Transitioning to Tech and Writing What You Know with Kara Luton

Robbie Wagner: [00:09] Hey, everybody. Welcome to another Whiskey Web and Whatnot with myself, Robbie Wagner, and my co-host, as always, Charles William Carpenter III. And our guest today is Kara, is it Luton?
 
Kara Luton: [00:24] Luton. Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [00:26] Luton.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [00:26] Okay.
 
Robbie Wagner: [00:27] I was close.
 
Kara Luton: [00:28] It's okay.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [00:29] I don't think you went to your website because there's pronunciation.
 
Robbie Wagner: [00:33] Is there?
 
Kara Luton: [00:34] There is.
 
Chuck Carpenter:[00:35] Yes. See, I do a little research. I'm just saying.
 
Robbie Wagner: [00:38] I was there. I may be skipped to the important info and missed the beginning, but yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [00:44] It's fine. Everybody mispronounces that. That's totally okay.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [00:48] We get there, we practice, and now we're doing it here audibly for hundreds of people.
 
Robbie Wagner: [00:56] Yeah, I guess for people that haven't heard of you, maybe just a super quick intro into, like, who you are, what you do.
 
Kara Luton: [01:04] Yeah. So my name is Kara. I am a UI engineer at CrowdStrike, which is a security company that stops breaches. And I had a really weird path to tech. When I was younger, I pursued a career as a professional ballerina and then left that, went to college, became a publicist in the music industry. Got burnt out and landed my way in a boot camp. And I've been in tech ever since. So very roundabout way of getting here. But I'm happy I'm here now.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:34] Nice. Yeah. Success story. Like to hear that.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:38] Yeah, it's nice. There's so many different paths to getting into engineering and tech in general, and no right or wrong answer, really.
 
Kara Luton: [01:47] Yeah, I agree. It's really exciting. Especially since I went to a boot camp six, seven years ago. Seeing how many people are doing that and self-teaching now. So it's still pretty relatively new, then. So it's really neat to see the tech world opening itself up to people from all sorts of backgrounds.
 
Robbie Wagner: [02:03.] Yeah, I was going to say seven years ago for a boot camp. I didn't know they were around that long, honestly.
 
Kara Luton: [02:08] Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [02:09] That's cool.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [02:10] Yeah. Which one did you go to?
 
Kara Luton: [02:11] I went to The Iron Yard, which closed down a few years after I went, but yeah, it was only three months long, and I only focused on a front end, so a little different than some other boot camps, but yeah, I wouldn't change my time there for anything. Even with if I knew eventually it would have been shutting down, I still really appreciated all my time spent there.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [02:31] Yeah, I remember there was one in DC. I think they hosted a couple of meetups or something.
 
Kara Luton: [02:35] Yeah, they're all over the country.
 
Robbie Wagner: [02:38] Yeah, they had empanadas as their food, which was crazy for a meet-up. Where's the pizza at? Like, this is so much better.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [02:48] Were they hosting the meetup where I spoke when Glimmer first came out or something? Where I did that little.
 
Robbie Wagner: [02:53] Yeah, that was there. Yeah, that's the one I was talking about.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [02:57] Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [02:57] I was speaking to maybe.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [02:59] I think you might have you said empanadas, and it triggered my memory. All of a sudden, I was like, oh, yeah, I remember that delicious food that wasn't just random pizza at a meetup.
 
Kara Luton: [03:08] I love that. Just eating empanadas as a meetup makes it stand out.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [03:12] Yeah, it goes a long way with me.
 
Robbie Wagner: [03:14] Yeah, definitely. All right, well, let's get started with some whiskey here. Tell us about what we got today.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [03:21] Tell us, what's the prize? Yeah, I don't want your ice ball to melt too quickly.
 
Kara Luton: [03:27] The Death Star.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [03:29] Yeah, the Death Star. So we have the Three Cord Strange collaboration. So it looks like they're out of Michigan, but they source the bourbon from Kentucky, so they're getting it somewhere there. But then they are aging in used Pinot Noir barrels from the Strange family vineyards of Santa Rita Hills, California. It's an interesting story. So the mash bill is 75% corn, 21% rye, 4% malted barley. It is 99 proof. So 49.5% alcohol, just under the bottled and bond requirements. Fun fact.
 
Robbie Wagner: [04:05] Also has the tightest quirk of all time. I can't get this to go back in.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [04:11] Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [04:11] That's why I opened it up before this. I was like, I'm not going to be able to open this up while I'm talking.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [04:18] All right. Oh, wow. That is, that's an impressive Three Chord. They intend.
 
Robbie Wagner: [04:24] Still working on it.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [04:26] No, I got it off.
 
Robbie Wagner: [04:28] Oh okay.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [04:28] Doing the back-in. Yeah, they intend for you to finish the entire thing. That's it. When you've opened it, it's done. Very sweet smell. I'm getting some cherries on the smell. I don't know. And some allergies this weekend. I'm probably making it all up.
 
Robbie Wagner: [04:45] This might be the first time in the past few that I haven't heard you say apricots as the first thing.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [04:51] Oh, wow. That's a cinnamon explosion for me. Yeah, there's a lot of that. Little hug. Little hug there, but a lot of cinnamon for me.
 
Kara Luton: [05:03] Admittedly, I'm not a whiskey person, but I do like it.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [05:06] Okay, interesting. So what is your spirit of choice, or if it is a spirit?
 
Kara Luton: [05:11] I am very basic, and I usually just drink ciders or wine.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [05:18] Yeah. Okay. I like ciders. I used to drink a lot of them.
 
Robbie Wagner: [05:22] And wine.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [05:23] Yeah, and wine is good.
 
Kara Luton: [05:24] Yeah, there's a lot of actually, surprisingly, a decent amount of cider breweries in Nashville. They're popping up more and more. So it's nice because we'll go to some craft brewer places in town and then hit up the sideways too.
 
Robbie Wagner: [05:37] Nice.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [05:38] Well, there is a whiskey distillery there. Green Brier. I believe is what it's called.
 
Kara Luton: [05:44] Oh yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [05:44] And they do the Belle Meade stuff. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever done a tasting there. That's a nice little place.
 
Kara Luton: [05:49] I think I have. So when I used to work in the music industry, I think I'd worked across from there.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [05:56] I see.
 
Kara Luton: [05:56] It was either them or a wine place. I think it was the whiskey place, though.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [06:01] There you go. You're OG.
 
Kara Luton: [06:03] Yes.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [06:04] This is interesting, though. I think that the Pinot Noir barrels might have a lot to do with some of the sweetness and follow-up there.
 
Robbie Wagner: [06:15] Yeah, I mean, I can't really don't have a refined palate, so I can't tell you all the flavors I'm experiencing, but I enjoy it. I think it's very good. It's not too much alcohol. It's a little little bit, but it's not terrible.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [06:29] Yeah, I feel it a little bit, and I like that for me personally. Yeah. The name Three Chord had me thrown off for a moment. I was like, oh, did we select something from Nashville, or we did not? I just happened to align with the themes of Nashville or Nash Vegas.
 
Kara Luton: [06:46] Yeah, right. Nash Vegas. Gosh, yes.
 
Robbie Wagner: [06:50] Do people call it that?
 
Kara Luton: [06:51] Unfortunately, I'm a big Predators fan for hockey, and their stadium series game is actually this week. And I'm going, so they have, like, custom jerseys, and they say smashville on the front, and that also I'm like.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [07:07] Oh, man.
 
Kara Luton: [07:07] That's a weird nickname for our city.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [07:09] Leaning in. Leaning in. So normally, with the whiskey, we in theme try to give it a rating from one to eight tentacles. So one being the worst, eight being the best. It's all very subjective. I know you said you don't have a lot of whiskeys but in terms of what you have had and what you've liked, not like where this lands for you. Could be an eight, could be a smash, or maybe it's just like, oh, it's pretty good, but I also like, blah, blah, blah.
 
Kara Luton: [07:37] Yeah, you want me to go first?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [07:40] Sure, why not?
 
Kara Luton: [07:40] Put all the pressure on me. I think out of eight. I would give it, I think, like a five and a half six because I haven't tasted very many whiskeys, but I do like it compared to the ones I've had.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [07:54] Yeah, I'm noticing the more I sip it, the more I like it. That first drink was like, I don't know, like eating a stick of cinnamon or something. Just not advised. But everyone thereafter, I was like, I was primed for the other flavors, and then I started to get more from it. So I'm enjoying I can see it with an ice cube, too. Being kind of nice, making it a little cooler. I think I'm going to give it a six. I think I'm interested in this one, and I will explore it with ice another time.
 
Robbie Wagner: [08:23] Yeah, I would give it a six as well, I think. I think with all the flavors and the cinnamon, it would be good in some cider. Like make a hot cider and put some of that in there.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [08:35] Yeah. Also interesting there. Look at you not having to spice it up as much. Yeah. I live in the desert, so I don't have to think about cold all that often. A couple of times a year, I'm like, oh, hot cider, that would be good. Otherwise, no.
 
Robbie Wagner: [08:50] Yeah. So you touched a little bit on your path to tech. Do you want to just talk a little bit more about, like I know nothing about being like a ballerina or much about the music industry? I used to do like I was in a band, and that's about as far as I went and get into making money from it. So I don't know, just if you want to kind of tell your story about how you got here.
 
Kara Luton: [09:13] Yeah. So I did ballet from when I was three years old. I have growth hormone deficiency, which is the pre rare deficiency where my pituitary gland actually doesn't produce any growth hormones. So I had to take shots every single day to actually grow to my very tall height of five foot two. Aside, the fact of growth hormone deficiency is that your joints can hurt while you're growing. So my mum enrolled me in ballet because the doctor said it'd be a really good exercise for me to do. And I never took it very seriously. It wasn't like something I was super passionate about for a long time. But for some reason, in high school, I decided to audition for a summer intensive, which is just like a summer camp for ballet. And remember, I didn't really care about getting into the audition and getting accepted. Somehow I was, and my parents made me go. It was in Louisville for two weeks, and I think they just wanted me out of the house for two weeks during the summer. But I ended up really falling in love with ballet at that time and started taking it a lot more seriously. I uped my dance classes to, like, 20, 25 hours a week and was an assistant teacher for the younger level classes. And then, the summer before my senior year of high school, I auditioned for the Joffrey Valley School summer intensive. And while at their audition, you could also audition to be in their traineeship program. And with that, when you're in a company, there's a hierarchy of levels, and training is kind of the first step into becoming a professional. And I had found out when I auditioned that not only did I get into the summer intensive, I had gotten accepted into the traineeship program as well. So I went to the summer intensive first Jest in New York City. It was an amazing time, and I decided that I wasn't going to do the traineeship, mainly because when you're at a trainee, and even if you're in that first level of being in a company, you still have to pay for classes. And it was really expensive. Like, I'd have to pay for housing in New York City, I'd have to pay for the classes themselves. I was still in high school at that time, so I also had to figure out how would I do school because online school was not really a thing. So I didn't do it for the first semester, but I had actually moved with my family from Nashville, Chicago, and was having a really hard time. And the school was very different from my school I had grown up with. It was 3000 kids compared to my large school in Tennessee, which was like 1500. And so, I decided that I wanted to move to New York City and do the traineeship for the last half of the year. So my parents somehow decided, yeah, sure, you're 17. Go live in New York City by yourself. So I did and did the traineeship the last summer or the last semester of my senior year of high school. I did high school online through a program. It was like a private online high school because that's, like, the only thing they had at the time. Actually, I think that Kylie Jenner went to my high school technically, which is just, like, hilarious to me. It was, like, a school for kids who were, like, doing sports or acting or anything. But while I was at Joffrey, I was dancing, like, every single day, nine to five. It was basically my job. And it was there that I learned, like, you know, I love ballet, but I don't want to do it as a career. I was getting injured a lot with stress fractures and just, like, the drama of being around mostly other women and kind of the struggles of that. It's a very competitive environment. I just knew that it wasn't for me, and I wanted a career that could last a really long time. In ballet, you're lucky if it lasts to, like, you're 30. So ballet, I was kind of ready to move on from in my life, and I decided to move back home and go to school at Belmont University in Nashville. And I majored in public relations. And originally, I wanted nothing to do with the music industry, but Nashville being Nashville, kind of got drawn into it and, after graduation, worked as a music publicist for a few years. So it's kind of like the middle person between my artist and journalists setting up interviews, being kind of the point of contact for my clients, going with them on red carpets, going to other shows. It seems very glamorous, but it was very stressful. So I knew I needed something new and found my boot camp, then kind of never looked back after that. And I'm very, very grateful for PR Valley actually taught me a lot that I use as a developer, which is really interesting. So I'm grateful I have that path that did leave me here.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [13:46] It seems like that there's the connected thread of potential creativity throughout all of those things that you.
 
Kara Luton: [13:54] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [13:54] So I can see that overlap. And if you have the passion for it, you can make those connections and still have that outlet.
 
Kara Luton: [14:02] For sure. Yeah, I guess I haven't really thought about it, but you're right, it is like, three very careers where it's creative, and you have to be passionate about it, and yeah, they all do, relate in that way.
 
Robbie Wagner: [14:11] Yeah, it's similar. I think I've maybe brought this up on a podcast before, but I knew some people that would work out all day long, and they were, like, some of the best developers. Being dedicated to ballet for that long gives you kind of that mindset of, like, you can dedicate to anything, and I don't know, it is also creative too, but it's just I don't know how to explain it. It's like a weird thing where people that are like that tend to be really good developers.
 
Kara Luton: [14:39] Yeah. Ballet teaches you a lot in life. Like, I will definitely enroll if I have a kid one day. Enroll them in ballet because it teaches you so many good life lessons.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [14:49] My daughter is two, and she has probably, like, ten tutus, so that's on her roadmap.
 
Kara Luton: [14:55] Yes. It's so good.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [14:57] Yeah. I think it's interesting. Anyone who's willing to dive in and go down the rabbit hole likes creative problem-solving, and then you can find a lot of different elements. Kind of like, I guess with ballet being a kind of dance. Right. There's a lot of forms of dance, and there's also a lot of different kinds of problems you can solve in engineering.
 
Kara Luton: [15:18] Yeah, exactly. And, like, ballet, it's very detail-oriented. I feel like that's something that's really helped me in my career as a developer, like, missing a semicolon or understanding different syntaxes, things like that. It's really helped me a lot. I'm really grateful for my time doing ballet, and I wish I was still doing it now because I was in great shape then. But.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [15:40] Pluses and minuses to everything. Oddly, not sitting in front of a screen for hours doesn't do much for fitness.
 
Kara Luton: [15:47] Right?
 
Robbie Wagner: [15:47] Yeah, that's why I'm standing right now. I've been sitting all day.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [15:51] That's your way to get some of your standing goals going.
 
Robbie Wagner: [15:55] Yeah. So you mentioned the boot camp you went to. Have you kept up with any of the other boot camps that have come out since then? Or what are some good ones that you've heard of recently?
 
Kara Luton: [16:07] There's a lot of people at CrowdStrike on my team who are from boot camps. I haven't really kept up with what's happening too much besides what I see on Twitter and things. But I do really appreciate just how more open people are to boot camp graduates and self-taught developers. Because when I was going through, I was kind of debating if I wanted to self-teach, but there really weren't resources online like there are now. And it's just amazing to look at like freeCodeCamp, Codecademy, and all those websites that you're able to self-teach and even just like, asynchronous virtual boot camps now. I think that's awesome because I think when I was going through it was only you had to be in person, and it usually was full-time. So I understand, like, how kind of privileged I was to be able to quit my job full time and do that for three months because definitely not something everybody can do, and I'm really grateful for that. It's crazy how many resources are now.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [17:11] Yeah, I bought stacks of books and then magazines to get like different projects to try out and learn something new. So if that dates me, and that's how I had to figure it out. But we were also creating websites in tables, so.
 
Robbie Wagner: [17:25] Yeah, you didn't punch them in punch cards and then go put them in a computer somewhere.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [17:29] Well, that was my first job.
 
Robbie Wagner: [00:17:32] So I'm curious, the boot camp, was it in Ember, or did you get into Ember afterwards?
 
Kara Luton: [17:39] So it actually was in Ember, which is super unique, especially like six, seven years ago. So we learned, of course, like vanilla JavaScript and then we went into Vue, and then we switched to Ember, and yeah, it was really interesting. My teacher, Ryan Tablada, he was really big into Ember at the time, which is why he taught it to us because Iron Yard was really good about letting the teachers kind of be really open and teaching what they saw on the rise and what was in demand. So it was really interesting that we got to learn about Ember, especially when it was still kind of pretty new and then I didn't use it for a couple of years after I graduated my boot camp and then picked it back up when I came to CrowdStrike since that's what we use. And I love the Ember community and how great it is.
 
Robbie Wagner: [18:27] Yeah, same.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [18:29] Robbie loves hearing that since he's a contributor.
 
Robbie Wagner: [18:33] Yeah, and I was going to say it's unfortunate that 99% of boot camps are, like, learn React real quick. We're not going to teach you even vanilla JavaScript because React is all you need to get hired, and then there's no way to really find people that are learning Ember, really. So it's really hard. Like a lot of companies want to switch away from it because we can't hire people. And I'm like, well, you shouldn't. You should figure out how to just hire whoever and then teach it to them. But I can't control them, so they don't listen to me very often.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [19:07] Yeah, it's hard to convey that ideology, but like you said, if people were starting with vanilla JavaScript and understanding like more native APIs, then getting into these different syntaxes or the sugar that the framework gives you would be a lot easier. You'd have, like, oh, let me just learn what the tools are in this and then I know how to leverage those patterns or whatever else. But I guess conversely, all these boot camps are competitive with one another, and part of their marketing is their ability. 98% hiring promises, things like that. And if everyone coming to them once wants this predetermined skill set and sort of it's a hard balance. We'll just start the Ship Shape accelerator. And you can teach all Ember.
 
Robbie Wagner: [19:53] Yeah, I mean, I would love to write a book or do something like that, but I just don't have the time.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [20:00] Going to compete with Balint the Ember, Rock, and Roll with Ember.
 
Robbie Wagner: [20:04] His stuff is good, but you would have to have someone that you needed to teach it to first. Most people just bail before they're like, oh, no one knows it. We'll just switch. But there's a lot of people like CrowdStrike's been hiring a lot. Right?
 
Robbie Wagner: [20:19] How many Ember developers do you all have?
 
Kara Luton: [20:21] Oh, gosh, over 100 now, I would say.
 
Robbie Wagner: [20:24] Wow.
 
Kara Luton: [20:25] Our UI is ember. So it's definitely not a requirement that you know it beforehand. I think a lot of people actually don't. And even for me, even though I kind of knew Ember, I basically had to relearn it because It had been so long. Ember was about to release Octane and just learning all about that. But yeah, it's cool to see people join the team, not knowing Ember, and then kind of becoming really passionate about it and seeing kind of the greatness of the Emperor community.
 
Robbie Wagner: [20:51] Yeah, I guess there's some other communities. I haven't delved into all of them, but the ones that I have been in have not been very accommodating or welcoming. The Ember community, I guess, because it's smaller, and a lot of people care about people having that good experience when they come in. It's just so much more intimate, and you feel like you can get help from everybody, and everyone's on the same team instead of being like, oh, you're not a good developer for needing to ask this question or something like that. Yeah, I've really enjoyed it.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [21:22] So you're not going to name drop another name drop a bad experience framework?
 
Robbie Wagner: [21:27] Oh, I have in previous podcasts. That was one of our video grams on Twitter. It was like an Angular one or something was terrible in their Slack community or whatever.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [21:38] Yeah, they kicked you out after.
 
Robbie Wagner: [21:39] I mean, who knows? I'm not looking for Angular help, so I could have been kicked out.
 
Kara Luton: [21:45] My second week on the job was actually going to Ember conf in 2019. And that was overwhelming for me just because it was my second week. I was just, like, meeting all my co-workers for the first time. But it was also really a nice way to kind of get reintroduced back to Ember again.
 
Robbie Wagner: [22:01] Yeah, I really miss in-person Ember confs.
 
Kara Luton: [22:04] Me too.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [22:06] Yeah. It's really the glue that's missing over the last couple of years, I think.
 
Robbie Wagner: [22:10] Yeah. And some people, I mean, it's good and bad. Like, there's new companies like CrowdStrike that are kind of pushing more on pulling Ember developers there. So it's not like all LinkedIn or one company anymore. But that's also like, I don't know, since everyone hasn't been coming together, and there's like all this great resignation and stuff. People are learning other frameworks and, like, moving away from the community. And I think we need some conferences in person to really bring people back and realize, like, hey, I like all these people. I should not do other stuff, right?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [22:43] Right. Get to engage with them, get to be blown away by Ed.
 
Robbie Wagner: [22:46] Yeah, Ed's stuff is crazy.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [22:48] Yeah, he shows you something crazy awesome, and then you're like, how do I do this in my thing?
 
Robbie Wagner: [22:54] And it's like, no documentation.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [22:57] Feel free to contact me at Ed@pilesofmoney.com. Yeah, that's what I'm here for. Comic Relief.
 
Robbie Wagner: [23:09] So, yeah, I guess I'm continuing on. People that might want a career Pivot or boot camps in general. Do you have any advice that you would give someone who's maybe really worried about, I don't want to quit my job for three months? Like, how am I going to pay for stuff? Is it worth it? What do you have for them?
 
Kara Luton: [23:28] Yeah, I definitely don't think if you don't have the ability to kind of completely stop your job and go to an in-person boot camp for three or six months or however long, I think you can definitely still either do a part-time boot camp or self-teach. There are just so many, like I was saying, so many online resources now, and just the community has grown immensely. For beginners with things like Code Newbie and Dev.to and kind of all these podcasts. It's just an amazing way to be able to learn. I think my number one tip would be to network. You want to get your name out there. You want to talk to people. It is very hard right now since we are still in the middle of the pandemic, but a lot of meetups are doing virtual, even doing things like getting on Twitter and talking on Twitter because there's a huge tech community there, just getting your name out there and kind of finding somebody that you can ask questions to. Just the biggest thing networking. I was lucky that during my boot camp, I could go to in-person meetups and meet people. And that's kind of how I landed my first job. But I got my job on CrowdStrike through Twitter, of all things. So you never know where something is going to lead you to.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [24:37] How does that coding interview work for.
 
Kara Luton: [24:39] CrowdStrike or for?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [24:41] For Twitter.
 
Kara Luton: [24:42] Oh, for Twitter.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [24:42] Job on Twitter? And then it would have been, like, they send you like 120 characters or less. Solve this out.
 
Kara Luton: [24:50] It was so random. Somebody had posted, I believe her name on Twitter is Jesslyn Rose, and she's not associated with CrowdStrike. She was just posting like, hey, if you're anon, I can't say that word. Anonymously job searching, like, sent me a DM. I'll post a little bio about yourself, and if anybody is interested, they'll reach out. And I was like, I've been at my current job for two years. I was working at an agency, kind of doing just like, marketing websites and things like that. And I was ready for something new. So I sent her a DM. And I was like, I'm not going to hear anything from this. And mentioned I had some Ember experience. And the director of the US team, Alex Graul, reached out and was like, hey, we're interviewing if you want interview. And I've never heard of crowd strike before. I had no cybersecurity knowledge before this, and it was just kind of a very lucky thing to end up where I am. And I've now been here for three years, and yeah, and to think I got a job on Twitter is just crazy to me, but.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [25:47] You never know how it's going to work exactly. Those are usually the best opportunities to go through, like these non-traditional.
 
Kara Luton: [25:54] Yeah, for sure, yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [25:55] Like if you have an advocate that's reaching out to people for you saying, like, this person is cool, and you should hire them because they know XYZ. Getting your foot in the door is the hardest part. Usually, if anyone mentions you already, then you're usually pretty good, honestly.
 
Kara Luton: [26:13] Yeah, totally.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [26:14] That's how I got hired at National Geographic. Someone I had worked with prior to was there and was like, hey, would you be interested in a job? And I was in Phoenix then. Do you want to move to DC? You'd be interested in a job? I was like, for the Nat Geo, I would. Just went from there.
 
Robbie Wagner: [26:31] Nice.
 
Kara Luton: [26:32] Yeah. And it worked out since CrowdStrike was, I mean, I was hired before the pandemic, but they were already remote then, so it's kind of an easier transition into the pandemic life.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [26:42] Yeah, they always had good swag at Ember conf, like useful things.
 
Kara Luton: [26:47] CrowdStrike has great swag.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [26:48] They do. They have interesting shirts. And then I can remember things like, oh, protect your credit card with this sleeve. Like useful stuff. Not a coffee mug.
 
Kara Luton: [26:57] Yeah, the cool adversaries.
 
Robbie Wagner:[26:59] Coffee mugs are useful.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [27:01] Yeah, very cool stuff.
 
Robbie Wagner: [27:03] Yeah. The thing I don't need is more stickers.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [27:06] I don't know, I like stickers. I probably don't need more T-shirts. I don't need more T-shirts, probably. But you know what I need more of? Socks.
 
Robbie Wagner: [27:14] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [27:14] I always liked the cool techy socks.
 
Kara Luton: [27:16] Okay. Socks are a great tech swag, and I wish more companies did it.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [27:20] Yeah, it's true. We should do some socks. We need some octo socks. We could, but it can't be called octo socks because that would be a bit conflicted with another company that some people use. I don't know if they're bigger than us, but.
 
Robbie Wagner: [27:32] Who are you talking about?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [27:33] Octo socks? GitHub Octo.
 
Robbie Wagner: [27:36] Oh, GitHub.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [27:37] Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [27:37] They don't have octo socks, I don't think.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [27:39] No. I don't know. Calling them octo socks would have to be confusing, is all I mean. Probably right. Tentacle socks.
 
Robbie Wagner: [27:46] And now they probably have to be. Like Microsoft logo socks since they own all of the JavaScript ecosystem.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [27:53] Yeah, everything we work with, and we all assimilate. So what's wrong with GitHub?
 
Robbie Wagner: [27:58] It's not as good. I don't have my pretty graph of contributions, and all of my stuff I contribute to is on GitHub.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [28:05] Right.
 
Kara Luton: [28:05] My GitHub looks pretty sad.
 
Robbie Wagner: [28:09] You can get a GitHub gardener if you need one.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [28:12] Right. A bot to do it for you.
 
Robbie Wagner: [28:14] Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [28:16] Oh yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [28:16] I'm contributing offline, but I'm contributing, so I want you to see. It's how Robbie looks busy. He hasn't written a code in years. I wouldn't buy it.
 
Robbie Wagner: [28:24] No, my stuff is public. You can see it all.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [28:26] Bot does your updates. Dependabot. You're like, oh, it counts.
 
Robbie Wagner: [28:30] That is true. Dependabot is a blessing and a curse. It's nice to have everything up to date. But you have so many PRS. Yeah, just like constantly.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [28:40] I don't want to manage it. That's why you do. Yeah. Speaking of open source, though, I think we were going to ask some things about open source, right?
 
Kara Luton: [28:47] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [28:48] Do you remember Robbie? Where was that? Something about he writes up some of the show notes. I had a little bit of detail and about open-source projects that you are interested in working on contributing to. Just in general, then.
 
Kara Luton: [29:02] Yeah, I haven't done a ton of open-source work. I think mainly just because I'm really wary of burning out because I did burn out my last career. So I really limit my coding time to just work. And I do a lot of speaking and talking at conferences. That's kind of like my outside work coding job, not job, but I don't get paid for that. I wish I was, but recently a lot of people on my team are obviously being involved in Ember. Do contribute to Ember, and it's something I want to do more and get more into it because I feel like contributing to the framework that you use will give you such good knowledge of it, even if it's something small, is like helping out. I was looking at stuff for the learning team, doing stuff like that because honestly, I feel like the best way to learn something is to teach it to somebody else. And it's something I definitely want to get more involved with open-source. That's going to be my goal for 2022 is to get more involved.
 
Robbie Wagner: [30:00] Yeah, we definitely know some folks on the learning team over here, and we definitely need a lot of help. Jared is basically solo writing the Ember times these days, so if you're inclined to write anything like that.
 
Kara Luton: [30:15] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [30:16] Wonderful.
 
Kara Luton: [30:17] You know, I had a past job where I had to write a lot, so probably help out.
 
Robbie Wagner: [30:22] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [30:23] There you go. That overlapping skill set that you mentioned earlier.
 
Robbie Wagner: [30:26] Yes.
 
Kara Luton: [30:27] Comes in handy.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [30:29] Yeah, I agree with that. One of the greatest ways to learn something is to teach someone or write a blog post about it. And that way, you have to kind of dig in a little more, getting under the hood and not just consuming sometimes a good way too.
 
Kara Luton: [30:45] I totally agree. Yeah. Even like basic things. I've done a couple of Dev.To posts that are just like, what's the difference between an arrow function or regular function? Talking about introduction to CSS grid those have helped me understand kind of the foundational knowledge even more than I had. Because trying to type it out in an easy-to-understand way makes you just understand it a lot better. So I I think highly recommend that to anyone. Even if you don't want to post a blog post or anything, just kind of write it out for yourself.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [31:18] Yeah. I think a lot of people also get hung up on like, oh, this blog post. Like people probably already know this, or they feel self-conscious about posting something because they think it's not advanced enough or something. And I forget where I saw this example, but someone had, like, I think, posted on Twitter that they were like, I've been working with this guy for, I don't know, five years. He's like a really senior JavaScript guy, and he didn't know what debugger was like. He was console-logging all of his debugging. So it's like there's someone that doesn't know something you might think is simple. So you should always feel like, put all the information out there, and you're probably going to help somebody, and it's good to do.
 
Kara Luton: [31:58] Exactly. And you never know if something you say, like the way you phrase something, will just make it click for somebody in a way that they haven't understood it before. I really recommend people writing blog posts and doing things because, like you said, you never know when something like, you'll explain something to someone who maybe thought, like, had known all this knowledge and they didn't know this one thing, and it really helps them out.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [32:21] Yeah. Just happens to be the way you say it is the way that it clicks for someone.
 
Kara Luton: [32:27] Exactly.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [32:28] So that reminds me, I think through one of your blog posts I think I clicked through and what your home office setup was. You wrote a blog post about it, and I think it was like a year ago. And so you were like, oh, this is my initial setup. Has it changed any?
 
Kara Luton: [32:45] It has changed a little bit. So I think since then, I've added this Blue Yeti mic, and maybe I had it during the blog post, I can't remember, but I've added a Blue Yeti mic.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [32:57] I don't think so.
 
Kara Luton: [32:58] Okay, so I added the mic with the stand. So I look like, really cool when people come into my house. My office is open to our front door. It's like a flex room. And so people will come in and be like, do you do podcasts? And I'm like, oh, sometimes they think I'm like, cool because I have a mic.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [33:14] Exactly.
 
Kara Luton: [33:15] What else has changed? On my desk, that's really it. I still have the same, like, Dell monitor, still using my laptop. Oh, I do have this in front of me. I got it from Amazon. It's just like a little whiteboard that I think it's by Quartet. It's what it was. It was like $20 on Amazon. And I really like it. So I'll write, like, really quick notes if I need to follow up with somebody. Or I usually write on an inspirational quote every week because I'm that person.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [33:45] Okay, that's fine.
 
Kara Luton: [33:46] Besides, just like, decorating my office because we moved into this house two years ago from an apartment. So it's been like getting furniture and actually making it, so my house isn't super echoey hasn't changed too much.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [33:59] That happens for sure.
 
Robbie Wagner: [34:00] So you're part of the real estate pandemic boom then.
 
Kara Luton: [34:05] So we built this house. So we had under contract in November of 2019 and moved in in May 2020. So the pandemic was just starting. So we got really, really lucky because now house prices everywhere is like insane.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [34:22] Oh, yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [34:23] You can't buy a two-by-four for less than like hundreds of dollars, I feel like.
 
Kara Luton: [34:27] No, it's crazy. My poor parents, they just moved back to Tennessee from Kansas and their house hunting, and I'm just like, oh, I feel so bad.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [34:35] Yeah, it's not going to go well. Yeah, there's a client that I'm working with, one of the engineering managers there, they're moving from St. Louis to Nashville, and they have quite a bit of sticker shock there.
 
Kara Luton: [34:49] Everybody is moving to Nashville. It's crazy.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [34:53] I don't think I am. It is nice, though.
 
Kara Luton: [34:55] I mean, I call myself a Nashville native because I've lived here for the majority of my life, and it's just insane to see it changing so much. And it's like a good thing for getting so many awesome new restaurants and things to do, but the houses and it's crazy seeing how the values of everything and people from California will come in and buy a house for tons of money over asking, not do an inspection. It's just crazy to me.
 
Robbie Wagner: [35:22] Yeah, because for them, it's cheaper.
 
Kara Luton: [35:24] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [35:25] They sell their bungalow for a million dollars and come and buy a giant house for $600,000, and they're like, yeah, whatever.
 
Kara Luton: [35:31] Yeah, it's insane.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [35:34] Anyway. I was going to say, are you still using the Lume Cube?
 
Kara Luton: [35:37] I am not. So I got rid of the Lume Cube. I think I want to get I saw Lume actually came out with a ring light. I think it was a ring light. It was like a work-from-home specific thing. And I think I kind of want to get that because I know people listening to this can't see my office. But my office is like a dungeon because I have these very dark chocolate gray walls, and the ceilings painted that color too. So it gets very dark in here. Sometimes. So I need some light, so it doesn't look like I'm sitting in a cave on my zoom calls.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [36:07] Right. Yeah. I ended up getting rid of the Lume Cube and just got some more standard, like, larger led lights, and they came with stands and everything else, and they were, like, same prices as a loom cube, except for they were generic Amazon brand stuff. And that works pretty good.
 
Kara Luton: [36:23] Yeah. I like the Lume Cube. I think it's just, like, a little too small for how dark my space is.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [36:28] And then, did you get the frame TV?
 
Kara Luton: [36:29] I still have not gotten the frame TV, but I recently got some credenza where the frame TV will go. So that's next on the list. Yes, we're slowly getting there. There's been other priorities for furniture in the house, like a dining table, because we didn't have one for a while. So the frame TV has been on the back burner, but it's definitely on my list because I like watching TV when I work, like having the background noise, and especially with my office, like, being in the front of our house, I don't want to my TV just, like, sitting there. Got to keep the aesthetic.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [37:02] Absolutely.
 
Robbie Wagner: [37:03] If you get a big enough TV, you can just slide it down and use it as a dining table.
 
Kara Luton: [37:08] Right, right.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [37:10] Yeah. Some of these, I don't know, but I think 75-inch is the longest for the frame. But I saw an 85-inch on sale at Costco the other day, and I'm like, that's insane. That's basically a projector.
 
Kara Luton: [37:21] For a frame TV?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [37:23] The frame, I think, goes up to 75-inch, and then a normal TV was 85-inch.
 
Kara Luton: [37:28] Crazy.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [37:28] Both sizes are pretty big.
 
Robbie Wagner: [37:30] Oh yeah. Anything over 55 starts to look large.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [37:35] Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [37:36] Depending on the room you're in. I guess, but.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [37:38] If you get the frame, though, you got to get some NFTs to display.
 
Kara Luton: [37:43] I don't understand.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [37:45] I have a friend who has a frame, and he has an NFT. I will say it's a Damien Hirst in there, though, so it's pretty cool. It's not just a random ape, although he doesn't also have an ape.
 
Robbie Wagner: [37:54] The random apes are worth a lot of money.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [37:56] So, for now, I have not gone.
 
Kara Luton: [37:58] Into the whole NFT thing. Some of that stuff goes over my head. I'm like, I just don't understand.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [38:05] Yeah, I mean, I've tried to dig into it a number of times, and I'm like, oh, I think I can speak to these buzzwords. I still don't really understand it. Now I'll have to build a smart contract before then. I still further don't understand the rest of them other than my own smart contract.
 
Robbie Wagner: [38:22] Yeah. I don't think anyone really understands them.
 
Kara Luton: [38:25] That's true.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [38:27] The big grift, some people think.
 
Robbie Wagner: [38:29] Yeah. No, it really is. You have a lot of FOMO, right? Like, you try to get people to be like, oh, no, if I don't buy this, it'll be worth millions of dollars one day, and I got to buy it right now for, like, $1,000. And then you make 50,000 people do that, and all of a sudden, you've got a lot of money, and it doesn't matter.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [38:46] And then it sells for $500 instead later. But they got their money, so they don't care. Yeah, it's interesting. I did come across a website. I think it was on Hacker News or something, and it was something about web3 wonders, I don't know. But what it was is it was tracking tweets about different web3 things, and anytime it mentioned, like, a monetary loss, then it had this little grift tracker at the bottom, and the money part in flames would just increase. I should find this again. It was really kind of funny. I believe there's potential in the technology that is being tested out in some very iffy ways right now. But this was funny. If you're really, like, opposed and you think it's a big joke, this is the best site to visit.
 
Robbie Wagner: [39:30] Yeah, I think what Torah said in the last one that hasn't aired yet about the problem NFT is trying to solve is correct, but the approach is maybe wrong. So being able to own a digital asset and say, I'm the owner no one else owns this is, like, a thing we need. But the way that it's happening right now is maybe not the best way.
 
Kara Luton: [39:54] Yeah, I agree with that. I think.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [39:55] Yeah, it's called web3, is going great, and the subtitle is and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring liquid lighter fluid on an already smoldering planet.
 
Kara Luton: [40:08] Oh, my gosh.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [40:11] So anyway, I thought that was entertaining. Shared with the world.
 
Kara Luton: [40:14] That's funny.
 
Robbie Wagner: [40:16] I saw that your Twitter says you are obsessed with dogs.
 
Kara Luton: [40:20] Oh, yes.
 
Robbie Wagner: [40:21] What kind of dogs? All dogs. What are your favorites?
 
Kara Luton: [40:24] Every single dog, really? Animals in general. I have two dogs. Their names are Maggie. She's six, and she's like a border collie golden retriever mix. And then I have Franklin. He is one and is a golden doodle. And they are the loves of my life. Besides my husband and my family. I guess I should mention them too. Yes, I am obsessed with them. I don't have any kids, so they are my children. And I'm that person that if you're walking down the street or in a store with a dog, I will stop you, and I will pet that dog.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [40:59] There you go. All dogs.
 
Robbie Wagner: [41:01] Does your one-year-old dog annoy the six-year-old dog?
 
Kara Luton: [41:04] Yes. So Maggie is like, even when we got her as a puppy, we got her as a rescue. She was always, like, very chill and relaxed. Franklin is a psychopath. He's like the opposite of that. He's like the normal we thought Maggie was like, what a typical dog was like. So when we got a puppy, he was just like, crazy and actually what a normal puppy is like, but he is definitely the annoying younger brother. He'll go up and try to cuddle with her, and she'll just get up and move. It's pretty funny, actually. But I think now we've had him for a year, so I think she's starting to take him under her wing now, and it's cute. She'll protect him if we're, like, playing with him sometimes, but then he turns around and gets on her nerves, and she'll bark at him again. But, yeah, they're my babies. I love them, and I post them on Twitter all the time.
 
Robbie Wagner: [41:55] Nice. Yeah. We have two French bulldogs, and one is five, and one is, like, a year and a half. And the younger one, just, will like the older one will be sleeping, hanging out, and they'll just come up and jump on him and want to play, and yeah, super annoying. Like, definitely a little brother.
 
Kara Luton: [42:17] Yeah. Franklin insists if Matty picks up a toy, Franklin also has to play with that toy. I'll be like, okay, let's go upstairs. Let's go hang out, and they'll be holding on to either side, running up the stairs, like, trying to battle over it. I'm like, Y'all have plenty of toys. Like, you don't have to fight over the same one.
 
Robbie Wagner: [42:35] No, that's the one.
 
Kara Luton: [42:37] Exactly. Whichever toy Maggie has, Franklin wants.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [42:40] You're describing exactly how my children behave. It's not unlike the same thing. My son is five, my daughter is two, and anytime one or the other picks up a toy, the other must have it.
 
Robbie Wagner: [42:54] It goes both ways for them.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [42:55] It does.
 
Robbie Wagner: [42:56] Wow.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [42:57] Good times.
 
Kara Luton: [43:00] I love dogs. I would have a million dogs if my house could fit that many, but I think, fortunately, my husband is, like, two is a max. We cannot have more than two dogs.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [43:10] I was going to say, how high will it scale? Because I'm sure, you could accommodate more than two.
 
Kara Luton: [43:15] I probably could. I wouldn't mind having three, but two dogs is the limit he's put in place, which I understand three dogs would be a lot. I want a cat because I've never had a cat, but my husband's, like, not a huge cat fan, and I think I just want a cat because I can't get another dog.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [43:33] Right. What about hamsters?
 
Kara Luton: [43:35] Hamsters kind of freaked me out, honestly. Like, I've just heard horror stories of people who have hamsters as kids, and they're, like, really mean.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [43:42] Oh, interesting.
 
Kara Luton: [43:44] Is that just me?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [43:45] Yeah. I didn't have that experience with hamsters.
 
Kara Luton: [43:48] Really?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [43:48] They seem fine. Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [43:49] I mean, they are cute.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [43:51] Right. They were fun.
 
Kara Luton: [43:52] I wouldn't mind a bird either, but birds live a very long time.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [43:56] Yes. And they're loud a lot.
 
Kara Luton: [43:57] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [44:00] My brother had birds for a bit.
 
Kara Luton: [44:02] I think it'd be, like, funny at first, but to have, like, a bird in it to repeat you. But I could see that getting old pretty fast.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [44:09] And then you'd have to get an eye patch sailboat. So it's a whole lifestyle commitment.
 
Kara Luton: [44:16] Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [44:17] I think the big thing for us is, like, the same with animals and children and all things. If you have more than two, one person cannot grab both easily.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [44:27] That's true.
 
Robbie Wagner: [44:28] That's kind of the logistics issue. Right.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [44:30] You're outnumbered at that point. Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [44:33] And it's funny. I'm a pretty petite person. I'm, like, five foot two. I'm not very strong. So Maggie could easily pull me. And we got Franklin. He was supposed to be like a mini golden doodle. And they were like, oh, he'll be like, 20 25 pounds. And somehow, we got the biggest puppy of the litter, unknowingly. And he's, like, 38 pounds. And is bigger than Maggie. And I'm just like, oh, this is great. I thought I was gonna have, like, a cute bulldog I carry all the time. And he's like a medium sized dog.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [45:02] Yeah. I suggest those French bulldogs.
 
Kara Luton: [45:04] Frenchies are so cute.
 
Robbie Wagner: [45:06] Well, Jake is 32 pounds.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [45:08] Oh, wow.
 
Kara Luton: [45:09] So he's like the same size as Franklin?
 
Robbie Wagner: [45:11] Yeah, he's like a really big Frenchy because Odie is like 27 pounds or something, which is still pretty beefy, honestly, for their size. They just have a lot of muscle.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [45:22] They're really like, what are you feeding them? Are they out, like, chasing foxes or something?
 
Robbie Wagner: [45:27] Yeah. No, they just eat deer all day in the yard. No, I'm just kidding.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [45:30] The deer comes up, and two Frenchies attack it. Take it down like a lion.
 
Robbie Wagner: [45:38] Yeah, I don't think that would go well.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [45:41] No.
 
Kara Luton: [45:41] My house growing up had, like, woods in the back, so we'd get deer all the time. And I had a golden retriever growing up and also a Shih Tzu named Murphy. And Murphy would chase the deer and squirrels because Patty, my golden retriever, would I'm like, you are a tiny little Shih Tzu puppy. Like, you shouldn't be chasing these animals.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [46:00] Yeah, it's a novel thing for them, too. They're like. We won't bother with you.

Robbie Wagner: [46:06] Yeah, we have, like, 20 deer that live in our yard.
 
Kara Luton: [46:11] -You gotta befriend them.
 
Robbie Wagner: [46:14] Luckily, our dogs are like, we don't have a we have fences, but they could get under them. So we just walk them on leashes so they can't just run after them. But if they could, they definitely would. And they would be able to catch them, and that would not go well.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [46:29] You wonder how that would work out. Maybe they'd catch them and be like, never mind.
 
Robbie Wagner: [46:34] Yeah, I don't know.
 
Kara Luton: [46:35] Yeah, I live in the country, so I hear coyotes all the time. And I'm, like, terrified of being in the yard and having because they can jump fences, like having one jump the fence. And I don't know if my dogs would not be able to stand up to a coyote. Like, Franklin scared of, like, deodorant. If you hold it up to him, he's like petrified of it. No, there's no way.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [46:57] A fresh scent.
 
Kara Luton: [46:58] Just anything strange, like hair clips. I bought a stool once because, being short, I had stools all around the house, and he was terrified of that. I'm like, yeah, that's really tough, though. Like, barks at the door, barks at other dogs. There's like a Doberman who lives behind us. He barks at him, but then he's scared of deodorant. Like, no, sir, you don't really know what you're doing.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [47:20] Yeah. The hierarchy of life is not clear to you.
 
Kara Luton: [47:25] I think he thinks he's like a massive dog. I'm like. You are a golden doodle. Like, you are a fluffy ball of fur.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [47:30] Yeah, they have muppet faces.
 
Kara Luton: [47:32] They do. He looks like a stuffed animal.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [47:35] Yes, they are pretty adorable, but even when they're big, they're like, yeah, but aren't you just a muppet? Waiting for you to sing Mah Nah Mah Nah or something, I guess.
 
Robbie Wagner: [47:47] Some other things. I saw you had done some crocheting. Are you still doing that?
 
Kara Luton: [47:53] Yes, that's a new hobby of mine. Yeah, I picked it up over. I took two weeks off for Christmas and New Year's, and I am very easily persuaded by Instagram ads. I'm very, I'm that person that they try to target, and I will buy it. And there was like a little crochet ad for this little dinosaur, and I was like, oh, how cute. And I did crochet as a kid, so I made it, and it was fun. And then I've made like a little trivet slash potholder. And I'm working on a scarf for my dad.
 
Robbie Wagner: [48:23] Nice.
 
Kara Luton: [48:24] It's really nice. I like it because I'm not staring at a screen while doing it after staring at my screen all day. And it's very, like, Zen and relaxing just to sit there and crochet. And it's nice to like I have people handed gifts, even though it takes quite a long time to make a scarf.
 
Robbie Wagner: [48:41] Yeah. I like things like mowing the yard and stuff. I feel like it's a similar satisfying like you do a little bit, and then it's immediately like, hey, that got bigger. I did that. So it's immediate gratification.
 
Kara Luton: [48:56] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [48:57] Some kind of mindless manual activity, I think, can be nice. It's a good break. It's almost meditative. I like doing outside yard work or fixing something because I can just zone out and do that.
 
Kara Luton: [49:11] Yeah, I really like it. I realized I can go down a deep rabbit hole of spending money on yarn, though, so that's been fun. But I like that I don't have to look at a screen. And like you said, it's meditative and nice, and I'm just going to have to get started on everyone's Christmas gifts this, like, next week if I'm going to get them done in time.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [49:30] There you go. And you have to have a realistic expectation and plan out your projects.
 
Robbie Wagner: [49:35] You need a crochet tracker, like the GitHub activity tracker. I crocheted today.
 
Kara Luton: [49:40] Yes. I should. I bet there's something out there that someone has made a side project.
 
Kara Luton: [49:46] Some kind of IoT thing that when you pick up the crochet needles. It would activate and send a signal to an Arduino and then log that to your tracker.
 
Kara Luton: [49:58] That'd be pretty cool, actually.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [50:00] Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [50:01] New Ship Shape product idea.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [50:03] Yes, these are good ideas. And then the execution is like, oh, that seems harder. I'm going to watch some Star Wars. Sorry.
 
Robbie Wagner: [50:13] Yeah, I did finish Boba Fett.
 
Kara Luton: [50:15] I've heard it's good.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [50:16] Yeah. It's not as good as the Mandalorian, but if you are into it and you're into the characters and stuff, like, the story is good, and it interweaves a little bit. There's a big part where there are a whole CGI. Luke Skywalkers in basically a whole episode. And that was cool. Filling in some blanks there, story-wise. But if you're like more of a layman to the stories, I think there's, like, better places to start or dive into.
 
Kara Luton: [50:42] That's all on Disney Plus, right?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [50:44] It is, yes. I have two small children, so I, of course, have Disney Plus.
 
Kara Luton: [50:48] I've never seen all the Marvel movies, so for the past, I don't even know how long, several months, I've been marathoning all the Marvel movies.
 
Robbie Wagner: [50:58] In order?
 
Kara Luton: [50:59] In release order. Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:01] Oh yes. Okay. Your street cred just went up.
 
Kara Luton: [51:04] Thank you.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:05] See? Okay. I can let the Star Wars thing go. If we're going over to the Marvel Universe, that's cool. Yeah. And, like, some of those shows are good, too, on Disney Plus, so.
 
Kara Luton: [51:13] Oh, my gosh.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:14] As you dive through that. Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [51:16] Loki, I think, was my favorite. Even, like out of all the movies and everything, I really liked Loki.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:21] Wow.
 
Robbie Wagner: [51:22] Have you watched the Netflix Marvel shows?
 
Kara Luton: [51:25] No, I haven't.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:27] Can you still?
 
Robbie Wagner: [51:28] You can until February 28. So just don't work for the next week or so and watch them.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:35] Daredevil. Daredevil is one.
 
Kara Luton: [51:38] Is Venom on Netflix? No.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:41] No, because the Spiderman universe is still a weird outlier that Sony.
 
Kara Luton: [51:46] Sony.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:46] Owns the rights to. They loaned Spiderman to Disney. But for the Venom movies, those are all on Sony, and that's why they're kind of.
 
Kara Luton: [51:54] Gotcha.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [51:54] Autonomous. And I like Tom Hardy. I still haven't seen them, but you have to actually pay what's my streaming option for them. Pay money.
 
Robbie Wagner: [52:02] Isn't like HBO. Aren't they Sony or not?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [52:05] No, they're Warner Brothers, so they have all, like, the Batman DC Universe stuff.
 
Robbie Wagner: [52:10] It's all the same. Some big company.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [52:12] No, which I watch those, too. Like Teen Titans and Peacemaker. The Peacemaker is hilarious. It's John Cena is this character that doesn't realize that he's an idiot racist. He thinks he's fighting for peace even if he has to kill a few women and children to get it. So anyway, it is recommended if you're into the superhero thing.
 
Kara Luton: [52:32] Doesn't the new Robert Pattinson, The Batman, come out soon?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [52:36] I think it does, yeah, like May.
 
Kara Luton: [52:37] Because it was delayed for a while.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [52:38] Yeah, I think it's May or something. But I already got emails about, like, pre-ordering tickets like.
 
Kara Luton: [52:44] Oh, wow.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [52:45] Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [52:45] That's very far. In advance.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [52:47] I know. And they're anticipating quite a quite a line.
 
Kara Luton: [52:51] Movie theaters kinda gross me out now. A lot of things post well, not even post-pandemic. Still in the pandemic. Gross me out.
 
Robbie Wagner: [52:59] Yeah, a lot of things. You didn't think about how much exposure you have to other germs and things.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [53:04] Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [53:05] Yeah. I've been to the movies twice since the pandemic. To see A quiet Place 2. And the new Spiderman?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [53:13] Wow. I haven't seen either of those.
 
Kara Luton: [53:15] They're both very good.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [53:16] Yeah, I like both of those in general. I think it's the first one. We have also seen two movies, and we did, like, matinees in order to avoid a Friday night crowd.
 
Kara Luton: [53:26] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [53:27] And so it was okay. One was a movie with my son. We took my five-year-old son to his first movie, and it was like Addam's Family 2, the animated one. So if you're a fan of one, you definitely see it. I don't even remember what the other one was, but it was all right. It should have been Spiderman, but.
 
Kara Luton: [53:44] Spiderman was so good. You need to see it.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [53:47] Agreed. Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [53:48] I haven't been to the movies in years.
 
Kara Luton: [53:50] Yeah, Spiderman was the only Marvel movie I've ever seen before I watched the Marvel movies. Well, not AND Guardians of the Galaxy. Had seen that one.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:01] Oh, okay.
 
Robbie Wagner: [54:02] I like Guardians of the Galaxy a lot.
 
Kara Luton: [54:04] Groot is so cute. Especially baby Groot. Just like dancing.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:07] Yeah, right? Yeah, he's pretty funny.
 
Robbie Wagner: [54:09] I just love thinking about they're paying Vin Diesel probably millions of dollars just to go into the studio and record. I am Groot.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:16] Groot.
 
Kara Luton: [54:17] Yep. It's a great job.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:20] Or he's just doing it for fun, but still making six figures. So I don't think anyone should feel sorry for him. Regardless, I mean, just stop making Fast and the Furious movies. Anything else?
 
Robbie Wagner: [54:30] Never.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:31] Pitch Black was good. Go back to that. Make twelve of those.
 
Robbie Wagner: [54:35] They'll probably go on to Mars for the next Fast and Furious or something.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:38] Yeah, just merge those characters.
 
Kara Luton: [54:41] How many are there now?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:42] Seven or something, right?
 
Kara Luton: [54:44] Seven.
 
Robbie Wagner: [54:44] No, nine.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:45] Nine?
 
Kara Luton: [54:46] Oh, my gosh.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:47] I've only seen two. I feel good about that.
 
Robbie Wagner: [54:51] The first two, where they were actually about street racing, were good.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [54:55] They went to, like, Tokyo and did this whole other culture thing. I was like, oh, yeah. I don't know.
 
Robbie Wagner: [55:00] Once the Rock and tanks come into the movie, I'm over it.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [55:05] It's fair. But the Rock is a love-hate relationship. He both makes things better and ruins them.
 
Robbie Wagner: [55:11] True. Because I love him in general, he's funny. He's a good guy. But, yeah, he does ruin a lot of stuff.
 
Kara Luton: [55:19] Isn't he the most-paid actor ever?
 
Robbie Wagner: [55:24] He's got to be.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [55:24] Yeah. He's been in so many things.
 
Robbie Wagner: [55:27] He's also in every movie, so.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [55:29] Yeah. He can be getting, like, an industry average and still be, like, the highest grossing because he's in everything.
 
Kara Luton: [55:35] That's true. Yeah. I do. Feel like he's releasing new things, like, every other month.
 
Robbie Wagner: [55:39] Yeah, he's taking the Lil Wayne approach. Like, just put out 50 albums and one of them will be a good one.
  
Chuck Carpenter: [00:55:46] At what point do you cease to be Lil? Remember Lil Bow Wow became just Bow Wow at some point when you became Wayne? I don't know.
 
Robbie Wagner: [55:55] I guess if you're still little in size. I don't know how big he is. He was kind of little, though.
 
Chuck Carpenter:[56:00] I don't know. I look it up. He's the same height as you. Yes, he very much is.
 
Robbie Wagner: [56:06] Yeah. You and I are not big people.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [56:09] Yeah. So we can empathize with you, Kara. I mean, I'm not 5'2. I just want that to be clear and on the record. But 5'7 isn't anything to brag about, either.
 
Kara Luton: [56:20] Yeah, I'm lucky to be the height that I am. But yeah, it's funny. I wish I was just like, two inches taller, especially for when I was doing ballet. Like 5'4” is like the sweet spot. You're tall enough, but you're not too tall to where like you partner, and then you'd be taller than the guy on point shoes, but it was always slightly too short.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [56:41] You should have done the Gattaca surgery. Do you remember that movie Gattaca? It was like Jude Law and Ethan Hawke. And Ethan Hawke had to take Jude Law's identity. They were working something out there. And so he got a surgery where they cut his bones. They were slowly pulling them apart as they would grow and fuse and grow and fuse so he could gain height. And apparently this is a real surgery in China.
 
Kara Luton: [57:08] What?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [57:08] Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [57:09] That's terrifying.
 
Robbie Wagner: [57:11] I know some guy did that. He wanted to be like six inches taller and they did that for sounds terrible, but.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [57:18] Yeah, it sounds really bad. But it is a thing.
 
Kara Luton: [57:21] Because it's interesting with my growth hormone deficiency, like, at some point, you're not going to grow more. I was always meant to be 5'2, but the medicines allowed me to grow to this height, whereas normally, because my brain wasn't producing growth hormones, like, I wouldn't have been. I don't even know how tall I would have been, which is terrifying to think about how tall I would have been without medicine. But yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [57:44] I'm actually familiar with that just because of the soccer player. Lionel Messi had the same issue.
 
Kara Luton: [57:49] Yes. He does.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [57:52] Had the same thing. And so when he went to Barcelona, they paid for his treatments so that he could grow.
 
Kara Luton: [57:57] Yeah, because it's really expensive. I was fortunate that my parents were both in the military, and the military covered my treatments.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [58:04] Oh, wonderful. Yeah. That's cool. Otherwise, you would have had to become a professional soccer player for Barcelona.
 
Kara Luton: [58:10] I know.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [58:11] Yeah. There's like two routes into that and you got the other one.
 
Kara Luton: [58:16] Yeah.
 
[00:58:17.490] - Chuck Carpenter
Yeah. But it's funny. You're familiar with him as well, and the fact that that was his story.
 
Kara Luton: [58:21] Yes. My husband is a huge Barcelona and a soccer fan, and so I think he was watching something about Messi one day, and I was like, they mentioned he had growth hormone deficiency. I was like, oh, how random. Because it's like a very random disorder to have. Obviously, looking at someone, you would never realize that they have it and yeah, it's really cool to see somebody else, like, especially somebody so in the mainstream and known that has something similar.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [58:46] No, I've been to the Camp Nou, also.
 
Kara Luton: [58:49] Me, too. Whoa.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [58:51] There we go. Not you, Robbie.
 
Kara Luton: [58:53] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [58:54] You're missing out in life.
 
Robbie Wagner: [58:55] I don't know what you're talking about. Is that a soccer stadium or something?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [58:58] Yeah, it's the Barcelona FC Stadium.
 
Kara Luton: [59:00] Except Messi's not on Barca anymore, which is very sad.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [59:04] Yeah. You have to go to Paris to see him now. It's not terrible.
 
Kara Luton: [59:07] No, I have to go to Paris.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [59:09] Yeah.
 
Robbie Wagner: [59:10] You always bring up soccer after we're at time for the podcast, so that you're just baiting me to be like, oh, we're at time, we're done.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [59:20] Yeah, that's my cue. You didn't know that?
 
Robbie Wagner: [59:23] It's like playing music at the award shows and stuff when people talk too long.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [59:27] Well, because so often people don't know what I'm talking about or don't care. And so it's an easy, like, oh, you don't care. We can wrap up now. But I'm really into it. I watch European soccer.
 
Kara Luton: [59:39] Yeah. My husband is a huge fan, so I've become, like, a bandwagon fan because of it. He was very distraught when Messi got switched to PSG.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [59:47] I see.
 
Kara Luton: [59:48] It was a very sad day in our household.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [59:50] I'm a Manchester United fan, and we got Ronaldo back, so I'm pretty happy.
 
Kara Luton: [59:53] Yeah. Really? I didn't know about that.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [59:55] Yeah, he came back, so a great one is doing it at the top level.
 
Kara Luton: [01:00:02] I keep joking, like, maybe Messi will come to the States when he's ready to retire, because that's the thing to do.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:00:08] They've been courting him in Miami for.
 
Kara Luton: [01:00:11] Really?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:00:11] For years already. Yeah. So that's the plan.
 
Kara Luton: [01:00:14] That's not surprising. That'd be really cool, though, actually go see him. We're supposed to go to of a Barcelona game, actually, on our honeymoon. We did a cruise for our honeymoon, but it was during the time that Barcelona was riding, trying to split from Spain.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:00:30] Secede yet again. Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [01:00:31] So we were on the cruise and they had actually moved the date of the game up two days, and so we were still on the cruise and couldn't go. My husband's like, island. Now I never will get to see Messi play in Barcelona. So he needs to go back so we can go see him.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:00:48] Yeah, well, it could happen.
 
Kara Luton: [01:00:50] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:00:51] I'll keep my fingers crossed for him.
 
Kara Luton: [01:00:53] Yeah. Because he's on PSG for like a two year contract, I think.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:00:56] Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [01:00:57] So we'll see. Barcelona is his home?
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:01:00] I think technically it's Rosario Argentina, but.
 
Kara Luton: [01:01:06] Yeah.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:01:07] But yeah. I think he's spent probably just as much time in Barcelona.
 
Kara Luton: [01:01:10] That's the only other team he's played for, I think.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:01:12] Right. He was Newell's Old Boys or whatever in Rosario.
 
Kara Luton: [01:01:17] I feel good that I can keep up with my soccer knowledge because I have very little.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:01:22] It's pretty good, though, like the thread that you know about, you know a lot about. So there you go. And Robbie is like. I don't know what you're talking about.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:01:29] No. I barely even keep up with American football, honestly. Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [01:01:34] I'm not a football person. I mainly watch hockey.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:01:37] It's cool. I can respect that I only knew who was in the Super Bowl a week before the Super Bowl because I'm from the Cincinnati area. So I was like, oh, okay.
 
Kara Luton: [01:01:48] I watch the Superbowl every year. Even though I don't watch football, I'm always like, oh, yeah, Super Bowl. I got to watch it. I don't know why it's just, like, a thing. I feel like you're in America. You have to watch the Super Bowl.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:01:57] Because the commercials are so good.
 
Kara Luton: [01:01:59] It's true.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:01:59] The commercials are good. It's a social event. It's fine.
 
Kara Luton: [01:02:02] I did like the halftime show this year with Eminem and everybody.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:02:07] Yeah. And Snoop Dogg bought Death Row. I don't know if you guys follow that any, but Snoop Dogg now owns Death Row Records.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:02:15] Interesting.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:02:16] Yeah. He announced it, like, two days before the Super Bowl, but didn't talk about it at the Super Bowl. Not everybody knows.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:02:22] Yeah, he didn't talk about anything. He just performed.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:02:24] Yeah, that was it. Just wearing those Rams colors.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:02:28] He's got that Martha Stewart money. He can buy whatever he wants now.
 
Kara Luton: [01:02:30] Oh, my gosh. Him and Martha Stewart did the Puppy Bowl before the Super Bowl.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:02:35] Right. Yeah.
 
Kara Luton: [01:02:36] Which I did not watch. And I'm very upset that I didn't because the Puppy Bowl is my Super Bowl.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:02:42] Yeah. I usually watch it, but I forgot. I do like their cooking show, though.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:02:49] Yeah, it's entertaining. They're good personalities. We should get them on the podcast.
 
Kara Luton: [01:02:54] Yeah, I'm sure they do it.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:02:58] I like the intro that's like a show with a convicted felon and Snoop Dogg.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:03:05] Yeah, exactly. I mean, murder was the case that they gave him but didn't stick. That was a Snoop Dogg song for those who don't know.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:03:16] All right, well, we're pretty overtime here, so going to wrap it up and end it. Thanks, everybody, for listening, and we'll catch you next time.
 
Chuck Carpenter: [01:03:26] Thanks for listening to Whiskey Web and Whatnot. This podcast is brought to you Ship Shape, and produced by Podcast Royale. If you like this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or two and leave us a rating, maybe a review, as long as it's good.
 
Robbie Wagner: [01:03:42] You can subscribe to future episodes on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more info about Ship Shape and this show, check out our website at shipshape.io.