wall of bats
Brandon gets attacked. Collin needs to speak to the head cashier. We talk about an island…of treasure…
Video game design!
Target priority
Enemy turns red
Go right
Recitalling continues
Wall of bats
Head cashier
Crawfish enjoyer
Oh Brother Summer Reading Spectacular!
Outside
Hobbit
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Farewell to Arms
AND NOW: Treasure Island
Tuberculosis is the answer
Haiku:
Adventure awaits
Setting sails on the high seas
Into the unknown
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
PROVIDED BY OTTER.AI
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
video game design, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Metroidvania, skill check, Darth Vader, hit detection, recital, piano performance, Barnes and Noble, geology section, autocross, Ozark Mountain Sports Complex, Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, coming of age story, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, Jekyll and Hyde, Bottle Imp, pacing, French Revolution, swashbuckling, Scottish author, adventure, high seas, rain, Clarksons Farm, reading list, 2025.
SPEAKERS
Speaker 3, Speaker 2, Collin, Speaker 4, Speaker 1
Speaker 1 00:00
Colin, welcome to Oh brother,
Speaker 2 00:06
a podcast where we try to figure it all out with your hosts, Brandon and Collin
00:13
on this week's show, wall of bats.
Speaker 3 00:18
Ahoy. Ahoy. What's going on? Oh, not a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:25
yes, fine. Don't worry. I'm not Yeah, should
00:29
I be worried? No, it's okay. Cool, cool.
Speaker 3 00:33
I have this, like, the little badge thing on my microphone. Sometimes when I lean close to it, my beer gets stuck in it. It's annoying, and I have to, like, yeah, get out of there. So don't worry if I ever am talking and go. That's what's happening. So it's that, or Susan has snuck up behind you, and that is also possible.
00:53
That one, I know,
Speaker 4 01:01
yeah, it's pretty good. Just kind of hanging out this week. Don't really have anything to do. It's been pretty nice. Just been vibing, uh, Susan's had to work this week a bunch, so I just been hanging out at home, kind of playing some video games, jump starting the reading train a little bit. And you know how it goes, right? It's pretty good, nice, right? I would like to give out about video game design for just a minute, if I could. That was, if you wouldn't mind, right? So I cede the floor to you, yeah, let's talk about video game design. Star Wars, Jedi survivors, okay, let's talk about this for just a minute. Yeah, nobody in particular, right? Not a game that I bought because it was on like summer sale the other day. That's fine. Don't worry about it. Sure. We need to talk about some things here. Two problems with the game, right? Two, only two really that stand out. Number one, this game is what you would probably call a Metroidvania, right? This means, like, back back, think all the way back. This genre is named after, like, Castlevania and Metroid, right where you progress through the game. And then you like, get new powers as you go, which then unlocks things that you saw before. So you'll, like, pass things. You'll be like, Oh, I can't open that right now. Yeah. But then later, you get an ability, and then you can go back, sure, and now you can open it, right? That's the Metroidvania style, sure, right? There are a couple times in Jedi survivor where, like the hub, there's, like, different planets you can go to, which is very Star Wars II, you know, fine, and then, but there's like one main planet that you come back to all the time. And so it is big. It has like a ton of different areas that you can go to. It's very large, right? It's a little bit too big, because some parts are kind of not visually distinct enough from others for me to remember where that thing is that I saw before.
03:26
Oh yes, because
Speaker 4 03:27
it's like, oh, I need to go back there. I don't know where that was. I don't know where. I don't know where that box is that I couldn't open before and now I can, or there was a door somewhere that I now have the ability to open. Where in the heck was that, right? So, like, it's just bordering on the hub area, like it kind of branches off into all these different directions, right? And they're not, like, super big. So I guess kind of like what you can do at the end is, like just kind of kind of re traverse some areas, just kind of like run through and not find everything, right? But that's still, like, it's something. Some of the things are not memorable enough. Some of them are some of them like, oh yeah, it was by this big thing, right? But other ones are like, or they're not near, like a warpable Checkpoint, right? So, like, you'd have to go to a checkpoint and then wander off in some direction to try to find the thing which, if it was closer to the checkpoint, that would make sense, because there's, like, certain areas you can warp to because it's so big, right? But like, so there's a couple things that are like that. The other problem that I was really grumpy at yesterday, and I had to put the game down for a minute, is there's like, all of a sudden in the middle of a game, there's this massive skill check, and it's like, what, where did this come from? What is happening, right? So every boss that you fight, you. You can basically just steamroll them, right? Like, I have not had a problem with any fights in this game at all, right? I'm just playing on like normal difficulty. Nothing like crazy, right? But like most bosses, it takes like, one to two, maybe three attempts, and you beat them, and it's like, right, at least for me, okay, so I'm not saying I'm like, a professional or anything, but, like, Sure, it wasn't bad, right? My Dark Souls, second real memory kicked in, and I can attack and block with your lightsaber, right? That's the combat flow, right? You can attack and block and deflect things, right? So you're doing this blah blah, the whole game, you're fighting all these enemies, mini bosses, whatever it's like, sometimes there's a boss that has like three enemies in it. Those suck because they're not always programmed to move at different speeds, right? You just get, like, totally swarmed by like, a group of three enemies. You're like, what? Yeah, like, if you're game designing this correctly, they move at slightly different speeds, so you can sort of kite them away and do kind of like, you know, you don't have to focus all them at the same time. You can prioritize
06:16
what's going to target priority,
Speaker 4 06:18
right? That's what you can do. Now, I'm sure that because some of those fights, I imagine, because I don't really invest too much in force power stuff, because when the lightsaber just works all the time, why? Why bother? Why bother? Right? Why? I don't need to invest in the force skill tree for like, one hyper, niche scenario
06:44
into it the gotcha. Yeah, right, gotcha. So that's
Speaker 4 06:47
the end of the game. So I'm sweeping up things and, like, I'm filling out skill trees that I wasn't really using for my secondary ones, right? Anyway, almost all the way through this game, we're getting close to the end, right? You can feel it wrapping up. There is a massive skill check, where all of a sudden you play as a different character for part of it, and Darth Vader shows up. Spoilers for Jedi survivors. So Darth Vader shows up and you have to fight Darth Vader. Oh, right, commonly known as an easy character, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, no problem, right? So like couple things. Number one, by playing this as not your main character, you now have none of the skills that you have been using for your fight. Excellent. So that's cool. So even if you were investing in the skill trees, like you're playing as a different person for this, like one section of the game, which is great fun, right? It's for thematic story reasons, but still zero, which also means you have way less healing than you would normally have, too, by the way. So there's a fun skill check they throw at you, right? The problem is, at no other point in the game have you had to fight a boss that lasts this long, right? The fight is such a grind because he's so much more difficult and he has, like, higher health than literally anybody. Yeah, it's fine, but, like, the fight is such a grind that it comes out of nowhere, like the main protagonist of the game, like I stomped him, like destroyed, right? And his little sidekick guy, destroyed, right? No problem. If the game didn't have cut scenes that like for story reasons, I would have beaten the major boss like ages ago, right? No problem. So Darth Vader shows up, and now there's this just like, horrendously massive skill check in the middle of the game. For no reason you're like, what? Why I like? I understand thematically, why it's so much harder than everything else. But,
08:53
bro, seriously, what are you doing? You should make him a little you should make him more difficult, yes, but not
Speaker 4 09:01
this much, right? Like, all kinds of things and whatever. And I think the biggest, the most annoying thing that I that it seemed like to me was happening, okay, I don't know this is, is factual, okay? Because I don't have, like, numerical frame data or anything like that. But there's during the middle of the Darth Vader fight, there's these big, like cross lightsaber moments where they're, like talking and whatever you know, you know, for cinematic reasons. But then it cuts back to gameplay, and I feel like his animation start before yours do right? So the thing will just cut back, and his animation, he started attacking you. And you don't have like, you can't push any buttons yet, there's a lag. Oh no, you can't die. Judge or block for like a second or two, like a split second, a whole second, but like for a couple milliseconds, you can't do anything, and his animations have started, which, in my opinion, is not particularly fair. Well, right? No, especially when, like, it's all based off of Yeah, reaction time and and sometimes the thing will when the little mini cut scene plays like it felt kind of random, that sometimes you just like, all of a sudden wouldn't be locked onto him anymore. So you might be facing like, slightly the wrong way, and try to deflect. And that doesn't work, really. So you'd like, get come out of a cut scene and just get owned. Like, what? What is why you would just start up like, and it's like, programmed to be like, one of several attacks, right? Kind of, because it's not the same one every time, sure. So sometimes it's just like the one hit attack, whatever. Sometimes he'll just, like, start with this, like, big, like, five to six hit combo that has the unblockable attack like, in the middle of it. So like, he turns, like, in video game design. What happens is the enemy turns red, and this is a signal to you that you cannot block this attack and you must interrupt it or dodge it some way. Oh, right, but if he starts with that,
11:37
yeah, what am I expected to do in this situation?
Speaker 4 11:40
Right? And there are some hitbox hit detection issues that I have problem with the grab attack specifically I kept yelling about, he feels like, okay, only this is a reference that no one's gonna get, but he feels like the Chained ogre in sekiro, right? This enemy famously has the most like ridiculous hit detection thing ever. But like in that game, they'll, like, grab at you. And visually you're definitely not in the grab animation, right? It's detecting that you are, so it grabs you. And that happens in this game with Darth Vader's little force grab thing. Like, you can dodge around the side, but sometimes it's like, No, you didn't got you
12:32
lose your like, you're you're getting in here, buddy. Like, yeah. So you're like,
Speaker 4 12:36
Oh, you jump out of the way. And his little hand thing is miles away from but he grabs you, but it's not right, but it's not right. It's like, okay, what in the I'm okay. Don't come at me with who's got the force. Shut up. That was nowhere near the hit detection of this, right? So anybody else annoyed with Darth Vader? The secret? Go left. Boom, he's left your right, circle to the right. Boom, nailed it. There you go. Darth Vader's weakness circling to the right. Hey, got him high grounds and going and circle? Yeah, it's true. I couldn't get the high ground in this. That was the problem, right? I should have done that. There's a little ledge. I should just stayed up there and stared at him. He I mean, he probably forced pulled me down there. But that's like, I know what to do here.
Speaker 3 13:36
I've seen this before. OBI, Wan, no, no one has taught you. With.
Speaker 4 13:43
So that's what I've been doing today. Mostly is complaining about some level design and hitbox detection. That's really, that's it. That's all. I Okay. I'm done. Rant over. I mean, if you can't complain about hitbox detection then, I mean, it's really important if you're gonna do action combat, right? If you're gonna do block attack combat style, like hit detection, needs to be pretty spot on, and your input speed needs to be matching as well. Yeah, right, because if their animation is starting before you're able to put in any inputs, that is not okay,
Speaker 4 14:27
that's a problem. Well, it Yeah, it's just so unfair at that point. Because if the whole point is to if your whole point is to react and respond as a fight, is the whole point of Yeah. And if you don't have a ability to do that, yeah. And so it's like, it's all well and good that it's like a seamless thing, right? For cinematic purposes, but there's not always a clear indication of I can attack now, right? So you kind of have to be like, if you hit the button too early. Nothing happens. You're sort of standing there. Oh, that's not good, as the lightsaber is careening down towards your skull. You know, that's not the best. So that's fun, yeah? All right, video game Rant over. What else did I do this week? Oh, yeah, all right, I have been to yet another recital. Can you believe it? I honestly, I can't. I'm a little recycling continues. How, how does the How are this many recitals? Well, this one was actually a relation, so it's Susan's nephew's son, right? Oh, so it was him, and it was just, it was like a piano thing, right? So, like he does, like private piano lessons, you know, which is like some lady from their church or whatever. And so it was like a, it was just kind of like a, when I say recital, what I mean is a family event so that he can practice performing in front of people, right? So, like, we went to their church thing, and they had snacks, and he played piano for 25 minutes with his teacher. So that was pretty cool, right? We did that. So he did pretty good. He's only been playing his piano since, like, I think he said October or November, and so pretty good. He played a bunch of little songs, just like little the tags, right? It's not like, though it was not like, uh, big, long pieces, obvious scandal for less than a year, right? Lots of good stuff there. So sorry, where did, where did you go? That was a computer beeping noise that was terrifying. What is it? Hello, hello. I Yes, hi. I
Speaker 2 16:50
think it's time that I replace a cord in my cabling setup. It is very chords, yes, it's very fussy. Sorry. I I went to reach my laptop was on a little stand, and I went to just move my laptop just a little bit, and the whole system was like my second monitor. When it dark, you disappeared. Sound, oh no, it over. It was like, You didn't unplug your, you know, your your storage properly. I wasn't trying to unplug anything. No, I touched this milli metrically. I just went like, Oh, let me just because I, as I am, want to do, I have to futz. And the computer was the left side of it was not in alignment with the left side of I was trying to make it
Speaker 4 17:41
test. Just gonna see what you did. You messed it up with your futzing
Speaker 2 17:45
fuzz, with stuff over here. That's all right. So I heard that this was a family gathering to purpose him, to give him a chance to to perform in front of others. Yes,
Speaker 4 17:59
that's pretty much what it was. So it was. So it wasn't like a whole bunch of random people playing piano, it was just him. It's like a little mini concert situation where he played, like, small song excerpts or like beginners. So they're like a minute or two long, right? They're not like Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, you know, yet, yeah? So well, important. We'll see next
18:18
time. But yeah, he's only
Speaker 4 18:19
been playing for since, since, like, October, November or whatever. Oh, wow. So pretty good, right? So we did that. So we decided, since we're in Springfield, already, make a day of it, right? So Susan had to go to Barnes and Noble, of course, too. Oh, no, yeah. I know it was rough. She had to go. And she was doing some research for her parents to teach her stuff about for read alouds for next year. She was just kind of like scouting out what would be good for age group stuff. Sat over in the children's section for a very long time while I wandered about the store and became very cross, right? I became very cross of Barnes and Noble, right? Because would you like to hazard a guess about how many books were in the geology section, um, science, little in the little, tiny science corner that nobody goes To except for me, I'm going to guess 5404, books about geology in the whole section. There are more books by Dave Ramsey in Barnes and Noble than there are about geology. And that is not allowed. That is upsetting. Wow, wow, wow. That's bad. Why it is bad? There are more copies of the 48 Laws of Power than there are books about geology in Barnes Noble I know, I know like because weirdly, the science and business section are right next to each other, which is weird, but whatever. I don't think that's how Dewey Decimal works, but it's fine. It's okay. It's okay. So that's what, yes, okay. Yeah. Came
20:00
very how many of those four books do you already own? Well, none, and
Speaker 4 20:03
I didn't buy any of them because they weren't, like, particularly good, right? Like they were the best, right? So it was kind of distressing. So I don't really know what I'm gonna do there. I did put some books on my list from while I was there, but just was like, man, what the heck? What is this science section over
20:26
here? Why is it so bad?
Speaker 4 20:29
No science books over here. Why are they not they're all like, I don't know what I don't know. I guess like, because it's like, popular with like, certain with like, the way that people present it online. But there's, like, lots of books about, like, lots of books about, like, astrophysics in space. Oh, no, yeah, which is, like, you know, it's a thing, and, like, that's cool. But like, where's the earth science books? Bro? Like, where is that? That's what we need in our life.
Collin 20:56
Yeah, nobody. That's not the cool stuff, though. Come on, there's cool stuff about Earth Science. Oh, I know, I know, but a lot of people do. I mean, they gotta, I mean, how are you how else are you supposed to determine if we're on a firmament or not? I mean, this is the real question. Stop it.
Speaker 4 21:15
Stop it. Right? I think it's much more interesting that the loudest sound, potentially the loudest sound in modern history, ever heard by humans, was the eruption of Krakatoa. So I have it
21:33
under authority that it was actually a concert for
Speaker 3 21:40
I mean that one time that Slipknot played a concert at the Ozark Mountain duck Stadium in Springfield, according to the neighbors, that was the loudest sound ever.
21:50
This is, this is what I'm talking about. And then it is one
Speaker 4 21:53
of the reasons why they don't have concerts there anymore. I know they had a Metal Fest thing there one time with like, slipknot and Papa Roach and some other bands that were popular at the time. I can't remember my friends went there. I mean, it's not a bad place
Speaker 2 22:13
for it. It's a stadium. It's a stadium that nobody was using. It's being Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 22:18
The other mountain ducks lasted in exactly like, felt like two seasons. I don't know if that's true, but it felt like it was not long, long enough for me to attend one Ozark Mountain ducks game, and that was all, and there's people playing there again, right? Right? Is that right? Is there? Is it opened? It's back, opened. I believe so. I think we talked about this before, yeah, I forget who, what the team name
Speaker 1 22:47
is, though, is it? Yeah, it's not the ducks sad face. I don't know this.
Speaker 4 22:51
Also went to an autocross thing here. They used to do autocross things in the parking lot, like every smile on the weekend. They, you know, like to set up the cones and the racy roundy thing. Yeah, I went there with some of my friends too. Yeah, it's
23:02
now called the Ozark Mountain Sports Complex. Oh,
Speaker 4 23:05
oh yeah, oh yeah, sports Oh. But,
Speaker 2 23:12
well, I don't know if that's true or not. Whenever you click on it a Squarespace site, a logo pops up and it says the website is expired. So let me see.
Speaker 4 23:20
You know, that sounds about right for that building, just because it's kind of knock on well for that place,
Speaker 2 23:30
oh, the Marucci clubhouse Midwest is located there. What does that mean? M, A,
Speaker 4 23:36
R, U, C, C, I, what? What is that? What is that? I don't, I actually don't know. I don't know. It's
Speaker 2 23:47
the hitter's house, no rainouts, no makeups. Oh, it's a batting cage. It's
23:52
a batting field housey situation, right? Interesting. Yeah, is that, like, the name of thing? Yeah, so
Speaker 2 24:05
it's, it's, um, they're located, they're all over Baton Rouge Lafayette, Austin. Have
24:11
you all over two places in Louisiana?
Collin 24:15
Hold on, it says Baton Rouge Lafayette, Austin. Interestingly, the Midwest is just Ozark, Missouri, Orlando, Las Vegas, Denver, Cedar Park, Tulsa, Phoenix. They have one in Tokyo, Houston, New Orleans, London and Scottsdale.
Speaker 4 24:35
You know, according to my impeccable research, that is playing all of the Yakuza games. Batting cages are big in Japan, according to that video game, they are a huge thing that is integral to every story. Yes, this is why this is important.
Speaker 2 24:59
I'm. On their map, on their website, I'm zooming out. Oh, look, look at all these little red dots over here. I don't know that there's no about the What's weird is, you go to hittershouse.com, there's no like about us. There's no like what we are. There's nothing about this
Speaker 4 25:17
poor, poor design. My favorite. I love that. Oh, but you can, Oh, interesting. You can get a monthly membership for, oh, a one month membership is $150 for a thing that you don't know what it is, right? Yes, I do like how it does say Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Austin, Midwest, Orlando, Las Vegas. It's called Missouri. It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 25:45
It's called Ozark. It's in the town of, oh, everything else was named after the town that they're in. But, you know, we,
Speaker 4 25:53
yeah, bro. Like, what is that? That is lame. That's real bad. I do like how their website also does not tell you anything about what actually happens here. You just have to sort of infer from this. Like, the very first picture that you see is just a wall of shirts and shorts, like athletic clothing, and you're like, that's weird. And then the picture on the wall appears to be of a woman walking, uh huh. But then when you look, when you squint really closely, I think she's she has a glove on at no point. Okay, there's a wall of baseball mitts. I don't know what this picture is of. I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at. Yeah, more T shirts. It's your bad picture. They just decided, Hey, Give grandpa the camera. Here's a wall of bats, wall of mitts. Not getting better, is it? No, and then I still don't know. I have no idea what this picture is supposed to be. Like, it's just a bunch of bags, but, like, I don't know if there's stuff in the bag. I don't know if it's just the bag. This one on the bottom looks like a like a gym bag with wheels. I've seen these before, but I don't know what these other things are. These things in the middle look like. There's supposed to have stuff in them, but maybe they're just backpacks. I don't know. I have no idea. This is a terrible, not good. It's very bad, right? Ah, age membership includes the use of baseballs, which, as we know, are expensive, um, and yes, l screen, oh, yes, okay, yes, batting T's and mounds. Nice, cool, salt test. The use of cage space is limited to one single lane for a maximum of 30 minutes, if no persons are waiting to use the lane, at the end of the 30 minutes, time can be extended an initial 30 minutes each non member a company will be charged $5 if no one's waiting. Yeah, yeah. So like, I don't, I don't. Why are there no pictures of the hitting facilities? If this is all about hitting baseballs. There is an extreme lack of pictures covering the facilities in which you hit. Okay, I need to know. All right. Let's see if the Baton Rouge, Louisiana one is better. Oh, look, not really. Oh, but at least this one is out. This is in the hitting lane, but it says a bucket of hats with the state of Louisiana on it. Well, that's neat. Wall of gloves.
Speaker 2 28:54
So far, I'm just getting it's a sport like it's a that's a supply store, basically.
29:00
Yes, what? Hold on?
29:03
I don't know. Why are their memberships
29:05
so cheap? Are they different price?
Speaker 2 29:10
Yeah, the monthly membership. Bro. Wait, what Hold on? Now, I don't know. Well, it's interesting. Maybe
29:17
the first one I've seen that has a picture of the hitting facility is the Tokyo one, which is very useful. I can't wait to go. I know, right, like bang. Anyway, sorry, let me go back. Fuse, so bizarre.
Speaker 4 29:40
Anyway, I this is weird, very weird, all right. Well, anyway, what was I talking about? Anyway, yes, Barnes Noble didn't buy any books. However, after that, obviously, we just. United time to eat right now. Eating dinner in Springfield on Sunday is awkward, right? Because every single restaurant is either they're either not open or they close early, right? All the restaurants are closing about eight o'clock, which is a problem for a person that really likes the dinner at seven o'clock. So like, had to try to move up the table here, move on the timetable, figure out where the heck to eat. So, yeah, you really had to bust it to
30:39
figure out what you were
Speaker 4 30:40
doing, yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, I know this is a me problem, because I'm the only person I know that likes to eat dinner late. Yeah, right. No. None of my friends do. None of my family does at all. Right? Dad's like, 430 you guys hungry? No, Dad, what are you doing? Get
30:59
ready for the lake, because we'll be
Speaker 4 31:01
Oh, yeah, but there's, there'll be snacks too. So, like, it's fine, right? Because, like, if you eat her, if I eat too early, then I'm hungry again, and then it's like, 930 10 o'clock, and I'm not in bed yet, but I'm hungry. I'm like, Oh, I definitely can't eat now. I don't wanna do that anyway. So new restaurant alert for Springfield we decided to go to. Was it called crave Mediterranean? Oh, gasp, some random places we found, right? She was like, Hey, can we go here? Yes, yes, we can. That's nice. It's over on the public road, like, by where that Ozark adventure store is in that little thing, oh,
31:54
all the time. I didn't know this was there. It's
Speaker 4 31:56
just, like, hiding there. It's right by Hertz donuts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is weird because the Hertz donut side is huge, and then, like, the little Mediterranean is, is not, it's like a very small, there's not a ton of seeds in there, but it is exceptionally good. Like, well, that's real good. Yes, it's like, real good, right? They have, uh, all kinds. Now again, it's a bit the the term Mediterranean, right, not quite correct, right? It's definitely more like Middle Eastern, West, Asian vibes, right? Okay, it's more like that. There's a lot more Turkish, Palestinian, Jordanian stuff like that in there. It's like shawarma and like falafel stuff like that, right? And it's mega, right? So we soon had a Euro, and I had the beef shawarma wrap thing. Bro, yes. This is, and is a pretty good deal. It's kind of pricey, but like the sandwich menu, like everything comes with, like the sandwich and fries or rice and soup or salad. Oh, that's good. That's not bad. Pretty good deal. So it is, like, it's not, it's actually that menu is not bad at all. It's like 14 bucks maybe for one thing, which is, you know, but if you get sandwich and rice or fries and soup or salad, that's right, that's pretty good. Yeah, some of their other like, entree dinners are more pricey, but, like, they look pretty big, so not bad dude there, right got some euros and some shawarma action. Weirdly, they have, like, what they described as Cajun fries. I don't think Cajun is the right word, but they were really good. And the lentil soup, bro, I had soup envy because I was like, I don't know if I want to think of soup, and it's not like a small cup of soup, it's a pretty big soup bowl. And I was like, I'll get the salad. And I looked at Susan soup, and I had immediate soup envy. It's like, oh that, Oh that. What have I done? Yeah, I know that's way better than Dang it. Oh Oh no. Oh no, sad. So, so that was all good and, and the highlight of the eating experience, however, right? So it was like, late they were closing, but the dude, all the staff in there, they were, like, swamped, right, oh, crushed right at the end of the night there. But the dudes were there was like, three servers out there, and they were the nicest people ever. So we're like, there a little bit after eight, like, finishing, and the dude's like, so dessert, yeah. We're like, oh, we gotta go. He's like, Nah, that's fine. What dessert you want? Oh.
35:01
Oh, so they're real cool. They're real cool about it. So obviously have to get some dessert. So we had some kanafa, right? You've had this stuff. I have not, bro, this might be the greatest thing ever. So it's like, it's like, the internet says Middle Eastern, but I think it's Palestinian, right? And it's like a little tiny, like pastry layers, right? Like philodo type situation, sure, with syrup and some other stuff, and then, like, a cheese baked in there. Everything
35:44
that I'm finding online, it looks fuzzy, yeah,
Speaker 4 35:47
that's like the, I can't remember what that stuff is on top there, but, like, it's got like, a crust of like, little stuff and pistachios on the top, that's what I saw. And it is so good, like, it's not like, it kind of tastes like, even though it's cheese, right? There's cheese in there, but it's like a real kind of a, I don't know it's like a savory or cheese, right? This neblis Cheese stuff is, like, very chill, and it just makes it like warm and gooey. Tasting is basically what tastes like. It kind of tastes like a fresh out of the oven, sugar cookie. It's got that consistency almost real, all the layers of dough and syrup and stuff. And it's so good.
36:48
Oh,
Speaker 4 36:50
right, it's so good. I don't, I don't really know it was like, on the this, on the wall, it was just, like, on the little screen thing. It was like, popping up stuff that was there. And we're like, what is that? Where is that? What even is this? I don't know what this is. It was on the dessert menu, ah, because it's like, but it looks red. Theirs is like the reddish one. And so I was not thinking, that's a dessert, right? It doesn't look desserty, you know? It does. It does not look like a dessert at all, no, but it's, is really good and very and it's, again, it's one of those destin not like, I am about to say the most un American thing of all time. I don't like desserts that are, like, stupidly sweet, right, right? Sure. I like, like, nice, like mildly sweet, kind of savory dessert. That's my jam, right? It's my favorite thing. And this is, like, this nails it, right? It's like, pop, is
37:46
it a little savory at least? I mean, like, yeah, it is, yeah,
Speaker 4 37:49
yeah, yeah. It was really good. So that was so kudos to the dude for letting us order that. Still, and he said it was his favorite thing. So, well, I mean, gotta go if
38:07
that, if it's my favorite thing, you do have to go with that. Yes, I
Speaker 4 38:11
agree. Yeah. He was like, Oh yeah, it's my favorite. Well, fine, okay,
38:19
okay, I guess you insist delicious thing that you
Speaker 4 38:23
have this delicious thing. He came back, we're like, the last two people in the restaurant, and he was like that, right, good, right. Yeah, bro, you were you scared us, right? You did us, right. Good job, man. Thank you.
Speaker 2 38:37
I like that whenever you know I'm not, it's tough, because I know that they like, you know, restaurants and the servers, they're like, they're really busy, they have a lot of things to do, and so that kind of behavior, I'm not like, yeah, they need to do that all the time, and that's the expectation for what makes a good restaurant. But when it does happen, it's like, yeah, this is exactly right. This is perfect.
Speaker 4 38:59
That's nice. Yeah, it was really cool. So bonus points for that guy. He was really nice, though that was pretty that's pretty much my week. That was highlight of the week. Exciting. New desserts are always fun, right? That's Yes, that's what we like, right? It was good. Yeah, take it, yeah. So that was pretty much it. What have you been doing? Okay, well, I
Speaker 2 39:26
I uttered a phrase that Megan said. I don't think I've heard anyone ever say that before.
39:31
Oh, no, she's underestimating you. That's rude.
39:35
It is me. So,
Speaker 2 39:40
no, I said the other night. She's like, can we talk? I was like, Yeah, first I need to clean up my pen.
39:46
She was like, what?
Speaker 2 39:48
Gotta clean out my bed, because I my my fountain pen, ice was not writing really well, and I was wanting to start using it more, and I had to go. I. Go clean it out. That
Speaker 4 40:01
reminds me, I brought mine home from my desk, and it's over in my backpack. I get that out tomorrow. That's that's what I'm doing tomorrow. Boom, there you go. Nailed it.
Speaker 2 40:08
You're welcome. Welcome to try to be gentle with it and everything. But I did have to remove the nib, uh, off of it and just give it a real good deep clean, because it just wasn't quite flowing
Speaker 4 40:19
the way I needed to. So
40:25
that was, that was, that was my big project this week. No, I pretty
Speaker 3 40:28
exciting. I important project, right? Maybe, you know, it
Speaker 4 40:32
is this, it's ridiculous, but it's fine. Ridiculousness is allowed. It's, uh, definitely okay. It is necessary, trusting in the show, it is mandatory. Actually,
Speaker 2 40:47
I know, I know it's so bad, but no, I actually expect to spend time with the green county assessor's
40:56
office. Oh, that sounds riveting. Oh, man,
Speaker 2 40:58
Emmy, no, here's, here's the saga that I have been undergoing for seven months now.
Speaker 4 41:06
November, we got a bill for tax, because in Green County, you don't just pay personal property taxes. You pay business property taxes too if you own a business. Ew, which I think is gross. That is like, that feels wrong, right? Like, yeah, I don't think you should pay both of those things. No, I don't. Right, I don't. Either there should definitely be a one or the other yes type situation.
41:38
I agree, because also all
Speaker 4 41:40
the own property, aren't you just renting office space? Well,
Collin 41:45
I learned so much seven months ago, coming about eight months ago, whenever I talked to them, because I said, this is stupid, and I said, I didn't, so I'm renting an office. And they're like, Uh huh, and what's in the office? I was like, a desk and chairs, and they're like, exactly, put it on the paper. And I was like, what had to pay tax on a desk? I said, Are you serious? Are you serious? And? And they said, Yeah, and anything else that you own to use in the business. And I went, Okay, and they gave me a helpful sheet to figure out how to like, what could be included? Was it really helpful? Well, if I owned rock crushers,
Speaker 4 42:31
welters, cars, yeah, definitely. Plasma torches, sitting the business venture the plasma torch without it.
Speaker 2 42:44
They that's what this is geared towards. And as soon as I saw the list, I was like, Oh, I see, I see, this is actually not for me. I This is okay, okay. This is industry. This is industry, as in, like, manufacturing and stuff.
43:03
So I said, I said,
Collin 43:05
Well, I didn't pay for the, I said the the furniture was actually just gifted to us. So I don't, I don't know. I didn't pay for it. Well, how much would you pay for that is zero, $0 if you bought it on the marketplace? And I said, Well, I wouldn't buy it on marketplace, because I could get it for could get it for free. And they're like, but what's its market value? I said, free because that's zero. I said zero because that's what I paid for. It how the market works. It's what people
43:31
are willing to spend. And
Speaker 2 43:32
I was willing to spend $0 they did not under like, this is not something they understand, right? So I put $1 and then I because whatever, I don't care. Like, come at me, we
Speaker 4 43:47
do care. That's what I pay her to garage. Yeah, we do own a little vacuum that that I bought for that
Speaker 2 43:57
deed, that dad actually died, that dad gave us so that we could keep our office clean, because he was big on that. That sounds
44:03
like him. Thing to say, Yes, yep.
Collin 44:07
And then I was like, I wrote my list, and I walk up, and I gave it to him. And they were like, What is this? I said, that's the property of my business. And they went, you don't have anything else. And I went, nope. And I said, Do you count company shirts? And they went, No. I went, Yes. I said, dog leashes. And then they thought about that, and they're like, well, but those I said, they said, Would you be expected? Would that be expected to be to last more than a year? I said, No, it depends. They said, probably not. I said, No. And so they went, Okay, don't put that on there anyway. What about poop bags? And they were like, no. I said, tennis balls. No. At this point they started to get annoyed with me, and they're like, Fine, whatever. Give
44:50
us high visibility jackets,
Speaker 2 44:54
no attire, like clothing and anything like cloth or material they expect, like, that's not a
Speaker 4 44:59
lag through. Yeah, you buy it again. And I said, I
Collin 45:02
said, this is all I do, like, this is everything, and I'm a service. We don't have a car. Oh, I will get to that in a minute, real quick. Okay, this is an overarching theme of frustration, of how no support or structure is built to help service industries. If you don't have a brick and mortar, you're kind of trash to a lot of people anyway. So I go through all this and they're like, you have brick buildings, brick, selling brick. I mean, like, like, we're people to you, right? Like, that's what you sell from. Like, you
Speaker 4 45:35
have a storefront anyway. So I
Speaker 2 45:41
I submitted this, my my tax bill on all this stuff, shockingly, was $5 okay, yeah, that's
45:50
what we like to see. I went
Speaker 2 45:52
online, I paid it, and I being honest, did not look at all the fine print. I was annoyed. I was rushing through this. I then looked at the tax rates of the bill, and I went, why did I pay $20
Speaker 4 46:04
No, no. Service fees, no. They attached a $15 late fee, to which I said, I just got this two weeks ago. How is this late? And I took it to them, and they went, Oh, well, these assessments were due back in April. And I went, I didn't get this piece of paper until two
Speaker 2 46:30
weeks ago, until May. No, this was back in November. Oh, okay. I said I didn't get this until November.
Speaker 4 46:39
And they were like, oh, oh, well, you'll have to call to see if they'll get that removed. And I was like, done called. They were like, absolutely, that was assessed in correct not
Speaker 2 46:51
we'll get that really, we'll get that removed. You will see a refund in 90 days.
47:01
Now, Famous last words from the person
Collin 47:05
it's November. I know how the end of the year works in government, nothing happens in November because it's Thanksgiving, and nothing gets done in December because it's Christmas. Like the entire month of December is just gone. Like, when I worked for the state November and December, they would tell us, don't even bother sending emails to other people unless something is on fire, because it's just going to get lost in November, December. And you're like, wow, and it's especially when you're on all these committees and stuff, because, like, 90% of people, they don't plan when their vacations and stuff are, and so something's beginning, and nothing happens. You can't do anything. And then January is mostly out because it takes people getting back into the groove by the 15th or 16th, and they're digging out from stuff they should have done back in November. And then it's February. And so I'm like, we're not seeing this at all until, like, until, like, end of February at the late at the earliest. Well, I 90 days. I did what we do. I put it on my calendar. I said, Call if it hasn't been there 90 days. And I call them, and they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, what do you what are you doing? We don't see this. You have to call, oh, I keep getting it confused. I think I have to call the assessors, but I actually have to call the collectors, even though the assessors did it incorrectly. The collectors are the ones with the payment. And I find out that, well, they have to send it via check, and that takes a little while, and there's a backlog. And so they batch these. And so if you're in the next batch, you'll get through. And so wait for another 45 days.
Speaker 4 48:44
Okay, Bro, wait another 45 days.
Collin 48:49
Put on my calendar. I called them today, and I said, Hey, just calling to check on what's going on. And I got a gentleman, and he was like, hmm, well, I see your account here, and there's some stuff on here that I don't understand. I'm going to have to talk with our head cashier so she show that she can interpret what's going on. And I was like,
Speaker 2 49:12
I said, fantastic. Let me know where, when can we talk with head cashier and get get her well, she's on vacation right now. Of course, she Okay, cool, cool. And I so then I start doing my like, poking and prodding of like, I just want it like, because I can't see their screen, and I'm just like, do you show that they're supposed to be a refund? And he was like, Well, I see something here. I see a strike off of $15 I see that I'm like, okay, cool, cool. I'm just confirming all this stuff. And he went, but I think that if it's below $20 there's a special process to get these handled. Just
49:56
give me and
Speaker 2 49:58
only the head. Cashier processes, the special process, so you'll have to call back when she's back from vacation to see where the what's going on.
Speaker 4 50:15
And so I learned today in government, they will freely give you $10,000 back to you within 90 days, but if it's
Speaker 2 50:26
less than 20 it will take you. It's impossible to get $15 back, probably
Speaker 4 50:34
because, like I imagine, it is a clerical thing. They don't know how to key it into the computer, right? I bet, I bet the only problem is they don't know how to put like, I bet there's like, a field thing, right? And it's like a certain range of characters, and I think that is probably under the range that they have programmed in the computer to be able to accept and they're like, Well, I don't know how to do that. I can't actually give it to you, because I don't know how to make it say that I gave you. There's not like, a manual entry thing, right? You probably can't be like, key in the number here, click, click. You probably have to do like a thing first, and so I bet they just can't do because they didn't program to be, I that small of a number. I imagine they weren't expecting that.
51:30
Who would ever, who? Why would we ever refund $15
Speaker 4 51:33
that's dumb, yeah, right. Like I imagine that it's that. It's probably something like during audits, it's easier to catch a $10,000 transaction on an audit page. That's also true, right? Keeping track of because you could if somebody was trying to cheat the system, right? You wouldn't, you wouldn't give, you wouldn't give your, your co conspirator, five grand. You'd give them really small
52:06
denominations on an ongoing basis, right? Brief little that's what
52:09
they all do. That's what they all do. When you get when they get caught, they're
Speaker 4 52:12
like, oh, they, they took, like, you know, $40 here, and like, you know, $20 here over the course of, like, six years, because nobody ever gets find that missing, like a little bit of money, exactly. So
Speaker 2 52:27
I think that in addition to what you're saying is there's there's, it doesn't allow them to enter small numbers like,
52:33
that's true, like a safety feature. I think it's a safety
Speaker 2 52:37
feature for skimming, right? Yes, skimming, yes. To prevent skimming, I imagine. So I'm just like, great. Well, so now if just, hey, racketeers, don't skim. Just take the just take the eight grand. They'll never know. You'll get your money immediately, and they'll be like, Oh, cool. No problem. Cool. Do we? Do?
Speaker 4 53:00
We do this all the time, yeah, we always issue large denomination.
Speaker 2 53:09
What could be the problem? It's fine. This is, this is what I have learned. And I went, Okay, oh, dear. So I have I have it on my calendar to call the head cashier back when they get back from vacation to see if we can settle this, expedite,
Speaker 4 53:28
this goofy thing. Finally,
Speaker 2 53:34
$15 and I know it's dumb, but like, Look, I've wasted more than $15 in electricity trying to solve this problem.
53:43
Come on, definitely true.
Speaker 2 53:47
So the only other highlight to this, oh, I need some water. No,
Speaker 4 53:51
fair enough. I almost always forget my water. I get my tea, and then I sit down. I'm like, Oh, the water for when the tea runs out. Yeah,
Collin 54:01
I've had a headache since I've woken up this morning. And no, yeah, so I've been trying to, like, chug the water. Good plan. But the only other thing I'll do my food review, and then we can move on to the next thing. Real quick. We also tried a new place. Hey, there's a barbecue trailer
Speaker 4 54:22
in our town, and they normally do barbecue that makes sense. That makes sense, they posted that they were going to do a crawfish boil, and they had ordered. They were ordering crawfish directly from Louisiana to be driven to our town to then be boiled. Yeah, crawfish boil. How do you not go to that? That's Megan. And I said, Absolutely, we, we will do this. And so we, we called the guy, and I'm like, how much like. You had to order it by the pound. And that always confuses me. I mean, yeah, like, No,
55:05
I don't know how much is a pound of crawfish?
55:07
Like, how big
55:08
is that bag? Like, well,
Speaker 2 55:10
and then the other thing is, is you go to a crawfish boil, you know, it's not just crawfish in there. Oh, yeah, our potatoes, sausages, sausages, corn, corn, sometimes hard boiled eggs. Oh, true, yeah, all sorts of
Speaker 4 55:25
stuff, other stuff, other random vegetables just in the air, like peppers and stuff, like, yeah,
Speaker 2 55:29
yeah. So I so he said he would make sure he he likes a healthy amount of crawfish in there. And so I'm like, okay, so that means that a pound of crawfish is actually gonna be a lot of crawfish.
Speaker 4 55:42
If he's like, not potato and not a pound of potatoes, this is what I was worried about. It's just fair. That's a fair problem. Well, he went like, 98% crawfish
Speaker 2 55:56
and not a lot of everything else. Now I mean both good and bad, good, because you get a lot of crawfish, which is what you want from a crawfish
56:05
boil, but no Andouille sausages and, oh, even a
Speaker 2 56:11
lot of crawfish are not very filling, yeah,
Speaker 4 56:16
the potatoes and the sausages, because crawfish are not big,
Collin 56:20
right? Nope, and you only eat the tail, yeah, and Sue, yeah. So this was fine. We sat out on our back deck and we ate. We had a lot of fun, and it was very good. And we ate, of course, we're out there. We're covered in crawfish on our backpack on our back deck, you know? We're just throwing it away. We're eating we're having fun. We're talking the rain rolls in. Yeah, yes, but we're covered, we're covered
Speaker 4 56:47
in crawfish. So we said, rain helped you out a little bit. We ate
56:52
crawfish in the rain for a little bit.
56:57
You know what? That helps the mess problem.
Collin 57:00
So it's fine. Because I was just like, look, I we're here, rushing around with my hands covered in crawfish. Is not going to do anything. So no, I'm just gonna, we're just, we're just gonna eat. It's fine. Kids sit back down.
Speaker 2 57:19
Crawfish in the rain. Yeah, we're okay. I It was just, you could see the like, you could see the totality of the rain cloud just being like, passing over us real fast, so it was going to be over. And it was not like a deluge or anything, but was just like, I don't know what this signifies that, but it was a lot of fun. So it means you're a crawfish enjoyer. That's
Speaker 4 57:43
what it means. That's, yes, that's exactly what we were doing, perfectly normal thing to it's fine. It's fine.
Speaker 2 57:54
So that was fun. That was our those were, that was, uh, that was our week. We had crawfish. I talked. I didn't speak to a head cashier. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 58:16
Anyway, so we are we want to the next
Speaker 1 58:22
yes section. Okay, so sorry. What did you get attacked again by your microphone? No,
Speaker 4 58:28
I was trying to move around my apps here, and it was messing up. And I have, I have two different I've been my notes app that I use right is red, and then this other app that came on my phone that I don't really use is also red, and I keep opening that one instead. So I'm trying to move them to where I feel like the Notes app should be, but then it was trying to combine them into a folder, and I didn't want to do that. I want to move the other one out of the way. So everything's fine. Everything's fine. I just like, I don't want the voice recorder here, because that's what I keep tapping when I want to open the Notes app. And so I'm just just just placing things. Everything's fine, yes, new segment time or returning segment returning segment time? Yes, right. Excitementing, right. What is this number? What? 344, no, five, yes. Wait, yeah,
59:31
wait, okay, okay. Now, wait a minute. What books have
Speaker 3 59:33
we read so far we have read, oh yeah, it's a summer book reading time. Once again.
Speaker 4 59:40
There we go. The Oh brother, summer reading spectacular is here we have read now. Do you want all the books, or just the summer books, because you sneaked in a bonus one. So we've read the outsiders, right? We've read The Hobbit. Yes, we have read a Connecticut. Yeah. King, King, are his court still kind of sorry about that one, but it's fine. We have read Farewell to Arms, and now we're ready for number five. Yeah, yes, okay, I understand, yes, this book is number five. We have not read five. We're getting ready for our fifth installment, right? Yes. What's happening here?
Speaker 2 1:00:23
Yes. So now we are embarking on an adventure, an adventure, a twist, a change, I think, from the previous, I mean, definitely from our winter program. And that's definitely, I don't know if we're going to revisit the winter program, basically what
1:00:39
happened, but well, we might.
Speaker 4 1:00:40
We might. It's fine. I think it was good. I think it was good. Was a good, solid plan, right? It's definitely just a little too depressing, so I'll have to, it'll be fine. Everything's fine. Good book. I enjoy doing that, so I think it's an okay thing to do the future again. But, and it went quick, we got to get you get anyway. So yeah, the haven't been an adventure for a while. The Winter Book definitely not adventure. The Connecticut Yankee is it was sort of adventure, kinda but like not, but mostly social commentary, but mostly confusing. So we have the Hobbit was our last adventure, adventure book, right? I did feel my suggestion was that after the winter read, we get something more upbeat, something a little swashbuckly, I believe is the term that I use, right? So we have decided on drum roll Collin. What'd we decide on Treasure Island. Yes, here we go. Yes, I am. I am very excited about this true, pretty good book. I was initially hesitant, because I have read this book before, but then I thought
1:01:53
that was a long time ago, right? I did do a sixth grade book report on Treasure
Speaker 4 1:02:01
Island so and I think I've read it again since then, but not in the last 20 years. So I think it's fine. I think I think we're safe, right? I do not really remember a lot of the minutia of the book, like general, like some of the major plot points, perhaps, but like, the, like, little details of absolutely not I have no idea.
Speaker 2 1:02:28
Yeah, no, I honestly it's been so long since I've read the book, my only real connection to this is the best connection, obviously, the best connection, obviously. So,
1:02:44
of course, the Muppet treasure,
1:02:46
Muppet Treasure Island. Which is the best, the best,
Speaker 4 1:02:49
right? Come on, yes, come on. Why? So, yes, I have that connection. So again, do I have the minutia, serious collection? No, no, I don't. So I think it'd be good, right? I think it'd be here's a classic, like adventure. It feels very summery to me, right? So I felt that was good. So I read up on your boy, Robert Louis Stevenson, today, a little bit. Oh, okay, would you like some Robert Lewin Stevenson background? Yes, absolutely. Number one, of course, Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish, right? So, because he was successful, he is called British, right? But, yeah, he is from Scotland, so boom, there you go. That's important here. He's kind of a like wish. Whisty kind of dude, right? He didn't want to do family business day, right? His family is like, be in the family business. And he was like, no, not want to do, you know, by the way, what Robert Lewis Stevens his family business is what his dad and uncle did, and grandpa. No, I did not know this either, until today, they designed and built lighthouses. What? Yes, how does they're like engineers that like, designed and helped construct, like worked on construction of lighthouse. That's crazy, yes. So Robert Louis Stevenson has a very deep connection to the sea, right? Because it makes sense now, because he, his family worked in build lighthouses all the time, which I did not know, right? Including the design of something called, like the intermittent beacon, they like flashed instead of just a steady thing, they made that like his uncle did that really. Yeah, it's crazy, I know. Well, okay, so that was, uh. Uh, unexpected. I was not really prepared for that. Just shocking revelation of, oh yeah, uh, Lighthouse building, cool anyway, born in 1850 uh, you'll never guess what disease Robert Louis Stevenson had was it? No, it was tuberculosis. Oh, okay,
1:05:25
I was trying to go with the C theme. So
Speaker 4 1:05:28
that's true, that's a fair, that's fair. But he was born in 1850 and he did live the beginning of his life in Scotland, so obviously, yeah, tuberculosis is the answer. He had this for I mean, obviously in 1800s This is now a lifelong affliction, right? So this kind of affected him a lot. He didn't want to do this. Was probably another reason he didn't want to do family business things, because he business things, because he was sick a lot of times. Sure, like, he even went to school and, like, studied engineering. He, like, passed the lawyer, the bar exam, and he was just like, Nah, I don't want to do that. Wow.
Speaker 4 1:06:21
So he kind of, like, would like, travel around, you know, to places to convalesce, like he went to Switzerland and France for the mountain air, you know. And he, like, started writing about his travels. And he was like, Oh yeah, no, this is what I'm gonna do. I like writing. Bang. Since we did, he started writing based on that. And yeah. So that was fun. He got married. Eventually, he met a woman who was already married, and she dished her husband for him. Uh huh. He got he went to go see her in San Francisco, and he got like, mega sick on the way, like, his tuberculosis, really accident. And so he got mega sick on the train. He took a train all the way across the United States to see her in San Francisco, and was like, wrecked, like he almost died. Yeah. No. Good, very bad. So that was fun. Then he started writing war. He wrote this book in 1883 I believe, yeah, he was so it made him 33 years old when it was published. He kind of wrote it for two reasons. He wrote it based on his experience, like telling stories and bonding with his stepson, right? And because he kind of wanted to impress his dad. He, like, really, kind of wanted to buckle down and be like, Look what I could make raw and to like, kind of show like, hey, look dad. I'm not like a
1:08:01
loser. I can write good look at me. Bang.
Speaker 4 1:08:06
So yeah, boom. That's kind of the okay Crux here, later in life, he, like, went all about, right? He was, he traveled a lot, right? He was also really inspired by other authors, like, he really liked Daniel Defoe, obviously, he really liked Thoreau, right? And other contemporary authors, right? I can't remember. There was another one that was mentioned here in this thing. And I was like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. But, uh, anyway, he read a lot of those guys, oh Po, obviously he liked that too. Um, but, like he, he died in Samoa. I did not know this. He was on, like, a South Sea thing again, for tropical air, for the old tuberculosis, right? But he really liked Samoa, and like, I guess, kind of during this time in British colonialism, right? It's a bit of a sore subject to be in Samoa, and he was very pro Samoan, right? So he, like, almost got banned from the island by the British government because he was so pro Samoa. Oh, that's funny, yeah. And he's actually buried on Samoa. That's where he's that's where he died, that's very, very I did not know that. So, yeah, he didn't really love traveling on the ocean, like he was kind of afraid of the water, but, like, he did it all the time anyway, so I thought that was also kind of weird, like kind of. Didn't really like the ocean, but he was always on the ocean. So there you go. That's what I learned today. His family built lighthouses, including this one I'm about to send you. This was designed by his uncle. I found a picture, finally. So boom, there we go. There's a brief Robert Louis Stevenson for my reading today. Well, I knew none of that to me either. So that's gone. That's crazy though, huh? Especially the connection to the lighthouse. Like, yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting. So, like, he was really, I think kind of because he was so he had to be confined to a bed a lot like he did sort of develop this very like adventurous side, where, when he was feeling well, he was going right, like he wanted to get out, and he wanted to go places, and he liked traveling, And he wanted to do all stuff, and then it would sort of wreck him and destroy him, and he would have to convalesce for very long time, which would then make him want to go adventure and travel more, right? So I think, I think part of this, like adventurous spirit and kind of like the wandering of the mind. Part of this comes from the fact that he often could not wander because he was bedridden. That makes a lot of sense, yeah, so I thought that was kind of cool. So yeah, that's what I found out today. Yeah. I think
Collin 1:11:38
it'll be interesting to hear, kind of read it through that lens of just his his own personal connection, but also kind of probably a little bit of longing and desire to be doing that I in my kind of preparation, I just kind of read some general stuff, trying not to spoil too much, stuff that maybe I'll remember, maybe I won't, doesn't matter. But, like, I don't remember when I read this, thinking of it as I saw that this has been classified as a coming of age story, and I didn't get that at all the first time I read it. So I am very interested to see that aspect as we work through the it kind of makes sense, you know, kid, whatever, like the narrator and whatever, but like that was definitely not on my mind when I read this, when I read this previously, and I was like, Really, I thought this was just a,
Speaker 4 1:12:27
you know, where. So I think the first time I read this book, I was probably around 12, because I think I again, I sixth grade book report, sounds about right? So I don't necessarily remember my first thoughts of the book, but yeah, it does kind of feel like that, right? So we'll just see how we go. We'll see some themes, probably reading with a more critical eye here this time, other than just like reading it, you know, yeah, back then. So interesting to see kind of what the themes are in this book. Because, like, I again, I just sort of remember story beats, like I remember this thing, or if I remember that character a little bit, right, obviously, you know, the one, but like, I don't really remember any of the nuanced things about that, which is kind of what some people were talking about his writing, because he was, like, engineer trained, right? They talk about how his like, you can, just like, throw detail at you, and it doesn't feel awkward, right? He describes things like, very efficiently and very well and just like, done. So I'm interested to see that, if that shows up in his writing style, because that's what I read a couple of people talking about was, like, how efficient he was, but like, in a positive way, right? That, like, he was able to use the words to describe things, like, very distinctly and, like, paint really good pictures, but like, not over describing, yeah, right. Not like my nemesis, Oscar Wilde, okay, not like that guy. He tries it. I mean, you know he's, he's just not for me. But so we'll see. So there we go. But yeah, so what are your thoughts on programming working through this? What do you have? So in my copy here, when I look at the cave Table of Contents, I have, it's got parts again, yes, right. So do you there's what, six parts? Yes, this is very nicely structured. This feels, see already we're getting some engineer feel right, six parts, six chapters per part. I can get behind this, yes, yep, and the chapters aren't themselves. Are not terribly long. I. Either for the No, not Yeah, for the most part. I think there are some slogs, but, well, yeah, I mean, I don't think there's, I don't know. I haven't flipped through it too much. I'm not seeing any, like, massive chapters. Yeah, right. This is, again, this is the thing that bothers me. Is when people are like, Oh no, every chapter is going to be like, 25 pages, like, you know what? No, I don't. I don't need that necessarily, all the time Mark Twain, or other authors that I read. I don't know if this was done. I'm
Speaker 2 1:15:37
going to go back and check something really quick here. Hold on. One you're gonna this is going to be very interesting. And I don't know
Speaker 4 1:15:47
how this was done. Hold on. Oh, anyway, no, sorry, the way. So I'm reading this on my
Speaker 2 1:15:57
my e reader, and the size of my screen and the size of my text made it so that each chapter was six pages long. I mean, that's
Speaker 3 1:16:07
when looking at this table of contents, they're also about six or seven pages long.
Speaker 4 1:16:11
Yes. So I was like, like, Okay, so we've got six six. Yeah, there we go. Okay, so
Speaker 2 1:16:21
I do want to just try and tackle part one in one stretch, or try and try and just do three and three.
Speaker 4 1:16:27
What are you thinking? Oh, I don't know. Don't know. For the first one, you want to try to do three and three. You can see how it goes. Yeah. Well, if we need to hot it up, we can, if we need to just keep going that pace, we can do that too.
Speaker 2 1:16:43
Yeah, right, I know also, yeah, because there's, we've got a you've got some travel, there's a lake trip in here. There's some other stuff. So
1:16:52
that's true, so we might, yeah, that's fair, yeah? Cuz then if we do need to record a couple episodes in a week, we could do, then we could
Speaker 4 1:17:01
do the full part. Easy, yeah, okay, yeah, okay, that could work. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll do the first three. And I feel like that's probably a good intro to feel for what's
1:17:12
going on. I think that'd be really good, right?
Speaker 4 1:17:16
Kind of feel it out, see how the pacing, see how, because, again, not all authors are created equal. Sometimes, some authors can make six pages a slog,
1:17:29
right? I don't think Stevenson is one of those, but you never know again. I don't remember very much. So have you ever read any other Stevenson? By the way, I
Speaker 2 1:17:43
have not. So this, not only have I read this one a long time ago, I have not read any other Stevenson. Ah,
Speaker 4 1:17:51
okay, so I have probably, I'm imagining. It's because I did like this. I'm guessing that's what happened. Um, I have read, of course, The Strange Case of Dr, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Oh, wait, oh, again, ages ago.
1:18:10
Yeah, okay, so I have read that one. Wait a minute, what
Speaker 4 1:18:13
I've read? I have a on my bookshelf. I'm looking at a collection of short stories, and I seem to remember liking the bottle imp. That sounds like a thing that I read, and I think I like that one. Do I remember why I like that one? No, but I think I did. So at some point I must have liked what he was doing, because I think I have read some of his other stuff. Now he's written other things too, but those are the only two books I've read. Is this and and Jekyll and Hyde. Okay, so I have read that one, and it also tells you how long that's been, because I had forgotten that he wrote that one. Yeah, yeah. It is not recently again, any time, anything I would have read by him is definitely, definitely occurred over 20 years ago, probably right, or just about 20 years ago, definitely over 15 years ago, 100% sure of that. So I have read it, but, like, I don't really remember a lot about so we'll just have to see.
1:19:35
I sent you a picture of him at 37 and he's 37
Speaker 4 1:19:40
Yeah, that's good, yeah, that's 37 in 1880s right? So that's Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:19:56
I'm Yeah. I'm excited to dive into the. This,
Speaker 4 1:20:00
it's gonna be good. So playing the two, it feels appropriately. Summary, it is appropriate. Summary, one, I agree. So good job. Good job there, talking me out of the other choice items. Well, you also talked yourself. I did all of our other listeners behind the curtain. Full disclosure here, some of our other choices were swashbuckley, but they did involve the French Revolution. And upon further investigation, some of them were very pro, like bourgeoisie. And I was just like, You know what? I don't Yeah, I'm not really feeling that right now. That doesn't really feel great. Back to treasure hunting, not that that sounds better, not that sounds better. Yeah. And the other choice, the decidedly not pro Bucha The Three Musketeers, is way longer than we thought it was. Yes, prohibitively so yes, like, extremely low. I was unaware that it was that big of a book, right? So, yeah, that one's kind of out just for time purposes. Can be having that so right now. Here we go. Scotland's own, right? I'm not going to follow that trap Scottish. Robert Lucy, there we go. Ready for it? Yes, I'm excited. So we will kick this off. We will have three chapters read, ready for next time? Boom. There we go, yep. So in final closing, if you're ready, I do have a haiku for you
1:21:52
inspired by this. I'm reading list of 2025 boom. Okay. Adventure awaits, setting sail on the high seas into the unknown.
Speaker 2 1:22:13
Perfect. There we go, as we ourselves set out on our own adventure. Yes,
Speaker 4 1:22:19
yes. Perfect for Mr. Stevenson's good work here. No, yes,
Speaker 2 1:22:26
I like it. Looking forward to it, indeed, and I'll see where this takes us. Okay, well, you're ready for the heat. Hopefully the rain will abate for a little bit, and it's
Speaker 3 1:22:43
hopefully not for super long, like for a few days anyway,
Speaker 4 1:22:50
just, I know this is my opening episode thing, but by next Tuesday, rain rain rain rain rain rain, like what is this? Is that, like a high percentage chance of rain out every day, but there's still a percentage chance of rain every day, right? So
1:23:07
good. Yeah,
Speaker 2 1:23:09
no, I had to get it in there because it has been too much rain. And true, we didn't talk about it. We would not be good Midwestern. That's true. That'd be legal.
Speaker 4 1:23:18
Oh, on that, on that. Just a slight just, just for your information, season four of Clarksons farm is starting, so they're not all released yet, okay, but they almost are all released yet. So I've watched the first couple already. So just what rain is happening?
1:23:41
Okay? Well, I will, I Yeah, it's on my list to watch too.
Speaker 4 1:23:44
You go. So it's like they're doing the partial like, every week at least, like, two more episodes, I think so interesting. I think there's they didn't do it all at once this time. I think maybe this week is five and six, and then next week will be the next two. Maybe, I don't know. I'll double check later, but I watched the first couple episodes. All right, so no spoilers here, but it's raining. No, suppose, but yeah, but the weather's the weather shockingly bad again. So there you go.
Speaker 2 1:24:14
Understood. Okay, well, we will look forward to that. We look forward to some reading and chapters and rain or no rain of our own. Yeah, we'll
1:24:24
see. We'll see. Keep the rain gages out. Ah,
1:24:27
always, always be ready. And on that we will end.
1:24:34
Love you. Love you. Bye, bye.