So thanks to everyone who attended the last talk of the silicone, it was a very long day and I really much appreciate everyone who joined me today to listen and to maybe share some feedback with our journey in RingCentral, what we are doing and when I started to preparing this talk, this presentation, I go on through several phases, I try to talk about different things but in my opinion, the most important part is not what you can read in documentation or what you can get online or I could not give talk about the flags or any other stuff better than the creators of these tools who are present at this conference. What I will try to do today is to share our journey in RingCentral, how we ended where we right now with continuous delivery, what we did was good and what was bad and how to avoid some mistakes.  So I will try to do it as a kind of story. So with prologue, pre-acts and epilogue, so it will be a little bit more fun when just a regular talk, but we'll see how it goes. So with prologue, I will introduce our actors. The first actor is me. Nice to meet you, my name is Ivan. I'm working in RingCentral pro year 2015, but I had a break. I left RingCentral and rejoined, started working in one of the startup companies. But essentially, more or less, I worked in RingCentral for six years, launched multiple projects, real projects. I was a cast, I started this project, led them from start to finish. This project landed in the hands of real customers and with thousands upon thousands of customers, happy customers who are using this project right now. I am currently director of engineering at RingCentral and my current role more or less is I work on the latest project, on the video project and I will tell you a little bit more about the company itself. So what is RingCentral? RingCentral is, I don't know, most likely it doesn't anyone heard of RingCentral before? Like, yeah, wow. Yeah, so it's a public company, that's quite a big company, which provides so-called unified communication as a service and what's one of our products called MVP, media phone, sorry, message, video phone. And what it does, it provides to businesses around the world ability to organize your communications with outside world and with inside world, meaning all the communication inside the company, like a phone calls, messaging, video conferencing. So messaging things Slack, video conferencing Zoom and phone is just the regular telephone system. And the company, it's quite, like I said, quite a big company, we have global presence around the world. So North America, it's South America, Southeast Asia and Europe. So we are present almost everywhere in the world. So for example, if you know some of the big companies like AT&T, Telus, Verizon, Vodafone, all our partners, we work very closely with them. And most likely, even if you do not know about ring central because we work in a bit of a space, you most likely encountered it before when you called, for example, Telus and was called on the line or something like this. All this was handled by the essential servers. Not all, but some of the stuff is handled by the essential in our system. So it's quite a lot of deployments around the world. So one of the thing, one important stuff which we are proud of is we have like five nights uptime SLA, which we are constantly uphold year after year for multiple years. Because when we're talking about this communication, it's the last thing which should go out. So multiple things can break, but you should be able to communicate with your customers and inside your organization. We also provide our services not only just regular businesses, but to small and big enterprises as well as the government organizations, healthcare institutions and universities and educational institutions. So we have multiple attestations, multiple certificates, all the stuff. So we need to handle it. We need to make sure we are compliant. We need to make sure we protect our user privacy and all of that. Quite a big challenge in a continuous delivery world and when we're building pipelines and all this stuff. So this is our environment. Yeah, so it's a given state. We cannot, we must somehow in this given state make sure we can live in a modern world. Meaning we need to not deploy every quarter like most telecom companies do. Not most, but big amount of telecom companies do. We want to do it fast. We want to give our customers value as soon as we could. So how do we, what steps we took on this journey? So is it act one? I would say NS may be both most important act of the journey. It's a year 2015 when I joined the company and I started to work on analytics project. Analytics is, it's called real-time analytics and it was one of the most, it was even to this day must like successful internal project because it started completely from scratch from the green field. And to this day, our real-time analytics, our quality of service analytics and everything we do for our customers in terms of way, analytical capabilities is considered best on the market for UCAS providers. So how we did it? So it's interesting, I will, so things I will talk here will be a little bit controversial. I do not want to pit technologies against each other. I do not want to say these technologies work it, these technologies don't. I want to pit methodologies and way of thinking against each other because we will see what I'm talking about later. So we started in 2015 and we had two big contenders in terms of containerization. Before everything was run in virtual machines. So it was VMware cloud, VMware on our own hardware and we started, okay, we need to containerize, we need to start using Kubernetes. Again, here is 2015, Kubernetes is kind of very young but we also another contender, it's a Mezos and Mezos smartphone which we try to do as well, but we took two completely different approaches. One approach was DevOps and another was DevOps. So what do I mean by it? It depended on the focus, if I'm like this DevOps circle, I'm not circle but infinity symbol, one is there, one is DevOps and they like interconnect. It's usually very heavily from my experience is very heavily focused on Dev side or on the Ops side and they not evenly balanced. In our case, it was the same. So we had DevOps approach which was heavily operational sided and DevOps approach which was heavily Dev side. I was worked on the Dev side and another team, big team worked on the operational side. So I would say like two things to approach this process kind of DevOps and department kind of DevOps. So when we're talking about the process side of DevOps because we launched the Greenfield projects, analytics was the Greenfield project, we focused on end-to-end ownership very heavily. So we try to give our customers product as fast as we could and we were able to build our first version towards first real paying customer in just four months. It was very quick for the company like Ring Central, trust me, some projects takes years to launch. While the department of Ops, they focused on the operational side and they wanted to build a tool set. Like everyone does, even many companies does right now. So we hired DevOps engineers and we said, okay, we're gonna do DevOps by building tools and doing all this stuff. So developers could use this new like measures, use all this stuff and we concentrate on the tooling. Another thing which was differentiated between the operational DevOps approach and like process DevOps is we focused on the money repository, everything was configured in one money repository and it's really sticked. So we always started to use money repository from this day and going forward all our projects use money repositories and it's I think the best possible approach in organizing key work because we have ability to atomically update configuration, update code and package them together and there's a lot of tools which helps to work with money repository like environments. So yeah, we focused on the delivery, like I said, we wanted to push updates to our customers like daily. Even before like we knew about the Dora metrics about all this stuff, we just wanted to make sure we can do it fast as fast as possible and we rejected some processes. And from the downside, we created our own tooling because again, year 2015 where it's like no service mesh existed, at least the working condition, there's no operators, no like great pipeline tools so we written everything from scratch. We use Scala programming language at the time. And we didn't document anything because we were focused just on the delivery and of course because of that, we had like really poor documentation. So I could say both these approaches, I would not want to wait which one was better, which one was worse. I only speak from my experience so in our organization, our company, the second one never worked. I witnessed multiple projects which failed on its tracks or it's failed later in the year or it's canceled after the year or it's achieved very little meaningful output. And I think the main reason here is because people were focused, was not focused on the customer. And there's one great talk yesterday it was called process or not, people process tools. Yeah, and I think what we did here, like unintentionally, we started with people and trying to mold the process before we worked on the tool tools. So this was very, very important and yeah, but everything which matters is the customers and like a code, code we build and customers we serve. If anything in between just noise, it's lost effort, it does not provide any value. So the very first lesson we learned and very important stuff without, which should be starting point in like GitOps and anything we build, at least from my experience as established DevOps culture. Without it, you will build tools. You will not, again, from my experience, very hard to succeed. Never seen a successful project which was focused on the operational side without thinking about the cultural change first because in the end, after you did everything, you will just strike this resistance from the development side, from the business side and project most likely will be there and die. So it's a prerequisite. So fast forward, year 2019 and I worked on, I did additional projects but I started to work in AI. Hot thing at the time, hot thing, right, even hotter right now. We were building services for speech recognition, computer vision, conversational intelligence, all this very interesting stuff. Transformers was published recently so we were excited and working all this stuff. And when we started to do these projects, another big change happened in terms of how we approached our development and what tools we used and this change was GitOps and we found out what Flux exists. It was version even one or even zero something like it's very first version of Flux and very first version of GitOps and again the spinnaker versus Flux did not say one better than another but what we very heavily understood and it was like this moment of clarity is we started to think not in terms of pipelines but in terms of conditions. So I constantly hear in this conference pipeline, pipeline, we build pipeline, we do pipelines. I think pipelines are evil. Yeah, so pipelines are very hard to maintain in a real production scenario. Pipelines are hard to build and pipelines can be very slow. So I can give you an example, a real life example from the central point of view is we have a pipeline, we can build a pipeline. Okay, we started to building a simple pipeline so we build something, verify it, test it and then deploy it to production, for example, to production, simple pipeline, it works. But when you start to say, okay, I need to run different kind of tests. I need to run regression tests and what's about manual gateway? How do I accommodate this pipeline? Okay, maybe I need to run pipeline in staging because this is critical change and how do I define which change is critical? Okay, I need to add change management procedures. I need to add additional security checks. I need to add, and pipelines just grows, grows and it never finishes. Yeah, it takes too much time and when you started to change pipelines, tooling changes, it's a mess. Very hard to reason about. So here, when GitOps appeared and we started to gather this puzzle and we started to think about our software as not as a delivery cycle, not as a pipeline but as set of conditions which must be satisfied. So what do I mean by it? I mean, if I want to release, so how does it, yeah? So, and I think this condition is a slider in my head, yeah? So, and these conditions are equal maybe to, equal to requirements, equal to something else. I do not have good name for it, yes. So I went coin it when I was preparing this presentation but when I have a piece of software which need to be run on a specific environment and here a common denominator is something running, code's running on an environment. In our case, it's a Kubernetes cluster. We, different types of environment for the same piece of code has different conditions. I mean, like in lab, you just need the working code to be able to run it. In CI environment or integration environment, it needs to be not just working but like, be at least without crashing bugs or not crashing all the time. In Canary and the preview release for internal users, it need to pass some security checks, some additional checks like quality gates but it not need to be really robust. If we deploying on the other hand to our customers like a partners or companies like gas hospitals and healthcare institution, it need to have very rigorous security checks run and we need to make sure what we run, we do not introduce any kind of back holes and I'm trying to malware. So it takes a lot of effort to do. But every environment has different requirements and as soon as you satisfy these requirements, you can deploy. So instead of just a pipeline which runs sequentially, right now you only have, like I satisfy this condition, I can deploy it to this environment. This changed our way of thinking with GitOps essentially. So GitOps allowed us to start thinking in this manner. Yeah, so we have Git's repository which has all the environments and all the artifacts on this environment and now we only need to make and shoe basically what we satisfy conditions. So how we do it, we changed approach and we're gonna change it again, I will tell you a little bit later but before few additional pieces which was very important in this process. The first one was like an old brainer, we had talks, we've seen talks today about the cannery releases and cannery analysis and one of these tools which we heavily use for all our stateless deployments is a Flagger. So is anyone familiar with a Flagger? Okay, so it's a tool which also developed by VifWorks which allows you to basically configure cannery releases very easily. Very easily configure very easily cannery releases. It makes, so you can define like canary, red, red, red, black, blue, green release types. You can define the cannery analysis routine and it's why it's important because when you have this work with GitOps, you really just change the environment but it does not, you can already different talks with say today changing the environment could lead to like problems. So you need to additional verification. So Flagger's helped with that. Very important tool, look it out. Another tool which we also heavily use to satisfy the condition is a Test Cube. So Test Cube allows us, again part of the Kubernetes infrastructure allows us to run tests in parallel in Kubernetes cluster and use API to verify what the specific type of conditions and test was, in fact was run as an audit trail. So we will really launch this test and this test passed and we can rely on this like a requirement like I said. We also use Caverna very heavily because one thing is to have all these requirements set up and have all the audit logs and all the trails about what it was really launched. Another thing is to enforce it. So we use Caverna to enforce what all the requirements are in fact really exist on the piece of software we're trying to deploy. So like combining all that, we started to, we were able to change our tooling yeah, so we were able to replace one with another. We started to see what the benefits are. We started to work with different types of pipelines and it's really made everything a lot easier. So an additional thing which is, we also was very, very important for us and I always talk about it inside the company and trying all our developers, all our engineers to adopt is a hermetic build. So what does it mean? Hermetic build means when you build something in different environments, you always have the same result. So it's essentially hermetic. So I built it on my local machine, I built it on one CI server, I built it on another CI server. I have one artifact with exactly the same control cell. First of all, it's very convenient so you do not have this environment issue, like you can build and reproduce it locally just from the commit. But another very important part here is ability to build it from the security point of view, build the same thing on the multiple environments because this is one of the security checks, what you need to ensure, what you have like secure build environments, all this stuff. So you can build on multiple environments and if we have drift of the control sum, we can figure out which environment could be compromised or we could have some problems with it. It also allows us to deploy the same build everywhere. So again, like federal agencies, FedRAM, or institutional healthcare institution, we have very strict requirements where this build could be built, how it built, what environment is used, who has access to this environment. And because of that, if you do not have hermetic build, you can essentially get a different image and you deploy one thing in one environment, another thing in another environment and you're praying to the gods, maybe because it was built from the same sources, it should align. It's not always the case. So hermetic builds is very, very important. For that, we're using NixOS for base layer so it isolates it on the library level. We're using Bazel as a build tool and we orchestrated with using GitLab pipelines, using GitLab internally. Yeah, so moving forward today. So right now I'm working on the video project and this is, like I said, why are we using these tools like a flagger, like a test hub, which part of the Kubernetes infrastructure because we have APIs which is easy to integrate and when we have these checks, we have to implement our own way of thinking, how we integrate it without pipelines, how we call one API calls another, our checks are satisfied. It's not as easy. But very, very cool thing happened recently. And this is ability to support OCI manifests and the ability to sign them. So what I mean by OCI manifest, Flux allows you to package all your manifests into container image, OCI image in this case. And this container image is immutable. Yeah, it already contains all the deployments, all the container images you need, all the settings, everything, like secrets, config maps, all the stuff. And then you can sign it and you can sign it multiple times. So what we do right now to satisfy this condition, when we build an artifact using, we build an OCI artifact, when we just sign it very easily. So test passed, we have a signature. Security passed, we have a signature. Even manual QA regression could sign it. In some companies, we still have manual verification step. We could sign it. Secure builder, build the same kind of image. We sign it. We sign it like we can have 20, 30, 50 signatures on the image. And then what we do, we just basically all our environments are always verified. If image contains all the necessary signatures, it can be deployed and it automatically promote it. So it's completely asynchronous workflow and OCI artifacts and cosine simplifies it to the level it's really easy to do and really easy to reason about because you have an audit trail, you have a signature which you can trace and you can trust. And yeah, and you can do it and different steps in this process, in this condition, do not need to know anything about each other, which is also very beautiful. So you could easily change it. Oops, so in epilogue, I had a different epilogue before, before I attended this conference. This epilogue was about tech radar. So we used and created a tech radar. And what it was, it was like, anyone knows about tech radar? What is it? Okay, no hints. So tech radar is, again, really nice things inside the engineering ecosystem. It's like, it's a circle with different quadrants which are divided and adapt, not adapt, trial, et cetera. And you can easily move some technologists and say this technologist is good to adapt, this technologist we should deprecate, et cetera. So I thought in epilogue, talk about the tech radar, but I thought even now, it's not as interesting. What is interesting is during this conference, I encountered the project called CD events. I never heard about it before. But this project is very heavily resonate with stuff we do ourselves internally. So we're trying to do this pipeline delivery. And CD events, it's a specification. It does not have real implementation, like real, real implementation right now. It's only like POC. But it tries to define this common ground between all the components, common APIs and how each system in continuous delivery, each part in continuous delivery ecosystem should, what events it should provide, how it should be consumed, et cetera. So it can be easily integrated into something much bigger. So what I think in our case, in case ring central is, yes, we're using signature, it's a very beautiful solution right now, but we'll definitely go and look into CD events because it looks like finally, we're starting to get this level of integration which does not rely on a pipeline, on a Jenkins pipeline, GitLab pipeline, Tecton pipeline, et cetera. Yeah, just completely independent systems, completely independent tools which could talk one language between each other. So it's a beautiful solution. So I really, again, it's my recommendation. Go look it out. It's a great project and I think it has very bright future. Okay, so yeah, let's end. Any questions? Yeah. I was yesterday in CD events and look like it's work and now you told how you make it in your company, you not use pipeline, you use different environments and build something for these environments and I remember CD events work same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think like we completely came to this independently. I think it's additionally verifies and says like if we did something in the same manner community is trying to move, I think we did the right stuff. So for me, it was very like, I was very excited. So it was pleasure for me to hear about people. We did the right thing essentially, it's a validation. But we build ourselves but I think you should not, we will have CD events and if you want to move in this direction, I think it's better to take existing tool and at least existing approach and try to adapt it. And yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. And also one thing, sorry, because Vancouver is a really beautiful city and a beautiful neighborhood here. I live in Vancouver like that. So if you have time, go on to the hike. It's an excellent weather. You can go up north to Squamish, hike on chief, hike on Groose Mountain, or hike like Eagle Bluffs here on the mountains. It's experience of a lifetime. Thank you.


So think of the movie, The Godfather, right? It's a movie that is just legendary. And it goes through all these kinds of different emotions with anticipation and fear and excitement, just, you know, there's humor in it. There's all kinds of different things in it. It just, it triggers all these different emotions in you. And that's, think of yourself as that, right? Think of helping a guy connect to you through different types of emotions. And that is what makes you stand out. Because for the most part, most guys, they go on dates with most women. And it's really, really boring for a number of different reasons. And so what you wanna do is you wanna stand out by connecting with him. And when you're in the first kind of initial dating phases, you don't need to make them feel a ton of different emotions or really deep emotions or make it really serious or any of that kind of stuff. What you wanna do, especially with the first date, if you go on the first date or the first few dates, what you want is playfulness, right? Love is not serious. Love is playful and fun. And so you wanna start off with playfulness and fun and then eventually go into some deeper types of emotions as you spend more and more time together. So be the godfather to him. Obviously not literally, of course, but be a bunch of different emotions. So how do you kind of trigger different emotions? There's a few different ways to do it. The fastest and easiest way is to ask him different questions that spark emotion, right? Have him remember a time when he did something by just asking him like, hey, is there anything that you're really scared of? Is there anything that really makes you laugh that really is a lot of fun to you? And if you ask him about those things and then get curious about it and have him talk about it, he'll relive those moments in his mind and he'll start to experience those emotions right there while he's sitting with you. That's one of the easiest ways to do it. Another easy way to do it is to have experiences that you guys go through where you experience different types of emotions. And it could be as easy as watching movies together, although that's super, super passive, but also potentially going to different kinds of events together or just different things together and experiencing emotions through that. Another one is learning something together. You can learn a lot about somebody when you learn something together and they have to overcome the difficulty of not knowing how to do something.  It stops being special. That's what the answer is. It stops being special. There's a phrase out there that goes, familiarity breeds contempt. And all this really means is that the more that you are around something, the more that it's in front of you, the more you experience it, the less you appreciate it. So let's take chocolate for instance.  And so what do you want to do?  So maybe eat it once a week or maybe you eat it once every two weeks. And then when you experience chocolate, it'll be this thing that you're looking forward to. It'll be this thing that you think about all week.   And you're like, mm, all week I've thought about eating this chocolate.  And so let's stop talking about chocolate. It's making me hungry. Let's talk about how to use this in the real world because this is normal behavior. This is normal. We all do this. And so the scarcity principle will basically what you want to do is create space.  You want to create some distance because that's when he starts missing you. That's when he has a chance to be thinking about you and his desire and his love will grow for you when you're not there. You'll be thinking about what's she doing, right? Like you'll have all these emotions that are going on that he experienced when he's with you going through him later and he'll be like, oh my God, I can't just like the chocolate. I can't wait to see her again. And so you don't want to be texting him all the time.  You want to give him some space. You want to have an air of mystery about you and what you're doing. And the best way to do that is to create scarcity. Why do people become addicted and obsessed with gambling? It's because of unpredictability. So sometimes they win, right?   And now I just want to kind of throw this out there. Cause this creates addiction, right? Unpredictability creates addiction.  He's going to think you're crazy and he's not going to want to deal with you because he's going to be like, this is way too much, way too much for me. So there's different kind of levels that you can do this with.  And so how do you use unpredictability? When you're texting and we just talked about scarcity and texting, so you don't want to be texting him every single day, right? You don't want to text him good morning and good night every single day. If you do text him good morning and good night, you should do it randomly, randomly throughout the week. If this is something that you do actually do, which is text him good morning and good night, what you should do is just different times, different days, right? Different days don't have a pattern to it and just do it in an unpredictable way. And if you're texting, when you are texting, you can text back immediately sometimes. Maybe sometimes you wait a little bit to text back. Maybe if it's later at night, you wait until the next day to text back. And so just have fun with it. Just play with it. Don't make it serious. Don't try to turn this into a game when you're trying to get something from him or trying to make him do something through it. Just have fun with it. Just make it a part of who you are and what you're doing and just have fun. And don't take it too seriously because like I said, love is playful and fun. It's not serious. And so that's it. The three are emotional range principle, the scarcity principle and unpredictability.  He'll want to be with you and it's a really great way to do things. This is human behavior. This is human psychology right here. This is human biology. We all do this, right? If a guy does this with you, you will feel this exact same way with him.


We're here at Mount Sinai Hospital. Today, one of our heroes, Allison Russo, a 25-year veteran of the fire department, was stabbed by an assailant. She was on duty at the time at EMS Station 49 in Astoria, Queens. She was brought here to Mount Sinai Hospital, which she passed away due to her injuries. Her heart to go out to the family, her colleagues in the city of New York, lost one of our heroes. She provided a service in the city for over 24 years. Her assailant has been apprehended and will be held accountable for his actions. Now turn it over to Acting Fire Commissioner. As the mayor said at 2.20 PM today, Lieutenant Allison Russo was on duty at Station 49. While outside her station, she was stabbed multiple times in a barbaric and completely unprovoked attack. Members of EMS serve only to help and save other people's lives. To be attacked and killed in the course of helping others is both heartbreaking and enraging for our department in ways I cannot describe. Lieutenant Russo exemplified FDNY EMS. She served the city for 25 years. She was a World Trade Center first responder. She was cited multiple times for her bravery and her life-saving work. And she was absolutely beloved on this job. She is the 1,158th member of the FDNY to die in the line of duty and the second member of EMS to die in the line of duty in the last five years. Our hearts break for our entire department and her family. And I'm going to turn it over to the PC to update you on the investigation. Thank you, Commissioner. Today our city is grieving. The New York City Police Department stands united with the FDNY and the entire city of New York as we mourn the tragic loss of a dedicated public servant. This deadly, senseless, broad daylight attack on a uniformed EMT member is a direct assault on our society. It is the latest consequence of the violence that we relentlessly fight in our city. The information we have is still preliminary and is subject to change. Chief Essig will give the details of what we know so far, but we do know this. We can never tolerate this violence in our city. It has to and will be stopped. And we will never forget the brave women and men who put their lives on the line to keep the rest of us safe. So tonight, as the mayor and the commissioner said, please keep this family and the FDNY in your prayers and in your hearts and stand with us as we work to eradicate this violence from our city. Chief Essig. Good afternoon, everybody. Today, at approximately 2.15 p.m., at the corner of 20th Avenue and 41st Street, an on-duty EMS FDNY lieutenant was viciously assaulted with a knife causing her demise. At 2.10 p.m., that EMS lieutenant was on her break and was going to get food nearby. She was assigned to an EMS station approximately one half block away and was attired and closed. They clearly indicated that she worked as an FDNY EMT. At the corner of 20th Avenue and 41st Street, a male 34 years old wearing a light gray shirt and dark pants brandished a knife and viciously attacked the EMS lieutenant, stabbing her numerous times about her body. She was removed to Mount Sinai Queens where she succumbed to her injuries. There were two eyewitnesses who know the perpetrator, one of whom gave chase. The perpetrator runs into 19-80 41st Street on the third floor, his residence, and barricaded himself. Members of the hostage negotiating team and emergency service unit were able to talk this person out of the apartment. He was taken into custody and is presently in the 114th precinct where the investigation is ongoing. With that, I'd like to turn it back over to Commissioner Kavanaugh. I just want to thank the NYPD for bringing the suspect quickly into custody and for doing everything possible to make sure that that happened for us. I'd also like to thank the hospital who did absolutely everything in their power to save the lieutenant tonight. And really please keep the FDNY family, her members at station 49 and her family in your hearts tonight. This is absolutely heartbreaking for them and they need your support and your love. Thank you. Excuse me, commissioner. I'm sorry. Out of respect, I just wanted to say something. Chief, I appreciate your investigation and the work the NYPD has done and commissioner I appreciate the work they've done. I just want to correct one thing. She was not on a break. I heard the word break being used. EMS does not get breaks. We are on duty 24-7, not there to help and save the public. So I want to make that clear because I heard that word used again. We don't get breaks. And EMS. Hold on, hold on, hold on. If any term was used to give the impression that this hero was in any way taking a break or not taking a break, that is not the reality. As in all of our first responders, they are always on call. She was there for a reason. And no matter what the reason was, she should not have been murdered in this fashion. This is a painful time for everyone. And let's be clear on the terminology that is used and reported. She was on duty doing her job saving the people of the city of New York. That was her role. And that's the role of the countless men and women who are moving through the city saving New Yorkers. And I want to thank the union for bringing the members here and for providing them the necessary condolences that they feel right now. I served with the EMS as a police officer. I know what they do every day. Every day they do their job in a manner in which many of us don't realize how dangerous it is. She was working for this city. She paid the ultimate sacrifice because of that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


So, as you probably know, last night were the presidential elections here in the United States, and I just wanted to take a moment to address that. And I'm just kidding. I wouldn't do that. This isn't a political channel. I'm a little aggravated over the last 24 hours before and after the election. How many YouTubers are putting out videos talking about the elections when they aren't political channels?  Unless it's political stuff talking about trademarks, patents, and copyrights, since that has to do with free and open source software, look, I talk about it on this channel. So I'm not going to do that to you. So I just wanted to make this video just as kind of as a joke. So thank you for watching. I hope you have a great day. It's not the end of the world.


Item number SCP-624 Object Class Safe Special Containment Procedures SCP-624 is to be stored in Site-16's safe storage room and charged frequently by testing personnel. Testing is open to all Site-16 personnel with proper clearance. Personal access to SCP-624 is otherwise restricted. SCP-624 is not to be taken off of Site-16 unless in the event of an emergency. SCP-624 must be listened to through regular headphones before being played on regular speakers. SCP-624 is not to be played at Site-16's social functions for entertainment due to containment protocol and possible risk of humiliation of Site-16 personnel. Audio created by SCP-624 is not to be sold commercially nor shared through file-sharing networks. Addendum 624-1 Personnel who do not listen to music, do not like music, or have zero musical influences are not allowed to test SCP-624. CTest Log 624-1 Description SCP-624 is a SanDisk Sansa E200-R MP3 player and voice recorder. The back of the player says SCP-624 contains two gigabytes of memory. Although the original owner's manual claims there are preloaded sample songs, there are no files stored within its memory when played on normal speakers. Uploading music to SCP-624 seems to be impossible, as every program tested, including iTunes, Rhapsody, and Yahoo Music, have all returned with encoding errors. When powering up SCP-624 through headphones, a tone will play, and this tone will be picked up through SCP-624's microphone. If SCP-624 does not detect the tone, it will shut down as if it were locked. If SCP-624 hears the tone from normal speakers, SCP-624 will power on normally, but contain no stored data. If SCP-624 detects the tone from a pair of headphones, SCP-624 automatically fills its library with two gigabytes worth of music. The music in question is all written, produced, played, and sung by the wearer of the headphones. Regardless of current musical talent, each song comes with an appropriate album cover in the listener's artist profile, which is factually incorrect, possibly based on an alternate timeline if the listener had become a full-time musician. When exposed to the musically inclined, SCP-624 will generate specific songs or improve songs they may have already written. When exposed to test subjects with little to no musical experience, SCP-624 will generate music based on their favorite music influences, regardless if they like the generated music or not. These songs tend to be very consistent to the listener, but more songs are added based on musical influences. If space runs out when the listener is introduced to a new musical influence, the listener's least favorite songs are replaced. When shut down, the songs are subsequently deleted, until SCP-624 is introduced to the listener once more. Once powered up through headphones, the listener may unplug his or her headphones and connect SCP-624 to normal speakers. The audio files themselves cannot be transferred, but can be dubbed onto a separate recording device. Test log, SCP-624-1 Subject Subject D-256 Subject's favorite genre is grindcore music. Artist profile Death began their rise to infamy after their deadly set at Hellfest 03, resulting in several injuries, and one recorded death. Death's lineup includes two drummers, two bassists, three rhythm guitarists, and two lead guitarists. Death's original lead singer, HR, committed suicide by gunshot wound on stage during their a** tour 2000 r*****. Music results. Music is extremely loud and very brutal, lasting between 5 to 45 seconds, resulting in more than a thousand tracks. A common trend among these tracks are atonal noise, screaming, cursing, and sounds from movie clips. The lyrics mostly concern violence, rape, murder, data expunged. Subject was very pleased with the results and requested a personal copy of the created music. This request was denied. Subject comments. Yeah, this is awesome! Subject E-class personnel, EW. Subject's favorite genre is adult alternative and has experience in playing guitar. Artist profile. EW is one of today's biggest names in acoustic pop and soul, sharing the same bill with such names as John Mayer and Jack Johnson. EW began playing guitar at the age of eight and continued on to other instruments such as piano, trumpet, and drums. EW also starred in Disney's high school musical series, competing with Summerland star Zac Efron for the role of Troy. Music results. Music is very relaxed and modern sounding. Lyrics mostly concern romance and recreational activities. Subjects stated multiple songs were originally written by him, but were all of much higher quality, both in writing, performance, and recording quality. Subject was surprised and initially very happy, but later saddened by the test results. Subject comments. God, I wish I could sing like that. Subject. Level 2 security, agent E. Subject does not normally listen to music, but would like to hear the results. Artist profile. DE, unknown artist, 0000. Music results. Music consisted of 72 tracks, all labeled by number. Each track contains a condensed autobiography of the subject by year, narrated by the subject himself in a clear theatrical voice. Personnel initially questioned the accuracy of the autobiography due to the inaccuracies of the previous tests, but track number confirmed its accuracy when the narrator referred to this very test, stating that the subject will leave the room when they begin playing track 72. The subject became distraught by the remaining biography, as data expunged, and subsequently left the testing room by track 71. Two thirds through the final track, the narrator begins to scream as data expunged, presumably killing him. The sounds of f***ing and inhuman cackling are heard for the remainder for the track. Subject comments. I never want to know what happens to me on that final track. I know I said you're going to tell me, but please, don't tell me. Subject. E-class personnel LP. It should be of note that LP, while aware of music, does not like or listen to music. Artist profile. LP does not think highly of herself.  She has frequent thoughts of suicide in between lusting after d***. LP doesn't know why she gets up in the morning. Music results. The playlist did not consist of music, but a list of f***ing names from site 16 personnel. When played, the subject's voice would state her deepest opinions on the track's staff member. Despite protests from the subject, testing personnel played every track in order to find any discrepancies. Subject was visibly angry. Subject comments. Turn it off! I said turn it off! Subject. Subject D-258. It should be of note that Subject D-258 does not listen to music. When questioned, Subject D-258 could not name one genre or band. Stating all music is noise. Artist profile. Was born on 19... Subject went to the following schools. Data expunged. Subject was eventually convicted of data expunged. He was later recruited by an organization known as the SCP Foundation to test one of their many strange relics. Subject committed suicide shortly after this test. Music results. Music consisted of one track of unknown bit-rating quality. Exceeding several days, possibly years worth of time, squeezed into exactly two gigabytes. When played, data expunged. Data expunged. Add no effect on listening personnel, but sent Subject D-258 into a state of shock. Subject D-258 committed suicide via blunt force trauma to the head. When fast forwarded to the end of the track, the track vaguely sounds like Subject D-258 being transferred to Site-16, with what sounds like D-258's thoughts in the background. Mostly violent and insulting thoughts towards the staff, turning to horror upon hearing SCP-624. After Subject D-258's suicide, the track continues playing past its runtime and cuts to data expunged. It is unknown how much longer the track continues, as all personnel present quickly fled the testing room and demanded testing be ceased immediately. Personnel present to data expunged were reported visibly shaken for days. Subject comments. No official statement was given. Subject D-258's last words were, my soul is on this machine. Note, active testing ceased on SCP-624. For freelance testing by personnel, see Test Log 624-2. Dr. Z. Experiment Log 624. Note 1. This is a test log of SCP-624 by Site-16 personnel and visiting staff to scope SCP-624's abilities. Please remember that SCP-624 is not a toy, and that you must do these tests at your own risk. Dr. Z. Note 2. I said it before and I'll say it again. SCP-624 is not a toy. You may use it for testing, but if you want to hear yourself become a famous musician, go take some music lessons. Our job is to seek out the range of SCP-624's abilities. As of 8-31-16, this test log is for anomalous test results only. To see the control tests, refer to Test Log SCP-624-1. Dr. D. Level 4 Security. Instructions for testing SCP-624. Charge SCP-624 from a computer, or 30-pin personal MP3 player charger. An iPod only 30-pin charger will not work. Hook up a pair of headphones to SCP-624 and power it on. Earbuds, noise cancellation headphones, and speakers will not work. Press the black button twice after playing a song to see the artist's profile. Report the generated music's style and genre if it has a genre. Once finished, include a short blurb of your or the subject's experience in the comments section. Subject. Dr. D. Level 4 Security. Subject did not profess his favorite music. Artist profile. M.D. did not invent the fart joke, but he certainly improved on it. Associated with such names as Adam Sandler and Bill Hicks, M.D. has been featured on such shows as Saturday Night Live and Mad TV for his talents in stand-up and comic song. M.D. wrote and directed the 2000 f***ing Summer Flop movie. Unanimously rated as the quote, worst movie of all time. End quote. Music results. Mostly low-brow stand-up and lewd acoustic guitar songs. Most tracks concern typical family problems, bodily functions, sex, and politics. Subject was visibly angry at the results. Subject comments. Not funny. Note. It seems SCP-624 isn't limited to specific genres of music, but the scope of the listener's imagination. Again, I am to remind all sight f***ing personnel that all access to SCP-624 is strictly for experimental purposes only. That SCP-624 is not to be played in the sight f***ing break room. Dr. Z. Note. Dr. Z. I think you mean is not to be played in the sight f***ing break room ever and under the penalty of demotion if you do. Dr. D. Level 4 security. Subject. Agent E. It should be of note that Agent E partook in the original test of SCP-624 and has since gotten into rap music. Artist profile. East Coast and West Coast collide, forming E. Dizzle. E. Dizzle is the first rapper to not only tour with Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, but united the now duo for their first tour in 2002. E. Dizzle helped discover and produce for rapper Eminem. Much mystery surrounded E. Dizzle's death in 2000 but his legacy still lives on. Music results. Music consisted of a strange new form of rap listed under the genre Hybrid Coast, mixing West Coast funk synths and East Coast orchestras. 208 of the 406 tracks contain guest rappers, most of whom are rivals or dead in this timeline. Subject initially pleased with the results, only to learn the date of his death is the same from the previous test. Subject comments. Seriously, if you guys could just let me take this outside and blast this over my car speakers. Hold on. What year did that artist profile thing say? Subject then proceeded to repeatedly scream about the year. Testing ceased shortly after. Subject. Dr. L. Subject claims to like orchestral music, but says she prefers audiobooks. Artist profile. Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner Hayley L. was prolific novelists of the 21st century, having written 40 novels in 20 years, roughly two novels a year. Mrs. L. is well-renowned for her fiction writing seminars, drawing students from all over the world. Much controversy surrounds Mrs. L's strange autobiography, released only in audio format. Music results. The results were not music, but a chronological list of audiobooks, all read by the subject. The genres of each audiobook don't seem to follow any sort of pattern. The first book, Seasons of Longing, is a historical romance that slowly gains fantasy and time-travel elements as it goes on. The next novel, Hills of Glory, is a war story that switches to supernatural horror halfway through. The stories of these audiobooks are captivating according to the listening researchers and continue increasing in quality as they go on, culminating in the second to last track. All this time, a family epic with supernatural elements. The final track, Unknown Track 0000 starts out as a straightforward autobiography of the writer. The narrator begins by talking about her home life, how she picked up writing, and how she wrote her first novel. But then, the narrator begins berating the subject for not making the same choice, growing increasingly angrier and louder. All attempts to turn down the volume do nothing to quiet the narrator's screaming and insults.  Subject comments. Subject had no official comment. Subject requested temporary leave from the foundation. The request was denied. Subject requested Class A amnestics. This request was also denied. Subject. Technician An Mi Song. Musical preferences include traditional Chinese and Tibetan music, folk rock, world beat, and reggae. Artist profile. Amy Song, born An Mi Song, is the latest A-pop sensation to explode onto the international scene. Her upbeat lyrics, infectious beats, sparkling melodies, and perky stage presence are sweeping the pop world. An up-and-coming idol not to be missed. Music results. Four albums worth of cookie-cutter A-pop music, bouncy and upbeat, with catchy pop hooks, and high-pitched girly vocals. Mostly musings on love and relationships, descriptions of activities with friends, and one album of music for an animated harem comedy series. Subject comments. Oh, no. If I ever end up doing any thing anywhere close to that, just feed me to 682. Note. This just makes me wonder how SCP-624 determines the music the user potentially creates, especially if it clashes with their personality. Dr. Z. Subject. D861. Subject is deaf and cannot hear. Artist profile. Listen. Music results. A series of tracks with names like 0 hertz to 10 kilohertz, 10 kilohertz to 10 gigahertz, and most peculiarly, selecting any of the tracks resulted in a loud feedback noise that made everyone but Subject D861 cover their ears. Testing personnel proceeded to listen through the headphones. Audio was a sharp, tinny version of the noises within the room. When Subject D861 put on the headphones, he was visibly stunned and began shouting how he could hear for the first time. Subject D861 proceeded to converse with the other staff. Finally able to hear his own voice and the voices of those around him. Subject was then asked to listen to the other tracks. The track 10 kilohertz to 10 gigahertz sent the subject into a state of brief shock but would not describe what he was hearing. He quickly switched back to 0 hertz to 10 kilohertz. Other tracks carried other anomalies. Tracks that could hear everything in other languages that cancelled out reverb that censored foul language and more. Finally, Subject D861 listened to Subject shows no reaction at first but gradually begins screaming at what he hears throwing the headphones off. Subject comments According to his interpreter Subject D861's last words were so many voices and they finally heard us. Lesson complete. If you missed the previous orientation go watch SCP-623 one groovy room right now or for the complete course watch this playlist.


Get in the net! Get in the net! Oh my gosh! Pull my trash! Oh my god! Where is he? Where is he? He's my personal best!  Bring it! God! This thing is so heavy! I've never seen a fish this big. I'm the king! Oh my god! AHHHH! Every day to catch this fish. It's my personal best. It's my personal best. This way. Can I tail it more? Yeah. That is literally the fish. Do you understand he was pulling my drag the whole time? He pulled my drag from here. You can hear it on camera. All the way to there. I was scared he was going to go down in this. So I kept pressure. I saw that he's barely hooked. I'm shaking right now so bad. There's no faking this. Okay, but actually though we have to get some of these fish out of here because it literally doesn't even fit in the live well. Yeah, I know. The thing about to pass out. Yeah, we don't. Fish head! Do you understand I haven't weighed my whole life for a fish like that? I'll call it Uber to bring a scale too. I don't care. Alright, here we go guys. Nine pounder personal best. Two fours. Got two two and a halfs. Get a release on these bad boys. Right there. Live 9.6 March 22nd 2018 Get a release on it.


I am James Swanick and today we are talking to Lonnie Gordon Aldenick who is the founder and CEO of Gordon Wealth. He's 44, he's a father of two based in Miami. He is the host of the OG Money podcast and the author of the book Heart of a Beast. He is currently a, how he would describe himself would be a social drinker, but did a year alcohol free a year or so ago and he's here to share his experience. Lonnie, great to have you here. Yeah, my pleasure. Tell us a little bit about you and what you do and where you live and your relationship with alcohol leading up to the point where you gave up for a year. Yeah, so I probably had my first drink as an 11th grader in high school and I was a wrestler so I never really drank too much. College was a complete disaster. Every single night we partied social chairman of the fraternity. It was a wild time. That was then proceeded after college with the same crazy maniacs from the fraternity in New York City partying. I was a stockbroker in 1997, 98 with a few dollars in my pocket, so it was a good time. That rolled into meeting my wife, having drinks, partying with friends, couples, what have you. We take a turn. I got invited to move down to Miami with the CEO of my company at the time, partying, having a good time. The markets are getting a little bit volatile. My business is getting a little bit strained. I'm taking on a little bit too much risk and I'm drinking too much as well. I decide that I have to scratch this itch that I always wanted to write a book that if I ever got out of this place right after college where I was a little bit depressed and in a bad head, if I ever got out of that place, I'd write a book and try and help someone that got out of college. Right as I was about to start that book, I strolled through my Instagram feed and that was about two, I would say two and a half years ago. Right then and there, I was writing the book. I just started it and I took the 30-day challenge that you gave me. It was a 90-day challenge, right? It was a 90-day challenge on Instagram and I literally said to myself, oh my God, when was the last time I went 90 days without having a drink? Can I do this? Is this even possible? So after the 90 days was up and I'm writing this book now so I'm clear, I'm sharp, I'm feeling good. I can't go backwards, right? I'm losing weight, I'm working out every day, I'm getting shredded.  And then that 90 days went into 120 days went into six months, went into a full year. I went a full year with no alcohol. And then I think at the year mark, I celebrated with a drink and I just was like whatever, like didn't need it, didn't want it. And now I would say I'm much more of a, you know, if a client's in town, I'll have a cocktail. If there's a special event, a wedding, I'll have a cocktail. But by no means, I've adopted my philosophy as if I don't feel good after I do it, I don't do it. And alcohol doesn't make me feel good. And I can't sleep. So I kind of, you know, just have a drink every now and then. That's where I am. Yeah, great. And you mentioned you've got clients coming into town. So are they all wanting to go out and party and get drunk? And have you feed them alcohol? Like how do you navigate those? Well, how did you navigate that experience during the year that you were completely alcohol free? And then how do you navigate it now that you have the occasional drink? Yeah, good question. So when I was actually doing the year, it was kind of like, hey, man, I gave up drinking for 90 days and I feel so good that I'm just not drinking right now and I'm going for a year. And there was so much respect. You know, at first, people didn't really understand what I was doing. They didn't, you know, really, they were trying to get me to drink because Lonnie the party or was the fun guy at the party all the time. But I found that a lot of people ended up respecting me a lot by doing it, you know, like the day after like, I can't believe Lonnie's not drinking because most people in society kind of just go with the group think the herd mentality and they don't want to be the black sheep. And then once you put your flag in the ground, like I'm not drinking, they respect you, some people follow your lead, right? And then you realize no one even cares that you're not drinking. You're not that important. Yeah, it's amazing. All the people who go through our Project 90 program, you know, the new members, I'm always saying that to them. Nobody cares that you don't drink. Nobody really cares. But everyone thinks they do. Because society has had us believe that for so long. But like when you get into it and you actually just share, you know what? I'm not drinking. I'm going a year. I'm not drinking at the moment. Maybe you get like a little bit of pushback for like five seconds. And then after that, it's like, ah, let's move on. Like everyone's so busy thinking about themselves that they don't have time to think about worry about the fact that you're not drinking. And that seems like that was your experience. Yeah. And as a leader, as a financial advisor, if you put your flag in the ground like I don't drink, I mean, they respect you more, right? You try to tell Jaco willing to have a drink, you know, Jaco's the Navy Seal, complete animal. He drinks water. That's it. You know, he's a good role model. And there's other people in my life that are very good role models and they don't drink. You know, I prefer to be that guy. Yeah. So did it compromise your ability to do any business by telling people that you you didn't drink? No, absolutely not.  What I would say to you is that if I'm out to dinner with a client and they happen to really love red wine, I'll have a glass of red wine with them, you know? If I said no, they'd be perfectly cool with it. But I also like, you know, I'm not completely, I would say I'm okay with having that occasional drink. If a client is in town and his favorite drink in the world is an old fashioned and he wants me to have one with them and I could tell, I'll do it, you know, with the client because I think, you know, even though I could say no and he'd have respect for me, I just sometimes will have that drink and I'm okay with it. If it's a Friday night or a Saturday night and I have no responsibilities the next day other than taking my kid to a soccer game, I'll have that cocktail once in a while, but never during the week, Monday through Friday is non-negotiable. And why have you created a non-negotiable around that? I have a very, very serious game plan, right? Like I'm going to bed at 10 o'clock if I can't fall asleep, 10 30, right? I'm waking up in the morning and I'm working out at 6 or 6 30 in the morning. I'm doing my, my steam, my cold plunge, my sauna. Well, now I can do the sauna finally, but I have a very regimented plan because I got to be sharp in the morning for my clients and I manage money. So if my mind isn't like a sword, I think my mind is a sword. It's got to be sharp. It can't be dull. Alcohol dulls the sword. So it's non-negotiable Monday through Friday. Saturday night, we're out with the wife. We're having a date night. I got nothing to do on Sunday. I might bend the, bend the tree a little. And what results have you found then from living that lifestyle, whether it was the year without alcohol or whether it's now non-negotiable Monday through Friday? Like what noticeable changes have you seen compared to the old Lonnie, which was, was drinking midweek? So I left New York city at 30 years old, right? I was 179 pounds. Okay. I was fat. I had a belly. I was disgusting. I was known as the skinny kid who turned fat, right? When I, I would, I was slowly losing weight. So 179, I'd say I was 169. When I stopped drinking alcohol and I got very serious in the gym and I think it was, you know, one and two together, like those two combinations of not drinking and getting onto a dead serious 6am workout regimen, I dropped down to my goal weight of 150 that I wrote down when I was like 25 years old as a goal. I hit that at 40 when I stopped drinking and worked out every day. And then when you do that and you look good and you feel good, why would you ever go back to that old guy that was drinking, partying, eating like crap? So I mean it, it's, it's a game changer. What did your wife and other loved ones maybe say to you as you embarked on this alcohol-free lifestyle, whether it was during that year or whether it's now, like what have they verbalized to you about any changes or things that they've noticed in you? Well, my wife, I remember vividly one night, she actually, I was drinking scotch, you know, I was in that scotch phase where you'd taste scotch, you know, everyone's about this single malt scotch and, you know, McCallan's and Glen Libet's and I went through that whole phase and I couldn't drink a drink at that time. I'd have half the bottle or the bottle and it got to a point where she went downstairs, my wife, and threw every single bottle of alcohol that I had, which I had a nice alcohol. I had a good bar, right?  Like it was getting to the point where she was just like, what is wrong with you? You have kids and when you're going through that, you don't really see it, you're just like feeling good, it tastes good, what have you. And now when I see people who are acting that way after I have a bottle of scotch, you know, you scratch your head, you can't believe you were actually like that at one point. So my wife, my marriage definitely was the main benefactor. And then I think my business is just taken off, right? So from the book that was launched. I was clean, I was healthy. I spun out into Gordon Wealth, which was an independent broker-dealer. I started the OG Money podcast. My life is really just taken off and there's without a doubt that the fact that I stopped drinking alcohol and was able to focus all of my energy, all my positive energy into just what I'm good at doing and not dulling the sword. I mean, it's been life-changing. Yeah, amazing. And this journey was really triggered by, or in part, I guess, by seeing an Instagram post that I had put out back in the day, apparently. I'm sure it was a accumulation of a number of things, but now it was an Instagram post. It was solely a double take. I'm scrolling. I see the 90-day no alcohol challenge by James Swannock. I read your story. Like I swapped past it and then I swapped back to it.  I think I could do that 90-day challenge. It's been 25 years. Let's see if I could do this. And that was it. It was just that challenge on Instagram. Nothing else.  But without a doubt, that 90-day challenge is what it was the trigger on Instagram. Wow. And that was 2017, yes? Yes. So we're in 2017, right around when the book, I was writing the book. Yeah. So if you look back on those three years, as we're recording this now, it's the end of 2020, almost 2021. If you look at it in terms of three years, how has your life changed in three years as a result of living this alcohol-free lifestyle? Well, I think that I've really just changed my whole mindset, right? So you're not drinking, you're feeling good, you're working out, you're eating healthy. Your whole life is now on a glide path, which is just in a better place. It's in a better space, right? So the networking that you're doing, the persistence, there's nothing slowing you down, right? If you do drugs and alcohol, it's just like running a race with a giant weight on your back.  So I think you just, if you get rid of the liquor and God forbid you're doing drugs, then ultimately, I think lead to a bad place and a destructive place. That's not good. So for me, I think that the path that I'm heading on, that I've been on now for about three and a half years, I'm doing jujitsu a handful days, three, four days a week, pre-COVID. Now I'm just getting back into it, working out, staying focused on my business, and just trying to continuously grow. I don't ever want to go backwards. Is there anything that you miss from those days of drinking? Like, is there anything that you miss from having alcohol present? There's something that you feel like you're missing out on because alcohol's not there? It's not that I miss anything, but, you know, I went with my wife to California and we went wine tasting, right? So you're in Napa Valley. That's another thing where I say I'm alcohol-free with an asterisk, right? So if it's an experience, I might have a cocktail or a drink. If I can, you know, equate it with something in my life where it's like an experience, but generally speaking, I don't think I really miss anything about not feeling good the next day, right? Even if the taste of the old-fashioned was good with the cherry on top, it still doesn't trump feeling like crap the next day and not getting a good night's sleep. So it gets crossed out, right? It's not good enough for that. Funny you were mentioning going to a vineyard. I remember I was in Mendoza, which is a city in Argentina, which is famous for some pretty spectacular wine. I was there in 2009 and then again in 2010. In 2009, I was still drinking. I hadn't quit drinking at that stage. I did a wine tour on bicycles. So it was like this bicycle tour where you ride around and you stop off at, you know, maybe, I think it was four or five different vineyards and you have a glass of wine there and then you'd ride your bike on to the next one. I remember doing that in 2019 when I was drinking and I was just decimated by the end of the day. Imagine being in the middle of summer of a Southern Hemisphere summer in Argentina, the sun blasting. I had fun, but it was a lot of work.  It was still fun. It was like a fun experience. But then I remember going back there a year later when I was alcohol free and doing a similar tour, not the exact same bike tour of the vineyards, but a similar tour and being alcohol free. And I just enjoyed it so much more, even though I didn't even touch a drop of the alcohol this time. I just enjoyed being there in the experience and being with some friends and, you know, looking at the surroundings and just taking it all in while drinking water. And I just felt so much better and riding between the vineyards on the bikes was just such a different experience. So, you know, people often say to me is like, I can't go to a vineyard. You can't do a wine tasting and not drink wine. Well, yes, you can. You can go to a vineyard and go to a wine tasting and not drink wine. You can just be there and experience the ceremony of it and have fun, but just do so without partaking. So any thoughts on that? That was my experience, certainly. Well, I think that this podcast is flickering something in my brain that's like, I don't even want to have that social drink anymore. I might go back to just cold turkeying, not having a drink at all, because I'm just thinking like about having a cocktail and like, I don't like it that much, right?  And I was at the bar and they're like, I can have a drink. We're having a drink. And I said, I'll have a beer, right?  It's disgusting. I really just don't like beer. But I decided to have the beer because I'll sip the beer. I don't like it. I'll have a half or a few drinks just to be as social in that environment. But that's me tricking my brain to just be kind of blending in with them, but ordering the thing I hate the most. But I think I should have just ordered the water or the sprite with the lime, right? That's probably where I'm heading. If you had to ask me right now, I just have no interest.  And I think it becomes a lifestyle, right? Like it just becomes who you are. It's not even, now I bet you don't even have like a thought. It's just not even part of the life. It's not even in, it doesn't register to have a cocktail anymore. Yeah.  And in the end, you know, I was playing around with alcohol free or sober. I don't like the word sober myself. I use the phrase alcohol free. And lifestyle kept coming up for me like this is a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle choice. You know, if you say you sober, well, it means that ordinarily you would drink. It's just you got this problem with alcohol. So you can't.  You're powerfully choosing health and vitality and energy. And you know, if given the choice, you just choose that you choose clear water or soda water, Pellegrino or Perrier or whatever green juices, you want to know that lifestyle. You want to let my wife likes to have a drink. And I look at her like, why do you need to have that drink? Because I'm now like, sort of like, I'm the one in the family that's like, why would you have a cocktail? Well, you don't need that drink. You know, to think a few years ago, she was the one yelling at me. And now I'm yelling, you know, back at her like, don't have a drink. Yeah. Well, Lonnie, my congratulations on living the lifestyle.  And even if you don't, and you just have the occasional drink, like that's okay. I keep saying to people like, the whole idea of this is not necessarily to completely quit. You can. I've chosen that path. Many people who've gone through project 90 have chosen that path. Some people have, have just have the occasional drink. The whole idea here is, is to get ultimate power over your drinking. So you're not feeling the need to drink because you're in a group of people. You're not feeling the need to drink because you're so stressed and anxious at the end of the day.  It's to have power over to make your own choices. Now I've chosen just to just live the alcohol free lifestyle, which to me means I'm not drinking for other people that can mean a drink on occasion. That's okay. Where people I think get tripped up is that they think that they can have the drink on occasion. And then that leads into a drink on a Monday night or a Tuesday night or a Wednesday night, a seemingly innocent drink. And next thing you know, they're putting on weight, they're waking up late, the health and vitalities starting to hit in the wrong direction. And it's a pretty vicious cycle that can get out of control pretty quickly. Yeah, I've seen it up close with people I've worked with and been pretty close to firing some people because when you're not in that place and someone else is, and they think that they can stumble in at 10 o'clock, 10 30, 11, miss a day. I mean, for anyone listening to this that are coming up in the workplace, if you're nice like me, you get one or two strikes.  And I'll tell you this, the two biggest role models, which, well, the four biggest role models that I have in my life right now, all are alcohol free. They don't drink. Would you care to share who they are those folks? So, Jocko willing is alcohol free. He drinks water, maybe seal, listen to almost every single one of his podcasts from day one. He had a very good trajectory. I interviewed him in the heart of the beast. The valente brothers, Pedro Valente, Rocky and Giva Valente, they live by the 753 code. They're alcohol free. They never drank alcohol in their lives once ever. I did an interview with Pedro Valente on the first podcast that I had in an interview on the OJ money podcast, and it's an amazing mindset. And like, you know, you look at these people that are really just living by this code and they're the most successful people, maybe not monetarily, maybe they are monetarily, but they're the most successful people that I could see in my life right now, like, from a spiritual standpoint, they feel the best. I love it. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Well, Lonnie Gordon Oglenick, who is the founder and CEO of Gordon Wealth in Miami, and host of the OJ money podcast and author of the book, Heart of the Beast, which you can find on Amazon. Lonnie, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today, mate. And congratulations. And long may your alcohol free lifestyle continue. Yeah, come visit me in Miami. You're due for a trip back to the States. Thanks, Lonnie. Thanks for listening to the alcohol free lifestyle podcast. I want to load you up with some free stuff right now. So if you want to go to jameswanick.com slash guide, I will send you my quit alcohol guide, which has helped six figure entrepreneurs and top professionals produce or quit drinking. You can also text the word quit guide to the number 44222, if you're in the US, of course, it doesn't really work anywhere outside of the US. But if you're in the US on your mobile phone and you'd like that guide, text the word quit guide to the number 44222, or you can go to jameswanick.com slash guide. If you'd like to schedule a free 15 minute call with one of my top coaches, just an exploratory call to see if or how we can help you, then you can go to jameswanick.com slash schedule, or you can text the word project 90 to the number 44222, if you're listening in the US on a mobile phone, that's jameswanick.com slash schedule, or you can text the word project 90, that's one word, project 90 to the number 44222. Feel free to send me a direct message over on my Instagram account, which is at jameswanick. You can also watch video episodes of this podcast, and a series of other educational videos on my YouTube channel, which is jameswanick1, or you can direct message me on Facebook at jameswanickofficial. And finally, a request, would you please now write a short review of the podcast inside of the Apple podcast app on your phone or on iTunes on your desktop computer? Would you please give the show five stars and write a quick one or two sentence review? This will help the show get in front of even more listeners, potentially transforming someone's life. You can rate and review the show inside of your Apple podcast app on your phone or over on iTunes on your desktop. Thank you so much, and I'll catch you next time.


The whole issue of assessment is thorny and difficult, and in this case, when we assess our graduate students, we don't have them do standardized scientific or pseudo-scientific kinds of testing. At the end, of course, we have them write a paper, and we may or may not stick a grade on the paper, but we engage with them intellectually on that, and we kind of see where their growth is and what their strengths are and where they could do better. And that's what we did here. We saw incredible intellectual growth in terms of trying to document that in any kind of quantitative way. That's pretty problematic. And then to go beyond that and figure out what's going on with those teachers' students is even more difficult to figure out, and honestly, I'm not sure that it can be assessed and documented in any kind of really genuine scientific way.


So, unlike Jason said this morning, this is not the chat ops talk you are looking for. However, I am so passionate about chat ops and we should have an open space about it. This talk is about games. So I can tell from the reaction previously we have some gamers. Any tabletop gamers? Any carcazone? Ooh, we should play. I like games. So a lot of people like games. Why? So they have an objective, right? They are challenging. Some of us really dig a challenge. They bring a different mindset. You get to be a different person sometimes. Just play werewolf. And it brings people together, right? You get to be a team. You get to hang out. So I am Adam Zolek. I am really passionate about better ways of working. I work in product at CA Tech at Agile Central. Dev Ops, chat ops and dev UX to make our other teams go faster and release better stuff. And I love playing games. So what are we going to talk about today? Games at work. I don't mean after work or during lunch. Let's schedule a meeting to play a game because we got to get stuff done, games at work. So why in the world would you do that? So I am in product. And as a product person, I want to find the most valuable thing. I want to get the wisdom from my teams and my users that I am supporting. And I want to find fun and engaging ways of discovering and shaping that value. I don't want it to be snooze.  So I want to share a couple of games. So let's learn a few games here today that you can take back. So the first game we are going to look at is called bang for the buck. And bang for the buck is about weighing what is the most valuable thing with how much do we want to spend on it. And it is cool because everybody gets to participate. So we are going to look at the game board and a couple of moves here. So we basically start out with a bunch of stuff. So we could crowdsource it. These could be blank cards. Maybe I bring some stuff in. And the game board looks like this, right? So the first player is going to grab one of those things, anything they want. They are going to write one in. And they are going to take it and put it out here. They are going to say this is super valuable. And of course it costs nothing. Maybe because it is super valuable and I really want to do it. And they tell us why, right? You get to hear that thing in their head. Like why is that valuable? Sort of make that argument for it, right? So the next player is going to pull the next thing, right? No! They moved their thing. They moved player A's thing, right? And they said, I don't think so. And I'm going to put it here, right? And so it's an interesting way. Everybody sort of goes around Robin, right? Everybody gets to play. It's an interesting way to hear what everybody is thinking and to let everybody sort of play that role of what's the most important thing. So why does this work? Each person gets a turn that doesn't always happen in meetings. You get to explain yourself and why you think it's valuable or cost or whatever. That doesn't always happen, right? Sometimes leadership will say something or there will be a strong voice. And you get to disagree, right? Hopefully it's a little bit more of a game if you bring some popcorn and some beers and you gamify a little bit. It's safer to disagree with one another and that's really cool, right? And then we can come together, hopefully, over time and understand each other. So another game, it's called Buy a Feature. This one's cool because you all get to be venture capitalists and you get money. So you start by getting a $50 bill, $2.20s and a $10. And you can design the game board however you'd like. When I played this, we've actually designed this as sort of a process. So in this case, this is getting a service on our pes. So we laid out the entire process and everybody gets this money and we say, okay, you're an investor. Where are you gonna invest in improving this, right? So take your money, boom, everybody's just going on the board and then we sort of talk about it, right? I put 50 here, I put 70 here. Can I change my 50 in for $2.20s and 10? No, can you get $51 bills? No. And so we sort of understand what's important to people, right? So this is the real one we did with our team, right here, right? This is our entire workflow. Forgetting the service on the pes and trying to work out the kinks and automate. So you see $90 one place, 150 another place, right? We talked about why. So why does this work, right? Everybody's a VC, right? Day to day, you might be a developer and engineer and I'm in product, but for this moment, everybody's in product, right? And the different denominations force tough decisions and you can even negotiate, right? Like, I'll move my 50, if you move my 50. So you can do that. And you really understand the why of decisions, right? Like, why? Why are people thinking of this, right? And that's like over half the value. That's like 75% of the value here. Just to talk as a team and to use this as a tool to explore. So some great tools for this. Post-its, some markers if you're in the same space. Google Docs, both of these come from innovation games. There's over 20 innovation games. Go check them out. There's rules. Some of them even have game boards you can play live. Food or drinks, you know, make it like poker. Have a good time. Can you even make your own play money? And in the words of Will Wheaton, play more games.


This study assessed the prevalence of comorbidities, severity and mortality with regard to geographic region, age, gender and smoking status in patients with COVID-19. The results showed that the prevalence of hypertension, obesity, diabetes, asthma, hospitalization, intensive care admissions and mortality were significantly higher in European countries compared to other regions. Additionally, the prevalence of hypertension and asthma was higher in older adults, while the prevalence of diabetes was higher in men. Furthermore, the prevalence of hospitalization and mortality was higher in observational studies compared to case control studies. This article was authored by Santana Chentsula, Kota Vidyasagar, Salman Patan and others.