Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, so I got today's episode.
Y'all it's going to be a story.
I love telling stories, man.
Actually, on my high fivestrength assessment to anybody
who doesn't know, I'm astrength-based life coach and
I'm a data manager, dataengineering manager but anybody
(00:21):
that all of my direct reports Iuse high five strengths
assessment to help peopleidentify their strengths.
I'm a firm follower of Gary Veeand I'm a firm believer that
you got to lean into yourstrengths, man.
You're going to have thingsthat you are not necessarily
naturally strong at and, guesswhat?
(00:41):
You're really never going to bestrong in those.
You can work on them, you cantry to sharpen up, but most
success comes from leaning intothe things that you are already
inclined for.
You're highly indexed for Rightand for me, my number one
strength is storyteller.
So I do want to tell a quickstory.
(01:02):
I don't know how many of y'allsaw it.
You know Deion Sanders, coachPrime, when he walked, his two
sons had senior day, shiloh andShador, and they walked and you
know their father was there withthem and their mother came out
and as soon as the mother wasthere, prime ran.
Man, prime, like he had a fewtoes removed, amputated right,
(01:25):
so it was shocking that he couldstill run this fast, but he
dipped.
He ran like he was in his prime.
No pun intended, man, but thatkind of reminded me of how my
parents were.
My parents were bitterlydivorced.
How my parents were my parentswere bitterly divorced.
At my high school graduation.
(01:46):
They sat on opposite sides ofthe stadium and I had to go
visit each one of them after itwas over.
But what it looked like earlyon when they first split up and
got divorced really was a kindof a competition to get our
(02:08):
attention to show us that theyboth still loved us.
So it really showed up in theform of money, right, my mom.
She really came up short onthat end of it, whereas my
father had many more resourcesthan her, and it caused a lot of
anxiety, specifically whenholidays would come up, you know
, or special occasions likeChristmas, or our birthdays,
(02:30):
right, me and my big brother.
So my mom had this rule thatshe instituted, right, christmas
comes around, or even onbirthdays, which was kind of odd
, that's kind of weird.
Even on birthdays, which waskind of odd, it's kind of weird.
So like, for instance, if itwas one kid's birthday, then the
(02:54):
other kid would have to getsomething too.
As a parent now, I don't go bythat.
I think I don't understand howsustainable that was ever going
to be.
But you know so, for instance,if my brother got a gift, my mom
would try to find some way toget some watered down version of
that same gift for me.
And this actually happened onetime and it actually was kind of
(03:14):
life changing.
So my brother, you know he was avery curious kid.
He was, you know, as the oldestchild.
He would, you know, be the tipof the spear for anything right
New thing, new technologies, newtoys, new trends, new anything,
anything right, new thing, newtechnologies, new toys, new
trends, new anything.
He would be the tip of thespear for the family to, you
know, get us involved in it.
As technology came around inthe 80s when the 80s hit like
(03:38):
1981, 82, you know he startedseeing computers pop up right,
and one of the things my brotherasked for one day was he wanted
a Commodore 64 computer.
And he asked my parents, my dadgot it for him and obviously
the rule kicks in.
So now little Jason has to getsomething right.
(04:02):
It has to be.
We got to get him some watereddown version of a computer and I
asked for this thing called anelectronic learning machine.
I think it was by.
Oh man, anybody who's listeningto this, help me out with the
this name of the company thatused to make electronics for
(04:23):
kids.
It's not Fisher Price, it'sanother one that was basically
specializing in electronics.
So I got this thing calledelectronic learning machine.
It really kind of sparked mycuriosity for learning and
computers and it was just likethis digital output type of
thing.
It wasn't really anythingspecial, but my brother jumped
(04:45):
right in to this Commodore 64,right.
Next thing.
You know, he was like I got togo get these floppy disks or I'm
going to stay over late atschool and get some games copied
onto my floppy disk.
Right, I got to get theseread-only memory games, or I'm
going to go to my friend's houseand exchange games with him and
maybe I'll get a hard drive.
(05:08):
I heard you can get more gamesif you can get a tape drive.
It was crazy, right, he wasjust going all in on this thing.
So I would go in his roomsometimes and I see him in there
and he's eager to show it offto me.
We didn't get along thegreatest, but when it came time
to show off what he was learningand his excitement about it.
(05:28):
He always would do that, whichsparked a lot of learning for me
.
And this was one of thoseoccasions.
He's like hey, come here, sitdown at this computer, Look at
this.
And he opened this book.
It was kind of like a notebook,a wire, one of those
wire-backed notebooks.
And he opened it up and it waslike all kinds of computer junk,
computer junk how do you dothis and how do you do that.
(05:51):
And he flipped to the back andit was like pages of code, these
lines like 10, go to 20, 20, goto 40.
And I'd never seen anythinglike it.
Never seen anything like it.
I came to find out years later.
I was just like what was that?
(06:12):
Okay, this is what's calledbasic code, basic coding
language.
So he showed me this book andhe's like if you type in
everything on this page and hitenter, it will make a ball
bounce on the screen.
But here's the catch you haveto type it in exactly.
You can't have any mistakes.
(06:35):
You can't type the wrong thing,you can't use the wrong case,
you can't put a period, youcan't have anything messed up.
It has to be exactly how itlooks on the page and I was like
okay, so I did it.
I'm typing like with one fingerand all of that, and I get to
the end and I hit the button andit says syntax error
(07:00):
S-Y-N-T-A-X-E-R-R-O-R.
That's the first time I'd everseen that word I was probably 7
years old syntax error wow, whatdoes that mean?
That means you made a mistake,something is in there or
(07:22):
something's missing, something'sdifferent than what the page
we're looking at and I'm like itcan't be, it looks right.
We just typed in a millionletters and it all looks exactly
like what's on the page.
He's like no, we're going tohave to look line for line and
see which line has a mistake onit and fix the error.
So we did that.
We're going through and what Ididn't know?
(07:43):
That at age seven, me and mybig brother, who had spent most
of my life just beating me up orbullying me or telling me to
get tougher, here we are sittingon this computer, commodore 64,
in his room and we are actuallytroubleshooting computer code.
We're pairing to troubleshootcomputer code.
(08:04):
I say all that to say well, Isay it that way because at 48
years old I'm a data engineeringmanager and I manage some
people who on a weekly basishave to pair to troubleshoot
computer code.
I mean, it's basically how I'vebuilt my whole career.
(08:25):
So it's interesting to go backto this day.
And we hacked at it a little bitlonger.
We found that it was a letteror period or whatever it was
that was missing.
We corrected it, we hit enterand that ball bounced on the
screen.
Y'all Boop, boop, boop, sosweet.
(08:51):
We both looked at each other.
It's unbelievable.
I mean this is the 80s,completely unbelievable.
We're like oh, my goodness,what did we just do?
It's like what else can we do?
And he's like it's so manythings.
He grabbed a notebook and heflipped to the next page and it
says we can change the color ofthe screen or change the color
(09:18):
of the cursor and the text thatwe're typing in to any color we
want, any color combination ofthe background and the text.
Whoa, like you know, that issomething that man like right
now.
It's like, yeah, you take thatfor granted, but it was in our
eyes at that moment.
It was like I cannot believe wegot to do it.
(09:41):
So we did it and we sat therefor hours just doing make
another color ball bounce, dothis, do that.
And there were some even harderones at the end we didn't get
to those right away, but it wasa beautiful day.
It opened our minds to things.
You know, it's interesting howthe socioeconomic reflections on
(10:03):
access to technology.
You know, I didn't realize inthat moment I was pairing with
my big brother, I was pairing ina coding session.
I didn't realize that untillater on, after like my third
year of college and my secondcollege, after dropping out the
first time, and I realized thatthis was the beginning of my
(10:28):
career, coding with my brother.
May he rest in peace.
Big J.
Yeah, it was a great time.
I get a little emotionalthinking about it.
We had some tumultuousrelationships, or we had some
tumultuous interactions asbrothers, as brothers are known
(10:50):
to do.
He had some issues regulatinghis emotions.
He was a super smart guy that'swhat our high school guidance
counselor said that he wasintelligent to the point of
brilliance.
But he had some issuesregulating his emotions and that
mostly showed up in histreatment of me.
So it's good to have thatbeautiful moment to look back at
(11:14):
and know that not only was itbeautiful, it was really a
cornerstone of some things thatI still am sitting on the
foundation of right now, yeah,so I encourage y'all to think
about a moment or a gift,something that changed the
trajectory of your life.
You didn't even know it at thetime, right, sometimes we don't
even realize what's happening.
(11:35):
Something that looks like justa regular rock, everyday rock,
but it's really a cornerstone ofwhat we're going to build our
whole lives on going forward andI can be beautiful man.
So I just wanted to take amoment and reflect on that
moment.
(11:55):
Reflect on that beautifulmemory for the interactions
between me and my brother, notonly for this foundation of me
having a tech career that wouldkick in later but also for that
discussion of access totechnology in certain
socioeconomic brackets.
This was not a thing that waspopular for us.
Getting on a computer wassomething that we did on a whim,
(12:16):
because it was all based off mybrother's excitement, curiosity
and intelligence.
If he had not been such anintelligent and curious and
adventurous person, thatcomputer would have never made
it into our house.
He was the only one with theinkling to bring that thing into
our home.
My parents never would havethought about anything like that
(12:40):
.
Neither one of them graduatedhigh school and they were older
people.
They were both born in the late20s and late 30s.
Yes, and I mean 1920s and 30s.
My father was born in 1927 inAlabama and my mother was born
in 1936 in Mississippi.
It's no fault of theirs, but Imean they had no ability to
(13:01):
bring that to us.
So shout out to my brother andhis soul rest in peace.
We'll talk about him a littlebit more in other episodes, but
yeah, this is a good one.
Yeah, so if you had a Commodore64, you had any kind of old
school computer that you gotexposed to in those days, and it
still sparks either your careeror some interest in tech that
(13:24):
you have.
Shout out, man, I can relate.
Yeah, thanks for listening.
Y'all, I love y'all.
All right, so I got today's episode.
Y'all it's going to be a story.
I love telling stories, man.
Actually, on my high fivestrength assessment to anybody
who doesn't know, I'm astrength-based life coach and
I'm a data manager, dataengineering manager but anybody
(00:21):
that all of my direct reports Iuse high five strengths
assessment to help peopleidentify their strengths.
I'm a firm follower of Gary Veeand I'm a firm believer that
you got to lean into yourstrengths, man.
You're going to have thingsthat you are not necessarily
naturally strong at and, guesswhat?
(00:41):
You're really never going to bestrong in those.
You can work on them, you cantry to sharpen up, but most
success comes from leaning intothe things that you are already
inclined for.
You're highly indexed for Rightand for me, my number one
strength is storyteller.
So I do want to tell a quickstory.
(01:02):
I don't know how many of y'allsaw it.
You know Deion Sanders, coachPrime, when he walked, his two
sons had senior day, shiloh andShador, and they walked and you
know their father was there withthem and their mother came out
and as soon as the mother wasthere, prime ran.
Man, prime, like he had a fewtoes removed, amputated right,
(01:25):
so it was shocking that he couldstill run this fast, but he
dipped.
He ran like he was in his prime.
No pun intended, man, but thatkind of reminded me of how my
parents were.
My parents were bitterlydivorced.
How my parents were my parentswere bitterly divorced.
At my high school graduation.
(01:46):
They sat on opposite sides ofthe stadium and I had to go
visit each one of them after itwas over.
But what it looked like earlyon when they first split up and
got divorced really was a kindof a competition to get our
(02:08):
attention to show us that theyboth still loved us.
So it really showed up in theform of money, right, my mom.
She really came up short onthat end of it, whereas my
father had many more resourcesthan her, and it caused a lot of
anxiety, specifically whenholidays would come up, you know
, or special occasions likeChristmas, or our birthdays,
(02:30):
right, me and my big brother.
So my mom had this rule thatshe instituted, right, christmas
comes around, or even onbirthdays, which was kind of odd
, that's kind of weird.
Even on birthdays, which waskind of odd, it's kind of weird.
So like, for instance, if itwas one kid's birthday, then the
(02:54):
other kid would have to getsomething too.
As a parent now, I don't go bythat.
I think I don't understand howsustainable that was ever going
to be.
But you know so, for instance,if my brother got a gift, my mom
would try to find some way toget some watered down version of
that same gift for me.
And this actually happened onetime and it actually was kind of
(03:14):
life changing.
So my brother, you know he was avery curious kid.
He was, you know, as the oldestchild.
He would, you know, be the tipof the spear for anything right
New thing, new technologies, newtoys, new trends, new anything,
anything right, new thing, newtechnologies, new toys, new
trends, new anything.
He would be the tip of thespear for the family to, you
know, get us involved in it.
As technology came around inthe 80s when the 80s hit like
(03:38):
1981, 82, you know he startedseeing computers pop up right,
and one of the things my brotherasked for one day was he wanted
a Commodore 64 computer.
And he asked my parents, my dadgot it for him and obviously
the rule kicks in.
So now little Jason has to getsomething right.
(04:02):
It has to be.
We got to get him some watereddown version of a computer and I
asked for this thing called anelectronic learning machine.
I think it was by.
Oh man, anybody who's listeningto this, help me out with the
this name of the company thatused to make electronics for
(04:23):
kids.
It's not Fisher Price, it'sanother one that was basically
specializing in electronics.
So I got this thing calledelectronic learning machine.
It really kind of sparked mycuriosity for learning and
computers and it was just likethis digital output type of
thing.
It wasn't really anythingspecial, but my brother jumped
(04:45):
right in to this Commodore 64,right.
Next thing.
You know, he was like I got togo get these floppy disks or I'm
going to stay over late atschool and get some games copied
onto my floppy disk.
Right, I got to get theseread-only memory games, or I'm
going to go to my friend's houseand exchange games with him and
maybe I'll get a hard drive.
(05:08):
I heard you can get more gamesif you can get a tape drive.
It was crazy, right, he wasjust going all in on this thing.
So I would go in his roomsometimes and I see him in there
and he's eager to show it offto me.
We didn't get along thegreatest, but when it came time
to show off what he was learningand his excitement about it.
(05:28):
He always would do that, whichsparked a lot of learning for me
.
And this was one of thoseoccasions.
He's like hey, come here, sitdown at this computer, Look at
this.
And he opened this book.
It was kind of like a notebook,a wire, one of those
wire-backed notebooks.
And he opened it up and it waslike all kinds of computer junk,
computer junk how do you dothis and how do you do that.
(05:51):
And he flipped to the back andit was like pages of code, these
lines like 10, go to 20, 20, goto 40.
And I'd never seen anythinglike it.
Never seen anything like it.
I came to find out years later.
I was just like what was that?
(06:12):
Okay, this is what's calledbasic code, basic coding
language.
So he showed me this book andhe's like if you type in
everything on this page and hitenter, it will make a ball
bounce on the screen.
But here's the catch you haveto type it in exactly.
You can't have any mistakes.
(06:35):
You can't type the wrong thing,you can't use the wrong case,
you can't put a period, youcan't have anything messed up.
It has to be exactly how itlooks on the page and I was like
okay, so I did it.
I'm typing like with one fingerand all of that, and I get to
the end and I hit the button andit says syntax error
(07:00):
S-Y-N-T-A-X-E-R-R-O-R.
That's the first time I'd everseen that word I was probably 7
years old syntax error wow, whatdoes that mean?
That means you made a mistake,something is in there or
(07:22):
something's missing, something'sdifferent than what the page
we're looking at and I'm like itcan't be, it looks right.
We just typed in a millionletters and it all looks exactly
like what's on the page.
He's like no, we're going tohave to look line for line and
see which line has a mistake onit and fix the error.
So we did that.
We're going through and what Ididn't know?
(07:43):
That at age seven, me and mybig brother, who had spent most
of my life just beating me up orbullying me or telling me to
get tougher, here we are sittingon this computer, commodore 64,
in his room and we are actuallytroubleshooting computer code.
We're pairing to troubleshootcomputer code.
(08:04):
I say all that to say well, Isay it that way because at 48
years old I'm a data engineeringmanager and I manage some
people who on a weekly basishave to pair to troubleshoot
computer code.
I mean, it's basically how I'vebuilt my whole career.
(08:25):
So it's interesting to go backto this day.
And we hacked at it a little bitlonger.
We found that it was a letteror period or whatever it was
that was missing.
We corrected it, we hit enterand that ball bounced on the
screen.
Y'all Boop, boop, boop, sosweet.
(08:51):
We both looked at each other.
It's unbelievable.
I mean this is the 80s,completely unbelievable.
We're like oh, my goodness,what did we just do?
It's like what else can we do?
And he's like it's so manythings.
He grabbed a notebook and heflipped to the next page and it
says we can change the color ofthe screen or change the color
(09:18):
of the cursor and the text thatwe're typing in to any color we
want, any color combination ofthe background and the text.
Whoa, like you know, that issomething that man like right
now.
It's like, yeah, you take thatfor granted, but it was in our
eyes at that moment.
It was like I cannot believe wegot to do it.
(09:41):
So we did it and we sat therefor hours just doing make
another color ball bounce, dothis, do that.
And there were some even harderones at the end we didn't get
to those right away, but it wasa beautiful day.
It opened our minds to things.
You know, it's interesting howthe socioeconomic reflections on
(10:03):
access to technology.
You know, I didn't realize inthat moment I was pairing with
my big brother, I was pairing ina coding session.
I didn't realize that untillater on, after like my third
year of college and my secondcollege, after dropping out the
first time, and I realized thatthis was the beginning of my
(10:28):
career, coding with my brother.
May he rest in peace.
Big J.
Yeah, it was a great time.
I get a little emotionalthinking about it.
We had some tumultuousrelationships, or we had some
tumultuous interactions asbrothers, as brothers are known
(10:50):
to do.
He had some issues regulatinghis emotions.
He was a super smart guy that'swhat our high school guidance
counselor said that he wasintelligent to the point of
brilliance.
But he had some issuesregulating his emotions and that
mostly showed up in histreatment of me.
So it's good to have thatbeautiful moment to look back at
(11:14):
and know that not only was itbeautiful, it was really a
cornerstone of some things thatI still am sitting on the
foundation of right now, yeah,so I encourage y'all to think
about a moment or a gift,something that changed the
trajectory of your life.
You didn't even know it at thetime, right, sometimes we don't
even realize what's happening.
(11:35):
Something that looks like justa regular rock, everyday rock,
but it's really a cornerstone ofwhat we're going to build our
whole lives on going forward andI can be beautiful man.
So I just wanted to take amoment and reflect on that
moment.
(11:55):
Reflect on that beautifulmemory for the interactions
between me and my brother, notonly for this foundation of me
having a tech career that wouldkick in later but also for that
discussion of access totechnology in certain
socioeconomic brackets.
This was not a thing that waspopular for us.
Getting on a computer wassomething that we did on a whim,
(12:16):
because it was all based off mybrother's excitement, curiosity
and intelligence.
If he had not been such anintelligent and curious and
adventurous person, thatcomputer would have never made
it into our house.
He was the only one with theinkling to bring that thing into
our home.
My parents never would havethought about anything like that
(12:40):
.
Neither one of them graduatedhigh school and they were older
people.
They were both born in the late20s and late 30s.
Yes, and I mean 1920s and 30s.
My father was born in 1927 inAlabama and my mother was born
in 1936 in Mississippi.
It's no fault of theirs, but Imean they had no ability to
(13:01):
bring that to us.
So shout out to my brother andhis soul rest in peace.
We'll talk about him a littlebit more in other episodes, but
yeah, this is a good one.
Yeah, so if you had a Commodore64, you had any kind of old
school computer that you gotexposed to in those days, and it
still sparks either your careeror some interest in tech that
(13:24):
you have.
Shout out, man, I can relate.
Yeah, thanks for listening.
Y'all, I love y'all.
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