108: Operators Are Standing By!

Now that we're in this triple digit thing. I don't know. It's weird. I almost want to start over I really I've longed for the days of the the zero the zero nine seven or the zero three two I don't know. I love that you think that it's weird now, right? Oh, I have three digits, but I felt really weird for the first what a Hundred or so with those extras thrown in every time I had to post on mastered on or Twitter back in the day with like Zero something and I just knew people looking at thinking are they all right? Like they know that zero represents nothing They don't have to do that. I'm glad that you feel weird down It's your turn. Well now the problem really is that No one thought we would get to three digits So now the problem of four digits is gonna be like why 2k for this show because if we hit 1000 I'm pretty sure the whole show will explode just like everything did on y2k So you're saying we should have been doing two zeros at the front? I think so before we reached 100 to account for that that would have been you know hindsight in all but that would have been The correct move I think no, well, we're screwed. Here we are. Yeah, we're gonna have to hire a whole team of Programmers to go in and change the date codes and so forth from you know, 108 to 0 108 It's gonna be a whole thing, but I think we know people so it should be okay We get Ron Livingston on it and Samir. Yeah, I think they're available So it should be fine now in a jar and maybe they could hook us up with that that penny scam, too And then that solves all the funding issues. It's kind of like a you know, double dip like in Superman Superman - yeah Hmm. Hmm. Let's try it But you have to look up money money laundering in the dictionary *music* All right, I know a guy that has a dictionary and his name is Martin Feld And it's the source. Yeah, I say one over there on the bookshelf I bet he's one of the only people that probably has tried to correct his dictionary with a red pen That just seems like the kind of guy Martin is. I don't apply pens to printed books. So I'm sorry to disappoint you there Did you hear how I just oh wow. I felt that that was Have you got a foot imprint on your head right now? I could feel it on my neck I thought it was like having trouble like oh, wow. That was just I did my friend I did He's swept the legs and then just pressed It brings back to mind you remember that clip art you did a long time ago where we had Feld and then the rest of us. That's what started it. Yeah crushed. I think it's time for that artwork to come back again That's what started it that's what started the whole flip thing that was really pretty sure it was early on Yeah, we should bring that back. I think it's and it's so long ago. It's probably like 320 by 240 or something It's in my favorites album in my photos app. I look at it occasionally. That's pretty Memory on his iPad screen. He's just like Albert. Yeah. Yeah That's right on this day But it's just every day the day that the insulting began, yeah I'll bring it into pixel mater and do the the super ultra mega enhanced thing and blow it up for you That would be good. That's just what I wanted So you don't know was that a segue to our third topic? I think so because I put this in the notes a little while ago and it's yeah, it's coming for episode 108 So yeah, I mean this doesn't have to go for too long because you know correcting gets painful But well Jason you took this photo of a red sharpie. I think that you had written my name on yep Basically symbolizing my character or personality Martin. You are the red pen. Yep. You're holding it right now There you go, and you can check the show notes everyone for this. It's the Martin sharpie. Mm-hmm, and it made me think Am I the only one who's correcting things in this way? Surely people are editing or critiquing their own work I mean, what about you two? Do you edit things heavily? And if so, where did that kind of spirit or habit come from? I just I want to say in regard to the pen. I don't actually remember Why this came about I don't I don't recall the context. I just found this again It resurfaced in my house recently. I was like, oh red sharpie, and I picked it up and scrawled on the side in black sharpie is Martin on I was like, oh, this is the Martin sharpie, of course Hmm, I couldn't recall why I had it, but I bet it was hilarious when it happened If anybody knows what episode it is Let me know because I have no idea I don't know if it ever came up in an episode But before you answer the question, I'd like to think that within the Feld family who are known as being a little bit. Let's say Mildly obsessed with spelling grammar punctuation all that stuff. I hope I kind of got that from my dad Mildly, okay to very okay to varying degrees. All right, so from my dad's side this is where this comes from and my mum was particularly good with Reading and stuff when I was a kid. I remember we would read together. We're talking like primary school age stuff So literacy was really encouraged from her side as well. But in the Feld family It's really a matter of if you were writing an essay for university or something for high school or whatever You'd print it out and my dad would do this and he would sit down with me after I'd written a draft and the red Pen would come out and it would be a matter of highlighting Printed on the page to let things jump out at you rather than relying on the screen where it could be kind of lost or ambiguous Right actually crossing out and writing things Jason's adjusting stuff in the notes. What's going on here? Are you correcting now? No, no I'm just keeping track of things Yeah, but I suppose I learned this art or habit or whatever of correcting things and now working in communications Generally, I kind of approach a lot of work like that and I think that the red sharpie came out for you with my name on it because I was applying a similar kind of Rigor or habit to things that we were writing or things in the show notes and look your show notes are wonderful But if I spot a missing hyphen, I'm gonna put it in there. I I oh I hate you in your hyphens I really do stylistically they look disgusting and they're gross doing my em dashes or hyphens Hyphens, they're different. He hyphens everything and I think it looks terrible. I know - and everything I - at compound modifiers and that's where they're useful. He's the - a - Yeah, I'll take that term. That's better than foot. No, you will remain foot fo - ot Back to the question Do either of you have this kind of habit with anything that you write or maybe something else that you do in your work? And where did it come from? Because I can't be the only one who likes to correct something. I Find if I print something out and then get a pen I will discover so many more errors and Items needing correction than I would if I just proof something on the screen as a document if I'm reading it, right? Usually it's something that I myself have written and I want to proof my own work. I Find that if I print it get a pen, I'm not too fussy about the color Sometimes I don't like using red because I feel like I'm being too hard on myself You know, so I will go a blue usually because usually it's printed in black and a blue provides a contrast point But I don't feel like I'm being punished by my own self. It's more like a suggestive edit Hey, Andrew, have you thought about doing this and I'll scribble and not we're not finished Usually I'll look at it and go wow, I made so many mistakes in that original draft But when I've read on the page, it seemed fine. So I am really strongly in favor of Pen editing and I don't know if that's an age thing as well. I didn't grow up in a pure digital era I grew up in in a handwritten era learning how to Do proper cursive at school. So maybe that's an age thing Well, it's funny you say that because I learned cursive or running writing at school And even though I just said that my dad did this with the red pen I don't print anything or ever use a red pen. I do everything on the screen. You should try printing You should try I would like to say this is an experiment for you now next time you write something right it then I don't have a printer. I was gonna say I bet he doesn't even have a printer. I hate them You need to get the the hemisphere reviews authorized printer endorsed printer It's the brother HL 3120 is that 30 20 and then there's like some letters at the end. I think like CW Something that's the one the old men in the chat Believe he doesn't have a printer Not even a dumb not even an inkjet. I grew up with one, but they're shit They're rickety they break the ink is just way too expensive and then you get a printer at work Surely you've got a big about I have only ever printed something at work once and it was because I was asked to and when they Asked me to I said I don't have printer access and I said is there a problem and I said no I just don't need it So Wow, so if I'm just to give out the model number here, it's the brother HL - L 3290 CDW CDW. Yeah, there's even a hyphen in there. So Martin will love that printer I'm encouraged by its presence. It was the HLL but then somebody like Martin came along in marketing. It was like no No, it's HL - L and they're like fine. Was it a - or - oh Christ I've actually changed my tune. I used to be a I used to be a editor to a fault To where I would get almost nothing out on the page Because I was constantly fussing with like every single sentence to make sure it was perfect and I've now switched my tune for better or worse to just like get shit on the page and Then deal with it later. Just get stuff on there. That's good. Get it out write it. It could be utter crap It doesn't make any sense riddled with typos, but get it out there and That's what I do now, and I think it's sometimes to a fault Because I feel like it like a blog post I will hit publish and then immediately find 900 things that I need to fix the best autocorrect or that yeah the best like spelling Correction is not the squiggly line. It's pressing publish on a blog post Really give you all of these like, you know, do you you know use vision OS all you want? I don't need it I just have my eyes and I just see millions of red squiggles after I push publish But yeah, I do that and then I even do it like from a work thing They're like I'll put something into like a slack message just to get it out and then go ah And immediately hit up arrow and correct like 50 things and then it's basically every message I send is edited which maybe that's good Maybe that's bad, but in the long run, I feel like it's better to just get the thoughts out and then correct them later So that's where I'm at now. I'm a very big corrector slash editor Nowadays because I'll get at the end of the day. I think a better result or at least a better representation of my thoughts Because more of the thoughts hit the page Then we're spent cycles trying to correct like the first intro sentence forever Cool. All right. I like I like printed document. I feel it feels more official. I like it once it's on paper I lose it. Oh, I thought I don't keep paper. I just like printing it looking at it and then throwing it away Oh, it's good. It sounds good environmental impact Wow that presents really nicely on the page. We have we done an environmental impact report for this organization recently Andrews behavior. I'm not sure we did what a 2023 but I think I might approach the board to request a Environmental impact report for this podcast. So I'm just gonna throw this out there despite being the quote-unquote foot I may have the smallest footprint. Oh Hmm. What size shoe do you wear? Generally, it's around a nine to ten nine and a half. Yeah, whatever we use in Australia. Is it equivalent to us? Yes, I have no idea. I don't think we've talked about shoe sizes. That's I preferred. Okay Well, I'm a nine nine and a half generally occasionally a ten if it's a weird shoe Okay, okay, and then I'm eleven and a half and I think Andrews probably like a twenty eight or something. I'm a fourteen Us hmm. So technically you do have the smallest footprint wide 14 e e gotta get the wide foot. What is e? Yeah, this is with e is width. Yeah Okay, I don't know why it's a but it is so this nickname of mine is looking more and more inappropriate all the time It is yeah Can we get a photo of that No, everyone smile Three I don't want my face next to that Too bad it already is check the shine. That's right Jeez I call him the foot We had a discussion Hmm, I wouldn't say recently recently feels like too soon But it was a while back now where we're I think it was kind of the theme was IT kind of horror stories or like data that you deleted on Accident or on purpose at work things related to data being just gone In a very bad way in a working environment where the data technically wasn't yours so you're kind of on the hook now and binary digit did us a solid and Didn't just put a text thread in there. There was a lovely audio Clip of the story and we wanted to share that so that everyone could could have a word of caution when it comes to data in the workplace Hey, it's binary digit. I was going to record my really quick story on The crazy situation that happened in my old job where Johnny decimal said Posted or didn't happen. So here goes. I used to be a systems engineer for an IT company it was a managed services provider in New York and We had many clients One of my jobs was to check the backups of many of the clients one in particular I checked almost every day but of course we had about five engineers on the team managing all these customers and This was near the very end of this job where I was there for about six or seven years I was already hitting burnout. It was really really scary actually How crazy burnout can be so anyway, this was one of the very last memories that I had with my boss before he left He was the director of the managed services department really cool guy We both worked as a team and he was amazing. And so and he had kind of no fear because he was ex-military He was a ex-marine Anyway, so and I was associate systems engineer technically so I was doing all this work When really it should have been more someone more senior But anyway story is I had to check backups one of the customers there was many servers one in particular was their file server Of course This was the day was the days before everything was in the cloud and we had just local servers on site And we had to check tape backups or digital backups, whatever systems they had. So I thought everything was good We got a call in saying hey, we have an emergency at this customer for some reason We feel like they got some ransomware and I was like, oh god ransomware. I've dealt with this before But no, I did it. I thought I did but this was on another level so I Logged into the servers sure enough I checked the backups to see if they were running and every single server was in the backup system except their file server Which was the most important one for some reason it didn't run for a few days And of course, that's the one that got hit the worst So panic mini panic told my boss. My boss is like, oh shit. Are you serious? And I said yes, and so I had to look into all of our options It was very nerve-wracking. But anyway, luckily me being a nerd I knew how to log into the as they say dark web, which really it could be dark web, but not really I logged into Tor I looked at I went on to the the onion site It's like a dot onion a web address that the ransomware says, you know You have to pay this ransom in Bitcoin or whatever and back then Bitcoin was whatever rate it was It was obviously very different. I would say this was probably in 2015 when this happened. So Or 2016 so I logged in and I was like, oh my god, okay So here is how much the ransom was I think was for the company was like a thousand dollars which is nothing but the point is is of course is very embarrassing for an IT company did not check backups and fix this system when it could have Been resolved with for storing some backups. So what we had to do I Had to use a different network at work, which wasn't under our firewall, which is kind of like an outside wireless connection Download the Tor browser log into the site see the ransom message and I asked my boss like hey, what do you want to do? He's like, alright looks like we're gonna have to pay this ransom and I was like, wow. Okay, this is gonna be experience So I said he's like, how do I get the Bitcoin? I said well and Remember, we're in New York Long Island. I said well There's an ATM in Brooklyn, which was like the closest one that was kind of obtainable because he had a car I said there's an ATM in Brooklyn that you could literally Get a wallet put money into the ATM with cash and get some Bitcoin in your Bitcoin wallet He's like, okay, so I'll do it. I'll do it. Let's go. Let's do it. I'll do it So I stayed in the office of course He went out to Brooklyn to go to the ATM and literally put money with a check from the company He cashed he put the cash in the ATM and did the whole thing And of course, he was nervous trying to get the Bitcoin wallet. That was a separate day I helped him with his ID and all this other stuff and I saw him physically nervous Which I was like shocked because he's not a nervous guy. He's just like, you know, whatever so But yeah, I remember the day he went he said okay I'm here you should see the line of people doing this same thing and people were telling him stories and he told me the stories of how people were putting money into this ATM to get Bitcoin to pay the ransom because They had tons of pictures of family members that were precious to them and they had to go pay the ransom and it was insane so That happened. Luckily. I went online. I paid it with the Bitcoin wallet that he provided me We got the extraction key and we decrypted all the files and miraculously it worked. It was legit. So that wasn't a crazy experience and I'll never forget it. And now I have three to him backups all the time, and I hope everyone else does too Thanks for listening. I like when people submit clips. I'll just say that right now if you want to submit audio of any kind well Mostly any kind I will say But it can be almost about anything We just like hearing from people in their in their own lives their own worlds and what's going on with them So if you ever have like a fun story or something even better something related to something we talked about like we talked about hamburgers for like 50 minutes last time got a good hamburger story or you want to tell us why HJ's are better than BK's. Let us know record that audio submitted to discord email, whatever and It may pending, you know legal review Make it on the show Right there, do you see that what is it that is the zike? zike Zike Ziki, we don't know who knows smart card made by Zike Ziki tech LLC so a name you can trust everyone knows Zikul Zikul tech LLC everyone knows them. Yeah So what it is is a okay, you know air tags, right? Hmm, you know your friend air tag Oh with everyone's favorite button batteries. Yep. Yeah, a little dollop of air tag will do you they're great They go on your stuff help you find it if you lose it However, there's a few places where an air tag just doesn't really fit, you know One of those being oh, I don't know Oh wallet. Oh it fits Can't put an air tag in there unless you want your issue can wallet to be four meters thick I do it. Oh, do you have a purse? No, just stick it in the money bit of the wallet I've just solved your problem with the the ZK smart card Locate with Apple find my it is a credit card sized device that supports find my and you shove it in your wallet because it's the size of a credit card and then you have find my in Your wallet and the extra cool thing Air tags air tag dies. What do you do? How do you how do you get an air tag going again? Anybody get it going again. Yeah, let's say it dies How do you how do you get your air tag working again change the battery? Will you twist it open you take the button battery out you put the new one in the air if you have to reset it There's like a five press Exactly. That's it taken out a battery and you're throwing it in the ocean and you're ruining the environment. That's exactly what's going on That's what Andrew would do. Yeah, I print the instruction. Well, he puts it into the printer paper and then just lights it on fire I'm pretty sure that's how that yes, but these little doodads You just attach to a magsafe Charger and it charges the card. That's cool And you only have to charge it like once every it says once a year, but like even if it's once every six months Big whoop Oh magsafe. Okay. Yeah, not the Apple watch. Sorry. I was thinking the Apple watch thing Yeah, it like the little you know, the little puck thing you just stick it on there at magnets to it It has a little light it charges turns green when it's done and that's cool. That's it and it works with find my yeah It's really pretty pretty sweet little deal IP x7 water resistant. So is there a hyphen in there or a - oh No, no there isn't I didn't think that was I just wanted to waste your time Built-in battery Charges for a half an hour can last about one year. So there you go. Is it an Apple store purchase? It's oh, no, these are these are not I don't believe these are sanctioned in any conceivable way Okay, but they work and they show up and find my so good enough for me Do they show up in the Chinese government as well? I mean what doesn't So you're gonna turn up on the front page of I don't know what the Oregon Observer with man's pocket explodes with Unsanctioned wallet explosive or something. I'll take the risk. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, mr Black and if you look on the front it has helpful pictures for things you can attach the card to oh some of which include a wallet also the card is Comically miss size to what the thing is it's on So the wallet is about the size of a house compared to the card So that's helpful a backpack a suitcase your medical doctor bag So if you're a doctor you're carrying your doctor bag around you go. Oh shit. Where's my doctor tools? No problem found it find my Your car your bike your baby stroller thing. No, it's terrible when you lose your baby like that I know but now you can find them so it's not an issue anymore Keys your badge your computer or your trophy Trophy so if you're constantly misplacing your trophy Got you covered. Yeah, you don't you hate when you lose your trophy. Jeez You don't want to you don't want to be having people over for a big dinner party and you know you have your you have your friend like subtly drop the hint about the trophy to try to Bring it up naturally and then you go. Oh this old thing and it's not on the shelf You go. Oh Shit, where is my trophy? Hold on you pull out your phone and you go poop poop poop poop poop Oh, there it is in the laundry basket again You know the Stanley Cup in the the ice hockey league. I've heard of it The traditionally the the victors get to take that on a tour. So it all goes back to the players their their homes You know, they take it back to where they started from it's kind of tradition But it turns out that the Stanley Cup was also being taken to some inappropriate locations And so required the league to step in and say hey you can't do that with the Stanley Cup Certain places certain things you shouldn't be doing with the cup if it fits it sits This is actually the official sponsor of the NHL if you didn't know that already So they sponsored the NHL and they sponsor us. So there you go Do I have to still disclaim that like we don't actually nobody believes that we actually have sponsors, right? I still do someone coming in might think that we're a serious business. I think it's act Yeah, we we actually know we nothing is sponsored here, right and all the business chat that Andrew brings to this podcast They're thinking this is hard-hitting business journalism hard-hitting. You know sort of deals that yeah, you know, they're doing subscriber Only with it with a cutting-edge of podcast. Is this the harvester business review podcast? That's what most people say when they have a business wishes it was elk You imagine if they had this kind of content probably sell a copy or two. They're like keeping notes. Like how do you spell depreciation? Do you know where I keep such notes Martin grains of rice in his kitchen? This is unheard of I keep all my depreciation notes in my net note-taking app of choice It's like a podcast player of choice, but for notes for notes. I've tried them all you would probably never guess that no I've got a new favorite every time I see in the App Store where they have like a Top notes list. I just assume it's like your editorial when I look at those it just says like Download download Open or download cloud. Yeah Yeah, look I'm not surprised by this and when I like in general that you would switch note-taking apps Andrew But when I saw which one it was Hmm I just had a big you're kidding in my mind and how many people have you insulted on this podcast for using this app? Like are you okay? Isn't that kind of the theme of the show though? I mean look it's Anyway, go on I use this app many years ago in its first incarnation. I even subscribed to it for a year way back when and Used it for a year and then thought why am I bothering with this? I don't really need it and I went away from it and then it it didn't ever develop further and then bear to emerged And everybody raved about bear - I said great I liked bear one, but it didn't really do much and bear - he doesn't seem that much different So I ignored it and I belittled those who chose to accept it Until my voyages through log seek and obsidian and agenda and Devon think and Apple Notes and tot and drafts Me and did my way through Until I was looking at bear - the other day Maybe just maybe there's something to this app Maybe I should give it a try and I downloaded it and it was gorgeous and it was fast And it was sink. The sink was reliable and it worked on all my machines and it didn't look like a DOS app from 1987 and I thought It could be something to this. I might be willing to put some cold hard cash behind this and I click the subscribe button and At that point I knew this app was for me because it remembered my loyalty from bear one It remembered that I was a buyer of bear one. I Think that's why I did what it did, but he gave me a discounted subscription price slash save I was like How could I not this app knows me it just responded to my Fiscal care and I'm buying it and I bought it and I have it everywhere and I love it and it's in my dock and it's beautiful Please The journey is over my friends for this week bear Is it no more no more fapping around? Yeah, right. I know where everything is. Everything's in bear. Everything looks nice Everything sinks across except to my work PC, but that's okay I'm sure there's some web app coming in the future Bear I forgot to mention I use strata for a while speaking of web app web note-taking apps It's a micro blog micro dot blogs. Yeah thing. Yeah. Oh and fast mile notes That's another one But bear is where it's at everybody jump on it Look I feel before we go on, you know, obviously I'm not gonna go into the fact that you say it's the final note-taking app ever because I've never believed a statement less than that I think you owe all of the listeners. You've insulted some form of at least a minor apology Sorry That was a very minor apology Listeners, you know where to find us our complaints department is titled NBL pocket podcast If you have any issues with the apology that was just given please let them know it's hello at NBL pocket podcast Calm below Andrew. I'm happy for you. I'm happy for the next Seven to eight weeks of your note-taking bliss before you find out that it can't do something and you move somewhere else Seven you're giving it seven to eight weeks. I paid for a year subscription. That's a long time I locked myself in no seven to eight weeks given that he's just told us, you know that he's got his annual subscription of him genuinely liking it and using it and then You know slightly but still a little bit. Hmm The web app isn't there or there's something wrong with the Windows PC support, but then he'll continue to limping along with this sort of gangrenous Vestigial subscription that he'll want to keep a hold of but kind of be looking with like yearning and just Longing at some other alternative and then he'll move to that and use it Concurrently, it'll be doing both and then he'll splinter everything and I get fragmented But he'll find some way to justify it because the money is there, you know, it's just ridiculous. So it'll be something like that He's big on sunk cost If you need some bear tips, I'm happy to give them to you over time. Oh if that would it be helpful I don't know if I need them. It's so straightforward. It's just such a beautiful app We'll call them bear hacks In Australia in the 80s maybe 90s long time ago when TV ads were still really a big thing and they were sort of part of the zeitgeist Is that B BMF? Huh before Martin Feld? Well, this is where I'm going. You don't preempt me okay, because yeah, we had these TVs and we'd have TV commercial selling products and There was a period where there's a couple of guys that became larger than life in the TV ad sales world and They became just personas in their own right and they would start doing guest appearances on other shows and they'll do crossovers with other products they just were so Massively popular and known I'll give you two examples, but where I'm going with this is Was there such a similar thing in the US? Or was this kind of a distinctly Australian thing? I'm I assume not I assume it was all ripped off from somewhere else But the two that spring to mind immediately in Australia were Big Kev big Kev was big Queensland guy, I think and he sold cleaning products and He would drape himself in a shiny satin shirt of the Australian flag Yeah, because that was that one of the big selling products as it was all local as Australian And he would talk about his cleaning products really enthusiastically and then he would finish off with I'm excited And Everybody like I remember walking around and it became a catch-cry across the entire nation. You just say I'm excited When something great happened big Kev became part of the zeitgeist Then there was another guy. I can't remember. I think this other guy might be before big Kev I think it probably was actually so I've probably got my timing wrong this is probably the original guy and that is Tim Shaw from dem tell and He got big selling knives Hmm. The cut was amazing chop through anything switch between Bread to tomatoes to meat and the ads are sensational. I had fun the other day looking through YouTube Watching some of him. They always had to have a catchphrase and Tim Shores was But there's more now viewers I've already offering you these these knives for just 49 95, but I know you want more So we're gonna give you these steak knives normally valued at 39 95 for just 19 95 such a deal But I know you want more And he would go on it was but there's more that became his huge catch-cry and again Tim short dem tell beloved across the nation So what I'm wondering is two questions actually Jason how many questions two questions? Thank you Martin were you around is this even in your zone of knowledge? Do you have any? experience of this at all and secondly Jason Were there American salesmen like this where a catchphrase just took over the nation and became a big thing and they were they were more popular than anything you could imagine So Martin first you familiar answering question one Tim sure, I don't have any memory of him, but the whole but there's more catchphrase or slogan Sounds very familiar. So I don't know if I ever heard his voice carried on or featuring another kind of Infomercials on TV, but I feel like I'm familiar with that kind of Let's say Capitalist broadcast vocabulary. Let's call it that. All right But big Kev Absolutely when I was a kid, he was on TV constantly giving thumbs up to everything He was shinier than you could believe with those satin shirts and he was quite gray Yes, I was a time that I saw him on TV, but I remember him fondly he would just Randomly pop up on commercial television. You've just been watching some, you know Pretty interesting drama on television and then suddenly big Kev's yelling at you to buy some sort of multi-purpose spray It was pretty exciting so I can see why he was so g'd up Okay, and do you have fun to a fondness for them or are they just like a thing that existed at a time? nostalgically, yes Because when I was a kid I don't think I knew much better or I was growing up in that kind of environment of watching commercial TV Like I'd watch shows on ABC and SBS and like ABC kids talking like when I was really young So I knew what commercial free television was but it was just kind of an accepted thing like I don't think kids now particularly would Appreciate it so much if they're just watching a lot of YouTube or walking away from the TV with their phones or something in families nowadays but when broadcast TV was on like you of course both would know this and a lot of people listening that ads came on and then you would just kind of Have to watch them or cop it or walk away or go to the toilet or get a snack or something So to have entertaining people like that who broke up that monotony was quite fun But nowadays I would find it obnoxious or like that's why you know We argued with Jason about the presence of the mute button on that new Siri remote or newer Siri remote If you do have to watch something in a stream where you know, you don't you can't stop it or you don't want to stop it You want to mute it? So I hate it. Yeah, sorry hemispheric views listeners. That was your first answer You heard there from Martin Feld a great answer, wasn't it? But I know I know you want more So let's flip it over to Jason over in the United States and see what he's got to say Jason what do you think? Thank you Andrew. Thank you for that question I had to wait for the satellite feed to kick in so I could hear what you're asking for It was pretty fast. I would think infomercials were probably I don't want to say invented here But boy, do we have a lot of them like infomercials were just such a thing 80s 90s Probably still I would say to some degree but not as much The one you mentioned there are digital channels he devoted to yeah. Oh, wow, really? Geez, that's crazy the knives were always like knives forever have been a thing of we had one that was It was called the Ginsu knife And it was the same kind of crap where it was like you could chop a tomato You could chop some lettuce you could chop a house in half and it's still sharp and it's like really Okay, I don't believe you but sure and the catchphrases were always it was always call now. Mm-hmm and Operators are standing by like there are just people Just waiting for your call to get you this amazing knife today for 1995 if you call in the next 34 minutes There's always a time limit Did you already have the really unsafe practice when they were demoing knives particularly with tomatoes where they would hurl? Tomatoes into the air and just chop it in the air. Yeah, cuz that's how you make a salad You just huck shit in the air and like slice it right through the air. It was like it was like fruit ninja Yeah, the guy exactly like you like you Nick your uncle's artery next to you in the kitchen, but at least the salad's good But I watched the dem till had the other day and it's like here's here's the lettuce. Here's the tomato. Here's the shoe Here's the meat and you're yeah Shoe. Yeah They're like Block and you're like well who's cutting a cinder block in their kitchen first, but okay, it's construction rated Yeah, it's granted for those and there's always the important but wait, there's more Mmm, which always kind of like thinking back on it now You're trying to sell me this knife that can tell can do Literally anything in my it'll solve all of my problems that I've ever had. It's only $20 Yet somehow that's still not good enough and you're telling me I have to have more to make this 20 bucks seem worth it That seems a little sketch but okay, the other ones that you were talking about this. I'm just they're flooding into my mind mmm Ron Popeil He was hawking crap left and right there was the Ron Popeil pocket fisherman Which was like a fishing rod that like collapsed that you'd put in your pocket, I guess So if you were, you know out for a walk and said, oh, there's a pond. I Would love to catch a fish You could just pull that thing out and you know cast your line and grab dinner, I guess Do you have a catch cry? Yeah, he well, I don't know for that one, but he had like another like rotisserie Cooker thing, I guess I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was this set it and forget it Was like the big thing. It was always like you just turn this magic dial Leave for a weekend come back and you'd have like roast ready for Sunday dinner or something. It's just magic The George Foreman grill. That's a that was a big one. Yep the the oxy clean guy. That was later That was a big one. Did you have ever doers? No, I don't think so Oh, it's just one of those stupid ad machines where you know, you fold it. Oh, yeah for sure We had that was that was yeah That was a different kind of set and forget because you set it under there and then forget that you ever had what's her name? With the with the leg thing. Oh She was very Jane Fonda probably it was like a big spring You would like squeeze your legs together or something and I was supposed to like fix your life I guess I don't know The other one was flow B that came to mind. That was the It was like a haircut thing that attached to your vacuum So you'd like cut your hair with it and it would like it suck the hair suck his scalp off that was another one and then the last one that that flooded to me was Miss Cleo was on one of these infomercial things forever and she was a psychic and She was a pay-per-minute psychic which sounds highly illegal But okay and she would always say like call me now and she had like she had this I'll pop to put a YouTube video and like you Can't reproduce it. But once you hear it, you just know like oh, that's that's miss Cleo But it was this it was one of those ones where they would do the whole spiel and then there would be like the fine print That you couldn't read on a CRT TV that was you know that big back in the day But you knew that there was a lot of like we're not responsible for any of the crap that you're about to waste your money on So yeah big big infomercial Culture here in the 80s and 90s for sure I remember you mentioning the you know, call call now operators standing by the sort of person that I was I remember investing too many thinking hours as a kid into like how many operators do they have and is it like a Call center environment and they just pant like panels of banks of phones and then when they say call within the next 30 minutes I was like, how do they know when the ads been on like they just actually TV What do they have like a like a chart that says we're gonna show you at it 12 32 I always thought I used to think about this stuff constantly. I was like who's watching the clock on this 30 minutes Yeah, and then later on something it was I was much older and I was like, hang on that's probably just all bullshit There's like one guy and you just like yeah, sure It's good that you were thinking about it because they'd be adults who went. Oh my god. I've got half an hour Yeah, not to mention the ad ran every 15 minutes I Always remember these fondly as a kid because on Good Morning, Australia, which had Burt Newton Australian listeners will know I'm Newton was massive TV personality, but I don't know all the ins and outs of the politics of it But Jason we're talking about someone who was one of the kings of Australian TV for a while He kind of had his break with Graham Kennedy on his show and he was like the preceding I suppose king of television It was always known as the Australian King of television But Burt Newton had all of these kind of prime time kind of comedy Compare and hosting positions and then he was kind of relegated to channel 10 morning TV And I think he was quite shitty about it but he dressed up the whole thing kind of mocked the whole process on the show and Moira was the woman who ran all of the infomercials on that and he would always overly swanky introductions to it like and now to Moira and he just kind of gave it this whole kind of cheesy look and I Was like this is a guy who was mocking the whole format on the show that includes it So big respect to him at the time and it actually made morning TV fun Nothing like that now thinking about that the the call bank Did you all have like telethons where it was on TV and there'd be somebody like? Trying to get money for something and they'd actually have the people like with all the little phones Literally in Perth we still have that It's still an annual tradition and it raises Millions of dollars like no joke It's like the biggest fundraising thing in in the state and it raises heaps for children's medical research There's like eight people with phones like there's no way all these there are eight people are taking these calls that are presumably Telethons in my memory are always a thing on American TV or in the Simpsons mocking the fact that they happened in the United States I don't recall ever seeing one in New South Wales. I feel like that was that was a big thing here for a while Still one here in Perth. It's it's you look you'll find the link in the show notes. Seriously It raises so much money keeping the dream alive in WA. We have a telethon kids Institute here in Perth and that's no joke Listeners if you bring in the next half hour in the following number Jason, what's the number that is? 4-0 5-5 Actual And then I quickly had a thought that maybe that's not the best idea Is it should I give my cell phone number on a public podcast? Is that a good idea or a bad idea? No, that's a bad idea. Okay Yeah, then. Yeah, don't call me call Andrew. It's a plus four zero eight two nine And then some other numbers X Seven point something. Yeah - Did you all have the CD scam there in Australia where there was like the membership you would join and you'd pay Something per month and you'd get like X discs and basically everybody got screwed at the end of the day I'm gonna one way or another. Did you have that as well? I remember reading about the American scam I know we had some here, but they never seemed quite as scammy. It wasn't like a full-on club It was more like they were probably like just like legit pay for a service get a thing More fun. It was cool now and get the entire MASH DVD set, you know that kind of thing. It wasn't the Music a month club, but that's a thing. That's a thing here in the Illawarra. You can ring the local station It's like well, it's not just the station. It's called the wind network It's like a huge regional network But if you're in the local office You can get Crawford's DVDs to get your full 20 volume DVD set of the Sullivan's the Sullivan's people ring up and get it Yeah, if you practice like our wartime, Australia Ah Back when TV was good, it's it's classic, but that's not a scam That's actually like octogenarians ringing up to get their favorite series from decades ago on goodness knows how many here like if you like like What's a show like maybe like the the new Yankee workshop, which was like a woodworking show in the 80s 90s Whatever at the end of the show they'd always say like for a VHS copy of this show and instructions, please write to like whatever and then for like $30 or something. They'd send you a VHS of what you just watched and then like instructions or something It was yeah, that was like totally a thing Wow. That is cool. Brilliant. Honestly, Andrew your printer is looking pretty normal now Don't know I guess that's a that's a that's a wrap. That was great. It's a wrap on 108 0 1 0 8 insert title here extra zeros shit 3 count us down - Yeah, okay good Good 3 2 1