Some strong statements about software development and choosing it as a lifestyle. It's all good fun until someone squelches your creativity. Or stuffs you in box with too many walls and obstructions. You've probably done this to someone yourself. We all do. But we shouldn't. There's a real cost to the lost innovation. The grind yields 1X of the capacity of a team. A disruptive creation could be a game changer. Not just could be, it is likely to be. People innovate and solve for their biggest absorbed pain, or for the customers, or their coworkers. Give me a 1X return with 0% breakthrough bet and I'll pass. Give me a 90% grind output plus 10% chaos theory running amok, any day. You won't beat 1X return every roll of the dice, but imagine the outcome of it coming up once every 3.5 rolls on average or even every 6. In a year you can blow the lid off the norm. IMO you have to do this. Because the grind never wins. Anyone can do it. And the human cost is toxic and counter-productive. Vote a little chaos in 2021 to experience some growth.

There's a strange snippet of a protest song called "Depleted Optimism". It's about how we take people, get them excited, and then stuff them unceremoniously in a box that all but assures low quality results. It's a really rampant problem. I have some ideas on how to solve it.

Later we visit a new song and an old song both written by Dennis DeYoung, formerly of Styx. One is Dennis' hard hitting "With All Due Respect", also a protest song, that rages at the media (and more--the top of the food chain). This is probably Dennis' greatest rock song ever. Performed and video made through the pandemic with home made video. Long live rock and roll. I utilize "Fair Use" doctrine to sample a very short segment just to make you hip to the song and go consume it fully and legally on youtube. Legality ends there when I play one of my favorite songs to play/sing on acoustic guitar, and one of my all around favorite songs: Suite Madame Blue. Not Dennis. Me. But a different take and only one minute long. Takes you from a room into a cavern as it builds from the farce about the song being about a woman and lets loose on the true subject: America.

The overall audio quality is good. I have been building new signal chains, mastering techniques, getting better equipment and using Apple Logic Pro to produce. Rode NT5 AND Shure SM57 used on all takes on guitar and vocals. Both ran through high quality Russian-made 12AX7 preamp tubes (a Genalex Gold Lion and Electro Harmonix 12AX7s). Acoustic Seagull Maritime SWS Mahogany HG. Three tracks vocals achieving space effect and double track reinforcement. Also used a little audio crack (addictive little tricks) to make every sound exciting and happening.

The image in this episode is in lieu of a magazine cover. I need to get good photos of the magazine covers I've had with tech articles. This is the last version of a product I co-created originally with an early toolkit of asynchronous networking, telecom, serial, networking stacks and other essential tools to communicate in real time with clients and servers alike while at Turbo Power Software. The connection will unravel in the episode (or will it?).

The songs "Society for the Free Mind" (not in the episode) and the full "Depleted Optimism" are on SoundClould in Pandemic Richie and the Quarantined Profile. https://soundcloud.com/rich-sadowsky-468824781/society-for-the-free-mind

Labeled (take 2) because I pulled an earlier version that I decided was not the right message. After producing this episode I had technical difficulties uploading the Apple Lossless Encoded version. Typically that works fine. Too big for a wav, so I tried high def AAC. Bingo! Success. More proof of the importance of experimentation.