517: A Direct, Sensible Podcast
Transcript from 517: A Direct, Sensible Podcast with Nathan Jones, Chris Svec, Christopher White, and Elecia White.
EW (00:00:06):
Hello. I am Elecia White, here with Christopher White. Welcome to Embedded podcast review. We have Nathan Jones and Chris Svec here, to provide some feedback on how we did this year.
CW (00:00:20):
This is our performance review?
EW (00:00:21):
It is exactly our performance review.
CW (00:00:23):
What can I expect, in terms of compensation increase and new title?
EW (00:00:27):
Well, I already have a page open on how to deal with negative feedback.
CW (00:00:31):
Great.
CS (00:00:31):
Performance reviews are unrelated to merit or bonus, or promotions and raises. Every HR thing will tell you that.
EW (00:00:45):
Svec, will you introduce yourself as if we, I do not know, met on a podcast ten years ago?
CS (00:00:54):
<laugh> Well, ten years ago I would be quite a bit different, but today I am Chris Svec. Although I was Chris Svec ten years ago as well. I work as a director of embedded software at Insulet. It is a medical device company. We make an insulin pump. Prior to doing embedded software for that, I have worked at companies like iRobot. I have worked at a number of chip companies doing embedded stuff, doing chip design.
(00:01:17):
I have been a longtime listener of the podcast, I think back to episode one. Back before podcasts were all the rage.
CW (00:01:25):
You were the one.
CS (00:01:26):
I was the- I might have been the first. I might have been the first. But yeah, enjoying the show. Looking forward to hopefully giving you some of the feedback that the audience, the listeners, gave as part of this survey this year.
EW (00:01:44):
And Nathan Jones, it has been about a year since we talked to you. Some things have changed for you. How would you introduce yourself these days?
NJ (00:01:52):
I would say I am a freelance educator and embedded systems engineer. Who, when I am not enjoying and fulfilling my role as husband and father of two, get to write some great articles and record some videos for DigiKey.
(00:02:08):
I have been clinically dead, I once shook the hand of the president, and I have fallen out of more than 20 aircraft. And one of those three is a lie.
CW (00:02:26):
<laugh> I am going to go with the aircraft is true. President is true. And you were abducted by aliens as to lie.
NJ (00:02:36):
No. Clinically dead was the first one, and I have been.
CS (00:02:40):
He never said, "Abducted by aliens."
NJ (00:02:43):
<laugh> You made up a lie for me.
CS (00:02:44):
You made up a lie is clever. It is very clever. I am going to guess it was president, shake the hand of the-
CW (00:02:49):
He already said.
NJ (00:02:50):
Good one.
CW (00:02:50):
Oh, wait. President? All right. Yeah. We eliminated. Well, yes. What are we doing?
CS (00:02:57):
<laugh>
EW (00:03:00):
Well, first of all, Nathan, could you tell us about Elevate Tutoring? Which is not where you work, but it is a company, a group, organization you are familiar with.
NJ (00:03:12):
It is, yeah. It was founded by a guy named Bob Schaffer, who taught at Harvey Mudd College for a while. I got to meet him there. He started this non-profit called "Elevate Tutoring." My wife and I were early donors. It has got a really neat mission. They are trying to help get first generation high school students into and through college.
(00:03:36):
But they do so with this really neat circular approach, where high school students will get tutored to gain success in high school and apply to colleges and get into colleges. The non-profit provides them grants, as my understanding, to get through college. The only thing it asks of them, once they are there, is to come back and provide more tutoring. So hopefully it sets up this process where it is almost self-sustaining.
(00:04:05):
And so this year on the survey, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try to raise some money for them. There is a link where folks could do that, which you and Chris have generously agreed to match. As of today, it looks like we have raised over $2,400, not including your matching donation, which is just stupendous. I am sure they are going to love it. I really appreciate the wonderful generosity of all the listeners to go in and do that.
EW (00:04:34):
I think we will just round it up to 5K. It is a nice round number.
CW (00:04:38):
Yeah.
NJ (00:04:38):
Very nice.
CS (00:04:39):
I am curious. What kind of tutoring? Is it subjects? What kind of content do you and your wife, have you talked with the high school students about?
NJ (00:04:50):
We are not tutors ourselves. Honestly, our connection with the organization is just that we know Bob well, and we love supporting them and their mission.
CS (00:04:58):
Okay. Okay.
NJ (00:04:59):
When I thought I had potentially this cool opportunity with the survey to benefit someone at the end of the year, they were one of the first ones that came to my mind.
CS (00:05:06):
Got it. Got it. Are all the mentors then high school graduates who have gone through it? Or do they have non-high school, like non-people who have been in it before, to do the mentoring as well?
EW (00:05:16):
Sounds to me like Svec wants Bob to be on the show.
CW (00:05:18):
<laugh>
CS (00:05:20):
Sure.
EW (00:05:22):
I actually do plan on asking Bob to be on the show. So we are not going to get into too many details there, other than it is a great organization, and it has a nice long tail benefit that was pretty exciting when Nathan brought it up.
(00:05:38):
Okay. So having cut off Svec, knowing that he is going to be one of the people delivering the bad news...
CW (00:05:43):
<laugh>
EW (00:05:43):
Maybe. Okay.
CS (00:05:49):
Why do you assume your review is going to be bad news?
EW (00:05:51):
It is always bad news.
CS (00:05:53):
I think most engineers always assume that it is going to be bad news. Maybe even-
NJ (00:05:57):
I was going to lead with the bad news, which Elecia, Chris, I hate to break it to you, but folks really like your show.
CS (00:06:05):
Mm-hmm.
EW (00:06:05):
<laugh> We are doing our best to fix that.
CS (00:06:08):
We are sorry. We are so sorry to tell you of this news.
NJ (00:06:12):
It gets worse. Chris, you are one of the favorite parts of the show.
CW (00:06:15):
No.
EW (00:06:15):
<laugh>
NJ (00:06:15):
It is true. Specifically mentioned several times.
CW (00:06:22):
As one of the Marx people said, "Well, never mind."
CS (00:06:25):
<laugh>
NJ (00:06:25):
It is a great quote.
EW (00:06:29):
So Nathan, you put together this survey, which we really appreciate.
CW (00:06:33):
We have done a couple of these in the past.
EW (00:06:35):
Right.
CW (00:06:35):
Some of them we did. Nathan has done this twice for us, this time.
EW (00:06:39):
Well, I stopped doing it a while back, when I realized I did not actually read the whole end of the survey. I was not going to take any action on it, so I was like, "It is too hard. It needs to go through another lens."
NJ (00:06:57):
Yeah. What I found too in the end of semester surveys, is I have to wait until the point when I do not really care about the answers, because otherwise it is too emotional to read them.
EW (00:07:06):
Exactly.
CS (00:07:08):
Mm. Need some distance.
NJ (00:07:08):
Yep.
EW (00:07:09):
Do you miss teaching, Nathan?
NJ (00:07:12):
Oh yeah. I am going to go back at some point. Middle Tennessee State University is right here in Murfreesboro. I am pretty sure the next time we talk, I will tell you a story about how I walked into the electrical engineering department and just said, "You need to let me teach a couple courses here."
EW (00:07:29):
<laugh> Well, where should we get started? Do you just want to go through the highlights, the lowlights, the...
CS (00:07:37):
What if we first start off with maybe Nathan, you can tell us what was on your mind as you created the questions. Give a quick overview of what were the main questions, that kind of a thing, for people who have not taken the survey. So it looks like- How many listeners do you all have? Do you know?
EW (00:07:55):
At least you two.
CS (00:07:58):
All right. At least two. At least two.
NJ (00:07:59):
At least two.
EW (00:08:00):
And honestly, if you got more responses than that, I filled out the survey too.
NJ (00:08:05):
<laugh>
CW (00:08:07):
I did not. So subtract one. We have many thousands of listeners.
CS (00:08:14):
Many thousands. All right.
NJ (00:08:15):
Yeah.
CS (00:08:16):
Nathan, what were you thinking? And maybe go through how you came up with it.
NJ (00:08:21):
I got the idea last year. We were talking about maybe doing an end of year episode. I thought it would just be really fun to do an end of year recap. The first one was totally split between fun, goofy questions, and asking folks what was their favorite episode or moment on the show. And what sorts of things would they want to say to Chris and Elecia, if they had the chance?
(00:08:45):
So this year I thought, "Well, I will just do it again." Again, real mix of some fun, goofy questions, and some of asking people how well the show is doing, what they can do to improve. This year, Chris and Elecia also asked to add a couple in there, in terms of where people are listening and how they are listening. That will give them some good data for what direction to take the show next year.
CS (00:09:15):
Cool.
NJ (00:09:16):
Yeah. So right out the gate, just like last year, we decided to ask a very serious question. We said, folks, we asked, "Would you rather, A, finish one tip everyone should know, or B, start a fictional robot?"
CW (00:09:32):
<laugh>
EW (00:09:33):
I cannot even tell you how many times I have started a fictional robot.
CW (00:09:36):
Yeah. Yeah.
EW (00:09:37):
So many times.
CW (00:09:38):
Yeah, yeah.
NJ (00:09:39):
You will be happy to know that one won by a slim margin, about 53% to 47%.
CW (00:09:45):
Wow, that is very tight.
NJ (00:09:48):
Elecia, what fictional robot would you start, if you could?
EW (00:09:52):
No, I was kind of serious actually. Before AIBOs came out, I wanted to make a robotic dog. I think that was like '96. '97?
CW (00:10:02):
I was going to make a robotic cat. I still have some of the parts for that project.
EW (00:10:09):
But since then, it has always been like, I do not actually want to do the work, but I do think about it a lot. I have started plenty of fictional robots. A recent one? Well, I have been doing a lot of origami over the holidays. So I have some more origami robots where I need extra hands to hold things.
CS (00:10:28):
<laugh> That would be great.
EW (00:10:31):
I would like a Doc Ock style set of four arms that I could- Kind of like the engineering hand things, where you clip things. But I need it to be much bigger.
CW (00:10:46):
Dr. Origami would be a good supervillain.
NJ (00:10:49):
Yes. Would your arms have-
EW (00:10:51):
With the paper cuts.
CW (00:10:51):
<laugh>
NJ (00:10:56):
Would your arms have their own personality, your robotic arms?
EW (00:10:59):
Of course.
NJ (00:11:01):
Okay, good.
CS (00:11:02):
I am just picturing your typing robot sort of accuracy, along with these giant heavy skull crashing, goal crushing, capable robot arms.
EW (00:11:13):
Well, that is another fictional robot. I actually-
CW (00:11:14):
Yeah, the typing robot was pretty fictional.
CS (00:11:18):
It was.
EW (00:11:19):
I did start it. But when you tell the typing robot to type, "Hello," and it types, "Help," instead, it is like you really cannot go up from there.That is the pinnacle. So I could not continue.
CS (00:11:34):
That was the personality in my head of the typing robot. Like, you dictating to it and it just adding its own commentary into the email like, "She has been erasing this sentence for 40 minutes. You just need to stop reading here and send her a reply."
EW (00:11:44):
Yeah.
CW (00:11:45):
Yeah. The entire point of that project was to be as janky as possible, and see if you could make it work.
EW (00:11:50):
And in fact, the arm was as janky as possible.
NJ (00:11:54):
Was that your first foray into modeling a robotic system and doing that kind of a pipeline, the software pipeline that went with it?
EW (00:12:04):
I had already had experience with ROS in automotive vehicle areas. In fact, some of the hardware I was using was related to automotive autonomous vehicle areas. So no. And I have done control- No, definitely not.
CW (00:12:24):
But you had not worked with an arm.
EW (00:12:25):
But I had not done kinematics yet.
CS (00:12:28):
Yeah, that was it.
(00:12:28):
Okay.
EW (00:12:29):
That was a big shift for me.
CS (00:12:30):
I remembered something being new in that area and I forgot what.
EW (00:12:33):
Yeah. All of the kinematics, and then trying to use a camera to deal with the problems of a very cheap off-the-shelf arm.
CW (00:12:46):
The cheapest.
EW (00:12:47):
The <laugh> cheapest.
CS (00:12:47):
<laugh>
CW (00:12:50):
This is how this is going to go. We are going to wind a way-
EW (00:12:52):
Nobody is-
CW (00:12:54):
Reminisce about random things as we go through this.
EW (00:12:56):
If you want a direct sensible podcast, you are going to have to sign up for the Patreon, so you can listen to the anime episode.
CS (00:13:02):
<laugh>
CW (00:13:04):
December 30th. I do not think people can expect much from us. I have not even started drinking yet.
CS (00:13:11):
I think you will see from the results that people are okay. We are okay with what you all are putting out. But I do not want to spoil it, but there you go.
NJ (00:13:19):
Yeah.
CW (00:13:19):
All right.
NJ (00:13:19):
That is a good segue to the next question. We did get a little more serious. We asked if there was a favorite quote, moment or guest from the past year, and got a lot of great responses. Lots of folks called out their favorite episodes.
(00:13:35):
A lot of votes went to episode 501 with Dr. Meredith Palmer and Akiba Wang, "Inside the Armpit of a Giraffe."
CW (00:13:43):
Oh, yes.
EW (00:13:43):
Yes.
NJ (00:13:44):
Or someone referred to it as- They just put, "Giraffe butt birds."
CS (00:13:49):
Yes. Yes. Yeah, "giraffe butt birds" pretty much says it all, right there.
EW (00:13:55):
That really is the epitome of the podcast.
NJ (00:13:59):
<laugh> It is such a great vote, because it was a wonderful episode. They were great guests. They had so many funny stories about animals on the savannah.
(00:14:08):
A lot of folks mentioned that they just really enjoyed remembering that the work that they do, the tech work, the science work, it can have a really useful purpose. It can serve the scientific community in really neat ways.
EW (00:14:30):
I made you ask one question about our mission, which I do not know if anybody realizes we actually do have a mission. Can I ask what the responses were on that one?
NJ (00:14:43):
Yeah. Do not take this the wrong way, but I did not know the podcast had a mission. Which was, "To encourage people to stay in STEM areas, to foster learning and community, and to inspire people to make amazing things. We have a slight bias towards guests who might be in underrepresented in tech categories. But the greatest qualifications are enthusiasm for technology, and an interest in sharing knowledge."
CW (00:15:08):
I thought it was, "Destroy all planets." We have been doing-
EW (00:15:11):
No. No, you thought it was, "Destroy all plants," which explains what happens to the yard.
NJ (00:15:18):
That is how she roped you into doing the audio engineering for the episode.
CW (00:15:21):
All right. I guess we have a mission.
EW (00:15:24):
We have always had a mission.
CW (00:15:25):
I know.
CS (00:15:27):
Yeah. I do feel like there was a period of time where you maybe talked about the mission more during the episodes, or at least mentioned it somehow in there. So I am not super surprised to hear Nathan say that he did not know there was one.
CW (00:15:41):
I think at some point we decided to just do what we were- Be guided by it, and not explicitly go...
EW (00:15:48):
Talking about diversity in technology is not as interesting as showcasing it. I would much rather talk to interesting people from different areas about what they are working on, instead of talking about how hard it is.
CS (00:16:08):
You want the engineering talk, and the projects and products and science and stories and stuff. You want them to be about embedded systems. And you want them to be from people who are perhaps under-represented in tech, and coming at it from a different angle than the average sort of middle of the industry. Is that a fair statement?
EW (00:16:29):
Yeah.
CS (00:16:30):
Cool. The specific question that Nathan wrote out was, "What was the best example, this year, of the show accomplishing that mission?" And the bird butt giraffe, whatever, came up in there as a pretty frequent answer to it, along with sort of more generic-
(00:16:52):
People were saying that you have science on there, difficult to pick a single example. And artists, makers, hobbyists, people who are making things. So nothing stuck out as a single winner on here for me. I do not know, Nathan, as you were combing through the results, did anything kind of smack you over the head?
NJ (00:17:20):
Yeah, I would wrap all that up together. And I would say, I think a lot of folks- Of course, we are never going to get rid of the technical content, and that is maybe the first reason why people come to the podcast. But they said over and over again that they love the diversity of guests.
(00:17:32):
The fact that they are non-technical guests, and artistic guests, and folks that are either using tech in really fascinating or new or weird or novel ways. Or maybe came at tech from a different angle, maybe did not necessarily have a technical background, but are still doing fun things.
(00:17:48):
So I think, Elecia, the thing that you are going for, that is the thing that people love about the show. That you are going to talk about the tech, but they get to see a picture of it that is more human.
CW (00:18:04):
And selfishly, there is no way we were going to survive doing this show for 500 episodes, by talking to a bunch of developers all the time, about day-to-day embedded systems development. That is a show that stops after 150 episodes or 200 episodes. At least for me. I am not going to be able to do that.
CS (00:18:28):
One quote that I think was in this question, but I saw it echoed elsewhere, was someone saying, "Seeing all the guests being nice, friendly, normal people and not super human beings, showed me that we can do anything."
CW (00:18:39):
Huh.
EW (00:18:39):
Nice.
CS (00:18:40):
So I think something else that people came to this with was saying, you all kind of share our humanity. Whether it is talking about burnout, whether it is talking about failures or mistakes-
CW (00:18:52):
What are you trying to say?
EW (00:18:53):
<laugh>
CS (00:18:54):
I am saying people love watching you screw up, Chris. That is what I am saying.
CW (00:18:58):
That is what I was hearing.
NJ (00:18:59):
You make a lot of mistakes, Chris.
CS (00:19:02):
You make a lot of mistakes. People have judgment for you.
NJ (00:19:05):
Okay. We got to back that quote up though, because I do have that one written down also, Svec, and it is just stupendous.
(00:19:10):
It starts with, "Sometimes I feel unmotivated and bored. Listening to this fixes it. Sometimes I feel anxious and alone. Again, listening to this fixes it. There are also the times where I feel weak and stupid, and listening to this podcast with seeing others achieve, kind of makes me jealous."
(00:19:26):
And then, "But seeing all the guests being nice, friendly, normal people and not superhuman beings, shows me that we can do anything."
CW (00:19:33):
That is very lovely sentiment. And also, this is going to be the second time I have said this on the air this year, but sounds like I should listen to my own podcast?
NJ (00:19:39):
Yeah, you should.
CW (00:19:42):
No.
EW (00:19:45):
That was- I want to make a joke about I was the one who wrote that, but I did not, and it is so sweet. So whoever wrote it, thank you.
CW (00:19:52):
Shwhew! I am glad you did not.
EW (00:19:52):
<laugh>
CW (00:19:52):
That would have been awkward.
NJ (00:19:54):
<laugh>
CS (00:19:55):
That would have been pretty awkward.
NJ (00:19:56):
There are others as well. People just speaking to the humanity of you two, that bring it is not just a technical, "This week in tech," kind of a thing or business or whatever.
(00:20:06):
But as a, "We are a bunch of humans figuring this out. Here are some people who have a very traditional academic background with a PhD and blah, blah, blah, and they are doing it. And here are people who have no quote unquote background or formal background or formal training in something, who are also doing exciting, interesting things. And then here is someone who goes in the middle of the wilds and finds birds flying out of animals' butts."
(00:20:33):
It is all in there. It is all interesting. It is all good stuff.
CS (00:20:36):
Dr. Palmer is like shouting at her stereo right now. <laugh>
EW (00:20:41):
We had a couple this year that I was happy- Christina Cyr and Sophi Kravitz both talked about leaving technology for a while, and coming back. And not finding it as egregiously difficult as they had been led to believe, which was kind of nice for me. I know Chris took a little while off.
CW (00:21:03):
Hey, I have done that three times.
EW (00:21:06):
I am always a little worried if I take too much time off, I will never manage to get my brain around it again. So it was nice for me to hear them. It is- Yeah, it is one of the reasons I do the show, is so that I can talk to people and ask them about things like that.
(00:21:24):
I wonder if Sophi's episode is the other one that might be good for "fits the mission." The whole fits the mission- The reason I asked you to ask about it was because I really am going to apply to a stupid award. Okay?
NJ (00:21:37):
Good for you.
EW (00:21:38):
So I have to give them a mission, and I have to give them an episode, and I need it to match. I will probably do the giraffe one, because it is awesome. I totally agree.
CW (00:21:46):
Do you think the awards people like being called "stupid," on the show?
EW (00:21:50):
I am not putting this episode in, and I do not think they will have time to listen to all of them.
CW (00:21:54):
All right.
EW (00:21:55):
So I hope not.
CS (00:21:57):
Sophi Kravitz's episode was 516, "Voices from the cataclysms of the universe," in which she tells us how many- Was it how many cosmic rays are penetrating your skull sized object at any given second?
NJ (00:22:10):
<laugh>
CS (00:22:10):
Was that it?
CW (00:22:11):
Yes.
EW (00:22:11):
Yes.
NJ (00:22:13):
All I know is that it is a shame I do not have superpowers at this point.
EW (00:22:15):
<laugh>
CS (00:22:16):
Was it like one particle per second per human sized skull?
CW (00:22:20):
Something like- It was on the order of...
EW (00:22:22):
I thought it was every three seconds or something.
CS (00:22:24):
Every three seconds. Okay.
CW (00:22:25):
It was some small number every- Yeah. Elecia, you say that I have left and come back several times or whatever. That is true. But you saw me a couple of weeks ago when this other project came back up, and I was doing real embedded stuff again, for the first time in probably eight months.
EW (00:22:43):
Everything you complained about was the Arduino interface that the client wanted to use.
CW (00:22:47):
Okay. That was part of it. But there was some other whining. <laugh>
EW (00:22:52):
Yes, but it was not-
CW (00:22:53):
But there was a lack of confidence. So I am saying it.
EW (00:22:55):
It was more about confidence than ability.
CW (00:22:57):
I was very, very insecure about it.
CS (00:23:01):
So your next question that goes in with that one is, "What is something the podcast could do next year, to accomplish that mission even better?" Here a lot of people said like, "Nothing. Keep up the good work."
CW (00:23:11):
All right! I am good at nothing.
EW (00:23:13):
<laugh> I am so doing nothing. Starting now!
CS (00:23:16):
No, no. "Keeping up the good work," I think is the part. It is not the, "Nothing."
CW (00:23:21):
Oh! All right.
CS (00:23:22):
A number of people had, "Guests from outside of the US. More women tech people. More women makers. Even ones who used to work in tech, but do not anymore," which kind of goes along with what you have just- People who have left tech but did not come back, maybe that could be interesting.
(00:23:36):
Some people talk about technical topics. I am not sure if that relates to your specific mission here. But some people are saying, "Hey, more technical, deeper- Deeper dives." "Do not change," is one. "Work at a sustainable pace," is another.
EW (00:23:58):
Oh, the every other week is so much easier.
CS (00:24:02):
That is good. When did you all start doing every other week, instead of every week?
CW (00:24:05):
At least a year ago.
EW (00:24:07):
I think it was around 400. It might have been earlier.
CS (00:24:12):
Yeah. It was a while ago.
EW (00:24:13):
It was a while ago. It has been so worth it.
CS (00:24:16):
Cool. That is really good. I definitely do enjoy your episodes, as much as you are willing to put out. Something else people have said is, "We enjoy the episodes, but it is more important that you all are motivated and healthy, to do it all." So we will take half as much, rather than zero.
NJ (00:24:32):
What are the two of you- Have you thought about what you might do next year, to just continue the great work?
CW (00:24:42):
I would be lying if I said, "I thought a lot about it." <laugh>
NJ (00:24:43):
Fair.
EW (00:24:47):
I am always scoping out guests.
NJ (00:24:48):
Yeah.
CW (00:24:48):
That is the really hard part that I think people probably do not realize, is that finding an interesting guest who we are interested in talking to who has a good topic, every two weeks-
EW (00:25:03):
And is available.
CW (00:25:03):
And is available.
EW (00:25:05):
I have one guest I have been stalking for almost a year now. We trade emails and each time it starts with, "I am sorry I have not talked to you. I am available in six months." Then I will reply and say, "Oh, my calendar is booked out for three months." And then- It just goes on.
(00:25:24):
Eventually this person will be on the show. They will probably be terrible, after all this time. Or, more likely they will be awesome, and it will be worth it.
CW (00:25:33):
That is 99% Elecia. I bring in a guest once in a blue moon, accidentally. But she does all of that booking work. So that is-
NJ (00:25:39):
Someone follows you home and you are like, "I guess we could have them on the show."
CS (00:25:43):
<laugh>
CW (00:25:43):
Yes, sure. <laugh>
NJ (00:25:46):
Hey, do you want to be on the show? What about you?
CW (00:25:48):
That is why we have had several deer and a skunk on the show.
NJ (00:25:52):
You had the cat on a show.
EW (00:25:54):
That was 100% my idea.
CW (00:25:55):
She booked that cat.
CS (00:25:56):
<laugh>
NJ (00:25:56):
She booked the cat.
CW (00:25:58):
But yeah, no, that is a ton of work, and she does all of that. You have to keep the pipeline full a little bit in advance, otherwise you are scrambling.
EW (00:26:09):
I do have folks who are on my list, if I-
CW (00:26:13):
Emergency guests.
EW (00:26:14):
Emergency guests. And I do seed a few of just Chris and me.
NJ (00:26:18):
Folks like those too. There are definitely a couple of comments on the survey that said, "Sometimes I just really enjoy listening to Elecia and Chris talk to each other."
CS (00:26:27):
Yeah. I think people enjoy the informality of that. Because clearly you two know each other and like each other. I do not know if you let your guard down a little more. But you certainly talk about the daily life of an embedded systems person, and a human being, of the problems you are facing, or burnout. You kind of go into more of some of that.
(00:26:49):
Again, the human side of things. It is just definitely less formal, which people seem to connect with in the survey results.
EW (00:26:57):
I remember episode 12 or something.
CW (00:27:01):
<laugh> I do not.
EW (00:27:02):
We got listener feedback from somebody who was a longtime listener- Has been a longtime listener. Probably still.
CW (00:27:09):
Oh, not really a longtime listener at episode 12!
EW (00:27:12):
I want to say, "Steven"? But he said it did not seem like we liked each other.
CW (00:27:17):
Pff! What?!
NJ (00:27:17):
Oh.
CS (00:27:17):
<laugh>
EW (00:27:17):
And then-
CW (00:27:20):
Wait, I was not even on most of those episodes.
EW (00:27:22):
You were not on very often. You would- Like a voice occasionally. And then I think we did the show with the wine bottle, the one about imposter syndrome. And then he wrote back. He said, "Never mind."
CW (00:27:38):
I do not remember seeing that feedback.
EW (00:27:41):
Because it was so awkward for me. I am like, "I do like him."
CW (00:27:44):
It was probably good I did not see it, because I probably would have written back an irate message.
EW (00:27:49):
If we were doing an interview show and you had popped in a question I was not ready, I do get blinder focused sometimes. Now we face each other, then we did not.
CW (00:27:59):
I do not think you can assess any show at episode 12, because we did not know what we were doing.
CS (00:28:05):
I have vague memories of Chris being maybe dragooned, I think that is the right word, into coming on the show as a co-host, instead of just behind the scenes.
CW (00:28:15):
I have no memory of when or how that happened. If it was my idea or her idea or at some point. I think there was- At some point we decided that occasionally someone needed to keep things on track.
EW (00:28:31):
Yes. And that I could not be held responsible for doing that all the time.
CS (00:28:35):
<laugh>
EW (00:28:35):
Especially when Jen was on the show, and we would just giggle for an hour.
NJ (00:28:40):
Not surprised about that.
CW (00:28:41):
So I think that is how that ended up happening. Yeah, I had no intention of ever being on the show, for the first while.
NJ (00:28:48):
And here you are the favorite element.
CW (00:28:51):
Prfft!
NJ (00:28:51):
<laugh> Wait, I got to read this. I got to do this. Hang on. Specifically, you and AI were mentioned.
CW (00:29:04):
Oh, great.
NJ (00:29:05):
Two quotes. "I could listen to Chris go into 'old man shakes fist at clouds' rants about AI for hours."
EW (00:29:14):
<laugh> I do.
CS (00:29:15):
<laugh>
CW (00:29:18):
Yeah. You listeners, I do not stop that when I am off the show, just so you know. That continues daily.
NJ (00:29:27):
All of the pent up aggression just spills out once the mics are off.
CW (00:29:32):
Yeah. Who are you calling old, by the way? Next.
NJ (00:29:39):
Per the question, a lot of the feedback was, yeah, just keep finding people, interesting guests to have on the show. But folks really like a diverse set of guests. And then they enjoy the two of you talking to each other.
(00:29:56):
So I think one of the best things you can do next year, is just continue to find great guests. And give yourself the permission for those guests to come from really different and unique places, as long as it is of interest to you. The guests love that.
EW (00:30:11):
If you want to be a guest on the show, the best way is to send an email that indicates you have definitely listened to the show.
CW (00:30:22):
Or, definitely put the show through ChatGPT, and had it pretend that you listened to the show.
EW (00:30:30):
And then talk about what you are doing that is making the world a better place. If you just tell me, "I made this thing," I might go look at your thing. But you have heard the mission now. I want to keep people in STEM. I want to build a community. I want to educate people. I want more diverse voices.
(00:30:50):
Kind of like if you are submitting for a job application. In that cover letter, go ahead and stress those ideas about how you are doing those things too.
CW (00:31:05):
Wow. Serious.
EW (00:31:06):
And do not ask me if you can pay to be on the show, because I just delete those now. I cannot even-
CW (00:31:14):
What about sponsored content? Sponsored content. We have got to put a blog post on your website.
EW (00:31:19):
We get so much junk mail.
CW (00:31:21):
We want to insert our own show in your show.
EW (00:31:22):
Yeah.
CW (00:31:22):
Yeah.
EW (00:31:26):
Anyway. But I am often looking for good people. Sometimes my inbox gets a little busy, but I do eventually get to most things. If I have not, feel free to email again. Like I said, tell me you listen to the show, and you know what you are getting into. And that will be good.
CS (00:31:46):
I want to say one thing there, to make sure people do not self-select out. Your vision for the show, the goal for the show is, or the mission, sorry- The mission is to encourage people in STEM, to keep people in, to inspire people to make amazing things.
(00:32:02):
Amazing things does not have to mean you are doing Nobel Prize winning stuff. It does not have to mean you are doing world changing or science changing or that kind of stuff. It can also mean you are doing interesting and fun things with light up jewelry. Or some sort of fashion thing. Or some, I do not know, bus stop monitoring system.
(00:32:27):
I am making stuff up here. But I think Elecia, what you are saying is you want people to know what the show is about, not be trying to sell something, that kind of a thing. And also people should feel free to put a positive spin on what they are doing. But it is not like it has to be Nobel Prize worthy, in order for you to have them on the show.
CW (00:32:44):
Right. Yeah.
EW (00:32:45):
No, no. The end of the mission is, we prefer- We have a slight preference, slight preference, to folks who are under-represented in technology. But the main qualification is an enthusiasm for talking about technology.
CW (00:33:00):
Yeah. And we do not want people to say, "Hey, I made the scoreable under 3,000, and I want to talk about it."
EW (00:33:07):
You can email us that, but please do not include the pictures.
NJ (00:33:12):
Here, I will set the floor. If you can be more interesting than talking about a half baked book idea about computer architecture-
EW (00:33:19):
I like that. It was fun.
CW (00:33:20):
That was a great episode.
EW (00:33:21):
And it was a good lead up to "Nand to Tetris."
NJ (00:33:23):
<laugh> It was good. But if you are more interesting than that, which hopefully I think all of you out there can think of something more interesting than that, and you want to be on the show, send Elecia an email.
EW (00:33:35):
Yeah.
CS (00:33:35):
Speaking of books, one of the questions was, "When Elecia hears mention of a third edition of her book, she has already written two editions of her book, her most likely reaction will be..." Go ahead and guess, Elecia.
(00:33:46):
So the answers were, "No. Hell, no. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Or, I will take a nope sandwich with extra nope sauce." So which of those four was the clear winner?
NJ (00:33:55):
<laugh>
EW (00:33:56):
I think- Was there an "Other" one on that one? Because I may have entered an other that said, "I have actually thought about this, and I would want to do more electronics in it. But I think that would be a different book. And sadly, I do not think I am the person to write that book. So yay." But I am not as nope, nope, nope as I was.
CW (00:34:21):
That was like just a year ago!
EW (00:34:23):
I know. It wore off much sooner this time.
CW (00:34:25):
Wow.
NJ (00:34:26):
It is like the- What are the chemicals in women's brains that makes them forget the birth, when they are having a baby? It is like that. Like, you wrote the book and a year later, you are like, "It was not that bad."
CW (00:34:40):
Well, I do not think you should do a third edition anytime soon.
EW (00:34:45):
No. But I do think about other things.
CS (00:34:47):
The clear answer was, "Nope, nope, nope, nope," 64%.
CW (00:34:51):
Wow.
CS (00:34:51):
65% almost, followed by the nope sandwich, followed by, "No." And then, "Hell, no," was the smallest.
NJ (00:34:59):
And if I had to guess, I would say each one of these had a little image to go with it. And the nope, nope, nope one was the nope octopus, that little GIF of the octopus just running across the sea floor.
CW (00:35:06):
Ah. Yes. Yes. Definitely biased.
EW (00:35:07):
Yeah.
NJ (00:35:08):
So my guess is a lot of folks picked up on the octopus. Yeah.
CW (00:35:10):
<laugh>
CS (00:35:11):
Yeah, very on brand. Very on brand.
NJ (00:35:13):
<laugh>
CS (00:35:13):
You asked- There was a separate question which said, "What content should be added, extended, or inserted into the book?" There was a lot of stuff on there. A lot of topics. Hardware, audio, DMA specific things.
(00:35:30):
"She should consider therapy first," which I thought was an excellent answer.
EW (00:35:34):
<laugh>
CS (00:35:34):
Part of my favorite one though was, "Integrating a dev kit into the spine of the book."
CW (00:35:40):
<laugh>
NJ (00:35:42):
Truly novel.
CS (00:35:43):
Which I would love, if we could figure how to do that.
EW (00:35:46):
Yeah. You can have the same form factor as the rulers.
CW (00:35:49):
It is great as long as people want the book to cost $350.
NJ (00:35:54):
No, whatever. You have got all the paper circuits, right? They have got microcontrollers that would connect. You could literally put...
CW (00:35:59):
<laugh>
NJ (00:36:02):
No. The manufacturing, you would not even need to place it somewhere. You could just include a sticker sheet with the Chibi paper circuits-
CW (00:36:10):
Ahh.
EW (00:36:10):
Yeah.
NJ (00:36:12):
And have activities in the book, where folks are putting stickers down and connecting circuits.
EW (00:36:19):
Chris got me a fold up magnifying glass for Christmas. Sorry, microscope.
NJ (00:36:24):
That is cool.
EW (00:36:25):
It is origami-ish. It has got all of these- It feels very sticker electronics. But it has the objectives, and I am not- All right. That would be kind of cool.
CS (00:36:41):
Definitely post a link. I cannot picture that. So post a link to that in the show notes, please.
EW (00:36:45):
Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember what? Foldable-
CW (00:36:47):
Foldscope.
EW (00:36:47):
Foldscope.
CS (00:36:48):
Foldscope. Cool.
NJ (00:36:51):
That is cool. Elecia, you mentioned electronics. So more like hardware side? Like, how do you physically connect to sensors, and set up a little amplifier or something like that?
EW (00:37:02):
Yeah! Going through "The Art of Electronics" is arduous. And in a world of digital electronics with only a little bit of analog, I am not convinced everyone needs to have that information. But most of us should be able to come up with the resistor divider network to make our signal smaller.
(00:37:32):
And yet every time I do that, I would, "Let us just go back to first principles and start over," instead of- I know that there are Forrest Mims books that do this. I just never have the right one in front of me. So this goes back to some of my book is just wanting to have all of the information in front of me at one time.
CW (00:37:55):
It depends on the goal too, because your book is semi- I believe your audience is intended to be professionals, or people wanting to be professionals. And the level of- It is a difficult balance to strike.
(00:38:08):
Because like with the drum machine course that I took, which is not for professionals, it is for people who want to make weird electronic synthesizers and things. A lot of the electronics was just, "Well, this is what it does. This is how you plug this together."
(00:38:21):
"Experiment with it, but I am not going to tell you how dI/dT relates to Ohm's law, and whatever is happening here. Or this differential equation. Or how this impedance does this." It is just, "This is the tricks we have learned. You can experiment. You are not going to blow anything up. And you will gain knowledge that way."
(00:38:38):
For a professional audience, I do not think that cuts it.
EW (00:38:40):
Yeah.
CW (00:38:40):
And so you would have to-
EW (00:38:42):
That is always the problem.
CW (00:38:43):
Yeah. And you could do some things like that. You could say, "Well, this is how a microcontroller would connect to this sensor, and you need these passives for this reason. But most of the time-" But it is really hard. Suddenly you are making an electronics book, right?
EW (00:38:59):
And there is always the, "Well actually," and the, "It depends."
CW (00:39:02):
And you are going to get a lot of review- That is the worry is like the reviews are like, "Well, this is not really an electronics book. What is this?" Yeah. It would be difficult to not have people miss the point.
EW (00:39:14):
Well, and that is probably why it is not really that good of an idea.
CW (00:39:18):
I did not say it was not a good idea. I am saying.
EW (00:39:21):
I should just make a journal for myself.
NJ (00:39:23):
You are right. It is probably a different book. But I like the idea of, "Hey, we are going to teach you enough physical electronics, that when you try to use this stuff in this book, you do not waste a week and a half realizing you forgot to put pull-up resistors on your I2C line."
EW (00:39:41):
Yeah.
CW (00:39:41):
Yeah. Yeah.
EW (00:39:43):
Yeah. That sort of thing.
CS (00:39:44):
So that goes into a couple other suggestions that might be included in the book. Was a whole new chapter, someone said, on interesting bugs or war stories. It is always fun to learn from others' mistakes. So something like, "Here is how I2C will burn you. Here is how a SPI will burn you. Here is how USB will burn you."
CW (00:40:04):
Well, that is a whole book.
CS (00:40:05):
The pull-up resistors- You could have something, kind of like the interview questions at the end of each chapter. You could even include something like that. I realize I just started trying to talk Elecia into writing another edition of her book. Anyway.
CW (00:40:16):
<laugh>
CS (00:40:16):
I will stop that.
NJ (00:40:18):
Just. Yep.
CW (00:40:18):
No, I think "The Big Book of Bugs" is a good idea though. Just, new book. New book, "The Big Book of Bugs."
EW (00:40:25):
<laugh>
NJ (00:40:27):
Yeah. Well, and to give you some inspiration, I will plug a book that I have loved. It is by Lisa Simone. It is called, "If I Only Change the Software, Why is the Phone on Fire?"
CW (00:40:35):
Yes. Yes. Yes. Familiar with that one.
CS (00:40:37):
I read that years ago, but that is a good book.
(00:40:38):
Quick time check. Which is something I say in my professional life, and I have never said outside of a professional meeting, but here we are. This unprofessional call. We have been recording for maybe 43 minutes. I am sure Chris will probably cut some of the stuff, and we are maybe halfway done with the survey.
(00:40:55):
So I do not know, Nathan, how do we want to... Nathan and I did not talk through this at all, either. Very "professionalless". Do we want to kind of speed through some stuff? Or any of the big highlights you want to hit?
NJ (00:41:09):
There is a whole section of talking about how folks were listening and how often they listen, we can skip. To me, I would say the last kind of big three I have got in my notes were talking about the learning opportunities/failures, any recommendations for future bonus episodes, or anything else you would like to share with Elecia and Chris?
CS (00:41:35):
Yeah, I think those are really good things to dig in. So first of all, something we did not mention, is there are 69 people who responded to the survey. Depending on how many thousands of people are actually listening- It is about 70 people. So anywhere between one and 10% of people responded to the survey. I am just making numbers up, but it is kind of close-ish.
CW (00:41:55):
It is about one, which is the expectation for any response to anything that anybody does.
CS (00:42:02):
Yeah. I will say that you have a part in here that says... Let us see. Okay, here it is. "Are you willing to answer a few more questions to help benefit the show?" And of the 69 people who answered any of the survey, 68 said, "Yes," and they continued on.
CW (00:42:17):
Wow.
CS (00:42:17):
So you have people who answered the survey, were people who want to spend a little more time and help the show.
CW (00:42:22):
Good!
CS (00:42:22):
I just want to make that point. All right, Nathan, what do you think we should hit next?
NJ (00:42:27):
We asked, "What topics should Elecia and Chris explore next year? Is there anyone that would be neat for them to interview?" And again, got a lot of great responses. So you got a great list, Elecia and Chris, of ideas for next year. I thought one that was cool, was to try to find someone who worked on the core rope memory for the NASA missions.
EW (00:42:47):
Ahh.
CW (00:42:48):
Oh, wow. Yeah.
NJ (00:42:50):
I watched some videos, I do not know, a year or so ago, about the Apollo Guidance Computer. That age of computer engineering to me is so fascinating.
EW (00:43:01):
Yes, we would be into that. Yes. Definitely.
CS (00:43:03):
And people have given a number of very specific like, "You should get this person or this person on there." So that is hopefully a helpful pointer.
EW (00:43:12):
If you know that person and you made that suggestion, please email introduction. It is so much better for me. Not just because it is easier. Just because then the other person does not delete my email as spam.
CW (00:43:24):
Yeah.
CS (00:43:25):
Yep. Yeah, that connection helps. They should email you at show@embedded.fm probably?
CW (00:43:28):
Yes.
EW (00:43:28):
Yes, please.
NJ (00:43:28):
Yeah. Next, I asked, "What was your biggest fail- I mean, learning opportunity?"
CW (00:43:39):
<laugh>
NJ (00:43:41):
Which was my attempt to hopefully help normalize and reframe what we consider to be unsavory moments of our memories. But I think there is a lot there to own.
(00:43:55):
Someone on the Slack channel a while ago thought it would be really funny if the folks, engineers, introduce themselves as like, "Hi, I am Nate Jones. Here is the most amount of money I have ever wasted at a company, doing- Blowing something up or whatever."
EW (00:44:09):
<laugh>
CW (00:44:09):
Right. Right.
NJ (00:44:10):
Which I love.
CS (00:44:12):
One of the respondents here said they killed a $25,000 piece of equipment, by wiring it up wrong. So that is good. That is bold.
NJ (00:44:19):
<laugh>
CS (00:44:19):
There was a few people talking about killing electronics by doing the wrong thing.
NJ (00:44:27):
And hopefully at that point, your employer did the same thing- What was it? At IBM or Intel, and someone made a $10 billion mistake, and they thought they were going to get fired. And they said, "I am not going to fire you. I just invested $10 billion in you." <laugh>
EW (00:44:38):
That is right.
CS (00:44:38):
Geez. Yep. Yeah. But there was a good array of answers to this one. There was people blew up a power supply, killed that piece of equipment.
(00:44:47):
Let us see. Accidentally deleting data from prod, that kind of stuff. Burnout. Learning to bite my tongue with customers. Stop accepting exploitative side gigs. So just definitely different- A range of- Is trying to handle my mother's estate without real legal assistance.
CW (00:45:06):
Oh, geez.
CS (00:45:08):
There are real good, honest answers in here. So a good exemplar.
NJ (00:45:12):
Mine was, so we moved to Tennessee in July. A couple weeks before that, I drove the 24 foot moving truck from New York to Tennessee with my friend and my daughter. In six days, loaded it up, drove to Tennessee, unloaded it in 20 hours, and then started driving back. Got almost all the way back, and my wife said, "Hey, how much did the truck weigh?"
(00:45:39):
That is when it hit me, that if the Army was going to reimburse me for my move, they were going to need to know how much I moved. And I forgot to weigh the truck. And so yeah, that was probably a $20,000 mistake, and I just had to not think about it for a couple of days.
(00:46:00):
At this point, anytime I think about it, I tell myself, "I am not allowed to miss something I never had to begin with."
CS (00:46:09):
Oh, boy. Thanks for admitting that. That is painful, but yeah, good learning opportunity.
(00:46:14):
One of my favorite interview questions, I forget who I- I read some management book in the last couple years, and- Oh shoot, I will have to look it up for the show notes. But the author, she, especially as hiring for managers, she views coachability as one of the strongest indicators that someone is going to do well, especially in a management or leadership job.
(00:46:39):
One of her favorite questions, which I have stolen shamelessly is, "Tell me about the time where you received some feedback. Some feedback that you have had to change something about the way you do or the way you act, the way you whatever. What was the feedback? How was it delivered to you? What did you do as a result of that feedback?
(00:46:58):
I have really found that to be an excellent question, to figure out if people can at least come up with an example of something, where they have been told, "Hey, you need to change something. Here is how to change it."
NJ (00:47:10):
I like that.
EW (00:47:12):
We will just add that to lightning round.
CW (00:47:13):
Lightning round. Yeah.
EW (00:47:13):
<laugh>
NJ (00:47:14):
That is a heavy lightning round question.
CS (00:47:17):
Yeah, a heavy lightning round question.
CW (00:47:17):
In two sentences, tell us about the time you were told to change your ways, and how you reacted.
CS (00:47:25):
Or you could add the, "What is the highest dollar amount item you have ever blown up at work?"
CW (00:47:30):
That is a good one. Yeah. We could add that.
CS (00:47:31):
That is kind of a combination of-
CW (00:47:33):
See, I think I got a pretty good total going. Although one of them came back to life. So I do not know if I get to count that one.
NJ (00:47:40):
Nope. You annihilated some servers or something, Chris?
CW (00:47:47):
Oh, I blew up a-
EW (00:47:48):
I know your answer.
CW (00:47:48):
I blew up a server at Mudd.
NJ (00:47:49):
<laugh>
EW (00:47:51):
Fire.
CW (00:47:52):
It lit on fire. That really was not my fault.
EW (00:47:55):
No.
CW (00:47:56):
I was the person who turned it on, and then it subsequently lit itself on fire moments later.
EW (00:48:02):
It was a known defect. We got the insurance money.
CW (00:48:05):
Blown up several lasers. And then there was the car. That was recent. The vehicle.
EW (00:48:10):
Oh, God, I still feel real bad about that one.
CS (00:48:11):
You did blow up the car? You did blow up the car?
CW (00:48:13):
I did not blow up the car. I did the opposite of blowing up a car. I moistened the car. No, that does not sound good.
NJ (00:48:18):
<laugh>
CS (00:48:18):
It sounds like you just took a spray bottle and kind of misted it.
EW (00:48:22):
Left the sunroof-
CW (00:48:24):
Left the sunroof partially-
EW (00:48:25):
Open just a crack.
CW (00:48:27):
It was a client's test vehicle. Yeah.
EW (00:48:28):
Rainstorm, and-
CW (00:48:31):
Yeah, there are a lot of those, yeah. But the better ones are the funny ones, where- Some of them where I was just-
EW (00:48:38):
Like when the stage went too fast, and crushed Barbie's head. Because Barbie was there as a stopper for a little while, while I was doing PID controlling.
CW (00:48:46):
Sure. Yeah. I was just present at some of the other ones. Like the time that somebody-
EW (00:48:51):
<laugh>
CW (00:48:53):
Fired the high powered laser at their monitor.
EW (00:48:55):
Oh, okay.
CS (00:48:56):
Toh-oh!
CW (00:48:56):
And it was forever left with a series of dots on there.
EW (00:49:00):
I thought you were going to bring up the bomb range.
CW (00:49:03):
The bomb range! That is a whole episode.
EW (00:49:05):
<laugh>
CW (00:49:05):
Geez.
NJ (00:49:07):
This would be a great spot for the two of you to just drop random. Like, "Oh, do not even get me started on the Furby. Hoo!" No back storages.
CW (00:49:16):
The bomb range with the snake bite kit. And the FBI. It was a separate one. The FBI was a separate one. The duct tape shoes, because your shoes were melting.
CS (00:49:27):
I think you are thinking of that episode of MacGyver. Again.
EW (00:49:29):
No. No. This was all an adventure.
CS (00:49:32):
Write this down. This will be a future episode we want follow up on.
CW (00:49:35):
Companies did weird stuff in the early aughts. Different weird stuff than they are doing now.
NJ (00:49:39):
Different weird stuff. <laugh>
EW (00:49:43):
Nobody ever needed a snake bite kit for AI.
CW (00:49:46):
So far.
EW (00:49:50):
<laugh>
NJ (00:49:50):
<laugh>
EW (00:49:50):
What else do we have on the survey?
NJ (00:49:53):
Chris, what jumped out at you, as you are going through it?
CS (00:49:57):
Let us see. "The ads blank my listening experience," where you were saying the ads- The question was, "The ads either detract from my listening experience, have no effect on, or enhance?" Have no effect on or enhance, was more than 86%.
CW (00:50:14):
All right. We are taking that to the sponsors.
EW (00:50:17):
Yeah. Heck yeah.
CS (00:50:18):
So the ads are a good thing, I think. Mostly. 14% said, "Detract from," but everyone else thought it was good.
(00:50:26):
"How did you find out about the show?" I thought was a couple things in there. About half the people either searched for it, or had it recommended. Or heard it from a host, a guest was on a different podcast.
(00:50:36):
This is just a reminder to listeners, that if you know other embedded folks in your life who might like this podcast, then share it around the office. Share it around the other community groups you are part of. That is another way to spread some of this joy and some of this fun with other folks. So a little plug for plugging the show.
NJ (00:50:57):
Yeah. Someone else mentioned wishing that their co-workers also listened to it. But that is another great usage of it. That if you have co-workers that listen to it or that you can kind of get attached to the show, now you have got a common language in terms of, "Hey, remember that thing that was talked about last week?"
CW (00:51:11):
Hm.
EW (00:51:13):
This is where I should promise to send out stickers. I might.
CS (00:51:18):
I think the last part was really the last question, which was, "Is there anything else you would like to share with Elecia and Chris?" Before we get into that, Nathan, anything else that jumped out at you before we- Because I think that might be a really good place to end.
NJ (00:51:28):
No. I think we will end with that one.
CS (00:51:31):
All right. This is great. So of the 69 total people, and the 68 who continued through the end, 57 people had responses for this last one. I am only saying that because this is 57 people who, it sounds like from reading the comments here, their lives are genuinely better, because of Chris and Elecia and doing this show for ten plus years here.
(00:51:52):
So I hope if you two are ever feeling down or like, "Why are we doing this?" that you read through these. Maybe have like a random shell script that shows you one a day or something like that. But my favorite quote of all was, "You are America's funniest engineering couple."
CW (00:52:07):
<laugh>
NJ (00:52:07):
Yes.
EW (00:52:13):
<laugh> I do not know if I am honored.
CW (00:52:15):
I am putting that on the website. That is going to be the pull-quote at the top of the website. "America's funniest engineering couple."
CS (00:52:21):
Yeah. Yeah.
NJ (00:52:24):
If that does not make it into the awards application, I do not know what you are doing, Elecia.
CW (00:52:32):
<laugh> Very niche-
EW (00:52:32):
Noted.
CW (00:52:32):
Category.
NJ (00:52:32):
<laugh>
CW (00:52:32):
Possibly two, maybe only three contestants. Yes.
CS (00:52:41):
People say, "Thank you for keeping it real. You guys are actually great. I really appreciate the work you both put into the podcast. From both a professional and personal perspective, thank you. Please keep it up." And, "Both of you really resonate with me in my life experiences. I look forward to each and every episode. Thank you for 500 excellent episodes. Audio production standards are very high. Thank you for that."
EW (00:53:03):
That is all, Chris.
CS (00:53:05):
"I have imposter or "I do not belong" syndrome. Your podcast has been awesome to create a coherent community in this type of work. Thanks for helping me learn."
NJ (00:53:15):
Yeah. "You have been the most valuable resource in my career. Thank you so much for everything you have shared. Keep up the good work. I know you guys talk a lot of burnout and other issues, but the podcast is really wonderful. It is nice to hear about other people's experiences, interesting projects, articles, book recommendations. I do not know how much time is involved in producing the podcast, but the weeks without it are duller."
CW (00:53:34):
Wow. Well, this is all very nice, and that is as much as I can take of positivity.
CS (00:53:38):
All right. We will put an end to that.
EW (00:53:38):
<laugh>
CW (00:53:38):
<laugh>
CS (00:53:44):
Now, people do both- As someone who has been in the Slack community for years, I think from there and reading these comments was not a surprise to me. But it was still very nice to read.
(00:53:54):
I think people really do find value from the shows. I know I have, in knowing you two, and certainly listening to all the episodes, and learning all kinds of random and sometimes embedded things.
(00:54:04):
The community that is part of the Slack group is also really good. Watching people struggle with stuff and learn stuff. And get jobs and help each other out and review resumes and do mock interviews. And ask random questions about why my I2C is not working, and someone suggests a pull-up that helps them. Getting to see all that.
(00:54:22):
You two have built, with a lot of effort, a really unique place on the internet. I think that is actually a healthy community. I hope I did not just jinx it. If I did, it is my fault. Just the show is great. Just the community is great. And I think together they are just really good.
(00:54:42):
Thank you personally for doing this. I will stop being nice to you now, Chris.
CW (00:54:47):
Just to add to that, my favorite thing about the show, or the thing that I am most proud of, is having that community. Which mostly formed organically, exists and be kind of self-sustaining. And we do not actually do anything on the Slack, except come in and-
EW (00:55:03):
Chat?
CW (00:55:04):
Chat like anyone else, or make jokes. Or be snarky.
EW (00:55:07):
Well, there would be a few people who would say that the DMs to be a little nicer.
CW (00:55:11):
Yeah, yeah.
EW (00:55:13):
But for the most part, everybody is great.
CW (00:55:15):
As far as internet communities go, it has been very-
EW (00:55:18):
Oh. It has been really easy and good. And useful to me, too.
CW (00:55:22):
Yeah, me too. I think we have found jobs sometimes through that, or at least adjacently.
NJ (00:55:29):
Yeah. I think that did come up a couple times. Svec, you mentioned anything else in the survey, but I think lots of people mentioned how wonderful and useful and awesome the Slack community has been.
(00:55:42):
I will second that. That has been probably the best professional decision of my career, after Chris came to talk to Alex Dean's class at NC State University. I was like, "Oh, there is this cool podcast," and joined the Slack. It has just been a phenomenal group of people.
(00:56:01):
Like you mentioned, Svec, I have had so many questions answered by much more knowledgeable people, who are extremely kind and patient in their explanations. And I have had the opportunity to share some stuff that I have learned, with folks who had not quite learned that yet. That is just an awesome resource, and it has been a great community.
(00:56:21):
If anyone is listening and they have not done that yet, for- What is it? Like a dollar a month, you can be part of this awesome community. And I will tell you what, I will say this on air right now. If you, for whatever financial reason, cannot afford a dollar a month to be part of the Slack community, email me, nathancharlessjones@gmail.com and I will sponsor you.
(00:56:45):
On top of having wonderful guests on the show, being part of that Slack is just great.
EW (00:56:50):
It is not even a dollar a month. We never kick anybody.
CW (00:56:52):
It is just a dollar. Once.
EW (00:56:53):
If you want ad free shows, it is five bucks a month.
CW (00:56:55):
Ad free is five bucks a month. But if you just want to be on the Slack-
EW (00:56:58):
You should be on Slack.
CW (00:56:59):
The dollar for the Slack was always intended as a-
EW (00:57:03):
We want to know you are serious.
CW (00:57:04):
We want to know you are actually a real human, with a dollar.
EW (00:57:07):
Yeah.
NJ (00:57:09):
Do it. I will sponsor you.
EW (00:57:10):
Thank you.
CS (00:57:12):
One other thing that I will say is that, especially in reading through the question about, "What is your biggest failure or learning opportunity in the last year?" I noticed a number of people talking about struggling with things technical. Or, "Hey, I am a new manager and I feel like I am doing very poor there." I forget the other things in there, but a bunch of things.
(00:57:31):
I want to encourage anyone, including myself, that if you are having issues, whether it is interviewing or managing or some technical thing, go to the community and ask the question.
(00:57:42):
I know people frequently will- The question will be like five words, and they will put about 15 words around it that are, "Please forgive me for asking this beginner question, that everyone else probably knows." I want to encourage us all to get rid of the boilerplate stuff, and just go in with the question. Because everyone has questions, everyone has failures, everyone needs help.
(00:58:01):
That community has been a pretty good place to get technical help, work professional help, all kinds of stuff. So I encourage people who listed failures and talked about learning opportunities and who are interested in learning more, to ask for feedback. Ask for help on the Slack. Probably someone will be willing to give you something that might be useful.
EW (00:58:24):
Yeah. And if they are mean to you, you just message me and I will take care of it for you. Every once in a while I like to get engaged.
NJ (00:58:35):
For the record, I have had no one be mean to me on Slack. Except for Svec that one time.
EW (00:58:39):
<laugh>
CS (00:58:39):
There was that one. It is okay. It is okay.
NJ (00:58:42):
I deserved it. It was all right.
CS (00:58:43):
You deserved it.
NJ (00:58:44):
<laugh>
CS (00:58:47):
I am contractually obligated to be mean to Chris, but that is the court system. The court system knows why.
EW (00:58:55):
And let us just be clear. I am married to Christopher White. And not Chris Svec, who is married to someone else entirely, and I do not think she appreciates the-
CW (00:59:03):
Confusion.
EW (00:59:04):
The confusion.
CW (00:59:04):
Yeah.
CS (00:59:06):
It is. Yeah actually, I was going to ask if- At the beginning of the show, if we could just- Nathan, if we could just call you "Chris," to keep things simpler.
NJ (00:59:11):
<laugh>
CS (00:59:12):
Or we could call you "Bruce" as well, to quote the old Monty Python sketch.
NJ (00:59:16):
Yes.
EW (00:59:20):
Thank you, Nathan, for putting the survey together.
NJ (00:59:22):
Pleasure.
EW (00:59:22):
Thank you both for looking through the responses, and pulling out such nice ones.
CW (00:59:29):
Thank you for talking to us on Christmas- Christmas? New Year's Eve Eve, New Year's Eve squared. Yes.
CS (00:59:36):
Very welcome. Thanks for the community. Thanks for the shows. Thanks for figuring out hopefully what is a more workable schedule for you. And if you guys got to pull back more, then obviously we-
CW (00:59:47):
I am feeling quarterly. How are you?
CS (00:59:48):
Quarterly? Oh man, that would be painful.
CW (00:59:50):
I am kidding. I am kidding.
CS (00:59:51):
That would be painful. But yeah, thanks for doing what you are doing, and just for everything. We appreciate you.
EW (00:59:58):
Oh, we have some good shows coming up. We cannot just go to that, until we get through the-
CW (01:00:01):
I know. I was kidding.
EW (01:00:03):
Thank you to our sponsors this year as well. Mouser, RunSafe, Nordic, and Memfault. And our supporters on Ko-fi and Patreon. It is weird. We do not do this for the money, but the money tells us we are doing a good job. Although the survey also says we are doing a good job. So thank you to everyone who filled out the survey.
(01:00:24):
I would like to have a huge shout out to Petria Cameron, for doing our professional transcripts. And to Raynay Novor for his work on social media for us, as well as collecting links and other assorted help. Congratulations, Raynay, on the new job.
(01:00:42):
Finally, thank you for listening. If you would like to contact us, show@embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. And no quote, just a big, "We appreciate you," and, "Happy New Year."
CW (01:00:58):
Thanks, Nathan. Thanks, Chris.
CS (01:00:59):
Thank you, all three of you.
NJ (01:01:02):
Thanks for having us.
