8 Bits with Tricia A. Howard!
Follow Tricia on Twitter: @TriciaKicksSaaS
Follow Chloe on Twitter: @ChloeCondon
Follow Brandon on Twitter: @TheCodeTraveler
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Transcript
Chloe Condon 4:20
Because this is a very special musical episode of a bed. Hello Brandon. I'm here. I'm Chloe Condon, of course your hostess with the mostess. And I'm here with my co host Brandon Minnick, as always. How's it been going, Brandon?
Brandon Minnick 4:38
Oh, amazing, amazingly stressful. My wife and I are in the process of moving and buying a new house so that we can get out of the city because living in the city is not a good place to be during a pandemic. But it's been a we'll say a fun process. We've definitely learned a lot but it is stressful.
Chloe Condon 5:00
I am going to insert as many musical theater references I can into the show today, Brandon because our guest also has a shared love of musical theater. So first I'm going to sing a little snippet. I gotta get out. I gotta get out from here.
But we have a special guest today, which is dress.
And you are coming from us from what looks to be a burrito in New York, correct?
Tricia Howard 5:27
That's correct. Yes. Yes. The Brooklyn burrito. I'm calling it
Chloe Condon 5:31
I almost bought that blanket. It keeps getting recommended to me on amazon.com and may or may not be in my cart right now. So excellent choice and blankets. I myself want to be wrapped up in a tortilla all the time as well.
Tricia Howard 5:45
Shout out to my mom, that was all her.
Chloe Condon 5:50
So Trisha, tell us a little bit about yourself who you are what you do for the lovely folks at home. Obviously your unicorn, we can tell that from your your head to parallel, but tell the lovely humans at home who you are. Sure, thanks.
Tricia Howard 6:03
So I'm Trisha Howard, aka Tricia kicks ass on Twitter. That's sh s, not just sassy, sassy, which is also as a service. SaaS dot txt. So I am a marketing manager for holistic cyber, which is a cybersecurity startup here in New York. And I have a theater degree. So I kind of fell into theater or sorry, not theater security completely on accident. And I like to say I'm an artist gone rogue. So
Chloe Condon 6:38
I love that. I'm going to start using that as well.
Tricia Howard 6:42
Please do, please do.
Chloe Condon 6:43
So I'm sure we'll get into a lot of the details of this in our actual eight bit segment. But tell us about this, as we like to call it wiggle noodle path to technology, because that sounds like a very, very big jump.
Tricia Howard 6:58
It was it was Yeah. So when I graduated college, I was on a path to getting my MFA in lighting design. And long story short, right at the 11th hour, they only took three people. And I was number four, because somebody came in with a lot more experience than me. And I panicked, not even gonna lie. And I put some extremely millennial post on Facebook, about how I was so distressed about searching for jobs and things were so hard and I was only out of college for two weeks. Okay, listen, um, it was, it was a big deal. And because I had no plan B, and I'm a big planner. So what ended up happening was a good friend of mine saw the post and said, Hey, actually, I think I have a good idea for you. And I was like, Yes, but nobody cares about my artistic experience. And he was like, No, I think it would. And sure enough, I found out about the job on a Tuesday and had an offer letter in my hands on Friday, and moved up to Connecticut Two weeks later from Texas originally. And I started in an inside sales program for an integrator. And so I learned a ton about the industry. And you know, I was making 75 plus cold calls a day talking to the industry leaders. Yeah, I was trash. And so I kind of just picked things up from there. And, and one of the things that I really latched on to was security, because I'm also a huge Marvel fan. And they're real life superheroes. The the cyberspace is poses a real threat to us now. And it's it's so interesting. So yeah, that's that's in like 10,000 feet view what happened? Yeah.
Chloe Condon 8:44
So Trisha, and I share similar origin story. Speaking of superheroes. I started in tech with a cold call sales job as well at Yelp. So this is pretty IPO Yelp back in the day, and a lot of tears were shed because I was not very good. But it's so interesting to find sort of these these happenstance pads that kind of bring folks like you into this industry. Ready to do a cold call Brandon. I'm curious it. It's not for me.
Brandon Minnick 9:16
I'm kind of I've always I so I did a little stint in sales too. But I was in post sales as a engineers like sales engineer, so it was more working with folks who had already purchased the product to help them implement it. That's actually what I did in Xamarin. But I mean, before that, yeah, I did a couple cold calls. But yeah, it's it's tough. I don't I don't like it because people don't want to talk to you when you have it. Like would you just call him out of the blue especially when they don't know you don't know your number. And getting somebody just to start the conversation is hard and it's it's tough people hanging up on you all the time.
Chloe Condon 9:58
A lot of empathy for People who are good at it and do it for a living, because it was very interesting. When I was hired for this job, they said, You're an actress, you'll be really, really good. You just read the script, and I read the scripts, but I wanted to cry after each time, it was like doing a dramatic monologue. I even just get nervous answering the phone, like my cell phone. So also, this is how I feel all the time. Just
Tricia Howard 10:23
amazing.
Chloe Condon 10:24
But yeah, I love to the way that I discovered you, Trisha. And we'll get into this a little bit later, because I want to plug this for everyone to watch, because it's so so funny. Are these dramatic readings of sales emails that you've been doing? A little bit how this started? And how this how this kind of content came to be? Sure, yeah,
Tricia Howard 10:45
thanks. I'm glad that they are being received well, so it was, of course, quarantine has made us all kind of nuts. Oh, and my dog and I have, our relationship has really gotten stronger during this, we do argue more, but you know, it's, it's fine. So I get a lot of a lot of cold sales interactions, both on LinkedIn and via email, because they see manager in my title, and it's instantly right. So. So I have for a time I when I would like be going through my emails or whatever, if I was like writing something or whatever, cuz I do a lot of content all from my day job as well. And I would get these emails, and I would read them dramatically to my dog.
Chloe Condon 11:32
Audience
Tricia Howard 11:34
Of course, and so I tweeted it out as a joke. Like, man, the highlight of my quarantine has been dramatically reading these sales emails to Darth and, and so many people. Yeah, dark. And so I, I got a bunch of people responding and say, like, videos or didn't happen, or I want to hear this vulva and I was like, okay, whatever. So I did, I did the first one. And it's so bad. Like, it's really irritating me now when I go back and watch it because I just did it on my phone. And it blew up. And I was like, oh, okay, people actually like these. So, yeah, so that's how it how it turned into what it is today. I also do like an explainer video a couple of days later, because I do come from a sales background. And the what I would have killed for something like that whenever I was in sales, like why am I Why are my emails not good. And so I actually brought it's like, 10 minutes. So it's pretty long, but break down each like my acting choice, I break down what was good, what was bad, or not bad, but what could be improved, and, and all that kind of stuff. So that way that made me feel a little bit better about like ragging on these people. Because it's a tough
Chloe Condon 12:42
experience.
Brandon Minnick 12:44
breakdowns are great. I was I was just watching one, I think is your most recent one, where he said, like, why was this email bad? Like, well, would you ever Introduce yourself like that to somebody in person as like, huh? You're right. Like, we totally change the way we introduce ourselves to people via email, then if we were just at a party and wanted to say Hi, nice to meet you. It's, I'd never thought of it like that before. Yeah.
Chloe Condon 13:13
And what I, what I really love about you know, folks who come from non traditional backgrounds, like ourselves, is we kind of bring that but industry expertise, like how does this get read as a human being, so to speak, now that you're not a human being brand. I've always kind of when people used to ask me what my job was, as a developer evangelist, or adult developer relations person, I always said, it's this translator or liaison between engineering and marketing, because marketers sometimes don't know how to speak to engineers and engineers, sometimes, most of the time, don't know how to do marketing. A lot of engineers think that they're designers as well. But that's a whole other story. But I think it's been really fascinating because I am more drawn to companies that speak more like humans. In particular, the last company I worked at century, one of the reasons that I decided to interview there was the copy on their website. I won't say it, because it's got a cuss word in it, but it said, Your bleep is broken, let us help you fix it. And I was like, this is how a developer talks like, this is how you interact. So what I love about these breakdowns that you do is you're not just out here trolling these people, you know, sending these bad emails, you're actually breaking down, like, why is this bad? How could this have been done better? And also, they're just really funny, because sales emails can be pretty funny sometimes. Yeah,
Tricia Howard 14:35
yeah. No, it's true. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm glad that
Brandon Minnick 14:41
Yeah, I've noticed a new trend where you don't get a the initial email. But the first email you received from this person says like, it's like a reply. And then even in the body, it's like, here's the email I sent you earlier, but it's like, I know you never sent me this email. So they're kind of they're following up. Yep, yeah. The cold outreach. It's like this is this is strange like this makes me like you less.
Tricia Howard 15:05
Yeah, it's a it's a nasty sales. There's a couple of them. I actually I got one, I got one today that made me laugh really hard. They'd spelled their, that their title like their title wrong. It was supposed to be like head and it said like Ha. And I'm like, okay, so either you don't have to proofread or this is a security. So I'm cynical or phishing attempt to get me to try and respond to you so that your rates go up. And then you can go to your manager and say, Yeah, I got 300 responses because these people are nice wanting to fix it. No, we see right through it me.
Chloe Condon 15:45
Oh, man, well, I am so so excited to watch more of these. You've inspired me now I want to do like dramatic readings of my DMS or some sort of Masterpiece Theater style of because there's so many of these things that I think as theatrical people we encounter in the tech world, and we kind of go Wait a minute.
Unknown Speaker 16:04
I this
Tricia Howard 16:05
looks familiar. Yeah,
Chloe Condon 16:07
I run into a similar issue. There's a keynote that I give pretty often called the ROI of lol, which is about bringing humor into tech. And I have to give credit to my boyfriend for that for that talk title though. That was a brainstorm session that we had. And I talked about this scenario. Long story short, I got added to an article about blockchain which I have zero knowledge or interest in and I was named one of the top 100 women in crypto and blockchain. I've never played with this technology before in my life. I reached out I thank you so much, Brandon. So for the first 10 minutes of this keynote, I kind of trick the audience and say today I'm going to tell you how to become an influential blockchain influencer in these five easy steps. And they're all just like, do absolutely nothing like just a blog post. And to this day, I still get LinkedIn messages asking for my expertise in blockchain. So I think the internet is such a funny place where you especially in these kinds of formats, like email or LinkedIn, there's a lot of cold emails and it really like I love when folks like yourself kind of point out these flaws in the system where it's like, Wait a second. No.
Unknown Speaker 17:18
If you
Chloe Condon 17:20
read my bio at all, you would know that this this is not I'm not the droids you're looking for it at all. Funny. So shall we get ready with these eight bits? Questions? I'm so excited. Okay, also, I wear a special shirt. For the viewers at home where I fought Trisha posted a picture of her unicorn headbands, and I figured I had to bring the fastest. Well, I've got my Clippy earrings today, I'll zoom in a little bit here. 3d. A pal of mine, Stacy. And this is a shirt that says, Whoever took my Microsoft Office, I will find you You have my word. And word is capitalized because of course. So we don't have an intro song here. So I'm just gonna go a bit a bit. And we'll dive right in.
Unknown Speaker 18:08
So
Chloe Condon 18:09
Trisha, what is your earliest memory of tech?
Tricia Howard 18:13
Yes. So my earliest memory was back. I think it was like sixth grade, maybe a little sooner. But we had a typing class back then. And the only reason I remember it is because there was always Bill Nye playing for some reason. And I'm obsessed with Bill Nye, because I wasn't. And so, of course, he's a baby. And it was it's so funny because they were still the old like, really blocky monitors, like we hadn't gotten up to the really sleek Apple ones that I had in high school. But yeah, that was probably my, my first memory of technology. Was that because we we had a TV at home. But it wasn't until later.
Chloe Condon 18:54
I just found out that Bill Nye will be speaking at Twilio signal comp this year. So a subtle plug for signal one of my favorite in person events, and I'm sure soon to be one of my favorite digital events. Huge Bill Nye fan myself gotta say.
Tricia Howard 19:11
Yeah, he's everything.
Chloe Condon 19:16
Brendan, I feel like have you met Bill Nye, this feels like something that was based on
Brandon Minnick 19:22
stories. I have not, but I know some folks who have because he, I forget the show was called he came back with another show. Is that a year or two ago. And on one of those shows, they showed off the Seeing AI App that we built at Microsoft. And the team that built the app got to meet bill during the filming. And so yeah, it was funny cuz my friend who got to meet him couldn't even talk about it until the show was released. And so we're like, we've been hanging out for months and you didn't tell us you guys Bill Nye. That's so cool.
Chloe Condon 20:02
That is the coolest. I just saw him on. Nicole Richie has a show on quibi called What is it called? She makes trap music on it's called Nikki fresh. And she does rap music song about bees with Bill Nye. So recognize any Bill Nye fans out there? I feel like there's a meme that I've seen a lot recently, which is like, when you saw this, you knew school was gonna be good. And it's like, the TV with the seatbelt on?
Tricia Howard 20:31
And I'm like, Ah, yes, absolutely.
Chloe Condon 20:36
We're all students and kids watching at home. We didn't have streaming back in the day we had VHS is that our teachers had to put into the television to watch
Brandon Minnick 20:43
movies or disk
Chloe Condon 20:45
laser.
Tricia Howard 20:48
It's, it's so funny, cuz I think like, especially the people who are like our age, we got that we're in that weird middle period where most of us did have like a significant childhood without technology being part, you know, part of our lives. I mean, my first I remember using floppy disks in school. And the only reason I remember it is because two reasons one, I had a ton of lime green ones cuz that was the thing to do. And the other thing was, I would get yelled at by the teacher, because I would always play with it. And they're like,
Unknown Speaker 21:18
you kind of raised some files.
Unknown Speaker 21:19
I'm like, whoa, whoa, it's fun.
Chloe Condon 21:25
Now, I have to ask because you mentioned you were doing typing did you do Mavis beacon or Mario teaches typing? Was there a particular type of program you use? Because we made a speech in class paper shark? This is new to me. I'm gonna apply pressure up. Yeah, did it like the shark? Like eat the words or something?
Tricia Howard 21:43
Yeah, so the Oh no, actually, the shark the shark was behind maybe I'm maybe I'm mixing two things up because there was also like a game that I used to just like to play, but they had their little sharks and they had words on them and you had to type the word out. And every time you got like a letter right, it would like hit the shark. And then it would like make it go away once you type the whole word, but if you if that like so you were like a little diver guy. And he would like these little shark keys would be coming and then if they got you there
Brandon Minnick 22:14
Yeah, you protecting the diver?
Tricia Howard 22:16
Yes. Yes.
Chloe Condon 22:19
Did did the two of you ever have to do Mavis beacon at all? I'm curious. Cuz that was like,
Tricia Howard 22:24
just sound familiar.
Chloe Condon 22:26
So there was a game in it. And I'm still very like, anytime I see a fly on a windshield I think of it because whenever you got you would have to type the words on the screen and you were like in a car driving and anytime you misspelled a word or missed a word, a fly would like smash on your windshield and like distort your vision of the word. So now whenever I see that like visual reminder of like, you know, you're driving on the freeway, there's like a fly or bug that smashes your window.
Tricia Howard 22:55
Oh, man. Yeah.
Chloe Condon 22:58
folks out there are interested in I'll link it in the YouTube show notes. A coworker of ours, Misty, Misty, Madonna, on Twitter did a very, very cool q&a with a panel folks who worked on Encarta and about like, how they created Encarta and a lot of this, like children's software programming that we grew up with. So I will link to that. All right, next question. What is the last piece of tech or hardware that you bought?
Tricia Howard 23:24
Yeah, so that I personally bought, it's pretty lame. I have bought these air pods because I lost my other ones. However, the last piece of tech that I was given, was this really cool light I have it turned off because if it's on then it will, you won't be able to see but it's the moon. And it sits in this little hand. And it can be all these all these different colors when it's plugged in. So it's kind of cute. I keep it on my desk. Yeah,
Chloe Condon 23:53
I am such a fan. So does it change? What changes on it? Does it is it like a projection thing?
Tricia Howard 23:59
No, it's a it's got little LEDs in there. So it'll change. It'll make like you can do it just white or you can do it like blue or I think it's I think it's all full RGB but you can also set it where it'll it'll like rotate through colors. So it's pretty cool. It was a it was a little thanks again, mom. So
Unknown Speaker 24:20
it's good to have all the craters and everything. Yeah,
Tricia Howard 24:23
yeah, it's hard. I don't know if you can see it hit because like the light is kind of weird. But yeah, it's got a little craters and stuff. It's really fun. It's giving me some David Bowie and Labyrinth vibes, you know? Oh, and he's like forever. Yes. Oh,
Chloe Condon 24:39
I was just looking this up on Twitter. But my my friend Charlene, formerly Uber. Currently, Google just built a clock that I'll link in the show notes, and it's inspired by Animal Crossing that uses Adafruit and circuit Python. And it's a non traditional clock. There's no like numbers. or letters or there's letters on the clock. But it lights up to different things to kind of represent the passage of time because she felt that in quarantine like time isn't really a thing. And that she posted the tutorial for it online. So I will make sure to link to that. Maybe we'll have her on the show because that's a really freakin cool project. Have you bought any new technology? Brandon since last Thursday?
Any new home things are new.
Brandon Minnick 25:30
We're not buying a house. But I think that counts. Now we've been just kind of keep in keeping the budget tight because of that. Because, yeah, if we've learned anything, it's just expect the unexpected. It's a it's like, oh, yeah, we need to make this required repair, like, oh, by the way, you need a new roof. And here's a landscaping person. And here's your Termite and Pest Control person. It's like, Oh, my gosh,
Chloe Condon 25:57
I'm pleased to announce that I'm finally going to purchase those Microsoft [Surface] Earbuds that I've had my eyes on because I lost another earbud probably my fourth or fifth earbud in this home during quarantine. And if you notice my I got a little bit of orange tie on my earbuds today. So maybe I'll have some new tech to report on next week. Look forward to hearing about that robot Butler, Brandon in your new home. So our next question is what technology do you love? Okay,
Tricia Howard 26:33
so I went back and forth on this like really hard. But I will say that the technology that I love is virtual reality. Because hashtag nerd alert. No. So it's, I fell in love with VR because I went to this. I went to this conference here. And when I first moved to New York, at Sotheby's, and it was called the art of VR. And it was all these artists who use virtual reality as their medium. And it was so crazy. I actually ended up Have y'all seen the movie? what dreams may come? Wow, no, okay. It's my favorite Robin Williams movie. Do not watch it if you were in a bad mental place. And even if you are bringing lots of tissues, it's very. But it is. It's such a beautiful, beautiful movie, like really changed my childhood and all this stuff. So I was meandering around this conference. And I got like, the whole thing is you can go test their art and all that, you know, they're trying to sell their apps and everything. And I get in line. And I have this experience and was like, oh, man, this is really cool. This seems so familiar. And so I ended up talking to the creators afterward. And I said, I don't know if you've seen this movie, but what dreams may come it reminds me of the visuals in that in that movie, and the woman looks at me as if I had just like, told her that I had a million children, right? And she says, Are you kidding me? And I was like, What? And she's like, Oh, you really don't know. It was them. They were the head creators of like the visual creators of whatever I went into full blown, like blurt mode, whatever. And I was like, I've loved this movie for so long, and blah, blah. Anyway, it was really nice. But I fell in love with VR. And I think now if Corona has really taught us anything, there are a lot of really strong practical applications for virtual reality for people who you know, for conferences and and things like that. I mean, obviously, the gaming side is dope, but there are like real life things as long as we can get it to the level of hD hD that we are used to consuming in the rest of me.
Chloe Condon 28:41
Ah,
that is super cool. I'm gonna have to watch that movie. Our uh, I guess he's one of our managers Thomas is doing a lot of really cool VR stuff and has been sending along a lot of theatrical use cases for it. And our coworker icicle just did an interview I want to say it was a week or two ago on her Tea Party show VR Tea Party, where she interviewed some a guy who had made a VR AR theater so you can actually experience theater from your living room and have that kind of like box office, you know, Front of House experience, which I think is amazing. My grandma lives in Tucson and has never been able to come and I mean, I'm not doing any shows nowadays. But see me in a show in the Bay Area. And I'm like, What a cool world we live in that soon someone and you know, Ohio can watch a community theater production in like, you know, Cupertino
Tricia Howard 29:37
amazing. School. Yeah, yeah.
Brandon Minnick 29:40
I just sort of something. It's not VR, but kind of similar where there was a theater show that actually got will say, shut down or cancelled because of the virus and they turned it into an audio only. So they kind of revamped it added, like, tweak the dial. A little bit added kind of a narrator, and still did the entire show with the original cast. It was just all
Unknown Speaker 30:06
amazing audio.
Brandon Minnick 30:07
What a cool idea.
Tricia Howard 30:10
No, I'm in a virtual play right now, actually. Oh,
Chloe Condon 30:13
tell us more. Yeah,
Tricia Howard 30:15
it's a this community theater I used to work with when I lived in Connecticut. And, of course, just like everybody else, the virus kind of decimated their entire season. And when you're a community theater, you rely on ticket sales you rely on you know, this stuff. Of course, you're like nonprofit, but that's the only way that you keep going.
Chloe Condon 30:34
And so there, as I've learned for many curtain speeches, ticket sales only cover about a quarter of the cost of what it takes to put on at the article production. So donate the theater.
Tricia Howard 30:46
No, seriously, seriously. It's it's very expensive. Honestly, sometimes the ticket sales don't even cover the publishing rights. So it's very, it's very expensive to put Theatre on. So they usually do this program called new faces, where that which is how I got involved in the theater, actually, where they bring people in who have either never worked in that particular theater before, or they've never done theater before. Or they want to try a new aspect of it, like lighting, or directing or what have you. And they're all like these 10 minute scenes, and they do them every summer. And it's you know, all proceeds, you know, go to the original playwrights, they're all original shows they go, you know, it's a really awesome little program. Well, with all this happening, they couldn't do it. So they were testing out the theory, like, oh, let's see if we can we can do this. And so most, from what I've seen, most virtual plays have been more like staged readings types, you know, like Pete, they still have their scripts up. And you know, they're not off book and stuff. We are doing a full blown production. We are out. We have sound effects, we have everything. It's it's still a 10 minute show, but it is as close as we think we could get to it. So I think I'm not sure on the date exactly that they will be doing it live, but it'll also be recorded. So I'll shoot that over to you whenever I get it done.
Chloe Condon 32:03
Yes, please. I just discovered a show, which I'm really excited. I got some secret Sneak Peek videos of that is called let's see a killer party. And it is a murder mystery musical series that's going to start streaming today on the fifth. And it has Alex Newell from Glee Jeremy Jordan, one of my favorite performers. carolee carmello. Christina Albano, and it's a musical like whodunit murder mystery thing that I am so stoked to. I'm just really, really excited to see how theater and a lot of these live experiences are adapting to the current like social climate. vos events has been doing a live or they just did a live drag show either maybe one in LA and one in New York, where it's basically a drive in and they're able to project on screens, kind of the zoom in like a Beyonce concert almost. And then the drag queens are safely socially distanced on stage. So it'll be a really interesting time to see how tech like I think in the past, really the only the only use cases are, I mean, obviously, there's technical theater, lighting, sound, all that fun stuff. But really, the only kind of integration of tech that I've seen on Broadway is dear Evan Hanson. They have like a lot more chill, be more chill. I saw a woman in white, which is a My gosh, is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical where they had projections instead of set pieces.
Tricia Howard 33:30
Nice.
Chloe Condon 33:32
So it's been interesting to see how we do this with streaming. Because as the three of us know, streaming can be fickle, and fun. So the beauty of life theater instead of cell phones interrupting while you're singing a ballad on stage now, it'll be your zoom. More teams can actually
Brandon Minnick 33:51
zoom bombs. Yeah.
Chloe Condon 33:52
Yeah.
Is there a link to check out this performance? We will link them in the show notes for sure. So come on back to the video afterwards, and we will share that. Alrighty. Next question we have is what technology Do you hate?
Tricia Howard 34:09
Yeah, I want to say this was probably the hardest question for me because I think most aspects of tech not like my initial gut reaction was deep fakes, but honestly, they're kind of fun. I mean, there's there's the scary element about it, but like that, it's also really kind of funny to watch Steve Buscemi his face on Scarlett Johansson. Let's be real. It's very funny. But so that was my initial answer, but the one technology that I genuinely cannot get behind in any way shape or form is stalkerware I think it is disgusting. I think it is. There's it's being touted as a good way to keep tabs on your children and all this kind of stuff. But the reality is it's used a lot by abusers and other you know, literally stalker. It's a stalker where it's so scary.
Chloe Condon 34:56
Yeah. And as someone who works in security And maybe for some of the folks who are tuning in, who aren't familiar with it, can you give us the TLDR of kind of what this does and how it infiltrates your information so to speak?
Tricia Howard 35:13
Yeah, sure. So it's mostly for mobile, or although you there are some that have desktop versions. But what it does is in allows a third party, usually it's touted, usually as a parent, but largely, it's not usually to monitor the activity on your devices. So including text messages, pictures, location data, you know, anything that your phone can do, it can report that back, there are there are a couple of different flavors of it. But in essence, it's it's intended to, okay, it was intended for parents to keep eyes on their children, because of course, in this digital age, we are very used to having people contact us all the time. So when a kid says that they are going to spend the night with a friend, and then you find out that they weren't, you know, they could potentially be in a dangerous situation. So the idea of it, I think, was well intentioned. However, as we know, in security, anything good can be very easily used for the bad. And what has been happening a lot of time is that, you know, significant others or exes or things can actually access these files. And sometimes most of the time without the knowledge and definitely not consent of the person that they are that is being monitored. And it's Yeah, it's really scary and hairy. Some of it, I'm not entirely sure how it's legal. But the the way that they've marketed it is, yeah, keep tabs on your children. My question or my response to that is, I don't have kids. I don't have any plans to but I'm not going to tell you how to raise them. But go watch the episode archangal on black mirror and then tell me how great stoneware is, yes. Oh,
Chloe Condon 36:59
such a good scary episode that becomes more real every day.
Brandon Minnick 37:06
For everybody watching at home that's now terrified, like I am right now, somebody might have installed this on my device, how do I go about checking that on my phone right now.
Tricia Howard 37:18
Um, so it would have to there would have to be and
Brandon Minnick 37:20
basically, you just you start with nothing like you're a settler in the Stone Age, and you learn new technologies, and you build your civilizations. And then there's all sorts of different ways to win it. Like you can either choose this domination victory, where you use your armies to battle the other civilizations, or you could use like, do the science victory, where you're the first one to go to another planet. And so it's basically this world building game that has all these different variables you have to keep track of because you might be going for the science victory, but another player might be going for the culture victory, and they don't really intersect at all, but you have to be aware that maybe they're about to win. Even though you are way more advanced in science, they now have more culture, they chose to go that route. But oh, it's a it's a beautiful game. It's It's not easy to get into. It's one of those you definitely play on easy mode a couple times to just figure out the rules. But uh, yeah, I found it's one of those that like, just consumes you and like, I can go into this game and just get lost for hours I call it I call it time traveling. That's what I used to do when I would get on planes and we would have these long over overseas flights that for say eight hours, I would just flip on the civilization six game on my iPhone and surco and it's like, oh, oh, we're here.
Chloe Condon 38:49
Meanwhile, I'm lining my Animal Crossing island with toilets that open up as you walk by them. So a little less cerebral, my simulation. Alrighty, and our ad hoc question. So Trisha, if folks are not familiar with theater world as well versus as the two of us are with a theater degrees there's a concept called in theater called a dream role. Now a dream role is something like your your, your it's like having a dream job, right? Like what role would you want to play on Broadway or a cruise ship or whatever it may be? Do you have a dream role, Trisha?
Tricia Howard 39:28
I do. I do. I have two actually. So one of them is Mr. Na da on from Les Mis. I love that role.
Chloe Condon 39:41
I think my house Yeah, although I called fans out there.
Tricia Howard 39:46
It's such a fun role to I think it was one of the aspects of the movie that I liked, was her Helena Bonham Carter's portrayal of her I thought that's so interesting because she isn't usually prepared that way. But anyway, That's one of them. But if I had, like, if I had just a dream world, I would have I would do a gender swapped version of the producers. And I would be playing Max bialystock. Because that role would be so fun to play.
Chloe Condon 40:18
And Max is the Nathan Lane character, right? Yes, yes. Sorry. Yeah. And for those who have seen the movie, it's Gene Wilder.
Oh, the other one.
Tricia Howard 40:28
No, it's the other one. It's the other one.
Chloe Condon 40:30
Yeah. You're in Moscow. Zero Moscow. Oh, my gosh, I'm losing it musical theater trivia right now.
Tricia Howard 40:36
I can't remember. But yeah, it's not Gene Wilder. I think I think gene plays a Matthew Broderick's role in the newer one, which is bloom. But yeah, Bloom would be fun too, because he has that whole. He has one of the best songs in the show, which is I want to be a producer. I mean, that's just like such an amazing song. But I don't know bialystock is just such this crazy or, or I'd want to play the director in that show. Cuz that that role is so hilarious. And debris, like it's just so funny.
Chloe Condon 41:10
I anytime that I did a show that had a lip into the orchestra pit I used to sit on the edge of the stage and go Who me? Mel Brooks such a such a lovely human being. I'm very excited to watch his documentary that he did recently. What about you, Brandon, you have a dream all I can answer while you think of one.
Brandon Minnick 41:35
So yeah, I was thinking about it, as Trisha was answering. And it's a big it's in the spirit of the question. But in, in real life. One of the reasons why we're moving is we, my wife, and I have this dream of one day kind of having a like a bed and breakfast where we can use that just meet people help people. And we can kind of get away from I guess what we call the the rat race, right? We wouldn't have to work full time, we could maybe do part time work. But kind of full time focus on this. And this is kind of our first step. So that house the house we bought has a separate one bed, one bath cottage, and this is kind of the first step towards our dream, but also in the same way that we can do it because we've never done it before. And sometimes when you try something for the first time you realize like, Oh, this is this is a pain. There's no way I want to do this for the rest of my life. So it's kind of this cool way where we can get into this dream job, or this idea of a dream job that we have, try it out and see if we enjoy it. And if we do yeah, it would be amazing. We kind of settle down a little bit we could not have to worry and stress out so much about our nine to five jobs and kind of just hang out meet cool people and enjoy our better breakfast.
Chloe Condon 43:06
And I will write the musical version of it. It's called bees b&b. So I think it'll come as a surprise to no one that my dream rolls all woods and Legally Blonde the musical except I want to do a new version where she's a computer scientist, obviously. Oh, yeah. But truthfully, I guess this is like, technically gender swapped, but not really. Um, so Peter Pan the musical typically Peter Pan is played by a woman and I have always been that person who's wanted to fly on stage. That's like one thing I didn't get to cross off my bucket list. So I was that kid at Girl Scout camp when we went rock climbing where I was like, just like pull the rope and like let me fly. I've got to figure out some way to fly. It's ironic though, cuz I'm not really into like bungee jumping or anything. I just want to be lifted on a stage.
So we I will also link this in the show notes because it is one of my favorite YouTube bloopers there is. So of course, flying comes with its comedy and tragedy. And there is a NPR episode that dives deep into this but there's a blooper of a community theater High School production of Peter Pan where the flying goes wrong. And whenever I need a giggle, I watched that and it reminds me maybe why I shouldn't be flying on stage. But
Tricia Howard 44:31
yeah, it can be pretty scary. I've never flown on stage but I have fallen through set pieces before and that was enough.
Chloe Condon 44:38
Oh my goodness.
Brandon Minnick 44:40
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Tricia Howard 44:41
Good. Yeah, I was fine. It was like long story short, we were doing you're a good man Charlie Brown. And I was playing Snoopy and I the house in in one of the songs we had flipped it around and the house had like a bunch of stairs up. So it was like, you know, it was like 10 feet in the air. I was pretty tall and Somehow one of the steps got a little, like messed up. And so I was going down them to in my, like jazz hands, whatever. And just went through the steps just went all the way through them. And it was it honestly, I'm really kind of like Loki mad that it wasn't on like it wasn't recorded because I'm sure that would have been hilarious to watch back. But I was more surprised that it was like, what why? Why am I inside my house now? Like?
Chloe Condon 45:33
It's so funny because I feel especially as a dev REL like a lot of my job. And Brandon's job is to do like, public speaking on stage and folks are always asking for tips and tricks with like, how do I get rid of my stage fright? And I'm like, do community theater for like, a year. And you'll have been embarrassed by like, Oh my goodness, I can count the amount of times that like my dresses ripped in every circumstance. So I think that's something from my background that I'm sure you as well, Trisha, have always kind of brought into what you do that like, Alright, things are broken. Let's keep going.
Tricia Howard 46:08
Exactly.
Brandon Minnick 46:10
I had a improv to that list, too. That's Yeah, that's kind of where I learned that. It's, it's not just okay to fail, it's good to fail. And it's not the failure. That's the problem. It's how you react to and handle and overcome that failure. And that was one of my big life lessons was doing just improv classes. You know, I didn't, oh, maybe someday, but didn't at least at the time have desires to do actual improv onstage at shows. And I just wanted to do something for fun and, and yeah, and improv. One of the lessons they teach you or one of the activities they teach you is when something when you fail, or something goes wrong, you go, I failed, and you take a bow and you're like, except the applause because mistakes are gifts. And, yeah, it's all about how you handle it. And so yeah, like Trisha and your scenario, falling through the floor. If you could kind of roll with that, you could make a funny quip. And then maybe, like, walk out the front door, instead of coming down the stairs, like, yeah, How'd I get it here? And then like, the audience would just love that. They'll eat it up. And, and yeah, the same goes true in for doing anything live or a workshop are giving a talk on stage, like, something's gonna go wrong, but it did that part doesn't matter. It's how you handled it. And so, like, did the Wi Fi go out? Okay, well, were you able to still give your demo without the Wi Fi? Or did you have a recording? Like, yep, it's not a big deal. Nobody's gonna blame you for the internet going out. It's not your fault. But if you're able to just kind of roll with the punches, then you can still give a great talk. And yeah, technically you failed, but it was a huge success.
Chloe Condon 47:53
It's funny, cuz I'm a terrible dancer. And I would much rather live code on stage and have it go wrong than me fall on my behind while tap dancing. So I always keep that in the back of my mind, and I'm presenting I'm like, it could be so much worse. It could be. Alright, so we got a couple minutes left. And that was a bit y'all done on time on time. Trisha, where can people find you on the interwebs? Where can they find your amazing videos? And you're lovely. I took I creeped your blog earlier. And you've got some really funny blog titles, including one that's a Rocky Horror Picture Show joke. So check that out, y'all.
Tricia Howard 48:32
But where can folks find you? Yeah, thanks. So all of my social channels are at Trisha kick sass. So, again, that's s a s. And also my blog is tragic access calm. So you can see those it's kind of fun. And all of my videos, all of my videos, I get funneled through my social channels so easy to find.
Chloe Condon 48:53
I'm so excited to meet digitally meet all of these different archetypes of sales people through the power of your video. Let me know if you ever need a scene partner we're here for you will mo Yeah,
Tricia Howard 49:08
well, we'll collaborate for sure.
Chloe Condon 49:13
Someone said new challenge coding dance off,
Unknown Speaker 49:15
I'll pass
Brandon Minnick 49:19
it's a giant keyboard that you do tap on. Tap the keys you know
Chloe Condon 49:24
are actually made a tic Tock app using Azure that teaches you the choreography so maybe I need to use that maybe need to just like I need a growth mindset with dancing. Oh, I need to get better at it. Alrighty, well, it's 159 Pacific Standard Time. So we are going to wrap things up. We still don't have a way to close the show. So since we have our musical theater guest today, I'm gonna close out with a little bit I'm making up as we speak. A bit Chloe Canton But a bit treasure. She has sass a pants.
Cut
Brandon Minnick 50:10
amazing
Chloe Condon 50:13
jazz hands
