208: Don't Be Mean to Racoons

00:00SPEAKERMy oven's working again, Brad, because, ah, I know it's been OK.

00:04SPEAKERWell, it's been kind of an embarrassing length of time.

00:06SPEAKERI, I we live in the Bay Area, as people may know.

00:11SPEAKERWhat people may not know is that the cost of getting someone out

00:13SPEAKERto look at a appliance repair just to have them hit the door.

00:17SPEAKERIt has never been less than three hundred dollars for me in this house.

00:20SPEAKEROuch. Yeah. Explain something.

00:22SPEAKERYou know, I'm not as a renter.

00:23SPEAKERI'm not in a position to have to deal with such things.

00:25SPEAKERBut that illuminates certain behaviors on the part of my landlord.

00:29SPEAKERLet's say, yeah, like it's generally set up so that unless you have a specific thing,

00:35SPEAKERit's cheaper to just replace the the the cost of just biting the bullet

00:40SPEAKERand replacing the appliance is such that you just you just buy a new one often.

00:45SPEAKERHowever, we bought a new oven, a new combo range stove a few years ago,

00:50SPEAKERabout five years ago, and when we bought it, we bought it at a place

00:53SPEAKERthat likes to push an extended warranty and and four big appliances

00:58SPEAKERthat are going to last five to 10 years and more than five years.

01:02SPEAKERI do tend to buy the extended warranty.

01:04SPEAKERI'm not sure we're talking is it is it a percentage or is it a flat fee based on?

01:09SPEAKERSo the the range listed at two grand, I knocked them down to sixteen hundred bucks

01:14SPEAKERand we split the difference on the extended warranty.

01:16SPEAKERIf I remember right.

01:18SPEAKERYou know, I started this.

01:19SPEAKERI've never considered whether you would be a haggler or not.

01:22SPEAKERAnd I started to say, I hate it.

01:24SPEAKERYou didn't you didn't strike me as a haggler.

01:25SPEAKERBut then like, no, you would totally haggle.

01:27SPEAKERI hate I hate the haggle, but you would still do it, right?

01:30SPEAKERI am, of course. Yeah.

01:33SPEAKERI mean, look, you know, my wife bought our got our last car

01:36SPEAKERbecause she was like, I'm going to do this email thing.

01:37SPEAKERI'm just going to grind them down.

01:39SPEAKERAnd she absolutely just wore their asses out by emailing different dealers

01:44SPEAKERand and saying, hey, I have this and this and this.

01:47SPEAKERWhat can you do with this deal?

01:49SPEAKERAnd then they would be like, oh, God, you again.

01:51SPEAKERAnd eventually one of them just gets so tired that they give you what you ask for

01:54SPEAKERbecause they just stop having you hassle them.

01:56SPEAKEROK, but yeah, that's the that's the Nicole Cliff toast method.

02:00SPEAKERThis was the first place I think I saw that. But anyway,

02:04SPEAKERwe so so as soon as they hit me with the like a Best Buy or whatever Costco,

02:10SPEAKERthere's no caggling at Costco, right?

02:12SPEAKERCircuit City, I used to love going in

02:13SPEAKERbecause you could you could grind a Circuit City guy down into dust.

02:17SPEAKERBut but Best Buy is tricky because like they only get

02:22SPEAKERlike the people who are working there are generally pretty helpful these days,

02:25SPEAKERespecially in the appliance section, only get paid on my understandings.

02:29SPEAKERThey only get paid on on plant sales on an extended warranty plant sales.

02:33SPEAKERSo they're strongly motivated to move extended warranties

02:35SPEAKERand they'll take a pretty big cut off of the top,

02:38SPEAKERespecially if you go into the right time of year.

02:39SPEAKERWe needed it up and it was the right time of year.

02:41SPEAKERThat was they had a bunch of stuff laying around, couldn't get rid of it.

02:45SPEAKERAnd and so, yeah, we got that.

02:46SPEAKERWe got a decent deal on the on the range.

02:49SPEAKERWe wanted the walk. We wanted like a high BTU walk burner that is like,

02:53SPEAKERI don't know if you like you can get a twenty five thousand BTU walk burner

02:57SPEAKERon just a normal ass range.

02:59SPEAKERIf you live someplace that there's a large Asian community

03:01SPEAKERand they call it a walk burner, but it's just a really, really hot burner

03:04SPEAKERon a normal ass gas stove.

03:06SPEAKERI know I have no frame of reference for BTUs, but twenty five thousand

03:09SPEAKERsounds like a lot.

03:10SPEAKERUsually that usually they're like 18 cap.

03:12SPEAKERSo like you can it gets hot enough that you can do an actual round bottom

03:16SPEAKERwalk on it without and the food works.

03:20SPEAKERBut it's also really nice for like searing meat and using.

03:22SPEAKERWe put the the the griddle and stuff like that on it as well.

03:26SPEAKERJust to maybe add some context.

03:27SPEAKERThe people I know who are serious walk cookers do all of their walk

03:30SPEAKERcooking outside is how is how hot that gets.

03:33SPEAKERThere is a reason the amount of smoke that the serious walk

03:36SPEAKERcooking makes requires a real, real outdoor ventilating hood anyway.

03:41SPEAKERSo last year, right after the holidays, our oven, the thermostat

03:44SPEAKERand it conked out and I knew exactly what the problem was.

03:46SPEAKERAnd I went through the whole extended warranty rigmarole with Best Buy.

03:50SPEAKERAnd they often defer you to an outside contractor

03:55SPEAKERand the outside contractor scheduled a thing and then didn't show up on the day

03:58SPEAKERand then schedule it.

03:58SPEAKERAnd I was like, I don't have time to deal with this right now.

04:00SPEAKERWe were gone for a little bit.

04:03SPEAKERSo I called back a couple of months ago.

04:05SPEAKERI was like, hey, we have a problem, blah, blah, blah.

04:06SPEAKERCan't come out.

04:07SPEAKERAnd also worth mentioning during the summer, it's a gas oven.

04:11SPEAKERI don't know if this is I'm getting into too much detail here.

04:13SPEAKERDuring the summer, it's a gas oven.

04:14SPEAKERSo we often use like the toaster oven to do baking stuff in the summertime

04:18SPEAKERand don't like make the house a million degrees with the gas oven.

04:22SPEAKERSo it wasn't like urgent.

04:24SPEAKERBut he came to fix the oven yesterday and now our oven's working again.

04:27SPEAKERI made biscuits this morning. I'm really happy.

04:28SPEAKERThat's fantastic.

04:30SPEAKERI haven't gotten past the part where you just casually tossed off

04:32SPEAKERthat he didn't show up the first time.

04:34SPEAKERSo they what happens is Best Buy has a system where you schedule an appointment

04:39SPEAKERand you're there like we'll be there on the Tuesday between eight and eight

04:43SPEAKERor some ridiculous timeframe.

04:44SPEAKERAnd then when they do it with the Geek Squad, that's when they show up

04:47SPEAKERand they text you and like the person is like, I'm going to be there at nine

04:50SPEAKERforty five a.m. the night before.

04:52SPEAKERAnd you're like, wow, that's really incredibly precise.

04:54SPEAKERThe when the outside contractor does it, they would call and be like, hey,

05:00SPEAKERwe are going to schedule you for this session, such a date,

05:03SPEAKERwhich is not the date that you took time off work and plan to be around.

05:06SPEAKERJust some other random day.

05:08SPEAKERAnd they didn't actually notify me that they had changed the date.

05:10SPEAKERSo when they showed up, nobody was here.

05:12SPEAKERAnd when I was there for the Best Buy day, nobody showed.

05:16SPEAKERSo I was upset and called and complained.

05:18SPEAKERThey were like, well, we rescheduled.

05:20SPEAKERAnyway, the upshot is the real Geek Squad guy, despite the fact that I've made fun

05:23SPEAKERof the Geek Squad people for a pretty long time, was freakin awesome.

05:27SPEAKERReally, really good.

05:28SPEAKERLike legit, delightful customer service.

05:31SPEAKERHe came in the house.

05:32SPEAKERHe did all the stuff.

05:33SPEAKERNo mess. Took like 20 minutes.

05:36SPEAKERHe made sure it worked.

05:37SPEAKERHe turned it off and on. He answered all the questions.

05:39SPEAKERHe was like, hey, if you this is a little weird, too.

05:41SPEAKERIf you want, I can come back and fix this later.

05:43SPEAKERI was like, don't worry about it. This is fine.

05:46SPEAKERAnd it was and it was like, you didn't have to sign anything.

05:49SPEAKERIt was really nice. Well, hey, you know what they say?

05:51SPEAKERDon't look a Geek Squad in the mouth.

06:16SPEAKERWell, welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Bot.

06:26SPEAKERI'm Will. I'm Brad.

06:28SPEAKERSo, Brad, in honor of the the I was kind of sad.

06:33SPEAKERI was hoping you're going to ask me how I knew it was the thermostat

06:35SPEAKERthat wasn't working right in the in the in the oven.

06:38SPEAKERHow did you know it was the thermostat that wasn't working right in the oven?

06:42SPEAKERI don't know how I don't know how I feel about this recent trend

06:44SPEAKERof carrying the cold open into the episode. OK, sorry.

06:47SPEAKERNo, no, no, no. Please go on. The podcast has to evolve, Brad.

06:50SPEAKERI'm not saying it's bad.

06:51SPEAKERIt's more that I am self-imposing some rigid,

06:55SPEAKERoh, principled nonsense on myself.

06:57SPEAKERWell, but so this week's episode is about troubleshooting,

07:00SPEAKERtroubleshooting theories, specifically topical. Yes.

07:03SPEAKERAnd like when the oven did this, I've had ovens that had the same problem

07:07SPEAKERin the past where it would the gas would come on, the fire would turn on for a moment

07:11SPEAKERand then it would turn off and then it would turn on.

07:14SPEAKERAnd then it would turn off and eventually would get up to like 250 or 300 degrees.

07:18SPEAKERBut it would smell real gassy and a little scary.

07:20SPEAKERAnd and it wouldn't really maintain a temperature the way the way you want.

07:24SPEAKERIt took too long and it was clearly not working right.

07:29SPEAKERMy daughter described as making it sound like a whale, kind of because the the

07:32SPEAKERwhen it when it turned on and off, it would go wrong just briefly.

07:37SPEAKERI don't think anything involving fire should sound like a whale.

07:40SPEAKERThat's not what you want.

07:42SPEAKERSo what that means, what that meant in my old manual analog oven was that the

07:49SPEAKERthermistor that the fire hits, that tells the mechanical part of the stove

07:54SPEAKERthat gas is on fire and not just pumping gas into your house,

07:58SPEAKERmaking your home into a gigantic fuel air bomb.

08:01SPEAKERIt's like that when that caulked out.

08:04SPEAKERThen that would happen on the old mechanical on the new ones.

08:06SPEAKERIt's all digital and there's a whole sensor and everything.

08:08SPEAKERAnd it like happens with a with a robot.

08:10SPEAKERSo anyway, so the Geek Squad guy came out.

08:14SPEAKERHe was like, oh, yeah, I know exactly what this is part will be here in a week.

08:17SPEAKERI'll be back a week after that and we'll get it put in.

08:19SPEAKERAnd it was done. But but the process of troubleshooting.

08:23SPEAKERIt turns out comes out a lot.

08:25SPEAKERComes up a lot when you're when you're people like us. Yes, it sure does.

08:29SPEAKERI we were bug hunting at work this week.

08:32SPEAKERLast week, kind of constantly right now, because we're coming up on launch

08:35SPEAKERDecember 5th on steam 1.0, leaving early access for the anacrusis.

08:39SPEAKERYou should check it out. You're welcome to chat.

08:44SPEAKERBut but yeah, we're we're coming up on launch, hunting for bugs

08:48SPEAKERand like troubleshooting busted PC hardware,

08:51SPEAKERlooking, trying to figure out what's causing a bug.

08:55SPEAKERLike figuring out why my home assistant isn't turning on at the right time,

08:59SPEAKERfiguring out all of the weird electronic technical technological stuff

09:03SPEAKERthat is in our homes that works or does not work or work sporadically.

09:09SPEAKERIt's all the same set of like there's a there's almost like a flowchart.

09:12SPEAKERYes. Yes. Figuring out why my PlayStation five is crashing in rest mode

09:16SPEAKERevery time I put it in rest mode.

09:18SPEAKERI mean, that that happened like two years ago. I solved it.

09:20SPEAKERAlthough that's a bad example because I'm still not quite sure what fixed it.

09:24SPEAKERBut but but but the point is like and I don't like to harp on this too much

09:28SPEAKERbecause it's just my gut feeling and I don't have like real tangible evidence,

09:31SPEAKERalthough I feel like we know enough people who work in like hardware

09:34SPEAKERand product design and so forth that the sentiment is not uncommon,

09:38SPEAKERbut especially after the last few years,

09:40SPEAKERit feels like everything needs a little more troubleshooting right now.

09:43SPEAKERI think things are the closer you live to the edge,

09:46SPEAKERthe harder, harder that life is sometimes I would say.

09:49SPEAKERBut all you know, like supply chain stuff has gotten disrupted.

09:52SPEAKERAnd like, who knows if if design compromises are happening lately

09:55SPEAKERor parts are having to be substituted or like there's

09:58SPEAKERthere wasn't as much Q&A on a thing or X, Y and Z or that we're binning hardware

10:02SPEAKERmore aggressively.

10:03SPEAKERAnd as a result, like the margins are a little bit narrower than they used to be.

10:08SPEAKERSo as I was doing that, so we started talking about doing

10:11SPEAKERa troubleshooting episode and like walking through the thought process

10:14SPEAKERfor troubleshooting, kind of a lot of computer stuff or computer.

10:18SPEAKEREverything's computers now.

10:19SPEAKERBut and I went and did some Googling and I remembered it prompted me.

10:26SPEAKERIt was like, hey, this is all in the A plus, the Microsoft A plus test

10:29SPEAKERfrom like 30 years ago that I don't think they do anymore.

10:32SPEAKERBut it was like, hey, here's how you troubleshoot computer problems.

10:35SPEAKERFirst, you have to blah, blah, blah.

10:36SPEAKERAnd it was it was funny because that woke up some neurons

10:40SPEAKERthat had been dormant for for twenty five years at this point, probably.

10:43SPEAKERDo you have a link to this? I think I need to see this.

10:45SPEAKERI did not save a link to it, unfortunately.

10:47SPEAKERI'll dig it up after the show.

10:48SPEAKEROK, but but the idea the idea is the same, like like

10:54SPEAKERI think when we were talking about this in Discord chat, I kind of offhandedly

10:57SPEAKERchucked five basic steps into the into the chat.

11:01SPEAKERAnd we've elaborated on them a little bit in our in our notes.

11:04SPEAKERBut it's it's the same basic idea as the A plus thing.

11:08SPEAKERA plus plus, A plus or A plus plus thing

11:11SPEAKERand all the other all the other troubleshooting methodologies.

11:15SPEAKERDid they really call for certification A plus plus?

11:17SPEAKERI think they just called it A plus, but I can't remember.

11:19SPEAKERIt sounds like it sounds like washing machine repair or something.

11:23SPEAKERThey had multiple levels of certification.

11:25SPEAKERThey had like like a help desk certification is what the A plus one was.

11:29SPEAKERThey had a server admin like Windows NT,

11:33SPEAKERlike IIS server and like domain admin ones.

11:37SPEAKERThey had they had them for all sorts.

11:38SPEAKERAnyway, you could you could spend a lot of money taking Microsoft classes

11:41SPEAKERback in the day like that.

11:43SPEAKERWas that to them?

11:45SPEAKERWere you paying by yourself directly or were there third party like licensed

11:48SPEAKERthird party instructors or, you know, boy, I have no idea.

11:52SPEAKERI think that they I think that you'd like most.

11:56SPEAKERI think I feel like most of the money came from like books and study things

11:59SPEAKERyou'd had to that you bought to before you took the test.

12:02SPEAKERI think you had to pay for the test, though,

12:03SPEAKERbut I can't imagine the test was like, I don't know.

12:07SPEAKERI think I mean, there was definitely a cost.

12:09SPEAKERThey were gatekeeping it pretty hard.

12:10SPEAKERIt was in retrospect, it's a little bit weird.

12:12SPEAKERDo you think anybody who passes the test is going to lift the tide of

12:15SPEAKERof the Microsoft

12:18SPEAKERthe Microsoft ship?

12:19SPEAKERBut but I mean, everybody did it.

12:21SPEAKERCisco, Cisco.

12:22SPEAKERI mean, this goes this still exists, right?

12:25SPEAKERLike Cisco and Oracle and all of the big giant technology

12:29SPEAKERbusiness companies still do this.

12:32SPEAKERCisco is always the one that I saw the most people talking about certifications

12:36SPEAKERthat when you actually like, unlike the help desk certification,

12:39SPEAKERwhich like woo, nothing personal for people who got the A plus.

12:44SPEAKERBut like the the like to know how to set up a routing table

12:49SPEAKERfor a 2000 person company is some real wizard shit.

12:53SPEAKERYeah. Yo, yo. Networking is hard.

12:55SPEAKERYeah. Networking continues to confound me like nothing else in computing.

13:00SPEAKERYeah, I my my boss, who was the network,

13:03SPEAKERhe was the one who had the network cert when I started at the biology

13:07SPEAKERdepartment, I.T. department,

13:10SPEAKERsat down and drew on a giant dry erase board how Internet protocol works.

13:16SPEAKERAnd it was like we went through two.

13:18SPEAKERIt was it was like beautiful mind stuff.

13:20SPEAKERLike we kept flipping the boards over.

13:23SPEAKERAnd anyway, I think I think I finally got layer two and layer three straight,

13:27SPEAKERat least I'll put it that way, but also when you when you get to a certain point,

13:31SPEAKERthen the people are like, yeah, all that layer stuff is kind of bullshit

13:34SPEAKERbecause they've all blended together over the last four years.

13:36SPEAKERAnd it was all true in like the 80s, but not at all now.

13:39SPEAKERYeah. If you if you look at the descriptions of each layer

13:41SPEAKERthat were presumably written in the 80s, it is very hard to intuit.

13:45SPEAKERLike, yeah, I mean, yes, you're exactly right.

13:47SPEAKERIt's like it's like where does one end of the next began?

13:49SPEAKERI don't know. What is what is the application layer?

13:51SPEAKERIt feels like that could mean a lot of things.

13:53SPEAKERIt's everything on top of TCP IP, but also TCP IP as well.

13:57SPEAKERSo anyway, but we're going to talk about troubleshooting.

14:00SPEAKERSo so like the basic top level stuff is that you start by being curious about the problem, right?

14:07SPEAKERThen you isolate variables and test theories to identify what the actual problem is,

14:11SPEAKERto lock down on what you think could be what you think is actually the problem.

14:14SPEAKERYou research, you find out how to fix the problem.

14:18SPEAKERYou implement the fixes, you test it to see if you actually did fix it.

14:21SPEAKERAnd then you repeat if you didn't fix it.

14:25SPEAKERAnd then there's a couple other things we've tacked on at the end that we'll talk about as well.

14:27SPEAKERLike, hey, man, writing stuff down, it turns out is important.

14:32SPEAKERThat's the part I'm it's the part everybody's bad at.

14:35SPEAKERI'm just going to politely excuse myself during that section.

14:39SPEAKERI'm not sure I've ever written anything down in this context.

14:41SPEAKERWell, but like like if you for example, I have this Plex server

14:45SPEAKERthat's running a little tiny hundred dollar square computer in the garage.

14:49SPEAKERAnd there's a couple other processes running on it.

14:52SPEAKERAnd I documented two of them and I didn't document any of the rest.

14:54SPEAKERI have no freaking clue even how to update any of that stuff,

14:58SPEAKERbecause I don't remember what I did to install it at this point.

15:00SPEAKERAnd whether it's like, is it installed through through through the Python package manager?

15:04SPEAKERIs it installed through the Debian app get like, how did I put it on there?

15:12SPEAKERI don't know. It's probably a Docker container that download from some Docker thing.

15:16SPEAKERAnd now, like, I think that just automatically updates when I reboot the computer.

15:19SPEAKERI don't know. Maybe. Why not? Sure.

15:21SPEAKERWhatever. I mean, this is this is really just an excuse for laziness,

15:24SPEAKERbut I've kind of come to look at that process of retracing your steps

15:27SPEAKERthrough stuff like that as its own form of kind of metagame.

15:31SPEAKERLike, how how much can how much can I not just recall, but also like intuit

15:35SPEAKERwhat my thought process would have been 18 months ago

15:38SPEAKERand like figure that out again and find the stuff.

15:40SPEAKERYou want to know what I do?

15:41SPEAKERI just keep pressing up in the bash terminal on that machine until I get to where

15:45SPEAKERI can I blow your mind? Yeah. Control our way.

15:48SPEAKEROne control our and then start typing. What does that do?

15:51SPEAKERIt's it searches your history.

15:53SPEAKERNo, no, I need to see the steps.

15:55SPEAKERI will reverse engineering the steps that I got to to get it finished.

15:59SPEAKERWell, there's working. I never touch it again.

16:00SPEAKERThat's my policy. There's a file where all that stuff lives.

16:03SPEAKEROh, that's nice. You open that file and look at that would be a lot easier.

16:06SPEAKERProbably it's probably not profiles anyway.

16:08SPEAKERSo, OK, so starting out step one, be curious.

16:11SPEAKERYou got a problem.

16:12SPEAKERYou don't know what's broken with your computer, with your with your home

16:15SPEAKERautomation stuff, with your media server, with your TV, whatever it is.

16:20SPEAKERThink about what's causing the problem.

16:23SPEAKERSounds so easy when you say it that way.

16:25SPEAKERYeah, but but like, did you change something recently?

16:28SPEAKERRight. That's like that's that's like the other day I had audio crackling.

16:33SPEAKERWhy did I have audio crackling? I don't know.

16:35SPEAKERI updated a bunch of drivers and I did the firmware on my audio interface.

16:40SPEAKERAnd then I was like, I'm updating firmware as I should update my bio.

16:43SPEAKERSo I update my bios and that reset all my settings.

16:46SPEAKERAnd then I went through and flipped the settings back on that I thought

16:47SPEAKERI had on before.

16:49SPEAKERAnd I turned on one that was like extreme power savings.

16:52SPEAKERAnd it turns out that turns off USB about every 45 seconds.

16:55SPEAKERAnd that made everything hitch and my mouse freeze.

16:57SPEAKERAnd it was bad news.

16:58SPEAKERYeah. What you're describing is the hard version of this,

17:01SPEAKERwhich is probably 90 percent of cases.

17:03SPEAKERIt's not it's not something you did directly to the thing

17:05SPEAKERthat's affected to make it break.

17:07SPEAKERIt's something tangential or like barely related, you know, like thinking,

17:12SPEAKERthinking through like second and third order causes for a problem

17:15SPEAKERthat don't like very obviously have anything to do with the problem.

17:19SPEAKERThat's the hard part.

17:20SPEAKERWell, but then. OK, so then you also have to think about other changes,

17:23SPEAKERlike environmental changes, right?

17:24SPEAKERIs it is it the time of year or even brownouts in your in your house? Right.

17:28SPEAKERIs the power going off at a specific time every day?

17:31SPEAKERIs it summertime and you're you're the ambient temperature in your rooms

17:35SPEAKERis 10 or 15 degrees warmer than it is the rest of the year.

17:38SPEAKERWhen I was at Maximum PC, the doctor column,

17:40SPEAKERwhich was where people could send in, hey, I have a computer problem.

17:43SPEAKERWe would see so many.

17:46SPEAKERLiterally, there was a spike in, hey, my computer is black screen

17:50SPEAKERcrashing, rebooting, and they would always spike in like July,

17:53SPEAKERAugust and September in the northern hemisphere when it's the hottest

17:57SPEAKERand people's computer rooms went from being 70 degrees to 85 degrees

18:02SPEAKERand the efficiency of the power supplies went down.

18:05SPEAKERSo if their power supply, if the amount of power

18:07SPEAKERtheir their power supply was providing to the computer was marginal,

18:11SPEAKERthey would, you know, the efficiency would go down.

18:13SPEAKERThe amount of power that was coming out would go down as a result.

18:16SPEAKERAnd when they hit something that would pull a lot of draw,

18:19SPEAKERthe machine would just reboot because that's what power supply.

18:21SPEAKERThat's what computers do when they don't have power is they just hard reboot.

18:26SPEAKERSo so so think about like you got to look at the whole thing.

18:28SPEAKERDid you did you plug something new in?

18:31SPEAKERDid you did you unplug something that you used to use?

18:34SPEAKERDid you change the USB ports?

18:36SPEAKERThis is my favorite.

18:37SPEAKERI don't know if you had this.

18:38SPEAKERYes. What the USB port thing?

18:40SPEAKERYeah. Oh, yes. All the time.

18:42SPEAKERMy USB ports, it's like one of those.

18:44SPEAKERIt's like one of those.

18:46SPEAKERIt's like one of those.

18:47SPEAKERI mean, just to be clear, we have weird situations.

18:50SPEAKERI think you'll be USB capture device.

18:53SPEAKERI have like a high powered USB audio stuff plugged in.

18:56SPEAKERLike there's a lot of USB stuff plugged in our computers and some of it's weird.

19:00SPEAKERBut some port configurations work.

19:02SPEAKERAnd it's like it's like one of those.

19:03SPEAKERRalph and John and Jimmy all have a wife and they one wife doesn't like fruit

19:08SPEAKERand one wife doesn't like turkey and one wife eats only the bugs.

19:12SPEAKERAnd you have to figure out which which plug,

19:15SPEAKERwhich does the camera go into a USB three point two port or USB three point

19:19SPEAKERoh port like. Yeah. Anyway.

19:22SPEAKERYeah. I mean, I think we're working more at the conceptual level on this episode,

19:24SPEAKERbut we could sit here for six hours going through hidden gotchas

19:27SPEAKERin the modern computer, such as what you're describing, that all USB ports

19:30SPEAKERon a motherboard are not created equal

19:32SPEAKERbecause they're going through different controllers, right?

19:34SPEAKERLike some of them are going through

19:35SPEAKERlike the chipset made by Intel or AMD on your on your board.

19:40SPEAKERBut if you have a ton of USB ports, the manufacturer of the board

19:43SPEAKERmay have added a third party controller to drive some more of those ports.

19:47SPEAKERAnd those third party controllers are not always up to snuff for every use case.

19:50SPEAKERWell, or or just some ports maybe on different root hubs than other ports.

19:54SPEAKERLike, yeah, we don't need to get into, like you said, you get the specifics.

19:56SPEAKERBut look at all of the things that are different and think about

20:00SPEAKERwhat could cause that.

20:01SPEAKERAnd another one real quick one I'll throw out is kind of bandwidth sharing

20:06SPEAKERor PCI Express lane sharing on on these days, that's always fun between less.

20:11SPEAKERSo SATA used to be a lot of SATA, but SATA is kind of on its way out now.

20:14SPEAKERBut SATA, NVMe, you know, M2 and PCI Express slots can all share bandwidth.

20:20SPEAKERSo if you if you have something in a thing in one of those interfaces,

20:24SPEAKERplug in something else, and then the first thing stops working.

20:27SPEAKERGo check your motherboard manual, because there's a good chance

20:29SPEAKERthat you can't actually use both of those at the same time.

20:33SPEAKERCheck your logs like this.

20:35SPEAKERThis is where logs are incredibly useful, even on windows.

20:38SPEAKERFor example, if you have a game that's crashing,

20:40SPEAKERyou can always open up the game directory.

20:41SPEAKERAnd there's almost always, especially if it's an unreal engine game,

20:44SPEAKERthere's almost always a log file that just has a bunch of stuff in there.

20:47SPEAKERAnd you just find out what the last thing is in the log and then start to,

20:51SPEAKERyou know, use that as your as your jumping off point in your in your research phase.

20:55SPEAKERThe value of logs cannot be overstated, but it took me way too long.

20:58SPEAKERI mean, it's kind of been

21:00SPEAKERconcurrent with my getting into Linux and open source and stuff like that

21:03SPEAKERand sort of staring at text more and just getting more comfortable with that stuff.

21:06SPEAKERBut that's kind of when I started looking at logs.

21:07SPEAKERAnd like, you'd be surprised how many different forms of logs are available

21:11SPEAKERleft and right. I mean, like, you know, not everybody streams, but OBS,

21:13SPEAKERfor example, right up under help.

21:15SPEAKERYeah, right under help as it has a log viewer and you can pull that up.

21:18SPEAKERAnd I don't know how many times I've not understood why OBS was doing something

21:22SPEAKERweird or not working right and pull that thing up and just like, oh, OK,

21:24SPEAKERnow I can see exactly what it's doing under the hood when I click this button.

21:28SPEAKERAnd that explains everything.

21:29SPEAKERYeah. And and like Windows.

21:31SPEAKERSo if you don't know, Windows has logs.

21:32SPEAKERThe event viewer shows Windows system application and security logs.

21:36SPEAKERYou can probably ignore security logs for this purpose.

21:39SPEAKERBut the system log tells you when Windows is having something weird happen

21:42SPEAKERand you can filter it by things that are super duper bad, a little bit bad,

21:47SPEAKERnot very bad at all, or just like bog standard happens like 50 million times a day.

21:52SPEAKERSo so if you get to the point that you only see the red X's

21:55SPEAKERand the exclamation points, like it's

21:59SPEAKERthere's usually useful information in there if Windows is doing something weird.

22:03SPEAKERSame thing for the application log.

22:04SPEAKERIf applications crash in the standard way and report the crash to Windows,

22:08SPEAKERthen it'll have all that a lot of information in there that's often useful to you.

22:13SPEAKERYeah, you can for reference, you can just open the start menu and type event viewer

22:17SPEAKERto get you right.

22:18SPEAKERClick on the start menu and go to the event viewer to really do that.

22:22SPEAKERThat's in there. Yeah, yeah.

22:24SPEAKERThere's that right click.

22:25SPEAKERIt's funny. There was a tangent here, but there's a talk in the discord

22:28SPEAKERthe other day about where your start menu start button is placed. And.

22:33SPEAKERI realized as a result of that conversation

22:35SPEAKERthat I right click on the start menu infinitely more than I like,

22:39SPEAKERI usually open the open the start menu by pressing the keyboard button for it.

22:43SPEAKERAnd I right click on the start menu to open the the the like.

22:48SPEAKERIt's like task manager and power options and you're right.

22:51SPEAKERAnd just computer management's in there to open an admin terminal from there.

22:56SPEAKERIt's really good.

22:56SPEAKERWow. I remember that.

22:58SPEAKERThat's a super useful shortcut.

23:01SPEAKERIf you if you have hard crashes in Windows, event viewer

23:03SPEAKERis the first place I go after after the hard crash or shut down

23:07SPEAKERto try to like because, you know, it logs everything by time.

23:09SPEAKERYou can try to retrace like what exactly was happening right before the crash.

23:13SPEAKERAlthough unfortunately, a lot of crashes, if it's like a hard reboot

23:17SPEAKERor something like that, they'll just get the very generic like kernel error

23:20SPEAKERof like system shut down without being or the system powered off

23:24SPEAKERwithout being shut down or something, you know, like it's not always that one.

23:27SPEAKERThat one's the one that comes up when it when it's restarting.

23:30SPEAKERIf you're getting blue screens or something like that,

23:32SPEAKERyou can install WinDBG, which is, I think, short for debug.

23:35SPEAKERIt's a kernel debugger that takes those mini dumps

23:38SPEAKERand crash dumps and tells you what was happening at the time.

23:42SPEAKERAnd those are a little bit hard to read if you're not pretty

23:45SPEAKERif you're not pretty competent with drivers and programming stuff.

23:47SPEAKERBut it'll at least tell you which driver is the problem.

23:49SPEAKERLike if it's if it's in an NV thing, it's probably your Nvidia driver.

23:52SPEAKERYou know, you can you can look up the name of the DLL that crash

23:56SPEAKERand causes the blue screen and it'll it'll it'll let you know.

23:59SPEAKERIt'll give you a jumping off point anyway and write this stuff down.

24:02SPEAKERSo figure out like make your make your list of theories, right?

24:07SPEAKEROften you'll find one.

24:08SPEAKERI tend I you know, it's fine to like find one and then go down the steps.

24:13SPEAKERIt's also fine to think about it

24:14SPEAKERand come up with a couple of different things.

24:16SPEAKERIt could be I like, especially when you're bug hunting for like the game.

24:19SPEAKERWe we try we make a concerted effort not to lock in on solutions too quickly. Right.

24:25SPEAKERSo if you often you're doing something and it's like,

24:29SPEAKERoh, there's a weird hitch when you do this and it's like, oh, it's probably audio

24:31SPEAKERbecause that's usually audio.

24:33SPEAKERAnd then I spend all day trying to figure out what the audio problem is.

24:36SPEAKERAnd it turns out there's no audio problem with something else happening in the game

24:39SPEAKERthat causes that hitch.

24:41SPEAKERLike, don't don't say curious is that is the thing to remember there.

24:44SPEAKERYeah, I think that the last thing I'll say here,

24:46SPEAKERand I don't know if this would work for everybody, but it certainly does for me,

24:49SPEAKERis by being curious and thinking about the thing a lot like

24:53SPEAKERa lot of the time, solutions will drift into my head out of nowhere,

24:57SPEAKERhours or a day or two after I've started trying to figure something out

25:00SPEAKERlike literal kind of shower thoughts method, I guess.

25:05SPEAKERYeah, and I don't know who knows what the cognitive root of that is.

25:10SPEAKERMaybe it's just obsessing over something too much and thinking about it too much.

25:13SPEAKERBut it's like it's again, it's some of the second and third order things,

25:16SPEAKERyou know, like it's just like I feel like

25:18SPEAKERI feel like I've exhausted every possible cause of this.

25:21SPEAKERLike I'm just tearing my hair out, screw this.

25:23SPEAKERAnd then three hours later, like something just pops in there.

25:26SPEAKERYou know, your brain makes the connections for you

25:29SPEAKERthat your conscious brain is not able to do.

25:31SPEAKERAnd and like I often find going on a walk, same same effect.

25:35SPEAKERYes. I can't spend that much time in the shower because my skin gets dry.

25:38SPEAKERSure. Maybe maybe maybe that's another bullet point to add is sort of take a break,

25:42SPEAKERlike walk away from it, go do something, do something less frustrating for a while.

25:46SPEAKERI wrote down at the bottom

25:50SPEAKERlike to talk about at the end, but I'm going to put it here, too.

25:52SPEAKERLike three a.m. is a bad time to be fixing problems.

25:56SPEAKERLike I have a personal like I have a personal personality flaw

25:59SPEAKERthat means that I get really anxious when stuff is broken

26:02SPEAKERand I don't want things being broken and I have to just keep working at them

26:06SPEAKERuntil I get them fixed, which often just makes it worse.

26:10SPEAKERYeah, I this is a weird this is a weird tangent,

26:13SPEAKERbut I've been dealing with stuff a lot lately, so it's top of mind.

26:15SPEAKERI think there's like there's nothing better for my waistline than computer problems

26:20SPEAKERbecause I'm so goddamn single mindedly focused on trying to fix it

26:24SPEAKERat all costs that I like will go all day without eating.

26:27SPEAKERIf I'm sitting there tinkering with parts and pulling things apart and testing.

26:30SPEAKERAnd yeah, well, but but yeah, and and to the larger point,

26:34SPEAKERyou're not going to be as sharp as you can be if you've been working on it

26:37SPEAKERfor six hours and you're like, it's just getting worse and worse.

26:41SPEAKERYou need to take that break.

26:42SPEAKEROK, so so there's curious. We're curious.

26:45SPEAKERWe've we've figured out we have some ideas of what the problem is.

26:47SPEAKERNow it's time to isolate variables and start testing stuff. Right.

26:51SPEAKERSo you can actually identify what the problem is.

26:53SPEAKERSo revert those changes.

26:55SPEAKERIf you know about recent changes, revert them, pull your unnecessary

27:00SPEAKERanything that is that could be contributing, but isn't isn't directly related.

27:04SPEAKERSo if you have if you're if you think you're having memory

27:07SPEAKERcausing crashes in your computer, pull a stick of memory

27:09SPEAKERand try both sticks individually and see if the crashes happen

27:12SPEAKERwith one stick or another, more than more than the others. Right.

27:16SPEAKERIf you're if your home assistant stuff isn't working right

27:19SPEAKERand you just updated the home assistant, roll back to the last update.

27:22SPEAKERThat's kind of sometimes it's a little more complicated

27:24SPEAKERthan you maybe want it to be. But go back and read the patch notes

27:27SPEAKERand see if there was something some step you were supposed to do as a result.

27:30SPEAKERLike often a home assistant is much better at this now.

27:33SPEAKERBut in the early days, they would put in the patch notes, you know,

27:36SPEAKERbefore you do this, run this script or something.

27:38SPEAKERAnd then if you didn't run the script, it would it would try to run it

27:41SPEAKERafter the first boot, but sometimes that would fail.

27:44SPEAKERAnd there was a reason they wanted to run it before.

27:47SPEAKERLike, go back and look at all of the things you did

27:50SPEAKERwithout reading the notes and and and, you know, roll them back.

27:56SPEAKERLike if you're dealing with BIOS problems,

27:57SPEAKERif you're doing system stability problems, you're in the BIOS.

28:00SPEAKERReset everything to the defaults and don't don't do it with this

28:03SPEAKERwith the button in the BIOS.

28:05SPEAKERLike hit the clear CMOS jumper on the motherboard

28:08SPEAKERand pull the battery if you have to.

28:11SPEAKERI've actually even had problems on an old ASUS board

28:15SPEAKERwhere pulling the CPU and putting the CPU back in

28:19SPEAKERactually caused it to to trigger the first run stuff again.

28:22SPEAKERAnd that fixed the problem I was having.

28:24SPEAKERSo like like like pull, pull everything out and plug it,

28:28SPEAKERsometimes pulling everything out and plugging it back in,

28:31SPEAKERpowering it all the way off, turning the power supply off,

28:33SPEAKERcompletely discharging it will fix the problem.

28:37SPEAKERYeah, not yeah, not not just isolating variables, but in a lot of cases,

28:40SPEAKEReliminating as many variables as you can quickly by doing things

28:43SPEAKERexactly like you're talking about, like defaults are great for that.

28:45SPEAKERJust like, hey, let's

28:47SPEAKERtry to set set everything back to baseline

28:49SPEAKERexcept for the thing that you think is wrong.

28:52SPEAKERA/B testing is huge for me.

28:53SPEAKERI mean, maybe this goes without saying, but this is very much

28:55SPEAKERhow I try to isolate stuff is is siloing every variable off in my head

29:00SPEAKERand then just very systematically going and running through tests

29:04SPEAKERthat will prove whether one of those things is is

29:07SPEAKERany any given one at a time is good or not.

29:10SPEAKERLike especially if it's like CPU memory.

29:12SPEAKERI mean, this gets tough

29:13SPEAKERif you don't have spare parts around to test with.

29:15SPEAKERIn a lot of cases, like it's it's very hard to know if your CPU is at fault,

29:20SPEAKERif you don't have another CPU to test with, for example.

29:22SPEAKERBut to whatever extent you can swap things in and out, test one thing at a time

29:27SPEAKERand say like, OK, now I know I know this memory is good

29:29SPEAKERbecause I got it to boot in my old machine or whatever.

29:32SPEAKERI think I think that's a big part of it, right? Is is knowing, knowing

29:39SPEAKERwe don't all have a computer lab, right?

29:41SPEAKERSo we don't all have extra memory and extra CPUs and extra motherboards

29:43SPEAKERand all that stuff. And when I was at Max PC especially, or even tested,

29:48SPEAKERand we had a bunch of computer hardware around it,

29:50SPEAKERit makes this troubleshooting process a lot easier because, yeah,

29:53SPEAKERyou just go grab an extra couple of sticks of RAM and jam them in.

29:55SPEAKERAnd if it works, then then it's probably the RAM.

30:00SPEAKERBut you can do a lot of the stuff like you can if you think if you have RAM

30:04SPEAKERand it's most of the RAM that people are going to have in like a gaming machine

30:07SPEAKERnow is going to be overclocked beyond what the standard is

30:11SPEAKERfor for whatever type of RAM you have.

30:12SPEAKERSo you can always clock the RAM at the JEDEC speed, the default speed,

30:16SPEAKERand just set everything to auto and see what happens. Right.

30:19SPEAKERI really wish that motherboards had like a fail safe option

30:23SPEAKERthat was, hey, this should run. Right.

30:26SPEAKERLike you plug it in, it turns off all the automatic overclocking,

30:29SPEAKERall of the bullshit that the motherboard vendors do to get a 3% increase

30:33SPEAKERso they can sell a few more motherboards.

30:35SPEAKERAnd it's just like, yeah, if you if the if the hardware is good, this will work.

30:39SPEAKEROh, I hate that all the defaults out of the box are the most extreme

30:42SPEAKERversion of everything. It's. Yeah.

30:45SPEAKERIt's infuriating.

30:46SPEAKERBut but and then, you know, for other stuff, for things like like

30:50SPEAKERlike your home automation or your living room stuff, like think about

30:55SPEAKERthis is where you've thought about all the steps from, you know, a console

30:59SPEAKERto the to the to the TV.

31:01SPEAKERAnd it's a little simpler these days, but it's kind of not because you have

31:04SPEAKERyou know, you have receivers with the arc and you have HDMI cables

31:08SPEAKERthat come in fifty five million different flavors.

31:10SPEAKERAnd like, you have to think about what each of those cables is and

31:14SPEAKERand whether the one that's in the wall that goes from the from the

31:17SPEAKERwhere your rack is to the to the to the back of the TV is actually the right cable

31:24SPEAKERand and try replacing, you know, try, try swapping your all your kit,

31:28SPEAKERtry swapping cables, but do it one at a time, swap one cable at a time,

31:31SPEAKERbecause then, you know, that one is the one that fixes the problem.

31:33SPEAKERYeah, I feel like some some devices are starting to have more kind of friendly

31:37SPEAKERdiagnostic stuff included, like the X of the Xbox series consoles

31:40SPEAKERare fantastic for that.

31:41SPEAKERAnd they've just got they've just got that giant screen full of like

31:45SPEAKERit's like a list of every like resolution and refresh rate and HDR type

31:49SPEAKERand a little checkmark or a big red X that tells you

31:52SPEAKERwhether your current setup can do each one or not.

31:55SPEAKERYeah, but but it's like it's funny because there's some problems

31:58SPEAKERthat I live with, but there's there's one that and I think it's

32:02SPEAKERI haven't actually taken the time to figure out what causes it,

32:04SPEAKERbut I think it's when devices plugged into my TV,

32:08SPEAKERturn on the TV and the receiver, the arc stuff doesn't always work.

32:12SPEAKERSo I'd always get audio return channel

32:14SPEAKERand I have to turn the receiver on and off to fix it

32:18SPEAKERevery time I turn on the switch because of where the switch is plugged in.

32:21SPEAKERLike I could probably fix that.

32:23SPEAKERI could make it so it doesn't happen.

32:25SPEAKERBut also, I don't care.

32:27SPEAKERIt's probably fine. It's a minor annoyance.

32:29SPEAKERI'm up anyway to get the switch controller.

32:31SPEAKERSo like, I just I just know I have to if I want to play Mario, I have to,

32:35SPEAKERyou know, turn it on and turn it off again.

32:37SPEAKERThe classic fix, fix everything.

32:40SPEAKERShould we talk about research?

32:41SPEAKERYes, I feel like that's

32:44SPEAKERmaybe the topic given the state of the Internet these days

32:47SPEAKERand how many how many A.I.

32:49SPEAKERgenerated garbage articles you're likely to run into

32:52SPEAKERif you go looking for solutions to problems these days.

32:54SPEAKERIt's it's really hard.

32:56SPEAKERLike this is this was when I was at tested.

32:58SPEAKERAdam used to joke that you just put for message board

33:01SPEAKERat the end of the thing you were looking for.

33:03SPEAKERThat's a good tip. And or forum. Right.

33:06SPEAKERAnd it would take you to a to a website

33:08SPEAKERmessage board where somebody had the same problem and fixed it.

33:11SPEAKERBut that doesn't work very well anymore.

33:14SPEAKERYou know, the goal.

33:16SPEAKERThe first thing I usually do is look for somebody who's had the same problem.

33:19SPEAKERAnd that means like figuring out which are the affected pieces of hardware,

33:23SPEAKERwhich sometimes is hard now because like it may be that like your motherboard

33:28SPEAKERand for example, my water cooler, my specific motherboard,

33:32SPEAKERmy specific water all in one water cooler was having voltage tags. Right.

33:38SPEAKERAnd that was causing the the the little controller inside the water

33:42SPEAKERall in one water cooler to crash.

33:44SPEAKERAnd that was causing a bunch of downstream problems.

33:46SPEAKERAnd the only way to solve that, the only way to know that was to search

33:50SPEAKERfor my motherboard, my all in one water cooler and USB.

33:55SPEAKERAnd then I found a Tom's hardware post from like six months of Europe.

33:58SPEAKERYou're in the past. It was like, oh, yeah, I have this motherboard.

34:01SPEAKERAnd every time I do something on this USB bus with it, it bombs out.

34:05SPEAKERAnd I don't understand what's happening.

34:07SPEAKERAnd the solution, it turns out, is to get a USB hub that lives inside your case

34:12SPEAKERand uses the motherboard header type USB plugs.

34:15SPEAKERAnd you just put that in and plug it into SATA power and it works.

34:20SPEAKERSo interesting. How did I figure that out?

34:22SPEAKERDid that work just fine?

34:24SPEAKERThere was literally a Reddit post that said,

34:26SPEAKERhey, I got this USB hub and that fixed the problem.

34:28SPEAKERAre those are those types of hubs made for those USB motherboard headers?

34:32SPEAKERYes. That's it's like a point.

34:34SPEAKERIs that something I should look into?

34:35SPEAKERBecause like the USB headers on motherboards can be pretty problematic.

34:39SPEAKERAnd if there's something that makes those more reliable, I would like to know.

34:42SPEAKERSo I will say, unless you have a problem, this is a situation

34:45SPEAKERwhere adding more variables is not going to make things better. Right. Fine.

34:50SPEAKERI didn't like I never in a million years would I have thought that

34:54SPEAKERthis is what the problem was.

34:56SPEAKERAnd then I found a Reddit post from somebody with the exact same thing.

34:58SPEAKERAnd it was like, oh, OK, here you go.

35:01SPEAKERI think I think like like dropping voltage is probably the biggest issue I have had.

35:04SPEAKERAnd again, we have extreme USB use cases here

35:08SPEAKERwith all the types of recording and microphone video stuff that we're doing.

35:12SPEAKERYeah. Devices hooked to those motherboard headers.

35:15SPEAKERNot seemingly not getting enough power generally seems like the biggest problem there.

35:19SPEAKERSo if there's some way to add power in line.

35:21SPEAKERSo that's it. That's you add that hub

35:23SPEAKERand you plug it into a set of power from the power supply.

35:25SPEAKERThat seems pretty desirable.

35:28SPEAKERBut but then you look for people with similar problems. Right.

35:30SPEAKERSo then so so first you start with at least I start with really specific

35:35SPEAKERthe the specific hardware affected.

35:38SPEAKERAnd then I and I usually I usually crunch the dates on those searches to

35:42SPEAKERfrom the time that hardware was released, because otherwise Google will be like,

35:46SPEAKERoh, I can't find anything about this.

35:47SPEAKERLet me find something with the same number in it from like 15 years ago.

35:50SPEAKERAnd that's useless. Yeah.

35:52SPEAKERI look for similar problems after that. Right.

35:55SPEAKERSo you look for a motherboard or whatever version

35:58SPEAKERCPU you have or whatever brand switch, if you're looking at like

36:03SPEAKERZ-Wave or matter problems or Zigbee problems with home automation stuff

36:07SPEAKERand then your home assistant or whatever your software is

36:11SPEAKERthat you're using to run the run the the the thing you're trying to do.

36:16SPEAKERYeah, I whenever whenever I'm looking for stuff like this,

36:19SPEAKERI always try to be conscious of the line between like trying to think how it like.

36:25SPEAKERWhere is the line that constitutes a legitimate problem?

36:28SPEAKERYou know, like where is how like this is this is getting into some like anecdotes

36:31SPEAKERor not data kind of territory of like how many different people do I need to see

36:35SPEAKERwith the exact same set of symptoms I've got before?

36:37SPEAKERThere's like maybe a larger issue here. You know what I mean?

36:40SPEAKERBecause no electronics, no technology on the planet has a zero percent failure rate.

36:44SPEAKERLike everything that you possibly buy might fail individually.

36:48SPEAKERYou know what I mean? Like manufacturing defect or whatever.

36:51SPEAKERBut what I'm talking about is not individual

36:53SPEAKERmanufacturing defect or something, but it's systemic or like design flaw

36:57SPEAKERand problems like we've released a motherboard that's torching your CPU.

37:01SPEAKERSo that's exactly the issue with this motherboard that I am.

37:05SPEAKERI'm divesting myself of is I saw enough people.

37:08SPEAKERFirst of all, the set of symptoms is weirdly specific enough that it raises an eyebrow.

37:13SPEAKERAnd then when I went to the gigabyte subreddits and saw numerous

37:17SPEAKERother people with the same model having the same weird set of circumstances,

37:21SPEAKERlike that's when you start to suspect like, OK, maybe there's

37:24SPEAKERmaybe there's an actual design flaw here, even even if it's only

37:27SPEAKERpoint two percent of owners of this board that are encountering it.

37:30SPEAKERIf there are that many people that there are like lengthy enough discussions about

37:35SPEAKERagain, again, what is a very specific problem?

37:38SPEAKERThen you start to wonder like, OK, at least, you know, you're not alone.

37:42SPEAKERIt's not just your specific board that is bad.

37:45SPEAKERSo the thing I'll tell you is you never can tell

37:49SPEAKERif it's a real problem, like a real systemic problem

37:53SPEAKERor just a small number of people who got duds,

37:57SPEAKERunless it gets to the stage that like Microsoft is spending a billion dollars

38:02SPEAKERreplacing Xbox 360s. Yes. Yes.

38:04SPEAKERSo 360 red ring is the classic counter example here of like clearly

38:08SPEAKERthis was deeply flawed. Right.

38:10SPEAKERBut like they're not the companies are never going to come out and be like,

38:13SPEAKERoh, man, we really messed this entire thing up.

38:15SPEAKEREverybody should replace these unless they unless it's like, hey,

38:18SPEAKERyour Chevy Bolt is catching fire in your garage and burning your house down or

38:25SPEAKERthe red ring or caps exploding on enforced

38:29SPEAKERmotherboards or whatever, you know, whatever the classic examples are.

38:33SPEAKERSo so like I my general advice

38:37SPEAKERis that you worry about that stuff before you buy something.

38:40SPEAKERAnd then you don't sweat it afterwards because you'll make yourself

38:44SPEAKERlike you could make yourself like you can go on the sub Reddit

38:46SPEAKERfor any given manufacturer and find a problem

38:50SPEAKERwith the thing that you have that 50 people report.

38:53SPEAKERAnd if they sold 20 million of them,

38:55SPEAKER50 people having a problem that are vocal about it, it doesn't matter.

38:58SPEAKERRight. Yes. Well, first of all, you're one of those 50 people.

39:00SPEAKERYes. That's that's what I was going to say.

39:01SPEAKERFirst of all, I'm only going out looking for the stuff because I, too,

39:04SPEAKERam having the problem. Well, of course.

39:06SPEAKERAnd like if you're having the problem, it's a completely different thing.

39:09SPEAKERAnd at that point, like you, you start reaching out to their customer

39:13SPEAKERservice teams and are like, hey, man, you got to fix this.

39:16SPEAKERYou've you've sold me something bad.

39:18SPEAKERYeah. Just just a little sidebar here, just because I've talked about it enough.

39:21SPEAKERI'll just briefly lay out the problem I'm having with this board.

39:24SPEAKERAnd again, a bunch of other people are having is that the the networking,

39:27SPEAKERthe storage, the like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth,

39:31SPEAKERlike all of these parts of the motherboard will just randomly fail

39:34SPEAKERand turn off and turn back on or just stop working entirely.

39:38SPEAKERSome of both. It's it's it's

39:42SPEAKERit's it's nonspecific enough that I can't describe an exact scenario,

39:46SPEAKERhow it plays out every time.

39:47SPEAKERBut like, it would always be something like all the networking died

39:51SPEAKERor like all my peripheral, all my connected USB devices died or both.

39:54SPEAKERAt the same time, I had it I had to corrupt my my my D drive.

39:59SPEAKERThe SSDs connected to the chipset at one point to the point that I had to format them.

40:02SPEAKERAnd like that was that was where I'd spent a lot of time in a bit.

40:05SPEAKERViewer recently is where I had I had a bad crash.

40:07SPEAKERAnd when I came back from it, like I saw dozens and dozens of of right errors

40:12SPEAKERto the drives and Bluetooth errors and all kinds of stuff.

40:15SPEAKERAnd it's the same stuff that other people are having.

40:16SPEAKERBut the thing I was going to say where you mentioned engaging

40:19SPEAKERthe support for the company that I was absolutely is normally the right advice.

40:23SPEAKERBut the thing I found looking around was other people had already done that

40:26SPEAKERand gotten replacement boards back that ended up developing the same problems again.

40:30SPEAKERSo I in my case, I suspect it's some kind of specific configuration.

40:35SPEAKERIt's like, oh, if you're using you're using all the M.2 on the board or something like,

40:39SPEAKERyou know what I mean, it's like some some extreme configuration

40:41SPEAKERthat ninety nine point five percent of people are never going to do because, yeah,

40:45SPEAKERmost people buy a motherboard and plug in a CPU and RAM and a graphics card

40:48SPEAKERand and maybe one or maybe two in VME drives these days. And that's it. Right.

40:53SPEAKERBut if you're if you're populating a lot more of what the board has available

40:57SPEAKERfor expansion, you're probably more prone to running into stuff like that.

41:00SPEAKERThe closer you live to the edge, the more likely you are to catch on fire.

41:04SPEAKERBrad, at the same time, you could argue they shouldn't put all that stuff on the board.

41:08SPEAKERIt's not going to work. Well, agreed.

41:11SPEAKERBut but I mean, OK, so you're at the spot.

41:13SPEAKERThe thing that you're describing is where you test with other hardware

41:16SPEAKERif you have access to it, right?

41:17SPEAKERLike either you you find someplace that you can buy some stuff

41:20SPEAKERthat doesn't have an expensive restocking fee

41:24SPEAKERor you look at the restocking fee is the cost of of running the test, right?

41:28SPEAKERLike if you're buying if you're buying an extra RAM kit and they have a 10%

41:31SPEAKERrestocking fee, then you're paying 15 bucks to to to get to find out

41:36SPEAKERif your RAM is good, which is not ideal, but better than better

41:40SPEAKERthan not knowing and constantly having problems. Anyway. Yeah.

41:45SPEAKERAnd then and then theoretically at the end of the.

41:47SPEAKEROh, go ahead. Can I can I throw one more thing in here real quick?

41:49SPEAKERJust just in the context of looking at discussion of people having issues.

41:54SPEAKERPlease resist.

41:55SPEAKERPlease do me a personal favor and resist if you come upon one of these discussions

42:00SPEAKERand you're not having the problem, please resist being the person

42:03SPEAKERwho just goes on there and probably is like, I don't know, working fine for me.

42:06SPEAKERLike that adds that there's always somebody who shows up saying like,

42:09SPEAKERI don't know what you want to know what your problem is like.

42:11SPEAKERThis is fine. You know, it's like, yeah, that's that's the nature of problems.

42:14SPEAKERThere's issues like this is it's only going to affect a small number of people.

42:17SPEAKERThat doesn't mean it's like an invalid thing or it's their fault

42:21SPEAKERthat is broken or whatever.

42:22SPEAKERThere's a there's a there's a human instinct to weigh in on things

42:29SPEAKERwhen people just shouldn't like.

42:32SPEAKERLike, yeah, if it doesn't impact you, just don't say anything.

42:35SPEAKERI don't I don't know how many different like Reddit threads.

42:38SPEAKERAnd I don't spend time on Reddit as a rule.

42:40SPEAKERI mostly Google stuff up.

42:43SPEAKERSo I'm mostly going there looking for solutions to things. But like,

42:47SPEAKERit feels like a near 100 percent

42:49SPEAKERsuccess rate of finding right in the middle of one of these conversations,

42:53SPEAKERa big digression where somebody just crashes in there, like

42:56SPEAKERcalling everybody stupid for not getting it to work right.

42:59SPEAKERAnd just it turns into a big argument. It's just it just wastes so much time.

43:02SPEAKERYeah. The other thing is and this is come back to this is like

43:05SPEAKERif you find a thread where somebody posted a solution

43:09SPEAKERthat actually solves your problem,

43:12SPEAKERcome make a note and come back to it and say, hey, this actually works.

43:16SPEAKERThat's an interesting point is, well, I think we'll get to that

43:19SPEAKERas we talk about nothing.

43:20SPEAKERWe'll talk about, you know, writing down solutions and stuff like that.

43:22SPEAKERBut like that's

43:25SPEAKERsort of incidental to that is, I guess,

43:29SPEAKERthe turmoil that's happening on a lot of different social platforms right now,

43:32SPEAKERlike Reddit's had its share of issues with people deactivating or deleting

43:35SPEAKERaccounts and like turning off whole subreddits in some cases, subreddit

43:39SPEAKERand moderator drama and all that stuff like Twitter.

43:41SPEAKERGod knows more than its share of issues.

43:44SPEAKERBut like a lot of old content is disappearing.

43:46SPEAKERLike a lot of a lot of old discussion is turning into Swiss cheese

43:49SPEAKERwhere there are all these holes and threads that you'll pull up.

43:51SPEAKERAnd I don't know how many times I've come upon what looked like

43:54SPEAKERit would have been exactly the solution for my problem.

43:57SPEAKERBut the person had deleted their account so I couldn't read the post anymore.

44:00SPEAKERAnd it wasn't wasn't in the wayback machine or whatever.

44:03SPEAKERThis is why I love the open source people is because they

44:06SPEAKERthey just post stuff on their personal blogs and it's like, hey,

44:08SPEAKERhere's how I got blah, blah, blah running on Docker.

44:11SPEAKERLike, oh, this is great. Thank you.

44:12SPEAKERI do. I do have a folder full of PDFs.

44:15SPEAKERI have printed I have printed to PDF several, like quite a few web pages

44:18SPEAKERthat are like, oh, this if this goes away in the future and I can't find it again,

44:22SPEAKERI'm going to be in trouble.

44:22SPEAKERI should save this somehow.

44:25SPEAKERIt's interesting you do PDFs.

44:26SPEAKERI often will save a document that's like the links of the links

44:28SPEAKERto the how tos that I follow.

44:30SPEAKERThat's what I used to do until until until a couple of them vanished.

44:34SPEAKERAnd like a year later when I needed it again, it wasn't there anymore.

44:37SPEAKERAnd I was like, OK, I need

44:39SPEAKERI've got all the storage in this box here.

44:41SPEAKERI should just put all these solutions on there.

44:44SPEAKERI have to I have to salute whoever I don't know what the hierarchy of ownership

44:49SPEAKERis between like Stack Exchange and, oh, no, the various whatever.

44:54SPEAKERDon't say good things about Stack Exchange satellite.

44:56SPEAKERI would have to there.

44:57SPEAKERI mean, there are a lot of solutions on there.

44:59SPEAKERBut the thing I was gonna say, though, is whoever whoever set that thing up

45:02SPEAKERlicenses all like they decided early on to license all the content,

45:06SPEAKERall the user content under, I think it's Creative Commons.

45:08SPEAKERI did that without telling the users that they were changing the license.

45:12SPEAKERI believe they're not. There was scene drama there.

45:14SPEAKEROh, well, I mean, but the upside of that, though, is that if a corporation,

45:18SPEAKERif some shitty corporation comes in and acquires that body of information

45:22SPEAKERbecause of the way it's licensed,

45:24SPEAKERyou can just copy all that information and take it and post it somewhere else.

45:27SPEAKERLike nobody can nobody, no, no big corporate owner can come in

45:30SPEAKERand close all that information off and start charging for it or something.

45:33SPEAKERI, I, I, I should say I blocked Stack Exchange from Google

45:37SPEAKERfor a long time when they had that as an option.

45:42SPEAKERAnyway,

45:45SPEAKERStack Exchange is like, well, we could probably do an episode about Stack Exchange.

45:49SPEAKERI have complicated feelings about Stack Exchange. OK, so we've we've been curious.

45:52SPEAKERWe figured out what the problem is.

45:53SPEAKERWe've isolated variables to test the theories and identify the problem.

45:56SPEAKERWe've done some research. We figured out potential solutions.

46:00SPEAKERNow we implement those solutions.

46:02SPEAKERSo this by this point, you should have you should have found something.

46:05SPEAKERYou can try. You should try it.

46:07SPEAKERGood luck. Do one thing at a time.

46:09SPEAKERThis is the place that people mess up.

46:11SPEAKERPeople like, oh, OK, I found 12 different things that'll fix this problem.

46:14SPEAKERI'm going to bang them all out.

46:15SPEAKERAnd then usually you break it worse and you don't know

46:17SPEAKERwhich of the 12 things you did to break the problem to make the problem worse.

46:20SPEAKERYes, you have to resist that urge.

46:22SPEAKERAnd that's where the A/B testing I mentioned earlier comes in.

46:24SPEAKERJust that's just changing one thing between two possibilities

46:27SPEAKERand testing with everything else the same.

46:29SPEAKERDo do one change at a time.

46:31SPEAKERSee if you have initial success.

46:33SPEAKERIf you do, then push on into the next step

46:36SPEAKERwhere we're actually going to do some real testing.

46:39SPEAKERBut but also be prepared.

46:41SPEAKERLike if you went through and reset all of your bio settings, make

46:44SPEAKERone change at a time, reboot it, see what see if it works when you reboot.

46:49SPEAKERIt takes a long time. Yes, this takes forever.

46:51SPEAKERYes, it is mind numbing.

46:53SPEAKERYeah. But but if you're if you're like if you're having driver problems

46:56SPEAKERand you restore a bunch of drivers, do those one at a time.

46:59SPEAKERAnd when it says, hey, you have to reboot after this one.

47:02SPEAKERI know that you don't really, really, really have to reboot

47:04SPEAKERfor most driver installs, but also reboot after each one, please.

47:07SPEAKERYeah, just just play safe.

47:09SPEAKERLike even what you think, even I mean, I'm old fashioned.

47:12SPEAKERLike I even reboot after the ones that don't tell you to reboot anymore.

47:16SPEAKEROh, I don't reboot for weeks on end.

47:18SPEAKERBrad, do you really?

47:20SPEAKERYeah. And I just go to sleep.

47:22SPEAKERI feel like I'm the last person who shuts their computer all the way down every night.

47:26SPEAKERSo I mine goes to sleep.

47:28SPEAKERI've had trouble.

47:29SPEAKERI've had sleep problems since the Windows update earlier this year.

47:33SPEAKERThat's that's a big part of it is that I do not know how many people

47:36SPEAKERand you've got an Intel machine.

47:37SPEAKERI see a lot of AMD users talking about sleep issues, but like

47:40SPEAKERit seems like sleep has just never been all the way reliable.

47:43SPEAKERThe more complicated the stuff in your computer, the less reliable sleep is.

47:47SPEAKERIf you have a laptop, it turns out it's pretty good.

47:49SPEAKERYeah. If you have a computer and there's like some weird capture card

47:52SPEAKERin there from a company that doesn't really care about sleep states,

47:55SPEAKERit's not going to work great.

47:56SPEAKERYes. Yes. Yeah.

47:57SPEAKERI mean, to be clear, my MacBook is on 24/7, 365.

48:00SPEAKERI don't think you can turn those off anymore.

48:01SPEAKERCan you can you can shut them?

48:03SPEAKERActually, it's a whole that's a whole topic.

48:05SPEAKERThey boot as soon as you open them.

48:07SPEAKERYeah. So you can shut them down and close them.

48:11SPEAKERBut when you open the lid, it will come right back on.

48:12SPEAKERAnd there's no there used to be a way to disable that.

48:14SPEAKERAnd there is not anymore.

48:15SPEAKERYeah. They absolutely want MacBooks to be on all the time.

48:19SPEAKERWe tried to turn Gina's off when we were going on a trip

48:21SPEAKERbecause it was going to be in a bag for a while

48:22SPEAKERand she was worried it was going to get hot.

48:24SPEAKERAnd you can do that every time.

48:26SPEAKERBut then I saw what happened was I opened and I was like, damn, it's on again.

48:30SPEAKERYes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. This is stupid.

48:32SPEAKERThat's the annoying part. Anyway, the other thing was sleep.

48:34SPEAKERI mean, we'll get back to topic here.

48:36SPEAKERBut I just I just rarely have anything running that I can't afford to lose

48:42SPEAKERor that I don't like.

48:44SPEAKERIt doesn't take that long to just open stuff again when I start the machine back up.

48:48SPEAKERSo for a while, my machine took a while to boot.

48:51SPEAKERIt's not as bad these days.

48:53SPEAKERBut I do I do like not having to turn everything on like like honestly,

48:58SPEAKERonce I figured out the magic set of USB ports to use on my computer

49:01SPEAKERto make everything work without me to unplug and replug stuff.

49:03SPEAKERSleep became less much less important to me for anyway.

49:08SPEAKEROK, so you fixed it.

49:09SPEAKERYou think you got to fix test test is the last part,

49:12SPEAKERbecause it's not it's not a fix until you're absolutely sure.

49:15SPEAKERAnd you've actually done some some whether it's if it's memory problems,

49:18SPEAKERyou run mem test and you boot off the USB drive and you do the hard one

49:22SPEAKERthat takes makes out all the fans and your computer spin.

49:25SPEAKERThere's a program piece of software that Gordon and Adam over at PC World

49:29SPEAKERintroduced me to call the OCCT, which is, I think, called Overclaw.

49:33SPEAKERIt's overclocking.

49:36SPEAKERI don't know what it stands for,

49:37SPEAKERbut I think it's one of those ones that used to stand for something

49:39SPEAKERand doesn't anymore.

49:41SPEAKERBut it's a it's a.

49:43SPEAKERLet's see, it has it has a timer on it when you launch it that

49:47SPEAKERthat if you don't pay for it, it gets longer the more you don't use it.

49:51SPEAKERBut it's a good way to stress test a machine.

49:53SPEAKERYou can you can hit all the CPUs, even on a massive core machine.

49:58SPEAKERYou can you can do memory testing.

50:00SPEAKERYou can do I think it is a GPU test, if I remember right.

50:03SPEAKERYeah, yeah, I think I think we mentioned that

50:05SPEAKERwhen we talked about new machines set up a few months ago.

50:07SPEAKERYeah, it's quite good and it's relatively easy to use.

50:10SPEAKERAnd you can just hit the button, hit the stability test button

50:13SPEAKERfor whichever part you care about.

50:14SPEAKERAnd it does a reasonably good job.

50:15SPEAKERYeah. You know, if it's

50:19SPEAKERif it's other stuff, just use it.

50:22SPEAKERSee how it works. Pay attention to whether it's working, where it's failing.

50:25SPEAKERKeep an eye on the logs during this period.

50:26SPEAKERIf it's if it's like an open source thing.

50:30SPEAKERI generally try to keep some spare parts around.

50:34SPEAKERLike I like to not have I like to have memory, spare memory,

50:38SPEAKERat least a stick for everybody, all the computers in the house

50:40SPEAKERthat are like ones I use all the time just because downtime is bad.

50:43SPEAKERLike memory standards, thankfully, are like the cycle for a given memory

50:47SPEAKERstandard is long enough that you're likely to have probably at least two

50:50SPEAKERtwo kits in that time, if not three.

50:53SPEAKERYeah, it's just like it's just what it's during the initial transition.

50:55SPEAKERThat's the hard time.

50:57SPEAKERBut it is not like, for example, if you're on a succession of Intel machines,

51:00SPEAKERlike everyone's got a different socket.

51:01SPEAKERI mean, that's changed at least temporarily for right now.

51:04SPEAKERBut like, you know,

51:05SPEAKERyou were not able to test CPUs between different generations of boards there.

51:09SPEAKERSo like that's that's very troublesome.

51:11SPEAKERBut memory, memory generally is going to be compatible back and forth

51:14SPEAKERfor a few years.

51:15SPEAKERYeah. And stuff like, you know,

51:18SPEAKERyou boot off a SATA drive, see if you can boot off a SATA drive

51:21SPEAKERif your MVME is causing problems, whatever.

51:25SPEAKERBrad, you put a good thing on the list here that I hadn't thought about,

51:27SPEAKERbut just like having a nice toolkit is incredibly useful.

51:30SPEAKERSo much. I went so long without.

51:33SPEAKERMy aunt gave me a little Radio Shack computer repair kit

51:36SPEAKERwhen I was 15 for Christmas.

51:37SPEAKERYeah, but I still have and use because it's still useful.

51:41SPEAKERBut it's very basic.

51:42SPEAKERDoes it have like CMOS pullers and stuff?

51:44SPEAKERIt does have a chip puller, actually.

51:45SPEAKERIt's got. Yeah. Oh, it's oh, it's right here.

51:50SPEAKERI was going to say when you were 15, that would have been like early 90s.

51:52SPEAKERSo it's like 80s stuff, right?

51:54SPEAKERMid 90s, like 94, 95, 95, 96 probably is about when I got it.

51:59SPEAKERLike it's got a couple of little like I got this.

52:01SPEAKERI guess this is like a chip. That's a CMOS puller. Yeah.

52:04SPEAKERYes, this is pretty, pretty old school.

52:06SPEAKERSorry. It's plastic, though.

52:08SPEAKERYou have a you have like hex head drivers.

52:11SPEAKERYes, a couple of them, actually.

52:12SPEAKERThat's right here. Is that a screw grabber?

52:14SPEAKERIt is. It's it looks it looks horrifying.

52:16SPEAKERI don't know if you can see this.

52:17SPEAKEROh, yeah, I love those.

52:18SPEAKERIt's the one that has a little like little three pieces of wire

52:20SPEAKERthat spread out and you can grab a screw that's falling into the cracks.

52:23SPEAKERIt's on it. It's on a spring.

52:24SPEAKERIt's got like a plunger and a spring in it.

52:26SPEAKERAnd these horrifying looking metal claws come out of it.

52:30SPEAKERGod, Radio Shack. I have one of those.

52:31SPEAKERIt's like three feet long. Radio Shack used to be so good.

52:34SPEAKERRadio Shack was pretty awesome for stuff like this, for if you need to go

52:37SPEAKERpick up some capacitors and a little toolkit with a CMOS puller in it.

52:41SPEAKERI have a little wobbly spring with a magnet on the end

52:43SPEAKERthat I can jam down into places that are tight to pull like a screw

52:46SPEAKERthat I dropped down in there. Yeah. Yeah.

52:48SPEAKERAnyway, I brought this up because this is all I used for a long time,

52:51SPEAKERbecause, granted, it's got good screwdrivers in it and that was kind of all I needed.

52:54SPEAKERBut like, there's a lot of modern equivalents and stuff like this out there.

52:57SPEAKERI think we talked about some of the stuff before, but the like the iFixit style,

53:01SPEAKERlike, you know, eight, 75 different screw, screw.

53:06SPEAKERWhat's the term? The security bits, security bits.

53:08SPEAKERYeah. So they have like the two.

53:10SPEAKERYou can open an elevator. You can open a Nintendo Switch.

53:13SPEAKERYou can open a, you know, pretty much anything.

53:16SPEAKERTry the pentalobe that's on iPhones, all that stuff.

53:19SPEAKERLike getting one of those has been life changing for me

53:21SPEAKERbecause you don't need it that often.

53:23SPEAKERBut when you need it, you're so glad you have it.

53:25SPEAKERThat it is absolutely worth whatever you paid for.

53:28SPEAKERIt's nice for putting a screw into your glasses, too.

53:30SPEAKERYeah. Yeah, totally. Stuff like that.

53:31SPEAKEROr like, you know, you're like, there are just enough

53:33SPEAKERTorx screws and stuff like that out there that having having interchangeable stuff

53:37SPEAKERis super nice. Yep.

53:39SPEAKERThe headlamp is my favorite thing.

53:41SPEAKERThe headlamp is another thing that like those those two things

53:44SPEAKERthe screwdriver said and the headlamp were just both like, why did I wait so long?

53:47SPEAKERI love that you're living that headlamp life now.

53:49SPEAKERThat makes me so happy. I have three of them.

53:51SPEAKERWhat? We've gone from zero to three in like less than a year.

53:54SPEAKERI didn't pay for any of them. They all like, let's see, appeared.

53:57SPEAKEROne of them was an Amazon freebie because I bought something I bought a

54:02SPEAKERI still like to say multimeter, even though most people like multimeter here in the States, I think.

54:05SPEAKERBut I bought I bought a multimeter and it came with a headlamp.

54:10SPEAKERI've gotten a couple other there.

54:11SPEAKERThey've all been freebies off of different, different promotional things.

54:15SPEAKERBut they're also like they're cheap.

54:16SPEAKERYou can get you can get a little ten dollar AAA battery driven one if you want.

54:21SPEAKERBut you can also get nicer ones.

54:23SPEAKERI will tell you, I pretty regularly when people when I find out somebody doesn't have one,

54:27SPEAKERI usually buy a twenty dollar black diamond one at the REI and they're fabulous.

54:32SPEAKERIt's so nice when you're bending over a computer trying to see in weird little places to like,

54:36SPEAKERespecially if like, you know, you're trying to like snake your hands under the graphics card

54:39SPEAKERto plug some motherboard headers in or a fan header or something like that.

54:42SPEAKERAnd you can't quite make things out.

54:44SPEAKERIt's I spent I spent so long like grabbing a lamp and putting it on the floor and trying

54:49SPEAKERto angle it.

54:50SPEAKERYeah, it sucks.

54:51SPEAKERIt's awful.

54:52SPEAKERIt's terrible.

54:53SPEAKERWhat if what if you just have light every direction?

54:54SPEAKERLet me tell you, Cooler Master, I think, used to do a case that plugged into the USB header

54:59SPEAKERinside and it had like a light that had a switch that you could flip on and off while

55:05SPEAKERyou were working in there that just floodlit the entire inside of the case.

55:08SPEAKERIt was so good.

55:09SPEAKEROh, wow.

55:10SPEAKERYeah, that's pretty good.

55:11SPEAKERLike it was on three sides of the case.

55:13SPEAKERIt was awesome.

55:14SPEAKERYes.

55:15SPEAKERI have to, I have to, I have to say real fast.

55:16SPEAKERI've clowned myself.

55:17SPEAKERHow so?

55:18SPEAKERWith when I, when I built this machine I put it, I put the classic, the Noctua NH-D15,

55:24SPEAKERthe King in there and they make an all black one now because most people like to have like

55:29SPEAKERnice sleek black parts in their thing.

55:31SPEAKERBut the classic is a like chromed metal with the brown, the beige fans, you know, and I

55:37SPEAKERwent, I went, ha ha, I'm going to get the beige one just because people are gonna be

55:41SPEAKERlike, you're dumb, forgetting beige.

55:43SPEAKERThe thing is so reflective with a headlamp on the chrome sides of this cooler is so reflective

55:50SPEAKERwith the headlamp on.

55:51SPEAKERI have to be very careful.

55:52SPEAKERSo you're just getting blasted right in the eyes.

55:53SPEAKEROh boy.

55:54SPEAKERI have to be very careful with, with how I look inside the case.

55:58SPEAKERI bought, I bought a electric blower, a canned air blower.

56:04SPEAKERI've had one of those for years and it is a godsend.

56:06SPEAKERIs yours battery powered or is it?

56:08SPEAKERMine's wall powered.

56:09SPEAKERMine plugs into the wall.

56:10SPEAKERYeah.

56:11SPEAKERIt's got the X power that's all over Amazon.

56:12SPEAKERI don't know.

56:13SPEAKERI use mine to do everything.

56:15SPEAKERIt cleans like the filters on the, the, the, when it, when it, when the air filters get

56:20SPEAKERput up at the end of the fire season, that thing comes out and I blast them clean.

56:25SPEAKERI literally bought all the filters in the PC.

56:28SPEAKEREverything gets blasted with that thing.

56:29SPEAKERIt's fabulous.

56:30SPEAKERYeah.

56:31SPEAKERI've, I've, I've never run into this cause I'm just obsessive about blowing dust out

56:34SPEAKERevery so often, but I've certainly heard from people who have had weird computer issues

56:38SPEAKERthat they've realized they hadn't opened the machine in three years and like a fan was

56:43SPEAKERno longer turning because of dust accumulation.

56:45SPEAKERSo, okay.

56:46SPEAKERSo here is the one thing to know about using canned air or blower on fans is that you want

56:52SPEAKERto not let the fan spin while you're doing that because they can because a motor and

56:57SPEAKERa generator are the same thing, just whether the, whether electricity is going in or coming

57:00SPEAKERout and you can back flush, you can back charge the motherboard.

57:05SPEAKERIf you let the fan spin.

57:06SPEAKEROh, I didn't know about that.

57:07SPEAKERI, I have always heard just like the, the machinery, the bearing bearings and stuff

57:11SPEAKERinside the fan also might not be able to withstand the speed that it would blow out.

57:16SPEAKERIf you, if you, yeah, maybe, but the real problem is that they'll generate electricity

57:20SPEAKERand pump it back into the, into the board.

57:23SPEAKERReplacing a fan is not the end of the world, but if it can also damage the actual machine,

57:26SPEAKERthat's bad.

57:27SPEAKERYeah.

57:28SPEAKERYou can just put like, I often just jam a pencil in between the blade, one of the struts

57:32SPEAKERand it'll keep it from moving while you're cleaning out.

57:34SPEAKERAlso my blower was like 50 bucks and if you look at the cost of canned air, like it's

57:38SPEAKERjust insane.

57:39SPEAKERLike a, like a three pack of canned air is pushing, maybe not 50, but it's like, you

57:43SPEAKERknow, you don't, you don't have to go through too many cans of air before you have, it's

57:46SPEAKERpaid for itself.

57:49SPEAKERSo anyway and then you have a soldering iron here.

57:53SPEAKERI don't think I've ever needed a soldering iron to fix a PC part.

57:56SPEAKERI put soldering iron maybe, you know, I've used it, I've used it to fix wiring before.

58:02SPEAKERI've used it to fix toys and wiring and stuff like that.

58:05SPEAKERI've used it to fix like big electronic stuff.

58:09SPEAKERI had a little component of MOSFET fall off of an Intel board once and the board worked

58:14SPEAKERfine other than the fact that the network, it was part of the networking, it was right

58:19SPEAKERnext to the ethernet port and it stopped the networking from ever working again and it

58:23SPEAKERwas so small and SMT soldered, like pad soldered, I couldn't get it soldered back on.

58:28SPEAKERSo my soldering iron wasn't as good back then, so maybe more modern, better soldering iron

58:33SPEAKERwould work better.

58:34SPEAKERYeah.

58:35SPEAKERThe, the MOSFET on the little fan controller on my old fractal case is it's, I guess it's

58:39SPEAKERnot bad, but maybe the connection is bad because if I kind of wiggle it back and forth with

58:43SPEAKERmy finger, the fan will come on and then go off.

58:46SPEAKERSo I guess, I guess that means that, that means the connection's bad, it just needs

58:49SPEAKERto be re-soldered.

58:50SPEAKERI mean the MOSFET's bad too.

58:52SPEAKERYeah.

58:53SPEAKERThey, I don't think there's a whole lot of MOSFETs that can go bad though.

58:55SPEAKERI don't know.

58:57SPEAKERAnd then, so if your tests fail, do you do it again?

58:59SPEAKERIf it doesn't, then you put the, close everything up and you call it a day.

59:02SPEAKERNice job.

59:03SPEAKERIt's the doing again part that really gets me, like I actually, I don't mind troubleshooting.

59:08SPEAKERIt's kind of a fun puzzle to solve except when it starts dragging into it's like say

59:12SPEAKERfifth or sixth iteration and you especially, I'm not speaking from recent experience here,

59:18SPEAKERespecially if it's something that requires a bajillion tedious steps every time you test

59:22SPEAKERsomething.

59:23SPEAKERIt's like something that takes 20 or 30 minutes of TDM to build back up and take apart and

59:29SPEAKERbuild back up over and over.

59:31SPEAKERAnd then actually testing the thing to see if it works takes about five seconds of hitting

59:34SPEAKERa switch, but you have to do that a dozen times.

59:36SPEAKERIt's.

59:37SPEAKERI, I had a problem once when I was at max PC that required I reinstall windows every

59:42SPEAKERsingle time to see, to get it to happen and just, it was a lot dead.

59:50SPEAKERLike once you find the fixed label, label everything, like I, I, every time I have to

59:57SPEAKERunplug and replug all the USB stuff, I curse myself because I still haven't labeled which

1:00:01SPEAKERUSB ports are the right ones for my stuff.

1:00:05SPEAKERWrite down what you did.

1:00:06SPEAKERIf you don't write it down, it didn't happen.

1:00:08SPEAKERA doctor friend of mine always used to say that I'd really, for real, like once you're

1:00:14SPEAKERtired, stop, go do something else, go to bed, wake up in the morning, work on it more.

1:00:19SPEAKERAnd, and do go back and revisit your old, the posts.

1:00:22SPEAKERThat's that's, you know, that's a big one actually, cause I've been troubleshooting

1:00:25SPEAKERsome stuff recently.

1:00:26SPEAKERAnd now that you mentioned it, I don't know how many times I've come upon people describing

1:00:30SPEAKERmy problem and then never actually coming back around to say if the thing, the advice

1:00:34SPEAKERthey got worked or not.

1:00:35SPEAKERYeah.

1:00:36SPEAKERAnd of course the other side of this is if you post a question someplace, go back and

1:00:40SPEAKERpost what you did to fix the problem.

1:00:42SPEAKERYeah.

1:00:43SPEAKERRight.

1:00:44SPEAKERLike, like, yeah.

1:00:45SPEAKERCause somebody else will find that post at some point in the future and be like, oh man,

1:00:48SPEAKERI guess this is, I'm just going to have to buy a new one.

1:00:50SPEAKERThis is terrible.

1:00:51SPEAKERSo yeah, it's always better to fix the thing, buy the new one if you can.

1:00:54SPEAKERSo, so that's the troubleshooting theory episode, I guess I'd love to hear what people think

1:01:00SPEAKERand what they do differently from us.

1:01:02SPEAKERYes.

1:01:03SPEAKERWe, we thrive on user tips and tricks.

1:01:05SPEAKERSo especially on our discord or email, please let us know if there's anything we haven't

1:01:10SPEAKERmentioned here that we could benefit from as well as our audience.

1:01:13SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:14SPEAKERThere'll be a feedback thread in the discord if you're a Patreon member or you can send

1:01:17SPEAKERit to techpod@content.town.

1:01:20SPEAKERIf you just want to use an electronic mail or email but yeah.

1:01:25SPEAKERThat's what that means.

1:01:26SPEAKERHave you heard about those?

1:01:27SPEAKERIt's the way for the future.

1:01:28SPEAKERThey're going to change the world.

1:01:29SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:30SPEAKERIt's a whole new thing.

1:01:31SPEAKERBut this is the part of the show where we thank our patrons, the people who make the

1:01:34SPEAKERshow possible.

1:01:35SPEAKERThis is a hundred percent listener supported show.

1:01:37SPEAKERSo without you all, we wouldn't be here.

1:01:39SPEAKERThank you so much patrons.

1:01:43SPEAKERAnd a very special thank you to our executive producer, to your patrons who I have not opened

1:01:49SPEAKERup on my, on my list yet.

1:01:51SPEAKERSo bad at filling.

1:01:52SPEAKERI don't know if I can.

1:01:55SPEAKERI got you.

1:01:56SPEAKEROkay.

1:01:57SPEAKERYou thank you to all of our executive producer, to your patrons, including Nick Johnston,

1:02:04SPEAKERPaddle Creek Games, Makers of Fractured Veil, Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett, Dollar Sign,

1:02:09SPEAKERWest Wedge, Joel Krauska, Twinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon, Makers

1:02:14SPEAKERof the HS3 High Speed 3D Printer.

1:02:16SPEAKERThank you.

1:02:17SPEAKERThank you all so much.

1:02:18SPEAKERThank you.

1:02:19SPEAKERThank you.

1:02:20SPEAKERIf you want to find out how to support the show, which is an important part of this segment

1:02:22SPEAKERthat I've forgotten up until now, you can go to patreon.com/techbot again.

1:02:27SPEAKERThat's patreon.com/techbot or patreon.com/techbot, or I think you can go to techbot.content.town/patreon.

1:02:34SPEAKERAll of those will go to the same place.

1:02:35SPEAKERI don't know about that last one.

1:02:36SPEAKERI'm suddenly questioning myself.

1:02:38SPEAKERBut, for five bucks, you support the show, you get access to the fabulous Techbot Discord,

1:02:44SPEAKERwhich is full of lovely people.

1:02:46SPEAKERSomebody joined, a new person joined, I won't out them, but a new person joined the Patreon

1:02:50SPEAKERthis week.

1:02:51SPEAKERThey were like, "I'd heard how nice a place this was."

1:02:55SPEAKERThen they joined into the Patreon and immediately got a bunch of pictures of nonsense in the

1:02:59SPEAKERgeneral feed.

1:03:00SPEAKERThey were like, "Oh, I'm good.

1:03:03SPEAKERThis is where I want to be."

1:03:04SPEAKERThis morning, I opened it up, and it was just pictures of raccoons.

1:03:08SPEAKERMillions and millions, maybe not millions, but a whole buttload of pictures of raccoons

1:03:11SPEAKERdoing very cute things and not being monsters.

1:03:14SPEAKERThat was nice.

1:03:15SPEAKERNo, raccoons have their downsides, but I think they're a delightful animal.

1:03:21SPEAKERThey may be festering with all sorts of horrible diseases.

1:03:25SPEAKERMy daughter found a YouTuber who has some house raccoons that are raised by humans,

1:03:33SPEAKERso they understand human ways, and they post cute videos with them swimming in their pool,

1:03:39SPEAKERwhich sounds revolting, but whatever.

1:03:41SPEAKERI'm not going to judge.

1:03:42SPEAKERThey did a mean thing to the raccoons, which I'm usually against cruelty to animals, but

1:03:47SPEAKERraccoons-

1:03:48SPEAKERDon't be mean to raccoons.

1:03:49SPEAKERThey gave them cotton candy, Brad.

1:03:51SPEAKERWait, does that mean?

1:03:52SPEAKERWell, so raccoons like to wash their food, right?

1:03:55SPEAKEROh, really?

1:03:56SPEAKERThey handed them cotton candy.

1:03:57SPEAKEROh, I didn't know that.

1:03:58SPEAKERThey ate the cotton candy.

1:03:59SPEAKERThey were like, "This is really good."

1:04:00SPEAKERThey put a bowl of water out.

1:04:02SPEAKERThey wash the food, and the cotton candy immediately just dissolves when they put it in the water,

1:04:07SPEAKERand they're like, "Wait, what happened?

1:04:08SPEAKERWhere's the good stuff?"

1:04:09SPEAKERThat's terrible.

1:04:10SPEAKERThat's kind of funny, but that's terrible.

1:04:11SPEAKERIt's kind of funny.

1:04:12SPEAKERI didn't know raccoons washed their food.

1:04:13SPEAKERYou said they were unclean.

1:04:15SPEAKERThat sounds pretty hygienic to me.

1:04:17SPEAKERWell, okay.

1:04:18SPEAKERThey wash their food because I think they have taste buds in their paws, so when they

1:04:21SPEAKERget it wet, they can taste it and see if the garbage is sufficiently ripe to eat without

1:04:26SPEAKERkilling them.

1:04:27SPEAKERInteresting.

1:04:28SPEAKEROkay.

1:04:29SPEAKERThe problem with raccoons, if you ever find a raccoon latrine, which is where a large

1:04:34SPEAKERnumber of raccoons have gone to the bathroom, hire a professional to clean it, because it

1:04:39SPEAKERhas parasites that will get in your brain and kill you.

1:04:41SPEAKEROh, no.

1:04:42SPEAKERYeah.

1:04:43SPEAKERIf you breathe the dust, is the contagion vector.

1:04:48SPEAKERIt's not just cast with spreadable brain parasites anymore?

1:04:52SPEAKERYeah, raccoon latrines, you've got to wear respirators and stuff.

1:04:58SPEAKERAnd if you do something stupid -- oh, yeah, if you cannot use heat, such as flame or boiling

1:05:05SPEAKERwater, you have to use hot, soapy water and a damp, not wet sponge to wipe up residual

1:05:10SPEAKERfecal material, flush dirty rinse water down the toilet.

1:05:15SPEAKERThanks, King County, Washington.

1:05:16SPEAKERI might keep my distance next time I see a raccoon.

1:05:20SPEAKERLook, they're fine.

1:05:22SPEAKERTrash pandas, indeed.

1:05:23SPEAKERYeah.

1:05:24SPEAKERI do love a trash panda.

1:05:27SPEAKERBut that'll do it for us this week.

1:05:28SPEAKERHave a good week, everybody.

1:05:29SPEAKERWe'll see you all next time.

1:05:30SPEAKERBye!