DOD222: Back to School! Here's a Dozen Poorly Made Apps for Ya

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's sending you an invite to Peach Jar, Appletree, Power School, Here Comes the Bus, and every other fucking thing that you can imagine in order to connect with us.

0:00:39 Thomas: Tom's had a stroke, Eli, it's happened.

0:00:41 Eli: Hey!

0:00:41 Thomas: Guys, Eli it's happen. Call the hospital.

0:00:42 Tom: I'm just, mmm,

0:00:43 Eli: Hello!

0:00:44 Tom: It's gonna be a Tom Yells About Stuff. Tom's gonna yell at a cloud, guys! Welcome to dear old dads. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:53 Eli: Welcome to the Winter Soldier we just activated with the words Tom just said. Here's a question. If Tom was having a stroke in the middle of our podcast, how many episodes do we think we would do before?

0:00:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. How long would it take? Yeah.

0:01:08 Eli: I don't know if you guys noticed, but when I said goop, goop goop for 46 minutes on the last one, Turns out that was a little problem in the old maroo. Still went to work, though. Got a bonus.

0:01:06 Tom: Before anybody

0:01:25 Eli: Made me a plaque that says goop, goop.

0:01:23 Tom: Noticed. Oh,

0:01:26 Thomas: It killed the part of my brain that feels bad about firing people, so I'm even better at my job.

0:01:27 Tom: My god. Yeah. Oh, I

0:01:31 Eli: Thomas, Tom doesn't have that part of his. Tom's got a lot of parts of his brains, but the feel bad part about firing people definitely died a long time ago.

0:01:38 Thomas: Okay. I think you're

0:01:41 Tom: Can't. You know what? Yeah, I can't do it anymore.

0:01:44 Thomas: Projecting, Eli. I think Eli's projecting.

0:01:44 Eli: It got punched out of an ear in a car wash.

0:01:50 Tom: What do you? God, you could. You know, there

0:01:53 Eli: All right, Kerry, you're down two to one. Yeah, no, I got it. Hey, if any of us loses a job, I feel really confident that I can deliver that news.

0:02:03 Tom: Used to be, like, I remember back in, like, the 90s, I had heard rumors that, like, there were people whose job it was to go into, like, big factories and things that are closing down, and they were ax men. They, like, fired people for a living. I don't know if you ever heard of these jobs before, but I remember immediately being like, I could do that.

0:02:16 Eli: Of course, yeah. You'd be so good at that. Yeah.

0:02:19 Tom: Work like that is work I could do.

0:02:21 Thomas: Jesus Christ, that was the first sign.

0:02:22 Tom: I could do it. I know I could do it. So I want to do a little, a little insanity pool talk, so I

0:02:27 Thomas: Pool update from Tom.

0:02:28 Eli: Pool watch. Pool, pool, pool. Splash. Ah.

0:02:31 Thomas: Please tell us about this large body of

0:02:35 Eli: Thomas, Thomas, wake Lydia and I want a bumper. I want like a splash. Ah. A bumper for pool chat.

0:02:40 Tom: I have a pool, which I've never had a pool before, so, like, we had a pool put in this year so that everybody could look at it and not use it.

0:02:50 Thomas: Water. Oh.

0:02:50 Tom: It's been it's been a delight and the pool requires like way way way more maintenance. The pool guy's like I just changed the filter once a day or you do this once a week. It is really not so bad once you get into a rhythm. I'm like okay cool but But you have to do this like pool chemistry. You got to like balance your pool chemistry, so what I've discovered about balancing your pool chemistry is that it's literally fucking impossible, and nobody's ever done it. My pool is either a giant vat of poisonous acid or a giant vat of boiling alkali, neither one of which I can never get it to just stay in that butter zone. Like, I'll dial it in, everything's perfect, and literally two days later I test the water, the pool Yes. The pool looks so inviting. It looks like this, like, fucking beautiful fountain of youth, and I test the water and I'm like, this has got to be good. It's crystal clear. It's been, and it's like, I have never been able to get the water to just stay okay.

0:03:32 Eli: You dip a toe in, the water all turns black like that science experiment.

0:03:36 Thomas: No.

0:03:52 Thomas: Jeez.

0:03:52 Tom: It'll be like one day everything is literally perfect, the next day everything is crazy wrong.

0:03:56 Thomas: Who would have thought taking care of water would be like, I never would have thought, you know?

0:04:01 Tom: It's impossible.

0:04:01 Thomas: Like, oh, it's gonna be, there's a lot of upkeep in this, checks notes, water. Water. Yeah.

0:04:04 Eli: Lot of upkeep in water. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Tom, have you considered this? And I want you to open your heart to this. A man as unlucky as yourself, I feel like you should have known better.

0:04:08 Tom: Yeah. Okay.

0:04:12 Thomas: Have you? Yeah, you know, you could, you should think about just considering stopping all things.

0:04:12 Tom: Should have thought about this.

0:04:18 Eli: That can go wrong, right? Like get a pet rock. Yeah.

0:04:20 Thomas: No, I think just stop at all things. I think just don't.

0:04:22 Tom: That's okay. That's actually a fair point.

0:04:23 Eli: Well, now you're the voice inside his head.

0:04:25 Thomas: Even, I don't leave it up to Tom to decide what could or couldn't go wrong. That's part of it.

0:04:26 Tom: That is a fair points. That is a fair point.

0:04:30 Tom: I'm just gonna have to run it by other people. I'm going to be like, I was thinking about getting a cup of coffee.

0:04:35 Thomas: No.

0:04:36 Tom: Is that, no? Okay. Yeah, obviously no. Yeah.

0:04:36 Eli: No, no, that's

0:04:37 Thomas: Don't even remember that McDonald's

0:04:37 Eli: Going to turn inside out on you while you're standing over an orphan. Yeah, exactly.

0:04:39 Tom: No. Okay, good. Yeah. All right, that's canceled. Yeah. I'm, I'm just not going to get out of bed. I'm not going to get out of bed.

0:04:41 Thomas: Lady. Yep. There it is.

0:04:43 Eli: Yeah. You have to watch the extras on the Tenet DVD, but the billionaire who wants to end the universe when he dies, it's actually just Tom. It's one more bad thing happening Tom played by Kenneth Branagh. Yeah.

0:04:57 Tom: This pool is so much work every day. It is so much. I go out, you've got to clean the basket, you've got to flush this filter, you've got to constantly monitor the water chemistry. If it gets too anything, all of this stuff is like, yeah, if your water chemistry is off, it'll basically ruin the entire investment in six minutes. It's garbage. You should just kill yourself. But you'll still have to pay for it for the next 25 -year loan.

0:05:22 Thomas: Yeah, but it's, but on the other hand, it's great that you have something to do now, though.

0:05:26 Tom: Yeah, I know!

0:05:26 Eli: If you think about it, it makes the idea of the pool boy fucking your wife even more insulting. Because you walk in, he's fucking your life, and you're like, uh, Chris, the pool is at 6 .4 right now, my man.

0:05:26 Tom: I know - Right? Yeah,

0:05:32 Thomas: Ooh. Oh, okay. See, that's one way to go. I'm going to go a different way, Eli, which is I think now he's earned it. You know, it's like, hey, pool boy, if you can make this shit fucking work, then, you know, it's, like, fair's fair.

0:05:48 Eli: Yeah.

0:05:49 Tom: Right, it's like at some point it's, like, alright, is the water okay? Because, like if the water's okay, like... It's fucking exhausting.

0:05:49 Eli: That's a bonus. Yeah. Hey.

0:05:51 Thomas: Yeah. You tap on the glass of the bedroom with, like the water gauge thing. Hey, it's not, come on. I don't give a shit. I don't care that you, I

0:06:01 Tom: Hey, my cyanuric acid levels are not at 40 parts per million, motherfucker.

0:06:06 Thomas: Don't care what you're doing RIGHT NOW EXCEPT THAT LOOK AT THIS WATER.

0:06:09 Tom: I'm gonna need you to get out of there and get over here, okay?

0:06:12 Eli: I need you to take a dip into the pool, if you know what I'm saying. Oh.

0:06:16 Tom: Hey, you can get hard when my calcium hardness has been adjusted, okay? Until then, soft water, soft dick only. That's it. I'm not. God damn.

0:06:19 Eli: Yeah. Stop ignoring me through the window. But, guys, do you know the only thing that would be worse for Tom than watching his wife get fucked by the pool boy while he worries about the chemical composition of his pool? Why? It's the ads. And you can make those things go away over at patreon.com forward slash Dear Old Dads, where, for as little as a dollar, you'll get a commercial-free version of every show, a bonus episode whenever the Smiths care to post one, and all kinds of bonus behind-the-scenes bonus extras, cool bonus, bonus now I'm having the stroke and no one will ever know

0:06:36 Tom: Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, yeah.

0:07:00 Tom: Oh,

0:06:56 Thomas: Now Eli's having a stroke. Uh -oh. And I had one long ago, so we're all fine.

0:07:02 Eli: That's right, patreon.com/Dear Old Dads. Like Tom says, to the pool boy, rip into it once the water is balanced.

0:07:17 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:07:19 Tom: My God. Oh, My God. So, has school, I got to start. Has school started for you guys? Has the school year started? I know it starts, yep, it's been going on for two weeks, starts

0:07:23 Thomas: Yep. Oh, wow.

0:07:24 Eli: Two weeks. No, it starts in two weeks.

0:07:28 Thomas: What the hell? Kind of lazy ass kid system you got over there, Eli.

0:07:31 Tom: No, that's better though, like start in fucking September, what the fuck is this like early mid -August nonsense, especially for you, Tom, it gotta be a thousand degrees in the middle of August.

0:07:32 Eli: Yeah, that's great, yeah.

0:07:33 Thomas: Yeah, I know. It is a thousand degrees. Only counterpoint to that, it's a thousand degrees, uh, April 20th through November 7th.

0:07:50 Tom: Okay, yeah, you can't, you Can't, hmm.

0:07:50 Thomas: That's about, so it'd be, it'd be a, it would be a tough year if we only were in school when it's not 110. It would, would be like a three-month school year, which, maybe, hey,

0:07:50 Eli: 4 4 20 blaze it, God lights up a joint, called California.

0:08:02 Eli: They'd be like, "All right, everybody, we made it to be this year, everyone is still in kindergarten." But, um, look at those

0:08:07 Thomas: This reference I made early, early in the show, that story about the, wasn't that this show, the, the, no, never mind, well, anyway, what's the short story where they're on like Venus or some shit and they can't come out but once a decade at school and then the kid gets locked in the thing, that must have been another show, I'm having a stroke, don't mind.

0:08:26 Eli: Bees. Oh.

0:08:29 Tom: We started school, we had a staggered start because I've got, you know, four kids, they're going to three different schools, right? Right. So I've got an elementary school kid. That's Eamon. Aislinn is in high school. Donovan and Finn are both in college. Right. So Finn's starting his first year of college. Donovan is starting his second year of college or the community college nearby.

0:08:46 Eli: Do you know where Donovan's transferring to yet, or you're not thinking about that?

0:08:50 Tom: Oh, no, no. Yeah, though. I'll get to transfer.

0:08:52 Eli: Yet.

0:08:52 Tom: Transfer is going to be a whole nightmare that we'll talk about in a few minutes. But yeah, I know where they're both transferring to. So that's we'll talking about that fucking giant, enormous clusterfuck headache that that is. But Eamone is just new. He's new with us. He is new in this district. Right. So I had to register him for school, registering a kid for school. I know I mentioned this before. It's like applying for a motherfucking mortgage, like the amount of stuff that we have to upload. But key to that, key to That guy's one of the things I had to upload is my custody agreement, right?

0:08:59 Eli: Montclair State University, he's

0:09:22 Thomas: Me.

0:09:23 Tom: So I had to upload my custody Agreement. And then I had to fill out on this like enormous Byzantine set of online forms. I had, that's Haley, there's no place for anybody, so then it just says contact three, contact four, so I put my access contact three, we go through it, takes like two or three iterations of like, "Hey, can you send this?" I'm like, "It's fucking attached, but here, you've got it again." Finally Eamon gets like registered and enrolled and he's got an IEP, so we immediately have to get an IEP meeting because crazily when you transfer from one district to another, at least in Illinois, even if they are are adjoining districts, right?

So like he's moving literally from a district that butts up against another school district. He's got an IEP. I call his old school and I call this new school before the end of last year. And I'm like, Hey, he's going to be transferring from this school to the next. Obviously he's got a IEP is going to need accommodations and we're going to want to have a meeting and everything.

It would be good if we did that ahead of time, because if we don't, then he's to start school without these things. And then we're gonna have to sort of chase it. That seems like less than ideal. And they were seriously, the plan was like, they were like, well, we can't actually talk to you in earnest about his IEP at the new district until he's enrolled. But you can't enroll him in the new District if he's rolled in another district.

0:10:47 Thomas: Oh.

0:10:48 Tom: So as long as he's going to the first school, the second school, yeah,

0:10:51 Eli: Got to go to school with the bag of grain, but then you bring the, the amen back across the river to the IEP.

0:10:54 Thomas: Boy.

0:10:56 Tom: Right. He's get for you serious. And then they're closed all summer. So this is work that cannot, or I don't know, I actually won't use the word cannot. On, will not be done over the summer. They will not engage this work over the course of the summer, so he finishes off his school year at the first school, and I can register him for the second school, but I can't get an IEP meeting until the new school year starts, which means that I am just going to have a weird gap where he goes to school ,and he may or may not have the appropriate accommodations because we haven't had the appropriate conversations and established that IEP at his new school. It's his fucking genuinely insane system. Like, it is dumber than dog shit. It makes no sense. Meanwhile...

0:11:37 Thomas: Meanwhile, your pool's turning to acid, someone's fucking your

0:11:41 Eli: Yeah, dip in the kitten pool, yeah. And it's worth pointing out that an IEP is for a lot of different, different disabilities. So like there are horror stories about these kinds of situations where the kid needs things like a wheelchair and they're like, "Sorry, I can't help you out until the school year's done. Push him through the window. I think that one's, it's not a high one. How good's his arm strength? Well, that's on him now, isn't it? All sorts of nightmare stuff. Listener, a little behind the scenes for you here. Um, because I am in Jersey, the greatest state where literally everything Tom said is the opposite is true. Like you get, so they have summer hours and they'd

0:11:54 Thomas: Wife." Wow. Oh, the TPS report. Yeah.

0:11:58 Tom: Yeah, till we have the meeting. Yeah.

0:12:18 Tom: They come to your house.

0:12:17 Eli: And they'll gently hold your hand. So they're actually doing, in my district they had three weeks of home visit for registration, which is, you could call and a lady would come to your house with a laptop and register your kid for school. And so, podcast listener, the reason I share this with you is I've just been screenshotting all of those announcements and sending them to Tom, along with TikToks about people who love their AI.

0:12:22 Thomas: All their pools are basic instead of acidic.

0:12:26 Tom: Shut the actual fuck up, you motherfucker.

0:12:44 Thomas: Yeah, Jersey might be an amazing conspiracy where all the punch lines are, no one wants to live there, like every TV show. You know, like, oh, Jersey, it's terrible, it's whatever, but then secretly it's actually great. Is that what's going on, or is it Eli trying to convince us of something? I don't

0:12:45 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. That's our secret. It's like, hey, hey, bada bing, nobody wants to come here. Look how silly we talk. Uh-oh, no gun violence.

0:13:09 Tom: So to this next part, I want you guys to tell me if I'm being overly sensitive. And if I am, I don't care. I'm still going to be this sensitive, but I want You to tell Me. So I get like the invitation. We schedule a time for the IEP. So now school years start. I've got them registered, all that good stuff. And like, well, I have these conversations with the assistant principal who's in charge of the special education program. And she's like, yeah, you know, we can set a date. We set a Date. She's like I'm going to have paperwork. And the first paperwork you get is just a notice of conference.

It's like this fucking totally useless piece of paper says here is a notice that we are going to Have a fucking thing. And this fucking piece of paper is addressed to my ex, not addressed to me. Haley's name is on it, but it's like around the corner and upside down. It's not like listed as like a parent. I filled that fucking paperwork out. I filled it out, I double-checked everything. I also sent the fucking custody agreement in, right? Eamon doesn't live with that woman. She doesn't live in this district. That paperwork had to be intentionally changed from what I registered.

0:13:15 Eli: Yeah,

0:13:43 Thomas: Know.

0:14:14 Eli: What were they Googling that they ended up with totally different names on everything?

0:14:17 Thomas: Oh, man.

0:14:18 Tom: It's just addressed "Dear" and then my ex's name on it. And like, not even "Dear" my ex, his name and my name and Haley, just her name. We're on there as signature lines or signatories to the document, but it's not fucking addressed to me as the primary parent. It's not addressed to Haley at all. It's addressed to my fucking ex. I can't

0:14:42 Eli: And what's worse is it's written in Infernal, her home tongue, so you had to get it translated. You gotta get the Necronomicon out and be like, okay, so you are getting someone to walk you to class, and we're checking here. It's hard because the Greek endings mix up with the Latin ones.

0:14:58 Tom: Think that this is anything other, and I don't know of a better way to say it, but like, I cannot think that there's anything other than just mom bias, because somebody had to go out of their way and make those changes, because again, like the registration, it couldn't be clearer. Like, if you just followed the primary parent, like, and just built your paperwork out on that, you would not have done this. So somebody had to go in and make a conscious fucking decision to be like, "Well, we're going to address this to mom, and not like stepmom, but bio mom." And there's a reason Eamon doesn't live with bio mom anymore, right? Like, there are reasons why this is always a bad idea, right, why the paperwork is the thing that you should follow. There are sometimes safety concerns

0:15:03 Thomas: Brutal. Yeah, might

0:15:05 Eli: Sure,

0:15:33 Thomas: Be, yeah.

0:15:43 Tom: Around parents and whatnot. Like it was incredibly incredibly insulting. It was, it was incredibly insulting to me. It was incredibly consulting to Haley. They didn't put on any of the emails that are going out from the school, like the little, you know, cause as soon as you register a kid for an email, it's like fucking signing up for fucking like old Navy discounts. You get a fucking thousand emails a day.

0:15:43 Eli: Right. Right.

0:15:45 Thomas: No fucking kidding.

0:16:00 Thomas: Man, oh yeah, I'm getting your kid's emails, I'm getting everything, email, everybody you've ever talked to, the email, I get an email, a letter, a, a phone call, a telegram, everything for every single announcement.

0:16:06 Tom: Yeah. Haley's not getting any of those emails.

0:16:15 Thomas: That's impossible. No, that's definitely intentional.

0:16:18 Tom: She is not getting any of those fucking emails. I had to ask her teacher, like, like cause again, she's on all the paperwork. Like Haley is on all the paperwork as the second parent, me first, Haley second. She's not getting shit. They are intentionally leaving her off of shit. It's enough to make me want to fucking scream. I went to the meet the teacher thing. So I brought him into his school. We did the meet the teach. We could put his school supplies and all that stuff. I fill out all the forms. I hand all the forums in. I get my first fucking email directly from the teacher. Cause of course you get emails from the school. You get emails FROM the district and then you get e -mails FROM the teacher, right? So you, because you have to have like at least a hundred fucking emails a day.

0:16:32 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. I can't imagine them passing up the opportunity to email another person. Like, that is what I don't get.

0:17:00 Eli: That's true. Yeah, that's their main goal. Yeah.

0:17:01 Thomas: That is why I think someone is fucking with you.

0:17:02 Tom: Thank you.

0:17:03 Eli: They get paid per email.

0:17:03 Thomas: It was intentional. Yeah.

0:17:05 Tom: I feel like they do, right? Like, it feels like a fucking content farm where, like, every email they sent out, they get a fucking eighth of a penny or something, right? It feels so fucking crazy. Like, there's this thing that you hear teachers say all the time. Administrators say it all the time. When I was going to school to be an educator, it was drilled into our heads that, like, you know, know the thing that really makes success is the involvement of parents, like, you really

0:17:11 Thomas: Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe to our school. Yeah.

0:17:31 Thomas: Oh,

0:17:31 Tom: Have got to get parents involved involved. Parents create better students and better outcomes, and we have to be a partnership and all this sort of, like, cooperative learning, and it's kind of bullshit. This experience has shown me, like, and because there's been a million other experiences too over the course of the 12 years I've gone through with the kids now, they just want to send you fucking invitations to Peach Jar. That's all they want to do. That's it. Like, they just want to send you apps that you have to download and, like, things you haveと sign off on. I've

0:17:59 Thomas: My God. Yeah. How many different apps do you have? How many apps do we have three different? Oh, how many different maps are you on? 10.

0:18:05 Tom: Got this fucking thing called Peach Jar, which is to get flyers from the school digital flyers. I've got Power School. Power School talk is a fucking absolute whoever designed Power School has has the same level of technical knowledge in web development that I do. Zero.

0:18:10 Thomas: Oh, Jesus Christ.

0:18:17 Eli: Power school rules. For the non -parents in our audience, power school is a national program. Almost all schools in the country have it. If your state doesn't have it, they have to register their own with the national thing. So everyone uses power school, which means it's made by a government website designer. And I don't know if you've operated a website that's been created by our government in the last hundred years, but it is Space Jam levels of ancient. Here's my favorite thing, okay? So, there's no PDF viewer in PowerSchool. So what it does is it downloads the PDF if you click on it.

And that's fine if you're on a computer, because you get a little pop -up and you go, you're downloading, you're looking at it. But if you have an iPhone, they're just like, where do you want us to put this?

I've heard you've heard a thing called Files. Do you want to search for files? And then just see a bunch of these motherfucking forms, really haberdasher, we have not named or dated any of this garbage. And PowerSchool, which I love about it so much, is it's a terrible app, it's terribly designed. It is also the only place you can deliver report cards. You cannot send it through any of the well-designed apps. So they'll be like, your Your kid's got a report card, but fuck me if you're going to see it today.

0:18:27 Tom: Oh, my God. It's so bad.

0:18:29 Thomas: I don't think I have it.

0:19:07 Thomas: Goes into your file system. Yeah. That's so true. Oh wow.

0:19:39 Thomas: Jesus.

0:19:40 Tom: Yeah, PowerSchool also, we have, obviously, we've a blended family. So, like, Aislinn is in this district. She's in high school. Eamon is in the same district. He is in elementary school. That means that I want to log into PowerSchool and I want to be able to see both of my kids. I cannot join them together.

0:19:58 Eli: Oh,

0:19:58 Thomas: Are you sure you can't just settle for one of them or?

0:19:58 Tom: Haley has to log in to see Aislinn and I get to log to see Eamon, but when you go to, like, add family member, it's like, okay, put in the student's name, no problem. Put in this student's access ID. I figured out access ID is their student ID. You would not know that naturally from anything like that. But then it says access, access password. And there's just a third thing you have to put in in order to join them together. And I fucking asked the school, I'm like, I don't know what the access password is. I needed like add a family member. And they basically were like, we don't know either. So Haley can log in and see Aislinn. I can't, I can log into. So we have to like trade phones back and forth, like to see who's doing what, because there is no way that we can figure out through fucking PowerSchool's, school's ancient Egyptian web architecture to figure out how to, like, connect these fucking dots. It is, dude.

0:20:16 Thomas: God. Oh, my God.

0:20:52 Eli: It's the best.

0:20:59 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:21:01 Eli: But Tom, do you have here comes the bus?

0:21:02 Tom: It's the worst. Yeah, I have Here Comes the bus. Can we be mad at Here Comes the Bus together? Okay.

0:21:05 Thomas: Wow.

0:21:07 Eli: Here comes the buzz. OK, here's what I want you to imagine. If podcast listener, if you don't know anything about computers, maybe you're a little older, maybe just not necessarily a tech person. I want to imagine someone put a gun to your head right now and they were like, draw the interface for the bus app. App, what you would draw is so much better than here comes the bus. I mean, just think about what the name here comes to the bus implies about the people who designed the app. Here comes the bus. All right, fellas, this is how all transportation is going to take place. I will remind you this is to field trips. This is to special trips .This is to and from school. And yes, this does apply to students with disabilities as well who might not otherwise be able to get to school without our help. What should we call the app to make it as easy as possible for them to use? Here Comes the bus. Yeah.

0:22:02 Thomas: Wow,

0:22:04 Tom: Well, dude, so Here Comes the Bus is supposed to give you a notification when the bus has entered your area and that. That would be really useful if the area that they defined, the radius that they defined, had any meaningful time relation to you in any way.

0:22:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:25 Eli: They're Using the same tracker as Grubhub, where they'll be like, your food's already there, and you're like, I don't think so. And you see a guy pull up like three blocks down and just throw a bag out his

0:22:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:35 Tom: So Amon gets up. So we'll talk about buses in a second, too. But like Amon, get on the bus at 8:40. That's what time his bus is supposed to arrive. The fucking Here Comes the Bus thing sends me a push notification that the bus has entered the danger zone or whatever at 8:17 this morning. But the bus didn't pull up until 8 .42.

0:22:55 Tom: So like it sends a notification literally like 25 minutes ahead of time. What good is it? What am I supposed to do with information like that?

0:22:50 Eli: Window. Danger zone. Keep

0:22:55 Thomas: Yeah,

0:23:04 Eli: In mind that for Tom, that's a shock. That's an electric shock to the

0:23:08 Tom: I don't need to know when the bus might arrive in a half an hour or so. That's not useful. Like tell me when the buses like two or three blocks away, if it's raining or cold, that would be super fucking useful.

0:23:08 Thomas: Wow.

0:23:08 Eli: Balls, if that, that notification is right there. So Tom wakes up 5 a.m., just gets a notification. Buses exist. Come on!

0:23:28 Tom: God damn it.

0:23:29 Eli: Damn it. This one's yellow. What? That's not, I don't need. Ah. Don't sit in seat 4B, let me tell you. They have numbers and letters now? Oh, yeah.

0:23:34 Tom: Oh, fuck. Well, speaking of 5 a .m., Aislinn, starting high school, her bus picks her up at 6:15 in the morning.

0:23:46 Eli: Nuts.

0:23:47 Tom: She's got to get up at 5:15 in the morning to wake up, get dressed, get ready for school, have something to eat, and get the fuck out the door. At 6:15, school starts at 7:20. They start class now in high school at 7:20. So that's the first bell. It's asinine. What time is your high school start, you motherfucker? I hate you, like, on a deep personal level. Right?

0:24:00 Eli: Mm -hmm. Mm -huh. For everyone, again, at home, just keep in score. Latest high school start in the nation, New Jersey.

0:24:06 Thomas: That's nuts. Wow! Never! They don't go.

0:24:16 Eli: 9 .30, baby. Maybe nine 30 plus they have legally mandated extension time. So you can say my kid takes gym in the morning. No, they don't. And so they don'T have to come in until 10 30.

0:24:24 Thomas: Go. I hope

0:24:30 Tom: Now when I was in high preschool 321 years ago, you could opt into something called zero hour. So if you wanted to build extra credits into your school curriculum, you could op in and have an early class, and I did that all four years, and it started at 7:15, but it was always gym class. The only people that were there were the knuckleheads who were like, I like school enough that I want to do more of it. So, like, that was me, and that was, like, 30 other people. Like, it was not a lot of people. They had to do gym, which was fine. It was a great way to wake up in the morning, you know? So, like, I, I chose that though. Now just the, every kid, 7:20. And so she's on a bus also for, like, like an hour.

0:25:07 Eli: Yeah. Oh yeah.

0:25:12 Tom: The school is 10 minutes away. 10 minutes away. If I get in my car and drive to school, it's 10, maybe 12 minute drive to get her to school. She's on that fucking bus for an hour, she's up at 5 .15, and she's supposed to do like math or some shit at 7 .20 in the morning.

0:25:29 Thomas: She likes listening to her, uh, Walkman. What are they, what do they got now? What are the kids got? I guess

0:25:34 Tom: A Walkman. A Walkman! A Walkman! Thomas, I wouldn't even say that.

0:25:35 Eli: Walk her Zune. Thomas, did you get sucked through a time portal while Tom was talking about here comes the bus.

0:25:43 Thomas: They have phones, huh?

0:25:41 Tom: A Walkman, what just happened here? In Thomas's world, that somebody's got like a giant boom box on their shoulder, like walking around.

0:25:47 Thomas: Yeah. Well, that'd be disturbing to the other passengers.

0:25:50 Eli: I hope you're enjoying some hip hop there on your, on your blaster. Is that, is that fun? Might want to check out Matchbox 20. He's not crazy. He's a little unwell. All right, excuse me, I'm gonna go bet on 9-11 or whatever it is I'm doing.

0:26:06 Tom: All right, so apps that I have for the school.

0:26:07 Thomas: Bet on 9-11.

0:26:10 Tom: I've got School Bucks, which is for paying for school lunches. Then I've Got Something Called,

0:26:10 Eli: All school lunches in New Jersey are free.

0:26:18 Tom: Swear to God, Eli Bosnick.

0:26:19 Eli: I'm just adding my own color

0:26:18 Thomas: At least we have that too, I think.

0:26:22 Tom: Do you think I don't have a car and a lot of rage to get out? Do you know what

0:26:25 Eli: Commentary. It's true. It's

0:26:27 Thomas: Tom, you can't. The pool. Think of the pool. The water.

0:26:29 Eli: Through. Think of the pool. Think of a pool.

0:26:32 Thomas: You can't neglect the water.

0:26:32 Eli: Tom, think about how acidic it would while you were over here murdering

0:26:35 Tom: The pool is at this point? It's like one of those fucking nuclear reactor things. They're just going to lower me into it to cool me off a few times a day. The pool is going to warm up on its own. So I got fucking school bucks. Then I got Pushcoin. Pushcoin is where you pay other things you have to pay.

0:26:40 Eli: Me. Yes.

0:26:42 Thomas: What?

0:26:51 Eli: School uniforms, merch, field trips, registration fees

0:26:51 Thomas: Jesus.

0:26:51 Tom: Yeah, like registration fees. So, yeah, so registration fees.

0:26:59 Thomas: I hate this so much.

0:26:59 Tom: I've already mentioned Peach Jar, PowerSchool, Here Comes the Bus. Then you've got the emails, which, no bullshit, you get emails from teachers potentially, you get emails from the district, and then you get females that are specific for the school themselves. So this week, school just started, just fucking just started. It's been like four days. School just started on Thursday for no reason, I don't know why that is. School just decided we had, like, like crazy rainstorms, and the high school, Aislinn's high school, got flooded out. It's all damaged and fucked up. So for the last two days, she's had remote learning.

0:27:35 Tom: So, so far, two out of her four days of high school have been remote learning, which means that two out of four days, shit literally doesn't have to do anything except for wake up and take attendance. Yeah.

0:27:43 Thomas: They still make her ride the bus for an hour, though.

0:27:46 Eli: Yeah, yeah, everyone just get on the bus, we're gonna drive you to the bottom of the ocean, and then you all log into Zoom. Play Roblox. It's

0:27:52 Thomas: I

0:27:52 Tom: And then on top of that shit for Amen, then you've got daily planner check -ins. So So he brings his planner home every day and I've got to look at his planner, make sure he does the stuff at his planner and sign off on it. So other than fucking peach jar power school, here comes the bus emails from three different locations, daily planner checks and fucking push coin. There's hardly anything to keep up with at all. I mean, the work basically does itself.

0:28:18 Thomas: Don't know what you're complaining about. Yeah.

0:28:18 Eli: Because you have it so easy in the other parts of your, your lifetime, you know. That's what it is. It's just a

0:28:21 Tom: It's fucking insane. Insane. It's fucking insane. Yeah.

0:28:24 Thomas: And I'm realizing I'm spoiled because like the kids are young enough that I still get the jokes about the apps because we have one or two, I think. But it's all like, hey, if you want to see pictures of your kids that we took while you were not watching them, here's an app that you don't have to download. And you'll just I don't download it. So I just get an email and a text saying there's something in the app you don't have.

0:28:35 Tom: Class

0:28:45 Eli: Cakewalk.

0:28:46 Thomas: So for me, it's much more I'm realising once it becomes stuff where it's like you have to be on it. And Lydia will probably tell me there's one we have of that that I don't know about. But short of that, that's going to suck. I'm not looking forward to that.

0:28:59 Eli: So our version of that is Class Dojo, which is the, like, Uh, Here's, here, yeah, here's the pictures that we took of your kid while you weren't watching them. And we have a yearly tradition here at the Bosnick household, which is that the Class Dojo has a very deceptive ads to try to get you to sign up for their Pro program.

0:29:04 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

0:29:04 Tom: Dojo.

0:29:18 Eli: Right, and their Pro programme is like, it lets you look at the history and blah blah blah, but you get at all the features at Class Dojo for no money. The problem is my wife will be looking at the pictures of our adorable child on Class Dojona pop-up that'll be like, see even more pictures, join Pro now pops up and she's like, should I? And I'm like, abso-fucking-lutely you should. But of course there are no extra, but like there's not a real, that's just a pop-op. They're allowed to lie in the pop-ap. Yes, exactly. I've got a ChatGPT version of my son, so we, we like to fall for Class Dojo every year, and every year we go like, hey, we're not going to fall off Class Doja this time. A reminder that we don't need to sign up. And then they'll be like, you could be looking at hundreds more pictures, and we're like, God, press it twice

0:29:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Didn't like generate new pictures. Yeah.

0:30:01 Thomas: Totally. We almost had that with the they keep saying, hey, buy Remy's yearbook. And I was like, ooh, Remy'S yearbook? Plus there's one time where we missed a yearbook. Like I'm, I'm still mad about it. I'll be mad about forever. We somehow missed a Yearbook because they don't make enough for like everyone to have one for some reason. I don't, I don'T know why that is. We missed one of Phoebe's like Phoebe'S first yearbook, I think.

0:30:01 Tom: Oh

0:30:24 Thomas: And so from then on, I'M, you know, I' m kind of on the lookout for the whole yearbook thing. And it says Remy'S yearbook get Remy's yearbook was like, is this what do is, do we do this? And Lee's like, oh no, that's just like the AI generated, like the app makes like a fake yearbook, you know, it's that same thing. And I was like, Oh, I almost bought it several times.

0:30:23 Tom: No

0:30:39 Eli: Yeah. Yeah, I think I said this in our private chat, but 59 to 95 of the emails you get from the school are nonsense you should ignore, and five percent are your kid will be fired out of a cannon at the side of the gym if you don't fill out this form in

0:30:54 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:30:56 Tom: Oh, my God, yes. Okay, I real quick, I have to... I did something kind of because I'm like, I'm, I'm losing my fucking mind, like, I am going, I am absolutely going crazy. So I told you we had these crazy storms, the school got flooded, we got an email, and the email said "in climate weather" "Weather," not "inclement weather." And I just, I replied to... I had to, like, I know it doesn't go anywhere, but I'm just like,

0:31:16 Eli: Triplicate. We

0:31:15 Thomas: Yeah, not inclement or whatever. Aren't you a fucking school?

0:31:22 Eli: Got

0:31:23 Tom: "This is... I'm embarrassed for you. This is embarrassing. That's not a word. You're the high school. In climate weather?" I was like,

0:31:28 Thomas: In climate weather? Yeah.

0:31:31 Eli: "Some of that climate weather you heard so much about."

0:31:33 Tom: You're just fucking

0:31:33 Thomas: My favorite thing is imagining the etymology of when people fuck things like that up. That's like one of my favorite things that I just do to myself. Oh, yeah. See, weather, when it's nice, it's not in climate.

0:31:44 Tom: Jackasses.

0:31:45 Eli: But now it is.

0:31:45 Tom: It's climate. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:45 Thomas: But when it is really bad, that is in climate, yeah, are you kidding? We are in climate over here. Yeah.

0:31:48 Eli: Oh god, I love that so much, because Thomas is picturing someone being like, "Now what's the correct turn of phrase?" And really it's just a me hitting the keys on his keyboard with the back end of his subway sandwich. "And climate." Pretty sure that's it. Now if you excuse me, I, I got a jerk off on my work computer in my office at work. The classroom. Yeah.

0:32:08 Tom: All right.

0:32:18 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:32:20 Tom: So you asked me about whether the kids, if I knew where the kids were going to transfer when they're done with the community college. So we know right where they're going to transfer. So there's a school that is pretty local to us. Donovan is going to go, he's going to do like the four plus one master's program for cybersecurity. And there's, there's There's a school right near us that is a.

0:32:37 Eli: It's five, by the way. I'll save you some time. Donovan. He didn't take the SATs. They know.

0:32:42 Tom: OK, write that down. Four plus one is five.

0:32:44 Thomas: So it's not one of the better schools. Okay.

0:32:48 Tom: Yeah. But it's accredited by the Department of Homeland Security for cybersecurity. So they got a real good program. You know, it's a it's good deal for them. And that also happens to be a school that has a very good program that Finn will be doing. So Finn's going to get a business degree in human resources management and organizational leadership. So they've got a program at the same school, so the kids will be able to go to the same college. There's just like one year that they'll be missing each other, which was last year, right? So the

0:32:55 Thomas: Oh,

0:33:15 Eli: Oh, human resource. You can teach him the art of firing.

0:33:18 Tom: Art of firing people. The subtle art of

0:33:18 Thomas: Yeah. I was going to say, as someone with a business degree, I was about to be like, oh, don't. And then he said human resources. Like, oh no, that's probably like a good. So you're not going to the business school to be like, I'm going to come up with the next billion dollar idea. It's like, no, just going to go. Yep. Okay. No, that's good. That's smart.

0:33:27 Tom: Yeah. Nope, nope, that's not Finn. Yeah, that's not, that's nothing.

0:33:34 Eli: Are you going to do like a Jason Bourne situation where he comes home one day and there's a guy in a bag and you take the bag off and you're like, "Fire him," and he's like, "What did he do?" And you know, like it Doesn't matter, fire him.

0:33:44 Thomas: No,

0:33:41 Tom: Yeah, God. I wish our H and my, I wish HR department was Involved in the firing. We didn't have to do it. They don't do a fucking anything like that.

0:33:51 Thomas: It'll be take off the mask. Pretend to care about this guy. Pretend to care about this guy and then only look out for the company.

0:33:55 Tom: I can't do it. Is this, this the final, is this my capstone project? I can't do

0:33:58 Thomas: Tell him you have his best interests at heart and then you actually don't. You just care about the corporate bottom line, but you want to make it look a little bit better.

0:34:04 Eli: Okay, everybody, today we're running the state training on awareness of vehicles in the workplace. I'm gonna take this hood off this guy. All right?

0:34:11 Tom: It, so

0:34:14 Thomas: Yeah. Show him a sexual harassment video from the 80s. Do it.

0:34:17 Eli: Does anyone know what a car is? Let's all raise our hands like children, like little baby children, and someone say, say what a card is to me, another full-grown adult here in this one precious life we've been given. Okay, phones down, everybody. I know that it's 9-11, but we need 2001, but I need, I need full focus up here. Does anyone know what a car is?

0:34:27 Thomas: And I won't move on until you do.

0:34:43 Thomas: No.

0:34:44 Tom: To Do the transfer. You guys went to community college, right? You guys didn't do community college, right? You guys went right to, like, the university system nearby, or local four-year or something?

0:34:51 Thomas: No, I went. I mean, call it nearby. Who's an hour and a half away, which is for me at the time, quite far away.

0:34:57 Eli: I attended New York University, America's number one dream school. I don't know.

0:34:57 Tom: Okay all right Uh, you've never mentioned that actually. I didn't know.. Yeah. OK. Huh. Yeah, I don't know you. So. Haley and I both did community college first and then we transferred over to get to finish our degree somewhere else. We're making all the kids do that just for the dollars. Right. So it doesn't the dollars and cents don't add up, in my opinion, to do otherwise. So they're all going to do the same thing.

But you've got to, like, work with somebody pretty early on to make sure that the classes that you're taking at the community college not only transfer, but will transfer and mean something for your upcoming degree, right? So typically when that happens, what you have is like a transfer guide. Schools have reciprocal relationships with other schools, and you can very easily say, hey, I'm going to transfer from a school X to school Y. I'm in a major in this, and they'll just lay out, oh, here's all the classes you can take at the community college level. Then these other classes you'll take at your final school, at the university or college or wherever you're transferring into. But we picked a school that just for the sake of fuck, I guess. I don't know. They don't have a fucking transfer guide or reciprocal relationship with the community college nearby. They are

0:35:08 Thomas: Yep.

0:36:08 Thomas: Oh, Jesus.

0:36:08 Tom: 40 minutes away from each other. I do not know why they are 40 minutes from each another. So we had, and I am not exaggerating, 39 emails back and forth with the world's least useful, least interested, and least competent transfer director. I have I've never met anybody who cared less about their job and how it would be done than this person because it's easy work, right? It's super easy work. You say, "Hey, I'm at school X. My major is Y. I'm looking to find out what classes I can take. There is no transfer guide. Can you tell me?" And what they should tell you is specific classes with course numbers, because every college names something different, right? Right. So like, you might have Psych 101 or Psych 100 or General Psychology or Introduction to Psychiatry. They don't all say, they're not all in there. You can't assume that they're the same thing. You cannot. If you assume it, you could pay for and take a class that then doesn't transfer one

0:36:20 Thomas: Oof. Yeah. Yep, oof, yeah.

0:36:31 Eli: Yeah, my

0:37:07 Tom: To one into the other school. It's a fucking mess.

0:37:09 Eli: Favorite is when you're talking to those people and it goes like this, it's like, oh, wait, sorry, what's the name? And you're like, Tom. And they're like, and you're like, that's more letters than my name is. That's so many more letters. Why are you still typing? Are you typing? Be a computer. And when you're a computer, I want you to open up to a page that says top curry all

0:37:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah...

0:37:31 Tom: That's exactly like it's crazy and like this lady that we're talking to I'm trying to do this over email and like I said literally not exactly 39 emails because I'm and I am very clear when I'm frustrated I'm like okay I'm frustrated I'M GOING TO WRITE A VERY CLEAR EMAIL AND LIKE I'M GONNA BE LIKE ALL RIGHT I'M GONNA ASK WITH REAL SPECIFICITY AND THEN I'LL GET A GENERAL ANSWER or an answer that's wrong, you know? And I'll be like, hey, I think that's inaccurate. It's like, I'm getting, it's like I'm talking to fucking chat GPT. It's that fucking absolutely useless.

0:37:45 Thomas: And no one can tell you're mad at all.

0:37:45 Eli: Caps. I mean, To be fair, Tom, you probably aren't talking to chat GPT a fair amount of the

0:38:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:06 Tom: I had to go, I had a buddy of mine that worked at that school for like 20 years. And I'm like, Hey, have you ever worked with this person? He just laughed. And he's like Yup. And I'm like, who's your boss? And he is like, here. And am like, cool. I was, I did a Zoom call with that lady yesterday. And was like, am trying to give you guys probably like a hundred thousand dollars. I know enrollment is down. I'm trying to salvage any interest I still have in transferring my two students to your school, so like, let's get on a call. And I got on a caller and she was like, it was like a nine-minute call. She's like, yeah, I can just put this thing together for you

0:38:15 Eli: Time oh it's it's insane how fast the eventual eventual solution. I might, my theory is the longer and more painful the process leading up to it is the quicker it is. Like if you had sent five more emails, she would have been like, Oh, one second. Click. There you go. They're all done. They were all set in college. They just had to push that button that says, do it.

0:38:57 Thomas: I'm

0:38:54 Tom: Yes. It's been the worst. Like, this week has been an exercise in daily incompetence and frustration. Like, everything has been fucking insane with getting these, and it's just the first week of, of school. It's the first week. They have Thursday, will be the first act. They started last week Thursday, we're recording this, it's Tuesday. Guys, there's been four days of school. It's gone. I know, it's so bad. Oh

0:39:22 Eli: And you don't even know how Tuesday all the way went yet. You might, they might come back and be like, they kicked me out, dad. They said, I can't be there anymore. She pushed that button. Now, now I go to Donovan's college. I don't know why, But I do have an IEP.

0:39:37 Tom: My God, Jesus.

0:39:37 Eli: I have a kick -ass IEP that's got an aid and I get extra time on the desk. I'm going to need it. I'm gonna need it because that's four more security cyber securities than I was expecting.

0:39:46 Tom: Christ. I will say this, I've got that fucking IEP meeting, uh, this coming week, actually, on Friday, and motherfucker, that IEP meaning, they better have that paperwork addressed to me. If they don't have it addressed to, I'm walking out of that meeting, um

0:40:01 Thomas: Throwing him in my acid pool that I've now had to neglect this whole time

0:40:02 Tom: Yeah, no.

0:40:03 Eli: Oh, do it as a mean impersonation of your ex. If they're like, oh, sorry, this is to Mrs. Schmantherfams. You should be like, oh, hello. And then you put on like a weird wig. Yes, exactly. Yes. A much more violent Mrs. Doubtfire.

0:40:12 Thomas: Oh, Mrs. Doubtfire, yes, yes.

0:40:13 Tom: For like, I'll Mrs. Doubtfire the whole thing. God, yeah. For real though. For real, yeah. If that shit is, is not fixed, if it is not addressed to me, and if Hayley is not on that shit, like, I'm just like, "We don't have a meeting today. Like, there's no point in having a meeting. There's not a point in here. So until you guys get your shit together, I'm walking out." Like, I, I'm gonna treat it like buying a fucking car. Like, you just have to be, like, aggressive at some point, I think.

0:40:19 Thomas: Like

0:40:37 Eli: Now, can I give you a little tip? Because I've been through plenty of IEP meetings at this point. Don't do an impersonation of your kid. No matter how much you fucking nail them to the wall, no matter how good it is and how much you think it'll help them understand their disability. Don't. They get no sense of. Yeah, because I'm a lot. I thought opening with a he's all like impersonation would really smooth the wheels.

0:40:50 Thomas: Here's what he needs. Here's how he is, kind of

0:40:51 Tom: Just the Tip. Okay, I feel like you're gonna have to tell me that. How does that, what

0:41:07 Thomas: Thing look

0:41:09 Eli: But I thought a practice run would do me good. All right, gentlemen, before we go, have you guys heard about quiet tennis? Yeah, it's like regular tennis but without all the racket

0:41:09 Tom: Oh, my God. Oh, my God,

0:41:15 Clip: DEAR OLD DAD

0:41:30 Thomas: At this water

0:42:27 Tom: Soft water, soft dick only.

0:42:30 Eli: Hey, bada bing, nobody wants to come here. Look how silly we talk. Uh-oh, no gun violence

0:42:40 Thomas: Meanwhile, your pool's turning to acid, someone's fucking your wife