Jim is back from the East Coast and has been using travel tech all week. He purchased the Echo Auto right before the trip on Amazon Prime Days sale for $20 and has a report. He also navigates the nearly 4000 miles using Waze and found some interesting options as well as a huge error that cost him several hours of travel, but took him to the interesting spots. Mike talks about how he is using Microsoft ToDo and then talks Jim into ordering the iPhone 12 (mostly in the post show). All that and more!

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg465

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #465 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Magsafe, grill, iphone, roll roads, Echo, Echo Auto, Waze, Alexa, iPhone 12, The Cigar Authority, Cigars, Meatup

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Jim on The Cigar Authority – https://thecigarauthority.com/vodcast-how-to-improve-a-cigar-podcast/

Cigar Authority Post Show – https://thecigarauthority.com/jim-collison-rates-the-cigar-authority/

BBQ, Grill and Smoking Meatup! Moved to November 7

[2:02] Big thanks to Bitdefender and Liviu Arsene for joining us on 464. Find it here

[2:55] Canva Challenge – https://theaverageguy.TV/Canva

[3:22]} Getting a little vacation time!

[5:26] Big thanks to Joe Pechoski for sending us to beer to try!

[10:01] We moved the Meatup. Now Nov 7. Link above.

[15:23] Echo Auto

[30:03]} Waze

[43:14] Microsoft ToDo

[51:44] iPhone 12

[1:08:44] Wrap

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 465 recorded on October 22, 2020.

Home Gadget Geeks here on Home Gadget Geeks to cover all the favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home, news reviews, product updates and conversation. All for the average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison broadcasting live from https://theAverageGuy.TV Studios here. Mike. The Fall has arrived. I think while he was gone did we see some snow is that what I heard?

Mike Wieger  [0:43] 
Woke up to snow the other morning and I we might have skipped the fall because Monday we have a high of 25F, so I’m not I don’t know where fall went. It never came and went.

Jim Collison  [0:55] 
I was cleaning up leaves before I left. I was trying to get them off the lawn. So I have a Linden and then a maple in the linden and gave a boss leaves last week so I clean those all up. I came home the maples have not quite given up their leaves yet. So I imagine over the next couple a week or so they will be time to go out and mow them up again them off the lawn all that grass stuff I did with McCabe man, my lawn was looking pretty great when I got home except today when I came home from getting a haircut, big dirt pile, the moles are back. So to get the

Mike Wieger  [1:31] 
that’s not what you want to see before wintertime.

Jim Collison  [1:33] 
The mole is back well yeah, they’ll go they’ll I think they hibernate I don’t do they I don’t know I got I got some work to do. I don’t know. We’ll go out and figure it of course, we’ll go out, you should go out and get the show notes. Now a new table of contents plus, you can get the complete transcripts.

https://theaverageguy.TV for this one, go slash HGG465. And get all that information out there. Last week we were off. We’ll talk a little bit a little bit later about why.

But Big thanks to Bitdefender. So Liviu Arsene came on and was kind of one of their senior cybersecurity engineers. We released that down the podcast channel for both Cyber Frontiers and Home Gadget Geeks. So both got the same. Mike that took me a while I was going to try and get that done Thursday. And then of course I didn’t and then as on the road and I couldn’t get it done. So I spent Monday Christians place Monday afternoon. took me about three hours to get it done and processed. Big thanks to Christian but big thanks to a bit defender for coming on the show. If you missed it, because I posted it on Monday it’s there. So just go back and listen to it for six for head out to https://theaverageguy.tv/HGG464 no,  https://theaverageguy.tv/HGG464. And you can catch that episode. It’s a tight 55 minutes and love to have you as part of that.

And then just a reminder, our affiliate link of the month here for the month of October that we’re in his Canva head out to https://theaverageguy.TV/Canva. I’ve been using a ton of it at work. And in been Of course I use it for here for the average guy TV, I threw out a challenge that nobody took me up on. But if you want to create some unique album art, you can still do it https://theaverageguy.TV/Canva it’s free, go out create some album art. There’s some things you can pay for you don’t have to do that. Give it a try. Send it to me, Jim@theaverageguy.TV and it might just make it into the channel. So again, check it out https://theaverageguy.TV/Canva.

Mike, we did take last week off I reminded folks of that and it was kind of kind of nice to have a week off. You got some some time to do some family stuff.

Mike Wieger  [3:40] 
Yeah, my oldest turned four, which I can’t believe I already have a four year old and we were looking at all the old pictures of him when he was born. And it’s just weird. That was four years ago. Yeah, we celebrated his birthday, which zooms made the day all about him snuggled up watch the movie all together as a family that night. So yeah, it was it was good to have a night off, but it sounds like you had afantastic vacation.

Jim Collison  [3:59] 
Yeah, we’ll talk a little bit about it. I’m gonna recognize a couple folks first, though. So Well, first off, Big thanks to Ed Sullivan, who hosted me Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night there in just north of Boston for cigar authority. And we’ll talk about that here. Second, a second. The Big thanks to Ed and Christian Johnson who I stayed with on a Sunday night Monday night as we kind of traveled around that the the actual trip will sprinkle its way into the show. So we’ll talk about that but can’t go without thanking those two guys for putting up with me over and over for those two days. I had planned to stay at Hall of Fame or at least see Hall of Famer, Dave Jackson, he I podcast with him on Ask the Podcast Coach on Saturday mornings.

And I cut my week or I cut my trip short a little bit. I kind of just wanted to get back. So on Monday, no. Tuesday morning, got up at six Eastern Time Zone drove 16 hours. Back to Omaha Like 16 hours all in one track Hmm, all in one shot. And I really I might have, I might have taken maybe an hour, maybe not the whole time in breaks. It was one of the things that you do when you’re traveling to stay like it. I knew this was coming. I mean, I knew it was going to be a thing. So there’s a whole bunch of stuff I did. So we’ll get to that here in a second big thanks.

Uh, Joe Pechoski sent us some beer and he’s done this before we know him as Tojoski out there. But Joe, thanks for sending those. Mike. I haven’t brought him over yet because I just got him but this honey, this love honey, we’ve had this before. I don’t it’s a Bach. I don’t know if you remember this. I

Mike Wieger  [5:42] 
was gonna ask if we’ve done that one before. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [5:44] 
these are all Lost Forty Yeah, Lost Forty brewing. Not all of them. Three of the four are last spring. But they’re Arkansas beers. Joe was kind enough to send them in a big box. Man. He wrapped it like in bubble wrap and then the bubble wrap and bubble wrap and plastic around that more bubble wrap.

Mike Wieger  [6:02] 
They arrived safe.

Jim Collison  [6:04] 
They did. No, perfect. By the way, if you’re gonna send us beer, and we always appreciate you doing that, contact me Jim@theaverageguy.tv. We always appreciate that. Don’t send bottles, though. Please don’t send bottles. They never make it here. Joe sent beers. This love Honey Bear. It’s got a little taste of honey. It’s kind of a sweet beer. We’ve had this before. I when I saw it, I was like, Yes. So Joe, thanks for sending that on. You’ll recognize this one as well.

Mike Wieger  [6:34] 
Yes, that was one of my favorites. those are those are longer. Yeah.

Jim Collison  [6:38] 
Oh, that’s a good one. So we’ll be we’ll be doing these on the show over the next couple weeks.

Mike Wieger  [6:43] 
beautiful

Jim Collison  [6:43] 
a new one. I don’t think we’ve seen before as Hunter.

Mike Wieger  [6:47] 
No.

Jim Collison  [6:49] 
This is Lost Forty Hunter No, I don’t. What kind of beers I don’t remember this small batch. Seasonal.

Mike Wieger  [6:56] 
Okay. Like an Oktoberfest?

Jim Collison  [6:57] 
Okay, it is an Oktoberfest? Yeah, it kind of looks like that. Yeah. So Hunter, those are kind of getting hard to find. Now the Oktoberfest are getting hard to find. And then this son gets I think in a plus for the name. The Day Drinker.

Mike Wieger  [7:12] 
That just tells you what to do. It’s like an instructional No, right on,

Jim Collison  [7:15] 
right. No, right onDay Drinker I get Yeah. So again, another Lost Forty beer. And gonna be I think it’d be pretty delicious. So, Joe, thanks for sending us those. I get to get those over to you, Mike. I just pulled these out. The kids came home and they were like, what’s Dad? What’s all this beer off the table? And I was like, Well, you know, when you have great listeners, and they send you a beer, it’s pretty great. So Joe, thanks for doing that. Appreciate it. Of course, those all come from Arkansas, and it will look for this. I get those over to you and get them on your porch. here and Joe. Thanks for setting up.

I was in Boston to do the cigar authority. So if you want to see what it looks like to have this guy on a cigar podcast head out to http://theCigarAuthority.com, I mentioned that Ed produces at solving listener to this show. does a great job of producing that. And he did as well. It’s a long podcast, Mike, it’s two hours. We normally normally do it Saturdays they do it live on YouTube. I mean, we got to be honest. We go an hour and a half. We’re not Yeah, that’s true. Right?

Mike Wieger  [8:18] 
Yeah. I thought we were kind of in the minority there.

Jim Collison  [8:20] 
But we definitely know we definitely are we we go longer than most I yeah. I think I don’t really care.

Mike Wieger  [8:27] 
But every time I listen to a podcast, and then they asked for a survey, I always love I’m like, you could go for five hours. I don’t care. Because it’s I just love having continually from the people I like to listen to, I can listen to them talk about anything. They’re really just friends with me as I’m driving to work, drop the kids off. I like long play podcasts. That’s why I listen to most.

Jim Collison  [8:46] 
Well, it’s helpful when you’re driving 16 hours, it’s actually helpful to have some podcasts that are in

Mike Wieger  [8:54] 
Not going to listen for eight weeks, because, I got a 16 hour drive on

Jim Collison  [8:57] 
Sunday catch up on I had, you know, I listened to podcast junkies and I had some of those to catch up on I did listen to the cigar authority, the live version of it on the way home as I was coming in. It’s two hours, I was critiquing the work that I did. I like to give it a couple days. So we did that on Saturday. And this was on Tuesday night. And it just gave me an opportunity to get kind of clear of it. You know, you get done with those kinds of things. And you’re like, oh, that wasn’t very good. Like, I don’t think I was very good. Then you listen to it a couple days later, and you’re like, Oh, I wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Yeah, you know. So if you’re into that at all, you want to see what that looks like we talked a lot about and you know, we talked actually a lot about podcasting. My job is to kind of critique the job they were doing, enjoyed a couple cigars in the process. And so if you went head out https://thecigarauthority.com.

There’s also a post show that I did for them that came out today. That’s a separate RSS feed now it’s actually the same RSS feed right now. We talked about that on the show told me I need to get that one out of there so it can be on its own. And so it’s available to us to Garth or dot com.

We moved the meetup. So me at the meetup October 24. That’s coming up this Saturday, Mike I got home the other day and I was making some steaks went out to my grill. Turn the grill on and only one side lit as like, okay, that’s kind of odd and then Oh, it smells like gas shut everything off. look underneath the grill and something the pipe had completely Come on done from the from the you know the burner burner. Yeah, I think the squirrels I have some squirrels that like to live in there. And I think they got to my burner. So see,

Mike Wieger  [10:41] 
you can’t participate.

Jim Collison  [10:43] 
No, I was a little bit like Oh, it’s so I started pulling the grill apart. And man, some of the parts on the inside it were just disintegrating in my hands. And I’m like, I can’t do this on Saturday with the half put together grill. And then so i’d order some parts they’re coming in. And then Sarah let me know Sammie is home for the weekend. And so I was like, I got all these conflicts. So we’ve moved it to the to November 7. So there’s there there’s still time to do that. link will be in the show notes. If you want to join us. I’ve been sending that out in the newsletter. If you go to https://theaverageguy.TV/subscribe and subscribe to the newsletter, you’ll get notifications of every time we do a meetup. We got a bunch coming up as well. So the Thursday before that, the fifth is the Patreon meetup Mike. So if you go to http://theaverageguy.TV/Patreon and join us for five bucks, you’ll get notifications of those you can join us for that. I think we have a full slate coming back in for that Patreon meetup great ways to get that done. And we’d love to have you do that as well. At the same time that Mike so my grill is down which is a bummer.

Mike Wieger  [11:43] 
So are you going smoker This is my question. I using it as kind of I’m going to switch over and upgrade or do you just get replacement parts?

Jim Collison  [11:50] 
No, I just I bought replacement parts. So I needed a new rock or or lava rock grate that had completely disintegrated. And the the the burner was in need of replacement too. So I bought to the so 40 bucks, you know, I cannot sell those now put it back together about some new parts for it. So yeah, that’ll be but I hope the great was just I got a notification that it was backordered. So someone have to figure a stomach and he get a new grill. I’m just saying so it’s I don’t need to whisper Sarah is not here. I may get a new grill. I don’t know. We’ll have to see how it goes. It’s a little painful to look at some of those new you know, because I get a I get a pellet smoker if I was gonna get any Yeah, this point, right? Yeah. And that’s 500 bucks, at least, at least right?

Mike Wieger  [12:37] 
Yeah. I think the model I have is 800 for the Green Mountain,

Jim Collison  [12:44] 
my brother a lot and trigger. When I headed out the very first stop was Ohio. And we did steaks and he did a trigger. And it’s got the two the two temperature probes. And it did. The steak was steak was amazing with steak and potato. So Dave, he never listens to the show. But thanks. Thanks for doing that. That was pretty rare. So we’ll have to see. I don’t know Mike. I don’t know if I’m gonna be dropping 700 bucks on a grill right now.

But so right before I left, I was talking about mow my lawn. So went out mowed it and I was picking up sticks because you know we’d had a big windstorm right before that and pick it up sticks and I’m throwing them in my fire pit. And I wasn’t quite breaking them small enough. So they were kind of like hanging out of the fire pit, you know, one of those metal round fire pits. So what I’ve just done in the past is they just take my foot and push them down. You see where this is going. So I pushed down and my foot goes right through the bottom of the fire pit right there. I don’t like Oh, so not only did my grill break, but my fire pit broke in the middle of all this. I’m having. I’m having fire issues, man.

Mike Wieger  [13:47] 
Oh, well, at least yours. You’re out. Okay, so like, I feel like I’ve been having the same issue. But inside the house. All of our appliances have been going back. Oh, and I mean the fridge. So we woke up on him his birthday that Thursday. We woke up and I walked out and Hannah’s cleaning something up on the floor in the kitchen. And I come out of the basement here. Blue, new melts, all the IDS started leaking all the waters or whole floor of our kitchen was soaked. Which wood floors it just wrecks you know, Yeah, yep. And it was all dripping down luckily into a corner of the unfinished basement where there’s nothing. So we had to go out there and dry that out. But my so that went bad at the oven that we’ve talked about recently. So we went to Nebraska Furniture, Mart we’re like, okay, it’s probably time. Okay, just tell you no new appliances. Oh, if you’re buying new appliances, I gotta have a new I gotta have a new smoker.

Jim Collison  [14:34] 
Right. There you go. You definitely Why wouldn’t I maybe I should just start a Patreon account just for the smoker. Yeah, do it something along those lines. So Oh, shoot, man. Yeah, it seems like when it rains it pours and this is I know when like this is the best time to be having fires and it’s wet finally so I can do it without feeling guilty because you don’t want to start a fire when it’s driving at rain in two months. You know, right? It’d be burning the neighborhood down So I got some, I got some I got some work to do. I got to figure out Hey, I just my foot went through the smoke or the the fire pit. I was like, I’ll have to figure this out when I get back like I’m not gonna. I’m not gonna mess with this I got a mole to deal with I start to put some fertilizer down. I guess.

Mike Wieger  [15:21] 
I’m just gonna leave for vacation. I’ll think about this later.

Jim Collison  [15:23] 
All right, you’re till we’re 10 minutes in and no, we’re 17 minutes in and people like where the heck is the tech? Well, there’s just some weeks. We don’t have too much. We actually have quite a little bit tonight. One of the things Mike so I did about 4000 miles, right Omaha to Boston, Boston to dc dc back to Omaha. One of the things I don’t know what you bought on Prime Day job, anything on Prime Day, you get to take a job really

Mike Wieger  [15:45] 
well, because I made a purchase later that we’ll talk about,

Jim Collison  [15:48] 
okay, you had to buy it. You had to buy some appliances, apparently. Are you tech? Okay. All right. Well, we’ll talk about here. One of the things I picked up in if you have to kind of watch the video to see this is the the Amazon auto, which was 20 bucks, right normally 50, 20 bucks. I’d actually put my name on the list for this in beta or whatever they called it never got one just happened to see it on Prime Day for 20. Like, heck yeah. Then like, wait a minute, I’m leaving in two days. ordered. It came the next day, which was really cool. I actually thought these the size was more like this. This is like this is my phone.

Mike Wieger  [16:24] 
I have the same thought I was shocked at the size.

Jim Collison  [16:27] 
Yeah, I was thinking you know, okay, so these are what, eight inches, seven inches, something like that. The the the actual device and it has a little blue light. You can’t see it because I don’t have it plugged in. But four inches, maybe three and a half, four. pretty small. It’s got a it’s got a microphone off. And it’s got a whatever the action button is I forget what they call that on the Alexa. Oh, I’m not supposed to shift. Sorry. Alexa, stop. Okay, so hopefully I stopped. You’re a lady device. Sorry about that. Eight, you can kind of see the little holes on there. Eight microphones there. Mike, you got one of these? Right? I do.

Mike Wieger  [17:03] 
Yeah, I like it. So I have mixed reviews of it. So the one thing I love it for the reason it has stayed in my car is because honestly, it’s the easiest because I have an old Jeep that has an ox port, but no Bluetooth. So I run it does have an ox out on there. So I run that to the stereo. It’s the easiest Bluetooth connectivity to my phone because it auto powers on as soon as it gets power from the auxiliary turns on. And so it works pretty well. That is all I use it for. And honestly, it’s a little frustrating because even with those microphones, it works well to ask her questions sometimes. But I get the worst reports on phone calls. People tell me it sounds awful. It echoes they can’t hear. And I don’t know if it’s because I’m using my like car stereo with the ox cord. And maybe it doesn’t do as good of a job of canceling themselves out. So I can’t I don’t use it for phone calls. And I’ve probably asked her a question. like five times knows the first day I got it. But it’s a great Bluetooth. And for $20 it’s it’s fine for just being a Bluetooth connectivity for your phone,

Jim Collison  [18:12] 
if you need that. I’m gonna say the lady’s name a bunch in the next 10 minutes. So I want you to just go ahead and mute it. I’ll give you a second. Because I don’t want to I don’t want to feel guilty about this. But I kind of need to say the name. I’m going to do a demo here in a second. So I just want to warn you go ahead hit the hit the mic. I’ll give you a second hit the microphone button.

This does have a microphone mute in there, Mike a similar. I had a really heavy I had a Belkin Bluetooth Bluetooth device. Yep. That literally sounded like I was underwater. Like I had done some things to try and make that better. It was terrible. I you know, these aftermarket ones, for whatever reason, just aren’t great. I haven’t found one yet. That’s been great. It was okay. It worked for playing Bluetooth stuff off my phone but taking calls in the car or impossible. This made it a little bit better now. 75 or 80. When you get all that road noise, not as great. They could hear that as well. But I was actually getting some pretty good reports from folks. They were like, hey, that actually does sound okay. At least I can hear you flawless on commanding her like saying things like I could say things for flawless never missed a beat. In fact, sometimes better than in the house.

Mike Wieger  [19:23] 
Yes.

Jim Collison  [19:23] 
So adding adding, adding Alexa to the car was all done. I’m gonna mute. I said that and then I wasn’t going to meet mine. I’m going to do a demo with her here in just a second. So we’ll turn it back on. But, um, so for controlling sometimes. So sometimes I didn’t know where I was I was driving around and I’d say, Alexa, where am I? Pretty good at saying, hey, you’re in Charleston, Massachusetts, heading west, huh? Okay, that’s pretty cool. Playing audible. If you’ve got no so podcasts Run audible now so I was playing some podcasts off Audible, which workers works pretty well and Amazon property. I said and let’s just do this live. So let me turn Alexa off for a second again turn your turn your device off. Alexa, I want to have a conversation.

Amazon Alexa  [20:19] 
Well, welcome to the Alexa prize, a university competition to advance AI. I’ll get you the social bot Grand Challenge three second place winner, chirpy Cardinal from Stanford University and Stanford. When you’re done, say stop. And I’ll ask you for your rating. Hi, this is an Alexa prize social bought. I’d love to get to know you a bit better before we chat. Is it alright, if I ask for your name?

Jim Collison  [20:45] 
It is.

Amazon Alexa  [20:48] 
Sorry, I didn’t catch your name seems mind repeating it.

Jim Collison  [20:52] 
My name is Jim.

Amazon Alexa  [20:56] 
Glad to meet you, Jim. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. So I hope you’re having a lovely evening. What did you have for dinner today?

Jim Collison  [21:07] 
I had two burritos from Taco Bell.

Amazon Alexa  [21:13] 
I have never had one of those. Did you like it?

Jim Collison  [21:16] 
A good at first but bad later.

Amazon Alexa  [21:24] 
I’m not a burrito person myself. I don’t like the texture either. Anyway, I enjoy hearing about that. Food is one of life’s great pleasures. What do you think about their menu? Any favorites?

Jim Collison  [21:37] 
Oh, the Taco Bell dollar menu is fantastic.

Amazon Alexa  [21:45] 
Yeah, it has 13 food items all priced at a United States dollar. That is more than I can eat every day. What about United States dollar? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Jim Collison  [21:56] 
I have no thoughts on the United States dollar.

Amazon Alexa  [22:04] 
All right. This is kind of random. But I love movies. And I was wondering what you think about them. Alexia Stop

Jim Collison  [22:11] 
she’s gonna ask me for

Amazon Alexa  [22:13] 
thanks for chatting. Quick question. On a scale from one to five stars. How do you feel about species the best robot again?

Jim Collison  [22:22] 
A five. Ain’t gonna cool.

Amazon Alexa  [22:26] 
Then anything else you’d like to tell the team about your experience?

Jim Collison  [22:29] 
You can tell the team? No. You can tell the team and it’ll record your message and send it to the team doing this

Amazon Alexa  [22:35] 
to try another social bot? Just say let’s chat.

Mike Wieger  [22:40] 
So so that was a stand for like a competition. What I gathered was an AI competition. They’ve all submitted these AI engines over to Amazon and then you’re pretty much interacting with this AI bot.

Jim Collison  [22:54] 
Yeah, yeah. And I kind of found it by accident, because I was like, I wonder if Alexa can have a conversation with me. And so I said, you know, Alexa, want to have a conversation. Boom popped in. There’s these different ones. So I don’t know how many different ones there are. But you can try these different winners. Yeah, that were in there, whatever. Some of them are better than others. That was by far the best one I’ve had yet. The fact that she came back and said tacos or I mean, burritos was like, Oh, wow.

Mike Wieger  [23:23] 
Well, then the menu that she knew there were 13 menu items all under $1.

Jim Collison  [23:27] 
That was actually that’s the most impressive thing I’ve heard yet on this. But you know, when you have at 12 hours, Wednesday, 12 hours Thursday in the car, you start going a little stir crazy, right? So but guess who’s in the car with me, Alexa? Right? You’re like, Oh, hey, I wonder if she can talk. So I spent maybe an hour or two. trying the different you know, then it stopped a conversation it would feed up a new one to me. Yeah. And was was actually really, really interesting. Like,

I don’t think they save state. I don’t think that it like it continues to learn about me. It learns about me in the conversation. They almost always go to movies, for whatever reason, like they kind of can we talk about movies? And you’re like, Sure, so what’s your favorite and some of those kinds of things? But, um, it would be it was it was, at least it could hold a conversation. It was doing really well. This one was doing really well with me, don’t you think?

Mike Wieger  [24:25] 
I think it was really cool. And I Oh, man. It reminds me of that movie her I think is that the name of the movie where the guy falls in love with his phone. I was imagining Jim coming home telling Sarah like I think I’m in love with Alexa now. Yeah. I she’s a really good listener and her responses. She she gets me she likes she knows me

Jim Collison  [24:43] 
for right now. She could just like know what I bought and tailor the, you know, tailor the content. Hey, you know, you could I mean if they would do like a review bot that would ask you some questions that were kind of tailored towards a review. Just think how many that wouldn’t be that hard, right? Just think how many reviews They, they might get more than they’re currently getting now as opposed to having to go in and type it in. Right? So

Mike Wieger  [25:06] 
well what does makes me so I’ve every time I hear of these like conversational AI, gym, I would love it if there was some way they could load in a knowledge base of a certain topic into the AI system. So well, I’m into ham radio, and almost like I’m having a conversation with an Elmer, I can be like, well, wouldn’t I need a quarter wave antenna? And she’d be like, Well, no, in this case, introducing a dipole almost like you’re like learning from someone in a conversation because they know all the data that would that’s like what I’m waiting for, is to be able to learn conversationally, that’s how I learned best. And so watching YouTube videos worked for me, because it’s, it’s a bit it’s a one sided conversation. Right? I want to ask a question right in the middle, that YouTube video so the moment we can start getting like educational AI. Man, that’ll be super cool. Because I could talk to I could talk about Ham Radio for hours, man, I could get through a 16 hour road trip. No problem. If I could talk about Ham Radio gold.

Jim Collison  [25:56] 
Yeah, well, I mean, think, think of the cooking applications on this when you know, you’d be cooking. And she could be feeding you the recipe and then said, How’d that go? And how was that? And what did you like about that? And would remember the preferences. So the next time you do that recipe, she’d be like, Okay, last time you did this, do you want to do it that way again? Or do you want to like I mean, there’s some really interesting things you could do. I was trying to teach, you know, and I work we do a lot of things around CliftonStrengths and Gallup. And there’s a whole system around that. And so I was trying to figure out ways to get a strengths conversation going, you know, I kept asking, do you want to know what I’m good at? Do you want to know, like I kept trying to get if I could find a bot that would listen long enough. I even did some experiments where I would teach it some things or tell it some things about me that I would stop. And then I would come back a little bit later and see if it remembered in most cases it did. So we’re not quite there yet. But imagine now that can be kind of creepy.

Mike Wieger  [26:56] 
I was gonna say that makes me feel better that it’s almost like just a fun thing. And then it wipes the slate clean.

Jim Collison  [27:03] 
Yeah, so just say I want to have a conversation and and get you can try that. I don’t know. I haven’t tried that on Google. Does Google have a car device? Like, you could just know something I don’t know, imagine you could? Well, I’ll tell you what I was using. Hold on, before I switch. There’s a little battery or there’s a little magnet metal piece on the back, you can plug it in, I’ve actually used one of those little round magnet attachments I use for my phone. I use this as well on the vents. So it just plugs right in. It does come with a metal vent mounted bracket. That looks a little bulky to me. And so I just kind of ditched it and was like Nah, I’m just gonna put this on the round thing. It’s set right on the vent and and worked out pretty well.

Mike Wieger  [27:45] 
So So how do you interface it to your stereo? Or do you not Bluetooth?

Jim Collison  [27:48] 
Yeah. Oh, Blue AUX. I have an 06. So it still has it on? Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [27:53] 
that’s my two. So your your Bluetooth from your phone to that device. And that device has the AUX cord running out into your stereo. That’s an Alexa auto.

Jim Collison  [28:00] 
Alexa auto kicks into so you get in the car. You turn it on this thing comes on it queues up Alexa auto so you can get it puts it in hands free mode. See that’s new, by the way, okay, as of like, a week or two ago. Oh, really? Yes, that whole auto experience that was not a thing. So because I just recently, as of last week started getting a notification on my phone, but at the Alexa auto was enabled, and I wasn’t okay, so I haven’t even looked into it. I should add a cow although it’s super, it’s super great. it’ll it’ll invoke and you know, one of the things in its This is just getting better, too. I learned during the course of the week to do more hands free invoking of things like ways or apps that I wanted to use, like, open Facebook Messenger, it’ll open it up for you, like Yeah, not that I was texting in the car or anything. I’m just I’m nice. I’m not saying I was but you could I was testing all these different things that you could open and man the hands free experience has gotten just a million times better as far as being able to get apps open and navigate and some of those kinds of things so that that part was pretty cool.

Mike Wieger  [29:10] 
Yeah, I agree. I I found for me, the best way for me to do that has still been with the air pod pro since it has that transparency mode where you can still hear everything around you. I put one in on my ear and then series right there, right because she’s always listening this so I can just talk by phone is on when those magnet mounts, but then when you have an air pod actually it’ll read you your text messages that comes into the building. If it knows you’re not doing anything, it will read you the message automatically. It’s like a pretty cool almost like driving mode. And so I just put the one in on the right in transparency mode so I can still hear everything around me. It works pretty well.

Jim Collison  [29:47] 
Joe says makes sense that Taco Bell would be better covered. I don’t know why Taco Bell. I don’t know why Taco Bell would be better covered, but I just shocked me that that she would know what Taco Bell was we

I used Waze for the trip and Waze is kind of become my kind of standard default kind of standard. But it’s been a while since I’ve navigated long, you know, a long trip again, you know, making, you know, what, 800 miles a day, something like that probably seven 800 miles a day on Waze.

One of the things Mike, I didn’t realize that I had turned tolls off. Like I didn’t want to go on any toll roads. Well, if you drive on the East Coast, they’re all they’re all toll roads, you know, toll roads. And if you don’t take them, it takes you forever. To get places. I mean, in one case, it added almost two hours. Oh, wow. Okay, yeah, onto my trip. Now it was too good hours, because it, it routed me through instead of going. Oh, instead of taking I think as 90 a toll road in, I went back highway to through Western Massachusetts.

Well, right now in Massachusetts, it’s the fall. And the foliage is fantastic. And I drove through highway two, which takes you through some of the most beautiful kind of mountain towns, old milling towns in Massachusetts. pretty great. So like, while it took me off the beaten path, but at one point, you know, we got off the interstate, it took me through some neighborhoods. It’s like, Where? Where is it taking me? That seems to be with Waze that’s one of those questions you ask all the time is like, Where is this thing taking me? Like, is it leading me into? You know, is it gonna take me somewhere or I’m gonna die, you know, like, could it lead me that down, uh, you know, the gauntlet, and, you know, whatever.

But good neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods, it doesn’t care, it’s going to take you through the most efficient, you know, kind of kind of path. So that was one of the things I you know, about midway through driving through the mountains of Western Massachusetts, and went, you know, under five toll roads turned off on this thing, and I went back, sure enough, now by that time, I was already too far. And it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t gonna make a difference. But that was one of the settings. I apparently, at some point, I turned it off, it probably cost me a couple hours of travel time,

Mike Wieger  [32:12] 
you would think that would be one of those, like, they have so many pop ups that pop up real quick. And they have the line and it goes away, it would be like, hey, just let you know, you’re you’ve added two hours to your trip, because you’re not doing toll roads still want to do that? Or do I turn it on for this trip? Because I would think there might be some circumstances, we don’t have any toll roads around here. So don’t worry about it, you can leave it off, and you’re never going to hit home road. But if you were out there there, you might want to leave that off by default. And then have it warn you though, if it’s like, Hey, this is gonna add more than 20 minutes to my trip, let me know.

Jim Collison  [32:41] 
Well, when you turn it on, and then you go to route, it’ll route a trip the fastest for you. And then you could go down and click the route buttons and it’ll show you three or four options. And it will tell you if those options have tolls or not. And it does make some suggestions on know toll roads, toll roads, that’s hard for me to say fast. I don’t know why. When I went from when I went from Boston to DC, it was a matter of it was a matter of two hours difference to go. toll roads versus non toll roads.

And it already when I saw I took the toll option and I was on. I was on took the New Jersey Turnpike from New York down to where it used to where it comes out somewhere. I forget Jia culture, Maryland, I think on this as you get close to Maryland, I think it comes out. And I’m kind of glad I did. It was 17 bucks, you know, to get or 18 bucks to get from one end in New Jersey to the other, but worth it because that would have been an extra hour or maybe hour and a half to get, you know, down that way. Right. And at one point, I navigated through New York City.

Now I wasn’t in Long Island. However, I wasn’t in Manhattan, so didn’t take me down there. Okay. Although I should have done that anyways. But yeah, why not? Like when am I gonna get a chance to traffic’s probably not that bad right now. And yes, Sunday, I probably should have gone through Manhattan. But it it, it does give you those options to get it done. So if you’re using ways to navigate, and I don’t know, I guess I could have used Siri maps or Apple Maps or Google Maps to get it done. But I just use ways I know what else Mike, what else are you using for maps? Do you use anything? Besides what else are you using?

Mike Wieger  [34:22] 
always Waze for me? Um, what I will do is I will use Google Maps to search for like a, like a restaurant. I think I’m looking for something very specific. And I’ll copy and paste the address out of Google and put it into ways I don’t know why I like the ways in her interface. I was a early early ways adopter. So I’m like the rank is like wait ways royalty, and I’m addicted to like keeping that rank. So like, I like the points. I like the competitive side of it. I got into a long time ago and I still like it. I love being able to report stuff. So I love like, hey, there’s a cop here. that’s available. Yeah, and I think it Maybe that stuff shows up in Google Maps. But I’d like to be able to contribute to Yeah, there’s a car stop by rose. I thought they were too. I thought they were too but I just I still like everything about ways it’s fine for me. I think it works the best.

Jim Collison  [35:13] 
Yeah, seeing, of course, I saw tons of police along the way. I apparently COVID has not stopped them from making their way on the interstate, in ways of course, would alert me I drive a hybrid I drive an O six hybrid civic. If they pulled me over, I’d laugh at him. I seriously guys, you pulled over 2006 rusted out Civic Hybrid. And I you know, but it was still the notifications that come in on ways were nice.

I did run into one traffic problem. And it alerted me and said, Hey, this thing’s gonna last 10 minutes. Like Don’t panic. It’s, this is a 10 minute stop, you know, which was, which was super helpful. And then I turned on the Batman mode, which was super cool. So the voice when it would say the voices, it would be in the it would be in the Batman voice. And it was kind of fun for a while. And then it’s like, Okay, this is annoying. I’m turning it back to the regular. Do you leave for ways do you leave all your turn notifications on or everything’s off? There’s no audio coming from ways even like if it dings or anything, it’s all off. But I will turn it on if I’m in a very, very unique city that I haven’t been in before. And I’m really trying to focus a lot of hours I literally, I’m just I’m doing the same drive I do all the time I go to Kansas City. I know it I just like having the ETA always there and the cops and everything. So I will turn on five minutes today. I don’t know. Joe says and thanks for the beer again, Joe. I use both depending on the trip Google Maps seems to do a better job of letting you know what lanes to be in. That is true. I agree with that as well and exits a little bit better. I noticed ways though, does a nice job of when you get to an exit as being either like it highlights the lanes that you need to kind of be in that didn’t get me I got lost, not lost. I got the wrong exit in Chicago. You know, I came up I’m like, oh, certainly it’s not that.

Oh, it was that exit and it cost me 15 minutes. One of the unintended consequences of this is so when I left Omaha so I left I got out of here, I don’t know five, I think I got up at four and left at five tried to be in in Ohio and I was going to gain an hour. So I knew is going to be about 12 hours to to Cleveland not that far. No, that is far. The so once I left Omaha I got that time in ways right that estimated time of arrival doesn’t build in any stops. It’s just saying like if you go non stop, this is your time. Yeah, like, like, it was everything I could do not to compete with that stupid time. The whole trip. I think that’s what stressed me out the most is that I was worried about the time I was going to get there. And so like when I took you know, bathroom breaks that’s literally bolting in going as fast as I could then running back to the car because I’m like, I don’t want to get behind. Right? You know? So I competed with that stupid clock.

Mike Wieger  [38:03] 
I do the same thing. Okay, I don’t know if you’ve ever used Have you ever used the share eta feature in Waze? No, that is nice. So talk. So for example, and we’re heading down to my parents house, I will just do as you’re when you’re on your drive, if you have your route plugged in, hit share eta and it sends you can send us a text message. So it can send it the link for them. They can follow you along with your route. So they go No, he stopped. He’s in mountain city they stopped probably letting him but so it’s almost like a live little map that they can have while you’re driving. Oh, it’s kind of cool. So for someone someone’s expecting you, and you don’t want to be competing against the clock, like I don’t want it to Okay, we’re stopping and probably an extra 45 minutes that you can just keep watching the link if you want. So aurat

Jim Collison  [38:42] 
go down to the bottom where it says eta hit that and then you’ll get some options you get route, Share, share trip, I think is what you’re talking about. And then overview and you click the I was constantly clicking the overview like where am I? How far have I gotten? That was another kind of consequence of having ways on all the time is I knew exactly where I was so

Mike Wieger  [39:03] 
you can make it seem longer. Totally

Jim Collison  [39:05] 
Yeah, driving like, oh, how far Oh, it’s one minute since like, Look, I’ve gone one mile since the last time I looked at this. I did find when I turned off, you know when I was coming back and I knew the way back and I turned off kind of ways. It went faster when I was just listening to podcasts as opposed to kind of looking like where am I What am I doing was helpful to find McDonald’s along the way. McDonald’s is one of those that show up on the like, you know, you’re going through different interchanges and we’ll show you what’s coming up and McDonald’s is one of those restaurants that will show you a sausage I’m just saying sausage egg biscuits are my favorite from McDonald’s. So a coffee a I’m not even sure those are potatoes. What hashbrowns whatever they call those things. I’m not even sure it’s real mood.

Mike Wieger  [39:53] 
But they’re good. Yeah, I was gonna say but they’re good.

Jim Collison  [39:57] 
They are Do you have any Mike? Do you have any when you’re traveling Do you have any special place like what do you have to do when you travel? You got you got something like that that you just like every time you travel. I got to stop at this restaurant.

Mike Wieger  [40:10] 
I gotta know I gotta have sunflower seeds a big sunflower seed in the car guy I my tongue ends up like raw but end of the trip because all the salt I just don’t have so messes mags for days. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [40:24] 
days. Yeah, no sunflower seeds for me. Now whoa, wait, normally usually that’s my go to and I get tired. Yeah, I was once I started doing seeds, man, I can drive when I was in the military. I drive 24 hours straight. It was seeds. That will do it. And yeah, you’re right. I couldn’t taste anything for days.

Mike Wieger  [40:40] 
Yeah, no seeds in a good energy drink. And that’s me. I really like the bang flat bang. branded energy drinks right now. They’re pretty good. So okay,

Jim Collison  [40:50] 
that’s not to I try not to drink too much, because it just makes me stop. Yeah, and I was fine. Dude, I was competing. I just can’t believe how much I competed against ways on this thing. Like, in one point, I’m like, okay, I can’t stop until I’ve made up four minutes, on way so that I can stop and not get too far behind. Mm hmm. That’s ridiculous. I put so much stress on myself that I didn’t need during that trip. Brian says in the chat room. Apple Maps has improved quite a bit it seems as well warns me of red light cameras recently, too. Yeah. And so did ways I got some red light camera warnings as I was going through or some speed camera warnings as well. It was just kind of helpful. I did. I do have the alerts turned on two ways for things like police and apparently railroad crossings. I didn’t realize that was a thing, but I was getting those notifications. There’s like police reported when it was in Batman mode. So it was it was pretty funny. So all in all 4000 miles. Pretty, pretty nuts. I’m not sure I do that again for a while Mike. I did. So that’s a long drive.

Mike Wieger  [41:59] 
Dude. It has to do it in one shot on the way back.

Jim Collison  [42:04] 
Yeah, in by myself. like yeah, that is something now. It was nice. I don’t get a lot of that by my by myself time. And there were moments It was kind of nice just to be kind of with my own thoughts think losing things I kind of thought through the future the shows and some of the things I’m doing at work and I just kind of worked through some stuff cleaned up my glovebox threw out some old receipts cleaned up the car wipe down the you know spent some time wiping down the the What do you call that the dash dash? Yeah, wipe down the dash kind of clean some stuff up. You know, I bought some wipes and clean some stuff. You know, you’re in there for a while. Yeah, I don’t have to be looking at it while I’m cleaning it up. I mean, I can be you know, you can just kind of be doing that. throwing some stuff away. So it was a good opportunity is good opportunity to get get into my own kind of get in my own head. Saw Boston’s New York City saw and I know the Maryland area but it was kind of fun to see that. And then, of course traveling through the backwoods was great as well. Um, Mike, what did you done? Like I went 4000 miles What have you done? Did apparently I said something about about the the to do app that got that got you excited?

Mike Wieger  [43:14] 
You did? Well, cuz so you were talking about the Microsoft to do app and I hadn’t even looked at it didn’t know much about it. But I had been looking at a way. I’m running a new program at work. And I just I’m like, you know what this is? I’ve been lucky every time I feel like I’d get really overwhelmed with organization that I’m unorganized. I’m like, I’ve just let my email inbox go. I’ve let my organizational files go, I bought my to do is go, I get a chance to like reset. So now as a new program at work, new initiative. I’m like, let’s start now. Right? refresh. What are the newest tools? What am I going to use when and when you said there was a full time to do list that you just leave up? Like that’s it. And then I’m like, okay, but there’s some challenges here because I live in OneNote. So first of all, it was resetting with OneNote. Two, I had let my OneNote organization get out of hand. So regroup with that, but I live in wonder like, okay, so does OneNote talk to to do. And it does, it was fantastic. So when you’re in OneNote, if you like highlight something and make it an outlook task, you just say it, make it an outlook task. All of a sudden, like boom, there it is my to do. And it’s in the to do app, like within a second. So I’m doing one note. So I’m in a meeting, we’re meeting with one of our clients, we’re talking about, okay, I have a takeaway, I need to get him this document by next week for our next call.

I just highlighted outlook task also it’s in the app and I’m like, okay, that could not be simpler. It’s amazing. And then dragging it in between different lists in the to do so. It wouldn’t kind of it was perfect. It’s exactly I was looking for it because my biggest complaint about OneNote at least I don’t know how to do it. Maybe someone out there does is there was no way for me to have like an overview of all because there’s is the to do feature in OneNote and it puts a checkmark by it. But I didn’t find it like a like a Hey, it’s an aggregated list of all the things because I have 20 meters In a day, that’s 20 different pages in one note, and I don’t wanna have to go through and click one. So this was perfect. I know that they do all funnel to Outlook. But Alex not the best interface for now. It wasn’t it’s not clean. So I’ve been, it’s only been a think when did I set this up last Friday. So I’ve been playing with it, trying to get used to it, seeing how I like it. And once I found the OneNote integration that was really like, ah, yep, this will this will work for me. And I’m really trying to get my other team members on it. So I can start assigning out tasks and really making it a group thing. So once that happens, I think that would be it. Are you still using it? It?

Jim Collison  [45:40] 
No, yeah, yeah, no, I while I was gone, I didn’t, I really just didn’t even look at it. I did not even on the phone. I just was like, Yeah, I get back to it. I use it here on a touchscreen device. And it’s pretty great. Because you can just as you get things done, I just, it actually sits over my work computer. It’s a separate, completely separate computer than the one I have at work interfaces with the computer here and the computer at work so I can get that list anywhere. When I’m done. I can just reach up and say, done, I did it, it resets. I have a I have some daily tasks that I need to do. So in the morning, I come in and I try and clear the daily ones like okay, let’s get these out of the way first. I’ve got some Monday only tasks that set up weekly set for Monday. You know, Hey, get Home Gadget Geeks scheduled on a stream yard, get my other podcast from Gallup on stream yard, whatever. But one of the one of the things that the best about it all, is this completely satisfying. When you get something done. You hear this?

Mike Wieger  [46:37] 
Yes.

Jim Collison  [46:40] 
And it’s weird, because you’re like, that’s it. That sounds terrible. But it actually after you do it for a while, it kind of

Mike Wieger  [46:46] 
had lovina response, right?

Jim Collison  [46:49] 
Like, I wonder how many times I can make this thing ring. They say that like Batman? How many times I make this thing, right? So yeah, and it just, it’s one of those things. So like, you know, I’d a week worth of things I could go in and clear, but it was just more satisfying to go. Dun dun dun dun dun, dun dun was watching nothing reset till today. I actually I didn’t get a lot of my daily tasks done, because my goal was just to clear email. Yeah, after being gone off sometime Friday, and then Monday, I’ll be back full speed. But

Mike Wieger  [47:21] 
yeah, pretty there are there are a few things though, that they need to do to make it better. It’s not, it’s definitely not perfect, right? It works okay for me. But there’s a few things that I haven’t either It wasn’t easy, which is not good. It wasn’t easy to figure out if it’s there, or it’s not there. One is tags or categories, right. So it funnels it when you, let’s use OneNote. For example, when I do that, it plugs into the home list. And you can move it to a new list. So that’s essentially what I did is I created a list for each category I have, because I organize my stuff by client. And so I’m okay for this client, what are all my tasks I have to do for this client. And I would love though to just have one main aggregated list and be able to tag those out.

So I can search for it by tag or category. And I did not see see a way to do that. And then once you put it into a list a created list, it takes it out of that home view. Now there is the today view. But I just want Tags and Categories. And that’s really something I wanted. And then the other integration I wanted was with teams. So I would love to have you can invite people to do and they can share your to do but I would love to have it integrated into my team’s view because I can like okay for organic growth team. Liz, you know, it’s a full list, you can go there see the teams to dues? Hey, the Who’s that assigned to? Who did we say was going to do what? Because I love accountability. Right? Hey, on the call, you said you were gonna give that to him? Did you do it? Did you do this? Right? Like that way next week, we’re prepping for the call. Okay, let’s look back at all the things we promised and we were gonna do and just run down the list. So there are a few things they could do to make it better.

But it’s definitely a great little addition, if you’re looking for something simple, a very simple to do manager, I would call that like this is not a wonder list replacement. This is not one of those, but I think there are things about it that make it more useful, Jim, for people like you and me. Yeah, when it’s integrated into your office suite, if your office runs on that. It’s nice. And then I did because you talked about the touchscreen last time. So I actually love it. I did the same thing. I have it on my iPad. So I followed my iPad and I have it right to my right. And I can always be looking at it and and having it up which which works well.

Jim Collison  [49:29] 
Um, it I think it’s a little more than simple like, I mean, it’s got some pretty robust functionality as far as being able to you know, you got this, this concept of here’s my day. You know, if you think about a Franklin Covey concept where you know, you kind of plan, here’s the six things I really want to get done today. You can kind of go through and organize it and you have a view for just your day. Here’s the things I absolutely want to get done today. And I want to eliminate everything else. So that’s kind of how you can add steps to task as well. Now the one thing this is not a project management tool. I mean, Microsoft has Projects right there Microsoft Project.

Mike Wieger  [50:03] 
That’s true. That’s right. That’s probably what I’m looking for honest. Yeah, probably what I’m talking about all the features on the pridemore projects.

Jim Collison  [50:08] 
Yeah, you know, there’s some other things in SharePoint as well, that’ll help with that. But by the way, I’m not justifying it, I’m just kind of saying, Yeah, for most people, just in their day to day task management, it’s been pretty great for me, I mean, I went from keeping it on a sticky note, a virtual sticky note, as it is, although they’re adding more and more functionality, that sticky note technology as well. So pretty soon you’ll be able to do these tasks lists, you might even be able to do it today, inside sticky notes. But you know, you can it can remind you, you can add a due date, it’s got to repeat, can add it to different email addresses that you have in there. And you can add a file to the thing if you want to be able to, you know, maybe there’s some things you need to remember about what’s coming up, and you can add a file in there that’ll prompt you in a place to get it. I think it’s great. Is it for everybody kind of depends on how you organize your day. Right? Right.

Mike Wieger  [50:59] 
I would agree. Yeah. I think I’m in this weird boat of like something like projects. Admittedly, I haven’t used it. But projects is almost too advanced. I don’t need that much, right. But I also need a little bit more than when it’s given me like I have a team like me. And this one, I just really want me this one of the person and a few other people in the company to be able to just have a little bit more integration. They don’t need to go full fledge into projects. So yeah, but it works perfectly for just me. I’ve been

Jim Collison  [51:26] 
on my show notes off of this, right. I mean, we really could Yeah, yeah. share that. As soon as we talked about

Mike Wieger  [51:33] 
topic, it’s ding and then our all of our listeners get their response to so they would start using it. Maybe that

Jim Collison  [51:38] 
would hate it. They wouldn’t listen, but that’d be the way we transition in between topics. Okay. Ding.

You’re getting the new iPhone?

Mike Wieger  [51:46] 
Yes, that one I heard it is. So when we talked about what did you buy on Amazon Prime Day? I didn’t. Jim, this is the first time since I was trying to remember the last time I got an iPhone on launch day. I have not done this in a very, very long time. So I currently have the iPhone 10. So I’ve had that now for three years. And I mean, that’s that’s a pretty good life. my battery’s starting to get a little wonky on it. And then I feel like this, like when I’m listening like my speaker, on the little top speaker here, when I’m on the call has gone. Like it sounds like people are underwater a little bit. So I was like, you know, I’ve been thinking about a new phone. And so Apple had their event last week. And I was I was honestly really blown away by the phone, and not for any big, huge reason, like, oh, man, it’s gonna be the best phone out there.

They just kind of went back to a lot of things. I like the aesthetics of it. Those more, it’s not rounded. On the end, it’s more of a squared off it reminds me of the iPhone five, a little bit. And obviously it has 5g which is great because Verizon does have 5g here in Omaha, they actually have ultra wideband downtown, and they have the regular 5g nationwide around and it was just the screen. A lot of improvements to the screen. Minimal improvements to the camera, but there were enough upgrades there. And man Jim, I don’t know if you saw it. Well, I guess you’re on sprint. So you might not have paid attention very much. But Verizon and at&t are offering some killer deals for this phone. So I was able to get the iPhone 12 so they came out with four phones, the iPhone 12 Mini which Jim actually think you might really like the iPhone 12 Mini aren’t you in the small phones?

Jim Collison  [53:26] 
Oh, um, I have a plus right now. Although

Mike Wieger  [53:28] 
you’re the opposite. I’m the no calling my buddy call and he’s going to be into the Mini. So there’s the iPhone 12 Mini the iPhone 12 the iPhone 12 Pro, and the iPhone 12 Pro max. So it’s four different phones, the 12 is is amazing. I think for the money I don’t really see unless you’re into cinematography, there’s really there’s there isn’t any reason to get the pro or the pro max. Because all that is is essentially a better camera you get the same processor you get pretty much the same everything on the 12 Jim $13 a month through Verizon.

No interest because they’re offering a $440 trading credit for I think any phone newer than the 10 or maybe even the eight camera which they went down. So for 40 there then they’re doing an extra $220 just in credit towards your purchase of the phone. And so the way Verizon works is you just do paid off over 24 months and so $13 a month for a brand new iPhone 12 and that’s not even the mini so it’s an $800 phone that I can’t do the math I haven’t done the math What is that? Once that’s faster than me so 3184 Yeah, carry the one you’re only paying 312 bucks after you trade in your phone. So if you have a paid off phone and because 440 I don’t know I didn’t do them. I didn’t look it up but this phone isn’t in the best condition.

So $440 for an iPhone 10 i thought was pretty good. I might be able to get maybe a few more bucks out selling it privately. But it saved me the hassle of it I just gonna put into a box and ship it back to Apple and and have that all taken care of and then you obviously get the instant credits for them. So they were just offering some really good deals. I was like, you know I, I would love to do an iPhone on launch day. So that actually gets here tomorrow. So I’ll be excited cuz we can talk about it on future shows. It arrives tomorrow via UPS, tomorrow’s the release day. So they opened up. Preorder was flawless By the way, their whole pre order process has gotten some slack in the past. Well, you know, it’s crashing and things like that. They let you set everything up ahead of time. And they said, Hey, we’re going live. I can I not remember to

Jim Collison  [55:26] 
remind you Just a minute. Later, you hit your video. Yeah, I was just thinking about that. I’m saying make sure you hit your video, I’m going to set that up as a task and to do every 27 minutes.

Mike Wieger  [55:38] 
Yeah, I think it’s right around there. But where was I at? I totally lost my train of thought, Oh, the pre order process. So they let you set it all up in advance. So all you have to do, especially if you have a phone already just open up the Apple Store. They said we’re going live at 7am on Friday morning, 5am. Pacific, you just opened up the app, and you just confirmed what you had already set up. So they let you ahead of time, say I’m upgrading a line, I want this phone and with this color on the side, I’m going to trade in this phone all the clicks you have to do, they let you save all that. So then you just woke up and you hit go.

So I had a pre ordered within 10 seconds. And yeah, it worked really well. And they integrated the whole process of Verizon or at&t, you didn’t have to go through any sort of, they took care of it all. So the whole back end process now of buying a phone and even putting it because if the payment plan is through Verizon, not through Apple, but I ordered it through Apple, it was all just taken care of like they deal with all the back end stuff there. So I maybe that’s been the process for the last few years. Like I said, I have not gotten a phone on launch day. Since probably the iPhone five, even my 10 I got a long time after it came out. So it’s kind of fun. I kind of missed the whole iPhone launch day being the first one to have a new phone. Nice. And I guess I did Barry, because we haven’t talked about this phone yet. For those of you who didn’t see it, one of the coolest parts is magsafe. So if you’re if you’ve been a historic Apple user, you know that the one of the things I miss most on the max now is magsafe. chargers, they got rid of those. So magsafe is like a charger, it’s a magnet. So you just slap it away, it would just connect.

Well now they’ve made it so the back of your phone, you know, the phones now have cheap charging, but there’s actually a magnet in it so that the they have a magsafe charger just kind of snap to the back. But you can also snap accessories. So you will no longer need the the plate CL I have like the magnetic plate. Yeah, you won’t need this because there will be a built in magsafe charger mount. Yes, that is my blood that gets in your way of your wireless charger. Right? Which I never had, because I know exactly that. Yeah, who on there. Same. So now it’s gonna be an all in one. So the car port is going to be event thing that has a cord on it, you’re going to, you’re going to slap it, it’s going to stick in charge at the same time. And I kind of like that. And then also wallet. So I ordered the wallet just for fun. It has a wallet that snaps on the back of their through the magnet. And it’s kind of cool. I always like magsafe if you have kids running around magsafe is great, because how many times has my two year old run past my phone as it’s been plugged in and ripped it out of the wall? Or ripped the phone out of my hand? So I do like I do like magsafe?

Jim Collison  [58:10] 
And it says don’t put it near your floppy disks? Yeah, right. The last time I did that,

Mike Wieger  [58:16] 
what people have been saying to is they like it because all it is it’s just ci with a magnet. So if you buy the magsafe charger, you can actually use it on Android phones, any ci compatible device or your phone, your iPhone 12 phone, you don’t have to use the magsafe charger, it’s still standard ci it’s just an added benefit of that magnet in there if you want to utilize their magsafe accessories.

Jim Collison  [58:38] 
Okay, so I don’t I shouldn’t go pro or ID to go pro. You don’t need to go pro. I don’t need it unless you are really going to use this thing for stunning video and things like that. Okay, so let’s go with just the 12 Oh, yeah. And then do they have various sizes associated?

Mike Wieger  [58:55] 
So 68 like, I think it’s like 68 128 I can’t remember exactly

Jim Collison  [58:59] 
the one I’ll go the 128 let’s look at that.

Mike Wieger  [59:02] 
Okay, and that’s actually I end up at the last second upgrading to 128 so mine’s actually $16 and 87 cents a month or 17 bucks a month. My dad Yeah, so I can get I get some pretty good I get like $410 on trading on this phone. Oh, there you go. If I if I know you doing this through the Apple store or through through best friend.

Jim Collison  [59:22] 
Oh, through Best Buy through Best Buy. Now I haven’t even I haven’t even looked at the other options. So yeah. So I’m right at the end. Like if I wait and traditionally you know me, I wait too long to do these kinds of things. So right now the eight plus is the last you know, it’s like 1110 eight plus, all in the same group, right? And they’re like, Hey, you can get whatever. So I’m in the last group. I should definitely if I was going to do this, okay, you should do it. I’m gonna do this.

Hi. I’m gonna walk you through it. So that way. Tomorrow I’m going to start because at this point, it kind of makes sense and I’ll probably take the monthly payment like 35 bucks a month to upgrade at this point, nothing you know, terrible Sam is gonna roll out of my sprint plan anyways here at this point go on to Google phi here at this so I’ll be the only one I sprint bill. And maybe it’s time it’s been paid off for a while. So maybe it’s time to pick up a new iPhone and have the latest and greatest and do something new. I wasn’t gonna but I think you’re right. my battery’s fine. By the way. I have not, you know, I’m two, three years into this thing and it’s still working great. But maybe it’s time to pull a weaker and upgrade before it is too late. Because

Mike Wieger  [1:00:38] 
it is a new Jim. This is this is I did not expect that.

Jim Collison  [1:00:43] 
He put 45 hours alone in a car, you turn into a completely different person, right? Yeah, I

Mike Wieger  [1:00:51] 
think you should. And the good thing about too with the sprint T Mobile merger is you’ll have better access to 5g coming up here. Now. I mean, T Mobile. A lot of people like to argue whether it’s true 5g or not. There’s actually if you want to have some fun, go watch the Twitter wars between Verizon at&t and T Mobile about what 5g even is like. They’re all trying to convince the consumer that their 5g is way different than everyone else’s 5g so but you know, Sprint was always way behind in 5g. So at least with the merger, you might because the biggest benefit is 5g on that phones. Nice. That’s a

Jim Collison  [1:01:26] 
5g for sprint. So because the T Mobile, so yep.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:29] 
Because the T Mobile.

Jim Collison  [1:01:30] 
Yeah, but it probably makes sense. Now to start again, like I’ve had this three and a half years, it’s been paid off for a while again, I’m at the bottom of the ring. So yeah, now Yeah. I’m gonna need 5g just to be honest. I’m not gonna need it. 4g has been just fine for me.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:46] 
Yeah, no, I agree. And I think people kept mixing up one Verizon because the big announcement at the apple event was that it was about Verizon 5g Ultra wideband, which is their millimeter nanometre millimeter wave technology. And they also have nationwide 5g 5g, which is similar to the T Mobile stuff. So Verizon has both. They don’t just have the ultra wideband, they do have both. But those companies love to confuse the clients about what the other person is offering. I think they’ll all be fine, honestly. And like you said, most people do not need 5g speeds.

Jim Collison  [1:02:21] 
If I order it through the sprint store, now I get $13 a month as opposed to the $34 a month on the best. Yes,

Mike Wieger  [1:02:30] 
exactly. That’s what because you do want to make sure you’re getting the the carrier credits. So I would get to either Apple because Apple is doing it right with them. Or the actual carrier.

Jim Collison  [1:02:41] 
I think I’m going to go through the sprint sprint store 13 bucks a month, two months,

Mike Wieger  [1:02:47] 
which means you’re only paying 312. But when do

Jim Collison  [1:02:49] 
they when they went? When does it come out?

Mike Wieger  [1:02:52] 
Tomorrow? So you could so mine so you could go to the store so I’m maybe not preorder go see if you can find one in stock. Because I think you know, we’re past the days of people waiting in line I think for iPhones, especially with COVID so I don’t know if they’re gonna allow it but maybe you could probably just go to a sprint sort of on they’ll have them in stock.

Jim Collison  [1:03:11] 
I may have to go I may have to go look around watch

Mike Wieger  [1:03:13] 
you’ll have years before me cuz ups charts gonna come at five and I’m gonna I’m gonna get a discord chatroom. You okay, so there’s black. There’s blue, the blues kind of cool looking. Kind of a cool look. And blue white. Case.

16.

Jim Collison  [1:03:29] 
Wow. Yeah. Okay. All right. Do I need to order that online?

Mike Wieger  [1:03:33] 
I did it all through the Apple Store. Oh, the crazy part about it is because I have the apple card. They’re like, well, so do you want to pay that like $3 a month for the next year? Yeah, zero interest like, sure. At that point, like zero interest like 60 bucks or three. I’m like, Okay, I’ll learn more on my money and put that to work for me the markers and I do sprint through the Apple Store. Yeah. I don’t know if they’ll have the same deal. So just that would price it out.

Jim Collison  [1:04:03] 
I imagine those like Best Buy the Apple Store sprint would be the three I would need to check right right chat room is that right there? Those would be missing anything. Anything else? You could

Mike Wieger  [1:04:14] 
also just order the case through Apple is what I would do. So maybe go through sprint or maybe go to sprint the store and see if they have any alcohol and then just order the case or or swing out to the Apple store in village point. I don’t know if they’re open during COVID I think they are

Jim Collison  [1:04:30] 
if I if I have a mask on, I think because I would definitely want that case like to be able to charge through that thing. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [1:04:36] 
heck, and there will be third party cases that have X a built in I mean, they talked about he said but you know all the big cases are going to be and that is new. Like I haven’t missed that in the past. I don’t know. So every phone I mean since the 10. It had cheap charging, but magsafe is the addition of a magnet that helps that align or allows you to add accessories and the Do not there’s not the car mount is not out yet from anyone because I’ve been waiting for it. As soon as that hits the market, I’m going to be snagging one of those as well. Because I agree that’s kind of the cool part. It’s one less kind of worry for me,

Jim Collison  [1:05:11] 
you might have to stay around and help me order this after the show or something. Maybe I can maybe I can order it from the sprint store and have it ready tomorrow when just to go pick up so Yeah, something like that. Okay, well, there we go. You got me? Hey, 13 bucks a month. Are you kidding me? Like why would I right? Yeah, I wish I had like a

Mike Wieger  [1:05:32] 
referral code.

I just looked at

Jim Collison  [1:05:35] 
the average guy TV. But if you have not

Mike Wieger  [1:05:38] 
had a TV slash iPhone,

Jim Collison  [1:05:40] 
I got speaking of affiliate I got Christian to order a box from hellofresh. So I can listen, I can always get a week for free. So if you want to contact me if you want to try it. I am telling you like I was talking I was telling Christian about all this cooking I’ve been doing and in he was like, I should try this. I’m like yeah, heck yeah, you should try this. You know the two of you should should definitely in marinas a great I mean, she’s she’s a great cook as it is but idiot, right?

They do not. Yeah, it’s probably a lot better. No, it’s super good. Well, hey, well, I was in was in Boston, Ed Sullivan showed me a new recipe with brussel sprouts. And I’m not are you out? Do you love grilled brussels sprouts where you quarter them and grill him? Get a little char on him? The hell have I been like I didn’t. I didn’t realize brussel sprouts were a thing. I always kind of. I think my mom boiled them or steamed them or I don’t know. He baked them all over there. He baked them. Cut them in half. baked them low salt, pepper and then made this big samick so a olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey. Oh, and honey. Ooh, that would be good. Oh, yeah, it was pretty pretty freakin delicious. So he chopped them up in the oven, just like you would on the grill. But I’ve got some plans. Jim, at the average guy TV. If you want to send that to me, I get two or if you want to support the show, just go to http://theaverageguy.TV/Hello Fresh. You can do Canva as well. If you’re buying By the way, if you’re buying a website, I head over my link to that it’s just I just thought of that. I’m like did i did i set one up for hover? Oh, maybe I did http://theaverageguy.TV/hover. I think that’ll get h o ve R. And of course Maple Grove Partners links. That’s

Mike Wieger  [1:07:29] 
cool. I love it.

Jim Collison  [1:07:31] 
I think that works. I love hover. Yeah, you give it a try http://theaverageguy.TV/hover if not contact me. If that doesn’t work, contact me. And then of course Christian is doing a bang up job with Maple Grove Partners. If you want to get secure high speed hosting from people that you know and you trust. I just had somebody reach out to me on Twitter, Shane on Twitter reach out to me today and was like, Who is that guy you’re always recommending for for hosting. I’m like, you mean Maple Grove Partners.

Mike Wieger  [1:07:57] 
It’s crucial. You know, when you trust like,

Jim Collison  [1:07:58] 
like I said, I spent time with him. I just saw the space in his basement where he’s going to do some pretty cool stuff with with Maple Grove Partners. So http://MapleGrovePartners.com plans start as little as $10 a month and a great way to get in and get going. And, and of course you’ll get you get you said Mike, anything else that we didn’t cover?

Mike Wieger  [1:08:20] 
No, I’m excited now. Because if you especially if you’re getting this thing, we’ll have a fun little iPhone.

Jim Collison  [1:08:25] 
Post show overview. Show. I’m gonna order it in the post show. Yes, that sounds good. We’ll review it in a future episode flying around for a few minutes while I get order. Okay. ordered in the post show. Okay, let’s see. What else am I supposed to say? get through this a pinch Christian. What?

Mike Wieger  [1:08:42] 
What else am I supposed to say?

Jim Collison  [1:08:44] 
I was supposed to say before we Whoa, by the way, December 3. And that’s actually not true. So December 2 is actually our anniversary. The fourth is the 10th anniversary of us posting hometech what would become Home Gadget Geeks. But December 3 is when we’re going to celebrate it. So Thursday night December 3, you’re gonna want to be a part of what we’re doing here. Come out be a part of the 10 year anniversary. big night we’re gonna try and get everybody back for it. So make sure you put that on your calendar and you join us live here at the average guy TV slash live December 3 8pm, central nine Eastern, just like we do every other week.

We are live every week. You can join us. I think we got some pretty great stuff coming up. Aaron Lawrence is coming back and pretty excited about getting some pre Christmas stuff. I get pinged on Twitter the other day somebody was like, man, I can’t wait for Christmas and Home Gadget Geeks. Yeah, yeah, it’s we’re gonna we’re gonna have some pretty great stuff coming up. And of course, we’re live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern. I want to get out of here because I want to order the iPhone. And you could go along with us in the process as well. And we’d love to have you join us. If you have any questions on anything, you can always send me an email Jim@theaverageguy.tv feedback suggestions my address so you can send me beer. Thanks, Joe.

We just appreciate all the things that you guys do for us if you want to join us on Patreon, http://theaverageguy.tv/Patreon get you there. We got a Patreon meetup coming up November 5. And then of course the meetup me at the meetup has been postponed till the seventh of November just so I can get some. And some other things I even brought them I even brought a camera home so I can why streaming smoker, but when your grill doesn’t work, not much to live stream they can’t really live stream we are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern. Out here http://theaverageguy.TV/live stay around. If you’re in the post show. stay around for Jim putting in the word for the new iPhone. With that we’ll say goodbye, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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