 Hi, welcome to Life in the Law. I'm Marianne Sasaki. Today we have a guest who is very difficult to acquire. I've been begging him to come on for some time. He finally is seated to my request and he's my husband, Andrew Sasaki. So welcome, Andrew. Welcome, Marianne. It's good to see you for the first time in hours. I've been asking you for months since I've been on. Andrew actually has a longer life in the law than I do because his father was a judge. So he's been in the law since he's been zero years old, right? Your father was a lawyer. Approximately zero. Right, right. He was in the prosecutor's office at that time. Oh, wow. So we can talk about your life in the law a little later, but let's talk about your life now. Andrew's an IT professional and he, I was gonna say, practiced many years but I guess worked many years in New York City. What did you do? I mean, I have no idea. Well, you know, I was 90 operations so I mostly built out infrastructure and planned for upgrades and things like that. So it would be everything from going into an empty space and deciding what kinds of network equipment needed to be there and how the hardware was we're gonna run and all that up to doing server rooms and virtualized infrastructure like VMware and, you know, in the cloud. I'm sure there are people out there that will understand the word of that. There are probably lots of people out there that won't understand the word of that. It's a little esoteric if you're not in the industry. So when you're here today really because you just completed a very exciting experience and you're embarking on an adventure in hacking aren't you? You know, I thought I was here today because you needed a last minute guest. Well, that also. Well, so don't give away my secrets to the audience. Oh, you can edit that out. Okay, we'll try. Okay. So no, but tell us about Dev League and what you did there and why it's so exciting for Hawaii and why Hawaii is like on the cusp of being a new silicon center. You know, there are really a lot of efforts to make it into that and I think Dev League is part of that. So Dev League, if you don't know, is an IT bootcamp. Those have come into popularity in recent years. They're really high intensity, very specialized kind of trade schools where you go for a short period of time and and you really learn web design and and you know web programming and coding and all that stuff very intensely, typically in a short period of time. Like how short? Well, Dev League was three months and it was six days a week, 11 hours a day and you were doing nothing but coding the entire time. So it's total immersion. Total immersion. So I have a question. So what's coding? So coding is, you know, they used to they used to call it programming, but you know, programming is, I guess they call it coding more now that it's, you know, that's for the web. I think there's kind of a I think there's kind of a distinction people make between programming, which is where you're writing some kind of a program that people are using on computers and coding, which is like a language, right? Which is doing stuff for the web, usually. Right, right. So there's kind of a gray area. You know, I've heard both of you, so. Was the bootcamp the hardest thing you've ever done? It probably was. It was really hard. Because you were out six days a week, 11 hours a day learning coding, right? You know, just just the loss of time that you have in committing to something 11 hours a day, you know, for that length of time, it's like you really miss the expert time. You don't realize until it's gone. I can't even imagine sitting in front of a computer screen for 11 hours a day. I mean, that alone is, you know, just a marathon. Well, it's true. Sometimes you're, sometimes you're watching, sometimes you're watching a lecture or a demonstration. Sometimes you're working with somebody else and they're the ones that are at the computer and you're kind of doing co-pilot stuff. So now what, what have you, what's your big takeaway from bootcamp? What was, did you learn a big lesson or a lot of little lessons or what, and what would you tell people if they were thinking about going to bootcamp? I would tell people, if they're thinking of going to a bootcamp, I think most people can do it if they're, if they're really dedicated. But it's definitely a lot of effort. And you, I think there's a misconception that people need a lot of technical skill in order to go in and do something like that. But it's not. You have to be willing to learn, I think, and willing to put in a lot of time and effort to do it. And if you can meet those criteria, and I think more people can than they realize, then you can do it. Yes, you can. You can do it. Even if you're a lawyer, you could go to Devlin if you're interested in IT. Yeah, I think even attorneys could do it. I think so. I think it'd probably be good for attorneys, although they, they used to marathon work schedules. So that would be kind of, you know, familiar to them, I think. Right. You know, more so maybe in some places than others. But yeah, definitely. So, so what, so what was your takeaway from debt? Well, first of all, we have to say the Dev League is one of the best of these in the country. It's gotten numerous awards for being the one of the best coding bootcamps in the country, right? I don't know how many awards it's gotten or anything, but but it's definitely, it's definitely one of the best ones. But then I think that's very significant that it's located here in Hawaii, because I think something is emerging. I think we're at a new frontier with Jay, if I don't think so, also with respect to, you know, information technology and computer development. Yeah, in a way, I think Hawaii maybe has a little bit of an advantage because they're a little isolated from the mainland. So they maybe don't have the, they maybe came into it without as much infrastructure on the technical side as maybe in some of the big cities on the mainland. So in a way, it's maybe easier to move forward with all that legacy stuff keeping you back. That's great. I mean, we were talking about that the other day, we're talking about how some places in Europe or India didn't have a good infrastructure and they became wired in a very sophisticated fashion because there was nothing there to begin with. And so that it's sort of analogous in that in that way, right? Right. I think the other day we were talking about was was like Italy. Oh, Italy. That's right. For the longest time, you know, notorious for having one of the worst phone systems in Europe. It was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. And so because they had this lousy infrastructure when mobile came in, you know, it was it was really easy to replace that lousy infrastructure because all of a sudden here's this new thing, you know, and and you didn't have to support the old thing when you're moving over to the new one. So so now what's what's the hackathon? Is it connected to Dev League or I mean, what, what's the connection? What is it? And what do you what are you doing? So typically hackathon is where you have a contest with a bunch of individuals or teams that are competing to to create some kind of program in a short amount of time. Hackathons, you know, become popular. But really, the government decided to the state government decided to get into the hackathon business and have a hackathon that would be on behalf of the state. So there were a bunch of teams that got together. And there were some presentations about a week and a half ago over loa tower on different government agencies that had needs that that they could really use some help. And this was the brainchild of the new CIO of Hawaii, right? Right, whose name I'm blanking on at the moment. I was hoping you would remember. Well, I don't really be a really good name to have on hand. Yes, I really would. But but I the fact that he's a new CIO, he's brought in a whole like fresh approach to the needs of the government and implementing sophisticated programmers and coders in governmental departments, which hadn't been a priority before, I think. I think it hasn't, you know, when when you talk about when we're talking earlier on about having legacy infrastructure, you know, the government is one of those places that really has a lot of legacy infrastructure. So I think in a lot of ways, it's been an issue of keeping government from moving forward on the IT side. But but you're right, this is like this is like a pretty innovative thing for them to be doing. And I've heard really good things about the state's efforts in this regard. So what kinds of so every bunches of people have projects right that they're doing in order to kind of like win this hackathon. That's how it goes. Yes, like their teams, right? And so are there teams that are specifically addressing issues the State Department has? Or can you just address any sort of governmental issue you think is important? Well, for the hackathon, there were about a half a dozen different presentations from different agencies. And each team is addressing one of those. Okay. So there are multiple teams on on some of them. And some only have, you know, maybe one team. So what are some teams? What are they working on? Do you know? So some of the projects were made in Hawaii, agricultural agricultural items and food. Another one was for farmers markets. There was one that was for visitations at the at the jail. Oh, that's that's a terrific idea. Yeah. Yeah, that is the you know, the story that they told there was that there's there's just so little manpower and so few resources. Right. You know, there's basically like one phone line. And people might travel by bus from the opposite side of the island to visit someone who's in prison. Right. And they try and call to make an appointment. And there's only the one line, which if it's busy, you know, you're just not going to get. Oh, yeah, that really lends itself to an application. Definitely. Because you know, I worked in the prisons rights project. And I know that visitation is not a high priority. And it's often I was bungled is a is a strong word. But but it doesn't get the attention that it deserves probably people do travel from far, from far away. And there are missed appointments or miscommunications with respect to appointments and visiting hours and things like that. And and often people traveling by public transportation. So it's, you know, really hard on on the visitor. So if they can fix that to some extent, that would be a great, great advance, I think it would be. It's a little surprising that there hasn't really that there hasn't really been any effort towards this so far. And they're still in the system where they have the one phone. I'm not surprised really, because I think people don't want to think about prisoners. They don't want to think about prison systems are so huge and growing and Baroque. And it's it's just it's like a leviathan, you know, you know, you to to attack it, you need you need to, you know, like special powers or something. Well, you know, I think you bring up a good point, which is that the prison system is growing. And it's really its own special industry. Right. And I really don't think it's, you know, there's there's profit in dealing with a lot of aspects of prisons, but I don't really think there's a lot of profit in accounting for prison visits. Right, I don't think so. Right. So it's so that's not really a profit center in the way that housing prisoners is, right, or, or producing products in prisons, which has been privatized. Right. That kind of thing. So I'm going to take a quick break. And after we come back, maybe we can talk about some more other subjects that we like to usually talk about politics and some other exciting things. And yes, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, but we look to talk about him. So we're going to take a quick break. You're watching Life in the Law. I'm Marion Sasaki. Stay tuned. I pity the fool who ain't watching this show at 12 o'clock on Friday afternoon. Stan, the energy man, watch it. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you get excited about my new show, which is humane architecture for Hawaii and beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. And the show is about Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. Thanks for watching Think Tech this summer. We have a lot of terrific shows of great importance. And I hope you'll watch my show to every Tuesday at noon, as we address sustainability issues for Hawaii. They're really pertinent as the World Conservation Congress approaches in September and the World Youth Congress that's focusing on sustainability next year as well. Have a great summer and tune in at noon every Tuesday. Hi, welcome back to Life in the Law. I'm speaking with Andrew Sasaki in full disclosure. He's my husband, but he's also an IT professional and involved in the state hackathon. And it's fascinating that the steps the state is taking to modernize the IT industry and hopefully bring it up to a state of the art product or practice or what would be state of the art industry, I guess is the right word, right? Right. Well, they really are making efforts in that regard. And I've heard some good things about people who were involved in the hackathon and not government people, but people who are outside of government. So what's your hackathon subject? My hackathon subject is going to be campaign finance. Well, it is campaign finance. And what will you do? I mean, how will that manifest? Do you know yet? So what we're trying to do is create a nice database of campaign finance, where the where the donations are coming from, where the where the money is being spent, and hopefully link that up to link that up to the candidates, a nice, searchable database. Oh, that's terrific. That would be great. I'd like to know that. Would that be open to the public? It would. Oh, I'd love to know that information. Everything is part of the challenge is going to be open to the public. Now, there's already there's already something that's like that, but it doesn't quite meet the needs that they're hoping for. So we're maybe going to modernize it. I would be totally interested in that. That's, you know, well, you know, I love politics, and I'm always willing to talk about politics. So do you want to talk a little bit about politics? Do you want to talk about politics? Well, we don't disagree. So it's very boring. Is it what we talk about? We could talk about the fact that Hillary Clinton will probably be the first female president of the United States. Did you think you'd ever see that in your lifetime? You know, I did. I thought it was a possibility back in the in the 80s. Really? With Geraldine Ferraro? Yeah, I mean, it could happen that that's, you know, that someone could be a vice president and be a woman or when a president, you know, if you've gone that far, you're an inch away. What do you think about the rise of Donald Trump? What do you think it says about Americans, American spirit or America? What's what's propelling this campaign, which is such an odd, an odd campaign? I mean, it's flip flops back and forth and it's it's built upon nationalism and anti, you know, sort of anti-globalism. What I mean, what who is he speaking to? He's speaking to he's speaking to right wing media listeners. You know, it's really clear to me when when I look at and you look the way that Trump is running his campaign and the things that said that it's really Trump has figured out how to hack the news. Oh, I really think you're absolutely right. But why don't you explain what that means to the audience? Because I understand what you mean and what do you mean by hack the news? Well, for a long time, you know, for a long time, the news operated as a public service and was requirement that if you had a broadcast license from the FCC, you needed to you needed to spend a certain amount of your of your time, whether you were a TV station or radio station broadcasting things that were demonstrably in the public interest for the public good. That's right. When did that go away? Well, that went away with with Ronald Reagan's administration in 1980s. And I think it really started when they gutted the the Fairness Act of the FCC. You know, they used to have that. Well, not the Fairness Act, the Fairness Doctrine. You know, there used to be something called the Fairness Doctrine, which was when you aired a political viewpoint, you had to give equal time to an opposing viewpoint. And you don't have to do that anymore. Well, you can pretty clearly see that on things like Fox News, right? There's no opposing viewpoint on that. Right, right, right. And when you say Donald Trump has hacked the news, do you mean turned it against itself? I mean gotten in virally involved in sort of, I mean, what do you mean by hacked the news? Well, Donald Trump has figured out in a way in Donald Trump has figured out some things about the news that the other candidates maybe maybe they figured it out and maybe they haven't. But if they figured it out at all. But part of it is but part of it is Donald Trump has some other strengths that allow him to do this. But he's figured out that you can say something that's newsworthy and crazy and there won't be enough time to follow up on it. But even more so, if you say something else that's newsworthy and off the wall the next day, that will be the thing that gets coverage. And the things you said that day before that's that was wacky, like forget that that won't be covered because now the media is covering this new thing that you said. Well, you know, that's interesting. You should say that because I thought that the scandal involving Trump University and the students feeling like they got ripped off when they attended, you know, and Trump's subsequent, you know, calling the Ohio born judge of the trial of Mexican or foreign. I thought surely this will demolish his career, but it but it didn't. And obviously other things came up. But it didn't because, you know, like almost as soon as that happened, there was some other crazy thing about Trump that that was on the news and was dominating all the coverage. And it's been like that all the time. I mean, there hasn't been, have there been maybe as many as three consecutive days that have gone by when there hasn't been some crazy thing about Trump. And he's on the news all the time. And the latest is that he funded a Florida attorney generals campaign at a private, out of nonprofit funds in hopes of having her drop the case against Trump University. How long do you think that story will last? I think it's a fascinating story. I mean, it's a story for one thing. It is. It seems like like right up to the line of bribery and maybe like tossing some stacks of cash over that line and the other side. But Trump has said that he that he in the past, you know, was happy to pay for when you pay to be on the inside, you know, pay for play or pay for influence. He's he's he said it. He said in castigating other candidates, he said, oh, I understand this whole play for pay. Nice use of castigating. Oh, thank you. You know, I understand this whole play for play thing. It's cricket. It's inside. And so I mean, here's an example of him having done it. And I wonder if it'll stick now. I mean, nothing seems to sort of stick. But how's it going to stick when everybody else does it, too? Right. Like when how can Hillary Clinton bring that up when when, you know, there are there are some issues involving involving her with the Clinton Foundation. I'm sure they don't and I'm sure they're they don't they don't rise at the same level, right? But I don't have to rise to the same level or or even be or even be actually illegal in the way that probably Trump's things are. But just the fact that you can bring them that you can bring them up and talk about them and kind of raise questions without really coming out and making an accusation, you know, shows that there is a pay for play operation going on and people have been doing it for a really long time and are reluctant to give it up. You know, well, it cuts clearly off at the knees as far as being able to bring that up. And and, you know, and the thing of it is when Trump says that stuff, he's right. I mean, all the candidates do that. There's such a strong link between money and getting elected. Let me ask you a question. Is your is your app going to can your app fix that or address it or? Oh, God, no. Oh, it's not going to give everyone. It's not going to give everyone a pony. But don't you think. But I mean, don't you think sunlight is the best disinfectant? I mean, if we see understand where money is coming from and, you know, how it's coming and where it's coming, it'll it'll people's eyes will be opened a little bit. You know, sunlight is the best disinfectant. And if we could get more detail in into the campaign finances, then the government requires, then, yeah, I think that would be really eye-opening. But, you know, one of the things that's happened is that campaign finance reform has has really been stymied every single time it tries to it's it's attempted. Well, what about Citizens United? Do you think Citizens United will stand? I would, I would hope it wouldn't. It's so it's so obviously democratic. We should explain Citizens United, which is a Supreme Court case that enabled packs or corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to candidates. Would you say that's that's a correct assessment in a nutshell of what Citizens United is? And obviously, you know, it's skews all all all kinds of candidates positions if, you know, large corporations can make large contributions to their campaigns. I wanted to say something before, though, when we were talking about, you know, even Hillary Clinton, I read that Goldman Sachs is to prevent conflict of interest Goldman Sachs is telling their employees that they ought not give to Trump that they should they ought to support Hillary Clinton. So so Hillary Clinton's in, you know, plugged into the into the whole play for play, pay for play in a big way to, as you were saying, I mean, maybe not maybe not so blatantly is Donald Trump. But, you know, I mean, I think almost every politician is plugged into that, you know, any politician of any province, not necessarily in a corrupt way, but the fact is that in order to get elected, you typically need like a really large campaign chest, right? You know, and they get that hitting up corporate donors. But you know what, Trump doesn't seem to be suffering from lack of mobility on the ground and a lack of a big war chest. I mean, see, that's how he's hacked the media. He's hacked the media because he's he's found a way to get the coverage that he needs without paying for the coverage that he needs without paying for commercials and so forth. Well, exactly. Like the largest expense of any campaign is, you know, is the campaign itself is like the media and getting that kind of exposure. And I've seen estimates that that say Trump has received over a billion dollars worth of free media exposure just by being outrageous and by becoming Donald Trump. So I want to change course just a little bit because we have only a few minutes left. And I have I'm kind of interested. You're from Kailua. I am from Kailua. And you were away from Hawaii for 20 some odd years. And so what tell me your thoughts on returning? Okay, the first thing that I really want to know is where did all the chickens come from? I go in downtown Kailua now or to the beach, you know, there were not chickens there when I was growing up. Now, you're a newcomer here. So you're not used to a chicken free. You're not used to a chicken. Of course there are chickens there in Whole Foods. I went to the court. I went to the court in Kauai. There were chickens all over the front of the courthouse. I will have to get to the bottom of why there are now chickens and why there were in the zoo. You know, they're probably involved in some kind of chicken related law soon and are there as witnesses. I'd have to guess. When some wild chickens get loose and just start populating the islands, I mean what? You know, I don't know what happened there. So that's the biggest thing that struck you that there's now a lot of chickens? Well, that's one of the big things. The other thing is that the demographics of Kailua have really changed, you know. It's really surprising to see how, you know, it's like there are not a lot of kama'inas there anymore. It's like they're being priced out of Kailua. And the entire character of downtown Kailua has changed so drastically. It used to be almost nothing but mom and pop stores. And there was the occasional big store there, like Liberty House in the Bronx. Right. Back when there was a Liberty House. I know. I'm so sad about that. And before it was long as it was Crest, which was just great. I love Crest. And you don't remember Crest. It was this five-in-dime store. Did it have a counter here at Crest? Did it have a counter? It has a food counter and you could buy sewing notions and it was just the greatest store. You could spend hours in it and, well, ours in New York City had, they also had pets. So they had pets. Ours had pets. Yeah. So you could have a buy. You could visit the pets. You could buy a sewing pad. It was like a general store. They don't exist anymore. Everybody's now, everybody's like a single-purpose entity, right? You go to the hamburger place for hamburgers. You go to the hot dog place for hot dogs. You go to the fried chicken place for fried chicken. Well, except for some place like Target, which has, you know, everything and you could probably fly a smaller plane around the side of the store. But it doesn't have pets. It doesn't have pets, Target. Can you say that for sure? Have you checked the entire store? I haven't checked all of the Target. Or there might be pets there somewhere. So are you, are you happy that you finally came on? You were so, you were so reluctant to come on. See, it's fun. It's fun. Show us life in the law. You've had life in the law. What's the biggest thing you've taken away from having had a life in the law, your father being a lawyer? Can you tell me? You already know what this is. You're asking what they call a leading question. The biggest thing I took away from growing up in a household with an attorney and later a judge for a father is that I never wanted to be an attorney. The amount of money you could pay me to be an attorney does not exist. So I think that's a good note to end your life in the law. And because here's somebody with a particular insight into a lawyer's day and what kind of obstacles we face, challenges we face. And so the law has begotten an IT professional. And frankly, the IT and the law are really interconnected these days. We could have talked a little bit about that, but we don't have the time. That's a whole other show. We could totally do a show on IT and the law. But it's fascinating. It's changing and shaping the law. It's changing and shaping the way the law is practiced. And it's actually changing. And it's actually changing. I know it is. But since we're out of time now, I'm going to just say thank you. And I'll say I'll see you at home later. Cook me dinner. And I want to thank everybody for tuning into Life in the Law. I'm Marianne Sasaki. We're on Wednesdays between 1 and 1.30. And I hope you join us. Talk like this all the time. This is totally how we talk.