258: Some Real MacGyver #$@!%

00:00SPEAKERso i plugged a smart plug that tracks power into my server's plug why would you do that to yourself

00:06SPEAKERi was i was curious so we were talking at pc world the other day about small like nuk style

00:13SPEAKERservers and i have this old b-link i think it's a 12th generation celeron back there right now which

00:17SPEAKERis which i bought specifically because it's a real low power drive yeah it's like you know under load

00:23SPEAKERit goes it goes fast enough it has quick sync for video but you can stream something on plex without

00:28SPEAKERit busting up to like 100 watts like my old desktop pc would have right normal normally i would say and

00:32SPEAKERthis i definitely fit into this category that this is the type of thing you're better off not knowing

00:36SPEAKERbut you have made choices that at least give some reason for optimism yeah look i'm looking at i'm

00:41SPEAKERlooking down the barrel of a 500 dollar power bill every month now part of it is because well my god

00:45SPEAKERit's also my car right okay sure so i'm not buying gas sure sure yeah that helps especially around

00:51SPEAKERhere as somebody we'll get into it on the main episode is somebody who pumped a lot of gas in

00:55SPEAKERa different part of the country recently gas is very expensive in the bay area yeah but but so

01:01SPEAKERanyway a big chunk of that is car that's fine i'm you know that's part of the deal still cheaper

01:06SPEAKERthan gas but i plugged in the the two smart plugs and i unfortunately i didn't have enough unused

01:12SPEAKERones so i stole them from like the christmas tree plug and one of the holiday lights that we put in

01:18SPEAKERthe front windows of the house plugs and didn't really think about the downstream consequences

01:22SPEAKERof that when the server turned off midway through a movie um somebody clapped their hands and oops

01:28SPEAKERplexed behind yeah hey it's time for the it's time for the for the holiday lights to turn off so all

01:33SPEAKEReverything turned off anyway i fixed i worked that out that's all better now but it's been interesting

01:38SPEAKERbecause i was running it versus a 14th gen intel msi box to see like what the the idle draw was

01:44SPEAKERon these on these things and that 12th gen celeron is the is the king that msi box is a little bit

01:50SPEAKERmore powerful it has a lot more cores but it still is like seven eight watts constant idle draw and

01:58SPEAKERuh it goes up it goes up about the same place when you put it under load like none of these are real

02:03SPEAKERhigh load servers they're like you know if somebody logs onto the minecraft server it spikes up for a

02:08SPEAKERsecond and then comes back down to like two watts higher than it was before but but it's kind of

02:13SPEAKERinteresting because i have this dashboard in home assistant that i can look at that shows me how

02:17SPEAKERmuch power the server is consuming at any moment now which is kind of fun so like here i'll share

02:24SPEAKERi'll share my screen so you can see what i'm talking about oh look at that oh real time yeah

02:28SPEAKERyou get like a line graph of what the current consumption is based on what the server is doing

02:34SPEAKERand like when somebody connects to plex it it boosts up and when somebody's off plex it comes

02:37SPEAKERdown and it's literally like a little real time like needle gauge like in a car or something you

02:42SPEAKERjust watch the needle going up and down well yeah and then there's also graphs over time that update

02:47SPEAKERlike every five or ten seconds it seems three to six seconds it seems like so you can get a good

02:52SPEAKERidea of like how much consumption you're using per day and stuff like that it's it's it's it's not

02:57SPEAKERsomething i realized they've done a lot of work on the power side of home assistant lately that

03:01SPEAKERi hadn't really been paying attention to and it's it's pretty pretty good that's cool i mean that

03:06SPEAKERthat's the type of information that you should know but might not want to know i can i can tell

03:10SPEAKERyou i've got a ups here the closest i've ever gotten to this is i have a ups and i have just

03:15SPEAKERlooked at the ups readout with everything running on it and with my nas which is a 12 600k

03:22SPEAKERmy edge router and like two raspberry pies three raspberry pies now i'm doing like 75 to 80 watts

03:31SPEAKERsteadily well so it's worth mentioning i don't have the synology with the spinning disks okay

03:36SPEAKERokay this is not your hard drives got it this is just the little server okay that makes me feel

03:40SPEAKERbetter because i think hard drives add up i think the motors add up because it's spinning all the

03:44SPEAKERtime i think the raspberry pies are basically free right the raspberry pies are like a couple of watts

03:49SPEAKEReach yes yeah but but yeah i think the if i put the synology in here i think my number would go

03:55SPEAKERup if i put my 24 point port switch in there i think the number would go up pretty significantly

04:00SPEAKERtoo probably because it's also power over ethernetting like multiple other downstream

04:05SPEAKERswitches and i think even the access point but i'm not sure because i don't think any

04:10SPEAKERof my switches are plugged into power maybe the one in my office is plugged into power

04:14SPEAKERthe rest of them were just powered over ethernet sure i i my frame of reference for like excessive

04:18SPEAKERwattage still goes back to the the what did i get yelled at for leaving lights on about scale

04:24SPEAKERfrom back in the day you know and i just think like okay that's just like one 60 watt light

04:28SPEAKERbulb and a little bit extra right that how bad how bad could it be except brad now your 60 watt

04:33SPEAKERlight bulb pulls like three watts and uh yeah the the the bulbs are nothing and even the rgb bulbs

04:41SPEAKERare nothing it's it's the future because i could just hear the voice now brad turn off that damn

04:46SPEAKERserver

05:11SPEAKERso

05:15SPEAKERwelcome to brad and will made a tech pod i'm will i'm brad i'm back welcome back thank you

05:21SPEAKERhi hello we have to be here we toured the tech pod regulars with norm and adam uh and wes over

05:30SPEAKERthe last several weeks but you've returned from your voyages yes thank you for holding it down

05:34SPEAKERthank you to all those guys very much for for swinging through it was fun fun looking at the

05:38SPEAKERepisode list and just like oh it's a who's who of current and former you know it's it's fun because

05:43SPEAKERwhen you're not like we've done 250 some episodes of this podcast at this point right there's like

05:49SPEAKERthree of them that i can listen to that i wasn't part of sure so i got to listen to the tech pod

05:54SPEAKERwhen you had vinny on while i was while i was dealing with covid stuff um it's a it's always

05:58SPEAKERa nice treat so yeah thanks yeah yeah thanks to them uh and i guess now we're here to talk about

06:04SPEAKERsome of the things i was doing while i was not on this podcast yeah i i am i am wildly curious so

06:12SPEAKERwe talked years and years ago after the california wildfires about like getting like a preparation

06:21SPEAKERkit for disaster preparedness kit together and we did that based on like the california i think

06:26SPEAKERthere's a 72-hour california website that's like hey here's what you need to survive for the 72

06:31SPEAKERhours after a disaster before you'll start seeing help from the outside like you have to you have to

06:36SPEAKERyou should assume that you're going to need to be relatively self-sufficient for up to 72 hours

06:43SPEAKERwhich i think is a little optimistic given what we know now yeah well depends on you know depends on

06:48SPEAKERthe area depends on the scale of the disaster of course but but yes it absolutely could exceed 72

06:52SPEAKERhours but but so you had a trip planned before helene hit yes and uh for the it ended up being

07:01SPEAKERthe week after helene uh yeah actually four days let's see so the storm it was funny talking to

07:07SPEAKERneighbors like the kind of what the the range of the storm was was a little different depending on

07:11SPEAKERwho you talk to but it was like four solid days of rain but the the peak of the storm was um

07:16SPEAKERuh thursday night friday morning when all the flooding happened when all the flooding happened

07:20SPEAKERyeah so it was kind of in the friday morning when the news was coming out about how bad it had gotten

07:24SPEAKERand our flight was tuesday morning so we we already had just a random trip we were just going

07:29SPEAKERto see my parents for a week uh we already had that trip booked uh four days after the storm hit

07:35SPEAKERso the kind of interesting thing about it from here was that there was a lot of news coming out

07:42SPEAKERfrom like northeast eastern tennessee like southeastern tennessee and western more eastern

07:49SPEAKERnorth carolina but there wasn't very much news coming out of ashville um that the greater

07:55SPEAKERashville area because 40 was like the interstates in and out of town were were closed and i feel

08:03SPEAKERlike there weren't a lot of and internet was down pretty much through the entire region so i feel

08:08SPEAKERlike there wasn't a lot of news like the news people couldn't get there to do the the their

08:12SPEAKERcoverage shots they were going to like elizabethton and irwin and and all these places around northeast

08:17SPEAKERtennessee instead yeah and then if they could have gotten there there was like you said there

08:20SPEAKERwas essentially no connectivity in and out of there so getting unless you were maybe satellite

08:25SPEAKERlike some kind of satellite uplink probably would have been your only option at that point

08:28SPEAKERthose big satellite trucks couldn't couldn't manage the roads it seemed like so right um and then by

08:34SPEAKERthe time they could get up there the news cycle had passed and like it was just oh it's a massive

08:40SPEAKERhumanitarian problem in ashville good luck yeah for sure um so so just up front what i wanted to

08:46SPEAKERdo with this episode is like i got toward the end of the trip and realized how many different like

08:50SPEAKERtechnical areas i had to touch uh as we were just trying to get by day to day from like electrical

08:56SPEAKERand gas engine generator stuff uh to like house repair you know pulling up flooring mold remediation

09:04SPEAKERtype stuff like i kind of i kind of just want to like pick your brain about like your homeowner

09:07SPEAKERknowledge oh god talk about electrical wiring and the way generators work and i mean i've got some

09:13SPEAKERcomputing stuff in here too that i had to mess with like some um some disaster preparedness

09:18SPEAKERstuff in terms of like portable solar lighting and battery packs and you know x y and z different

09:24SPEAKERthings that you know i came in contact with buying a generator like having to having to find and i

09:30SPEAKERstarted to say like pick out a generator on short notice but like frankly what we were picking out

09:36SPEAKERwas whatever they had right like we didn't exactly have a lot of uh inventory to pick from uh when we

09:41SPEAKERhad to find a generator quickly so but you know there's there's just a bajillion different little

09:45SPEAKERtechnical areas of expertise that i had to like try to figure out quickly and i thought it would

09:49SPEAKERbe kind of interesting to run a lot of that stuff down yeah i'm before we before we i i'm really

09:54SPEAKERcurious what it was like on the ground though like like i've read accounts of what it was like post

09:59SPEAKERkatrina and and like our friend friend of the show nathan edwards lived in houston when they

10:04SPEAKERhad the big floods uh probably 10 years ago now um and it's it's interesting talking to people who've

10:12SPEAKERbeen in those situations because there's some stuff that's always different but then there's

10:15SPEAKERalso a lot of stuff that's always the same sure um so so um like it was just to be clear it was just

10:23SPEAKERa ludicrous amount of rain in a really short period of time right yeah yeah so our i talked

10:27SPEAKERto our neighbor up the hill who was a civil engineer by training so you can assume he's

10:32SPEAKERprobably relatively exacting about his measurements from tuesday night when the

10:35SPEAKERrain started to friday morning after the storm had peaked like i said he measured 32 inches

10:40SPEAKERthat's incredible which is you know i've never owned a house i understand that's quite a bit of

10:44SPEAKERwater we we've had so when we've had big coastal storms here like sometimes we'll see an inch or

10:50SPEAKERtwo an hour and that's that's a lot when we when our crawlspace flooded on new year's a few years

10:56SPEAKERago i can't remember exactly how much it was but it was it was it was fractions of 32 inches over

11:02SPEAKERa two-day 3d you know 72 hour period sure yes it was a substantial amount of water got dumped i

11:08SPEAKERunderstand i didn't i didn't get to spend a lot of time looking at kind of like the post-mortem on

11:12SPEAKERthe storm behavior but it sounds like it sounds like it migrated up from the gulf coast through

11:17SPEAKERthe southeast and then it just kind of parked itself over the western north carolina eastern

11:20SPEAKERtennessee area for a while yeah it seems like it came up it carried a bunch of water up through

11:25SPEAKERbecause like it went through atlanta and georgia and a little bit of south carolina and didn't do

11:31SPEAKERa whole lot of like it was it was a bad storm but it wasn't like apocalyptic like this yeah and then

11:36SPEAKERit seems like once it hit the mountains it didn't have enough juice to get over the mountains so it

11:40SPEAKERjust dumped all the water it was still carrying uh and the the my understanding i'm not a meteorologist

11:46SPEAKERbut my understanding is that because the air was warmer and because the gulf is warmer you're

11:51SPEAKERgetting more water in these storms now than you have in the past which is why you're seeing so

11:56SPEAKERmuch more rain out of them which seems like it's going to be a significant problem to deal with

12:01SPEAKERin years to come for that area um the whole southeast i mean the whole hurricane everywhere

12:06SPEAKERyeah or even like hurricanes go all the way up the coast now you know like you've got

12:10SPEAKERhurricanes hitting new york these days hurricanes there were hurricanes hitting northern europe

12:14SPEAKERthis year yeah it seems fine oh sure um let's see here where to go from there uh well can we talk

12:22SPEAKERabout the like i saw a bunch of places roads seem to have washed out yeah there was um there was a

12:28SPEAKERspot about half a mile from my parents house although they had they had done road work putting

12:33SPEAKERin some kind of culvert or something there so it was like kind of a temp pave job yeah but but

12:37SPEAKERfully one entire lane just washed down into the gully uh so we were driving around that the whole

12:42SPEAKERtime we were there but um i i should say my i the area that this is the house i grew up in and that

12:48SPEAKERarea is about 30 minutes outside of ashville 45 depending on where you're going exactly um we were

12:54SPEAKERincredibly lucky where we were because ashville proper and the areas north of ashville up toward

13:00SPEAKERlake lake lore got it infinitely worse than we did um i don't know anybody that got hurt like i you

13:06SPEAKERknow everybody in the neighborhood had water in the house like my parents had close to a foot of

13:10SPEAKERwater flow through there but it was all just property damage i don't know anybody that got

13:14SPEAKERhurt but i definitely know people who know people or sorry i know people who have friends who did

13:19SPEAKERyeah if that makes sense like definitely would hear stories from people you talk to of like oh

13:24SPEAKERi've got a friend up around on you know lives on the swan anoa or up around chimney rock or

13:29SPEAKERsomething who has nothing left but the clothes they were wearing type stuff you know uh we you

13:35SPEAKERheard a lot about a lot of missing people too yes my neighbor neighbor as by the time i left the

13:39SPEAKERneighbor one of the neighbors had a friend up in ashville who still had not been found so

13:43SPEAKERi'd i'd mostly say that you know hearts go out to those people and also to say like you know

13:47SPEAKERthings were not great where we're from structurally but like it was it could have

13:50SPEAKERbeen so much worse for us so i i feel fortunate that it wasn't worse and i feel terrible for the

13:56SPEAKERpeople up there that's uh but anyway yeah so like the flood waters had all receded by the time we

14:01SPEAKERcame in four days later like i'm sure up around ashville and you know where that dam was letting

14:06SPEAKERoff excess there was still plenty of standing water but it was mostly all drained out where

14:10SPEAKERwhere we lived okay but it definitely coming in from the airport was an interesting scene

14:15SPEAKERum i i did a fair amount of homework before we flew out there because it definitely had

14:18SPEAKERsome people reach out say was saying like hey i don't know if you should fly out there like

14:22SPEAKERthey're saying don't travel in western north carolina right now so i spent a lot of time on

14:27SPEAKERlike the north carolina dot has a good road closures website so i was like literally routing

14:33SPEAKERand when we were lucky to be able to get from the airport we flew into the ashville airport

14:37SPEAKERto my parents house without touching interstates yeah yeah um so i very intensively went through

14:42SPEAKERlooking at road closures and felt confident we could make it once we got in which we did like

14:48SPEAKERmy mom told me that they were seeing around their area they were just seeing like regular people

14:52SPEAKERrolling up with chainsaws on like roads that had downed trees and just going in and like cutting

14:57SPEAKERout enough to open up a lane type stuff before proper road crews were even getting out so like

15:02SPEAKERpeople were pitching in making things passable so we got there the flight in was fine like we get

15:08SPEAKERthere and of course there are like military helicopters idling on the tarmac there's like

15:12SPEAKERbig supply trucks going back and forth um probably the craziest thing getting in was phones had mostly

15:17SPEAKERbeen working the first two three days after the storm yeah for whatever reason the day that we

15:23SPEAKERflew in at verizon at least i don't know about other carriers verizon was utterly non-existent

15:28SPEAKERjust down like my our phones once we hit the ground in ashville our phones were just pinging

15:32SPEAKERsos on leak period like zero signal no matter where we went the thing that happened when we

15:37SPEAKERhad the power outages for like seven days here is that the towers were good for 48 hours maybe 30

15:44SPEAKERmaybe maybe a little bit longer and then the battery backups that they used ran out and then

15:49SPEAKEReverything went dark like i guess it probably was something like that but like we'd literally no

15:53SPEAKERdata no phone calls no nothing at the airport and there was it turned out to be fine but there was

15:58SPEAKERkind of a miscommunication about when we were going to get in such that our ride didn't show

16:02SPEAKERup for about 90 minutes after we got outside which is like it's fine like the weight was not really

16:07SPEAKERthe problem it was more the worry that something bad had happened yeah yeah because we had no way

16:11SPEAKERto get any kind of word in or out so it was more just like okay you know we were kind of like

16:17SPEAKERtrying to absorb the conditions on the ground in general you know really just like what's what the

16:20SPEAKERhell's going on out here like our family member has not shown up like i really hope something bad

16:25SPEAKERis not going on it turned out like i said it was basically just a miscommunication so that was not

16:29SPEAKERa big deal but it's it's it really is just really humbling to realize how dependent you are on

16:34SPEAKERmagical anywhere communication in your pocket once it goes away like it's really too bad

16:39SPEAKERthat kurt cobain didn't live long enough to see gps that's all i know yeah yeah um and you know

16:44SPEAKERlike even at the airport like we went and just talked to the ground transportation people because

16:48SPEAKERwe were just like oh let's maybe we can just get a car and go home and they were like hey our phones

16:52SPEAKERdon't work any better than yours too like there's not much we can do for you so again it's just like

16:57SPEAKERwe don't really have a lot of options you know you just are dependent on modern infrastructure

17:00SPEAKERbecause that's what's there but like once that once that disappears you really is a serious

17:05SPEAKERreality check it seems like there's like time moves differently right yeah for sure so driving

17:12SPEAKERin i mean it was kind of what you would expect it was a lot of roads washed out like lines down

17:15SPEAKERliterally everywhere you looked like road signs blown over uh trees down on houses uh you name it

17:23SPEAKERjust kind of your standard flood damage that you would expect to see um so what were like once you

17:30SPEAKERwere there and settled in what were days like where like could you i assume you weren't driving

17:34SPEAKERaround a lot because i assume gas was fairly precious and like you probably didn't have

17:39SPEAKERplaces like probably there wasn't places you could go to buy stuff if you needed to buy something

17:43SPEAKERright yeah so um everybody in their neighborhood is on well water they're too far out to be on city

17:48SPEAKERwater um and so which means when the power is out there's no running water uh so before we got there

17:54SPEAKERthere was one neighbor that had a generator who had been running it every afternoon and letting

17:58SPEAKERneighbors who did not have power come and fill up a bunch of you know like five gallon oh that's

18:03SPEAKERbeautiful containers so yeah i mean there was a tremendous amount of just like neighbors pulling

18:07SPEAKERtogether mutual aid community helping itself type you know what i mean yeah generally over the course

18:13SPEAKERof this whole thing but so like everybody was kind of getting water where they could so they could

18:17SPEAKERflush toilets and stuff like that for people who don't know this is the thing i feel i've learned

18:22SPEAKERthat a bunch of people don't know if you fill the top tank of your toilet with water even if you

18:26SPEAKERdon't have water running in your house the toilet will flush when you push the lever yep it sure

18:31SPEAKERwill yeah and important knowledge they even had a system worked out where they had like here's

18:35SPEAKERclean drinkable water here's toilet flush water oh that's that's awesome because like here because

18:40SPEAKERthese containers we're using we're not clean enough to want to drink out of but we can still

18:44SPEAKERuse the flush toilet type stuff it's yeah on fun watching like people's ingenuity come into effect

18:49SPEAKERwhen stuff like this is going on but um did you have to boil the well water or do you so yes

18:54SPEAKERthey're well that was a topic of frequent debate around there because there was definitely there

18:58SPEAKERwas a boil order on for city water yeah and it was kind of like i said the most of the neighbors

19:04SPEAKERaround and us all we all kind of assumed that doesn't apply to well water because you would

19:08SPEAKERassume the reservoirs typically are deep enough to not be affected by what's going on with

19:12SPEAKERgroundwater but maybe that's naive well i mean i would think so but like if your well had floods

19:17SPEAKERthen then you can get flood water into the head of the well which would be bad yeah i mean that's

19:22SPEAKERthe thing you know i guess it depends on where the well is being fed from yeah but uh at any rate we

19:27SPEAKERdid not boil the well water nobody got sick so it's probably fine probably okay um let us know

19:33SPEAKERin the comments yes uh there was there was only one grocery store in town open when we got there

19:39SPEAKERthat's funny the one across the street that my parents usually go to uh the word around

19:43SPEAKERtown is it will never reopen because it's right on the bank of a creek oh wow and it like cut out

19:49SPEAKERfrom underneath yeah like apparently the foundation is damaged enough that that building is probably

19:53SPEAKERjust toast that led to an interesting situation where all of their prescriptions are at the

19:57SPEAKERpharmacy in that grocery store which is permanently closed and so no way to call the doctor huh

20:03SPEAKERso we managed to get a call into the doctor's office for the prescription we needed but the

20:07SPEAKERdoctor was not there like course thankfully that turned out to be a kind of less essential

20:12SPEAKERmedication like the important ones were stocked okay at home so that was fine but but we just

20:17SPEAKERkind of could not get that prescription filled for like a week and a half kind of makes me think

20:22SPEAKERi should start keeping uh paper versions of the prescriptions just in case that was exactly what

20:28SPEAKERhappened that was that was one of the like endless tasks that came up and this is a little bit

20:32SPEAKERtechnical i guess was like okay we got no power we barely have any phone signal to speak of at all

20:38SPEAKERlike the data barely works of course the internet is out we need to print these prescriptions how

20:43SPEAKERare we going to do this you know like it was very much yeah because because i guess is that the

20:47SPEAKERstandard if you have paper printouts like credible printouts of your prescriptions and a different

20:52SPEAKERpharmacy will take them that was my understanding there are different rules based on the controlled

20:57SPEAKERness of the substance so if you want like morphine then you have to go you have to have some special

21:02SPEAKERbut if you just need like your prescription antihistamines a piece of paper with a

21:06SPEAKERcredible looking doctor's signature won't work yeah okay so that's what we were trying to do but

21:10SPEAKERbut again that was that that got kind of challenging in itself um anyway so there was

21:14SPEAKERthere was only the one grocery store open they were cash only and they were only letting like

21:18SPEAKER50 people in at a time just because they were afraid there'd be a riot or because it was dark

21:22SPEAKERi get no no the power was on in that part of town by the time we got there so i don't i guess yeah

21:28SPEAKERi assumed it was just a let's manage the flow of people in and out like because some of the

21:32SPEAKERinventory was pretty picked over as well maybe you don't want too many people like all fighting over

21:36SPEAKERthe last carton of eggs or whatever um but it was super chill it was very orderly i never ran into

21:41SPEAKERany problems at all okay yeah i mean i assume there weren't people like hoarding toilet paper

21:46SPEAKERor anything ridiculous like that not that i saw okay i mean there's definitely like i said there

21:50SPEAKERwas definitely like like eggs were not eggs and hot dogs for example were basically non-existent

21:55SPEAKERfor a few days ice was hard very hard to find i i assume that like because like there's i i

22:02SPEAKERassume almost everybody there has a grill so you did a lot of grilling right a decent decent amount

22:06SPEAKERof grilling yeah yeah um it was a lot of uh it was a lot of they have a gas stovetop so it was

22:10SPEAKERa lot of just lighting the stovetop off of a off of a lighter and boiling a lot of stuff like i got

22:15SPEAKERvery used to just boiling a pot of water and making instant coffee in the morning okay for example to

22:20SPEAKERthe point that i can we continued doing that even if the power came back on um because it was just

22:25SPEAKERfaster but uh anyway um what i heard was that the gas station near us was limiting you to 30

22:32SPEAKERgallons a day but we had no need for anywhere near that much okay uh we only had about 17 ish

22:41SPEAKERgallons worth of empty cans okay um so uh we borrowed a generator from the neighbor

22:48SPEAKERlike miraculously it came to light that the the neighbor had a built-in like a full in-home

22:53SPEAKERgenerator oh like a natural gas one or something yes and and a portable so he very graciously let

22:58SPEAKERus borrow that portable um which we brought down and uh actually let's let's say the generator

23:06SPEAKERsorry i'll get to that in more detail uh i'll finish talking about kind of conditions around

23:12SPEAKERum so yeah like like groceries and gas were pretty limited uh like you said um i i did uh

23:19SPEAKERi actually talked to you and you helped me come up with like a checklist of things to do before

23:23SPEAKERi went out there one of them was get a lot of cash yeah which i'm glad i did because we were

23:28SPEAKERkind of going on grocery runs basically every day oh that's good well because i assume you go and

23:32SPEAKERget what they get what you can get right like what they had and also we didn't have a lot of capacity

23:36SPEAKERto keep things cold so right so we were not buying a lot of perishables uh at one time uh we kind of

23:42SPEAKERgo like once every day or two or okay for that week we were there before the power came back on

23:48SPEAKERbut uh i'm very glad i had that cash um i i assume typically in this kind of situation

23:55SPEAKERlike there's a lot of it's one of the things i i i say love but power and utility companies

24:02SPEAKERtend to pull together and send massive amounts of resources from unaffected areas to help people

24:09SPEAKERwhere they're i assume there's road crews from like a bazillion different power companies there

24:14SPEAKERthat was that was one of the craziest like visuals of the whole trip like one of the most like i feel

24:18SPEAKERlike i'm in a disaster movie kind of things was like you could not go anywhere in that area

24:22SPEAKERwithout like just constant giant white trucks uh either either the oversized pickup truck type of

24:29SPEAKERutility vehicle or the full-on giant like tree truck you know with the big crane kind of traction

24:34SPEAKERon the back because they were going around taking or getting up trees absolutely everywhere so like

24:39SPEAKERthere's there's a there's a school relatively close to us there's a there's a church you know

24:44SPEAKERmile or two up the road and like you would constantly like anywhere with a giant parking lot

24:48SPEAKERbasically you would just see like 20 of those giant trucks like staging in the uh in the parking

24:54SPEAKERlots constantly like day and night and they were just on the roads everywhere um i kind of i kind

25:00SPEAKERof made a little game out of reading like the little side art on all the trucks to see where

25:03SPEAKERthey were from um because there were there were plenty of like local duke energy trucks around

25:08SPEAKERbut like i saw like a bunch of the crews near us were from kansas city missouri um i saw there

25:13SPEAKERwere some from up north um one of our neighbors one of our neighbors ran into a road crew from

25:20SPEAKERmontreal nearby i was gonna i was montreal is the classic example because when they had a big ice

25:25SPEAKERstorm in the 90s maybe late 80s even i remember like in bristol we sent power trucks up there to

25:31SPEAKERhelp them out because they had to rerun basically the entire city's electrical because the ice

25:36SPEAKERknocked down all the all the power lines and in the middle of winter when it was like the outside

25:41SPEAKERwill kill you right right yeah yeah so so like that neighbor actually speaks a little bit of

25:45SPEAKERfrench so she like joked about trying to having fun trying to talk to them in her broken french

25:51SPEAKERum but it was just it was everywhere i mean i could not believe the number of utility workers

25:55SPEAKERall over the place and god bless them for for doing it yeah um i heard i heard at least a

26:01SPEAKERcouple of linemen got killed uh not not near us but somewhere up north of us like they're like

26:07SPEAKERthat that is hazardous work like doing all that electrical work that fast i'm sure

26:11SPEAKERoh yeah in and of itself is very dangerous unstable roads and yes yeah anyway yeah i was

26:18SPEAKERhearing weird i was hearing crazy stories from up um up around like the like the chimney rock area

26:22SPEAKERlike the places that absolutely just got kind of washed off the map like you're hearing stories

26:26SPEAKERabout they were having to helicopter in utility poles in places because they couldn't get any

26:30SPEAKERtrucks up to place them wow so they were literally like using helicopters to to lower and place the

26:35SPEAKERutility poles into the ground like i heard they were using mules in places to get supplies up and

26:40SPEAKERdown in the mountainous areas i was going to say i saw some videos some people shared them the tech

26:45SPEAKERpod channels of like a bike youtuber who was hauling stuff around on bikes up washed out roads

26:51SPEAKERand and there was a lot of like mutual aid stuff coming out of restaurants and and places with

26:58SPEAKERkitchens that still were working and like bookstores surprisingly um that that like you

27:06SPEAKERwould see people doing a morning meeting every day that was like hey what do people need help

27:10SPEAKERwith today and then they apply as much human power as they could to it yeah yeah i you were

27:16SPEAKERseeing that everywhere i was i was really impressed just driving around town like all

27:19SPEAKERover the place you'd see like free barbecue 1 p.m or like you know free hot meals at the elks lodge

27:24SPEAKERjust like different different like community organizations clubs whatever churches like all

27:30SPEAKERover the place like just hey come get food no questions asked we never we never made use of

27:34SPEAKERany of that stuff i kind of wonder in retrospect if maybe we should have more but i i just always

27:38SPEAKERfelt like there are probably there have to be people worse off than us that need it well yeah

27:43SPEAKERthat feels like one of those if you need it you need it right yeah um looking at duke power's

27:49SPEAKERwebsite there's still a thousand households in the greater ashville area it looks like that are that

27:55SPEAKERare knocked out yeah so we we it's kind of a game day by day of text messages coming from them about

28:02SPEAKERlike at first it was like uh most customers by friday and then it was okay most customers by

28:06SPEAKERsunday this was sunday being nine days after the storm somewhere around saturday or sunday my mom

28:13SPEAKERgot a text message from them saying basically saying your area is going to require significant

28:18SPEAKERreconstruction something something which basically was like okay i guess we're not even in the sunday

28:22SPEAKERgroup um yeah the the message on the affected people now is uh repairs underway where where

28:33SPEAKERconditions allow disaster recovery and process is what it says in an estimated time of restoration

28:39SPEAKERyeah so it ended up being 11 days for them before the power came back on and this is like we're at a

28:44SPEAKERmonth now it's the 25th the storm hit on the on the 27th is when the power outage started according

28:49SPEAKERto the website yes and there's still people without power apparently i don't know what the

28:53SPEAKERstate of like city water in ashville is that was still a mess by the time i left so um we got a uh

29:01SPEAKERwe got a note i was gonna save it for the q a episode but i'm gonna put it here we're gonna do

29:05SPEAKERq a next week by the way yes yeah if anybody anybody wants to write in either questions about

29:09SPEAKERall this stuff or also like some of the stuff we'll cover about like reinforcing your home or

29:14SPEAKERelectrical wiring or generators or any of that stuff that you have knowledge about i would love

29:18SPEAKERto hear or if you want to share stories yeah stories as well sure um they said that the the

29:25SPEAKERmapping they they pointed out some mapping resources that are really good in this kind

29:29SPEAKERof situation because they're offline uh organic maps is an app that uh is basically open street

29:35SPEAKERmap but it's 100 offline so you can download whatever segments you want in advance uh and then

29:40SPEAKERuh open inframap.org and the us energy mapping system both give complementary tools for figuring

29:47SPEAKERout where your power is coming from and what like what the state of the grid is beyond what the power

29:52SPEAKERcompany is telling you that's super useful to know because i definitely got hit by that when we went

29:56SPEAKERout uh you know i used to live there but it's been 25 years i don't remember everything and and yeah

30:01SPEAKERgoogle maps not very reliable in a situation where the cellular data is not great i did try to use

30:06SPEAKERthe google maps feature to download kind of pre-cache the area data yeah which i had mixed

30:11SPEAKERresults with it seemed like it worked for a while but at some point it was trying to hit the cell

30:15SPEAKERnetwork again uh um cellmapper.net is the other thing that they recommended which tells you where

30:21SPEAKERthe cell towers are so interesting um and this is this is thomas sent this in okay so thanks thomas

30:29SPEAKERyeah that's cool um let's see yeah i guess just quick stats so the power was out for 11 days it

30:34SPEAKERwas just about 14 like one magically magically about just about exactly two weeks after the

30:41SPEAKERstorm hit one day we got up and the phones just were working again they had the whole pots lines

30:46SPEAKERno no no i mean like the cell phones just like like data data kind of worked off and on through

30:52SPEAKERthat time but it was very much like i have to go stand outside to actually make anything load was

30:58SPEAKERit like you'll get a text message or something like you can get text messages kind of text

31:02SPEAKERmessages would come through here and there but it was very spotty like you get a lot of messages

31:05SPEAKERfailing to send and stuff like that um but like loading loading web pages was very difficult for

31:11SPEAKERexample that was that was the thing about twitter in the early days was that because you could use

31:16SPEAKER404.04 to send a message to twitter get messages from twitter you could actually get like it was a

31:21SPEAKERreally shockingly good distribution method for broad emergency comms for places that didn't have

31:28SPEAKERlike text messaging infrastructure set up like the power company um but that's gone now yeah

31:33SPEAKERthat was something i thought about constantly so um like i i had my phone on low battery mode like

31:39SPEAKERconstantly my iphone um which the way they handle things is kind of annoying because you can't turn

31:44SPEAKERthat on permanently basically when you charge the phone back up to what they consider a sufficient

31:48SPEAKERlevel they will just turn low battery mode off yep and you have to keep going and turning it

31:52SPEAKERback on again but that was that was getting me through an entire day with like very little

31:56SPEAKERbattery loss yeah um but it does make you think about how much just like invisible metadata is

32:02SPEAKERgoing out along with messages these days how much like just from a sheer bytes perspective how much

32:07SPEAKERdata needs to go through just to send a simple message these days you know and in a situation

32:10SPEAKERlike this where the throughput is incredibly constrained like it does kind of get a little

32:14SPEAKERfrustrating when you think about like your twitter example you know it's like that's that's probably

32:19SPEAKERa few hundred bytes at most to send the message right yeah it's a few hundred kilo yeah a couple

32:24SPEAKERkilobytes probably yeah uh so like having having the amount of overhead that goes along with modern

32:29SPEAKERcommunication that suddenly you can't turn off uh in a situation where you wish you could is kind of

32:35SPEAKERfrustrating but uh let's see uh that's pretty much it like the internet it was it was over two weeks

32:40SPEAKERbefore the cable internet came back up and that was super spotty for another four or five days

32:44SPEAKERafter that kind of just going up and or coming up and going down over and over like there were

32:49SPEAKERthere were times when it was speed testing at less than a megabit per second which meant basically

32:53SPEAKERnothing was working wow stuff like that so but those are just kind of the stats on how long

32:57SPEAKERstuff took to come back so brad what about this experience has changed your disaster preparedness

33:04SPEAKERplan for living in san francisco here i don't know i mean earthquakes are the biggest danger

33:09SPEAKERhere and those are very sporadic but it sure does make me want to keep some water around which is

33:14SPEAKERthe recommendation let's just say the water is a big thing we have um we have vinny vinny actually

33:19SPEAKERrecommended years ago i think i went camping with him once and he had this thing it's like a big

33:23SPEAKERcanvas like a sack that you can fill with water and then it you hang it up in a tree or on a post

33:29SPEAKERor something and gravity feeds through a filter interesting just drain it out the bottom oh and

33:34SPEAKERit's good for i i don't know if it's good for like flood like i probably wouldn't drink flood water

33:39SPEAKERthrough it but i i've definitely drunk water from a lake through it before wow interesting and that's

33:45SPEAKERthat's it's the same kind of filtering you get with like a life straw or something like that

33:48SPEAKERbut you can actually get a substantial amount of water with it yeah um yeah definitely keeping

33:54SPEAKERwater around is the big one uh obviously that's easier if you're in a bigger place like in an

33:58SPEAKERapartment it's tough to keep however what what's the recommendation is like x number of gallons a

34:02SPEAKERday per person one one gallon per person plus more that's just for drinking and like washing and

34:07SPEAKERmaking food right right so it's obviously tough to keep a lot of water around in a smaller place but

34:13SPEAKERthe thing that hit me you know i grew up there with a well so you know and the power went out

34:17SPEAKERa lot from ice storms and then you know thunderstorms and all kinds of stuff but

34:21SPEAKERwe were used to not having running water on a well there the thing i never considered is

34:26SPEAKERyou know this was bad enough to disrupt for example ashville city water dramatically like

34:30SPEAKERthere were places that just didn't have water and then when they did have it like i said the

34:33SPEAKERboil order was still on after i left with the boil yeah the last thing i saw is that the boil water

34:38SPEAKERis going to be on indefinitely because the water treatment plant got really jacked up right so so

34:43SPEAKEReven if you're on city water which does work when the power is out like your water supply might still

34:47SPEAKERbe severely compromised if things are bad enough so even even then having some potable water around

34:52SPEAKERis is a must i i've i've um this is the thing i've talked to vinnie about in the past but i've

34:59SPEAKERbeen thinking about like having a rain barrel just to have toilet flushing water yep um the the the

35:07SPEAKERthe big like do you think people are going to sign up for solar and batteries at this point i don't

35:12SPEAKERknow uh i've definitely seen more people online talking about like like vinnie advocates for jackery

35:17SPEAKERis one company that does like kind of big whole home battery backup yeah contraptions and you

35:22SPEAKERcan get solar cells that attach to those to charge them throughout the day like that we'll get to it

35:26SPEAKERin a minute you know i've messed with generators enough during this trip to think that that might

35:30SPEAKERbe a nice a nice clean alternative to generators i don't know how fast those solar cells charge

35:35SPEAKERso you if you want to do a whole house worth of electricity you need quite a few of them

35:39SPEAKERright yeah like yeah like my house is a thousand square feet doing the math on how much power we

35:44SPEAKERuse every day i could cover i could get enough power out of a significant percentage of our roof

35:51SPEAKERplus some batteries in the garage to basically run indefinitely assuming that there's no like

35:56SPEAKERassuming a tree doesn't fall in the house and break the panels right sure sure um that that

36:01SPEAKERportable battery backup that he was talking about apparently you can like daisy chain more solar

36:05SPEAKERcells onto those so you can buy extras to make it charge faster which is cool so you like fill

36:09SPEAKERyour backyard with them and then yeah um so like i said i talked to you before i left about just

36:14SPEAKERlike hey what are some what are some things i haven't thought of that i should bring um

36:18SPEAKERyou recommended these little um solar-powered led lanterns that are getting pretty popular

36:24SPEAKERthe brand i bought was luminade that's just the one that came up when i searched yeah i i first

36:30SPEAKERgot these years and years ago when we bought the house and i was like we need to have a way to have

36:34SPEAKERlight if the power goes out um and there was a company called d light that did a thing where they

36:40SPEAKERwere it was like a tom's situation where they would make for every light you bought from them

36:45SPEAKERthey would put two into like places in the global south where they were using kerosene lanterns and

36:51SPEAKERstuff like that that were burning down houses sure um and yeah it's it's basically just like a little

36:58SPEAKERsolar cell it's waterproof you put an led in the bottom and then there's like a plastic cup

37:04SPEAKERbasically that diffuses the light out of the led and a little battery and it's enough to get 14

37:10SPEAKERhours of light on a day's charge so so these these were clutch uh i bought some luminade again as the

37:17SPEAKERbrand if you want to go look at the ones i i got but um i bought two of the smaller ones on one of

37:21SPEAKERthe bigger ones and the thing about these is that they are basically inflatable oh yeah so they

37:26SPEAKERcompress or flatten down into basically like a one inch thickness little square and then you kind of

37:31SPEAKERinflate them at night when you want to use them that's it's like two puffs right right or actually

37:35SPEAKERthe bigger nicer one i got which was like 100 bucks like you actually didn't even have to

37:38SPEAKERinflate it you just twist it and it would kind of expand on its own it's kind of hard to explain but

37:43SPEAKERit was really cool uh that one the bigger one on the lowest brightness which was still enough to

37:48SPEAKERlight like a hallway to go to the bathroom or whatever just fine at night actually had like

37:53SPEAKER100 hours of runtime it had like a way way brighter modes that were just like you know

37:57SPEAKERthree hours or 12 hours but the lowest mode it would run for like from you know four or five

38:02SPEAKERdays on a single full charge um they will not charge all the way uh via solar like there's not

38:09SPEAKERenough time okay in the day to fully charge them but they will still give you i think most of a

38:14SPEAKERnight's run time on the lowest setting uh if you leave them out all day so the ones that we got are

38:20SPEAKERthe d dot light ones and um they have inflatables and then canister ones um it turns out if you have

38:29SPEAKERa way to put them up above you you it's not as bright as like a coleman lantern with those with

38:34SPEAKERthe you know the wicks but it they're infinite right like the benefit is that they're infinite

38:39SPEAKERand these you can charge off of usb to get them get them primed up if you need to yeah and in fact

38:43SPEAKERthe the bigger one of these i bought had usb out like charging ports for your phone that's nice i

38:47SPEAKERmean i don't know how much charging would get uh off of just a solar charge but it did have that

38:52SPEAKERoption which is cool uh yeah these were huge i mean if you're just in an extended power outage

38:56SPEAKERsituation just being able to see at a basic level where you're going at night in the middle of the

39:02SPEAKERnight looked very great when you're camping too like these these we have in the in the camping

39:06SPEAKERkit i have a one of the inflatable ones a little one that i just when i when i used to backpack i

39:11SPEAKERwould hang on the back of the backpack during the day when i was walking and then it would be

39:15SPEAKERcharged up at night and i would have camp light when i was making dinner and stuff like that which

39:18SPEAKERwas really nice yeah um i got a couple of the um i mean everybody knows about these just a couple

39:24SPEAKERof onker 20 000 milliamp hour battery packs yeah which we didn't have any current ones of we've

39:30SPEAKERbeen a while since i've owned one of those so it's nice to have now the density has gone up

39:34SPEAKERdramatically since i bought my last ones and i need to replace yeah like i ran we'll get to it

39:39SPEAKERlater there was a couple days after i got there there was a work situation i needed to deal with

39:43SPEAKERand i ran my laptop and phone off of one of those battery packs yeah for a time um and then the cash

39:50SPEAKERlike i said just this this this situation i've i've always kept like a little bit of cash around

39:56SPEAKERbut the situation is going to increase the amount that i keep around yeah it makes sense by a good

40:01SPEAKERbit because having having a few hundred dollars in a situation where you can only buy groceries

40:05SPEAKERwith cash is very important yeah um yeah that was it like i you know that's that's what i very

40:12SPEAKERquickly threw together in the time that we had to prepare and like all of it turned out to be useful

40:16SPEAKERlike at the time when i ordered all that stuff and went and took several hundred dollars out of the

40:20SPEAKERbank i was like am i is this overkill am i going overboard is this disaster theater am i just

40:26SPEAKERmaking myself feel better but no like everything i'd got was super useful well and it's also worth

40:32SPEAKERmentioning i don't think you probably would have gone if your parents weren't fairly elderly right

40:36SPEAKERyes yes like that that was a big part of it as well which i'm not going to get into too much but

40:40SPEAKERyou know some just kind of like family realities that basically required somebody to be there

40:46SPEAKERwell and and but also like if you have 70 year old parents having like you don't want them ripping

40:52SPEAKERcarpet out oh definitely or in this case could not like not capable um yeah so um and then also

40:59SPEAKERthe neighbors in the in the neighborhood were amazing like i said generally around town there

41:03SPEAKERwas tons of like kind of mutual aid stuff around but also like people were people in their

41:07SPEAKERneighborhood were just pulling together in a way that really restores your faith in humanity well

41:12SPEAKERand and like it's nice when like your neighborhood was relatively lightly hit it sounds like right

41:18SPEAKERyeah and like like everybody in the neighborhood had water in the house but but but yes nobody

41:22SPEAKERnobody got flooded out uh although god i feel terrible one of the neighbors just spent like

41:27SPEAKERthe better part of a year remodeling their entire downstairs no intensively like remodeled to the

41:32SPEAKERpoint that they went and stayed with a parent for a few months because it was that level of rebuttal

41:38SPEAKERand the whole downstairs which was fully finished got hit badly well at least they know what it

41:43SPEAKERcosts when the insurance comes they can yeah probably be a lot faster the second time um

41:48SPEAKERokay so what we talked about generator i talked to you once or twice while you were gone and we

41:53SPEAKERtalked about generators a little bit i think vinnie and i think it's a conversation with

41:56SPEAKERvinnie about generators too yes yes so so they they borrowed that generator right before i got there

42:02SPEAKERum the thing that long story short the thing they didn't realize is that they didn't know they could

42:08SPEAKERhook that generator into the mains of the house do they is their house set up for that so it is

42:13SPEAKERokay but it happened long ago again it's hard to explain but it happened long enough ago and there

42:17SPEAKERwas not yeah there was not enough shared knowledge of the setup there let's say to for for everybody

42:23SPEAKERto connect the dots got him and then slowly people came to the realization that like oh wait there is

42:30SPEAKERtotally a 240 volt plug here wait hold on you didn't use a mail-to-mail plug to plug the

42:36SPEAKERgenerator into okay okay okay everything was fine it's just that nobody nobody there had the

42:40SPEAKERexpertise and knowledge of the house to know that that could happen until after we got there and

42:44SPEAKERthen we slowly pieced together oh wait we totally have a 240 volt cable and a plug into the mains of

42:51SPEAKERthe house here and so did you have a cut off so you could cut off the outbound so that you don't

42:55SPEAKERelectrify the wires near your house yeah yes there was like a second and i'm getting way out of my

42:59SPEAKERdepth here with electrical stuff but there was a second like second circuit breaker box there with

43:05SPEAKERkind of a changeover kind of you can only you can switch it okay you can only throw the breaker

43:10SPEAKERon either the main or the generator at once they can't both be on at the same time if that makes

43:15SPEAKERsense yeah anyway long story short you do that so you don't electrocute line line just to be clear

43:20SPEAKERyeah like they had just been plugging a few appliances and lights straight into the generator

43:25SPEAKERwhen we got there yeah but then after after we got there and figure out what was what we realized

43:29SPEAKERthat we couldn't hook it straight into the house and just turn off the enough breakers that you

43:33SPEAKERdidn't overload the generator yes so like it was it was a it was a rapid educational process of

43:40SPEAKERhow trying to figure out what was what especially with like very spotty internet like i said but i

43:44SPEAKERsure i sure know what a 240 volt plug looks like now and we'll never forget um some other weird

43:51SPEAKERstuff i ran into like a um i'm sure you've seen this like a 120 volt plug where one of the two

43:57SPEAKERprongs is sideways it's almost like smiley face winking at you oh is that the is that the one you

44:03SPEAKERuse for the outbound 120 volt i think that's what that is i was not clear we never ended up using

44:08SPEAKERthat but that's what that seemed like yeah um there was a there was a uh an ongoing like

44:16SPEAKERexperimental process i guess i would say trying to figure out what in the house was actually wired to

44:21SPEAKERthe generator this is this is a 70s construction problem okay that house was built in the early

44:27SPEAKER70s so that that checks out because trying to figure out what was and was not wired to the

44:32SPEAKERgenerator and what lunatic thought that was appropriate was an ongoing problem because like

44:37SPEAKERfor example none of the overhead lights in the kitchen were were on the generator circuit so i

44:43SPEAKERdon't even know if i'm using the right terms here but like whatever whatever subset of the of the

44:47SPEAKERwiring in the house was hooked up to the generator like no lights in the kitchen for example well

44:51SPEAKERso there's two things one is that in the old days they would wire like the things that would end up

44:57SPEAKERon the same circuit were all run in series so like you go from like the the bedroom light to the

45:04SPEAKERother bedroom light to the plug on the edge of the bedroom wall and then be like well that looks like

45:08SPEAKERabout enough for 15 amps and then they'd cut that one off interesting okay like the plugs in later

45:14SPEAKERlike i want to say 80s or 90s they started doing like okay mass the the main bedroom will all have

45:21SPEAKERall the plugs in the main bedroom will be on the same circuit right but before it was just like

45:26SPEAKERwhat was convenient when the electrician was running through the house okay that makes way

45:29SPEAKERmore sense than yeah because it was just a constant bafflement at who thought this was

45:34SPEAKERa good way to wire things up like the like the bedroom the bedroom at the far end of the house

45:38SPEAKERhad a couple of outlets that worked but the bedroom closer to the closer to the the circuit

45:42SPEAKERbreaker and the generator hadn't had zero for example i was gonna say and then the other thing

45:46SPEAKERis a lot of times especially in older houses like in the 50s they'd have two plugs per room

45:52SPEAKERright and then at some point you come through and you're like well i gotta get an electrician in

45:56SPEAKERhere because like it's the 21st century and we have shit that needs to be plugged in so you run

46:01SPEAKERa lot more cables and then like i have a separate circuit breaker box that the that the new cables

46:05SPEAKERare run out of right they're not they're not in the main panel sure so it's like there's a breaker

46:10SPEAKERthat goes to them and then the big breaker that goes to them and then there's another smaller

46:14SPEAKERpanel that's hidden someplace that like i'm gonna have to tell whoever buys our house eventually

46:18SPEAKERwhere where all that stuff is sure is that is that the kind of thing you can get rewired with

46:22SPEAKERa minimum of like like like non-invasively or do you actually have to like tear out wires like

46:27SPEAKERroom by room to rewire stuff like that it's really easy to run new wires it's you have to tear out

46:33SPEAKERwalls to replace old wires so it's usually easier to just cover up the old wires and disconnect them

46:38SPEAKERand run new wires unless you have to pull out walls for some reason got it okay because there

46:44SPEAKERwas there was some idle talk of like maybe we should get some of this redone to make it less

46:48SPEAKERof a pain but i mean it's i was gonna say like here's the the nice thing is if they have the

46:53SPEAKERcutoff for main versus internal power they're already they have the expensive part done for the

47:00SPEAKERi mean obviously panels and batteries and all that stuff are expensive too but it doesn't require a

47:04SPEAKERmassive rewiring in a new panel to do the to if they wanted to put solar and get batteries assuming

47:10SPEAKERthey have enough sun yeah so like i think that's the conversation right is like the breakers go

47:17SPEAKERthrough and label all the breakers right because because the other way you can do it is you just

47:21SPEAKERturn off the breakers and then you literally walk around and you test every outlet and every light

47:24SPEAKERand all that stuff and and you find out which ones are which and then you make a map and clearly label

47:31SPEAKERinside the box that is the work that had not been done because only only a small handful of the

47:36SPEAKERbreakers were labeled in the box and nobody had mapped out what was what in the house so it was

47:41SPEAKERyeah kind of complicated look my breaker box has dishwasher question mark next to three different

47:46SPEAKERbreakers so yeah it's about it's about stuff like that in fact i've got some pictures of it here i'm

47:50SPEAKERgoing to share my screen with you real quick so we can uh talk about some visual aids here i've got

47:55SPEAKERuh i've got a picture of uh one of the old breakers here that's a breaker box okay some of them have

48:01SPEAKERbeen written over and scribbled out multiple times yeah uh so you have multiple breaker boxes that's

48:08SPEAKERalways exciting so this is this is the one that got added in the like late 90s around 2000 after

48:12SPEAKERenough power outages made people sick of things um so this this was the this was the 240 volt plug

48:20SPEAKERthat was discovered and it was like oh wait we can just run this generator straight into the house

48:24SPEAKERrather than just plugging some lights and appliances straight into it i like that the

48:28SPEAKERnotes are written in pencil it looks like on the metal uh-huh that's that's a lasting plan they

48:33SPEAKERsure are and it's good that the breaker box was installed upside down it doesn't matter yeah but

48:38SPEAKERalso all the yeah okay um anyway um so uh what happened with um the whole generator situation

48:48SPEAKERis that the neighbor who let us borrow that loner uh his his internal his in-home natural gas one

48:55SPEAKERstarted leaking oil pretty substantially oh boy so he came down a few days later saying i might

49:00SPEAKERneed that one back soon so we kind of had to drop everything and go out and find our own i'm

49:05SPEAKERimpressed you were able to find one so am i it was it was it blew my mind and at the time i was

49:09SPEAKERlike oh maybe are they just like airlifting these things in like i can't believe they found some

49:13SPEAKERyeah i guess they were but like they're like i saw videos of people dropping generators from

49:18SPEAKERchinooks to people up in valleys that had their roads washed out and we're gonna be without power

49:23SPEAKERfrom weeks i showed you i showed you a video before this i mean obviously can't show it on

49:27SPEAKERthe podcast but i was just in the part of the target parking lot one day about to pull out and

49:31SPEAKERi heard a helicopter just looked and it was a chinook flying right over the target there are

49:34SPEAKERthere are very specific like they're the people don't know they're the ones that have the two two

49:39SPEAKERpropellers two two rotors on the top yeah and they make a real specific sound they sure do they fly

49:45SPEAKERover my house sometimes on the coast sure uh so anyway like like i said we had we barely had

49:49SPEAKERinternet but i kind of slogged through that to try to check websites for local places so there's

49:55SPEAKERa lowes and a home depot fairly close and shockingly they actually had generators in stock

50:00SPEAKERso wow so we basically just zipped over there in the pickup truck and bought a generac that day

50:06SPEAKERnice happened to be back over there a couple days later zero generators like they were all gone

50:10SPEAKERyeah sure it was very spotty i think we just got super lucky that we happened to find some that day

50:15SPEAKERthe the home depot guy told me that they home depot had sold something like 20 000 generators

50:20SPEAKERin the area in the last week i bet they were shifting stock as fast as they could from other

50:24SPEAKERstores right they also had a big sign up that said no no open box generators returns accepted

50:30SPEAKERno exceptions well so now you're now your folks have a generator just in case yes so i mean that's

50:35SPEAKERa whole thing like man you know we were having to go buy gas every day or two yeah how much how

50:40SPEAKERmuch gas does a generator use did you run it around the clock no definitely absolutely not

50:45SPEAKERwe were trying to be pretty conservative especially on the neighbor's loaner but even after we

50:49SPEAKERgot our own we were trying to be pretty judicious about it um i mean like i said there were a lot of

50:53SPEAKERthings i had to learn about generators like continuous wattage versus peak wattage and like

50:57SPEAKERhow much gas do they burn at sort of idle or at low minimum draw like do they have do they have

51:02SPEAKERa minimum output it sounds like they do like they're like they're always going to burn and

51:06SPEAKERoutput a floor even if you're not yeah pulling that current from it right well i mean like

51:11SPEAKERpresumably you have the fridge on the circuit that's covered so like you're always you're

51:15SPEAKERalways running at least you know a couple of watts for the fridge right right so so even even there

51:20SPEAKERwe were we were basically running it in the evenings for like five six hours okay uh and

51:25SPEAKERthen shutting it off before bed and then maybe like for an hour or two in the morning so just

51:29SPEAKERto get water water tanks and stuff like that yeah flush toilets and stuff like that do they have a

51:34SPEAKERgas hot water heater or electric uh i believe it is a gas okay pretty sure it's gas did you have

51:41SPEAKERhot water when you took showers yes okay uh but but the generator was running then so i but i'm

51:46SPEAKERpretty sure it's gas okay and i assume they're like bottled gas not on a main um i think that's

51:54SPEAKERright okay i think that's right don't quote me on that yeah yeah um but you know like i i i have

52:01SPEAKERnever like worked on cars in my life you know like i don't have a lot of combustible or combustion

52:06SPEAKERengine experience so like dealing with the generator was educational like we had to change

52:11SPEAKERthe oil on the neighbor generator at one point oh boy uh because apparently you have to change the

52:15SPEAKERoil and generators like very very quickly or very very frequently i should say yeah it's usually it's

52:20SPEAKERevery certain number of hours running right yes uh we bought that that generac we got came with

52:26SPEAKERa quart of what they just described as like special generator blend oil huh although they

52:33SPEAKERsaid use this first before you switch over to regular like store-bought is that for like the

52:37SPEAKERbreak-in period yeah basically it's basically said it was kind of a break-in period but then

52:41SPEAKERthere was kind of a debate in the house because the manual the manual said to use 5w30 oil with

52:46SPEAKERthe generator okay um they have like a little temperature chart and they basically said don't

52:49SPEAKERuse 10w30 unless it's like 40 degrees fahrenheit or below outside oh so there's a viscosity thing

52:56SPEAKERprobably i guess i guess that's what it is that's weird though there were some skepticism from some

53:00SPEAKERold timers around about 5w30 is a pretty light oil but that's what the manual said so that's what we

53:08SPEAKERwhat we got yeah you'd assume that um yeah i'd assume that once it's i i guess it's just during

53:14SPEAKERthe warm-up while it's warming it matters yeah maybe so uh i just i just went by the book on

53:20SPEAKERthat but um i mean i guess we don't need to get into like chokes and all kinds of parts of like

53:25SPEAKERit's just like it's just all the fun of a gas lawnmower with uh something that runs and makes

53:30SPEAKERyour refrigerator work yep yep uh and then once the power came back on uh i found a lot of

53:35SPEAKERconflicting opinions out there about how you should like store a generator and keep it primed

53:39SPEAKERand ready for use did you drain the gas and all that i unfortunately i did not have time it was a

53:44SPEAKERit turned into a mad scramble before we left mostly working on the basement trying to get

53:48SPEAKERthings ready for mediators to come in yeah so unfortunately did not have time to deal with that

53:52SPEAKERbut like i or other family are going to be back there again soon enough to deal with it i i would

53:59SPEAKERmy assumption would be that you put like worst case you put gas stabilizer in but best case you

54:04SPEAKERprobably drain the gas and like does it have a coolant loop it has to rain or is it air cooled

54:09SPEAKERi'm not the person to ask about that well because like like on most gas engines like a boat or a

54:16SPEAKERlike motorcycle or whatever like uh sorry not a motorcycle a lawnmower you winterize uh to to if

54:23SPEAKERit has coolant so the coolant doesn't freeze and crack the block right so so you know it's awesome

54:28SPEAKERsome people were saying like oh you should you should crank it and run it once a month

54:32SPEAKERthat's like a pain in the ass yeah yes i agree but then other people were like drain it other

54:36SPEAKERpeople were like no let it run down until until the gas is gone yeah um there were a lot of

54:41SPEAKERconflicting opinions but anyway like i said it'll it'll get dealt with in fairly short order this is

54:46SPEAKERone of those ones where i look at what the manual says and probably just do that yeah that's that's

54:50SPEAKERprobably the actual right way to go um let's see we talk about some of the work on the house a

54:55SPEAKERlittle bit yeah um downstairs it is like 80 percent a laminate it's like linoleum type stuff uh no no

55:03SPEAKERlike a like a panel oh oh like like pergo and mohawk are brands that you will see there

55:09SPEAKERgot it like a faux a faux sort of um hardwood looking material hardwood made of plastic that

55:15SPEAKERyou can that that tongue and grooves together in a way that you don't have to actually glue

55:19SPEAKERit to the floor uh or in this case because i pulled a fair amount of it up it's like almost

55:23SPEAKERlike a cardboard kind of material underneath the the top weird the top like hard part yeah yeah

55:29SPEAKERlike a paper pulpy paper cardboardy kind of thing weird um and then there's a there's a guest bedroom

55:34SPEAKERdown there that had carpet in it sadly um so basically after on day two after we got all the

55:40SPEAKERpower stuff sorted out and kind of humming along reasonably well we immediately started tearing

55:45SPEAKERcarpet out yeah that's that's good i'm sure it was soaking wet no it was like when you when you

55:50SPEAKERwalk down there it was like water still squeezing out of the carpet as you would step on it um

55:56SPEAKERso we you know down there with crowbars and uh box cutters tearing that out as fast as we could

56:02SPEAKERand piling it outside yeah um all that to the dump i talked about this a lot on the next land

56:08SPEAKERof ramble cast if people want to go listen to that i won't get into some of the same details

56:11SPEAKERhere but there was a whole scene at the dump oh i'm sure you can imagine chaos yeah of people

56:17SPEAKERtrying to bring storm debris and stuff in um later on the the county instituted a program there where

56:23SPEAKERthey're actually just going to go around and pick up literally everything that they find in every

56:27SPEAKERright of way in the county oh that's nice no questions asked for free man so once that once

56:32SPEAKERthat order went out widely because they were actually asking people not to go to the to the

56:37SPEAKERdump because there were like a lot of industrial people coming in and out of there and it was just

56:41SPEAKERa huge mess which we were happy to not do again after we dumped the carpet but once that order

56:46SPEAKERwent out and you were driving around you would just see the craziest piles of stuff outside

56:50SPEAKERpeople's houses like dude not just rolls of carpets but like furniture you know like dressers and

56:55SPEAKERmattresses and just everywhere you went just giant piles of stuff that people would turn out that was

57:00SPEAKERruined what i assume up there people don't have flood insurance for the most part right you can't

57:05SPEAKERit's some kind of fema directive that flood insurance in western north carolina is not allowed

57:11SPEAKERweird i do not understand but that is the case because they they have a i showed you some

57:17SPEAKERpictures there is a pretty sizable tree limb down yeah i saw on the on the house which as far as i

57:24SPEAKERknow is still there because good luck getting tree people out yeah they know they know a tree guy

57:29SPEAKERthat they're very friendly with and he was just like hey i'll get to you when i get to you yeah

57:34SPEAKERthat's how it kind of works right well the next thing that'll happen is the roofers will come

57:38SPEAKERright when we had we there was a big hail storm in knoxville when i lived there and for the people

57:43SPEAKERlike like a double digit percentage of all their homes in the area got their their roofs destroyed

57:50SPEAKERyeah and then next like a month later a bazillion roofers came in from all over the southeast and

57:57SPEAKERlike it was it was like people were back in business by the next winter yeah which was which

58:01SPEAKERwas nice yeah they'll get there and they they had a guy they know who's kind of a former roof guy

58:06SPEAKERwho's a friend came by and looked and said he doesn't think it's gonna leak so hopefully it'll

58:11SPEAKERbe fine until it gets fixed yeah hopefully they can get it done before winter though yes uh anyway

58:16SPEAKERso yeah we got the carpet out of there as fast as we could there was just too much stuff everywhere

58:20SPEAKERtoo much like the entire contents of the guest bedroom had to be loaded out into the main area

58:24SPEAKERwith the laminate yeah for example so there was just too much furniture everywhere and also we

58:28SPEAKERwere trying our best to dry out a lot of our stuff that got wet yeah which turned out to mostly be my

58:33SPEAKERstuff sadly so we could not pull up that much of the laminate while i was there just because there

58:37SPEAKERwas too much stuff on it everywhere yeah yeah so i assume you had to tear out all the walls too up

58:44SPEAKERto whatever the flood water mark was so none of that has happened yet but yes that is coming okay

58:49SPEAKERum like like i said we couldn't even get all the flooring out it was it was very much while i was

58:54SPEAKERthere it was very much let's get rid of a bunch of stuff let's figure out what's ruined a fair

58:59SPEAKERamount of non-ruined stuff also got rid of because it turns out an event like this is a good occasion

59:04SPEAKERto just be like you know what we don't need a lot of this stuff like it's time to to simplify so

59:08SPEAKERyeah a lot of while i was there was sifting through stuff drying stuff out consolidating

59:12SPEAKERputting i bought a body ton of plastic bins to consolidate a bunch of stuff into so we kind of

59:17SPEAKERreduced the footprint of the clutter and the belongings down there quite a bit wait did the

59:21SPEAKERduck make the cut bread uh the duck's still up on the china cabinet oh okay i mean it's like i

59:27SPEAKERi don't believe in divine intervention but like this the stuff that got spared down there is

59:31SPEAKERalmost hard not to think about something like that because like like a lot of my stuff like i said got

59:36SPEAKERwet but it's mostly all like video game memorabilia and like some of it's of some historical value but

59:40SPEAKERlike the true family heirlooms there were multiple cases of like 80 year old photos you know like my

59:46SPEAKERgrandparents photos like correspondence from almost you know from 80 plus years ago like

59:52SPEAKERmultiple cases of like water is standing on top of the chest that this stuff is in and none of

59:57SPEAKERit got wet like it's crazy how lucky i feel about stuff like that but um anyway yeah it was it was a

1:00:03SPEAKERlot of going through stuff down there um by the time the power came back on like i said it was 11

1:00:08SPEAKERdays and it was also like 80 degrees and muggy the entire time so it was incredibly dank down there

1:00:14SPEAKERit did not smell good yeah no i can only imagine and and like i'm sure that there's no like

1:00:19SPEAKERindustrial dehumidifiers and like big fans and all that stuff definitely not in fact but my mom had

1:00:24SPEAKERread that in a mold situation like this it's actually bad to run fans because it can spread

1:00:28SPEAKERspores around that makes sense but basically there's only there's only a door and two small

1:00:33SPEAKERwindows on that basement so it was basically like this kind of muggy late summer weather

1:00:37SPEAKERand the basement soaked and basically just having the windows and door open to try to air it out and

1:00:42SPEAKERthat was it for 11 days which really sucked when the power finally came back on they have three

1:00:47SPEAKERdecent standing dehumidifiers down there because it's just a damp basement generally yeah and so i

1:00:53SPEAKERwas i was on like empty dehumidifier duty basically 24/7 love that and i could not tell you how much

1:01:01SPEAKERwater came out of the air down there um i would guess it was at least 10 gallons a day coming out

1:01:08SPEAKERof those things because i had a big five gallon bucket that it was basically all three dehumidifiers

1:01:12SPEAKERadded up to just about that whole five gallon bucket when i emptied them wonderful and i was

1:01:17SPEAKEReasily emptying that thing twice a day plus you know like twice a day and into the night you know

1:01:22SPEAKERlike the overnight would add another one i mean it was just dozens of gallons of water that came

1:01:28SPEAKERout of the air down there um well and it's yeah and it's like it's in the walls it's in the

1:01:34SPEAKERyeah it's everywhere yeah like when we pulled up the laminate it was under the laminate you know

1:01:38SPEAKERlike it was just just water all over the place yeah so let's see so i guess so i assume they'll

1:01:46SPEAKERhave the remediation people come when when they get to them yeah so so they finally had their first

1:01:51SPEAKERmeeting like three days ago with the guy that's coming in to do both the flooring and remediation

1:01:56SPEAKERstuff um so all the laminate has since been pulled out some family came after i left because we got

1:02:03SPEAKERenough of the stuff out of the basement some other family came and helped take out the laminate which

1:02:06SPEAKERis shockingly easy to pull out that's still like you said that um what's the term for the way that

1:02:11SPEAKERstuff fits together it's tongue and groove and floating is the two eights i've heard it described

1:02:15SPEAKERbecause like you said it's not glued down it's just it's basically just kept together like by

1:02:18SPEAKERpressure right yeah you look i've taken up linoleum that was epoxied to the subfloor before and that

1:02:26SPEAKERwas like that was maybe one of the worst house repair jobs i've ever done i don't know i like

1:02:31SPEAKERi think if i had to do that again i would just cut up the subfloor and put new subfloor in honestly

1:02:35SPEAKERright um it's just so it's just obviously it's just a concrete floor down there but yeah that

1:02:39SPEAKERthat laminate was like the the stuff i did have room to pull up is like as easy as you can imagine

1:02:44SPEAKERit literally just lifts right out yeah so that's all been pulled out now when the remediation guy

1:02:48SPEAKERcame uh they are going to cut out the bottom two feet of the drywall all the way around okay um

1:02:54SPEAKERand you know i think it's pretty standard mold treatment stuff like they're gonna have to do

1:02:57SPEAKERchemical treatments yeah you just want to keep it from growing when you get it dark and yes

1:03:02SPEAKERwet in there all the all the cabinets in the bathroom and there's a little kitchenette kind

1:03:06SPEAKERof thing down there like all those cabinets are gonna have to be ripped out because they

1:03:09SPEAKERare full of mold inside yeah um stuff like that um i very quickly talking to my mom got a sense

1:03:15SPEAKERof there there are four classes of water damage yeah um that involve things like was it clean

1:03:20SPEAKERwater just out of your pipes or was it like flood water was a chemically contaminated flood water

1:03:26SPEAKERyou know that sort of thing um so they've got class four which is the worst which means that

1:03:30SPEAKEReverything has to come out um they even have they have like sheet vinyl flooring in the bathroom

1:03:36SPEAKERwhich looks just fine and we just assumed would be fine to stay but this guy said that even even

1:03:42SPEAKERvinyl like that has to come out in a class four because water can get underneath it into the

1:03:47SPEAKERconcrete and you can get mold growing in the concrete so i assume that they're gonna have

1:03:51SPEAKERlike when the remediation people come they're gonna set up like the big heavy duty industrial

1:03:55SPEAKERdehumidifiers for like a period of time i guess so i don't know because um so even running those

1:04:01SPEAKERthree dehumidifiers all day long it was still sitting at like 70 humidity down there for like a

1:04:06SPEAKERweek but it turned a corner like kind of overnight one day about a week after the power came back on

1:04:10SPEAKERwhere all of a sudden they were actually reading more like 45 50. oh um so i think most of the

1:04:18SPEAKERstanding moisture just got kind of pulled out eventually from me running those for so long

1:04:24SPEAKERum i wouldn't be shocked if they still do some industrial dehumidifying or something down there

1:04:30SPEAKERyeah um there's been there's been some loose talk about what to put back in there

1:04:34SPEAKERuh definitely no more carpet going down there yeah uh as you can imagine um the initial plan was it

1:04:41SPEAKERsounded like just to put some basic vinyl down like was in the bathroom because the assumption

1:04:46SPEAKERwas that would be resilient to any future flooding uh but what this remediation guy has said like i

1:04:51SPEAKERsaid like that bathroom that sheet in the bathroom has to come out anyway yeah so he said in a bad

1:04:56SPEAKERenough flood you're gonna have to take all the flooring out no matter what it is you should just

1:04:59SPEAKERdo painted concrete then i'm serious like they do uh yeah like it's a whole thing they do like fancy

1:05:06SPEAKERlooking finished concrete and it looks like wood and now it still is hard like concrete and it's

1:05:09SPEAKERcold like concrete so it's not like interesting yeah i didn't know they did such a thing finished

1:05:14SPEAKERconcrete wow you might have to have the like if the concrete's not smooth and shiny enough it

1:05:18SPEAKERmight not might not do it yeah it's extremely not but um they're looking at uh they they have like

1:05:25SPEAKERvinyl plank now that is similar to that laminate that they had yeah which is like basic it's kind

1:05:30SPEAKERof water resistant at a basic level like you can spill stuff on it it's fine yeah um but apparently

1:05:34SPEAKERthat's actually not really much more expensive than the sheet vinyl and we'll get them a similar

1:05:40SPEAKERkind of fake hardwood look from what they had the pergo that's what the pergo stuff has become now

1:05:44SPEAKERlike it's all vinyl yeah you do you just do long sheets of vinyl okay of it's it's not vinyl but

1:05:50SPEAKERit's like it's the same it's the same it's like a manufactured fake hardwood right yeah uh so so you

1:05:56SPEAKERknow basically the thought was this is not much more expensive than the sheet vinyl and in a

1:06:00SPEAKERsimilar flood it's all gonna have to come up anyway yeah so they might as well get the one

1:06:04SPEAKERthat looks nicer um that's kind of it they're oh and uh the electrician is going to need to come

1:06:10SPEAKERand replace all the electrical outlets as well is what this guy has said um i mean it makes sense

1:06:15SPEAKERthey're all working fine uh at the moments but i'm not sure that's a good idea long term

1:06:21SPEAKERit's like this is this is a electrical plugs cost four dollars yeah yeah so yeah i think i think

1:06:29SPEAKERwhat he said was the wiring should be fine because the wiring is all insulated but it's exposed at

1:06:33SPEAKERthe outlets so that's why the outlets need to come out we had a a very nice electrician from

1:06:38SPEAKERhawaii wrote into the next lander podcast and basically told me exactly this that like hey

1:06:43SPEAKEReven if the outlets are working they can have corrosion on them from the water and it's not

1:06:46SPEAKERa good idea to use those long term yeah makes sense yeah you don't want weird shorts yes

1:06:52SPEAKERuh i guess the last stuff i would talk about here is just there's there's some computing stuff and

1:06:56SPEAKERsome things i found downstairs stuff yeah you you gave me a hint of this before but let's talk about

1:07:04SPEAKERthe connectivity stuff first i think because like this sounds like an enormous pain in the ass and

1:07:09SPEAKERif you just called me and hooked me up with your landlord i would have been happy to drive over

1:07:12SPEAKERthere and like send you the file i you know i had i had a couple of family members admonish me for

1:07:18SPEAKERlike you know what you should just ask for help more not try to do everything yourselves and it's

1:07:22SPEAKERokay to ask for help yeah i know i really don't like burdening people i mean look i have a family

1:07:27SPEAKERfull of people who don't ever ask for help so i understand there's a there's a degree of self

1:07:32SPEAKERreliance that is expected and but it's okay to need help it is it is endemic rugged individualism

1:07:39SPEAKERyeah in the area um this turned out to be this was kind of a fun challenge because it really

1:07:44SPEAKERlet me put my preparedness to the test on on remote access to my stuff here uh so a couple

1:07:49SPEAKERdays after i got there it turned out i had forgotten to upload one of my local podcast

1:07:53SPEAKERrecordings from xlander oops and if i hadn't been able to pull this off it was fine we do like a

1:07:59SPEAKERwe do a recording of the kind of video call mix down oh right that can be used in a pinch so it

1:08:04SPEAKERwould not have been like the absolute end of the world um but it did turn into kind of a fun

1:08:09SPEAKERchallenge of like okay i'm in an extremely uh i'm in a very reduced capability here let's say

1:08:16SPEAKERpowers out internet is out phones barely work i don't even know if i can tether to this phone

1:08:20SPEAKERlet's see if i can get a 500 megabyte wave file uploaded to dropbox wow um i will say

1:08:27SPEAKERmy first thought was so i can turn on everything remotely here my nas and my desktop pc but you

1:08:32SPEAKERturn your nas off when you're out of town yeah i mean 75 watts but i'm not here i don't know

1:08:40SPEAKERi mean nobody's watching plex movie though nobody's watching plex or streaming music here

1:08:44SPEAKERor any of the other stuff okay okay doing podcast stuff or video kind of anyway my first thought was

1:08:51SPEAKERlike okay maybe i can remote desktop into my pc and export that file and get it uploaded to dropbox

1:08:55SPEAKERbut the way the data was working through the phones i was like okay there's no way the remote

1:09:00SPEAKERdesktop is going to be functional yeah um it kind of saved my ass that it turned out i had exported

1:09:06SPEAKERthe wave from the project to my nas before i went audacity project yes so the wave was sitting there

1:09:12SPEAKERso i did not have to get audacity open to export a wave to upload it yeah the wave was already

1:09:18SPEAKERsitting there so i kind of had to use like every tool at my disposal and it still took like an hour

1:09:23SPEAKERand a half to get it done um but what i ended up doing because i realized i was like oh wait i can

1:09:29SPEAKERi can access my nas and dropbox and everything without remote desktop i can do it all through

1:09:33SPEAKERlike text-based tools yeah that don't push a lot of data through so i did manage to tether my

1:09:38SPEAKERlaptop to my phone turn on low data mode there as well to try to prevent any like background

1:09:43SPEAKERmail syncing or whatever okay clogging up the connection wire guarded into my house

1:09:49SPEAKERconnected to the pykvm which lets me press the power button on the nas essentially turned out

1:09:54SPEAKERon why are you shaking your head just you could have had it could have already been on that's one

1:09:58SPEAKERextra step and uh i also um i've tried to set that thing up for wake on land but for some reason

1:10:04SPEAKERthat's not working at the moment i could have done that as well if you didn't have a pykvm

1:10:07SPEAKERit's turned on yeah but the pykvm makes it a lot easier then i was able to ssh into the nas

1:10:13SPEAKERand because i've set up those r clone tools that hook up to things like dropbox and one drive

1:10:18SPEAKERand google drive so basically anytime i log into my account on my nas it mounts all of my cloud

1:10:23SPEAKERstorage buckets as just local directories that's nice so ultimately i was able to ssh into the nas

1:10:28SPEAKERand just basically issue a command to copy just a straight up cp the way file over to dropbox uh

1:10:36SPEAKERor uh sorry in this case it was google drive but anyway i was able to basically get the file where

1:10:40SPEAKERit needed to be for alex to grab it and use it in his edit you could have just sent me a login for

1:10:45SPEAKERyour ssh and you know yeah anyway uh i did i did run into ssh key problems that made me have to go

1:10:51SPEAKERin and mess with the ssh d configuration so it would let me log in but anyway that's yeah either

1:10:56SPEAKERhere nor there something is always going to break though uh even with all these tools set up but it

1:11:00SPEAKERwas kind of nice to be like okay even our clone which sort of felt like a frivolous thing to set

1:11:05SPEAKERup because how often are you going to need to access your google drive for coming from a command

1:11:09SPEAKERline it was like oh in this case i'm actually extremely glad i had that it's funny you say that

1:11:13SPEAKERbecause i like i haven't bothered to set that up specifically because of that and but it's often

1:11:19SPEAKERa thing where i'm like man it'd be really nice to just be able to copy this into my dropbox

1:11:23SPEAKERso good to know yeah it was cool some real mcgyver shit there brad yes yes it definitely was it was

1:11:30SPEAKERsatisfying it felt it felt like you know what i did all that work for a reason okay so let's get

1:11:35SPEAKERto this sad part of the show i guess yeah i mean and again i really want to stress like this is

1:11:40SPEAKERsad as an extremely relative term here like i'm kind of bummed that i lost some some stuff from

1:11:45SPEAKERmy early time in the game industry but you know sometimes it's freeing pretty small price to pay

1:11:50SPEAKERwell yeah some of the stuff is stuff that i would have maybe considered donating to the video game

1:11:54SPEAKERhistory foundation at some point now it's ruined um yeah so it just happened to turn out we were

1:12:00SPEAKERstoring everything down there in cardboard boxes because my mom worked in education and had a ton

1:12:05SPEAKERof paper boxes from over the years yeah the types of boxes that just printer paper comes in yeah

1:12:09SPEAKERyeah of course um everything was in cardboard boxes it just so happened that most of the stuff

1:12:13SPEAKERalong the floor was mine oh so quite a few of my boxes of stuff got wet which is a real bummer

1:12:19SPEAKERa lot of it was just like old video game and computer magazines which i think like

1:12:22SPEAKERbasically every magazine on the planet has been scanned and pdfed at this point right

1:12:27SPEAKERi would say they're pretty well archived at this point it feels like so that's that's like kind of

1:12:31SPEAKERa bummer but you know i can still read those magazines online i did have one box of old e3

1:12:36SPEAKERmaterials from mostly from 1998 e3 that got ruined that's a kind of a heartbreaker like i've got the

1:12:42SPEAKERi've got the full-on like very thick booklet of like show directory here's literally everybody's

1:12:46SPEAKERspeaking at e3 here's every booth there's description of every exhibitor like that thing

1:12:50SPEAKERis trashed it's nasty god i'd forgotten that they used to hand that stuff you used to get a bag with

1:12:55SPEAKERthat stuff in it when you checked in at e3 yes yes like it was it was a crazy reminder of how much

1:13:00SPEAKERjust material like hard copy stuff they gave you at e3 also 98 was the first one i registered as

1:13:04SPEAKERpress okay so i had i had grabbed literally every press release in the press room like i had a stack

1:13:10SPEAKERof stuff oh man uh some of which is like it's still legible like it's definitely water damaged

1:13:14SPEAKERbut a lot of it is probably still could be scanned uh if there's a need for that kind of stuff like

1:13:18SPEAKERi've got nintendo's entire 1998 like thick e3 packet of like 50 press releases for ocarina of

1:13:25SPEAKERtime and the gameboy camera and a bunch of pokemon stuff like uh and that hopefully that stuff is

1:13:30SPEAKERstill usable wow lots of stuff like that a lot of random stuff i found apparently i requested

1:13:35SPEAKERa packet of information from number nine somewhere around 95 96 the wow the the hey we make bad video

1:13:41SPEAKERcards yes yes number nine the company that named all their video cards after beetle songs

1:13:45SPEAKERand that seemed like it was going to be legally actionable i've got i've got and it's still it's

1:13:50SPEAKERstill fairly legible some of it i definitely got acquainted with which types of print papers stick

1:13:55SPEAKERtogether and ruin themselves when you separate them and which don't that makes sense it's a lot

1:13:59SPEAKERof the stuff that would get stuck together when i pull the pages apart and just pull all the print

1:14:02SPEAKERoff and the coding yeah and some of that number nine stuff is messed up anyway there's just a ton

1:14:06SPEAKERof a ton of weird like marketing materials and so forth i've got pictures of some of the stuff i

1:14:11SPEAKERcould be showing you um i also just found a lot of stuff that didn't get ruined but like i said

1:14:16SPEAKERbecause i was going through and throwing so much stuff out and categorizing and everything

1:14:20SPEAKERi just found a lot of random stuff generally brad there's there's a bullet point here that says

1:14:26SPEAKERfound some printouts of usenet posts circa 1996 oh i've got them here's why did you print usenet

1:14:31SPEAKERposts dude because it was the 90s man sometimes you wanted to be able to take it with you look

1:14:37SPEAKERthis is this is i guess sometimes you had to take so nuclear hot that you were like i'm gonna save

1:14:43SPEAKERthis one well no it was informational stuff like the one you can see here from sai dot lang dot

1:14:47SPEAKERjapan which is the quick and dirty guide to japanese grammar oh so it's like reference

1:14:52SPEAKERmaterial is what i had printed out um here you can see uh here's here's my nicely stapled slackware

1:14:59SPEAKERdocumentation from the late 90s what is this microsoft oh dude congratulations on downloading

1:15:04SPEAKERinternet explorer 3.0 sorry yes i i i debated whether to even talk about that oh i there's no

1:15:11SPEAKERway we're not talking about this uh i don't know if i registered for this or what i have a t-shirt

1:15:17SPEAKERi think i've maybe put a picture of that t-shirt on twitter before this is like they oh they mailed

1:15:22SPEAKERthis to you yes they i don't know if i registered or if they just had my information somehow and i

1:15:27SPEAKERi basically downloaded internet explorer 3.0 like at the midnight launch because of course i did 32

1:15:33SPEAKER000 people registered by morning uh we've decided to send free commemorative t-shirts to all of the

1:15:39SPEAKER32 000 plus users who registered their copies of internet explorer 3.0 during the midnight

1:15:43SPEAKERmadness promotion uh when they launched it basically so yes i have i have that t-shirt

1:15:49SPEAKERdownstairs somewhere it just has a big like i downloaded it internet explorer 3.0 on t-shirt

1:15:54SPEAKERyes i am yes so i've never been like i've generally i'm not disappointed

1:16:01SPEAKERbut downloading internet explorer 3.0 on launch day this is a badge of shame my friend registering

1:16:08SPEAKERit registering it going out of my way to register it before 6 a.m the following morning also just

1:16:14SPEAKERsome people know the counterpoint to this is the slackware is the how to get linux documentation

1:16:21SPEAKERlike you took pictures of both of these things side by side from around well i just found them

1:16:25SPEAKERin the same box together i mean they're they may be a couple years apart i my recollection of

1:16:29SPEAKERmessing with slackware was probably around 1998 or so i don't i don't feel good about this when did

1:16:34SPEAKERwhen did ie3 come out 96 probably oh that sounds right i think it's look browsers like you were

1:16:42SPEAKERusing netscape 2 back then you know like new browsers were a thing look man this is back in

1:16:47SPEAKERthe m dollar sign era of microsoft it's when slash had the board logo bill gates like this is i

1:16:54SPEAKERprobably shouldn't even show you this article i wrote about windows 95 at the time okay now this

1:16:59SPEAKERis this is fantastic 32-bit preemptive multitasking architecture this is what lets you play doom while

1:17:04SPEAKERdefragging your hard drive okay i got it i got to call it hold on no no go back to that go back to

1:17:09SPEAKERthat you got to go back to that because you had written in the side gates in like big block text

1:17:15SPEAKERwith the s as like a lightning bolt like like in the mega death why i did that oh my god we can't

1:17:21SPEAKERcan i please read it please let me read it no i can't man oh it's a bad episode okay fine boom

1:17:27SPEAKERboom this the sound of microsoft's juggernaut windows 95 has been growing louder for months

1:17:34SPEAKERokay i'm not i'm not gonna read the rest of it but this is amazing this is really good

1:17:39SPEAKERi myself have experienced this miracle os miracles and sneer quotes having sneer having

1:17:46SPEAKERhaving been trampled underfoot by the microsoft propaganda machine at least you were aware i think

1:17:52SPEAKERthis was probably for my high school newspaper because there's also a printed out version of it

1:17:56SPEAKERthat's okay a bit more formal i worked on the paper for a couple of years some of my high school

1:18:01SPEAKERnewspapers got water locked unfortunately but there was a long drying out period of spreading

1:18:06SPEAKERthings out on drying racks and stuff to try to salvage as much as i could i i'm going to tell

1:18:11SPEAKERyou right now there is an endless amount of embarrassing old computer shit there is so so

1:18:19SPEAKERmuch that i found that i do not have pictures of and i'm not mentioning to you look if you go back

1:18:24SPEAKERfor an extended period of time we can just do uh what's in brad's basement segment it'll be a

1:18:29SPEAKERten dollar patron tier dude that's like months of podcast fodder um i i gotta there's two things

1:18:35SPEAKERthat make me that are shocking like first i had forgotten that there was a time before cdns

1:18:40SPEAKERwhen download servers would get overwhelmed and you wouldn't be able to download new software

1:18:44SPEAKERwhen people were excited about it oh yeah that was kind of standard back then but like it's it's

1:18:48SPEAKERbeen such a long time since that happened like when was the last time like you like call of duty

1:18:53SPEAKERcame out today and steam's not collapsed under that weight right like it's it's uh it's it's

1:19:00SPEAKERamazing that that was such a limited period of time in retrospect it was a very different time

1:19:05SPEAKERand then uh the other thing is the idea that microsoft would send out t-shirts to

1:19:10SPEAKER32 000 people for registering their browser like the like just the amount of money they were

1:19:16SPEAKERspending on browser stuff is incredible to me oh absolutely anyway i've got one of those 32 000

1:19:22SPEAKERshirts and i'm just going to because i'm already all the way down the road of debasing myself here

1:19:27SPEAKERfor your yeah what else you got i'm just going to tell you that t-shirt pretty rough shape which

1:19:32SPEAKERmeans that i wore it a lot i mean look you you not everyone would have the rocks to wear a t-shirt

1:19:41SPEAKERthat shows their support for the faces of multinational corporations standing up against

1:19:45SPEAKERthe the underdog of mark andreasen it was a different landscape navigator god dude don't

1:19:51SPEAKEReven get me started about it remember that like time magazine cover of mark andreasen barefoot

1:19:55SPEAKERlook there there's been a lot of barefoot tech geniuses on the cover of time magazine we don't

1:19:59SPEAKERneed to get to walk down that path the mark andreasen villain arc is really something to

1:20:04SPEAKERreckon with um at least i was linux curious at the time yeah i was not i was not fully in the

1:20:10SPEAKERtank for microsoft you were in there yes anyway uh maybe someday if i if and when i have more

1:20:16SPEAKERready access to the archives down there maybe we'll go through some more of this material um

1:20:22SPEAKERwhat about you said there's hardware down there we've talked about a little bit before i i you

1:20:26SPEAKERknow on the subject i think we'll wrap up here pretty quick but on the subject of feeling

1:20:30SPEAKERfortunate about what did and didn't get wet not a single piece of electronics got wet oh that's nice

1:20:35SPEAKERuh and granted if something's not plugged in you know i think probably

1:20:39SPEAKERsome some amount of electronics can withstand some amount of water yeah like you want to

1:20:43SPEAKERwash them off with rubbing alcohol right high high percentage out from the alcohol to get the

1:20:48SPEAKERjust to keep them from corroding right but if you know but if if some stuff had gotten wet that

1:20:52SPEAKERwouldn't necessarily mean it was dead but but at any rate nothing basically it was basically just

1:20:56SPEAKERpaper like pretty much everything i had get wet was almost all just paper well that's good i guess

1:21:02SPEAKERthere was there actually was one still fully built computer down there it was the one i had built

1:21:06SPEAKERthe last one i had built for my parents before before they were like you know we're just gonna

1:21:10SPEAKERget laptops um and miraculously that case had zero water in it even though it was sitting on the

1:21:16SPEAKERfloor like i think it was on the floor i'm not sure where it was actually but oh weird somehow

1:21:20SPEAKERit did not get water in it uh that is a it's an abit kx7 i believe in that machine okay um

1:21:30SPEAKERwhich probably is some kind of mid period athlon like a thunderbird like a yeah like a thunderbird

1:21:36SPEAKER1.2 gigahertz is probably what's in there huh uh some kind of some kind of red ati card they were

1:21:42SPEAKERall red then weren't they yeah they were most of them yeah uh so so that is a functional computer

1:21:48SPEAKERpresumably i mean it's at least it didn't get wet i don't i mean it may just like be old and

1:21:52SPEAKERmight not boot anyway but look next time you go back you should just build one of these and plug

1:21:56SPEAKERit in see how it goes um so like i said as i was cleaning up and consolidating and bending things

1:22:00SPEAKERi found a ton of other hardware scattered through different boxes i found two more abit boards down

1:22:06SPEAKERthere a bh6 and a kt7 bh6 is one of the great socket seven boards yes absolutely um some of the

1:22:14SPEAKERstuff some of the stuff was from my old builds and some of it was hand-me-downs because i lived with

1:22:18SPEAKERa roommate for quite a while around this time who would just give me his old stuff when he didn't

1:22:22SPEAKERwhen he was upgrading okay so i've got quite a bit of extra hardware some of which i've never

1:22:26SPEAKERused down there so so there's that full kt7 or sorry kx7 machine there's a bh6 and kt7

1:22:32SPEAKERmotherboards i found a pentium 2 but i've never used this yeah so loose pentium 2 but i never had

1:22:37SPEAKERa pentium 2 i just had a celeron so i think that was one of my roommates i also found i found my

1:22:42SPEAKERloose celeron 300a oh man was it a chip or a slot one uh it's a slot okay um also found that boxed

1:22:50SPEAKERsealed 300a as well uh i found my voodoo one okay which was an orchid card or can we catch this one

1:22:58SPEAKERi believe well no the cannabis with the extra two megabytes of ram was the nice one i felt like the

1:23:03SPEAKERdiamond one was the low end the orchid one was the mid-tier and the cannabis was the high end but

1:23:08SPEAKERyeah yeah i think they were i don't know that's true i think they're all the same other than that

1:23:12SPEAKERcanopus one pretty much yeah i found i found the uh the tnt one that i had for a while that was

1:23:18SPEAKERmade by stb okay i found a voodoo 3 which i had to like google lens to figure out what it was

1:23:23SPEAKERbecause i saw a 3d effects logo on there that was definitely my roommates because i've never had a

1:23:27SPEAKERvoodoo 3 that was already a card i never had any voodoo card past the voodoo one um i also found my

1:23:34SPEAKERasus geforce 256 sdr oh man so there's like a pretty good assortment of CPUs and video cards

1:23:42SPEAKERthere i think that was the one of the first video cards i reviewed for maximum pc really asus ddr g

1:23:47SPEAKERforce uh this was the sdr one sdr sadly because i needed a card badly um so so yeah like and i also

1:23:55SPEAKERfound like a tons i found like two different modems like a land card uh an old video capture

1:24:01SPEAKERcard that was definitely not mine um but i think i could probably i could probably get three working

1:24:07SPEAKERretro pcs together out of the stuff i found down there time time to have a land party down there

1:24:11SPEAKERget them get fire up doom or duke nukem and you know let her rip assuming all that stuff works

1:24:16SPEAKERonce i get it put together but um and a nice thing the nice thing about atx you know we we kind of

1:24:21SPEAKERlament the fact that atx is a 30 year old standard at this point it's a fairly common topic over on

1:24:27SPEAKERuh on the full nerd yes uh but i guess the nice thing about that is i could buy like new atx power

1:24:33SPEAKERsupplies and cases for the stuff right and it should just work that's uh assuming they have

1:24:38SPEAKERthe 24 pin with the breakaway because it's probably a 16 pin or 20 pin connector oh power yeah i'll

1:24:44SPEAKERhave to look into that but but like worst case you can get in there with a pair of snips and make it

1:24:48SPEAKERmake it happen sure um anyway you know it was nice to find all that hardware and know that it still

1:24:54SPEAKERmight work kind of incredible yeah like yeah i'm glad i'm glad it wasn't too uh

1:25:01SPEAKERglad it wasn't too much of a disaster yeah uh but none of that stuff was in static bags so i don't

1:25:05SPEAKERknow it's dysfunctional it is those circuits are big enough that it's not like yeah static is not

1:25:13SPEAKERthat much of a problem yeah you're probably right um well anyway brad i'm glad you're back i'm glad

1:25:18SPEAKEReverybody is like for the most part you know it's just it's just property damage yeah yeah totally

1:25:24SPEAKERare you yeah i i mostly just want to do this episode because there were so many sort of

1:25:28SPEAKERtechnical subjects that i rubbed up against as we were doing this well and like i think it's worth

1:25:33SPEAKERtalking about this stuff because it's good like hopefully this will light the fires and under some

1:25:38SPEAKERpeople who haven't done their preparedness stuff right yeah like yeah like i think that's that kind

1:25:41SPEAKERof the real lesson because you've had people in that area for a long time going like oh we're like

1:25:46SPEAKERkind of immune to climate change here we don't really have a lot of natural disasters of note

1:25:52SPEAKERlike i have a an acquaintance who works in that space who when i asked them 10 years ago where you

1:25:58SPEAKERshould move if you wanted to be unaffected by climate change they're like well like western

1:26:02SPEAKERnorth carolina pretty good vermont inland vermont pretty good like up in the mountains eastern

1:26:09SPEAKERcolorado all these places i was like oh yeah okay no nothing's safe it's all yeah that's that seems

1:26:15SPEAKERto be the lesson just on the subject of disaster preparedness i think that's the lesson out of this

1:26:19SPEAKERis that nowhere is immune it's all the same climate emergency yes no matter no matter where

1:26:23SPEAKERyou live it pays to be at least prepared at a basic level because you never know what might

1:26:28SPEAKERhappen well and i mean there was a lot of kind of misinformation about um like what's going on

1:26:36SPEAKERin north carolina with the fema stuff it's been in the news we don't need to recap but that's that's

1:26:41SPEAKERtype of stuff i had no idea about until i got back out here basically because i wasn't really able to

1:26:45SPEAKERfollow news and social media much there but yeah hearing that there was like man this stuff makes

1:26:50SPEAKERme so mad i don't know if i want to get into it yeah because like the people the the thing the

1:26:55SPEAKERthing when you talk to people who are on the ground in in this kind of a climate this kind of

1:27:00SPEAKERan emergency generally the vibe is that everybody pulls together yeah totally right and and the

1:27:06SPEAKERstuff i saw in the news after i got back out here is that like even even local political leaders

1:27:11SPEAKERwho let's say are politically aligned with people spreading the misinformation were like hey fucking

1:27:16SPEAKERstop yeah we've got enough problems here on the ground trying to deal with this in a real way

1:27:20SPEAKERwithout you spreading conspiracy theories about this nonsense like shut the fuck up

1:27:24SPEAKERyeah yeah get out of the way so that people can do the work yes yes turns out real life trump's

1:27:31SPEAKERwhat's going on on social media when it comes down to it in so many ways brass yes uh but you know

1:27:37SPEAKERwhat doesn't trump what's going on on social media is listener supported podcasts right

1:27:42SPEAKERi don't even know what that means yeah actually i don't know if that's right but yeah let's go with

1:27:46SPEAKERit uh brad and will made a tech pod is a listener supported show that means we wouldn't be here

1:27:50SPEAKERwithout you the listeners who we love and appreciate every single week um if you want

1:27:56SPEAKERto find out how you can support the show you can go to patreon.com slash tech pod again that's

1:28:01SPEAKERpatreon.com slash tech pod where for five bucks a month you get access to the patreon the the tech

1:28:07SPEAKERpod discord which is like look sharing interesting things sharing topics talking about problems we're

1:28:14SPEAKERtalking about the the arrow lake launch which just so people know we're going to do a big like what's

1:28:20SPEAKERgoing on with cpu episode what's the x3 x3d embargoes lift and i don't know when that is

1:28:27SPEAKERexactly but it's soon yeah i really want to hear about all this even like a lot going on with cpus

1:28:31SPEAKERlately yeah well we've had new new launches from amd intel hit yeah like earlier this week for

1:28:37SPEAKERpeople who are listening and then the x3d the gamer focused amd cpus will land later this month

1:28:43SPEAKERor next month i guess um but yeah we we appreciate everybody who supports the show and you can go to

1:28:48SPEAKERpatreon.com slash jackpot you get access to the tech pod discord you can get access to the patreon

1:28:52SPEAKERexclusive episode i think the last month's patron exclusive episode was us talking about

1:28:56SPEAKERyou getting ready to go on this trip so like there's that and this will bookend nicely if

1:29:01SPEAKERyou're interested in that yep um and uh yeah we we um we appreciate all of our patrons but we

1:29:09SPEAKERespecially appreciate our executive producer and associate producer to your patrons so

1:29:14SPEAKERon the executive producer front thanks to andrew slosky bunnyfiend david allen james kamek jordan

1:29:21SPEAKERlippett twinkle twinkie and pantheon makers of the hs3 high speed 3d printer uh and at the end

1:29:29SPEAKERof the month we give an extra special shout out to our associate producer to your patrons including

1:29:34SPEAKERalihandra navarro andre m burke andrew dicey shoal dice arthur geese ben tallman brutal kerfluffle

1:29:42SPEAKEReric eric klein felix kramer graham banks jad rita just associate wedge matt walker parentheses

1:29:50SPEAKERwalkman 8080 close parentheses mike ethridge nathan phelps sanchik kumar steve lynn thomas

1:29:57SPEAKERshay and tom hilton thank you all so so much we appreciate you all yes we sure do and uh i guess

1:30:03SPEAKERthat'll do it for us this week uh we will have a patron episode up soon but we will see you all

1:30:09SPEAKERuh next week with another episode of the tech pod that's right q a yeah send questions tech pod at

1:30:15SPEAKERcontent.down it's where the questions get turned into answers or the questions seeking answers

1:30:20SPEAKERuh channel on the discord both work see you all next time bye