8 Bits

8 Bits with Cat Carbonell!

• Brandon • Season 2 • Episode 12

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This week we are joined by Cat Carbonell!

Cat is an amazing UI / UX designer with an incredible background. Tune in to learn more!

Visit Cat's Website: https://catvsco.de
Support Cat! https://buymeacoff.ee/catvscode

Watch the Video Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piQfb8GWBs8

Follow Cat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/catvscode
Follow Chloe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chloecondon
Follow Brandon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCodeTraveler

Chloe Condon:

You know that song means that countdown song can only mean one thing at a time. Music

Brandon Minnick:

content Music

Chloe Condon:

Welcome back to eight beds. I'm Chloe Condon. And I'm here with my co host, Brandon Minnick. How you doing, Brandon?

Brandon Minnick:

Oh, so good. So good to see you again. As always. Yeah, it's been just a great week. Cuz it's, yeah, it's it's Thanksgiving here in the US. And most people take this week off from work. And that kind of means you don't really have to do at work this week. Even if you don't take it off. So

Chloe Condon:

pi today. Even that is gonna be a lot of work. But yeah, this is kind of a triplet, isn't it?

Brandon Minnick:

Yeah, like all my meetings get canceled, even when I show up. Like I showed up for a meeting on Monday. And the it's like a weekly meeting. And I managers like oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot to tell you. I'm, I'm totally out this week. Okay. Yeah, no problem. Everyone always, always have to do

Chloe Condon:

a passable food. I'm super stoked, because well, first of all, I walked over to the grocery store today, and I got one and a half pies. Very exciting this time of year they're offering and a half so you can try more pie options. But on the topic of food, I have been working on this really awesome project with the Microsoft Student Ambassadors called bright the seasons of serverless. Insert sound effects turkey gobble about the holidays, but it's a holiday. So it's been really fun content to work on. Because one day we're doing like advertisements that are circling focus. So like we're using advertisements to predict the perfect drying for working air conditioning. Our next one is going to be lovely ladoos. Which if you've ever had a Indian to do before, so tasty. It's like, Okay, so this is so cute. Hopefully I'm not spoiling anything. If not, I think it's like happening to us, it's fine. But ladoos desserts, they're like these little balls, they like doughnut holes almost. And two students who worked with jasmine and other cloud advocate on the team built AI that can help determine because ladoos look very, very similar to doughnut holes. So using Azure cognitive services, know, yeah, Azure cognitive services, determine if it's a ladoos, they are able to train this data set enough, because really the only differentiation between ulladulla doughnut hole or maybe some like sesame seeds or something. So really cool projects, all food themed, I'm making videos for each one of them. The link is below for the challenges. So you complete the challenges. And there's seven of them, I believe, some days of seasonings and serverless. And check out the videos on my YouTube because they're really goofy. And they have a lot of Turkey sound effects in them. And just just these kids, I say kids, but like these students are going to be CEOs and my boss someday. They're so smart and amazing. And I feel so lucky I get to

Brandon Minnick:

everybody might as well watch the videos now get to know them because they'll be taken over the world in a couple years anyways.

Chloe Condon:

It's kind of cool, though, that like now with the age of the internet, because like I feel like a lot of people do video content now. And there's a lot of things on the internet like my dad used to do theater and there's like no, like digital memory at all of the shows that he did because it was pre internet time. But that is really cool to think that like the next Bill Gates or the next like Satya out there may be like YouTube videos of them like struggling through a twitch stream right now. exist.

Brandon Minnick:

Cool, but also kind of terrifying.

Chloe Condon:

Yes.

Brandon Minnick:

Hope I look good. 10 years ago.

Chloe Condon:

Yeah, make sure your hair is good. Good angles. Yeah.

Brandon Minnick:

No hat. Wow. Showing off the long hair leading into it.

Chloe Condon:

I love that. Every. So I've grown my hair out a little bit. But when I used to do theater, it was common practice, especially with a period piece. So we're talking I mean, I never did Hamilton but something like Les Miz or My fair Lady. They'd always tell the boys grow out your hair because it's a it's a period piece when someone will cut their hair and a buzz cut and the costume designer would get really mad so I feel like Brandon, you're ready to do let's see what musical we cast you in could be like a Pirates of Penzance got a good length going on now.

Brandon Minnick:

So I think we're gonna keep it Yeah,

Chloe Condon:

I mean, dude, but like a Pompadour in there like just like

Brandon Minnick:

a little poof right here, but we'll see if it holds up.

Chloe Condon:

Everybody in the chat how's everybody's here doing during the pandemic? I would take off my hats but my roots look crazy 2020 is so weird. What a weird year is quite quite the strange time for long hair and just strange goings on.

Brandon Minnick:

A lot of pajama pants. That's been kind of my life.

Chloe Condon:

Yes. Then quite the time. Well, I'm I'm super excited today, Brandon because well wait. First I have to tell you a quick life hack because it would not be eight bits without mentioning theme parks. I bought some so are you familiar with these like wax candle melts? Like there's like candles and you like like a candle that smells good. But like there's these things that you plug into the wall. And you can like melt this wax. There's no flame. It's just like a little. It's Oh, yeah.

Brandon Minnick:

I've seen those in offices where like they don't allow flames. But if you want to bring in a scented candle to make it smell a little bit more like home.

Chloe Condon:

So I have ADHD, so I'm terrible at leaving candles burning all the time. And I

Brandon Minnick:

don't know.

Chloe Condon:

I bought a wax candle melting thing. And I found this store that sells the sense of theme park. So I'm talking like bribes like Pirates of the Caribbean. You know, the very distinct sense like there's like an avatar. I've never been on the avatar rights and ever been Disneyworld. It all smells like different things. So right now. I've got Butterbeer going downstairs universal smell. Cat said mold mildew. Yeah, I think that is the smell of the pirates like the water smell.

Brandon Minnick:

next to you.

Chloe Condon:

Yeah, like an odd, but I got Mickey's gingerbread house smell upstairs. So for anybody out there who's looking to kind of upgrade their workspace get some wax candle melts that smell like theme parks or things that you missed from the before times? That's my only Pro Tip of the Week.

Brandon Minnick:

There that it's like Yeah, wow. took a vacation to Disney World all over again.

Chloe Condon:

And if anybody who watches the show, gets the one that smells like pirates, let me know because I'm curious if it smells like old water because I know that.

Brandon Minnick:

Like dirty water ride water.

Chloe Condon:

Yeah, I love that. Bring it up is we have a theme park musical theater enthusiasts joining us today. And right before we got on to this call, they were telling us that they were from Vallejo. And I have a quick Vallejo story to intro this person because we're going to be talking today our guest of course is is also a non traditional background engineer has had many different jobs in their past and we also both went to SF State Fun fact. But when I was attending SF State I had a weird odds and ends job as a children's birthday party entertainer for all star show grams Brandon. Maybe you've heard of it before.

Brandon Minnick:

The big deal.

Chloe Condon:

I don't know if their website is still up. But if I recall, it looked a lot like a Geocities website and it's a quite a neat unique website. Long story short, I kind of got not conned I really wanted to be one of those Disney Princesses who performed at these children's birthday parties was very hot dig back in the day for for college, college girls. And they suddenly and they were like I did my first party and I was Cinderella and I got for this beautiful dress that my second gig was in Vallejo. And they tricked me and they said oh, it's just a one time thing. There'll be Minnie Mouse. I put on scariest looking Minnie Mouse costume drive with a van with a man I barely knew to the middle of La Whoa. Did balloon art and face painting for three hours of my life and probably the most money I've ever made in my life in college. So anyway, this is all to say. I think maybe myself crossed paths at some point either at college or maybe in that weird van on the way to LA Whoa. Welcome everyone. I can't.

Cat Carbonell:

Great. God. I have this story because I worked at well. It used to be called marine world.

Chloe Condon:

Okay, yes. Six Flags marine. We're all the closest theme park to where I grew up.

Cat Carbonell:

Yes. And I was a henna tattoo artist in high school I love so like I would just be practicing on myself. So I had an arm full of henna. And while I was like practicing, you know, I hated like, numbers and script and stuff. So like, these two guys were on their break, like I guess they man the Oh, no rights. And they go, hey, how much is it for n number or a letter? And I'm like, depends on the style. And you guys know much. How much is for seven. And I'm like,

Chloe Condon:

I feel like you know, when you have those questions in the interviews, like an engineering interviews, where they're like, can you deal with a variety of personalities? You could just be like, I was a henna tattoo artists at Six Flags.

Cat Carbonell:

It's like, Hey, can you handle pressure? Have you played Tetris? 99. Sir.

Chloe Condon:

For those who are tuning in, who maybe don't follow you on Twitter, cat, give folks a little give us a little elevator pitch. Who are you? What do you do? I know you from Twitter, of course. And I've been watching your journey into software engineering, but give the lovely folks at home introduction to you. Okay,

Cat Carbonell:

well, Hi, I'm Kat. I am a front end engineer with design experience. I worked at Facebook as a contractor and boy, it was that fun. Right now I am looking for a either a dev REL or a front end engineering job and I've been looking since April. I made a lot of career pivots in my life. So I think they kind of see me as like, weirdo. What are you doing here?

Chloe Condon:

I remember when I was first applying to jobs, people would look at my resume and go okay like actress disney store will pass you you kind of got yours your beginnings in tech kind of in the Neopets MySpace era like I did as well correct? Oh, yeah.

Cat Carbonell:

Yeah. I like made an omelet store because I always like visit visited the big omelet in the middle of that one land and onion

Brandon Minnick:

branches very aspiring entrepreneur, me

Chloe Condon:

Pat and Anna Medina like maybe maybe cat sold an omelet to Anna like this was like

Unknown:

totally possible

Chloe Condon:

about Neopets on the show before and I with the amount of anda who else, Charmaine as well do Pat, I bet there's been some cross paths here the eight bit cinematic universe in

Cat Carbonell:

like, I needed to make it super pretty. Oh my god, the omelets look appealing. So what is it that these other stores are doing that I'm not doing? And then I discovered HTML, CSS. And then my brother comes home from college and he's just like, hey, let me teach you how to make a website. And he shows me to cities and I'm like, cool, let me make my Sailor Jupiter fan site. And then it all fell apart from there

Chloe Condon:

feel like fansites, and just like that whole era. And and Brandon, let me know if this was the situation for you. Because as a gal who doesn't know anything about engineering, who like really loves computers, the era of like, geo cities, Angel fire was like I am the Wizard of the Internet. The amount of fan pages for a town. I vividly remember so I now make the newsletter for the Academic Team here at Microsoft internally. But I had a Pokemon newsletter that I sent. I had it through an AOL chat room. I was pika punk. 13 aol.com don't email me because I don't have. And I have a newsletter that I ran with someone who's screaming was like Zoo bat something and that there was a word search. It was a very intricate experience. I feel like these fandoms like help create this passion for tech for folks like us who were otherwise technically inclined or knew about that world. Did you kind of do that as well Brandon.

Brandon Minnick:

Let's that's why I'm so impressed. So I was always a I was like, as I would call myself a computer nerd growing up, like I I bought, built I bought the parts built my own computer. I was like yeah, I've learned the command line stuff back in the windows three dot one days. So I can play video games. And so loved computers was always on computers. But I never actually learned to code. I never touched code until I got to college. And so what's impressive to me is we've had so many people on the show, they're like, Oh, yeah, you know, when I was 810 12 years old, was already making websites and a cat hire said just, you're on geo cities, you were creating these online stores. And I didn't know how to do any of that. Until I was at least 18 years old. It's very impressive.

Cat Carbonell:

Yeah, these backgrounds are like crazy. They.

Chloe Condon:

We have a comment here that says this classic geo cities, webpages were amazing. I remember being so amazed when someone had him in the back. Yes, I feel like this comment here about fandom fandom. Want me to write video edit Photoshop and other stuff. I couldn't agree more. The whole like, online community of bootleg Broadway shows taught me so much about like piracy. How to like barter like I would like trade sheet music for like the wicked like shaky version of it. I mean, no, I very legally.

Cat Carbonell:

Time wire and Misha and CW f those to my friends. It Hi, Patrick.

Chloe Condon:

CAT scan that. Yeah.

Cat Carbonell:

Yeah. So how did I get this?

Chloe Condon:

From like the world of all of the blinkies and dolls, and, you know, things of MySpace to kind of how did you go on that path to where we are now?

Cat Carbonell:

Well, boy, I didn't even know that web development was like an option, I guess as a career. So I was kind of like, floundering through high school because I just did not like care about anything. Like I didn't know what to do. I honestly, like, was surrounded by brilliant people. Like everybody was super smart. The majority of my class was on AP classes. And I'm like, I'm a dummy. I don't know anything. I don't care. But I also had like this, I guess, pride where I had to, I had pressure to go to college. That's not a community college. Not that I'm dunking on college or community colleges. But of course, like, people do the thing. But yeah, um, I went

Brandon Minnick:

to, like, four year college. Yeah. All the above.

Cat Carbonell:

So I went to SF State as an undeclared. And then I, I failed chemistry twice, because Okay, so I'm Filipino. I'm Filipino American. And as we all know, Filipino American women, or even men, or non bear non binary people become nurses. But that's just the default. It's like, Oh, hey, you're Filipino. Do you work at Kaiser? And I'm like, when I was working at this gym in Berkeley, they're like, Oh, do you thought of UC Berkeley? And I'm like, whoo, I graduated with a 2.6, buddy. Yeah, so I went from SF State to beauty school. And I actually did my face to prove that I'm a makeup person. Um, I used to be an aesthetician a licensed aesthetician. And I got a job right after beauty school. At a spa, and this lady was my boss was like, hey, so yeah, you can be my apprentice. Can you also man the reception? And I'm like, Yeah, sure. Okay, I'll do anything. Cuz I'm, you know, young and impressionable. So I think about for one to two years, I was there and I'm like, okay, Catherine, when are you going to teach me and it's just broken promise after broken promise. And then I decided to leave and then I was desperate for another job. So I really wanted to be an aesthetician. So on Craigslist. I just scoured the health and beauty like, section for jobs. And I found the gym that I previously We've mentioned and so I was their office manager over there, they taught Krav Maga. So I had free self defense lessons. And Geez, should I go into the story about the two owners?

Chloe Condon:

A quick pause here, I'm first of all, feeling so many parallels between our journeys cat because we went to the same college. And back in those days around the time that we both would have been graduating Craigslist was such a like job searching place like back in the 2011 ish time, I got my first job ever through Craigslist as well at Yelp, not an engineering role in a sales role, because they used to like turn out these classes of like, they would call them sales reps or not sales representatives, those account representatives. So it sounded very fancy and businesslike. And I was a new grad and I thought, oh my goodness, I'm going to work in an office and I was so mesmerized, it's my first time being in a tech company before because I had a theater degree and I was like, I'll take whatever job I can get. They had free deli meat in the fridge. And it blew my mind. It wasn't even like the free crystal geyser sparkling water. I was like, we can just eat this bread and meat. And they're like, yeah, it's free for everyone. And that that was a bite in the text that I was like food because if you've ever you're lucky if you get a pizza during tech week, or like maybe a soda. So in a lot of ways I feel like the free the promise of free jackets and tote bags and food. I was like tech. And then of course I wouldn't end up getting into engineering. So many years later. I got so many of my first couple tech jobs on Craigslist. Now I feel like Craigslist maybe isn't as as popular as the job searching marketplaces. It used to be.

Cat Carbonell:

I swear. I was trying to look for a scooter or a vest but for my fiance for Christmas. And I was just like, this is not working. I do not like this.

Chloe Condon:

And first jobs that I ever got, or after right after y'all was, you know, like, nowadays, I think it's called intercom or something. There's a little chat that pops up in the bottom of the website. It's like how can I help you? It was one of those and they had posted something on Craigslist and they said hi, how can we help you? And I said, I'm looking for a job and they said come in today and I got the job that day. Like that's how old school like job searching used to work at these like little startup tech companies back in America back. Craigslist, just like me randomly in a coffee shop. I missed the before times y'all.

Cat Carbonell:

Parents are like, Hey, don't talk to strangers. Kay, several years later, let me do this real quick. Get into this random stranger,

Chloe Condon:

that I'm on Twitter just about too many strangers? You have Magog place. And what was it that kind of got? Were you able to apply some of these kind of previous skills that you had there?

Cat Carbonell:

Yes, actually. So the two owners. This was probably two months after I was hired. The two owners decided to break up. And one guy took the name the branding the site and half of the members and went to San Francisco where as the other guy stayed in Berkeley, with Well, at least the facility, but no name, no website. And he just has has the people that wanted to stay in Berkeley. So what I did for maybe one to two weeks was one split the database. And if anybody's ever worked with mind body on the back end, oh boy, I like respect to you.

Chloe Condon:

Wow, for people who've never used the mind body before a virgin yoga class, or a dance class, or a circus class or any sort of fitness class, it's pretty much kind of the standard meetup.com for like, online fitness classes. So it sounds like you were kind of faced with this challenge where you're like, Okay, I need to do this simple task and you didn't know it but you were kind of like engineering your way around it by googling I would.

Cat Carbonell:

I was looking at like the bottom of the footer and like, Where's the contact? I just need to talk to a human. How do I do this? Cuz I have questions. And, you know, for a couple of days, they were just like you wanted to write like Can you like take the San Francisco addresses? And the Berkeley addresses? split them apart? email them to me as separate files. Thank you. Okay, I guess. And then I had to like check in with them, like call them every day and I'm like, Hi is this cat from redacted

Chloe Condon:

this project

Cat Carbonell:

and at the same time, I had to bug my boss about a logo and a new name. And I'm like, what are we called, man? I can't design this logo without you telling you what.

Unknown:

I'll tell you later.

Brandon Minnick:

Just tells you to do all this stuff. But it's his business. He doesn't even know the name or the logo of it. It's just like, yeah, you gotta figure this out. Make it happen.

Cat Carbonell:

To like call this Krav Maga I guess. God gym, I guess. Krav Maga. Yes. Also, I had to ask people who have been regulars for a long time. regulars who have been members for a long time. If they were willing to be volunteer instructors, you know, because the actual instructors like with the San Francisco guy, so he also did not have any instructors.

Brandon Minnick:

Sounds like you're running this business.

Cat Carbonell:

Yeah. I built the website on Weebly, like in one day, and I just had like this generic like soldier fight saying Krav Maga random picture of my boss being autofilled stills. And it's like, okay, here's the site. And here's our new Mind Body account. By the way, we shouldn't be using Mind Body cuz it's so nice.

Chloe Condon:

To kind of just had to learn by doing really, and then you kind of like, it almost seems like you woke up and you're like, Wait a second, I just like ran this whole business. Like

Cat Carbonell:

I also established like Facebook, and Twitter accounts, but not Instagram, I think around like the 2012. area. Instagram was kind of me. Yeah. So, um, I made the logo. And I actually like, asked around like the people who wanted to stay at this gym. I wanted to ask them actually what they wanted to see out of this new era, I guess. And they were saying, Oh, we need new t shirts. And they should only be black or like, oh, no more military font everywhere. Yeah. No joke. It was called Krav Maga extreme with an X.

Brandon Minnick:

Oh, what? extreme?

Cat Carbonell:

Yes. So I'm not sure if they're still using the logo, I helped design, I had to figure my way out. on Adobe Illustrator. I also had to coordinate getting the T shirts. And also just

Chloe Condon:

you have to do like, just a lot of like, I don't know how to do that. I'm gonna go do it kind of stuff. So when you're interviewing now, like for these engineering roles, like, it's, I'm seeing so many parallels here, cat because there's so much not as an engineer, that can that is so like, cross. It crosses the the path of what an engineer is, and everything that you're saying. I'm like, Oh, yeah, I don't really know how to use this part of react. I want to learn how to do it. So it almost sounds like you engineered an entire business together.

Cat Carbonell:

I did. And if you ask them because so we I left because he wanted to start paying me under the table. So he took me off of payroll. And I was like, That's not good. So that's my cue to leave. And my significant other at the time, who was also a an instructor there, he was saying, like, you should get into UX design. He was also a DevOps person at redacted company. And he was saying, like, you have a lot of talent in tech. You should, you should try UX design. And I'm like, Yeah, I should. Let's go. So I went to Full Sail University, and work my ass off. I got straight A's and I don't know there's this one. class where I got like, a plane a cuz I think it's like a legal class of some sort like copyright. I don't know, education or whatever. Not like me like, I had too many questions like I don't understand this this. I don't know how to translate this Full Sail represent. Yeah, I don't know any mascots there. I don't know airplanes. Yes, I don't know. So I graduated with a 3.9 GPA, straight A's. And I tried interviewing as a designer because my developer chops weren't as strong back then. And honestly, it was, so this was 2016. And I got my Facebook contracting job in 2018. So this was two years. And between the two years I was like, relying on this really crappy person have a significant other? And some freelance stuff. But like, yeah, it was it was hard. And, you know, I can totally identify with like, the excitement of free food, because like, my first day, at Facebook, my manager told me, too, was it called full circle cafe. And she was saying, like, Oh, yeah, it's a buffet type of thing, you know, and then it's just this huge, it is a buffet was huge. And I Wow, and Wow, so much stuff. And I'm like, where do we pay for stuff and she's like,

Chloe Condon:

I feel like, from Annie, where they like, bring her to where bucks mansion, it's like, I think I'm gonna like, that's like me whenever I could attack office, because truthfully, the, the, the polar opposite of the previous idea of free food is just, it's a beautiful thing.

Brandon Minnick:

It's amazing, like I cuz I, I work professionally as a an engineering for five years before moving out to San Francisco. That's what I got the job of Xamarin. And that would be headquartered out here. So that's when I moved out and got to experience this world of like, basically the tech world where there's just like, yeah, free drinks, free food everywhere. And there's none of that where I came from.

Chloe Condon:

A few industries, like even NASA, like I've gone to NASA have gone to, you know, Kennedy Space Center. They don't even have free food, like they pay for their own food and like a DMV looking cafeteria like SpaceX gets the free food and bring their pets to work. But like it unique industry, like even, even if you're like an actor, there's like craft services and stuff, but it's like, okay, but Tech's got it made. I also saw a tweet recently that said, it was a free food tweet. But then there was a follow up tweet that said, tech pays so much, because therapy is expensive. And I think the same goes for the free food. So I imagine that like the world now. So like you're you're out there and you're applying and you're you're you're pounding the pavement, as we say, trying to get it trying to get a job in the software engineering world. What So you mentioned you're looking for dev role roles, what kind of stuff Are you looking for, and shout out to anybody out there who's hiring, right.

Cat Carbonell:

So I'm looking for mainly UI, UX engineering roles front end, my strengths are definitely in design. Like, I think when I was in high school, I was like, yeah, you know, like graphic design sounds fun. And then, you know, hot depressions just like, you suck at that. Don't do it. And I'm like, Okay, I'm just going, I feel like

Chloe Condon:

no one tells you like in high school, like, Hey, you like this thing that you're doing? Like, that's a job. We had to make these senior portfolios at my Performing Arts High School, where I believe we just like made a PowerPoint that was clickable, like you click through it. So we basically made a website and I was like, This is fun, but no one was like, Oh, you like this? That's software engineering, because of course, we're all about to go off to college, and get our respective Performing Arts degrees from wherever we're going. But I feel like yeah, it's like really to put upon like, 1617 year old 18 year old kid, to like, decide what you're going to do. The rest of your life like graphic design would have been cool.

Brandon Minnick:

I did. So I did Computer Engineering in college. And to be honest with you, I didn't even know what that meant. Other than like, I knew I like

Chloe Condon:

these men are brave, getting degrees and things. They don't know what it

Brandon Minnick:

was like. So my dad was an engineer, and I really like computers. So why not be a computer engineer? Maybe it's just

Chloe Condon:

like, I spoke to this earlier as well that like sometimes it just takes somebody telling you like for you caught it was this DevOps person being like, hey, you'd be really good at UX and design. Like for me, it was my boyfriend being like, Oh, you can still learn to code like me and the name engineer never would have put that in the same sentence if someone else hadn't said it to me. So that's what makes me so excited to see people like cat and this industry because I'm like, Yes, please help influence more people to come and join us.

Cat Carbonell:

I see like little Filipino mostly girls, actually. Oh, that's my fiance. Anyways, um, I see more Filipino girls get kind of like, not harassed, but like pushed into nursing when they don't want to. It's just like, I hate blood. But nursing makes you a lot of money enough. Okay, I'm not gonna like my child or something. Yeah, you know need to make more money so you can support your family in the future and give me grandbabies.

Chloe Condon:

I feel like there's a shirt you would really like cat that I wear often that says the girl of my dreams is just me with more money. I think like we're kind of like even my family of course is just like wow, you did the thing and you became an engineer but I think especially once I first started going into this industry everyone was like you sure like like musical? Who are you? Okay? And that's what makes me so excited to see people who come from these like, like, for example, it makes me so excited with you with this makeup background that Anna Medina also famously and Neopets in the MySpace Stan also has a makeup background as well. And I just can't wait for these like makeup themed apps for these like musical. Oh, speaking of musicals, y'all. Well, Pat was talking about her passion for design. And I would love to get your opinion on this design question cat. Ratatouille, the musical. Let's talk about this. And for the folks at home who aren't familiar. Don't worry. It's not what it sounds like. So Oh, someone says is there a developers who love musicals club because I need to sign up for that. It's right here. Yeah, that into it. So. So y'all, um, there's this phenomenon that I've been made aware of called Ratatouille, the musical and I would love to talk about it because it feels like open source to be in the musical theater fashion. So there's a thread that I will tweet, but basically, there was a call for content. Someone on tik tok was like, hey, all Ratatouille the musical should be a thing. We need set designers, costumers, choreographers, singers, dancers, actors, and they basically just like a call for papers for a conference or something, put out this call for submissions, right? So now Tick Tock is full of all these like choreography submissions, like people auditioning for the role of Grammys dad. There's full songs and orchestrations being submitted to this project during quarantine. And it's one of the most beautiful like, like just coming together of a nerdy musical online theater community. Speaking of online fandoms Captain Brandon would love to get your take on Ratatouille the musical because this is blown my mind.

Cat Carbonell:

Versus correct. I did not think that oh, my God, it is open source pull requests on? Yes, well,

Chloe Condon:

there's actually like, it's what does this mean? It's hit record Joe on Twitter, Joseph Gordon Levitt, he and his brother I believe run this website called hit record, where it's open sourced art so people will put like stuff up and be like, we want to make this video so we need a song about this and people to submit stories about this. So it's like kind of this open sourced art community. So Ratatouille the musical I was like, Oh my god, it's

Cat Carbonell:

like, is it open source? Is oh my gosh, this pandemic has like sprouted some craziness including creative insanity, which is great. What is

Chloe Condon:

crazy A project that y'all have seen during core. Does anybody have a Fave?

Unknown:

Oh, that's good.

Brandon Minnick:

I don't know if you guys are fans of the office. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I've seen every episode, probably at least four times. But somebody put together a whole. Let's see, I will hold new season, I forget how many I think the office had nine seasons. So they made a 10th. And it's a whole transcript that you can download, free online that they put together of like, basically the office if it took place in 2020, like a modern day, the office and just incredible, and I actually, we should do a should call, do a call for content here. I tried to get a bunch of friends together cuz I was like, How fun would this be? Because we can't leave the house. We're all quarantined at home, that we just dial into a zoom meeting and basically do a table read. So like, you could be Michael Scott, like you could be a helper. Amazing,

Chloe Condon:

I believe one of our previous guests, Charmaine was telling me that there is a Slack channel or something of that nature that you can join that is just slack conversations between the characters of the office so it's almost like performer than the Slack channel allegedly asked to follow up on but apparently

Cat Carbonell:

I like remember the live journal days where there are role playing turtle? Oh, yeah, everywhere and like, I never caught on to it. But I've seen a couple friends jump on that train for like, I don't know what it was a fandom or Sailor Moon or any gotcha.

Chloe Condon:

Let's see. I want to get his name right, because I want to shout him out. Let's see. Okay, so the understudy for Beetlejuice and Beetlejuice, the musical His name is will blossom will blonde B Liu M. There's this musical called Floyd Collins, which is not done very often. It's kind of like a niche musical I believe that's about these miners who get like stuck in the mines or something like that, and will bless them with 400. And get this this number right 476 pieces of cardboard created a 125 foot cave, and he staged a full production of Floyd Collins like in his New York apartment. And for me, it's just been so i i still very much identify as an artist like even though I work in tech now. And there's, I don't think people really have a concept of how many artists are out of work right now. Because just to put on one Broadway show isn't just the actors you see on stage. It's the people in the box office. It's the set designers, it's the lighting designers, it's the choreographers, it's the producers, it's senior managers, it's so many people, it's the costume changers. So like 1000s of people are out of work. And I think what I love the most about Ratatouille the musical is it not only gives like a creative outlet for these people to like, showcase their art, but it really does go to show just like how creative these people are during like a pandemic like, of course nobody on Broadway is able to perform right now. So what do you do you build a giant cave out of cardboard and self? Yeah.

Brandon Minnick:

They're writing their own scripts, writing their own songs, doing their own set design, performing it all by themselves. It's incredible. When everything shows, and I really hope it happens. I really hope it comes together because I mean, Ratatouille is one of the well it's definitely the most underappreciated Pixar movies. But I think it's one of the best storylines. It's just so complete and so diverse. And

Chloe Condon:

it's about mentorship and video of the ride in Japan. I want to say PJ laughs Okay, there's a hard ride of Ratatouille. And it looks incredible. And I really want to go on that. But an interesting kind of thing around this, which which came up from another article I read about tech talk talking tech carry on is so so I was thinking about Ratatouille, the musical right and getting the rights to any sort of entity to make it into like a musical. There's a lot of legal stuff that goes around with it. I don't know if people have been following but there's this amazing tick talker who mixes paint and he was working at Sherwin Williams and Sherwin Williams fired him because they were like, oh, like you're capitalizing using it but he's like one of the most followed Tiktok people for paint or whatever. But this new company Florida paints I just read this morning hired him and now it's great branding for Florida paints because they have this famous Tick Tock are doing it so I guess this kind of begs the question, with Ratatouille the musical something so beautiful like this where it's like the the logistics of getting all of the different writers and creators to actually make this musical would take a lot of work, but I really want it to happen y'all. Like, I feel like it would be such a it would be complicated for Disney, but it would be such a great like marketing move that would be so cool.

Cat Carbonell:

Just like to just do Disney don't stop them. So, um, I think a while ago, Nintendo sent a cease and desist to these people who were making a Pokemon MMO or massive multiplayer online game. Okay. And it was like established already, like, they were ready to send out invites for like this the beta testing, and they got hit with a cease and desist. And it's just like, three already. Oh, my God, that's my site. Oh, my.

Brandon Minnick:

I was just trying to queue it up.

Cat Carbonell:

Oh, my God tech. Going with Oh, oh. And it's just like, do you know, like, just pay them like a million dollars and steal it? Come on. Everybody wants this.

Chloe Condon:

But it's tough, right? Because I remember I'm gonna kind of butcher this story. But I had Scott chacoan, one of the CO creators of GitHub, come on a panel of mine once and it was a panel on open source. And we're kind of talking about open source advocate, right, like, when should you contribute? When should you not it's like yes, do contribute, things that are helpful or useful are being asked for. But I think he had mentioned like, they'd open sourced some book, like some kind of like a book that he had written and they put it on GitHub, and someone went through and edited and took out all of like, the commas or something or they like change the Oxford commas and he's like, No, I don't want this. So it's like, if you are going to contribute, if you are going to build something, you're going to do something and take the time and contribute like, make sure. Like, if you're not just doing it for yourself, make sure people want it. So I always think of that story. I'm just like, I'm probably butchering it a little bit. Shout out Scott, if you're watching another musical theater fan. Remember how October Yes,

Brandon Minnick:

yes this

Cat Carbonell:

year, just five years ago, but yeah, yeah, the first week people are just like, Hey, I made a pull request take a look and it's just like what's the change the title you know, they add awesome documentation of Don't overreact. Yes.

Brandon Minnick:

Right. It's just poor poor Oktoberfest such a good pure idea. Just try to help the community people just wanted us first y'all just want like free stickers so cat

Chloe Condon:

what is next for you? Like you're on the job search obviously you're going to get 100 job interviews from this video obviously this was promoting we're like hire cat hair cat. But what's next like where where do we see cat like five years from now? What is cat doing? I know like difficult question right? But like let's let's help paint this we're gonna manifest we're gonna like make a vision board of cat

Cat Carbonell:

like crystals back there or whatever. I'm Yeah.

Chloe Condon:

We're at build or something. Build 2024 go outside again. What are you giving a talk on? What is cat's world?

Brandon Minnick:

Besides Ratatouille? The musical? Yeah.

Chloe Condon:

Someone said twice as many stuffed animals. I think that's common.

Cat Carbonell:

Yes, um, Patrick and I are actually like joking about like an entire room full of plushies I mean, like I am having so much trouble just getting rid of those let Pikachu right there is 20 years old. Wow. Anyways, um, cat in 2024 would be talking about. I can't believe this is like, a thing still. So I've been experiencing a lot of just bias against me as a woman and a person of color. Like, there was like one interview that I made it to the final round two. And for the reason that I didn't get this internship was because this other person finished their interviews before me like, Why waste my time? So maybe like, how I overcame, you know, adversity. Getting a job in tech.

Chloe Condon:

I don't know man of color. many parallels to like, like I mentioned earlier, you know, cats pounding the pavement. And I and I truly mean that in that like, getting your first engineering role is a lot like auditioning. Like, how do you Get the experience before you have the experience. How do you even get your toe pinky finger toe and let alone your foot in the door and cat? Based on the comments alone, you got a lot of fans here cheering you on first of all, and I cannot wait to see what you do in this industry truthfully are so close and we're so excited to see. I'm stoked for this talk. I'm like so here for it and if you need any horror stories I can contribute to share this comment because it made me lol Pikachu going to college.

Brandon Minnick:

20 years old. Just don't feel like you. If you're forced to go to college. You could do whatever you want. your passions

Chloe Condon:

been hella cute, or Yeah. Oh, maybe a minor in photography from his Pokemon Snap days. Oh my gosh,

Cat Carbonell:

my brother drives me to blockbuster every week to get Pokemon Snap pictures.

Chloe Condon:

So that is a project that's been on my back burner a long time. And the only thing that stopped me from making this is figuring out, I guess I would just use an N 64. But what technology I would need to extract the images from the N 64 cartridge because I don't want to build the big thing. I just want to like build a small version. So anybody out there wants to build this. Cat, I think we should build some sort of like a IML musical theater recommendation thing. Like I feel like we've got to use the skills in our brain of our musical theater knowledge and apply it to tech. We've got all these people in the chat asking where the club's at.

Brandon Minnick:

Make the clubs. So I see we only have a couple minutes left. So you saw a sneak peek of cats website pop up earlier, because I wanted to show it off because I think it is truly amazing.

Cat Carbonell:

Thank you,

Brandon Minnick:

Kat. You're both welcome. But so I'm a mobile developer, I make iOS and Android apps and

Chloe Condon:

app the official App of the show go on.

Brandon Minnick:

Get trans.com ga t t e d s.com downloaded today for free. But your website is so well done and put together and I just wanted to highlight the showed off to the world because I've made one website in my life. And it just had texts so I had headline text, I had paragraph text and look just how beautiful this website is and how it scrolls and things slide from the side and go dig into your portfolio and play the game. All your GitHub repos. Dude, we click on this

Cat Carbonell:

Yes, play the game, please.

Chloe Condon:

We've never played a game.

Brandon Minnick:

Let's see. I got it.

Cat Carbonell:

Okay, so start try. Just play it. How you know

Chloe Condon:

whatever. Oh my gosh, this is so cute. Cat. Block.

Brandon Minnick:

Yes, no. Yeah. Block. Throw. Block throw. Hit strike. Oh, is that the secret? Yeah, just

Cat Carbonell:

a secret.

Brandon Minnick:

I love strike one away the barrier Hold on. Can everybody see this? It's not fair.

Chloe Condon:

at your company, and you too could get us like this.

Brandon Minnick:

Oh no. You might you might lose an arm but that's the risk we're willing to take because cat is so amazing.

Cat Carbonell:

When we're trying to do the block like all in a row you

Chloe Condon:

know you lost your arm.

Brandon Minnick:

Do you do one hand tied behind my back?

Cat Carbonell:

Yeah do with block like click lock like three times in a row or something like that. Forget what the

Brandon Minnick:

didn't really do anything. Bear went to sleep and healed.

Chloe Condon:

I love that.

Brandon Minnick:

And then it keeps striking. And then I throw the bear I don't know if I'm gonna win this one.

Chloe Condon:

Ah rip. This is giving me flashbacks to when I was in hackbright they would give us these assignments and they would be like, oh, like uses CSS to make this image go from small to big and everyone else would use like stock images and mine would be like the slop dressed up as a pope, like all of my stuff had such a sense of humor. And I just love that these little easter eggs of like a bear eating your arm. I'm just like, how is this Lindsey not hired yet? Hire this lady.

Cat Carbonell:

Please, I have made a crazy wedding to pay for you guys.

Chloe Condon:

Well, we have the link below by Kotlikoff this report caught by new cough cough dot e.

Unknown:

m. o and

Chloe Condon:

final important question because I feel like we need to settle this debate. Is it cat VS code or cat VS code? Okay.

Cat Carbonell:

The tally real quick. Um

Chloe Condon:

cabarrus is cut. But you got a job on the VS code team. It could be of Yeah.

Brandon Minnick:

It was meant to be.

Cat Carbonell:

Exactly hit me nudge. Totally did great dev row person or dev avocado.

Chloe Condon:

Seeing you on the stage at one of these conferences soon. I cannot wait to hear this talk on inclusivity. And diversity in tech I used to give one myself on called diversity is not equal to stock photos of hands. When you Google the words. Google page is all just rainbow hands. And you'll notice if you go out and there's posters, it's like first clipart that pops up. And I think the more that we can make diversity not be a clip art of rainbow hands and actually about hiring. Interesting. I mean, don't even get me started on the name of fleets. That's a story for another day. But just having diverse voices in the room can make such a difference. So I Welcome to the world of I mean, you've been in the world for a long time cat but I'm just so excited to see all the butts you're gonna kick it in the best way possible.

Cat Carbonell:

So much for having me on here. It's so it's such an honor. Really like I was like what? I should close out on a song

Chloe Condon:

from Ratatouille the musical Brandon, do you want to do choreography and

Brandon Minnick:

really good at chair dancing.

Unknown:

Okay. Well,

Chloe Condon:

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Happy Season's Greetings. So all in the last couple minutes. Should we share? What snack we're excited to eat for the holidays tomorrow? Sure. Well, I have a pie and a half and we'll see but I think we're gonna order some delivery to support some local businesses. And we have placed here called homeroom that follows mac and cheese. I'm hoping that they have special Thanksgiving Mac. So happy seasonings. Greetings. How are you cat?

Cat Carbonell:

So my brother bought this gigantic Costco size bag of Yukon Gold potatoes. And every year I make random ass mashed potatoes. Put whatever in so potatoes mashed potatoes. And actually, the next day he makes potato waffles out of the leftovers. So I'm like stoked for that.

Brandon Minnick:

Why genius idea?

Unknown:

Yes.

Chloe Condon:

How can you Brandon?

Brandon Minnick:

Ooh. So this is unique. I mean, obviously it's 2020. So route traveling, we're not doing it with family or friends. It's just gonna be my wife and I, but we switched to plant based diet back in January. And so we're doing a plant base Thanksgiving with all the fixings but it's all like tofurkey instead of Turkey and it's like cashew cheese instead of like mac and cheese and so I have no idea what to expect. I i've been like pleasantly surprised on this plant based journey. Because all these meat substitutes are just so good nowadays that unless you know if you're comparing it to like a really nice steak, then obviously the really nice steak is gonna be better than

Chloe Condon:

I've been eating lots of eggs. So now

Cat Carbonell:

beyond meat was like mind blowing like what this tastes

Brandon Minnick:

good. Yeah.

Chloe Condon:

Well, I'm super stoked to hear next week about this veggie giving y'all got a couple seconds left should we bobl Thank you so much for joining us. catch y'all next week and happy