Podcast episode 160 transcription

​Al Del Degan Hosts Tony Grimes

Listen to the Podcast episode here!

[00:00:00] Al Del Degan: All right, everybody. Welcome to the show. My special guest today is Tony Grimes. Tony, thanks for joining me.
[00:00:05] Tony Grimes: My pleasure.
So tony, you are a very interesting experienced software developer. You have gone so far as to take your career into the education realm, where you teach at SAIT as an adjunct instructor, for JavaScript, HTML and CSS classes, which is awesome. but you're also the founder of a group in Calgary called Pixels and Pints. So before we get into all of that, I'd kinda like to hear, the Tony Grimes origin story. If you don't mind, I'd like to know how you got where you are today.
[00:00:38] Tony Grimes: How far back?
[00:00:42] Al Del Degan: Probably after teething, at least.
well, if we start at the beginning, I guess a born and raised Albertain, but mostly in Brooks. So I grew up in Brooks. That's what I consider my hometown. And. I don't know, actually, it's kind of interesting. I've been taking care of my mom and we did a kind of a series of recordings, not really a podcast, but just getting her stories on the record and everything.
[00:01:05] Tony Grimes: And she been telling me like how we actually ended up out here because my reserve is in Ontario and I don't really have a lot of contact with my family. And it turns out like she really didn't like the reserve. So she moved out here when she was really, really young and met my dad out here and it kind of just ended up, we ended up in Brooks cause my dad had a job teaching.
So I guess now I'm a fourth generation teacher, third generation teacher now. And he was teaching in Tilley when they found out about me. And it was like, well, this is, this is where we're going to stay for it. And that's kind of where I started. So, Brooks kind of has a weird reputation now, but, that was, it's mostly like industry-related and immigration related and everything, but that happened after I left and yeah, I grew up, in, in Brooks, loved it and you know, not a whole heck of a lot, to talk about there, you know, you grow up, you have run into friends at a really great group of five friends that we kind of helped each other out, protected each other, in junior high high school. And I was, you know, just middle of the road, popularity. Like everybody just kind of like ignored me. So I kind of just floated through and played mostly basketball and Marvel superheroes, a little Warhammer, 40 K.
So I was more on the nerd side for sure. Like my whole life and graduated, took a year off and got the best job I ever had, which is going to surprise a lot of people. I worked at the meat packing plant at Lakeside and on the cleanup crew. And yeah, that was just, you know, graduate high school. the idea was always to go to university eventually, but you know what, I'm going to take a year off.
And it was just this thing that I did. And a buddy of mine was working there. So I applied, got onto the cleanup crew and probably all of my best stories and all my best anecdotes come from that job, because it's just the weirdest thing. The things that you do and meatpacking plant have like no relation to the real world.
You talk about racing forklifts in the cooler and you have high pressure hoses for water fights and you know, all the gross stuff too, which never really bothered me. And I did that for about a year and the. You know, almost stayed. I got to admit, I, they offered me, they wanted me to be a manager and everything, and I really enjoyed it, but just something in the back of my head just told me that wasn't the right direction for me.
so luckily for me, I'm bill 31 status Indian. So we get, you know, quote unquote free education. So back then you would get a free bachelor's, a master's and a PhD. And I took advantage of that. So I thought my mom did all of this, but, when we were interviewing, she told me that I was the one who actually did all of that.
[00:04:02] Tony Grimes: She didn't even know what my plans were. And when I think back, I don't even know if I applied for any other university than the U of C. But regardless I got in and I moved up here and the plan was for me to move in with my dad cause he was living up here at that time. And I think that was the reason why I only applied to U of C.
Cause I just, you know, wanted to live with him for awhile. My parents had split up. He'd moved away, like when I was five or something like that. He was at the summer dad. Pretty awesome dad, a pretty crazy dude. He was a birthday clown, a Santa Claus, he did a lot of community theater and he worked in group homes, for his, what he called his backup career.
Cause when you're a male, you can work in group homes and work with violent clients and stuff. And you've always got a job. Right. So, he was doing that when I moved up, I was gonna move in with him, but, you know, things didn't work out, I just got my own place. And yeah, I just kind of bounced around.
Did my, did my time, so to speak at the, at the U of C and that's where, you know, my whole life just kind of, kind of unfolded, I guess I didn't really know what was, what was going to be happening, but, I graduated in 94, like at a high school, came into university in 95 and I didn't really know the difference between RAM and a hard drive back then.
[00:05:25] Al Del Degan: Well, did you know you were going to get into something technical or did you fall into that?
[00:05:30] Tony Grimes: My goal was to actually go to med school. So I knew I wanted to do something in science and one of the really great things about having your education paid for. And I had a living allowance and they paid for my books.
They did all of that. And even if I got a job, they didn't care. So when I got a job, I still got to keep all that money, plus my living allowance. So I approached university a lot differently than everybody else. I didn't really have a plan. I was just roaming. So I took a lot of. Well, at the end of it, I ended up with two minors because of all of the extra courses I took and I just kind of roamed, but I had, I always had this idea, you know, I wanted to go for status.
I wanted to go for the money and everything, and, went into biology. I was looking at the different types of careers that I could do in science. And after research, you know, chemistry was my thing. I loved chemistry, but there's no jobs in chemistry unless you go into the oil and gas industry or pharmaceuticals.
So I decided, you know what, let's try this med school thing. So I was in biochemistry and just did, you know, the genetics and, you know, I, I managed to get out of the math. I only had to do calculus. I, I managed to Dodge all of the English classes and just did pure science all the way through. And about two or three years into my degree, I, I was a photographer at that point.
And I just ran into somebody on a protest March who was also a photographer. And he said, you know what, you're going to university, just go to go to the, your newspaper and become a photographer. They'll give you all the film that you want and they'll give you assignments and you can go off and, and, you know, just work on your craft.
And I was like, awesome. So as soon as I got back from that, I went to The Gauntlet and became a photographer for the gauntlet. And that was my introduction into computers. Like I took computer 20 in high school. You know, I wrote some basic, but it wasn't really, you know, computers never really clicked for me.
I didn't really get it. And also it was pre-internet back then. So, or pre-web, and I just basically got really into the photography and scanning my negatives and learning Photoshop and all of that became a photo editor and did my year. And at that point, Like being an editor is pretty sweet at The Gauntlet.
Cause you get, you got the key to the office, which is basically the biggest locker on campus. Right. So I wanted to keep that, but I didn't want to do photo editor again. So my co-ed, Mike, we both, we both felt the same way. And we decided, okay, well, I can't write, I'm not a good writer, so I can't do news editor or anything like that.
And I kind of looked over and there's these three guys who are always, came in after production night and they were the web editors and they would, put everything online and I just kind of went over to them and just said, this is actually Tyler Shandro actually was the, was one of the editors. So he actually taught me a lot of web. And he just kind of told me, well, yeah, we just, you know, take the newspaper in Pagemaker, and we copy and paste it into Adobe Go Live, and then we FTP it up to the server and then we're done. So it was all static, HTML, there's no database, no anything. And I was like, you know what? I, I think I could do that.
So me and Mike, we, we ran for web editor and we, we won and that was my introduction into web development and fell in love with it right out of the, get-go got my first job, off the U of C job board. And, worked for PPDM the Public Petroleum Data Model Association. And as a webmaster, that's what we, that's what they called webmaster a moniker.
Yeah. Cause they didn't really know what Web was so well, you're the master of it. So we'll just call you that. And it was 16 bucks an hour, which is twice what I was making it at the meat packing plant, which I thought was already like really good, eight bucks an hour back then. And I. You know, if, if it was, if it was just that I probably would still do the, the med school thing, but in my early twenties, my arches fell cause I had flat feet and that was a big life changing thing for me.
Like I had to give up running and a bunch of other stuff. And then I realized, you know, med school is a lot of standing up, you know, eight, 12 hours a day. So I don't think I can do that. So that was the big push I decided to go down the web dev track. At that point. I'm not sure if I wanted to do that for a living, but it kinda got to the point where, you know, I just got this one job with PPDM and from there it was a trade association so.
The way you probably know how boards work. You know, everybody kind of works on different boards, word gets out people. people heard about me. So all of my clients, I just got calls from, you know, one client after another, and I was doing it part-time with, with PPDM at school. But then when I, once I graduated, I took a graveyard shift at a, at a autistic, home for, for children.
And I just did graveyard. So I had my little iBook and this is back when they didn't have wifi. So I hacked my flip phone for 15 megs of data a month. And basically just kind of learned how to build a web server off of my laptop. Cause there wasn't a connection and everything, and I kind of built my company.
I just did that for about a year after I graduated and I ended up with a degree in environmental biology, minor and chem, a minor in psych. and it was just, just a culmination of all the different courses that I took. Got that degree. Never did anything with it. went straight into the graveyard shift and worked on, on my business and from PPDM I got CAPLA, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Land Administrators from there, I got CAPL, Association of Landmen, PODS, Pipeline Open Data S ociety, IRWA. So all the, all the petroleum trade organizations kind of hired me as their web developer. And I became just the guy that built event registration stuff, how to do membership renewals. And this was all PHP back then. I worked for the Movie Poster Shop, and, and my partner there, he's the one who taught me how to code. So that was when I made the jump from HTML, CSS, just static to, going from Pearl to PHP and. Loved it loved it, loved it a lot.
And I really quickly like maybe two or three years down the road. I, you know how it goes. You, you gradually get enough clients that you can work full time, but then the feast or famine cycle kind of crushes you at the top and starves you at the bottom. So I just got more and more clients and it got to the point where I had to hire help and I hired my first engineer right out of a university out of the U of C. And we worked together, we both coded, and this was when we were building the CAPL, system, which was all like, just a homegrown event, registration, membership, renewals, all of that. And right around halfway through that project, this was my first big project.
They, they signed a contract for $30,000. It was just, oh, okay. I can quit. So I quit my job. We did that. And about halfway through that, that project, at some point I was kind of like looking at Andrew's code and I was looking at my code and he's the engineer. So his code was way nicer. And he was actually working harder to work around the way that I was doing it.
It was like you know what Andrew, like, let's hire another developer. You handle that stuff. I'll just handle the company. And this was probably around 2004, 2005, and that was kind of the start of me just being that the business owner and I, I did less and less coding. I got to admit and, I loved it. I loved it a lot, but you know, just for the good of the company, the good of the project, I just stepped aside because, you know, I was book learned.
I learned from the PHP cookbook. I didn't have any idea what a framework was. Or a design patterns or any of that stuff that Andrew had. So I gave him the wheel of the development side of it and it worked really well because I was the client liaison. I managed the projects, I scoped everything out and, I was pretty good at that.
And Andrew and the other devs, they didn't like dealing with clients as, as devs. usually don't so it was really nice, you know, I just kind of managed everything, did that for. Basically all of my career and, and the, the whole thing, I think at my peak, we had maybe four or five full-time devs. I think we had a PPDM,Trudy over at PPDM.
She was my first mentor. She kind of showed me the ropes, how to write a contract, how to kind of cover your butt. most importantly, how to ask for money, like how to structure payments and everything, and make sure that, you know, at the bottom of your email, like this is not a fixed quote. You know, I'm going to bill hourly, invoice, monthly, all of that and loved it a lot until I got really scared.
What was it? It was, I lost one of my clients to IRM, which was a local. I guess a SAS, a software as a platform, kind of thing for memberships, renewals, and events and all the things that I did, but they had a platform where they only had to pay like $2000 a month or $3000 a month or something. And I lost this contract that I was negotiating, which would have been like an $80,000 contract.
And they went with these other guys and scared the living poop out of me. Right, like, wow. And the worst part was that I was thinking through and like, you know what, I would've done the same thing. Like why would they spend 80 K on custom software when they could just go with somebody else and just go piecemeal?
So that was when I made a pivot into a more conventional software. and we turned into a WordPress shop and I didn't know it then, but that was the beginning of the end for me. I just kinda, I lost a lot of the, you know, all the fun was out of it. We're really, we're not coding a lot. There's not a lot of work for custom plugins, that kind of stuff.
So the, the whole, like right around at that point, that's when I started Pixels. And that was enough for me to enough distraction to kind of go into other things. We got you, we got work out of it, but. You know, there's this kind of period in time where I was very distracted, you know, I wasn't quite into what the company was doing.
It was making money, it was keeping people fed and everything like my devs and everything, but really, you know, Pixels really kind of took over. I went through this whole kind of phase where all I could think about was events. So, Did a lot of meetups. So we did Pixels, which was the one I'm most well-known for, but I also did a board game meetup.
So we had that going. It was a, a sellers meetup, Gotwood would field game league. And I started a podcast meetup. I did, a few and I just kinda got more and more into the. Public speaking kind of thing, bringing, my mics to everywhere and hosting people in a room and everything. And though those are back in the days when Melrose was still around and, and basically everybody had their events down on that, on that second floor and all, all this time that I'm kind of going off on my own little Trek, You know, the business is doing less and less well every year. And I, if I had to do it over again, I probably would have shut down the company sooner than I did, but you know what, all my devs, I made sure that they all landed softly. we gradually went from four devs down to three devs down to two, and then after a while it was just me and Andrew and then he left and then I brought on another business partner. And, but by then it was too late. Like I was, I was just had a, not into it, but luckily for me, when, just from the, the whole Pixels thing, you meet a lot of people. I got to be known as the person who knows people, which really came in handy. And I met, Dan Stevenson who was, one of the instructors over at SAIT.
And even before this, I was already down the road. because that's basically what I did for my company is I would spin people up like Andrew, he was a right out of school. He knew what he was doing and, brought on other devs who had already had coding experience and they were devs, but at some point I began hiring straight out of, out of SAIT.
So I would, take practicum students and I would train them up and I would teach them how I would do things and, and, and that kind of thing. I really enjoyed it. And teaching had always been in the back of my head because of my dad. He's the one who convinced me not to go into traditional, teaching.
he just said that the paperwork takes all the fun out of it. And, so I, you know, I took his word for it and I just kind of went my own route, but it was always in the back of my mind. And I just kind of by then, by the time I met Dan. I had already hired like maybe going through two or three rounds of practicum students and I really enjoyed it.
[00:19:09] Tony Grimes: So basically I would bring them on at a really low rate. I would train them up to the point where, you know, they're making $40, $50 bucks an hour. And then because I knew, I think subconsciously that, you know, this isn't the place for you. I'm not going to become a billionaire, you know, doing this. I don't, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be doing it.
So I just made sure that they landed softly when they got bored of it, or if I completely encourage them to look for other positions and keep their eyes open. So. There's actually, a couple of them are working for EvansHunt. Now, Andrew moved up to Victoria and he's also working for, Doug, who was my business partner at the time.
So everyone is actually doing really well. And, you know, after a while I, I met Dan and he introduced me to the whole like, official teaching kind of thing. And you know, the rest is history now I'm, you know, I'm just at SAIT now. I'm, I'm also working with contractors. So that's where I met you. Well, actually, I don't can't remember where I met you.
I met you at a, a definitely at a, lunch without lunch. And somebody told me they like gripped me by the shoulders. And they said, you have to meet Al. And, and he just pointed, she just pointed like over there in the corner and I like, you know, shook your hand and everything. And I don't think we actually spoke for another year after that.
[00:20:28] Al Del Degan: I do remember attending Pixels and Pints though. I do remember attending that and seeing how successful and big it was, like the Pixels and Pints attendees, they love you. And they love that event. It just felt like he joined into somebody's group of friends only, there was like tons of them.
[00:20:48] Tony Grimes: Yeah. That was the funnest part about running events, is they do all the work for you. Your job is to create the room, you know, set the guidelines are not, you know, explicit. We don't have rules of like, this has to be a safe space. You just make it a safe space by having it be a safe space, right? And that was one of the things that I'm fairly good at is the talking and the charisma and all of that, so that was a lot of fun. It was just kind of figuring out how do I set up the environment so that this group of people can be at their best. And so there's a lot of tips I picked up over the years. cause we started, see we're in the 12th or 13th year now, you know, we started in Vicious Circle, which was just on first street and 11th avenue.
And we started with bench tables because, there was only maybe 12 to 15 people that showed up every, every, And that was a trick every month without fail. You always do it every month. You have to have that repetition. And that's one of the secrets there is that, that inner circle that, that atmosphere doesn't come out from nowhere.
It doesn't come out of a vacuum. You have to have that, that rhythm, that heartbeat every month there they're coming in and they're gradually getting to know each other and that builds trust. So at the core of trust is, is repetition in some way. And. The the other half of it is the, is picking a good room, having, having a good, nice room to, to have people interact in.
And at the beginning, when we only had 15 people a month, you know, had no street cred. the, the bars are always great, but you know, we're just one of many people. This is at the heyday of Meetup. So they would assign us a bench table, this big, huge, long stand-up tables. And it took, it didn't take very long for me to realize that that that's not a good way to organize an event because it's, it's a crap shoot.
You roll the dice. When you sit down on whether or not you're going to be having a good time, because you're with those people the entire night, you know what, if you sit next to somebody who's a crumb bum or something. So we, we did that for a while and. After Vicious Circle, I moved over to The District, which is where, Last Best is right now.
And again, they put us in bench tables all the time and we didn't really key into this whole thing until that venue. I began looking for other venues. Okay. Let's find a place that doesn't have bench tables. And we went to the Hop and Brew and that's when we really hit our stride because I learned about edges.
You know, the, the whole, how to design an environment. You have short tables, you have tall tables, you have stand up areas and you make it so that they have to mingle. So you take away chairs and stuff like that. And I think that was a big part of it was that, that camaraderie that everyone got by the time we got to Hop and Brew, we had a few people who were there like for two years, and then we just gradually built it up, you know, went from 15, 20 to 20 to 30 and.
You know, I think our record is the 10th birthday that we had. We had like over 200 and yeah. And the secret was really just the, the, the format. Cause I, I'm not one of those detail oriented people, the, the, with the checklists every day and, and, you know, I drop balls all over the place. They're there, they cover my life.
And I knew that going in that if I, like, I knew it had to be monthly, but I also knew me. If I have to find a speaker or some kind of agenda item that I have to think about every month, it's not going to happen. So Cody Torgerson who was doing Green Drinks, he helped me out. I kind of went to him and said, okay, I want to kind of do this thing.
I kind of like how Green Drinks does it. and he gave me the kind of pointers of like, like basically the entire format of Pixels is, is cause of Cody. and he said like, start at five. And that way people can come there straight to work, go late, go till nine or 10. That way people can go home and get their dinner and then come back and don't do any agendas like there that you can like under the Green Drinks format, you can have a max of 15 minutes for, for announcements.
And that was it. And the rest is history. Like Meetup kept me honest. It gave me that date, every month and I had to do it. And after a while, all it was was just me, you know, booking the room and just doing the hosting, just having the name tags available and that kind of stuff. And then, yeah, and then at some point we started doing announcements and that's where the call for talent came in, which I totally stole from Demo Camp.
They were doing that and was like, yeah, I'm going to do that too. I don't know if they called it The Call for Talent. I think, yeah, maybe they did. Maybe they didn't, I don't know where that term came from.
[00:25:51] Al Del Degan: Ya, what kind of numbers were you getting in those days? Kind of like the peak days, like it was a pretty big crowd.
[00:25:58] Tony Grimes: Yeah. And the peak days, would, would have been in when we were at Hudson's.
So after Hop and Brew, we outgrew the room basically. anything over 50 was a little bit too tight in, in the top floor there. And, and also it wasn't wheelchair accessible. and we didn't even get to wheelchair accessible until we got to Hudson's. But after that, we went to Rose and Crown, which was a bigger space.
And then we kind of grew to about 60, 70 a month, and then they did a Reno that totally ruined the room that I liked. So we moved over to Hudson's and they gave us the back room, which, you know, never was my favorite room, to be honest. I think Hop and Brew was probably my favorite, Rose and Crown being a close second, but Hudson's, at that point it got uncomfortable around 85 people and it was uncomfortable a lot.
So that was probably when we hit our peak, I think. And. It just kind of, kind of grew from there. And then, you know, of course COVID happened. We had the lockdown, so everything kinda shut down and yeah. And then that's where we're at now. I have no idea where we're going to end up now.
[00:27:10] Al Del Degan: Yeah, no kidding. Like you haven't been able to really have the regular steady meetings and,I've seen some emails go out with information, so-and-so's hiring if anyone's interested kind of a thing, but you haven't been able to hold that cadence because of the last couple of years.
[00:27:26] Tony Grimes: No, when we first locked down, I tried, you know, I did two in a row. it just wasn't there and, you know, I'm not going to force it. So, that's when I figured, you know, what, if there's at any point that I'm ever going to take a hiatus from Pixels, it's going to be during a world pandemic. So I just kinda like, oh, you know, I'm just going to go with it.
And I kept up the week with emails and everything, and I'm very, you know, up and down on that, because, like I said, I'm not the, you know, the task oriented, details, oriented person. that's one of my regrets from the whole thing is that I should have started with some friends and not be the sole founder.
that's where Green Drinks really, kind of, I think hit their stride was that they had four co-founders and they had a good mixture of cross disciplinary. So, basically with me being the only, Pixels person, you know, when I get burnt out, there's nobody to cover up my slack. So, you know, and that basically goes with the seasons of teaching. So I'm just so focused on my, program when I'm teaching that nothing else exists, basically.
[00:28:38] Tony Grimes: So now I'm kind of getting to the tail end of my current season. So, that's where I'm okay, now it's time to kind of think about Pixels and I'm really bad for only starting up the emails maybe two weeks before I actually have an event. Like one of these days, I'm actually going to get my group together and get that going. But I'm in no hurry.
[00:28:59] Al Del Degan: Well in all fairness, most of us have a short attention span anyway, so that two weeks is probably just right.
[00:29:05] Tony Grimes: Yeah. That's, that's another thing I learned about Calgary. It's a very last minute kind of city. So, I, I, I'm not sure what the plans are right now. Like we, we did some online events and I was very careful not to call them Pixels and Pints.
So they're, they're branded differently. I don't want any brand dilution in there, although nobody really understands that only I notice it. so there, there were called Friday Night Pints, in the last few and it's just a completely different feel,cause with Pixels, the experience level of the room is pretty high, right?
We've got a lot of seniors, intermediate and some juniors, because there always is the, the idea of finding a job. That's what networking events are kind of all about. But when we did the online ones, because I was a teacher, it was mostly my students,InceptionU students, it was my SAIT students, which is awesome, it's just not the type of event that Pixels was known for. So they were named something different and, I think, yeah, you know, just for the audience, like we're at, you know, the March of 2022. So we're just coming up on two years into it, not sure where we're going to be at for, you know, The ability to pack 80 people into a room.
I don't, I don't even know when, or if that'll happen in the near future, but yeah, that's one of the things that, that I kinda miss is, you know, I'm ready to get back into it. I'm ready to do the monthly events again. But I want to do it when it's right. And when I don't have to worry about.
Being too popular, you know, like when we, when we do it, we're going to not be afraid of, of putting a lot of people into a room. And, you know, basically that's out of my hands, you know, it's a, it all has to do with biology and, and whether or not we build. 10 new hospitals or something?
[00:30:57] Al Del Degan: Well, I'm not sure if everybody caught the call-out, but I think, if, if anybody's, intrigued and interested in chatting with you about Pixels and Pints, maybe this is the chance for you to actually build that crew of four or five people that kind of put their brains together and figure this stuff out. So you're not just by yourself.
[00:31:15] Tony Grimes: Yeah. This would be a good time to do that. because, like I said, I'm taking care of my mom, so she's living with me and, with her circumstances that if she gets COVID, you know, she's probably a goner.
So I, you know, there's no reason to wait for me. Like if, if we're going to do it, we might as well do it without me and, and start fresh. And remove my name from it, because right now that brand is, is entirely tied to my name. And it would be nice to, you know, have a group that can take ownership over that. Like maybe even if we rename it, who knows.
But, I, I would love to have some extra people to just kind of take over, I'm open to keep doing it as long as people allow me to do it, I'm fully prepared to do it until I retire at the age of 130 or however long we're going to be living the next couple of decades. But, it would be nice to kind of share the wealth, you know, it's, it was, it's been in a pretty amazing journey, and I think it's something that should be shared with other people, for sure.
[00:32:15] Al Del Degan: Well, that sounds great. What's the best way for people to get ahold of you? We'll add it to the show notes and stuff, but usually, people are listening to this maybe while they're bike riding or driving a car or something, what's sort of a good way for them to find you so that they can reach out and chat with you about it?
[00:32:29] Tony Grimes: Well, obviously email is going to be one of the easy ones. My turnaround time for email is actually quite slow. So every few days I'll check email, especially during school because my students are trained to Slack me. But other than that, we have a Discord server for Pixels and just DM me on Discord.
And that's the easiest way. sometimes like I check it. Most every day, but sometimes I don't, but yeah, that's the thing when I'm, when I'm teaching, there's really no need to, interface with the outside world. Right. Because, you know, I just, I have 20 to 30, like souls that I'm responsible for. So, all my attention goes to them, which is unfortunate. Everything else kind of falls to the wayside. But yeah, Discord is a good one.
[00:33:15] Al Del Degan: Okay. Well, we'll make sure to have that contact information in the show notes. and then, I imagine you're also on LinkedIn at some point?
[00:33:22] Tony Grimes: Yeah. That, that, one's probably the worst out of them. I log in every few weeks. And the first thing I'll do on a, on a message is tell them to email me.
[00:33:31] Al Del Degan: Well, thanks so much for your time, Tony. It was an absolute blast hearing your story. I've known you for a while now. but I never knew your origin story so that was really exciting to hear that. And, you know, best of luck with your mom, of course. And, I look forward to, someday Pixels and Pints being resurrected and going back to its glory. however that might look in the future.
[00:33:52] Tony Grimes: Bring the fire extinguishers cause we're. We're going to burn the place down.
[00:33:59] Al Del Degan: That's. That's awesome. Thanks tony.
[00:34:01] Tony Grimes: Thank you, Al. It was a pleasure.