Slightly Caffeinated

TJ Miller (00:00)
Hey, welcome back to the Slightly Caffeinated Podcast. I'm TJ. Hey Chris, what is new in your world?

Chris Gmyr (00:03)
And I'm Chris.

And just getting back to work after being off for a couple weeks and enjoying the holiday and New Year with everyone. So just trying to get my bearings and figure out what I was doing and figure out how to type on a keyboard and all that. So yeah, pretty good adjustment coming back into it. But had a good time over the holidays. And I we wanted to talk about that. But yeah, just slow ramp up.

TJ Miller (00:20)
Yep.

Chris Gmyr (00:31)
into the new week and 2025.

TJ Miller (00:35)
Yeah, yeah, man. I'm in the same boat. I've actually had a really rough time getting back into things. It's, you know, I took two weeks off for Christmas and the new year and man, my ADHD is just like kicking my ass. has been a rough landing starting the fresh week, but I also started, you know, coming back, you know, Monday, kind of got into things with work. We did our like 2025 kickoff, which was fun.

But then like Tuesday, I had to have a tooth pulled. had plumbers here yesterday. So today's Thursday. like Tuesday, I had a tooth pulled. Wednesday, I had plumbers here and they had to like work in the office. So I had to tear my whole office apart for them to work. man, it's been a... So on top of all of that, yeah, like just my ADHD is killing me. So it's been a rough... I'm really hoping like next week is smooth sailing into like the rest of the year, you know?

Chris Gmyr (01:31)
Yeah, totally. Sounds hectic coming into it. Yeah, I actually put this on Blue Sky the other day, I signed back on Friday because I thought my son was back to school too, but they had like a last minute change, so changed it to a teacher's workshop. So he ended up having Friday off. I'm like, well, I'm still going to go back and not change my BTO time off. So Friday was nice because not that many people were.

TJ Miller (01:51)
Yep.

Chris Gmyr (01:56)
back or active online. We still had a code freeze. And I just went through and cleared out all the notifications, responded back to slacks and emails and linear tickets and all that, and just kind of cleared my plate and had kind of like a fresh start on Monday morning. And that made that transition a little bit better. that's what I try and like to do is like a soft entry after a long holiday, if I can.

or break, but you know, that worked out this time. Doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes you're just thrust right back into it and into the deep end.

TJ Miller (02:29)
Yeah, yeah, no, that sounds like a good plan, kind of coming back like the day before. You know, most people are coming back and be able to like settle in and kind of catch up and get back to, you know, start getting back to like habits and workflows and stuff. It's, yeah, I think that worked out well, you know.

Chris Gmyr (02:48)
Yeah, totally. So yeah, how did the holiday go? Your New Year's? Family stuff? I know that you got the new printer. how was all the things?

TJ Miller (02:59)
Ooh, yeah.

Yeah, this year was kind of a special Christmas for us. Like we we've been struggle busting for like the last couple of years. And so this year was a little winded up a little bit doing a little bit better than previous years. So we were able to kind of spoil the crap out of my son, which was just an absolute riot. Being able to like get him all the stuff he asked for and then.

and then some stuff, which was just a blast, but I think, I think the biggest hit of the year was snagging a 3d printer. it's something my son and I've been like talking about for. Probably the last year, like getting serious about it and just kind of pushing it off to one of those like, well, whatever we eventually get one, you know, we'll, we'll have some fun with it. but there was a pretty like bamboo had a.

pretty sick Black Friday deal. Actually, I checked yesterday. I think they're still like, have their Black Friday pricing on their printers. And it was, we snagged, like, I was like a no brainer. So we snagged one and, I wanted to set it up right away. Like I didn't, I didn't want to wait for Christmas. I was like, why can't we just tell them it's for Christmas and we open it up now? My wife was very adamant about, it's for Christmas day. So,

That thing has been running almost nonstop since we set it up between like stuff that I've been eager to print. Since I knew we were getting it, I had like a list of things that I wanted to print because, you know, I'd be like browsing around the different websites and, you know, had stuff ready to roll. And my son has just been like all over all the printing websites.

texting me like, hey, can we print this one? How about this one? How about this one? He's like, can you just put the app on my phone so I can print whatever I want? I'll make sure I ask permission first. I'm like, no.

Chris Gmyr (04:48)
Yeah, start printing things in the middle of the night or something. Like, sneak these in.

TJ Miller (04:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, I've got, I think I've got my first like really big print coming up. actually just finished it before we hopped on here. It was, I think we're looking at like three days, big, big old print, but like for me, it's, it's been fun poking around like websites and like finding stuff that other people have made to print. But in high school, which is

ancient years ago, the ancient history at this point, but I spent four years taking like drafting classes, and AutoCAD classes and like ended with like a semester of independent study in AutoCAD where I got to basically like lay out my own project and build it, which was super cool. So I have like a long history, albeit like a long time ago, with like working with like CAD and AutoCAD. So.

I was super stoked really to like also be start, get back into like be designing my own things in like, there's a list of house projects and things that I've needed bits and parts for. So, getting to like hop into AutoCAD and like design something and then print it and actually be able to hold it has been so rewarding. Like I, I think for us, like we,

write code and we like exist in this like virtual world for like so much of what we do. And that's like fun and rewarding in its own way. But there's just something about like being able to do that in like a virtual world and then be able to like physically hold something as an artifact from that. That is just I don't know. There's something magic about it. At least for me there is.

Chris Gmyr (06:29)
Yeah, like bridging the

gap between the two worlds and still being able to build something digitally and then still build it in reality. that's, yeah, that's awesome.

TJ Miller (06:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, there was something like similarly satisfying. A couple of years ago, I worked for a credit card processing company and our API interacted with hardware credit card terminals. So that was like rewarding in a very similar way where it was like, I built this API. You make this API request and now this like physical thing next to you is like lighting up, you you interact with it and

you get this response back from the API, like bridging the gap between those two worlds was really pretty neat. now I'm like diving like further into it. And you know, it's it's been a lot of fun. have a lot of learning, like relearning to do with with CAD. The software has changed a lot. It's gotten in a lot of aspects so much easier to like design things. But

I have forgotten all the fundamentals and like I can do some basic stuff. and there was something I was designing the other day where I got it to work. I printed it. came out like more or less like how I wanted it. But I know that I did it in like probably the most hacky way possible. And I'm sure if someone like familiar with Fusion looked at what I was doing, they'd be like, why are you doing it this way? Like this is your-

Chris Gmyr (07:29)
You

TJ Miller (07:52)
You're so dumb. Like it's way easier doing it this way. Yeah. So I think, I think I've got queued up this weekend, a YouTube playlist of tutorials and I'm to see if I can't get back up to speed and, you know, sprinkling some work on Prism, but you know, also catch up a little bit on some 3d modeling. Cause I've definitely got a few things that I want to do. then, you know, even

Chris Gmyr (07:57)
You gotta start somewhere though.

TJ Miller (08:19)
beyond just 3D printing them, I've got a few things that I want to like then go get CNC'd. So like being able to like do all the prototyping on a 3D printer and then, you know, ship off the design to a couple buddies of mine that have got, you know, CNC machines, you know, try to knock out something in like metal, I think would be super cool. But yeah, so that was like

Chris Gmyr (08:40)
Yeah. Yeah. That would be pretty sweet.

TJ Miller (08:46)
That was the big thing on Christmas. I got to hand it to you like bamboo labs. We got a P1S printer and with the AMS system. And the AMS system is basically you can have like, you can have two AMS systems, but each AMS system is like four spools of filament. So you can do like multicolor prints and it'll actually like switch the filament based on like what you're printing. So you could have something with like four different colors.

And it will like automatically like purge the lines and like change the colors and print which is mind-blowing. I guess like a little backstory on like 3d printing too.

It was just before Alice was born. like probably 12, maybe 12 and a half years ago, I was super into 3D printing and I was part of this like hacker and maker space. And there were several people there who like at this time, like it was completely unaffordable to like buy a 3D printer. So there was this community of like people who had 3D printers who would 3D print parts and like sell them for other people could

build their own 3D printers. So it was like this whole community of like homemade 3D printers. And it worked pretty well. The resolutions were really bad, but, and like the tools were super clunky, but like I was way into it then. and just seeing how far it's come in, you know, 12, 13 years is wild because I pulled this thing out of the box. Took me 10, 15 minutes to like just set up.

And within like five minutes after that, we were like printing our first thing from my phone, even like they've got an app on my phone. Like I did it from the vet the other day. My son texted me a design and I like sent it to the printer from not even like my house. Like it was it's. Absolutely insane where this tech is gone, but I. I could not believe how easy it was to get up and running.

Chris Gmyr (10:24)
Yeah.

TJ Miller (10:41)
So super fun. That was the majority. Like, it was like the big bulk of our Christmas. Was getting that, setting that up and just playing with it nonstop. I've already ordered like more filament three times since we've got it too, just like different colors. I've already like ate through all of the blacks. I've got to like get more of that. Yeah, and the New Year's was super chill. We...

Most years we end up like falling asleep and waking up at like 11 50. Like saying happy new year and like rolling over and going back to sleep. my son was adamant this year about staying up. we, we had late, late coffee and happened to make it all the way to midnight. I think we were all asleep by 12 15 though. So it was chill. my wife.

Chris Gmyr (11:22)
Just made it.

TJ Miller (11:24)
Some from so I don't know where it came from but somewhere she was reading like if you want like good luck in the new year You have to sit under a table and eat a dozen frozen grapes At New Year's so we did it. It was hilarious

Yeah, I don't know where the heck that came from, but it was fun. We ended up having a race who could eat their grapes the fastest, and I was the only one that managed not to get brain freeze.

Chris Gmyr (11:49)
great. Yeah, I've seen frozen grapes, not in like the New Year, like good luck contacts, but I've also seen people putting them in the soda machines like the at home like CO2 and you leave them in there for I don't know like an hour or two and they get all carbonated inside. Yeah, I haven't tried it. I've just seen videos on it. So I don't know if you have an at home soda machine, try it out.

TJ Miller (12:08)
Ooh.

Yeah. And I mean, on top of that, like frozen grapes, like I've never, I don't know if I've ever had frozen grapes before. They are a super satisfying snack. Like we have just like kept a baggie of frozen grapes in there. And like, as I walk by, I'll just munch on them a bit. They're pretty good.

Chris Gmyr (12:30)
Nice, like many little ice creams or something.

TJ Miller (12:33)
Yeah, for sure. How

about you, man? How was your holiday?

Chris Gmyr (12:37)
Yeah, it was good. It was a little hectic with driving and travel and all that. Basically, had the majority of our families send presents ahead of time because they knew our schedule. So we had all the kids or both the kids open up their presents over the week ahead of time. And we just recorded it for everyone because we weren't going to drag everything down to Florida with us. We had too much stuff to already bring anyways.

TJ Miller (13:03)
yeah.

Chris Gmyr (13:05)
We just recorded it for everyone, sent pictures and videos to everyone to see them open their stuff and say thank you and all that. Yeah, and then we like, I tailed it down to, we stayed overnight in Savannah, both ways, Savannah, Georgia. And then went down to New Smyrna Beach. So we met up with my wife's sister and niece in Savannah the first time down. So we got to go, we were like right on the water in the

the river and like plant district. So it's like all these like old industrial buildings that they've turned into hotels and restaurants and things to do. And they had a like Christmas event like outside. So there were like a bunch of vendors and there was like Santa and taking pictures and hot chocolate and

Stuff like that. once we got there, we were just like walking along the boardwalk and the river and doing stuff like that and getting some food. And it like went really well. And it was fun for the kids and got to stay up late and do some fun things like that. Unfortunately, leaving. So we had a roof rack storage unit on top of our car. And the hotel that we stayed at had valet.

TJ Miller (14:06)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (14:09)
And they just kind of like took it and, you know, didn't really think anything of it. And then when we went to check out the next day to head down to Florida, it's like, man, it's really taken a long time for them to get the car to us. Usually it only takes like 10, you know, 15 minutes max. And when you call up from the room, you know, it doesn't take that long by the time they actually go down and check out. it's like, man, this has taken a really long time. And one of the valets came in. He's like, is this your car that you're waiting on?

TJ Miller (14:29)
Right.

Chris Gmyr (14:37)
the roof rack. It's like, yeah, is there something wrong? He's like, yeah, I don't know how they got it into the garage, but it's too tall to actually get out of the garage, and we don't want to ruin the roof rack storage thing. So I'm like, OK, so what are our options? He's like, well, I tried to get down a couple different ways. I don't really know how they got up there, but it seems like we're going to have to take it off. I'm like,

TJ Miller (15:03)
jeez.

Chris Gmyr (15:05)
Okay, so like I took a couple things like way up in the garage that they had it they get a couple of the big like wheelie carts and I basically had to take everything out of the the roof rack and take the roof rack off and basically just get it down either through the escalator or they had to take the roof rack like on the cart like all the way down the ramp and then bring the car down and then I had to put everything else

TJ Miller (15:27)
Jeez, man.

Chris Gmyr (15:32)
back in and like get the roof rack attached. And luckily it's like really easy to take on and off and get secured down. But it's like, man, like there's a ton of stuff in there. That's why we put the roof rack in there to not deal with this. And yeah. So that was like a little bit of a fiasco leaving the hotel and going down to Florida. But luckily the guy that I was like interacting with most was the manager. And I said like, Hey, we're going to be back here next week.

TJ Miller (15:43)
Yep.

Chris Gmyr (15:59)
Like, what, what do I do with this now? Cause I don't want to do this again. He's like, I'm going to comp you today. I'm going to comp you when you come back for, cause you know, they obviously charge for valet and tips and all that stuff. he's like, whoever you talk to. When you come back into town, I'll, I'll be here, but if you don't talk to me, just tell them to park it on the street and we'll be good to go. So I'm like, okay. So we don't have to deal with that again. So on the way back, it was no problem. They parked it on the street. They, they got it to us. Didn't have to take it off.

TJ Miller (16:11)
Yeah.

Ha ha ha!

Chris Gmyr (16:28)
kept all of our stuff intact and was much smoother the way out. But I'm like, just having to do that and wrangle the two kids. And luckily my sister-in-law and niece were still around, so they helped kind of entertain them as I was doing this. But it was just super frustrating because you're trying to do this in the line of other Validate people coming in, coming out. there's just people and cars everywhere. And it's like, this is not fun, first thing in the morning.

TJ Miller (16:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

my god.

No, no, not at all. Especially when you're all like geared up, you know, ready to, ready to leave and then like, guess, guess not.

Chris Gmyr (16:55)
So.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally. So then getting on the road, it was only a couple hours down to Florida and stayed in a pretty decent Airbnb, a condo on the intercostal. So we were pretty close to the beach and her family got a couple of other Airbnbs in the area. we were walking around to the different locations and down to the beach. And they had a really nice little beachy downtown area.

with little shops and coffee shops and restaurants and things like that. So we just like hung out there and had a bunch of good food, made the huge charcuterie board twice. We did it for, we we bought apparently so much more stuff than we needed. We did it on Christmas Eve and Christmas day and we still had stuff left over for it that we were munching on for a couple more days. But yeah, it was fun. Got to see everyone.

TJ Miller (17:47)
Wow.

Chris Gmyr (17:54)
Didn't have any big crazy presents like the 3D printer, but kids still enjoyed it. And her aunt had a little pool at their Airbnb, so the kids just liked going swimming and hanging out with their big cousins and playing on the beach and all that. And the weather was mostly nice. It was good enough for them to go swimming. The ocean water was a little chilly, but they still went in.

TJ Miller (17:59)
yeah.

especially in December, like getting to go swimming.

Chris Gmyr (18:18)
built in sand castles and stuff like that. And all the adults and older kids were like in sweatshirts and pants on the beach, like going, okay, 30 more minutes and then we're going to go.

TJ Miller (18:28)
Yeah, kids don't care. They'll just suck it up and do it, you know?

Chris Gmyr (18:32)
Yep,

yep, totally. And then I came back and chilled here for New Year's and last week. And yeah, we don't even try to stay up till midnight anymore. It's just like after the kids go to bed, I think we went to bed at like 9.30 or 10. We usually put on YouTube on the Sydney and Dubai fireworks show.

TJ Miller (18:59)
Yeah

Chris Gmyr (18:59)
So they're usually only like, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes each. we put those on, they have some treats, and we usually do like appetizers for dinner on New Year's Eve just to have a little fun different thing to do. And I got a sparkling apple juice, so they got to do some fake champagne. And you don't really drink champagne either, so everyone just had the sparkling apple juice. it was great. It was fun.

TJ Miller (19:14)
That's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we forgot to drink our sparkling apple juice. We still have it sitting in the fridge. Maybe I'll bust it out this afternoon, you know? Like, why not?

Chris Gmyr (19:36)
There you go.

We're like, tomorrow afternoon after you get done with work, yeah, we made it through the first week to work and school. We did it.

TJ Miller (19:42)
Yup.

Yeah, I'm just, I got to celebrate like, not being sick. I forgot, I forgot to mention that, man. was like sick for two weeks. It took off. Like I caught, caught a head cold and turned into a sinus infection. I'm still like, I'm still dealing with it a little bit and like it's still lingering. So yeah, maybe, maybe I'll bust it out tomorrow as a end of week and finally not super sick, you know, celebration.

Chris Gmyr (20:07)
Yeah, nothing worse than like taking vacation and then just being sick and just out of it the whole time and just no good. That's happened multiple times and it's just like good thing I took the day because I don't know, I'd probably have to take the day anyway because I'm just feeling terrible.

TJ Miller (20:22)
Yup.

Yeah, it's so this is like week three of it and I should be done. I'm at this rate. I'm probably going to be fine across the weekend finally. But like my son is the one that brought it home. And of course, he was only down for like a week and bounced right back. You know, I got hit with it and then Laurel got hit with it on a delay. So like she's still in the thick of it. Like, rough. But hey, man, I, I think,

I think it was like low key genius doing like Sydney and Dubai fireworks and like kind of calling that is like the celebration. I'm going to try to borrow that next year so we can, you know, watch some fireworks, celebrate a little bit and then go to sleep and not worry about making it to midnight at all.

Chris Gmyr (21:01)
Yeah. Yeah,

because it's still dark. It's like after dinner, know, hang out, watch some fireworks, do a couple more. There's a bunch of them on YouTube. And since Sydney is like, I don't know, 12, 18 hours away at that point, you can watch it multiple times if you want. And it's super good. And the music that they have on there is pretty decent, too. The kids were dancing around, having a little dance party, type of thing, drinking their juice.

TJ Miller (21:18)
Yeah.

Love it.

Chris Gmyr (21:28)
having some snacks. So yeah, they loved it. And then they didn't care. Like, I don't know, they don't even know what midnight is really. So they're just like, OK, we're going to go to bed. And you know, that was fun.

TJ Miller (21:29)
You

Yep.

Yeah, my son was just like adamant. He's like, no, I'm staying up until midnight. He's like, I don't care if you guys go to sleep. I'm staying up. And I'm like, well, you're going to stay up. We might as well stay up too. You know, this is being the first year that like he's he gets to stay up until midnight. I'm like, I might as well as well. I'll do it. And turned on. I can't remember what movie we watched. We ended up like watching a movie to like get us there. And it was super chill. So I think I think for next year.

We're going do some Sydney fireworks and call it a night. I like it.

Chris Gmyr (22:08)
There you go. you go. And get some appetizers

or sparkling apple juice and.

TJ Miller (22:13)
Dude, I love the appetizers too, man. Like that's like such

a fun idea of just like, yeah, whole bunch of different appetizers, like have, have some fun, mix it up a bit, you know.

Chris Gmyr (22:22)
It's like you're at

a real adult New Year's Eve party. Just a bunch of appetizers, drinks, stuff like that. So yeah, do it up.

TJ Miller (22:26)
Yeah!

Yep.

That's cool, man. That's cool. Well, hey, man, you want to wrap up a little early today?

Chris Gmyr (22:38)
Sure, we can do that.

TJ Miller (22:40)
Cool, man. Thank you all so much for listening to the Slightly Caffeinated podcast. Show notes and links from all the things we talked about, as well as our social channels will be down below at slightlycaffeinated.fm. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch up with you next week.