Drones To The Rescue

of the Olympics. Didn't think I was gonna watch it, Tom, But listen, this is a draft of sports just because I'm not the biggest baseball fan, so it's actually been entertaining. Peacock. If you subscribe to Peacock, part of the Infinity and Comcast family, they've actually been chilling it. They've got dozens of channels. I've been watching the Gold Zone, which is

pretty fun. Gotta big a big shout out. Congrats to the USA women's gymnastics team, Simone Biles, Katie Leddeccy, two names that we love, but we ain't gonna be hearing for another four years, if not ever. In the regular Olympic rotation, you got the rugby team, volleyball teams doing well. Snoop Dogg man who has won the Olympics so far, I mean just the overall went Snoop Dogg. He's pretty strong,

he's been he's been having a lot of fun. So if you've been watching, if you want to share your thoughts, if you're just bored, if if you're happy the freaking sun is out, even though it's nasty hot, Why don't you share your love with me? Why don't you share what's up? Seven one three two one two five nine five oh twenty three years been doing this yere on the radio, KPRC nine fifty. That number, believe it or not, has not changed. Believe it or not, that piece of

technology has never changed. We still actually do have phone calls. Some of the things that's changed. Is we now had email? I don't think when I started two plus decades ago. Yeah, I guess I did have email, but no, we didn't use it too much. People snail mail things. Snail mail is still around the price of a snail mail forever. Stamp went up about two weeks ago. I told you what is like seventy eight cents, But the seven digits have not changed. Seven one three, two one two five

nine five. Oh Callum Reid, were you born twenty three? Three years ago I started this show. He's answering the phone, he's pushing the buttons. We love to hear from you. Do have some interesting fun takes for you, not all technology. We've got this start of Houston Restaurant Weeks for the next month. Some of your favorite restaurants I believe four hundred plus have set some prefix a set the word prefix a prefix menus where you can go try them. We're gonna have a lit chat later. This is it

this our next hour. We'll do it this hour with Katie Stone. Katie is the executive director of Houston Restaurant Weeks, who took over for her her late mother. A good friend of mine, cleverly Stone. She'll talk about some of the reasons why she continued it and what are some of the restaurants that are out there. They got some new ones and some of your faves, and it's also really to help the restaurant industry. August is August is never the greatest month, and he is never the greatest month.

He's never the greatest month in Houston. Restaurants they probably, you know, have a little slow down. It's hot, people are out of town, they're prepping for back to school. But it is a little way to get back into restaurants. So we will yap about that. Product reviews, I'm gonna have some chats with a kind of a tied end to a back to school. Been playing with a new laptop that I got about about what is about two weeks ago and from a company called ass as Us.

I could not be more really more impressed with the list laptop. It's really nice, light, it is thinning is back to school. I'm gonna have a conversation with someone on the design team who came up with that. And also a SEUs has come up with the latest version of a handheld gaming system. So for for all you people and it's not just for kids anymore. It's for parents.

It's for all you gamers out there. It's an interesting hand held video gaming system, a big upgrade from the one they released about a year a year and a half ago. I will talk to one of the people who had a lot to do with designing it and actually came up with the name the rog the Republic of Gamers, the ally X. We have got that, and you know what we're gonna talk about. This is probably one of the two biggest topics in the past month

since Hurricane Barrel came barreling through. We're gonna talk about roofs. We're gonna talk about roofing, but we're also going to talk about the technology now that companies are using to check to see if there was damage to your roof. Companies now they may not need to excuse me a while the whip out this long ladder to get on your roof, which obviously can be a safety hazard. They are using drones drone technology to flying drones right above your roof and really zoom in and get close for

an initial inspection. We'll talk to a company to see how they have used it. Alex changed their business model, and so yeah, there's a little spin with technology, and also I need to prep a little bit more on it. The second hottest topic this month has been generators. You got a new generator? What's the weight for a generator? What branded generator? I need to do a little bit

more studying. This coming Tuesday, I will make one of my regular appearances on Great Day use to Channel eleven CBS, and I am specifically gonna talk about generators because there are a number of different types of generators. If I say the word generator, you may think of these whole home generators. These are the relatively expensive ones that you need to call companies from Kohler to Generat to what have you, and they've got to come out install it outside.

It's about the size of a small air conditioning unit, and they put a little cement pad out there for it to sit on, and then they've got to have a natural gas line, and then you gotta have an annual upkeep plan and everything. I mean as generator one and those automatically kick in when your power goes off. But there's also generators that go inside your home. They do not use any form of liquid gas or propane or natural gas. Obviously you don't want that inside your home.

They're relative, they're certainly less expensive than those and they can run a number of different things. They could run your refrigerator or some fans, a lot of things. And so I do have some show and tell for next Tuesday's Great Day Houston. But tell me, tell me what your favorite brand is. Did it work for you? Did

it fail for you? Anecdotally I heard some stories of people with generators that were supposed to automatically flip on our everything in their home, air conditioning, lights, washer dryer, but it didn't work. Maybe you forgot to oil it, or you know, check your natural gas line or have it service to a regular basis. There have been some some scary stories out there, and if you're going to spend that much money and that much time investing in researching,

you really would hope it works. I really do it. By the way, if you do have a generator and it does work and power goes off in my house, please send me your email your address, because Big Daddy Garfa definitely needs some Maraic edition. Listen, we got that and a number of fun different stories. I will answer your back to school questions if you've got a high schooler, if you've got a college student going back to school in the next month or so, you need to figure

out a laptop. You need to want to know should I get a new phone? What else do does he or she need? I probably can help you answer that. You know the phone number. You can go to all of these socials, high tech texts and h I T H T I C A T E C H TV X A N tell the High Tech Taxi Show, Michael Golfa, We're going to be right back. I hope everybody is doing well. Are you Are you at the pool? I'll tell you what you know. I started off the summer in the sun in the pool, kicking ten. Actually hopped

out to southern California, visited my son. Man. I was coming back looking man it would movies stop?

long it's gonna stay out. But if you're listening here on the first Saturday of August twenty twenty four, I hope you'll hope you're listening via your little EarPods, your ear pods or whatever brand you're using some waterproof flotation to MP three's and I hope you're having a coldie while you're listening to the high tech text and it is Michael Garfield got some phone numbers, fun stuff for

you here. Later this hour, we're gonna actually next second, I think we're going to talk about a new laptop, a little back to school laptop. I mean, I'm really

having fun with this laptop. It's thin, it's light, and I will be talking to the designer and the engineer from the company who did that, and then we'll talk a little Houston restaurant weeks so you may be laying by your pool getting tanned to get out putt stuff to go out to h to summit tell a restaurant you've never been to with a prefixed menu that some of the money goes to the Houston Food Bank, which is nice. That's what Houston Euston Restaurant we says. Hey,

I'll tell you what I had. I had this guy, I made it. Not I wanted to talk about this, not a conversation with the buddy of mine about cell phones, because I have cell phones all the time, and I didn't give it well. I mean, I tried not to carry more than one because you know, they they can weigh you down, and you know they look weird in your pockets or something. But I didn't given time. I probably got eight or nine cell phones right now I'm

testing that are new. Some of them are lit up with the with the SIM card that have self service. Some of them I have to flip the SIM card here and there. But but I think he was asking me about what type of cells? Who was my cell phone provider? Because he's sick and tired of paying all this money for him and his kids and his three or four lines or something like this, and we had to I got into discussion, a discussion about alternatives than the big three Verizon, AT and T and T Mobile.

There are many other cell phone providers and they are smaller. I mean if you look at them, you know, logistically in terms of the number of subscribers. But they are called it's it's it's an acronym. Follow me here. This is an interesting discussion. I hope you're going to enjoy it. But it's called m v N oh. It stands for Mobile virtual network operator, and what it means is it's a company that doesn't own a mobile spectrum license, but it sells mobile services under its brand name using the

network of an actual license mobile operator. For example, under Verizon, where Verizon has spent billions of dollars on its infrastructure for setting up turs you know, they're engineers their network and what have you. And Verizon sells its own service. I mean many of you probably have Verizon cell phone service and you probably pay through it, and they have

a billion different plans and whatever. But Verizon also sells or sub licenses some of its capaccity on its network to other smaller companies that you may have heard of, one of which is called Total Wireless used to be called Total by Verizon, smaller company. But what you get is a heck of a smaller bill. They don't cost you the same thing as the futtal service at and T does it, T Mobile does it. There are brand names out there, from Boost Mobile to Cricket to Expinity Mobile,

and it goes on and on. There are probably three hundred four hundred is my guess, different MVNO's Mobile virtual network operators there and let me help you out without naming brands. I've used an MVNO as my main cell phone provider for years, my middle side, actually all three of my sons. May I just know my meddal soner who lives here in Houston, he uses an mv O NBNA. Why why pay one hundred and fifty two hundred whatever?

It is? Bucks a line where sometimes you could pay as little as twenty thirty dollars for almost unlimited data. Do your research, people, do your research, and so it's it's funny. I mentioned Total Wireless because I'm driving down Westheimer the other day outside the Belway and I see a Total Wireless store and I researched. I walked in. I was just seeing what was going on. I'm looking at prices and stuff, and I just could not have

been a nicer staff. And they sell phones, they sell cell phones, but you can also BYOD you can bring your own device. You don't need to change your cell phone. So let's just say your contract is up, but you want a new cell service plan, so you bring your phone in. You check if your phone is compatible to a specific carrier. The reason why a lot of phones are still locked they're locked under the initial network carrier.

So if you bought a phone and it was subsidized because Verizon gave you a good deal, it may be locked to the Verizon network. But wait a minute, the MVNOs they will actually use Verizon. Most often you're able to put a SIM or use an e SIM in there too, such as the case with Total Total Wireless. So I was looking at some of the plant. I grant that brochure, whereas this brochure here is a brochure, and there are several different plans here. What is it?

They got a price plan here that have a base five it's five g starts at forty bucks a month, and it's unlimited data. And think about that. And when I people ask me, Michael, well, cut, what plan should I get? Well, you have to you have to ask yourself and maybe look at you. There's a setting you can look in your phone. You can see how much data you've used this month, last month, and you can go back, or you can actually log onto your account too. How much data do you use on a given month?

If you use under five gigs of data, which means you're not talking or you're tech you know you're not doing too much. You can get some really really inexpensive ones if you start using watching videos. Okay, yeah, now you're going to start, you know, using some data, but unlimited it's it's a good way to go. Yes, they have hot spots. They have it solved some of the plans of international talk and text. Uh there, there's here's a plan for fifty dollars that actually has ten times

faster unlimited data never slows down. Here's this I think the highest price plan. I think it's just sixty dollars a month for five G. And again I'm specifically talking about what's this aprochure Total Wireless, Total Wireless dot com. They have several stores. Specifically I went to the one one two, three zero three West Timer. It's in Shadow Briar Plaza. It's part of the Victor Group, and I am familiar with the Victor Group. Vic tra great company,

very reliable too. But they have price guarantees, they have a lot of things. And so that's what an MVY is. And that was the conversation I have. But I just I just sometimes I just go over. I talk about it once every two or three months. In vin O's it's a good time of year because it's back to school. Kids may be getting on their own cell phone plan.

Maybe you know, they could be moving going to college where their college dorm, the city they're moving to doesn't have as good as cell phone coverage as mom and dads are the ones that the kids used to at home. Check it out, go see. But also there's there's ways to actually save money and still be under self service of the plane. You know what. Also, I'm playing with two they also I was total wireless, and they have

wireless internet routers right now. And I can complain in bitch as much as I do how much I've been paying forever with Comcast fit Exfinity, which is two hundred and seventy stupid dollars a month, which yes, it does get me home internet, and it gets me my cable. But you know, people are cutting the cord and cutting the cable. Verizon itself as here in Houston, let's talk about used it. They have wireless home internet. You buy a router five G, you set it up in your home.

That's it. You can kill Comcasts, you kill anything else, nothing else you eat. At that point, You've got your internet. At that point. Now you could still use your Netflix account on your TV. Just make sure your TV is using that wireless internet account and it works throughout your home. So anyway, I've been playing with one and I got to tell you this anecdotally. I only got about a

minute before I take a commercial break. I have wireless in my house that I've used from Comcasts for years and years and years, and I thought, I'm paying extra for the super speedy download speeds. I was comparing it because I did a speed test. And if you ever want to do a speed test, go on your going your browser at home, going your browser on your phone and just type in speed test and Google and you can pops up and you can see the download speeds

at upload speeds. Obviously the fast is better. My download speed at home on my old, well, my old my Comcast Xfinity was something like fifty to seventy megabits per per per second whatever. Fifty to seventy. I thought that's pretty good. I then plug in and I started to try this total by Verizon, this five G home Internet. I am not lying. I'm putting a hand to God. One one hundred and seventy six megs per second. What it went from fifty I'm like, are you why am

I paying what I'm paying for twenty plus years? A how Long's comcast has been in used in a long time and it's all wireless, very very cool. This is what I do on the High Tech Textan show. I tell you about products and services. Take my advice. Don't take my advice by people. At least I researched some stuff for you. We could talk about this if you try these MVNO's, you've got a favorite one. Open phone lines. Have you ever tried the wireless high speed home internet

to cut the actual cable? Talk to me seven one three two one two five nine five Oh. Michael Garfield KPRC nine fifty Am. Part of iHeartRadio. Been doing it for two decades. This is the high Tech Texting Show. We're gonna be back.

speaking it back to school, it's time. Can I start talking about some back to school or even back to work items, including the all important laptops. I've been covering these things for well over twenty years. When laptops were so big, they used to be called desktops. Now laptops are so small, they're so light, they're so convenient that many many people have them, And just not long ago, I ran into a brand new one from a company that I'm familiar with, and I'm very very impressed with it.

The company is called a sus as Us. I have seen them many, many many years. They've been at CEES and other technology shows like that. I've talked about many of their products. They make phones, they make gaming units, and of course they make computers, including laptops. Got to go to New York not long ago to see some of their new products, new devices that are coming out, and one laptop that really really impressed me is their brand new zen Book sixteen I just like that name.

Just think about it, zinbook. It just sounds so nice. Everything is zen. It's the zen Book sixteen. The first thing I picked it up, I noticed the first of several crazy awesome things, one of which is the look of this thing. This is not just your typical silver or black outside design. It's something very very unique with a new word that's now in my vocabulary called sarah aluminum. We'll talk about that. It's incredibly light, it's got nice

battery power, it's got a decent price. But I want to give you more information with that, I have to go to an expert, and so it happens to be I do have an x directly with the SEUs. His name is Philip Shung. He is a product manager. He joins me now for a few minutes to talk about the zen Book sixteen. Philip, can I just give you one hundred percent credit for coming up with the zen Book? So congratulations, it's all you, Right.

was the school person. You know, there was there was there was like a professional snow order of you know how you know, you know some of your devices you know, you know can stand you know, zero degrees fahrenheit and things. It was interesting. But the one that really caught my eye was this Zen Book sixteen. And it was perfect timing for me because I'm putting together my list of the best back to school back to work items and you know, to me, it's all about form factor. I

like light things. I don't want something in my backpack that that weighs me down. I need something that's very snappy and stylish and this zen Book sixteen really checked all the boxes for me. So let's specific specifically start

with this. You kind of designed this version of the zen Book from the ground up, and as they said, starting from the outside, it looks the physical look of this thing is different because you've you're going to be creating something something as a design and it's called Serah luminum And I pronounced that correctly.

light emitting diet OL. It is something different than generally a lot of laptops don't use why the choice with old and you describe how brilliant this display.

it hurts ace. Who's lumina o lead display that puts you know, the ASUS stamp of guarantee of quality when we say lumina old lead. You can have this amazing experience. It has you know, five hundred nit peak brightness as a sixteen x ten aspect ratio. The screen of body ratio is over ninety percent. And what makes OLED so amazing is that color brightness. It's unparalleled. Once you've seen OLED, you're like, how the colors pop out to you, How black is so much more dynamic compared to all the

other colors. And also there's some other additional effects that you may not be aware of, right o, let emits so much less harmful blue light on the eyes. Right, especially this effectually younger children right now, you know, kids younger and younger, they have actual technology, access to laptops. You know, it's like they're stirring at a screen from a super young age, and OLED displays it made less

blue light. It's less harmful on the eyes. And the one last thing that talking about like less harmful, you know, like light and so on and so forth. I don't know about you. Sometimes when I'm on my computer it's late at night, I got the lights off, okay, and you know, like the older laptops when you you know, when the lights are off, the screen is very dimly lit. Don't have that problem with old when it turned on. It's nice and bright even when the lights are off.

So again, the amazing display all around.

colors to me, I like it. The first time I remember seeing high FTV versus going you know, with the four y three screen, it's like whoa, I mean, yeah,

that was life changing. We're used to seeing bright screens, but I don't think we're used to seeing now screens this bright, this vivid on desktops or even laptops, and so you know this, I don't know if your company, you know, sees is this way, but this do you see it as a game changer or all your computers or at least that some in this class are going to be like this.

pretty much all of our premium level of devices. So all sem books you're gonna have O LED displays. Anything that's you know, like no design for that premium sleek tist for the professional grade, it's going to come with all AT displays because that's how much we believe in this technology.

of like keeping on a desk. I think it just gives you a better ability to actually, you know, touch a lot of these cases, and the touch pad itself it's larger, so it's going to give you a lot more room to actually be more portable and using anywhere.

you know, interface with how do you use device. I knew one wants to type on a laptop and then ten minutes later been like, man, my wrisk feels a little bit funky, right, so we want to make sure that again, whether it comes to ACUS laptops, you know, zem books and all you know, you have this great typeing experience, so you don't feel tired. Your arms are nice and your hands are nice rested touchpads. Amazing absolutely like and.

Instead of going snap Dragon hith the chip, you go AMD Rising specifically, I think it's the AI nine h X three seventy chip or something like that, a MD Rising still very very nice chip. Why that versus a snap Dragon.

That is because the latest and greatest am D CPU is really pushing the boundaries when it comes to like AI computing power, right, It's like, not all CPUs are you know, built the same on inside in terms of how much computing power they have for AI processes. When it comes to the current you know and latest and greatest am D CPU, it is far and away the best one out there right now, and that's why we are basically putting it in the book.

in forty nine minutes. So if you're on the go, you see to plug it in, you know, dance back, dance outside, dance right back in, and boom, this thing's ready to rock and roll again.

a sixteen inch. But now we go to the cost. This is about one thousand dollars less than what those mac books. I mean, you really priced this thing according.

the right device for you at the right price. It's the right mixed between costs and productivity and also that amazing premium delivery.

posts for you and all sorts of things. But of course, obviously even after it does all that thing, make sure you give it that that nice unique human touch at the end to make sure it is definitely unique to you and you can put your own stand of you know, like, hey, this is me on it.

three pounds. That's that's really really light point four to three inches, very super thin. And I think you designed this a great You've talked about a price sixteen ninety nine or so, and I know if you go to the website as US A SEUs you have it. You got a great story, backstory. I know you all over the world certainly, I know, as I've learned in South America, you guys are huge, but you continue to put out some great stuff. Any final words on the this is in book sixteen that I've missed.

We've been doing this for twenty three years, and I do appreciate everybody tuning in, not just over the year interrestrially, but also by downloading that app, the iHeartRadio app. You know, as for as long as I've been doing this show, there's also been something that has been going on. Actually I'm the longer that I've been doing this here in Houston, and it happens to coincide with this hot, disgusting, nasty month of August. But there's always a bright side. Well

there's two bright things that are happening. Football season is not far away, and it is the start of the annual Houston Restaurant Weeks. Always a fun time for me, just because it's an opportunity for me. Do you get to go out and try some of them, some new restaurants I've never been to, some of my favorites with that with a really interesting neat you know, fixed price. But at the end of the day, a money raise

goes to a really good cause. For so many years, a dear friend of mine, Clever Stone, she founded the organization. She came on my radio show simonthaneously why she was on her radio show on another station and we would talk about it. But the point is to promote it and let everybody out there know what's going on. Uh. The organization now is in just as good as hands with Cleverly's daughter Katie, Katie Stone, and this is a very busy month for her, but she is so sweet.

She has taken a few minutes to hop on to talk about it. To join me, Katie joins me, and Katie, I'll start with this, How excited are you the greatest month of the year.

The diners win because they're getting a great deal, they're getting a chance to try multiple dishes for one prefix cost. And then the food bank obviously makes out because they get their biggest check of the year. And so it's really just an incredible way to support the community in multiple ways and have fun while doing.

then lunch and brunch are optional. And the really great thing is is that that the fixed costs, so twenty five dollars over your two or three course brunch or lunch, and then there's two dinner price points. There's a thirty nine dinner price point, which is three or four courses, and then there's also a fifty five dollars price point, which again is three or four courses. Now they're corresponding donations, Michael, that are built in to each one of the price points,

so diners are never solicited for the donations. The restaurants make the donations totally depending on the number of HRW meals that they sell, and it turns out to be a happy number at the end of the month.

Those restaurants that participate in Houston Restaurant Weeks actually supports their respective food banks because you know, the Houston Food Bank is actually the largest in the country, it's the largest in the world. And because they're so big, they can support other smaller food banks in the area, just like Montgomery County and Galveston County, and so the restaurants in those respective counties they're helping their local food banks

as well. And so it's just a really nice way for restaurants to not only connect with new diners and introducing folks all around to their types of cuisine because you know, we got a lot of different types of cuisine here in Texas, Michael. You know, we make them up every day. But it's just a really great way for them to be able to give back. You know, these restaurant tours and these chefs, they're dealing with food

every single day. They're feeding people every day. But when you offer them the ability to feed people who really really need it. It just takes on a different mission. It just takes on a different meaning. And you know, my mother was you were right there with her too, you know, for twenty years, you know, helping people to understand why this was so helpful to our community. And it's fun. You know, we may gain account at the end of the month, but we have enough time to

lose it before Thanksgiving. You know, that's my plan at least if know this, it's a great plan.

are participating. But he was very sincere and thankful of what would you your mom, what she created do for the Houston restaurant weeks because the money rais this that this that this is their biggest the biggest check that they received on an annual basis, and that's all thanks to the word that you get out the Stevens group. You know, big males like me, but that we do it because it's a good calluse it really is good.

I'll let you go on this one question. I'm not going to ask you a name all four on your plus restaurants because you could find them on the websites. But some of the ones that stick out, maybe some one or two of the newer venues that maybe people haven't tried. What what are some of the ones that that you know, you personally want to spotlight?

diners are super excited for. Blue Dorn is another very popular restaurant that's kind of helped get Houston a little bit more on the national food scene map Navy Blue again, that's another one of the same restaurant group with the Blue Dorn. Also b DN Taste in Tradition. That's another really amazing one that came on board this year. Annabelle Brasserie are the Burgh Hospitality Group. It's a new beautiful restaurant that's the one that has all the flowers on

the ceiling. And then Federal American Girl Downtown, which recently opened and we were really excited to welcome them back into the program as well. So lots of great choices. I think we added about eighty new restaurants this year and so we're very excited. A lot of the places, though, Michael are telling me that they are already getting booked.

So I would highly recommend any diner who is in if you've got your eye on a menu this year, y'all, go go ahead and make those reservations on open table dot com. You can actually make them directly from the Houston Restaurant Week's website, but definitely get in there, and if you've got to lift, go ahead and grab your spots because they are getting booked, which is a good thing because people are dining out and doing good.

and a reminder about Labor Day weekend. All the hours for the participants are on the website, but it's always a good idea just to check their Labor Day hour because sometimes they can be open for half the weekend and sometimes they're closed, and so just in case because it is the last you know, when it comes around, it'll be the last weekend and we don't want anybody to miss out on anything this year.

you have roof problems, give me about ten minutes. I'm gonna have a discussion with the roofing company who use this technology technology that's right, people to initially check out roofs to see if there are any damages. They use drunes to fly right over your roof and take a quick look at them really really close and before they get on the roof, which is I think it's a much better safety opportunity for them, and how it's changed

their company and what have you. And I know a lot of people out there have probably gotten new pieces or full roofs after hurricing, barrel king, barreling through. That's one of the things that we will be talking about. Thank you again to miss Katie Stellem. Katie is the director executive director of Houston Restaurant Weeks, which is now

officially kicked off. Four hundred restaurants are waiting for you all across the area and if you want to go dine and have some fun while also having a portion of the proceeds for some of your fixed meals go directly to the Eastern Food Bank. It's a neat opportunity. I was looking look it through like like miny to you do. You're probably sometimes play around on Houston Restaurant Weeks websites. You find some of your standby restaurants, you find some ones you haven't been to. You start making

a list. You check with your friends. Hey, guys, let's go try this out. Because it's a it's a it's a pretty good deal. It's a it's you know, obviously, it's a it's a nice it's it's nice way to get to some charity too. Uh. I usually start with

my little standbys. I'm taking a look and once again there's my guys and girls at the Capitol Groyle and I'll give you example, so they have a price fixed menu, a three course meal, three course meal, your choice of you can start with a wedge of blue cheese with smoked bacon, a field green salad or New England clam chadda, there's number one. Then you get your entree choice. You get an eight ounce filet or chicken breast or seared

citrus glaize salmon. Then you get your choice to dessert, a flowerless chocolate espresso cake or the famous Capitol grilled cheesecake. And for that I believe it's I believe it's thirty five or forty five dollars that is fixed for all three of those. And at that point, the Capitol Grill or in this case the Capitol Grill, they are the ones who make a donation to the Houston Food Bank.

You don't have to pay anything that they don't ask it to donate anything else on top of that, and then it all adds up at the end of the month and Euston Restaurant Weeks gets it did the food and gets millions and millions of dollars. So take a look at the Houston Restaurant Week's website and go eat people, and then maybe I don't know if if you need a if you need a fourth, if you need a second person. Uh, you know how you know how to

get me hit Michael Garfield at iHeartMedia dot com. Uh, I got it as I see a few open phone lines if you want to chat and have some fun seven one three two one two five nine five zero talk. I'm still playing with some some cameras. Still enjoying the Samsung Flip camera and the fold camera, the new version, the version six that I received two or three weeks ago.

I liked those. No new iPhones yet, they're not coming out un till the other two months or so, and they're not gonna have any flip or foldable phones this year, at least the rumors, though they're potentially coming in twenty twenty six. I did see something I thought was interesting that there are some police forces that are aila teat they're testing out Samsung Galaxy Z flip phones as police body cams body cams. There are about twenty five metro

police departments across five states. I don't think it's Texas yet, but I'm reading this on in Gadget and I thought it was pretty interesting, and I'm taking a look at these things there are police officers, and for police officers out there, we'd love you. We appreciate everything that you do, you put in your lives on the line, and thank you so much for everything that you continue to do.

And I know, generally it may be mandated that you have a body cam, which is a camera, small camera that they police officers they keep somewhere on their front part of their body, maybe on their vests, in the center of their shirts or something. So they're constantly filming for a number of different reasons. I legal reasons too that. But there's now there's some police departments that are testing out a Galaxy Z flip series and I'm looking at it right now, and sure enough, there is a Galaxy

Zee flip camera. It looks like it's a little modified and it's in a case and it's clipped to a police officer's vest pointing outwards. They get you know, they could do that because a flip phone, it's the form factor of a flip phone is relatively small. I mean, it's smaller than your typical six and a half inch diagonal chocolate bar sized phone. It flips in half, and so I thought that was pretty interesting. I don't know if it's going to be a full time thing, but

it's it's pretty cool. But if you think about it, Samsung in this case, they're not the only tech company that has got involved with making his products part of law enforcement. I mean, if you go back Ring, which is the smart doorbell company, which is owned by Amazon, they share at least they reversed its policies, but they used to give footage of what was on Ring cameras with police officers too. And there are law enforcement off

they're they're law enforcement agencies. They're using drones to to to to you know, sort of to do surveillance. You know, they got somebody on foot and they're chasing, you know, somebody, They're going through houses and stuff, and you know, why not throw up a drone out of a trunk and follow somebody. They use facial recognition systems, they use a lot of things. And so I think, you know, this is what we're here for. Technology. It's here to stay.

We hope it's for the best. But I like the fact that are wonderful men and women in blue who do so much. Maybe maybe technology can make their their lives and their jobs a bit easier. For lack of a better term, but also safer because it's safer for initially firefighters to send into drone to test the heat.

Or maybe there are I've seen firefighting drones that can that are so big that they can lift a fire hose up two three four five stories to throw water on it and instead of having the actual fire fighters up there doing it's it's nice stuff. I dig stories like that. Speaking of stories, I'm gonna come back and we're gonna talk to the stories about how drones can actually help roofing companies. They maybe help you determine if you need a new roof via drones. Coming up here

right on the High Tech Texans Show. Back at it, Michael Garfield. It is the long running High Tech Texan show. Open phone lines seven one three, two one two five nine five. Oh finally the sun seems out, which is good. Anybody still have any leaks in their roof? Tell you what, just a few weeks removed from Beryl and this this entire Southeast Texas, it's going crazy. I drive around. I see roofing companies, I see ladders, I see nails and

everything on the ground. So please be careful which brings me to the point that I want to talk about this. People ask me, you know, is a company reputable? And you know, when I put my name on a company, I want to make sure that I research them too. But I also want to know what's their processes. When it comes to roofing companies we've known forever. You know, you put a ladder up there, and you've got to be careful. And the roofing people who are certified and

they know exactly what they're doing. But you know, you get I live in a three story home. The hell if I'm getting on a ladder up there. I want to leave it to the professionals. But better than that, companies now they're using technology. They're using drones to fly over rus to take close up shots before they even take their roofs up there. And I want to talk about that. And with so, I want to bring in a very reputable company that's been around about ten years.

It's called Alpha Elite Roofing. I see their trucks all over the place, and they do a great job. Andrew Hernandez is the owner, he's the CEO. He's going to join me for a few minutes. The fact is that you're still alive and you haven't fallen off a roof. That's actually good news. Andrew, Yeah, that's true. Talk about the new technology that you do use, and when did you kind of change over from the I'm going to call it old school, you know, put the ladders up there, to using drones.

get close with the drone. If it's something that catches our attention and we need to get up there and assess it with our hands and actually touch it and feel it, like something like rotten decking or missing shingles, things like that, then we will put the ladder on the roof, put on our safety shoes, and get up on the roof and take a look at it for you.

But the main thing about the drones is that it saves us time, it keeps us safe, and we're able to get especially something like Beryl, you know that has a whole city wide effect. You know, on these roofs, we're able to get to clients faster.

What we do as project managers is we'll go and assess the damage and then will help assist homeowners and filing their claims with their insurance company and holding their hand and walking them step by step through that process, which could be an enduring process so they don't have to actually, you know, get on the roof a lot of the times if the damage is you know, bad enough.

do have to have a trained eye. So it's much more than that you talk about a project manager. I want to flip over to one of your project manager's. His name is Kevin Bam Bam Bainbridge. He's been in the business quite quite a while. You are can I call you drone certified and drone proficient. I actually saw you flying it around. What is the process once you get that drone off the ground, And I was standing next to you, you know, kind of watching it, and you were,

you know, doing the three sixty fly around. What is specifically things that you're looking for?

kind of out of the ordinary or bent. So we try to do a basic overview of everything and then take detailed areas and pictures of each individual area.

in twenty twenty four? Are they easy? Are they difficult? Are you finding now with Hurricane Barrel as it came through, are they receptive to actually, you know, if there are issues, are are they Are they paying up? Yes and no.

like they're using That's my honest opinion. There are a lot of great insurance companies out there that if the client does have damage, they reimburse them for it right they come out, we meet with them, we go over the damages, and then we write an estimate together getting the insurance company to pay their fair share and their portion.

The owner's responsibility is their deductible. So that's one of the things that we talked to a homeowner about before they even file an insurance claim is we look at their policy and say, hey, Michael, if you were the homeowner, you're deductibles eight thousand dollars. Are you prepared to pay

eight thousand dollars for your deductible? You're going to get X from the insurance company, but they're going to want to see that you pay your deductible and that's something that we have to prove before we recover their depreciation. So it's a whole process, but we have to have proof like bank statements and everything.

so welcome you back. Michael is the name at the long running High Tech Dexon show Midsummer, which means not a ton of stuff for going on in the tech world, but we are counting down to back to school, maybe still some travel seasons out there. So whatever you're doing, I hope you're having a good summer. And it's still my job. Somebody's got to work and actually review all these products that they keep mailing me, and so I'm

here for you. So I'm sucking it up. Two weeks ago, I was in New York and I went to a really really eye opening event for me from Asus, And you know, I talk about a sus some my often. I see them at CDs every year, and that makes them really good products. Obviously I've talked about their one of their newest laptops that just was released, the Z

Book sixteen, which is I love. It's a great back to school, back to work opportunity to But for all you gamers out there, get your ears per top and you listen, you'd be told if you're a long time listener, I've done this for two decades. I may not be the biggest gamer, but that's why I gave birth to three sons, all right, And so they're the ones who

review this stuff. But they're very familiar with the asis Is line of handheld gaming unit, and they just came out with their second version of what they call the roog ally. This is the ally X, and I just happen to have one here, and now I've got three kids fighting over which one's gonna play with it. But actually, you teach me how to use it. ROG stands a Republic of gamers, and I want to give you the

inside info. So I actually had to go to the head of content marketing for the ROG line with an Asis. His name Witson Gordon. I'm gonna spend a few minutes with him right now, he joins me. Can I just give you credit? This was your idea, You created it all. It's just it's on you, Is that right, Woodson?

the more names get taken by other people. And so you come up with this great name and then find out there was some obscure gaming handheld that was named that back in the nineties, and it's well, we can't use that now, we got to come up with something else. It gets harder and harder every year.

can't take those anywhere. And then there's the handheld device. And again I'm gonna throw out competitors, and with all due respect, I mean they're Steam Deck and there's the game Boys that we can continue to go on and now Asis for the second generation. Now now it's the ally A L L y X, And you really hit a home run. How big is the hand held gaming industry and how important is this device? Two aces?

palm of your hand with great performance. And then you can even pick up your games where you left off. So I can start playing a game on my TV back here, right, my save will synk to the cloud. I'll pick up the game right where I left off on my ALLY. When I'm playing in bed or playing it on an airplane with incredible graphics and performance stuff that I couldn't have even imagined in a handheld format

or factor just a few years ago. So this is this is a whole new breed of handhelds that we're seeing starting to pop up, and we're really happy to kind of be at. As part of the forefront of that.

Windows guy. I don't do Mac stuff like that. I'm like, oh my goodness, this is an actually, you know, real computer over here. Inherently you look at pre or other hand AELD gaming systems, they're not Windows operating systems, right, Steam Deck is not, and Nintendo just it starts up the decision to go with Windows. Where are we standing with this? What's the feedback?

for hundreds of games. The ally that you play all of those games on this system, even going back to some older Windows, retro games that you might have, or stuff like that, indie games that you download from the web, it all plays on the rog ally and that's something that a lot of other handheld devices or our game consoles can't say, which is really really.

and look at chatboards. I mean thumbs up, I mean very happy because a lot of people were playing it, are comparing it to the older version, and I think what you probably did it I want to take I guess and let you kind of extrapolate on it is you took a lot of feedback, You took a lot of research from from from the people who use the ally, going what can be improved, and just anedotally on looking at this. I think you literally doubled the battery life,

you doubled the storage type and seating. I mean, how big was the customer feedback before you before you went nuts on this one.

of feedback for us. And so, you know, after the first few months, it was kind of like, Okay, well, we can keep riding the rog Ally train for a couple of years, or we can kind of take it back to the drawing board and fine tune literally everything that the people are giving us and trying to make a better version of it. So yeah, we doubled the size of the battery without making it too much heavier. We doubled the storage, We added more rams so that

that's not a bottleneck. And performance, We improved all the ergonomics. That was, honestly kind of my favorite part was that it fits in my hand so much more comfortably than even the first model did. We made the sticks a little bit tighter and more durable, We made the buttons a little bit clickier. Everything down to the smallest details that people gave us feedback on, we went in and replaced it, made it better, and it really shows in the final product.

to take on those scenarios. And what also makes this display really special is that it has a feature called variable refresh rate, which you're seeing on a lot of new TVs and gaming monitors lately, and basically it allows the display and the graphics processor to communicate and make sure that they're in sync, which makes motion much much smoother and less kind of stuttery, which is really important on some of these handhelds because they are such a limited power envelope to work with.

squeeze in time here or there. And what we found was that it ended up being really really popular with you know, parents, you know old gamers who have been around the block a little bit longer, maybe in their thirties or forties, and they have jobs, they have kids, they have marriages, but they still want to try and squeeze in some game time. And we're finding that a lot of those people who, by the way, that's one hundred percent of me. I fit exactly into that category.

And I was like, oh, I could have told you guys this, that's why I love it so much. I can play it in bed and still pretend like I'm spending quality time with my wife, or I can play it while I'm waiting for my kids to finish up their swim lessons or soccer practice or whatever. Squeeze in a twenty minute game session. You know, it's for everyone, but we're finding that that category of people has really really latched onto it in a way that's exciting bringing them back into the gaming sphere.

and the back. It actually works. I love the sound that works well. I did mention it was Windows. Can this be used as an actual Windows computer? Sure? Yeah?

Really nice? I like that back to school. Next week or two, I'll definitely be doing some more back to the school items. I'll also talk to an Asus product manager about their new rog The Republic of Gamers al X it would be fun. I don't know. I think my kids are a little bit more excited than I am. They're gonna have to teach me how to play some of these games. But it's a handheld gaming system and reviews have been very good thanks to the folks at

Alpha Roofing Company. If you're interested in getting your roof checked the one offul They're a company that uses drums to initially fly above your own makes things pretty quick to see if there's any roof damage or win damage, hail damage, tile damage, whatever from a hurricane, barrel or whatever has happened. And if they find something, then they actually do the old fashioned old school actually get up

on the roof and they can repair it. Katie Stone with Houston Restaurant Weeks, We spoke with her and we got about what thirty more days for you to go out and dine on four hundred plus restaurants here in and around Houston to test out some of your fave meals, some new places you have have been, but also be able to eat some fixed price lunch, lunch dinners, and then some of that money that goes directly to the Houston Folk Food Bank. So that's kind of what we do,

certainly much more than technology. We do have some fun speaking of food and tech. I saw this one too. Taco Bell fans out there. I am not one of them whatsoever. I can count the number of times on one hand am I the lifetime that I've been to a Taco Bell, and I still would have fingers left over. They are apparently they're testing AI in their drive throughs, artificial intelligence and their drive throughs. And don't be wrong.

You know, I am a tech pamp, and you know I should be saying, hey, AI is the greatest thing in the world. But you know, I know there's a lot of trupidation when it does come to artificial intelligence. There's some there's bound sides to AI right now, but it's AI voice technology when you go through it drive through to help better hate your order. And I think for you people who are in your cars to maybe

bel help hear hear better. How many times have you been, I mean, over the years, it's almost a running joke. You go through these, you know, drive throughs, and there's this small speaker that's been sitting out there through the rain, the rust, the dust and hurricanes forever, and then you know, welcome order and they get it wrong. You can't hear

what's going on. Bring it on. Use AI technology to better understand me on what I'm saying, so they can actually maybe I don't even I'm not flying to take people's jobs away, but maybe they use the technology so that an actual person and they are in it will use the software and artificial intelligence to correctly say that I actually want a grilled chicken sandwich with extra pickles on it on my Chick fil at Not the Chick fil A is actually doing this yet, but I hope so.

But in this case, Taco Bell is listen. I don't care who starts the thing. Good for Taco Bell, I do not plan to try because I don't plan to go into it talking about They're actually not the only fast food chain to test having custompers talk to it AI drive through. But it will free up employees, you know, to spend more time on other tasks, hopefully booth sales.

I think McDonald's, and I'm actually quoting it this time CNN dot com McDonald's was testing this, but I think they're they're stopping it because I think some women it ordered some sweet teas and she ended up with nine Sweet Teas. There's somebody that people were shout out. Listen, sometimes this stuff works, sometimes it does it. I mean, how many listen don't tell me that somebody in Texas. Maybe it's a visitor driving through a great state and

they're going to go through a taco belt. Not everybody is going to correctly pronounce the name case Ada correctly. Yeah, I probably can figure out what they're trying to say, Howard, I'm from New York City longer and I want to Can I give me one of them? Hey, Sdilla's you know some an actual person who would take that or I actually could see them potentially actually purposefully getting that

thing wrong. So yeah, for AI when it comes to oh, helping us in that case, I thought that was interesting. I'm not going to give out the vote number anymore because we only got about three or four minutes before we get out of here. Once we are done, you could download or listen to your will on podcasts. That's one of the many, many things that helem read here. Callum, thank you so much for taking my show. Do we use AI Callum to clean up some of the things

that I never make mistakes? I've been doing this too long, my dad. But you know, with clean up and so we can make even our podcast actually sound better. I'd be reminised if I didn't actually mitch this because it's a little clemped. I got a little for clemp talk amongst yourselves earlier this week on that was Thursday was August first. August first always holds a little special special

day in my art. Forty three years ago on August first, Where were you August first, nineteen eighty one, Well, for those of you who live, love and never get out of the eighties, it was an incredibly seminal and memorable day because forty three years ago, just this past Thursday, MTV launched and I posted it on my Facebook and I talked about it and what I wanted to do, Calum and maybe you could talk to our bosses. I wanted to play like the Top eight because we have

eight breaks. Actually we have in and out from Top sixteen for the first sixteen songs ever played on MTV all last week. Can't because of licensing's agreements. We don't want to pay here at iHeart, we give you top notch content like the high tech texting show Put God Forbid. We want to pay two cents extra actually a license a song, so we weren't able to do that. I could say video killed the radios. You know what, Actually we may actually have to pay for that too, Video

killed the radio. Star The Boggles, the very first song ever played on MTV. We all know that one too. But where were you when MTV was around? And you know my kids now, who in their twenties, they don't understand. Certainly they weren't even a thought back in nineteen eighty one, but they know their dad absolutely adores, loves and still lives in the eighties. They are big fans of the eighties because every time I'm in the car with them,

and certainly growing up, that's all I listened to. It is eighties on eight and all the a lot of artwork that I personally aide in my house, and it's my eighties DVDs and my eighties cassettes, my eighties albums. But the point is, and I will give a shout out to the leader of our company here at iHeartRadio, all right. iHeartMedia was one of the early founders, the president people who actually gave birth to MTV, Bob Pittman. Bob Pittman. He is the chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia,

and back in the day, Bob Pittman ran MTV. He has been in the arena for a long time. And I'm not saying this for Bob Pittman has no freaking clue who I am. I'm getting bonuses for that, but I just think it's what comes around goes around. But as I said before, and as I talked, MTV was always much more than oh, it was just another a channel on cable. It changed August first, nineteen eighty one. It changed the music industry. It changed the way we

consumed listening to music and watching music. We never watched music per se, we watched music. It changed the fashion industry. It changed the editing industry. Videos are edited, you know, quick cuts and different angles and things changed. It changed Generation X, which I am right smack and actually I was the start of Generation X. But it changed many generations after that. So take a moment thumbs up. I want my MTV and oh how my life could have changed.

I was a finalist for an MTV DJ I was back in the day and a last letker I am got a to our radio show here on a Saturday on AM station. Life's good, my friends. I hope you're enjoying yours. Michael Gartfield does the Dame I do. Thank you for tuning in. It's called the High Tech Texting Show. Checking me out high Tech Texting dot Com. This coming Tuesday morning, specifically Great Day, Houston. I'll be talking about generators. If you need me high Tech Texting dot Com. Callum.

Thank you very much for everybody who's been a part of the show. We appreciate it. Stay warm, butts unscreen on and we'll talk to you next week because right now my show is We'll move L tax Tax