8 Bits with Cecil Phillip!

Learn more @ https://8bits.tv

Episode Transcript

Brandon Minnick (02:02):
Hello and welcome back. My name is Brandon
Minnick. I'm your host here oneight bits. Thanks so much for
joining us. And this week wehave a very special guest hosts,
Christopher Harrison. Thanks forjoining the show.

Christopher Harrison (02:17):
Thanks for thanks for inviting me. Thanks
for letting me come back and,and co host again, I guess I
didn't do too bad of a job. WhenI was here a few weeks ago with
with Chloe when you're onvacation. That's right. Yeah, I

Brandon Minnick (02:30):
was out. Turin amazing. national parks and
monuments a couple weeks ago, wewere Yeah, we were checking the
Grand Canyon, Monument Valley,Bryce Canyon, Xi'an we did all
the things. And now this week,it's Chloe surd, to take a
vacation so much appreciate youcoming on the show. Have you
been?

Unknown (02:50):
You know, I'm actually pretty good. Like speaking of
vacation, took last week off,went down to Las Vegas, with my
wife celebrated her birthday andour anniversary. And it was it
was it was wonderful to like,you know, be out and, and really
to like, experience a little bitof of life again, that it was it

(03:13):
was a really nice taste of ofnormal after the last, you know,
1415 months. And it was so goodfor us all. I hear that. Yeah,

Brandon Minnick (03:25):
we were we were in Arizona, heading up to the
Grand Canyon when the CDC cameout with the new recommendations
for the mask mandates. And allof a sudden, I mean, my wife and
I were both fully vaccinated,which is why we felt comfortable
doing this trip. But yeah, itwas like all of a sudden,
everything felt really normal.
So here's here's hoping to agreat summer. But I do want to

(03:46):
share some Well, it's excitingnews, but I can't really share
the news yet. But for folks thatlisten to join us here in the
live stream for the show. I theyknow I've been working a lot on
something called the Xamarincommunity toolkit. And I also
very passion about Xamarin stuffused to work at Xamarin. And

(04:11):
with this new thing calleddotnet, Maui coming, which is
the evolution of Xamarin. We'vebeen having a lot of internal
conversations about what are wedoing with the Xamarin community
toolkit, because we got to makesure it works for dotnet Maui.
So I'll say for now, stay tuned.
There's an announcement andcoming. It's all good news.

(04:33):
You're in good hands. And if ifyou don't like it, you can blame
me. But we've got no, we've gotall good things coming up. So if
you, for example, want tocontinue using the toolkit on
dotnet Maui, we got you coveredif you want to take advantage of
the new dotnet Maui performancestuff with maybe a new toolkit.

(04:55):
We'll have you covered but staytuned. We'll make an official
announcement soon.

Unknown (05:00):
If you don't like it from all of your male,
California, United States ofAmerica.

Brandon Minnick (05:06):
That's right.
You can you can find me onTwitter at the code traveler.
Nice things only, please. Butuh, yeah, Chris, we're we have.
So we have an amazing guesttoday. But I want to make sure
we get any announcements in thatyou have as well before we bring
him on and talk about hisamazing journey.

Unknown (05:22):
Yeah, absolutely. So my, my big announcement is on
June 30, we're going to belaunching a new video series for
view, which of course, is afront end JavaScript framework.
And really excited about that.
We've got Jen looper and Chrissnoring, and myself all on video
and presenting all of that outthere. And it's there to support

(05:44):
the learning path that currentlyexists on Microsoft learn for
view, j s. So that's going to beon June 30 of the video series
will launch. definitely keep aneye out for that or just my
Twitter handle. There we go.
Right there, you can hit me upon Twitter. And I'll of course
be advertising that. And ifyou're curious about the

(06:06):
learning path, which is stillout there, you know, hit me up
on that. And a little bit later.
We're also going to have a biton Django as well, which I'm
really excited about. I justadore Django. It's It's such a
fantastic framework. So I loveit a

Brandon Minnick (06:20):
couple of teasers for the fans of eight
bits. You heard it here first.
And for anybody listening on thepodcast, Christopher's Twitter
handle is at geek trainer. So Iassume you trade a lot of geeks
like me.

Unknown (06:36):
Yeah, that before joining Microsoft, I was I was a
full time tech trainer. And thatthat Twitter handle happened to
be available, which still tothis day boggles my mind that
nobody else had had snatchedthat. So yeah. Thank you, Rob. I
appreciate that. Rob says thePython for beginners was
terrific. Thank you. Thank you.
I appreciate that. So yeah,we're trying to keep that style
with both the view and the andthe Django. So hopefully you'll

(07:00):
you'll enjoy that as well.

Brandon Minnick (07:04):
I'm excited.
Keep us keep us posted. happy toannounce it on eight bits once
once it's live as well. Yeah,well, definitely. Without
further ado, we have an amazingguest this week. He's been one
of my favorite people to workwith since joining Microsoft,
and he has such an incrediblestory that don't want to delay
anymore. Let's bring him intothe show. Welcome. sessile.

(07:26):
Philip, welcome. Hey, thanks forhaving me. What's going on?
Yeah, so excited. You could joinus this week. So I've known you
for a couple years. I know youwork at Microsoft. But for folks
who haven't met you before? Whoare you? And what do you do?
Sure. So like you said, Brandon,Brandon, you and I and Chris are

(07:46):
on the same team now,technically.

Unknown (07:50):
So I'm a cloud developer advocate at Microsoft.
I've been in this role for aboutthree years, well, a little bit
more than three years, I think,July 27, to be precise, he's
gonna make four years here inthe company, like doing in the
same role doing the same job.
Um, yeah, I'm a dotnet. Guy,like, I spent my entire career
doing dotnet between, you know,web forms and MVC, and back in

(08:13):
the day when we used to dojQuery and knockout, j. s, and
all those types of things, up tonow where we're talking about
like Docker, or microservicesand stuff, but has always been
dotnet in some way or the other.
And then also, you know, alongthe way, I've, you know, kind
of, you know, got into the worldof teaching a little bit, right.
And that's, that's been a funpart of my journey as well, too.

(08:35):
And maybe we'll talk about thata little bit as we go on. But,
you know, I know no developercomes up being like, Oh, I want
to be a teacher. Like, that's anormal thing that we do after we
get our engineering degrees,right. Like, I want to go teach
people to do stuff. But yeah, Ispent some time doing that. And
you know, I've done somepodcasts and some video shows
and things of that nature. Andnow here I am with you folks
having a good time. You know,doing some live streaming.

Brandon Minnick (08:57):
That's right.
And so yeah, let's let's golet's go all the way back. Let's
do the the sessile Philip originstory, because I know you live
in Florida. Now you work atMicrosoft now. But how? How did
you get there? How did you getstarted in the world of tech?

Unknown (09:14):
Your young age as time went on? You got older?

Cecil Phillip (09:20):
Yeah, let's go on. Let's like dig into the time
machine, right and make go allthe way back. So I was I was
born in an island calledlentigo. Alright, so for those
that don't know, it's in theCaribbean is a very small
country. It's precisely 108square miles. So for
perspective, you know that ifyou take Florida and you drop it
in Florida, if you take it anddrop it in the bottom of Florida

(09:42):
is probably smaller than Miami.
You know, it'll take you abouttwo hours to go around the
perimeter of the country. Right.
So again, for perspective of howbig of a place that we're
talking about. But yeah, but Iwas one reason to, you know,
went to elementary school highschool. They're, you know, I
stayed there until I left, youknow, come up to the United

(10:03):
States for college. I think oneof the things that's was always
interesting about antiga and,and folks always ask, oh, how
did you become like a computerperson? It's always an
interesting story, because wenever had computers growing up
per se. You know, I wasn't Iwasn't in one of those societies
where, you know, we didn't havecomputers in schools, we didn't

(10:25):
have computers in the household.
You know, and we're talkingabout like, the late 90s, going
into 2000s, right? Well looklike I'm in high school, I'm
trying to figure out who I am asa person, right? Like, I'm
trying to do some self discoverykind of thing. And, you know,
your parents as Caribbeanparents, they're very, they're
very strict, right? When itcomes to like, education, you

(10:45):
know, what I mean? Likeeducation and success and having
a plan, right? And they're like,what are you gonna do? What are
you gonna do? What are you gonnastudy? And so my dad was a
doctor, or is a doctor, I guessyou could say, he's retired now.
But my dad was a doctor. And,you know, between me and my
sister, he was always like, Oh,well, your your, you guys are
gonna get older and you to comeand take a family business. And

(11:06):
so when you go to school, youneed to study biology and
chemistry and stuff, rightphysics, and whatever the case
is? Well, it turns out, I didn'tdo that. And I ended up doing,
you know, in school, we can talka little bit about how the
Caribbean education is a littlebit different to the American
education system. But when Iwent to school, I ended up
studying business, accountingand math, right, like, those are

(11:30):
the subjects I wanted to do,because those are the things I
gravitated to. And thensomewhere along the line, like I
ended up taking, like a computerclass. Now our computer class
was interesting, because ourcomputer class didn't actually
have a computer. Right? Therewas a book that spoke about
computers, but there was nophysical computer per se, for me
to actually just interesting.

(11:55):
You know, it's kind of like,it's well, for us, it was kind
of like every other sciencesubjects. You know, the IQ talk
about science, we talk aboutbiology, you know, nothing but
like, I've never dissected ananimal anatomy, or I've never
done any of these people we talkabout, we talk about, like, you
know, bones and skeletons andthe structure of biology, just
in the same way we spoke about,like, you know, processors and

(12:16):
screens and keyboards, like thestructure of a machine, like, I
never really had one to playwith.

Unknown (12:20):
I had a programming class where the instructor tried
to teach a little bit like that,that, you know, like, you learn
a language. And so he wasinsistent that you could do this
without a computer that if youjust like, wrote out your code
on with with pen and paper thatthat was somehow going to teach
you to program. Yeah, I mean,for me, that's just cruel and

(12:41):
unusual punishments.

Brandon Minnick (12:44):
Right. It almost reminds me, like, why
would we do this? Yeah, it wasreminds me of doing whiteboard
interviews, where it's like, howdo you write code at this
company? Do you do it on thewhiteboard? Or do you do it on a
computer and a tool like VisualStudio? Because maybe we should
do the interview using VisualStudio that

Unknown (13:01):
just I hated whiteboarding, those
whiteboarding test too, becausemy handwriting is horrible. So
like, why would I want to cometo an interview and do things
that are absolutely horriblethat and feel confident that I'm
going to do well, this interviewlike, anyway, that's, that's
another story. We can talk aboutthat later. I'm sorry. So so so
that, so that was that was myeducational experience from that

(13:23):
perspective, again, like we, welearned about stuff, but like, I
didn't actually physically havemore. And, you know, along the
lines at home, like I used towatch my dad, he used to come
home, and he used to bring workhome a lot and bringing work
home, and like he had to doreports, like he typed up
reports and Doctor things,whatever, whatever it is that he
did. And I think that's theofficial term doctor. Yeah, we

(13:45):
just we just call them doctorthings, whatever it is that
they're typing, I didn'tunderstand the jargon. So I'm
just gonna say doctor things.
And so I grew up watching my dadwith like, various typewriters
throughout the years, liketyping of reports, and, you
know, stuff for people. And oneyear, I think, might have been
like, two, maybe two yearsbefore, like, I left the country

(14:06):
to come to college. He brought acomputer home, right? I think
like I said, like, we didn'thave computers in school. It was
very uncommon for your friend tohave a computer in the house.
But for my father, it was like,Hey, I spent a lot of time
writing reports. This is like mynew report writing machine like
that was the intent and purposeof it at the time. So he brings
his machine home is CompaqPresario folks remember, compact

(14:29):
exhale MPa, q right. It's rightback the Curio, right with the Q
and you know, it was it was atower computer, you know, and
that's when you bought acomputer came with everything
right? It comes with thekeyboard and the mouse and the
monitor and like, you know, notlike today like you got to buy
them separately, right? Like itcame with everything. And along
with it, it came with acollection of books. Which

(14:52):
again, I don't think anyone doesthat today. Like you don't buy a
laptop and it comes with likereference material. You know
what I mean? Like, that's not athing, right? That's right. So
So anyway, so you got this. Andalso we had like that 56k modem
right, the thing that goes to doto stir it or did it right, like
you connect to, like, throughthe phone line to the internet,

(15:13):
like that's how long ago we'retalking about. And oh, yeah, the
turbo button. Yeah, I think wehad a turbo button on the
machine. So you could be right.

Brandon Minnick (15:21):
I never understood that.

Unknown (15:23):
I don't know what it did. Um, it made the computer
make noise. I don't actually gotany faster.

Christopher Harrison (15:30):
It goes to 11 There we go. There we go. We
go a little faster. So

Brandon Minnick (15:36):
anyway, everybody knows what the turbo
button does? Let us know in thecomments. Yeah, definitely. I
never figured that.

Unknown (15:43):
I have no idea what the thing but so anyway, so the
report writing machine is in thehouse. And at the time it came
on, I didn't really care aboutit too much. It was just like,
Okay, this is like a work thing.
You know, to me, like, I'm gonnago watch cartoons. And so one
summer, you know, again, I'mhome aboard. And I decided, hey,
let me go play with thiscomputer thing. Right. And it
started off with just us likeplaying solitaire. So I guess

(16:04):
we're talking like Windows 95,just before windows 98. You
know, I mean, I wasn't into likecomputer games and stuff like
that at the time. And I'm justlike learning like what this
machine is. And so, I mean, whatdoes everyone do with a
computer? Right? You playSolitaire and Minesweeper for
like, hours, hours and hours,like clicking around, and like
just understanding the mechanicsof how the thing moves and

(16:25):
works, right. And somehow Iended up like reading those
books that came along with themachine. And in those books,
they were manuals about, like,windows, obviously, like, you
know, what's the Start button,what's, you know, the terminal,
what's Windows Explorer, like,you know, those types of things.
And also, it is one on NetscapeNavigator, which was, again,

(16:45):
like the big internet browser atthe time. Right. So this is a
while ago. And so I'm readingabout Netscape Navigator. And
what's a web browser? And what'sthe internet? And, you know, I
think AOL and yahoo.com werelike the two big things right,
like back in the day. And a partof it spoke about like HTML. So
what is HTML? I don't think it'sspoken about JavaScript yet. But

(17:06):
it was just like HTML. And thenI think that's when you could
still put styling, you know,like, there's no stylesheet.
Like, you put the style in thetag kind of thing, right? So you
say like, font color bold equalstrue, or whatever the case is,
right? Like on the tag versuslike, on some CSS property. So
anyway, so I'm reading the book,I'm like, hey, let me go ahead.
And I mean, I'm not doinganything, I'm bored. During the

(17:28):
summer, I'm gonna try and, youknow, go through this book and
try some stuff out. So I triedout. And again, the simplest
thing that you could probablyever do with a web browser,
right? Like I put my name on thescreen, big, bold letters
centered right in the middle ofthe browser. Right away. Wait,
you centered text. And, youknow, that might have just been

(17:50):
the default, tech Tech Center,whatever. And it was centered,
right? I know. It's silly,right? Because today's
developers, like we'd look atthat stuff. And it's just like,
Oh, it's whatever. But in thatmoment, for, again, this person
that I didn't have a computerbefore I am playing Minesweeper,
like, that's my extent of mycomputer knowledge, right. And

(18:11):
now my name is on the screen.
I'm like, Oh, I have masteredthe machine like, this is mine.
Like, like, I own this, like, myname is
I'm envisioning you, as TomHanks in Castaway going, I have
made fire.
Exactly, exactly, exactly,exactly. Like that is exactly

(18:33):
one of those moments where I getin retrospect, is a very trivial
thing to do. But in my mind,this is like, I have just
discovered the world, right?
Like, this is the most amazingthing ever. And so I call my
friends on my phone, you know,again, he's, you know, those
rotary phone, like, you turnyour phone, it goes, click,
click, click the call myfriends, and I'm like, hell you
need to come over, because Ijust put my name with this

(18:55):
computer thing. Like, it'samazing, most coolest thing
ever. Like, if you come over,I'll put your name on the
computer, too. You know, likethat. That was a conversation I
was having. So again, way, waytoo excited about putting some
texts like on black or whitebackground, you know, anyway. So
anyway, so that happened. Andover the summer, I just
continued playing with it,right, like, you know, added a

(19:15):
button. You know, just try andplay with different colors. Try
to put differently, I created aparagraph and not just not just
the word, right, like justplaying around and try to
understand how this thingworked. And I think with between
then and the few years that kindof went by prior to me leaving
the country and actually comingto university. I would always
just like ask my parents forstuff. So so my uncles and

(19:39):
Auntie's, like they would leavethe country and they'd go to
Florida and New York and otherplaces. And so I'd asked him to
bring me more books. Right. So Ithink I remember him. I think my
dad, he went to Florida, and Itold him, Hey, I want to learn
how to like use this thing. Andso he went He brought me a c++
book. I think it was Borlandc++, something something like

(20:02):
whatever that thing was. And sohe brought me the book. But I'm
like, I couldn't use it. BecauseBorland was expensive, right?
And I had, yeah, I had the book,but I couldn't do the thing. You
know what I mean? Like, Icouldn't do anything with it. I
could just read it. So again,just like my class in school,
right, like, I had nothing todo, I could just look at it. I

(20:24):
couldn't do anything with it,really. But you know, I read the
book, cuz I was interested in Iwas curious about it. And, and
obviously, over time, I startedlike playing games on the
computer, I think, NBA Live orwhatever the case is, I'd come
on, like NBA, like when thoseeSports games won those
basketball games. But that'swhen like, you had to actually
put the CD in and install it inDOS. If you remember those, you

(20:47):
have to do that before. Before.
Before there was a like a click,click, click Run, there was a go
into dos CD slash something,something something installed,
and you have to like run a, likea boot script of some sort. For
you to install the game on theCD. Right? This is before like

Brandon Minnick (21:02):
the Yeah, is this like Windows? 3.1? No, this
is Windows 9598. This is butthis is before. This is before

Unknown (21:12):
you know, now we have the CD and it just does the
thing.

Brandon Minnick (21:16):
Yeah, cuz what's the CD?

Unknown (21:18):
Yeah, cuz still a lot of things that you had to do
directly in DOS. Like it wasn'tlike that pure shell that
Windows three one was or overdas, but like Windows 95. It was
it was still like this, thislittle blend. And there were
still a lot that you had to dothrough das that you still
couldn't do through the throughthe UI. I distinctly remember
those days. Yeah.

(21:39):
Yeah. Yeah. So you still had to,there was like some manual
interaction, right, that you hadto do. Right? So I think between
me playing video games andMinesweeper and reading these
books, like I eventually becamelike, the computer Person of the
house, right? Because I mean, noone else in the house was going
into dos to do anything, youknow. But here I was, because I
really wanted to play this videogame, right. And so I had to

(22:01):
figure out how to get the thingto work. So again, like doing
all these little things, and Iagain, I just became pretty
comfortable doing that type ofstuff. And then you know, there
was the whole phase of Napsterwhere now I'm downloading music,
and you know, I'm doing stuff,right.
Like, I'd have to go online andfill out your music legally,
we're just going to pretendlike, yes, the MPAA that's

(22:24):
listening here. It was alllegal. It was all you know,
public domain music.
Was all non copyright. CreativeCommons. Yes. Yeah. But what
happened was, because 150 6kmodem back in the day, what
would happen is that I would setthe, like a single song, I would

(22:45):
set it to download, like, thenight before I go to bed and
wake up and see if it was done.
Right. So I have to wait, like,at least eight hours to like,
download a song, right? When youfolks Remember, if you when you
were on dial up, and anyonecalled the house, like, your
internet, cuddles, you had it,you had to do that again, right?
Like this is again, this is along, long time ago. Um, so no,
like, so that was kind of likeme being in the computer space,

(23:07):
right? Like, I kind of just gotcomfortable navigating and doing
things with it and being inthere. And eventually, I was
just like, Well, why don't Ijust do this for a living,
because it feels like a verycomfortable thing to do. And
also at the time, there, therereally weren't a lot of folks in
Antigua that were doing thingswith a computer, right? I think
whenever I whenever I graduatedto get into college, they were

(23:29):
like maybe three or four shops,quote unquote, I call them
shops. of people that will fixcomputers, like you can go in
and, you know, it's like, you goto a mechanic, right? You take
your mechanic your car into themechanic, they fix the thing.
There are few like computermechanics that I could go to,
whenever I don't know, theprinter wasn't working or, you
know, the file, something wascorrupt, or I needed more RAM or

(23:52):
whatever the case was. And so inmy head, I'm like, Okay, well,
this is what computer people do.
Right? Like they fix machines,they fix machines, and they give
it to other people. For somereason, like software never was
in the back of my mind. Like itnever crossed my mind that that
could be a thing that that Icould do. Right? I was like, I'm
gonna fix the machine and get itback. Because when you think

(24:13):
about, like, the environment yougrew up in, like, usually, you
know, pull your inspiration fromthat environment, right? Like,
there were no programmers aroundme. So I didn't pull that
inspiration from anyone in thatcontext. So anyway, I got to
college, university, and now I'mdoing like, intro to algorithms
and data structures. I'm doingJava, I'm doing c++, I'm doing
assembly language, I'm doing allthese things. And, you know, in

(24:36):
addition to like, just thecultural immersion, socially,
that I got from leaving thecountry, there's also the
professional cultural immersion,I suppose. Because now like, I
could see I could do more stuff,right? Like, I didn't have to
fix computers and printers for aliving, right? Like, there's a
little bit more available for mefrom that perspective. And then

(24:57):
um, and then you know, you Youknow, you do the career fair
days and things of that natureand you see all these companies
that are coming to hire collegekids. And I'm like, wait, EA
Sports is here. Microsoft ishere. IBM at the time was here.
HP Hewlett Packard, like all ofthese people like Netflix, a
very, very, very early versionof Netflix games are college. At

(25:18):
that point out, and which thisis far to tech, this is in
Melbourne, years ago. And yeah,not Melbourne, Australia. I
didn't I didn't go that faraway.

Brandon Minnick (25:32):
Well, that's Melbourne. Melbourne, you get
you're going to add that Aaronwould quickly correct us.

Unknown (25:41):
Exactly, exactly. So yeah. So again, like just seeing
that, like, was so important forme, because, like being academic
is one thing, but then beingable to see what you could do
with it is a different thing.
And, and that's kind of whereyou you derive, like your
motivation and your inspirationfrom, at least for me, anyway.
So I was like, Oh, well, Idon't, again, I don't have to go
home and fix computers, I couldwork for a company that does

(26:04):
software, you know what I mean,I could, I could do more, I
could start my own softwarecompany, I could teach people
how to do these things like,like, there's so many different
ideas kind of just started, likeformulating in the back of my
head about what was possible.
But But I think along with theinspiration, like there were
highs and lows to it as well,right? Because some of the lows
of that were, Hey, I just again,I just came to this country, I'm

(26:28):
not from here. A lot of thesepeople that I went to school
with already did programming inhigh school, I'm just picking
this stuff up, like right now.
So I already felt like I wasbehind the curve, like way, like
years behind, you know what Imean? Like I'm trying to catch
up to where these folks are. Um,and then on top of that, to,
like, you know, there as aninternational student, right,
like, I had to go through theprocess of getting a student

(26:49):
visa, and then making sure mystudent visa was always valid,
you know, making sure I got anh1 visa whenever I graduated, so
I could still work, I had to getan f1 visa, you know, there were
things that had to happen, inaddition to like doing the work
and being like a professionalcomputer person, you know, all
the visas you had to write. AndI think that's one thing that

(27:12):
maybe employers would notice,but for for your co workers that
they may or may not know, like,and again, assuming that we got
here legally, you know, what Imean? You may not know all of
the things that have to happenfor an international person to
be here. So when you think aboutit, you have to realize that
one, these people have to, youknow, these people probably work

(27:33):
a lot harder than you did. Notjust from an academic
perspective, but just in termsof putting in effort through
legal fees and paperwork, andlike having to maintain a
certain level of status, to stayhere else, you know, like, as an
example, like, if I don't get ajob, like, when I left college,
if I didn't get a job in, likesix to nine months, like I had

(27:55):
to go, like, I can't stay hereand hang out, you know what I
mean? Like, I can't take like agap here. You don't mean like,
so people do the kind of justnot go to school for you and
hang out, like I have to go, youknow what I mean? And so, again,
just always thinking about,like, you know, and also to, you
know, coming from the Caribbeanto the United States, like the
currency, you know, it's, it'snot exactly the same. So, you

(28:16):
know, my parents are spending alot of money to come to school
here, I have to put in a lot ofwork to to stay here again,
going through the lawyers and,and do all this types of stuff.
And still I have schoolwork todo. I gotta I gotta pass my
classes. Right. I got to dostuff. And, you know, it's
again, it's it's work it'seffort, right? And, again,
eventually worked out. And, andhere we are,

Brandon Minnick (28:40):
but some curious. So yeah, for, for folks
watching. Yeah, we get 1000s ofviews. And there's a good
possibility somebody is maybe inantigo right now wondering,
yeah. How can I do that, too?
How do you get started withthat? Either college application
process visa process, or whichone comes first?

Unknown (29:05):
For me, it was very much like, like rolling dice,
right? Like, you never kind ofknow where you're gonna land.
And I mean, not very seriously,because, again, I didn't I
didn't live here. So I didn't dolike a college tour. You know
what I mean? Like, I didn'ttravel to schools and visit
departments and see people, youknow what I mean? I was lucky

(29:29):
that again, my uncles and somefamily members would leave on
teager and come back, and thenbring back I think it was called
us colleges, in those thickbooks that had like listings of
colleges and universities. Itwas kind of like a like a like,
yeah, universities or whatever.
And, like they would bring thosebooks home for me. And I'd have
to spend time when I scrollthrough those books, right, that

(29:50):
two, sometimes two, three books.
I'd like 1500 pages, right?
Because it's every college anduniversity. It's all of their
courses. It's how many creditsthey have. are, you know,
student loans and deadlines?
Like it's a very, very thickbook. And so I had to think
about, well, where do I want tolive? Right? Um, and I'm like, I

(30:10):
don't know, cuz I don't live inthe United States. I'm not gonna
be like, Oh, I want to go livein Arizona. I don't know
anything about Arizona. I livein North Carolina. I don't know.
I mean, like, like, how do Ipick? How am I supposed to know,
assuming that I haven't donethat before. Now, some people
have. But for me, I haven't beento these places. So I couldn't
really make an intelligentdecision. So the approach that I

(30:32):
took was, well, I do have somefamily members that live outside
of the United States. I'm goingto pick colleges where my family
lives. So I had family thatlived in Virginia, I had family
in New York, I had family inCanada, I had family in Florida.
I'm like, so that sounds like agood start. Like, let's start
there. And then we'll kind oflike start whittling down what

(30:52):
you want to do. Now, now I'mlooking through these books now.
And, you know, now I gotta say,Well, what am I going to study?
Right? I know, I want to docomputers, right? But like, what
does that mean? Like, there'scomputer science is Computer
Engineering is managementinformation systems is
information technology. And itturns out that every school
teaches those classes verydifferently. So now, like, how

(31:14):
do you pick right? So now I'mgoing through these books I'm
looking at, like, I'm going downto the level of reading course
descriptions to be like, what Iwant to do this course or not
what I want to, like, do I wantto do, I think, what was it
like, UI with with Java? Do Iwant to do that? Or do I want to
do hardware softwareintegration? You know, I think I
think today, we'll call thatIoT. But back in the day, it was

(31:35):
like, hardware softwareintegration with like, assembly
language. Do I want to do that?
I don't know. You know,so I'm curious about the the
timing, were you able to, like,do all that research online? Or
were you talking about, like,you know, having to flip
through, like physical coursecount,
there was no online. I want tosay there was no online, we had

(31:55):
the internet, but you know,right. I had a book, like I had
a thick book, or multiples ofthick books that I was scrolling
through these books and tryingto figure out, you know, where I
was gonna go. And, you know, inthat time, again, we're talking
about like, late 1998 99 thistime, because, you know, you got
to apply like, a year, year anda half before, right. So, you

(32:19):
know, at this point, I'm lookingthrough these books, these are
all black and white books,right? I don't know what this
place looks like, right? Theyhave pictures of campuses and
things of that nature. But forme, like they all look the same.
They're all black and white. Soit's whatever.

Brandon Minnick (32:31):
Even pictures like, I'm sure you stayed in a
hotel that had great pictures.
Oh, this grayscale this look?
Okay, pool that pool water couldbe green and purple? Like, I
don't know.

Unknown (32:45):
Whatever sessile.
didn't know at the time is thatall the campuses are we're
actually just you know,grayscale?
Exactly, exactly. So, so theprocess for me was, you know,
again, luckily enough, like Ihad some family members that,
you know, live outside of thecountry, they sent me these
college books. And I just, Iflipped through them, right, I
flipped through them. And Ipicked some schools where I

(33:05):
think we're close enough to myfamily, and I sent applications
to those places. Now, andobviously, I had to do my essay
T's I was, you could do youressays in the Caribbean, at
least then same essay, you know,we do in the US. Same as it is,
yeah, we just go, you know, wehave specific testing centers
that did that, right. So youcouldn't go to every school and

(33:26):
do it. I think today, like youjust do it in your school or
whatever. Like, I had to go tolike specific places like
testing facilities to do that.
Right. And so I'll go did my siT's got a pretty good score. I
did it the second time, I got aneven better score. I'm like,
Okay, oh, no, like, Can I justkeep taking this thing and keep
getting better scores. Butanyway, it turns out that, you
know, from the grades I hadbefore, I got accepted to two

(33:49):
schools without even sending myessays, right. So I sent in my
college application, but I sentthem in before I had gotten in
my scores. Right. And that wasbecause the deadline was
approaching, but at the timethat we're taking the exam, like
that would be that would havebeen past the deadline, right?
So anyway, so I sent my LSATscores after I've already got

(34:12):
accepted to college, which isfunny. So I think that was more
so just like, how many creditsare you gonna get, like, you
know, like, how many transfercredits or how many, you know,

Brandon Minnick (34:23):
scholarship classes or

Unknown (34:24):
Yeah, AP classes, you know, scholarship grants and
things of that nature that thatwas a separate conversation. I'm
sorry, I sent in my stuff got anand now what I got to pick Well,
I got accepted to Virginia Tech.
Florida tech, good school, and Igot accepted to FSU. Right now.
I'm trying to decide well, whichagain, I haven't been to these

(34:48):
places. I don't know thedifference, right? Probably if I
grew up in United States, Imight have watched like, I don't
know NCAA basketball or seen thenews or something like that I
would have I would have learnedabout like College reputation.
Like that's the thing peopleknow about the country. I didn't
know anything about that. Like Ijust Eenie meenie miney Moe.
Right. We're gonna pick one.

(35:10):
FSU is playing for the softballtitle. Tonight if they beat
Oklahoma, they take the softballtitle tonight.
See? and see. Like you knowabout that stuff. It's, it's,
it's like news to you. For me.
It's just like I don't knowthese people like like, what is
this?

Brandon Minnick (35:28):
Right? And even like for me growing up in
Orlando, I kind of have asimilar story where I love
computers as the computer guy.
And so when it came time tochoose a college I just looked
around said like, what are thebest engineering colleges and at
least at the time, hopefully,it's still true. University of
Florida was the top in thestate. So I applied to
University of Florida. That wasthe only application I submitted

(35:49):
to any college and they acceptedme. So I went. But just wanted
to get a subtle jab in there.
Good choice, not choosing FSU.

Unknown (36:02):
But I'll tell you the one reason why I'm going to
Florida tech was because I likedtheir computer science program
the most. And then also, at thetime, they had the highest
international student populationin the United States. And I
mean, that sounds like thatmight be a big number. But at
the time, it was at like 12% 12%international students. I don't

(36:24):
know what it is today might bemore or less but but at that
point that was the highest inthe United States. So I was
like, there's a lot of peoplethat want to go.

Brandon Minnick (36:33):
Ironically, yeah, I so I used to live in
Melbourne. And I used to coachthe fit the Florida tech water
polo team. And yeah, the teamwas almost exclusively
international students. So it'sthat the percentage of
international students said fithis or her Florida Tech has gone
up dramatically.

Unknown (36:53):
Yeah, it probably has.
But but that that, for me waslike the deciding factor after
I've gotten my acceptanceletters, right. Like, it was,
Hey, I like the the curriculum,because we're getting remember,
I was going through all of thesecourse descriptions and stuff
like that. I like thecurriculum, I like the subject
matter. But I also really likedthe fact that there's a lot of
international folks going there.

(37:14):
But not only internationalfolks, there are a lot of
Caribbean people that wentthere. So again, for me if I'm
going to go like, and I don'tknow anything about this place,
like let me go where theterritory is, could it be a
little bit more familiar, right?
Because again, that's importantbecause you're going away from
home, right? Like, I'm not goingto the college down the street
or, you know, at the other sideof the island, right, like I'm

(37:34):
going to another country, youknow, I mean, like let me at
least walk in slowly to a placethat's a little bit comfortable.
You know, that kind of makessense. So anyway, so now, you
know, I'm here I'm in. I'm inFlorida tech. And um, you know,
it's, it's weird, because whileI was in college, no one
believed that I was a computerscience major. Which is, which
is weird, right? They're like,Oh, sessile you don't, you know,

(37:57):
you're not like, and I don'tmean to offend anybody, but I'm
just gonna tell you what theytold me right there, like you
don't wear glasses and watchanime and drink soda and pizza
parties and hang out. And I'mlike, I mean, it's, it's
balanced. Right? Like, like,we're all not the same. And I
think it's a conversation wehave a lot today with, which is
like, what does a computerprofessional look like? The

(38:20):
Anatomy. And so for me veryearly on, I'm just like, this is
just how I spin like, I likeplaying. I like sports. But I
like computers, too. It's okayto like more than one thing.
It's not a problem. You know,the way
I got that a ton when I when Iwas doing full time tech
training is the number ofstudents who who would come up

(38:41):
to me or you know, the number ofadmins that whatever Training
Center I was at, and it wouldjust be blown away by the fact
that Oh, wait, wait, wait, holdon. You mean, you're technical,
but you're so outgoing, and youlike have a personality like,
Yeah, and that's okay.
Yeah, it's, it's very weird. Inever really understood that.

(39:02):
Um, but again, also to remember,like, my context is different,
like, I'm coming from anotherplace, and I'm just like, do do
computer people do somethingdifferent than I'm supposed to
know. Am I missing something?
Like, I already know that Ididn't do it in high school,
like a lot of other folks that'sin my head. I'm always thinking,
I am missing something. Likethere's something that like, I
haven't done that, like, Ihaven't gotten like the rite of

(39:24):
passage to be in this place. Youknow what I mean? After a while,
I just realized it was justsilly, silly stereotypes, and
it's whatever. Um, I can tellyou another thing for me in
college was, um, so before Iwent to college, like I didn't,
I didn't meet a lot of differenttype of people that don't look

(39:46):
like what I look like, you know,um, you know, right now, I think
there's a big conversation inthe United States about like
diversity and inclusion and justlike respect of other people.
Um, I grew up in a society wherelike, everyone was the same,
like I had black teachers, I hadblack friends I had, like,
everyone was the same, you know,it was a Christian society,

(40:10):
right? Like, like, everythingwas the same. And so now I want
to say Christian, like, youknow, it's, you know, Catholics
and Methodists and Baptists. Andlike those, like, like, that was
the culture of the Alamo. Andnow I come to United States, and
I'm meeting people from Egypt,and Africa, and Australia, and
France. And I'm like, we don'thave any of those, you know, me,

(40:33):
like I've never met folks fromfrom this, from these places in
these cultures. I've never metMuslim people before. I've never
met Jewish people before until Ileft the country. And I came
here. And I think in addition tojust one, learning more about
the perspective of what I coulddo, technically, again, it was
also learning, like, thedifferent perspectives of people

(40:57):
in general, right, like, so itwas learning on both sides, both
professionally and personally,you know, what I mean, like
college was a huge exposure forme, just understanding like,
what was possible, you know, ina way, and I know, everyone
doesn't have like, the abilityto go or the finances to go
whatever the case is. But forme, it was about, you know,

(41:17):
what, regardless of whether itwas school, or whatever the case
is, it was about like, leavingyour comfort zone. And being in
a place that were kind ofimmerse you around different
types of people in differenttypes of experiences. And, and
it's almost like going to, like,very uncomfortable situations,
right, and learning to kind oflike, adapt to those not hostile
situations, but again, just justplaces that you're just not

(41:39):
usually at, you know what Imean, and kind of deal with
that.

Brandon Minnick (41:45):
Yeah. And so I'm curious. So I'm going to
selfishly take a minute to plugyour podcasts away from the
keyboard. anybody listeningshould go to away from the
keyboard, Comm. Subscribe. It'sa great listen. And the reason I
bring it up is what you're justtalking about. So with different

(42:08):
folks who not only lookdifferent, but have different
backgrounds or sound different.
Seems to be the kind of therunning theme on the podcast is
that kind of is this lifeexperience? What inspired you to
host this show?

Unknown (42:27):
I think life experience turned it into what it is today,
what where it initially startedwas. So you know, we used to,
you know, pre pre COVID prepandemic, right, we actually
used to meet together and usergroups and used to meet in
person and have sessions andstuff like that. I don't
remember any of that. It waslike a lifetime ago. That's
like, that's, like at least fiveJavaScript frameworks I got

(42:49):
right. Like, we don't rememberthat. We, one of the things that
we always wanted to do was like,since these meetups were, you
know, once a month kind ofthing, like, how do we connect
with people for the other threeweeks of the month, right? So
like, Oh, hey, let's do apodcast and and kind of, like,
continue the conversation thatwe would have started at the end

(43:10):
of the meetup, because at theend of the meetup and the
sessions that everyone wants tohang out, and there's questions,
and then the little bit ofnetworking happens, and, you
know, like, community buildinghappens, you know, like before
and after the meetup is whenlike, the community is kind of
built. But anyway, as we'redoing the podcast, and you know,
I'm in South Florida, so it wasmainly like South Florida
conversations we're having with,you know, different companies,

(43:32):
and how are you using dotnet?
And what kind of startup areyou? We didn't call them
startups back then. But youknow, what kind of you business
ID you have now and whatever,whatever. And eventually, like,
we realize, hey, like, there arepeople from outside of Florida
that are listening to ourpodcast, too. We didn't think
about that, like that was neverthat the target audience. We
didn't like go out and seekthem. But they found the show

(43:53):
and they liked it. So now we'relike, Okay, well, how could we
expand the, the subject matterto include people from different
places, you know, the way and sowe could have totally, you just
been like, we don't care,whatever, we're just gonna keep
it so far. We're just gonna keepit man. We're just gonna keep it
for a lot of you. But I thinkonce you recognize that people
are giving you your time. Ithink it was almost like our

(44:16):
duty to like, give those peoplelike a moment. You know what I
mean? Like, like, again, like,I've never been to Africa, at
least at the time, you know, butwe have people from Africa,
listening to the podcast, maybewe should get a guest that's
been from South Africa. Right?
You know, I'd never been to theUK or, you know, again, I, I've

(44:38):
never, I haven't done a lot ofthings right. Like, maybe we
should find some other peoplewith insect that do these
things. Because now as morepeople listen to the show, like
if I want them to find someoneor some thing or some topic that
they could kind of connect to,and be like, oh, okay, every
episode is not about me, butlike this particular one, like,
I feel this person, likeemotionally like attached to

(44:59):
what they're talking But I kindof felt like it was our duty to
kind of tell that story. Um,another thing too, what you'll
notice, as you know, even withlike the conversation we're
having right now, you know, welike we haven't said anything
about technology, like I haven'tsaid, compiler preprocessor
directive data, like we haven'tspoken about it. Right. But But

(45:21):
what we're doing is we'relooking at, like the people
behind the code, right, like thepeople behind the software that
we built. And I think a lot ofthe times we forget that
perspective. Yeah, a lot of thetimes we see a thing, and we're
like, Oh, damn, you, company x,your does, your thing doesn't do
the thing I wanted to do. Andthen we say we have a lot of

(45:42):
choice words for those people.
But then we forget that thereare people, right, and you
forget that, you know, we're allunder the same pandemic, we
forget that, you know, somepeople have lost loved ones. And
some people have lost theirjobs, we forget context, right?
We forget that we're stillpeople at the end of the day.
And I think shows like, like ourpodcasts, and even what we're
doing here, right now, it'salways good to show the other

(46:03):
side of the keyboard, you know,what I mean? Like, like, like,
Who are the people that aredoing these things? What are
they building? Like? What dothey feel like? You know, what
are some of the struggles thatthey've gone through? You know,
because you can imagine thereare 1000s millions of people
that are writing software everyday. You know what I mean? Like,
what's the probability thatsomeone that's written some

(46:24):
software that you're using had abad day? You know, what I mean?
Like, what's the probabilitythat you know, something messed
up happened to them? In anevent? You don't know, right?
And it's kind of like whenpeople are online, and they're
complaining, oh, well, youbrought up this feature, but you

(46:45):
didn't do this one. And you didthis. He didn't do this one. And
I'm just like, really, dude,like, you know, yeah, people,
it's always like, what have youdone for me lately? versus, uh,
you know, hey, like, like, Ishould really appreciate these
people's time and effort. And,you know, again, remember that
we're talking about people,we're not talking about, like
machines that are writing thecode themselves. Right.

Brandon Minnick (47:07):
Yeah, that's a it was a, I empathize deeply,
having been on both sides ofthat. And, yeah, I had that
realization a couple years ago,myself, where every time
somebody creates, or every time,there's a new tool, a new
website, a new podcast,something new in the world,

(47:28):
somebody created that. Andsomebody put time and effort
into it. And I think it's right.
And I realized, it's importantthat we we remember that first
before necessarily criticizingit, because it's, it's so easy
to read a blog post and be like,Oh, this is terrible. There's
typos everywhere, or they callit this instead of this, how,

(47:51):
how could they? But yeah, at theend of the day, you know,
somebody took the time out oftheir busy day, to write that
blog posts, they're not makingany money off it, they're not
looking for fame, they justwanted to share their
experiences. And I think if wefirst take that moment to
appreciate that content, then Ithink we can give some better

(48:15):
feedback rather than worst blogpost ever. How could anybody
read this just is, there's aperson behind it?

Unknown (48:24):
Yeah, I think for me, so kind of like, going back to
the question Christopher askedme, for me, it's very similar to
my experience going to college,right? Like, I didn't know
certain things until I got thereanon meeting these different
people. And now I have adifferent perspective about what
it means to communicate withthem what their culture is,
like, you know, what things mayor may not be deemed respectful

(48:47):
or disrespectful? Again, youdon't know what you don't know.
But then you don't know if youdon't make the effort to know.
Right? And so it's Same thingwith us, right? Like, as we tell
the stories of computer scienceand of computing in general, I
kind of look at shows like this,like, the historical record of
what we've done, right? BecauseBecause who's writing the

(49:07):
history books for us? ran away?
Like, where's the who's thewho's the computer historian?
Right. And it's us technically,in a kind of backward way.
Right? It's these podcasts thatwe do is the shows that we do
these videos that recreate theseblog posts, or rewrite, that at
some point, you think about it1025 years from now, whenever
someone's gonna look back and belike, Oh, well, this is how we

(49:29):
used to write code. And this ishow we used to do videos, and
this is how we used to dopodcasts and conversations. And,
you know, assuming that, like,you know, the world hasn't
gotten crashing to hell. We canlook back at a historical data
and be like, oh, wow, likethings were different or better
or worse or whatever. Because,you know, if we look back,

(49:49):
probably a lot of the thingsthat happened, like might have
been lost to, you know, I don'tknow, like environmental damage,
and I lost the disk and you knowwhat I mean? Like, stuff
happened, right? And we don'thave history for everything. And
so I think all this data thatwe're generating, now, this is
just going to become, you know,like someone at some point is
going to sit down and curate allthis stuff that we've created

(50:12):
over this past, you know, two,three decades, and be like,
well, this is the history ofcomputing over, you know, the
early parts of the 2000s. Right,and this is what it looked like.
And this is, and this is what,you know, this is where we came
from. And, you know, this iswhere we're gonna go, right.

Brandon Minnick (50:31):
Well said, Yeah, I wonder about that
myself. Because we areconstantly generating or
creating things, but it alllives in the cloud are ones and
zeros. And I'm curious how, howthat will survive, or if it will
survive, like, you know, you'retalking about installing
software, installing games on acomputer using the CD. That was

(50:54):
only 20 years ago. And now, Idon't even own a CD player. So
yeah, if if all that informationwas saved on the CD, well, what
good is it if we don't have away to read the medium? So like?
Yeah, I'm always curious. Andnone of us will be around to
know the answer. But yeah, 2000years from now, will we still

(51:16):
have like, the old Geocitieswebsites cached somewhere? And
the Internet Archive?

Unknown (51:22):
I mean, I don't know.
It's, it's funny, because Imean, certainly there's a lot of
things that have been lost tothe ether over time. But
there's, there's still a lot ofthings that that do exist out
there. You know, the the SpaceJam the original Space Jam
website being like a fantasticexample of that, or Bob loblaw,
one of his website,

Brandon Minnick (51:46):
laws law blog.
Yes. Thank you.

Unknown (51:49):
Yes, exactly. But But he was he was a y2k denier
saying that it wasn't going tobe that big of a thing until he
put out a website about this.
And it apparently, like stillexists in the in that exact same
state that it did from his lastupdate of like, you know,

(52:10):
February or something like thatof the year 2020. So that, you
know, some of those things dostill exist out there. So to
like Russell's point, it's gonnabe really interesting. And to
your point, as well, Brandon,it's gonna be really interesting
to sort of see 20 years fromnow, when everybody starts going
back and looking at thosethings, like, what the
interpretation of that is, isgonna wind up at Yang,

Brandon Minnick (52:33):
right? Yeah, for sure. Like this? Oh, no,

Unknown (52:38):
no, exactly. I look at my family, like generations of
my family. And like, I kind ofstarted talking about, like, how
my dad reports on a typewriter,you know, no way. And then I
went to college, I wrote reportson a laptop, you know what I
mean? And now my eight year oldson talks to like, the air,
right? And some device in thehouse is good to listen to him

(53:01):
and does the thing, right. Sowe're, I had to like, use, you
know, my dad walked tolibraries, I had Britannica or
whatever, and carta on a CD. Youknow, now my son stays at home,
and he talks to the air. Andlike, the speakers in the house
are like, oh, I'll find theanswer for you. I know what that
is, you know what I mean? Sothere's just a kind of, again,

(53:21):
and this, we're only talkingthree generations, right? We're
not talking about hundreds ofyears. But you can see how
technology has kind of evolvedover that space. And one, like,
you know, we're very much moreconnected, but then to is
there's just so much more.
That's possible, you know,within that space. So, again, I
don't have a teenager my son'snot 20 years old in college. So
I can only imagine when, when hehas to write reports like, what

(53:43):
is what is that going to looklike, at that point? You know, I
mean, and what does it look likefor his grandkids? And, you
know, sometimes I wonder, Is hegonna even own a car? Or are
they just gonna like, you know,our cars just gonna drive us?
We're not gonna drive thatanymore. Like, what is it?
Really?
I just want my flying car.
That's all that I just want myflying car. See? Something?

(54:04):
Yeah, we don't get like jetpacksor something.

Brandon Minnick (54:09):
So it's just a beaver missed? Because we've
been having some awesome chatsin the comments about
stereotypes. We've talked aboutit for a bit. Where are what a
software engineers look like?
And in the thumbnail for theshow, you're holding this really
cool metal? What is that andexplain a little bit more about

(54:30):
your, your hobbies as a softwareengineer on the side. What are
you what do we do?

Unknown (54:39):
So, so kinda like I mentioned earlier, like we like,
whenever I went to college,there was always the, you're not
a software person. Like, I don'tbelieve you. Like up until the
point that I'm graduating. AndI'm walking across the stage
like, we don't believe you likeI need to hear him call you.
Because I don't believe you.
Right, but I'm like, okay,whatever. So You know, I grew up
again, I grew up in Antigua andI was always a fairly like

(55:02):
active person. I used to swimfor Antigua. Like regionally
speaking, like, I used to do alot of swimming and basketball
was the thing that I did. And,you know, after I graduated, I
was like, I need something todo. Right, I need, you know, I'm
not on a team anymore. And, youknow, getting into sports in the
United States is a little bitmore complicated. Particularly

(55:23):
you want to play in college andstuff, like you can't just like,
Hey, I'm coming and show up.
Because that's what we did athome. We just showed up here,
paperwork, stuff has to happen,right? So anyway, um, I started
getting into like weightliftinga little bit. When I started
working, like nothing, not notlike super heavy weights, just

(55:44):
like lean fitness, I guess. AndI saw an ad on like, you know,
like Hulu or one of thosethings. I saw an ad about, like
these obstacle course races, soI started looking them up on
YouTube. And then I think likeSpartan and CrossFit was, like,
just starting, like, it wasn'tsuper profitable yet, but it was
just like a thing that peoplewere doing. And I was like, Oh,

(56:06):
hey, you know, I don't likerunning. Like I honestly hate
running. Um, but there's veryfew races that's just swimming.
In no way, particularly like,this is a big continent. Versus
I could like, I could walk tothe beach from my house. And
until you get to me, like so, megetting to the beach is a little
bit different. So I'm like, thisis a big place, like, what do

(56:27):
people do? And so I saw theseobstacle course races and I'm
like, okay, I don't likerunning. But like, this is like
a little bit of everything. Likethere's some climbing, there's
lifting there's, you know,swinging on bars and carrying
rocks. And like, That soundslike fun. Let's Let's do that.
And you before COVID I want tosay maybe two or three years
before COVID I started doinglike obstacle course races. So I

(56:50):
did. Warrior dash was my firstrace. I did that like three,
maybe like three times. Before Idid any other race event. Yeah,
warrior dash was a lot of fun.
So it was worried that SouthFlorida, they don't come down
here anymore, but they used to.
I think the closest one to menow will be Orlando. But before
we used to come all the way downto Fort Lauderdale, Miami. Um, I

(57:13):
did that I did. Mud factor likeso this, this metal that I have
here that I'm holding up is fromone factor. I know you can see
that. But that's what it says.
This is a mud factor race. Onefactor is kind of short. It's
like a 5k with obstacles kind ofthing. So not not super long in
comparison to the other one.
I've done Spartan, Spartan Race.
Spartan is interesting becausethey have three different

(57:37):
versions. I think there's athere's like a five by eight and
a 13 mile version or some somesome iteration of that. Like
there's three different plansthat you could do with obviously
varying levels of like,obstacles and things of that
nature. So I did two of them.
And I was trying to get thetrifecta. The trifecta is when
you do all three of them. Whathappens is that when you do

(57:59):
Spartan, Spartan races, you justlike you don't get the whole
middle, you get like back,right? So I had like the top
piece, I like the sight piece.
And I needed like one more partand the 113 mile and I'm just
like, do I really want to dothis? I do I really want to do
30 miles of obstacles. But I'magain COVID happened, and then I

(58:20):
haven't done it. So. But thething is, you have to do this.
You can't like do it. I can't do2018 2019 2020 I got to do all
three races the same year. So Idon't think I'm going to do it
this year because things arestill pretty locked out. But
maybe next year, I'll you know,get the three of them. And let's
see how that goes.

Brandon Minnick (58:41):
Right. Well, we'll start trading now. Well,
sessile we only have a minuteleft. Thanks again so much for
coming on. So quicker. I flewby. But for folks listening,
where can they find you online?
We know your your podcast, awayfrom the keyboard calm.

Unknown (59:00):
Yeah, so definitely check out my podcast away from
the keyboard calm. And again,the whole purpose of that show
is for us to just haveconversations with folks in
technology about not technology.
So you know, you'll hear a lotof random conversations about
comic books and woodworking andhaving children and starting
businesses and you know, butthey're all from folks in
technology. So again, like kindof just like peeling the veil

(59:20):
behind and showing you thepeople behind like the stuff.
Another thing that I do, and Icould see if I could find like
I'll put this in a private chat.
So I do a show called The ondotnet show. So this is a pretty
fun show that I've been doingfor about three years. We do a
live version of the show we do apre recorded version of the

(59:41):
show. And we also have like whatwe call a little highlight
videos, but it's all arounddotnet stuff so you know dotnet
web applications dotnet you knownew C sharp things, new blazer
things Visual Studio things. Ifyou're interested in learning
about dotnet we have somethingfor everybody. Whether you're
seeing here or elevating youWe're in the space. So that's

(01:00:01):
pretty cool. And another thingthat I do that's public that
folks can take a look at. I'llshare this inside of the chat
too, really quickly. So my meand my other co worker, Brian
Clark, we do a show called payweekly live, actually did it
just before I got on here, likebefore I'd signed on to the
stream. That's what exactly whatwe're doing. But we pay weekly
live, what we do is, you know,we take two folks that aren't

(01:00:24):
Python, professional people. Soagain, I'm a dotnet person,
right is more of a JavaScriptperson. And then we both get
together, we learn Python, whichhas been really fun. So we've
been looking at building a lotof cool things with Python.
We've been exploring differentPython web frameworks, we look
through flask and Django andfast API. Bottle tornado. Again,

(01:00:45):
like all the cool Python things,we've kind of just been
exploring those. How do you workwith databases with Python? Or
how do you call web API's withPython? How do you build bots
with Python? Again, the cat isjust, you know, messing around
and exploring a lot of things.
Another thing too, you'll noticeabout that stream, like Brian,
and I love to go on tangents. Soagain, I'm warning you because
when you come to the show, andwe don't do code top to bottom,

(01:01:05):
don't get mad, like, we like togo on tangents. Because I was I
was, again, because it's aboutpeople at the end of the day,
and I think it's important thatwe have the conversation. And
sometimes we have new folks thatcome in, and they're like, oh,
okay, how do you do? priorityplanning? Like, how do you
determine like, what we're goingto do first, right, or stuff
like, you know, oh, how do youlike what's what's, what's type

(01:01:27):
hinting in Python? And then wegot, you know, we go on a little
bit of a tangent, or what'sDocker, you know, how do I
install, like, the VS codething, or whatever. And then we
kind of go on tangents. And, youknow, we want to make sure that
whoever comes to the show,understands what it is by the
time that they leave. So I knowthat might be frustrating for
some of the more advanced folks,I'm sorry. But you know, again,

(01:01:47):
we definitely want to make surethat people are comfortable and
understand, hey, even though youmight be coming from a
perspective of I'm a newdeveloper, or maybe you're, you
know, super duper c++ person andyou want to learn Python, like
we want to make sure thateveryone understands what's
happening. Love it,

Brandon Minnick (01:02:07):
let's say printing in Python. Yeah,
Python. So yeah, so we are outof time, but sessile Thank you
so much. Thanks so much fortuning in to eight bits this
week. Do make sure to check outhis sessile his podcast away
from the keyboard Comm. You cansee him on the on dotnet show on
Channel Nine. And also he cancatch up on Twitch doing pie

(01:02:29):
weekly. sessile Thank you somuch, Christopher. Thank you as
well for coming on as the guesthost and we will see you next
week. Thanks everybody.
Appreciate it.