How you got a blank video screen this morning and How Iran Could Strike Israel

The jetlag caught up to me

I’ve been running on a good three hours of sleep ever since I came back from Australia and it finally caught up with me last night. That’s why if you opened your email alerts this morning and tried to click on a video about Iran, you got nothing but a blank screen.

Here is how that happened:

This is my fault. When I got back, home, I told my agent a funny story about how Rocketmoney detected a double charge at an airport lounge. He told Rocketmoney and Rocketmoney asked me if I could do an ad about the event.

The only problem was that I didn’t have a video.

I normally have “roundup” videos ready to go. This is where I rapid-fire answer viewer questions, but then Iran killed Ismail Haniyeh and everyone initially thought it was an F-35 air strike. So a fan asked me if Iran could theoretically do the same to Israel.

At first, I laughed it off, but wargaming is all about how you could make a scenario happen. So if I were Iran, how could I used fighters to create a dilemma for Israel?

A scenario formed in my head and by some miracle of God I was able to write the video, shoot it, edit it and get it approved by the advertiser in just two days.

I got it done, but I was going on about three hours sleep.

It was almost the weekend and I have this “friend” in Virginia Beach.

You know the kind of friend who is in her 40’s, works all the time and doesn’t have time for a relationship but can fit you in for dinner and a short visit as long as you don’t overstay your welcome or develop feelings?

Well, I went to see her. It’s normally a three hour trip from where I live in Washington, DC to Virginia Beach… unless you have a Tesla. Then it’s five hours due to charging stops.

While driving down, a tree fell in the road on I64 and I was stuck for two hours.

They eventually cleared the tree debris, but I didn’t get to the friend’s place until midnight.

My agent, who is in the Vancouver time zone, finally got back to me and told me that my video had been approved by RocketMoney. So I logged into YouTube and set up the video to be released at 9AM on Saturday. I also set up my Substack to release the video at 9:01.

Since I didn’t have the time to recut a second video for Substack, and risk of demonetization was low, I just linked the YouTube video to Substack as an embedded video.

Then I went to bed. I slept a good 11 hours.

I woke up to about 30 emails from angry Substack fans - they got the email alert and then couldn’t watch the video. It took me a moment, but I finally figured out what was wrong. In my groggy haze, I had set the YouTube video to release on Sunday, not Saturday. I made the quick fix and now the video is available below.

Sorry!

-Ryan