294: ‘DOS Rot’, With John Moltz
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I don't think I've ever told you this.
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I am a big believer in the poodle.
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I also believe though that we should keep it quiet.
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But I feel like I'm almost out of this.
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Jonas is heading into 11th grade.
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I think we're hopefully getting out of the quarantine.
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I feel like if I've gotten this far and we haven't gotten a dog,
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I'm going to get out of this without a dog.
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But in my back pocket,
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I've had all along,
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if we got to get a dog, we're getting a poodle.
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Yeah. Because they're great.
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He's good. He's 11,
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but old dogs age faster.
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So he's a little rickety at this point.
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But he's a good boy.
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They're great dogs. They're smart.
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They have great disposition.
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They don't shed.
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They don't shed.
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They do not shed.
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They don't. The only thing that happens is
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Karen will cut his hair and then leave the hairline all over the place.
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I assume under the assumption the Roomba will take care of it.
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I'm not sure what's going on there.
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We also have, Amy had a poodle growing up named Andy.
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He was a great dog.
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They live a long time.
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Andy was unbelievable.
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I honestly got it.
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Was that a little one?
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He was like a mid-size.
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He wasn't like yours.
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Yeah. I think we'll go mid-size next time.
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Yeah. Andy was a black poodle who wasn't big like yours.
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What's your dog's name?
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Wasn't a big one, but he wasn't one of those mid toy poodles.
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Well, that was the thing.
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If we were going to get a poodle,
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I want to get a big one because I didn't want
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something that would shiver every time the door opened.
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Andy was a good dog.
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He was a very good dog.
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But he lived a truly preposterous number of years.
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I honestly don't think I'm exaggerating.
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I think he might have been 18 when he died.
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But he lost his hearing towards the end and eventually lost it all.
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But he was in good health.
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For a dog that lived to be 18, going deaf is probably the least of his problems.
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Amy's mom's house had this vent.
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It still has the vent, I guess.
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I shouldn't say she still lives there.
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But it has a vent in the floor, and in the winter, it was just his spot.
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And the hot air would just come out.
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And like many dogs, did not care for the mail carrier
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and apparently would have dreams about the mail carrier.
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So the real mail would come.
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And for years and years, he wouldn't even hear the mail drop in through the slot.
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But then he would seemingly have dreams and just jump out of his corner.
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And it's kind of neat because an old dog is still a lot more limber and fast
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than an old person.
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You know what I mean?
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A 17-year-old dog, when he had a dream about the mailman,
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could still book it.
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Well, Grant can't do that.
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He's only 11, but big dogs have hip problems a lot of times,
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and he's got hip problems.
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He's got arthritis and stuff like that already.
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So he's wearing down fast.
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Yeah, but he does that sleep dream thing.
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So you see his paws moving a lot when he's asleep.
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And then one night, I was home, and I was up late working,
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and I was sitting in the living room, and he was lying there next to me.
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And we had a bunch of things go wrong in the house.
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And I can't remember exactly what, but just like you buy a house,
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it's a money sink.
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So I was mad about all that stuff.
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And all of a sudden, I hear this thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.
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Oh, god, now what?
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What is going on in this house?
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What is broken down in this house?
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And I'm looking around trying to figure out what this noise is,
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and he's asleep, and he's having a happy dream in his wagon and his tail.
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Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.
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We went out to eat last night.
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Oh, it was great.
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It was actually great.
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This is the first time we've been out to eat since March.
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I used to know the date.
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It was like March 10th, I think, or something like that.
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But we went out to eat for the first time, and it was great.
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Philly, the rules are still no indoor dining.
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There's a rumor, possibly.
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I guess the plan is some point mid-September,
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they might reopen indoor dining with 25% capacity and a bunch of rules.
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But in the meantime, outdoor dining only, which we've had for weeks.
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And we, the groupers, have simply decided we're just not going to partake in.
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And it's just a vague, like, eh, we're good.
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Yeah, that's how I feel currently.
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I mean, I might do outdoor dining, though.
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I mean, that would be certainly something that I would consider.
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I would not consider indoor dining at this point.
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One of the factors for us isn't germophobia or overt fear of getting it.
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It's that July and August in Philadelphia are very hot and humid.
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I mean, really hot and humid.
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And I don't like to be sweaty when I'm eating,
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and I take the heat better than other members of the family.
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So it's just, you know, I get it.
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And it's great to see it.
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We go out for walks all the time, and we go past all these restaurants.
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And there's more and more of them opening up with lots of tables,
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and it's just a delight to see.
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And it's good to see that restaurants are not thriving,
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but it seems like some of them have enough space and enough tables
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that hopefully they're breaking even, at least.
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And I'm so glad to see it, but we went out to eat last night.
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And it was great.
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It was very nice.
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But boy, what a weird thing to go six months without eating
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at any restaurant at all.
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We do take out an awful lot.
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I haven't been in a restaurant, other than to pick up food.
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Right, same here.
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Same exact thing here.
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And for us, we see it, and it was like last Friday I picked up pizza.
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And I was like, what in the world is going on with all the DoorDash people
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at the pizza place where I've been before?
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And I realized, because it was raining--
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and it wasn't like pouring down rain, it was just a rainy night--
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but because it was a rainy night, nobody could eat outside.
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And so therefore, anybody whose plans were I don't want to cook
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was getting takeout.
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And so the difference between a nice Friday night
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and a rainy Friday night in terms of how many people
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are waiting at the pizza place for pickup were just kind of crazy.
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But they did a great job.
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I had to wait a little longer than you'd think,
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but they were ready for me, paid in advance.
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And therefore, it was like they knew what I had,
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and it came right out of the oven into the box.
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Here you go, John.
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Here's your two pies.
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And I was on my way with fresh hot--
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I'd rather wait and have fresh hot pizza than get a cold pizza.
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There's a couple places that do this, but one place
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that's like a Thai fusion sort of place close to us that we go to.
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If you pull up in the parking lot and call them,
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they'll bring it right out to you so you don't even have to go in.
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There's a couple places that do.
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I mean, in Philly, where we are, it's so pedestrian-oriented.
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But it is weird, too.
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There's a lot of people who are recreationally driving,
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cruising, clearly.
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Well, I've had to start doing that because my car won't start if I don't.
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I don't take recreational drives.
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And then I go to the grocery store every two weeks.
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And I have to jumpstart the car again.
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You know this from the ones like we're on.
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My car died and couldn't even be jumpstarted.
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It died, died, died.
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And it was an old-ish battery that I don't
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think I would have had to replace if I'd been driving normally.
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We don't even drive that much ordinarily, but we drive enough.
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And I was like, this is ridiculous.
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There's no way that it's been that long.
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And then I was like, well, wait.
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I definitely drove the car at Easter to pick up food on Easter Sunday.
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And I was like, how long ago was Easter?
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And I did the hey dingus.
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Like, hey dingus, how long ago was Easter?
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And it was like six weeks.
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It was like over six weeks where I hadn't even started the car.
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And I was like, oh, yeah.
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I guess that wasn't two weeks ago.
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Yeah, I did the same thing.
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I feel sorry for the car, like the room, but the car
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should make a sad noise because I haven't been paying attention to it.
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Yeah, we have this great little startup thing here called 1-900 Ice Cream.
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I actually don't even know if the phone number works,
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but they started it-- somebody maybe old enough to remember 1-900 numbers,
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which, again, in hindsight, wow, what a kooky idea that was.
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You call a number and pay to listen to stuff.
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But they don't have a permanent retail spot.
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And so what they've been doing-- and I hope I'm getting the story right.
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Amy tends to handle it.
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But I think that they just make fresh batch, small batch ice creams week
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And when they have ice cream ready to go, they announce it.
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And then you have to quick jump in order.
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And then you go pick it up.
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But they know a bunch of people in the industry because they often--
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I guess they make ice cream for restaurants, too.
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And they've just sort of been bouncing between spots that--
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restaurants that aren't open.
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And so they could take the spot for a month.
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And now they're out in a neighborhood four or five miles
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from Center City, Philadelphia.
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Not far, four or five miles.
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And Amy's like, I don't know if you want to go out there.
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I'm like, no, no, no.
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Get all the ice cream now because I need a four or five mile drive.
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Like, I don't even--
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To charge the battery up.
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I don't even care about this ice cream that's making me fat.
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Even though it is delicious, it's absolutely delicious.
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And they're a delightful small company.
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And I'm happy to buy it.
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I was like, I just need a reason to drive the car.
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And this is where my life is, you know what I mean?
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And it's like, there's a lot worse problems out there.
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I drive down by the waterfront of Tacoma, which
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is a really nice drive.
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And also, you can see other people who are being unsafe.
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And you can be really judgy about it.
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OK, I get two kicks at the cat with that one.
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All right, my thought is we got the holiday week coming up.
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Have you guys-- I mean, nobody's--
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I haven't gone anywhere.
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Ben and I were talking about this on dithering for a bit.
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It's like, somehow the whole summer's coming past.
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And we didn't really take a vacation.
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And it's so totally like my weirdo job--
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put a parentheses S behind it--
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of doing my site and podcasts.
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It's like, I don't really need a vacation the way people--
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and again, my old coal miner grandfather
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who died when I was in first grade of black lung disease,
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he probably could have used vacations for me.
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But there is a sort of burnout.
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All of a sudden, it's like, hey, I've
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been working six days a week and writing nonstop for six months.
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Maybe I should take it easy for a week.
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It doesn't seem like a vacation, but maybe a slow week.
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I don't know.
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I mean, yeah, eventually you need to reset your mind a little bit, right?
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I guess, I think.
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It certainly feels like maybe--
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but anyway, I thought we could do a lighthearted show and not
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worry about stuff like--
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Well, we bought a pool.
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We bought an above-ground pool for the summer, which has been great.
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And here is a terrible place to have a pool,
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because there's basically two months out of the year
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that you're going to be able to use it.
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And we are quickly approaching.
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And we got it in a little bit late, because it was hard.
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I mean, I did all the work for myself, basically.
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But you got to flatten the--
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my yard was not flat.
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And you got to flatten it out, because otherwise the thing will just
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like tip over.
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How do you do that?
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--it's going to get a lot more work than I thought it was going to be.
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How do you flatten a yard?
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I mean, so you just have to start digging.
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And you get a board, and you put a level on the board,
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so you can get the distance of the whole board to see if it's level.
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And you just keep going around until you get it close enough.
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And it's supposed to be within like an inch the whole way around.
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And I think I got about that close.
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I'm still completely nervous that it's just
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going to-- I'm going to wake up one day, and the side busted open,
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and the whole thing spilled all over the yard.
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Because it's a good-- so we got a good size, and we got like a 15 foot.
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Because we wanted to be able to have other people over and be 15 feet apart
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from each other, and have you be in the pool.
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And we only have done that a couple of times, which was nice.
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And it's a great thing for Hank, because Hank loves to swim.
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He loves to be in the water.
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So it was a good way for him to get out of the house.
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Oh, that seems luxurious.
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Yeah, so now we're face-- now I got to deal with it for the winter,
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and I don't even know what to do.
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Yeah, I think that's probably the easier way.
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Put the house over sale.
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Includes pool.
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No, like I said, we've dried the value down.
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So the other funny thing about going out to eat yesterday
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was everything closes earlier.
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It's like places close at 8.
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And I don't know about you, if a place says they close at 8,
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I don't want to get a reservation in the last half hour.
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It always feels like you're imposing.
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And it's not like a selfish, oh, I think they might run out of stuff.
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It just feels like--
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You don't want to be the last person in there.
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Yeah, I don't like to be the last person in a restaurant.
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Last person in a bar, a little different.
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Yeah, they'll just push you out.
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You know what I mean?
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There's no problem.
00:14:06
◼
►
The last person in a restaurant, they don't want to be rude.
00:14:12
◼
►
So we ate at 6.15.
00:14:14
◼
►
And part of the novelty of the whole thing
00:14:17
◼
►
was I don't think we've ever eaten in a restaurant at 6.15
00:14:22
◼
►
other than a wedding or something.
00:14:27
◼
►
But not like, hey, let's us the family go eat.
00:14:30
◼
►
And we got out.
00:14:31
◼
►
And it's like 7.30, quarter to 8.
00:14:34
◼
►
And it's like, wait, why am I full?
00:14:37
◼
►
What is going on here?
00:14:39
◼
►
Am I retired?
00:14:40
◼
►
In your schedule, that was probably like lunch, right?
00:14:44
◼
►
But I felt like, maybe we should move to Florida, go to Boca.
00:14:48
◼
►
Because then we'll be closing places out by eating at 6.15.
00:14:55
◼
►
It's further north up here.
00:14:57
◼
►
And we get a big difference between sunlight in the summer
00:15:01
◼
►
and sunlight the rest of the year.
00:15:03
◼
►
And it's already started.
00:15:06
◼
►
So it'll be light until almost 10 o'clock some days during the summer.
00:15:12
◼
►
So yeah, they can't start the fireworks at least until 10 o'clock on 4th of July.
00:15:17
◼
►
Not that there were any this year.
00:15:20
◼
►
So now we're getting towards September.
00:15:23
◼
►
It's noticeably different.
00:15:26
◼
►
So we went and walked the dogs last night at like 8.20.
00:15:29
◼
►
And it was dark already.
00:15:31
◼
►
And that was just like, man, this is really starting to feel like it's fall now.
00:15:37
◼
►
And it always does when it gets dark.
00:15:40
◼
►
But it feels like we didn't really have a summer.
00:15:42
◼
►
I mean, the other thing I noticed at dinner last night at 6.15
00:15:45
◼
►
is I was looking at Jonas.
00:15:46
◼
►
And I was like, man, you really have not gotten out this summer.
00:15:52
◼
►
He doesn't look unhealthy.
00:15:54
◼
►
But he definitely looks like a kid who has spent an entire summer
00:15:58
◼
►
indoors playing video games.
00:16:00
◼
►
Yeah, and that is pretty much--
00:16:01
◼
►
other than go out to the pool, Hank has been inside from almost all the summer.
00:16:06
◼
►
Yeah, and he wore sunglasses throughout the meal.
00:16:09
◼
►
And I thought, you're just being a jerk.
00:16:12
◼
►
You're trying to look cool.
00:16:14
◼
►
Is it his sunglasses or anything?
00:16:15
◼
►
Or maybe have your eyes--
00:16:16
◼
►
Yeah, right.
00:16:18
◼
►
We're turning into vampires.
00:16:21
◼
►
Yeah, have you done vampire-like damage to your eyes and your light sensitivity?
00:16:25
◼
►
I don't know.
00:16:26
◼
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All right, let me take a break here to thank our first sponsor.
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My thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring the talk show.
00:19:08
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All right, this is why I want to talk to you, John.
00:19:10
◼
►
We got to go.
00:19:11
◼
►
We got to do this.
00:19:12
◼
►
I got to dig in.
00:19:13
◼
►
I got to rant.
00:19:14
◼
►
The main event.
00:19:17
◼
►
So 18 months ago for Christmas, we got Jonas a gaming PC.
00:19:22
◼
►
You and I have talked about this.
00:19:25
◼
►
I feel like you and I--
00:19:28
◼
►
Long suffering.
00:19:29
◼
►
I have never--
00:19:30
◼
►
Others and children with PCs.
00:19:35
◼
►
And again, it's not like I'm one of those people who's
00:19:37
◼
►
ever spelled Windows with D-O-Z-E at the end.
00:19:41
◼
►
But I used it.
00:19:42
◼
►
I had to work using Windows computers when I was in the '90s
00:19:48
◼
►
and coming out of college.
00:19:50
◼
►
I really found it tasteful.
00:19:52
◼
►
I was like, this is so gross.
00:19:54
◼
►
And so I've never bought one.
00:19:58
◼
►
I got an Xbox, like the original one, circa 2000,
00:20:03
◼
►
which let you play PC era games on the Xbox.
00:20:07
◼
►
I like video games.
00:20:08
◼
►
I don't really play them much anymore,
00:20:09
◼
►
but I did when I was younger.
00:20:11
◼
►
Never bought a PC.
00:20:12
◼
►
Never owned one.
00:20:14
◼
►
Told Jonas, look, all right, I get it.
00:20:17
◼
►
You want one.
00:20:18
◼
►
I'm not trying to talk you out of it,
00:20:20
◼
►
but this is the biggest, nicest thing you're ever
00:20:24
◼
►
going to get from me.
00:20:27
◼
►
I don't know a lot about this.
00:20:30
◼
►
You're going to have to take some responsibility here
00:20:34
◼
►
on knowing how to manage this.
00:20:36
◼
►
I mean, I'll certainly try to help you out.
00:20:38
◼
►
It's not like I'm going to say-- I'm not going to touch it.
00:20:43
◼
►
And it's been great.
00:20:44
◼
►
That's what you got him.
00:20:47
◼
►
We got something from MSI.
00:20:51
◼
►
I don't know.
00:20:52
◼
►
So it wasn't a build your own thing.
00:20:53
◼
►
We got a pre-configured thing.
00:20:55
◼
►
And I know that that's up there.
00:20:57
◼
►
And I did a lot of research.
00:20:58
◼
►
We did a lot of research, but I didn't want to build it.
00:21:02
◼
►
And he didn't really want to build it.
00:21:04
◼
►
It seemed like if we get one that just all comes put
00:21:07
◼
►
together, then we know it all works together.
00:21:09
◼
►
And we've both been very happy with it to date.
00:21:15
◼
►
Maxed out on the graphics card, which is core of our problem.
00:21:24
◼
►
Anyway, it was great for 16 months out of 18 months.
00:21:27
◼
►
And then, I don't know.
00:21:29
◼
►
But I guess it was about a month ago.
00:21:31
◼
►
Who knows in corona time?
00:21:32
◼
►
Four or five weeks ago, Jonas says.
00:21:37
◼
►
I think maybe water got in my PC.
00:21:44
◼
►
Well, it's on the ground.
00:21:47
◼
►
And there's been-- it's like a weird thing.
00:21:51
◼
►
You think, well, that's not how leaky windows work, right?
00:21:54
◼
►
Where one time there's rain, and he gets a little bit of water
00:21:58
◼
►
in through a window.
00:21:59
◼
►
And then it never happens again.
00:22:00
◼
►
And so you can't really identify what the hell is going on.
00:22:02
◼
►
But that's sort of what happened.
00:22:04
◼
►
Where it's like, yeah, there's a weird rain.
00:22:07
◼
►
This is a tower?
00:22:08
◼
►
Yeah, it's a tower.
00:22:11
◼
►
It's on the ground.
00:22:13
◼
►
It was-- most nights, puts it to sleep,
00:22:16
◼
►
wakes up, and then starts playing games.
00:22:19
◼
►
Woke up, and power was off.
00:22:21
◼
►
And then when he turned it on, it was in a weird diagnostic mode,
00:22:24
◼
►
which in hindsight, we realized was like the BIOS thing, which
00:22:28
◼
►
doesn't look like the old DOS BIOS thing anymore.
00:22:31
◼
►
It's like a manufacturer's thing that was graphical.
00:22:36
◼
►
But he tried to fix it at that point.
00:22:38
◼
►
So I didn't see that at that point.
00:22:40
◼
►
And then it didn't work.
00:22:42
◼
►
This is the weird thing.
00:22:43
◼
►
It manifested itself as working, but it was only driving his display
00:22:49
◼
►
at 1024 by 768, which was not right, and not even the right aspect ratio.
00:22:56
◼
►
So everything was sort of stretched, and none of these games would launch.
00:23:02
◼
►
Windows was working, and he could do things like browse the web
00:23:05
◼
►
and whatever.
00:23:05
◼
►
It just was the display thing that was broken.
00:23:08
◼
►
And I was like, well, this doesn't seem like water damage at all.
00:23:11
◼
►
What makes you think it's water damage?
00:23:13
◼
►
And I'm thinking this whole thing is kaput.
00:23:17
◼
►
And there's nothing by his window.
00:23:19
◼
►
There's no signs, nothing on the floor.
00:23:21
◼
►
I'm like, what?
00:23:21
◼
►
And he's like, well, I don't know.
00:23:22
◼
►
I just guessed that that's what would break it.
00:23:24
◼
►
And I'm like, wait.
00:23:26
◼
►
Wait, wait, wait.
00:23:27
◼
►
I'm not mad.
00:23:28
◼
►
I'm not going to yell.
00:23:29
◼
►
You've taken good care.
00:23:31
◼
►
Nothing came in through the window.
00:23:33
◼
►
And I'm like, wait, it didn't even rain.
00:23:34
◼
►
I was like, did you spill something on it?
00:23:36
◼
►
Just tell me.
00:23:37
◼
►
Did you somehow spill something even though it's off to the side?
00:23:39
◼
►
I'm not going to yell at you.
00:23:41
◼
►
We'll figure it out.
00:23:42
◼
►
We'll fix it.
00:23:43
◼
►
And he's like, not that I remember.
00:23:45
◼
►
And I'm like, Jonas, what do you mean not that you remember?
00:23:51
◼
►
If you are even suspicious, did you rest a can on it
00:23:55
◼
►
and you're worried that the can was condensed with humidity
00:23:59
◼
►
and dripped into it?
00:24:00
◼
►
Just tell me.
00:24:01
◼
►
If that's the sort of-- and you're like, does that count?
00:24:03
◼
►
Are you trying to parse this legally?
00:24:07
◼
►
And he's like, no.
00:24:08
◼
►
And I was like, do you have any vague recollection
00:24:10
◼
►
of any incident like that that would involve drops of water
00:24:13
◼
►
getting into the top of this thing?
00:24:15
◼
►
And he's like, no.
00:24:16
◼
►
And I'm like, so it's not water damage.
00:24:18
◼
►
Water damage shorts electrical things out.
00:24:21
◼
►
They don't tend to still turn on and half work.
00:24:26
◼
►
And so the whole water damage thing was a complete red herring.
00:24:30
◼
►
It was just his--
00:24:31
◼
►
this is the level of--
00:24:32
◼
►
Just his idle speculation.
00:24:33
◼
►
So we start digging around.
00:24:39
◼
►
And can I just tell you, Windows is so much worse
00:24:43
◼
►
than it ever was.
00:24:46
◼
►
On the surface level, it's like I thought, well,
00:24:48
◼
►
maybe it's gotten better.
00:24:50
◼
►
People say it's gotten better.
00:24:51
◼
►
It kind of looks better.
00:24:53
◼
►
But it's so much worse than it ever was back in the day
00:24:58
◼
►
when I had to use it.
00:24:59
◼
►
It's horrible.
00:25:00
◼
►
Windows is a goddamn criminal nightmare.
00:25:04
◼
►
And in my mind, I have--
00:25:07
◼
►
and for years, I own the Pixel phones.
00:25:10
◼
►
And I used to have a Nexus.
00:25:11
◼
►
I try to stay up to date with the Android thing.
00:25:14
◼
►
And in my mind, I've always sort of thought, well,
00:25:16
◼
►
Android is to iOS as Windows was to the Mac.
00:25:20
◼
►
And there's things I see in Android.
00:25:21
◼
►
I'm like, this is just so distasteful.
00:25:24
◼
►
It's that Steve Jobs line about Bill Gates.
00:25:26
◼
►
That his problem is he just has no taste.
00:25:29
◼
►
I say, this is just--
00:25:30
◼
►
but it's like, Android is so much better and more tastefully
00:25:35
◼
►
designed than Windows--
00:25:39
◼
►
to mobile devices than Windows is to PCs that it's like--
00:25:44
◼
►
ah, I can't even.
00:25:45
◼
►
I can't even, John.
00:25:46
◼
►
I can't even.
00:25:48
◼
►
Well, part of the thing that's really frustrating when
00:25:50
◼
►
you start to diagnose a Windows problem
00:25:52
◼
►
is that there's different places to look now, right?
00:25:57
◼
►
Because it used to be you go to the control panels.
00:25:59
◼
►
Like, everything was in the control panel section.
00:26:02
◼
►
I mean, I may be using the wrong words.
00:26:03
◼
►
No, that's it.
00:26:04
◼
►
I think it's control panels, right?
00:26:06
◼
►
But now, there's like a system preferences interface, which
00:26:12
◼
►
I believe came about--
00:26:14
◼
►
actually, I'm pretty sure it came about
00:26:16
◼
►
during Windows 8 when they were trying
00:26:17
◼
►
to do touch-based screens so that you
00:26:20
◼
►
have this thing that has much bigger touch targets so
00:26:23
◼
►
that you can use it with a tablet, in a tablet form
00:26:27
◼
►
But when you really want to do anything that's actually
00:26:30
◼
►
going to help fix your device, you've
00:26:32
◼
►
got to go into the control panels.
00:26:36
◼
►
And that's still the same basic thing that it was under XP.
00:26:43
◼
►
It's all still there.
00:26:45
◼
►
But it's not the thing that-- but you have to find that,
00:26:48
◼
►
It's not a menu item.
00:26:50
◼
►
The menu item thing is the system preferences,
00:26:53
◼
►
which is like a bunch of basic settings.
00:26:56
◼
►
But everything where you really configure
00:26:57
◼
►
the guts of the machine is under the control panels.
00:27:01
◼
►
And you have to search to find that every single time.
00:27:05
◼
►
At least I do.
00:27:06
◼
►
You have to go in.
00:27:08
◼
►
I swear to God, I'll put this in the show notes.
00:27:10
◼
►
But it's like you've got to go into the Run menu.
00:27:13
◼
►
And it's just like launching a CD-ROM in 1996,
00:27:18
◼
►
where you've got to type the exact right incantation.
00:27:21
◼
►
It's like you've got to type like DEVMGMT something,
00:27:26
◼
►
dev management.
00:27:27
◼
►
And it's like, oh my God, we're back at the seven character
00:27:31
◼
►
We're at that level of DOS rot.
00:27:34
◼
►
In a sense, actually having my son, whom I love,
00:27:43
◼
►
and who truly did and does take care of his PC,
00:27:49
◼
►
and who really does enjoy it, and it's
00:27:52
◼
►
a big part of his social life in normal times
00:27:54
◼
►
and the entirety of his social life in corona times,
00:27:59
◼
►
I really wanted to help fix it.
00:28:03
◼
►
Whatever it takes.
00:28:04
◼
►
If we need to spend our way out of it,
00:28:05
◼
►
we'll spend our way out of it.
00:28:07
◼
►
It's important.
00:28:10
◼
►
This is such a pile of heap of garbage.
00:28:13
◼
►
Again, in a sense, it is almost impressive the way
00:28:17
◼
►
that their strategy of managing technical debt
00:28:20
◼
►
is to keep architecting ways to haul all of it with them.
00:28:28
◼
►
In like this Dante's Inferno--
00:28:31
◼
►
We will leave no setting behind.
00:28:33
◼
►
Right, like multiple layers of hell.
00:28:35
◼
►
Like you think you're in hell just going
00:28:38
◼
►
through their settings app, but then you
00:28:40
◼
►
realize you've got to go back to the control panel.
00:28:43
◼
►
And then eventually you're back in the registry,
00:28:46
◼
►
and it's 1993 again.
00:28:52
◼
►
I kind of knew this was the case from helping him set the PC up.
00:28:57
◼
►
Even just setting it up when everything
00:28:59
◼
►
was new and working properly and we
00:29:01
◼
►
needed to do a few things like there
00:29:03
◼
►
was a courtesy copy of a Norton or something
00:29:08
◼
►
that was set to auto run.
00:29:09
◼
►
And it's like, well, let's figure out
00:29:10
◼
►
how to get rid of this because you don't need it.
00:29:12
◼
►
And let's just get this Microsoft's own Windows
00:29:15
◼
►
Defender set up.
00:29:16
◼
►
That seems like what you want.
00:29:18
◼
►
That's all you need.
00:29:20
◼
►
And even just setting it up, you still can't get out.
00:29:24
◼
►
You can't just sit on the modern surface layer.
00:29:26
◼
►
But this is seriously like a technical debt layer.
00:29:28
◼
►
This is like you're back at some point going back on a Mac,
00:29:33
◼
►
and Susan Cares' control panel is still there.
00:29:36
◼
►
You're looking at black and white Chicago 12 pixel font.
00:29:43
◼
►
There used to be--
00:29:45
◼
►
for a long time, there was something--
00:29:47
◼
►
if you started in recovery, what was that?
00:29:50
◼
►
Where it had the OS 9 style.
00:29:53
◼
►
There was-- yeah, it was like the--
00:29:55
◼
►
That got dragged forward for a long time, but that's not--
00:29:58
◼
►
I don't think that exists anymore.
00:30:00
◼
►
Or maybe I'm thinking of the tools.
00:30:04
◼
►
You'd get that CD that had the--
00:30:07
◼
►
Hardware diagnostic tool.
00:30:09
◼
►
It was called the hardware diagnostic tool, and it did.
00:30:13
◼
►
It wasn't Mac OS.
00:30:15
◼
►
It was some weird--
00:30:16
◼
►
It was something made to look like it.
00:30:18
◼
►
Yeah, something made to look like it.
00:30:19
◼
►
Whereas this actually is the old Windows XP running
00:30:23
◼
►
under the hood with just a veneer on top, which is--
00:30:28
◼
►
all the way back strategically, it's
00:30:29
◼
►
exactly what Windows was at the beginning.
00:30:31
◼
►
Windows was just a DOS program.
00:30:34
◼
►
If you recall, you would just type--
00:30:36
◼
►
you'd boot into DOS and type win to get the Windows.
00:30:40
◼
►
And when people bought a computer that launched,
00:30:43
◼
►
quote unquote, launched into Windows,
00:30:45
◼
►
it was just an auto-exist bat file
00:30:47
◼
►
that had the win command in it.
00:30:52
◼
►
I ran a small office back then.
00:30:53
◼
►
Yeah, we had Windows 3.1 for work groups, 3.1.1 or something
00:30:59
◼
►
Yeah, that was a trip.
00:31:02
◼
►
So anyway, what it is is we figured this out.
00:31:05
◼
►
We're in the control panel.
00:31:07
◼
►
We find that the Nvidia G-Force GTX, whatever,
00:31:12
◼
►
2080 is his video card.
00:31:15
◼
►
And you go to General, and it would say--
00:31:18
◼
►
here, I have a screenshot.
00:31:22
◼
►
I'll read it.
00:31:23
◼
►
Windows has stopped this device because it
00:31:25
◼
►
has reported problems, parentheses, code 43,
00:31:30
◼
►
end parentheses.
00:31:32
◼
►
And it was another way to tell that the video was
00:31:37
◼
►
being driven by something called the Windows default driver.
00:31:42
◼
►
And it's some kind of generic thing built
00:31:44
◼
►
into the low level of Windows.
00:31:45
◼
►
So in other words, even though we never
00:31:48
◼
►
unplugged his display and put it into a different port
00:31:52
◼
►
on the back of his PC--
00:31:53
◼
►
because there's a bunch of them, because there's so many--
00:31:58
◼
►
because he put a video card in, and then the video card
00:32:00
◼
►
has two DisplayPort ports and an HDMI port.
00:32:04
◼
►
But then there's one on the motherboard
00:32:06
◼
►
that has a plug in it, because it's like,
00:32:08
◼
►
don't use this one, because that's just
00:32:10
◼
►
the dumb one on the motherboard.
00:32:13
◼
►
But we never unplugged anything.
00:32:14
◼
►
So it was still plugged into the same thing
00:32:17
◼
►
that used to be driving it as this advanced expensive Nvidia
00:32:20
◼
►
G-Force gaming card.
00:32:21
◼
►
But now it wasn't.
00:32:22
◼
►
But it was that the driver Windows was using
00:32:25
◼
►
was no longer the Nvidia driver.
00:32:27
◼
►
It was this default driver.
00:32:29
◼
►
And now, all right, this makes some level of sense.
00:32:31
◼
►
This is why it's a 1024 by 768.
00:32:34
◼
►
And none of your games--
00:32:36
◼
►
it doesn't even come close to meeting
00:32:38
◼
►
the minimum specs of any game other than maybe Minesweeper,
00:32:43
◼
►
which is still there.
00:32:44
◼
►
Oh, no, it's not still there.
00:32:46
◼
►
They got rid of Minesweeper, which is criminal.
00:32:48
◼
►
I think they make you pay for all the old games
00:32:50
◼
►
that they used to do for free.
00:32:53
◼
►
Jonas and I were playing Minesweeper.
00:32:55
◼
►
But the best way to get it now is through Google.
00:32:57
◼
►
You just go to Google and type Minesweeper
00:32:59
◼
►
and they have a web-based version.
00:33:02
◼
►
But I was teaching them how to play real games
00:33:03
◼
►
like Minesweeper.
00:33:06
◼
►
So OK, code 43.
00:33:08
◼
►
This is something to go on.
00:33:10
◼
►
This isn't helpful, but you go on it.
00:33:12
◼
►
And you go-- and I'll put it in the show notes.
00:33:15
◼
►
It's a really helpful article, truly is, at a site called--
00:33:20
◼
►
what's this site called?
00:33:21
◼
►
Crazy Web Studio.
00:33:23
◼
►
How to Solve Code 43 Nvidia--
00:33:26
◼
►
That's reassuring.
00:33:27
◼
►
Nvidia GTX 10XX or RTX 20XX.
00:33:32
◼
►
It's a whole bunch of video cards
00:33:33
◼
►
that have that naming scheme GPU problem.
00:33:37
◼
►
And there's ways to--
00:33:40
◼
►
you can-- techniques to go through.
00:33:44
◼
►
Completely uninstall all the Nvidia device drivers
00:33:47
◼
►
and reinstall them from Nvidia.
00:33:51
◼
►
Didn't work.
00:33:53
◼
►
Start using some scripts that people have written
00:33:56
◼
►
and it seemed--
00:33:58
◼
►
the people swear by them and there's enough people.
00:34:01
◼
►
And you can kind of say you're not just
00:34:03
◼
►
running a truly random script.
00:34:05
◼
►
But it's like a bat file.
00:34:06
◼
►
And it deletes-- delete, deletes.
00:34:10
◼
►
Super deletes the drivers.
00:34:13
◼
►
Because I guess what they have to do is get into the registry.
00:34:16
◼
►
And the registry is still like the Yoda's Dagobah
00:34:20
◼
►
cave of the dark side.
00:34:24
◼
►
Everything's sort of dreamlike in there.
00:34:28
◼
►
Anyway, the script-- people swear by it that it works.
00:34:30
◼
►
Then reinstall them and it might work.
00:34:33
◼
►
That didn't solve it.
00:34:36
◼
►
So I thought, well, this is-- and then you get there.
00:34:38
◼
►
And here's the-- we did read that.
00:34:41
◼
►
I read the whole article, but it says, important.
00:34:44
◼
►
You also have to consider that the issue can
00:34:46
◼
►
happen for hardware problems.
00:34:48
◼
►
In some cases, the PCI card was not plugged in properly.
00:34:52
◼
►
In other cases, the alignment cable of the graphics card
00:34:54
◼
►
was not any more plugged properly.
00:34:57
◼
►
This is slightly broken English, perhaps.
00:35:00
◼
►
And in other cases, the graphic card was broken.
00:35:03
◼
►
This doesn't make any sense to me,
00:35:07
◼
►
that if the graphics card is broken,
00:35:09
◼
►
that it's still working in some low mode.
00:35:13
◼
►
Like, I was like--
00:35:14
◼
►
Well, wouldn't it default back to whatever the graphics are
00:35:17
◼
►
that are included on the Intel?
00:35:19
◼
►
Well, but it's not plugged into it, right?
00:35:21
◼
►
It's-- how would the display be getting this when it's
00:35:25
◼
►
plugged into the display port?
00:35:29
◼
►
It wasn't like, oh, we're not getting any picture out
00:35:31
◼
►
of this video card.
00:35:32
◼
►
Let's plug it into the Intel graphics port
00:35:35
◼
►
on this motherboard and at least get a picture
00:35:38
◼
►
and see if we can diagnose this.
00:35:40
◼
►
We never unplugged anything.
00:35:43
◼
►
I checked with Panzareno, who's a gamer.
00:35:45
◼
►
And he said that that makes some level of sense,
00:35:49
◼
►
that there's like-- that the hardware card could have
00:35:53
◼
►
It's broken.
00:35:54
◼
►
It's out of warranty by far.
00:35:56
◼
►
It's a 12-month warranty, so it's out of warranty.
00:35:59
◼
►
But even when it fails, it might have an emergency mode.
00:36:04
◼
►
This makes some level of sense at the way PC components work.
00:36:07
◼
►
And it's like, I guess that is-- so to the PC world's credit,
00:36:10
◼
►
that is better than nothing, I guess.
00:36:14
◼
►
But the error message is exactly--
00:36:16
◼
►
It's more confusing, though.
00:36:17
◼
►
The error message for drivers that need to be reinstalled
00:36:21
◼
►
and a card that has a cataclysmic hardware failure
00:36:25
◼
►
or a card that isn't properly seated in the PCI slot
00:36:31
◼
►
are all the same.
00:36:35
◼
►
That's all you get.
00:36:37
◼
►
So I had the idea then of, well, before we order a replacement
00:36:42
◼
►
video card, which is expensive-- effectively,
00:36:45
◼
►
a gaming PC is just a minimal--
00:36:48
◼
►
It's all-- yeah, it all revolves around that.
00:36:50
◼
►
It's a high-end video card with a computer wrapped around it,
00:36:55
◼
►
I mean, effectively.
00:36:57
◼
►
So I was like, don't worry.
00:36:58
◼
►
You know, it's not your fault. If this broke, it's truly--
00:37:02
◼
►
this is what you get when you buy a cutting-edge video card.
00:37:07
◼
►
No harm done.
00:37:08
◼
►
You're not in any trouble.
00:37:10
◼
►
This isn't coming out of your college fund.
00:37:13
◼
►
Which wouldn't-- I've worried.
00:37:15
◼
►
I've got to go to a state school now.
00:37:17
◼
►
Yeah, which I worry.
00:37:17
◼
►
You'd be like, ah, who cares?
00:37:21
◼
►
I need this now.
00:37:23
◼
►
But I thought, before we spend the money on this,
00:37:26
◼
►
how can we prove that it's not a software problem?
00:37:29
◼
►
And I thought, well, what about booting
00:37:31
◼
►
from an external drive?
00:37:34
◼
►
Well, that's easy on a Mac, right?
00:37:37
◼
►
If you have a drive.
00:37:38
◼
►
And we have plenty of drives in our house.
00:37:41
◼
►
And Windows, that is not easy at all to just say,
00:37:45
◼
►
I would like to install Windows on a USB drive
00:37:49
◼
►
and then boot from that drive.
00:37:50
◼
►
That was like a day.
00:37:53
◼
►
But we did get it to work.
00:37:55
◼
►
And the video was exactly the same, 1024, 768.
00:38:00
◼
►
Fresh installation of Windows with a--
00:38:05
◼
►
you could tell it was, right?
00:38:06
◼
►
Wasn't like a clone of his original C drive.
00:38:10
◼
►
Can you believe there's still C drives, by the way?
00:38:12
◼
►
C and D drives?
00:38:13
◼
►
Well, I mean, I know there aren't, but--
00:38:16
◼
►
Anyway, we had a lot of father-son time.
00:38:20
◼
►
So maybe this is all a good story.
00:38:22
◼
►
But I was like, do you know where the A and B drives are?
00:38:25
◼
►
And Jonas was like, no.
00:38:27
◼
►
And I was like, have you ever wondered?
00:38:28
◼
►
He said, yes.
00:38:30
◼
►
And I said, those are reserved for floppy drives, which
00:38:36
◼
►
no longer are supported by the operating system.
00:38:40
◼
►
And you still need it to be the C drive.
00:38:43
◼
►
And he's like, no.
00:38:44
◼
►
And I'm like, yep.
00:38:45
◼
►
So anyway, long story short, we replaced the video card.
00:38:54
◼
►
It took a while, because it's one of those things that
00:38:57
◼
►
still has to ship from China.
00:38:58
◼
►
And therefore-- and it's still the way
00:39:00
◼
►
shipments are messed up.
00:39:01
◼
►
And the quarantine world took like a week and a half
00:39:05
◼
►
or something.
00:39:06
◼
►
We learned how to replace a video card in a modern PC,
00:39:10
◼
►
which was-- and again, sort of is a father-son--
00:39:15
◼
►
it's like LEGOs, except the card cost $1,000.
00:39:18
◼
►
So let's be careful.
00:39:20
◼
►
Just what you wanted.
00:39:27
◼
►
We have LEGOs, but much more expensive.
00:39:29
◼
►
And lo and behold, once we got the replacement video card in,
00:39:33
◼
►
hooked everything back up, closed it all up, rebooted it,
00:39:36
◼
►
it was all back to normal.
00:39:37
◼
►
So that was it.
00:39:39
◼
►
And did you buy a different kind of card,
00:39:41
◼
►
or did you buy exactly the same?
00:39:43
◼
►
Ah, I'm so glad you asked.
00:39:46
◼
►
So we bought the exact same card.
00:39:48
◼
►
I called MSI.
00:39:50
◼
►
Number one-- and this is weird.
00:39:52
◼
►
So I tried their online help first,
00:39:55
◼
►
because I, of course, don't like to talk to people on the phone.
00:40:00
◼
►
And their online help was one of those things that--
00:40:03
◼
►
and they tried to steer you to it,
00:40:05
◼
►
I guess for obvious reasons.
00:40:07
◼
►
It's cheaper.
00:40:08
◼
►
And it's one of those things, those awful chat
00:40:11
◼
►
things on the web.
00:40:13
◼
►
And it's like-- and they don't answer for a while.
00:40:17
◼
►
You know, they'll be like, how can I help you?
00:40:19
◼
►
And you're like, I have an MSI, Trident, whatever, whatever.
00:40:22
◼
►
And here's-- you know, and I've already written a bunch of this
00:40:25
◼
►
so I can paste it in, you know, and be as helpful as possible.
00:40:29
◼
►
And they're like, oh, let me see.
00:40:30
◼
►
And then, of course, they're worried
00:40:32
◼
►
that I want a refund or whatever,
00:40:33
◼
►
even though it's out of warranty.
00:40:35
◼
►
And I'm like, I realize it's out of warranty.
00:40:37
◼
►
I just want to know what I should do.
00:40:39
◼
►
And then they don't answer for a while.
00:40:41
◼
►
And then it's like they come back, and they're like,
00:40:43
◼
►
if I don't hear from you in 30 seconds,
00:40:45
◼
►
I will consider this ticket closed.
00:40:46
◼
►
And it's like, wait!
00:40:48
◼
►
This is terrible.
00:40:49
◼
►
And they were not helpful.
00:40:50
◼
►
They had like a fact, and it's like, ah, I
00:40:52
◼
►
found all this already.
00:40:53
◼
►
I called them, and I talked to a nice young man,
00:40:57
◼
►
possibly in Texas.
00:40:58
◼
►
He sounded like, you know, sort of had a distinctive--
00:41:01
◼
►
Yeah, we've had Lenovo's--
00:41:05
◼
►
well, Hank has had a Lenovo and a Dell.
00:41:07
◼
►
And I think both times, the people that I talked to
00:41:09
◼
►
were in Texas.
00:41:09
◼
►
Yeah, very helpful.
00:41:11
◼
►
And again, once I made it clear that I realized
00:41:14
◼
►
this is well out of the 12-month warranty
00:41:16
◼
►
and I don't want warranty service,
00:41:18
◼
►
I just want to know what's the best thing to do,
00:41:21
◼
►
it was very helpful.
00:41:22
◼
►
And we got to the conclusion of you really
00:41:24
◼
►
should just buy a new card.
00:41:26
◼
►
And the best card you could get is the same model.
00:41:29
◼
►
So I bought it again.
00:41:30
◼
►
And I said to Jonas, this is a--
00:41:32
◼
►
but we shopped around, and even the pictures
00:41:34
◼
►
looked a little different.
00:41:36
◼
►
It's still the RTX something 2080.
00:41:40
◼
►
But it's like a Rev 2.0.
00:41:43
◼
►
So it's the same graphics card from Nvidia,
00:41:47
◼
►
and it's from the PC Maker MSI.
00:41:49
◼
►
So it's built-- and it was like a half inch bigger.
00:41:53
◼
►
But you have to be careful, because he
00:41:55
◼
►
doesn't have like this big giant.
00:41:56
◼
►
Like I said earlier in the story,
00:41:58
◼
►
he doesn't have a giant build your own case.
00:42:00
◼
►
It was an all-in-one enclosure.
00:42:02
◼
►
But the all-in-one enclosure is still
00:42:04
◼
►
sort of bigger and more spacious and meant for component
00:42:08
◼
►
swapping more than like an Apple product.
00:42:11
◼
►
It's a totally different design, though.
00:42:15
◼
►
It's everything about-- it might be the same graphic card,
00:42:18
◼
►
but even like the green motherboard,
00:42:21
◼
►
when I peek through it-- because it's
00:42:23
◼
►
like got like all this other stuff glommed on top of it.
00:42:26
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:42:27
◼
►
If you've ever looked at these things, you know, the fans--
00:42:30
◼
►
well, it's all fans.
00:42:31
◼
►
It's just a bunch of fans.
00:42:34
◼
►
But the thing I noticed was that the heat sink
00:42:37
◼
►
was completely different.
00:42:38
◼
►
It's just a totally different heat sink style.
00:42:41
◼
►
Doesn't look like more of a heat sink,
00:42:43
◼
►
doesn't look like less of a heat sink,
00:42:45
◼
►
but it's just totally different architecture
00:42:49
◼
►
of where the physical coils go.
00:42:51
◼
►
And I was like, probably what happened
00:42:53
◼
►
is that the old one overheated at some point,
00:42:56
◼
►
and it burned out, and that they've completely
00:42:59
◼
►
redesigned it in the interim.
00:43:00
◼
►
And then again, Pansarino said, oh, yeah.
00:43:02
◼
►
And he goes, how old was it when you bought it?
00:43:04
◼
►
And I was like, it was like two months old.
00:43:05
◼
►
And he was like, yeah, you bought the dumb one.
00:43:10
◼
►
Because I said to him, I was like, here's the worst part.
00:43:12
◼
►
I was like, what if these things have an 18-month lifespan?
00:43:15
◼
►
Right, you're just-- yeah, pay you $1,000 every 18 months.
00:43:18
◼
►
Right, and I was like, next time we'll just, I guess,
00:43:20
◼
►
get a new PC.
00:43:23
◼
►
Maybe you'll be 18 at the time, and I'll just disown you.
00:43:31
◼
►
Oh, that's my story.
00:43:33
◼
►
Well, we're still in the midst of a similar--
00:43:37
◼
►
so he has a Dell laptop now.
00:43:40
◼
►
He's always wanted laptops, but he still likes playing games.
00:43:43
◼
►
So I try and get a laptop with a decent graphics card.
00:43:46
◼
►
And he had something-- he claims that-- he
00:43:49
◼
►
thinks that it was a virus.
00:43:51
◼
►
He doesn't have any idea what it was.
00:43:53
◼
►
But the hard drive--
00:43:54
◼
►
something happened on the hard drive.
00:43:56
◼
►
And so I finally got around recently to opening it up
00:43:59
◼
►
and pulling the hard drive out.
00:44:00
◼
►
And it is wiped.
00:44:02
◼
►
It is not even--
00:44:03
◼
►
it's not just empty with Windows or empty
00:44:06
◼
►
with any bootable thing.
00:44:07
◼
►
It is like you plug it in, and it does not
00:44:09
◼
►
recognize that the drive has been formatted at all.
00:44:12
◼
►
And I have not been able--
00:44:14
◼
►
I haven't tried yet.
00:44:15
◼
►
I mean, it could be just damaged.
00:44:16
◼
►
Was this the C drive?
00:44:18
◼
►
It was the startup drive?
00:44:19
◼
►
Yeah, which was a hybrid.
00:44:23
◼
►
It's a terabyte hybrid drive.
00:44:25
◼
►
And I think hybrids are not necessarily the best.
00:44:29
◼
►
I think for durability, you're better off
00:44:33
◼
►
either with a full SSD or a spinning drive.
00:44:37
◼
►
So I think if I have to get a replacement,
00:44:39
◼
►
I'll probably just get an SSD, get the largest SSD
00:44:41
◼
►
I can afford.
00:44:42
◼
►
Yeah, the way Jonas's works is his C drive
00:44:46
◼
►
is a spinning hard disk.
00:44:47
◼
►
But he has a built-in D drive that is an SSD.
00:44:51
◼
►
And the games are all no to store their data on the D drive.
00:44:56
◼
►
And it seems like it's both a more logical way
00:44:59
◼
►
to put the thing you care about, the games on the SSD.
00:45:05
◼
►
And it seems to keep your game data
00:45:07
◼
►
safe from any Windows screwage, screwy-upyness.
00:45:11
◼
►
You know, like you're like, you know,
00:45:14
◼
►
we'll just kind of go over here.
00:45:15
◼
►
You be over there.
00:45:20
◼
►
We're going to be over here doing the fun stuff.
00:45:23
◼
►
Which I guess for gaming games, because games so much run
00:45:26
◼
►
in their own kind of environment, that makes sense.
00:45:30
◼
►
Yeah, I think so.
00:45:32
◼
►
Yeah, that's just sort of like, just give me
00:45:34
◼
►
enough to boot to launch.
00:45:36
◼
►
Yeah, and then it basically takes over the computer.
00:45:40
◼
►
And the operating system does nothing at that point.
00:45:44
◼
►
So anyway, Windows, worse than ever.
00:45:46
◼
►
This would drive me nuts.
00:45:48
◼
►
Like my whatever-- I don't want to call it OCD-ness,
00:45:53
◼
►
but it's whatever weird part of my brain
00:45:55
◼
►
that lets me have my physical desk be a mess,
00:45:58
◼
►
but I know where everything is.
00:46:00
◼
►
No, don't touch it.
00:46:01
◼
►
That's where all the important legal papers are.
00:46:05
◼
►
But I want my computer to be very neatly organized,
00:46:09
◼
►
including my stuff.
00:46:11
◼
►
But I also like the idea that the system itself
00:46:14
◼
►
is self-explanatory.
00:46:16
◼
►
That users' library preferences is your users' preferences.
00:46:22
◼
►
And library, root level library preferences
00:46:27
◼
►
is stuff that's system-wide for all users.
00:46:29
◼
►
And it's so neat and organized.
00:46:31
◼
►
And there's-- I just keep thinking about how,
00:46:33
◼
►
like, I think it was Adam Anks.
00:46:35
◼
►
Somebody recently had an article in the last year about, like,
00:46:39
◼
►
hey, does anybody find the order of control panel or system
00:46:42
◼
►
preference panels in the system prefs app to be random?
00:46:46
◼
►
And somebody pointed out that you can go to the View menu
00:46:49
◼
►
and organize alphabetically.
00:46:52
◼
►
And you can just change system preferences on the Mac
00:46:55
◼
►
to just order all of them alphabetically.
00:46:57
◼
►
And people who can't remember where some of them are, like,
00:47:01
◼
►
oh my god, you just saved my life.
00:47:04
◼
►
Because the other order by categories
00:47:08
◼
►
is, like, they don't tell you what the categories are.
00:47:11
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:47:13
◼
►
Yeah, it's something-- yeah, someone at Apple
00:47:15
◼
►
decided what the logical collection is.
00:47:17
◼
►
Now it doesn't-- yeah, right.
00:47:18
◼
►
It's difficult to say what that actually is.
00:47:21
◼
►
And it's not just a Mac OS X. And I
00:47:24
◼
►
say that very specifically, like, starting in 2001, 2002,
00:47:29
◼
►
you know, the original Mac OS X. It's not like a carryover.
00:47:32
◼
►
It's like, even with iOS, with the Settings app,
00:47:36
◼
►
the organization of the Apple ones,
00:47:39
◼
►
before you scroll down far enough
00:47:41
◼
►
at the root level of Settings to get to all your third party
00:47:44
◼
►
apps is sort of arbitrary.
00:47:46
◼
►
You know, I think it was Adam Engs who was writing, like, I don't
00:47:48
◼
►
understand this order at all.
00:47:50
◼
►
Like, why is Safari down there where it is?
00:47:54
◼
►
Why is the camera app in there with music?
00:47:57
◼
►
So, like, the camera app is down there in a section.
00:47:59
◼
►
It's the-- the first group is airplane mode Wi-Fi.
00:48:03
◼
►
It's like, OK, this is all networking stuff.
00:48:05
◼
►
And then there's notification sounds,
00:48:07
◼
►
do not disturb, and screen time.
00:48:09
◼
►
I don't know why they're together.
00:48:11
◼
►
And general control center, display and brightness,
00:48:15
◼
►
accessibility, wallpaper, Syrian search, Face ID and passcode.
00:48:21
◼
►
It's starting to get confusing, right?
00:48:23
◼
►
It's like, why isn't this together?
00:48:27
◼
►
Then there's one that's just iTunes and App Store
00:48:29
◼
►
and Wallet and Apple Pay.
00:48:30
◼
►
And they kind of make sense together.
00:48:32
◼
►
It's like, well, there's where your financials-- you know,
00:48:34
◼
►
you put credit cards in those two.
00:48:36
◼
►
And then you start getting weird.
00:48:38
◼
►
Then there's a bunch of apps.
00:48:39
◼
►
And then it's like everything else, right?
00:48:41
◼
►
But then there's--
00:48:42
◼
►
But everything else.
00:48:43
◼
►
But yeah, but then two sections of everything else.
00:48:46
◼
►
And then the one that's really weird
00:48:48
◼
►
is that one underneath the next section, where it's music, TV,
00:48:54
◼
►
books, podcasts--
00:48:55
◼
►
I'm going out of order--
00:48:56
◼
►
Game Center, where you're like, OK, this is all content stuff
00:49:00
◼
►
But then Photos is in there.
00:49:02
◼
►
Entertainment style.
00:49:03
◼
►
Right, but then Photos is in there, and the camera--
00:49:07
◼
►
and camera is in there.
00:49:08
◼
►
And that camera one is kind of important.
00:49:11
◼
►
If you care about using your phone as a camera,
00:49:13
◼
►
because it's where you set what's your default video.
00:49:15
◼
►
Do you want to shoot 4K?
00:49:16
◼
►
You want to shoot 1080p?
00:49:18
◼
►
Why in the world is something so hardware related with all--
00:49:21
◼
►
it's all a bit weird.
00:49:22
◼
►
You kind of remember where it is.
00:49:25
◼
►
I mean, I figure most people use the search thing now.
00:49:27
◼
►
Yeah, I think so, too.
00:49:28
◼
►
And maybe that's why they've sort of gotten away with this,
00:49:31
◼
►
and it's sort of grown.
00:49:32
◼
►
And I think if you went back to the original 1.0 iPhone
00:49:36
◼
►
and looked at the layout of the Settings app,
00:49:39
◼
►
you'd be like, well, this makes complete sense.
00:49:42
◼
►
And somehow something that started making complete sense
00:49:45
◼
►
grew into something that seems a bit arbitrary.
00:49:48
◼
►
All of those complaints, when you dig in and try
00:49:51
◼
►
to do something-- system preference, control paneling,
00:49:54
◼
►
settings, whatever you want to frigging call it--
00:49:56
◼
►
on Windows, you are like, oh my god,
00:49:58
◼
►
thank god for the complete sanity of the Apple
00:50:01
◼
►
layout of these things.
00:50:07
◼
►
I'll just reuse the analogy.
00:50:10
◼
►
I really did start to feel like Luke down in the Dagobah
00:50:13
◼
►
cave, where it's like the frame rate's off.
00:50:16
◼
►
You're right.
00:50:17
◼
►
All of a sudden, it's like, is that really Darth Vader?
00:50:19
◼
►
Remember being a kid, and you'd be like, what is going on?
00:50:21
◼
►
What is going on?
00:50:22
◼
►
This makes no sense.
00:50:24
◼
►
This is the greatest movie I've ever seen,
00:50:26
◼
►
and I thought I was on top of it,
00:50:27
◼
►
but Darth Vader is down here.
00:50:29
◼
►
All of a sudden, and he's Luke?
00:50:32
◼
►
And why isn't Yoda helping him?
00:50:33
◼
►
Why would Yoda let him go down there, and the frame rate's off?
00:50:37
◼
►
And it's like, what the hell happened?
00:50:38
◼
►
He cut his head off, and what?
00:50:43
◼
►
What the hell is going on?
00:50:44
◼
►
That's what it feels like when you're in the XP's control
00:50:47
◼
►
panel in Windows.
00:50:49
◼
►
It's like, where am I?
00:50:50
◼
►
Which is not even-- yeah.
00:50:52
◼
►
I think under XP, it was ugly, but it made sense.
00:50:55
◼
►
It made more sense anyway.
00:50:56
◼
►
And now it has this extra layer of, hey, we're being friendly,
00:51:00
◼
►
but you've also just obfuscated so many things
00:51:02
◼
►
that I can't even understand what's going on anymore.
00:51:06
◼
►
The other thing-- so the other PC story
00:51:08
◼
►
that I have from the last year is that Karen's dad's--
00:51:14
◼
►
he bought a new computer when he moved in with us,
00:51:16
◼
►
because the one that he had was ancient and running,
00:51:20
◼
►
And so he wanted me to help him migrate his old stuff
00:51:24
◼
►
to his new computer.
00:51:25
◼
►
And they don't have-- as much as we complain about the Apple
00:51:29
◼
►
migration tool, there is no--
00:51:32
◼
►
with Windows 10, there is no migration tool.
00:51:34
◼
►
There is something that you can move your settings,
00:51:37
◼
►
but you can't move apps.
00:51:39
◼
►
It won't move your apps for you.
00:51:41
◼
►
And so you have to pay $40 to this company that--
00:51:45
◼
►
they have this recommended tool that you use,
00:51:46
◼
►
and it's like $40.
00:51:47
◼
►
And I was like, oh, you've got to be kidding me.
00:51:50
◼
►
So I paid the $40 to get this tool,
00:51:52
◼
►
and then it moves everything.
00:51:53
◼
►
And it worked fine.
00:51:55
◼
►
It worked quite well.
00:51:56
◼
►
But one of the things that he still had was RealPlayer.
00:52:04
◼
►
And it moved-- it dutifully moved
00:52:05
◼
►
RealPlayer, which is what it thought it should do.
00:52:08
◼
►
But then I could not get rid of RealPlayer.
00:52:11
◼
►
I thought you didn't need this anymore.
00:52:12
◼
►
And it kept popping up trying to--
00:52:14
◼
►
every time you reboot it would say,
00:52:15
◼
►
RealPlayer would like to be your default.
00:52:17
◼
►
Like, stop it.
00:52:18
◼
►
OK, nobody uses RealPlayer anymore.
00:52:20
◼
►
You need to go away.
00:52:21
◼
►
And setting it as your default player for anything
00:52:24
◼
►
has got to be the worst thing you could possibly do.
00:52:26
◼
►
Completely insane.
00:52:27
◼
►
And I could not get rid of it.
00:52:29
◼
►
It's still on that machine.
00:52:31
◼
►
And now it's-- I've inherited it since he passed away.
00:52:34
◼
►
And so I have set it up to--
00:52:35
◼
►
I made a Minecraft server for Hank on it.
00:52:38
◼
►
But every time it boots, even in my user,
00:52:40
◼
►
it still has RealPlayer popping up there saying, hi.
00:52:43
◼
►
Remember me from 1998?
00:52:47
◼
►
That's just the most ridiculous thing possible.
00:52:54
◼
►
The only thing-- I mean, what else?
00:52:55
◼
►
It somehow is even sillier than if it was AOL.
00:52:58
◼
►
I don't even know what could be sillier than RealPlayer.
00:53:02
◼
►
And there are instructions for how to get rid of it.
00:53:05
◼
►
Like, you have to--
00:53:07
◼
►
some of them involve reinstalling it and then
00:53:10
◼
►
deleting it.
00:53:11
◼
►
And I've tried all of them, and it just simply will not go away.
00:53:15
◼
►
There's probably a registry thing
00:53:16
◼
►
that I have to do that I haven't figured out yet.
00:53:18
◼
►
But maybe someday I'll get--
00:53:20
◼
►
I also just think that I'm going to end up
00:53:21
◼
►
wiping the whole machine starting all over again.
00:53:24
◼
►
But which is not easy.
00:53:26
◼
►
That's the thing about trying to create a boot disk,
00:53:29
◼
►
an external USB drive to boot Windows, was I had to use--
00:53:33
◼
►
seemingly had to use third party software.
00:53:38
◼
►
And I forget why there was a free mode.
00:53:41
◼
►
It was a very highly recommended utility.
00:53:44
◼
►
It seemed like the way that Mac users talk about super duper,
00:53:47
◼
►
people talk about this thing.
00:53:49
◼
►
I forget what it is.
00:53:52
◼
►
And it was like, I don't know, $15 or something.
00:53:56
◼
►
And Jonas thought it was like a deal breaker.
00:53:59
◼
►
And I'm like, Jonas, wait.
00:54:02
◼
►
We're talking about replacing-- if this doesn't work,
00:54:04
◼
►
we're talking about spending like $1,000 or close to $1,000
00:54:07
◼
►
on a video card.
00:54:08
◼
►
We can spend $15 on a software utility.
00:54:11
◼
►
He's like, well, that seems like a lot.
00:54:13
◼
►
And you buy $60 games every time you scratch $60 together.
00:54:17
◼
►
But it's like-- and I'm reminded--
00:54:19
◼
►
did you see the tweet from Cable Sasser, a friend of the show,
00:54:24
◼
►
where his son-- forget how young his son is.
00:54:27
◼
►
But just to say he's 10, 11-ish, maybe,
00:54:32
◼
►
was really getting into art and wanted to get Procreate for iPad.
00:54:35
◼
►
And he's like, Dad, everybody says this is the best, but it's $10.
00:54:41
◼
►
Knowing that this was like a deal breaker.
00:54:43
◼
►
And hey, it's like, you don't understand what your father does for a living.
00:54:49
◼
►
It was like the--
00:54:50
◼
►
I could just imagine with Cable, it was the sigh of all sighs.
00:54:55
◼
►
We've actually lost this war.
00:54:57
◼
►
We think we're still battling to keep indie utility and productivity
00:55:02
◼
►
software alive.
00:55:04
◼
►
But it's over.
00:55:06
◼
►
And I said to John, you know how much this would have cost when I was your age,
00:55:10
◼
►
this utility that would match--
00:55:11
◼
►
Oh my god, yeah.
00:55:12
◼
►
It was like the one--
00:55:16
◼
►
on two reasons.
00:55:17
◼
►
Some of the smartest people in all of the early era of computing
00:55:20
◼
►
were involved in recovery tools.
00:55:23
◼
►
Because A, you had to be really smart to make them work, right?
00:55:26
◼
►
Because you're talking about saving people's data from drives.
00:55:29
◼
►
Remember drives-- I said to Joe this too.
00:55:32
◼
►
I was like, you have no idea how often drives went bad.
00:55:35
◼
►
It doesn't even matter.
00:55:36
◼
►
It wasn't even like an Apple thing versus PCs.
00:55:39
◼
►
Drives would just go bad.
00:55:41
◼
►
Even we in the Mac thought we were so lucky,
00:55:47
◼
►
because at least we'd get a little sad Mac.
00:55:53
◼
►
And it's like, you know--
00:55:55
◼
►
Getting back to our, the droids should make noises.
00:56:00
◼
►
But it's like, technically, you had to be very good to read bits
00:56:04
◼
►
and off a drive that had gone corrupt in its--
00:56:07
◼
►
whatever we used to call them, boot sectors or whatever they were.
00:56:12
◼
►
But then also, you were very smart, because guess what people
00:56:15
◼
►
are willing to pay a lot of money for?
00:56:18
◼
►
They're willing to pay a lot of money to get their data back
00:56:21
◼
►
when an emergency has crippled them from getting access
00:56:27
◼
►
to the file they need right now.
00:56:28
◼
►
It was good business and whatever.
00:56:34
◼
►
I was like, this would not be $15 back then.
00:56:36
◼
►
This would be like, we'd have to call the bank and authorize--
00:56:40
◼
►
And replacement drives were crazy expensive too.
00:56:44
◼
►
Crazy expensive.
00:56:45
◼
►
You had to buy another one.
00:56:46
◼
►
You were like, oh, god.
00:56:48
◼
►
I was like, drives were like the video cards of the day.
00:56:50
◼
►
It was like, oh, this whole thing is just a computer built around a hard disk
00:56:57
◼
►
just to keep me from having to use 40 floppy disks.
00:57:01
◼
►
I had-- for my first computer was an SE with a high density-- not the 30,
00:57:06
◼
►
but with the high density floppy drives.
00:57:08
◼
►
It had two floppy drives instead of an internal drive and one floppy drive.
00:57:14
◼
►
And then it had an external hard drive, which was great.
00:57:17
◼
►
Because the guy--
00:57:18
◼
►
I bought it from a guy because I was going to graduate school.
00:57:21
◼
►
And the guy said, I feel like this is a good setup because you can--
00:57:24
◼
►
if the drive goes down, you can run the OS on one of these floppies.
00:57:27
◼
►
And then you can have another floppy in there with your data and programs
00:57:30
◼
►
and stuff like that.
00:57:31
◼
►
I was like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea.
00:57:33
◼
►
And it never happened.
00:57:34
◼
►
But it was still--
00:57:36
◼
►
it was great.
00:57:36
◼
►
I always thought that was a great setup.
00:57:39
◼
►
Whatever we did to get this bootable USB drive of Windows took forever.
00:57:44
◼
►
It took a lot longer than you'd think it would.
00:57:46
◼
►
And I was like, but--
00:57:47
◼
►
and Jonas was getting a bit impatient.
00:57:50
◼
►
And I was like, well, I realize this is taking longer than I think it should.
00:57:55
◼
►
But I remember-- and let me tell you about what
00:57:58
◼
►
it was like in the old days--
00:57:59
◼
►
I remember the first time I had a job where we got Windows NT.
00:58:04
◼
►
And it came on floppies.
00:58:05
◼
►
And it was like 40 floppies.
00:58:08
◼
►
And he's like, come on.
00:58:09
◼
►
I'm like, nope, 40 floppies.
00:58:11
◼
►
And you would put it in.
00:58:12
◼
►
And I guess in theory, somebody could have built a robot to do it.
00:58:16
◼
►
But instead, what they would do is hire college kids.
00:58:20
◼
►
And you had a job.
00:58:22
◼
►
And I was like, so I got paid for an entire day of work.
00:58:24
◼
►
I showed up at 9.
00:58:25
◼
►
And today was the day I would install NT on this PC.
00:58:30
◼
►
And I would just sit there and wait and wait.
00:58:32
◼
►
And then the floppy-- it would tell me.
00:58:34
◼
►
And I hit a button.
00:58:35
◼
►
And the floppy would pick out.
00:58:36
◼
►
And I'd put number 2 in there.
00:58:38
◼
►
It would take a couple seconds for it to figure it out,
00:58:41
◼
►
get its bearings in the floppy drive.
00:58:44
◼
►
Then it would continue.
00:58:45
◼
►
And this would go on.
00:58:46
◼
►
And by the end of the day, maybe I was done.
00:58:48
◼
►
Times change.
00:58:56
◼
►
All right, let me tell you.
00:58:57
◼
►
Speaking of which, this is actually--
00:58:59
◼
►
I swear to God, I didn't set this up.
00:59:00
◼
►
Didn't set it up.
00:59:02
◼
►
This is a true coincidence.
00:59:03
◼
►
But my god, our next sponsor, Backblaze.
00:59:06
◼
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What a great segue.
00:59:08
◼
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00:59:12
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with none of the hassles I just talked about in the old days.
00:59:15
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$6 a month, which is unbelievable.
00:59:18
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Also, not expensive like in the old days.
00:59:22
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You back up everything-- your documents, your music,
00:59:24
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your photos, your videos, your drawings, your projects, all
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And you can restore your files anywhere.
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You can get them direct download from the web.
00:59:32
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Or case of catastrophe, something happens.
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And somebody steals your hard drive, steals your computer.
00:59:39
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The roof caves in.
00:59:41
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You're just traveling.
00:59:43
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You're away from home, but you need to access them.
00:59:45
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If you need to, you can get the whole drive sent to you.
00:59:49
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Like FedEx, they'll just put it on a USB drive, send it to you.
00:59:53
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Really, you can just restore your computer by mail.
00:59:56
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That's just unbelievable.
00:59:57
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They'll overnight FedEx it to you,
00:59:58
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and you can restore and return the hard drive to us
01:00:01
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when you're done--
01:00:02
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to them when you're done and get the money back for the drive.
01:00:05
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So they'll just send you a hard drive with all your stuff
01:00:07
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overnight, get it the next morning, copy it back.
01:00:10
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You're restored.
01:00:11
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Send the drive back to them.
01:00:12
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You get the cost of the drive back.
01:00:14
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That's just unbelievable.
01:00:15
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You need to just get one file somewhere.
01:00:18
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Use their iOS app.
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You can just go right in to your last backup.
01:00:21
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01:00:23
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01:00:25
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01:00:26
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01:00:31
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Really, just great mobile apps.
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01:00:36
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01:00:38
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And when it runs on your Mac, you install Backblaze.
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You sign up.
01:00:42
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01:00:43
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And it just runs silently in the background.
01:00:46
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You don't even know it's there.
01:00:47
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There's never any kind of interruption.
01:00:49
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You don't have to do anything.
01:00:50
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But you need to see what's going on when the last time it was.
01:00:52
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You just go into System Preferences, go to Backblaze.
01:00:55
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There it is.
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While you're just using your computer,
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you don't have to worry about it.
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But there you go.
01:01:03
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They have a full backup of all your stuff offsite,
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01:01:09
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Really, I've been using it for years and years.
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01:01:23
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01:01:30
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01:01:38
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One last time, backblaze.com/daringfireball.
01:01:43
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Yeah, backing up back then was--
01:01:47
◼
►
I don't remember what I did.
01:01:48
◼
►
I think it just backed things up on floppies.
01:01:50
◼
►
You would back up files that you needed to keep,
01:01:52
◼
►
and that was about it.
01:01:53
◼
►
Yeah, I still have all those floppies.
01:01:56
◼
►
I guess if I--
01:01:58
◼
►
Mine are all right behind me right now.
01:02:00
◼
►
I always say, as some people get into golf,
01:02:03
◼
►
it's like, I guess my retirement plan is I'll get into retrocomputing
01:02:07
◼
►
and hope that my floppies still work, I guess.
01:02:10
◼
►
Yeah, but anything truly important, like if I
01:02:15
◼
►
had a game that was really good, I would just put it on floppy and label.
01:02:18
◼
►
I was real-- I don't know if you did this.
01:02:21
◼
►
I had a style writer.
01:02:25
◼
►
Remember the style writer?
01:02:27
◼
►
Yeah, oh, yeah.
01:02:29
◼
►
And I bought labels, like floppy disk labels.
01:02:33
◼
►
And what's that?
01:02:36
◼
►
That one company that has a weird monopoly on labels.
01:02:43
◼
►
I can't think of the name.
01:02:44
◼
►
Well, whatever they are, I bought their floppy disk labels.
01:02:46
◼
►
And if I had a game I really liked, I would make a custom icon.
01:02:51
◼
►
I'd go into ResEdit, get the icon.
01:02:53
◼
►
If the style writer was black and white, so I'd get the--
01:02:56
◼
►
even though I had a color LC, I'd go into ResEdit
01:02:59
◼
►
and get the black and white icon, right?
01:03:01
◼
►
Because all the games still had to have black and white icons
01:03:04
◼
►
to some of the Macs for black and white.
01:03:05
◼
►
Yeah, because if you were running it on an SE or something, yeah.
01:03:07
◼
►
And I would make custom labels for the games
01:03:09
◼
►
and make these as nice as I could make them labels,
01:03:13
◼
►
and then have an archive of all my stuff that I just
01:03:16
◼
►
downloaded from the internet.
01:03:17
◼
►
That was my backup.
01:03:20
◼
►
What else did I have?
01:03:21
◼
►
I had a tape drive at some point.
01:03:26
◼
►
We had one at work, but I never had one at home.
01:03:30
◼
►
The zip drive was the first thing that I had.
01:03:33
◼
►
I bought a tape drive.
01:03:34
◼
►
And what was the name of the program?
01:03:36
◼
►
It was the official-- the best backup program for professional--
01:03:41
◼
►
because this was after college.
01:03:42
◼
►
And I was doing-- most of my income was from freelance work.
01:03:46
◼
►
So I felt like I should be professional and get a backup thing.
01:03:49
◼
►
So I had an expensive backup drive.
01:03:51
◼
►
And I had these tapes that were expensive, and it was backing it up.
01:03:55
◼
►
And it's a typical Murphy's law.
01:03:57
◼
►
I never once needed them and never once backed up or restored a single thing.
01:04:03
◼
►
I spent, to my mind, a fortune.
01:04:06
◼
►
It could have been better spent on fun stuff on a backup system
01:04:10
◼
►
that I never once ever used, ever.
01:04:12
◼
►
Not even one time, one file.
01:04:15
◼
►
Whatever happened to that one file?
01:04:17
◼
►
I bet I could get it from a tape.
01:04:18
◼
►
Never used it.
01:04:19
◼
►
I have no idea if any of them ever worked, ever.
01:04:22
◼
►
Because you couldn't boot from them.
01:04:24
◼
►
That was the thing.
01:04:24
◼
►
If it wasn't a bootable thing, you'd have to get the tape
01:04:27
◼
►
and restore it to our-- it just seemed so hard to test,
01:04:30
◼
►
so I never tested it, which, of course, is pretty dumb
01:04:33
◼
►
that I spent a relative fortune of my personal net worth on a backup system.
01:04:37
◼
►
It was like having a painting of your backup.
01:04:45
◼
►
But that was-- tape was the cheap way to do backups, right?
01:04:50
◼
►
Because you could back up a lot of data on tape for relatively--
01:04:54
◼
►
It was an inexpensive medium.
01:04:57
◼
►
So you could have large amounts of data, and it was no random access.
01:05:05
◼
►
And yeah, that's right, because you had to back up the whole thing.
01:05:08
◼
►
Well, and you--
01:05:09
◼
►
We had to restore the whole thing in order to get one file.
01:05:12
◼
►
Right, because unlike a hard drive, if you
01:05:13
◼
►
wanted to get one file that was at the beginning of the tape
01:05:16
◼
►
and the other at the end of the tape, it would take you 20 minutes.
01:05:22
◼
►
Anyway, good times.
01:05:27
◼
►
Yeah, most of that stuff is right here at my feet,
01:05:29
◼
►
because I podcast from the basement.
01:05:30
◼
►
And so-- and speaking of things that you had to plug in,
01:05:34
◼
►
different cards in the back.
01:05:35
◼
►
My Performa 6400 is right here with the--
01:05:39
◼
►
and I got an extra card, like the video, the advanced video card for it.
01:05:43
◼
►
I forget what the heck the company was that made it, but it was a card
01:05:48
◼
►
that you put into the thing, and then you had to get a cable
01:05:51
◼
►
to reroute the video through the card in the back.
01:05:57
◼
►
All right, moving on.
01:05:59
◼
►
I just figured the rest of the show, we'd just talk a little lighthearted stuff,
01:06:03
◼
►
maybe make some movie TV recommendations.
01:06:05
◼
►
But the one thing related to that is there's a rumor a couple weeks ago
01:06:10
◼
►
Mark Gurman had that Apple's supposedly thinking
01:06:13
◼
►
about coming out with a bundle of their subscription content stuff, which
01:06:17
◼
►
has-- yeah, it seems pretty obvious.
01:06:20
◼
►
Ever since they started offering more than one monthly subscription thing,
01:06:23
◼
►
people have wondered why don't they have a bundle where you can get them
01:06:27
◼
►
together, with the idea that it's named Apple One,
01:06:31
◼
►
or at least that's the working title, according to Gurman.
01:06:35
◼
►
And I wrote about this during Fireball.
01:06:37
◼
►
I suggested that maybe they should try to--
01:06:41
◼
►
what Gurman described seemed way too complicated to me.
01:06:45
◼
►
It just seemed like it's not much of a bundle, right?
01:06:48
◼
►
Like, it just seemed like there'd be like one tier with music and TV,
01:06:53
◼
►
and then you can pay more and get news and pay more and get this and pay--
01:06:58
◼
►
and it's like-- and then ultimately, it was like--
01:07:02
◼
►
so a family with family sharing could wind up
01:07:05
◼
►
saving $5 on what would otherwise cost $45 a month to get all of it--
01:07:10
◼
►
music and TV with sharing, with news, with Apple Arcade,
01:07:15
◼
►
and extended more than the default iCloud storage.
01:07:20
◼
►
And to me, my take was, well, I don't know--
01:07:22
◼
►
and I feel like pricing and names are the sort of things that
01:07:26
◼
►
are the last to leak, because they can be known by the least number of people.
01:07:30
◼
►
They can keep that within--
01:07:31
◼
►
I was going to say Schiller's group, but maybe it's
01:07:33
◼
►
JAWS's group at this point.
01:07:36
◼
►
But I suggested that they should really try
01:07:39
◼
►
to be aggressive on the pricing on this, and maybe try to get it to like $20
01:07:44
◼
►
bucks for a single or $15 bucks for a person and $20 bucks for family sharing,
01:07:51
◼
►
with the idea that maybe they have to-- right now, it's $10 bucks for Apple
01:07:54
◼
►
Music as an individual and $15 bucks a month for Apple Music for a family.
01:07:58
◼
►
And because Apple doesn't own all that music or any of that music,
01:08:03
◼
►
they have to license it.
01:08:04
◼
►
It's not really up to Apple that they can't just--
01:08:07
◼
►
unlike Apple Arcade, where they can say, look, Apple Arcade,
01:08:10
◼
►
it's $5 bucks a month.
01:08:11
◼
►
And if you have a family, everybody in your family can use it,
01:08:13
◼
►
and there's no upsell for family sharing.
01:08:16
◼
►
They can do that because they own the rights to all the Apple Arcade games.
01:08:19
◼
►
They can't do that for music.
01:08:20
◼
►
So let's just assume family sharing has to cost $5 bucks more.
01:08:24
◼
►
Why not $15 and $20 and get more people on it?
01:08:29
◼
►
And a lot of people wrote to me, and were like, wait,
01:08:31
◼
►
aren't you the one who's always saying that Apple
01:08:33
◼
►
charges a fortune for everything?
01:08:35
◼
►
And here's me and you.
01:08:36
◼
►
We always have our segment when you're on the talk show that's
01:08:38
◼
►
spend Tim Cook's money, right?
01:08:44
◼
►
Yeah, well, I would love it if they--
01:08:46
◼
►
I don't think they'll do it just because of that,
01:08:49
◼
►
because they tend to charge more for everything.
01:08:52
◼
►
And this seems-- yeah, I mean, like you said, this is aggressive.
01:08:56
◼
►
I think it would be wonderful if they were aggressive.
01:08:58
◼
►
Because I'm currently paying--
01:09:00
◼
►
well, I'm not paying for TV+ yet, because I'm still on the free here.
01:09:04
◼
►
But I probably will, because I think there's enough stuff on it
01:09:07
◼
►
that I really, really like.
01:09:09
◼
►
Maybe we'll get to some of that a little later.
01:09:11
◼
►
But I got to pay for the music.
01:09:15
◼
►
We're all using music.
01:09:17
◼
►
I'm paying for arcade.
01:09:19
◼
►
Hank is actually not playing arcade very much, if at all, frankly.
01:09:23
◼
►
But I do occasionally, and I like seeing what's available.
01:09:27
◼
►
And that's the one I keep thinking, well, am I
01:09:30
◼
►
going to get rid of that or not?
01:09:31
◼
►
But if it was a part of a bundle, I would probably totally
01:09:35
◼
►
pay for the whole thing.
01:09:36
◼
►
And $5 a month is--
01:09:40
◼
►
I'm getting old here-- $60 a year.
01:09:42
◼
►
I had to double check that.
01:09:45
◼
►
It's not nothing.
01:09:46
◼
►
But I feel like $5 a month for new games is roughly what I would waste.
01:09:51
◼
►
And I don't play a lot of games.
01:09:52
◼
►
Even me, as someone that doesn't play a lot of games,
01:09:55
◼
►
I would still find a new game.
01:09:57
◼
►
And it's $3 or $2.
01:10:00
◼
►
I'll buy it.
01:10:02
◼
►
I'm on that for $5 a month.
01:10:04
◼
►
I'm interested enough, even though I don't spend a lot of time on Apple Arcade
01:10:08
◼
►
I like seeing it.
01:10:09
◼
►
It seems fair.
01:10:12
◼
►
My argument in favor of this, even knowing that Apple stuff tends
01:10:15
◼
►
to be expensive and they don't discount it,
01:10:17
◼
►
is that services are very different.
01:10:20
◼
►
There's no or less marginal cost for increasing it.
01:10:26
◼
►
When more people sign up for Apple Arcade,
01:10:28
◼
►
Apple doesn't incur any extra costs other than the download
01:10:32
◼
►
cost of the games to more people, which is negligible.
01:10:38
◼
►
As opposed to people who might think, oh my god, the new iPhone 12
01:10:43
◼
►
is going to start at $1,100.
01:10:45
◼
►
I wish they would only charge $800.
01:10:47
◼
►
And it's like, well, welcome to Apple.
01:10:51
◼
►
They're going to charge more.
01:10:54
◼
►
My argument in a totally let's just try to make Apple the most money possible
01:11:01
◼
►
cynical perspective is a lower priced bundle that seems like, well,
01:11:07
◼
►
oh, man, at that price, I should just sign up,
01:11:10
◼
►
would get so many more people to pay $15 or $20 a month to Apple monthly,
01:11:17
◼
►
so many more people who don't spend anything monthly to Apple,
01:11:22
◼
►
or even if they only have music, which I think for obvious reasons
01:11:26
◼
►
is probably their most popular thing, just to get them to spend $5 more
01:11:31
◼
►
than they're already spending for Apple Music and just give them
01:11:35
◼
►
everything except-- and again, the news,
01:11:36
◼
►
they can't just throw in free because news they don't own.
01:11:39
◼
►
They have to pay all of the publishers who are in news plus.
01:11:43
◼
►
And also, it also seems like the least popular thing
01:11:48
◼
►
because it's also the one aspect of this that is not fun at all.
01:11:53
◼
►
Certainly right now.
01:11:55
◼
►
It's like, who would like to relax?
01:12:00
◼
►
Who wants to pay $5 for this news?
01:12:04
◼
►
No good, thanks.
01:12:06
◼
►
Oh, I don't want to see anything about that story.
01:12:08
◼
►
What else is in the news?
01:12:11
◼
►
Oh, the least-- the good news is a hurricane that wasn't as bad
01:12:21
◼
►
as they thought it was going to be, but was still bad and caused a lot of--
01:12:27
◼
►
that's the good news.
01:12:28
◼
►
Yeah, I'm going to say I'm going to go back to arcade.
01:12:31
◼
►
Maybe walk--
01:12:34
◼
►
Go back to staring at the wall.
01:12:36
◼
►
It's the new episode of Ted Lasso out.
01:12:39
◼
►
How much do I have to pay to just stare at the wall?
01:12:42
◼
►
But again, they can't just throw it in free from Apple's perspective
01:12:48
◼
►
because they have to pay them.
01:12:49
◼
►
And it seems like that's also something that's not as appealing to everybody.
01:12:53
◼
►
And then the storage thing-- oh my god.
01:12:57
◼
►
How many years now have we been talking that, hey,
01:13:01
◼
►
the storage for Apple or for iCloud is kind of expensive.
01:13:06
◼
►
The default free one is ridiculously small and doesn't help anybody back up anything.
01:13:13
◼
►
When is this going-- this has to change eventually, right?
01:13:18
◼
►
We're not going to be here 20 years from now doing episode 1,000 of the talk show
01:13:22
◼
►
talking about the same 5 gigabyte plan for iCloud, right?
01:13:29
◼
►
It has to change eventually, says me, the guy who's--
01:13:35
◼
►
Or 50, whatever.
01:13:37
◼
►
I just wanted to make-- because originally, I think maybe it was like five or something.
01:13:40
◼
►
It was five for a while.
01:13:41
◼
►
And you know, it's funny.
01:13:44
◼
►
A couple of people wrote to me when I wrote about this.
01:13:46
◼
►
And other people-- I'm not close.
01:13:49
◼
►
Hang on a second.
01:13:50
◼
►
50 is $1 a month.
01:13:53
◼
►
You still have to pay to get to 50.
01:13:54
◼
►
I think the default, the free one is still like 10 gigabytes, I think.
01:13:58
◼
►
That sounds right.
01:13:59
◼
►
But it's not enough.
01:14:01
◼
►
I don't know.
01:14:01
◼
►
Or if they want to say, OK, for free, we're still going to be mean.
01:14:05
◼
►
And we're not going to give you enough.
01:14:07
◼
►
But just make it so if you pay anything, you have enough to back up your device and typical
01:14:12
◼
►
photo albums.
01:14:12
◼
►
The $1.99 plan really isn't enough for people who are shooting video.
01:14:17
◼
►
And it just doesn't make sense that they're shipping these devices with truly amazing
01:14:23
◼
►
4K cameras, like kind of crazy.
01:14:25
◼
►
Again, I still look at it.
01:14:27
◼
►
I never look at things that I'm on because I can't stand looking or listening to myself.
01:14:31
◼
►
But I still look at my talk show remote and think that we shot that with iPhones.
01:14:37
◼
►
I can't believe it.
01:14:38
◼
►
It looks so good.
01:14:39
◼
►
It's 5 gigabytes is free.
01:14:42
◼
►
5 gigabytes.
01:14:43
◼
►
So I guess what you said originally was correct.
01:14:44
◼
►
I talked myself out of it, Josh.
01:14:46
◼
►
Because it just seems like, oh, that can't be true.
01:14:48
◼
►
That seems so ridiculous that I couldn't believe that that was real.
01:14:52
◼
►
So maybe my hope, and again, I'm truly Charlie Brown kicking Lucy's football with iCloud
01:14:59
◼
►
storage plans.
01:15:00
◼
►
But my hope is that they've been holding on to these old ones as long as they have so
01:15:05
◼
►
that when they unveil this bundle, they can say, and you're going from this terrible plan
01:15:13
◼
►
that we don't even know what maniacs, all of us have been here forever.
01:15:18
◼
►
Yeah, who did this?
01:15:21
◼
►
Who did this?
01:15:22
◼
►
Now you can pay this one low monthly fee and you get on a four still.
01:15:26
◼
►
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:15:27
◼
►
Get him up there.
01:15:28
◼
►
But anyway, but the other on the flip side, I just sort of unrelated to my argument that
01:15:35
◼
►
the bundle should be relatively low priced and compelling.
01:15:38
◼
►
The two, the most you can give them is like, I forget what it costs per month.
01:15:42
◼
►
What's the 50 gig or two terabyte plan?
01:15:44
◼
►
10 bucks a month, which isn't much per month, but that's the most you can get.
01:15:51
◼
►
And it's, I've heard from a bunch of daring fireball readers who are either pressing up
01:15:55
◼
►
against it or are over it and now have to manage what do they do with their videos?
01:16:02
◼
►
You know, and if you, you know, I can't even imagine what we'd be at if all of my video
01:16:07
◼
►
from my now 16 year old son, if I had 4k footage of him when he was a baby, my God, we'd be
01:16:15
◼
►
over two terabytes easily.
01:16:18
◼
►
Yeah, so and that, and just sort of ballpark estimating the age of the people emailing
01:16:23
◼
►
me, it's people with younger kids, they have more home video footage.
01:16:26
◼
►
And why not shoot 4k, right?
01:16:29
◼
►
I mean, you want the, you know, don't be an idiot and shoot 1080 to save space.
01:16:34
◼
►
You know, you have these memories of your precious family.
01:16:37
◼
►
Don't you love your child?
01:16:39
◼
►
Don't you realize how big TVs are going to be in 40 years?
01:16:41
◼
►
Yeah, right.
01:16:42
◼
►
So I don't know.
01:16:46
◼
►
But anyway, that's my basic idea is that at a fundamental level, even if Apple wants to
01:16:51
◼
►
be, you know, why are Apple's prices so high?
01:16:53
◼
►
Why do they have 38% profit margins across the company?
01:16:56
◼
►
Because they enjoy making money there.
01:16:59
◼
►
That's, you know, part of what they do is they, you know, how do they sleep at night?
01:17:04
◼
►
There's a line from Mad Men, you know, somebody asked Don Draper, how do you sleep at night?
01:17:08
◼
►
And he says, on a bed of money.
01:17:13
◼
►
Even if they're in it for the money, they want to make the most money they can on their
01:17:17
◼
►
own branded services.
01:17:19
◼
►
I think they would make more money by having a compelling bundle that's a lot lower than
01:17:27
◼
►
the price of the a la carte.
01:17:29
◼
►
Okay, I'll get music and TV plus and arcade.
01:17:34
◼
►
And I guess I need more storage because I have to back up more than five gigabytes of
01:17:43
◼
►
Why not make it like a dislike?
01:17:46
◼
►
Okay, you were spending close to $40 a month for 20 bucks a month.
01:17:50
◼
►
You can get this.
01:17:51
◼
►
But then yes, you'll make less money from people like me who were spending 40 bucks
01:17:56
◼
►
a month or something like that.
01:17:57
◼
►
But you'll make up so much more from all the people who were only spending 10 bucks a month
01:18:03
◼
►
And, you know, yeah, the math has to work out that there's some sweet spot in there.
01:18:09
◼
►
Maybe my dream prices are too low, but something where it's way less than the buck than the
01:18:14
◼
►
a la carte combination five like the German story that says you might save five bucks
01:18:18
◼
►
a month if you buy everything is like, what's the point?
01:18:22
◼
►
Yeah, I don't know.
01:18:25
◼
►
What do you think?
01:18:25
◼
►
Well, it seems to me like, yeah, there's obviously there's a spreadsheet someplace in Cupertino
01:18:31
◼
►
that has all of this on it, right?
01:18:32
◼
►
And my guess is that they figure out where that sweet spot is, and then they add $5.
01:18:40
◼
►
I don't know.
01:18:41
◼
►
I really hope it's true.
01:18:43
◼
►
Anyway, last thing on the show, I just wanted to throw out some recommendations for people
01:18:47
◼
►
for maybe this holiday week and what to watch.
01:18:50
◼
►
I want to recommend Ted Lasso, which is an Apple.
01:18:53
◼
►
Have you been watching?
01:18:55
◼
►
I've seen it like three times all the way through.
01:18:59
◼
►
And it's so good.
01:19:01
◼
►
And it's not what I expected at all.
01:19:03
◼
►
I thought it was going to be and I think maybe they played that up in the previews.
01:19:08
◼
►
I thought it's the premise is this guy was an American football coach in Kansas or Missouri.
01:19:16
◼
►
I forget where he's from.
01:19:17
◼
►
Who somehow gets hired as the head of a Premier League soccer team in London.
01:19:23
◼
►
Fish out of water.
01:19:25
◼
►
I figured the guy was going to be like 30 Rock slapstick.
01:19:32
◼
►
Truly dumb guy comedy.
01:19:34
◼
►
You know, like Ernest goes to coach soccer level of comedy.
01:19:38
◼
►
I like Jason Sudeikis.
01:19:39
◼
►
I thought it would be like that.
01:19:40
◼
►
It's not like that at all.
01:19:42
◼
►
It is funny.
01:19:42
◼
►
I enjoy it, but it is way less.
01:19:46
◼
►
He's not a dumb guy.
01:19:48
◼
►
He's he's really quite smart.
01:19:50
◼
►
He's quite smart.
01:19:51
◼
►
And as one of the most easy, like he's sort of like Yoda, right?
01:19:54
◼
►
I mean, yeah, he's wise.
01:19:55
◼
►
He's not smart about soccer at all.
01:19:58
◼
►
It he forgets.
01:20:00
◼
►
He forgets that they have ties.
01:20:02
◼
►
He forgets all these things, but he's smart about people.
01:20:06
◼
►
And it's an earnest show in a way.
01:20:09
◼
►
It's not cynical.
01:20:12
◼
►
It is a throwback on Twitter.
01:20:17
◼
►
I was talking about how much it is a little thread and friend of the show, Adam.
01:20:21
◼
►
Lisa Gore just I think he described it as I he just likes it because it everybody in
01:20:25
◼
►
the show is nice to each other.
01:20:27
◼
►
And that's not quite true.
01:20:28
◼
►
There's you know, yeah, no.
01:20:30
◼
►
But there's a heart of the heart of the show is nice.
01:20:32
◼
►
And in people who are nice to each other, really, you know, are the ones that you.
01:20:36
◼
►
I associate with and root for.
01:20:41
◼
►
Amy loves it.
01:20:42
◼
►
I've I have watched.
01:20:43
◼
►
There's an episode that like the second to last episode, Amy fell asleep very early and
01:20:48
◼
►
I couldn't stop.
01:20:49
◼
►
And I usually am very good about like stopping anything.
01:20:52
◼
►
And I was so into it.
01:20:52
◼
►
I've watched the whole thing and then we just watched it again last night.
01:20:55
◼
►
And I've just I've watched an episode.
01:20:57
◼
►
I haven't watched an episode of a show that I've watched before in years.
01:21:01
◼
►
I mean, literally since Mad Men.
01:21:02
◼
►
I loved it again.
01:21:04
◼
►
It was great.
01:21:04
◼
►
It was the one that the episode where they had the charity thing for underprivileged
01:21:09
◼
►
And it was a nice surprise.
01:21:12
◼
►
Amy was like, Wait, was this the one I fell asleep in?
01:21:14
◼
►
I was like, Yeah.
01:21:14
◼
►
And she was like, So we have another one.
01:21:15
◼
►
I was like, Yeah.
01:21:16
◼
►
And she was like, Yeah.
01:21:17
◼
►
And it was like the happiest thing that's happened to us in months.
01:21:20
◼
►
The next one's even better.
01:21:22
◼
►
Well, we watched it last night, but she didn't know.
01:21:26
◼
►
She thought we were catching up.
01:21:27
◼
►
And I was like, No, we have 30 more minutes.
01:21:29
◼
►
And it was great.
01:21:31
◼
►
And it's such a great cast.
01:21:32
◼
►
It's like a classic sitcom, you know, like Cheers where there's like, you know, I don't
01:21:38
◼
►
know, a dozen characters and you like them all.
01:21:40
◼
►
And they're all even the ones who aren't in a lot are like, I like them.
01:21:46
◼
►
And some of them are working on the writing.
01:21:48
◼
►
At least I know the guy who plays Roy Kent wrote one of the more recent episodes.
01:21:55
◼
►
I was looking it up online.
01:21:56
◼
►
I really enjoy that show.
01:21:59
◼
►
And I would just say, just forget about the trailer.
01:22:01
◼
►
Just go watch it if you have Apple TV.
01:22:04
◼
►
Because I because I went back.
01:22:05
◼
►
I don't even remember seeing the trailer per se, but I went when they announced that I
01:22:09
◼
►
went back and looked at some of the because he's it started out as an ad for NBC's coverage
01:22:15
◼
►
of Yeah, yeah, football, like British football, right?
01:22:20
◼
►
Beth is, you know, like, goofy American, and it was much more I mean, not slapstick, but
01:22:26
◼
►
much more silly.
01:22:27
◼
►
And, and, you know, he was much more of a Homer Simpson type.
01:22:30
◼
►
Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it.
01:22:33
◼
►
Like Homer Simpson, caught you coaching a sport he doesn't know the rules to.
01:22:37
◼
►
And the premise is just so the basic premise is so ridiculous.
01:22:42
◼
►
It's, you know, like, imagine if like, it's like saying, like, imagine if the United
01:22:47
◼
►
States put a reality show game show host narcissist sociopath and elected him president of the
01:22:53
◼
►
United States.
01:22:54
◼
►
You know, a guy who doesn't know soccer coaching in the Premier League in England, it doesn't
01:22:59
◼
►
be you know, couldn't happen.
01:23:00
◼
►
But anyway, I really recommend it.
01:23:05
◼
►
And again, I am a cold, you know, me, john, I'm cold hearted.
01:23:09
◼
►
I like I like my comedy mean, I like I like my cynicism.
01:23:15
◼
►
This show is like a feel good show.
01:23:18
◼
►
And I love it.
01:23:19
◼
►
Even I need it.
01:23:20
◼
►
I need this show.
01:23:20
◼
►
And I know it wasn't planned for when it came out.
01:23:23
◼
►
But it is it is truly the perfect.
01:23:26
◼
►
It's the it's perfect for right now.
01:23:27
◼
►
It's exactly it is just it's so so it really decompresses you watching the show.
01:23:34
◼
►
Yeah, it is the proverbial cold glass of ice water and hell.
01:23:38
◼
►
So Ted lasso is my recommendation.
01:23:41
◼
►
And it's been renewed for another season.
01:23:43
◼
►
Oh, that's fantastic.
01:23:45
◼
►
I feel like I feel like this could be the sort of show that really I'm not gonna say
01:23:50
◼
►
it's gonna single handedly turn Apple TV plus into a hit.
01:23:53
◼
►
But it seems like the type of show that's gonna have word of mouth.
01:23:56
◼
►
Like people will say,
01:23:57
◼
►
Oh, yeah, I noticed that I felt for a while I was watching I got on it early.
01:24:01
◼
►
And I felt like I was talking about it.
01:24:03
◼
►
And nobody else was and then all of a sudden, like this, this floodgate Well, not all of
01:24:06
◼
►
a sudden, slowly, this floodgate started opening.
01:24:08
◼
►
And I keep seeing more and more people talking about it.
01:24:11
◼
►
And everybody who talks about it is just like, wow, this is so good.
01:24:15
◼
►
And I wasn't expecting it.
01:24:17
◼
►
And and, you know, and there is something to be said for the sitcom format 30 minutes,
01:24:23
◼
►
here's a story.
01:24:24
◼
►
But it's modern.
01:24:25
◼
►
It's not a it's a throwback sentimentality wise in a way that people are good to each
01:24:31
◼
►
But like, it unlike a classic sitcom, which was always meant purposefully so that the
01:24:38
◼
►
episodes can be seen in any order, written for syndication, you know, so that, you know,
01:24:43
◼
►
like when you watch Cheers, you don't have to know you don't have to watch season.
01:24:47
◼
►
So you can watch any episode immediately.
01:24:49
◼
►
If you didn't watch Episode three, you're never going to get Episode four.
01:24:52
◼
►
No, they're all they all stand alone.
01:24:54
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►
This one it they go in order, you have to watch the season in order, which is a very
01:24:58
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modern streaming way of writing a season.
01:25:01
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It's so easy to get into.
01:25:03
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Ah, I totally recommend it to anybody.
01:25:07
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Anything else you want to recommend?
01:25:08
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Um, no, I would just say one more thing about it.
01:25:13
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It's, um, it's definitely my favorite just to talk about moral Apple TV Plus, but it's
01:25:17
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definitely my favorite Apple TV Plus series.
01:25:20
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And there's there are a couple that I really like.
01:25:22
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I really liked Dickerson and I really have liked the space one.
01:25:26
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For All Mankind.
01:25:28
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I like For All Mankind could not get Amy involved in it at all.
01:25:32
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I enjoyed it.
01:25:33
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Glad they got season two coming out.
01:25:34
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We enjoyed as a family, the M Night Shyamalan one, which Oh, did you?
01:25:39
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Okay, what's it called?
01:25:40
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I'm not a big horror fan.
01:25:42
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So that one was, uh, it seemed like it was well made, but it wasn't my cup of tea, particularly.
01:25:47
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I only I didn't get through the first episode.
01:25:48
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It's actually filmed blocks away from our
01:25:54
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It's called servant.
01:25:55
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That's right.
01:25:56
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I wanted to say beloved.
01:25:57
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And I knew that was it.
01:25:58
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It's it is very M Night Shyamalan.
01:26:05
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It's a little lower on the horror.
01:26:07
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You know, it's very it's suspenseful, though.
01:26:10
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And it's weird.
01:26:11
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Did you watch or no?
01:26:13
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I watched some of I watched some of the first episode and I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna.
01:26:16
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This isn't and it's not and it's not because I think it's bad or it's poorly made or anything.
01:26:20
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It's just it's a I do not care for horror very much.
01:26:25
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So and the other thing was so the other thing I've heard very good things about is Lovecraft
01:26:31
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Country, but another thing that is horror that I probably will.
01:26:34
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Yeah, I think that's next on our list.
01:26:37
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That's HBO Max.
01:26:39
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Yeah, that would be next on our list.
01:26:42
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We're going to watch that.
01:26:43
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Anyway, that's pretty good.
01:26:45
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I heard there's a rumor that Apple might extend the TV plus thing for another year with purchases.
01:26:52
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You know, I can see why.
01:26:56
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And I feel like it's sort of how do you bootstrap a because they're not doing that.
01:27:01
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They didn't buy the library rights to anything, right?
01:27:04
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Like when you get and this is like before like a year ago before TV plus launched, everybody
01:27:09
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was like, Well, why are people going to pay for a service that only has even if the six
01:27:14
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►
shows are great?
01:27:15
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►
Why would you pay five bucks a month for a service with six shows that when you watch
01:27:20
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►
them, you're out?
01:27:21
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►
And the answer was, well, they're really kind of going to go out of their way to give it
01:27:25
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►
to anybody who buys any other Apple hardware product.
01:27:29
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►
And that's how you bootstrap it, right?
01:27:32
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And I kind of see that.
01:27:34
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►
But to me, that's why Apple TV plus it's don't compare it to Netscape or not a Netscape.
01:27:41
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►
Jesus, Netflix definitely don't compare to that.
01:27:44
◼
►
Netflix is entire business is getting people to pay, you know, 10 or 15 bucks a month for
01:27:49
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►
Netflix, right?
01:27:50
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►
That is the it's it's, you know, as sprawling as they're in.
01:27:53
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►
They don't have any.
01:27:54
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►
That's that's what they do.
01:27:55
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►
And it's kind of a thing of beauty, you know, that they pivoted from a will mail you DVDs
01:28:01
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►
at home to we've, we're now the preeminent library of streaming content that everybody
01:28:07
◼
►
It's a thing of beauty, because it's so nice and simple.
01:28:11
◼
►
And the value proposition is, will you watch, you know, 10 bucks of Netflix a month?
01:28:18
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►
So yeah, you'll get it.
01:28:20
◼
►
The TV plus thing is to me more like Apple or Amazon Prime video where nobody signs up
01:28:26
◼
►
for Amazon Prime to get Prime video, you sign up for free shipping, and then you, you have
01:28:33
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►
these prime shows you can watch and they're, you know, some of them are pretty good.
01:28:36
◼
►
And you know, it's one of the easiest streaming things.
01:28:39
◼
►
If it went away for me, I really probably wouldn't miss it.
01:28:42
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►
But I'm glad I have it because every once in a while something comes up.
01:28:47
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►
And I feel like TV plus for Apple is and always will be like that in that it will make way
01:28:53
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►
more sense in the context of an Apple one bundle where, okay, you know, you just give
01:29:01
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►
Okay, add five $30.
01:29:03
◼
►
All right, they give us just give us something a month and we'll give you these TV shows
01:29:09
◼
►
Is the free year thing going on is still going on right now?
01:29:12
◼
►
Yeah, because they it Well, it has to be because it started they announced it with the iPhones,
01:29:17
◼
►
So the iPhones were last September 7th, 8th, 9th, something around there, or 12th or something,
01:29:24
◼
►
you know, somewhere around September 11th, but never actually September 11th.
01:29:28
◼
►
And they didn't actually sell they actually announced it and they didn't sell the phones
01:29:33
◼
►
for another week or two.
01:29:35
◼
►
So even the earliest like if you bought a new iPhone at the very first day, your year
01:29:40
◼
►
of TV, like if you bought if you bought Well, the reason I asked is I just bought Hank a
01:29:44
◼
►
Oh, yeah, I think you do.
01:29:46
◼
►
Yeah, I think you still get you should still get a year of of TV plus.
01:29:51
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►
Anyway, that's my recommendation.
01:29:55
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►
Anything else?
01:29:55
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►
Yeah, I guess the other thing what a sad story.
01:29:58
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►
I don't want to end on two percent of a note but this Chadwick Boseman.
01:30:01
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►
Yeah, passing.
01:30:03
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►
What a completely out of the blue for you know, most everybody.
01:30:07
◼
►
Yeah, yeah, they kept it private and I don't blame him, you know, but I mean, who would
01:30:11
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►
have thought it doesn't even make any sense.
01:30:13
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►
The guy had was fighting cancer for four years while he was like the most fit even literally
01:30:19
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►
played superhero.
01:30:20
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►
I mean, yeah, and like the part.
01:30:22
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►
Oh, and who else did he play?
01:30:24
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►
Well, he played Jackie Robinson, like one of the greatest athletes in history of America.
01:30:30
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►
And he looked like one of the great athletes of America and he's fighting cancer and died
01:30:35
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►
and my god, what a sad story.
01:30:37
◼
►
But I will just say, and I know everybody, you know, he was so talented, so amazing.
01:30:43
◼
►
And everybody knows Black Panther and ABC or Disney, I guess, did a really cool thing
01:30:47
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►
where they showed Black Panther on ABC, which everybody gets.
01:30:51
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►
You can even get it over the air commercial free.
01:30:55
◼
►
A night or two ago.
01:30:56
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►
What a great way to truly to honor him.
01:30:58
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►
No commercials and put a nice thing about his life afterwards.
01:31:01
◼
►
But I'll just say 42, the Jackie Robinson movie is one of my favorite sports movies
01:31:07
◼
►
of all time and is one of.
01:31:09
◼
►
Okay, I've not seen it.
01:31:10
◼
►
Oh, it's so good.
01:31:11
◼
►
I really recommend it.
01:31:12
◼
►
I would be my last recommendation.
01:31:14
◼
►
Like, you know, I don't have to say go watch Black Panther.
01:31:17
◼
►
I mean, probably everybody's seen Black Panther, which is a great superhero movie.
01:31:21
◼
►
But 42 is just amazing.
01:31:23
◼
►
And in terms, you know, it's, you know, the sort of where we've come and how far we have
01:31:28
◼
►
to go with race relations in this country.
01:31:30
◼
►
It is as well, you know, sadly, is more relevant than it should be in 2020.
01:31:38
◼
►
But he's so good.
01:31:39
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►
He's he was such an amazing actor.
01:31:42
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►
It's you just don't think of him as, oh, there's Chadwick Boseman.
01:31:46
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►
It's like, no, that's Jackie Robinson.
01:31:50
◼
►
So that would be my other recommendation is watch 42.
01:31:53
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►
I will check that out.
01:31:54
◼
►
You see, he died.
01:31:55
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►
It's I'm not like a coincidence person, but he died on Jackie Robinson Day in Major League
01:32:01
◼
►
Baseball, which is so weird.
01:32:04
◼
►
And it's not even usually usually it's April 15.
01:32:06
◼
►
But it couldn't be because they weren't playing baseball on April 15.
01:32:11
◼
►
Anyway, this timeline.
01:32:13
◼
►
Oh, anyway, that's my recommendation about this timeline.
01:32:17
◼
►
John, it's always good to talk to you.
01:32:19
◼
►
People can get plenty of discussion.
01:32:22
◼
►
People can hear it here.
01:32:23
◼
►
Hear your good voice on turning turning this car around the podcast with with our good
01:32:30
◼
►
friend, Lex and oh, you said his name.
01:32:35
◼
►
Lex and John Armstrong.
01:32:38
◼
►
John Armstrong.
01:32:39
◼
►
Also a good friend.
01:32:41
◼
►
You see the joke I had.
01:32:42
◼
►
I have some some poor guy on Twitter fell right in the middle of it.
01:32:45
◼
►
Did you see the thread Lex and I had on Twitter?
01:32:48
◼
►
I skim past it because I'm trying I'm trying not to doom scroll these days.
01:32:54
◼
►
And I am I am not I am no longer I used to be a completist as far as Twitter goes.
01:32:59
◼
►
And now I'm like, nope, nope, nope, not today.
01:33:01
◼
►
Lex Lex had a tweet that was something to the lines of, oh, is anybody else running into
01:33:06
◼
►
the thing or, you know, late summer and these troubling times they they're waking up at
01:33:11
◼
►
And it was literally said 515.
01:33:13
◼
►
And I just wrote me too.
01:33:15
◼
►
And somebody wrote Yeah, how do you not be a morning person and just some random and
01:33:22
◼
►
I wrote Oh, we're talking about 515 in the morning.
01:33:24
◼
►
It was I couldn't have set it up better with a sock puppet account.
01:33:31
◼
►
Anyway, John,
01:33:34
◼
►
I'm glad you got I'm glad you got up early for this podcast.
01:33:36
◼
►
Ah, I am getting up earlier.
01:33:39
◼
►
I guess if 11 is early.
01:33:42
◼
►
Who knows some days I do get up early.
01:33:45
◼
►
It's crazy times.
01:33:46
◼
►
Anyway, good talking to you, John.
01:33:48
◼
►
Have a good holiday week.
01:33:49
◼
►
Oh, yeah, I will.
01:33:50
◼
►
Enjoy the pool.