The following program is produced by the tech Talk Radio Network. Hey this comedian Kathleen Maddie, and you're listening to Slick, Justin and Andy on tech Talk Radio. It's something I will never be listening to because I hate technology. For those of you, the two these are your guys. Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Slick, and I'm Justin. Lemme Justin. It is good to see you, Slick, good to see you. It's been a while since both of you guys been on board.
You know, we've been dealing with natural disasters.
Of one four it wasn't so much more natural, but yes, it was a disaster. My entire basement flooded and that's where my studio is.
So yeah, So now when it came time to do the repair for you, Justin, it meant going all out and removing everything that you had. Did you have to take stuff off the walls as well? Or oh?
Absolutely well? I mean so behind me in the studio here is my theater. I guess you could say, yeah, so I didn't have to remove the TV and stuff like that, but we did have to remove all of the furniture, including the entertainment center, the couch behind me, over on this side, the computer desk, everything, because the entire carpet got replaced, so we have brand new carpet.
It is a different style of carpet. It's it's a lot more low, low ply, so it's a little bit more of a of a modern type of carpet you find in more modern homes instead of the standard I don't know what do you call that inch inch and a half or whatever. It's not it wasn't shag before that, but it was the standard carpet. It's almost like a
like a hotel carpet. Maybe maybe a hotel Yeah, you're kind of yeah, but it's it's it's much easier to clean up because we do have a cat who likes to vomit everywhere, so this is actually much.
Well you know what I mean, cats do what cats do?
I like it.
You would put I think you would put a meme up or a picture of your cat, was saying, brand new carpeting in the home, and now the cat has to make his mark.
Yeah, And it was like a meme of like a cat dressed in like upscale attire and it was like junkins prepare the finest carpet. I wish too vomit.
What is it with cats in their hacking?
Yeah, I mean yeah, and he and as soon as we lay the carpet down, he's like, oh, new carpet.
The cats yacking. That's not good.
This is what it is, man. I mean, at least he hasn't, you know, done anything else on the carpet. But we did have to, you know, get everything out. But it took a while too, because the last time I was on the show, the basement was all torn up. I still had my desk here. But after that we had to remove the desk. We had to remove all the everything else so they could do the carpet. They did new paint, new baseboards, they've done all of that
stuff and so everything is all brand new now. So it's we finally put everything back together, got the basement back up together. We put the couch back in.
Now.
One of the things is with the couch. You know, this is a it's a lazy boy. It's a three person you know, recliner. This we've had this for or gosh, it's been about fifteen years almost now, so it's a little bit older. But I mean it's still really nice and it's a Lazy Boy brand, so it's gonna last forever. But when we took it apart, we had to take it into the three sections, and I had to store
it in the maintenance room behind me. And when we put it in the maintenance room, I didn't pay attention to where I actually put it, and one of the units, this one on the very end here, I actually put it next to the condensate drain from the HVAC and the water heater. So for that whole month that it was in there, it was leaking water into the swede
because this is a swede couch. Oh no, So it was leaking water into the swede enough so much so that the pressure of it leaning up against the pipe and the humidity of the water caused the frame of the couch to break because the wood just couldn't take it anymore. So now I have a broken piece of wood on it. It's thankfully it's not structural. It's just cosmetic. I can just take a piece of metal behind it and like you know, shore it up and it'll be fine. For their fifteen years.
To be able to figure out how to do that on YouTube.
Oh yeah, yeah, well, you know, yeah, this is that's a pretty easy fix. But you know, it's it's it's actually kind of funny that you mentioned that, and he, you know, find out how to do that on YouTube. Because when this, when this happened, this was the second thing that happened within a course of a month, because I remember, our first event was a leak in our master bathroom, which caused us to have to remodel our entire master bathroom. Which that is done. That's great, everything's awesome.
But then this happened, and then I got to the point where I said, you know what, I can't. I can't. I can't do this anymore. I I have to learn
how to do basic home maintenance. And in order to do that, I said, you know, I'm just going to start watching some YouTube videos, and so I subscribed to some random YouTube channels, like there's one it's like the hvac guy, and he talks about how to you know, dismantle your hvac and do it, you know, clean it yourself and right, and not only just clean the outside thing, but like take apart the inside and get the a frame coil that's where all the free on and everything
runs through how to take that out, how to clean that, how to clean the outside, and then one of the cool videos I saw, and this is this is a funny story, but one of the videos I saw from him was, Hey, is your ac turning on the but it's not blowing cold air. Here's the problem. It's you.
It's your capacitor in the outdoor unit. And so you'll hear you'll hear the fan turn on, but you won't hear that dumb right, you know when the compressor kicks on, right, because the capacitors dead, because the capacitor is what gives that compressor the juice that it needs to start up.
So I'm watching this and it's like this video is talking about how you can replace this capacitor for like twenty bucks, and if you go with like an HVAC company, they're gonna charge seven hundred to one thousand dollars to replace this. And the the guys like it is so easy to replace. So I watched this video, I went out, I bought the one tool that he recommended, and I'm like, you know what, this makes me want to start learning
how to do home maintenance. Fast forward two days later, I'm sitting over at Bruise Beers after work having a drink. My neighbor comes in. My neighbor, I see him there all the time. He comes in. He's like he's looking like he's looking disheveled, he's looking stressed, and it's it's sweaty, it's sweaty. This was the week that we were having like one hundred degree tempts. And he's like, my ace's not working. I was like, oh, well, what's what's wrong.
He goes, well, I don't know, man, but like I can hear the fan turning on, but it just won't blow cold air. And I'm like, ding ding ding. And so I immediately recalled that video and I said, have you checked your capacitor? And he's like, what is the capelsitor?
What is that?
And I was like, well, it's the outdoor unit, you know, blah blah blah, there's a capacitor in it. I kind of explained how to do it. I said, dude, go go get a very simple multimeter. I can even let borrow mine if you want. Go check your capacitor, make sure that's working. He's like, I don't know how to do that. I said, here's a video, and I sent him a link to the video. I said, here's a video. Watch this video, go test it.
Let me know.
He comes back the next day and he's like, dude, you just save me a thousand dollars.
So it worked, that's great.
It was exactly the same cause that capacitor of his burnt out. It was ten years old, which is what capacitors usually last about ten years. And he said, I saw your video. I went to home depot. They had the capacitor there. I bought it. I followed the instructions on the video. I replaced it. You know, you have to discharge it because you know it's a capacitor. It can kill you.
So he's like something to remember, Well, yeah, I.
Know, seriously. So he discharged it properly, unhooked it, put the new capacitor in, hooked it back up, bam ac. He's like, you just save me a thousand dollars. I'm like, well, I guess I know who's buying my beer today.
Exactly.
I mean about the compensation charge.
Yeah, well yeah, I mean. But but the thing is is this, this is the kind of stuff that every homeowner should know how to do the basic stuff.
Well and you know what, think about this too, justin you know, they used to teach some of this stuff in high school. They don't do that anymore. No, same with auto auto shop. Used to learn auto shop. Heck, I learned computers in high school. I don't even know if they do that anymore. Well, I'm sure they do a kind of that. But I mean, you could find the solution to these in these videos that are available on YouTube.
There's so many videos out there on YouTube that are actually helpful. I mean, I know some people say, you know, YouTube is just full of junk, and you know it, it really is. I mean, but it also it depends on what you want to watch. I mean, the algorithm will start to tailor your experience to what you're currently watching.
So I went and I watched a ton of videos on how to repair your h BAC, how to clean your water heater, you know, tankless water heater, how to repair an undersync garbage disposal, how you know, things like that, And all of a sudden, now I'm starting to get more and more of these home repair videos because that's what I watch, and I learned stuff from this, and so far, what I've been able to do is replace the lights in the master bathroom, replace the faucets in
the master bathroom, replace the cocking around a sink in the spare bathroom, fix my ac. Wow, unclog the garbage disposal because we had a clog in it, and I was able to do that super easily.
These are things that happened normally.
I mean, yes, and these are the things that my neighbors on our little Homeowner's Facebook page, they're calling, They're asking people, Oh, does anybody have a technician that they know of that can come out and repair a garbage disposal. I'm like, dude, you're about to spend five hundred dollars to have somebody come out and do this, and you could do it yourself for nothing.
I did the same thing when it came to garbage disposal, although I had to watch a couple of videos to nail it. And you know, you have to be specific in your search, Like if you're looking for maybe you know a specific type of garbage disposal, specific type of sync,
you know it's good to you. Sure, you may have to go down a rabbit hole to find exactly what it is or tailor your search is, but you know you're gonna be able to and that's what I ended up doing and replace the garbage disposal myself, and to this day it's still working. It still works. Okay, So again you can do this with cars, help some computers. You could do it with your yard. You want to know how to put something in your yard, you could even do that as well.
I've learned a lot from it, and honestly, I mean, I'm loving what the content that YouTube has and and how you can learn so much about how to repair. I mean, there's there's almost a video for everything.
Do you subscribe to these channels? Like when you find a maybe a creator that's doing a lot of different home repairs.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If I find them and what they've given me is useful to me, I will make sure to do exactly what they ask, and that is to make sure to like and subscribe because you know, it obviously helps them out, but it helps me out because then it changes the algorithm to instead of showing me, you know, conspiracy theory videos, which I don't know how that ended up on my channel, right.
But I could see that.
Yeah, well okay, well whatever, but anyway, it's changed the algorithm to show me more of these home repairs. So I might be sitting there at night and you know, Mysa's like, hey, let's watch a little YouTube. Let's see what's on YouTube. And I'm like, oh, the HVAC guy's got a new video. And she's like, yeah, I'm going to bed.
Yeah, that's probably not something she'd want to watch.
Do you have a new side hustle now, Justin, Like, Justin's just fix it or something.
I'm not quite the handyman yet.
No.
There, we do have a couple of handymen in the neighborhood that take care of that. But I do have a new side hustle. We can talk about that later.
Oh okay, I like that. That's good. Slike, how about you. I know you've been keeping busy with the well, we had the storms here. Justin is in Denver for those that don't know, Slick is actually in Tucson. We had storms that and it's been a different monsoon season. I remember last year thinking, eh, it's kind of week week. The year before it was kind of weak. This one kind of has played out pretty good so far.
I see, yeah, and we're being in Arizona. I've always been of the mind that we need the water. Just just bring it, just skick it over. Now, A bad story about this. I mean, this is a kind of a side story. Just a couple of days ago and we had rain. It wasn't that that about a week week and a half ago. I guess we had a big storm. Yeah, but a couple of Sunday, Yeah, yeah, a couple of days ago we had some rain and I was out and I forgot how water flows in Tucson.
So just you forgot how water described it.
Some people, Well, it flows differently in Tucson.
Yeah, it doesn't. I don't know if this will make sense to people, but I will try. So I was let's say, ten blocks away. It was ten blocks south from where I live, meaning that I had to cross some streets that carry water from east to west, and I forget all about that part. So as I'm trying to walk home, I come to the first street and
it's flowing. So a couple hours later, I decide, Okay, I'm definitely going to try to walk through this made But that's when I forgot there was a street following it that's doing the same thing.
If I remember correctly with Tucson, because I used to live in Tucson as well. That's where Andy and I and Slick met. Water in Tucson either is nonexistent or it is torrential.
Yeah, yes, when it comes to storming. Yeah yeah, yeah. And we've had the torrential lately so that.
I remember one time when I was a kid, the monsoon. It was a monsoon season and we went to one of the wash. I can't remember which wash. It was, that wash that went right behind the fries at like Oracle, And first we were there and they were like, hey, there's a monsoon, check this out. And so we were just standing there in this heat and I'm like, what are we doing here? And They're like just wait, just wait. And then all of a sudden, I felt like a cold breeze come over me. And I was like and
they're like, oh, here comes, here comes, here comes. And I look down the wash and there was just a wall of water and debris like logs and sticks and plants, but it was a wall of water and just like that, it was just boom, a massive flood in that whole area.
That's they have to remind every year. They have to remind people stay out of the washes. Because it may look you know, dry, and everything may look good and it just comes in like crazy, or even people that drive across these areas that have had minimal flooding that they think they can go through it, and then another wave will come in and it just knocks the cars, the cars off the road. I mean, it's it's been it's been pretty crazy. So yeah, it's been bad. Luckily,
I have only heard one story so far about lightning. Well, there was one story about a car getting hit by lightning at a fry shopping center out towards us A Central too. So I don't know if you heard about that one slick, but carbage just sitting there got zapped by lightning and pretty much destroyed the car. There was another one. I've only heard one story about electronics being zapped. The house took a hit and basically took out the TVs, computers,
a laptop that was plugged in, some appliances. I mean, did just major damage to that, and they did not have search suppression on it.
We have that same problem at my job, water World, you know where I work here in Denver because water World sits on a hill and so we're the highest point in that area. So when a storm does roll over, obviously, being that it's a giant water park that obviously already attracts lightning, and then the fact that we're high up it also at tracks more lightning. So we've got these giant lightning towers that look like giant flagpoles, right. Their whole job is just to you know, take the lightning.
But from time to time we will get hit with lightning on one of our buildings. And even though we have search protectors on every device for you know, computer network, whatever, it doesn't matter a lightning bolt. You take a direct hit from a lightning bolt, it's gonna fry everything.
The plus sides of this, if you buy one with enhanced jewel protection, generally you're gonna get a guarantee or a warranty, whether it be for Monster APC. They carry warranties on a lot of those. So at least if you've taken that warranties, yeah, you've taken that step. I don't know if you've ever tried to cash in on one of those.
Oh yeah, no, we have. Definitely.
Do they pay, Oh yeah, they'll pay. They pay good.
I mean, it's not like it's not instant. I mean usually you have to come out of pocket to replace things and then they reimburse you, you know, a certain portion of it. But you know, yeah, they do stand by their word. But it's just just the nature of the beast man. I mean, where we're at and what we do. I mean, you're gonna get a lightning and so no matter what we can do to prevent it,
there's really nothing you can do. You might get a serve protector that says, I don't know, ten thousand jewel protection, fifty thousand jewel protection, a lightning strike is like twenty millions. I mean, there's nothing you can do about that.
One of the things though, that I and a lot of people don't know, and I'd like to mention it because here's some I found out about in a YouTube video. When you have a surge hall, when you get a search protector, and we've all been there, where you're in the house and the lights flicker, maybe power goes out, takes a little while, and then comes back up. Every time you get a surge on one of those surge suppressors, it will degrade the quality of the protection and the
suppression for that surge protector. So if you think about it, if you live like in Tucson where we get a lot of electrical storms during the monsoon season, you've taken about seven eight nine hits on that suppressor. You may want to really start thinking about, Okay, time to replace that because you're not going to get that kind of protection you would get with one brand new out of the box that has never taken a suppress you know, a suppression before.
Well another thing too is, you know, most new homes, you know, built within let's say the last ten years, because our home is ten years old, they actually put a whole home surge protector in the panel. So that's like your first line of defense, right, So that will absorb you know, a certain amount of jewels when a lightning strike, and then whatever is residual that makes it through.
Hopefully then your APC's, you know, your battery backups and your surge protectors in your house will then absorb the rest of it.
Yeah, that's something I have to do. I won't do it because I know I will frizz my hair and you know, be skeletal if I try to replay. Yeah, it looked like slick.
Is that where you're going? With us.
Yeah. Basically, so the house in Hunting the Beach was built in nineteen sixty four. I believe my dad replaced the power panel in around seventy six, seventy seven. It's never been replaced ever since. And so we're talking eighty ninety. You know, we're talking almost forty years. It's time to replace the panel. As my son does does say that because he lives in the house, stuff switches off sometimes.
So just just going back to that comment about Slick right there for a minute. If if you guys have never actually seen Slick and or maybe you don't watch the video cast of this, just imagine Daniel Stern and home alone when he gets electrocuted. That's basically what Slick looks like with the white hair frizzed out. That's that's he looks, just like Daniel Stern getting electrocuted and home alone.
I thought you were going to go with a lot of people have been going with Einstein lately. Hey, Eroin Stein, how you doing?
Oh yeah, like you kind of see it's kind of got that way kind of kind yeah. I mean, I've known Slick so many years though I've seen it. I've seen the style change over the years. So we do have a lot to talk about. I mean, there's been a lot that has happened in the world of tech. We really have not been able to talk about the big issue, which was Microsoft, of course, and CrowdStrike, that whole debacle. Who would affect it? Who? It didn't? A Some people thought, oh, it had nothing to do with me,
so I was fine. And then on record day, the day that we are recording this show, Microsoft had another outage, the second global outage in less than two weeks, but this one impacted Microsoft three sixty five services. Although I was able to use Microsoft three sixty five for you know, my employer. We were able to log in, so we didn't seem to have an issue. Did CrowdStrike? Did it affect you at all?
Justin No, thankfully not. I thought it was going to affect us, but no, we don't. We don't actually use CrowdStrike, and neither do any of our you know, online providers or whatever.
So we were actually very lucky slake. How about you?
Oh yeah, So apparently in in my neighborhood, let's say, yeah, those who utilized the crowd strike services noticed issues. Let's say about six pm local time, the support technicians, et cetera. And I guess it really took effect hard time after midnight. From what I can gather now, I just happened to decide to go into a government office that morning early, right, So I go in about oh, I don't know, I'm gonna say six, seven o'clock. So I'm in earlierly before
anybody's office and stuff like that. And I'm aware of the news because I had the new I leave. I'm a news junkie, current events junk I leave the TV on script's news all night, you know, So three am, I'm aware of what's going on the system I used. The the computer and the software and the services I use are licensed by a government agency that uses CrowdStrike. I didn't realize I had it on my computer. But so I get into the office, I fired up, and
I'm I'm off and running. Man, I'm doing stuff, and I'm seeing email messages come into my official government email address saying, yeah, we know, we got problems, and everybody's offline. I mean, you know, like everybody's offline and you can't do this, and we're gonna have to They're gonna have to manually come around, which they did and run a script on every computer. Yeah. So they set the it team out very early in the morning to just all over the city. Let's just say all over the city.
So they walk in. The guy walks into the office that I'm in and he's like, I'm here to fix the computer. So he starts to back. I'm in the front. He starts to back. It works his way to me and he says, uh. He says, I'm here to fix your computer. And I said mine is working. He goes, what, Yeah, mine's working fine. Now, admittedly, I've made some modifications to the enterprice of the Windows discussion, and I tried to
warn him. You know, I've also worked for Microsoft, and I've tried to warn people about handing your systems and your services over to a company or whatever and then just walking away. I tried to warn and this is to me, this is exactly what happened.
Yeah, And a lot of people were blaming Microsoft at this, and honestly, this was not a Microsoft issue. This is not a program that the general you know, homeowner might may be using. The fix for It was pretty simple unless you were administering a computer, say over the net, and you know, maybe you were you know, you were doing the technical support for a system. I mean you had to try and get into it over the net. How did you do that? That's where a lot of
people ran into, you know, issues with that. You know, this is just one of those things one company pushes out. And who pushes out an update on a weekend? I mean it was a Friday.
It's like, that's why they call it read only Fridays.
Yeah, who Yeah, who pushes an update? You don't do that? Did you see the famous tweet or I'm famous? But like it went kind of viral. It was a tweet of a guy and I'm pretty sure it was fake. It was probably just you know, set in jest, but it was a guy. It was like a young guy and he was taking a selfie with the crowd Strike company building logo behind.
Him and he was like, first day at CrowdStrike, just pushed out a small update, no big deal, going to take the rest of the day off.
There's another one with actor Wayne Knight, who you know from Seinfeld but most people will recognize him also from Jurassic Park. He played the it guy in Jurassic Park and somebody put a picture of him in front of that same crowd Strike you know office with a big smile on his face. So yeah, I mean you could make you could kind of make light of it, but a lot of it, people were working overtime, were stressed, you know, the whole bit.
Well, our guy Matt, you know Matt from you know with us on tech talk he is a crowd strike admin, yep, and he had just gotten back from a cruise. He was on vacation and he came back into this debacle.
Poor guy.
Yeah it yeah, it's not it's not been well for him.
All Right, we're gonna take a quick break. We come back. I have been having a lot of fun and I'm glad that slick is here, a lot of fun with Linux and slick is can answer a couple of questions I have on it. But got a new distro you might want to take a look at. We'll be back. I'm Andy Taylor, I am Slick and I'm justin.
Let me find us on the web tech talk radio dot com.
We'll be right back. And that fact to tech talk Radio. So I'm still playing around with win Boom too, and I'm wait, I'm sorry one more time win Boom too. When win boom to or one wouldn't. Yeah, that's what that's what you call it. I talked to to Sean about it a couple of weeks ago in the show, and you hadn't heard what had happened. I bought that TPM two point zero plug in for my motherboard because I wanted to tell you to do that. I want well, I wanted to upgrade to Windows eleven and I needed
the TPM two point oh. So I went ahead, I bought it. It arrived, I plugged it in and it saw it. I was so excited. And then wouldn't let me upgrade to Windows eleven because it said my processor was not certified even though it was an I seven sixty six hundred, it was a seventh generation processor and because of that, uh, the Microsoft would not qualify it as a security and Sean was like, you know what,
you know, there's reasons for it the whole bit. So, and I could not even buy another motherboard or another processor that would fit that motherboard. That motherboard wouldn't support higher generation.
So and then you get that, then you have to get a new raum.
Yeah, and then yeah, that's ridiculous. So I thought, so now I understand, all right. So what I ended up doing is I was reading this story about when boontu and basically it's I've used them boom too before I've done it. I remember being extremely easy, and I thought, well, let me go online and look more into this. And I looked in and I went to the official website. So I thought, let's try it. So I downloaded it,
burned an ISO. And for those wondering how it's what's the cost, there was no cost involved if I wanted to. If I wanted to, uh maybe donate, which I did, which was thirty five bucks to the developers for the power tools I could have that. I got to the computer, changed out a hard drive, so I kept my original files, put a new one one terrorbyte as this in there and installed it. And it's like wind It looks just like Windows Windows. It's like Windows eleven is sitting on
my computer. It's what does the what does the start button look like? Is it the Linux logo instead of it's the Windows and that there's a couple of reviews that have been saying that they're going to run into problems because they're using what looks like official Windows icons and the whole bit.
You know, it would be funny is if they just put like literally a picture of like an old cottage window or something right like just just as the start button, like an old wooden duel frame cottage window. You know what I'm talking about. Yep, Yeah, that'd be funny.
But I got to be honest, and I really like it. It's been great. We're using it right now in the Zoom call. I was able to, you know, download Zoom skyes.
How is the application support then?
Pretty good? I mean I haven't run into any issues. I've done done the updates every day. I have not been able to install nor on it because of course I have the Norton System Suite. Don't make fun of me, but I pay for it biting my tongue. So yeah, I know you are Norton support Linux. I don't think it. I don't think it is because I couldn't find I couldn't find that support. So yeah, E set would be one. I would think that would.
But here's the thing though, you're talking about Linux, right, which is you know, Linux is based off of Unix. Linux doesn't necessarily require anti virus because viruses aren't written for Linux. Yeah, they're written for Windows because ninety five percent of the world uses Windows or whatever it.
Is, so they're gonna be the biggest target. Yeah.
Yeah, so you're not gonna get very much malware or viruses on a Linux machine.
It's been really pretty good. I like the experience. And you know, Slick has been using Linux and different distributions for a while and I was dying to tell them, dude, have you looked at when yet? Because I do like it. Well, what are you running, Slick? Uh?
I'm running on one I'm running I'm trying to think of the name of theirs. There are three major versions of U boom Too, and I'm running the media version. Uh, with all the media editing tools. I'm running down on one machine. On another machine, I am just running a think straight o boom Too, you know, just using it as a you know, with with with all the accessible and compatible software services. I got a lot of Linux machines around. I just handed somebody one. I gave it
to them for free. I'm trying to remember Manjero, I put Majero on that one and gave it to somebody. Let me ask about this one boom Too, because I'm as we're talking. I'm looking because I'm not familiar with one bo to w I N b U N t U Is that correct? W U N wouldn't I just because I did find win boo too, But what you were saying didn't fit. Quick script, Oh.
My gosh, this is literally Windows eleven. I'm looking at a screenshot of it. It is literally Windows eleven.
Yeah, you look at it and it's uh, it just it's spitting image of it. You can have, uh, you'd have the tools set up the same way runs Google Chrome, runs Microsoft Edge, has my favorites.
You know.
He was able to load my password manager into it. I'm pretty, like I said, pretty darn pleased with it. The only thing I hadn't found although in the last time we used it, Uh, the camera was a little weird because I'm using the Logitech Prio and there's no specific Linux software for it, but it looks like Linux itself when I did. One of the updates. May have fixed that because the camera's looking pretty good now.
Wow. So yeah, the Windows type interface on top of Linux or BUTU and a version of a BOOTU which is a derivative of Debian. So yes, I know it's it's way too much. I just said, everybody I know. But that's that's how it's layered out.
But here's the thing. Somebody has an older computer they like I've done. I've got an old laptop, and I'm thinking, you know what, I think that maybe this is something I need to do is install it on that older computer and give it a shot.
Because if you like the hardware, if it's good hardware, I tell people, never ever until unless you're absolutely sure, never throw away the hardware because.
I may be able to put life into it with a Linux system. Right. So there's a there's a new distribution that's out now, all right, This distribution is getting a lot of attention. It is called linux Mint twenty two. Yeah, and the official website is linuxmint dot com. That I'm thinking, now I may go ahead and pull this drive out and just go ahead and do linux Mint and give
that a shot and see how that experience is. Because people are saying that with Cinnamon running on underneath it, it's it's just perfect.
Right And if those are no When Andy says Cinnamon, he's talking about the desktop, the interface. What looks like they're different names for different types.
So you get that experience. But yet you're able to work without some of the frustrations that some people have said. And you know, my frustration was going to be end of October of next year, I'm not going to have support on this because you know, Microsoft is saying, well a Windows ten support is going to go away, so I wouldn't have those security safety updates. Why not take a look at Linux and see what it can do?
Yeah, and Linux is yeah free unless you want to donate the thirty five. I think that's an amazing it's an amazing thing. Lenox is really making some good strides recently in getting public support, and again with Windows eleven. I mean, Windows eleven is is kind of been a flop. I mean it's it's not that great. I mean, I've thankfully had not too many problems with it. But then again, I also didn't have any problems with Vista, and everybody had problems with.
Oh yeah, yeah, so did you really?
I did not? Probably I didn't. Yeah, me too, I did not have a problem with it. Now Windows, that meant we're not going to go there.
Yeah's stay away from me or Bob, but let's stay away from Microsoft Bob too. Yeah.
But but but you know, Linux is really making some good strides. And you know, you look at things like Steam, the gaming platform. Steam has a lot more support for Linux games now and and and even with like Xbox or whatever, like you want to do Xbox you can put you can't put the Xbox app on a Linux, but you can do streaming through the web browser on Xbox. So Linux is really making a lot of good moves and I really applaud them for that.
Yeah, so that distribute should linux mint dot com if you want to take a look for that, uh and check that out and see if if that's something that may be able to work for you. Well, they like it.
The big problem used the version of Linux linux mint before and it's strong. I mean it's sturdy. It is rock solid.
Now.
The thing is is people that who might be a little bit tech savvy but not like super when you think of Linux, you might be scared. You might be thinking, oh my god, command line and then the command line interface and text all everything is everything's text. No, not anymore. I mean it's still there. You can use it if
you want, you don't have to. And then that kind of really started with a Buntu, a Boontu took that major next step from getting away from the command line to be more in of a graphical user interface or guy. And then from there they just kept building upon that graphical units interface to now where it's it's it's almost indistinguishable from Windows eleven. Okay, but you can still use it if you want. You can still use the command line interface.
I have to ask this, is there a Linux distribution that looks like Windows XP because that would make me really happy.
Oh, I'm sure there probably is.
Somebody probably has a desktop that you can load into the computer. Yeah, all right.
It's like real quick.
You've been you know, looking and delving into television choices, and we've talked about you know, ATSC with three you know, three point oh, three point zero, what's going to be happening. You actually did a little investigation on this.
I get well, I did a lot of investor because I was looking forward to it for the possible opportunities of expansion features and stuff like that. So here in Tucson, what we did they did most of the major stations, if not all, of our television stations have upgraded to ATSC three point zero, So it's there. So I did invest in an ATSC three point zero, donor Oh so I've got one of those. And you know today one day one was kind of funny.
Guy.
I think I told the story already before because some channels had DRM on them to realize management and I'm like, oh, you're gonna lock us out of some stuff. Well, this isn't fun.
Wait, so you would go to over the air, you know, ATSC three point zero and over the channel and it had DRM so you wouldn't be able to see it.
Yeah, and it was ill autumn. It's not a problem. I think it was KVOA and k gun kg un. And I mean as I was scrolling through after I did the scan for all the channels, I'm scrolling through the channels that there was I'm able to receive. I noticed that and with locks, and I'm like, oh, and now they weren't. Those channels were not locked, but the possibility of them locking me out was there. You know. I was like, all right, this is great. What else?
So you know, right now here in Tucson, I'm not going to push anybody to get an at SC three point oh t TV And and they're they're starting to advertise a lot now too. You know, hey, this TV has got you know, the version three And I'm like, yeah, yeah, save your money. Just calm down, save your money. Not related to this, but maybe it is related to this. I did notice that. So one of my favorite digital subchannels, I call them the dot channels, but I learned the
official term. Now, I like nine point six here in Town, which is script's news all the time. But I know, and they were. I knew they were talking about it. I didn't know they were going to do it. Me TV was going to create a brand new channel of their own. I don't know if you have it justin.
But do you know what I'm talking about? The idiots?
Okay, good, So which one?
Sov hang hang on, let me get there.
So on Saturdays, me TV does a three hour cartoon block, and I'm always there with my bowl of cheerios. Man, I am right there.
Warner Brothers, because of course you are.
I can't afford comic books anymore.
Well, they have me TV Tunes, which is you get cartoons all the time. Yep.
Yeah, that's the one that just kicked off. What a couple of weeks ago, and I have been on it. I mean they've They've got a cartoon that can't stand but I will watch they're there Marine Boy. That was the dumbest cartoon, idiot. Yeah, there is a speed racer.
Okay, go run to Warner Brothers stuff.
There's oh Scooby Dooes now on now.
I think I saw Heckle and Jackal Yep, yep, saw them, Popeye and Olive Oil. I mean it's the cartoons that you're gonna love. I mean, they're they're doing that. But you know, you look at that and you think, wow, there's there is to be an outlet for people who don't want to subscribe to cable. And if they live in a in a good area, they're going to be able to pick this all up with a tutor. But you're still saying, don't buy one yet.
Not yet.
Now this tuner I have also to get the let's say, the additional features. It has a Wi Fi on it, so this tuner connects. Yeah, this tuner connects to my internet service, so it can. And so I'm based on what I've heard about other ATSC three point zero TV stations in other cities, but they've they've been doing so there's interactivity. There's the possibility of interactivity between the viewers and the television station. It's going to be through the internet.
It's not gonna be necessarily over the air. So all the all the stuff that we're getting is coming over the air. So once I put it online, like I said, we're not doing any interactivity here in Tucson. But I've heard what you know that there have been some in other cities.
The thing about ATSC three, and you kind of brought this up because your tuner is Internet connected and things like that. Here's another aspect of this that people aren't realizing. Now. I'm not trying to say don't go ATSC three. Okay, it's the future. Everybody's gonna have to have it, no matter what. You're gonna be forced upon it. But here's the thing. Exactly what Slick was just talking about. Internet connected device that gets his channels, gets the guide. It
also takes your data. It's taking your data and selling your aggregated data of who's watching what to what time, and it's selling it to the highest bidder. So these TV companies, you know, these local TV companies, because they are losing money like crazy. This was a big reason why ATSC three was approved by the FCC because they realized that with all these streaming services now local television
was dying. They did not have a profit stream and they didn't have a stream of revenue stream because nobody was watching.
The only way to get an is through news broadcasts because they own control that, and there you go.
But people weren't even doing that anymore. They were just going online to look at the news. So here comes ATSC three and saying, hey, look, we can track all of this data and then you can turn around and sell it.
Right, Gonna be interesting to see what happens with that. All Right, we get take another quick break, we come back. You got you're thinking about another career too, justin that. It's kind of interesting night gig. So we'll talk about how you're gonna come up with that one with more of tech Talk Radio. And I want to show you something I bought at the bin store that I thought this is pretty amazing stuff. When we come back, I'm Ady Taylor Amslick and I'm Justin.
Find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com Forge last tech Talkers.
We'll be right back now back to Chief Talk Radio.
So a couple of weeks ago, I got approached by some friends of mine that they do the trivia night over at the Bruce where I do my tributes every Wednesday.
During the gonna say, during the pandemic. It was It's cool because I could log in and you were streaming live and actually watch the trivia nights. That was a blast.
Yeah, And actually that really, honestly, that was one of the reasons that Bruce was, you know, saved. They told me it was because doing this kept people thinking about Bruce and going there and buying the beers. Even though they couldn't be there. They would go there and buy the beer and they would watch the trivia nights and it was great for both me and for them.
So I mean.
I I yeah, I loved it. I loved doing it, and it was great, a great time. But they approached me and said, hey, look, you know we're gonna have a wedding. They're already married, but they just want to have a ceremony. We want you to dj our wedding. And I was like, oh, I uh, I just I don't do that anymore, you know. And they're like, well, you know, you said you were radio DJ and I said yeah, and I you know, when I was living in Japan. I was a club dj. I mean I was.
I was.
I was one of the better DJs in Tokyo. I mean I was going up to Rapungi and DJing Friday Saturday nights. I mean, I was, I was. I was pretty good. But you know this is this is looking bad, this twenty years ago, you know, so like I just don't do anymore. I don't have any of the equipment, you know, I don't have the turntables, I don't have the software. I don't I don't have all the music anymore. And they're like, please, please, we you know, please, we want you to DJ or a wedding. And I'm like,
all right, let me look into it. So I looked into it a little bit. I found this software called Virtual DJ.
The best. It's good.
Virtual Virtual DJ is actually free to use. Now if you're if you're doing performances, they're like, oh, you've got to have a license to you know, perform you know whatever, blah blah blah. But you can use it for free. And then for music, I just I actually just I subscribe a title. So title is like another like a Spotify because Spotify does not allow this kind of stuff. And this is where I'm really starting to get irked with with Spotify. They're shutting down API access everywhere, like
it's just they're they're locking it down. They're drivingway customers. And honestly, now that I've used Title, I've only used Title here for about twelve hours now. I signed up earlier today. I like it. And the good thing about Title is it's it's it's lossless quality, Like every song they do is lossless quality. And they have over ninety million songs versus Spotify's what one hundred and twenty million, one hundred and thirty million something like that, so pretty
much everything is there almost right. So you tie in Title into into this program, and then you can buy hardware. So like I looked online and they actually sell like a DJ controller which comes with like the the two paddles where you can like you know, tick ticket, you know, give.
It back wedding like that.
But yeah, yeah, well the fader and everything, you know, like all the buttons, like like an actual traditional deck, right, like a cdg CD deck. The thing was only one hundred ninety nine dollars. Wow, And I was like, wait, hold on, so you're telling me for the price of title, which is nineteen ninety nine a month for the tie into Virtual DJ plus the music, and one hundred and ninety nine dollars for this, plus thirty five dollars for a stand that would fit the fit the controller, plus
the laptop. I'm like, a set, but you need speakers, dude, Well yeah, I know, but but the thing is, I'm not gonna buy those. They're gonna rent those from a company, and it's like two hundred and fifty bucks to rent them for a weekend. Let's come with massive speakers enough to fit one thousand people, and they're only gonna have like one hundred, right, So this is gonna be well over that. So anyway, I'm like, okay, so I could. I could probably do this, but I was like, I
don't know if I want to get into this. Then I looked up how much does a wedding DJ charge?
Oh boy, yeah, a wedding.
DJ, on average in twenty twenty four will charge anywhere from two to three thousand dollars. That was my give to seven hours of work.
Yep.
At that moment, I turned around and went to Amazon and I bought all that damn equipment because I'm like, hold up, if I spend two hundred and eighty dollars and I can make three thousand, which obviously I'm not
gonna charge them three thousand because they're my friends. But yeah, I might charge them two thousand, maybe fifteen hundred, maybe fifteen hundred because they're gona rent the speakers, but still fifteen hundred dollars for five hours of work, yes, please, it's And you know, the thing is, it's a lot of fun if you go out there with the idea that you're gonna have fun, rather than because I've done him.
I've done them before too, and they're they're a blasts.
I'm having so much fun with this. I hooked up my laptop to my my big surround sound speakers down here, and I'm sitting here playing with this DJ software with Eric, you know, Eric sitting you're playing his games on the news system. Misa is sitting on the couch, and I'm like mixing tracks back and forth. And my wife was like, ooh, that was a smooth cut. And I'm like, DJ Spider's back, baby. That was my that was my DJ name, that yeah,
twenty years ago. But dude, I am having so much fun with this now, and I'm I'm like, oh my god, I could literally do this because I've actually had requests from people, like a lot of times during the holiday season. They're like, oh, I know you do carry or not, I mean trivia, but do you do like, you know, just regular DJing, And I'm like, no, no, I don't, but now, hey, I can do that. I could do I could make a thousand dollars a night, you know, over over you know, over the holiday season DJ and
a couple of company parties. I'm just having so much fun with this and I get my new I get the new controller here on like Thursday or Friday, I'm not sure which day yet, but I'm gonna have so much fun with this and I'm gonna give them the best show of their lives.
Yeah, it's getting on the microphone. Make sure you get a microphone, you know, and then a microphone for the people who have to make the toast that golden voice there's, you know, And the thing is, it's all about the personality. There's about maybe three or four wedding DJs that are in southern this Tucson Green Valley area, you know, a couple of them are in radio and one of them is really good. And that's the thing. It's about that,
that that experience. You give them that personality. And you know, we've been spoiled because when I got into this this stuff, I had to carry crates of records. We didn't have digital music back then, you know, we didn't even have CDs that you would play. It was always vinyl, vinyl on techniques, twelve hundreds and go that way. But now I mean, you have you have you can have a party, Yeah, you can. You could book a party and they say,
well we like country music. Well, there you go. There's your your there's your drive, either title or your drive of collected music that's country or disco or whatever. Speaking of Southern Arizona, is is ah Duns Entertainment still in business becausemember I used to work for them back when I was in high school. Remember I don't I was.
It was the biggest, it was the biggest DJ company in Southern Arizona. They they did a party for Whitney Houston when.
The still alive.
I don't know, I've never I dj my own senior prom with them because I lost my date. My date dumped me on the day of the thing and I ended up djaying the prom for her and yeah, that was even much better than that. So that but no, I don't know if that company is still around, But I mean, yes, you're right, there's only a few different companies. But personality is what makes it different. And that was
when I had worked for that company, Doune's Entertainment. That's what they did because they they would have a DJ, they would have a lighting technician whose job was solely to play the lights, and then they would have a hype guy and that person's job was just to get out there with the crowded dance. And that's what made that company different. And again, going back to your point is it's not about the music or the equipment. It's about the personality. And that's why my friends wanted to
hire me because they know my personality. They wanted me there. They didn't want to hire anybody else. They wanted me.
You are gonna have to make sure you have the chicken dance song and the electric.
They actually told me those are banned.
They're like, no, oh, good band, those are not my favorite tudes. I'll tell you that much, Ben. There is a product that's going to be coming out and it was created by this this guy that is a Harvard dropout. His name is Avi Schiffman, and they got they got some funding and you talk about the side gig here justin how about this one? Right? Apparently back when COVID nineteen was out, he created a website that tracked it
and a lot of people loved it. Well, now this new device, it's an AI device called Friend and what it is is you wear it around your neck and it's treated as a companion. So you've got this little device that's there hanging by your neck and it's treated as a companion. You can talk to it or talk back to you, and it's all done by the artificial intelligence. And it could also connect to your phone via Bluetooth
and so it's constantly listening to you. And they say that it's really going to help a lot of people combat loneliness. Now we're so smoovie about that. Yeah, we're very skeptical of this kind of stuff. Called her Yes, and who was in the Scarlett Johansson, right, Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Rah Yeah. Yeah, he's calling it Friends. And this product is gonna be out for about ninety nine bucks but it reminded me. Do you remember tomaguccie. Oh yeah,
this is exactly what Toma Gotchi did. It was well, yeah, but do you have to like feed this thing? You gotta communicate with it and it'll just die if you don't. Oh maybe not. I don't know. That would be awful.
Because that's what Tomagotchi did. But yeah, but no, I get it. No, it makes it makes a lot of sense. The comparison. I just don't know. Man, wearing a thing about my neck. I mean, yes, I'm already carrying my phone in my pocket, which is always listening to me anyway, but just to have that device around my neck or whatever it is.
Like that's always going to be listening.
Yeah, yeah, about that.
Another break, we'll be back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I am Slick.
And I'm justin. Let me once again find us on the web tech talk radio dot com.
We'll be right back and now fact to tech talk Radio. What do remind you that if you want to reach out to us, you've got a question for the show, feel free to drop us a line. Just email us tech guys at tech talk radio dot com and we'll get to your question and if something you need and answer on right away, something you're working on, we'll get right back to you. But again tech guys at tech
talk radio dot com. So I was trying to explain to Slick earlier about the bins stores Amazon bin stores, and we're seeing that they're opening up in different parts of the country, justin do you know if you have a bin store in Denver, you don't know what a store is.
So what it.
Is is there is stuff that's returned to Amazon, and you know, usually it's returned through that area. So stuff that you're gonna find is going to be on the West Coast or East coast or central United States, but it gets returned and then people can bid and buy that buy on palettes. So when they buy stuff, they have no idea what they're getting, but you're gonna get
returns sometimes that are like they're pretty good stuff. And people have been going to our Bitten store here in Green Valley finding stuff, and I wanted to show you what I found. And again I found this in Green Valley a microphone, and this is a perfect microphone for podcasters. It is the A eight plus finit finin fifth in right and it's a little hard to pronounce, but it's powered by USBC. It lights up, it's got an era RGB look to it, and the quality sounds just as good.
I gotta say it just as good as the Logitech ORB that I have. This cost me fifteen bucks. That's it, really, Yeah, for fifteen dollars. So if you go there on Fridays, to fine is what it's called. But if you go there on Fridays, whether it be if you have one in your area. I know. I was doing a search for somebody else that was in California and I found the same type of store that sells pallettes that came in.
If you go in there on the day that they have the first price put out, and this one was fifteen, it drops every day until one day they do the restocking. But this is a really good microphone. Again, picked it up for fifteen bucks, So you never know what you're gonna find there. I've already bought a tablet I've bought. I bought three D glasses, not the Mata, but they're the kind you pop your your smartphone in and you
watch it that way. And again I found those here in Green Valley, so I wanted to share that with you.
That's awesome.
Yeah, good stuff. I don't think we have one of those in Denver. I bet, I bet if you look and you look for Amazon Surplus or Amazon Bin returns or even Walmart Target, some of those also do the same thing. They sell some of their stuff on pallets, you know. And it used to be for a while when you had an Amazon product. If it didn't, if it wasn't going to be something they could resell, they would just tell you, okay, we'll we'll send you your refund.
Keep it my cardio systems card that I have to you know, you press your two fingers on it, it gives you a heart beat. If I decided I didn't really want it, I wanted to send it back and they said, no, keep it, and they gave me a full refund, and you know, then I started having heart is shoes. So you served me right. So I kept it and they used it. There you go anyway, all right, great, So it's great to see you guys again. We got so much more to talk about. But we'll pick some of
that stuff up next week. Actually, you're gonna be out again justin right next week, Yes, next week. I'm on vacation, all right, hopefully Slick, you'll be with us.
Yeah, I've got. I'm I'm probably gonna go off about this downy junior thing.
As do Wait, you don't like that? Huh you don't like that?
Yeah, I got. I'm bothered by that. So I have a hole, you know.
Oh wow? And I love that. We got through the whole show. And I know Justin has seen uh, you know, Wolverine and Deadpool. I haven't seen it yet, and he didn't give away one bad thing. Is the movie good? It's great? Yeah, it's great.
Yeah, Like everything around this movie is great.
Yeah, it's made a lot of money.
Anything and everything related to it seems to be great.
All right. Well again, that wraps up this week. I'm Andy Taylor, dian Die am Slick and I'm Justin let me.
Thanks for joining us, have yourselves a great week. We'll see you next time.