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Roderick on the Line

Ep. 72: "Diddling is the MacGuffin"

Roderick on the Line

Merlin Mann

Thelongwinters, Society & Culture, Merlinmann, Philosophy, Johnroderick

4.81.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2013

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I was born this way.

Roderick on the Line, Ep. 72: “Diddling is the MacGuffin” on Huffduffer

The Problem: Just give it to me in pigs and bunnies.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello.

0:06.1

Hi, John.

0:07.6

Hi, Merlin. I know it's you because I was just talking to you on the phone.

0:11.3

Are you sure?

0:12.4

Yeah, pretty sure.

0:13.8

I was helping you do some troubleshooting on your computer.

0:16.6

Yeah, you were.

0:17.2

I had, see, I had to reboot my USB because my firewire was, um,

0:23.4

had forgotten that it was a friend. Oh. And you, you, you, you told me that I should, um,

0:31.1

unplug everything. And then, uh, then plug it all back in. I, to be honest with you, I, I think I, I'm, I mostly understand what you're saying, but I'm not really a technologist. Could you give that to me again in Pigs and Bunnies? So what happened was? You heard that term? Pigs and bunnies. I used to work with a guy, my boss, was way smarter than me in every conceivable way. And I would go into him, you know,

0:55.6

you know how I get, right?

0:57.0

Oh, I do. Yeah. So I would go into his office and go, who's his name? JavaScript. And I would misuse like half. Did you just say JavaScript? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But like, you know me. I will go in and in my premedicated days especially, I would give him this, you know, like i will go in and and uh in my premedicated days especially i would give him

1:12.5

this you know emesis of of half understood data and richard would lean back in his chair and he paused

1:19.7

for a minute and he'd go uh can you give that to me again in pigs and bunnies and i say you know what i i? I'm kind of dumb, aren't I? I don't know what I'm talking about it because you're fine. Just explain it. I'll understand. I'll figure out the technical stuff. Tell me what you want the web page to do. Yeah. Well, as you have said over and over and over, turn your computer off and then turn it back on.

1:45.9

Isn't that, isn't that?

1:48.9

It's just like, oh, all right.

1:54.4

And in this case, I needed to actually unplug all the devices and plug them back in, but it's the same thing.

1:55.9

Well, I get the sense that you're, you know what, fuck it, you're kind of, I know you're like this. And I'm definitely like this where like, I'm like, fuck! And you get, you get so, one, get so mad about how fucking stupid your fucking computer is. Sorry, I'm cursed, John. But like last night, you were using your headphones at 2 a.m. And everything was called pathetic. You get up today.

2:19.7

It's Alex Van Halen's 60th birthday.

2:32.4

And you can't even make your computer work. And that's crazy frustrating. And in my experience, that's when I go off the rails. Yeah. That's when I start doing all kinds of crazy. I don't want to be ping pong. Lots of crazy voodoo shit. I start taking things apart.

2:38.5

The Vood, the Haitian voodoo priests that listen to our podcast are so mad right now that you are besmirching the name of their religion.

2:41.4

They're going to get together with the Scientologists and the Santeria practitioners.

...

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