0053 Sir Gene Speaks

Hey guys, I just wanted to release a short episode and let you know what's happening. And that there's probably going to be, you were episodes in the coming several weeks before I get back home and start doing episodes on the more regular schedule. Although probably not the every other day that I used to a month ago, probably more a twice a day. So my mom had a stroke, so I'm actually spending time at my parent's house and helping my dad take care of that. And consequently I may put out an episode here and there it's going to be recorded on my iPhone rather than the normal programs that I use and not on the fancy professional microphone that I would have at home. So if something comes up, if I'm motivated, I will put out an episode that day. I don't plan on doing anything on a particular day of the week for the time being. But I didn't want to not just have everyone to see him. Oh, he must have lost interest and stop doing these episodes. I definitely am still looking for interesting guests and I still have topics that I want to cover, but I also have to admit that frankly, politics is starting to become. A little draining. I am taking the opportunity to take a bit of a break from politics. Those of you that are in the know agenda social will probably notice that my last week or probably several weeks worth of links and posts that I've made have tend to be more on the, Hey, check out this music. Hey, here's an interesting video that deals with science. Here's an interesting video that deals with him. So while I am certainly still paying attention to what's going on politically, it is by no means been an, a topic that is as interesting to me right now, as it was, let's say three months ago or at the beginning of the podcast where I was really focusing on providing as much day-to-day political coverage as I could. I I think probably there will be ebbs and flows to this, and I'm trying to be as open about what my plans are as I can with you guys to those that, that still subscribe and they're soliciting and having deleted the podcast off their list of interesting podcasts. I certainly appreciate that to the handful of you guys that are sending me money. I certainly appreciate that as well. Being able to do a podcast and have the fees that are associated with hosting and creation be paid out of donations is obviously very cool and much, much better than having to take the time and effort and create a podcast and then have to pay all those fees out of your own pocket as well. Hopefully I am still providing some value to that. I know once we had the big series of interviews relating to podcasting 2.0. I started going back to politics, but certainly my interest was already waning in that regard. And I did several episodes, really more focused on topics of probably philosophy more than anything, or just big question topics. Even if they were somewhat related to the political landscape. So I would certainly say for the time being There will be fewer stuff coming out, just due to life issues with my parents. But post that and hopefully with a quick and good recovery. And my mom seems to be okay, she's not in any immediate trouble, just, slowly recovering her memory, the usual stuff that happens when somebody has a stroke. And my dad's. Yeah. Pretty darn old. I'm 109. So I think he's 134 right now. It's a, it's something that is going to take a little more attention for me to deal with. But I certainly appreciate the well-wishing as well. And I'm sure there will be some coming as a result of putting this out there as a podcast. But since I really do want to maintain a bi-directional conversation with you. Either through no agenda, social, or even people that just reach out to me through the email, which is just podcasts that sir, gene.com and the website, obviously for downloading the podcast is podcasts, dots, or gene.com. So if you want get ahold of me, that's the best way to do it. I do try to get on nudge in the social at least every other day, occasionally five times a day. All depends on what I'm doing. And I do want to hear of interesting things you guys are doing and any kind of articles and links people send me. I always check out. I generally don't just ignore that stuff. It just, I may either not have a reaction to it, or I may have a comment to it right away. It all depends on what I'm doing and what the topic is. But in a nutshell, that is what's happening in my world right now and what my immediate plans are. For the people that have reached out to me on the agenda chat about my next streaming session or what the games I'm playing. Because when I stream it's generally games just to update you guys. And again, I won't be streaming while I'm at my parents' house. Cause that's, I'm not bringing my gaming PC with me. That's a, that's going to have to wait until I'm back home. But I've been playing star citizen. The ships are awesome. They're look really cool. If you are a gamer at all, it's definitely worth checking out star citizen, watch the videos you don't necessarily have to sign up and play. I will tell you that from having jumped into it and played it a little bit, it is absolutely an alpha. It's not even beta. And it's been an alpha for many years now, and I'm not sure when it's going to get to that. So watch videos, don't invest your own money unless the videos really make you feel like you want to play around with these ships. It is most Lee, a showroom of really cool things. The spaceships right now don't expect a whole lot more than that. Yes, there is other stuff to do in the game and there's mining and fights. You've got the battle with spaceships, but it is a, for the most part, just a place to go walk around and look at cool. And also you don't have to spend real money on ships. You just have to buy the game once. And then every other pretty much every ship, if not every, than at least 95% of the ships, you can get through the in game currency. So the only reason to spend real dollars on them is if you want to directly jump to a ship without having to grind anything in there. And then buy it for real dollars. And those prices are not cheap. Those ships go from about$35 up to$600, I think, for the humongous ones. Hey, if you've got disposable income, you just want to have something that you can walk around. Looks really cool. It's a, one-to-one replica of a cool spaceship, not really replica, I guess, similar to spaceships in movies. Like star wars or star Trek or whatever, then by all means check out what's available for sale for anybody who just wants to take a look at it, just watch the videos and anybody that just wants to actually try it, give it a shot and play the game. Don't buy any of the expensive stuff, just buy the starter package and then you can earn the game money through doing missions to be able to. All the ships that are available. And then the other game that I've been playing a really, probably for the month prior to that. And the one that I streamed a little bit of is a elite dangerous, which is quite similar to star citizen in a lot of ways, but it is a much more complete game. It is fully fleshed out. There's still some bugs, but for the most part, the gameplay is all there. The ships are all there. In fact, they haven't really updated ships in about two years. But they really, like they work, they're not in as much of a beta or alpha phase as star citizen and in its own way, elite dangerous is just as beautiful. It's just that beauty doesn't go to the level of detail and to the level of ships that star citizen is creating. But the trade-off for that, of course, is that. Elite dangerous is much more of a full functioning in game. And it's been out of beta for many years now. Whereas star citizen has been in alpha, so pre beta for about eight years now, which is insane. So anyway, that's what I've been spending my time on. I and I guess the other thing to mention is a game that I used to play an awful lot, like a thousand hours or more, probably closer to 2000 hours over the last five. Is a Kerbal, which is a space simulator with tons of mud support. That game just celebrated 10 years. I have not been plating a whole lot lately, but they just came out with what is their last or final update to the game as they're currently working on the brand new version of the game to be released? Well, either Christmas of this year or more than likely sometime. But the last update to Kerbal just happened and I probably will download it when I get back home because I've always loved playing curb on Cape Kerbel is more simulator than game. I would think of it more as a spaceship version of Microsoft flight simulator, but also with cute little green men. So that having the little green men adds somebody to the game beyond just building space. Now you have spaceships that carry little green men that really you should try to not kill. So it adds that element, the doubt, the element of having to save somebody's life and not just not care, whether a piece of technology gets destroyed, very fun game. So anyway, that's that's been what's taken up my time on the gaming side of things. Like I said, from a political standpoint I'm minimizing that. I'm just getting sort of tangential news. I'll listen to no agenda. But I may not even finish the episodes. I may just listen to a few bits and decide that's all the politics I need for this week or certainly for these few days. And then rinse and repeat, do it again when the next episode comes out. I do think that at least here in Texas, COVID is pretty much in the past. That's in the rear view mirror, if not completely gone, because it's still visible in the rear view mirror. It is very much on the decline. And most people are not wearing masks. There's still a handful of people that are like, I was even that whole foods earlier. They, and even the cashiers at whole foods are not wearing masks, which kind of surprised me because I figured it out of all the stores. At that store, they would be the last ones to get rid of masks for their employees. But, I guess they they're on board with not having masks anymore, which is a good thing you can actually see when people are smiling. Now you can see what people are thinking and whether they're sad or angry or happier or whatever other emotion and not try and just figure that out from their eyes and their eyebrows, but actually see. On their entire face, which is a very good thing that was missing for about a year and I'm glad to have it back. And I also, I guess the other topic that I touched on a previous episode is the whole, what is going in an office. And there's no concrete update on that for me, this particular episode, other than to say I today at lunch with another friend that just moved out of Austin, actually moved to New York for a job. So the number of people that are in Austin proper, like next to downtown than I am, is ranking. And that again is just more. More reason for me to start looking for where my next abode is going to be. And I still very much love Texas. I have no intention of moving out of Texas. But there are a few cities in Texas where I've not lived and that I have a casual interest in exploring. So while I could just go back to familiar territory up in Dallas, where I lived for a number of years I think I'm more inclined to either move to Houston or San Antonio and there's pros and cons to both. San Antonio is nowhere near as interesting. It doesn't have as much entertainment or culture or restaurants or anything else as Houston, but it's also smaller. It's also much closer to Austin and it is a, it's got some other benefits through it and it's also way cheaper than Houston. And there is a certainly a potential for a few other folks that I know that may end up moving to San Antonio. So San Antonio is not been written off by any means. It's very much on the list. And of course, Houston is a city I've wanted to live in for a while, just not in any hurry to move there, but I've been there tons of times and I've explored different areas. And it really does at certain times, or certainly in certain areas of Houston, it feels like a major metropolis the way Chicago does and the surrounding area, the way New York does and surrounding area. Even more so than I think the way LA feels because LA is very spread out. But like Chicago and New York are not nearly as spread out. Or even Miami for that matter has a little bit of that sort of bigger city feel that Houston has. Whereas other cities, including Dallas really don't, Dallas and Fort worth both have a fairly small downtown of high rise buildings followed by a very large area, a really suburbia with either old suburbia, like old big, nice, expensive houses that were built closer to them. Or way out in the Boonie suburbia, like where I used to live in Frisco, which is brand new construction on what used to be farmland just 10 years ago and a good half hour from the downtown, but nice area to be good schools. Lots of activities for people with kids, not so many activities for people without kids. Which is one of the reasons I ended up moving to Austin. There's Austin seemed like a much better place to be in the if you want it to actually socialize, if you want it to do things, hang out at bars, meet with friends for an evening out that sort of thing. Whereas in Dallas, it felt like everybody in Dallas was married. And and everybody got kids and even people who are not married, they're all dealing with kid issues. Maybe that's just systematic of my age. Once I got divorced, those kind of a decade went by between when I was previously single and when I became single maybe that was just emblematic of that, but definitely moving to Austin. It seemed like there were a lot more other people that were single or other people that were interested in getting together at 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM or something on hanging out in different places, getting drinks, having good food, a good barbecue that Austin is known for all these different factors. Austin was a very enjoyable place, but I really am getting over it. And I feel like I'm at that stage of my final for sure my final year, but maybe my final several months in Austin in wrapping up what I've been here and every time a new person, that's a friend of mine that lives in Austin ends up moving out of Austin. It just puts one more nail in that coffin of Austin and the phrase that I've said before. And I'll just repeat again. Here is Austin today. Really I would say is a lot closer to San Diego than Austin was when I moved to Austin a decade ago. And San Diego is not bad. Like I live in San Diego for about two years. It's a nice city, but it's not Austin. It's a very different environment. Austin had it. Keep us in the weird culture. It had live music everywhere. You literally, any day of the week, walking around Austin within three miles of downtown, not even necessarily in downtown, but around downtown, you would hear live the music. And as you're walking or as you're driving, you can hear music fade from one live band, and then you start hearing a different type of music. And as you approach, you realize that's another live band. And that was very much the Austin that I moved to. Things were much cheaper there. The the number of, what do they call it? The little pop-up food market thing. Yeah, I'm blanking out when they're called, but anyway, almost every day of the week, you could find where the local farmer's market farmer's markets. That is what they're called, where the local farmer's market was, that there was one happening in different location all the time. It was just, it felt more like a small town with a fairly sizeable downtown. And right now Austin feels more like. Small city with a definitely large downtown at this point, the downtown number of buildings and population density has probably doubled since I moved here. And in that transition from town to city. And I think it's really lost a lot of the character that I enjoyed about Austin, where it felt like you were still in a smaller town and outside of the mainstream. And right now, you're seeing a lot of signs that I like even just driving today. I was changing lanes and I had two people that were honking at me, which never happened in Austin. And it doesn't happen anywhere else in Texas. People are super friendly in Texas and we'll let you in. But Austin probably today has about 35% of its population comprised of Californians. And we all know how much of an asshole is California. So they're all moving here and it's getting time to seriously start looking at moving out of here. But that's okay because moving brings about new and interesting and surprising opportunities and new friends that you meet and new adventures. So I am, I'm not at all disappointed. I it's been a decade. It's been a good time. I've lived longer in Austin. I think that I have in any city in my entire life I've done it to move around about every three, four or five years. And I've been here for nearly a decade. So it is it has been a place that I've enjoyed calling home. And the airport's been pretty damn good too. Although nothing beats DFW, even if I moved to Houston and the airport. I think is considerably worse in terms of its layout and planning than the airport in Dallas or DFW, which really between red, between the middle from Dallas to Fort worth and still probably my favorite airport out of all the airports in the country at this point, it's just laid out. So well, and for somebody that used to travel every other week, That was a very significant thing that I looked for these days with remote working a lot less travel involved, it's really just not as big of a concern. And so being in the weather, I'm in the city with a big, huge airport, or whether or not I'm in the city with a smaller airport, it's just less of an issue. And while I still certainly think I will be flying at certain points I just don't foresee that sort of every other week type travel that I used to do. So that's my update for this week probably. And I'm going to preemptively thank people that are sending me well wishes for my mom. Now that she's in the urban dictionary, as Adam pointed out and sent me a link that the term Gene's mom are so easy that Gene's mom could use. It is in there. I think it's gonna be, fun for me to show that to her. Once she recovers to a degree where her mammary is back to the point where she can appreciate the humor in it. But anyway they tuned for more updates. And just give me a little bit of a break on sound quality, because you just know they're going to be. And then I phone and then uploaded without any kind of processing that I would typically do during an uh, my home studio setup. And anyone has any suggestions or any pros or cons incidentally to either San Antonio or Houston? I'm all ears to that as well. Cause I'd love to hear from people that have actually lived in those cities, even if you don't currently live in that city. And get your take on pros and cons and why you moved there or why you left there. Because those are the two most likely places that I'm considering. And I think that there is still a slight chance where I made the site to just throw a dart at the map of Texas and just pick some little tiny town in the middle of nowhere. And just move there for a while just through experience. Traditional old time, Texas life. I think that would be an interesting thing too, but I'd say chance of that probably about 5% and then chance of the other two cities as 95%, one or the other. But I don't want to exclude it either. I may go that route, honestly, with doing everything remotely. The only real need that I have in terms of location. Is a place that has gigabit ethernet, so likely fiber. And that's simply because that's what I'm used to. I've had gigabit for quite a long time for almost the entire time I've been here after the first couple of years, probably for sure. And so I'm used to really fast and low latency internet for not just for gaming, which obviously is where it helps a lot, but also just for sending and getting files from clients and doing other activities like that. It's nice to have the extra bandwidth. But other than that, if I get gigabit ethernet at a random small town in Texas, I certainly wouldn't rule it out. I would go and check it out, see what it's like and maybe live someplace super quiet for a change as well. It would be because I've only lived in fairly urban areas in Texas. All right, guys, that'll be it for this episode. Hopefully you'll enjoy it or at least appreciated the update that I provided and I will let you know what's happening with my mom as well as any other topics that come up probably about a week from now. Thanks for listening.