I have a new lower profile microphone boom arm to be setting up and I have actual, you know, work to be doing.

But before I can do either of those things, it’s time to present a very special episode of Your Daily Lex.

Very special in the sense that this is the first episode to be executive produced by John Syracuse.

Your Daily Lex.

Now I mentioned John a decent amount of the time on this show.

I think of him as a celebrity and he’s a celebrity who likes me.

And so since John talks to me and, you know, texts me and whatnot, I feel important every time because he’s like a luminary in both the kind of Apple press core and the Apple developer community and the podcasting community.

So the fact that that guy likes me enough to send me feedback on Your Daily Lex, you know, it’s a, it’s a gift.

But John had texted me this morning saying that he felt I buried the lead on my plane story from yesterday by rushing past the end where my near death experience seemingly motivated me to make some new demands at my job.

Could I expand on that part?

Also did you actually take the brace position during the landing?

Did everyone?

So I gave him some answers via text message and John said, great, now say those things into a microphone and give me an executive producer credit on the episode.

So again, this episode executive produced by John Syracuse.

I’m saying his last name a couple of different times because hopefully one time at least I’ll say it correctly.

So I’m going to read and expand upon my answers from, I’m going to read my texts and then if I need to add some color commentary to what I texted, I will.

We all did take the brace position, you know, they came through and showed you how to do it and we all did have to take that position for the landing.

I didn’t notice anybody not doing it.

Certainly everybody around me did it.

Now when you’re in a brace position, you can’t really see what everybody else is doing, but there wasn’t really the sense of people being self-conscious about doing it since the captain was clearly expressing that there could be an issue.

So nobody felt like, oh, this is embarrassing.

There is that thing, you know, that phenomenon where people don’t, um, nobody wants to be the first to leave when the fire alarm is going off because you don’t want to seem like the weak one and like being the person who does it can save people.

So I felt like everybody just kind of got into that brace position.

So that wasn’t like, people were definitely uncomfortable.

People were certainly trying to take out blackberries or whatever to see if they could text, uh, loved me.

I guess because the iPhone era at that point too, it was 2010.

So people were trying to take out their smartphones to, to write messages, which didn’t always work.

So I think the internet on that plane, but, um, uh, where people got really nervous was one when you landed and people’s then look up, like they’re looking out the windows cause now you’re on the ground.

What am I bracing for?

And you see that you’re surrounded by emergency vehicles, ambulances and fire trucks like that definitely got people heart racing.

And then when the plane finally reaches a stop and they won’t open the doors, um, people did not like that, especially when they were saying like, yeah, if we open the doors, it could, you know, cause explosion.

It made people feel like I think, or the interpretation was, Hey, this plane could explode.

So they don’t want us to open it because they’d rather just, we explode that they explode, which wasn’t what they were saying, but it felt like that’s how people were misinterpreting.

So on the work front at this point, uh, I was at, you know, this company’s demand.

I had already applied for a job at Mac world.

I was freelancing for my world with my nights and weekends and loving it.

And Jason Snell was like, no, I can’t really hire you because, uh, uh, you know, you, you make more at a, you know, an internet startup than I could pay you at Mac world.

I’m like, well, at least make me an offer.

And uh, he eventually did, but it took a little while.

So at work I had worked, you know, at a startup with, uh, several of, you know, certainly my bosses at demand for years, I had worked at intermix, which was the parent company of my space.

And then a couple of, uh, intermixians and I had all launched a diet tracking startup called the daily plate.

And so they knew me, my bosses knew me as not just a person who could do the product and business development side of things, but also like a full-time web developer.

I had been hired initially at, at the my space parent as a PHP, my SQL developer, their first full-time PHP developer at that company, cause they had been built on.net.

Uh, but they wanted to adapt to PHP.

So I was brought in to help on that front.

Uh, but because that was my, my history with them, even though I had moved into the product side, uh, anytime the tech team was like, Hey, we can’t get this feature until, you know, three months from now, or this feature is too complicated or can’t be done.

My friends and bosses would be like, well, Lex, you could do it, right?

Can’t you just get in there?

And so I would go in and code these things, which of course annoyed the development team since I wasn’t really a developer, but I would use, uh, I think at one point we were using CVS and eventually moved to subversion, but I would use the version and control systems and I would go in and do the thing and get the feature launched.

Um, that happened most recently at this time in, in, when I had this plane incident in with Livestrong.com, uh, and I was, uh, you know, it didn’t feel fair to me that I still had to do the development stuff because I wasn’t, that wasn’t my job and it was, it felt like I was being exploited or taken advantage of.

So when I was frustrated and had had this not near death experience, but this terrifying experience, I came into work that day in LA and I was like, Joe, I’m done working on stuff that I’m not supposed to be doing.

I want to work on the things I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m here to do product and business development.

And so if we need coding things, that’s going to go to the development team and I’m going to just do the stuff that I’m actually supposed to do based on my job description.

He’s like, yeah, okay, you’re right.

That’s what I did.

Um, and then eventually I got Jason Snell to hire me at Macworld and that led to a series of things that led to what I do now.

So thanks Jason.

And uh, thanks to the plane for not blowing up again.

This episode of your daily Lex was executive produced by John Syracuse.

Hosted by Lex Friedman, executive produced by John Syracuse, directed by Lex Friedman.