In this episode, I'll take just a few moments of your time to tell you about this project. The good stuff follows soon!

Published August 17, 2020

Curtis is a specialist in computer storage, backup and recovery and is currently the Chief Technical Evangelist at Druva, a cloud-based data protection company.

Published August 19, 2020

Nina Levinson is a graduate student at The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, studying translation localization management in Japanese.

Published August 26, 2020

Edward Branley is a writer, teacher, historian, and computer nerd. Author of six books on the history of New Orleans as well as several Young Adult fiction novels.

Published September 2, 2020

Originally from the San Francisco Bay area, Tom Gilsenan is the owner of DZ Solutions, a reseller of hardware, software, cloud, and IT Professional Services.

Published September 9, 2020

Sylvain Goessens is a real man of the world, having lived and worked in 6 countries across 4 continents. He loves to travel and has always been fascinated by different cultures.

Published September 16, 2020

Peter Kurbikoff is a retired entrepreneur from Redondo Beach, California. Peter talks today about dealing with a Chronic Illness and Family Overseas during the pandemic.

Published September 23, 2020

Lisa Diana Shapiro is a playwright and actor living in New York City. Her most recent production, Samantha Spade, Ace Detective was produced by the TADA Youth Theatre Program.

Published September 30, 2020

Scott Kelley used to work in IT for such places as the US Air Force, Oracle, Disney, and various busted startups. Back in January 2018 he took on the American dream, sold his home and quit his job in order to travel more and enjoy life.

Published October 7, 2020

Jen Lee Reeves is Founder of Born Just Right Strategy which evolved from her experience as a parent and led to her work as an ally in the disability community. She is the Co-Founder/Executive Director for her Born Just Right Non-Profit and runs a communications consultancy.

Published October 14, 2020

Tiana Chun is a Post Production Assistant for the NCIS: New Orleans TV Show on CBS. She graduated from California State University at Long Beach with a BA in Film and Electronic Arts with an emphasis in editing. Prior to working on NCIS:NOLA, she was a Post PA for the Netflix show, Julie and The Phantoms.

Published October 21, 2020

Noelle Stransky is a User Experience design strategist for brands such as ZipRecruiter, Livestrong.com and the Active Network. She's also spent time working in the gaming industry at Microsoft Xbox and is currently working on internal tooling at Riot Games.

Published October 28, 2020

Linda Nelson has been an investment banker, IT executive and real estate developer before pivoting into her true passion as a producer and distributor of films and television shows. In 2007, she co-founded Indie Rights with Michael Madison and has been active in creating and distributing quality content ever since.

Published November 5, 2020

Athena Demos sees herself as a muse, fueling her soul by facilitating the creative process. She is currently developing a new TV show about the lives of indigenous women. Traveling to and living in South and Central America as she captures the experiences of these communities.

Published November 11, 2020

Originally from the Philadelphia area, Matthew Cooperstein transplanted to LA in 2006 to work for the LA Weekly. He has 15 years experience in media and marketing and was formerly in digital marketing sales for V Digital Services a part of the Voice Media Group.

Published November 19, 2020

Susan Karlin is an award-winning journalist in Los Angeles who writes about the nexus of science, technology, business, and arts. She’s a regular contributor to Fast Company, where she covers space science, autonomous vehicles, and the future of transportation.

Published December 2, 2020

Cat Thelia is a Visual Effects & Animation Producer. She has worked at studios such as Digital Domain, Rhythm & Hues, Sony Imageworks, and Dreamworks Animation. She also served as Digital Manager at Gentle Giant studios where she developed the framework for their 3D scanning facility in London for “Solo: A Star Wars Story” and got to see a lot of Avengers in their underwear.

Published December 9, 2020

Chris Hause is the Group Vice President, North America Sales Engineering at Oracle. He spent the first twelve years of his career at Hughes Aircraft Company writing test automation suites for the M1 Abrams main battle tank then at Hughes Space and Communications as a Systems Engineer for missions including the Earth Observing System, launch vehicle integration and operations for the Airane 4 and two Space Shuttle missions.

Published December 16, 2020

Back in September 2020, during the third interview on the podcast, I spoke with Edward Branley. We had a fun conversation about our humble experiences in the pre- and early-PC era of computers. We also spoke about what it is like looking for a job right smack in the middle of a pandemic. It was great stuff, but it didn’t really fit in the amount of time available for the episode, so it landed in the cutting room.

Published January 5, 2021

Tommy Williams is a professional musician from Long Island, New York. He landed the position of guitarist, keyboardist and Musical Director for ‘80’s teen-pop star DEBBIE GIBSON, touring the world and appearing on her first three albums (including lead guitar on the #1 hit “Lost In Your Eyes”). Tommy is a member of the band THE HOOTERS , where he provides vocals, guitar, mandolin, mandola and keyboards, playing to sold-out concert and festival crowds around the world.

Published February 10, 2021

Tommy Williams is a professional musician from Long Island, New York. Listen to his profile and Interview in Episode 20…In this bonus episode, enjoy 3 cuts from Tommy’s solo Release “Two Hundred”

https://www.tommywilliams.net/music

Track 1 - Two Hundred

Track 2 - I don’t Want to Cry Anymore

Track 3 - Where Are You Now

All Music / Rights Reserved by Tommy Williams

Published February 10, 2021

Born in Nashville, Dara McGarry worked at Disney Feature Animation for 14 years before trading her mouse ears for a bowler hat. She moved to London in 2010 to work as an Artist Manager at Double Negative, a Post Production, Visual Effects and Animation studio. ( https://www.dneg.com )

Published February 24, 2021

Scott "Skottie" Miller is a Technologist focused on operational tactics and long-term strategy around High-Performance Computing, Storage and Networking as it relates to Computational Visualization for feature length animated films. He spent 11 years in Aerospace before landing at The Walt Disney Animation Studio where amongst his many achievements, he helped build the first all CG Pipeline for the movie Dinosaur. He moved over to Dreamworks Animation in 1999 where he still is a Vice President and Technology Fellow and one of the smartest people I know.

Published March 10, 2021

Alyson Rochlin is a Student at California State University Long Beach in Southern California where she is studying Music Education and Performance. She has been studying flute since she was 11 years old and has since learned to play eight instruments as part of her education studies.

Published March 24, 2021

W. Curtis Preston is a specialist in computer storage, backup and recovery and has been a consultant and analyst in the industry for many years. He’s the author of 3 O’Reilly books with a fourth, “Modern Data Protection” being released in May.

Currently the Chief Technical Evangelist at Druva, a cloud-based data protection company, You can also find his works in publications like Network World and in the “Restore It All” podcast from his website, Backup Central.

Published April 7, 2021

Adam Bunnell is a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in multiple coffee startups. He currently is the owner and operator of Hustle-N-Dough, a small batch donut company that serves handmade donuts- and Adam's own roast from a food truck in all four corners of Los Angeles.

Published April 21, 2021

Al Pimentel grew up in a family of musicians. By age 12, music became his passion and he decide he wanted a career in the music industry. Thru high school he performed in several small venues from Santa Monica to Venice Beach and started teaching part time during the summer. He completed his formal musical studies at El Camino College, where he studied both Jazz and Classical saxophone. Besides teaching, he can also be found playing not just Jazz, but other popular styles of music all over Los Angeles.

Published May 5, 2021

Annie Choi is the owner of Found Coffee, a specialty coffee shop in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles which recently celebrated it’s sixth year in business despite the pandemic! Prior to being an entrepreneur, Annie worked in television post production on notable shows such Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Project Runway: All Stars.

Published May 19, 2021

Dave Dinsmore has never taken a single wine class, but he knows what he likes and best of all, he likes to share. Originally from Chicago, and currently working remotely from South Carolina, Dave works in IT at a film studio while building his his dream, Ascension Wines with his wife Lisa. As Master of Quality Control of the company, he’s dedicated to testing every bottle, so only the best wine finds its way into the glass.

Published June 2, 2021

Mike Appel is a Multiple Emmy Award winning Lighting Director/Designer, working on such projects as the Kid’s Choice Awards for Nickelodeon, Unplugged and The Video Music Awards for MTV, The BET Awards, NBC’s Christmas in Rockefeller Center and Democracy Plaza for Election Nights, VH-1’s Storytellers and the I-Heart Radio Festival Amongst many other shows. He has lit performances at The White House and for the broadcast of The NBA Draft.

He has been nominated for 5 Emmy Awards and the winner of 3.

Published June 16, 2021

Kelly Cheatle is a materials and process maven who specializes in visual storytelling and innovation. She is the Artistic Director of Airigami, a creative firm that specializes in colossal experiential and dimensional illustrative projects built from modeling balloons.

She is also a founding member of Read Along Road, an on-line program supporting the development of family literacy skills by not only providing access to age-appropriate reading materials, but also by modeling how reading aloud is done in fun and welcoming videos.

Published June 30, 2021

Lani Rosales is the Chief Operating Officer at The American Genius , a strong news voice in the entrepreneur and tech world, offering meaningful, concise insight into emerging technologies, the digital economy, best practices, and a shifting business culture.

She is a seasoned business writer and editorialist with a penchant for the irreverent.

Published July 16, 2021

No guest interview on this show. I wanted to take a moment to reflect. See August marks a year since I published the first episode and started down this adventure. I beg your indulgence for a moment while I share some of my story for perspective….

Published August 8, 2021

Bobak Roshan is a recovering lawyer who opened his first coffee bar 10 years ago in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo neighborhood.

While that store has closed in the pandemic, his Demitasse cafe continues on Third Street in Santa Monica where he uses unique brewing methods to make fine drinks from his own coffee roastery.

In addition to Demitasse, Bobby now has a cafe and a dessert/mocktail bar called Kindred Spirits in Santa Monica on the Third Street Promenade.

Larry Blake is a supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer of feature films. He has worked on over 80 features since 1989 and won an Emmy for his work on “Behind the Candelabra” in 2013.  

He has been working with Film Maker Steven Soderbergh since the beginning with 29 features and three television seasons, plus multiple films from Victor Nuñez, David Gordon Green, and the Duplass Brothers.

He has written extensively on film sound, beginning in 1981 for Recording Engineer/Producer and then in Mix; these writings total over 110 columns and 35 feature articles. Right now, he is working on a book on the digital archiving of motion pictures called “Solving the Digital Dilemma”. 

From 2000-2016 he owned Swelltone Labs, a post-production sound facility in New Orleans, where he lives and works.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0086626/

Mitch Ziegler retired last June from a 35 year career in teaching. For 31 of them he was the adviser of the award winning newspaper and yearbook at Redondo Union High School, where he also taught AP English and photography.

The recipient of numerous advising and service awards over the years, Ziegler was named the H.L. Hall National Yearbook Adviser of the Year by the Journalism Education Association.

Ziegler has been married to his wife Julie for 33 years, and he has two adult sons.

Jeff Prang was elected in 2014 as the 27th Assessor for the County of Los Angeles and re-elected in 2018. 

Raised in Warren, Michigan, Assessor Prang is a graduate of Michigan State University. After graduation, Mr. Prang relocated to California where he served nearly 18 years as a council member for the City of West Hollywood, including four terms as Mayor, among many other positions in his public sector career. 

Assessor Prang is a State Board of Equalization licensed appraiser and administers the largest office of its kind in the nation with 1,300 employees that provides the foundation for a property tax system that generates over $17 billion annually. 

https://assessor.lacounty.gov/formsPublished August 8, 2021

Taglit is the Hebrew word for 'discovery'.

The Birthright Israel program was initiated in 1994 and is funded by private donors, The Jewish Agency for Israel and the Israeli Government. To be eligible you have to have at least one parent of recognized Jewish descent, or who have converted to Judaism through a recognized Jewish movement and be between the ages of 18 and 27.

As of 2022, more than 800,000 participants from 68 countries had participated in a Birthright tour.

A Birthright Israel trip includes airfare from a major gateway city, room, board and transportation associated with touring the country for a ten-day trip.

Guest Intro

On today’s show, my guests are Nina Levinson who works in the entertainment industry creating localizations, literally the foreign language versions, of popular TV shows and movies. And Jason Rochlin who is the Lead Features Editor at Game Rant, a popular web blog site covering news and interest stories of the video gaming industry. (And yes, he is my son)