5 Vegas Cask Strength

Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking today, Nate? Well we're kind of rounding out our mini run of the 5 Vegas line. I'm not sure if they have more than the three or not. I think they do. So this one is the 5 Vegas cask strength and that's really all the wrapper says. Yeah. About it. So I only had one of these and one of the regular 5 Vegas in my humidor, but I did have or I do have at least two more of the S series or those Maduro ones.

Okay. And now upon wetting it to get it cut, I noticed that the wrapper is just a bit spicy and I don't think the other two were. So no, no, the wrapper was definitely spicy. I got a little pepper on my lip. Yep. And I can actually draw through the cap without cutting. Okay. And now, and we did have some cap issues on there, just their standard, I think, right? Yes. And no cap issues on this one. So mine's a little rolled at the end, but it's not really the cap. It's the outer leaf. Oh, okay.

Yeah. It's like, there's like a little weird spot towards the end, but this is definitely what I would call a budget cigar, you know? So all right. And I'm still out in my garage, but I'm going to remember to put my lighter in my pocket so that if I need any relights, I've got it ready to go. Hell yeah. Whew. I had a heck of a day today. Well, do tell. We have a topic. I don't know how long our topic is going to take really, but I'm going to tell you, I had a hell of a day today.

I went out to start my four-wheeler to plow and the fucking thing wouldn't start. And we just had a big snowstorm here. So I had to hand shovel earlier when the storm happened because I had two drifts that were four feet tall at the end of 12 inches of snow in my hole of everywhere, everywhere in my driveway and my yard where I plow out to get access to the tank and stuff. And so I was so mad. I was so sour. Yesterday, I did my taxes and I got back enough money to buy a new snowblower.

So I blew $2,000 today on a fucking snowblower that was on sale. That was this season. So now I got a 30 inch commercial snowblower and a four-wheeler with a plow that doesn't run right now. I'm going to have to tear it up, spring and rebuild it. Or I probably won't rebuild the motor, but I'm probably going to have to do a pretty intensive tune-up and probably rebuild the carburetor. But yeah.

And then somebody, my neighbor, saw that I was screwed and I had hand shoveled out my driveway at the end there. And he came in and plowed me a couple of big rows with his truck today. So yeah, that was pretty nice. But now I got a snowblow tomorrow, the rest of it. So now I have a walk behind it. Well, it's a $2,500 originally snowblower. That was not happy. I was mad all day. Well, now you can be happy. I guess so. Initial puffs, it's medium, not overly dark.

It's not overly dark, but it is spicy. Yeah, it is very spicy. Very spicy, actually. It's very interesting. I haven't had a medium bodied cigar this spicy since probably the nub, maybe. Oh yeah. You know, the nubs, what the heck one was that? The habano, I think, was the spicy one. Yeah, I believe so. I believe so. And it's good. Yeah, I'm digging it so far. I'm only like a quarter of an inch in. So Nate picked our topic. Yeah, it did happen.

And you know, like Mike said, there's probably not a whole lot to talk about here. But it is the Marjorie Taylor Greene, everybody's favorite. And she's calling for something called a national divorce. And she wants to split the country into red states and blue states. And she has some additional, let's say, thoughts on if you're, say, a, I don't know, blue person moving into a red state. If you're a Democrat. Yes. Putting a statute of limitations on like how many years until you can vote again.

She said five years. Five years. She suggested five years. Okay. Because I thought it was four, but five years. Okay. Yes. If you move from a blue state to a red state, you should not move for five years, is what she said. Yes. Out your values into the red states is what she that was the addition. Yes. Yes. Which I've heard that that particular refrain from people that I know, living in rural areas. And it's usually the same people that complain that all the young people move away.

Yes. And a good friend. And I looked at him. I'm like, Chris, who the fuck is going to move to this shitty little village you live in? Like the only people that are going to move here are people who were from here. Yeah. So sure, they might be more liberal than you, but they are undoubtedly originally from this town, at least one half of whoever is going to move here. Yeah. Because at that time it was right after COVID and I think 12 to this little hamlet town.

Yeah. And I'm like, who do you think those 12 families are? I guarantee you that 12 of those couples were from here originally. Yeah. So it's always interesting. But yeah, so that's pretty much all of it too, because you didn't go into any more detail, but I did. And it was just a single tweet. You had asked me if you, because sometimes we like to do that thing where only one of us researches it and the other one has no idea what's going on. So we kind of have the knower and the unknower.

It's the React channel. Yeah. But yeah, so I did it more in depth and that was pretty much it. It was just a single tweet and then she did an interview with Newsmax or some outlet that wants her on. Yeah. And that's where she said that Democrat voters should have to wait five years before they're allowed to vote if they move to a red state. Oh yeah. Yeah. So Marjorie Taylor Greene, this is an online conspiracy theory. I kind of conspiracy theory, that's not the right term.

But in like hardcore right wing circles, they've been talking about a national divorce because a lot of it is focused on California and the homelessness problem there. And then also woke politics because politics is a big hot button issue amongst conservatives. And she is kind of a meme lord. You know, she's always been that way. She was that way with QAnon. I'm not sure if it's intentional or if she just really is that meme lord person. You know what I mean?

She ran on that sort of campaign, the like QAnon right wing online meme lord campaign. Yeah. I mean, she's very much tied in with QAnon and like the right wing meme culture that you enjoy so much. And I'm not sure if she's genuine or not about that, but that's all this is. I mean, this conversation has happened online many times or talk about it has been going on online forever. I think we might even brought it up on this podcast before. Probably. We're pretty good about that. Right.

It is a big right wing thing right now that they want to separate from the blue states, but they ignore the fact that red states are largely welfare states that are out of the federal government. So they economically can't afford to break away from the blue because they use the tax base in blue states to pay for all their programs. Got it. It's kind of like a dirty secret of federal politics is that the majority of red states are more rural.

More rural states take more money per capita per person than populated states. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. We'd be better off in we in the blue states would be better off not having the red states economically. Yeah. Yeah. Amongst some other reasons maybe, but. Oh, you know, all depends on how you look at it. Yeah, that's true. The story is really about the media's reaction to the just the presenting of what's already going on online.

Yeah, they pretend they're pretending like some radical idea that nobody's ever heard of. Yeah. But what do you what are your thoughts on it? I don't know. I mean, I guess like throughout our history as a country, there's been lots of people that have at one time or another wanted to kind of secede from the union as it were. Probably none more violently than the Civil War. But I guess states rights remain a big issue even today. And I don't know.

I don't know if our overwhelming national federal level government's opinion on secession has changed in the past 200 years or whatever it's been since the Civil War, because we did commit a huge amount of people to their deaths to maintain our nation as a whole.

So I don't I don't know if that kind of overwhelming mindset has faded and that if our federal government would be amenable to something like that, my guess is probably not because the more states, the more federal income tax they get and the more they can shuffle around their money and hide money and things like that. So I'm not sure. You know, it's certainly not unique that somebody would want to, you know, leave the union. No, it's kind of a theme through our history, I think.

Civil rights era for sure. The gay marriage thing, we've brought it up like every time anything changes, it brings it up, you know? And it's always the same pathetic nonsense where people don't want to don't want others to have rights. And more or less, I mean, some of the politics we talk about it is problematic to me, at least. Yeah. And I think some of it is, you know, like, and we talked about this on the podcast, too.

But you know, one group always wants to have their own ideals and stuff represented by their government. And they tell everybody, well, if you don't like it, you can move and have your own, you know, government. And we talked about how that isn't really an option with because we talked about with the abortion stuff because they say, well, just move to a state that has abortion. You don't have to have to worry about it. But if you don't have the same means as everybody else, that's not a reality.

You can't just move to be close to health care. Right. I can't remember what percentage, but a significant percentage of the population cannot afford a $500 emergency. So yeah, moving your whole life to live in a different state is really not something that most people can do. Yeah. I moved several times and it's always been for work. Yeah. But I don't know, do because they want to be somewhere else, you know, other than for work? I don't know. Do people move outside of for work?

Was that your question? Yeah, like adults, adults in the United States, like do people move for reasons other than work? Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know. Sarah and I moved, I mean, work was part of it, but we wanted to move. So we found jobs in the city that we wanted to live in and then move down, you know. I suppose. I mean, you know, like the unfortunate thing is like work is always tied into it, at least pre pandemic because there weren't a lot of remote jobs.

And I suppose now the stats will be different because a lot of companies are keeping the remote work and they don't really care where you live. So people could theoretically move wherever they wanted to. They're not going to get, you know, the reimbursement from their job to go move. But being remote for a lot of professions, I guess people now have more options where they want to live. They don't necessarily have to live in that town where the company is headquartered. That's true.

I didn't think about that. There was a lot of people moving, especially tech sector type people. A lot of those people are losing their jobs, too, from what I understand. There's a big layoff. Yeah. Yeah. Bubble. Right. Speaking about like jobs and stuff. The other thing we could talk about is I think Britain just finished up their four day work week trial. Air about that. So they were and I don't know, I'd have to look it up.

But I don't know how long the trial went, but they said that basically the work life balance, like the employees were all happier. They had way less turnover during the four day work week. And so basically what they did was they said, hey, instead of working, you know, 40 hours a week, five days a week, why don't you work four days a week at eight hours? So 32 hours or whatever a week, we're still paying you for the full 40. You're still getting paid for the full 40.

But they just had that extra day off. And it was kind of the same results as the pandemic when all the companies went remote. Like productivity went up, overhead went down. People were happier because they were home. So for this one, it's kind of the same thing. I think a majority of the companies are going to keep the four day work week, at least for a bit longer. And there were a few that were making it permanent.

And you know, the work life balance and people were more productive because they were more recharged showing up at work and all that stuff. So. No, it's good. That is another right wing online conversation is people claiming that the pandemic and remote work is crushing productivity, shrinking it, you know, making it smaller. Yeah, I've engaged several times these people and I asked them, like, do you work at a place that has this? Do you have any data for any of this?

Because there's three of us that are three people that I know, myself included, where they're doing remote work and at three different employers doing three different type of jobs and productivity has gone up. Yeah, all three places. So I'd say our productivity has gone up at my work. I mean, I don't know for sure because I don't really get to see a lot of that data. But I'd say by and large, like things are I never really have an issue. Right. It's kind of bizarre.

Like I say, where I work, we don't I can't do remote work, but yeah, there's people who are and they they it does feel like they're not doing their job. I'm not going to lie. But they are by the numbers. Statistically, they are, but it seems like the wait time to answer emails and stuff is longer for some reason.

Yeah. And but you know what I think and that's and that's probably definitely true because I haven't frustrated, you know, like sending emails or asking people things and like just the number of times sometimes I have to follow up. But you know, it's like if you think about it, an email was never intended to be instantaneous. And we got into this weird like corporate cultural habit of you have to respond to an email within, you know, 15, 20 minutes or whatever your company might say.

But it's like that's not really how emails were intended to behave, you know. Right. No. And I I definitely check my email once a day. Yeah. And then on my work phone, that is important if I happen to look at it, then I'll respond. But typically it takes me 24 hours to do any email responses. Yeah. So I'm not blaming them. No, no. It's just that these people were just sitting at their desk waiting for an email, I think. Yeah. And now they're not.

Which I think is, you know, better in the long run, because how lame is that that we as a country or as corporate America had all these people just sitting there and they're just waiting for an email to come in when they could be doing like other things, you know. But it's like, nope, you're supposed to work eight hours a day. So you clock in at this time, you clock out at that time, and you've got to sit here. And it's like, come on, you know.

Yeah, it's pretty much a bunch of nonsense, I would say. Yeah. And especially, you know, like not your job and not like doctors and not, you know, so there's other things, but like by and large, corporate America isn't doing anything to really make anybody's lives better. You're not saving lives. You're not doing anything. You're like moving 401k accounts or money transactions or whatever. And it's like, it doesn't have to happen right now. It doesn't have to be an instantaneous thing.

And if it did, you could easily spend the money to automate a bunch of stuff and not have all these people doing these stupid redundant tasks. But you know, and maybe that's something else we need to talk about is with the proliferation of AI. And I just found out that there are a bunch, a whole slew of ebooks on Amazon that have now been authored by AI or co-authored by AI.

But we only know about the slew of them because the humans are saying written by, you know, myself and whatever chatbot, whatever 10,000. But there's no actual requirement or law that says you have to disclose who wrote the book. So there could be a lot more books out there within the past couple of years that are completely AI fabrications and nobody's disclosed that. Interesting. Are any of them bestsellers? You know, I don't know. I didn't look that far into it.

But I did see there's a photographer Instagram account who had posted all these portraits. And he just came clean that he's been using AI to generate all these images and they're not actual people and they're not actual like real photographs. He's just been using AI to generate these portraits of people. And he's been getting likes and all these followers and I don't know what else, you know, but. So it's kind of like a strange, strange era. It is a stranger.

I have to talk to you about something that happened not at my work, but related to my job on the East Coast. OK. It's some Russian hackers got into a system being operated by a city in like North Carolina. And I guess they raised all kinds of they didn't change any of the software passwords from standard and they had them online. And it was like the most basic hack that could ever happen for a government agency. They just didn't change any of the standard settings and they had it fully online.

Yeah, like that's so stupid. You have it on the VPN or something, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were just running it on standard Internet. It's like your, you know, your router password is like admin and you got to change that right away or else people can come in and like hack your hack your router. Right. Oh, yeah. Passwords don't really have to be all that difficult if it's a closed system. But the second you put that put it online, now you have to. Yeah, I mean, be careful.

It's kind of it's kind of like anything else. And I guess the best analogy that I can think of is kind of like bike locks, you know, because when I was in college, that was my only mode of transportation. So I researched all these bike locks and I bought like this really heavy and it was like hardened steel and they had like octagon links or something and you couldn't fit a bottle jack in there to pop it and all this other stuff. But it was like heavy and cumbersome and unwieldy and everything.

And but the point is, you don't really have to have that. But you need to have something better than most other people have. But you don't need to have something that's unbreakable because nothing's unbreakable. Right. And like the deterrent is having something that makes it difficult for somebody to quickly steal it. And the same with passwords, like it doesn't have to be the Fort Knox of passwords.

But if they guess like your pet and your birthday and your spouse's name and they can't get in, they'll probably move on to somebody else who's got, you know, because how many people have accounts and how many people have weak passwords, you know. I know there's brute force hacking for passwords. And that's what I mean.

Like even if you have like the most complex password ever with quantum computing and AI and all this other stuff, like who knows, maybe they can feed the AI a description of you and it'll guess your password, you know. Possibly. I know that back in the day when they had all those little quizzes online, it was like, what's your favorite color? What's your thing? Yeah, yeah. Basically, password for hacking purposes, from what I understand.

Yep. To find out what kind of bread you are, we need your mother's maiden name, last four of your social and your sourdough. Right. Yeah. What's your favorite? Or what's your high school? Tell them where you bought it. Yep. Yep. Always interesting. Oh, yeah. Well, I think I've got to be about halfway. I'm not quite halfway through. Maybe it maybe. Yeah, maybe not quite quite. But I figured now is a good time as any before we shift into some other kind of topic. So yeah, absolutely.

I had only weird. I had a weird issue where I was getting like pinholes going down it like there's a hot spots burning down the center of the cigar and it's affecting kind of the draw a little. OK. But otherwise, the flavor is good. Yeah, it's good. I don't really have the pinhole. It's a slightly uneven burn. Sure. But you know, not anything super drastic. Nothing that's affected the draw really, I think.

There's been a couple I've taken a couple of puffs and they felt a little I don't know if more airy is the right word, but they didn't feel as flavorful. Yes. But then the next puff was the same flavor. So I wasn't quite sure if that was just me making it up. But you confirming it means that it must at least be happening. Or we have like our own like two person confirmation bias going on. It's possible. And like the first one, these are from the same box.

So yeah, yeah, there was a couple of imperfections, which is unlikely given the I want to say quality of the cigar, but the price point, maybe price point. Yeah. Yeah. And to be fair, the airy puffs or airy drops, whatever you want to call them. Not really a big deal. Not a big issue. You know, if you're a casual cigar smoker, I only brought it up because, you know, we have a cigar podcast. So I wanted to mention it.

And you know, if I was just smoking this with friends, I don't think I would say like, hey, did you guys get a couple like airy puffs there? Like I just, I did, I don't know. I don't think it would be worth mentioning outside of the podcast here, you know, just for full disclosure of our experience. So. So far I like this better than both of the other ones, to be honest with you. Yeah, I would agree. I'm really digging it. Yep. Yeah, I'm really digging it. It's good.

I think it's the best one of the three. Yeah, I concur. So far, which we're only halfway through. So we'll find out. We will find out. We will find out. So I want to talk about this again. I want everybody to be clear that I hate her. I think that she's. We're talking Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah, yeah. OK. She's the typical hypocritical right wing conservative type person who wants to ban trans people from bathrooms and gay marriage and abortion.

She cheats on her husband to the point where they had to get a divorce, even though she's an elected politician. Right. Her personal life is a total mess. She's clearly a moron. Or she pretends to be a moron. It's hard to know. I mean, she's basically just a Jim whore who got elected because she knows how to spout Internet memes. Yeah, it's crazy. It's insane that anybody takes her seriously at all. Yeah, she's not a serious person.

If I if you met this person in real, if I met her in real life, I would immediately dismiss her. Yeah. I would just dismiss her for being a consciousness. Which maybe that says a lot about me and not about her. But well, maybe. I mean, there definitely are. And living here in the Midwest, where you've got kind of the Minnesota nice, it's a little more difficult to just be like, this is the person I wouldn't talk to. Or, you know, if they started talking to me, I'd leave right away.

But definitely somebody that you'd want to limit your exposure to. You know, I wouldn't walk away or stop talking to her. But I would dismiss that person in my mind. Yeah. It'd be one of those things where it'd be like, you know, you talk to them and then, you know, on our next podcast, you'd be like, well, Nate, do I have a topic for you? So I met this person the other day. Yes, we don't have to be nice on the podcast.

No, you know, but like, I don't feel like I don't feel like we tear anybody down, really. You know, politicians for sure, because most of them are too faced or worse. And they're public figures. They're the public figure. And maybe they're nice to some people in their lives, but definitely not their constituents. So yeah, they're the lowest of the low largely. But yeah, if I were to meet this person in real life, I would just immediately discount whatever they said. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty harsh, I guess, but that is true. You do tend to have some patience every once in a while. Yeah, I try. I really try. I went to a music show last night. Yeah. It was good. It was really good. Yeah. Yeah. My buddy played. Yeah, I saw the posts from your Sarah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, my buddy's band played. They were really good. I don't know if I should say the name of their band. They're going to play a music festival that's coming up this summer, too.

Okay. So I'm pretty excited about that. I'm definitely going to go. Yeah. And Sarah's cousin's band played the same event. Okay. So and then the daughter of one of my friends was the other performer. So I didn't directly know all three bands. Yeah. But I indirectly knew all of them. So it was good. They were all way better than I thought they were going to be. Okay. I'm used to the local bands in North Dakota and they...

Yeah. A lot of the musician artsy people can't afford to live there or couldn't at that time afford to live there. Oh, yeah. The Fargo and Bismarck bands were good, but here, these hippie people, they just live everywhere I guess. They walk among us. But yeah, they were really good. That's good. You have to send me the three bands or whatever so I can check them out. Yeah, I will. I know the one because I think Sarah posted the name of the one, but... Was it the first performer or the second?

Or was it her cousin? I think it was her cousin. Yeah, her cousin's band does alternative rock. Okay. Yeah, they're our age so it's like that 90s alternative rock type music. And it's good. I enjoy it. But yeah, it was really good. I didn't know that my little area here had such diversity. There was a lesbian couple there and there was a transgendered woman there. Okay. Yeah, it was the first time I'd really gone to an event in a while. And it's kind of crazy seeing the crowd.

It's not like growing up. Yeah. At least seemingly. Well, that's good. No, it's a good thing that the people that people are staying who normally would have moved to Minneapolis, Denver or something, Chicago. Or Portland or wherever. Right. Yeah, it's always nice when your small hometown is growing. Because I remember my small hometown growing up and they've got a micro brewery now, which is kind of amazing to me. I mean, not really because it's in Wisconsin. So why wouldn't they?

They already have the cheese co-op so brewery fits right in. But just a small town's kind of growing or finding their place and being a place where people that are not like the white hick feel comfortable staying and going to events. That's a good thing all around. Yeah, I agree. Like I say, I was pleasantly surprised. And I guess I have an image in my mind of what the area is like and it must be getting outdated, which is a good thing. Yeah. So I know they called us NAFTA refugees.

And now a lot of people are talking about a renaissance because there's a lot of people in their 30s moving back. Okay. And yeah, there's a lot of hopes. Yeah, I wonder if that has anything to do with the pandemic and remote work or if it's partly because the population where you are is, the working population is aging out. It's the, oh, some people that are in charge of hiring at certain businesses in town.

Yeah. So it's an unofficial policy that they want to hire people that are from the area originally. Okay. You know, at these at professional level positions, not at. Yeah. They want to replace the people who are retiring with people who are originally from the area. Yeah. Preferably. So I'm sure it's both though, because I have a, he was working remote. And yeah, it's entirely because he's working remote. Okay. That's good. Yeah. It definitely benefits the community to have more people here.

So. That is true. And unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, it benefits community to have people that are different than you. And I'm not trying to spout some, you know, like liberal BS, but like, honestly, it is because I was talking about this with, I think, I think it was, I don't want to say it was Dev, who was a guest on our show in season one, but it might've been, it might've been somebody else. I think it was somebody else. I don't know.

But anyway, we were talking about like people who don't have like a friend or a partner or somebody that they spend time with. Like you don't have anybody to call you out on your bullshit. Even if that person is mostly like you, you know, but if I were acting, you know, like entitled or somehow normally out of my character, I know you would call me out on it and be like, Hey man, like what's going on with that? Or, you know, that's kind of weird.

But also to just like to learn, like it's good to get other viewpoints of people that didn't grow up in the same background that you grew up in, you know. Right. So I don't know why you'd want to keep all the other, the opposing side out. But I'm not going to say too much more about the opposing side because that will be the big theme of the next episode. Nice. Nice. See what I did there? I'm trying to get better about hyping our own show. Hype, hype, hype.

I was going to say that at my work, we do a lot of not workshopping, but discussing on how to fix problems or prevent issues in the future. And there's certain people that they want it their way and it doesn't matter what anybody else says.

Yeah. And that usually ends in disaster because if you don't take into all the perspectives, especially if some people, there's radically different ideas, you're going to come up with the best solution of every, if you have a diversity of thought involved in the process. Yes. But address all the possible roadblocks that you're going to come up against. Yeah. And no one person can predict all the random nonsense that happens, you know.

What's the saying is like, you don't want to make decisions in a vacuum or something? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And some people like it when they're in an echo chamber, but that usually leads to total, like I say, it just leads to disaster. One mistake after another, you know. It's not a good thing. Not at all. Yeah. It's interesting. So for my job, I'm in sales enablement and we launched a big project for the sales reps to use. And we've, you know, it's over a year.

It's almost, I guess we're, you know, yeah, just a little over a year that it's been live in production. And so we're trying to figure out more ways to make it better. But we've got these, and this is going to sound kind of bad initially, but it's not intended that way, is we've got these people that send in a lot of help cases, help case requests like, Hey, I'm struggling with this and, and they're like repeat offenders. Right.

So we kind of, when, when we see their name attached to like the help ticket, we're kind of like, Oh no, but I decided that why shouldn't we take a survey of these like top, I think we ended up at 12, like these 12 people that seem to really be struggling with, with what we launched. And you know, we ended up getting a lot of good feedback because we asked the people that were struggling. So not the echo chamber. We weren't asking the people that had great success with it.

We're asking people that are for, for whatever reason, one reason or another are struggling with it because they're the ones that are going to give us the better ideas to fix it and make it even more accessible to everybody. Right. And I'm sure that some of them are lazy and not trying to learn the system. It sounds like you have met a salesperson in your life before. Right.

Some of them, at least one of them, probably extremely knowledgeable about how it works and they're pushing the boundaries of the program. Yeah. I mean, they're pushing the limits of what it's capable of.

Yeah. At least what I do, that's how our, a lot of our programming is like, there's both of those two, there's, there's multiple people obviously involved and there's at least one that's like pushing the outer limits of what the software is even capable of performing and potentially breaking like the user agreements to try to manipulate it to make it do something it's not intended to do, at least in my. Yeah. I don't think we have somebody like, I don't think we have anybody like that.

We have people that definitely have a different selling style or sell a particular set of clients or accounts, similar accounts we'll say that maybe don't fall within the norm. And so they want the system to be able to handle these kinds of what we would consider outliers, but to them it's their everyday. It's like it's third day today, but it's company wide the outlier. Right. There's bread and butter on the fringe itself. Yeah. Yep. So that's good.

You know, like, there's one guy in my work group who he doesn't like dealing with one of the programs that we have to use. And for about two years, he just didn't use it at all until I did pretty heavily. And now he uses it rarely. It's so funny that I have access to all of his data logs and stuff like that. And he has access to all mine too. It's mutual. I have a supervisor authority or whatever. Yeah. You don't do it.

It's either you're not doing anything or you're just not using this program at all, even though we're supposed to use it on a daily basis. Yeah. I use it every day just for information, more or less. Yeah. It's so funny. But yeah, so funny. He's an older guy. He's about to retire. Okay. So, you know, they get the retiree syndrome. I already have that and I'm not even close. Oh, I know. Right. I know. So far, I've worked with two guys directly that document any of the stuff they did.

So I ended up doing all of their paperwork. Okay. And they were older guys about to retire. They just didn't give a shit. Yeah. And I meant that I had this time. I was like, yeah, I can do more desk time. And they got me to learn a lot more about the internal workings of the machine. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, yeah. Of the machine of my workplace, not like any directly related. But always interesting.

Yeah. I'm sure that sounds very vague to anybody who's listening who doesn't know what I do. I'm guessing that of the nine lists you have, they all know who I am and what I do for a living. Yeah, possibly. Yeah, possibly. But you know, when we hit it big and people come back to listen to these first few seasons. Right. Yep. When we're when Joe Rogan is a guest on our show. Yep. When we're when we're podcasting from our yacht in the Caribbean. Oh, geez. Oh, geez.

Going to have to get one of those mega yachts where they have to take bridges down. Yeah. And we won't be able to afford it at that point. You know, there's nothing like podcasting from a yacht with having like oil massaged into your into your muscles. Oh, yes. That sounds horrible. Yes, we're still digging out from the foot of snow we got. Oh, my God. Yeah, that sounds terrible. Yachts, sun. Yeah, it was not for me. No, yeah, it was sunny today. It was sunny for me, but yeah, it was.

Oh, I was so sour that I had to spend all that money. Yeah, for a day snow blower. In spring. In spring. Well, we're going to get at least two more storms. So yeah, yeah. I mean, it's well worth it. You'd rather have it now on sale than, you know, have to buy it at the start of winter next year. Right. Even if you didn't have to use it again, you know, rail, it's done. It's taken care of one less thing to worry about. I was talking with Sarah, my Sarah about it.

It's like, well, it's going to be two grand now. It's going to be three grand next next winter. Because we're going to have to have a backup to the tour for weather for sure. Yeah. Well, three grand barring any more ridiculous inflation. Right. Or supply chain issues or whatever. Another evergreen getting stuck in the canal. It just so happened to be carrying snow blower parts. So now snow blowers are eight grand. Right. Exactly. Oh, it's a one year in Minot.

We had an epic snowfall and I was told this by somebody I knew that worked at Walmart. He was a manager. OK. They sold out every machine there in like two hours. Yeah. I guess nobody had a snow blower or something. He didn't even know what was going on. They sold out every single one. I mean, I guess. Yeah. And he said that the next day at like Ace or some one of these smaller stores, they doubled the price of all their equipment. OK. There's a lot of price gouging going on at that time.

Yeah. But yeah, no, it's just a pain. Oh, well. Yeah. I had to. We've got an old, it's an old Toro snow blower. I've actually burned up the electric start on it this year because I forgot about that. Got the fuel shut off valve. So I'll have to replace that this summer. I'm not doing it when it's cold out. But it was also leaking gas from the fuel shut off valve. So I had to buy a new fuel shut off valve and swap that out. But it's always something, you know. He had a commercial grade Toro.

OK. Years and years ago. And he he he blunts years and the reason why he got rid of it is he couldn't get any more replacement parts for it because they stopped manufacturing like the hands and small parts like that that he just couldn't physically find anymore. And this was pre Internet. So he could knock off version of it. But it ran. The motor was still running when he brought it to the dump. Oh, yeah. Couldn't get any parts to fix everything else on it anymore.

Yeah. So it was a hell of a machine. Yeah, this one seems to be fine. You know, if anything, it's probably a little undersized for what I need or for, you know, the berms that those plows leave at the end of our driveway and stuff. But right. Oh, why don't you just give it time? I'm not sure the exact measurements, but it's basically sidewalk width or like sidewalks by your house, you know, like that with 20 inches. Yeah, probably 18, 20 inches somewhere in there.

OK, it's not a bad size, but I wish it through through a little further, but that's all good. Right. I got a 30. OK, yeah, yeah. I got the biggest, most expensive one I could find. Yeah. Is it gas or electric? Oh, it's gas. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got an electric start, but it's yes. You got to have gas. It does not have track. I kind of wanted to get one that had tracks, but they didn't have one. Oh, yeah. It has wheels. But whatever. Mine, you'll get some tire chains for it.

Yeah, I should get some tire chains for mine. Mine has wheels that aren't inflatable, so they're like the hard rubber, which is nice. But I should probably get some chains. We just we have so much ice. Right. I definitely am going to order a little enclosure for myself. Oh, yeah, yeah. That would be good. I was hoping to get one like my grandfather had. He had a 1980s, probably. John Deere walked behind. OK. And he it had this enclosure and it was like down to the ground. You know what I mean?

You had a zip. Oh, yeah. OK. To get in and out of it. Yeah, it was incredible. He had his cigarettes and he had a he welded a beer cup to it or beer holder so he could drink his beer and have a cigarette inside of there. Like he would snow blow the whole block and he would go around to the school he used to live by a school. He did all the sidewalks and everything. He was retired. Nice. Yeah, that was a mean machine for.

Yeah. Well, if you get your enclosure, you have to put one of those really light like rechargeable USB fans and cut a little hole so you can smoke your cigar when you're snow blowing and the smoke has somewhere to go. Yep. Oh, yeah. I smoke a cigar when I plow typically. Oh, yeah, yeah. I had a nub this week. OK. Mm hmm. Yeah. So I just measured because I'm sitting at my workbench. I got three inches left and it's kind of there's a little bit of a flavor change that I'm not particularly fond of.

I don't know. It's about the same. Probably two and a half. But it's. It's not. I don't know if it's like full on bitter, but it's got a little like a little hint. So maybe I got to slow down just a little bit here at the end. I know we've talked about this on a lot of sticks, you know, where it's like when you get close to the end, especially if they're within, you know, kind of the budget of the sticks that we smoke, you have to kind of slow down or just kind of put them out.

But this one's definitely not put out yet. But I just have been starting to get some hints. So mine's good. Mine's still good. What are you pairing it with? We didn't say that at the start of the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm on my third beer, but I started with a drive through red dry hopped red ale. And it's from San Jose, California by Joseph Brow Brewing Company. And it's a dry red and it was it was a good match. Then I switched to a simpler times.

And now because my wife's parents were here, we have an influx of bush light left over in our fridge. So I am working through some bush light. Yeah, bush light. I have other beer in there, but it's like, well, you know, I'm going to drink the two like good tasting ones. And then I think for our next cigar, the bush light will will pair nicely. So that's great. I mean, you know, the bush light doesn't really have much of a taste. So I can focus on the cigar. Bud light, 60 calorie beer.

It was like a Bud Light, Ultralight or something like that. OK, it smelled like nothing and it tasted like a weak Zima. So what are you drinking right now? I made myself a stone fence. OK. And for what people don't know, it's the modern stone fence, quote unquote. And it's cider with whiskey and bitters. OK. Yep. So that sounds good. This is a very old school drink. I watched an episode of now. I can't remember. It's a it's drinking mixing drinks. It's like drinking for adults or something.

But I went through the whole history of this particular drink. And I OK. It sounds good. Next time I'm up, we'll have to like to try one. Yeah, it was Ethan Allen's favorite drink. OK, so there we go. Now we know the more you know. And for those revolutionary war history buffs. That are definitely listening. Well, not with how much we've been talking about state rights. Mm hmm. Oh, I love it.

Like the more it's such an ignorant argument to say, oh, we'd be better off separate from the is economically. They are not, you know, it's all about economics. Oh, nice setup, dude. Yeah, man. Yeah. I don't know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Go on. Oh, Nate sent me a picture and I have a Apple phone and Apple computer. So I got my little pop up right on my laptop. And no, it's definitely nice. I like it. Yeah. So I'm sitting at my workbench. I put in we talked about this last episode or two episodes ago.

I put in a brushless bathroom fan over my workbench in the garage and I've got a oil heater radiator style. And today at a thrift store, I found a swivel stool with a back bar stool with a back that I'm sitting in and it's comfortable and a little little lamp and it's got two USB plugs in the front. Now the last because we recorded two episodes at a time for episodes one and two and the garage was very much smoky even with the bathroom fan.

So today I put a little fan heater and I left the entrance door, the side door cracked open a little bit and I'm having that blow some hot air in to kind of get because otherwise you don't have any like airflow in this garage. So I thought just a little bit of influx of the fresh air on the other side for me would help keep the smoke up through the fan. It helped. It seems to be helping so far. But the fan is it's pretty underrated for the size of this whole garage.

So I might end up doing something with like some fabric cloths or something to kind of like make it more of a little booth when I'm out here smoking. Oh, like build a hood. You could build a hood. Yeah, yeah, something like that. So so as for your needs a tarp. Yeah, I thought if I did like fabric, it would be better with the echoing and the noise since we're doing an audio podcast. So a little blip there, I guess I have noticed you had a couple audio blips. Oh, I had some audio blips as well.

You're not cutting out, but it's like a like a blip, you know. Not sure if it'll be on the recording or not. Yeah, it's tough to say usually whatever I hear is on the recording. So okay, we've been having technical difficulties for those who haven't noticed. Yeah, and if you have a fool. Well, if you haven't noticed, it's only because I have in the future gone and edited those blips out before we publish. So yes, Nate is a pro. We're gonna we're gonna try and remedy some of our issues.

And you know, the other change to our setup is that I am out in the garage and I changed to mesh a mesh Wi Fi network to reach out here. But as far as I know, like my connection strength is, you know, around 70% on the Wi Fi. So I don't really think you know, streaming audio doesn't take up that much bandwidth. Right. I wouldn't think so. Yep. Mine's getting hot. My cigars getting hot, but it's not sour yet. Okay. Yeah, but it's definitely hot. I can feel it.

Yeah, and it's not it's not full on sour. It's just it's it the the flavor changed a little bit. Right. But I can't quite place it and it's just not quite as maybe it's not quite as full. Maybe it's a little thinner than it was. Maybe it's the beer. Yeah, maybe it's the water in the can that I'm drinking. And I can say that because Bushlight is not a sponsor. If they want to become a sponsor, I will drink Bushlight. Yes. And I will say it is the greatest light beer that is a sponsor of mine.

Yeah. I think I think we talked about like the Bushlight blind taste testing that I did with my buddy. Because I always thought that I liked Coors, but it turns out blind taste test like Coors, Bush, Bud, and McGolden. McGolden is actually the most flavorful. Interesting. And I never would have known because of the marketing. And that's one of those weird things where it's like, I never thought the Coors marketing was really all that great.

But I always found myself like ordering a Coors if I are grabbing a Coors from the like the you know, if you're at a party and they got a cooler beer and it's like, okay, great. They got Bud Light Coors light and McGolden. Like okay, I'm grabbing the Coors. But apparently that is that is mistaken thinking. I have not been to a party where they had a cooler beer where there wasn't Grain Belt in it in a very long time.

Yeah, I was just talking more like, yeah, if you're at a party, but it's not really a party and your parents put it on or your parents friends put it on that that kind of party not like our peers, you know, no, no, I'm talking about the same thing because I usually bring I usually bring beer. Okay. Like always. Yeah. And I always bring Grain Belt for sure. That's my go to. Yeah, that's a good one. It's a good one to go to. I haven't had a Grain Belt in a long time.

So maybe I'll have to pick some up before our next for some future episodes, I suppose. Yeah, no, I really like it. I like bringing it to because they they don't really sell it outside of Minnesota and North Dakota, or at least the the region here. So if there's somebody from Colorado, they've never had a Grain Belt before. So yeah. And it's drinkable, you know. Yeah, I like the I like the northeast from them. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Northeast is good. They, you know, maybe in northeast, too.

I never really thought about that. That is a good beer, entry level beer for somebody who drinks Bud Light. Yeah. You know, it has some flavor to it and it's not overpowering. It's not an IPA. Yeah, that is true. Mine's still not sour. I've been puffing really softly because there's really good draw. Okay. I've had really good draw. I feel like you've had better draw than I've had and these came from the same box. But I feel like mine's maybe a little more tightly packed.

It's not terrible draw by any any stretch, but I don't think and I didn't try, but I don't think I could have I don't think I could have pulled anything through the cap like you did. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I pulled it right through the cap. I was like, yeah, I think I think mine's a little more tightly packed for whatever reason. Interesting. Maybe it's the humidification. I don't know. I had it in my big humidor. Could be. So I've been really diligent on maintaining my humidor.

So I just picked up some new Pave de Beggs as well and dropped them in there because mine turned crispy. Sure. They're crunchy or whatever. I soaked mine in. Yeah, that's what you said last episode. It worked swimmingly well. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah. They're now, you know, a week later. Yep. And on the outside and they have moisture in them. OK, good. And it went really well. Worked out great. Let them sit overnight. Yep. And yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll have to give that a go.

Yeah, my cheapness paid off. We also have distilled water, a lot of it in the house because we use diffusers during the winter. Oh, got it. Yeah. I heard you're supposed to put, you're supposed to use distilled water in your humidifiers and things. Yes. And not tap water. So yes, anything that processes the water, you want to have this distilled water. So we've been, I've been messing up then for a lot of years now. Does it still operate? Yeah, I mean, it still operates.

I think I thought it was more about like the mold or like the whatever. No, I was, I see. And I was always under the assumption that it was for the mechanisms in the machines. Oh, OK. So that didn't build up salt and iron and whatever other crud is in the water. The fluoride. Yeah, the fluoride. I don't know. My water's not, doesn't have any fluoride in it, but. Yeah. This whole other conspiracy thing we could go down rabbit hole, I suppose. But oh, fluoride, fluoride in the water.

I don't know if it's true or not. I think they put it in there, but they claim it's for the teeth. But I've read some things that say it's kind of like a calming agent or I don't know what you would call it. It is a weak calming agent. Yeah, kind of like pacifies, but mildly, you know, so you can still have like the super angry bros and alpha males, I guess. But it takes the edge off. Yeah, that was the conspiracy theory.

And it in clinical trials, it does have a calming effect, but I'm not sure what the dosage is, you know? Yeah, or to what extent the calming is, because like lots of things have calming effects. Cigars maybe, beer maybe. I don't know. All of the things we like to partake in. But I wouldn't, you know, but like, you know, is it like, oh, I hate being calm. Like why am I calming myself? So I don't know, like to what extent the calming effect is.

Like is it, are you, can you tell for one, you know, like if you smoke enough cigars, you can't really tell that you're calmer after smoking one. You know, like, I don't know. I can definitely tell that I'm now the one we started. That you're what I was pretty worked up all day and I slowly calm down throughout. You know what I mean? Yeah, I can tell that to you. You're real tense. I was wound up pretty tight. And I was all sore earlier today.

But I don't know, I don't remember if it was for her birthday or last Christmas or something, but I bought Sarah one of those massage guns and I was like, you know, I did all the snow blowing and the shoveling and I'm all sore. Like could you give me a gun in quick before my podcast? And so I've just been pretty, pretty calm today. I might write an angry letter to my senator about the calming effects of massage guns later. I don't know. But yes, yes. Yeah, drinking.

I know you've met people like this, but alcohol affects everybody a little differently, of course. Yeah. And different types of alcohol. It can. Yeah. And it's a lot of it is, you know, if I'm sick before I have a drink, it's I'm going to get affected a lot differently than if I was healthy. You know what I mean? Yeah. And for me, I don't really drink if I'm sick. But it kind of depends.

Like if I have like a salad for dinner, which I almost never do because that's stupid, unless you unless every all of our listeners love salads for dinner, then it's great. But like sometimes I do just want a salad for dinner. If it's like the holidays and I've just like eaten for three days straight and I'm like, oh, my God, I need something light. But if I have like a lighter meal and then I drink like it affects me way differently than if I have like a good base.

Sure. What I'm talking about being sick is sometimes I'll have a cold coming on and I won't be sick yet. And I'll have a couple of beers and it will just radically affect me. Yeah. Almost like a two for one ratio. Okay. I'll get way more and less alcohol and rat like wildly intoxicated. Sometimes it's kind of crazy. I was there once. No, I'm just kidding. I've never seen Mike wildly intoxicated or intoxicated at all. He is an upstanding citizen. Yes, he hates French haircuts. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Well, I was what I was getting at is I know people that get really angry when they get intoxicated, but they still drink. Yeah. Never understood that. Like, why are you doing this to yourself and everybody else? Well, yeah, I mean, it's like the everybody else part is kind of the big one. You know, you do what you want to yourself at home, but some people can't handle things and you know, it can be alcohol. It could be other drugs.

It could be, you know, I don't know, shopping or a certain like show. You know, like people get so worked up about things and like football, like, let's just say football and it's like, you get so worked up and like you through the remote through the drywall because you're set about a play or, you know, you did this or that and it's like. At some point, you just have to kind of be like, wouldn't you think like the person would be like, man, I don't like how angry I get watching the football.

Like maybe I should stop. I had the feeling that you've not happened before. Have you seen somebody throw the remote through the drywall at a house? No, no. I haven't. I haven't.

But I've seen other things come out of like sporting events or watching sporting events and like just some, just some things I've seen some things and I used to be one of those people that did the things, not like you get like physically aggressive or violently, whatever, but like sometimes the shit talk goes too far, you know, and it's like, well, is it really about the game or is it about your friendship with people or, you know, like,

you know, just kind of like, I don't need that stress and I don't need that thing. And it's like, you like, my family was huge into football and it was like every time we'd watch the game, it'd be like, I was on edge, like, oh, I hope the team wins and I hope, you know, and it's like, and then if they lost, you were angry for days or like depressed for days. And it's like, it's a sports game. It's supposed to be entertainment, you know, like you're not supposed to take it that serious.

So that's why I quit watching mostly. I can honestly tell you, I do not know who was in the Super Bowl this year. I don't know who won. Yeah. I don't know who is playing. I didn't bet on it. Yeah. Even when I did bet, I bet on a couple in the past and I didn't watch them. Yeah. Well, we watched the Super Bowl, but we usually only like watching it for the halftime show.

And we always tell ourselves we like watching it for the commercials, but for the past like 15 years, the commercials have an absolute shit. So it's not really that either. It's just kind of like, it's the biggest sporting event of the year. So like, so we don't watch live TV like ever. And so we hate commercials and stuff, but like we'll watch. So we make two exceptions, we watch the Super Bowl and we watch the Oscars. Oh, you do watch the Oscars. And you can say like, oh, you watch the Oscars.

Oh my God, you're like feeding into whatever and like, I don't know, all the racism or the glorifying the people. And maybe we do. What we like to do is I'll print out the ballot, right? Of all the nominated films and actors and all that stuff. And then we make predictions beforehand and then we watch to see who wins, like who got the most right. And we also like to try and watch all the all the best picture and all the best actor, actress, nominated, nominated films.

And usually we've seen most of them anyway, just because I'm a film buff, you know, so great. So it's kind of nice to see. But you know, I don't really like, like, yeah, we watch the slap live or on the seven second delay or whatever they do. But that wasn't, I wasn't like, oh my God, I'm so glad I was watching and saw that. Like that wasn't my thing. Like I love the in memorandum thing because you can see all the people that have passed and like, oh my God, I didn't know that person died.

And then for a lot of those documentaries and the other like foreign films and stuff, they show the little like blurbs from them. They're like, and here's the nominated films for like best foreign picture. And they show like, you know, a 20 second clip from each of them. And then sometimes you're like, oh, that looks really interesting. Maybe we should check that one out, you know, so. Yeah, interesting. Not that I'm trying to like justify why I'm watching the Oscars.

No, no, no, no, no. Were you the one who used to throw an Oscar party? No, people would write their predictions down. No, I had a friend who would throw a party for the Oscars and I never went, but. They would write the predictions down and like have a little game out of. OK, got the predictions right and stuff like that. Yeah, it was a kind of cool. And the party part, you know, that's interesting.

I mean, it's just something, you know, like, I don't know, so many people watch all these shows and reality shows and whatever. It's like, now we just watch two events a year. I guess two nights out of our life and we spend and. That's what we do. So that's cool. You know, no judgment for me. Yeah, I. I haven't been watching any live TV. I do need to watch some. They need to watch some what some bowling. Oh, yeah, they just did the US Open. OK, like last week or something.

And I'd like to I'd like to watch it live. It's a pretty tough. That's a pretty tough tournament. Yeah. For those who don't. There's all sorts of information about the oil patterns on the Internet. It's always fascinating to watch. For me, I'd like to bowl in those patterns. But of course, not likely to happen. But I would like to try it at least. Well, where's where's one of those lanes? Well, we'll have our yacht dock in that city and, you know, in between episodes, you can go bowl.

I'll just buy a bowling alley so I can pattern out myself. Yeah, just put it on the yacht. Yeah. Hey, there we go. Yeah. And you know, the the waves or the tide is part of the hazard of playing the course, right? Yep. They had an event years ago. It was a women's bowling tournament and they did it in an outdoor stadium. OK. And there was like a frickin windstorm or something. OK. Oh, Lane, you got to hang a you got to hang a windsock down by the pins. Oh, it was great.

It was really interesting to watch. Very entertaining for anybody who's wants some entertainment value. Yeah. See the best lady bowlers. Oh, Lane said dirt on him. Yeah, it was great. So I thought it was humorous. Yeah. But that's kind of like for those who don't know, nine pin bowling was banned in the United States because of the gambling. And that's how 10 pin bowling became the top dog in this country. OK. Because nine pin bowling was banned, but 10 pin bowling was legal.

I feel like that was a ploy by the the big pin industry where they're like, how can we sell them an extra pin? Right. Yes. Ban nine pin bowling. Yeah. Big pin. So well, I'm I'm going to put mine out because it's. Not pleasant to me anymore, but I've got about an inch left. So OK, that's about me to the end. That's about standard, I think, for most of our sticks. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's been a few that we've wanted to Roach clip or whatever.

But you know, this one was a decent smoke all the way through. I like the spicy wrapper and the flavor profile of this one is much nicer than the other two. Not that the other two were were terrible or bad. But I think I like this one the most. I thought it was good. This one, I think if you if you see any five Vegas, I think the cask strength is probably the way to go. Depending on your flavor preferences. The Maduro was good too. Yeah. Sorry if you're talking about him. Oh, no, no, not at all.

If you like a little spicier, do the cask strength. If you like just flavor, do the Maduro because it doesn't have the spice. That would be our recommendation or mine. I speak for Mike. I think this is clearly the best of the three we had. I think that the Maduro was a series S or something. It was the middle point and that was good. I would recommend if you see this at a cigar shop and you want a cheaper stick, I would recommend buying this. Yes, I liked it. It's spicy. I liked it too.

I have about an inch and a half left on mine, maybe an inch and a quarter and it's still good for me. But the end is starting to unravel. I'm starting to get a lot of leaf coming through the end. I'm getting a lot of junk in my mouth. Yeah, so mine didn't unravel, but it got kind of sour. So sure, a little. I don't know if that's quality control or just smoking styles or or what, but you know, there are slight variations stick to stick even in the same even the same box. Oh, of course.

It's a artisanal product. So you're going to have variation. But I would I would recommend it. I think it's good. Likewise. We'll see you next week for our random stick that neither of us thought we'd be smoking. Be safe. Hum.