X was.
And so when it installed, I was like, okay, that's cool. And it's all well totally wiped out all my
patchy because I didn't know what it was. I didn't know that it would wipe out a patchy.
So I had to go back and it really wound up just being fixing config files. I mean, it wasn't that
hard, but like for a good day, I was just shitting my pants. So are you now on engine X?
No, it's still running Apache because I haven't, to be honest, I haven't figured it out and I
haven't had time to figure it out. Once I get sorted out, I want to get it running because it's
freaking cool. Yeah, you should be able to, you should be able to set them up to if you've got one
thing that needs Apache and one thing that needs engine X, you should be able to set them up to
listen on different ports. That's not a bad idea. I need to figure that out. I'm sure it's, well,
I know actually I do know how to do it on Apache because that's what happened to go back and change
to make it work. But I originally wanted to get it set up because I was like, this would be
something to cool with, do with the, if we do the RPG, like we could do use that to like share maps
and look at it and stuff. And so I was like, oh, this would be super cool to put on the server. So,
you know, I'll get it one of these days. Right now, grad school takes presidents.
You're still the coolest. That's awesome. No, why? Okay, isn't half the idea behind engine X to
not have to run Apache so that your CPU is less loaded and your RAM is, you know, the more free
RAM, I mean, I know the speed is the main thing, but isn't that a big part of it?
Engine X can also be a forward or reverse proxy. So you could set it in front of Apache for certain
things as well. It can do a caching proxy. It can do all kinds of stuff. Oh yeah, I heard about that
at a conference. I heard somebody explain in that where it can pretty much make everything think
that it's Apache until it can't be Apache and then forward it on. And it's, uh, and just,
lightens the load like system-wide, like massive, massive systems. It can just kind of trick
into thinking Apache's working here, just fine. It's really cool. See now, my best buddy, his,
like, his job is to manage Apache servers. And if you know what you're doing, it's,
Apache's not terrible. It just, there's a lot to it. And it's a dark art in and of itself.
Oh, I know Apache's not terrible. It's, it's one of the greatest things that's ever happened
on the planet. It's just engine X has some advantages for, you know, a guy who wants to run
a lightweight server. Yeah, there are some things that does faster, definitely.
The most comical part about it was I was trying to explain to my wife what happened. And, you know,
I, I never like said these things out loud. I think I said them in my head that never made sense.
And I was like, oh, well, my patchy got, you know, messed up because I installed engine X. She
just looks at me and she goes, that's racist. Engine X will serve your website up by any means
necessary. Nothing. Does it mean anything to anybody? I guess crickets from this end.
Crickets, crickets, crickets. I know as soon as you just say it, I'm going to be like,
oh, it was political. Malcolm X was, was by any means necessary.
Yeah, okay. I wouldn't put that together. Whereas Martin Luther King was, was, you know,
all for peace. Malcolm X preached by any means necessary. So yeah, that was bad.
See, I, I know this is a little terrible, but every time I think of Martin Luther King and Malcolm
X always see his machinito and professor X. Oh my god, this is true. I never thought of that.
That's brilliant. Oh, I know it. Somebody point is, okay, here's this superhero related thing.
We were talking about the wood gas stove. And I showed that to somebody. And he goes, hey,
that's just like Batman, where he makes a motorcycle in a car and takes a piece off of each and
gets a helmet out of it. No joke. I'm going to take that Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X
thing. And the one of the social studies teachers at our school is, he's a total dork like me.
We hang out all the time. I'm going to tell him that. And I guarantee he shits his pants. He's
going to think that's the most awesome thing ever. I guess I don't know how it was. I've always
seen that metaphor there. I would not be surprised in any way to find out that, that those were
the actual influences for those two characters now that think about it. Yeah, I always
remember it was deliberate. No, I mean, it's perfect. I mean, it's, it's like literally exactly
the right thing. So I mean, yeah, it has to be that. I spent my Thanksgiving setting up mail.
But it was doing it for me. So it was more fun. But
I hate, I hate editing email at work. So what do I do? I set up my own mail server at home.
So yeah, I've always wanted to do that. So I could control my stuff because you know,
Gmail, whatever. But it's just such a pain in the ass. It's actually wasn't that bad. I mean,
my buddy's already got a VPS. That's the thing is you have to have a VPS for that because it's not
something you can self-host at home because unless you do like a business class line because to get
SMTP working, you have to have reverse DNS working. Well, not just that, but even once you
get it working, a lot of ISPs will just block your traffic because they'll see too much going
in out of port 25 and just think your spammer. Well, yeah, that too. But I was I was thinking to get
it up legitimately, you would need the DNS records because most real email providers,
you try and send somebody an email and you don't have reverse DNS set up, right? They'll be like,
ah, no. I think the next thing that I want to play with, and this is, you know, if I get some
free time, but something's really cool is port knocking. I'd like to try setting up like some
port knocking rules on my router. I have no idea what that is, but it sounds completely dirty.
Oh, yeah, baby. It's totally dirty. It's basically, you tell the router to not allow any incoming
traffic or, you know, on whatever ports, and then you set it up to listen, just like it always does,
and you ping certain ports in a certain order, a certain number of times, like
dialing a combination and the router will unlock a certain port for incoming traffic. So it's
like having a password over a port. So you would do that if you were trying to come in from the
outside. So it's sort of like a, like you said, like a combination lot. Yes, exactly. That's sweet.
Yeah, isn't it really neat? Integral told me about that years ago now, and I always thought
it was the coolest thing, and just figured it was like over my head, but I've learned enough
since then to think that I could probably handle that if, you know, if my router can handle it,
which I think it can, because I'm running tomato, but I think you'd probably handle it.
And then you just write a script for, you know, that knocks on the right ports, and you can only,
you know, give that script to the people who you want to have access to your server,
work through your router. I shouldn't have to be a server, I guess.
And does it actually have to be ICMP traffic, or is it going to just literally be an attempt
to connect into that port? That's the other question. Well, it's literally just a ping. You send
a series of pings to different, you know, you just send the command ping one time, this address,
this port, and then ping this time, this address, that port, and you have a combination setup.
I don't know how it probably doesn't have to be very long, but it could be, I would imagine,
and you just, you hit them in the right order, and, you know, within a certain time frame,
and it opens a port for your connection. But I don't know if it's how that works,
if it's timed out, or if it works until the port's broken, or if it's now open to everybody,
I don't know. That's interesting. I guess I didn't know you could ping to a specific port.
I think of ping as a protocol. Maybe I'm wrong. You probably know far more about this than I do,
so I will say I could easily be wrong in the way that I misunderstood it.
But yeah, I think to ping a port, you just add the colon after the address, right?
Todd, any idea?
I have never tried it, so I don't know. Okay, maybe it seems like something that would maybe work.
I do like the combination part of it, though. It just makes me want to just like start slamming
on people's routers and trying to force ports to see what I can get it open up. I mean,
it's so random because you'd have to know what port would open to even go in. I mean, it seems
fairly secure, but I guess if you could script it to where it would just randomly try everything
very, very fast, it might be not the most secure thing in the world.
Well, I don't, I mean, it has a layer of security. I don't think it's a very strong layer of
security because if someone, like I'm in in the middle, could just see what you're doing,
and then he's got it. But you know, other than that, I think it probably is pretty fair because
what it, as I understand it, if I understand it correctly, what it protects you from is the random
script kitty who's just scanning the network. Right, just the novelty of it. I mean, like the three
of us, you were the only one that had heard of it. So I mean, I think even if you were watching
the traffic, you'd probably be like, what the fuck's going on? Like, what's this guy doing this?
I mean, you might eventually figure it out, but I've heard of it. I've just never set it up.
Now we got to put a DM link in the show notes.
I've already put it in the chat. Yes, I know that's why I now know it has to go in the show notes.
So I'm assuming this is going to wind up being the end of the show.
Yeah, it's going to have to be now. This is cool stuff, especially when I make all those
pork knocking jokes in the middle of the review. Oh, I mean, they'll be retroactive by the time
this place. I know people will hear it and be like, there it is. I now know what it is.
It's a background in joke. It's a reverse background in joke because this part goes at the end of the
show. It's a recursive joke. That's what you get from a room full of gunudists.
Really, was that a bad joke? You didn't like that? I'd loved gunudists the first time I heard it.
It's better than some of the other ones I've heard. Yeah, well, that's what it was. I said free
tarred to somebody because I prefer gunudist. That's see, that would have been funny.
It was it was it wasn't it was Matt Lee actually. So it came from the perfect source.
Oh, he's hilarious. Yeah, he is. I like him. I have the neck beard to prove it.
Yes, I know. You could go as Matt Lee to a Halloween party.
And actually, Pokey, since the last time you saw me, I don't think I've had a haircut
and I haven't shaved an over a month. So I'm looking like a lumberjack here.
Well, you live in the right place for it and I don't blame you.
I may have the neck beard though. All the way down to the shirt collar gets a little itchy scratchy.
Yeah, I've never liked having a neck beard. It might be your wants to grow that way and it's a
constant battle to to stop it. So it's it's I can't do it with just a razor. I need clippers because
a razor can't keep ahead of it. I'm pretty sure if I started to grow a neck beard, my wife would
fix that solution problem mostly.
My wife's not fond of the neck part of the neck beard, but the beard part of it, I have actually
been forbidden from removing my beard. Yes, same here. It's my wife said the same thing. I'm not
allowed to shave now. See, Matt was the opposite for a long time. She said I couldn't have one. And
then so I had to go tea forever and I rocked that for all this worth. And then finally last year,
I was like, look, it's no shave November. I'm grown a beard. I don't care. It's it's for reason.
She's like, okay, then I grew it. She's like, okay, it's kind of nice, but you get to keep it
trimmed and clean. Yes, I did no shave November, but I started kind of in the middle of October and
I haven't stopped yet. See, I took it a different way. I took it to mean that my wife thinks I'm ugly
and I should cover up my face as much as I can. See, I have pictures of my wife and I actually
met in high school. And so we went to prom together and I have prom pictures of the two of us
still in my wallet. And at one point I showed them to some people I worked with and their first
response was, who is that with your wife? Nice. Because everybody cares for on a picture of
another man with their wife. Yes, exactly. I've got your beat. I met my wife in middle school. So
I met my first wife in high school. And now I didn't go so well longer. All right, you guys want
to start the show? Sure.