We were live from the Wieger Tech Studios (aka Mike’s House) this week as we follow up on Jim’s Cox Modem issues from the week before and cover a bunch of listener feedback. We also celebrate 5 years of Mike being on Home Gadget Geeks and Jim get him his very own bottle of Jeffersons!  I think you will enjoy the show.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg449

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #449 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Listener Feedback, Cox, Cox Communications, Modem, Internet Speed, Speedtest.net, Jefferson’s Bourbon, Mike Wieger

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Listener Feedback

—

Good morning Jim.

Reasons to subscribe to your channel where are enjoying listening to your recorded live shows covering interesting topics ranging from gardening to technical information.

If I was going to ask a question, it would be.

What have you look forward too or release this pass year. And the fullfill expectations

Regards for UK 

Chris

—–

Hi there Jim and Mike,

Thanks for doing HGG for us week in, week out.

I’m enjoying the variety of topics and themes you are introducing these days. Sometimes I’m fully engaged, others less so. But no complaints from me.

Regards,

Philip 

—–

1. I really enjoy the show and the mix of topics and all the guests that you have on. The live sessions are not timed well for me to participate but I always download the audio and listen to it while walking or driving. The shows focusing on specific topic are always great. Unraid, BBQ, etc.

2. When are we going to have an Omaha meetup? BBQ, fly our drones, talk about setups and tech-topics, gear-swapping or selling, whatever. The last meetup in Indianapolis will be three years ago this September. 

3. Survey the listener community (with the “weekly” newsletter? On Discord? on Facebook?) about PC and server backup strategy. Discuss the results. With the demise of the Home Server I’d guess people are no longer doing many full-image backups, just data. What are they using? Win10’s built-in backup to a network share? QNAP or Synology’s PC tools? Something cloud based? I stuck with Crashplan for years, until I recently retired my own Home Server. What are others usign for cloud backup? Everyone on BackBlaze B2 or a remote NAS?

4. Would like to hear a joint show with Josh and Richard from DMZ focusing on different setups implementing Plex for home (internal) use, and for remote (hole-in-your-firewall) use. How much processor do you need to handle a couple of transcoding streams? How much memory? Bandwidth. What should we keep on our Plex server? A single full-bitrate MKV file or both an MKV and an M4V at a lower bitrate? Tips and tricks, such as naming conventions. What software do they recommend and what settings? MakeMKV and HandBrake is what I use. Maybe another community survey opportunity.

5. Would like to hear a segment dedicated to car tech. Someone to talk about the pros and cons of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compared to built-in navigation systems and so forth. Someone to talk about dashboard cameras. Favorite sources for cables? What is your “everyday carry” equivalent for in-car tech of any sort? In your own car? What do you take with you when you travel? That sort of thing.  Maybe another community survey opportunity.

6. I think a segment talking about hiking tech would be interesting. Do solar battery rechargers work well enough to bother with? Cell phone range extenders? Waterproof device bags?  Maybe another community survey opportunity.

7. I thought the show with Jim’s daughter as guest was very interesting and would really like to hear a follow-up segment. Invite her to give her favorite Pokémon Go tips and tricks as part of it.

Jim

—

Hey Jim and Mike,

Thanks for doing this episode I have a couple pieces of feedback.

The first I’ve already mentioned to Jim in a live chat, but I work for a large school District’s Information System department and at the beginning of this pandemic our helpdesk was getting slammed with calls about how to do things from teachers and parents a like. I’m one of our Azure admins and the director came to me and said, “You seem like you might know about this, what would it take to make a bot that ties into our knowledge base, and would it be possible to voice enable it?”  I had played around with it a little bit after your episode with Dewain Robinson, not much more than a hello world type example, but I pulled it up and showed him the basics.  I told him that our developers could do it in their sleep.  He laughed a little bit when he said he’d spent hours looking that information up the night before and should have just waited to ask me.

The second bit of feedback ties into the first.  I love the fact that you’re a variety show.  In my circles I’m “the tech guy” and it doesn’t matter that I work on routers and firewalls all day long they still ask me about everything, and listening to your show keeps me well rounded in tech.  I may not be an expert in virtual assistants, but I know the basics, I may not have a traeger, but I live in utah and that is a BIG culture here and so it helps to be able to chat about it with my inlaws.  

The current bane of my computing setup is my graphics card (or lack there of)  I’m using the built in intel stuff.  So here is a question for you.  When it comes to bang for the buck and expected longevity, which card would you get.  I don’t mind spending a couple hundred dollars if it will last me for years. Also a wishlist item is a QUIET card since this would go in the computer that I podcast from.  

Thanks

Branden

—–

I’ve been a listener of the podcast/viewer of the show for a couple years, and am always learning something new every time.  I’ve always been a follower of tech news, but have never had as much confidence to do tech-based updates than I had after listening to the show.

One example is adding smart devices to my home.  What started as one Echo speaker, has grown to four speakers, five plugs, a power strip, two light bulbs, two Ring cameras, and a Ring doorbell – something I would have never ventured into without your show building my confidence.

My next tech-adventure involves getting some use out of some old hard drives I have in some laptops that I no longer use.  While I don’t use the laptops, I would like to use their hard drives to store backup copies, occasionally access the data, etc.  I should mention that my main machine is now a Chromebook, and I also use an iPad (6th Gen), and an iPhone SE (2020 edition).  I would like to learn how to read/write to the drives over a network.  I am a complete novice in this area, and would appreciate any tips, or recommendations to websites to show me how to do this.  If an affordable method exists, even better!

Thanks for the great show,

Brian

—–

Hi Jim and Mike,

I just wanted to thank you for keeping Home Gadget Geeks (Home Tech) going strong. In the past 10 years, I have had many projects inspired by conversations on this show. Ranging from Home Servers and router software such as pfsense, sophos, and untangle to my current obsession for almost 3 years…cryptomining… I can’t believe it’s been that long already. I’m still going strong with about 45TB mining Burst, BHD and it’s derivatives and about 12TB of Storj data space used.

Needless to say this show has inspired countless projects and with it many late, late, late nights of tinkering and troubleshooting in pursuit of perfection. The wealth of information and diverse backgrounds of our community members, combined with the all around willingness of members to assist and contribute when possible is truly unique. 

Okay, that’s enough congratulatory back slapping…Keep up the good work! 

Ken

——–

Based on HGG show, and help from the DISCORD group, I selected components and built an incredible UNRAID box. Still need to configure it and play a ton more, but it is up and running.

I also bought and installed two Ring cameras. This weekend I hope to do the Ring Doorbell 3.

Jon

Audio Transcripts

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you found Home Gadget Geeks show number 449 are so close to 450 recorded on June 18 2020.

Jim Collison  [0:23] 
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 Uighur Tech Studios here in beautiful West Omaha Mike thanks for hosting the horse.

Mike Wieger  [0:38] 
Yeah to change the scenery for both of us but you know getting to do it in person. It’s a lot of fun. It’s

Jim Collison  [0:44] 
a little mic. open mic night ish.

Mike Wieger  [0:47] 
It is it kind of feels that way. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [0:48] 
especially because you know, in me in college students this is how Kallen I usually used to do. It was a live in person in my apartment. It feels a lot of memories flooding back at Gallup. I’ve done a few of these with with people sitting right next to me and it’s just a ton of fun like I now that I’m doing it again, I’m thinking like, ah, maybe you have to figure out how to do this.

Mike Wieger  [1:07] 
Yeah, exactly. I mean, the kids right, it would be impossible to do it all

Jim Collison  [1:12] 
the time because they would be they’d want to know what dad’s doing.

Mike Wieger  [1:15] 
Oh, for sure. We couldn’t do it over here. I’d probably have to be in your house. Yeah.

Jim Collison  [1:17] 
Anyway, that’s doesn’t there’s not a good spot at my place. Yeah. To do all this. We had initially thought maybe we do it on the deck. We have thunderstorms coming through tonight and just didn’t want to chance it. We got a chance to adjust and send us some cigars. Justin Simmons sent us some scars. And we smoked those before some nice Cubans. They were they were delicious. JOHN, john Biggs has sent us some Kentucky bourbon barrel aged beer that we’ve been enjoying. So he opened that in the pre show. By the way if you don’t join us live you should Thursday nights 8pm Central nine Eastern. At the average guy.tv slash live we kind of cover all that stuff in the pre show. So stormy weather. I don’t think I think we’re going to be okay.

Mike Wieger  [1:56] 
It was a good decision. weather

Jim Collison  [1:56] 
wise Yeah. Being indoors course. You can catch the show notes. won’t be a ton. I’ll include the feedback that we got from the show in the show notes this week, but the average guy.tv Don’t forget, you can download the mobile app watches mobile Home Gadget geeks.com. You can also follow the show schedule. Now, the average guy.eventbrite.com get you to that. And if you want to subscribe to the newsletter, I forgot to send it out this week. So I say it’s mostly weekly, but the average guy.tv slash subscribe and we want to thank our Patreon subscribers as well folks that are doing that. Appreciate your financial partnership in what we’re doing here at Home Gadget Geeks. Mike, you spent some time last week before we get to the user feedback. You spent some time last by the way thank you for covering my arse last week.

Mike Wieger  [2:44] 
I felt so bad I just know how that goes when text is going wrong. It’s there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to figure that out live on the fly.

Jim Collison  [2:53] 
You did a great job of filling in for me 35 minutes show maybe pretty quick. By the time I took out all my Hey, can you Hear me? Can you hear me Can you hear me now? We it seems to be going around Dave Jackson and had this problem I had been podcasting with him the week before you had been. You know, the story you told last week is about your Wi Fi

Mike Wieger  [3:13] 
grades and everything like that. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [3:14] 
not modem. Yep. And so you bought a new modem. I actually went back as I was editing the show to listen to what you had to say because I missed most of it. Just as I was thinking about because I had all this I had all that trouble last week right? And so right after the show was over I called Cox and said hey, like help me out here like so. We did some troubleshooting on Thursday night and I did it all the all the other chat messenger so never picked up the phone didn’t call him I’m gonna have beer burps with this because it’s really good. So all all the messenger all via chat. We did all the things that you know, they say you do my direct line connection rebooted everything.

Mike Wieger  [3:55] 
I almost like to like preface those conversation with them of like, I know what I’m doing. I’ve done everything. Everything we normally do we just jump straight we skip the script and go to the end they don’t believe you that I know they never they never let you say well let’s try it again

Jim Collison  [4:07] 
yeah yeah so went through that Thursday night till an 11 or so and and finally were that she the gal who I was talking to said hey you’re probably going to need a new modem because your modems old we’ve we’ve ruled out everything else so alright fine so I started looking and then I went back and listened Yeah, to what you’d said and I had almost someone on eBay No, I want it that would be you. I went

Mike Wieger  [4:33] 
right I did buy by noon this time it was Amazon by this time so I went on Amazon to

Jim Collison  [4:38] 
try and find those and they were they’re super pricey like the prices have even gone up

Mike Wieger  [4:43] 
20 bucks since I bought it and I only bought it a week or two ago.

Jim Collison  [4:45] 
What what what did you pay in your 140 so it was like 200 bucks like 199 when I went to lease and and I couldn’t get it till like Thursday like it would have been it would have been today. I wonder what by the time I guess I got mine was here the next day going for 140 I couldn’t get it. And I wanted this fixed now

Mike Wieger  [5:05] 
like I was like okay well needed to for your job like you’re working from home right here in the podcasting from home for Gallup. And so you need that to be worked out and had

Jim Collison  [5:11] 
a busy week at five podcasts. And so I was like, Okay, I need to do something different. So I looked somebody had said in the chat room last week, and I forget who it was one of the modems was available at Walmart. So I actually Friday morning, I actually went out to Walmart in that some they had some DOCSIS three, they didn’t know DOCSIS 3.1. And I was still at that time, I was still kind of going back and forth. What What did I want to do? So check target, they had some as well, no three ones, they only hit threes. And I kind of had to wrestle with that decision. like am I gonna get it fixed today? With a three Oh, right. Or am I gonna wait a couple days and get a 331 right. And when I went kind of back and forth. I wanted it fixed right now and I was kind of hoping I was kind of hoping I could get that thing fixed. This was so this was Friday morning. And I knew I had asked the podcast coach with Dave Jackson on Saturday and I was trying to get it fixed before Saturday so it’s I wanted the equipment right now so I did find Best Buy it was actually the best deal I had. And I got a Motorola 6190 although it’s a RR is Rs Yes. How they pronounce your a surfboard? Yeah, I think they they sell more than anybody. Right. So it’s not really motorable. And it’s a three Oh, and it gets up to 1.4 gig and I thought okay, good enough like I think this will this will work so actually bought it Friday morning from Best Buy Best Buy still not letting you in that store so drove out there someone carried it out to the car

Mike Wieger  [6:45] 
bad deal not not a bad deal at all right? I bought something from them to another that’s kind of nice to be honest. I don’t like that faster than Amazon. They bring it right out.

Jim Collison  [6:53] 
Totally. Yeah, I got in tax isn’t an issue anymore, right. So so the gal brought it out to me which was super awesome. came home, plugged it in called Cox back said, Okay, I got a new modem gal walked me through the setup and what’s your mac address and all those things? Then we started checking speeds. It wasn’t any better. It was not any better. And the comment was funny. I was like, in this weekend we were doing this via chat. I’ve just found that to be a lot easier than writing on the phone

Mike Wieger  [7:21] 
and faster faster. So

Jim Collison  [7:22] 
yep, yeah. So I I said, here’s my speeds, and literally, she typed back to me. Oh, that’s awful. That that is awful. And I just thought that was funny. Like she would admit like, oh, beads are awful.

Mike Wieger  [7:37] 
Yeah. Especially with a new modem because then at that point, they know there’s really no other links in the chain that could be causing an issue.

Jim Collison  [7:42] 
Yeah, no, it was it was should we be concerned Andrew says and there goes the stream but can you guys you guys see I’m still still hearing ncns Okay, since we’re we’re doing this live. Are you guys still? Yeah, he’s still

Unknown Speaker  [7:54] 
looking good. On my side looks like it’s going well, so

Jim Collison  [7:56] 
good. Well, you have a new modem and I do too. So I’m yeah

Mike Wieger  [8:00] 
I know right? Well, and you know, we’re on Wi Fi tonight and we’re back on a Mac. Yeah. And so you

Jim Collison  [8:04] 
never know. It’s questionable. Yeah. Brian says working fine for him. So cool. Okay, so I’m like, She’s like, I’ll send out a technician.

Mike Wieger  [8:13] 
Yes, I got the magical and that never happens. They are so super stingy. Yes, super stingy. But now you have the plan with Cox

Jim Collison  [8:22] 
Did you? I did. I bought it, but I bought it Thursday. Well, I bought it Thursday night. So they’re like, Hey, $10 a month gets you wiring, no matter where it’s at. So they’ll come in the house, although they’re not currently coming in the house. Like they can’t come in at all. But that okay, no at all. So I was, you know, it’s going back and forth. Like, okay, do I buy that? Am I you know, now the deal on that is if you buy it, then you have a service call, and you cancel it they charge $90. So that’s kind of keeps you from buying it just for the one time have them fix it right. $10 a month, right. So I’m going to keep that on that and that’s it. I wasn’t that worried. I’ll tack that on to what I’m doing, you know. So now I know like, and I’ll probably cancel it if I don’t have any problems in the next

Mike Wieger  [9:08] 
year, and you have your own modem. So it’s really like paying a modem cost like I have been for the last.

Jim Collison  [9:12] 
Yeah, two years. Yeah. nothing goes wrong. I just call and there’s advanced support. Yeah. So I’m going to give it a try. So I bought their advanced support kit. 22 year old kid came out, I thought, Oh, boy, like, I got the newbie. Here we go. And he kind of was a newbie, but he opened the box. And Hayden, I think was his name.

Mike Wieger  [9:30] 
And this is the box on the outside of your

Jim Collison  [9:32] 
outside of the box comes in, coming in, drops down goes into the box, he does the test. He goes, What’s coming in is perfect. So he opens up. We have two boxes, one, one where the cable comes in, and I didn’t really know what was in the second box. I mean, this may be free for you guys. Like do you know everything? all the boxes, like what’s in all the boxes that are on the outside of your house? I didn’t, I probably couldn’t either. I had no idea. So the top box came in. I had a little HBO filter on it like that had been put on 22 years ago that had never they never took it off and all the servicing they were doing they never even though I didn’t have cable so he took a picture of it and called some guy and like oh yeah, that’s ancient take rip that thing out for sure. And then I said what what’s in the box below? He looks at it. He’s like, I don’t know. It’s not our box. And I’m like, let’s open it. So we pop it open. Well, it was their box and it was the line coming in and being split twice, not once but twice. So it came in some splits went out to some wires in the house which I belong removed. Right all of the cable inside the house and even on the outside, but it was being split twice. And then coming in a line was coming in that was going to the modem. I said, Can you take all that stuff out? He’s like, You bet I can he just yeah, it just seen cables flying out of the right. That’s what you like to see. Okay, sweet. Simplicity is better in cabling every time Yeah. Super, super satisfying to have them.

Mike Wieger  [11:04] 
Well, it’s funny, though because real quick when I forgot to say this when I’m talking about my thing back when the Cox test technician came out for me when I was having my issues we did sort of the same thing I had I know where my like he looked outside it is just one line in we know exactly that goes my basement. We unplugged it from everything. I’m like, I don’t without cable anymore. Just come straight in from there and go into my modem. And then so but the same thing where he couldn’t come into the house. Yeah. So he comes up front door, and he says, Hey, put this thing behind your modem to the mainline and he like made this kind of filtery sort of thing. Apparently, he saw the levels outside saw levels. My modem was getting like okay, this little filter thing he made. So it’s like this little attachment. It’s got like three little bulbs in it, and he just custom made it. And I put it in there and it was fixed everything nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s weird how the cabling stuff is huge. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [11:53] 
no right on, but yours probably hadn’t been looked at it for No, no, it had not been I’ve been trying to get a technician out. For a long time, and I just never could get it done, I was always afraid you’re gonna pay that service year or whatever. So I just got laughed at Well, at this point I would have paid anything damn fix it like I was so frustrated with my, with my connection. So. So it cuts it all out and it basically gives me a direct line the modem. And so we get it all set up and I pull out my phone and start doing speed tests. And it’s okay. But it’s not great. Okay, no. He’s like I said, Tell you what, let me go in. And let me test it on the inside on wired, right. I’m on my phone. We’re outside. Yeah, let me just test it. So I go in and again, I’m using the Omaha talk server. And you talked about this a while back and I had to admit to you tonight because I was we were in prep for this I was telling you the story you’re like Dude, I talked about

Mike Wieger  [12:47] 
love I talked about in the show. I think it was like in post show went home. It might have been on the show, but no one shall have to say if they remember me telling us but but tell them when you say use the Cox server. What do you mean?

Jim Collison  [12:55] 
Yeah, so there’s a Cox, Omaha kind of its speed test. dotnet it was All the very first thing that resolves to is tax for all of us, you know, and you think, okay, that’s the right it’s close. It’s the right thing. It’s I’m sure it’s optimized. Yep.

Mike Wieger  [13:07] 
Right. I’m sure. Should be Internet Service Provider here should have a great connection and provide a great accurate speed test.

Jim Collison  [13:15] 
Yeah, yeah, that’s what I thought to do. Not so much. No, no, that’s so much but half the speeds of what especially up was about half down

Mike Wieger  [13:24] 
was that was the problem up for me as well. Right. It was the up that it was constantly telling me, I had about six up and then 30 was what I have and pay for. And it was the error. Real quick. I’ll just mention if you guys want to speed test on it is great. And I think what your solution was was to switch the server in speed test on that where you were testing you probably switch to a different provider here locally. The other one that I found that works just way better for me is fast, calm, and fast, calm another speed test and they use Netflix servers. So I think it I don’t know if it’s provided by netflix if they use Netflix servers, and obviously, they have bandwidth galore. And what’s crazy to me is I was doing a speed test and the closest Netflix server to you and i right now is Kansas City. So still going three hours down the road, and it was more accurate than the COC servers that are here in Omaha just kind of maddening. Like, I not the weird part about that, though, is like you and me were having different things. I wasn’t experiencing any issues. But my speed tests were showing me I had issues you were actually having issues with your speed test was also saying it’s so for me, my thing was more of a maddening like, it should be perfect. And it’s not I don’t have any issues right now. But why is my speed test so low? Right, I’m not paying for this sort of service. Right?

Jim Collison  [14:38] 
No, right on, right. On Saturday, Saturday morning during ask the podcast coach my up was fine. So they could everybody could hear me just fine. My video was fine. I could not hear Dave Jackson. So he was doing that. That you know, yeah. And we asked the audience you know, like, Hey, can you hear us okay? They’re like, yeah, you guys are fine, but I could I was only hearing like ever Other work? You know how hard it is to podcast for an hour and a half? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  [15:05] 
I do

Jim Collison  [15:07] 
is last week. terrible it was it was tough.

Mike Wieger  [15:09] 
Yeah. Well and you’re trying to figure out the like, if it’s gonna come back for you, I don’t want to make this story last too long. I don’t know, you know, right so you’re trying to play gracious coat because you’re in that situation too You’re the co host right you’re trying to be kind of a villain and trying to get on and yeah,

Jim Collison  [15:25] 
you know I keep going What do I make up? What do I do right? So um, but I got off that call and I was a wreck. I don’t know how you did it when I when I was doing it. But oh my gosh, I was kind of a wreck on Saturday morning. So we got it fixed. And then I did a ping a server and Lincoln. I ping the server in Kansas City was getting great speeds and things have been fine since so the question is do I now that I know do i do i now order the DOCSIS three point ones without being silent? Yeah, I don’t think so

Mike Wieger  [15:56] 
either. I mean, unless you plan on going because I do know that dogs DOCSIS 3.1 really the benefits are first of all, the biggest benefit is buffer bloat for upload. If you’re not experiencing an issue, there’s a speed test out there I think it’s by DSL reports if you go to DSL reports, google it speed test they actually test your buffer bloat and you can see it some routers take care of that for you they try and help a little bit but DOCSIS 3.1 modems really helped with buffer bloat. I thought you needed a 3.14 gigabit Do you not

Jim Collison  [16:25] 
you do you do I don’t have gigabit either one so it only if you ever wanted to push I don’t think you’d ever really need to you probably don’t need with just you and Sarah in the house and they offered no and they offered me the 500 plan yeah five bucks more a month for the next year. And I saw I said yeah and then the modem I had didn’t support it. So I was like you know what, 150 is good enough. It’s 85 bucks. So it’s the cheapest distro cheapest plan, but they have cheaper plans but I could I could be on but for me that that that one

Mike Wieger  [16:52] 
it’s gonna change a lot. Once in our area. We do not have access to symmetrical up and down speeds we don’t have fibre to the home. in Omaha pretty much anywhere they may be somewhere but not not where I live I don’t like where you live CenturyLink is getting better they get better running around here they are not up to speed so because I only pay for the gigabit tier from Cox so I can get 35 up right which is not a lot if I had I would take 100 down 100 up if I had some Metro amazing I just need a lot of up speed and so I get the gigabit plan which I do not need a gigabit down especially and we have a lot of devices in this home but my boys are not at the age yet they’re not streaming stuff I’m sure when they do nice but yeah

Jim Collison  [17:32] 
yeah so it’s it’s weird what how you choose your plan right a lot of it for me right now is based on the uploads I don’t know totally too much down and way too little. I need some I need some room in the up especially for work like I don’t want that for now. Now I’ll be going back into the studios we have brand new studios opening a gallop that during this pandemic they have been redoing and they didn’t plan it that way. We just started doing work back in January. They said they’d be done in July then of course everything went up you know everything went to hell and March. And so I haven’t been there to watch him every day, I probably be watching what they’re doing. But so brand new studio is going in, and I will go back to work to do those. But for these kinds of things, it’s kind of nice to have a little buffer a little. Yeah, a little bit of over, you know, kind of a little bit of bandwidth over to be able to do it right. Especially

Mike Wieger  [18:17] 
for like the listeners of this show. Probably a lot a lot like us. You know, for me, I have I have Plex going outside the home, right. So those are streams that’s upload speed, my backups going to, you know, backblaze for my server, those run at 10am every morning. And so there’s a lot of times where that 35 can get saturated really quick. Yeah, megabits never getting saturated, the down is never been up. It’s very easy to start to saturate that pipe, and then all sudden you hop on a zoom call for work and it’s garbling you don’t know why like Well, it’s because you had all this extra stuff going on the background you don’t really think about

Jim Collison  [18:49] 
we’ve been hearing stories too of ISP is really cranking down during this pandemic because people came home and then have been kind of bandwidth hogs. Yeah, in both up and down. And so there’s been some neighborhoods that have been penalized because they can’t do it down to the systems aren’t often built to do it down to the person. They can’t throttle the person got it, they can only throttle the node.

Mike Wieger  [19:11] 
Well, but you know, what’s interesting about that is one thing we mentioned last week on my end, I know we got to get to the feedback at some point in the show where we’ll be What was that? So obviously, my, my modem from Cox was throttled down to 500 meg, and then all of a sudden, I switch to a different modem. And I get my full speeds back, but the what the tech told me was, Oh, yeah, 500 expect that. That’s what they’re, you know, they’re really having to throttle people down. So I was like, Okay, well, I get it pandemic, they’re gonna throw us down. When I swap out to an external modem and all sudden, I’m back up to my full speed. So I don’t know, I thought they could still control. Third Party modems, because they can reset it for you sure is, when they walk you through that setup of the new modem. They tell you they’re going to send a reset signal and they can, but I don’t know how the throttling obviously doesn’t work on my third party when because I have my full speed now. Right. Which is weird. Yeah, I think they don’t like is it a story they’re telling? Yeah, we’re throttling? No, because if you have our if you have our modems, we’re going to do that anyway. Yeah.

Jim Collison  [20:08] 
I think they can do more than they say can do a lot. I think I think, Well, the good news is everything’s fixed. Ironically, we’re here this week, but that we didn’t plan this for that. But everything’s great. It’s there’s a couple things in my life that kind of have to work. One is my car, like, I can’t have it not working to my internet. Like that doesn’t work. Three is my power. And this week, not related to this, but I got an email from Lowe’s. And I’ve been super impressed with the way Lowe’s has handled this pandemic, both the way they’re supporting the community and especially the minority community and offering and doing some great things there. Of course, with everything that’s going on in the United States right now super impressed with some of the things are doing. But they sent me an email and said, Hey, we’re we get these generators that are and will give you 500 bucks off. They’re not it was only 1200 bucks to begin with. So $700 right, for 6500 watt generator. And we’ve been Sarah and I have been talking about those just as a backup like this could, this is big enough that could run all my computers and I could do now, you know, the meat would thaw out, but I could.

Mike Wieger  [21:17] 
Sorry, so you’re not gonna eat but my computer’s gonna run like a

Jim Collison  [21:19] 
dragon do this, I could do a freaking podcast. But powerful enough that it could run easily run even all the computers plus run the refrigerators and some of those kinds of things in the house. And we’d had a tornado that had rolled through In fact, you had done some work and some drone work on it. You’ve done some drone work out at the Harley Davidson dealership here three years ago or so. And then we’d had a major power outage about eight or nine years ago during the winter that I just get super grumpy. Yeah, like I get super grumpy when the power doesn’t work. I cannot. It’s not about charging my phone. I just it just freaks me out. I need to have power so that actually shipped this morning from their distribution center in Wisconsin and will be here tomorrow. So super impressed though they’re going to deliver it as free delivery right to the door like is pretty great deal good deal so you know tomorrow this weekend I’m going to be new project running some Bitcoin yeah

Mike Wieger  [22:17] 
there you go off gasoline which is super cheap right now

Jim Collison  [22:21] 
yeah although it’s still probably not like not worth like I’m sure that’s more expensive I don’t know easily maybe easily after I’m gonna run the calculations

Mike Wieger  [22:30] 
we’ll just run the generator and see how much gas it cranks through. Yeah, and then you’ll know per hour of this generator power how much gas Am I using take some GPUs out to the garage.

Jim Collison  [22:39] 
Yeah, you know, I think it’s gonna be a fun thing runs a Bitcoin off the generator. Yeah. So it’ll be good. I think eventually I’m going to hire electrician to come in and put in one of those bypass switches switch crank. Yeah. So you don’t you can say which circuits that you want to use. We just have a few, not a big house should be able to support a lot of it. We wouldn’t use the oven we wouldn’t use the dryer in a in a you know that kind of situation where we lost power. Those are the two big energy hogs natural gas for the for the hot water heater natural gas for the furnace so I just need to run the

Mike Wieger  [23:14] 
the air conditioner takes a lot it would take a lot

Jim Collison  [23:17] 
in that kind of scenario though. You could cool the house down when’s the worst time not to have air? night? Yeah, right. So you could shut everything down just run just the air conditioner off of it. And at least cool the house down yet while everybody’s sleeping. So pretty excited about getting that so that’s coming as well. And then one more thing or just for you guys sprint this week offered free lines kind of forever. So you mean okay, so you can if you’re a current sprint subscriber, you can start another line, bring your device by device, whatever free on your on your program. So really now you have to there’s certain couple things you have to qualify. I think you have to have at least one line I have to Yeah, my daughter and I, and you pay the taxes on him like so you pay the taxes until, like 3040 bucks a month. Yeah, you can reserve the line right now. In other words, you could I could reserve it, pay the taxes on it and still have it for free not put a device on it. As long as you have an active and valid account, they’re going to honor that free line. You hate to say forever, but but right now they’re saying for free. Yeah, that’s what they’re saying that they’re saying always be free. So kind of interesting. Just one of those kinds of things. Everybody’s doing some different stuff. But that came across my that came across my slick deals. And oh, that’s a sprint reached out to me on that one. So they’re doing some they’re they’re doing so I don’t think I’m going to do it though.

Mike Wieger  [24:42] 
Yeah, we need you know, for the real quick, since we’re talking about that I want user feedback is fitting the user feedback show, or if any of you guys are using something like mint mobile or some of those newcomers to the game. I know there’s always been like Boost Mobile and some of those, like a true third party internet only like silver brighter I meant mobile something I’ve really been looking into and there’s a lot of people are saying it’s fantastic and I pay for Verizon and everyone knows rises the most expensive for what you get. And like there are some of these I think these new companies are starting up are actually a pretty good deal. Yeah. Sprint’s always been a good deal Yeah, service here whether it’s

Jim Collison  [25:16] 
mobile to now to right they merged right demo bones printers. But yeah,

Mike Wieger  [25:21] 
if you guys are using like more than that let me know send me a tweet or something because I’ve been really itching to my voice. Just my Verizon bill alone I think is a just for Hannah and I my wife and I is like 250 bucks a month ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. It’s unlimited. Right, but they made they pretty much wanted everyone to move to an unlimited plan. And I guess that does include probably $60 worth of phone payments we’re making right now. Yeah, but still 180 is a lot for two phones.

Jim Collison  [25:46] 
I think I’m 140 Oh, two phones on okay. Not paying for phones though.

Mike Wieger  [25:52] 
I feel as bad Yeah,

Jim Collison  [25:53] 
no,

Mike Wieger  [25:54] 
there’s only 40 bucks more but still 40 bucks a month higher. Yeah. And the only thing is sprint does not work down the farms. So I couldn’t switch to sprint. Verizon is no T Mobile, because they’re the same network. Now I wouldn’t I don’t know anyone who has T Mobile. I had sprint before and I would go down and I would have no signal service down there.

Jim Collison  [26:09] 
Yeah. I probably won’t do anything big. You know, it’s interesting. I’m on an iPhone, Sara’s on the Android. That’s weird. Like, she’s, she’s on a pixel. And she’s using Google phi. My voice talked her into that. Well, yeah, it’s been great for her. So she’s, she’s a big fight customer and it’s on her account. She pays for that. And so a couple suggestions on the generator came in the chat room mic if you actually click on Yeah, Josie. I think he said the one about Oh, we’ve we’ve already moved past. Yeah, he’s suggesting Yeah, there we go. He said he’s suggesting ethanol free which we have a lot of ethanol hundred fields out here. So we do need to go premium to do that. That’s okay. Like for a generator, you’re not running it that much. Great suggestion. I’ve been thinking about that. Also, probably run it once a month. Just pull it out. Run it for a couple hours, just run some stuff but it rascal we are very ethanol heavy gas. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [27:01] 
you have to be premium if you want ethanol free, right? Yeah, you do for sure.

Jim Collison  [27:06] 
Yeah. And I’ll probably spend some time trying to put a load on it and do some things just to kind of keep it it’ll be one of those things I’ll pull out. It did cause me to get really oil change crazy. So I changed the oil in my mower, I change the oil and

Mike Wieger  [27:20] 
I love I do it in my mower more than I should. Yeah, and then john big says you should definitely have a transfer switch installed so much easier and safer.

Jim Collison  [27:27] 
Yep, just coming out that it’s got a it’s got a 240 in it and you can just come right out of it and plug it into the transfer switch and then make the necessary changes. When the power comes back on. It’s gonna run off the generator until you make that switch flip. It’s just basically grid power on top generator on the bottom crank, you just flip them Yep, yeah, no, it’s It can’t be that. You know, I’m probably looking at a couple hundred bucks to get an electrician to come in and get that to put in so be good all it’ll all isolate the circuit. So I’ll figure out okay, what are the computers are on what are the fridges? They’re on? What’s the furnace? What’s the you know, those kinds of things? Those would be the circuits that get priority. And we’ll mark that probe. Well, I’ve got some messy wiring in the house. Yeah. So you got a mix of things. Okay. garage door would be probably one you want to put on? Yeah, for sure on the circuit. So you know, that garage door open. So excited about getting that in. Okay, we could talk about all that stuff forever. Let’s, let’s get some user feedback in here. First ever tried user feedback. And thanks for sending this in. Many of you responded to it. I realized Mike as I did this, I didn’t really give clear instructions on what I was really looking for. It’s actually okay that way. A lot of the feedback I wasn’t looking for just positive feedback, or I wasn’t looking for love I was kind of looking for, and I really wasn’t looking for necessarily where we could do things differently. We got some of that and that’s cool. I was kind of I kind of wanted to know what you’re working on. I should have been clear about that. And that’s okay. That’s okay. Many of you guys got it. So, Chris writes in reason. Reasons to subscribe to the channel. Or enjoying listening to the recorded live shows covering interesting topics ranging from gardening to technical information. And we do it’s a variety is definitely a lot of time. One of the things he says and I’ll ask you this question Mike, what do you look forward to like as you think about the next six months? We think about gadgets What are you looking forward to stuff that’s coming out?

Mike Wieger  [29:22] 
Well, number one on my list by far right now is the next gen consoles for gaming so I have recently although I’m not I I got into it more because I stopped streaming because now I can just play for fun casually I have a bunch of friends who are playing the new Call of Duty, then huge and back into Xbox, like probably almost every night been playing some Xbox. And so the new consoles come out this Christmas season both the new PlayStation and the new Xbox and man they just look amazing. We’re finally this is the first gen consoles gym that have SSD in them. Yeah, that’s crazy. We’re way behind councils have been way behind now. That’s the master race has been making fun of us because for the conference side. And you guys know for me I’ve been mixing up a little bit I did a little bit of PC gaming. Xbox is easier for me because all of my friends are on switch is honestly easier. Yeah, the graphics aren’t as great but man, these next gen consoles look amazing we’re going to be doing this is not really confirm Yep, upright 4k at 30 to 60 frames per second, right? Which is great because right now, the Xbox I’m on is TDP 60 frames not even 144 or anything like that. So higher frame rates SSDs I think this is a huge jump. Everyone’s calling it a very small jump. I don’t think everyone realizes the difference these little things are going to make going forward and and yeah, we’re not going from like 720 to 1080 we’re not making like a huge leap there but just go do 4k Gaming with SSD all this stuff. I think it’s gonna be amazing. So that’s number one. I am super pumped can’t wait. I can’t wait to see the price. because that’ll affect if I end up getting one on launch day but I think I’m pretty decided that the new Xbox for me is going to be a launch day item and probably the first launch day item I have done on any time. In a very long time you guys know that way back when used to open mic night I was all into you know, I would wait and get the new iPhone This is three years old now I have no need to switch my iPhone. I haven’t on any launch day tech in a very long time so I’m very excited for the new new consoles

Jim Collison  [31:15] 
you know, I don’t I think I’ve been getting just into kind of the the didn’t get this generator coming and I may buy one of those what’s that orange box? Do you remember the name of that? Oh, man, he was all in modules all your electrical and I think Kyle did made us maybe did this or somebody in the community did. And so I may start digging and now that I got this generator, I was current now. Anyways, somebody in the chat room, let me know what the thing was. I think I’m going to spend some infrastructure time the sense sense

Mike Wieger  [31:45] 
sense energy,

Jim Collison  [31:46] 
yep. And other 300 bucks or so expensive and, but I may spend some time kind of figuring out where things are going and you know where the energy’s going and I have a car to buy this fall sometime. That’s It’s been delayed just this weekend with COVID and all those other things going on so so Chris, thanks for your email I I am tempted to go down always tempted to go down to the Subaru Deere dealership and just start talking. Yeah, walking around. You can negotiate see what’s kind of good. So Chris, Chris from the UK. Thanks for that. The next one. Hi there, Jim and Mike, thanks for doing Home. Gadget Geeks for us week in and week out. I’m enjoying the variety of topics and themes that you’re introducing these days. Sometimes I’m fully engaged others not so, but no complaints. Yeah, no. Right on that’s no pressure there. So Phil, thanks for that. You’re not fully interested in every single topic we cover. How dare you? Oh, you should be now fully engaged all the time. It’s a battle sometimes, you know, and thinking through like, you know, we do the launch shows and they’re real popular, but not everybody likes them. Right? Yeah, but we’re gonna keep doing Yeah, cuz I like doing them and that’s all that really matters. So Phil, thanks. Well, I’ve always been on feedback. I’ve always been that kind of way.

Mike Wieger  [33:03] 
Well, you have to be because you get feedback both ways.

Jim Collison  [33:05] 
Right? And I’m not gonna do a show I don’t

Mike Wieger  [33:06] 
like right exactly. always gonna get people who love it and you get people to hate it literally guys every time there’s feedback, positive feedback, I hated it on the same exact episode, same content, so you got to do stuff you love that you enjoy. And you and I both love doing lawn stuff.

Jim Collison  [33:20] 
Yeah, no, and it’s been a good year to do lawn stuff. It’s been I’ve been looking at robot lawn mowers again.

Unknown Speaker  [33:24] 
Really?

Jim Collison  [33:26] 
It’s after all the talk we’ve been doing That’s right. No, there’s some really good ones out there. And there’s a good one for like 800 bucks. Okay, like I knew the prices would start to come down and they have and you know, apparently I have $900 to throw away by the way I did buy on the generator. I bought the Lowe’s plan, like I bought there for years extended warranty. Okay. I’m not normally an extended warranty kind of guy but for something that I’m only going to use every once in a while that has a propensity to Yeah, you out go wrong. Yeah, I dropped I dropped the 150 bones

Mike Wieger  [33:55] 
to jetski says it’s the yawn show. See what mean guys? Exactly.

Jim Collison  [34:01] 
Here’s the deal though. Twitter has lit up pictures of people’s lawns, right? Oh, yeah. You know,

Mike Wieger  [34:06] 
well, because we’re all home now. So I think we have to care. No,

Jim Collison  [34:08] 
no, I like that. I love seeing your lawn on Twitter like it’s been. We’ve gotten some good somebody asked me the other day on Twitter, like, how did you how’d you get the line? So straight? It’s practice, right? You got it, you got to do those things. You know, you got to do this thing. And another piece of email says, I really enjoy the show in the mix of topics that’s really common and the guests you have on to the live sessions are not timed well for me to participate in. But I always download the audio after the fact. The show’s focusing on specific topics. topics are always great. Unraid barbecue, etc. Okay, it’s beginning. When are we going to have the Omaha meetup? Okay, so here again, the questions on the Omaha meetup. Here it goes. When are we gonna have the Omaha meetup barbecue fly drones talk about setups tech tech topics gear swapping or selling whatever Last meetup in Indianapolis will be three years ago this September three years ago feels

Mike Wieger  [35:07] 
like it feels like just yesterday you were telling me about the last Atlas meetup

Jim Collison  [35:11] 
yeah wow it’s it’s it is crazy and I’ve been I’ve been saying for a long time like yeah we’ll do this it’s it certainly with everything that’s going on right now. No right like yeah we got to get out this year we got to get kind of clear of this stuff okay, but I do want to say to this Mike like I appreciate the I do appreciate the grind the reminder in a lot of ways because it to me it means there’s demand

Mike Wieger  [35:35] 
well there’s if you guys have been asking for for this long you’re right hundred percent it means there’s demand means our interest means there’s people who would actually show up

Jim Collison  [35:43] 
okay, point three survey the listener communities and be back with weekly and you’re either in the nucleus the weekly newsletter or on discord or Facebook about PC and Server Backup strategy course that comes out of the home server show days. very concerned about backup discuss the results. With the demise of the home server, I guess people are no longer doing many full image backups just data. What are what are they using Windows 10 built in backup to network share q naps analogy, PC tools, something that’s cloud based. Certainly this is an area PC backups gotten kind of quiet. Like we don’t. But there are more, there are more options to do it. Now. I mean, there’s a lot of different options. I’m using a Cronus. What are you using?

Mike Wieger  [36:25] 
Well, for me, it’s it’s not that the home server demise has stopped you from doing I think it’s the cloud backup or not backup cloud documents, storage, things like that the ease of downloading software again, it’s like well, it’s almost quicker for me to just like, you know, flash a new version, renew windows 10 image and install the few apps I used. sign into next cloud sign into Google Cloud, whatever you use. There’s all your docs. It’s almost faster to it that way than to mess with where’s my backup, how do I get it back on here? Almost quicker. The one tool actually I use, interestingly enough I just did this yesterday I moved my blue Iris off of the iMac so the iMac is no longer running Windows. Because I had this extra Dell optiplex box. It wasn’t doing anything. I was like, Why can rebuy Hannah kind of wants that Mac back upstairs so she can use it. Samsung has an awesome tool that they put out there just for people to migrate their stuff over to the SSD they sell. It works perfect for doing any sort of just I need to clone this and move it over it is the easiest click to things. It’s a free tool from Samsung as long as you’re using a Samsung SSD, which I was to move to then that that move it over. But yeah, backup is something we could definitely get to do a whole show on on where we’re at now. Do we

Jim Collison  [37:43] 
have a backup group in the discord group? Is there just a one dedicated to backup now there’s hardware there smart home I don’t think there’s any sort of back kind of backup methodologies that maybe we should add one there and everyone can kind of talk about what they do. Average guy.tv slash discord if you want to join us in that that We’ll take you right to the group and you can jump in there. That may be one worth adding to see where it goes, you know, just kind of to see what happens with it. And we

Mike Wieger  [38:08] 
did, I stopped all my full disk image backups, I do not do anymore anymore. I backup a lot of my stuff to my Unraid Box, and then that goes to backblaze as far as documents, but I don’t do anything

Jim Collison  [38:21] 
with anyone. I’m putting a lot of stuff on that Morrow data box that then goes to, to backblaze B to container there, I move some of it to the Drobo. So I can have a local copy of it as well. I am doing some image backups for some other PCs. So I kind of have a hybrid solution. Yep. backup is only as good as testing and I’ve tested them in a long time. Right. Right. So So Jim, good Jim Shoemaker. This is his comments from him. Good, good idea. Maybe go in there. We’ll think if there’s enough traffic in the discord group, kind of talking about that. By the way, you have another beer from from john and i see your beer guys go grab a ride you want to go unplug your will unplug. Don’t forget to unplug your headphones. I keep reading on this forum as well so you can get that you can get that additional beer. Jim also says I’d like to hear a joint show with Josh and Richard from the DNC focusing on different setup invitations for Plex. There has been a lot if you’re not if you’re if you’re not currently listening to entertainment to Dotto, you should be they talked about Plex a lot. It’s kind of where I get all my Plex information and a lot of different ways to do that, including Unraid. And there’s some you know, there’s some concepts around you know, how do you rip it and what do you rip and what are we ripping and what are we doing? So? Certainly, that’d be it’d be a good idea to have to reach out to those guys. Although I’ll be honest, they do a pretty good job on their show of talking about that entertainment to Dotto though like to hear Jim also, he goes on to say like to hear a segment dedicated to car tech. So I’m gonna come in and talk about pros and cons of Apple CarPlay Android Auto compared to the built in navigation systems and so forth. So I’m going to talk about dashboard cams favorites versus for cables. What’s your every kit? Your everyday carry? That’s equivalent for in car tech. Yeah. Like what do you keep in your car?

Mike Wieger  [40:10] 
That’s a great idea. One. Yeah. Great idea, Jim. So it’d be scared.

Jim Collison  [40:14] 
Yeah. Yeah, I’m ready for the apocalypse. Yeah. What do you keep in your own car? Like do you have any like you’ve talked about everyday carry stuff for you? Do you have any everyday carry stuff in your car

Mike Wieger  [40:25] 
tech related or or just self protection related? Usually all self protection. Maybe I don’t want to No, no, I mean, I I carry a full trauma kit in my car at all times strapped to the back of my seat so because a lot of times you know that stuff is usually you’re not stopping a gun wound people. You’re helping a tummy ache or a headache. So I have a lot of aspirin in there a lot of Tums in that trauma kit and that stuff goes faster. I’ve never used the dressing that I have used so many of the time

Jim Collison  [40:52] 
you say trauma Do you mean first aid kit? Is that what you mean? It’s a trauma kit okay for under different

Mike Wieger  [40:56] 
okay. It’s like actual shears for cutting off the clothing. There’s a wound packing All sorts of stuff. So it’s a little bit more advanced than a first aid kit. But But yeah, that kind of stuff and everything. So I would love to do a what’s in my car kind of show?

Jim Collison  [41:12] 
Yeah, it would be a lot of fun. Let me say this. So for everybody listening to the both the live and the recorded version, if you’ve got like, Jim’s got some great idea shoot, I could, by the way, Plex is like I could talk about Plex for days, we could do three shows, I consider myself a pretty much heavy user of Plex. And there’s a lot of tips and tricks in there that I think a lot of people can benefit, I guess have to reach out, reach out to Josh and Richard and get him on. But if you’re a specialist specialist in this area, we’d love to hear from you. So send me an email Jim at the average guy.tv if you’ve got something to say, maybe we could create some roundtable shows around that’d be awesome. Yeah, that’d be a perfect good three or four on at a time and kind of work through some of the show. That’d be super cool

Mike Wieger  [41:51] 
that car tech crosses my my interest, right? I’m a big tech guy. I’m also a big like self defense home defense guy. And those, that would be a perfect segue. For me to finally have with all this, I think

Jim Collison  [42:02] 
I’m never gonna pick a fight with you.

Unknown Speaker  [42:04] 
Well, you know, you know, I mean you probably could you’re bigger than

Jim Collison  [42:06] 
me so fatter maybe but but I got you I got you about about 50 pounds. Maybe?

Mike Wieger  [42:14] 
I don’t know you’re tall guy.

Jim Collison  [42:16] 
You don’t realize it until we stand up. You’re a tall guy. I always keep that camera pointing down people

Mike Wieger  [42:21] 
watch we know that every time we get to forget how tall you are, like, I’m not the tallest I’m 510 so I’m not the tallest.

Jim Collison  [42:28] 
Yeah, I got a little girth. The gym also goes on to say I think a segment about hiking would be interesting. Do solar batteries recharge? Those recharges work well enough to even bother with those are the ones you would put out. You know you get someplace put them out in the sun. Yeah, charge your phone or whatever. While you’re hiking, should I work with them cell phone range extenders waterproof device bags. Aaron Lawrence. We’ll get her back on here as we go into the fall. She’s been doing a lot of stuff with van life and she’s been doing a lot of solar stuff. So we’ll get her on the But if you’ve got an area, if you’re listening to this and you’re doing some of that, let us know waterproof device bags, maybe another community survey opportunity. Jim says to me and then last but not least, and by the way, this this feedback I got from Jim Shoemaker. Perfect. This is kind of what I was looking. Okay. So he says, I thought, a show with Jim’s daughter as a guest, Sammy, who’s been on before, it’s very interesting and would really like to hear a follow up to the segment. So, Jim, we’ve scheduled Samantha for a 730 joy. Hey, she’s a rock star.

Mike Wieger  [43:29] 
She’s pretty good. Like you always give Hannah compliments and they’re the people that I don’t know about Sam, because it you’ve told me what are you talking about Sam, he’s like, she’s always kind of nervous to be on the show. Same thing with Hannah. And then they just come on and kill it. And you and I who do this every week, we get shown up by the people who are so nervous. I’ve never done a podcast. They’re just so relatable. They’re honest, they’re sincere on the show. I love and we had her on. I thought she was one of the best guests we’ve ever had.

Jim Collison  [43:53] 
Yeah, she’s coming back July 30 2020. So she’ll be rain. I said, Hey, would you come back again? And she’s like, yeah, heck yeah. Is that next week. No july two weeks July 30. July July trees Yeah, month and a half month and a half. It’s quarantine What day is it? What week is it? She’ll be getting ready to go back to school they Northwest has announced that they are building person in person in person.

Mike Wieger  [44:14] 
Are they ending in at Thanksgiving Thanksgiving? Yeah, do the

Jim Collison  [44:17] 
same thing that’s super smart. By the way read, you know, don’t don’t send anybody home to get the virus right and then bring it back to school so that it can go back out like, That’s ridiculous. So, Jim’s suggestion invite her to give her favorite Pokemon GO tips and tricks as part of it. She crushes Pokemon Go. So as she’s gotten into d&d, so that’ll be kind of cool. She’s been watching critical role, which is a big d&d podcast and then she’s gotten in a d&d group with my son with my middle son, and they’re playing d&d every Friday or Saturday night or the weekend. That’s super cool. Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [44:52] 
And I read a dice masters, which is another kind of that card dice game and man, we have a we have a blast with it. Jim Shoemaker. Thanks. Thanks for that feedback. I appreciate that. Let’s see next. I think Ron would be down for a for a car show he says that he has a bug out bag with his radio gear ready to run and go and I’m the same way my ham radios are part of my bag I have one in my car. Obviously they’re always ready to go and can go ham radio is a big thing for that kind of stuff. Yeah not being able to be out in the if things happen you’re out in a car hammers are a great way to go. So yeah, maybe so much tech. You could talk about what things you take in your car,

Jim Collison  [45:26] 
do it do a roundtable and you just talk about what’s in your car, right? Yeah, yep. Now super easy. Jim at the average guy.tv if you got if you want to join us as soon as I get enough people who want to do these kinds of topics I’ll start a list is we jump in there as we get enough we’ll do a roundtable Yeah, well throw that in there. Yeah, it’d be good. Brandon send sends me know Jim. Thanks for the episode. Have a couple pieces of feedback. First, I’ve already mentioned a gym and live chat but I work for a large school district Information Systems department at the beginning of the pandemic or help desk was getting slammed with calls About how to do things for teachers and parents. I’m one of the I’m one of the Azure admins and the director came to me and said, You seem like you know a lot about this. What should it What would it take to make a bot that ties into our knowledge base? And would it be possible to voice enable it? Wow, that’s pretty, pretty cool. So it played around with a little bit and after your episode with Dwayne Robinson, not just memory it went on. And yeah, we meant to talk about something else. And Dwayne went into what he was working on. Not much more, as he says, played around with a little bit after Dwayne’s episode played around with a little bit with a little bit after episode with Dwayne, not much more than a Hello World type example. But I pulled it up and showed it showed him the basics, told him that our developers could do it in their sleep. He laughed a little bit, but he said he’d spent hours looking up the information the night before, and should have just waited to ask me Right. Isn’t that a great feeling when that happens? second benefit. So it’s super cool that Dwayne, of course brought on that time he brought, we didn’t even anticipate him doing that in the course Microsoft’s doing some really cool things around bot bot development. So Dwayne doing we’ll be back. He’s a regular, we’ll have to catch up with him as well. second bit of feedback ties into the first I love the fact that you’re a variety show. In my circles. I’m the tech guy. I think everybody you got to be

Unknown Speaker  [47:28] 
the tech someone, the tech guy, if you listen to this show you are that guy.

Jim Collison  [47:32] 
I don’t know if we don’t know it yet. I don’t know if we have any tech gals I never heard. Love to hear from Jim at the average guy TV. I

Mike Wieger  [47:38] 
know. You’re a tech guy, awesome tech gal hosts who have come out right on it.

Jim Collison  [47:43] 
Yeah, right on. In my circles. I’m the tech guy. And it doesn’t matter that I work on routers or firewalls all day long. They still ask me about everything. Listen to your show keeps me well rounded in tech. I hear that a lot actually from folks that get feedback on I may not be an expert in virtual assistants. But I know the basics. I may not have a trigger. But I love but I live in Utah. And that’s a that is a big culture here. So it helps me be able to chat about it with my in laws and

Mike Wieger  [48:11] 
talk to talk all that right. I’m the same way that this podcast has kept me apprised of all that stuff. And, and a lot of times, it’s just being able to talk to talk a little bit.

Jim Collison  [48:20] 
Agreed. Brandon goes on to say the current bane of my computer setup is my graphics card or lack thereof. I’m using the built in Intel stuff, which is super common, and it works. I added that part. So here’s a question for you when it comes to bang for the buck, and expected longevity, which card do you get? I don’t mind spending a couple hundred dollars if it will ask me a couple years. So wishlist items. Also a wishlist item is a quiet card, since it could go in the computer that I podcast from So Mike, what do you think?

Mike Wieger  [48:52] 
Well bang for the buck wise right now, I think the biggest probably, you know, entry level that you would actually want to be To get into right now is what I got into, which is the 1660. Super. And the reason I say that is because the 1660 Super is built on the new Turing architecture. So you have that new architecture, you don’t have the tensor cores that the 20 series cards are on. And I should fully I should admit up front, I am not I know there are a lot of new AMD cards that are competitive this so do your research. I’m probably only going to give the Nvidia side because I needed Nvidia for a lot of other reasons. But 1660 Super gets you into that Turing architecture. You don’t get tensor cores, but you’re at least there with new architecture. So if you’re doing any sort of streaming, the envying codec is using all the new new architecture, but what I would really suggest is if you can spend the money, I would probably say a 2070. And whether that’s a 2070, super ti whatever Radio 2017 I think the 2017 is probably the sweet spot 2018 is fantastic car but a little bit overkill prime for most people will we need, I would not call it 2080 bang for the buck 2070 I probably would for the type of performance you’re going to get and the longevity you’re going to get out of it. But I think the 1660 for a lot of people, I mean, if you are not looking to heavily game on this thing, you just want something that is update as of now ready to go, I think is a great card quite a bit cheaper than the 2016 even or the 2070. And I think I think is a pretty decent card. So I would say either go 2017 or 1660 I would skip the 2016 I don’t really see any reason not to maybe some of you in chat would disagree with me there. But I don’t I think it’s either the 1660 or the 2017 people forget the 1616 exists. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [50:47] 
price point on that. 1616

Mike Wieger  [50:48] 
I think probably around, man 300 Okay, to 260 to 300 I think that’s the right price. Right, right. Yeah, should look it up now. 1616 Let’s just get a head And definitely go with the super I think the Supers better than the TI

Jim Collison  [51:02] 
and we bought okay so the generation before that we bought 1060s when we were my I went not no cheaper to 39 okay for gigabyte 1660 Super 239 that’s a great price. Yeah. Because we were buying what six to seven times? Yeah. When we were buying the 1060 right for the mining and that that was kind of the best bang for your buck. Yeah, those were like I could get them on sale to 15 to 30 somewhere in there. So I think this is in that same price. It’s

Mike Wieger  [51:30] 
right at the same price point. Now you’re not going to get the other thing you won’t get as ray tracing. Because it doesn’t it’s not an RT x right? It’s not that 20 series cards a 1660. So you get the new architecture but you don’t get a lot of the other benefits, but that’s why it’s so cheap. That’s why it’s 239 bucks. compared to some of their prices. 20 2016 What are they where are they starting? I would say around 350 $400 and cursor brings up a great point Chad he says the 20 series cards hopefully going down in price him because The 3000 series cards coming out, which is a great point too. So they’re going to be I think this will all change here in a few months. And again you really need to give a good look depending on what you’re trying to do. Give a good look at AMD as well. They have a lot of great competitive cards that are they’re doing really well. In this space. Obviously Nvidia has always been kind of a leader here but AMD is coming in to some

Jim Collison  [52:19] 
great guards they are and it’s worth kind of checking to around but that price point that kind of 250 to 300 price point usually right now usually gets you in a pretty good Yeah, kitchen a pretty good spot I have for 1060s and ever got rid of them. Like I wear the exotic or the opposite you buy and sell I hold on to everything ever. And they’ve just I mean they’ve recently just got into computers just to be video cards and they’re great. They’re just great cards

Mike Wieger  [52:44] 
depending on the frame rate of what you need for for even gaming. I’m able to game at 1080 on the highest settings on a lot of games and be totally fine now I’m not getting 144 frames per second. At those super high settings I bumped like for example Call of Duty I bumped down just a little bit I can still run it and get 144 frames per second 10 dP on that 1660 Super at whatever it is high, not extreme settings, but high on most turning down a few settings there. So as far as gaming wise, it’s it’s perfect. And then I actually through the one I have I had a 1060. Before that I threw in Unraid. And that is now just my Plex transcoder. Yeah, and that card is perfect for that entitle you Unraid has made it super easy. We talked about on the past show with kind of integrating that it’s supported ish. But works great as a little card for that machine. You’ve been working on the Unraid 6.9 beta or I have not yet no 6.9 is not out of beta yet. Right. I just checked today to see. And so I know I’m not playing around with it too much. I will be once it’s released, but no, I’m not playing with beta. I have so much running I’ve realized I used to run bait on everything. And like next cloud. I do run the beta of next cloud but I started to realize My Unraid Box controls a lot of my life, my password manager, all my documents, I don’t use any external Dropbox, Google, it’s all self hosted for next cloud. I mean, everything is on my Unraid, I am no longer in the position to be able to run beta software, I need it to be pretty much rock solid. Because when that goes down, when you start to get texts from your wife, you know that you run mission critical software, because she’s like, Hey, I can’t actually access my next cloud from work. I’m like, Oh, sorry. It’s because it’s down. I’m working with stuff. That’s not acceptable. One of the drawbacks of self hosting everything. But yeah, so I’m still on 6.3 which is the latest on Unraid. Right now,

Jim Collison  [54:38] 
like when you host stuff for family, we’ll get john back on when we when I asked him if when they released it. If they come on the show. We’ll let them go through the release and get them we’ll give them a couple months. Yeah, have them back on have Unraid back on. But Brandon, thanks for that feedback. That was That was great. Appreciate that. Great to see on Saturday mornings as well and ask the podcast coach. Brian sends us now he says I’ve been a listener of the podcast. For the show for a couple years, always learning something new every time I’ve been a follower of tech news, but I’ve never had as much confidence to do tech updates as I have after listening to the show. That’s pretty great. So I appreciate that.

Mike Wieger  [55:13] 
It was hell Ryan FM chat because Brian I know I think you just said Take care. I think you just hopped off the live. I wonder if it’s the same Brian could be.

Jim Collison  [55:21] 
Could be could be one I didn’t I didn’t put I just put first names in here because I didn’t ask for permission. So I just was keeping them fairly anonymous. One example is adding smart devices to my home. When I started when started as what I’m sorry What started as one echo speaker has grown into four or five plugs, a power strip two light bulbs, two ring cameras or doorbell. Something I would have never ventured out to without a show building my confidence. So Brian, thanks for That’s great to hear. I guess. That’s what we’re here to do. Yeah, but it’s it’s also my experience. Like I am not the greatest tech guy. I’m not The smartest guy around these things I get great confidence from people around me doing these things, you try some stuff. And then once you’ve done it, I kind of jumped into it.

Mike Wieger  [56:08] 
Yeah. And vice versa as well.

Jim Collison  [56:10] 
Yeah. My next tech adventure involves getting some use out of some old hard drives. But I have laptops that no longer use. Why don’t use laptops, I’d like to use those hard drives to store backup copies occasionally access the data, etc. I should mention that my main machine is now a Chromebook. And I use an iPad six Gen and an iPhone SE 2020 edition. I’d like to learn how to read write to the drives over a network. So back to Jim’s question about maybe having some backup. Yeah, like we all assume we know we’re doing

Mike Wieger  [56:42] 
we do and this is one of those scenarios where you know Unraid the software is so affordable right now. There’s no rule that says that your home server needs to be some super redundant, reliable machine. If he has a bunch of hard drives in here, use Unraid as DLS throw them into like a Dell optiplex with a bunch of weird connections together. drives plugged in there, those drives are old probably slow, not gonna run well, but Unraid the OS just gives that the capability to now be a share really easy, you know? So there’s things like that you can have a lot of fun with stuff like that I play around with stuff like that all the time. I’m constantly I you know, I talk on my made Unraid Box. I’ve built probably 12 different Unraid boxes since then, because I have so much fun creating second like, well, I could just throw some really old drives in here and this could be like a off site redundant. I’ll put it in my parents house right. There’s a lot of fun you can have with that sort stuff. And I’m glad that we’re giving you guys that kind of confidence to have fun with it. Play with it. break stuff. Yeah, that’s when it gets fun, right? You and I got so bored of the crypto when we stopped breaking shit. We used to break stuff all the time. Good. And then when we stop worrying, this is boring.

Jim Collison  [57:49] 
Work running. Yeah, I noticed so much better when it broke. Ken and I have been running bursts. We still run burst. Yeah, and all about a million variants

Mike Wieger  [57:59] 
only terabyte You haven’t I think I’ve

Jim Collison  [58:01] 
done 287 because you’ve been slowly parody I did have an eight terabyte drive die on some of those. So 87 and Ken Ken’s feedbacks coming up here. He talks about this a little bit but but it, it sometimes it does get a little boring. It’s been good during the pandemic for it to be boring and just for it to work because they haven’t had a lot of time to mess with it. Brian goes on to say I’m a complete novice in this area of backup, it’s okay like this, you’re in the right community and appreciate your tips recommendations to websites, Mike, you just kind of do that right now. Affordable methods which Unraid is a perfect way to get in

Mike Wieger  [58:34] 
there is there is a license fee associated. And but the thing about it is because the other option that most people say for a cheap way to go is free NAS but free NAS doesn’t let you just throw in a bunch of really old randomly sized drives and make the best of it. Whereas Unraid is toy like, give us what you got and we’ll let you use it right. That’s what I love about it. Yeah, now it’s easy to use. I mean, I got it working. So I got it working on an old core. I Reeboks from like a million years ago. And if you don’t have those old boxes, literally Facebook marketplace at least here in Omaha is flooded with 25 to $40 Dell optiplex is that people are trying to get rid of those old machines but they weren’t great. It’s a core i three, are I five, like, you know, 2000 series I five and second gen I five, right three. And those things were great for Unraid. Like, I have a stack of those. I am ashamed to admit I like every time I see one on Facebook Live $25 that could be an Unraid Box. And so I buy them and then they just stack up in my basement. And I make routers out of them or whatever because I also use Dell optiplex that’s what’s running, untangle. That’s my router that we’re talking on right now. Right The Dell optiplex super cheap one. It works just cheap.

Jim Collison  [59:45] 
Right? So you don’t have a piece of hardware to do it on. Sometimes ask family if they have old computers that are sitting

Mike Wieger  [59:51] 
yes right post on Facebook. Hey, do you guys have those old computers are sitting around I could just take off your hands, repurpose them do a pf sense box Unraid router box. You’re grab one of those and just use that as your test bench your play around box. You can put anything on there. I’ve done that a million times. It’s so much fun. I just recycle for blue Iris we talked about earlier. I switched my totally blue Iris over to an old Dell optiplex. That works perfectly. It runs Windows well enough to just be my blue Iris. Security standard camera software for nine HD cameras North great.

Jim Collison  [1:00:25] 
Yeah, yeah. Ask family because oftentimes they don’t they don’t know how to recycle it. They don’t like oh, yeah, girl. I take that. Please. Could you just get out? It’s collecting dust. Right. Yeah. As family. That’s a great way to do so Brian, thanks for those that feedback. appreciate those questions coming in. I mentioned Ken a second ago. And Ken said, Hey, Mike and Jim. I just wanted to thank you for keeping Home Gadget Geeks and home tech before that going strong in the past 10 years I’ve had many people I’ve had many projects inspired by conversations on the show. So we ranging from home servers to router software such as pf sense. Sophos angle

Mike Wieger  [1:01:01] 
to talk about

Jim Collison  [1:01:03] 
Yeah, to my current obsession of almost three years crypto mining. I can’t believe it’s been that long already. We can either can that’s pretty crazy. I’m still going strong with about 45 terabytes mining burst VHD and its derivatives and about 12 terabytes of storage, or storage A is the origin, like God. data’s space used. Needless to say, This show is inspired countless projects. And with its many late late late nights of tinkering and troubleshooting the fun, right?

Mike Wieger  [1:01:36] 
Well, I’m really glad to hear them say that because I feel so bad Jim, because how notorious Am I for starting a project tell everyone about it and the next week on the show like Yeah, I just that project. I know.

Jim Collison  [1:01:45] 
So I feel I’m

Mike Wieger  [1:01:46] 
glad you guys don’t take me too seriously. And hopefully it lets you Tinker like I do. Maybe some of you are like me, we Tinker we get all set up like well, it’s fun. Now let’s hear back down.

Jim Collison  [1:01:54] 
Yeah, let’s do something different. But there are some who take that as an inclination when they go all the way in Totally Yeah, go on there they become

Mike Wieger  [1:02:03] 
mining right? He took that or he is now the expert in that area I would say in our group. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [1:02:08] 
yeah, you dropped out after about two days. I was there for a while. I was there for a while sort of sort of whatever. The wealth of information and diverse backgrounds and our community members combined with all the all around willingness of members to assist and contribute whenever possible, is truly unique. Okay, that’s enough congratulatory, backslapping. I was waiting. I think I didn’t say that earlier in the show, right? Because I wanted to save it for can that goes back to an old home server show reference, keep up the good work. Thanks, Ken says

Mike Wieger  [1:02:36] 
glad you guys don’t ask me for legal advice. This is the one I get to get away from my day job and not be a lawyer and talk about the fun stuff. So I’m glad I don’t have to use my expertise and I just get to be the dumb guy who gets to listen to all you people. I’ll use smart tech people

Jim Collison  [1:02:49] 
no really there’s there’s like way piece way smarter in the discord.

Mike Wieger  [1:02:53] 
Oh my god, so many. Yeah, like I have learned a lot from you guys. It’s funny. We learned so much from you guys in the discord from your country. From your suggestions from your emails, and it gets me through a lot of my projects,

Jim Collison  [1:03:04] 
yeah. If you if you’re new, you’re new to Home Gadget Geeks and

Unknown Speaker  [1:03:08] 
you didn’t listen to home server show off for that. And he said congratulatory, backslapping.

Jim Collison  [1:03:12] 
Yeah, that was show 100 of home server show. And john Sadler, and I, I think maybe Chris was crystal there. I can remember. We gathered a whole bunch of positive feedback for Dave because, you know, in those days, 100 podcasts was a big deal. Yeah. Now we’re 450 so you know, but

Mike Wieger  [1:03:29] 
it’s never made it to 100 open mic,

Jim Collison  [1:03:31] 
by the way. That’s okay. It’s okay. It was like 70 it was good. It was gonna suit scrubs. How many students scrubs? No, I think we got like six you got quite a few. No more than was it? I don’t know. I don’t can’t remember how many. I just enjoyed it. I just, I like listening to Hannah and I love it when she calls you Michael. trouble. I know.

Unknown Speaker  [1:03:51] 
On the podcast, I’m in trouble. It’s so great. Yeah.

Jim Collison  [1:03:54] 
Yeah. Last one comes from john and longtime listener. Good friend. He says based on Home Gadget Geeks And help a help and help from the discord group I selected components to build an incredible Unraid Box. So like john is one of these he’s the opposite of you like he actually stays with it for a while is all in. He does. Yeah, he doesn’t do anything kind of halfway he’s in although, in fact, he’s not using eBay stuff. No, no, no, he waits. He plans it you know thinks about it. He plot the plots it out everything you just I get notes from john about, Hey, this is my Unraid build weekend. And I’m like, Okay, yeah, that sounds great. So, john, I’ve always appreciated John’s feedback. I hear from john all the time. We chat into messenger all the time. And it’s just been good. He’s, you know, it’s just, that’s for me, the best part of podcasting are the relationships like I have with you or I have with john or I think, you know, name everybody in the chat room. Just the folks that we get to have relationships with. So that’s pretty cool, john, good. goes on to say I also bought and installed two ring cameras. I think I think a few of those went in I’m thinking about a third for the battery really floodlight cam would be the right thing to do would be, I’d be the right thing to do.

Mike Wieger  [1:05:11] 
Yeah, no, for sure. It’s actually somebody just installed one. Yeah. And found he moved into a very old house great house but old house in this old party Kansas City. And he’s like, you won’t know what they did for the wiring and he like sent me a picture and like the guy had gotten super lazy and just like splice it and he wrapped it electrical tape that was sitting like in his between two two by fours. Yeah. He’s like, I don’t think that’s up to code. Like I don’t think it was either.

Jim Collison  [1:05:34] 
I had I found some wiring in my house, they did a lot of janky things to instead of going through the two by four, they just want to round it and then just put plastic that’s like how I would do it and no, it was shield. And so I was drilling for the you know, screw drilling to get a What’s he gonna put it’s gonna put a screw in for the microwave. And I hit that thing and a flame shot out right? past my face just and this is why there are rules people that’s why we have a code. Yeah, that’s why we have code so yeah, I think I think you’re right. I’m gonna do the floodlight cam in the back because it’s powered back there and it’s also shaded back there and so putting a solar panel back there, man that’s the setup I did the stick up cam with a with a horse well oh my god. Like awesome now I should have bought a stick up cam. I mean, I should have bought like him for like him that but not knowing that I kind of pieced that thing in Yeah, but it’s been rock solid. It has not been below 98% power since I’ve hit that thing. Yeah, no, that’s that that that solar panel from ring Is this legit? Like it’s super great. So this weekend, john continues he says this weekend I hope to do the ring. doorbell three so john, good luck on putting that in. And with that, I’ll say Everybody who sent us the feedback and kind of fun right a lot of fun just Yeah, a variety show you learn anything on it.

Unknown Speaker  [1:07:07] 
Why

Mike Wieger  [1:07:09] 
don’t you guys like me?

Jim Collison  [1:07:11] 
us good to be like

Mike Wieger  [1:07:12] 
yeah, I was worried I switch things up with you guys too much so it’s good to know that we have a lot of topics that are you know, Jim and I talked about stuff a lot and you guys probably all know that but probably at the end of every show. We’re always talking about you know, what kind of topics you know, should we keep the variety should we not Should we do this we do that and so it’s always good to hear your guys’s feedback and and it’s good and I think we got actually a lot of good ideas on future shows what we do. I’m really two things I learned from that. I would love to do a Plex show like I could do a love to Plex show. And I would love to do a car tech slash when you have in your car. Either you know I’ve actually switched most people have a bug out bag I have a Get Home Bag. I would rather I would rather get home than Bug Out My home is much more safe than anywhere. I’m going to bug out to something we have a lot of fun with that. Learned tonight Don’t be a rabbit in your around your house cuz Oh, that’s true. It’s not Sam did learn to not be a rabbit. We don’t like we don’t take kindly to rabbits around these parts so

Jim Collison  [1:08:09] 
well, yeah so we got some good roundtable ideas coming up in we appreciate your feedback. If you want to be a part of one of those roundtables or have an idea, just send me your idea. If you if you have the idea, I kind of want you to be on the show. So not necessarily have to be but that’d be nice. Jim at the average guy.tv will start throwing some roundtables. This is actually something I thought of back in January and just never really COVID hit and it just never really got it started to grad Yeah, yeah. So we’ll get some. We’ll get some topics going. Mike, you’ve been podcasting with me for five years, five years, five years now. Getting together tonight, I thought it’d be a great opportunity to say thank you to you for the work that you’ve done. Thank you. I love it. This is I bought show last. I bought you a little thank you gift on the way and it’s my favorite. It’s my favorite and so it’s some Jeffersons. So we’re good Hold like that is gold by the way. That is pretty great. I think you’re gonna

Mike Wieger  [1:09:04] 
we’re gonna have to, we’re gonna you’re gonna have one. Right? Okay, good. Okay, this is a man. Thank you guys. You guys. Jim. We’ve had so much fun over five years. You know? It’s it used to be a joke to him. It’s not a joke anymore. This is the longest I’ve stuck to anything by the way. Like, honestly, five years besides maybe the sport of soccer as a kid. I have not done anything for five years. Yeah, it’s longer than anything I’ve done along with any hobby I’ve had. And it’s just because I have so much fun with you Jim with the people here. You guys keep me engaged all the time. Love you guys in Discord. So thank you. Yeah, this is this is a lot of fun. I

Jim Collison  [1:09:39] 
love coming every Thursday. My favorite bourbon, this is it’s pretty great. Jefferson. We’re excited. Makes a couple couple different varieties of that. And so I swung by hyvee on the way in today and I thought I gotta get my own bottle. Thank you. Thanks for Yeah, you know, it’s it’s it’s hard to find people who will show up almost every week, like, you know, you take some time off and you try. And that’s great, though. Yeah, it always works.

Mike Wieger  [1:10:06] 
It’s like my control. I’m gonna be here.

Jim Collison  [1:10:08] 
It’s super hard to find people who would give five years of their of their time to show up on Thursdays to do this crazy thing. We call podcasting, you know, and so I appreciate you and thank you for the work that you do. No, it’s it’s it’s good to have you on. Thanks for thanks for doing that. Couple reminders on the way out for folks that are listening, of course, send me an email, if you’re interested in any of these things. This feedback show is kind of fun. This maybe has to be an annual, I think, yeah, you know, and then you have to remind me for sure,

Mike Wieger  [1:10:38] 
if not semi annual, is that something?

Jim Collison  [1:10:40] 
Oh, by the way, you can always send us your feedback. Like that doesn’t mean I’m not looking for good feedback. Like, we look for opportunities, things that you want us to do, you can’t always do it all and I’m not gonna always do it all. But we might, and it may be a great opportunity, and so send it in Jim at the average guy.tv always appreciate that. In And I think some people always feel like when podcasts are sort of looking for feedback, they’re looking for that congratulatory back. And we’re not. Look, we kind of are. I mean, it’s kind of a little bit. I mean, we do like it. Yeah. It is kind of

Mike Wieger  [1:11:12] 
nice to hear one of myself go ahead and do that.

Jim Collison  [1:11:14] 
But no, I don’t want any other negative. No. I’m not interested. Keep your opinions to yourself. But if you do, it’s positive. And just being honest, it cuz nobody really likes to hear negative feedback. Like they don’t I’m kind of weird, Jim. I think I do. Do you okay.

Unknown Speaker  [1:11:32] 
There’s reasons why we don’t get into now. Well, you can send it to Wieger.

Unknown Speaker  [1:11:35] 
Yeah, then

Mike Wieger  [1:11:36] 
sending me the negative feedback. DM me on Twitter.

Jim Collison  [1:11:38] 
I’m on Twitter. One of the of course, you know, one of the big supporters of the podcast over the years has been Christian Johnson, and Christian, get married this summer. And, man, it’s been you know, it’s been 12 years or 11 years with him. And of course, we appreciate the work that he does. And he kind of hosts in runs this, you know, kind of runs the back end of everything that we do. At Maple Grove Partners, so if you’re interested in getting high speed, reliable hosting, right and getting it local in the sense that we know him, him and Gary are great partners in what they do. Maple Grove partners.com plans start at 10 bucks.

Mike Wieger  [1:12:13] 
So fast. So Jim, I wanted to switch. I have a website host with him that actually had another harebrained idea, I want to switch over. And he was so fast, I still haven’t done my part of switching it over because he was way ahead. I was like, I thought it was gonna take a while. And I mean, this was months ago, and I’m still in the planning phase of what I want to do next. And he was like, next day, yeah, hey, you’re all switched over. You need to do XYZ on your end. And I’m like, cool. That was really fast. I was not expecting to do that. He’s always on like his support. And I did his support through an email through his website. So his Maple Grove website, you can you can do a ticket for your website. And he like that so fast. So fast, great service, super fast website. I think there’s runs like a dream.

Jim Collison  [1:12:54] 
Sunday’s three in the morning. That might not be the best, the fastest. Oh, He get back to you pretty quick. Yeah, he’ll get back to you pretty quick so Christian appreciate you and all that you do have been a good friend for such a long time but congratulations to him for I think he’s getting married here in the end of July. Hopefully I’ll get put together like I don’t I don’t know how that’s gonna happen. Yeah, I was really hoping to go I don’t think I’m going to be able to fly at that point. But Christian Thanks for all the work that you do. If you want to join us on discord, the average guy TV slash Discord. I mentioned the email address Jim at the average guy.tv I’m pretty quick at getting you back. Back to you that way. Home Gadget geeks.com if you want to join us, for you to download that app there. Easiest way to listen to us on the road in streaming that that app does that as well. I don’t know if I’ll have that forever. But we appreciate our Patreon supporters for the work that they do. There. We are live every Thursday. We don’t have time. Well this is pretty great. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern down here at the average guy that tv live next week. We are back in our studios with Dave McCabe and Dave will be back to talk about Summer Lawn. And I’m pretty pumped. Like I’m

Mike Wieger  [1:14:02] 
trying to I need this stage now, because I’m getting brown spots. I don’t like it, Jim. Everybody is killing

Jim Collison  [1:14:08] 
my lawn. Everybody thinks they’re good in the spring. Yes. Amazing. lawn care. I

Mike Wieger  [1:14:13] 
never have to mow a mark doesn’t grow. No, no, he does. Same here. Oh, it’s

Jim Collison  [1:14:18] 
been in the summer separates the men from the boys or the ladies from the women or whatever, gentlemen that are everyone.

Mike Wieger  [1:14:25] 
No join in next week. So you can make sure you stay ahead of the curve and you are not the guy with the destroyed lawn.

Jim Collison  [1:14:31] 
No right on because now is the critical time. It is don’t bring it easy. If you don’t get it now in the fall. You’re screwed. Yep. Right. So Dave will be on to talk about that. And it’s super important. So we’ll have you join us live next week. Ryan Kirschner coming on the week after that. Paul Brennan after that. Jay Madison is back and excited to have Jay on. Daniel J. Lewis, who normally is on the podcasting side is going to come in and talk about lighting, which is super cool. He did some really fancy lighting setup. So we’re going to have him kind of come in and talk about that and

Mike Wieger  [1:14:58] 
see the podcast. I couldn’t be better. I

Jim Collison  [1:15:01] 
see yes. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Big podcaster him. He stopped for a little bit that’s in that that’s in my podcasting bubble, right.

Mike Wieger  [1:15:07] 
I podcaster you know, Daniel J. Lewis. You do?

Jim Collison  [1:15:10] 
Yeah. He does a lot of great work. And then Sammy comes back. So Samantha will be on here coming up on the 30th 30th of July. So we are live every every Thursday almost every Thursday and a lot of Thursday’s coming up here. I am taking a break August 6, my mom turns 90 so I’ll be heading out to headed out to Colorado Springs to see my mom. I’m super nervous about it. Because it’s COVID. Like, she’s she’s in the mouse ear. Oh, yeah. She’s not going to be thwarted on this party. She is having this part. Okay. And we are coming. We have been told you will come.

Mike Wieger  [1:15:45] 
Like mom says you do something you mom.

Jim Collison  [1:15:48] 
Um, no, she’s having us. So that’s coming up in August. We are live every Thursday. 8pm Central nine Eastern hundred, the average guy.tv slash live. I’m sure we’ll do maybe a little post show. Yeah, for sure. For

Mike Wieger  [1:15:59] 
sure. I’m gonna Grab some glasses and a little little Jefferson

Jim Collison  [1:16:01] 
stick around for some for those listening, live stare if I could get interesting

Mike Wieger  [1:16:06] 
got that right now with that, we’ll say goodnight

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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