Mike Dell's world number 3 83 for September 21st, 2022. This podcast is meant for educational purposes, only void wear prohibited. Some assembly required batteries, not included. Items may be closer than they appear. Contents may settle during shipment use only as directed no other warranty expressed or implied do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment subject to approval.
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Call toll free before digging driver does not carry cash. Some of the trademarks mentioned in this product appear for identification purposes. Only decision of the judges is final. This supersedes all previous notices. Now back to your regularly scheduled podcast, no podcasters plants or animals were harmed in the making of this disclaimer. Well let's hope not anyway. Yeah. I've been using that to disclaimer for a long time. Uh, I forget how long ago I recorded that.
I think I wanna say probably 10 years ago. maybe not quite that long ago, but it was a while that was on my old MXL Mike down in the old studio in the basement back before I knew what I was doing. But it turned out. All right. Anyway, this is Mike, and, uh, welcome to Mike Dell's world 3 83. If you're keeping track and it's been about a month, actually exactly a month since I put out an episode, I. I do mean to, uh, do this a little more often, but man times are times are busy. Let's see.
Since the last time we talked, I've been to Dallas or, well, I don't remember now. I've been doing some traveling anyway. I've been to, uh, Columbus in Dallas. I think. Let's see. When was the company meeting? Eh, it's been a while. Oh, I guess the company meeting was before the last episode. Uh, where was it? No, it wasn't. Yes, it was okay. All right. I'm I'm screwed up. So yeah, I was at Columbus before the last episode, and then I went to Dallas right after the episode.
And that was a fun trip sort of, of course, Dallas was getting torrential rains during the, my flight. So I didn't make it there on the day I was supposed to, I ended up getting stuck in Chicago, which wasn't too bad. Cuz the airport Sheridan, it was the same hotel chain that I was scheduled to be in, in Dallas. So I just traded one night in Dallas for the night in Chicago and flew out the next morning and all was well. So it wasn't bad. And I got my fix of, uh, Chicago hot dogs.
So that was okay. Uh, Uber eats is a, is a wonderful thing. Uh, when you don't have wheels and don't feel like paying to ride somewhere to eat. So, uh, I just had, 'em deliver me a couple of hot dogs in a six pack and I was styling. I. That trip from up here down to Chicago was unique. I think, or least unique to me. I flew down on a little tiny airline called Cape air and. It reminded me.
I flew from Manistee, Michigan, which was a Tinky little airport and it reminded me very much of the old NBC show wings. And when I mentioned that to somebody, in fact, I mentioned it to the pilot on the way home, since I was sitting a foot and a half from him, uh, I said, uh, this reminds me of that old TV show wings.
And he says, well, you know, uh, We do, uh, service that island, whatever it was, I think, well, I don't remember what island it was, but Massachusetts there anyway, they said, well, we service that island and that TV show was based on Cape air, so ironic, but it was kind of cool. Got to fly down on. I don't know some Italian airplane, uh, ISER that had like eight, nine seats, something like that, a little twin, uh, piston engine airplane.
And on the way back, I flew back in a Cessna 4 0 4. I never even knew what those were. Just a Cessna twin twin. And. I sat literally right behind the co-pilot seat, which was empty. It was just one pilot and, uh, got to chit chat with a pilot, uh, and all that good stuff. And he even joked with me. He says, well, maybe I'll give you the landing in Manistee . But anyway, that was on eventful. And then I flew, you know, to Dallas and back on American airlines. Uh, Yeah, whatever. They're okay.
And had a good time in Dallas had a little controversy. I'm not sure you probably heard about it, but you might have, uh, with Ben Shapiro showing up at the conference and, uh, some people freaked out, uh, Because, uh, they didn't like Ben Shapiro. Uh, I won't go into much more than that, other than it was a definite shit show.
And as far as the publicity for podcast movement was, but I think they've, you know, they've apologized and, uh, I do believe daily wire, which is Ben's, uh, network has, uh, Accepted that apology or at least, uh, I think so. So we'll see. And maybe they learned a little lesson who knows, yield, saying, go woke, go broke. I think that might apply. Hopefully not, you know, I like, I like podcast movement and I'm friends with the owners of it and it wasn't the owners of podcast movement that.
Put out the apology for Ben showing up. And then it was the owners of podcast movement that put out the apology to Ben for freaking out on him. But, uh, like I said, if you wanna know more about that, uh, check out, uh, the daily wire, uh, It's one of their backstage, not this last one, but the one before. So check out the recording of backstage at did daily wire. And, uh, they can go into that whole thing right at the beginning. And it was, uh, really quite.
Uh, shocking was the word that I, that we used while we were at the show. It kinda sucked the energy out of the, the one day there. But, uh, it recovered, but, uh, yeah, stuff happens. People all have opinions and, uh, you know, half of 'em are wrong. what half I'll let you decide. But anyway, so yeah, I've been busy with, with travel and work stuff. And, uh, we've been putting out a lot of stuff at blueberry. That's new.
If you've been to Mike Dell's world lately, actually this episode, hopefully I'm trying out a new thing called script to, uh, edit and transcribe my show. So if it all works as planned, you're gonna see a CC button on the player at, at blueberry and you can, uh, hit play and then hit that CC button and it'll show the transcript and it'll highlight. As I'm talking everything I'm saying, so kind of like closed captioning.
Well, it is closed captioning and we're the, uh, first audio company that's done that. So, uh, it's unique. I, I, I'm trying to get out of the habit of saying things like very unique or, you know, cause there is no variable of unique, unique is unique. So not that, uh, I speak perfect English all the time. But I try. Let's see, what else has been going on having a little bit of vehicle drama? Uh, no, not anything huge.
Believe me, but it's, uh, worked out a little bit strangely this week, uh, because I have to travel down to grand Haven for a funeral. A friend of mine's mother passed away last week and the funeral is tomorrow on Thursday. So this is Wednesday. Evening, my wife's already down there, uh, helping plan the, the party and Memorial and all that stuff.
So she's down there probably cooking, I'm guessing, but my pickup truck, uh, you know, the typical Northern Michigan vehicle, that's a little bit of rust, but that's just the way they are when they get older. This one's not that old, so 2013, but. I mean close to 10 years old, I guess. So, depending on when it was built, I'd already be 10, 10 years old. I didn't look at the manufactured date, but anyway, uh, what happens with these, these things is, uh, snow ice, salt and crap.
Get packed all over underside over all over the underside of the car and or truck in this case. And. The. What is it fuel pump? Uh, it has a, a steel plate that locks into the plastic gas tank and then all the lines and electrical stuff and the fuel pump all go through that hole with that plate on the top. And what's happened with my truck is that plate has rusted out to the point where now it's leaking and it's leak. Enough that, uh, I have to get it fixed.
And so can't drive the truck and he couldn't get me into the shop until Monday. So I still got over the weekend and I've gotta travel down to grand Haven as I mentioned. And so I borrowed my folks convertible. They have a convertible Volkswagen beetle and. I drive it home. And you know, my wife dropped me off out there and I drove it home. And as I was, uh, driving at home, it was, you know, spit in sputter once in a while. I was like, I didn't think much of it.
It didn't get driven a lot this, this year. So, you know, who knows might just need to get the cobwebs worked out of it. So I didn't think much of it. And then, uh, on Tuesday I did that on Monday on Tuesday. I, uh, went up to the store and, you know, pick up some groceries and stuff in the beetle. And I put the top down figuring why not? It's a nice day. So I put the top down, I go go to the store. I come back from the store and I park it and I haul the groceries in.
And then I thought, oh, I'd better put the top back up, cuz. You know, we got acorns falling out of the trees and stuff, and I went the car full of acorns. So I go out there and I start, try to start the car cuz you, you know, I like to run the, the, uh, roof when it's running so that it doesn't run the battery out, but I tried to start it and the operative word there. Try it didn't work. So I fiddle farted around with it.
I plugged in my scan tool and, and it gave a code for speed sensor, no signal. And some other thing it had to do with the catalytic converter, which you, those are normal, cuz that thing had its lights on any or the check engine light. Anyway, cuz you know, it's an old car and. That's just happens. So anyway, I clear the codes. I try to start it again. Won't start, won't start. Won't start. Won't start. All right. So I call my dad and say, Hey, uh, Beatles's not starting.
And here's what I found and told him the code and all that stuff. And. He says, well, thing ran perfectly last time, you know, whatever. He typical dad response and they happened to be over at Costco. It's about a mile away. So they come over, mom, dad, and he tried it and looked at it and, oh, well, so he called the, uh, tow truck and had it towed to the shop that he goes to. And in the meantime, Carless because my wife had already left for grand Haven.
And at this moment we don't have our a third car. I had to, I had to trash my old van. I went to the junkyard. I drove it there, but it wasn't, uh, it, it had needed some stuff that, uh, I just didn't wanna spend the money on. And then it was, it was a rust bucket. So time to get rid of it. And we hadn't got around to replacing our. Spare car. It's always like to have a spare cuz you know, I, I drive older cars and I do, I do that because I don't want huge car payments.
And part of owning older cars is to have at least a spare available because you know, once in a while, one of 'em is gonna break and it's a lot cheaper than car payments to fix cars. Most of the time. So here I am carless, no big deal. And, uh, I didn't have to go anywhere until, uh, Later today. And my mom and sister were going downstate. So my sister drops her car off let's, you know, for me to, to, uh, use and that's all fine and dandy.
So, uh, tomorrow I'll drive my sister's car down to grand Haven for the funeral. And that'll be that. And I, and a and another, uh, related note. Uh, my sister's son, my nephew, Zach, uh, picked up a winner beater, cuz he he's got a oh one of those, an older Lexus hot rod car. I don't know, LS. 300 or ES 300, whatever, the, the hot rod, one with the six cylinder and the manual transmission. And he didn't want to drive it in the winter cuz it's in pretty good shape.
And so he bought a, a winter beater, oh 99 Corolla manual transmission. It, uh, needs a little bit needs, some struts and door handles and you know, typical. Corolla things, but it was in decent shape. And then my uncle passed away a couple weeks ago and my. Called Zach and asked if he wanted, uh, his old car it's so rather nice Chrysler 300 So he, he jumped at that and got it for a cheap price and it's a nice car and he got a hell of a deal. So now he is, got this Corolla that he doesn't need.
And you know, he's a mechanic at the Toyota dealer, so he's, he was gonna fix it up, sell it well, I found out about that. I went and checked it out and, uh, I agreed to buy it from him, but I still gotta wait till he gets the struts and the door handles and whatever else he wanted to do to it. He bought all the parts. He just has to get time to do it. So in the next couple weeks, I will have my spare car. And as a bonus, I'll have one with a manul transmission.
Which I will enjoy thoroughly, cuz I haven't really driven many manuals lately. Uh, of course I drove Zach's Lexus home, uh, when we went to pick it up or part of the way anyway. And uh, so I got to drive that, that was that's the only time I've driven a stick shift in quite some time. I think the time before that I got to drove a drive, a focus. St. I think it was down at the Ford test track.
Um, when I was, uh, writing for geek news central, I got a, got to go on a junk at, for Ford down at the test track. And that was a lot of fun. Got to drive just about everything Ford made at the time. I wanna say that was 2015 maybe or 2014, something like that. But it was fun. We got to drive a whole bunch of cars and even they even had some Nissans and Toyotas and stuff for, uh, what they call comparative drives around the track.
And, and, uh, they set up an auto cross track and an offroad track for the truck. So got to drive a Raptor on the offroad track. And yeah, it was just, it was a lot of fun. Uh, but, uh, the only stick shift that I'd driven down there. Uh, that focus SST or RT or RS or whatever the fancy one, the fancy focus was. And, uh, so hadn't really driven a lot of stick shift lately when I was a kid, it's all we had. That's all anybody had that I knew for the most part.
I mean, my uncle had an old van that had, uh, uh, automatic transmission, but I didn't know very many people that had automatics and this was in the early eighties. And. So it was just, you know, pretty much everything was a stick shift, unless it was, you know, some, you know, full size truck or some beast of a car. But for the most part, everything I drove, I mean, I learned on a 64 Volkswagen beetle, which was old at the time, come on, 20 something years old.
And then, uh, my first vehicle was a Chevy pickup that had a six cylinder and no power. Anything. I mean, no power steering, no power brakes, no air conditioning, no power windows, no cruise control am radio. Uh, you know, it was a truck and had a three speed column shift, uh, manual transmission. And, you know, so I, you know, up until I think the first automatic that I owned.
That's when I lived out in Idaho, I bought a cut list, uh, for my then wife, my first wife, and every once in a while, I would drive that. And then later on, we had a Camaro that had a automatic, but everything else I had was stick until I think until I got the Imperial. Yeah, that, uh, that big old 1970 Imperial I had as a toy car, of course, that was, uh, automatic, but I also had a manual Corolla and a, uh, and a Mazda pickup that was manual at the time.
Uh, So, uh, you know, then, you know, the next vehicle after the Mazda was a Ford truck, it was just automatic. And, you know, we've had all automatic since then. So it'll be interesting to have a somewhat daily driver stick shift. I have to get used to that again, but it'll be fun even though it's a Corolla. I mean, they're kind of the most vanilla boring cars on the planet. Stick shift. It's a little bit better and things in pretty decent shape.
It's a little rusty, but you know, what do you expect for 23 year old car in Northern Michigan, but they're solidly built and the, you know, the chassis is good and the, the most of the body panels are good too. It's just a little bit around the edges. It's got some rust on it, but it's not nearly as rusty as that old van was. And interior's nice that needs a door panel on one side and all the door handles interior and exterior. That's a typical Toyota problem.
My Camry that I had had that same problem, the exterior door handle, uh, broke. And the way I fix is I took a peach piece of, uh, strapping and that wide cloth. Strapping and made a loop and screwed it into the mechanism on the outside. So I had just had a, a loop and I just grabbed that loop and , she'd write open right up, no problem. And then come to find out, uh, that's what Porsche does on the Boxter. At least they did back.
And then, you know, when they first came out, the interior door handle is just a loop of cloth. So , it's kind of funny. I put Porsche door handles on the, uh, Camry, but. Anyway, I'm getting far afield on vehicular pursuits. Still plan on doing the, the auto. History podcast, but being as busy as I've been, uh, haven't had a chance to launch it. I've got a couple of good interviews in the can and got a couple more scheduled. So, uh, we'll get that going.
Uh, definitely wanna do that and, and explore some automotive history. I think maybe the Corolla would be a good one cuz they've been around a long time. I think since 1970. I wanna say in the us, I don't know, overseas might be more, but, uh, they're by far the best selling car in the world now, uh, overall they've made, I wanna say over 30 million of them with a Corolla named plate. So , it's pretty impressive. When the Volkswagen, I think, got to 20 million.
Or something like, or 15 million, 20 million, something like that. And the Ford model T made it to 15 million. So, uh, yeah, we'll see, uh, how much longer they keep making the Corollas. So of course they're nothing like they used to be too many whiz bang stuff. That's another reason I like buying older cars is not as much computer controlled crap. That 2013, Chevy's got an off. I mean, I like the truck don't get me wrong, but, uh, I could do without a lot of the computery stuff.
Although I do love my sister's car. Hers is a Toyota newer one, uh, RAV4, which is a little less SUV, but it has radar cruise. Oh man. Do I love that? I wish I could add that to a car, you know? After market, but I don't think that's possible, but the radar cruise is awesome. You set the cruise and you just, uh, follow along and you just keep up with traffic. It's, it's pretty slick. I rented a, a Ford one time to go down to Columbus that had that, and it also had the lane keeping and all that.
So basically you didn't have to do anything, uh, to keep it in the. And even if you, if you, uh, just hit the turn signal, you know, to change lanes, just tap it. And it would blink three times. And then if it was clear, it would, it would merge left, pass, whatever slow vehicle was in front of you, you hit the turn signal, it would merge right on its own. And, uh, I drove all away from grayling, Michigan to, uh, the state line or, well, exit five down south of grand or south of, uh, Ann Arbor.
Without touching the gas or the throttle on that car. Uh, cuz they just stayed on the freeway and it slowed down, even went into a traffic jam and the car comes to a complete stop. And then when the car in front of you takes off, it takes off again and it's uh, really quite something. So that is one fancy whizbang thing I wish I could get, but I'm not paying $50,000 for a new vehicle. Just not gonna happen unless say hit the lottery.
There's just no way in hell I'll ever have a $50,000 new vehicle. You know, I'll wait till the, some of the newness wears off and buy one later. . That's usually the better way to go. Cuz again, maintenance and repairs on vehicles. Most of the time are cheaper than car payments. Now, you know, if I blow an engine on a car that I've got paid off and it's not worth putting an engine in, I just junk it and get another one. It may not be the best way to do it, but it's the way I do it. Let's see.
Yeah. Other than that, uh, it's been a pretty nice summer. Uh, getting a lot of stuff done around the house here. Uh, you know, mainly just sort of spring cleaning things that got the fence up in the backyard. Uh, So that now I have a little privacy again, uh, since they built those houses behind us. And so I put up a six foot privacy fence and that keeps the dogs from barking at the neighbors back there and all that. So that's a good thing.
And again, I have some privacy in the backyard, so when I don't feel like going all the way into the house, well, I can just use a tree next to my office here. But, and I'm not gonna get into the politicy stuff. There is just a lot of that going on. I don't, I don't know. It's, uh, I, I think we're living in clown world, you know, watching some of the headlines and I still don't watch the news on TV except for every once in a while. I'll turn on the local news.
If I know something's going on, but for the most part, I get my news from a couple of. Daily podcasts and, uh, and you know, some online sources and, you know, if anything big happens, I hear about it, but, uh, I'm not going to look for it. And I don't wanna sit through all the drug ads and all that stuff. Uh, it's just a waste of time and actually, you know, find, I have a lot more time. I'm not watching a lot of traditional TV anyway, especially not the news. But anyway.
All right, well, I'm gonna just call this a quickie update and. Let you guys get on with the next podcast, but I do, uh, want you to go check out Mike, check out Mike Dell's world.com on this episode and, uh, check out that closed captioning thing. Uh, let's see if it works on this episode. But it should be the latest episode if you're listening to this, uh, anytime in September or October, although I hope to have another episode before then. Come on.
I got some, I got some things, uh, to talk about. So anyway, we'll catch you next time. And again, check out Mike dell.com for any updates I might have that don't include a podcast episode. It's me later.