Reconcilable Differences

How life is like a rally or a bridge or some…software, I guess?

• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code DIFFS at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
• Health IQ: Insurance for the Health Conscious. Save up to 41%. Take the quiz now to see if you qualify.

Things kick off with an administrative meeting about the doc. Merlin tries to keep John from sneaking in, and John thinks Merlin should just use his eyeballs. Analogy sandwiches and their contents are debated. John lives with an unnamed two-towel person, and Merlin thinks he knows who it is.

Spock loses his phaser, and Merlin earns his first multisyllabic laugh from John. Merlin can tell whether you are an AT&T customer, and John thinks phone calls in general are creepy. Merlin demonstrates his robot hands for John. Merlin thinks he's an open book, and John realizes there's always something to be yelled at about. There's also some fairly harrowing cat follow-up.

In a mini-topic, John talks about Studio Ghibli movies (finally) being available digitally, and Merlin offers to take one for the team and report back. Also, some talk about metadata.

Merlin has questions for John about what constitutes a "rally." Is there a better word for having to thread an existential and chronological needle in life? Because that's what Merlin needs a name for.

Regardless of what you call this phenomenon, it's not about being first or fastest; it's about timing all the jobs and obligations that you know about, as well as leaving padding for when (inevitably) more comes up or stuff changes.

Like project management and software development, life has a funny way of hiding dependencies and disguising milestones. This leads to a deep dive on understanding the culture of your environment and the foibles of human nature.

People, amirite?

(Recorded on Tuesday, January 14, 2020.)

• Audio Editor: Jim Metzendorf
  
• Admin Assistance: Kerry Provenzano
  
• Music: Merlin Mann
• The Suits: Stephen Hackett, Myke Hurley