A Look at APRS for Ham, Black Friday Shopping Lists and AirPod Pro – HGG422

By surprise, when I was interviewing Christian for Cyber Frontiers 58, he mentioned a site for Ham Radio Operators. Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) is an amateur radio-based system for real time digital communications of information of immediate value in the local area. Data can include object Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates, weather station telemetry, text messages, announcements, queries, and other telemetry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Packet_Reporting_System). We also talked about our Black Friday shopping lists, some thoughts from Jim on Plex and Mike covers the new AirPod Pro. I think you will enjoy the show.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg422

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #422 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Ham, APRS, Automatic Packet Reporting System, Plex, Nvidia Shield, Peloton, Apple, Ham Radio, AirPods

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Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 422 recorded on November 7, 2019. 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 the average guy TV Studios it I think we get a little snow the other day.

Mike Wieger  [0:37] 
Yes we did. Yeah, a little bit snow kidding. Two separate days events now.

Jim Collison  [0:42] 
Well, fall came and went. It was chilly today. 17 degrees when I woke up this morning and it was like oh, okay, winter is here. It’s great. I love it. That’s my favorite jackets and those kinds of things. Of course. We we post the show Yeah, like it with world class show notes each week out at the average guy.tv. Don’t forget and we want to remind you if you haven’t downloaded the app yet, you might want to get that done an iOS or Android free Home Gadget Geeks. com best way to listen on the road many of you have it gets really good numbers actually. So head out to Home Gadget geeks.com you can download that for free we would thank our Patreon subscribers who helped me pay for that every single year. By the way, thank you to everybody who who gives through Patreon. Appreciate that. It’s the beginning of the month and and we just got those donations to come through. So appreciate you guys doing that. If you want to join us in discord, the average guy.tv slash discord will get you there. Or the average guy.tv slash Facebook if you want to do the old way of talking to us. You can get that done as well. Mike Howard. Well, Mike Wieger was out how was for almost at Fourth of July. How was Halloween?

Mike Wieger  [1:47] 
It was a cold Halloween for us in Nebraska last week. So you know for our boys are young too. So my boy is actually their favorite part was actually handing out candy. They had a lot of fun. So we did the run. They were woody in buzz Halloween and her Emmett still wears his what he had around the house he just thinks it’s the best thing ever. And they had a good time and and was first time that Emma was kind of old enough to really enjoy the full aspects of the holiday right the candy the everything Harrison was watching him and honestly doing everything he did. It was it was a great Halloween It was fun seeing him early in July for the first time.

Jim Collison  [2:19] 
Do you have a ring doorbell?

Mike Wieger  [2:21] 
I do. We have a simply safe okay,

Jim Collison  [2:23] 
but if kids came up Did you have kids come up and yeah, I did they ring the doorbell did Hannah give out the candy or did you guys put a bowl out we had the door open and we’re all in our living room. So usually I didn’t even have to we were like we were just kind of sitting around we had like chairs right around there venting your heat out to the Lord. Did he do

Mike Wieger  [2:41] 
the whole neighborhood?

Jim Collison  [2:42] 
powers free

Mike Wieger  [2:44] 
What the heck? I need to get all my mom my dad had not eaten whole neighborhood All right.

Jim Collison  [2:50] 
This this Halloween the big deal was like ring door cam footage of kids stealing candy. I don’t know if you notice that but it was All over Twitter, and you know, or kids and put a bowl out. I guess that’s become a new tradition too. You’re too lazy to even answer the door. So you put a bowl of candy out and the kids just come and get what they want. What do you expect with kids? I’m going to put that I’m going to get angry on Twitter and just start getting angry at people.

Mike Wieger  [3:15] 
Well did. Did you see the one good samaritan video though from that? Yeah, one kid shows up. There’s no candy. There’s a little girl coming behind him. I don’t know if it’s the sister. I didn’t get the full story and he took candy out of his own bucket. Put it in the bowl so that there was candy for her when she came up. That was a sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. super great. Yeah, you raised a good kid if that’s what he’s doing.

Jim Collison  [3:33] 
Duck. Totally. Yeah, that’s like a parent of the Year award right? And you gotta be proud of that. But boy, there were a lot of ring door cam photos and people just tattling on some and you know, things getting racked and ruined and whatever or like you said, you know situation where it was for good. But that’s kind of interesting. Like those have become so popular now and having a camera on your front door or recording that has become we turn our lights Often we just don’t do it. In fact, Big thanks to Mike Howard who was on the show last week it was Halloween evening when we’re doing that Mike came on and updated on a story are really good Home Gadget Geeks, if you haven’t had a chance to listen to it, go back and listen to 421 and you can get that at the average guy.tv slash HGG 421 if you want to go back kind of directly to a big thanks to Mike who came on and kind of talked about his cancer story and what he’s doing and he is not out of the woods in Mike or thinking about Yeah, and it was care about him a lot. And you know, it’s this is Mike, this is real. Like this is real life. We’ve had this community for a decade together. We’ve been all all of us have been together those who started this back in the home server show days, we’ve been together a decade. You’re coming on six or seven years, I think maybe hanging out with us and I’m going into sixth thing. Yeah. And you start caring about people. You know, it’s just one of those things. I really appreciate the community who just lets me do those kinds of things. We get some really good comments back From the livestream about having Mike on, so, appreciate you guys doing that. Not necessarily a lot of tech in there, but it was really good to have Mike on and catch up with him on the show. So Mike, thanks for doing that. Um, I got with Christian on Monday night, we finally got to cyber frontiers records, cyber frontiers. 58 still do out. So right at this very second, if you went over the average guy.tv it would not be there. I’ll get it. I’m waiting on some show notes from Christian. But Christian brought up I didn’t realize this. He’s gotten into ham radio. He got the bug. He has not not like you. But he does monitors some things. And we talked about this site APRS. So aprs.fi and it’s kind of like Google Maps with all this ham stuff. superimposed Mike, have you seen that?

Mike Wieger  [5:51] 
Yeah, I have. So APRS is a really cool use case for ham radio. And what it essentially does is it allows you to it’s like a Network all over the country, usually, there is a frequency that you can tune to. And for the most part, you’re going to find a repeater or something that is using a prs to get your signal out, think of as a big mesh network, essentially of radios for a for a prs, especially, and it’s a frequency you tune your radio two and certain radios have the ability to then pick out your location. So for example, my radio in my car has GPS built in. So it pulls in the GPS signal, and it will ping out on that radio frequency, certain information, my location, my speed, anything I want, right and and you then it gets loaded into this database. And so what a prs FI does, it’s really fun you guys definitely go plug that URL and and go to it a prs. A prs is the technology.fi dot five. Well, so and Jim is showing it on screen. So if you’re if you’re watching the video, I’ll kind of walk you through what’s going on. So on this screen, what you’re seeing are different things for different radios that are using the APS, a prs protocol. And you’ll notice there’s there’s lines on this map a lot. And it’s almost like you’re tracking someone. This is used as nowadays, you know, I can’t talk historically, because I’m new to ham radio as well. But the current use case for this is think about if you are a cheaper in Colorado, right, and you go up into the mountains, especially we don’t have cell signal and you’re meeting up with friends and you all have ham radios. Well, with a prs, you’re able to track and you can get positional data. So I could say, you know, Jim sending out his pain, I can set my radio essentially, and it’ll tell me exactly how far away I am from him. It’s pretty much almost like a GPS coordinate communication, but you can do a lot more with it. A lot of the blue dots on Jim screen on our weather stations. So you can have a weather station that you can have connected to the APR system so it’ll ping out weather data all across the network as well so you can get weather information. You can also ping out your current frequency that you’re broadcasting on so for a prs radios usually it’s a dual Radio rig right? So in my car, my radios do a radio. So on one radio, I’m doing a prs sending and receiving. And on the other radio I’m using for communications. Well the A prs system when it pings out your geolocation, it can also ping out what frequency you’re using to communicate, which is really cool, especially if you’re driving through really remote areas. What I’ve used this for is, you know, maybe there’s no repeaters around our Peter is essentially one big tower and it repeats one frequency gives you more range, maybe you don’t have that, well, I use a prs because you can find other cars driving along with you. And then it tells you and you can instantly click and change your frequency and you can have a conversation with them direct without going over our repeater. So this AP RS network is extremely cool. So many cool use cases for it. And you know, a lot of the Jeepers actually see their spouses use this website because it lets them know you know, where because their spouse is in the mountains, and there’s no cell service, they have no idea where they’re at, well, this tells them exactly they can follow along on their route. Do you know make sure they’re safe LDC still moving, right? It’s been used, especially in emergency services for those people where, you know, they’ll tell their wife, hey, I’m keeping I have a prs on, if you can’t get ahold of me, you don’t say I’m moving, you know, this is the, these are going to be my coordinates. And there’s a lot of different use cases for it. But a really cool use of ham radio, I don’t know enough the technical details on how they got this to work and where all this data is stored. But the way that your broadcast works, the reason it’s more of a mesh, and this is one of the there are other mesh systems in ham radio, or Peter is kind of a mesh, but not really, a prs truly is though, because my radio, when I am driving around, can act as a repeater for someone else’s signal. So in your settings, you say, hey, at the max, do two or three hops in a hot means, how many hops does it take before I get to a site that’s actually sending this to the network, right? Because, you know, my radio doesn’t need to network but maybe it can get to me, and then I can pass it on to someone else who’s close enough to a node. That’s going to Get this into the network. So it really uses these hops to get through the network and get back to the database that records it and allows you to have the map. So just a super, I’m glad Christian brought it up, and I’d be very interested to see because he’s such a techie man, he’s gonna, he’s gonna have this figured out, and he’s gonna have some probably really cool use cases for it. And you know, you even get when I first thought of this, I did turn it on, right and so any certain day, you could have gone to this and see my little Jeep symbol, that’s a symbol I chose and my little path from my house all the way to work. The worry is, is that you are putting exactly where your car’s location is, and it uses your callsign. So you know, if someone knows that, oh, he usually has a lot of tech in his car. So there are all these sort of settings where it can it can kind of office get it can say well just just give you a brief, you know, like you put my circle within a mile of where I’m at so doesn’t have to be super detailed to someone couldn’t get it but if you leave it, the data is so accurate. You could find someone parked in a parking lot like you can get The exact stall with the GPS data that it’s able to send out.

Jim Collison  [11:05] 
We can kind of scroll in and see you were mentioned these weather stations that are here. This is kind of cool. So 25 degrees 60% humidity. I mean, this is I’m kind of a weather nerd. So you know, you can kind of, you could come to a map like this and start clicking on the different weather stations around town.

Mike Wieger  [11:21] 
And if you scroll in their kids scroll into that red line. All the way to the very end. There’s a car you’ll see. opens up the start of it. Maybe that’s this movies or car.

Jim Collison  [11:30] 
Or the car there, right. We’ll go Hold on. Oops, nope, you went down. Let’s see where we’re here. Maybe a Giles. Know what should there be like a car on the end? Yeah, that

Mike Wieger  [11:44] 
was there’s a car on one end and you can click on it and you can get there. I think it might have been on the other one. I couldn’t see but go to any one of those lines. Maybe the one up top there. Okay, there’s a car there. little red car. Right. Oh, I see it. Yeah, yes. on that car right in there, and you can see his callsign might be able to see his his speed that he’s going over 12 miles an hour.

Jim Collison  [12:07] 
Yeah, it’s got an altitude, right. So 1100 and 55 feet, Nebraska is not, we’re not low, we’re 1000 feet up, which is pretty interesting. Right?

Mike Wieger  [12:16] 
Now radios are getting really sophisticated, because the problem here is how often do I don’t want to spam the frequency with my location when I don’t need to. So what these radios do, you’ll notice those lines are pretty clean. And the radios the advanced ones, it will do it when it senses a turn, right? If I’ve taken a turn more than 30 degrees, or more than even set the degree, right to make a turn, it’ll send a ping. And then you can set it to Hey, if I’m going this sort of speed, only ping this often, if I’m going faster, paying a little bit more often, right because I could be changing stuff up more often. So the radios do a really good job of not over spamming the frequency with your signal if it doesn’t need to.

Jim Collison  [12:56] 
What’s this line? What’s this purple line here? coming up? off of the car. So there’s a straight line. There’s a couple lines coming off that car one’s this green line over to a repeater. And then there’s this purple line that kind of just goes nowhere goes over to here. Do you know

Mike Wieger  [13:12] 
scroll into where that purple line ends? You know, might tell you somewhere I guess I could always pull it up on my no interesting. One of the times it’ll say if he has told if he’s also broadcasting what frequency he’s on. It’ll tell you what repeater his closest that he’s probably actually accessing that frequency on.

Jim Collison  [13:34] 
I kids little bit live over in this neighborhood. One of the cool things I saw no, that’s not the button I wanted is the Where did it go? Let’s refresh this. There was maybe I need to scroll out for it to become it was there was a link that said things that are moving. quick link here. Where did it go? It was just there. It was like another view Oh down here stations currently moving. So you can click on that. And then it brings all this station information up and then how fast they’re going. So is is I was going through this with Christian I was like this is some of these are kind of interesting because as I was looking through them that night on Monday night, this one’s moving at six or 269 miles an hour, which has been pretty interesting. So let’s click on it. And its way up in Canada, western part of Canada Vancouver up in that area, but it looks like a tower. It does. So there’s some misreporting, right. It’s obviously not moving at 269 miles per hour.

Mike Wieger  [14:41] 
So but the interesting thing is Jim, one thing you would really like is I’ll have to see if I can remember or if I can find it on Google. So we can put it in the show notes. There is an air balloon and I don’t know if it’s still going these guys released a balloon into the air and let it go and it was going around the world and this thing was falling different jet streams it had gone South below the United States and swept back over below California, come back across the southern United States and it was using a prs and you could track this thing in real time because you can type in any callsign you want and track it. So since you guys know I’m w zero Eg er, you can type that in right here, and it won’t show up because I haven’t used a prs with that new callsign yet, but you could track anything and so there are certain people that will use it for those kind of experiments where what would happen like how would this balloon flow? And a prs is a super easy way to to get that signal back? No,

Jim Collison  [15:30] 
super cool. It’s really nerdy like and Christian it said on on the episode separate frontiers he’s using he’s learning because there were some things they figured out with ham and kind of the analog side of networking that can be applied to the digital side. And so ham has been a been an interest to him and not really in a spot right now to set up him but he probably will. I think he just got his ham license as well. And I was super surprised. I was like, really? Like Where did this come from? All of a sudden You know, you kids are coming back around to all these things that the adults ahead of me are doing. skipped my generation. And now is letting me on yours, right? Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [16:11] 
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I think that’s it’s not the first time that’s happened. But yeah, ham radio is definitely one of those ideas. My dad was like, Really? That’s what you’re into.

Jim Collison  [16:19] 
Yeah, that’s a lot of fun. You got any ham radio so Black Friday, which is all month now, right? Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Any any hand stuff on your black friday lyst

Mike Wieger  [16:30] 
You know what, I’m pretty well set I kind of I went hog wild when I first got in. So I need to simmer a little bit and really learn every single detail about what I already have. And and get into that little bit more and then maybe move up because really the next step for me is getting into HF, which is high frequency, meaning I could talk to, you know, London and I can talk to him in California directly, not over the internet. And so that’s something I do want to get into but probably, you know, wait a few years really get into using to meter local stuff. Before I get into the Long Distance

Jim Collison  [17:01] 
certification we invented this thing called the internet that you can talk to anybody. Yeah. Anytime video. Like it’s awesome and the kids are going they’re flocking back to ham right? It’s gotten kind of popular it has. Yeah, I think so No, I know. That’s just that’s just crazy. So

Mike Wieger  [17:19] 
any other so when you think of Black Friday any other things you’re kind of watching from a tech side or a gadget side that you’re interested in? Well you know, I need to what I’ve noticed is with the you know, my boys are starting to use Wi Fi just enough on the iPad and things like that, that it might be good to get another unified access point or two. I have one for my entire house and I haven’t really centrally located so it works. Okay. But you know, like there’s like in our in the master bathroom, and that’s where you really need good WiFi. That’s it. That’s, you know, it’s probably the most use Wi Fi and if you

Jim Collison  [17:55] 
lose LTE in there, it’s even

Mike Wieger  [17:57] 
worse. No kidding if horizon doesn’t act up and he’s So I think I might be looking for some good deals usually people are putting out good deals on those and they have some really cool options. I had not looked at the unify lineup in a while. So we have a lot of cool stuff that I’ll be looking and see if I can get a good deal on as the newer stuff comes out. I am totally fine with the older gear. So I think I’ll probably snag one or two of those. But non tech related power tools are always like my go to Black Friday they always have a good deal and so I always try and pick up at least one new tool something I’ve been waiting to get

Jim Collison  [18:29] 
loaded. Greg jig

Mike Wieger  [18:31] 
so the bigger Craig Jake I told you guys a long time ago about the little tiny crack joke I got and it would be so much faster to get the full size of that goes on sale that can be is that the pocket

Jim Collison  [18:40] 
pocket? That’s the atmosphere way Yeah, yeah, no, those are those are super cool. Lows is running and they all are and all the big box stores are running their Black Friday sales pretty early and I was all they’re all their drill, you know guns are all on sale right now. And they got some cool again, battery technology and they got some cool little gadgets. assigned to those things in the chat room really quick. Let’s do this. So Andrew said Mike, are you clicking on the wrong thing? Are you on six? Six? Me? Is that six meter?

Mike Wieger  [19:11] 
Yep, yep, centimeter. Nope. I’m only on two meter and 414. So not on six meter.

Jim Collison  [19:18] 
Justin’s wondering, Is this the same thing as the flip phones? feature phone trend? Are we there are some it’s funny, I there are some older adults and maybe you know, I tell you what, there’d be days I’d love to go back to just a flip phone and not have any connectivity. Especially lately, back to the beginning of the show or go back to the day talking about that in the show, or was that in the pre show? Maybe it’s I think it was in the pre show. You know, Justin’s mentioned in the Wi Fi in the throne room good. The unified dream machine is interesting is what what Tony says, might want to look into that one unifies. Got some great stuff. There’s some really good mesh networking things that are going on right now, so some good some good options for you. Um, I am thinking from a gadget perspective my garage is a mess and I’m not very good about keeping up with it and I’m kind of thinking like I want to remove I don’t want to move all the shelving that’s in there because whoever buys this place next is going to want it but I’m thinking about taking out a whole bunch of junk and really Mike to settling down on one mobile toolbox you know, like get one of those anywhere from 200 to 1000. I was looking to keep them Akita one is like 1000 bucks. But I was thinking of just and then consolidating everything down into one and if it if, if it’s a tool I haven’t used in a year, gone, type deal. I’ve got duplicates, gone like just that kind of get rid stuff. I got wire I have like wire from on a wiring project I did 15 years ago. still up there and a cabinet gone. Like I’d really like to get when when we move. I know I’ve been saying that for like a hundred years, I want to roll that thing into that I literally want to roll my garage into the moving van and be done. That’s, you know, I want to get down to kind of one and then maybe have a few portable rigs for, you know, a few portable toolboxes for the tools I use all the time that I want to take. So I was looking on Amazon that’s one way to do it I’ll probably go to Home Depot and and Bernards and some of those other ones just kind of take a look at what’s available or maybe go on Craigslist and buy a used one that

Mike Wieger  [21:26] 
maybe I was just gonna say that those toolboxes usually them find really good deals on those us but Isn’t it crazy how expensive storage in general is? Plastic tubs right are just the biggest crock when it comes to price. Those guys haven’t you know made and don’t buy it.

Jim Collison  [21:43] 
You need to buy in light of your time. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [21:46] 
yeah. But when they’re trying to get rid of all you know, they all stock up as everybody goes into this storage craze. You know, they all start stocking them up. Yeah, you want to buy those things in February.

Mike Wieger  [21:55] 
And so here’s my I know it’s early, but my favorite stocking stuffer I think I’ve ever received And I’ll show you a speaking of tools is the organizer that goes on top of any five gallon bucket right like this organizer. I take this thing when I go and do like a wiring job for someone to do install Wi Fi, put all your tools in it load up the bucket. It I had never seen one before. Before I got it as a stocking stuffer like years ago and it is my favorite item. And you know in the bucket break, you just move it over to new bucket and it’s just so selfishly for the way I store my tools here and I do my work in the garage. I bring the bucket down tool tool tool, what I needed throw in the bucket, take it out of the garage and then bring it right back. It’s

Jim Collison  [22:36] 
a great way to do it. It is a great I have a bucket I have a bucket boss. I also have a bucket boss on my on my desk that holds my pens so Okay, that’s it also you know I got a little this you know, you can put that on there. I have one of those in my nose. That’s pretty cool. This is a coffee mug. This Yeah, goes on a coffee mug. That’s this is the for the for the The monitor stand that I have here it has some little wrench that you can tighten it up what I love about these as you can put tools for the stuff that’s around you in them because what do you do with the allen wrench that that comes with the with the monitor state or with everything else and I never know which one it is yeah you never find it and so a little bucket boss for yeah this is just the the bucket boss where’s the brand name? I think I’m covering it but little bucket boss Brand there and somebody gave this to me, I think which is super cool. Yeah GIFs you get your like this is awesome. Yeah, mostly hold pen and it’s got you know, I got a little pocket knife in there. You know you can’t you can’t live without a little pocket knife. No, right? Yeah, nope. I got like 50 of them right around here. So I love me too. I actually that’s for me that little bucket boss that goes around those five gallon buckets is the most kind of helpful,

Mike Wieger  [23:54] 
helpful, caring kit that I had so thinking about I would use him for all of these all my I’d like 10 USB drives that have different lessons automatic practice stick them right in there. So because I use them a lot, I’m always recreating different images of stuff and these all just have labels like a boon to and everything but they’re just scattered across my desk.

Jim Collison  [24:12] 
Well my HP box two has a specialized end that I need to use that as part of a craftsman you know this is this the right size for it little star. So I keep it here. That’s when I’m working on it. It needs to be close right so having some of those kind of gadgets for your gadgets to kind of keep keep track of them. So I’m going to spend a little bit of time between now and then there’s those don’t go on Black Friday sell that much but looking at kind of consolidating the garage getting rid of some tools, I got some crappy tools. The other thing we got Joel from life door to come on, he’ll be coming on I’ll talk about it here at the end of the show. He’s coming on a little bit later in the I think in early what I say I think December hmm September 19. Joel from life door life door is that we talked about that said device you can put on any door and it was if it senses there’s a fire and he was on Richard Gunther is home on so this is where I found him. They talked about it for about 15 or 20 minutes I was like oh this would be great to talk about for about an hour. And I want to pick his brain on his own gadgets but Mike I’m installing a hallway door that’s been sitting in the room over there waiting for me in a cold weekend to install it in the hallway like you know, you don’t want to waste weekends on being inside when when you so I bought that in the spring. It got nice started doing outdoor stuff. But this is a this life door is a device ratchet. So when you open the door, it puts a ratchet spring on it. And then if it senses there’s a fire alarms go off in your house that listens for these frequencies. Here’s the noise. It shuts the door.

Mike Wieger  [25:45] 
I was wondering if it was a smoke sensor in itself

Jim Collison  [25:48] 
or okay. Could be but and there’s some interesting things. We’ll talk about that on the show. But I’m going to pick one of those up I think this weekend and maybe a two weekends put the door on and then when Joel comes on, we’re going Talk about that. So that’s another one of my November Black Friday, kind of connected devices that you know, it’s like oh, this is this is really really cool with you know, you get with a fire today you get a, I don’t know you get maybe three minutes with the toxic gases that all of our furniture puts off. If the door is shut you get like 12 minutes. And so, you know, if it hears those things go off and it shuts the door by the way, you should sleep with the door shut. If you can save it will save lives. This will automatically shut the door. So pretty cool. And he’s doing some super good guy and Richard did a nice job of interviewing him. So he’s coming on in February as well I’m sorry, in December as well. And we’re looking forward to to interviewing him. Otherwise, I have not like on my list. I’m I’m kind of good to go. You know, I’m kind of going into the year like I don’t know, one of the things non tech is one rack. I just think I this probably time for me to pick up some kind of wine rack that we can store some of the wine on. That’d be a good thing, kind of to have the basement. Since I’ve put temperature sensors down here it kind of stays at a pretty constant 70.

Mike Wieger  [27:15] 
Like it just doesn’t want what thermostat do you use to connect those two? Oh, honey, well,

Jim Collison  [27:20] 
no, I have one of those. We we goes Are we okay as remote sensors. So yeah, it was the temperature. Well, I bought one for the cigars. Just to be honest. Gotcha. Justin, I was wondering how long would take me to

Mike Wieger  [27:33] 
just know the temperature down there?

Jim Collison  [27:35] 
Yeah. Okay, got it. No. So I bought one for the the top adore that I have for the cigars. I bought a little Remote Sensor so I could kind of keep track of what what was in there, using you know, and it’s got an app, so I can do it on Android. And so I’ve been monitoring the temperature down here now for I don’t know, three, four months since I got since I picked up that sensor and there’s a whole bunch of them by a whole bunch of different names. They’re all about 25 or 30 bucks. They’re all pretty good. And in the room next door right now 68.4 if I bring it in here, about 72.3 or just a 72 the reason for the difference is these PCs that are sitting in front of me, mining raises the temperature in here about five degrees. Ironically, when it gets when the winter really sets in, it will get colder in here again, it’ll be, you know, a little colder in that room because it doesn’t get the heat little little cooler in here, maybe in 70s but all summer, the air conditioner keeps the 70 just like rock solid 70 so it makes a great kind of makes a nice wine. You know, I don’t necessarily need a wine fridge down here. So be picking up kind of one of those be we looking for one of those as well. I kinda. Okay, peloton. Let’s talk about it. Mike is coming on in a couple. Well, early January Mike, a librarian who’s been on the show before She’s going to come on she’s a setup peloton bike and such she talked me into using the app today. You know she,

Mike Wieger  [29:06] 
you know she did that on purpose right because January it’s wrapped the holidays. We’re all feeling fat and wanted to do something to help us out. Yeah, I’m going to end up buying a peloton, Jim will Okay, I better start talking some money as

Jim Collison  [29:18] 
well. 50 bucks a month I have monthly plans can do it interest free some of those bands. But if you want to try out the peloton, app $12 they have a 14 week free trial it’s 12 bucks a month. If you just want to do the peloton app and at first so she’s been on me about this. So today I just said okay, I’ll try the peloton app I’m on the free trial. So she sends me a couple rides to try. And boy what a slick app like look, they’ve really done a nice job on getting the app you can go through and have a nice search area to say okay, I want to find rides that are 30 minutes or 45 minutes or 20 minutes I want to this hard or this easy. I want to buy this genre so you can do it. Hard rocker 70s or 80s or popper. One was banjo 80s

Mike Wieger  [30:06] 
Oh, that’s me.

Unknown Speaker  [30:07] 
Yeah. Like

Jim Collison  [30:10] 
right on time after time on the banjo, you know? Nothing like Cyndi Lauper on

Mike Wieger  [30:15] 
the whole on the banjo. Yeah. Now you’re speaking my language, Jim.

Jim Collison  [30:17] 
But you don’t even know who Cyndi Lauper is. I do. Yeah. Do you okay. That’s good. That’s sometimes we’ll have to have. I’ll have to have an 80s quiz for you to see just how much of the Justin

Mike Wieger  [30:29] 
wasn’t even alive in the 80s. Jim.

Jim Collison  [30:31] 
I know. I know. Ken’s got to take off. Ken will see you. Um, so the app is slick. And I was a little skeptical. It’s a little bit of a cult this peloton culture that they have going on?

Mike Wieger  [30:44] 
Oh definitely. Especially at my work. Like my work is is the cold. I feel like everyone there has one and does it and so I’m like, constantly I’m like, you can do it. You can do it.

Jim Collison  [30:56] 
So well. I tried. So I tried today. I found a guy My name is Dennis and long hair total man been it was it was awesome. And so put my put my apple earbuds and we’ll talk about those here in a little second rip off. I have the I have the knockoff version. This is live on demand. This one was on demand, but you could do live the next live ride was at 430. And this was like three and I didn’t want to wait for I didn’t want to wait. So I played an episode and went back and this guy, like it was the most helpful ride ever and he’s talking to you the whole time. So your buds in I’m writing and he’s telling you like okay, you know, increase the difficulty and then we’re going to go at 5050 revolutions, right and the bike I use so I’m using a standard stationary bike at work. This isn’t even a peloton bike but it’s got some controls on it where you can kind of get the resistance going and some of those kinds of things. So I’m trying to figure out a little difference between their bikes in this one and some kind of first 15 minutes trying to figure out then it’s on and then I’m sucked And this guy is I mean, he is telling me Okay, we’re going to stand up here. Okay. 20 seconds we’re going to do a 22nd spin Get ready, you know 321 and it’s it’s Mike there’s a reason people love this. It’s super cool. Like it’s super cool now you don’t have to have the bike again you don’t have to have the bike I did it without a bike. I mean, I did. I had a just a regular stationary bike is pretty good one. But I didn’t have to go the full peloton route. And I got down with a ride and man, you know, I’ve never had a runner’s high in all the years I’ve been running, I never got that runner’s high. I had kind of that I got off the bike and I was like, that was freaking Great. So So

Mike Wieger  [32:42] 
okay, there must be something to it because my buddy said at work, he’s like, just come over and do one. I said, I feel like if I do I’m gonna want to get one though. That’s the problem. And but it’s, I can see that in for them to it’s the leaderboards right, like they’re always competing and they can see each other’s scores. I really like that aspect of it. Yeah, I mean, well, there’s a reason to because they even come out the treadmill. So now they haven’t. They did.

Jim Collison  [33:05] 
And they have a whole bunch of different kinds of workouts now, it’s not just writing, you can run, you can walk, they’ve got stretches, they have kind of mindfulness things I think going on in there. So they’ve kind of expanded it to kind of a variety of I’m actually kind of like I suck at stretching, I just I I have all activity but I want to spend 10 minutes stretching, and they have some of those workouts as well. And so I’m kinda 12 bucks a month. I’ve kind of changed my habits at work. So I’m not buying I was buying a six or $8 lunch every day at work, and I’ve I’ve started bringing it in to kind of reduce the calories. I’m a I’m a big to 40 right now. I mean it I carry it well, but it’s a little more than I want to be. And I’ve committed to this vertical mile climb for trek up the tower so 10 Times up the First National Bank tower in February. And of course every pound matters and certainly trying to trying to thin back down to a more reasonable you know to 10 to five something like that little more healthy. So I’m not going to every day yet but definitely adding in maybe one or two days a week on the app is 12 bucks I’m saving that on lunches now easy like I’m easily say three days of lunches. Yeah, and I’ve paid for the peloton app for them, right?

Mike Wieger  [34:24] 
So you’ve eaten healthier and added in workout, right?

Jim Collison  [34:28] 
Yeah, you know, it’s pretty great. I feel better. And on the bike, like I get off the bike and you just don’t have the same like when I would run and you know, I did a 600 calorie workout today when I’d run that’s a six mile run. I would just be I mean I’d be crippled for for a day recovering from that run. So been pretty cool. just scratching the surface but I’m I’m I’m interested Micah and I have been competing on and you’re you’re in the group to The app and I holy cow since I committed to this vertical mile race, and then I’ve been competing with her every week. My Fitness has completely changed. Mike, I don’t know if you’ve been tracking me on your

Mike Wieger  [35:11] 
watch. Yes, I have. I’ve noticed like, Jim, I’m like, why not work? Why is the way how did you do that?

Jim Collison  [35:18] 
Just just been crushing it. Yeah, it’s but it’s getting the motivation using the tech getting the motivation in the right place. Kind of getting resolved around it and feels really good. I haven’t lost a single pound Had it been at four weeks. But the pants don’t fit as tight. I’m replacing muscle. I’m replacing fat with muscle. That’s more muscles more dense so you don’t lose right away. So I’m pretty excited about it. And again, this I will definitely if I use it two days a week. definitely get into this peloton app and if you buy the bike, 5060 bucks a month plus I think 40 for the service. So the bike can be expensive. It’s $100 a month now. $40 you get your fam. It’s a family plan. So anybody who’s on the bike can take advantage of that plan,

Mike Wieger  [36:07] 
which is crazy new and the app is only $12 a month. But yeah, the app on your phone, I bought your bike, so I could have the biggest screen. And that cost me more now per month. A lot more

Jim Collison  [36:17] 
than that crazy. Yeah. So John’s asking exercise coach app with an audio track, yes. And music and you can pick the music and you can kind of pick your trainer. So you know, Micah has gotten to know most of those trainers. So she’s like, Oh, you need to get you know, go. She’s crazy. Or you need to get this guy because he kind of works out that way. So super motivating. And, man, my 45 minute ride went like that today. Like all of a sudden I’m like, oh, we’re for done. Oh, this is kind of cool. Yeah. So a cool way of taking your mind off what typically and then when I ride I would just go you know, I would just go balls out for 30 minutes as fast as I Could no rhythm no reason no nothing just right. You know, and that’s it’s okay. But there’s ways for you

Mike Wieger  [37:07] 
Yeah. And it keeps you interested. If you’re not killing yourself that intensely for 30 minutes it’s you know, spread out over time and makes you want to come back. It’s the fun factor. Yeah, working out for me is all about what’s going to give me to come back right like the gym that I was at. And that’s another thing like I was paying $150 a month just for me at the gym. So $100 a month and it’s Hannah and I both and any other family member Well, you know what the boys got? All right, so that kind of makes sense. hundred dollars a month isn’t really bad when you think of how much actual Jim costs. But for me that Jim was because I love the people there was so much fun. It made me want to get up in the morning and go

Jim Collison  [37:40] 
I think so in Gallup if I use if I prove that I use the service, I think eight times a month they’ll reimburse me half of the service fee. Oh, as kind of a well being thing. So now on the $12 plan six bucks probably not even worth the time to build paperwork. But on the big one on the $40 one, Hey, get in 20 bucks a month to you know, you may be in a place you may work in a place that encourages those kinds of things. And they may even pay for a part of the peloton from a monthly basis. So one of those kinds of things, those are freakishly cool bikes, and they got some serious tech around those Joe mentioned in the chat room. Speaking of that, Google by Fitbit, which I didn’t see coming, he says, I guess I should have seen that coming. I didn’t see Google getting into the Fitbit space. Fitbit has been on again off again. Fitness gear, right, don’t you think

Mike Wieger  [38:36] 
they need, they need some form to get that data into Google that we really think about it like the Android Wear watches aren’t taking off that much like they really didn’t have a way to get fitness data. The one piece that we’re missing, I’m sure they had some way to get it. But Fitbit made a perfect sense for them to go and grab it. I’m just really concerned about what they’ve done to every other company that they’ve bought into just crowded

Jim Collison  [39:00] 
Okay with NASA john says I hope they don’t rebrand it to nest bit. Yeah. That’s a good one. Yeah, I think it’ll be it will be interesting to see you know, Samsung has tried to be in this space with some of the and Samsung watch stuff in or Android where it hasn’t really I mean fitness gear just hasn’t really taken off like I thought it would. Yeah, I mean Fitbit it’s done okay, they’re doing okay. I mean, there’s a lot my son loves his Fitbit.

Mike Wieger  [39:33] 
And the people have them love that. I know.

Jim Collison  [39:35] 
Yeah, my No, no. So some interesting some interesting things in the fitness space, especially in the tech space. We’re coming up on the end of the year where traditionally people begin to start make those new year’s resolutions and start getting into fitness gear and some of those Mike I have no desire to buy a peloton bike. That’s the weird thing like even it really, yeah, no, I can’t I cannot work out at all. Okay, it’s just it has never worked out for me. I can’t. I don’t know what it is, but I am adverse to working out at home like

Mike Wieger  [40:08] 
doing right. Yeah, well,

Jim Collison  [40:10] 
it feels I get hot and sweaty and I don’t want to be sweaty in my house like, Okay, I know it’s a weird thing. I can’t stand being sweaty in the house. So never been able to work out in my own house even with a fan on some of those kinds of things. I love to be in the you know, fitness center or whatever. Before I worked at Gallup, we would go we had a local fitness center we go to we go early in the morning and walk and some of those other things. So this will add before this before the peloton thing what I was doing when I’d ride the bike is I just put on a YouTube video of someone biking. There’s there’s bunches of them they put a camera on the front of their bike, and they ride and I saw some really cool things through somebody else’s bike ride. Same kind of effect. You get kind of sucked in and you kind of think That you’re on that right i think peloton has some of those rights to now as part of their service where you can say, hey, I want to ride, particularly beautiful ride that I did one time was down in the city of San Francisco. And you could ride around down in that area. And it’s really, really beautiful down there. So going from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge. Great ride. It was a super great ride. And I just really enjoyed you could see some things move by people, you kind of tricked you into thinking you’re there. And then all of a sudden your rides over. You know, because you’re looking at stuff on the side. Yeah, and those kinds of things. So yeah, no, I don’t have any interest in the $12 app. When you think about it could be $100 a month or $12 a month all of a sudden $12 seems seems pretty great. It has made me think though, like, okay, so I’m doing my I’m using my phone for this now. But do I need to upgrade, you know, do I need to take a bigger device in that I have a little bit of bigger of a screen so I can kind of see Get a dedicated

Mike Wieger  [42:01] 
you have a good place to put it when you’re working I do

Jim Collison  [42:03] 
yeah I think that’s the next step then messed up my monitor well and do I leave it in? Like you know do I leave it in my bag and you know do I it’s just one of those funny things an iPad Mini would actually be a really good device for for fitness and watching. Little bit bigger than your phone and a lot of people’s phones but not as big as an iPad that’s obnoxious when I see people working out with iPads you like that’s pretty kind of noxious. Yeah, right. So pretty excited about that first peloton workout. I think I’m going to do on early Saturday morning. kind of thing going to fitness center before the kids on Saturday so pretty cool. We got that notice they talked about it on entertainment to Dotto that most folks if you if you’re running a Windows Media Center, which I am, you got to notice date is going away There’s ways you can fake it but I’m not really that interested. So I went to Sarah and said okay, remember I told you about this day windows seven support we’re still on Windows seven we talked about that. Yeah so I’ve been doing some things testing some things out and I Mike I think I finally got it all figured out like and I’ve been testing and free cuz

Mike Wieger  [43:19] 
I you know there’s different options I know you can go down right like do you reactivate YouTube TV? Are you going Plex are you doing you know who live now? So now Yeah, you’ve got me intrigued. What did

Jim Collison  [43:28] 
you decide on lots of testing on this one back and forth on a bunch of things. I like I said, I did the YouTube Live. I think I’m landing on Plex on the NVIDIA Shield. And I finally kind of figured out how to configure that shield as the server or shield as the client shield is the server okay? And and it will be in the client, right? So you can the it’ll be I’ll move it out front. The The, the, the remote for it is very, very simple, but very, very good. androids made some updates for Android TV lately that have really kind of improved. And I think Plex has as well. I using the mobile as storage. And that’s working just fine to be able to keep up been doing a bunch of testing, I found the key for me was the clients. So making sure I’m using really good clients, the PC, the web client, not necessarily very easy on your, on your server on your Plex server. And so it takes a lot of resources and it has to trans code. But if you’re using a another Plex, or if you’re using an Xbox, which has its own problems by the Xbox.

Mike Wieger  [44:42] 
Yeah, I was the worst Plex client.

Jim Collison  [44:44] 
Yeah. And it is what we use. I think it freezes. It has been freezing every time for me. But off my phone streaming at chrome casting, it works great. watching it on there works great. I can use the web client, it’s

Mike Wieger  [44:57] 
okay doing direct stream instead of trans code. I don’t know That Nvidia Shield is good at transcoding

Jim Collison  [45:04] 
correcting

Mike Wieger  [45:05] 
right. Everything I want to know I seven box devoted to Plex and when I have one trans code it uses as much as it can have that CPU and especially if I have three or four transcoding at the same time. It doesn’t find but it’s it takes it takes a lot of power key

Jim Collison  [45:19] 
is direct, right? Yes, be direct play offers faster works better you get better signal all those kinds of things. So drug was fine keeps

Mike Wieger  [45:28] 
up all of those things you should be like on Xbox, you should be able to go in and change your settings because I’m guessing what it’s doing is you have your quality settings set below what that file is at. So just turn all those up to original. go into your settings on every client that’s in the house. If you’re not worried about internet, right, if you’re outside the house, it’s different in the house, every single client, go into your quality settings and just turn the limits on everything. I think it’s like a it’s like little goal remote and online or something three different settings, set them all to original because a lot of times it’s a fault. That to like a 10 ADP 10 megabit file. And a lot of times your movies are ahead of that or something and it’ll try and transcoding when it really didn’t need to because it knows the format and it’s on the local network.

Jim Collison  [46:11] 
So So I think those are quick. I think one of the things I learned is Plex has a really good dashboard that will tell you how all the clients are connecting Yes. And so going in and then optimizing it based on the client or getting the client like you’re talking about optimized for the server and testing those man made all the difference in the world. Yeah, and john was asking if it was a shield pro I think I just have the regular shield the pros got a little bit more storage i think i think i just have the standard I paid 129 bucks wasn’t terribly expensive.

Mike Wieger  [46:42] 
Now you have so many boxes in your basement. Why not just devote one of those two Plex?

Jim Collison  [46:46] 
Yeah, because what you said when you do it on the PC and on when you’re using the Windows software, man, it sucks down all the resources in that box kind of becomes like dead. It hated to just do in blacks. Yeah. And I really wanted to get on a lower power device and the shields perfect for that. But yeah, when it’s not doing its thing, it’s not trying to install Windows updates. Like, it’s not you know, it’s just a shield.

Mike Wieger  [47:18] 
And you don’t have anyone outside the house trying to try to get in. And it’s going to have to do a lot of transcoding. I guess you’ll be fine. Like if Sam is trying to watch this from her dorm room. You know, it might just we don’t we don’t do that.

Jim Collison  [47:30] 
Yeah, no, we don’t. That’s not she’s fine on her phone. And that’s not the way she consumes media. She does not watch TV that way. She’s Hulu. She’s Netflix, streaming it. And so it gave us I think it’s gave us the most options. Now. We haven’t I haven’t rolled it out in a full scale demo yet. So I told her, it’s ready. I have it back here still. It’s ready to go. When you’re ready to make the switch, we can start adding your shows to it and then you can start accessing it and I’m going to kind of let her or I’m going to say you can either do it through the Plex because I’ll move the Plex box out there. I mean the NVIDIA Shield out there. You need to do it this way, which has been a really good experience for me like I’ve really enjoyed watching TV. On the NVIDIA Shield three Plex, it’s worked great for me, and the way I watch TV, the one caveat on here is Plexus still not really good at when you’re recording something, being able to watch it live as well. That’s not a great experience. I got to kind of figure that I got to kind of figure that one out how we’re going to kind of get out sir doesn’t watch TV that way. She’s either watching live, or she’s watching the recorded version the next day. So I think we’re going to be I think we’re going to be okay. There. And so I think Mike that’s the that’s the next, the next move for us whenever we’ll probably do it over the holidays. When you know the Christmas holidays, so every weekend I still continue to test it watch a football it’s back here. I’m going to take your tip on the Xbox though. And I just thought, because I’ve heard bad things about the Xbox client and I’m like, Well, if I’m going to watch TV I just watch for my computer. I’d rather use the Xbox for that. So maybe after monkey around with the settings,

Mike Wieger  [49:14] 
veterans Yeah, and, and maybe live TV might be difficult I think before it before Plex goes through and kind of trans codes it because at the end if you ever move commercials on it kind of trans code itself when it does that, yeah, um, I don’t live pretty much live on the Xbox. I think you’re always gonna have to trans code. Sadly, every time I load up a live on Xbox, I look at my stats, it’s transcoding it.

Jim Collison  [49:40] 
Okay. Well again, the I think the key has been watching the devices come in. And so she’s on if we have the NVIDIA Shield which is the server and she’s watching it on that box. Yeah. In and the storage is coming off the the elbow, we should be we should be just fine. That’s that That’s that’s a that’s a configuration that’s that’s worked out pretty well. For me so far been watching a lot of TV and a lot of recorded stuff just to kind of test it so making making the move I think this Christmas So okay, I think I’m finally kind of done

Mike Wieger  [50:16] 
an ad her shows in for her right now see how the recording works because end to make sure that it’s going to record just as well as the media center and you can test it out now with the removing commercials not removing commercials and see if you like it. I’ve noticed Plexus gotten really good at that. If you’re watching a network show, which is all you’re watching over the internet, it’s doing a great job now or moving commercials. Yeah.

Jim Collison  [50:40] 
Okay, well, it’s good. It’s good to know other Jim says I’m still thinking about HTS, Homer and Sergio to go along with my runners. I think I’m going to pick up another HD home run I have four tuners. And I think it’s time for six.

Mike Wieger  [50:54] 
I’m a born I only have two so I can’t I pretty much I can’t use it really to watch live because usually on One of the nights it’s recording two shows. And so I would kick one of my recordings off. So I think it’s time for me to get another. Another home run as well.

Jim Collison  [51:07] 
Yeah. So making that move. Andrew says he’s a little behind on podcasts and he just caught up to the one with Sammy on it. We’re doing Hey, we’re going to have Sammy on Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving you interested in joining? Are you guys around? Okay. Yeah. So she she asked me, she was like, hey, I want to be on again. And I said, Well, why don’t we do it the Friday after Thanksgiving? So just know if you’re listening. We’ll do a special Friday evening episode as opposed to Thursday night and bring Sammy back in. One of the interesting questions Sarah asked me when I when I threw this all out there, Mike and I’ll ask you how you’d handle it. Yeah. No blu ray. Like Okay, so I go Nvidia Shield. What do I What do I play blu rays on?

Mike Wieger  [51:51] 
As I watched, I haven’t watched anything with a disc.

Jim Collison  [51:53] 
She still buys desk. Yeah, you know, we still own we all own all the Marvel. She loves the desk. And we stream from time to time, but she does love the disks.

Mike Wieger  [52:05] 
Do I rip it you rip it for and just put it on blast? I could

Jim Collison  [52:08] 
but that has not been a really successful strategy for her. She’s, she kind of likes to watch. I guess my option is to buy just a standard a standard USB, little. I don’t think so. The Nvidia Shield? No, I don’t think it has the drivers to run a blu ray. Yeah, that’s good idea. She was like, Well, you could buy a blu ray for the computer because you know, we have a computer out there running. I’m like, I’m trying to get rid of the computer. It’s a core i three three blaring what

Mike Wieger  [52:41] 
25 bucks nowadays? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s probably just now put in there. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [52:45] 
yeah. So, but that was interesting. One of those thoughts was like, what do we do about blu rays? I and I’ll be honest with you, I’m not interested in ripping anymore. Like I don’t want to Those down. Now I don’t want to rip them don’t want to store them don’t want to back them up. Don’t want to. Don’t wanna, I don’t wanna I, she wants to grab the. She wants to grab the case, put it in, watch it, and show, we will probably I’ll probably buy the cheapest blu ray player I can get my hands on and that’ll be we only watch blu ray, baby. Or time see here. Right? So

Mike Wieger  [53:25] 
or you put your Xbox up there.

Jim Collison  [53:29] 
Now that’s blasphemy. You’re telling me I need to move my Xbox into the living room? Well, you have to go sit with her out there. Oh, I do that. I guess I should just say that too loud. She’s just right over

Mike Wieger  [53:43] 
there. I was just gonna I was just gonna let you say and move on. You know, I was I was even going to address it. Right, you know, attention to the

Jim Collison  [53:50] 
comment we’re making. So I think we’re be I think we’re going to be making the move over. Mike. Christmas time some folks are beginning to think that For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be talking about some Christmas gadgets. Aaron Lawrence is coming back on here towards the end of the month to talk about some gadgets. If you had to buy a PC today, or you had to buy a computer, let’s not even call it a PC because it could be something else. You had to buy a computer. What What do you buy it today? Like what would you if you had to replace some of the things that you had? Maybe your daily driver? Right, whatever you really driver, whatever you are on a regular basis,

Mike Wieger  [54:30] 
see our newest computers, our laptop, which is I say the computer that gets us the most in our home. We just replaced that. So that’s kind of hard for me to think about because like we it’s it’s new enough. It’s great. It’s fast enough, I would replace this machine I’m talking to you guys on the machine that I kind of come down to my command center machine is really old iMac. I mean this iMac is from 20 years I graduate undergrad. 12 2012 2013 right around there. And so I mean it’s it’s it’s showing its age a little bit so I think I would get a towel And I would custom build it I have always wanted to build yes I would see I would custom build it mainly because I don’t use the Mac stuff enough on this main machine and there’s a lot of things I find myself wanting to dual boot over to a PC for number one like a Sue ham radio software right if you want to directly connect in that’s that’s windows OBS works way better in Windows. So if you ever want to do any sort of you know recording with screen recording things like that. Yeah, so I’d be going PC I’d be custom building it and I want to do that for a long time I go I think I’ll eventually end up doing that at some point I think I’m gonna wait till it gets a little older though and do it with him AMD Intel AMD right now would be where I’d be going okay i’d really want to do a thread rubber machine that’s like that would be probably one of my go tues because I mean AMD right now is just kind of killing it. They’re doing a really good job and their their new line of processors are are pretty good. Nothing wrong with until now but I would want to try out the end. So I’ve never had an end machine. I think it’d be nursing to build one.

Unknown Speaker  [56:05] 
Okay. Yeah. And

Jim Collison  [56:09] 
like I, I’m a bad one to ask because I have nine PCs in the house and two laptops. So you know, I’m kind of like, I don’t in fact, my the laptop, my work laptop, we have the option to buy those for almost nothing when they you know, when at end of life, they wipe them and they’re like, you want to buy them. And if you don’t, then it goes into a pool and people can buy them for really a reasonable price. And I was like, it’s been a good little laptop, but do I need another laptop? I think I do. And I’ve been kind of itching to try out a Chromebook and just kind of like that’s another or or what I might do is go with the Mac Mini. That would be like, How weird is this?

Mike Wieger  [56:52] 
And now you’re going Mac Mini on me. Well,

Jim Collison  [56:55] 
I don’t have a Mac. And so uh, one of the things I’d love to have is just a Mac to do some things. So just so I kind of know it and understand it. One of the weird things, you know, 10 years ago, and we were trying to help people with computers and stuff, you know, and help to have all these things. Not that many people ask for help anymore. Like, it’s just not a it’s not a thing anymore for the most part. Yes. And I know most of people that listen to this show,

Mike Wieger  [57:20] 
because most people are using computers anymore.

Unknown Speaker  [57:22] 
I think you’re right on the phone, tablets. It’s all in the

Mike Wieger  [57:25] 
fights, things that don’t need. They they run pretty well. Right? Yeah. You don’t need much assistance with them anymore.

Jim Collison  [57:31] 
Andrew asked me if I used to have a Mac and I did. It was a really old one. didn’t last very long. It was still the PC pro or whatever, that it was old. I got it from a sale from Yahoo. Tonight when I got home. It was pinging you. We were putting show notes together and I started everything for the show. That looked like my screen was broken there for a second. I started had you panic. Like what every I started at All the show notes and everything from my phone. And I had that thought tonight like, you know, could I do everything I mean, except except for this of course, I do everything from my phone. And so I think you’re right. Like, we’re just you know,

Mike Wieger  [58:13] 
well you know what, you know what the number one question though now is what’s making a comeback? This is like what maybe people asked about a long time ago. Then they got it set up and now everyone’s systems are ancient is home networks Wi Fi. I have had a million questions that work I have never once been asked about how do I do this on a computer? It is Hey, like my things buffering really bad like that. Because now people are trying they’re getting Netflix they’re doing 4k TVs, and their Wi Fi they’re trying to run over Wi Fi from like an old n router. And their internet speed is only 10 I’m like well 4k is like 15 to 25 megabits per second you know that my one buddies like Dude, I’m on satellite. I only get 10 I’m like well you’re not going to watch 4k like either you’re just not and that that whole side of things. Because the industry has been too easy for them to go out by the 4k TV. The TV has a smart It they don’t need a box they plug it in they expect it to work and it doesn’t and so now it’s well now what’s what’s the issue right and they’ve never thought about their network ever since they first got internet. It’s the one thing I think cable companies are doing right? I’ll be honest that them they had they do have pretty decent routers now that you are renting from Cox like my Cox panoramic Wi Fi that just comes with whatever service I’m doing would be good enough for most people. And it’s staying up it’s an AC Wi Fi access point. I mean, so I think the cable companies are doing an okay job at keeping people up to date as much as they can. But for people who haven’t checked their service or anything, they’re needing a lot of help there.

Jim Collison  [59:39] 
When Tim my marine came home, he brought all his electronic gear because he’s getting deployed. And so he brought us 4k TV home. It’s sitting in the other room. I haven’t looked at at once No, no because you don’t think 4k either deal. I don’t either. I don’t know if any for and I really have not felt the need to get anything 4k yet today up on a 4k is still pretty, pretty beautiful and you Can there are some streaming services he was using that you could stream 4k on it and and you know, use it. It’s a beautiful TV.

Mike Wieger  [1:00:08] 
Yeah. Go 4k. Because I’ve thought about getting into it. I’m like, you know you can get the 4k TVs on Amazon for like 300 bucks, they’re not an expensive anymore. But if I’m going to do it like I have looked at those, and then I’ve looked like an OLED, like a really nice Samsung que LED, whatever, all those and the difference is it means like one’s 4k, and that’s cool. And it’s very crisp. And one those deep blocks. That’s what makes the difference I think in the screen. Is those sort of quality is not really the resolution. Resolution is big for me as the HDR you know, the old style. I think that’s what makes the biggest difference. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [1:00:40] 
yeah. Well, it’s just interesting. It’s sitting in the room next door, and there’s just a wall that divides it. He’s like dead you could use it. Like if you want to use this one gone. That’s fine. And I was like, No, no good. Okay. It’s this weird that now I have eight monitors sitting on my desk here. So like,

Mike Wieger  [1:00:58] 
do I even need it? RK and just do you know

Jim Collison  [1:01:01] 
you know while I’m kind of looking around like do I do I have even a spot for it we are Xbox right you have the Xbox s that does output in 4k does. It does that’s been the one temptation but it’s in another room on that I would never use it.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:14] 
Hang it right here right above your Xbox.

Unknown Speaker  [1:01:16] 
Your Xbox right there next to it. What’s up here now?

Mike Wieger  [1:01:19] 
hang it up. I think he’s just put that 4k TV right next to you. And

Jim Collison  [1:01:23] 
yeah, stop it looks beautiful. Now I think I think I am good. It’s just kind of ironic. I asked you before the show. The Hey, you know we said anything you’re looking forward to I mentioned that I am using these knockoff kind of Apple earbuds that I bought for 40 bucks at shop co right before they went out of business. And they’ve been great, but Apple introduced some new,

Mike Wieger  [1:01:52] 
some new air pods that have some noise cancelling RUU attempt to take my money Apple, take my money. Just take it. Take it now. Because I have been an unapologetic air pod fan from the beginning for me that they fit my ears really well the convenience of them how well they work. How will they pair with everything they sound decent enough I’m not expecting these to be both quality sounding headphones. I’m using them for convenience. I’m using them in the office, why just need to listen to something phone calls all that and they work great for that. And so but Hannah hates them, they don’t fit our ears very well. So I think we’re going to grab a set of the pros because the pros now they just came out with them $250 so you know, still pretty pricey. You’re getting up they’re not Bose pricey, though not those pricey, right? Well, they shouldn’t because they’re not Bose quality sounding but the silicon tip which Hannah was very excited to see because she hates the current air pods because they hurt her ear. So silicon tail noise cancelling. So Active Noise Cancelling too, so it’s not so active noise cancelling and they also have a transparent mode. So they have noise cancelling on which it has microphones on the inside of your ear canal, the outside of does the actual noise cancelling. And then they have noise cancelling off completely off. And then they have transparent mode because these things are kind of suction in your ear. It can kind of use the microphone from the outside and kind of project that in a little bit. Almost. So you could be in a city environment, right? You’re walking on the streets of New York or downtown. You can still hear what’s going on around you but also hear your music. Yeah, I know very shorter, much shorter stem. But the things for me that I like about this is the the silicon ear tip the suctioning in obviously and then the shorter thing is is nice for me. I saw one video and I didn’t realize it was a problem until I watched the video the guys like watch and he took off his shirt and they stayed his ears there so I’ll get done with a workout will come in and I’ll take them off in my ear pods go they get caught in the shower and they fling out everywhere and a problem I didn’t know that I had before.

Jim Collison  [1:03:53] 
You should just tear your shirt off.

Mike Wieger  [1:03:55] 
Yeah, right. rip it off every time but a pretty decent upgrade. You know, I didn’t expect them to be able to get better battery life because of all these things right you know you’ve got Active Noise Cancelling and that takes power and everything and it’s a shorter stem so the battery power stayed the same as the first generation. So same battery power they did change up the case a little bit more longer shape, nothing really big ingenious. They’re the only thing I don’t like about them is that they still went with lightning charger on the air pods instead of USB type C, they’ve moved to USB type C on the phone like Why not? Why are you Why are you now on a brand new product we just released? Not going us bc

Jim Collison  [1:04:36] 
zero cents. A bunch left over in the factory.

Mike Wieger  [1:04:39] 
Well, but there it’s a new case design. I know. It’s weird, right? And so they must have been? Who knows? I’m guessing My guess is that they meant to release these A long time ago. Oh, right. Like they just for some reason they got delayed. canceling wasn’t working. They were trying. I’m guessing this was meant to be released last year, and it didn’t end so they’re still stuck on a lightning but I’m guessing you’ll I’m guessing because they just did they did a new case for the originals. So if you had the originals you could get you could go buy just a new case for them that had wireless charging. I’m guessing they’ll do something same in the future with USB type cc did you get them? Are you not yet okay I have not yet I’m probably going to I think I might get it for Hannah for Christmas. Just mainly because she she’s the one who would really benefit from whenever she because she just doesn’t like the regular pods right now she uses the we have a pair of the beats ones that have the silicon tip that kind of go around the year they still have the wire that runs along the back, not the over here just the earbuds and she uses those and those worked out pretty well because they have the silicon tip on them though.

Jim Collison  [1:05:43] 
I think I like the old school ones more i don’t i don’t like the silicon tip that is not that doesn’t feel good for me. So I just I I like I mean these these have a year fitting, molding kind of thing. I can’t I can’t do the tips. They they make me feel like I’m underwater. Even even if sounds passing through well, and

Mike Wieger  [1:06:02] 
that’s the one thing is that that’s what people have said is they had that feeling. But these ones are actually open. Like, it’s not just a microphone. It’s like a vent. And so there’s no like, Oh, they don’t have like that air pocket that gets shoved, like and then when you put it in, there’s actually air that flows all the way through. So maybe well, maybe maybe worth going in. Try him.

Jim Collison  [1:06:20] 
Yeah, just kind of see. Andrew says he’s hoping to get a Kindle Fire for Christmas. And I keep clicking the wrong thing. Right there. I showed it a little bit earlier last year, I picked up one of these Kindle. That’s not really are these Kindles? It’s the eight inch soon to turn this thing on. Fire tablet, that’s what it was. Yeah, they were running all kinds of deals on these fire tablets. And I bought the kind of this cases awesome for these actual

Mike Wieger  [1:06:48] 
tablet. $20

Jim Collison  [1:06:50] 
Yeah, yeah. 15 I think it’s 15 or 16. Yeah, it was Yeah. So watch for these two. This is kind of become my humidor monitoring device. That’s really I use it for maybe peloton coming up maybe some maybe we’ll bring it full circle bringing some some

Mike Wieger  [1:07:06] 
one of those that I could tape to the back of my door my front door that is always connected to the IP cameras so I could like if the doorbell rings you almost could like if you’re walking by like look at the almost like a people. The digital people, huh?

Jim Collison  [1:07:21] 
Yeah, well they’re cheap like or at least they were last year and I bet they’ll they’ll Amazon probably run some kind of some kind of deal on them as well. I haven’t liked those rip off knockoff earbuds. I’ve I’ve enjoyed the first time was a little skeptical but they’ve really become a good little good little device, especially at the workout. Couple reminders for folks is we’re thinking about what’s coming up here. On Home Gadget Geeks, I gotta stop drinking so much beer during the show. Of course if you’re behind, catch up like there’s some really good know you’re behind until you get to this episode. Yes from next Cloud was here two weeks ago. You know sometimes you just listening you get behind and you just declare bankruptcy. I can’t listen

Mike Wieger  [1:08:07] 
to this. Latest

Jim Collison  [1:08:08] 
Yeah, go. But Ed Sullivan was on came we had a little scar tech that we talked about that was in there. James Madison came on and and we talked a little bit about gear, we’re going to get Jay back on as well. coming up in the next couple weeks rich, hey joins us. Ignite was just last week. And so Microsoft Ignite and so rich is going to come on and kind of give us a recap. And or I’m sure we’ll talk about surface hardware. Some of those things, you know, surface came out with a new some new earbuds as well. And they’re kind of a little around Puck looking thing that go in your ear so you don’t have that big thing dropping down. It’s just kind of a loop that’s in there. So those things look pretty cool. Dwayne Robinson is coming back. So he’ll be back on the 21st. I mentioned Thanksgiving. We’ll do a Friday show with Sammy, my daughter. She wants to come back on we’re going to talk a little bit about college tech and some of the software she’s been using. We talked about hardware last time. We’ll talk a little bit about software. She’s fresh. off a trip to Washington DC and had a great time doing that as well. The fifth I’m off I’m in London we’re not going to do a show that week it’s just too much way too many things going on while I’m in London air Lawrence comes back and then Joel from life door is on and then Mike It’s Christmas. It’s hard to believe right? I have a lot of Christmas shopping I gotta do I think of all the Christmas music we soft to listen to. Yeah. Between now and then the joy. We have a lot. We have a lot to do. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern out here at the average guy.tv live slash live couple reminders before you go when if you want to support us on Patreon and I really appreciate those that have stayed around to that I don’t make a big deal about you guys probably enough and I probably should. But thanks for your sponsorship, it kind of helps in in, in in covering some of the bills here. And we appreciate that as well. You can join us the average guy.tv slash Patreon. If you want to get the app and download it. It’s free. The Patreon subscribers help pay for that every year. Spreaker makes it its own slick little app. Home. Gadget Geeks calm all one word Home Gadget Geeks calm gets there. Of course, Home Gadget Geeks and the average guy TV network really driven and powered by Maple Grove partners get secure reliable, high speed hosting from people that you know and you trust that’s Christian cyber frontiers 58 coming out this weekend if you want to catch up with that one as well. Maple Grove partners com plans start at $10 a month and the guy is just rockin so if you want to get those checked out as well you can get that done in get get er done is kind of what I say Mike Hello Fresh has Thanksgiving plans. I don’t know if you’ve seen those come out there taking care of your Thanksgiving Yeah, like you can just you can just buy I think it’s I don’t know 16 bucks a person or something like that they should be the turkey and stuffing and all the stuff that you need. I still have you guys you guys still rockin some

Mike Wieger  [1:10:56] 
health review. We just had one last week we do it like every probably other other week. We just got Whenever we know we’re gonna have a weekend, we set it up. That’s what I love about it is they don’t guilt you when you hit skip we really take you out, like an entire three weeks in a row. And yeah, they didn’t know no worries.

Jim Collison  [1:11:12] 
Yeah, they don’t. They don’t they’re not like trying to like shyster you with all these kinds of things like okay, well, thanks. We’ll see you next week. kind of deal right and and super, super, super convenient. We did these. The other day we did the sausage like they were like, it was like Philly, but it’s like a Philly so they sent the bread you slice and we made some. We made some garlic butter and then we toasted and then and we put this in there with some cheese and some bell peppers and it was a 20 minute meal and it was really 20 minutes and it was super great. And then we made our own fries, our own baked fries, which are really good, really, really healthy. And it was just had it just been so great. They continue to send me coupons. So if you want one I get your whole week for free. I think nothing off the I just want you to eat well. So if you want to do that send me an email Jim at the average guy.tv and we would love to have you join other Jim said, bingo. There we go. I haven’t said that in a while. So this this show we’ve covered a lot we’ve PC, Mac, you know, we haven’t talked about crypto. Yeah, there you go. Okay, there you go. We we mentioned we are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern, by the way, Bitcoin is up 9003 9004. So, there you go. There’s your crypto update. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern. We’ll do a little bit of a post show afterwards. Want to thank those who came out and join us live with that will say goodnight everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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