Kreg Pocket Hole Jig for Corn Hole Boards, Making Perfect Ice Balls and Battery Powered Generators – HGG415
Mike has taken on a second job with building Corn Hole Boards out of his garage this fall and working Hannah as the head painter. We spend some time talking about Kreg Pocket Hole Jigs and how Mike is using them. We also looked at $5000 fridge that will make clear ice balls for you as well a window to see into the unit. We finish up with some chat about some new Battery Powered Generators on Kickstarter. I think you will enjoy the show.
Full show notes and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg415
Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #415 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.
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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, plwx, battery, fridge, jig, solar power, corn hole, generators, Scooters, Kreg
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Conversation
Corn hole boards?
Jim is back on Plex
Perfect Ice balls – https://twitter.com/AwsmSpaceMonkey/status/1169270017961136129
News
A new line of Battery-powered Generators
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ecoflow/delta-the-new-standard-of-battery-powered-generator
Scooters
Reviews
Kreg Pocket Hole Jig – https://www.kregtool.com/store/c13/kreg-jigsreg/
Updates
The battery on the Kangaroo Update
TAG.tv got a speed lift – thanks Christian
Jim Collison [0:00]
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 415, recorded on September 5 2019.
Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all the favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home. News, reviews, product updates and conversation all for the Average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison, broadcasting live from the average guy TV Studios here in a blistering…Mike I kind of joke last week that like a falls on its way. any farther from the truth, right?
Mike Wieger [0:41]
It can’t decide because like a few days this week, it’s beautiful low 70s. And then you get other days, which is super high humidity high heat like today. It just can’t figure it out. Hopefully we start the trend of getting rid of some of these days. But you know, it’s still clear skies. It’s still gorgeous
Jim Collison [0:57]
for us as I look at the weather channel, and on my Surface RT looks like 84, 81, 77 and you’re thinking okay, maybe that’s it? Nope. 87, 86, 85 so we’re not we’re not out of it yet. But is it Can you can you build those cornhole boards in your garage? When its hot is still
Mike Wieger [1:19]
not what I do.
Jim Collison [1:20]
Yeah, garage fan.
Mike Wieger [1:21]
I don’t. I’ve been wanting to get one actually. It’s my father in law. He was in town this weekend. He’s like, you just need a fan. I have a backdoor in my garage and the garage. I opened the door and the garage. Usually that creates little bit of a cross breeze. It kind of flows through there. But it’s, it’s not too terrible. You’re out of the sun. Right? It’s just the humidity like you walk outside and your shirts just sticking to it. Yeah,
Jim Collison [1:41]
I need to get one of those big box industrial box fans like 160 hundred 70 bucks like the go on the deck. Just one we’re sitting out there. The other night I was out there and it was just a smidge too hot, where you kind of he was kind of stifling. And if I had some fun had a little more wind blowing and probably wouldn’t work. So
Mike Wieger [2:02]
I tell you that we had on Saturday of Labor Day weekend, that was probably the most beautiful weather day. We’ve had Nebraska in a very long time. So much so that, you know during the day we were outside Husker gameday, obviously we were playing cornhole in the yard. And then at night, we sat around and we started a fire in the fireplace outside. And we all sat around, because I just got that really crisp, cool air. And that fire felt really good. It was the best day on Saturday
Jim Collison [2:25]
Looks like we got some rain coming and maybe some cooler temperatures. Of course, we have some cool show notes that are we put out there. And you know, there’ll be a few for tonight, head out to the average guy.tv slash HGG 415 for the show if you want to catch the show notes. And you can also join us live on our mobile app I just paid for another year of those. And I always forget I haven’t turned on automatic. I want to thank our Patreon subscribers, I got paid by Patreon as well. So thank our Patreon subscribers for helping us cover the expense of that HomeGadgetGeeks.com thank Patreon. And I think Christian Johnson this week, Christian did a bunch of great to the average guy TV and Mike, it could not be any faster. Like he has to throttle it just so people don’t think it’s fake. Like that’s the right. That’s now he had to slow it down a little bit so people don’t get there and going is this actually real.
Mike Wieger [3:13]
I saw that and showed up and I went and tested my website. And sure enough and just let you guys know, he also does have he has really caring and nice customer support. I didn’t realize so I set my website up about a month ago. And apparently when I set it up, I did it wrong. And I didn’t do automatic payments. So he just sent me a nice little message. Hey, Hey, Mike, how many automatic payments are working? You didn’t pay your last invoice. I’m like, Oh, I didn’t even realize it went in and fixed it. But he didn’t turn me off or anything. He just, you know, politely messaged me. And it was like it had been a week. And so very, very considerate customer support he offers
Jim Collison [3:47]
well, and let me tell you the story, because so on Sunday, Sunday, was it Sunday, Sunday, Monday timeframe, he’s doing some database upgrades to make it even faster. And he doesn’t have to like it could just be the way
Mike Wieger [4:00]
it is already blazing fast.
Jim Collison [4:02]
God it’s incredible as fast as it is and as stable as it is. And so he pings me, he’s like, hey, do you got a backup? And I was like, Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure I set up backup on that thing. Let me go find it. So go to Dropbox or I’ve set the drive the backups to go. There’s no backups up there. There’s some old backups from another website I used to consult on and Oh, and there’s some ones from 2012. And if 5 years ago, well, no, 2014. Five years ago, I shut off the backups for some reason. This list like this tells you how little I’ve thought about backing up my site? Because I just trust Christian, Mike. I don’t. He wants me to have my own backup copy. He’s like, no, it’s best practice if you have your own, but I got your back. So like I hadn’t backed up the site in five years. So the backups that were on the server because I use WP backup or something like that. So the copy goes to the server, copy goes to Dropbox. So we have it just in case. Well, so he restores from what he thinks is my backup. And, of course, there’s articles from 2014 the newest stuff that’s out there. No, none of the plugins are there. And none of that, like the theme isn’t there. I mean, it’s a it’s kind of a mess. I’m like, dude, I am so sorry. Like I haven’t run a backup in five years. And I first of all, how do I get this far? How do I go five years without thinking about a backup? It’s how rock solid
Mike Wieger [5:33]
it is.
Jim Collison [5:35]
This tells you just how much I trust it. Right? So he’s that guy, give me a give me a little bit. Sure on some things back whatever. By that evening. He’s like, okay, it’s back. And I said, Dude, he’s like, Yeah, we did this and that. And I got this done. It was super cool. He goes, I said, Okay, you so do you want me to set backups because again, I always recommend you have your own backups. And so reset those backup, turn them on, verify them, make sure things were going there, they’re going back to my Dropbox account again. But huge thanks to Christian for that again. Maple Grove partners. com if you think of setting up a site, Mike did this $10 a month Unlimited, just about everything. Super fast, right?
Mike Wieger [6:12]
Throw in the email to the emails, awesome. He’s got web based email, and you can just put on your phone for an extra $5 a month, so you just can’t beat it. I wish I had been going with him. Honestly, I had been doing Google Apps for a lot of my other domains in the past to get email and all that stuff. And it’s just so expensive over there. And getting out of that ecosystem is so hard. Just I didn’t realize that he had that option to just for five bucks and get email
Jim Collison [6:37]
if you normally don’t make it to the end of the show. Usually thank Christian at the end, but so much good work by him this week in fixing Hey, this has been any other provider. I’d have been down. Listen, I’ve been down for the count. Like I didn’t have Mike I didn’t I literally Yeah, I had October 2014 that’s all I had and I could I have reconstructed it. Maybe not without oven weeks of work to put all that back together and so in there’s other providers that do that as well. But Christian did a bang up job very little drama took care of it. Christian, thanks for your work. And if you’re if you’re like I said, if you’re interested in starting a site, Maple Grove partners com plans are 10 bucks, get out there as little as $10 get out there and get that done. Want to thank Ross Brand did a bang up job. Ross is the master marketer when it comes to audio and video and he marketed that thing all week. And it may have set records as far as viewers and those kinds of things. So Ross, thanks for your time last week, a lot of time talking about YouTube, a lot of soul searching on my end, what am I going to do? I kind of just decided Mike at the end. So if you haven’t listened to it, spoiler alert. I’ve been struggling, how much more work do I do to make YouTube work for me, and I’m going to just keep doing what I was doing. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, I’m just gonna put it out there, I’m not going to try and gain it. I’ll put tags and I’m gonna change I am gonna change the album art. So it looks a little better than just, you know, just the green Home Gadget Geeks. The reason I did that Mike is that way I thought people would be able to find it quickly on YouTube, it would set it out. That’s a very distinctive logo. Right? And so if I were looking through YouTube for my stuff, I would see it faster because it’s the brand. Apparently I don’t get any honor on YouTube for doing that they want these crazy pictures of people. And then words and yellow letters and maybe some of the ugliest art ugliest, ugliest art I’ve ever seen. It’s ridiculous.
Mike Wieger [8:33]
Yeah. And it just goes back to that thing of Do you want to find new listeners? Because the thing you just described is great. Actually, for me. I do appreciate that. And when I’m scrolling through, I noticed the logo and that but I’m someone who’s already looking for your podcast. If you’re looking to get a new audience, it’s just not going to attract someone to click on it right
Jim Collison [8:50]
now. They’re just not I guess that
Mike Wieger [8:51]
I got the oh my gosh, I guess
Jim Collison [8:53]
oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe
Mike Wieger [8:55]
in two days.
Jim Collison [8:56]
You won’t believe what Mike said next. Yeah, we had a good time with it. I does cause me man I I get all wound up I get wrapped around the axle on this I on all Friday and Saturday. This is all I thought about and I tried doing some. I thought okay, I was gonna break some things up and do some other stuff. And then I said, You know what, I’m not happy. Doing all those things like that. So, yeah, I’m not going to get the reach on YouTube and some of those kinds of things. I’m just not happy doing them. It doesn’t make me happy. And what makes me happy is blowing through the production dropping this on audio, you know, we’re getting, I don’t know, six to 800 downloads. Now, on the audio. The video RSS feeds do pretty well there are 100 plus on both sides, sometimes more. Good enough. Good enough. And listen, if you’re listening to this right now you’re in your car, you’re walking the dog or on a bike or whatever, I appreciate you just listen, we I think we just want to be a community podcasts. And I don’t know if I want to deal with all the negative garbage that comes along with 10s of thousands of subscribers. We do have 1000 I think I’ve 12 hundred subscribers out on YouTube. It’s not enough, but it’s still good. Yeah, so good. And I appreciate your guys’s loyalty to the podcast. So great discussion caused me to think a lot, Mike, if you guys have any feedback on that, if you want to tell me what you like, or you want to tell me what you prefer. Or some other things or just tell me what to do. Apparently, there’s folks who love to tell me just what to do. You can send me an email. Jim at the average. I’m joking, Jim. Not really, Jim at the average guy.tv and I love to hear from you. I saw Tony put in a comment Tony thanks to you. Tony is getting great at getting guests on. And so Frank and Joss from next cloud are coming on in a couple weeks here three, four weeks. And so Tony, thanks for getting that done as well. I got emails from both of them and they were like I think it was on Twitter. And they’re like apparently we’re supposed to be on your show. Okay, apparently Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds awesome. And they said they liked coming on shows in doing this so Tony thanks for that if you got if you have somebody you want to see interview we’ve got after next week Ryan is coming on so it’d be fun to have him on he came into Omaha Mike and I got a chance to meet him at a pizza last and meet his family and enjoy a time he’ll be on next week. 17th is a little bit of a is a little bit is a little open at this point not sure where I’m going with that one and then three brand new guests you never heard from or the next three weeks so you can I want to stay tuned in to all those things that are going on. Join us in the Facebook group facebook.com slash groups slash the average guy or I think you can just go to the average guy.tv slash Facebook and then discord the average guy.tv slash discord Mike you have been building cornhole like we just talked about this in pre show like you do nothing once now that you got and so so tell me these cornhole boards it for everybody who knows that game, kind of a board, it’s you know, four by three or whatever for you. Yep. Or before by two and a hole and you throw the corn bags with corn and on but what, what got you into building these and this is going to lead to a kind of a tech tip gadget that we have for you. But what got you into building these things.
Mike Wieger [12:06]
So it started you know, while ago, a few years ago, I was over to buddy’s house, and he just his dad actually we were hanging out as a college roommate of mine, his dad happened to be working on one of these and, and we helped him for an afternoon and it was it was a ton of fun. It was just I saw it as a really cool project. And cornhole is one of those things if you’re in if you’re in actually, if you’re a tailgate, or really anywhere in the US. But it’s especially popular here in the Midwest. People just really like these cornhole boards, and they sell them commercially at like your shields, your Dick’s Sporting Goods, your outdoor stores, but they’re extremely expensive, for not very good quality boards. So you’re going to pay like, between 160 and $200. For some pretty flimsy, not very well put together boards, decent. I mean, they’ll do the job, but you can, you can build it a lot better. So I actually we have a very cheap set that have been getting us through, and they finally started wither away. And I was like, you know what I’m just gonna buy I buy a new set. It’s it’s Husker game day. So this was last week, I was like, I’m just gonna buy a set, I started looking at the prices, I’m like, you know, this could be kind of fun, I could build one of these. And so they’re okay, let me just let me go and see how this goes by myself, because I’ve done it before, but I’ve never done it all on my own right. And so when I went to Lowes, and Hannah and I threw together a set for ourselves, and I can actually show a picture real quick here of that while I’m talking. But um, so what got me into it was really just I love building. And when I go to work, and I have to use my brain all day, and I’m just mentally exhausted, coming home and working with your hands is just one of the best things ever. I’ve I’ve learned that about myself, whatever it is, you know, you see all the tools behind me, I’m usually doing projects back here, whether it’s building stuff for Hannah, we built a coat rack, and I just really enjoy it. And so I went to Lowes and I got all the parts. And I really, that this is actually they’re not, they’re not too expensive to put together. But they take a lot of time is what they take. So what I’ve done this entire process is if you are paying someone to make you a custom cornhole board, so long story short, ours went really well. So now I’m making them for other people and selling these boards. Just know that if you see the price on these things on a Facebook marketplace, or something like that, and you start to kind of balk at the price, these take a lot of time. And if it’s a very well put together set, you can easily throw these things together and do a sloppy job. If you’re taking the time to do it, right. You know, it takes it takes a long time. So you’re paying for someone’s time. But let’s see here, if I can share just an application,
Jim Collison [14:41]
bring that up, and I’ll throw it into the throw it into the video. Mike, oftentimes, when you’re building things this way, and I’m a big this old house and and if you know, if you’ve watched this old house, you know that they make jigs for everything they got, I forget his name, Tom Silva, who is their main carpenter, he has a jig for everything. We’re going to talk a little bit about a really cool jig that you’re doing for this. But yeah, you’re showing this these are, these are some that you just made.
Mike Wieger [15:11]
Yeah. So this is the set that I made for Hannah and I. And so we put kind of we got the frame all together. And we obviously taped down I kind of custom design. And then we use a combination of stain and paint. So obviously the dark side there, it’s kind of hard to see in this photo, but you can still see the green as a stain. And then we painted the the line in. And then the W actually for Wieger. Last name is we used Hannah’s mom’s cricket. If you guys have ever used a cricket machine, they’re really cool. You can print any sort of design into a lot of different materials, we used a kind of totally forget the name of it like that sticky vinyl, is what it is. And then I was kind of worried about that peeling off. But really, you have to do so many layers of polymer on the top of this thing to get the slide right. So we did six layers of public on this, you do a layer of poly, wait three hours to layer probably wait you on your second to last layer of poly you sand to get it really nice and smooth. And then you on your last layer, you’re really just doing a really thin almost to get, you know finish it up, you know really thin, thin last layer, and it covered everything up so that w is not going anywhere. You can even go your you can try it, you’re not going to get to it, there’s so many layers of poly underneath there. So so that’s what they turned out, they turned out actually pretty good. I’ve got a handle on this side, a rope handle that you can kind of hold them together. And I think what I’m actually going to do now that I have, I think I’m going to put an eyelid hole on one side of one. And on the opposite side of the other board and then connected with like a straps, you could throw it over your shoulder and it’s connected to both boards. So you know if you’re carrying it a long distance, the one thing about these boards, so these are regulation size, four by two, and they’re used with two by fours and three quarter inch plywood on top. They’re pretty heavy. I mean, that’s a lot of lumber there, which makes it great for they don’t budge, like if you’re playing on some that these things aren’t bouncing on you. They’re not moving, they’re staying solid, which is great. You want the weight, but getting them to your destination can sometimes be a little bit of a challenge. So So yeah, that’s what that’s what I’ve been working on and building it turned into a family project because I love the construction side of it right getting it all put together. And Hannah is really enjoying the painting setting up the monogram whoever designs and so she’s really been all about that. So she’s in charge of all painting and everything. She does a much better job than I do I get I’m too impatient. Okay, come on, let’s go. And I start to rush stuff and it doesn’t work out. Well.
Jim Collison [17:32]
She’s doing that not with painting. Oh, go ahead. Oh, yeah, go for it. No, no God.
Mike Wieger [17:37]
So I think what this was leading to was the one item that I think if you guys are doing any sort of woodworking, I found a really cool tool. And I’m sure you guys if you if you’re big into woodworking you probably already know about it. But if you’re kind of new to it in our set that you just saw with Hannah and I had not use this tool. And so in our set, when you’re putting together the two, you see the screws on the outside. So the frame of that board set, you see obviously the screw holes on the outside that go into the construct the outside four foot pieces to the inner 28 inch pieces. And so what you can do though, is you can actually do pocket holes, and a pocket hole is on the inside underneath their holes that go in at an angle. And if you guys have looked at any decent furniture, you know what I’m talking about, it’s on the inside, it’s nice look at the inside of like your coffee table look up underneath it. And they hide the holes because they’re underneath there on the back and they’re at an angle. And even if they weren’t underneath, or if they weren’t a place you could see you can actually fill the holes and with plugs. So you can plug it back in because of the way it does it. So this Craig jig has been really nice to us, it’s KREG for those of you not watching on the on the video sites of KREG you can get this at Lowe’s, Home Depot Minaj, you can get online Amazon wherever you go, I would suggest going to Lowe’s or Home Depot because they run sales on these a lot because they’re a little bit expensive. But the version I got is the Craig pocket hold jigs 320. So this version is not any sort of jig that you would mount to like a table. This jig is going directly on the woods got a latch, so it latches on to the end. You set your depth you set what kind of thickness would you’re using, and it comes with the jig. So that’s what’s going you’re you’re putting that on the woods, you can have a nice hole to drill into. And then it comes with the drill bit as well you’d put in your drill with the stopper. So you set your stopper at the length. Yeah, this is a perfect picture. For those of you who aren’t watching the video. So it clamps onto the wood you’ve come to with the drill bit with the stopper. So it’s it could not be any easier because once you have set all the settings on the jig correctly, you put this thing down, you drill until the stopper hits the jig, and you’ve got a perfect pocket hole. And it works really really well it’s super easy to use this version is $39 is like if you get it from Craig calm, I got it for 28 on at Lowes, and just it couldn’t be easier. And I would suggest there’s one extra tool I would get into it’s called the I don’t know what it’s called. It’s the Craig clamp. And what it does is if you’re doing anything with one person, you have an extra set of hands. What the clamp does is once you get all your pocket holes drilled, you’re going to have two pieces of wood that are trying to come together usually at a 90 degree angle. And what the what the clamp is going to do is the clamp actually goes into the pocket holes and then it clamps to the other piece of wood. And when you clamp it down it creates a perfect 90 degree angle and it holds it together. So if you’re doing it one with one person, you’re not having to like straddle the boards hold it with your knees make pressure you’re in your then it’s something’s always slipping and moving. So I see Jim trying to look for the website. I’m not sure. Oh, there it is. So scroll down a bit. It’s actually the second one in from the left and the second row. So this clamp it’s the right angle clamp. And hope the other one that’s hard that one right the one right to the left to that. All right, hold on. Just to go back real quick. Yeah, no worries. To the right. This this second one in on the left.
Jim Collison [21:18]
Second one. Oh, this one this right angle clamp?
Mike Wieger [21:20]
Yes. Okay. Super simple. It’s actually pretty expensive. It Yeah, it’s like $40 but it is worth its money because of the the size of the just the way it’s constructed. You’re not going to find another clamp that can do this very well because it actually goes into the pocket hole and pulls that thing together at a 90 degree angle. So you’re getting right in you know you’ve got the right spot. And then you can always just cuz since you’re doing two pocket holes when you take one screw out you can put in the other hole if you want to, and clamp it together so it really if you’re a two man shop, you’d probably don’t need this if someone’s can help you hold a 90 degree angle. Even then though it just it makes it makes life super easy. So not a tech gadget per se. But for all you guys out there who like to work around the garage like to build stuff. Once I did this for the first time on cornhole boards, I went back and looked at all the things I’ve made and realized that you can use this in every woodworking project you do anything where you have two boards coming together. If you do the pocket hold it’s going to look so much better so much cleaner than you know having the screw holes on the side. So I’m really excited actually used on a bunch of other projects because cornhole boards, the cornhole boards, right I throw outside doesn’t doesn’t need to be that nice looking. No, I just kind of want it to be before any sort of furniture you’re making it’ll it’ll make a really, really nice pocket whole.
Jim Collison [22:39]
Other Jim said, back to my reference about Tom Silva. He thinks norm is the master carpenter. And I think that’s true a norm used to have a show called the new Yankee workshop if you’re into would like these guys, the tech, and Lately, I’ve been watching a ton of this old house. They’ve been getting super nerdy, like they’re talking about nest thermostats. I think they did a one of the EOB they’re talking a ton about tankless water heaters. They’ve, I mean, they they’ve really gone to all the gadgets over there. Norm is master Tom soap I think general contractor but he’s a pretty good Carpenter as well. He is the jig master. That guy gets a jig for everything that he does. He doesn’t leave anything for chance. He’s like, nope, he’ll spend an hour or two making a jig just to make sure he gets the best
Mike Wieger [23:26]
That’s my father-in-law and I didn’t I didn’t even think about it. But he’s, I was constantly doing the measuring tape, tape, you know, and then pull it over to the miter saw and do it. He’s like, why don’t we just make a jig? You can just slide these things don’t hit the thing and moving your crank through. I’m like, I don’t know, cuz it’s not gonna take that long. But uh, but yeah, making a jig definitely does help us. Yeah, no, yeah, get together to two pieces of advice I would give you if you guys are doing this, your workshop makes a difference, set it up to be the most functional workshop you can have. There are two simple things I have in my garage that make it the best best place for me to do all this. And all it is, is you know, I have an air compressor. So I use for my, I think it was Ron in the chat was talking about getting a brand new and actually have one I use it with my air compressor. But in my air compressor, I have a hose that I have nailed up the wall up onto the ceiling and into one of those big huge round retractable hoses. And having that on the ceiling, I can just grab that from anywhere and yank it pulled over, let it go and it goes right back up to the ceiling keeps everything clean, I would not use my compressor as much if I didn’t have that hose just always there. I mean, I don’t want to unwind a hose, I want to wind it back up and I have to make sure putting stuff away. And then I have the same thing for electrical power my garage. So I have one of those circular retractable ones, it’s up in the ceiling plugged in, I just pull that power down, I pull the air down. So being able to do that I use it all the time to spray out all the sawdust or use the Brad Naylor and so just having a place that’s functional and I have a table a collapsible table that’s out there with my saw on it that I it fits perfectly in a spot when I put my cars in so I can parked my car in the garage, pull my jeep Out, pull my table and my workshops ready to go. So, you know think about those little things that yeah, that retractable thing might cost 60 bucks at first, but man does it save you a bunch of time bunch of hassle, you’re gonna actually use your tools more when you have just just accessible and having it mounted to the ceiling I found is the best because it’s right where you need it and it stays out of your way. You’re not going to hit it, but it’s always there. I used to fill up our car tires you know pull down the compressed air it’s right there and and just go
Jim Collison [25:29]
Yeah, good. Good advice. I think if you this is where my mistake I don’t set things I don’t take the time to set them up properly. So I’m always fighting with them all the time. Yeah.
Mike Wieger [25:40]
Yeah, I need I need to do is already hard enough. You don’t need little things, giving you one more excuse to that.
Jim Collison [25:47]
Right. Tony says he loves his battery powered nailers. Yeah. super handy. Yeah, yeah, they’re not as fast like you gotta kind of wait for that to reset and re you know, do whatever you hear those. Some of the least some of the older ones you’d shoot those and you kind of gotta wait a second for that thing to reset. So not as fast in my experience as air compressor, nailer and I’ve got a couple of dealers to my I don’t have a brad, but I’ve got a finish nailer that I really like. A lot. Tony said he uses he used the the Craig jig for crown molding. Oh, that’s a good idea. Let me another Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good, good. And put the crown molding together first, and then put the crown molding up, like you’ve got a corner, which corner together first glue it, get it square, work with it down below, get it perfect, then put it in the space. Yeah, you have to have some square spaces to get that done. But good way to get it done. Mike, that’s super cool. And I think that’s some of the garage tech stuff that, you know, there’s just some really handy things from you know, flashlights to, to, you know, cables, retractable cables to tables, I what I really need in my garage is a movable, you know, but like, you can lock the wheels, but unlock them and move that table around. That’s kind of a general purpose table. And so you can do you can use it as an extension for your chop saw, you could use it as the extender for your table saw, you could put some things on it. If you know if you need to work on it, you could build things on top of it, slide it around, move it around, it needs to have the holes where you can put things up against it, you know, put dowels down in there to hold those things in a clamp, as well as a vice of advice. There’s tons of plans, by the way on the internet, you can find those and literally you just order the wood or buy the wood and put them together yourself. Yeah. And that’s another another project for another weekend. Are you yourself? Are you building these things and selling them to? Is that what you’re doing? Yeah, for people who want that?
Mike Wieger [27:52]
Yep. So you know, we’re not shipping them anywhere. So it really had to be local. But then the other basic thing about the garage we forgot, forget about simple technology. Like I like listening to music in the garage. You know, sometimes you forget the simplest solutions just the best. Just a $25 now I think they are Chromecast Audio, just get the audio version and plug that into a speaker and then I’ve got my phone there with Spotify that connects to a Chromecast Audio and you’ve got wireless music going wherever you need to. I kind of forgot how nice those Chromecast audios are. Because a lot of times you don’t want to you know I don’t have a TV out there. I don’t watch TV in my garage very often. But I started to listen to music. And those little Chromecast audios are fantastic little devices that still work really well.
Jim Collison [28:35]
Years ago, I got a little Bluetooth audio box. This one actually will take phone calls as well you can attach to the scale speaker to it. I found this handy and kind of dirty because I just grab it, turn it on, I leave it plugged in all the time. Turn on Bluetooth, it’s already recognized on the phone, I can play anything off of it. Move this thing around just kind of really handy. Yeah, you know, power, you could plug I could plug it line into it. If I want to do it. I reviewed this Olxiar, when we first got it. But I think having a little handy portable Bluetooth speaker. Also not a bad option to have, you know, around the yard have one outside that you you know that you can use kind of in a pinch, it needs to be handy. That’s the thing. Like if you’ve put it away somewhere, yeah, you may or may not actually go find it to get it out. It is kind of one of those things I find when I just leave it in the garage charging in the garage. Although that’s not the best for right, it gets pretty hot out there. And it gets pretty cold out there in the winter. Not great for the battery. But I find the more handy it is the better. I’ve actually found I’m putting a lot of my battery, the battery. What am I What am I? Yeah, my battery. So I put a lot of the batteries on. We have a pantry right before you go outside and it’s got power right behind it. And it kind of rigged up just a battery station it’s inside. So there’s a temperature fluctuations. But it’s it’s kind of not inside either like this, that pantry area kinda is the extension of the garage, so to speak in everybody’s mind, right. So another good way temperature is really hard on batteries. So now you know another good way to how kind of a station I’ve got one here back here. I can’t really see this. Let’s Let’s I’ve got one up on the top of this on the other side of the scar humidor here. It’s kind of battery station over here. Everything Xbox battery, anything that regards to charger, any kind of those things all in one place, right about a five little tower five USB, and some power right you got one of those two.
Mike Wieger [30:41]
Yeah, same thing I got it right over here. You can’t see it but it’s over in that corner of the workbench. I’ve got power running over there two chargers and then I’ve got actually in the slot where the workbench came in. That’s where I just store all the rechargeable batteries. So all the rechargeable double a triple A’s things like that over there drill batteries and then for the drums actually ran the charger right over to where those batteries are. If I can point two of those batteries to the drone are right there and I just ran the power right there so I can just charge them wherever they
think they’re supposed to be no
Jim Collison [31:12]
super good organization.
It helps I know I’m not the best at it to be honest with you but but Mike we had when we had shot to history Cody Wheat there we go when we had Cody wheat on the podcast couple weeks ago to three weeks ago he talked about making the perfect ice balls right and and or the perfect IQ right so of course we couldn’t be let me let me switch over to this in as I share my screen because you want to see this to maybe this is a good one to come watch the the video on so I got a tweet Peter. Peter sent me a tweet this week to both of us said hey here’s what you guys need for that the next cocktail and LG new refrigerator promises clear ice balls for your home neat pores and so if you click you get if you move into that you can see the LG new making these things and blah blah blah and it’s got a little section for it down here below and it’ll make it for you and then you kind of go wow, I wonder I wonder how much this thing costs. If you’re just and I know it’s not just the ice balls that make this thing expensive but 4399 Yikes. Right But Peter thanks for tweeting I don’t know if I could
Mike Wieger [32:35]
have already awesome refrigerator look at now with the interview.
Jim Collison [32:39]
Yeah, yeah. And oh, by the way, you can there’s a button you can push in it. it obscures the view into the fridge. So you can either have clear or what’s I’m sure it’s a white kind of whatever that is. Yeah, you know, frost frost up that glass. And what’s really popular on these kinds of fridges is the doors actually double doors so you open it once and you get to some set a shelf, close it, open it on a different handle in it. It grabs that shelf and pulls it with it and there’s another set of shelves behind it. Oh, and I was out I was out with Sammy I don’t know if this is one of those you’re getting a good look at the the shelf there. I don’t know let me see if there’s a picture here. freezer on the bottom they don’t i don’t know if this was one of these but I was at with Samantha and you’ve all heard her on the podcast. She closes he says what’s this handle for she grabs it and opens it up and there’s a whole nother shelf behind it and she she literally just got blow blew her mind. She’s like, what is this wizardry and and so pretty nice fridge. So Peter, thanks for sending in. Tony you’re really good about doing this to Tony has some of the most interesting tweets. I don’t know how he finds time to do it all just to be honest. He must subscribers good stuff, too. Yeah, he really go
Mike Wieger [34:05]
I want to know on this fridge. How are they making the perfect ice ball in a fridge freezer? Oh,
Jim Collison [34:11]
that’s a good? Yeah, that’s a good question. Let’s see if we’ve got some
Mike Wieger [34:15]
from what we heard. It’s it’s a very difficult task. It’s not something that’s very easy to do.
Jim Collison [34:21]
So it says the craft ice that’s they and they have the trademark device boasts a few options of course that makes standard cubes which can be dispensed in their original form or crushed the mechanism also makes cool ice spheres. I guess they’re not balls, but I thought it saying ice balls. LG is exclusive ice craft slow melting around icemaker automatically makes upscale craft ice at home without the work explains the marketing materials. No more time consuming molds that only produced one or two at a time. The balls are two inches, two inches in diameter. Sorry, it’s really hard to say that and what hallway about 1.13 pounds a pop, the refrigerator can turn out three every 24 hours. And that’s not much more than one just to be you know, it’s
Mike Wieger [35:11]
not two inches in diameter is not that big.
Jim Collison [35:17]
He’s tiny, they’re like their ice cubes were just in around shape. That’s almost like they said they’ve doubled the production of most ice cube of most single Ice Cube makers, right? You know, you’re like, Yeah, one to two. But like, if What if I was making cocktails for six people like a door of ice for a month, the refrigerator can turn out three every 24 hours and features a dedicated area that can store up to 25 of them. So what you’re seeing is the storage area for that, so let’s see if there’s anything blah, blah, blah. Notably, the balls are. Don’t don’t expect I like a seventh grader. Don’t expect for whole draft protection, but they’re still pretty damn clear. That’s their words, not mine above anything else on the consumer end. Alas, the new interview starts at 3999. But it also comes with the namesake interview panel that turns from opaque to clear, allowing you to see or hide the contents of your fridge without opening the door. So there you go. Peter,
Mike Wieger [36:25]
why can’t just open the door. What are you really saving me? I still gotta stand there. So do something. Well, can you view it from an app? Like is it a camera? Oh, that I can view from an app because that that’s a game changer. That’s what I need is I’m at the store. Shoot. How full was that milk? I can remember? Hey, just probably camera at the inside of my thing that would that
Jim Collison [36:50]
would be cool. Maybe a camera that would run down like a track on the inside. So you could go you could see the various show. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, it’s otherwise I’m just gonna open the door for thousand dollar fridge. Well, okay. But there’s people like in this who are very proud of the way they stack their food in their fridge, none of us.
Mike Wieger [37:13]
But serial killers, maybe
Jim Collison [37:18]
every marketing material, even even the pictures they had here, you know, of course, the food is stacked in the neatest of containers and it’s perfect. Like, but you know, that doesn’t last like, you know, at 230 in the morning when you’re in there. Turn into some food because you’re hungry. You ruin the whole system.
Mike Wieger [37:33]
Right? Oh, yeah.
Jim Collison [37:35]
So Joe says the Samson for just have that. So that’s how the camera Okay. Let’s just not go there. They Yeah. And I think Joe says they have to add features somehow. Right? I mean, it is kind of right. What What else do you do? Yeah.
Mike Wieger [37:56]
You gotta kind of have some, although I still don’t think people are going out and buying a fridge for the features. You’re buying a fridge because you either moved into a new house doesn’t have one or your other one went out. So I don’t think they need to innovate to
Jim Collison [38:07]
Mike. I think the the wealthy don’t care. They they go in they see this. Hey, that’s true. It’s I know it’s 4000 bucks, but that means nothing to the wealthy. Right? Yeah, it’s true. I’m not knocking people who can do this, by the way, if you’ve earned enough money to be able to do this awesome. And you’re probably not listening to this podcast, but because you have people who do the tech for you. But you know, 4000 Okay, yeah, I have the coolest fridge, like that’s in a kitchen you just spent $150,000 on or more. Like, if you got a high end kitchen, top of the line, you’re putting this kind of thing in, you just spent maybe a quarter of a million just on your kitchen. Yeah. You know, so $4,000 doesn’t seem doesn’t seem that much. I on the other hand, have a beer fridge that was $399 or whatever that’s sitting over here. And it has a big 10 year warranty thing slapped on the front of it because it’s like, they had to at least have something to fill the fridge that because it’s just a fridge. It doesn’t have anything in it. No ice maker. No, no. Yeah,
Mike Wieger [39:14]
I just wanted it for beer. Right? My beer fridge was $5 from a neighbor from the next door happens like he wouldn’t have old things, even if it works has been in my basement for years. Like good enough. Just Just enough to my beer cold in the basement.
Jim Collison [39:25]
Yeah, Andrew says he just found a fridge online for 500 bucks. Yeah, totally doable. And Joe says are they finance them for six years? Or maybe 10? You know,
Mike Wieger [39:36]
yeah, that’s your fridge.
Jim Collison [39:41]
Financial fully hopefully if you can’t afford it, like you shouldn’t do that with with just a fridge. It just Brian Regan has a good skin. He’s like, just keep your food cold. Right? That’s this one. $600 keeps your food cold. This one $900 keeps your food cold. This 115 hundred dollars. Guess what keeps your food cold. So you know, I think Be careful. But Peter, thanks for that tweet. I appreciate that. Jim, RJ Collison on Twitter, if you want to jump out there. There’s still a lot of activity on Twitter. I I surprised people all the time when I tell them. You know, yeah, I’m still doing Twitter, because I mentioned that, like you’re on. You’re still in. There’s still people on Twitter. And I’m actually like in the tech community, it’s pretty still pretty popular. So we haven’t given up on Twitter yet. If you want to tweet at me at J. Collison, Mike, I cannot let Plex go. Like I don’t know what I’ve been trying to let
Mike Wieger [40:35]
Plex go.
Jim Collison [40:36]
Yes, I even canceled my monthly, you know, monthly
Mike Wieger [40:39]
subscription. On the lifetime of that every time you say that. It reminds me I’m not on a lifetime pass. I’m still paying monthly.
Jim Collison [40:45]
Yeah. And there was just a deal. I think it was just a deal for a pretty inexpensive hundred dollars, maybe for lifetime. But here’s the deal. Like I’ve quit the I’ve quit the monthly past enough that I’m like I you know, I don’t I don’t know. So big stake in the in the, in the Plex community over the last week. They made an announcement two weeks ago. They’re getting rid of the TV interface and then they backtracked on that. Good. Good conversation over with with Josh and Richard over to entertainment to Dotto on the podcast. If you’re not listening to that you should be those guys are. Those guys are pretty great, super thorough, real pro, you want to head over there and listen to that as well. So a bunch of conversation. They backtracked on a TV, but there’s like, Okay, well, we’ll keep it around kind of for a while. I’m not, not my reasoning. I football seasons coming around again. And I don’t know what sparked it. But I just said, You know, I think I’m going to give I think I’m going to get Plex and other tribe actually installed it on the NVIDIA Shield. And so I’m using the shield as kind of the, you know, the server for that, right. And as having a lot of problems with it like it was stuttering. And I always watch through the browser, right? I was watching the browser, Chrome, and it was stuttering a lot. And I really thought is the NVIDIA Shield. I posted it to the discord group. I think that’s where it went. We had a lot of the conversations around it. And I thought, you know, maybe I should try a native app on this thing. Sure enough, it’s the browser, the browser versions with the way I’m doing it on the NVIDIA Shield for whatever reason, caused the video to stutter Now, not all the time, but it’ll go for a while, and then it will just skip. And we’ll go maybe for another two minutes, and then it’ll just skip. And this is live TV you’re trying to watch. No, in this case, it’s just the recorded stuff.
Mike Wieger [42:39]
Oh, that’s even worse.
Jim Collison [42:40]
Yeah, I have I have since so I have plugged in a 500 gig heart spinner hard drive, dock USB three. Plenty fast, should do it just fine. Shouldn’t shouldn’t shouldn’t be a problem there. Just for some extra storage on that thing works out pretty well. So I use the Windows app, and no problems. Places perfect actually looks great. Some comments, I think, maybe gene, Simmons, Jason, right. Jason Simmons, they get their agenda. Justin, Justin said he thought he hates he thinks the app is junk. And it’s not the were used. And I respect that I don’t use it a lot. It’s not the greatest the Windows app is not the greatest. But it did play really well. I mean, that Windows app looks beautiful compared to the to the browser app. And, and so I don’t know, I it was it again. It was it was one of those things. And then of course, I heard about all this controversy around that, them giving up support on the TV on TV mode and some of those other things. So it got me kind of digging into it. But Plexus kind of continues to hang out there. And then this week, an article came out in the verge, talking a little bit about how Plexus plan is to kind of be the center of everything. So not necessarily trying to provide Disney plus or Netflix or HBO content, not be the originator of it, but be able to push that kind of content through Plex. So you can go to one place to get that. And Mike, that seems pretty attractive. Because we’ve gone all a cart on all these things. You can do this on your Roku app, you can do this on your Nvidia Shield, right, you can kind of consolidate these into at least one device. Does that say Plexus gets this right? Does that make Plexus any attractive anymore?
Mike Wieger [44:34]
Yeah, especially if they have unified search, right. So if your search capability and Plex will search through all those services and show you, you know, hey, you’re in Plex, I’m going to pull this from Netflix, if it just consolidates it from all the different services you pay for. Yeah, I don’t see how they’re going to be able to do that, though. Because I don’t I can’t see a scenario where Netflix, Amazon Hulu give up their interface. That’s how you stay in their ecosystem. Yeah, right. That’s how they recommend stuff to you. It’s how you find stuff. So I don’t know how successful Plex will be. Right now, it just works well for me, because of its where our TVs and movies are. It’s where we put them to where we store them. It works really well. And it works well to share it out. And so that’s it’s, it’s what works well for me. You know, Joe, I don’t know. I wonder though, is that shield powerful enough to do transcoding? Because, you know, I’ve noticed because I have a full, you know, my, my Plex is running on an ice seven. And when even one stream is transcoding two streams, I mean, it it uses as much CPU as you’ll give it to give it a good experience. So I wonder if you had, you know, you put on another one of your machines down there that’s always on but not being used very often. And I thought would help a different test case. But I’m like you. So right now this whole time I’ve had the Plex app for Mac, the brand new one that just came out open running the football game well TV, and it is way better than the browser in terms of memory, right? So the CPU is down at nothing. It even seems that it’s giving it a better Hey, give me this quality of it or let me direct stream it because it’s not transcoding. It’s direct streaming. And I think whenever I run in the browser, I tried just transcoding it. So maybe you’re running into that maybe when you open the app, you’re actually direct streaming instead of transcoding. And maybe that’s why you’re getting a good experience, maybe that Nvidia Shield just can’t trans code very well. So maybe the apps doing a better job at giving a, you know, an ability to do a direct stream.
Jim Collison [46:36]
Yeah, the shield is hardware optimized. So I mean, it is I mean, it’s just one big video process. Okay, that’s all it’s supposed to do. But I think you’re right. Even that being said, and you know, I’d welcome your comments, Jim, at the average guy TV, if you want to dialogue on this in our discord group, Facebook group, whatever. But I think it I don’t think the browser version of it is good. Now. This is where Plexus is, in their announcement of getting rid of some of their app stuff. They they’re trying to push everything to the browser. I don’t know if the browsers is good just to be 100%. I
Mike Wieger [47:09]
think they’re the opposite. They’re trying to push everyone to an app.
Jim Collison [47:12]
Okay. Okay, that was my I thought, because when they killed the TV functionality, they were like, hey, look, we’ve got a web app that does this, and you can just use our web app. That was that’s what they said it when they when they were doing that. So, you know, it’s it’s kind of you know, that which I was like, I don’t know, if the browser experience is the best experience. Functionally, though, functionally, it’s, it’s got everything functional, you need, it’s actually laid out pretty well, they’ve been working on the, you know, they’ve been working on the menu systems. And it’s hard to do, you know, anytime you create an app that does a million things, right. And, and, and Plex, does, including giving you all the control that you want to change anything like you go into the dashboard, it’s pretty complicated. It’s got a dashboard now that monitors what’s coming in outside of your network and what’s being done on the inside of your network, right. I mean, it’s, it’s pretty good. But options, equal confusion. And I think in some of those cases, you know, it can be kind of confusing of finding things. When an app gets complicated, I have no patience for people who say it’s not intuitive. Now, there, there are times when, you know, you can create things that are complex and make them simple. But for To be honest with you. Anytime things are super complex, it’s gonna take a little bit of a learning curve to figure out just where everything is. It’s like flying. That’s why pilots have checklists. It would be like a pilot coming into an airplane, which, by the way, we’ve been flying for a long time now and saying, Yeah, these controls aren’t very intuitive. You know, there’s too many of them. Well, you kind of want some control. Yeah, you know what I’m saying? Anyways, I’ve had a hard I’m having a hard time walking away from flex. I don’t, I really like it. You know, and Joe was saying in the chat room, he found a lifetime past deal for 75 bucks. So I think there are deals going on, and that’s probably the right thing to do is buy it at that price. Right? When it gets in there. But it’s it’s I want to love it. I want to do it. And then I don’t know why.
I guess maybe I feel like sometimes I shouldn’t
Mike Wieger [49:18]
get Windows Media Server is still working for you. Right?
Jim Collison [49:20]
It is. Yeah, it’s working for Sarah, let’s,
Mike Wieger [49:23]
yeah, I don’t use it. I don’t ever use it. I’m what’s that stops, though flexible. And I think good. But quickly, going back to your point of when they were talking about, you know, there’s a browser, I think what Plex was saying there is Hey, like we have all these apps that are built into platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Xbox, really anywhere you want the app, you can get it now. And if you do want to run it on kind of one of those PCs plugged into a TV. I mean, the one way you still could do that they’re saying a technical you can with the browser’s what kind of refrigerator I think they want everyone to go to the app. And you know, I know Joe mentioned it, and people mentioned it in the week special that the one thing that’s missing is HD audio pass through. And that’s true. Hopefully that comes in the future is the one downside of that. But overall, the you know, the Plex experience, I have it on. I use the app on Mac, I use the iOS apps, and then Roku and Xbox. So I use I use it on a lot of platforms. And it just it just works everywhere. Roku I’m so shocked that a $25 roku stick can just give super high quality plug streams and stuff like that It handles like a champ. No problem. And so you know, getting one of those is sometimes I think just a little bit easier.
Jim Collison [50:40]
Yeah, yeah, I’d almost rather Sarah start with the app on her phone. And then either Chromecast it or send it you know, whatever. That way. And so the remote control is her phone from here on out. And she chooses she picks and choose because I’ll be honest, here’s how she watches TV. All that. Let me let me back this up. Here’s how my wife watches TV.
Mike Wieger [51:04]
Okay, here’s the TVs up here. Okay, TVs on her phone, okay? No,
Jim Collison [51:08]
she says, I come around the corner. She’s on her phone, you can’t see this, but she’s on her phone, playing a game or talking to somebody, whatever. And I’m like, why don’t we just why don’t we make the phone your remote control, you can control the volume, you can control what you want to watch. And fast forward, you can do all that will just do it through Plex. And do it kind of do it that way. I’ve been suspicious of the way it records and TV, you know, taking the commercials out and some of those kinds of things. Now that I’m going full time, I’ve opened up full speed on recording a whole bunch of stuff, and I’m gonna try and consume it. I think that’s kind of the direction we’re headed. And if I think if I could get I think maybe if the lifetime does pop up again, I think maybe maybe I’ll pick it up.
Mike Wieger [51:52]
What do you run your Windows Media Server on?
Jim Collison [51:56]
It’s an old Core i three
Mike Wieger [52:01]
into the TV? She watches it on? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that’s okay. Because I was gonna say, if you don’t end up doing that, just make sure what’s going to turn her off as if she has the same trouble you did, right? If you’re running it as a server on Nvidia Shield, and the shield doesn’t have enough trans code power, and she’s constantly buffering running into problems, you know, I think you’re gonna lose her pretty quick. So you probably have to either put Plex on that box, then when you replace it, or just put Plex the server on one of your beefier Machines down in your basement. And she can do it remotely through an app on on something up there have to try that out. I’ll switch it out, right, you could use the shield as more of the client instead of the server.
Jim Collison [52:41]
I actually think I could run up to test it. But I think I could from the from the app on my phone from the Plex iPhone app, bring it up Chromecast it to the TV. Oh yeah. And I think I’m gonna get some pretty good quality that way. Yeah, you just get her used to the app on her phone. It’s a Android. So that would be pretty easy. Plexus got Chromecast abilities, or again, you know, you could do it Roku, whatever. Worst case scenario, just get another Nvidia Shield. And so still continue to run this off the shield, but run it up, run it up there. I want to keep it as simple as possible. It’s to me, it seems to just make sense to make her phone the control for what we’re doing. So I think that’s the direction we’re heading. I do need to test that. So I’ll spend some time kind of getting that done this week. Plex just does not want to let go in that area. It just does not and man I watch the football games on it. This this last week and it looks so good. look great coming off the HD antenna. So yeah, super cool. One of the things one of the other things long term projects I’ve been thinking about is a generator so from time to time you know we’ve had some things come through we had a tornado come through a couple years ago I just out for four days to forget the past back on it almost ended my marriage that week cuz Tara was not very patient we lost a bunch of meat and there was some mistakes on my end but so I’ve always thought you know, it’d be kind of cool to have a you know, I for 1000 bucks, I can get a really nice pretty quiet Honda generator that would at least run the fridges. Right. So last night I’m surfing around a little bit looking for some you know, some things on the to talk about tonight. And there’s kind of a new line of these battery power generators is what they’re calling them. And they give you the ability, you can kind of see here this these generators are sitting on the back of a truck. But in in in Kickstarter and the Kickstarter world, delta is making these in the Kickstarter world. They they’re selling for like 699 7799 not that much different than the gas power ones. And of course, they’re getting they get they’ve had a lot of backers on this, they’re doing pretty well they’ve
they have they’ve almost raised a million dollars for these things. The idea is and let me find this there was some stats. So the idea is there’s a recharge so once you do use it up, it’ll recharge from zero to 80% 60 minutes on a regular power source. So viewer say you are in a place and you needed you were using one of these in the power was out you in theory I could drive it somewhere where there is power, plug it in, charge it bring it back, I’d be good for another 24 hours depending on when I’m when I’m running on this, they are touting right now lifetime battery warranty, which because I had to replace the batteries in my Honda my hybrid, you know, you start kind of worried about this kind of thing. It has 618 hundred watt AC wall outlets that are in there. In it there, they tout like you can run your chop saw your skill saw a heater now doesn’t last as long with some of those things, but has enough draw on it, you can run some of these, they’re like put it in your shop. And we can run power tools off this thing because of the universe of solar input. So if you have solar panels, you can charge recharge the thing back off with with solar panels. And, you know so they do some things are really going after gas generators. At this point they’re you know, well hey, gas generators, you got all this maintenance hundred 50 year here’s the real cost once you buy one of these but annual cost of maintenance on these things is zero by the way, we have a lifetime warranty on them. So the batteries, were always going to replace the batteries on it. On the video, you can see pretty easy, it’s got a front input that’s got a whole bunch of us, USDA, and well, I shouldn’t say whole bunch, but to 12, white USDA and to 60 YU SBC plus 221 fast chargers that are on the front. So think about it, Mike, you guys have a power outage probably have a bunch of things like phones and stuff you need to charge, you could do that right off an LED screen on the front, six power plugs on the back. Pretty cool little unit and they’re touting if you kept this in your electric car, so say you have a you know a Tesla or whatever and you run out of juice, this will give you you can plug this in, it’ll quick charge the car and get you another three to five miles to maybe get to someplace where you can charge up. So it could be one of those things powerful enough to to recharge the car, get on video showing the car, it’s getting there doing a demo of this thing coming off of an electric hammer, hammer drill, which 150 watt device pulls a little juice. When it does, it handles that they when they talk about it. So like a 10 watt light bulb 36 hours on that it’s pretty easy. Coffee Maker will make 5060 cups of coffee, air conditioner, it’ll run it somewhere between a half an hour and let’s just say three hours, right? I guess it depends on how big the air conditioner is. It’ll run your electric grill, a hairdryer flat screen TV, your microwave. Now, this is funny, it’ll run 1000 watt Mike or 650 watt microwave for one to 1.8 hours. Well, I don’t know that many people that run. But in an emergency again, you could get your microwave working make a good turkey in the microwave 10 or 20 hours on your fridge, which again, actually an emergency not a bad thing kind of thing. If I could plug my freezer in, get it back to a certain temperature, unplug it because I have a bunch of cold packs in there. That’ll keep it you know, for maybe eight or 10 hours. So keep it cold in there, right frying pan drill circular saw blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, drones, here’s here’s your drone, it can recharge your drones anywhere from 16 to 23 times, recharge the laptop 25 times and run asleep. Now this is this is super interesting for this. So if you were out somewhere where you couldn’t get power, and you need see Pat to do this, it’ll run it for you 18 to 22 hours, which and it’s dead quiet. So this is actually one of those things where you go, Oh, I never really thought about that. Right? So multipurpose multi, like, could do could do tons of stuff. Mike is I’m thinking about gas versus electric or gas versus battery. Are we getting to the we’re getting to the spot or having a couple battery backups around is enough in this case, or do I still need that ability to put gas in it and run that thing? 24 seven?
Mike Wieger [59:33]
Well, I think it depends on use case. So from what you just described to me and you ran through the the time that could run all those machines. This to me seems like a perfect camping battery. Right, instead of loading up a big haunted generator. When I go camping, throw this thing in because those time frames are perfect for like a two day camp trip to three day camping trip, you’re not going to be using a ton of electricity when you’re out there. But if you want to bring a coffee machine if you want to bring you know whatever I don’t know what she had charged but if you need to bring a laptop right if you’re working while you’re camping, some like that, This to me is perfect. Because there y’all can bring the gas with it, it’s you know, it’s easier put it in there. I think for more of the home, your back your power is going out for two three days because a tree limb cut something you know, things like that. I still want the Honda generator. I think this would be great. Also for like, quick going out to a work site. If you are doing something with like construction, right, you just do one really quick thing, you’re heading out there to want to load the generator, things like that. So I think it definitely has its use cases. And I think that would be that might be actually the first generator I would buy. Because for me I’m not really looking for something that’s going to keep my house going for a few days if I am going to do something a little bit bigger than that. But I would use one of those in way more circumstances than I would have generator in my everyday life. Right I’m thinking how many times I take the hundred generator places, like even camping, I would love to have one on my I’m not gonna haul it camping, unless I had a nice big campers like that. But just if we’re packing up the traverse and then heading out, I would but I would take that and that would that would solve actually a lot of big problems. The drone battery thing is huge. You know, how many times do you go to an event as a drone operator and you don’t have to go find a place to plug in your drone battery and you don’t know where it’s at, you know, if you have that you can charge a bunch of times. There are people who go do remote drone shoots and having that would be a big benefit. And like you said with the universal solar power. You could take that even on longer camping trip really if you had the solar panel, throw it up on top of the car and just keep that thing plugged in all the time. I’m wondering if it could even run somebody like the camping fridges. Yeah, because they make the camping fridges that usually you would run off your car but then you worry about your car battery getting below and not being able to start the car up. So if you had one of these that you then just throughout the throughout the solar panel on top of your car,
Jim Collison [1:01:57]
you can run a lot of stuff where you attended 1020 hours on fridge depending upon its draw
Mike Wieger [1:02:02]
small camping fridges not much drawn those Yeah, like a big
Jim Collison [1:02:07]
stick and Aaron, I sent Aaron a note how this is when I saw this last night. That’s exactly who
Mike Wieger [1:02:11]
would be perfect for Yeah,
Jim Collison [1:02:12]
I was like Hey, did you just look at these I mean, yeah, you could build your own battery kind of, you know, like, if you’re going to put solar you could put batteries in and get car batteries or whatever they use on the solar stuff. You can kind of build your own battery array. But I think this is way more to have these plugged in smartly recharging off when you’re parked you recharge these off of your you know off of the solar panels that are up there, you they become kind of the base for you. And they’re so freaking flexible, like this is nothing you can do so many different things with them. And really manage the power load kind of in a way and and really conveniently. Run says they make a great battery, by the way, a battery rig for a ham radio, when you have a field day and you’re outside Mike, that was
Mike Wieger [1:03:07]
another thing I was thinking about it would make a perfect field day for ham radio. And other Jim brought up a good point to Yeah, for the tailgate and still hear the game perfect in his next one no carbon monoxide risk. I’m thinking when you said to see Pat machine, you can bring this thing in and put it next to your bed. Well,
right. So
Jim Collison [1:03:25]
yeah, yeah, I just I kind of think you know, if you need that kind of device or any kind of medical device in your in a place, typically you might be restricted to power. And in these kinds of things, you could bring this along with you and really fulfill that battery requirement for long periods of time. And so again, we’re getting to that place where these batteries are getting so good and the technology around this. Currently Kickstarter, the link will be in the show notes, if you want to go out I’m actually thinking about buying one of these. But because it would fill in a, it would fill in a gap. Even without a gas power generator, it would fill in a pinch where I could there’s some things I could do to manage. Like I said, freezer, I’ve actually packed so we got these, we’ve gotten these freezer packs from Hello Fresh. And I’ve kept a bunch of them at the bottom of the freezer. Just if we lose power, again, they’re going to help me keep that area cold for a little bit longer than if I had nothing in there. Right that’ll that. That’ll help me help me do that. I can move some down to the fridge. But if I could turn the freezer on for two hours, I could probably get that temperature back to freezing, freeze everything back up again, then unplug it and move it on to something else run the computers or right whatever, right. And then in theory, if I needed to I could take the thing to work with me charge it up charges, you know, hundred percent charge really fast on that. It’d be ready to go to bring home to run various things again, here. Now it’s not going to run my air conditioner. Yeah, it’s not going to run the heater here in the house. It’s not going to be that way. But then neither is a Honda generator either just to be now right? Yeah, you’re not going to do that. So I think I sometimes do pa you know, I do a little DJ work a little MC work. And when you’re outside, that’s always the challenge. And if you got a loud generator in the Honda ones, the thousand dollar ones pretty quiet, like you can hide those around the corner somewhere. And they’re kind of you know, this is you could just put right next to you, you could put it right next to your stuff you’re in play it and it could be right there because it doesn’t make any noise it would make the kind of the perfect. Kind of a you know, I bet I could probably get four or five, six hours off of it
Mike Wieger [1:05:45]
depends on how speakers are running.
Jim Collison [1:05:46]
Well, let’s see. Yeah, that’s true. And I
Mike Wieger [1:05:51]
things at once, what the wattage? Well,
Jim Collison [1:05:52]
you will be running your amplifier out to the speakers. My speakers are not empowered. So I have an answer NAM and I think it’s a 300 watt. And so as I look at that I already closed it. Leave it open. Let’s see. So let’s go back. Yeah, I closed it. Now. Again. It’s good. It’s giving me some options. Yeah, it definitely opens up the doors. So I thought those were pretty, pretty cool. If you go to their Kickstarter, I think you can still take advantage of their Kickstarter prices. If you get those right now the 1000, the Delta 1000, it’s on a super early bird, it’s 699. If you go with their 1300 799 that’s not bad pricing for what you’re getting here. And then they do have kind of a what they call a portable energy bundle. So it’s a grand 11 sake, 1100 bucks, it’s 1099 you get a solar panel, you get 110 watt solar panel, as well. So it’s the 1300 version with a solar panel, the charging cable and everything that you need. The estimated delivery date is December 2019. So they’re not this isn’t something you can get today. Wrap it under the under the tree, you know and then
a plug, hey, like honey,
plug this or hopefully it comes fully charged.
Mike Wieger [1:07:18]
I can run this tree for two days.
Jim Collison [1:07:23]
Super cool. And maybe a little cool little gadget that again, I I I’m with you. I still like I still like to have a gas generator that I have around just for that Mike Finally, as we kind of close things out. You’ve seen them and I seen and we have maybe every city in the nation struggling with it. So we have these these scooters, these electric scooters, right that are getting put everywhere around town. I really thought they disappear by now. But for whatever reason. They’re everywhere. Every morning when I drive in, they’re meticulously parked in rows on the corners downtown a drive through downtown to get to work. You probably have you you don’t have them out there in your area.
Mike Wieger [1:08:02]
No, no. Okay, stop at 680.
Jim Collison [1:08:05]
Okay, so and that’s our western edge. That’s the interstate that kind of skirts down or really now splits east and west does. Yeah,
Mike Wieger [1:08:12]
it’s like Central.
Jim Collison [1:08:14]
And so, which is kind of weird because 16th used to be central, but now it’s 100 hundred 14. Yeah. So or Yeah. So they’re everywhere. But what happens when a hurricane comes through? And you have the potential you’re in Orlando, by the way, I was just in Orlando. They’re everywhere in Orlando. And you have the potential 440 hundred and 50 hundred and 65 an hour winds and these things become missiles. Right. So the company’s hurricane came through Florida this weekend. Fortunately, hasn’t I don’t know if it’s been as bad as they thought it’s kind
Mike Wieger [1:08:53]
of really has
Jim Collison [1:08:54]
been skipped by Florida. South Carolina is getting hammered right now. Tony, are you getting you get much whether you you’re in that area, right? He’s in the chat room. So he’s here tonight. So it’s obviously he’s not hunkered down in a bunker somewhere. But these things become missiles. So the companies announced earlier this week that they would actually be having their staff go out, pick them all up and secure them in some way to make sure that that in this in this weather event we did not have hundreds maybe thousands of missiles being launched that crazy. It’s again, one of those who would have thought about Yeah, yeah. Here in Nebraska, where we have tornadoes, you would not be able to respond that fast tornadoes you don’t get you get 10 minutes of warning, maybe five. And those things are absolutely just get picked up in a rock. Well, no liability of sending your people who are charging these up, I thought, hey, go pick
Mike Wieger [1:09:48]
these up, go outside. And I need to go pick up some scooters.
Jim Collison [1:09:54]
So good for you live. I’m thinking about lime. And I got the story out of the verge, bird and spin. Yeah, yeah. And they good for them for kind of thinking through this. Like, yeah, we’re gonna go, we’re gonna go pick these up, so they don’t go flying around the city. And, you know, there’s been a lot I mean, I’ve been surprised the staying power of those things so far. Now, it’ll be interesting to see if they come back next year. That I think in the city of Omaha, they have to be off the streets by October 1. Oh, do they really? I think so. Yeah, I think I think here in the city of Oman, I could be wrong. But this is what my understanding was. So the mayor authorize them to be here for six months. In the summer. I think March, April, May, June, July, August. So maybe April through October, or April through September. Then it was a test period. pull them off the streets was to see what let’s see how they do. I’m sure the city gets a cut of this in some way. tax revenue on them or something associated with it. So certainly, Mike, I have spent this the summer I spent more time in the Old Market downtown. It’s a downtown area than I’ve ever spent. Maybe combined. Like I’ve been here almost 30 years. This summer, I spent more time in the market than maybe the other 29 years combined. Don’t ask me why? Because I’m smoking cigars. And yeah, they’re everywhere.
Mike Wieger [1:11:21]
And people are using them. Right? They’re not just out there just laying there people are people using them.
Jim Collison [1:11:27]
Yeah. Well, what’s been interesting is people that I watched people figure try to figure it out. So they come up to him. They’re curious. So they grab them and they start moving them the alarms go off. Right. They start squawking let me immediately stop, put them down and get their phone out. There’s instructions on them and, and you know, download the app, you got to fund the app some money, and then check them out. During the College World Series. There were just they were they were everywhere. After the game after the championship game. I was down there and there were just people riding them all over the place. So I think from a use case perspective, they’ve been really popular
Mike Wieger [1:12:08]
one of the tourist cities I think I mentioned this before we talked about them. But you know, when I went with my in laws to Nashville, that’s how we got around it. We even had our cars because we drove our cars to that we drove we didn’t fly. And we use the scooters. All of us the whole family. We were a scooter gang. We had like eight of us on the scooters. Nashville, like yeah, we were we were like a little scooter gang. It was awesome. And they were to pull up isolating it around Nashville. Yeah, that was great. I did just
Jim Collison [1:12:36]
pull up just surround them. Oh, yeah. No, been pretty cool. Before we close last week, I talked I think it was last week talked a little bit about the the exploding battery. Speaking of batteries. This is not what it’s supposed to look like. So it’s worse
Mike Wieger [1:12:51]
than I thought it would.
Jim Collison [1:12:52]
I know I pulled it out of the kangaroo. So I talked about if you’re listening the audio, I talked about how the battery and I shouldn’t even squeeze it this way. I talked about how the battery had popped out again on the kangaroo and still worked. But it was not good. I did not want to leave it plugged in. You said to me, can you just unplug the battery and use the kangaroo? And I said, I think I think I’m done with it anyways, whatever. I think that’s what I said. But then I got thinking after the show and I was like I don’t maybe I can so I went in, ripped it apart. Took the battery out. Put it back together put the drive back in. plugged it in sure enough works out the battery now that things that POS Anyways, let’s just be real clear those
Mike Wieger [1:13:35]
some things. Okay.
Jim Collison [1:13:39]
Turn off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so they were on the show, and I appreciate you being kind but they’re not great. Like anytime I would Windows Updates really struggled on that thing for a long time. Finally, they got really good, but it was the it was a Windows update that he did this thing up to tell what it you know, kind of what it became. And this is Robin, these batteries would get hot. And they were just, you know, they do this. To take this The Best Buy and wrap it in the battery recycle here pretty quick. So it doesn’t. I think I’m plugged? I think I’ll be okay. So the the I think it’s I think it’s unplugged is it now it’s still plugged in, I plugged it back in, tried it, it worked. And then I was kind of like, I ordered a DVR cable or a video cable for the because it was running this monitor right here, the monitor that runs the background for me that that’s all it really did. Well, the surface can do that just fine. So I think I’m going to pull it out of the cycle. And I think it’s time to recycle it. I just can’t now, I tell you what, if you’re listening, I’ll hold on to this for a little while. If you’re listening to this and you think you can kind of use this in some way no battery, no warranty, just the way it is send me an email Jim at the average guy.tv. If you’re here in the United States, I probably can’t ship this overseas and have it makes sense but pretty light, I could probably get it to you. And if you think you can make use of it, sanity, how’s that sound? Oh, wipe it out, declare it or maybe just reinstall Windows. So it’s backup, Jim at the average guy TV, maybe we can recycle that through the community. I’d really kind of like it in a situation where you really need it or you got you got some kind of weird use for it. And then we can talk about it on the show.
Mike Wieger [1:15:16]
So if you want to do that, Jim at the end, if you remember, one of the cool things about those machines was that you could actually use an iPad as the screen as a touchscreen for it. So if you aren’t a run Windows Moberly with an iPad and that was one of the benefits is that you connect with the cable and then you get a touchscreen monitor for the
Jim Collison [1:15:36]
for the kangaroo.
Mike Wieger [1:15:36]
I was actually just googling to see if they’re even still around. You can still get it on Newegg.
But I can. Yeah.
I can not find any website.
Jim Collison [1:15:49]
I put it back together. So it’s not it’s not protruding anymore. There’s just no battery in anymore.
Mike Wieger [1:15:54]
So the company that used to make the
Jim Collison [1:15:56]
ones they call stop box, I’ll send it to you in the box. So Mike, I don’t think they’re around anymore. We made it. We made it. We made it through another another one here and done. What if you’re listening live I stay around for a few minutes post show. And thank everybody for coming out and for listening. I want to thank everybody and those who sponsor us on Patreon. For that kind of helps. I just I just renewed the apps with Spreaker if you’re using the apps head up to the Home Gadget Geeks calm and you can download those iPhone Android. Some of you do I get those. The Spreaker numbers are not bad. So if you want to do that, head over to Home Gadget Geeks com we appreciate your support on Patreon discord group is the average guy.tv slash discord you can join us on Facebook at the average guy.tv slash Facebook Don’t forget to contact us Jim at the average guy.tv big big shout out and a big thanks I spent some time in the beginning of the show talking about this big thanks to Christian for just rockin it on our hosting you can get high speed reliable hosting from people that you know and you trust course you know that’s Christian Maple Grove partners.com he’s got some super awesome hosting and plenty of room and he loves Home Gadget Geeks listeners. So if you want to get that done home head out to Maple Grove partners.com Mike I decided to continue doing Hello Fresh I did
Mike Wieger [1:17:19]
we’ve been doing like every other week. Okay, so we just did it last week I made the mistake I did not know there were some that cost more than the others so I got like I didn’t order I ordered a premium one which was really good though. I actually posted it in the discord if you want to see a picture of it and the general it was crusted chicken with bacon spread over the top asparagus with mashed potatoes it’s been good it’s been real
Jim Collison [1:17:45]
yeah it’s I bought 10 bucks more I think if you do it on a two person it’s like yeah bucks a person yeah that way usually a little better meat or premium COD or something along those lines so yeah, I think
Mike Wieger [1:17:56]
doesn’t like the asparagus right it was chicken and asparagus and bacon. You kind of were getting old that
Jim Collison [1:18:03]
he had bait I’ve never seen bacon and Hello Fresh
Mike Wieger [1:18:05]
OQD was the thick slices too heavy
Jim Collison [1:18:11]
have we Oh yeah, we had cauliflower bacon mac and cheese and that was that’s the only time we’ve seen bacon and Hello Fresh but we had beef teriyaki over rice with broccoli up beef teriyaki broccoli over rice last night or two nights ago super good. Like
Mike Wieger [1:18:28]
I need to look it up there was one that so I did the order and then I showed him what we got and we both she’s like why did you get this? And I was like oh You’re right. I don’t know that’s going to be awful. And we It was our favorite meal we have had it was one of those like totally surprising. Have you had that where you’ve got something from them? I’m like I don’t know. It was like a low end pic right like a low draft choice and ended up being like
Jim Collison [1:18:50]
a or you make a mistake and get a veggie one where you’re like oh I don’t know like no protein and right in you’re like dang This is pretty good. This is Wow. So it’s been I’ve just enjoyed cooking and we’ve got one more I don’t know when we’re going to do it for this week maybe so I guess tomorrow night. Oh no, we got we got friends coming over tomorrow night. So I guess we’ll do it Saturday night we keep a week that refresh the vegetable and you know court carrots. Carrots in particular, don’t ya? Sarah saying carrots and green onions don’t will not make it a week. If you leave them in your fridge a week right? But it’s one
Mike Wieger [1:19:32]
was a crispy chick pea to believable. I think this one was this one was a big one. Oh my gosh, it was so good. had ended up making it again with just going to IV and getting the ingredients.
Jim Collison [1:19:47]
Right off the off the menu. Andrew says I like fake bacon or fake it. Fake bacon faking I like it. If you you want to try Hello Fresh I got bands that it gives you a week for free Mike did it and again I don’t do this because I make anything off of it. I do it while I do make some I make some weight off of it because it’s delicious. So if you want to get if you want to get some Hello Fresh let me know Jim at the average guy.tv and I’ll send you that coupon and you get a week for free. Like I said you don’t have to do it every week. You can do it every other week you do every third week. They literally do not care. You just cancel for the week. You have to do it. You have to do it before the shipping. You gotta give them a little bit of time. You can’t do it like the day before they ship but they got a plan for God’s sakes. So just cancel it and and you’re done. no guilt. Mike, have you ever guilt Did you and you took a week off like Hey, where did you go ever? Yeah, no, they really don’t care. You can do multiple weeks off the app in advance so you can be
Mike Wieger [1:20:46]
excited last week this week or sorry this week and next week off cuz I knew those two words were going to work well for what we’re doing.
Jim Collison [1:20:52]
Yeah. And I think you can play six weeks out or something like that. So you can you can have it all planned out. Or you can kind of do it week over so let me know Jim at the average guy.tv We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern out here at the average guy talked about the beginning of the show some stuff that’s coming up and hopefully join us live. Come out Thursday. The average guy.tv forward slash live will get you there. Stay around. If you’re listening live stay around for a little bit of post show with that.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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