348: Vincent Caravella, Back Alley Electrician

00:00SPEAKER- Oh, because you guys do the cold open, right?

00:02SPEAKER- Yeah, we do a cold open.

00:03SPEAKER- Oh, I forgot, yeah.

00:04SPEAKEROr is that a warm open?

00:06SPEAKER- Look, man, at this point, who knows?

00:07SPEAKER- You do a rolling start.

00:09SPEAKER- Exactly, we're just easing in.

00:10SPEAKER- So I will continue to berate you that you do not do back.

00:15SPEAKERYou are literally raw dog in this podcast.

00:19SPEAKERYou are just no support.

00:21SPEAKER- Look, I only had to rerecord my audio beside one time.

00:24SPEAKER- That's like being like, look, I used to wear underwear,

00:28SPEAKERbut I don't wear it anymore because I wore it,

00:30SPEAKERbut nothing really happened.

00:32SPEAKERMy pants never ripped in front,

00:34SPEAKERand so what was gonna happen?

00:36SPEAKERSo I just don't wear underwear anymore

00:37SPEAKERbecause I already got pants on.

00:40SPEAKERThe pants are in the front.

00:41SPEAKERI don't get it.

00:42SPEAKER- Look, man, my doctor told me I was getting chafing

00:45SPEAKERbecause my underwear was keeping everything too warm in there.

00:48SPEAKER- Too warm, yes.

00:49SPEAKER- Yeah, so you gotta let everything breathe.

00:51SPEAKERYou gotta get some air movement.

00:53SPEAKER- Getting too many devices recording.

00:55SPEAKERYour room is getting too warm.

00:56SPEAKERYou gotta stop doing it.

00:57SPEAKER- I literally have panic attacks on one of my,

01:00SPEAKERI do three recordings for everything,

01:02SPEAKERand I panic when one of them goes out.

01:06SPEAKER- So I just do one.

01:08SPEAKERI used to do three.

01:10SPEAKERI used to do two.

01:13SPEAKERI did 200 episodes of this podcast just doing two.

01:16SPEAKERI realized that I had terabytes of crap on a hard drive,

01:21SPEAKERand I was like, I've never needed this.

01:22SPEAKERI'm gonna stop doing it.

01:23SPEAKERIt's been fun.

01:24SPEAKER- That's not how backups work.

01:25SPEAKER- No, no, no, it's fine.

01:26SPEAKER- You delete the backup once the thing is posted.

01:31SPEAKERYou keep your file, the one file,

01:35SPEAKERbut you have a rolling backup recording going,

01:40SPEAKERand then you just reuse that.

01:42SPEAKER- So, okay.

01:43SPEAKER- It's audio.

01:44SPEAKERIt's so easy to back up.

01:46SPEAKER- This is, well, but I don't have two easy places to record

01:48SPEAKERthat aren't on the same machine.

01:49SPEAKER- Record on the mixer.

01:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I gotta log into this janky web interface.

01:54SPEAKERIt's not great.

01:56SPEAKERSo, this has bitten me twice.

01:57SPEAKEROnce I forgot to record the first 10 minutes of the podcast,

02:01SPEAKERso I had to then go in and recreate the questions

02:07SPEAKERthat I asked.

02:09SPEAKER- Did you?

02:10SPEAKERDid you punch in and redo the--

02:12SPEAKER- Oh, I punched in and redid the whole thing.

02:15SPEAKER- Did you match, it's hard sometimes to match tone

02:17SPEAKERif you're recording after the fact.

02:19SPEAKERYou have to be right near the mic or away from the mic.

02:22SPEAKER- It was an enormous pain in the ass.

02:23SPEAKERYes, it took me, it would have been easier.

02:25SPEAKERI think it was when we had a guest on.

02:27SPEAKERIt might have been the Mic Mic episode real early.

02:30SPEAKERAnd luckily I could hear, he didn't wear headphones,

02:33SPEAKERwhich is another thing we forgot to ask people not to do.

02:36SPEAKER- So you got bleed?

02:37SPEAKER- So I could hear my questions through in the bleed

02:39SPEAKERand then I could just kind of line it back up

02:41SPEAKERand it worked itself out.

02:42SPEAKERIt was not great though.

02:44SPEAKERIt was a real, it was a bad time for everyone.

02:46SPEAKERThe other time was when we had a guest on the FOSS pod

02:50SPEAKERand we sent him the documentation for how to do this.

02:53SPEAKERAnd the weird thing about the open source founders was

02:56SPEAKERthey're really technical in the stuff

02:57SPEAKERthat they're technical about,

02:59SPEAKERbut not at all in everything else.

03:02SPEAKER- Oh, you just expect them to understand how

03:04SPEAKERlike recording formats and where to, don't wear

03:08SPEAKERor wear headphones and sit up on a mic and the whole thing.

03:11SPEAKER- Yeah, have a microphone is a good place to start.

03:14SPEAKERSometimes you'd get the call and they'd be like,

03:16SPEAKERoh, was I supposed to have a microphone?

03:17SPEAKERAnd you're like, yeah, we would have, we had a kit.

03:19SPEAKERWe could have sent you,

03:20SPEAKERif you had sent you didn't have a microphone.

03:22SPEAKER- Yeah, do you have a kit?

03:24SPEAKER- Not anymore.

03:25SPEAKERGoogle paid for a kit that, you know,

03:27SPEAKERthis is the beautiful thing about having the might

03:29SPEAKERof one of the six biggest companies in the world

03:31SPEAKERor whatever behind your--

03:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I've heard working for giant companies is awesome

03:35SPEAKERis what I always hear. - No downside, it turns out.

03:38SPEAKER- It's all up microphones, all upsides, yes.

03:41SPEAKER- Like you want a FedEx, a microphone and an audio interface

03:44SPEAKERand a pair of headphones anywhere in the world, we got you.

03:47SPEAKER- You know, I sometimes do, I would love to sometimes sit in

03:50SPEAKERon like an NPR production meeting because I am curious

03:54SPEAKERwhat they send people sometimes.

03:55SPEAKERSometimes they do a little behind the scenes

03:57SPEAKERand it sounds like sometimes they have a producer there

03:59SPEAKERon location.

04:00SPEAKERSometimes it sounds like they are just using some kind

04:04SPEAKERof Bluetooth or something app on their phone or a microphone

04:08SPEAKERon their phone, maybe they sent them ahead of time.

04:10SPEAKERAnd sometimes it sounds like they're just using

04:12SPEAKERtheir phones and some kind of app on their phone.

04:16SPEAKER- So we worked with a really great producer

04:18SPEAKERwho had done NPR stuff before.

04:19SPEAKERI've done some NPR call-ins before where you go

04:23SPEAKERto like the local NPR station and they put you

04:25SPEAKERin a recording booth. - In house, yeah.

04:26SPEAKER- In house, yeah, like I'd go to KQED in San Francisco.

04:29SPEAKER- Right.

04:30SPEAKER- Somebody'd meet you at the door, they'd be like,

04:31SPEAKER"Oh yeah, you're in recording room four,

04:33SPEAKER"we'll definitely take you up there."

04:34SPEAKERAnd then they'd lock you in a small booth.

04:36SPEAKER- Did they have their cool, this is the thing

04:38SPEAKERI was always jealous of, they're cool like,

04:40SPEAKERI guess they're not ISDN lines now.

04:41SPEAKERThey're special like phone lines that like jump right

04:46SPEAKERinto the main hub.

04:47SPEAKER- Well, it's point to point, yeah.

04:48SPEAKER- So I think when I did it, they were still ISDN lines,

04:51SPEAKERat least the first time, but they were like,

04:54SPEAKERyou would sit there and then a light would flash green.

04:58SPEAKERIt was like, hey, when the green light flashes,

04:59SPEAKERyou hit the button and it connects you.

05:01SPEAKERAnd then somebody'd pop up in your ears and be like,

05:03SPEAKER"Hey, this is blah, blah, blah, we're gonna go be live."

05:06SPEAKERAnd it was like you called into some radio show,

05:08SPEAKERexcept for you were using the same microphones

05:10SPEAKERwe're using now, 'cause they were like electro voice,

05:12SPEAKERI think is the thing that they standardize on.

05:14SPEAKER- Yeah, probably.

05:17SPEAKERYeah, and you were in a studio.

05:18SPEAKER- And I was in a little studio with super padded walls,

05:21SPEAKERthe whole thing.

05:22SPEAKERThe other thing that he said that they would do

05:25SPEAKERwhen they were doing recordings and remotes

05:27SPEAKERthat weren't live is he would just have them hold up

05:30SPEAKERthe phone with the voice recorder turned on

05:33SPEAKERand just hold it up to their mouth,

05:34SPEAKERlike three inches from the side of their face like this.

05:38SPEAKERAnd it's surprisingly effective if they had a modern phone,

05:41SPEAKERlike if they had a decent phone, especially an iPhone,

05:45SPEAKERthen you could get a pretty clean audio source

05:48SPEAKERwithout a whole lot of mouth noises

05:50SPEAKERand stuff like that out of that thing.

05:51SPEAKERIt's still a little processed, more processed than you like,

05:54SPEAKERbut it wasn't bad.

05:55SPEAKER- So I believe it, and especially nowadays,

05:58SPEAKERI feel like once in a blue moon,

06:00SPEAKERyou get a little behind the scenes stuff,

06:01SPEAKERlike we're kind of dating ourselves

06:03SPEAKERbecause we're talking about NPR,

06:05SPEAKERbut like some once in a while who listen to NPR,

06:07SPEAKERradio folks here, that's what all the kids are listening to.

06:11SPEAKERI still have a radio, I love it.

06:13SPEAKERI listen, look, to kids like NPR.

06:16SPEAKERMy daughter is like, hey, can we stop listening

06:18SPEAKERto the old guy music and listen to the old guys talking?

06:21SPEAKERAnd I was like, yeah, we can totally do that.

06:22SPEAKER- It's a KQED, right?

06:26SPEAKER- Yeah, KQED.

06:27SPEAKER- So I once in a while there do like the pre-show stuff

06:31SPEAKERwhere you hear them and they sound like garbage

06:33SPEAKERand then they're like, is it recording now?

06:34SPEAKERAnd then they switch over to sounding high quality

06:37SPEAKERand you're like, oh, okay,

06:38SPEAKERthey are definitely doing some kind of thing

06:41SPEAKERlike a Skype or something on the terminal on the computer

06:45SPEAKERand then they are using a phone or some other device.

06:48SPEAKERMaybe they sent them a recorder.

06:50SPEAKERI don't know, that's so fascinating to me.

06:52SPEAKERI would like to sit in, though,

06:55SPEAKER'cause I have real guest tech fear stuff,

06:58SPEAKERthis is why I do multiple recordings here,

07:00SPEAKERabout having guests on podcasts and being like,

07:02SPEAKERoh my gosh, are they gonna forget to record

07:05SPEAKERor are they saying they're recording on their end

07:07SPEAKERand like they're not quite sure or, you know,

07:10SPEAKERI'm a bad producer in the way that like,

07:13SPEAKERI'm a little better at it now,

07:15SPEAKERbut like when people would record

07:17SPEAKERand their mics are like way out here

07:19SPEAKERand then I have to be like, hey, do you mind

07:20SPEAKERjust like pulling your mic in or like,

07:22SPEAKERhey, those earbuds are really bleeding.

07:24SPEAKERDo you have another set of,

07:25SPEAKERor sorry, your headphones are really bleeding.

07:27SPEAKERBut, Will, there are, I just talked about this recently,

07:32SPEAKERI forget where, I think on like a Nextlander Q&A,

07:35SPEAKERthere are really, really good VST plugins now

07:38SPEAKERfor cleaning up audio and they work very well.

07:44SPEAKERAnd are they part of the AI takeover?

07:47SPEAKERMaybe some of them have a little,

07:50SPEAKERlet's call it machine learning, okay, let's.

07:52SPEAKER- Yeah, it's fine, machine learning's okay.

07:55SPEAKER- Yeah, but they work really well.

07:57SPEAKERThey're actually the newest suite of ones

08:00SPEAKERthat I just upgraded to recently

08:02SPEAKERthat I really like have bleed.

08:05SPEAKERIt's magic bleed removal. - Really?

08:08SPEAKER- Yes, that's what they said.

08:11SPEAKERI really like them, I think they are very good.

08:15SPEAKER- I'm gonna have to get a recommendation

08:17SPEAKERbecause it's always a problem.

08:20SPEAKERIt's why, honestly, this has gone from cold open

08:24SPEAKERto just talking about audio stuff now,

08:26SPEAKERbut it's the reason we don't do very many guests typically

08:30SPEAKERis because it's always a wild card

08:32SPEAKERand I'm always gonna skew on the side of guests

08:34SPEAKERwho I know have pretty decent recording setups

08:38SPEAKERbecause it's like fixing a dirty audio signal

08:41SPEAKERis such an enormous undertaking.

08:44SPEAKER- I think I use the iZotope suite

08:47SPEAKERthat is not the big main one, it's the slightly cheaper one

08:51SPEAKERbecause the whole big, huge thing is too expensive.

08:55SPEAKERYes, it's the iZotope suite.

08:58SPEAKER- Okay, iZotope, right?

09:00SPEAKER- iZotope, yes, and they just updated to 12 recently

09:04SPEAKERand I used their suite of cleanup tools.

09:09SPEAKERThey have mastering suites that are for recording music

09:12SPEAKERand stuff like that, I don't use that.

09:15SPEAKERBut it's not free, it's not super cheap,

09:18SPEAKERbut it's a couple hundred bucks

09:20SPEAKERand I find them to work really well.

09:23SPEAKERThe only problem, Will, is when you use it,

09:27SPEAKERyou forget that it's gonna take a lot longer

09:31SPEAKERto kick out this, you get used to exporting your audio file

09:36SPEAKERand be like, yeah, this'll be done in five minutes,

09:37SPEAKERI'll just, my workflow, and then suddenly you're just like,

09:40SPEAKERthis is an hour and 15 minutes to export this audio now

09:43SPEAKERbecause it's processing, yeah, so just be careful.

09:47SPEAKER- It's not GPU accelerated, I assume,

09:49SPEAKERit's just run on the CPU like a peasant?

09:51SPEAKER- Probably, probably, the thing is,

09:55SPEAKERI just updated it recently and I use it once in a while

09:58SPEAKERbecause it can clean up background noise.

10:00SPEAKERThey have a lot of things in there that are like,

10:02SPEAKERand they work, you think they wouldn't work.

10:05SPEAKERI've been doing audio for a long time,

10:07SPEAKERI'm like, you can't do this, that's impossible.

10:09SPEAKERBut they have, and you're like, oh, okay, that kinda works.

10:11SPEAKERThey have de-reverb, yeah, which works for roomy people.

10:16SPEAKERThey have de-clipping, which kinda works

10:21SPEAKERto restore a little bit if somebody's peaking or clipping,

10:23SPEAKERit's not perfect, but it'll,

10:26SPEAKERI look at how it's trying to work,

10:28SPEAKERit kind of restores it a bit.

10:31SPEAKERThey have de-buzz and de-syllaben, de-essing.

10:37SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, de-civilization.

10:40SPEAKER- Yeah, right, that's the bad for axis scheme.

10:44SPEAKER- Yeah, welcome to Vinny Caravella's de-civilization.

10:48SPEAKERNo civil dannings here.

10:51SPEAKER- And so we, you know, I should do an audio podcast

10:56SPEAKERcalled Civil War, Civil War?

10:58SPEAKER- Oh, no, no, no, don't do that, you'll get the wrong,

11:01SPEAKERpeople will be confused by that one.

11:04SPEAKER- Anyway, they kind of work, but they added something

11:08SPEAKERthat I have a problem with in podcasts, which is,

11:11SPEAKERand this might have been in RX11, not just RS12,

11:14SPEAKERde-click, like a D, a D, you know, like that.

11:18SPEAKERWhich I do all the time in my podcast,

11:20SPEAKERI'm always like, you know, that mouth sound?

11:24SPEAKERYeah, sorry for people who are, it's gonna happen anyway,

11:27SPEAKERI'm sorry, I just do it all the time.

11:29SPEAKERAnd I was like, great, this is awesome,

11:31SPEAKERI'm just gonna use this.

11:32SPEAKERAnd then it took the rendering time up from like

11:35SPEAKERfive minutes to an hour and 15 minutes,

11:37SPEAKERI was like, great, turning that,

11:38SPEAKERI'm just stopping that and turning that off.

11:41SPEAKER'Cause usually I'm editing the podcast

11:43SPEAKERfor our main podcast, and it's like eight o'clock at night,

11:45SPEAKERand I'm like, I just gotta get this thing out.

11:48SPEAKERAnd I was like, I'm not waiting 'til 10 o'clock

11:50SPEAKERto get this podcast out.

11:51SPEAKER- Yeah, this is a tomorrow morning problem at that point.

11:53SPEAKERThis is a, if I have the, this is a luxury on this one.

11:57SPEAKERSo anyway, what's up?

11:59SPEAKER(upbeat music)

12:23SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

12:27SPEAKERWelcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."

12:29SPEAKERI'm Will, and our substitute Brad this week,

12:32SPEAKERBrad's still out having, doing family stuff,

12:36SPEAKERis one Nextlander's own Vinny Caravella.

12:39SPEAKERWelcome to StrowVinny, welcome back.

12:40SPEAKER- Hey, there is no substitute for Brad Schumacher.

12:44SPEAKER- Look, I've tried, it's impossible.

12:46SPEAKER- Impossible.

12:47SPEAKER- He's inimicable.

12:49SPEAKER- It's, there are certain things, inimicable.

12:52SPEAKER- He's not inimical, inimical means he'd be an enemy.

12:55SPEAKERInimitable means he's not able to be copied, yeah.

12:59SPEAKER- There are certain things for which

13:00SPEAKERthere are plenty of substitutes.

13:02SPEAKERI prefer, I can take a veggie dog.

13:06SPEAKERI like a veggie dog.

13:08SPEAKER- Oh, wow, that's a bold choice.

13:10SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't mind it, I don't mind it, it's different.

13:12SPEAKERI find it to be an okay swapping in.

13:15SPEAKERVeggie mayo, doesn't work for me.

13:18SPEAKER- No, I've gotten real into nutritional yeast lately.

13:22SPEAKER- Oh, what?

13:23SPEAKER- Yeah, the nooch is what the vegans call it.

13:26SPEAKERBut I put it on popcorn.

13:28SPEAKERThe Trader Joe's used to make this popcorn

13:30SPEAKERthat was called, I can't remember,

13:33SPEAKERit had a Trader Joe's name, but it was like

13:35SPEAKERpopcorn and nutritional yeast and like a little bit

13:37SPEAKERof onion and garlic powder, and it basically was like,

13:40SPEAKERit was just the bomb, it was the kind of thing that like,

13:43SPEAKERI went there one day, I was like, oh this looks pretty good,

13:44SPEAKERI'll try it, and I was on the way home

13:46SPEAKERfrom the grocery store, I was like, maybe I'll dig

13:47SPEAKERinto the groceries, grab a little snack on the way home.

13:50SPEAKERI opened up that bag of popcorn, I ate like half the bag

13:52SPEAKERof popcorn on the way home, I just housed it.

13:54SPEAKER- Now, look, I get it, I like bread, so I'm a fan of yeast,

13:59SPEAKERlet's just get that out of the gate.

14:01SPEAKERSo my best friends are yeast.

14:03SPEAKER- Yeah, you know a lot of yeast,

14:04SPEAKERwe know, I know this works for me.

14:06SPEAKER- But nutritional yeast does sound like one of those products

14:09SPEAKERin the sci-fi books where it's like, hey, you got your block

14:13SPEAKERof nutritional yeast.

14:15SPEAKER- Yeah, we grow it in the vat downstairs.

14:17SPEAKER- That's right, yes, you just got your that

14:18SPEAKERand some algae that you are eating.

14:22SPEAKER- It tastes like cheese, it tastes real cheesy,

14:24SPEAKERis the kind of tale you are.

14:25SPEAKER- I like cheese, I'm a big fan of cheese and yeast,

14:28SPEAKERmaybe I'm a candidate.

14:31SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, speaking of cheese,

14:33SPEAKERwe're here today 'cause you and I had a conversation

14:36SPEAKERa couple weeks ago into a microphone someplace,

14:38SPEAKERand I think one of us idly said, Vinny, you should just come

14:41SPEAKERon the podcast and ask a bunch of questions.

14:43SPEAKER- The problem is, every time you're on,

14:45SPEAKERpeople don't realize this, but pre-show is usually

14:47SPEAKERwhen I just ask you every Monday.

14:51SPEAKER- Well, what's up with monitor scaling?

14:53SPEAKERHow come display scaling just breaks half my programs?

14:57SPEAKER- Well, let me tell you.

14:58SPEAKER- So I think eventually you're like,

15:00SPEAKERyou should just come on the show, just write these down.

15:03SPEAKER- Yeah, so this is the first outing of this.

15:08SPEAKERVinny, you put about 20 questions into a big giant

15:11SPEAKERGoogle document, and then I put check marks

15:13SPEAKERnext to the ones that I'm prepared to answer,

15:15SPEAKERand you're gonna ask a bunch of questions,

15:17SPEAKERyou're gonna see how many we get through, and yeah.

15:20SPEAKER- Now, disclaimer, I certainly don't know the answer

15:24SPEAKERto these questions.

15:25SPEAKERDo you feel like you have a good handle on these,

15:28SPEAKERor do you have to do like a, look,

15:31SPEAKERthis isn't necessarily my expertise here?

15:35SPEAKER- So I did a little bit of reading on some of these topics.

15:38SPEAKERSome of them I have pretty strong feelings for

15:40SPEAKERout of the gate.

15:41SPEAKERSome of them I'm gonna say, hey, when Brad's back,

15:43SPEAKERwe're gonna do a whole episode about this.

15:44SPEAKER- Oh, fantastic, okay, great.

15:46SPEAKERSo should I just start asking a question?

15:48SPEAKER- Just let her rip, man.

15:49SPEAKERThat's what we're here for.

15:50SPEAKER- And apologies to some of your audience

15:52SPEAKERif I get stuff wrong.

15:54SPEAKERI know you run in some pretty tech crowds here, so.

15:58SPEAKER- People are very accepting of mistakes

16:00SPEAKERas long as, you know, it's fine, it's part of the process.

16:04SPEAKER- Are they accepting of bad opinions?

16:06SPEAKER- Look, they like, we've never, as a group,

16:09SPEAKERsaid no to a hot take.

16:11SPEAKER- Okay, all right.

16:12SPEAKERAll right, here's my first question.

16:14SPEAKER- Okay.

16:15SPEAKER- This one comes in from Viddy.

16:17SPEAKER- We know they're all from Viddy.

16:19SPEAKER- Should I use paid search?

16:23SPEAKER- You know, it's funny you ask this,

16:25SPEAKER'cause about two months ago,

16:27SPEAKERsomebody sent a letter into the show and was like,

16:29SPEAKERhey, can you talk about paid search?

16:31SPEAKERI'm kind of curious and Google really sucks now.

16:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

16:34SPEAKER- And the answer, so I switched.

16:37SPEAKERI signed up for Kagi, which is one of the paid searches.

16:39SPEAKER- That is the one, right?

16:40SPEAKERThat is the paid search.

16:42SPEAKER- Seems like the one people like.

16:43SPEAKERIt has all the same stuff that Google has

16:46SPEAKERand DuckDuckGo and Bing.

16:49SPEAKER- OpenStart page or what's with some of the other ones?

16:53SPEAKER- Those are the main ones.

16:54SPEAKERI haven't used any of the others at this point.

16:57SPEAKERSo it does have AI stuff, which is, I think,

17:00SPEAKERone of the main reasons people kind of want to get away

17:01SPEAKERfrom Google is 'cause the AI overviews are simultaneously

17:06SPEAKERnot super reliable and also are killing independent websites

17:10SPEAKERbecause they're sucking all the traffic away.

17:13SPEAKERLike in the old days, you'd type something into Google,

17:15SPEAKERyou'd get some results, you'd click a link,

17:16SPEAKERyou'd go to that page, and then if they were giving you

17:19SPEAKERlaptop buying advice, you'd click on an affiliate link

17:21SPEAKERto buy the laptop that you decide you're gonna get

17:24SPEAKERand they'd get a little chatter, you'd get a laptop,

17:26SPEAKEReverybody wins.

17:26SPEAKER- And we get a little AdSense money too along the way.

17:29SPEAKER- Yeah, now Google is just not,

17:30SPEAKERthey're just giving the link straight to the thing

17:32SPEAKERand kind of badly summarizing the reviews.

17:36SPEAKERThis isn't the reason to stop using this though,

17:38SPEAKERjust to be clear.

17:39SPEAKER- Not the reason to stop using Google.

17:41SPEAKER- The Google stuff, the reason to stop using

17:44SPEAKERthe Google AI summaries is 'cause they're fucking terrible

17:46SPEAKERabout 40% of the time.

17:48SPEAKER- Yeah, and also it's like the other thing that,

17:51SPEAKERso my wife is doing, is it Kagi or Kaji?

17:56SPEAKER- I've been saying Kagi, I think.

17:58SPEAKER- Okay, this is what brought this up to me,

18:00SPEAKERshe started using it as well.

18:02SPEAKERShe got tired of the AI stuff, but also she was like,

18:05SPEAKERI have to scroll so far to get the non-sponsored results.

18:09SPEAKERAnd she was like, I'm just, I'm tired of that.

18:11SPEAKER- Well, so you can do the UDM thing on Google,

18:14SPEAKERwhich basically reverts your Google results

18:16SPEAKERto like a 2015 era, no sponsored results at the top,

18:21SPEAKERno AI summary, no knowledge graph, that stuff still works.

18:27SPEAKERThe problem is that the Google results

18:28SPEAKERare actually worse now, it seems like.

18:30SPEAKERSo I did that for a long time,

18:32SPEAKERand that was my solution to this.

18:34SPEAKERThe difference in the Kagi search and the Google search

18:38SPEAKERis as good as everybody says it is.

18:39SPEAKERWhen like, it's one of those things that like,

18:43SPEAKERyou know how when, remember when Dave got his first

18:46SPEAKERZojirushi thermal mug, and he's like,

18:47SPEAKERwow, this thing is really good, and then all of a sudden

18:49SPEAKERanother person bought a thermal mug, I think it was you,

18:51SPEAKERand you were like, wow, this thing is really good.

18:54SPEAKERAnd then like three days later,

18:55SPEAKEReverybody has the thermal mug.

18:57SPEAKERYeah, it's the same thing, it's legit awesome.

19:00SPEAKERIt's like going back in time to when search

19:02SPEAKERwas useful and good.

19:04SPEAKERWhether you should pay for it or not really is,

19:06SPEAKERdepends on how much search you use.

19:08SPEAKERSo, just because of the work that I do,

19:11SPEAKERI spend a lot of time searching for stuff.

19:14SPEAKERAnd it turns out that the 10 bucks a month,

19:16SPEAKERor whatever it is, is a real easy spend

19:18SPEAKERwhen you're doing 600 queries a month,

19:20SPEAKERor 800 queries a month, or something like that.

19:21SPEAKER- 'Cause it's something like five bucks for two,

19:25SPEAKERI forget how many queries.

19:26SPEAKERYou get charged right at a cap at some point, right?

19:29SPEAKERLike a certain amount of queries?

19:31SPEAKER- Yeah, the 10, what it was was that the $10 tier,

19:34SPEAKERit's unlimited, and the $5 tier,

19:36SPEAKERit's limited to several hundred.

19:38SPEAKERI don't remember the actual number off the top of my head.

19:41SPEAKERBut it's free for 300, or the first 300 maybe.

19:46SPEAKERSo you can try it, there's no downside to trying it.

19:49SPEAKERThe pain in the butt is getting it set up

19:51SPEAKERon all your devices.

19:53SPEAKERSo like, I mainly use it on my desktop and my phone.

19:56SPEAKERI don't have it on my tablet or my laptop

19:58SPEAKERor any of that stuff yet,

19:59SPEAKERjust 'cause it hasn't been an issue yet.

20:02SPEAKER- So when I looked at it, here are the things

20:05SPEAKERthat why I wanted to ask you about it.

20:06SPEAKERAnd I'm glad you've used it, because I think

20:09SPEAKERyou're pushing me into switching over, at least trying it.

20:12SPEAKEROne thing I heard, all right, I'm just gonna run down

20:15SPEAKERwhat, here's what I heard, here's what I've heard

20:17SPEAKERon the screen.

20:18SPEAKER- Yeah, let me know what Uncle Google told you.

20:20SPEAKER(laughing)

20:21SPEAKER- Yeah, right.

20:22SPEAKER- You know a guy who works at Google, I know.

20:24SPEAKER- First, I think probably the thing that maybe

20:27SPEAKERsome of your audience has heard,

20:29SPEAKER'cause they might be in the know,

20:30SPEAKERis that this came up, and I know there is no company

20:34SPEAKERthat's gonna be fully, you can proudly go out

20:39SPEAKERand be like, I'm using this company without something.

20:42SPEAKERI guess that one of their indexes is Yandex,

20:46SPEAKERthe Russian one that they pull in.

20:50SPEAKERAnd they said that it's a very small part

20:53SPEAKERof their indexing, but they do incorporate some of that,

20:56SPEAKERand some people are pretty unhappy about that,

20:58SPEAKERthat money might go to a Russian-owned,

21:03SPEAKERagain, I don't know all the details,

21:05SPEAKERindex, 'cause they build their own indexes

21:07SPEAKERfrom other indexes.

21:09SPEAKER- Yeah, they're like, it's a little bit meta-crawlery

21:14SPEAKERif you're from the 90s, in that they search multiple indexes.

21:17SPEAKER- Yes.

21:18SPEAKER- DuckDuckGo works the same way.

21:19SPEAKERDuckDuckGo is primarily Bing plus some other stuff.

21:21SPEAKER- Oh, their search is just, as much as I want them

21:23SPEAKERto be good, their search results are just never that good.

21:26SPEAKER- It's only as good as Bing is.

21:28SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

21:28SPEAKER- And I got bad news for you about Bing, man.

21:31SPEAKERSo there is that part where some people are like,

21:33SPEAKERI really wish they didn't.

21:36SPEAKERBut what I also saw again was that Kaji was like,

21:41SPEAKERhey, we would love to have our own index,

21:42SPEAKERwe just aren't there yet, right?

21:44SPEAKERLike we would like to be a top player.

21:46SPEAKERAnd they said, I think if they remove it,

21:48SPEAKERthen their search results would be poor.

21:51SPEAKERAgain, I'm not well-versed enough to know how true that is.

21:55SPEAKER- The problem with the search is that it's such a big

21:57SPEAKERproblem and it requires so much infrastructure to fix.

22:01SPEAKERThat I don't know that anybody's gonna do this

22:04SPEAKERfrom a standing start without integrating

22:06SPEAKERsome other products, right?

22:07SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, and like a lot of stuff on the internet,

22:11SPEAKERI think it is, I think trying, this is my personal take.

22:15SPEAKERAgain, I'm not well-versed in it, but my feeling is,

22:18SPEAKERlook, you're probably gonna have to choose

22:20SPEAKERyour poison here, right?

22:21SPEAKERLike nothing's gonna be perfect.

22:23SPEAKER- That's it.

22:24SPEAKERSo the poison in the Kaji sense, that Yandex thing is bad.

22:28SPEAKERI'm not as worried about that.

22:29SPEAKERAt some point, when they scale up, they'll move beyond that

22:32SPEAKERand start doing their own image searches, I'm sure.

22:34SPEAKEROr somebody else will offer an image search that is better.

22:37SPEAKERLike this is a no ethical consumption

22:40SPEAKERunder capitalism situation.

22:42SPEAKER- It sometimes feels like it, right, yes, right.

22:44SPEAKER- 'Cause like, if you look at the damage Google's done

22:47SPEAKERover the years, it's probably broader and shallower,

22:52SPEAKERbut the scale is much larger, so, you know, look--

22:55SPEAKER- I don't even know broader and shallower.

22:57SPEAKERLike, I think it's just, I think it's much, much broader.

23:02SPEAKERI don't know much shallow.

23:05SPEAKERAgain, it probably goes to what your personal feelings

23:07SPEAKERare about what's happening.

23:09SPEAKER- Yeah, so the other things it does is they do have

23:11SPEAKERan AI search, like you can turn that stuff off.

23:14SPEAKER- But it's off by default now?

23:15SPEAKERAgain, this is when I was looking it up.

23:17SPEAKERIt seemed like it was pushed forward initially,

23:19SPEAKERand then since they are, or this is what I,

23:23SPEAKERwhat Uncle Google told me, Uncle Reddit told me,

23:27SPEAKERwas that since enough people complained,

23:30SPEAKERthey kind of pushed it off to maybe an opt-in,

23:32SPEAKERor it doesn't surface immediately if you subscribe.

23:35SPEAKERI have not subscribed, so I don't know

23:37SPEAKERif that's actually true, but that's--

23:40SPEAKER- I don't remember what the defaults are,

23:42SPEAKERbut I do, I definitely didn't,

23:45SPEAKERI don't see it on the day-to-day.

23:46SPEAKERLike, I was able to, like, in the same way

23:49SPEAKERthat Firefox now has a yo, don't bother me

23:51SPEAKERabout AI features anymore, it's a similar situation.

23:55SPEAKER- So like, I think the thing that was appealing to me was,

24:00SPEAKERlook, and this is what was appealing to my wife,

24:03SPEAKERis I would like to pay you for the service.

24:07SPEAKERI don't wanna be the product, and if I'm unhappy,

24:10SPEAKERyou will lose money, you know?

24:12SPEAKERAnd if enough people are unhappy,

24:14SPEAKERthen you can't sustain your business, right?

24:16SPEAKERThat's the exchange.

24:18SPEAKER- That's a big part of it, right?

24:20SPEAKERLike, you being the customer, not the product,

24:22SPEAKERis a big goal of paying for services like this.

24:26SPEAKERIt's why I pay for Fast Mail instead of using Gmail anymore,

24:30SPEAKERis because if Fast Mail screws up,

24:32SPEAKERand they mess my, they're not doing the work that I want,

24:35SPEAKERthen I don't, you know, they don't get my money anymore,

24:37SPEAKERand everything works out.

24:38SPEAKERSo I would definitely say try the free--

24:40SPEAKER- I will.

24:41SPEAKER- 300 search trial, set it up on your main computer,

24:43SPEAKERthe one where you do the most searching,

24:45SPEAKERand then see if it's worth going through the hassle

24:47SPEAKERof jumping in.

24:50SPEAKERI, like, I will say--

24:51SPEAKER- It's just a weird thing, right?

24:52SPEAKERLike, it's just-- - Yeah.

24:54SPEAKER- It's like a weird, like, I'm so,

24:57SPEAKERsorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there.

24:59SPEAKER- No, you're good.

25:01SPEAKER- It's just such a, I'm so tired of paying for services,

25:04SPEAKERbut then I guess I have to pick and choose

25:06SPEAKERhow I want to engage, or like, I'm at the crossroads now

25:10SPEAKERfor what kind of internet do I want, you know?

25:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:13SPEAKER- That's what I think where I'm at.

25:14SPEAKER- And the big important takeaway for me after using this

25:18SPEAKERfor a couple months now is that the search results

25:22SPEAKERthemselves are better.

25:23SPEAKERLike, I'm getting, instead of having to dig through

25:26SPEAKERthree pages of results to find the thing I want

25:28SPEAKERwith all the spam blogs and all that,

25:30SPEAKERthey're doing a much better job of filtering out

25:32SPEAKERthe garbage than Google is right now.

25:34SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess Brave Search has this,

25:37SPEAKERand again, I haven't used them all,

25:38SPEAKERbut there's a way to, there's that mouth noise,

25:41SPEAKERthere's a way to filter,

25:46SPEAKERI think they call it lenses or something,

25:47SPEAKERI don't know what it's called in Kagi,

25:50SPEAKERto more results like this, right?

25:52SPEAKER- Oh, it's like cohort analysis, yeah.

25:55SPEAKERSo they can say, okay, if you search for a term

25:58SPEAKERthat's ambiguous, like goat, it'll say,

26:04SPEAKERokay, do you want Serena Williams the greatest of all time,

26:07SPEAKERor do you want literal goats, and then you click the picture

26:11SPEAKERand then it, so actually, that hasn't come up for me,

26:15SPEAKER'cause I don't, I'm pretty good about generating queries

26:17SPEAKERthat don't result in that kind of ambiguous response.

26:21SPEAKERBut yeah, like I'm looking at, I typed in goat

26:24SPEAKERand I have the definition of goat on Wikipedia,

26:27SPEAKERI've got goat.com, which is sneakers, apparel and accessories

26:32SPEAKERand then I've got like memes and yeah, other stuff.

26:35SPEAKER- So can you click on the Wikipedia one?

26:37SPEAKERIs there something, the thing I was reading was,

26:39SPEAKERthere's a way to go to like the Wikipedia one

26:41SPEAKERand maybe be like, hey, give me more,

26:43SPEAKERthis is kind of the stuff I want,

26:44SPEAKERor to block things that are like sites

26:47SPEAKERthat aren't of relevance.

26:50SPEAKER- Yeah, so you can definitely do the more results

26:51SPEAKERfrom this site, remove results from this site.

26:53SPEAKERSo if you get like spam stuff, then you can pull that out.

26:56SPEAKERAnd it also lets you deep link into the internet archive.

26:59SPEAKERSo you can pull an old version of the thing,

27:02SPEAKERwhich is like, is a Google feature Google used to have

27:05SPEAKERvisible and was fantastic. - I know, I know what,

27:08SPEAKERI look, I'm sure you guys have talked about

27:11SPEAKERcertification up and down. - Up and down.

27:13SPEAKER- Up and down, but man, it's another reason why I am like,

27:18SPEAKERI think I'm ready to get off.

27:20SPEAKERI feel like quoted searches, is that just gone?

27:22SPEAKERCan you not just like...

27:25SPEAKER- I'm sure that there's a way to access it

27:27SPEAKERif you know how to build the right command line,

27:28SPEAKERthe right URL, but it's not in the main UI anymore, no.

27:31SPEAKER- Yes, anyway, okay, I think you've convinced me,

27:34SPEAKERI think I'm gonna try the trial for it.

27:36SPEAKER- Yeah, you got nothing to lose, you got another question?

27:40SPEAKERYou feeling good? - I've got so many questions.

27:42SPEAKER- I thought we were gonna get through at least 10 of these.

27:44SPEAKERIf we get through four, I think we're gonna be doing good.

27:47SPEAKER- All right, I was just gonna go down the list.

27:50SPEAKER- Yeah, hit it.

27:51SPEAKER- I've got a NAS, I'm nasty with the NAS,

27:54SPEAKERmy network area storage.

27:56SPEAKERI have had mine for a long time,

27:58SPEAKERwhich probably means I have too many spinning rust drives

28:03SPEAKERof low terabyte, or low values, terabyte values.

28:09SPEAKERAnd when they go and I upgrade them,

28:10SPEAKERI like usually put a higher terabyte value in,

28:13SPEAKERand then in the pool,

28:17SPEAKERwe'll eventually get up to a higher terabyte.

28:19SPEAKERSo I've got, I don't know, let's say 24 drives plus, right?

28:23SPEAKER- That's a lot of drives, Vinny.

28:25SPEAKER- Yeah, look, well, look, it's a lot of drives.

28:31SPEAKERAnd what happens now, so I did buy spares

28:35SPEAKERwhen they're cheap.

28:35SPEAKERI tried to buy spares when they would go on sale

28:38SPEAKERover the last 10 years.

28:39SPEAKERI'd be like, okay, look, there's a sale,

28:41SPEAKERsomething's happening, there's a sale here,

28:43SPEAKERI'll just pick up a spare.

28:44SPEAKERSo I've got a couple of spares,

28:46SPEAKERbut I feel like there's a ticking clock now on my NAS

28:50SPEAKERand something's gonna go and we're in the worst time.

28:54SPEAKERWhat do we do when all of our drives start failing

28:58SPEAKERin the next five years and it costs $4,000

29:02SPEAKERto replace a drive?

29:04SPEAKER- Yep, so that's the eternal struggle

29:09SPEAKERfor the NAS people right now.

29:12SPEAKERI'm looking at a list of disks.com,

29:15SPEAKERwhich is my new shuck stop alternative.

29:18SPEAKERThe shuck stop guy shut down finally.

29:20SPEAKERHe was like, I'm not gonna,

29:22SPEAKERthis isn't gonna be a thing that I continue working on,

29:25SPEAKERwhich is a bummer, but like, I get it.

29:28SPEAKERThey do price per terabyte is their dollar per terabyte.

29:32SPEAKERAnd right now the top pick is $23 per terabyte

29:36SPEAKERwhen it was like $2 a terabyte this time,

29:38SPEAKERlike $6 a terabyte or something this time last year.

29:41SPEAKER- Wait, $23 per terabyte.

29:44SPEAKER- Yep, so a 24 terabyte drive costs $554

29:48SPEAKERfor a Western Digital Gold 24 terabyte right now.

29:51SPEAKER- Okay, I mean, that's a lot of terabytes,

29:55SPEAKERbut that's a lot of money.

29:56SPEAKER- It is, but the problem is you need multiples

29:58SPEAKERof the same drive, so you're looking at like 1,500 bucks

30:00SPEAKERfor redundancy on a 48.

30:03SPEAKERI mean, look, it's a 48 terabyte server,

30:05SPEAKERwhich is a lot at that point.

30:06SPEAKER- That's a lot.

30:07SPEAKERI mean, I was going for anything over,

30:13SPEAKERlet's say anything over eight terabytes,

30:16SPEAKERI would usually go for used, refurbed drives from,

30:22SPEAKERyou look, your eyes just went.

30:24SPEAKER- Wow, mister, I have three backups

30:27SPEAKERand you're buying refurbed drives for your NAS?

30:29SPEAKER- I like certified refurbs from,

30:31SPEAKERwhat was it, server part deals or what?

30:34SPEAKERYeah, no, they weren't like, 'cause--

30:37SPEAKER- Back out like harddrives.com?

30:40SPEAKER- Back of a van, harddrives.com.

30:43SPEAKER- I know a guy.com, the hard drive superstore.

30:45SPEAKER- They are, you know, they would be pretty low usage

30:50SPEAKERbecause data centers would just be like,

30:52SPEAKERhey, you know, this is too low or something like that.

30:54SPEAKER- Notoriously light usage data centers.

30:56SPEAKER- Light usage, they hardly even touch them.

30:58SPEAKERThey just breathe on them for a little bit.

31:00SPEAKERBut no, they'd be pretty decent.

31:02SPEAKERBut the thing for me was they would be decent enough

31:06SPEAKERwhere the price to value or longevity would be okay.

31:11SPEAKER24 terabytes is getting up there.

31:13SPEAKERYou're, look, that's what,

31:14SPEAKERthat's probably near bleeding edge for a spinning disk.

31:21SPEAKER24 terabytes is the biggest of the ones

31:25SPEAKERthat I think people recommend right now.

31:26SPEAKERI think Seagate has a 28 gigabyte drive now

31:29SPEAKERthat's new enough that people--

31:32SPEAKER- Terabyte, not gigabyte.

31:33SPEAKER- Terabyte, did I say gigabyte?

31:34SPEAKERYeah, terabyte.

31:36SPEAKERBut yeah, so I'm looking at these, so here's the thing.

31:39SPEAKERThese are actual NAS drives where I'm looking at this list.

31:42SPEAKERThe reason I like shuck stop is 'cause that guy was like,

31:45SPEAKERyo, here's the ones you can go buy at Best Buy

31:47SPEAKERand you pop out of the case and you can get

31:49SPEAKERa 24 gigabyte drive for like 2/3 of the price.

31:51SPEAKER- Yes.

31:53SPEAKER- It's a bad, the TLDR is pray to God

31:57SPEAKERthat your hard drives don't conk out

31:58SPEAKERin the next like two years.

32:00SPEAKER- Literally knocking on wood right now.

32:01SPEAKER- Yeah, usually I try to replace them every five years

32:04SPEAKER'cause I start getting suspect about always on drives

32:06SPEAKERafter about five years, even if they're not

32:08SPEAKERsuper heavy usage.

32:10SPEAKERWe're gonna go a little longer this go round.

32:12SPEAKER- I have a thing that I started about seven, eight years ago

32:17SPEAKERwhere I forget how old my NAS is, it's getting up there.

32:20SPEAKERMy main NAS is pretty old at this point

32:25SPEAKERbut I started a while ago.

32:29SPEAKERI just did a thing in my you need a budget, my YNAB,

32:32SPEAKERwhich is just NAS cost and I just put,

32:35SPEAKERI just put money in there every month.

32:37SPEAKERThat's just like, hey, so I have an envelope

32:40SPEAKERor pool of money that is just accruing every month.

32:43SPEAKERI was just like, you're gonna need it.

32:45SPEAKERI know it's coming.

32:46SPEAKERThis happened after like the second time I had to go in

32:49SPEAKERand be like, oh my God, wait, right,

32:52SPEAKERthis is gonna be an ongoing cost for the rest of eternity

32:57SPEAKERreplacing drives, which I think is a thing

32:59SPEAKERthat some people who are like, I should build a NAS

33:01SPEAKERdon't necessarily realize is like, it's not one and done.

33:05SPEAKERYou need to feed that monster.

33:08SPEAKER- It is an ongoing, the drives are an ongoing cost.

33:11SPEAKERI'm gonna go and tell you, it has changed my feelings

33:17SPEAKERso I have a whole giant DVD collection that I rip

33:21SPEAKERand I did them as ISOs years ago, the DVDs.

33:26SPEAKERI first did them as H.264s

33:27SPEAKERthen I redid them all as ISOs a few years after.

33:30SPEAKERAnd I was looking at some of the old H.264 versions

33:35SPEAKERand looking at the ISO versions.

33:36SPEAKERThere's no difference in quality.

33:38SPEAKERI can't see the difference in quality.

33:40SPEAKERIt's good H.264 on top of MPEG-2 compression.

33:43SPEAKERLike the MPEG-2 compression is messy and garbage

33:46SPEAKERand making those videos smaller with H.264

33:48SPEAKERat a decent bit rate, no impact as far as I can tell.

33:52SPEAKERLook, my eyes are old, I wear thick glasses, Vinnie.

33:56SPEAKERLook, the kids are watching YouTube at 320 by 200 these days

34:00SPEAKER- Are you sure you're not like transcoding those

34:02SPEAKERwhen you're watching them

34:04SPEAKERand it's just pushing everything down

34:06SPEAKERto a meg and a half on the client end?

34:09SPEAKER- No, it actually goes the other way, it's really stupid.

34:11SPEAKERSo I was watching some old Beavis and Butt.

34:14SPEAKERLook, I did a thing, you can't get Beavis and Butt head

34:17SPEAKERwith the music videos, you can't buy that.

34:19SPEAKERSo I went up, it's possible I sailed the high seas

34:23SPEAKERand found some old VHS rips of people's recordings

34:28SPEAKERwith like the ads and stuff still in them.

34:30SPEAKERFantastic, you get all the good late night ads from that.

34:34SPEAKERHey, do you want to meet hot girls in your area?

34:36SPEAKER- Sure, those phone numbers still work.

34:38SPEAKER- Yeah, those phone numbers are still good.

34:39SPEAKERThere's been one guy logged in just for the last 10 years,

34:42SPEAKERjust so that the service can't go down.

34:45SPEAKERWe can't turn it off, that guy's still on.

34:47SPEAKER- Hello, hey Will.

34:50SPEAKER- Hey, how's it going, man?

34:50SPEAKER- How's it going?

34:52SPEAKER- But so those, it scales up to 1080p.

34:56SPEAKERIt transcodes them up to 1080p

34:58SPEAKER'cause the video encoder doesn't know what to do

35:01SPEAKERwith like 320 by 240 video or whatever it is.

35:03SPEAKER- Good use of some wattage there, yeah.

35:05SPEAKER- Yeah, we're really cooking the bits there.

35:08SPEAKER- I think with MKV is what people,

35:11SPEAKERlike Matryoshka?

35:13SPEAKER- Matryoshka's the container people like

35:14SPEAKER'cause it holds everything.

35:15SPEAKERYou can put like, where MP4 has real limitations

35:18SPEAKERon like numbers of subtitles and different audio tracks

35:20SPEAKERand stuff you can do, MKV is just like, yo, man,

35:23SPEAKERwe'll take whatever you got, you got, you know.

35:26SPEAKER- Real loosey goosey.

35:27SPEAKER- Yeah, they don't, they don't,

35:29SPEAKERMatryoshka don't care, you know.

35:30SPEAKER- Yeah, right, exactly.

35:31SPEAKERYeah, so my worry is,

35:35SPEAKERso basically you're saying we're doomed.

35:37SPEAKERAnd I guess my follow-up question was,

35:39SPEAKERis SSD NASes, are they for the uber rich?

35:45SPEAKERWhat is, when somebody tells me they have an SSD NAS,

35:48SPEAKERI don't, I just don't believe them, I just.

35:50SPEAKER- So, well, if you think about scale of data,

35:53SPEAKERso if they're not, if they don't have a media collection,

35:56SPEAKERyou know, I have these thousands,

35:57SPEAKERI used to buy a bunch of Blu-rays and DVDs,

35:59SPEAKERwhich was a mistake.

36:01SPEAKERAnd that collection, storing that collection digitally

36:05SPEAKERtakes a ballload of space, it's like 15, 20 gigs, right?

36:09SPEAKERUm, a terabytes rather, not gigs.

36:12SPEAKER15, 20 gigs, no problem, I can put that in my pocket.

36:14SPEAKER15 or 20 terabytes.

36:16SPEAKER- Per, per item?

36:19SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, for the whole collection,

36:21SPEAKERfor the thousands of disks.

36:23SPEAKER- Of audio?

36:24SPEAKER- A video, no, no, DVDs and Blu-rays.

36:26SPEAKER- 15 to 20 terabytes, that's not bad.

36:30SPEAKER- I mean, look, for a long time at Maximum PC,

36:33SPEAKERfor some reason, I was on, like, the movie studio's

36:36SPEAKERmailing list, so I would get every Blu-ray release

36:38SPEAKERthat came out.

36:38SPEAKER- I'm just saying, your video collection must look

36:41SPEAKERlike garbage, 15 to 20 terabytes for a thousand movies.

36:44SPEAKERWill is over there, crunching these things down

36:48SPEAKERto poach the sticks.

36:49SPEAKER- Wow, I didn't expect to be attacked today, sir.

36:52SPEAKERNo, they're running, I mean, they look,

36:55SPEAKERtypically they look better than, like,

36:57SPEAKERyour Netflix or Amazon stream.

37:00SPEAKERThey do not look as good as the raw Blu-ray, but like,

37:02SPEAKERand also a lot of them are DVDs.

37:03SPEAKER- Well, look, if you're talking about DVDs

37:05SPEAKERand not 4K Blu-rays, then, you know, yeah.

37:08SPEAKER- DVDs start out at eight gigs, right?

37:11SPEAKERSo, and when you crunch them down to movies

37:13SPEAKERlike two, a gig and a half?

37:15SPEAKER- I think it depends how you're going, you know,

37:18SPEAKERlike, you know, some movies now, like,

37:21SPEAKERsome bigger Blu-rays, they can be 20 gigs if--

37:26SPEAKER- 50 gigs.

37:27SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, right, if you're really--

37:29SPEAKER- Two layer.

37:29SPEAKER- If you're a sicko, if you're putting that thing,

37:32SPEAKERso, okay, 15, 20, I'm not here to shame your compression.

37:35SPEAKER- It seems like, like, I did a lot of testing

37:37SPEAKERon this back in the day.

37:38SPEAKERThis was a recurring segment on tested.com,

37:42SPEAKERthe place for your MP4 compression of Blu-rays.

37:45SPEAKER- You're putting everybody else's, like,

37:47SPEAKER80 terabyte servers to shame here

37:50SPEAKERwith your compression ratios.

37:53SPEAKER- Well, so, okay, so compression is important.

37:58SPEAKERI have started deleting stuff

38:01SPEAKERthat's never gonna get watched again.

38:02SPEAKER- Curated collection. - 'Cause I still have

38:03SPEAKERthe disks in, like, a big binder in case files

38:06SPEAKERin the garage, like, flat, like, hanging files

38:10SPEAKERfull of disks.

38:10SPEAKERI got rid of all the jewel cases years ago.

38:12SPEAKER- Right.

38:13SPEAKER- But the disks are still around.

38:14SPEAKERSo if I wanna watch the actual movie,

38:15SPEAKERI can go dig it out of the archive.

38:17SPEAKER- Or re-encode it.

38:18SPEAKER- Yeah, or re-encode it, or there's other ways

38:20SPEAKERto find things.

38:21SPEAKEREverything's available, it turns out, these days,

38:23SPEAKERif you know where to look.

38:25SPEAKERSo, the NAS, the SSD NAS people

38:30SPEAKERare not doing media collections.

38:33SPEAKERSo, if you want a place to store,

38:35SPEAKERto have, like, files that are accessible

38:37SPEAKERfrom all your computers, if you wanna have a place

38:39SPEAKERto keep, like, backup your cloud photo backups, right,

38:42SPEAKER'cause it's nice to have a spare copy of that stuff

38:44SPEAKERjust in case Google messes up Google Photos somehow.

38:48SPEAKERStuff like that, then, like, three, two terabyte SSDs,

38:53SPEAKERwhich would have been $500 a year ago,

38:57SPEAKERis a reasonable place to do that.

38:59SPEAKERAnd, like, Beelink and Synology and all those companies,

39:02SPEAKERlike, it's funny, 'cause the companies that make

39:05SPEAKERthose little, like, I don't know, their NUCs

39:08SPEAKERis what I was thinking of as, like, the little square

39:10SPEAKERmini PCs, like, they got into this game last year

39:14SPEAKERand started making mini PCs with, like,

39:16SPEAKERsix SSD slots and NVMe slots.

39:20SPEAKERAnd so, the mini PC people and the NAS people

39:23SPEAKERare kind of, like, meeting each other

39:24SPEAKERand duking it out in that kind of new category.

39:26SPEAKER- For their low-power NAS, their low-power, yeah.

39:28SPEAKER- Yeah, so they'll put, like, a four-core Celeron

39:31SPEAKERor a, you know, a decent low-range, low-mid-range APU

39:35SPEAKERfrom AMD or something in there,

39:37SPEAKERand then a bunch of NVMe slots

39:40SPEAKERand probably a 2.5 gigabit ethernet port, or two.

39:44SPEAKER- Okay, so, okay, this is, again, this is outside my depth,

39:47SPEAKERbut maybe you, maybe you know.

39:49SPEAKERSo, with, I run TrueNAS, and so, with the way that it writes,

39:58SPEAKERinitially, I feel like, again,

39:59SPEAKERthis is some memory from a while ago,

40:02SPEAKERSSDs were not the right solution

40:04SPEAKERbecause of the way it writes continuously,

40:06SPEAKERor something about the way--

40:07SPEAKER- The ZFS stuff. - Yeah, the ZFS stuff.

40:09SPEAKER- And SS, it can do, it can over-ware SSDs.

40:13SPEAKERI have to assume that's a fixed problem at this point,

40:15SPEAKERI don't know for sure.

40:17SPEAKERAre you on Linux TrueNAS, or are you on BSD TrueNAS still?

40:19SPEAKER- BSD, I think, I don't think I ever switched over.

40:22SPEAKER- And you're running ZFS, I assume, not the better, yeah.

40:25SPEAKER- So, that, I'd have to do research

40:28SPEAKERto know the answer on that one.

40:29SPEAKERI actually, I don't know that.

40:31SPEAKER- Look, I just switched over to, I think,

40:32SPEAKERthe TrueNAS from FreeNAS, I think I just updated

40:36SPEAKERnot that long ago, like a couple years ago.

40:38SPEAKERI think the, okay, should I put a cache drive in?

40:42SPEAKERAn SSD cache?

40:44SPEAKER- I used to do a cache drive, but that was mainly

40:45SPEAKER'cause I had a bunch of small, like, 120,

40:49SPEAKERlike, early days of SSD, 128 gigabyte SSDs, stuff like that.

40:54SPEAKER- It seemed to improve writing performance quite a bit,

40:57SPEAKERif I recall, like when I was writing large files.

41:00SPEAKERIt didn't have a whole lot of an impact on read performance.

41:03SPEAKER- That makes sense to me, though, that makes sense,

41:05SPEAKER'cause it's basically, maybe I'm way off,

41:07SPEAKERis it just like a buffer when you're writing,

41:08SPEAKERyou write to the cache, and then that'll spill out

41:11SPEAKERto the hard drive later?

41:12SPEAKER- I think it let you write to the cache and one hard drive,

41:16SPEAKERrather than to two hard drives at the same time,

41:18SPEAKERwhich was a little bit problematic, at least on the,

41:22SPEAKERlike, I was running that on a Broadwell EU,

41:24SPEAKERwhich in retrospect was really funny,

41:25SPEAKER'cause that machine probably cost me 50 bucks a month

41:27SPEAKERto run just on idle power.

41:30SPEAKERBut yeah, the cache, I think it's, if you have a,

41:36SPEAKERlike, I wouldn't go spend $300 on a 120 gigabyte SSD today,

41:41SPEAKERbut if you have one laying around that you're not using,

41:43SPEAKERplug it in, yeah, yeah.

41:44SPEAKER- Okay, all right, maybe I'll try that.

41:46SPEAKERI know there's some, or, again, I don't know,

41:48SPEAKERbut I had heard there were some issues,

41:50SPEAKERif you're really concerned about maybe cache drives,

41:54SPEAKERif power goes out while you're in the cache.

41:56SPEAKER- That can happen, yeah.

41:57SPEAKER- Okay, and then some issues there.

41:59SPEAKER- If you're not plugged into a UPS,

42:01SPEAKERespecially on the way ZFS works and FreeNAS,

42:04SPEAKERI distinctly remember them saying,

42:06SPEAKER"Hey, don't do this unless you have this on power back,"

42:09SPEAKERand can do a gentle shutdown when the power goes out, too.

42:12SPEAKERLike, that's the other part of it, is you don't, like--

42:16SPEAKER- Run the battery down to zero.

42:17SPEAKER- You want that to happen automatically, not,

42:19SPEAKERyou have to run into the garage and hit the button on it

42:21SPEAKERas fast as you can.

42:22SPEAKER- My nuts are, my nuts are all secure.

42:24SPEAKER- You see, I don't have a nuts server,

42:25SPEAKERbut I'm also, I like to live dangerously

42:28SPEAKERas we've established.

42:29SPEAKER- That's right, your nuts are just hanging out there.

42:31SPEAKERAll right, should we go through another question?

42:33SPEAKERWe can't spend too long on,

42:34SPEAKERwe could probably do a whole show on one of these questions.

42:36SPEAKER- I think several of these could have been,

42:38SPEAKERI think we're gonna do a paid search show,

42:39SPEAKERfor what it's worth.

42:40SPEAKER- Okay.

42:41SPEAKER- 'Cause I wanna talk to Brad about it, too.

42:42SPEAKER- The other one that we're not gonna do,

42:43SPEAKERI'll just say that you were like,

42:45SPEAKER"This is a whole show," at some point,

42:46SPEAKERis like browsers, the browser wars, because I was,

42:50SPEAKERI'm, along with getting off of maybe Google search,

42:53SPEAKERwas like, "Ah, it's Chrome, there's gotta be,"

42:56SPEAKERand then I looked, I was like, "Oh my gosh,

42:58SPEAKERbrowser wars are hot right now."

43:01SPEAKER- Yep, desperately fighting over a tenth of a percent

43:04SPEAKERof the worldwide browser market.

43:06SPEAKER- Yeah, all right.

43:08SPEAKERThis one actually is one that my wife asked me about,

43:11SPEAKERand I'm like, "Do you wanna go down this route?

43:13SPEAKER"Do you wanna go down this route?

43:15SPEAKER"Do you know what you're talking about?"

43:16SPEAKERAnd it is these smart breaker panels,

43:18SPEAKERbecause she's like, "Hey, our electricity bill

43:22SPEAKER"was super high, what's going on?"

43:24SPEAKERAnd I'm like, "You know, I'm not really sure

43:27SPEAKER"exactly what's going on."

43:29SPEAKERWhat I'm not like is, "It's definitely my NAS."

43:32SPEAKER(laughing)

43:33SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

43:34SPEAKER- It's--

43:35SPEAKER- "Hey, I got a new video card for the computer.

43:36SPEAKER"It's why my office is so hot all the time."

43:40SPEAKER- It's absolutely the server.

43:43SPEAKERI'm like, "I don't know, if there is a way to find that,

43:46SPEAKER"we could, I can install a smart breaker panel,

43:48SPEAKER"which could tell us who's chewing up

43:50SPEAKER"what kind of energy in the house."

43:53SPEAKERWhat do you think about those?

43:54SPEAKER- That's an expensive option, right?

43:56SPEAKER- It is not cheap.

43:57SPEAKER- Yeah, you have to basically shut down

43:59SPEAKERyour electrical service for a period of time,

44:01SPEAKERpay an electrician to come in and rip out the thing

44:03SPEAKERthat's been hung off the side of your house.

44:05SPEAKERNo, you gotta pay, don't do that one yourself.

44:07SPEAKER- What are you talking, that's not so bad.

44:08SPEAKER- That's a, no, replacing your electrical service

44:11SPEAKERfor the whole house?

44:13SPEAKER- Well, what's the--

44:14SPEAKER- It's like what breaker times 48?

44:18SPEAKER- But you gotta turn it off on the wall.

44:20SPEAKER- From the outside, oh, I can turn off,

44:22SPEAKERI can cut the, look, I'm not saying I would do this,

44:25SPEAKERwhat I'm saying is I have thought about doing this,

44:27SPEAKERso I can cut the power off,

44:30SPEAKERthe mains come in from the outside, right?

44:33SPEAKERThey hit a box out there, I could turn that off

44:37SPEAKERbefore it gets to my breaker panel.

44:39SPEAKER- But your breaker panel's inside the house, right?

44:41SPEAKERI forgot, I live in California where we do stupid stuff,

44:43SPEAKERlike put your breaker panel outside.

44:45SPEAKER- No, no, no, so my breaker panel's inside,

44:46SPEAKERbut I have a, where the mains hit the house

44:48SPEAKERalso has a breaker there, so I can,

44:51SPEAKERI would be working with dead wire, ideally,

44:54SPEAKERinside at the breaker panel.

44:56SPEAKER- I'm going to tell you this is 100% not a Vinny project.

45:00SPEAKER- What?

45:01SPEAKER- You should not do this one.

45:01SPEAKER- Wait, but what, okay, but explain it to me, yeah.

45:03SPEAKER- 'Cause if you mess this up,

45:04SPEAKERyou're going to burn your house down.

45:06SPEAKERLike, and it won't be like a slow burn the house down,

45:08SPEAKERlike over an indeterminate period of time in the future,

45:11SPEAKERit will go immediately, like you will burn everything down

45:13SPEAKERin like five minutes.

45:14SPEAKER- I've done sub panels, and you know.

45:16SPEAKER- Congratulations.

45:17SPEAKER- They're smaller, but it's not the mains.

45:20SPEAKER- I don't, no, no, no, no, no.

45:24SPEAKER- But this is, like I, okay.

45:27SPEAKER- Does the panel get 240 volts in?

45:29SPEAKER- Yes.

45:29SPEAKER- 120 volts on a big, giant, thick wire?

45:32SPEAKER- Each leg, each leg will get 120, yeah.

45:34SPEAKER- Yeah, don't do that.

45:35SPEAKER- And then, you know, they're, you know,

45:38SPEAKERI understand that the, in concept what's happening.

45:41SPEAKER- I support.

45:42SPEAKERLet's break her back in one at a time.

45:43SPEAKER- I've seen you make XLR cables before.

45:46SPEAKERLook, so here's the thing.

45:48SPEAKERLike, I fully support anybody who wants to do

45:50SPEAKERsome freelance plumbing.

45:52SPEAKERLike, if you want to learn how to do plumbing,

45:54SPEAKERshit runs downhill on Paydays Fridays.

45:55SPEAKERIt's pretty straightforward.

45:57SPEAKER- I see plumbing scares me.

45:59SPEAKERElectrical stuff doesn't scare me

46:00SPEAKERas much as plumbing scares me.

46:01SPEAKER- Well, plumbing won't kill you if you do it bad.

46:04SPEAKERBut electrical stuff, plumbing probably won't kill you

46:07SPEAKERif you do it bad.

46:09SPEAKER- Water damage is real, but it'll kill your wallet.

46:11SPEAKER- Yeah, water damage hurts.

46:13SPEAKER- See, water damage is a slow kill.

46:15SPEAKER- Yeah, that's just you wish you were dead, actually.

46:18SPEAKER- It's a quick one and you're just kind of done.

46:21SPEAKERI hear what you're saying and I take it to heart.

46:26SPEAKER- So, I think that there are better,

46:29SPEAKERmore reasonable solutions that don't involve

46:33SPEAKERreplacing your electrical service.

46:35SPEAKER- Better.

46:37SPEAKERLess comprehensive, though.

46:39SPEAKER- Less comprehensive.

46:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:41SPEAKER- You can buy, for 25 bucks,

46:43SPEAKERa plug that you put in the wall

46:44SPEAKERbetween things that you think might be expensive or not.

46:46SPEAKERWell, you can buy the kilowatt.

46:47SPEAKERYou can also buy ones that are directly connected

46:50SPEAKERto your home assistant setup,

46:51SPEAKER'cause I think you're a home assistant person.

46:53SPEAKER- I'm not, I am not.

46:54SPEAKEROh, I have home assistant for one thing,

46:56SPEAKERI think for the nut servers.

46:58SPEAKER- Sweet Jesus.

46:59SPEAKER- I know.

47:00SPEAKER- So, you can connect to those power monitoring switches.

47:04SPEAKERI use these, I think they're TP-Link ones

47:08SPEAKERthat basically can give me a live reading

47:11SPEAKERof how much power the devices

47:12SPEAKERthat are plugged into it are using.

47:14SPEAKERIt also makes it a switch,

47:15SPEAKERso you can turn it on and off on a schedule.

47:18SPEAKERAnd you can, like, I get a report.

47:21SPEAKERI have a report on my home assistant page

47:23SPEAKERthat tells me that yesterday, July 16th, 15th,

47:29SPEAKERI used 1.568 kilowatts of electricity

47:33SPEAKERfor the tower on my computer, working all day.

47:36SPEAKER- So, okay.

47:37SPEAKER- Which is a dollar worth of electricity.

47:39SPEAKERI have gone down this road, right?

47:41SPEAKERI have a couple of kilowatts hooked up.

47:43SPEAKERI have one to my server.

47:44SPEAKERI can see right now I'm using 600 watts

47:46SPEAKERin this office between.

47:47SPEAKERThe problem I have is stuff like the AC

47:51SPEAKERthat doesn't get plugged into,

47:52SPEAKERthat runs right to the breaker.

47:55SPEAKERThose are the things I really wanna monitor,

47:59SPEAKERthat I really wanna see how much we're using per month

48:03SPEAKERor something like that.

48:04SPEAKERI know there are things you can clip on,

48:07SPEAKERalmost like ammeters that you can clip on.

48:10SPEAKERBut I think the smart panel.

48:14SPEAKER- I think the smart panel is a great solution.

48:16SPEAKER- It's really expensive.

48:17SPEAKER- It is really expensive.

48:18SPEAKERYou should not freelance that.

48:19SPEAKERYou should pay someone to do that.

48:22SPEAKER- What if I watch a bunch of YouTube videos?

48:25SPEAKER- Nope.

48:26SPEAKER- That's the same thing, isn't it?

48:28SPEAKER- I'm not coming to your house now.

48:29SPEAKERI'm just gonna be clear.

48:31SPEAKER- You know, I have paid people.

48:33SPEAKERI have paid electricians and bless them,

48:37SPEAKERI've had some very good electricians.

48:39SPEAKERI'm gonna say I'm 50/50 on electricians

48:42SPEAKERwhere I have had to go back and redo their work

48:44SPEAKERbecause they have done poor work for licensed electricians.

48:49SPEAKERAnd I'll be like, dude, you can't bond.

48:52SPEAKERThe ground here should not be bonded.

48:53SPEAKERIt's already bonded somewhere else.

48:54SPEAKEROr like, hey, this sub panel here should not,

48:57SPEAKERor like you wired this wrong.

49:00SPEAKERI'm telling you 50/50 shot.

49:01SPEAKER- Vinny, do you know what is bonded is the liability.

49:05SPEAKERWhen they burn your house down, you'll get a giant check.

49:08SPEAKER- They're gone.

49:09SPEAKER- If you are responsible for burning your house down,

49:11SPEAKERyou know who's gonna get a giant check?

49:13SPEAKERNo one.

49:14SPEAKER- No.

49:14SPEAKER- 'Cause the homeowners, and now there's a public record

49:17SPEAKERof us talking about this, so you know.

49:18SPEAKER- There is.

49:19SPEAKER- Yeah, we messed this up.

49:20SPEAKER- I could get a, I would, look what I would do.

49:24SPEAKERIf it was required by the town,

49:26SPEAKERI would get a permit and have somebody inspect it.

49:30SPEAKERHow about that?

49:30SPEAKERDoes that make you feel better?

49:31SPEAKER- A little, but not much.

49:33SPEAKER- Okay.

49:34SPEAKER- I know a lot of house inspectors.

49:36SPEAKERIt's not, the city inspectors, they're not looking

49:39SPEAKERfor the kind of crimes you're gonna do inside those walls.

49:41SPEAKER- I had an electrician come because I,

49:44SPEAKERmuch like you're recommending here,

49:45SPEAKERand I'm only half joking about this,

49:47SPEAKERbut much like you're recommending,

49:49SPEAKERsome things are like, hey, it's not worth it, right?

49:52SPEAKERLike you should just have somebody do it.

49:53SPEAKERSo when I was redoing my attic,

49:55SPEAKERI had everything in my hand, wire.

49:57SPEAKERI had an auger drill bit, and I was like, I'm right.

50:01SPEAKERAnd then at some point I was like,

50:02SPEAKERthe thing that actually stopped me was,

50:04SPEAKERI don't feel like putting giant holes through structural

50:09SPEAKERparts of the house to run the cable in the attic.

50:12SPEAKERIf it's wrong, then it's gonna be Swiss cheese.

50:15SPEAKERIf, you know, there are certain things like,

50:17SPEAKERhey, oops, this needed to be six inches in, not seven,

50:20SPEAKERstuff like that.

50:21SPEAKERAnd I was like, I'm gonna stay comfortable.

50:22SPEAKERPaid somebody to do it.

50:25SPEAKERI'll try to keep this story quick.

50:26SPEAKERAnd then when I was finishing up the attic,

50:29SPEAKERI was doing the walls and everything else up there.

50:32SPEAKEREvery time I'd plug in like my shop vac,

50:33SPEAKERit would trip the circuit.

50:34SPEAKERAnd I'm like, oh, it must just be the shop vac

50:37SPEAKERpulls so many amps up there, right?

50:38SPEAKERLike, okay, maybe it's not rated something.

50:42SPEAKERSo I'd plug it in downstairs.

50:43SPEAKERBy the time I was all done, when I would plug in my cell

50:46SPEAKERphone, it would trip the circuit to charge.

50:48SPEAKERAnd I was like, what the heck?

50:50SPEAKERCalled an electrician.

50:52SPEAKERAnother, this other guy had gone, the guy I had hired,

50:54SPEAKERhe was gone.

50:55SPEAKERCalled another electrician, look at it.

50:57SPEAKERHe's like, oh, these new breakers are sensitive.

51:00SPEAKERThey can be sensitive to, they were arc fault breakers.

51:03SPEAKERThey can be sensitive to, maybe as a homeowner,

51:07SPEAKERyou can put in just regular old breakers that might fix it.

51:11SPEAKERThis was like the third electrician that had come in.

51:13SPEAKERAnyway, my wife is out.

51:15SPEAKERI was like, hey, can you just pick up like a 15 amp breaker

51:18SPEAKERwhile you're out there?

51:19SPEAKERI'm just gonna try swapping this out.

51:20SPEAKERWhile she was out, I went upstairs.

51:23SPEAKERI opened one of the outlets.

51:25SPEAKERThe guy had tied the mains wrong to, they were shorting.

51:32SPEAKER- To like the wrong posts on the thing?

51:35SPEAKER- Basically, he had to make a connection,

51:37SPEAKERand he had tied the neutral to like the mains somewhere.

51:42SPEAKERIt wasn't to the mains, it was actually to the ground.

51:43SPEAKERBut he had tied it incorrectly.

51:45SPEAKERSo that every time the, it would trip.

51:47SPEAKEREvery time you plug something in.

51:49SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what it's supposed to do.

51:50SPEAKERThat's working as intended.

51:51SPEAKER- No!

51:52SPEAKER- No, no, no, I mean, you wired up wrong,

51:54SPEAKERthe breaker's supposed to trip.

51:56SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah, that worked.

51:59SPEAKERAnd so I basically just unscrewed it

52:01SPEAKERand did it the right way, and it totally worked.

52:04SPEAKERAnd this was a paid electrician that had come by my house.

52:07SPEAKER- So I would have probably asked that guy for money back?

52:10SPEAKER- I think at that point we were just like,

52:12SPEAKERjust never come back to the house.

52:14SPEAKER- Our long national nightmare is over.

52:15SPEAKERBut yeah, so, okay, so one bad seed can spoil one bad egg,

52:20SPEAKERone bad apple berry.

52:22SPEAKERI don't know what the metaphor is here.

52:24SPEAKERBut the whole bunch can go bad if one,

52:25SPEAKERbut you got a bad banana in there.

52:27SPEAKERAnd it sounds like you got a bad banana, but--

52:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

52:30SPEAKER- Look, this is like a classic,

52:33SPEAKERyou know, the Rogue Legacy preview, don't shit your pants.

52:36SPEAKERYou remember that game?

52:37SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

52:38SPEAKER- I had no idea that that was the Rogue Legacy team.

52:41SPEAKERThe next thing they went on to do was Rogue Legacy.

52:44SPEAKER- So wait, are you saying, which part am I?

52:46SPEAKERAm I in the Rogue Legacy part,

52:47SPEAKERor am I just shitting the pants for it?

52:49SPEAKER- Your game is don't burn your house down.

52:51SPEAKERAnd the answer is licensed and bonded electrician.

52:54SPEAKER- It's gonna be thousands of dollars to do,

52:56SPEAKERyou know how much work that is?

52:57SPEAKERI have so many breakers in that thing.

52:59SPEAKER- $25 and just plug that thing in, and you know what?

53:03SPEAKERDon't worry about the air conditioning,

53:05SPEAKER'cause here's the thing.

53:06SPEAKERWe as a society, as a species,

53:10SPEAKERtreat air conditioning like a luxury,

53:11SPEAKERwhen in the times that we live in,

53:13SPEAKERit is increasingly not that.

53:15SPEAKERIt's also much, much cheaper if, do you have a heat pump?

53:19SPEAKER- I also have heat pumps.

53:21SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you're using a heat pump,

53:23SPEAKERit's cheaper to cool your house

53:25SPEAKERthan it is to heat your house,

53:27SPEAKERbecause you're going down a few degrees

53:29SPEAKERrather than up a lot of degrees.

53:31SPEAKERRight? - Going down a few degrees.

53:33SPEAKEROh, you're taking, is this like an energy thing?

53:36SPEAKERYou're taking the heat out? - This is an energy thing.

53:37SPEAKER- Yeah. - Versus putting the heat in?

53:39SPEAKEROkay. - Yeah, it's like,

53:40SPEAKERmoving the heat from one side to the other

53:43SPEAKERis the same cost no matter which way it's going,

53:46SPEAKERbut more costs more and less costs less, right?

53:48SPEAKER- So, yeah, we have central air for our existing system,

53:54SPEAKERcentral air for like the first and second floor,

53:55SPEAKERand then we have heat pumps.

53:57SPEAKERI have one in the garage here,

53:58SPEAKERand then I put some in the basement

53:59SPEAKERwhen we redid the basement.

54:01SPEAKERBig fan, big fan. - The heat pump's great.

54:04SPEAKERSo, yeah, don't worry about it.

54:06SPEAKERElectricity's, if you're worried about that,

54:10SPEAKERthen you should, you know,

54:11SPEAKERput some solar panels on the roof and buy some batteries.

54:14SPEAKER- So, okay, this, I have another question here.

54:16SPEAKERI, okay. - I'm aware.

54:17SPEAKERI'm aware you have questions.

54:18SPEAKER- Okay, I have another question here.

54:20SPEAKERSo, we are, when we moved into the house,

54:23SPEAKERwe had to put a new roof on

54:25SPEAKERand have a bunch of work done to the house.

54:27SPEAKERSo, our roof is not that old.

54:29SPEAKERAnd we always said, when we have to do the roof again,

54:32SPEAKERwe will investigate solar panels, right?

54:34SPEAKERLike when it's time for the roof.

54:36SPEAKERBy, and you know, a lot of reasons.

54:38SPEAKEROne, solar panels can be very, very expensive.

54:41SPEAKERTwo, we were hoping that by the time that happens,

54:44SPEAKERefficiency of solar panels would have changed,

54:45SPEAKERwhich I think, which I still believe is happening.

54:47SPEAKER- Absolutely has happened, yes.

54:49SPEAKER- Yeah, and three, maybe, you know, some other,

54:53SPEAKERwe would like a whole house battery with our solar system,

54:57SPEAKERnot just feeding back into the grid,

54:59SPEAKERand battery technology also changes, right?

55:02SPEAKERVery quickly, capacity and efficiency.

55:04SPEAKERSo, solar panels, but we did join a solar co-op.

55:10SPEAKERDo you know what I mean? - Oh, so that means

55:10SPEAKERyou're buying electricity from a solar provider?

55:13SPEAKER- We are, so we were doing that initially

55:16SPEAKERwith our power plan, which was like,

55:18SPEAKERhey, you can opt in to get energy

55:21SPEAKERfrom what they would call a green service, right?

55:24SPEAKERLike a solar provider or somewhere else.

55:25SPEAKERThis, but in our neighborhood, we,

55:29SPEAKERthey started a solar farm, not in our neighborhood,

55:31SPEAKERbut in a nearby town, and we are like in a co-op,

55:34SPEAKERlike a solar co-op, we put, we're like,

55:36SPEAKERparticipate in this thing.

55:37SPEAKERIt generates electricity, and we get a share

55:40SPEAKERof the electricity that it generates,

55:42SPEAKERwhich then I think gets taken off,

55:45SPEAKERI think the electricity company buys that share,

55:49SPEAKERand we get the money for it.

55:51SPEAKERSo it did take like 100 bucks or so off of our bill.

55:54SPEAKER- That seems pretty good. - Yeah, it was pretty good.

55:56SPEAKERNow our bill is like, as everybody's electricity bill

55:59SPEAKERis probably bananas, but yeah, it was kinda cool.

56:03SPEAKERI thought it was maybe a scam at first,

56:04SPEAKERI'm not, but it seems like it's okay.

56:06SPEAKER- Did a kid come to your door and was like,

56:08SPEAKERhey man, my name's Lance, I wanna talk to you

56:12SPEAKERabout your electrons.

56:13SPEAKER(laughing)

56:15SPEAKER- Also, you have ants, I could get rid of them for you.

56:18SPEAKER- I noticed you got extra kids in there,

56:20SPEAKERwe can do something about that.

56:22SPEAKERAnyway, I got a PG, I got a guy trying,

56:24SPEAKERthe PG&E slammers, we get those here,

56:27SPEAKERwhere somebody comes to your door,

56:28SPEAKERand they basically sign you up for an opt-in,

56:32SPEAKERsuper expensive electrical provider.

56:34SPEAKER- Oh.

56:35SPEAKER- Because you know, we're deregulated, anything goes,

56:38SPEAKERso like, it's just door-to-door scamming

56:41SPEAKERout here in California.

56:42SPEAKER- So that's, I'm always very,

56:45SPEAKERmy scam radar is probably overactive,

56:48SPEAKERwhich is probably not a terrible thing.

56:50SPEAKER- That's a good thing, yeah.

56:51SPEAKER- Yeah, so I don't know if anybody in your community knows,

56:54SPEAKERwe just joined it recently, this is our first summer on it.

56:58SPEAKERSo far, knock on wood, has been pretty cool,

57:00SPEAKERI have liked it, and I think it could be a great thing

57:03SPEAKERfor people who are in apartments

57:05SPEAKERor can't put solar on their house.

57:07SPEAKERIf we are able to build solar farms somewhere,

57:10SPEAKERand then communities can get in on it, right?

57:13SPEAKERLike, you know, I'm not getting the electricity

57:15SPEAKERit generates, but they are selling it back for me.

57:18SPEAKER- Well, so San Mateo County, where I live,

57:20SPEAKERyears and years ago, switched everybody over to,

57:23SPEAKERlike, we had a referendum or something,

57:24SPEAKERand we voted to buy from a green power provider.

57:28SPEAKERSo we buy wind and solar,

57:31SPEAKERand I assume that they have batteries in that mix now,

57:33SPEAKERthat store stuff generated during the day,

57:35SPEAKERand all, theoretically, all of the power

57:37SPEAKERin San Mateo County is clean at this point.

57:40SPEAKER- Then they probably, your local provider just is like,

57:43SPEAKERwell then we're gonna pay, we're gonna charge you

57:45SPEAKERup the wazoo for transmission lines.

57:46SPEAKER- Let me tell you about the transmission costs, yeah.

57:49SPEAKER- It's so expensive.

57:50SPEAKER- So we've gone from, yeah, we're paying at peak,

57:55SPEAKERwe plan, let's see, we pay based on demand and time.

58:00SPEAKERSo like, it's most expensive between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m.

58:04SPEAKERIt's least expensive between midnight and 3 p.m.

58:09SPEAKERAnd as a result, you do things like set your electric car

58:12SPEAKERto only charge from midnight to three and stuff like that.

58:17SPEAKERBut we're paying 78 cents per kilowatt hour at peak.

58:21SPEAKER- Okay, that's pretty high. - At that 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. time.

58:23SPEAKERThat's including transmission.

58:24SPEAKERThat's transmission and generation.

58:27SPEAKERAnd it's basically like a third,

58:30SPEAKERor probably 2/5 generation and 3/5 transmission,

58:36SPEAKERbecause PG&E keeps fucking up at a high level.

58:40SPEAKERSo anyway, the answer to your question is,

58:44SPEAKERyeah, solar seems pretty good right now.

58:47SPEAKERIt's funny, I was walking the dog yesterday

58:48SPEAKERand I talked to one of my neighbors who's an older guy

58:51SPEAKERwho I, you know, we chat.

58:53SPEAKERYou know, he's a nice guy.

58:54SPEAKERHe's a marine veteran who's 85 years old

58:57SPEAKERand lives down the street and is a sweet old guy.

59:00SPEAKERBut a few years ago, he was like,

59:02SPEAKER"I'm tired of paying PG&E, I'm gonna get off the grid."

59:05SPEAKERAnd he did the thing where he puts the panels on,

59:07SPEAKERhe has two big batteries hanging off the side of his house.

59:09SPEAKER- Whoa, really? - And he's like,

59:11SPEAKER"Yeah, I get $5 a month back from them on winter months

59:16SPEAKER"and they pay me like 50 bucks a month in the summertime."

59:19SPEAKER- So he's not only battery,

59:20SPEAKERhe is feeding back into the grid as well?

59:23SPEAKER- Yeah, so in California at least,

59:24SPEAKERand this is a thing that varies based on municipality,

59:26SPEAKERyou can't disconnect from the grid entirely often,

59:29SPEAKERthey don't let you.

59:31SPEAKERBut yeah, so he said he's net positive

59:33SPEAKERlike 10 months of the year, basically,

59:36SPEAKERand two, that he's not in the rainy season in the winter.

59:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it's one of those things I feel like

59:42SPEAKERit's so A, climate dependent,

59:45SPEAKERbut B, situational dependent.

59:48SPEAKER- Latitude dependent, too.

59:49SPEAKER- Yeah, latitude dependent, but situational,

59:51SPEAKERis your house, was your house built facing the right way,

59:53SPEAKERright, like with the roof?

59:55SPEAKERDo you have a surface area on the roof, right?

59:57SPEAKERLike, so many of those things that I feel like

1:00:02SPEAKERif this community solar stuff can offset some of that,

1:00:05SPEAKERit's a great other option for folks

1:00:07SPEAKERthat have poor solar compatibility.

1:00:10SPEAKER- Well, so the other thing, so the two of the things,

1:00:13SPEAKERat least at the latitudes I operate at,

1:00:15SPEAKERand it may be different

1:00:16SPEAKER'cause you're a little further north than me,

1:00:17SPEAKERI actually, no, you're a little further south

1:00:19SPEAKER'cause I'm even with Boston, I think.

1:00:21SPEAKERSan Francisco's even with Boston, if I recall.

1:00:23SPEAKER- I'd have to look at that.

1:00:25SPEAKER- Yes, but the point is the new,

1:00:28SPEAKERthe current gen solar panels are efficient enough

1:00:31SPEAKERthat it's not like the old rules

1:00:32SPEAKERwhere you want a south-facing surface to put them on.

1:00:35SPEAKERYou can put them, like south-facing's definitely better,

1:00:37SPEAKERbut kind of anything works is my understanding,

1:00:41SPEAKERand you'd lose a little bit of efficiency,

1:00:42SPEAKERbut you're still gonna do pretty well,

1:00:45SPEAKERand surface area goes a long way.

1:00:48SPEAKER- I told my wife I would be willing to, I don't care,

1:00:50SPEAKERI would put like a buttress around the entire roof

1:00:52SPEAKERthat is just a second roof on top of our roof.

1:00:55SPEAKERLike, I don't care how it looks, you know?

1:00:57SPEAKER- You're building a Valheim roof up there on the top

1:00:59SPEAKERthat's like, it's like, hey man, it's extra attic, okay?

1:01:03SPEAKER- Just a weird space that's over our other roof.

1:01:06SPEAKERLike, if I could get to like net zero would be awesome.

1:01:11SPEAKERLike, I would feel very happy.

1:01:13SPEAKER- I was like, I think that's totally attainable.

1:01:16SPEAKERLike, our roof was on the house when we got here,

1:01:20SPEAKERand it was probably five years old at the time,

1:01:22SPEAKERso it's coming up on 25 years,

1:01:23SPEAKERand we are, I have literally been saying,

1:01:25SPEAKERI think probably since I've known you

1:01:27SPEAKERthat we have to do a new roof,

1:01:28SPEAKERand when we do a new roof, we're gonna do this.

1:01:30SPEAKERAnd every time I have somebody come out

1:01:31SPEAKERand look at the roof, they're like,

1:01:32SPEAKER"Yeah, no, you absolutely shouldn't take this roof off,

1:01:34SPEAKER"this is still super sound."

1:01:36SPEAKER- Roofs are expensive.

1:01:37SPEAKER- Well, they're expensive,

1:01:38SPEAKERand also the opportunity to mess them up.

1:01:41SPEAKERLike, it's very much from, like when the roofer comes out,

1:01:45SPEAKERI was like, "Yeah, no, I wouldn't replace this one yet."

1:01:47SPEAKERLike, he's like, "If it's not broke,

1:01:50SPEAKER"don't fix it situation."

1:01:51SPEAKER- Wait a second, are you gonna tell me

1:01:53SPEAKERI shouldn't do my own roof as well?

1:01:55SPEAKER- I absolutely think you should do your own roof.

1:01:57SPEAKERI wanna, like, you should live stream that,

1:02:00SPEAKERmake that an event.

1:02:01SPEAKERLike, just set up some cameras,

1:02:03SPEAKERwe can get Jimmy Fallon out there,

1:02:04SPEAKERlike, it's gonna be a big deal.

1:02:07SPEAKERI've done, have you never,

1:02:09SPEAKERI did roofs in high school briefly,

1:02:11SPEAKERmostly tin on boats, and it was real bad.

1:02:14SPEAKER- Oh, I did, my growing up, we,

1:02:19SPEAKERI don't know if you guys call them this,

1:02:21SPEAKERbut like a doghouse on a roof,

1:02:22SPEAKERthe little like pop-up thing on some roofs,

1:02:25SPEAKERand like on attic spaces, it's like the little,

1:02:27SPEAKER- We call it a dormer?

1:02:28SPEAKER- No, it's much smaller than that.

1:02:30SPEAKERIt's just like a little, we always call it a doghouse.

1:02:33SPEAKERIt's just like the little part of the roof

1:02:35SPEAKERthat just looks, it looks like a little doghouse.

1:02:37SPEAKERBut like, when you're in the attic space,

1:02:39SPEAKERit's like a little bump out.

1:02:41SPEAKER- Okay, that's a dormer, isn't it?

1:02:43SPEAKER- So a dormer, I always imagine is like a second floor,

1:02:46SPEAKERlike on a thing.

1:02:47SPEAKERThis is very small.

1:02:48SPEAKERIt could be a dormer.

1:02:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's called a dormer, Vinny.

1:02:50SPEAKER- Okay, I always, a dormer in my mind

1:02:54SPEAKERwas always like a bigger living space for a,

1:02:57SPEAKERlike where one would, my dorm.

1:02:59SPEAKERThis is like a tiny little, tiny little thing.

1:03:02SPEAKERYeah, yeah.

1:03:03SPEAKERWell, I also don't know, maybe a mother-in-law thing

1:03:05SPEAKERis another term that got thrown around.

1:03:07SPEAKER- I wouldn't put my mother-in-law in the attic,

1:03:09SPEAKERbut that's up to you, man.

1:03:10SPEAKERI'm not gonna judge.

1:03:11SPEAKER- So on our house, we had a single floor ranch growing up

1:03:13SPEAKERand we had this little bump out on the roof

1:03:15SPEAKERand it would leak in the attic.

1:03:18SPEAKERAnd so I went on the roof with my dad and my brothers

1:03:24SPEAKERto take that thing off.

1:03:25SPEAKERThat was the most roofing we did.

1:03:26SPEAKERI hate heights.

1:03:27SPEAKERI do not like heights at all.

1:03:30SPEAKERAnd so that was not a great situation.

1:03:32SPEAKER- You have a tall house too, as if I recall.

1:03:34SPEAKER- Well, now I do.

1:03:35SPEAKERNow we have a two-story and an attic, finished attic.

1:03:39SPEAKERBut growing up, it was a one-story house, a ranch.

1:03:42SPEAKERBut even that, I did not like.

1:03:44SPEAKERSo I would, I freak out.

1:03:47SPEAKERI've wanted to put an antenna on my roof for a long time

1:03:50SPEAKERand I won't do it.

1:03:50SPEAKERI just don't wanna go up that ladder.

1:03:52SPEAKER- Yeah, but meanwhile, you're in the other room being like,

1:03:55SPEAKERyeah, let's rip out these big

1:03:56SPEAKERthree-inch thick electrical cables.

1:03:58SPEAKER- Dude, that's, I'm telling you, I love it.

1:04:03SPEAKER- But yeah, you should definitely,

1:04:05SPEAKERI wouldn't wait on the roof at this point.

1:04:07SPEAKERIf your roof is good and it's been sound,

1:04:09SPEAKERyou should just put the panels up.

1:04:11SPEAKERThe guy down the street had his,

1:04:12SPEAKERI was talking to him 'cause he was having his roof redone

1:04:14SPEAKERand I wanted to see how he liked the guys he was using

1:04:16SPEAKER'cause this is what we do as functioning adults.

1:04:19SPEAKERAnd he was like, oh, he's fantastic.

1:04:20SPEAKERHe's been really good.

1:04:22SPEAKERAnd I was like, what did you do about your panels?

1:04:24SPEAKERAnd he said, oh, the solar people came out two days before,

1:04:28SPEAKERtook them all off, piled up into the backyard

1:04:29SPEAKERand then they'll come back the day after it's done

1:04:31SPEAKERand put them back on.

1:04:32SPEAKERAnd it was, and I pay him like 150 bucks to do that.

1:04:35SPEAKER- What? - He said it wasn't, yeah.

1:04:37SPEAKER'Cause they're not, they're on mounts

1:04:39SPEAKERbut they're not permanent,

1:04:41SPEAKERlike they're not like screwed into the roof necessarily.

1:04:43SPEAKERThey're screwed into mounts so you can take the panels off

1:04:45SPEAKERand then the roofers work around the mounts is what he said.

1:04:48SPEAKER- Really? - Yeah.

1:04:49SPEAKER- They can, I guess it really depends

1:04:50SPEAKERon the type of roof you have as well.

1:04:52SPEAKER- It probably also depends on the type of roof

1:04:53SPEAKERbut these are like normal shingle roofs.

1:04:56SPEAKER- Okay, like asphalt shingles or?

1:04:57SPEAKER- Asphalt shingle, it's California

1:05:00SPEAKERso it's a relatively narrow pitch

1:05:01SPEAKERcompared to what you guys would have out there

1:05:03SPEAKERprobably because of snow.

1:05:04SPEAKER- Yeah. - But yeah, so.

1:05:06SPEAKER- That's wild. - Yeah.

1:05:07SPEAKER- I thought they would have to take the mounts off.

1:05:10SPEAKER- I don't know, it didn't look like it.

1:05:12SPEAKERIt looked like they were poking through still, so.

1:05:13SPEAKER- I bet the guys working on the roof hate that.

1:05:17SPEAKER- I would say they're probably pretty used to it by now.

1:05:20SPEAKER- Yeah, I would love to get solar stuff.

1:05:22SPEAKERI'm still waiting, I'm ticking,

1:05:24SPEAKERwaiting to see battery again

1:05:25SPEAKERand solar technology efficiency.

1:05:28SPEAKERI know it's gotten better and cheaper also.

1:05:30SPEAKERLook, I'm just saying, I don't know.

1:05:32SPEAKERDon't wanna get too into it but let's just say

1:05:34SPEAKERI would love to get a solar subsidy back.

1:05:39SPEAKER- Yeah. - Some kind of federal

1:05:40SPEAKERsubsidy back for solar.

1:05:42SPEAKER- So yeah, that 7,500 bucks or whatever it was

1:05:45SPEAKERthey used to get looks pretty good right now.

1:05:48SPEAKERI don't know, to me we've reached the point almost

1:05:53SPEAKERespecially with the electric car

1:05:54SPEAKERwhere knocking the $500 that I pay PG&E

1:05:57SPEAKERfor electricity every month off feels really nice.

1:06:02SPEAKER- Would be, yeah. - Would be.

1:06:04SPEAKER- But what do you imagine a solar installation

1:06:06SPEAKERfor your house would cost to buy?

1:06:08SPEAKERNot to lease, not to rent, like you think in my mind

1:06:11SPEAKERit's always like $40,000 to $80,000.

1:06:13SPEAKER- Oh no, I mean that includes the roof, easy.

1:06:17SPEAKER- Includes the roof, yeah, yeah.

1:06:19SPEAKER- So I have a 1,000 square foot house

1:06:19SPEAKERso it's a little, the coverage area is small.

1:06:23SPEAKERWhen I priced it out even two, three years ago

1:06:25SPEAKERit was like 12 grand with the batteries and the panels.

1:06:28SPEAKER- But not including like doing the roof again

1:06:31SPEAKERor that was included in there?

1:06:32SPEAKER- The big cost for me is I have to replace

1:06:34SPEAKERmy electrical service 'cause I don't have,

1:06:37SPEAKERmy breaker box is one of the, it's 40 years old

1:06:41SPEAKERand it was shitty when they bought it.

1:06:42SPEAKER- Okay.

1:06:43SPEAKER- So like I have to replace that

1:06:46SPEAKERand then wire the batteries and all that stuff into that.

1:06:48SPEAKER- Call me up, let's go.

1:06:50SPEAKER- And I'm gonna pay a licensed and bonded electrician

1:06:54SPEAKERto do that work 'cause I love life

1:06:56SPEAKERand don't wanna burn my house down.

1:06:58SPEAKER- I've got you covered.

1:07:01SPEAKER- I mean, although I guess I could probably

1:07:03SPEAKERfor fly you out for next to nothing.

1:07:06SPEAKERLast time I got a quote on replacing electrical services

1:07:08SPEAKERit was gonna be like 10 grand.

1:07:10SPEAKERWhich is also why I charge my car on 120 volts

1:07:12SPEAKERinstead of 240s 'cause I don't have enough breaker space

1:07:15SPEAKERfor a 240 running to the car.

1:07:17SPEAKER- Yeah, it turns out they, yes, that is definitely a thing.

1:07:20SPEAKEROh my gosh, all right, just quick story on that.

1:07:23SPEAKERSo like everybody knows at this point

1:07:25SPEAKERI enjoy doing some electrical work.

1:07:27SPEAKERI am not a licensed electrician.

1:07:29SPEAKER- We've all, yeah, established.

1:07:31SPEAKER- Yeah, established.

1:07:32SPEAKERBut when we got our car and I actually look,

1:07:37SPEAKERI very much feel like charging at 120

1:07:40SPEAKERis completely reasonable.

1:07:41SPEAKERI don't think everybody, it needs 240.

1:07:43SPEAKER- Like I think if you work at home

1:07:45SPEAKERand you're driving like a few times a week

1:07:46SPEAKEReven if you're like running kids to school

1:07:48SPEAKERand stuff like that, like when we had the Bolt

1:07:51SPEAKERand we were driving the kiddo to school

1:07:54SPEAKERsix miles each way every day,

1:07:56SPEAKERit was no problem on the 120 volts.

1:07:59SPEAKER- Yeah, if you're regularly keeping it charged up

1:08:02SPEAKERto your 80% or whatever overnight

1:08:04SPEAKERand you're not in a rush, right?

1:08:05SPEAKERBut me being me, I was like hey,

1:08:08SPEAKERI'm gonna put a 240 outlet over here

1:08:11SPEAKERand I'm gonna put a charger in by this garage.

1:08:14SPEAKERIt's a detached garage from my house.

1:08:17SPEAKERAnd I had an electrician, thank you very much,

1:08:20SPEAKERrun power out here initially to the sub panel out here.

1:08:24SPEAKERI didn't do it myself.

1:08:25SPEAKERAnd but I was like, oh man,

1:08:28SPEAKERI know enough just to be dangerous.

1:08:29SPEAKERI was like, okay, I need to put like a 50 amp

1:08:33SPEAKERto 50 to 60 amp breaker in this box

1:08:37SPEAKERto run this outlet over here for the car.

1:08:43SPEAKERI need to know the gauge of the wire

1:08:45SPEAKERthat's run from the garage to the main terminal

1:08:49SPEAKERback to the house here.

1:08:51SPEAKERAnd I was like, this is a thing that I know

1:08:55SPEAKERif it's not the right gauge,

1:08:57SPEAKERyou're gonna be pulling too many amps over here, exactly.

1:09:02SPEAKERAnd I need to do an audit of what's on here,

1:09:04SPEAKERet cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

1:09:05SPEAKERSo I did it all and I was like, I'm right on the cusp.

1:09:09SPEAKERI'm right on the cusp here.

1:09:12SPEAKERThere's not a lot of headroom,

1:09:14SPEAKERbut I think it would be fine.

1:09:17SPEAKERI could re-pull wire that's thicker,

1:09:19SPEAKERbut then the conduit is not,

1:09:22SPEAKERit's gonna be a pain in the butt for a thicker wire,

1:09:25SPEAKERfor a lower gauge wire.

1:09:28SPEAKERI don't wanna do that.

1:09:31SPEAKERLet me just call an electrician.

1:09:33SPEAKERI'm gonna call an electrician.

1:09:35SPEAKERCall an electrician.

1:09:37SPEAKERDude pops out the breaker on one end,

1:09:38SPEAKERpops out the breaker on this end,

1:09:40SPEAKERpops in a new breaker, pops in a new breaker,

1:09:42SPEAKERhe's like, you're good.

1:09:44SPEAKER- Look, I don't know if you're hiring mob electricians

1:09:47SPEAKERor what, but like-

1:09:48SPEAKER- No, they're like, you're good.

1:09:50SPEAKERYour gauges are good, you're good here.

1:09:53SPEAKERAnd then I was like, dammit.

1:09:56SPEAKER- What was that, like 500 bucks?

1:09:57SPEAKER- So the reason I wound up doing it

1:09:59SPEAKERwas when I got my charger for here,

1:10:04SPEAKERit was actually reimbursed from the,

1:10:08SPEAKERyeah, yeah, so they covered it.

1:10:09SPEAKERAmazing, so he actually installed the charger too.

1:10:13SPEAKERAnd they were like-

1:10:14SPEAKER- Did you get him to do a 240 volt plug

1:10:16SPEAKERor did you just do, do you do it straight into the wall?

1:10:18SPEAKER- No, no, 240 volts.

1:10:20SPEAKER- Okay, perfect, so you can take it with you

1:10:21SPEAKERshould you move or whatever.

1:10:22SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a box mounted on the outside

1:10:25SPEAKERand then the charger plugs into the box.

1:10:27SPEAKER- Got it, okay.

1:10:29SPEAKER- So amazingly though, Will, would you believe it?

1:10:33SPEAKERWe were reimbursed from our electric company for $1,500.

1:10:40SPEAKER- That's pretty good.

1:10:40SPEAKER- To get this thing in, yeah, yeah, pretty good.

1:10:42SPEAKERHow much do you think it costs?

1:10:43SPEAKERHow much do you think to the penny?

1:10:45SPEAKERHow much do you think it costs

1:10:46SPEAKERfor that electrician to put it in?

1:10:47SPEAKER- $1,499.

1:10:49SPEAKER- $1,500, right, right on the nose.

1:10:50SPEAKER- But what a weird coincidence.

1:10:52SPEAKERLook, that's better than the PG&E reimbursement.

1:10:55SPEAKERWe're like, hey, we'll reimburse you $1,500

1:10:57SPEAKERand it's $2,500 to do the thing

1:10:59SPEAKERthat you're getting reimbursed for, so.

1:11:00SPEAKER- Wait, that sucks.

1:11:02SPEAKER- Yeah, no, it's bad, it's like, well, 'cause,

1:11:05SPEAKERso when we had to do a hot water heater a few years ago,

1:11:07SPEAKERwe were like, oh, let's see

1:11:09SPEAKERif there's any kind of rebates or anything.

1:11:10SPEAKERLike, I'll buy the Eco-Friend.

1:11:12SPEAKERAnd I looked at it and I was like, yeah, okay,

1:11:14SPEAKERso we can buy, we can get 1,500 bucks back

1:11:17SPEAKERon the $5,000 hot water heater,

1:11:19SPEAKERor we can just buy a $2,100 hot water heater

1:11:21SPEAKERand pay to have it installed ourselves.

1:11:23SPEAKERAnd like, hey, guess which one we chose.

1:11:25SPEAKERIt was a pretty easy decision.

1:11:28SPEAKER- Look, I want your audience to know

1:11:29SPEAKERthat I am actually a very nervous person

1:11:33SPEAKERwhen it comes to safety in the house.

1:11:35SPEAKER- I'm shocked, this whole conversation is shocking to me.

1:11:38SPEAKERI respect electricity and water and plumbing

1:11:43SPEAKERand all sorts of things,

1:11:44SPEAKERbut I do like to have a good understanding.

1:11:49SPEAKERAnd I do get permits

1:11:52SPEAKERand I try to make sure everything is legit

1:11:54SPEAKERbecause I do feel like if I sell this house,

1:11:55SPEAKERI don't want somebody else to open a thing and be like,

1:11:59SPEAKERwhat the hell did this guy do?

1:12:02SPEAKER- Look, that's gonna happen no matter what.

1:12:03SPEAKERWe've lived here for almost 20 years.

1:12:05SPEAKERAnd like, I lived that life for the first 10

1:12:07SPEAKERand then the second 10, I'm like, you know what?

1:12:10SPEAKERWhoever gets this, good luck.

1:12:11SPEAKERThey're gonna raise this thing

1:12:12SPEAKERand just build a new house here.

1:12:13SPEAKER- That is true.

1:12:14SPEAKERIn my neighborhood now, whoever gets this house

1:12:16SPEAKERis absolutely just going to bulldoze this house

1:12:18SPEAKERand put up some horrible thing.

1:12:21SPEAKER- Can I, do you get the thing with your kid,

1:12:25SPEAKERwith your kids when you're doing a project like this?

1:12:28SPEAKERThe other day, I bought a sink snake,

1:12:33SPEAKERthose little plastic ones that you jammed down the sink

1:12:35SPEAKERto like jam the hair clog out

1:12:37SPEAKERso I don't have to take the drain.

1:12:38SPEAKER- So gross.

1:12:39SPEAKER- Look, it's anytime you have to do

1:12:42SPEAKERany kind of hair plumbing stuff,

1:12:45SPEAKERit's just a nightmare horror show.

1:12:47SPEAKER- It is, ah.

1:12:50SPEAKER- It just gets so gross in there.

1:12:52SPEAKERYeah.

1:12:53SPEAKER- So wait, did you get the little plastic one

1:12:55SPEAKERwith the ridges that basically you like zip tie through?

1:12:59SPEAKER- So that's what I've always used in the past

1:13:00SPEAKERand those are great because the zip ties are pronged

1:13:03SPEAKERand you jam them down there and then you pull it back

1:13:04SPEAKERand it pulls it all up.

1:13:06SPEAKER- The bio matter, whatever is happening, it's, oh.

1:13:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it smells like a swamp down there

1:13:11SPEAKERwhen you break the seal on that, it's bad.

1:13:13SPEAKER- That's bad.

1:13:14SPEAKERIt's like Cthulhu down there, it is just bad.

1:13:18SPEAKER- Let me tell you though, so I bought one,

1:13:20SPEAKERI saw one that was like, oh, it's got a stainless steel wire

1:13:23SPEAKERit's wrapped in plastic, it's got like a little,

1:13:25SPEAKERit looks like a, it's like a little spiky thing on the end

1:13:27SPEAKERbut it doesn't have the fish hook, the barbs.

1:13:30SPEAKER- Okay, but it's not a true snake,

1:13:32SPEAKERit's not something you're feeding forever down the pipe.

1:13:34SPEAKER- It's like four feet long, it's longer,

1:13:36SPEAKER'cause it's like, it's a long run.

1:13:39SPEAKERSo I was like, oh, this is gonna be great,

1:13:40SPEAKERI'm gonna do this, I'm gonna try this new one,

1:13:43SPEAKERit's gonna go all the way down, I won't have to take the,

1:13:45SPEAKERI won't have to take the goose neck off,

1:13:47SPEAKERthis is gonna be fantastic.

1:13:49SPEAKERAnd I used it and it immediately started draining better

1:13:53SPEAKERand I was like, oh, this is great.

1:13:55SPEAKERBut when I pulled it up, nothing was on the thing,

1:13:56SPEAKERI was like, this is a win-win, I love this, this is fabulous.

1:13:59SPEAKER- Push it on down the line, baby.

1:14:00SPEAKER- Yeah, so shit ran downhill.

1:14:04SPEAKERIt turns out, downstream of that drain

1:14:07SPEAKERis my bathtub drain and my kitchen sink drain.

1:14:11SPEAKERAnd what I did was I pushed the crap

1:14:14SPEAKERfrom in the bathroom sink to block up the tub

1:14:17SPEAKERand the kitchen, and then also eventually the bathroom sink.

1:14:20SPEAKERSo once enough water was in there,

1:14:23SPEAKERthe water was coming out of the tub,

1:14:24SPEAKERand it was, it's not what you want.

1:14:27SPEAKER- Back flowing up into the tub, or?

1:14:30SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like the black water

1:14:33SPEAKERcoming into the tub is not what you want ever.

1:14:35SPEAKER- No, no, no.

1:14:36SPEAKER- So I'm sorry, I should have given you

1:14:40SPEAKERa trigger warning on this.

1:14:41SPEAKERI realize you had some flooding issues.

1:14:42SPEAKER- It's just like, it's so gross.

1:14:45SPEAKERI hate cleaning drains so much.

1:14:47SPEAKER- It is my least favorite.

1:14:48SPEAKERSo I come in there and I told my, we have one bathroom,

1:14:53SPEAKERso it's like when the bathroom's not working right,

1:14:55SPEAKERit's a little urgent, and I was like,

1:14:57SPEAKERplease, for the love of God, let the toilet come in

1:14:59SPEAKERafter the bathtub drain, and it did.

1:15:01SPEAKERSo we're cool on that front.

1:15:04SPEAKERAnd I'm sitting there, and my daughter comes in,

1:15:06SPEAKERI was like, you don't wanna see what's coming

1:15:06SPEAKERout of the tub right now, it's gross.

1:15:08SPEAKERAnd she was like, oh, how long until you call the plumber?

1:15:11SPEAKER- Oh.

1:15:12SPEAKER- And I was like, wow.

1:15:13SPEAKER- Wow.

1:15:14SPEAKER- You're not even gonna give me--

1:15:15SPEAKER- Wow.

1:15:16SPEAKER- I've lived here for 20 years,

1:15:17SPEAKERI've never had to call the plumber.

1:15:19SPEAKER- Oh.

1:15:20SPEAKER- Like, I've called the plumber for like--

1:15:21SPEAKER- Knock on wood, yeah.

1:15:22SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, good call.

1:15:26SPEAKERAt three o'clock in the morning,

1:15:27SPEAKERand the day before Thanksgiving,

1:15:28SPEAKERwhen one of us ran a bunch of sweet potato peels

1:15:32SPEAKERdown the garbage disposal, not gonna say who that was,

1:15:35SPEAKERbut it wasn't me.

1:15:36SPEAKER- Was that a bad thing for the garbage disposal,

1:15:38SPEAKERsweet potato peels?

1:15:38SPEAKER- I'm gonna go and tell you, it was great

1:15:40SPEAKERfor the garbage disposal, it loved them,

1:15:41SPEAKERbut they came up in the bathtub, and, you know.

1:15:45SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

1:15:45SPEAKER- In a one-bathroom house, with 20 people coming over

1:15:48SPEAKERfor Thanksgiving in six hours, not a great time.

1:15:52SPEAKERSo I didn't call the plumber on that one, you know, anyway.

1:15:56SPEAKERI was like, I'm not gonna call the plumber,

1:15:57SPEAKERso I went out to the garage to look for the snake.

1:16:00SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:16:01SPEAKER- 'Cause at first I was like, maybe I can plunge this,

1:16:03SPEAKERand there's too many outs, there's no plunging,

1:16:05SPEAKERit's just the air goes straight out the kitchen sink.

1:16:08SPEAKER- Just spurting black goo out of--

1:16:09SPEAKER- Blasting horrors out there, and she was like,

1:16:12SPEAKERit's making a weird sound in the kitchen,

1:16:13SPEAKERI'm like, yeah, I know.

1:16:15SPEAKERSo I'm like, I can't find the snake,

1:16:19SPEAKERand then I had a vague memory of the last time

1:16:23SPEAKERthis happening, saying, I'm never abusing

1:16:24SPEAKERthis fucking snake again, this one sucks, it's too heavy,

1:16:28SPEAKERit's all rusty and gross.

1:16:30SPEAKER- Is it the one where the ones you hook up to your drill

1:16:32SPEAKERthat you can--

1:16:33SPEAKER- No, like, those seem scary to me.

1:16:36SPEAKERAlso, I don't have the high enough torque drill for that,

1:16:38SPEAKERI have just baby drills mostly.

1:16:41SPEAKERI'm gonna buy another one the next time I need a snake,

1:16:43SPEAKERand it was like the, you know, dental plan,

1:16:47SPEAKERLisa needs braces, dental plan.

1:16:50SPEAKER(laughing)

1:16:51SPEAKER- Right.

1:16:52SPEAKER- So I went to Ace Hardware and I bought the plumbing snake,

1:16:55SPEAKERand the woman in line in front of me is trying to,

1:16:58SPEAKERlike, she's clearly here visiting on vacation,

1:17:01SPEAKERand she's like, hey, what's some good place to eat?

1:17:03SPEAKERAnd her husband looks at the guy with two different kinds

1:17:06SPEAKERof plumbing snake, and it's like,

1:17:07SPEAKERhe's not in a chatting mood, honey.

1:17:09SPEAKER- This guy needs to get home, he's like, yeah, yeah.

1:17:12SPEAKER- Like, it's four o'clock in the afternoon on Friday,

1:17:14SPEAKERyou don't come to the store and buy a plumbing snake

1:17:16SPEAKER'cause shit's going well in your life.

1:17:17SPEAKER- Especially two different types,

1:17:19SPEAKERso you're like, one of these has to work.

1:17:20SPEAKER- Yeah, well, they closed at six,

1:17:22SPEAKERso I was like, I gotta get, I gotta get my, anyway.

1:17:25SPEAKERSo I come back with all this stuff and my daughter's like,

1:17:27SPEAKERyou should just call the plumber.

1:17:28SPEAKERI was like, I'm not calling the damn plumber.

1:17:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:17:32SPEAKER- And so I get it out, I pull out maybe the most

1:17:35SPEAKERhorrifying thing I've ever seen in the tub before.

1:17:37SPEAKER- Yeah, and you put it in a dish towel

1:17:41SPEAKERand then smack it with a brick.

1:17:43SPEAKER(laughing)

1:17:44SPEAKER- Well, no, so it's like wrapped into the end of the snake,

1:17:47SPEAKERand I'm like, hey, somebody needs to bring me a bucket.

1:17:50SPEAKER- It's so gross, I just, it's--

1:17:52SPEAKER- It's like two feet long, it's just kind of stretched out.

1:17:55SPEAKER- It is really just like, it's something that,

1:17:57SPEAKERif you've never done a drain before, or like,

1:18:00SPEAKERare at home, you just, you're never prepared for it.

1:18:01SPEAKER- Old pipes, man, it's bad.

1:18:04SPEAKERAt least now, at least now, this long end,

1:18:06SPEAKERI know it's all of our stuff.

1:18:07SPEAKERLike, the first time I did it, I was like,

1:18:09SPEAKERoh shit, this is the people who lived here before me.

1:18:11SPEAKERGross. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:18:14SPEAKER- So I got it out and I was like, hey,

1:18:15SPEAKERI want you all to appreciate the horrors

1:18:17SPEAKERthat I witnessed when I have to do this.

1:18:19SPEAKERWhen I say, hey, can we please use the drain thing

1:18:22SPEAKERand clean it every time we use the shower?

1:18:23SPEAKERThis is what I'm talking about.

1:18:25SPEAKER- Yes, the mesh thing that goes over, or the, yeah.

1:18:30SPEAKER- There's no tub shroom strong enough.

1:18:33SPEAKER- I don't actually eat the shroom, the shroom--

1:18:35SPEAKER- It sucks.

1:18:36SPEAKER- I don't use the shroom, I use a different thing,

1:18:38SPEAKERbut like, yes, and I'm like, I am a bald man.

1:18:43SPEAKERThis is not me. - You're not contributing

1:18:44SPEAKERto this. - Yeah, yeah,

1:18:45SPEAKERthis is all you guys, I just need to let you all know,

1:18:49SPEAKERthis is not a me issue, this is you issue,

1:18:51SPEAKERand like, I don't know why you guys,

1:18:53SPEAKERI'm looking at you, children, can't brush your teeth.

1:18:56SPEAKERAre you just squirting toothpaste into the sink?

1:19:00SPEAKERAre you just upside down toothpaste into the sink?

1:19:06SPEAKERI can brush my teeth and it gets on the toothbrush.

1:19:08SPEAKERWhat are you doing?

1:19:10SPEAKER- Okay, I have the same, like, I walk into the bathroom

1:19:15SPEAKERand there's like a huge blue smear across the white vanity.

1:19:19SPEAKERI'm like, how did you not notice this?

1:19:21SPEAKERIt's two feet long!

1:19:22SPEAKER- It's just, and then it's just like, okay,

1:19:25SPEAKERnow I'll just brush it down into the drain.

1:19:27SPEAKERBe like, okay, yeah, no, it all disappears

1:19:29SPEAKERwhen it goes in the drain. - No!

1:19:30SPEAKER- Until dad is in there wrestling

1:19:33SPEAKERwith an anaconda-sized biomass that is,

1:19:36SPEAKERlike Resident Evil-style villain is in our drain,

1:19:41SPEAKERyou don't understand.

1:19:43SPEAKERSomebody needs to come in here

1:19:44SPEAKERand tell me if they see a weak spot.

1:19:45SPEAKERDo you see, like, look, if there's some kind of orange eye

1:19:48SPEAKERopening up, I need to know.

1:19:50SPEAKER- Hey, hey, I'm gonna send pictures of this to Miyazaki

1:19:53SPEAKERfor the Elden Ring sequel and like,

1:19:57SPEAKERso I had it on the thing and I was out there in the back

1:20:00SPEAKERcursing and trying to untwist it off the other way with like,

1:20:03SPEAKERand like, I wear rubber gloves when I'm doing this

1:20:06SPEAKER'cause it's gross. - Yes, yes.

1:20:07SPEAKER- But like, the end of that thing's pointy

1:20:10SPEAKERand like you can't hear, like it always breaks the seal.

1:20:12SPEAKER- You are like minutes away from the prequel

1:20:16SPEAKERor the intro to a Contagion movie or something

1:20:19SPEAKERwhere you look at your glove and you're like,

1:20:20SPEAKERoh no, oh no.

1:20:22SPEAKER- Well, so nobody, I was like, hey,

1:20:24SPEAKERI want you all to come out and witness the horrors

1:20:26SPEAKERthat I go through for you.

1:20:27SPEAKER- Yes, so wait, you did call family out to witness it?

1:20:29SPEAKER'Cause I did that too. - They wouldn't come out.

1:20:31SPEAKERThey were like, I don't need to see this.

1:20:33SPEAKERIt's like, I think you do.

1:20:35SPEAKER- I do the same thing, I'm like, family, family,

1:20:38SPEAKERcome up and look at what you've made me do.

1:20:41SPEAKERLook at this. - Yeah, yeah.

1:20:43SPEAKERI could at least, look, I have hair,

1:20:44SPEAKERso I'm complicit in the whole thing, but yeah.