The Happy Jōb Records

Time stretches and distorts across the astral plane as one grows and matures. Perception morphs from baby days to adulthood, as awareness of time is taught and learned, then weaponized. Fight back against…something?...by accepting that some of the time you’ll be doing nothing. Teasing at tips and tricks for time management. 0m 17s Nuggets and catch phrases. 3m 29s Riding in cars with curious child...

Terry can’t stop thinking about “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and Russ can’t stop thinking about whether to take the song literally, figuratively, or both. Come with us on a journey deep into the psyche, where we unlock hangover fantasies and fried chicken nostalgia. Also, helicopters. 0m 45s Written by Kris Kristofferson, popularized by Johnny Cash. How Kris convinced John. 1m 31s There’s somethin...

Surgeon Tim Dawson returns to deeply ponder surgery and its place in public health in response to difficult questions from Terry. An existential collapse is avoided, but only barely. The gang uncover the universal desire to do something that works. Terry can’t stop thinking about how America has turned into Thiccmerica while Dr. Dawson declines to surgically remove twenty pounds of Russ’s middle a...

Applied researcher, statistician, and friend-of-Terry John Lipinski joins to talk about job prospects for psychology PhDs, numbers and figures, modern (and old-fashioned) brain science, Iron Maiden, iron rods through the skull, and much more. 2m 45s Terry finds his friends on Upwork. 6m 26s Psychology as a fuzzy discipline. “People are messy. Societies are messy.” 8m 15s Pressure, incentives, and...

Air travel. Faster than driving, but you’re confined to a metal tube tens of thousands of feet above the earth. Terry explains what he does on planes and Russ shares the one trick to turn a plane ride into a time travel machine. 0m 37s Identifying the worst plane and deeply observing airline operations. 5m 58s Drowning out the rabble is worth increasing your odds of being pickpocketed. 7m 4s You h...

Sometimes when you know something, it’s okay not to share it. Other times, it’s not much use to know it and not share it. Still other times, everything we know is an abstraction in which we place blind faith and confidence until an inevitable shattering of our tenuous reality. Also, germs vs. feral pigs. 0m 30s Clarifying whether or not Terry actually knows anything. 2m 34s Publishing results does...

Terry takes the day off to deep clean his passwords while Larry Grate returns to coach Russ through his ongoing cybersecurity existential crisis. Robots, robot safety, and password managers are addressed (inadequately). Attempts are made to put good cyber hygiene practices into plain language. 0m 45s How cybersecurity is like safety. 3m 10s Waking up in the middle of the night realizing your robot...

Against his better judgment, Terry agrees to rank various jobs people do. They guys invent a ranking system, then test it out on a handful of different occupations. Judgment is passed, aggressively, mostly on finance bros and streamers. Upon further reflection, no apologies are made but perhaps strongly-held opinions begin to temper. 0m 50s Nothing worse than having to learn as an adult. 1m 45s Bi...

In the name of polite conflict, Pat McGuire (Attorney at Law, video game enthusiast) returns at Russ’s request to try and show Terry that gamers are people too. Learn useless trivia about iconic characters like Mario and Donkey Kong and Mr. Wonder. Are video games art? Are they pop-art? Does that even matter? There are only two types of people in this world: Those who know what a Nintendo Switch g...

This is a fun one! Russ probes Terry about his leisure pursuits and lack thereof. Amusement Parks get thrown under the bus. The coast of Spain comes out on top. Cheering for yourself. Jumping over park benches. Being jaded with playing live shows, or at least with loading gear in and out. 2m 9s Band practice is for children. Adults go to band rehearsal. 7m 40s “Lobsters used to be peasant food and...

Tim Dawson, surgeon, returns to give a cursury education on robot assisted surgery with Intuitive Surgical’s Davinci robot surgery system. Honestly, this one is pretty self-explanatory. If you want to hear a robot surgeon describe robot surgery, then this episode is for you. Robot. 0m 30s Tim came back and brought ART. 1m 45s Diving right in to how much and who pays for surgical robots. 6m 15s Nig...

Russ talks how he was raised and how he’s doing the raising these days. Terry worries about prying but misunderstands the extent to which his cohost will happily dodge, deflect, and fabricate. Stay tuned for next time when roles are flipped and we hear about Terry’s “weird” family. 1m 3s “When I became a man I put away childish things.” Or did I? 8m 32s Contentedness and happiness as a kid. 14m 17...

Hobbies are hard if you pick ones like photography that need skill and you’re uptight about the quality of your results. Doing stuff you’re pretty okay at can be harder than doing stuff you’re bad at, emotionally speaking. Letting kids use your stuff versus keeping your kids from destroying your stuff. Expensive stuff versus the stuff you have close at hand. 0m 44s Kids making and breaking music s...

Man of many talents John Klaess joins to talk musical higher learning, primary research, career ending injuries, staying on the musical horse, and career switching while remembering where you came from. John’s book is Breaks in the Air: The Birth of Rap Radio in New York City . You can find some of the archival shows he used for the book on YouTube . 0m 51s Mixing up rapper eras. It’s an honest mi...

Tim Dawson, surgeon, joins for a long and detailed adventure. Origin stories (Lite). Aggressive training and doctoral hazing. Path dependency and living free from regret. Dissociation from chopping open people’s bodies. The money side of medicine. Ignorance of kangaroo anatomy; enormous kangaroo muscles. Performing remote controlled surgery from the same room. Look forward to a return visit from T...

Multiple-founder Bindu Reddy (Abacus.ai, ex-AWS, ex-Google) weighs in on applied research, science and math vs product management, explosive interest in artificial intelligence, risk and diversifying the customer base. Remember: artificial intelligence does not have consciousness or agency. 2m 27s Teach the machine if there's a hotdog in your image or not. 4m 45s Building the artificial intelligen...

Chef Ed Lee loves food and happy people. He joins the guys today to talk growing up in NYC, getting started young, parental doubts, the move to Louisville, and the benefits of learning by doing. Also, loan sharks and eel farms. Visit 610 Magnolia or Nami Modern Korean Steakhouse in Louisville, KY, Succotash Prime in DC or Succotash in DC and National Harbor, MD. The full rundown on his prolific ou...

Terry grills Larry Grate and Russ on impossible to answer industrial equipment questions and they mostly deflect and dodge the questions. Especially Russ. It’s a no-holds barred contest initiated by ill-advised insults directly to Terry’s face and someone is going to end up looking the fool. 1m 30s Knowing about fish isn’t going to help you here. 2m 12s Industrial superlatives: Most Likely to PLC;...

These days there’s a lot of transparency into what people are up to, in a way our forefathers didn’t imagine. Is that a continuum? What else is there to expose? Will there be an end? Has it always been thus. Find non-answers to these questions and more in today’s episode! 0m 58s A family of pilots. 4m 12s Transparency today vs yesteryear. Seeing behind the curtain. Perpetual peeping. 8m 31s Trusti...

In “Trolling for Patents” #2, the mundane is made interesting and the ‘shrooms are made mundane. Existential dread creeps in but never takes over. Terry does his homework during class. This episode features both mounts AND anchors! 1m 3s Terry Miller’s non-patented idea for data encryption. Cryptologists, prove him wrong! Lack of hecklers hurts the patent process. 4m 55s There’s not enough time to...

Fresh off of taking in some glorious mid-winter sunbeams, Russ seals himself up in an interior room with inferior audiovisual equipment. Astronomy these days isn’t riding the high it used to. Terry wonders out loud about trusting the stars. And trusting anything. 2m 8s We’re not in decline, we’re just in a trough. Or something. 3m 50s Kids these days can’t name constellations. 4m 53s Marveling at...

When the little things are big flaming balls of gas hundreds of thousands of miles across sustaining all life on Earth, is it worth waking up early just to bask in the glow? That, and imaginary submarine missions.  1m 58s Feeling bad for those confined to solitary.  3m 30s SPONTANEOUS SUNSHINE SONG ROUNDUP  7m 21s Nirvana: They’re not putting out another live album. 😬  8m 56s...

How does one feel about the outdoors? A trivial question on its surface reveals deep, foundational worldviews and interpretations of self and society. Although when all is said and done, mayb just go feel the grass. 4m 19s Raised by the woods. 7m 10s Very specifically sky blue. 8m 34s The salt life is calling and I must go. 13m 28s Building the illusion of deep wilderness, starting with eliminatin...

Fresh off of a long series on learning (for adults), Russ has some scary questions for returning guest Larry Grate. A consensus is reached that doing is in fact the best way of learning; Russ remains concerned that his personal information may be compromised by some rookie mistake when “learning” cybersecurity. A questionable set of experiments are conceptualized. 0m 20s Honeypots are real. 2m 12s...

Stories come from everywhere, but if you’re Terry and Russ they don’t come from novels. Or poems. Or short stories. Or novellas. Or movies. Or TV shows. So where do these guys get their fiction and why are all the usual avenues falling short for them? 0m 26s It can be difficult to coax stories from monkeys, birds, and other wildlife. But not impossible. 3m 30s Not reading Kurt Vonnegut novels. 4m...