Week 2 of wondering if anyone ever actually reads this part of the show notes. If you are reading this, shoot me an email, jim@theaverageguy.tv and say hi! Let’s see if I get any emails this week! Last week we had one. While you are reading, get your graphic design game on and try out Canva. Head over to https://theAverageGuy.tv/canva and make your best Home Gadget Geeks album art (need to be 600 x 600p) and submit it to me for a chance to be featured on the podcasts. Pick any show or just do some freestyle. Love to see what you come up with. Try today.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg463

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #463 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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[1:53] Canva Challenge – https://theaverageguy.TV/Canva

[3:04] October 2020 Meatup – https://theaverageguy.tv/Oct2020Meetup

[5:02] Patreon Meetup

[7:05] Nathaniel Lindley Interview

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[1:24:28] Reminders

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 463 recorded on October 8, 2020.

Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your 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 theAverageGuy.TV Studios and Mike, we sat on the deck last night turn the lights on, enjoyed a beverage and a cigar 77, 76

Mike Wieger  [0:42] 
We tried to do the same thing we actually tried to light a fire cuz I’m like, you know what, a little campfire right now. Okay, perfect. The wood I had had not been dead long enough. Because it was the wood we got when the storm rolled through knocked all those trees. So it needs to dry a little bit more. But yeah, same thing. Jim

Jim Collison  [0:56] 
Nathanial. It’s a dry up there for you guys. I mean, we’re really I don’t think we’ve seen rain in two months dry for you?

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:03] 
Yeah, we’ve gotten a little bit of rain, but not much. We’ve had like a week of 30s and 40s. And then this week is 70s 60s 70s and 80s. So it’s it’s up and down like usual. And now all the leaves are falling. The one thing they say is like you’ve had a lot earlier colors earlier, lead falling the normal.

Jim Collison  [1:22] 
I think with the dryness, the trees are just ready to give up. But let’s get rid of these things and go dormant for the winter. But it has created some in the Midwest here, just some spectacular evenings. Gorgeous. So man, if you hopefully where you’re at and where you’re listening, you’ve got a chance to do that as well. I was talking to some friends in Australia this morning, and it was raining. So it’s probably good, you need it.

But we could use some to of course, what we could really use some good show notes. And so full transcripts and a few notes that are out there today out of http://theaverageguy.tv.

Of course, this month, it’s October, we’re talking a little bit about Canva. I talked a little bit about this last week, if you go to the average guy, TV slash Canva, you can use our free plan or sign up for it. It’s kind of like, it’s kind of you know, it’s like creating graphic design for dummies A great way even I can do it. The album art a lot of the album art we do here. One of the things I created on Canva. One of the things I forgot to mention I mentioned at the very end of the show last week is we’re doing a little contest, and I’d like you to jump on Canva and try to create some album art, you can either do it to recreate the Home Gadget Geeks album, or I’ll use it temporarily.

Or if you want to change the the show art for this particular show or any of the shows, be creative head out to https://theaverageguy.TV/Canva. You can use a free plan they have some paid plans if you want to get some more. Like we mentioned last week, you can download some of those images and pay for like a buck. It’s not terribly expensive. I use it for work all the time. Check it out the average guy TV slash Canva. Send me your submissions, Jim@theaverageguy.tv. And we’ll see if we can get those. We can kind of sneak those in and get them you know, get your get a chance for you to influence what we do here with the album art.

A couple reminders before we get started one. October 24 is our 2020 meetup, MEAT meetup going on barbecue grill and smoking meetup. By the way, don’t have to do any of those to be a part of this meetup. So if you’re thinking about coming, anyone to join us, you can just hang out we have an 8am Central and a 1pm, central 3pm cigar cigar, a little cigar meetup, 3pm. And then an 8pm meetup for meetups throughout the day, you can attend one or all of them or whatever you want to do. Mike and I and maybe some other folks will have our grills live streaming all day long. And Mike, I’m going to do I think I told you I’m gonna roast a chicken and do some wings. So super excited about that. So you can join us. Right now the link will be in the show notes (https://theaverageguy.tv/Oct2020Meetup) to get that so head out to https://theaverageguy.TV/hgg463 to make sure that you can get the link to that. It’ll take you to Eventbrite, just register. So you get that done. We’d love to see you there, Mike. I am. I’m kind of looking forward to it. You know, I am too.

Mike Wieger  [3:06] 
I am too mainly because I I that’s how I learned at a barbecue is by watching other people do it. And so, you know, YouTube is great. So seeing live what other people are doing, I’m gonna be writing down everyone’s recipes as they do it. Because I’m always I love to learn that way. So yeah,

Jim Collison  [4:23] 
good opportunity to do that. And if any gonna be able to join us for parts of that.

Mike Wieger  [4:27] 
Yeah, I’m glad there’s gonna be a schedule so I know when to check in. From barbecuing for me, I learned by eating barbecue, and then realizing that someone else is going to do a really good job of this.

I think my sister’s in town that week and she lives in Minnesota. So I’ll just package it up with her and I’ll say take this back up. There’s a guy up there you need to deliver this to I will do that.

Nathaniel Lindley  [4:46] 
I would take it. I would take it my uncle in Des Moines barbecues a lot. So when we visit him,

Mike Wieger  [4:52] 
it’s even closer to Omaha. So there you go.

Nathaniel Lindley  [4:53] 
Yeah, he wraps up some ribs for us. And it’s a real treat, but

Jim Collison  [4:57] 
it’s gonna be super good. I can’t I can’t wait to Get it done, we’ll deploy a little tech on that as well.

And then the Patreon meetup then the next one, we had one earlier, we’re going to schedule another one for November 5. So if you’re a part of our Patreon group, and you want to join us out there, just head out to the average guy, TV slash Patreon. We’ve discovered tonight, if you don’t have your alert, your email alert notifications on on Patreon, you’re never going to hear from me. So if you are a Patreon subscriber, head out there and turn on not saying anybody didn’t do that. But Mike, Mike Wieger, it was going off. That was me. And actually it was set to another account. But to go out there and turn those on, if you want to join us, we have a $5 plan that you can join us on in if you schedule it right now. You’ll be able to join us for the for the November 5 meetup. So get in there, http://theaverageguy.tv/Patreon. Nathaniel, you were the last meetup. Yeah, do we do?

Mike Wieger  [5:50] 
It was good. I think it was a good number of folks. So it wasn’t too overwhelming. You get too many people. And then it’s just a couple of people get stuck. Nobody listens. So it’s a good number. And it’s always exciting or interesting for me to hear what other people are working on where their expertise is their perspective. So it’s always it’s always reassuring to know, oh, yeah. Okay, I’ve heard that name in the chat. And now I remember that’s what that guy looks like or it’s a man.

It’s kind of cool how we had intros that we got to do this time. So next time, maybe we can come with a topic and really jump right into it without having to do a bunch of intros, because we just did that a month ago. I think that that format worked roll.

Jim Collison  [6:28] 
Yea, I’ll have a topic off some questions to ask some things to talk about. We got some ideas from that group the last time on some things to for the regular meetups to do so probably at this point, we’ll be scheduling a January meetup that will be like so one month, we’ll do Patreon. The next month, we’ll do something I may do 3d printing or something along those lines.

So I got a whole list of topics from you guys. And we’re excited to do so again, head out there and join us. If you’re on Patreon watch, either go to patreon, https://TheAverageGuy.tv/Patreon. The post will be there with the link to Eventbrite or you can join us on Patreon as well. And let’s get that done.

Nathaniel Lindley is back. Nathaniel, you may get I think quietly you have the record for most appearances on Home Gadget Geeks because I looked you up I think 2013 was the very first time you are on I’ve I think I’ve had john at least twice a year. Since then you just kind of quietly Yeah, just kind of filled in. Thanks for doing that. Appreciate welcome.

Mike Wieger  [7:27] 
Yeah, I think every six months is just about right for me to fit it in. So what do they say? Like? First time caller? longtime listener?

Jim Collison  [7:36] 
Yeah. Right. Longtime caller? Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [7:39] 
Yeah. Periodic periodic listener? Yeah,

Jim Collison  [7:42] 
no, no, it’s uh, it’s all good. We had you on in the spring and kinda feels like 1980. Doesn’t it like it?

Yeah, it’s a long.

Nathaniel Lindley  [7:51] 
March is a long time ago. I don’t remember if I was on in March or April or when it was, but I think it blends together.

Jim Collison  [7:58] 
I think we had you and

who joins us.

Yeah. Brian Freelander came on. And we talked a little bit about what was going on, then. Primarily, give us again, tell us what you do for the school district. What’s your what’s your role in what you do

Mike Wieger  [8:14] 
Right, right for a medium sized public school district here outside Minneapolis, a sort of the technology supervisor. So I help coordinate the efforts of the team that are out in the buildings and in the district and all the various parts that are moving sort of liaison?

Jim Collison  [8:33] 
Yeah. And I think you’ve always been at least a lot of the specialty you brought is kind of from a hardware perspective, we talked in the past about you guys are you were using Chromebooks and just kind of Wi Fi and how to make that work and kind of the setup. I want to I want to ask you before we kind of talk a little bit about how you guys are transition. What did you learn? What have you learned during this time, as we think about, you know, personally, thinking through the things you take away from just the last six months, anything is you think about that anything that you would say, oh, man, I this. This has been an education for me. And in a you know, it’s the things I’ve learned on this, what would you say?

Nathaniel Lindley  [9:15] 
Um, I think the number one thing is last spring and this fall again, is the clear need to have better broadband access for everyone. Yeah, the number one complaint is that families aren’t set up for good internet, where their household is. Yeah. And that’s both within the suburban area in urban Minneapolis, St. Paul, as well as outstate in the rural. That’s the number one frustration is the choices to access, the complexity, the quality. It’s been really hard. That’s the bill. That’s the biggest thing. Yeah. And if we’re trying to connect with families Do zoom calls and meets the internet is so critical. And there’s only so much school districts can do to help band aid the situation we need the state, you know, or the federal government to really step in and start treating it like a utility and rolling it out like they did telephones. Yeah, saying this is more important.

Jim Collison  [10:22] 
That’s the second time in a week, I’ve heard someone refer to the internet as utility. Do you think that they think we have any ability to go that direction? And what you’re seeing? Or is that kind of a pipe dream? You know, we keep talking about it. But for now,

Nathaniel Lindley  [10:39] 
I think it’s everybody agrees. It’s like infrastructure and roads and bridges. Everyone campaigns on Yep, I’m gonna fix bridges and roads. But when it comes down to like, well, we got to raise the gas tax to do it. Ever. Like, oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don’t want to do that. So

We’ll get internet tomorrow. We’ll get the internet tomorrow.

Yeah. And it’s hard. Because if it works for me, I have access, I have choice, then. Somebody else’s problem. So I don’t know. Maybe Maybe it’ll happen. It may depend how this school year goes.

Jim Collison  [11:12] 
Yeah, we may need to get through a full school year. I think, you know, in the spring, we were responding based on half of a school year, for the most part, right half of the, not even the year, half of the semester. Right. It was kind of just cobble it together. This year, schools had at least a summer to kind of get some things put together figure some things out. We were kind of debating. Back in the spring, we were speculating on kind of where school would go and how they’d actually do it. Where did you guys land as far as how they’re actually conducting classes, alternate days? How are they doing that?

Nathaniel Lindley  [11:48] 
Sure. We had this summer to kind of plan out scenarios, our governor said, plan for A, B and C, and we’ll let you know at the end of July, what we decide is the state working with the Minnesota Department of Health Minnesota Department of Education in the governor’s office. So we spent a lot of time brainstorming and putting pieces of the puzzle together to what this could look like would it be full in person, some sort of in between or full distance? What we ended up with in the district that work in and the district district of my kids are in is a sort of a hybrid model, which is very common in this districts that are small enough to pull it off. So that means my fifth grader goes two days a week to in person class.

And she has a smaller group of students in her fifth grade class, they all wear masks all day. They eat in their classroom, the food is all pull apart, take out lunch. And then Wednesday, she’s distance learning and then Thursday and Friday distance learning. They did announce her school said that later in October, they’re going to be four days a week in class because the case numbers have gone down and the district feels like they can keep that unit together. And in her class in some ways, is it’s not that when she goes Thursday and Friday, it would be more kids would just be the same kids four days a week instead of two. So every school in districts a little bit different in their numbers and their structure. The district I work for is very similar where they have a group of students that come Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays and what they call a synchronous online learning day where there’s students. I don’t think they have as many on you know, synchronous meets or live meets.

But they have work to do. The teachers spend a lot of time on that day planning, regrouping, getting ready for Thursday and Friday, then they have a B group Thursday Friday. Most districts including these two have the option for families to say No thanks. We’re all distance learning, my kid will stay at home, they’ll do their learning at home. And so then what a lot of districts have done is say, Okay, we’ve got a cohort of teachers that can meet the distance learning need of the end, it’s usually right around 20% 20% of the families say we want to be all distance learning for one reason or another. And so they divide off a chunk of staff that work with those distance learning students and then 80% are in the building. So that’s typically the structure some larger districts have said we’re all distance learning to start, because we don’t feel like we have the ability to have students and staff all in the building even on rotations because of the complexities with transportation and timing and staffing needs. And this and that. So I I’m not sure but I believe Minneapolis and St. Paul, which are two of the larger districts are still all distance learning. And whether they’re coming back to a hybrid, I’m not quite sure. But the smaller schools and private schools or parochial schools are real small districts. A lot of them are pulling off full in person learning and they may still have some distance component or not, but most of the kids are there. Every De, because they’re able to spread out, they’re able to get smaller classes. So it’s really all over the place, which makes it hard as a state to track all that. But those are some of the scenarios.

Jim Collison  [15:13] 
Nathaniel is, as we’ve gone through this, of course, there’s been some ways to track and Mike, what did they call that on the iPhone where you can enable it? So it you know, somebody nearby, you is, has gotten COVID that they rolled that out with 13? And they did now it’s an option in 14, something like that proximity, no

Nathaniel Lindley  [15:32] 
exposure notification earlier there.

Jim Collison  [15:36] 
Yeah, no, no, no. I’m, Nathaniel, do you feel like his has there been an ability because certainly in the enterprise, we actually track who comes in the building. And if, you know, if someone self reports, then we can start doing some forensics to kind of be like, Alright, here’s who you exposed? And, you know, we can kind of do that. How does that work at all in the in the school districts just too many moving parts?

Nathaniel Lindley  [16:01] 
Yeah, it’s gonna be really hard. So we spend a lot of time my district, and especially the health department. So the, the district wide health director has become like one of the most important roles district in terms of coordinating all the efforts between the LS ends, licensed school nurse and health, health, school health, what’s the I don’t know what that abbreviation is, but the multiple medically trained people in the district, and they become sort of the authorities for each building on what qualifies as an exposure, what’s the risk. And so we’ve had instances already, of employees or students who have been either exposed to someone who has symptoms or been diagnosed, or themselves. And so then there’s standard quarantine, isolation period.

And those are different things. It’s really confusing. We’ve had some training, and it’s like the difference between isolation and quarantine and the number of days and this and so it’s gonna make it a juggling act as a principal or a teacher or a student is diagnosed, then does a whole class have to stay home? That’s just the teacher, okay? If the teachers at home, can they keep teaching remotely? Or do we need to bring in a sub, and if they are remote, then we need someone in the classroom to supervise the students are in place. So the permutations of complexity are high. And it’s incredible work that this, you know, health staff is doing on the behalf of the students and the staff. But it gets pretty complicated. So the standard procedure is that if, if an employee or a family member finds out they have to email, you know, the health person for their building, and the supervisor, the principal, and then there’s this flowchart of Okay, what’s the ramifications and what do we do? Yeah,

Jim Collison  [18:03] 
yeah, it’s complicated. Yeah. I mean, it’s just really in in this kind of situation. There’s just so many moving parts. Have you guys. So from a tech perspective, have you guys deployed? Did you do anything different? This fall tech wise, infrastructure wise? We talked about, you know, the lack of broadband at home. But what did you guys do to prep for the fall?

Nathaniel Lindley  [18:24] 
Well, the big the big thing for my department is going from shared on in classroom device model, where the K through five students came to school, they use the devices in the classroom, they did not take them home. And in often cases, they shared them rather than one to one. That was in the winter. Spring came and we had to send as many devices home with kids, we didn’t have enough. So a lot of times, like if you have a device at home that works, can you just use that and till we can get more. We were fortunate enough to be able to get our orders in for more devices in the spring so that we could get them in the summer. There’s a big national shortage, international shortage for major suppliers like Dell, Lenovo, hp.

And so we are really lucky. But my partner school districts around the state are like, I’ve got an order for 1000. And I have no idea if they’ll come before January, maybe in the spring, you know, so I will say that Apple has been incredibly efficient or somehow been able to keep their supply chains up and deliver product. unlike some of the other vendors and I, I’m sure it has to do with the complexity of trade agreements and manufacturing and sourcing parts but we ordered a fair amount in the spring planning for the falls. We got another thousand iPads, and then 1400 more Chromebooks.

So we spent the summer getting those prepped and ready taking the old ones in getting them fixed up getting them updated, getting them prepped, and then a lot of late summer, spring or late summer and fall was spent checking him out to all the students. And so that’s a huge change for our younger students, k five, and setting them up to having the device that they take home, manage getting on the Wi Fi at home getting signed into the right account. We’ve learned a lot because of course, not having done this practice before, there is a lot of mistakes made in the deployment. But in incredible work by my team, like trying to get it done and predict like a chess game, three steps ahead of if we do this, and this, will this work better for us in the long run or worse, like, so moving one to one has been the biggest challenge.

And we we’ve been fortunate to get the devices. The other thing that is we’re still struggling to learn is how to depend on technology, and predict its faults when we depend on technology way more than we have. So, you know, doing a Google meet was kind of a novelty before and now it’s like three times a day, if the kid can’t get in, do they get marked absent, you know, through no fault of their own. And so we’ve taken on a lot of work trying to help families and students get connected and troubleshoot. And you know, we do a lot of phone calls with parents. I’m here sitting here with my first grader, they got the iPad, we’re trying to do this. And it’s not connecting and saying this, and we’re over the phone, trying to do remote screen shares and troubleshoot. And sometimes I’ve had to tell a parent, you know, like, I can’t figure it out, I’ve done everything I know how to do and I can’t tell you why it’s not working. Just send an email to the teacher later and say you did your best, you know, he couldn’t connect. And so that’s, that’s a big change. We used to have control because everything was in the class. Right? And we’ve lost a lot of control.

Jim Collison  [21:56] 
Yeah. Do you feel like, you know, Mike, I don’t know about you. And I’ll ask you here in a second. But where I’m at, about every quarter, we’d figure two or three things out in a redeploy some things like, Okay, this didn’t work, we’re going to do this. And this didn’t work, we’re going to do it this way. And and we we even rolled out like Windows Hello capabilities. Oh, I think four or five weeks ago, that’s a pretty big going from, from just regular sign in to allowing some Windows Hello options. And there was like, it worked one way at first. And then a week or two later, it changed, you know, and I was like, oh, they’re, they’re figuring some things out. Mike, have you had that same experience at work of just kind of constant integration?

Mike Wieger  [22:42] 
100% Yeah, all of our technology, whether it’s our, you know, our contract management systems, or there’s things that we’ve tried to implement ourselves, we roll our own, or we get it off the shelf. And it’s always a constant evolution, especially when you’re trying to like, you know, the company I work for is trying to stay ahead of the game and always try to provide like the best technology to our clients. And that’s when it gets you know, you’re Oh, there’s always some other vendor out there saying, Well, I can do this now. I can do this now. And you feel like didn’t we? We didn’t even wrap up our last project. And we started our new one right? I don’t know it. It can get a little crazy.

Jim Collison  [23:15] 
Nathaniel, do you guys feel like you’re getting some you know, the software guys calm Sprint’s. But some abilities to deploy, learn? figure some things out redeploy. Do you get that capability? Or is it really kind of? Well, I guess we’re this way till the end of the year.

Nathaniel Lindley  [23:34] 
Right now it feels like we’re just sprinting all the time. And there’s no pause and reflect. And you know, there’s a little bit of that, but it just the fire hoses just come in with? Yeah. So we’ve rolled out new devices, new practices, you know, dependent on technology tools, then we started adding new software subscriptions, you know, okay, well, if kids are home, we need another tool to be able to deliver a quiz or make it interactive or all legit all valuable things. But it’s just the quantity of new that gets gets challenging. And so we find it hard to create documentation to share with the family about this or our tech support staff to understand when you get a call for this, here’s the known issues.

So you know, we’re we’re trying to catch up. And I think we’ll get there it certainly is getting better as the weeks go on. And things get a little more stable. And I think part of it is both the teachers and the students are learning like glitches are now expected and a norm. And they’re starting to learn to troubleshoot a little more on their own. They’re starting to you know, learn the nuance of like, well, if I restart each night, that gives me a better chance of having a clean system in the morning. Or if I remove the 75 extensions from Chrome then it won’t take so long to load pages or you know So there’s a lot of that forced self reliance and learning thing.

Jim Collison  [25:06] 
It gets me thinking, as you’re saying this, like, you’re creating the next generation of remote workers, who we all went remote, and a lot of people struggled, that this will this will be like whatever, like working remote, whatever I did in school. And, you know, we’re just at the early phases of it. And I think it is, just like you said, I think it is giving us some good learning opportunities. Brian in the chat says that, he says, as a teacher, I’ve seen students step up a lot more with regards to responsibility for their learning, takes motivation for students to stay focused at home, I work with high school aged kids. And listen, that’s not that’s not just high school students, or students, like work at home, like professionals struggled, I think through the summer to stay motivated and to stay busy. I’m to the point now where I’m actually more, because I have so much more equipment here than I would at work so many more screens. I’m way more productive at home than I would be going in. I’ve got my setup, Mike, how are you feeling about your at home work?

Mike Wieger  [26:09] 
I go back and forth. You could ask me this question every week. And I think I would, depending on how my week went answer different way. Yeah, I am more productive. But at the same time, there are still a lot of my conversations are on like, I just wish we could be in front of a whiteboard. Right now back in a meeting room, we could have this hammered out, my buddy across the halls who I’m working with grab him, let’s go grab a whiteboard, I don’t want to hear and schedule a meeting with you open up to like, it’s good. And it’s bad, right? So there’s given there’s take, I am extremely excited to say this to get back in the office like I cannot wait, I am not someone who would want this to last forever. I might be more productive in some ways.

But I can’t stand anymore. I’m kind of going a little crazy at this point. To be honest, I was good for there for a long time. And when my kids went back to school, I was even better. And now I’m getting to the point again, where like I just need to be back in the office, I need to be with my people having the conversations across the watercooler about work about whatever. And that’s, that’s for my sanity, I think I am not good at being alone. So I’m losing productivity. The longer this goes on saying,

Nathaniel Lindley  [27:08] 
Yeah, no, I’m I’m in four days a week, I take Thursdays to work from home. And partly it’s to a chance to catch my breath. And then I usually have a longer webinar or meeting today at a three hour meeting. Online. So you know, it’s easier to do that here. But I really have to be in the office to help support my team. It’s It’s It’s hard to be a supervisor, you know, and not present. So it’s it’s a mix, I don’t think I could do all work from home with this type of job. But having one day a week to be kind of focused, and a little bit more in control of my time a little bit, it helps. But I totally understand Mike’s point of there’s a lot to be said about the spontaneity of like, get a couple people stand around a table, talk through a problem. 510 minutes, you’re done instead of the formality of scheduling a time or trying to interrupt and

Jim Collison  [28:10] 
although that being said, Today, I had a problem. And I started an email in the morning, I had a call in meeting with a quick team to say, Okay, this is exactly what the problem is everybody understood. Then during the day emails and a few team conversations that went on. Then we literally went team by Team troubleshooting like they they have gotten that our technology team has gotten this point where they start putting like things in the header of the email and the subject line. So it can make and track where that email has gone. What version of the email is. And then so they’re sending these things. And it’s like, this is one, okay, this is one A, this one’s two, because it’s a branch. It’s almost like they would do in coding if they would branch the code.

So that the they know where these emails are going. And then at the end of the day, we pulled it all back together and have this quick conversation online. Like, okay, here’s what we found out. Here’s what we’re going to do. That would have been a week process if we were in person. Oh, really? Yeah, it would have we would have actually been because we meet more. That was the this is the thing when we’re in person or meeting all the time, the being home, we meet less we meet, we meet faster. And and so because, you know, meetings, we’re a suit. We’re a super social company. And so we get to meetings, we’re in him for an hour, you know, yeah, now your online is 20 minutes, like Okay, that’s good. I gotta go like I got other things I need to do. And you get off the line. Right. And, and so that has worked particularly well for us, Nathaniel, as you think about has this changed some processes? Maybe let’s think for the better has been any things where this is improved or you’ve seen some opportunities for improvement and some things were maybe unintended, maybe intended things got things maybe got better or better opportunities.

Nathaniel Lindley  [30:00] 
I think it just depends on the job type. You know, so some people on my team have a type of job where sitting alone for two hours and working through a problem is exactly what they need to be most efficient. And having the distractions of other people and interruptions kills their productivity, whereas others, their job is to be interrupted. You know, as part of my role is I’m here to be interrupted and to be available for questions and things that come up. So I think that’s part of that with with teaching in the classroom. I think it depends a lot again, on the subject area, you know, it’s it’s really hard for remote learning for Stute youngest students, you know, their attention span, and the complexity and the teachers that are successful with that are the ones who were very clear about what’s expected when what to do.

And so my daughter’s successful with that in fifth grade, because her teachers very, very structured. And Brian mentioned in the chat, it’s not just for kids, but it’s for adults, too, the more routine and structure you have, the easier it is to maintain that sort of productivity. So, but on the flip side, the teachers that are more of a, well, I’m just winging it, I can figure it out, I’m, you know, I’ve done this a long time, they’re having a harder time, because it doesn’t work that way anymore. You know, we’re not, we don’t have a good 15 minutes to kind of feel how the discussion is going and get through a class period, you know that. And so, I think it just really depends a lot. Um, one of the things we’re seeing is some of the students are distance learning, and some are hybrid.

But some of the teachers are trying to teach both distance learning students and hybrid teacher and in class students at the same time, especially in secondary. So the challenge is, if I’m an in class teacher, and two thirds of my students are in the room or half, and another chunk or out of the room, how do I develop lessons for both audiences? In my prediction is that if one of them is going to suffer, and so we’re seeing some students, and families that are doing a hybrid through the beginning of the year, saying, you know, what, this isn’t working, we’re gonna switch to distance learning. You know, and because if they’re going to class, and they’re doing a lot of self guided work, watching videos, and they’re not having the same level of discussion or labs and things, then why do they need to be there and take the risk and wear mask all day? So it’ll be really interesting to see over time, what the ebb and flow are the preference of students and families is, depending on the teaching model. Yeah. But,

Jim Collison  [32:57] 
Mike, I cut you off a second ago. Do you want to add anything there?

Mike Wieger  [33:00] 
No, I mean, really, the only thing I was going to say is, I think from the people I’ve talked to who are my age, and it’s interesting, I’d be interested to see the educational side of this. We’ve almost been doing this so long, that a lot of us we’re talking we’re starting to revert back to our old at home habits. So meaning distractions are a lot more now. Like I’m finding it really hard to not get distracted by things around the house that when we were first into this, it was new, it was fresh, like you were caught up like it was in your brain to not get distracted by things to work from home 100% of time, like, almost do what you’re doing in the office at home. And we were just talking last week, what you just getting harder and harder to not to stay with that mentality of I’m working on home, like it’s almost been too long. Now.

The newness of it, and the novelty of it has kind of worn off. So a lot of our brains for us have been like, yeah, it’s a lot harder for me to not turn on the Ham Radio, like I got 10 minutes real quick. Let me let me switch on. Or, you know, like, do this do a little laundry real quick. And it take longer than it should? Right? There’s finally taking breaks like for sure. Like, I would have got up at work and gone and talk to someone. So taking that 10 minutes to swap a load of laundry. I think that’s fine, but it’s getting harder and harder. And I don’t know if anyone else has seen that. Or if the kids at school now. They did this all last spring. So are they starting to get sick and tired of it? Are they still finding it kind of new and interesting. I mean, what Where are the kids at with their kind of mentality on this?

Nathaniel Lindley  [34:25] 
I think a lot of it depends on the kids. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And some kids. Like I think I mentioned in the spring, some kids thrived in the spring because they had more control over their environment. They were willing to participate in class because they had that safe virtual space. They could private message the teacher, they could raise their hand without feeling like everyone’s looking at me. Right. Some kids have done really well in in person class because the numbers have been smaller. So I’ve had a dog from a foreign language teacher, who was an early early weeks of school doing an introductory thing, okay, everybody, every, each person is going to get up and do a poem in Spanish or something.

And this teacher relayed like, I know this kid, and they would have never ever stood up and done that request, when we had 28 students in the classroom 30 in the classroom, but when we had 15, the student felt comfortable, they felt safe. So I think that’s more a testament of like, small numbers make a difference? Yeah, right, more than online learning. But those kids did really well. And other kids do well, remote. So I really hope that long term, we start to figure out, can we offer both in a more predictable, structured way, for the students and for the teachers? Some teachers are crazy good at distance learning and developing online materials, and feedback loops and things. And they they do really well. And it’s not to say they don’t do well in the class. But some are better at it than others. So what are the teachers? How about like, the technology staff staff who aren’t directly responsible? The kids? Are they? Are they in the office at the office? And like, how have they been? mentally, most of them, most of them are in the office. Okay, some are remote.

We prefer him to be in the office, because it’s easier to communicate easier to do problems. But for other reasons, some are working remote and because their job allows it. So if we get a request of like, Oh, I want to work remote all the time, we have to look at what the job duties are and try to predict like, is that really possible? You know, if you’re, if you’re the one who fixes the projectors, and you know, maintains this Chromebooks, that probably is not going to be really easy to do from home kind of thing. So it depends. But I think over time, we’ll start to feel a groove of like, okay, these roles make sense. This kind of structure makes sense and is manageable. So I’m hopeful that that will take hold over time and just say, What can education what can schooling look like for kids? And how do we meet their needs even better than we did before when everyone was just required to come to school?

Jim Collison  [37:19] 
A couple really good comments in the chat room. So let me cover those Alex had said that they change he that he changed his son’s Chromebook to single sign on versus the spring, having to sign on to each app, and each website, everything just signs in automatically in other apps that he has to use it What a great idea. I mean, yeah, you know, I was I have a big, long, complex password. And in enabling some things to kind of help me with that, when I was at work, it just logs in all the time, because I’m behind the firewall. But when I’m on the other side of the firewall, after authentic, authenticate everything, and so having some of those things helped me getting Windows Hello, which was super helpful. Now, it’s a pin in my face, instead of a big, long, complex password. That made that super easy other gym it said, We opened up a virtual Help Desk. So you users can drop in via zoom. But Daniel, have you guys from a health perspective? Is it phone? Is it video? How are you guys handling that?

Nathaniel Lindley  [38:16] 
Yeah, no, I I messaged other gym I said, That’s, I’d like to do that because we do phone. And we do email. So when we opened it up our email system or ticketing system to parents and families, they can email support and get in the system. And then we can distribute the ticket to the right person. That’s that’s helped out a lot for tracking. Because if we had just an email inbox, it would be a nightmare trying to pick and choose who’s doing what. But we have the phone open. And then families can call we had extended hours in the spring and extended hours at the start of the year. But it sort of tapered down now we’re just seven to four. And that’s worked out real well. And I find it more effective to talk to a parent and help them or a student. We have high schoolers and middle schoolers calling us. And I love it because they’re practicing using the phone.

Jim Collison  [39:09] 
Yeah, not to say don’t do it.

Mike Wieger  [39:12] 
I mean, they’ve never had to do before talk.

Nathaniel Lindley  [39:14] 
So sometimes you can catch right away, like, Okay, I need to change my enunciation my pace so that they’re feeling comfortable. And I can prompt them with questions without sounding like, you know, a jerk. And sometimes you hear the mom in the background, like, tell them your name, tell them what grade you’re in. And so it’s really it’s great, but it’s effective on the phone because we can ask them the questions to get to the root of the problem. Whereas An email will get an email that says my son’s Chromebook doesn’t work. Right? And we’re like, okay, right. What’s your son’s name? Yeah, What school do they go to? So I like the idea of a virtual option because a lot of times I’ve been on the phone, I want to say, well, I’ll send you a link but I don’t have their email address and it won’t And to be able to say go to help.school.org and click on the chat button and not and there’s people there to answer the chat or a video call. I like that idea. So,

Jim Collison  [40:15] 
I’ve done that round. Nathaniel, when when I get customers who it’s complex, I’m like, I’m just gonna send you a zoom link. Yeah, you got 20 minutes. So we can troubleshoot this via zoom, because this is, it’s so powerful to be able to share screens and to be able to show them or drop it in chat, or, I mean, 10 years of podcasting have got me ready to help people this way to just be like, hey, here it is, let me show you how to do it. Let me walk you through it, it’s so much easier.

Nathaniel Lindley  [40:44] 
What we do, we do screen sharing. So a lot of times around the phone, I’ll be like, okay, go to this site, we use splashtop splashtop. For Business, SOS. It’s got a lot of tools. But this is a real easy one that works on Mac and Windows, and iPad. And that’s almost all of our calls are those kind of things.

And then with the Chromebooks, they have a built in Chrome Remote Desktop support tool, which has been really reliable. And I’m actually impressed with how easy it’s been to connect in because a lot of times the problems that students will have is related to the junk in their account, not the hardware. So cookies are turned off, or pop ups are blocked, or there’s too many extensions. And so a lot of times, it’s like, we need to clear your cache out clear your cookies, we do have the ability to send with the Google console, we can send a remote restart, which clears out the local cache and reset some stuff without without resetting the whole operating system.

And that’s helped a lot. Because sometimes kids go for a week without restarting. And just doing that as helps some problems. So we have some of those but the missing pieces that virtual Help Desk, you know, immediate communication chat with with families outside.

Mike Wieger  [42:04] 
I would always be interested, I wonder, okay, so I know you guys don’t use probably video when you’re doing like, like a zoom call. I bet people are a lot less angry. It’s a lot. It’s really hard to be angry with someone when you can see their face. Like then you’re yelling at them in person, you’re no longer just yelling over the phone. I bet he would calm people down just a little bit if they’re getting angry if I can see your face. Like, if any of you are on the phone, I might go to get mad at you. But right now, I mean, we have smile. I can’t get mad at you.  And I see that right. Now I get mad at you again. Yeah. Oh, there we go.

Nathaniel Lindley  [42:33] 
And so I’ll do that. I’m like, Okay, let’s try to do a Hangout. Let’s try to do a meet. Let’s see if we can get it going. And I’ll give them a code. And they’ll be like, oh, oh, hi. And I’m getting here in the office. And I got a mask on, which makes it hard to articulate. And they’re like, Okay, I guess I guess it’s working. And so that’s been kind of fun. You know, I do like helping people. That’s part of why I’m in the job and getting them through it. And a lot of times it’s explaining what’s going on? Oh, I didn’t know we could do that. I didn’t know we had that. You know. And so I wish we had more time. I mean, every phone call I do is like 15 to 20 minutes, you know, at least even if it’s a quick fix, you know? And it’s, it’s good. You know, we we are there to help the families were there to help the kids. It’s just not what we did a year ago. And so getting that that shift and what our expectations of support is, is it’s getting there. I know, I think we’ll look back at this and be like, wow, we really did a lot.

Jim Collison  [43:33] 
Yeah. Do you think that Google and in this space will innovate as well as they’re getting feedback from now that districts are doing this? Don’t you think by next spring, they start rolling some things out to help you guys are

Nathaniel Lindley  [43:47] 
right now. They’re doing it right now. So they’ve made some improvements to Google meet, which is our primary video conferencing tool. They’re listening to education and teachers about what they need breakout groups breakout rooms is one of the big, big, big, big, big requests that’s coming. They have Q and A’s and polls built in now they’re giving some moderator controls to the organizers so that he can say, everyone that clicks the link and join automatically or everyone has to knock, you know, request to get in. So they’re doing that the the complaint I have is that there’s still some inconsistency is about who’s the organizer and you can only have one organizer. So I think in zoom, you can say okay, Mike’s the organizer, but he’s got to leave. So he’s passing the organizer role to Jim, you gave him a co host. Yeah. So we can’t do that yet. That would be

Jim Collison  [44:38] 
really far ahead on this, like they had it all. They weren’t secure. It was open source. I mean, it was open to everybody. But they had all the functionality built in. They’ve had to lock it down where a Google or even Microsoft Teams, which was completely ready for this like they were close. But you know, it was a four by four screen and you know If it didn’t have breakout rooms and some of those kinds of things, you know, it could, it’ll only handle small sizes. So go ahead, and

Nathaniel Lindley  [45:07] 
but teams is getting better. Oh, and they’re adding features, they got breakout rooms on the roadmap too. And we have teams, but we haven’t rolled it out to staff, because we’re like, let’s not give him too much to and, you know, complicate things right now. So we focus on Google meat, we didn’t purchase the enterprise for zoom. And there are a lot of angry teachers that we didn’t buy zoom, there’s angry teachers that we didn’t buy Schoology conferences, you know, because everyone’s got their favorite flavor of like, this is why I like to do conferences. And in my role, I’ve got to have, you know, four different conferencing apps on my computer, because depending on meet with, it could be Cisco or goto meeting, or whatever.

But we’re trying to keep it simple and keep our training around fewer products. But I often think like, man, if, if teams could do this, maybe that would help solve their problem or meet that need. But we’ll see. I found teams to be really useful, but only if you need the integration with the chat side of it really, right. Like, we I probably don’t even utilize 90% of the features of teams. But it’s, it’s our chat. And then hey, can we just jump on video real quick? Can I ask you a question? Sure. And it’s like, we use it for all of our meetings, internal meetings, we rarely use it external. We still have zoom for that. But all of our internal meetings are basically zoom. Like I said, there’s SharePoint features, there’s files, there’s the team’s like, when you’re on a team in teams, all those features are a little bit wonky, I think, still maybe not clearly defined from a user standpoint. But it works pretty well. I just, you know, I can’t see kids using it, though. It’s not the most user friendly interface for a child.

Yeah. And Microsoft wants to get in that education space. So built into teams is like classrooms, and boys are really yeah, at least in our addition, you know, and in, like you, my department uses teams, constantly, all day, right? I don’t know people’s phone numbers, because I just call them on teams. Yep. And because you can use the mobile app or the desktop as a web. We’d love it for that. And my wife’s company, they’ve been rolling out teams. And they’re starting to build in file structure and table of contents. And there’s all these features and teams that as a business, they’re using, you know, build out a knowledge base kind of thing inside teams, and they have different channels, depending on clients and this and that, and this is pretty amazing what you can do with it.

But it takes, you know, some time and effort and design to build it out that way. But for our needs in the in the school, we just need the quick video, we need them there. Now we’ve got tile view and meet so you can spread all your kids out, you know, helping teachers learn that you can make two windows, one with your meat and you can see all your kids and another window with your presentation. And can you do full window and not full screen. So it’s just little tricks and tips like that, that take time to roll out? You know, even if we had the perfect instruction guide on how to do everything at the beginning of the year, it would have been too much, right? No, we didn’t, you know,

Jim Collison  [48:08] 
you got to ease into it. Right, we’ve had to learn a lot of these things too. And there’s been rollouts for us. As far as you know, having additional features, I really do like document sharing. And we’ve been doing a lot of Excel spreadsheet sharing quickly to say, Hey, I’m just going to share this spreadsheet with you, if I update it and you updated at the same time, we’re okay, we can be in there doing this. And then when you’re done, you just kind of let it go. Like you don’t, it doesn’t have to live anywhere we get some data retention policies that are going to take care of those eventually, you know, they’ll just disappear. And, and so you can do some scratch work. Like, Hey, I got this list of email addresses that I need to get handled right now.

Okay, I’m going to start working on these, I’ll grab these from you, I’m going to share it with you, you know, and so teams has been good for that resume early on, you just wouldn’t, you know, you’d never put a file in zoom. And for the longest time, you could even share a link in zoom. It didn’t worry. LinkedIn work, they just we just whatever version we just moved to they just allow that. So, you know, regardless of the platform, and Andrew had said in the chat room, you know, we soon find that because there was a good one. You know, Skype blew a 20 year lead. And you know, you think about this, and another, you know, another Microsoft product that sat out there for a long time. It had it Well, to be honest, it didn’t have all this stuff that’s in it, but it bit think about it like it was out there for the longest time. And then who comes along as the leaders zoom.

Nathaniel Lindley  [49:35] 
So what I find fascinating is, is Skype is being you know, pushed aside by Microsoft. And yet on the Outlook app on my phone, when I create a new meeting event, it says Do you want to make this a Skype one? And I’m like, Yeah, why is the look at not have teams in it, right? No one wants? Yeah, I got a default install and Skype loads up every time I restart my computer like confused. The two teams are talking to each other

Jim Collison  [50:01] 
type in Skype for Business. And then of course, we’ve got a team. So there’s some there’s confusion there.

Nathaniel Lindley  [50:06] 
And I will say though, with teams, one more thing is my eldest son, he’s in technical school in Minneapolis. And they’re all office 365. So all his meetings are on teams, and they do team’s does a good job of broadcasting. All his classes are online. So as a post secondary, he attends, he says some of them, instructors a little slow sometimes, so they record and release it. So he’ll rewatch it at one and a half speed to kind of catch up on the materials. And I figure it’s a really good strategy, because then he can hear it the first time, you know, taking it in and watch it again, pause and start again, to capture some of that information. But they have a very good success, but they’re kind of like, all in office 365. So they’re staying within one environment. It’s working for him.

Jim Collison  [50:57] 
Well, Microsoft has some trouble this week and last with their office 365. Staying.

Nathaniel Lindley  [51:04] 
Did everybody’s had trouble these last two weeks last last Schoology had a big one. Was it yesterday? A two to for Microsoft. Right?

Jim Collison  [51:14] 
You think you’re getting attacked?

Nathaniel Lindley  [51:16] 
Well, I think it’s just load

Mike Wieger  [51:18] 
tack, right? Like that their outage worldwide, right? I mean, my I couldn’t. I was working on a legal document. And I couldn’t open it and save it because OneDrive was down that I couldn’t teach anyone about it. Cuz teams now I couldn’t email anyone, like, our entire suite was offline. And I’m like this beard. And we have a policy because of our industry. We can’t text. So I can’t text people about work, because it can’t be monitored. And so I was like, What do I do? I have literally no idea what to do. I was hacked to give an outage, right? I mean, you would think if it was you did you would be regions or sector would fall offline. But man, it’s

Jim Collison  [51:59] 
it’s something we wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was I mean, there’s this massive disruptions going on right now. Yeah, a month before a major election. I mean, listen, we used to do this to other countries. And now they’re doing a das. So you know, it is it is it’s too coincidental that it’s happening to all of the big players all at the same time.

Nathaniel Lindley  [52:20] 
Yeah. And it my attitude is I kind of not getting worked up about it anymore. Yeah, we used to panic, like, Oh, my gosh, Google Drive is down. Nobody can do anything. And I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna take a walk. It’s like having a fire drill. Come back in a little bit. It’ll be back office out for a day, then we’re in trouble, right. But the company seemed to be pretty good about rolling back changes or fixing it? Because they know everyone’s depending on it. So I think it’s, it’s all right.

Jim Collison  [52:48] 
Mike, you had mentioned, you mentioned earlier about being more distracted. You know, as time has gone on. It’s been the opposite for me, which is amazing is that I’ve gotten more laser focused in the last six weeks at home. So much. So I was doing a great job of working out like, I used to go out and I’d move the water on the line, I do a little mini workout, I come back in and do an hour’s worth of work. And I just repeat that throughout the day, like, and I was I was fit and I lost some weight as feeling good. I have been so laser focused on work over the last six weeks, just at home again, with the whole NASA setup that I have here like eight monitor and all this stuff that I’m kind of dialed in. And I’m having a hard time getting away from it. I work till almost six tonight. Just add some things I needed a wrap up, I was kind of in the zone, I wanted to get some things done, we’ve made some changes that I wanted to take advantage of. So for me, it’s been like, they’re wanting us to come back in and I’m sometimes telling my boss I’m like, you know, here’s a little secret. I’m a million times more productive at home. Like it’s just that’s just what it’s turned out now.

Will it be that way forever? And is it great for my health? Probably not. You know, I probably need to make some changes to get back to a little more fitness, get back to a little more balance. I don’t hate it. By the way, I get I got done at the end of the day today. And I’m like, man, I freaking crushed it. You know, and that feels good. When you have a day and get a lot of stuff done that Daniel I imagine when you get a day and you have some wins. Right? I help some people you get some things going you figure some things out that feels good, right?

Nathaniel Lindley  [54:25] 
crossing stuff off the list and my list maker. Yeah, always writing stuff down, like okay, these are the six things and then I get to done I’m like, at least I got to

Jim Collison  [54:36] 
well, and I’m a little I’m a similar boat to you. Now I’ve gotten kind of a hybrid role of podcasting and customer support. And so when I wake up in the morning, I have a handful of things I’ve come in from Europe, and a little bit of Asia overnight. So I need to handle those right away. And so I start sending off emails and start working some things and try to contact some people if I can or whatever in there. Are rush between like 730 and 10, of trying to get those things knocked out. And if I’m good, they’re done. And then I can do some of my work, right. And then in the afternoon, you know, this goes, things start kind of wrapping up and people start, that’s when they start calling back in again. And so I see a kind of an afternoon of you know, meetings are over whatever, and people are trying to get some work done. You guys have busy and slow patterns that go throughout the day.

Nathaniel Lindley  [55:27] 
Yeah, for sure. I mean, the morning, the start of the day is always the busiest time. And that’s where mysteriously things that work yesterday are now broken for no reason. And so we’re real busy in the morning. And then it is just like that, where it’s after lunch, things are quiet. And then usually around 233, that’s when either things start to blow up bad or like there’s problems. Or in my case, I start to feel productive, because now I’m getting to focus on some of the project type work. And I’m like, Alright, it’s three o’clock. Now I’m getting to this thing that I’ve been putting off and couldn’t get to. And then Oh, I got to, I can’t stay here. So we have that dip, too. And if you look at, you know, if you look at the analytics on printing, throughout the day, it’s always like blue and then slows down. And it’s very similar.

Jim Collison  [56:16] 
Yeah, yeah, well, and I do find, I’ve got some late friends who will take a meeting at five o’clock, where, you know, not everybody would do that before. And now you’re like, Hey, can we just meet at five because that clears that it’s like, clear of the day. And because it’s at five, we try to meet for as quick as possible. It’s kind of like, let’s get in and let’s get this thing done. So we picked up some efficiencies, and then you know, like, Okay, well, you know, there’s times I’ve, we had a new I had a new Patreon subscriber that I needed to mail one of the badges to, and so Monday morning, I wanted to make sure that thing got out first, our post office down here is open at nine. So you know, 855, wraps things up, head down. So you get a little bit more freedom that way. And don’t get me wrong. I’ve wanted to I haven’t done it yet. But I wanted to mow the lawn in the middle of the day is well, where, you know, maybe like at lunch, get out there and you know, get the lawn mowed. Um, so it does, it does give us some freedom. So if Daniel, anything else along those lines, go and talk about that light that you have, but anything else along those lines that we might have missed that you want to update us on?

Nathaniel Lindley  [57:23] 
Yeah, okay. You know, ask me in six months?

Jim Collison  [57:26] 
Yeah, well, we’ll have you back on at six months, for sure. So

Nathaniel Lindley  [57:29] 
that the big difference I was thinking through it is in the spring, everybody was in like panic mode, like, Oh, my gosh, we have to all be remote. And we’ve never done this before and get this fixed and do this and do this and, and the teachers are learning, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The end of the school year was coming, we’d already had relationships between two teachers and students. So they knew each other and it was like, let’s get through this together. Starting the year, going into winter, that’s a different mindset. So we’ve had time to kind of regroup, rest, come back to it, change some structure, build out some skills and tools. But this is going to be a long year. And as things get colder, we can’t have band practice outside. We can’t have lunch outside and recess as well. recess is fine, but it’s gonna get it’s gonna get difficult as it gets darker and colder. And it’s not just schools, everybody’s like, well, I can’t go to my favorite restaurant and sit on the patio in January. Right. So it’s gonna be interesting, the sustainability and the ability to like, Okay, how do we pace ourselves as an organization to get through this without burning out our teachers burning out our kids burning out a staff? How do we how do we set expectations that are reasonable to get get through the winter?

Mike Wieger  [58:50] 
So hadn’t even thought about that yet? I got to press

down on winter, we’re not gonna be able to sit outside. Okay. Oh, man.

Nathaniel Lindley  [58:58] 
Well, a lot of people are buying fire pits, patio heaters, and all that kind of stuff. I ordered a solo stove, you know? Oh, good.

Jim Collison  [59:08] 
Well, you have to you have to check in and tell me how well that works. That maybe you could maybe during the meet up? Yeah.

Nathaniel Lindley  [59:15] 
Yeah. When’s the meet up? Is that early November?

Jim Collison  [59:18] 
No. October 24.

Nathaniel Lindley  [59:20] 
I might be here. They’re backordered. So

Jim Collison  [59:23] 
okay, yeah. Yeah, cuz firepits can work too. I mean, we could get firepits at the same time, that would be super cool. I tell you what, what saved me is I have virtual happy hours with guys. And so every Friday and on the weekends with Ed Sullivan, I have just been I get out on the deck. I take my laptop out on the deck so much so that I installed the new power outlet out on my deck. So I could plug my laptop in which will be great for the meetup and and those regular weekly kind of connects.

Not work. This isn’t a work thing. This is you know, grabbing a beer scarf. Whatever, in half an hour long conversation that’s just kind of connecting with somebody I normally do to the office. But that’s not happening. So that’s been good. And and both of these guys are outside of my network. So it’s not like I work with them all day and then we’re doing this. It’s kind of, it’s a safe for me to go. Right. So that’s been, I think that’s been in, of course, this show, which continues to be normal. Like, I mean, think about it, we’ve been able to really change. No, we’ve been able to stay normal through all this so well, I mean, we’re not Mike’s not normal, and I’m not normal, but everybody else is on that. Okay,

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:00:37] 
the level of obsession with like, deep diving into something. It just amazes me, isn’t it, he can go farther? Not a good thing. I don’t know how that brain works. But it’s not like mine. Like I thought I got into things. But that’s another level.

Mike Wieger  [1:00:54] 
It’s bad. It’s a add, it doesn’t work out. Well, for me. Maybe that’s why I get distracted at work. Maybe that’s why I need to be back in the office. because

Jim Collison  [1:01:00] 
well, but Mike, you you really learn it inside now like I have, I have benefited from your willingness to figure it out. I mean, you’ve got it all figured out. By the time I say yes to it. And then you’re like, when we were doing Bitcoin stuff together, you’re like, Okay, do this and this and this. And this. And I’m like, this is great. Like, I don’t have to figure any of this stuff out.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:19] 
So are you saying there’s a chance to get you into ham radio? I mean, there’s

Jim Collison  [1:01:23] 
always a chance. All right, yeah, there’s always a chance. Um,

what we’ve learned a and I think we’re kind of through this nothing to be honest. But lighting matters when it comes to this kind of communication. And early on in the pandemic, everybody was dark, and it was terrible. And so things, I’ve watched my own co workers rearrange, like, they’re starting to figure it out. And they’ve rearranged their desks and where they sit, to get that forward facing light. I said all the time, you know, get some natural light or some forward facing light on you. And so just today, I was on a call with a bunch of, of my, you know, the folks that I work with, and they all looked good, like, every single one of them look good. And I was like, This wasn’t this way in March. Right? Some of that’s lighting and you found a cool little gadget that, that might help with that.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:02:12] 
Yeah, I, I agree with you. And sound and light are important. And so one thing we did for our teachers is we bought a lot of USB headsets, that didn’t make it perfect, they made it way better than just using with built in. And sound is important for the students to hear what the teacher is saying, whether it’s a screencast or something, and it’ll make it less tiresome. So lighting is another good thing and, and so I found this portable light. And this is a battery operated little one, a hold it like this, and it it can change the brightness, and it can change the color temperature. And it just has a little USB port for charging. And it fits nicely. If you want let’s see, where’d I put it in a cell phone tripod. So good idea, you know those gorilla pods and stuff so you can put it in and turn off a tripod, so that you can mount it easily above a lamp or back of something. And this this makes just a fill, you know how the photographer’s will have a side light that kind of fills from the side that’s that’s what I use it for.

And so that that’s nice the other that you can get if you need if you’re in a basement that has that dark wood paneling, sorry, the basement with the dark wood paneling, you know, every 70s basement, it’s only seven and a half feet tall. As you can get one of these light bars an LED light bar, that’s also battery or it can be plugged in and you can mount that up or or put it on a stand and then this throws off a fair amount of light to just to fill in what you don’t get from a table lamp. So that was kind of a pretty cheap, pretty easy way to

Jim Collison  [1:04:11] 
supplement Those light bars are 20 and the very first one you showed us is like 40

Mike Wieger  [1:04:19] 
and that’s a really good deal for the size. I’ve always had to find something that’s small that looks like it gets pretty bright.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:04:25] 
And this is like 28% power. You know really adjust how bright and what the color temp is. And then because it’s light I just am setting it here up on top of a lamp. Okay, off to the side.

Jim Collison  [1:04:41] 
Yeah, I think it’s a great I have you know, I bought some Well, I should say Dave McKay back in the day gifted me at Christmas. These Cowboy Studio lights that I’ve because I’m in the basement, I’ve actually mounted to the ceiling. So instead of having them down here they’re mounted with Yeah, just mounted to the ceiling. And explain why it’s just there, and then pointed down at me. And so that’s always given me some light. But not everybody has that kind of space. And so if any of you two of those on either side, pointed out, you or two of those light bars, I mean, at 20 bucks each, yeah, dollars and you’re in pretty good shape, right? You could have those off to the side pointing at you, right. And that gives you a pretty good, that’s almost a little too bright too much. You want to defuse that. But

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:05:27] 
if I had it farther back,

Jim Collison  [1:05:28] 
you can you adjust this the light bar,

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:05:32] 
this one just does low and high, but I can’t tell the difference.

Jim Collison  [1:05:37] 
So you get what you pay for.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:05:38] 
These aren’t exactly sophisticated.

Jim Collison  [1:05:40] 
Yeah, you get what you pay for,

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:05:43] 
you know, you said you, you’ve been able to set up your space. And you’ve been doing it for podcasting for almost 10 years. But my wife’s been working from home since March, we finally got her an actual desk and set it up with a docking station and a proper thing. And I got flipped, I used to be on that side. And I moved over here because I’m not here very often. So we’re both in this small office.

But for her getting a formal space, this is where I work, it’s separate from the dining room, it’s separate from everything else has made a big difference for that, that sort of mindset of, you know, I’m at work, I can close a door. That’s huge for for us and for kids to be able to have their own space, you know, my daughter has a little desk in her bedroom, she’ll do her meet in there when she’s, you know, on a call, and she can use headset or not. But there’s a door to close. So having a space that sort of dedicated for this type of work, if you want to call it is is really helpful for that sort of mindset of you know, focus.

Jim Collison  [1:06:48] 
Yeah, I think it needs to be comfortable to I was early in the pandemic, I was struggling to see some things like physically see, I didn’t have my resolution, it was different. I brought my office equipment home. But the distance that I was from the the monitors was different. And so the resolutions that I had in the office didn’t work at home, the laptop that I had wasn’t bright enough in some cases, and I was in the angles were all wrong. And I was you know, I was constantly doing this, you know, to get the to get in the in the bifocals or in the trifocals on mine to get I was constantly having them have my head up. Well, you do that all day.

And you’re like, yeah, oh my god, right? It’s got to be comfortable. And so what I, it took me too long to get to this point. But what I started looking at what I started doing is looking at every monitor and saying, Do My eyes hurt when I look at this, right. And if it feels good, it’s right, regardless of what the recommended settings are, if it feels good, if I’m not getting a headache, if I’m comfortable with it, that is right. And then I went through everything and set it to that. So now no matter what monitor I’m looking at, based on what I’m using it for, I’ve got it set exactly to the right resolution, or my eyes, like to look at it. And it’s amazing what that does for your productivity. You know,

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:08:10] 
so do you think you adjust the resolution? Or do you just the text size, or what is Microsoft call it where it’s like 125% scale,

Jim Collison  [1:08:20] 
sometimes both to be honest. So sometimes I’ll go in like on the laptop, it may take a combination of both. In other words, on a web page, the way the web page is set up, even though I might have 125 or 150% of that turned on, I’m going to I’m going to either cram the webpage down or blow it up in Chrome. So that the the, the you know, the the icons or the the characters get to the right size for my eyes based on the distance that I’m looking at the map, right because that’s that’s key.

I sit here I also sit here for work. This is the work mode, this is podcasting mode. These are set differently than these because I mean, they’re they’re different. They’re in a different length. I site length, when I figured that out, productivity shot through the roof, because I was before I was you know, but every 45 minutes, I was like, you know, yeah, oh, and I just I didn’t want to work. I was like, getting physically frustrated. And now that I can see clearly. You know, it’s like, oh, well, I can look at this all day. You know, so I think that’s key to is getting that getting your work environment set right for you. Right, Mike? If you if you’re like me, you were always moving things around to get them just perfect. Well, and a lot of time doing that, too.

Mike Wieger  [1:09:44] 
So my problem was, I actually got told by one of our clients that my background down here was very unprofessional. And you know, I agree, right? Like this is a workshop area. It’s nothing professional. So I ended up just putting a desk up in our bedroom and you can’t tell it’s our bedroom because the angle the camera, I got it set up. And that’s just where I ended up. So it’s kind of nice though, because I’m writing from the window upstairs, I’m no longer in the dungeon of the basement. So I can even open up the window, have a nice air. And then if I don’t have, I’m in meetings like probably 75% of my day, and when I’m not that I’ll try and go sit on the back patio. And I’ll just sit with when I’m trying to crank out.

Jim Collison  [1:10:22] 
You’ll keep talking.

Mike Wieger  [1:10:25] 
So, I go to the back yard because man I have found Jim that you know, we talked about struggling to focus on things. And I found the one place where I can focus is my backyard if I’m sitting on that back patio. That’s not where any of my distractions are, there’s no laundry there’s no nothing hotter so I’m using laundry example my wife’s gonna kill me cuz I don’t do any of the laundry. My you

Jim Collison  [1:10:44] 
know, things like don’t do any laundry, my get

Mike Wieger  [1:10:46] 
the dishes, the other computers, the Ham Radio, the iPads, everything like that, where I can go sit back there and I can get a bunch of stuff done. I’ll just sit there put the laptop on my lap and, and turn on some music from the speakers. And increasingly, they’re

Jim Collison  [1:10:59] 
seeing and I’m I couldn’t be any less productive outside. I get outside and I just lose. I lose my mind outside. It’s just too beautiful. Too many things to look at that. Daniel, do you have a spot? Like, if you were to think where am I the the most productive? What’s that for you?

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:11:19] 
Yeah, it probably depends. Probably in my desk at work. Yeah, it’s a little less, a little less crowded than here. I’ve got the screen set up on a visa mount the way I like, you know, I’ve got things like yours set up things where they’re within arm’s reach. Yeah. Now, if there’s nobody there, then it’s like super productivity mode. But yeah, and then here, you know, I think around projects around the house and do things and then it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I’ll be upstairs sometimes downstairs. So it just depends. I did buy some blue light glasses.

So that if I’m working late in the evening, I wear these I don’t normally wear glasses at all. But I’ve been wearing these just to see if that helps reduce some of the fatigue. No, but I don’t wear them all the time. So it’s hard to say whether it makes a difference or not. But yeah, that’s an easy thing to add and try it. It’s a good idea.

Mike Wieger  [1:12:17] 
And I agree with you, I should have said my work desk at work is where I’m most productive. I need to get back there. And I honestly I think they’re to the point where you can just come in. They used to say if you need to have a reason to I’m sure they’d be fine if I went back and work there. But you know, Okay, then let’s be 100% honest, there are some really nice aspects of it. Right? Like, like, Am I the mo am I’m the most productive No, but man it is nice to be able to get some stuff done.

Like you said, Jim, right. If you need to run somewhere real quick, do one quick thing. It is no big deal the few times like my oldest has forgot his lunch when you take it to school. No one’s even notice it’s not that awkward. Like, Hey, sorry, I got to run to my boys school real quick. I’ll be right back. I promise you. I mean, no one even knows right? Cuz I have teams on my phone. I can answer calls and everything I’m they would have no idea where I was at. I could be in Bora Bora. And they would have no idea.

Jim Collison  [1:13:07] 
The difference with that though, Mike is I’m a big video guy. And so I ping my coworkers. And they’re doing that and I’m like, Hey, get jump on video. And they’re like, Oh, I’m out. You know, I’m on the road, or, you know, I’m dropping the kids off or whatever. Yeah. And so, it I’ve noticed because I’m insistent. I’m one of the few I think I’m insistent every meeting has video. Like I want to see your face. And in in some I can tell some of my co workers are not necessarily at their desk, you know? Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [1:13:40] 
Well, I think in and we had that same thing. I think what set the tone was our boss was doing the same thing. One time he was in the kitchen, filling up his coffee, and then grabbing a sandwich while he was teams videoing and he’s like, okay, I mean, you guys are me up doing Yeah, what time he was in his car. He’s like, Oh, I gotta go run to the I gotta get my birth certificate for my daughter somebody have lost like, he set the standard that it’s you can be on teams for video. You don’t be sitting at the perfect spot. I don’t care, because we’re really just talking internally about stuff. So I think when he set that tone, I’ve answered my teams from anywhere because he’s I know he’s not gonna care. Right on what he cares about is I’m gonna answer

Jim Collison  [1:14:16] 
you know, I can you can get there.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:14:19] 
Set the sleep mode on teams though. Set it to like not paying you between certain hours. I do. Yep. nice feature on the phone. It’s like nope, it’s not gonna make noise before 7am

Mike Wieger  [1:14:30] 
Do Not Disturb on the iPhone is becoming more and more necessary.

I have found I don’t

Jim Collison  [1:14:35] 
I have no alerts turned on you. My phone makes no noise at any time during the day or night. Never. Nope. Yeah, I don’t. I don’t use alerts that way. I’m just it’s just different for me. So you get a it just it buzzes Well, it does. It’ll buzz on my watch. Got it. Okay, so yeah, so I guess that’s how I’m doing it, but I’m not wearing my watch at night. So that’s I guess that’s my Do Not Disturb is When my watch goes on the charger at night right before I go to bed, it’s off until because my phone is off. It’s You’re not? No, it’s getting a hold of me. Mike. Yeah. Well,

Mike Wieger  [1:15:13] 
when user Nathaniel, what are you using in? are using an iPhone or? space? Yeah, I have an iPhone, iPhone, are you? They did a lot of cool updates with the sleep and everything. The whole process of setting that up is kind of cool. I actually stumbled into it iOS 14 Have you set that up yet where you try to tell it when you go to bed when you wake up? It’ll start to it automatically does disturb it tells you Hey, you should stop looking at your phone now cuz I’m go to bed. I’m like, oh, and the reminder has been nice, cuz I’ve been like, Oh, yeah, you’re right. It’s almost like a guilt trip. Like, okay, fine, I’ll set my phone it is you’re right, it’s hard to get close to that. And then it does an automatic alarm in the morning.

And it kind of Sue’s you into waking up. And this is all built in. Which is I know, there’s a lot of apps that people have used. So I don’t know, I had never looked into this, I’d never used a sleep tracker app or a sleep setup app. It’s been kind of fun. Because I now I wear my watch at night because it’s built into the watch, too. And obviously, it’s just rooms turned on automatically. So I don’t care. It’s just nicely wakes you up. It’s interesting. Yeah, I haven’t I haven’t upgraded iOS 14 yet, I was waiting to like, a few more point 1.2 updates, because things are working. And like, like Jim says, I just want my phone to work this, I don’t want it to have problems.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:16:28] 
So I just I’ll be patient. But I am curious about some of that stuff. Making it a little easier. I’ve kind of stepped away from sleep tracking, and Fitbit and activity and just kind of taking a pause and all that and I still wear a watch during the day, but I take it off at night. And it’s just it’s it’s a sort of a self preservation. Yeah, the fewer distractions in my world lets me get through the day and focus on more important things. So I haven’t, I haven’t really opened Facebook in two, three weeks. And what we’ve done with some of my family is we’ve converted to using a iPhoto shared album.

So we just once every while there’s a cute picture of a cousin or nephew, we just put it in there. And then people get it. But we’re not going on Facebook and seeing the posts and garbage. And it’s sort of we want to share these moments and these things, but not through that tool.

Mike Wieger  [1:17:27] 
So okay, use case, it’s so funny you say that, because I’ve never thought of it in that way before. And honestly, when you do add the photo to the shared photo, it gives you that pop up, like you’re gonna write a post. I never got that. Because in our family, we’ve always set up like, Hey, we’re all going to Lake of the Ozarks, we’re going to set up a shared album so that we can just gather everyone’s photos in one place because her mom likes to create albums.

And so it’s been a gathering method, but it’s never been a shit. Like, we’ve only used it when we’re all in the same place at an event trying to just gather our photos, that’s a really good idea to use it almost as a social media.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:18:03] 
Just Yeah, I mean, it’s almost like a private Instagram, where it’s a photo, and maybe a small caption, or a small video. You know, it could be I was going through a photo album, and I found this old print of Grandma, and I’m just gonna take a picture. And hey, remember Grandma, you know, and, and then everybody gets to see it. And it’s very easy, you just got to get everybody signed into the same shared album, and then it just starts showing up. And like you said, you get a notification, it’s been a really good way to stay connected with different family members that aren’t close by and you can’t visit and, or who are on social media, my parents are not on they are friends.

Mike Wieger  [1:18:40] 
They’ve never been on any social media. And so we always have to text them the photos. And that’s a really good idea.

Jim Collison  [1:18:48] 
Actually, we use Snapchat for that, but nothing else. So snapchats like our family, we don’t follow anybody else. I don’t. But we don’t follow anybody else on Snapchat except the family. And so I go in there each night and I look at some of the snaps that the kids have put, you know, they’ll they’ll update throughout the day. See the grandkids, those kinds of things.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:19:07] 
Yep. And I wonder if you’ll see a condensing of the social media instead of how many friends can you collect on right? product platform ABC? How small Can you make your? Your your circle of influence? Yeah, it’s funny you talk about that. And this could be a whole I won’t even dive into it. But the social social dilemma, right is that the new Netflix

Jim Collison  [1:19:30] 
see that everybody’s been talking about that.

Mike Wieger  [1:19:33] 
Phenomenal, you haven’t seen what I’ve liked is actually I find myself gravitating towards discord because it’s smaller groups with a targeted market or targeted purpose right so I’m in discord groups, discord servers, channels, Everyone calm for like one for Ham Radio things and they’re just these very small tight knit groups. I have no ads. I see nothing else. All I can I can go there and just interact by peeps, right? These are my Ham Radio guys and I can talk Ham Radio, no ads, no nothing. And get out and not have anything else thrown in my face. I’m like, beautiful, I would easily ditch Facebook for something like discord full time because I could just live there and not worry about all the extra stuff of the social media platforms. So you’re right within you you’ve almost created your own little with, you know, with photo sharing. There it is. There’s another way to kind of avoid the social media. Do it yourself. Um, I like it.

That’s good.

Jim Collison  [1:20:27] 
Nathaniel, last question before we let you go, or before we wrap this up. It’s Christmas time coming up. Like it’s I don’t know how many. It’s not many 60 some days maybe a Christmas, right? Or maybe a little bit more? Maybe 75 days. When you think about tech a tech gadget for Christmas in something you’re kind of got your eyes on hoping Santa will bring but he gets your eyes on from a gadget perspective.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:20:54] 
That’s a good one. Uh, well, I was I was very intrigued about the build your own sound baffle panel. That was on a couple weeks ago. So I’ve been watching videos about building your own sound panel, not the LED light strip. That’s crazy. That was way was good. That’s like a ham radio complexity of LED lights that upset me now is is fascinating. But I would I would like to add some sound baffles in here that just deaden the sound some. So that’s a project I want to kind of work on. My wife doesn’t think it’s a great idea. But we’ll see. But yeah, I don’t know. I like the idea of getting a little bit better at my smart home gadgets and getting them consolidator right now I’ve got them split between smart things and hubitat in picking one because not smart things can do everything and habitat can do everything, you know, go in there and I think that would be something but a gadget man. I don’t know. I kind of would like just a straight you HD Blu 4k blu ray player. Really not just the Xbox, but just a I can see why don’t just go with the Xbox. It’s just It’s like my worst player ever. Yeah. is bad and the remote and you’re right. Yeah, I want just explain you HD player.

Mike Wieger  [1:22:19] 
Okay, so I blu rays.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:22:21] 
Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [1:22:22] 
yeah, that was more what I was curious about is I just as more people start to just rent it off of any service, whatever device they have the physical media side, but actually, I have a few friends who are very much into owning physical media. I’m always like, I don’t know how many of those are left. But good to know that there are still a lot of people out there that are buying blu rays. Is it hard to find? I’ve honestly never bought like maybe one blu ray in my life. Because it’s so bad.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:22:48] 
It depends. But what’s interesting is that some movies are never upgraded to blu ray. So I’ll think like, Oh, I haven’t watched this movie in a long time, I want to watch it with my dad. And it’s only on DVD. And I’m like, okay, and you can’t rent it anywhere, you know. So there’s movies, you have to get on disk. And I like, you know, I take my blu rays and put them on plaques. And then I can share with my family. And so that’s part of the rationale is like I can take it and make it digitized to share it easier than I can share a disk. But yeah, I still buy him and not a lot. And sometimes it’s cheaper. You know, it’s ridiculous that I can buy a disk cheaper on Amazon than renting it or not renting it, but usually then buying it. So the 114 99 to buy own the digital copy. And I can buy the disk for 799. And sometimes you can get three packs. So I just watched the M Night Shyamalan series of unbreakable split and glass. And I can get those discs cheaper in a three pack from England. Then renting him you know, so crazy. Yeah, and now I have a big shelf of media that I’m going to have to send to Goodwill someday, but I

Jim Collison  [1:24:04] 
know we got to wait, listen, we have three shelves of media that skip Sarah just buys them. We buy DVDs forever. And so she just a movie we want she just buys it. We don’t even ask questions, and I was doing on Plex for a while and then I’m like nah, now it’s just gonna sit on the shelf. We’ll just do it that way. Well, good enough. Well, if you guys will hang tight for me one second. Let me close this up. We’ll do a little bit of both show here.

But a couple reminders before you go I mentioned this if you want to support us on Patreon and be part of that Patreon Meetup group which we’re doing like every other month at this point, http://theaverageguy.TV/Patreon we got a $5 plan if you want to join us out there always appreciate it when you support the show just allows me to have some ability to do some things here on the network or buy some gadgets and do that kind of stuff. So we appreciate that

Mike, I appreciate your endorsement of discord. And so you can join us in our discord group which is actually super calm. Like it’s it’s the calmest group I’ve ever been in. It’s It’s just super reasonable. So if you’re looking for a place, right I mean, don’t you think Mike? Oh, you bought you muted yourself Mike

Mike Wieger  [1:25:06] 
sorry. It is definitely a non toxic environment. Easily throw any question out there talk things people just throw stuff out there all the time. It’s a it’s a really fun place.

Jim Collison  [1:25:17] 
And listen, if you make a toxic I’m gonna throw you out. So http://theaverageguy.tv/discord gets you there as well. And you know what we’d love that Mike and I, we got some shows coming up, or it’s just the two of us and we’d love to get your voicemail. When we make when we love to have some voicemail asked some questions, some comments and things to respond to. Rev is super easy way now for you to give us a voicemail. So go to http://HomeGadgetGeeks.com in over the right hand corner, even I think I’m on the phone version of it. There’s a little like a little microphone, if you just push it and then talk. Nathaniel referred to this ancient technology called talking on your phone earlier in the show. Nobody really knows what that is anymore, but you push the button and then you just talk and when you’re done, you push it again and we get a message from you. We love to have some of those messages.

So this week, next week, whenever whenever you’re listening to this, just pick it up and leave us a crazy message, do something fun http://HomeGadgetGeeks.com I want to try that service out. We we recently moved that from an app to using pi page to get it done and have a service where you can leave a message so do that as well. Home Gadget geeks.com if you want to send me an email you can’t not as fun but Jim@theaverageguy.tv and it’s always good to hear from you Neal who sends me an email all the time so appreciate that Twitter @jcollison @WiegerTech over there for Mr. Wieger and if you want to join us on Facebook you can join the Facebook group http://theaverageguy.tv/Facebook think about that one for a second here.

The average guy TV both web and media hosting powered by Maple Grove Partners get secure reliable high speed hosting from people that you know and you trust and that’s Christian he’s doing bang up we’re gonna see him in two weeks. So I’m kind of excited about hanging out at his place full COVID things in place masks we’re doing the whole thing but we’re gonna get a chance to see Christian here right email hosting to I’ve

Mike Wieger  [1:27:11] 
ever mentioned that I ran my I run my whiskey zero eco golf Romeo my my Ham Radio email through him and the website through him and it just it works. It’s so great. It’s amazing.

Jim Collison  [1:27:21] 
He does a great job. He’ll do anything up by playing start at 10 bucks Maple Grove partners.com.

And then don’t forget, December 2 is actually but December 3 is the date. Thursday, December 3. We are gonna celebrate 10 years of Home Gadget Geeks what was called home tech and Nathaniel, you are on home tech 143 like you are in here before we even changed it to Home Gadget Geeks. And remember norwescon and hometech Yeah, in the day Yeah,

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:27:50] 
yep. So yep, I was on that. And then Rich’s random podcast

Jim Collison  [1:27:54] 
guests. Now it’s those super fun days when we just that was we were blab before there was blab. It was super cool as you can we want to have you join us December 3 Thursday night December 3 special anniversary 10 year anniversary party we’re going to come out join us live make sure you get that on the calendar. So you join us live we want to have you out here we are live every Thursday at 8pm Central nine Eastern out here at the average guy TV slash live Nathaniel thanks for coming out and being a part one. Thanks for being a part of the community too. Thanks for being a Patreon subscriber. I appreciate that as well. And for each thanks for being a great

guy. Appreciate that. Oh,

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:28:29] 
thanks. No, it’s thinking in my head like yeah, I have to pay to have friends and people to hang out with but I didn’t say it out loud until just now.

Jim Collison  [1:28:38] 
Well, it but it helps us do the things that we do. So thanks.

Nathaniel Lindley  [1:28:41] 
That’s what I do it for. I want to support it. I get a lot out of it. I appreciate

Jim Collison  [1:28:44] 
you doing that. So with that, we’ll say goodbye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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