40: Gigantic Flaming Luminous Orb

00:00SPEAKER- This light is huge.

00:01SPEAKER- That is a big light.

00:02SPEAKER- It's a big, it's a key light.

00:04SPEAKER- Is it battery powered?

00:05SPEAKER- It is, no, it plugs into the wall.

00:06SPEAKERIn fact, the power brick is for,

00:09SPEAKERan LED lamp is like trying to,

00:11SPEAKERthat's a significant power brick

00:13SPEAKERfor something that is just lumens.

00:15SPEAKERBut...

00:17SPEAKER- Welcome to our light podcast.

00:18SPEAKER- I guess I should say I'm talking about

00:20SPEAKERthis Elgato key light that I just got in.

00:22SPEAKER- Ooh.

00:23SPEAKER- What do you do for face lighting?

00:25SPEAKERYou've got a big spot shining on your mug.

00:29SPEAKER- I don't have a big spot.

00:30SPEAKERWhat I have is one of those,

00:33SPEAKERit's an Ikea like collapsible ball light.

00:37SPEAKEROne of the paper ones that hangs from the ceiling

00:40SPEAKERright up behind the camera.

00:41SPEAKERAnd it has a dimmable Cree light bulb in there

00:45SPEAKERthat I can adjust the intensity with.

00:45SPEAKER- Like literally sort of like a paper lampshade.

00:48SPEAKERI bet that's like a nice diffused kind of light then, right?

00:51SPEAKERIt's like a, oh my God.

00:53SPEAKER- One of those.

00:54SPEAKER- Wow.

00:55SPEAKER(laughing)

00:56SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's a big round ball, metal frame in it.

00:59SPEAKER- And the blown out webcam that just looked like the sun.

01:01SPEAKER- Yeah, it took a minute.

01:02SPEAKER- Just a gigantic flaming luminous orb.

01:06SPEAKER- As I was picking up the camera to aim it at the light,

01:08SPEAKERI realized that literally you're the only one

01:10SPEAKERwho will ever see that.

01:11SPEAKERSo there you go.

01:12SPEAKER- I am part of a privileged few

01:15SPEAKERthat has seen behind the curtain.

01:17SPEAKER- I don't know that I have ever actually shown that before.

01:19SPEAKERI'm looking to see what the name.

01:21SPEAKERIt is a, it's like a Luma base, I think is what it's,

01:25SPEAKERno, I can't find the Ikea name.

01:29SPEAKERBut it was like 10, it's the $10 hack.

01:32SPEAKEROh, Regulate, pendant lampshade.

01:34SPEAKER- You know, are you into Ikea hacks?

01:36SPEAKER- I--

01:37SPEAKER- Is that an episode topic

01:38SPEAKERthat I shouldn't be burning right now?

01:40SPEAKER- Look, in my heart, I like the concept of Ikea hacks.

01:44SPEAKERBut in practice, the Ikea hacks

01:46SPEAKERare always somewhat disappointing.

01:47SPEAKER- Just a little too hacky?

01:48SPEAKER- Yeah, like I want somebody to tell me

01:51SPEAKERhow to turn my daughter's queenside,

01:53SPEAKERlike, where should I, where is it safe for me to cut off?

01:56SPEAKERCan I get like another dresser for my daughter

01:58SPEAKERand make a loft bed by cutting the legs

02:01SPEAKERoff of her queenside bed?

02:02SPEAKERAnd then putting the two dressers up.

02:05SPEAKER- Do you really want to entrust your child's safety

02:07SPEAKERto the internet?

02:08SPEAKER- I mean, I don't let her on YouTube,

02:10SPEAKERso I feel like I'm already one step ahead.

02:12SPEAKER- Enough said.

02:13SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:23SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:49SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Bot.

02:52SPEAKERI'm Will.

02:53SPEAKERI'm trying not to cough.

02:54SPEAKERI started doing the intro and I was like,

02:56SPEAKERshould I stop him?

02:57SPEAKERAnd then just hang on, just talk amongst yourself.

02:59SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, I'll just do it again.

03:00SPEAKERThat's fine, that's fine, that's fine.

03:01SPEAKERThis week we're doing the, it's the pajamas sweat pod.

03:04SPEAKER- I haven't, I don't even want to mention

03:07SPEAKERhow long it's been since I bathed.

03:09SPEAKER- It's not the sweat pants tech bot.

03:11SPEAKERIt's the pajamas tech bot.

03:12SPEAKER- It's been a week.

03:13SPEAKERIt's been a week around here.

03:15SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

03:16SPEAKERHow's your, well, I'm sure I can look on the site

03:19SPEAKERand see what you think about the discourse

03:24SPEAKERand the topics of the day.

03:25SPEAKERBut you know what we're going to talk about today

03:26SPEAKERis a different kind of disaster.

03:28SPEAKER- Oh boy.

03:29SPEAKERThe steps are off to an appropriate start then.

03:33SPEAKERWhat do you got?

03:34SPEAKER- I think, you know, the stories that we tell each other

03:38SPEAKERwhen we're like, you know what, it could be worse.

03:41SPEAKERAnd then it's like the time that I, you know,

03:43SPEAKERalmost died while I was working on computers.

03:45SPEAKER- Do you know, as far as it could be worse type stories go,

03:48SPEAKERthat one's up there.

03:49SPEAKER- I'm going to say, like when you've gotten to the point

03:53SPEAKERof I almost died, there's really only one more example

03:56SPEAKERof could be worse after that.

03:59SPEAKER- I mean, I feel like losing digits

04:02SPEAKERprobably is in between I almost died and I actually died.

04:05SPEAKER- Okay, sure, sure.

04:07SPEAKERI have a family member who lost a pinky to a circular saw.

04:11SPEAKER- Yeah, that happens.

04:13SPEAKER- Somewhat acquainted with, yeah.

04:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I have friends who have like,

04:19SPEAKERit's funny, our friend of mine was like,

04:22SPEAKERI'm going to get really into woodworking

04:24SPEAKERaround the time Vinny got into woodworking, as I recall.

04:28SPEAKERAnd he went to the, to like the woodworking,

04:33SPEAKERthe local woodworker shop to get some wood

04:35SPEAKERand to get some knives and chisels and tools and all that.

04:38SPEAKERAnd he walked in and he was looking around

04:40SPEAKERand there were a bunch of the old timers in there.

04:41SPEAKERHe's like, man, this is awesome.

04:42SPEAKERThere's a bunch of old guys hanging out.

04:44SPEAKERLike there's a guy probably smoking a pipe out back.

04:47SPEAKERAnd then he looked around and he started counting fingers

04:49SPEAKERand he's like, every single one of these guys

04:51SPEAKERis missing at least part of a finger.

04:53SPEAKERHe's like, and that was when he decided

04:55SPEAKERhe was going to do hand tools instead of power tools.

04:57SPEAKER- What's the woodworking equivalent of a screwdriver shop?

05:03SPEAKERIs it the lathe shop?

05:04SPEAKER- No, man, it's the hardwood shop.

05:06SPEAKERYou ever been in a good hardwood vendor?

05:09SPEAKEROh, there's a place in the city down off Bayshore,

05:13SPEAKERlike between Bayshore and the Tenderloin

05:14SPEAKERand Cesar Chavez in that triangle.

05:17SPEAKERAnd it's called McBeath Hardwood.

05:19SPEAKERAnd when you go in there, there's all these kind of,

05:22SPEAKERthey look like crusty.

05:23SPEAKERLike I would associate them as crusty hardware store guys

05:27SPEAKERfrom like back home, but they're super sweet

05:30SPEAKERand really helpful and willing to answer

05:32SPEAKERa bunch of questions no matter how dopey they are.

05:34SPEAKER- Those are experienced craftsmen.

05:37SPEAKER- Yeah, and like that place is amazing

05:40SPEAKER'cause like if you want a piece of cheap wood,

05:43SPEAKERyou go to Lowe's and then you can like,

05:45SPEAKERtake a bendy ass strut two by four

05:48SPEAKERthat you use for building a house

05:50SPEAKERand maybe make it what you want.

05:51SPEAKERBut if you want something that's like made of mahogany

05:53SPEAKERor teak or some sort of endangered hardwood

05:57SPEAKERthat you probably aren't supposed to buy, I don't know.

05:58SPEAKER- Something a little luxurious.

06:00SPEAKER- McBeath is very good, yeah.

06:03SPEAKERAnd you can get a 13 ply sheet of beach plywood

06:06SPEAKERfour feet by eight feet.

06:08SPEAKERThat's like, it's like a hundred bucks.

06:10SPEAKER- Wow.

06:11SPEAKER- And is like perfectly plainer.

06:14SPEAKER- That's what I made my daughter's time.

06:16SPEAKER- I love plainer.

06:17SPEAKERIt can't get any more flat.

06:21SPEAKERAll right, I'll keep that in mind in the far-flung future

06:23SPEAKERwhere I somehow have the woodworking capacity

06:25SPEAKERto build a desk.

06:27SPEAKER- Yeah. - To build the desk.

06:28SPEAKER- I did that once.

06:29SPEAKER- To build the butcher block countertop desk of my dreams.

06:32SPEAKERI'll keep that place in mind.

06:34SPEAKER- You know, the secret of butcher blocks, right?

06:35SPEAKER- What's that?

06:36SPEAKER- You get butcher blocks from old bakeries.

06:38SPEAKER- Oh, you mean like a legit one?

06:40SPEAKER- Yeah, dude.

06:41SPEAKER- Sorry, I'm just a real frog in the throat today.

06:44SPEAKERI'm talking like, it might be like flour down in there

06:47SPEAKERor something, like some remnants of actual cooking

06:49SPEAKERin your desk top.

06:50SPEAKER- You've been making dough?

06:51SPEAKER- I don't know about that.

06:52SPEAKER- You got your sourdough game up?

06:53SPEAKER- Not so much, no.

06:54SPEAKER- Oh. - No.

06:55SPEAKER- Gina made sourdough last week, it was very good.

06:57SPEAKERBut you know, that wasn't a disaster.

06:59SPEAKERAnd you know what is?

07:00SPEAKER- What's that?

07:03SPEAKER- Segue is strong this morning.

07:06SPEAKERWell, so I used to work IT before I started at Maximum PC,

07:09SPEAKERbefore we started ours, I was the IT guy,

07:12SPEAKERone of the three IT people for the Department of Biology

07:16SPEAKERat the University of Tennessee.

07:17SPEAKERSo we served.

07:18SPEAKER- This is in the Wang era?

07:20SPEAKER- This is post Wang, Wang was like '93.

07:23SPEAKERThis would have been in '92, '93.

07:26SPEAKERThis would have been like '98 to 2000.

07:29SPEAKERSo I feel like I quit in maybe like February of 2000.

07:34SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

07:35SPEAKER- And I took that job, like I finished school

07:38SPEAKERand I was talking to my advisor.

07:40SPEAKERI was like, I'm not gonna go to med school

07:41SPEAKERbecause I don't want to be a fucking doctor.

07:42SPEAKERIt seems like a terrible idea.

07:44SPEAKERAnd he was like, well, what are you gonna do?

07:46SPEAKERI was like, I don't have any idea.

07:47SPEAKERHe's like, didn't you pay for, didn't you do like work?

07:50SPEAKERYou know, whenever I was telling you,

07:51SPEAKERhey, you need to get your grades up.

07:52SPEAKERYou were like, oh, well, I'm, you know, assembling networks

07:55SPEAKERand building computers for people all into the night.

07:57SPEAKERSo, you know, definitely not playing Quake.

08:02SPEAKERAnd he was like, aren't you good at computers?

08:03SPEAKERThere's a spot open in the IT shop here

08:06SPEAKERat the Division of Biology.

08:07SPEAKERI was like, oh, well, I didn't pay my bills.

08:09SPEAKERThat sounds good.

08:10SPEAKERI did that.

08:11SPEAKER- For how many years?

08:12SPEAKER- Year, 18 months.

08:14SPEAKER- Oh, that's it, okay.

08:15SPEAKER- Year and a half.

08:17SPEAKERI went from making about $25,000 a year

08:20SPEAKERworking nights and weekends building computers

08:21SPEAKERand running networks for people

08:23SPEAKERto making $25,000 a year working 80 or 90 hours.

08:27SPEAKERLike I took the job 'cause I was like,

08:28SPEAKERmaybe I can get a master's while I'm doing this

08:31SPEAKERand like do the night school master's program

08:34SPEAKERwhile I'm working here during the day.

08:36SPEAKERAnd then there was no way

08:37SPEAKER'cause it was like an 80 hour a week job, terrible.

08:39SPEAKER- That's rough, so it was just the last 18 months

08:40SPEAKERthat you were a professional?

08:42SPEAKER- Yeah, the last, that was 18 months

08:44SPEAKERthat I was a professional.

08:45SPEAKER- All before that was just kind of moonlighting?

08:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that's how I paid for school.

08:49SPEAKERI literally, I put up flyers and put in newspaper ads

08:53SPEAKERwhere like, hey, do you want a network?

08:54SPEAKERAnd everybody wanted a network.

08:56SPEAKERNobody knew what they needed a network for

08:58SPEAKERbut they all wanted networks.

09:00SPEAKER- IPX, it's hot technology.

09:02SPEAKER- Yeah, well, look, you gotta get that,

09:04SPEAKERyou can need a file server to share the files

09:07SPEAKER'cause like copying, like putting stuff on a floppy drive

09:10SPEAKERand carrying it down the hall, that's 90s tech.

09:12SPEAKERYou wanna be ready for the 2000s, man.

09:14SPEAKER- You're probably gonna want a print server.

09:15SPEAKERYou might wanna...

09:16SPEAKER- Yep, shared print.

09:18SPEAKERI did a lot of like Y2K BIOS updates and stuff like that

09:21SPEAKERaround that time too.

09:23SPEAKER- Also, I just wanna state for the record,

09:25SPEAKERdeploying Quake is a professional consideration

09:27SPEAKER'cause how else are you gonna test that network?

09:29SPEAKER- That's true.

09:30SPEAKER- You gotta stress test.

09:32SPEAKER- That's how I learned about,

09:34SPEAKERlike that's why I learned about networks

09:35SPEAKERwas so that we could set up a LAN

09:36SPEAKERand we could play Quake.

09:38SPEAKERIt was, you couldn't use a dial-up.

09:40SPEAKERAnyway, so I got a call one day

09:43SPEAKERwhen I was working the help desk

09:45SPEAKERand we'd get like, we had a ticket system

09:50SPEAKERand I got like four or five tickets within about 10 minutes

09:53SPEAKERthat were the network and Ayers Hall was down.

09:55SPEAKERAyers Hall was the oldest building on campus

09:56SPEAKERat the University of Tennessee.

09:58SPEAKERAnd the network, it was one of the first places

10:01SPEAKERthat got network in the campus,

10:03SPEAKERbut they did it with coax there.

10:06SPEAKERSo it was a 10 base two barrel like cable network.

10:10SPEAKERAnd that stuff, you would run the two ends of a cable

10:14SPEAKERinto a T and then you'd plug the T

10:16SPEAKERinto the back of the network card.

10:17SPEAKER- Is that what the T in 10 base T is?

10:20SPEAKEROr is that, that's probably a very naive question.

10:23SPEAKER- That's a different thing.

10:24SPEAKERI don't know what, I don't know what they're--

10:24SPEAKER- What is the two?

10:25SPEAKERI've never heard of 10 base two before.

10:28SPEAKER- The T might indicate the number of electrical connections.

10:34SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause there's, I don't know, two.

10:36SPEAKERIt's a coax cable, so there's a shield and a center.

10:40SPEAKERIt's like cable cable kind of, but different ends.

10:43SPEAKER- Okay, that has nothing to do with the phrase twisted pair

10:47SPEAKERjust popped into my head for the first time

10:48SPEAKERin probably two decades.

10:50SPEAKER- Oh, so twisted pair is because inside an ethernet cable,

10:55SPEAKEReach pair, there's four pairs of wires, right?

10:57SPEAKERAnd ethernet uses two pairs, so four total wires.

11:01SPEAKERAnd each of the wires is twisted at a different density

11:06SPEAKERof twists per inch so that they don't interfere

11:08SPEAKERwith each other.

11:09SPEAKERSo just because of the way the two pairs,

11:12SPEAKERbecause you're sending one signal and an opposite,

11:15SPEAKERthen the interference on each one cancels out

11:17SPEAKERand twisting them at different percentages or something.

11:19SPEAKERThis is electrical engineering stuff.

11:20SPEAKERI don't know what I'm talking about, but the gist is--

11:22SPEAKER- You made it work.

11:23SPEAKER- They're all twisted at different amounts.

11:25SPEAKERThat's why they're called twisted pairs.

11:26SPEAKERIf you take an ethernet cable and you strip the shielding

11:29SPEAKERoff and you untwist the cables in the middle,

11:31SPEAKERit will stop working right.

11:32SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.

11:34SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, a metal connector on the T,

11:39SPEAKERand you're supposed to only run one of these from the wall

11:41SPEAKERinto each computer, but you could daisy chain

11:43SPEAKERup to like 24 of them on one long chain.

11:46SPEAKERAyers Hall, you know, old building,

11:51SPEAKERlike the wiring was put in after the building was built

11:54SPEAKERand they did like the conduit and then they just bolt

11:57SPEAKERon a breaker, a box, a gang box for the power plugs.

12:02SPEAKER- It's like a jargon in this episode so far.

12:04SPEAKER- Oh yeah. - The gang box?

12:06SPEAKER- Yeah, gang box.

12:07SPEAKERGang box is the thing that like your power outlets

12:10SPEAKERare in in the wall.

12:11SPEAKERSo they usually hammer them into a stud

12:13SPEAKERand then you put a face plate over them.

12:15SPEAKER- Got it.

12:15SPEAKER- But if you don't have, if you can't do that

12:17SPEAKER'cause it's an old building,

12:19SPEAKERthen they would stick a little metal box on the outside

12:21SPEAKERand screw it into the wall.

12:23SPEAKERAnyway, I get up there, I go to the first one.

12:25SPEAKERI'm like, huh, all the people who are complaining

12:27SPEAKERare on the same network chain.

12:28SPEAKERThat's weird.

12:29SPEAKERSo I start at the far end of the network chain

12:31SPEAKERand I start, you know, unplugging.

12:32SPEAKERAnd when you got to the end of one of those chains,

12:34SPEAKERyou had to put a terminator on the other part of the T.

12:37SPEAKERSo it's like a little cap basically with a resistor in it.

12:40SPEAKERAnd I took a terminator and I, first thing you did

12:42SPEAKERwas pop off the terminator and replace it and that was fine.

12:46SPEAKERAnd I keep going further down.

12:47SPEAKERI'm gonna ask everybody,

12:48SPEAKERhey, is your computer working as a network?

12:49SPEAKERFine, blah, blah, blah.

12:51SPEAKERAnd I reach, I find the one that's like,

12:53SPEAKERno, my network's not working.

12:54SPEAKERI reach under there, grab it and I can't let go of the T.

12:57SPEAKERLike once I touch the T, my hand grips on

12:59SPEAKERand I'm like, oh, this is really bad.

13:01SPEAKERI can't, I can't, I can't let go with my hand.

13:04SPEAKERMy muscles only go one way now.

13:06SPEAKERWas there any pain at this point?

13:08SPEAKEROr just-

13:08SPEAKERIt didn't feel good.

13:09SPEAKEROkay.

13:10SPEAKERIt wasn't like getting,

13:11SPEAKERit wasn't like when I stepped on a nail as a kid.

13:13SPEAKERIt was, I don't know if you've ever like brushed up

13:17SPEAKERagainst the metal on when you're plugging in a lamp

13:21SPEAKERor something, just like, just grazed it a little bit.

13:23SPEAKERYou mean the actual plug?

13:25SPEAKERLike, you mean the actual plug?

13:27SPEAKERYeah.

13:28SPEAKERAs it's contacting the outlet?

13:29SPEAKERI don't think so.

13:30SPEAKERHave you ever zapped yourself just a little bit?

13:31SPEAKERI don't think so, I don't think so.

13:32SPEAKERYeah, so it feels like, okay,

13:35SPEAKERso it's less bad than getting tased.

13:39SPEAKERI have been tased before.

13:41SPEAKERAlthough it's like a consumer level taser, let's say.

13:45SPEAKERGetting tased, don't do that.

13:46SPEAKERThat's a stupid idea.

13:47SPEAKERIf you can avoid getting tased, don't-

13:49SPEAKERThis was perhaps the biggest asshole

13:51SPEAKERin my entire high school.

13:53SPEAKERGot his hands on something and went wild in the lunchroom.

13:57SPEAKERWhat the hell?

13:58SPEAKERYou got tased at school?

13:59SPEAKERAgain, again, it was like a little zap.

14:01SPEAKERI don't know what, this was not,

14:03SPEAKERthis was not like law enforcement grade.

14:04SPEAKEROkay, okay.

14:07SPEAKERSo anyway, I grabbed it, I couldn't let go.

14:10SPEAKERI'm freaking out at this point.

14:12SPEAKERI unplug, I just yanked the power brick out,

14:15SPEAKERthe power strip out from the wall and it doesn't stop.

14:19SPEAKEROh man.

14:20SPEAKERSo I'm like, oh, this is really bad.

14:23SPEAKERAnd like, I don't know how long,

14:25SPEAKERthis is probably 20 seconds at this point.

14:28SPEAKERSo I rank wrench my whole hand around

14:33SPEAKERjust as like rotate my wrist as hard as I can.

14:36SPEAKER'Cause it's like a locking twister on the connector

14:39SPEAKERwhere it goes on the PC.

14:40SPEAKERAnd I managed to get my whole arm around enough

14:42SPEAKERthat the connector comes off.

14:44SPEAKERAnd as soon as I get the connector off,

14:48SPEAKERI'm able to release my hand.

14:49SPEAKERWow.

14:52SPEAKERI was like, what caused this?

14:55SPEAKERSo I literally went office to office and I was like,

14:58SPEAKERI realized what it was 'cause somebody floated a ground

15:00SPEAKERacross the whole line because there's no,

15:03SPEAKERthe outlets in that building are ungrounded.

15:05SPEAKERSo you have to use a grounding adapter

15:07SPEAKERon every piece of electronics that you plug in

15:09SPEAKERin the building.

15:10SPEAKERYou know, one of those two prong things

15:11SPEAKERthat has a little wire that goes into the gang box.

15:14SPEAKERAnd I went room to room,

15:17SPEAKERjust yanking people's power strips out.

15:19SPEAKERI was so pissed.

15:21SPEAKERI'm excited for when you found the culprit.

15:24SPEAKERAnd I found there was this lady,

15:26SPEAKERher name was Agnes something.

15:28SPEAKERAnd she'd been a secretary at the,

15:30SPEAKERa secretary, not a personal assistant or whatever,

15:32SPEAKERbut a secretary at the college

15:34SPEAKERfor probably 50 years at this point.

15:36SPEAKERShe was maybe 70 years old. Wow.

15:38SPEAKERAnd she had taken a power strip

15:42SPEAKERand she didn't have one of the little things

15:43SPEAKERthat makes it a ground, that grounded it.

15:46SPEAKERAnd she just broke off the third prong.

15:49SPEAKERI knew that was coming.

15:51SPEAKERAnd I hate when people do that.

15:52SPEAKERI don't even have the ground.

15:54SPEAKERI don't even have the electrical knowledge

15:56SPEAKERto know why I hate when people do that,

15:57SPEAKERbut I know it's bad and it's shouldn't do it.

16:00SPEAKERYeah, so two things on that.

16:02SPEAKEROne is that probably she was responsible

16:04SPEAKERfor every weird, all the weird computer shit

16:07SPEAKERthat happened on that network chain for years.

16:10SPEAKERAnd two, don't break the prongs off of your grounding.

16:13SPEAKERDon't break the grounding prong.

16:15SPEAKERDid you have a stern conversation?

16:18SPEAKERI was so, luckily-

16:19SPEAKERDid anybody know about this?

16:22SPEAKERSo my boss, whose name was Rod Button at the school,

16:26SPEAKERthe delightful man, I learned a ton from him.

16:34SPEAKERSo I called him when I got off the computer.

16:36SPEAKERI was like, "Hey," I told him what happened.

16:37SPEAKERHe was like, "Oh, I'll be right there.

16:39SPEAKERDon't do anything."

16:40SPEAKER'Cause he could tell I was pissed.

16:42SPEAKERAnd I don't get pissed very often.

16:44SPEAKERIt's an unusual, I can think of like maybe four times

16:47SPEAKERin the last 25 years.

16:49SPEAKERSo I went, I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna go find out

16:51SPEAKERwhere the float is."

16:53SPEAKERAnd that's why I started yanking people's things off

16:55SPEAKERwithout turning off their computers first.

16:56SPEAKERAnd he got up there.

16:59SPEAKERHe must've run.

17:00SPEAKERHe got up there right about the time

17:02SPEAKERI started yelling at her.

17:03SPEAKEROh, wow.

17:04SPEAKERHe was like, "You need to go home now, Will.

17:05SPEAKERThank you.

17:05SPEAKERYou did a good job here."

17:08SPEAKERAnd he sent me home.

17:09SPEAKERSo I went and grabbed a double quarter pounder

17:13SPEAKERor something at McDonald's and ate that in the car

17:16SPEAKERand went home and took a nap 'cause I was real tired.

17:18SPEAKERJeez. I wasn't sure why.

17:19SPEAKERDo you have, I'm trying to think like

17:22SPEAKERwhat the best question to ask here is.

17:23SPEAKERLike, do you have any sense of how close

17:25SPEAKERto actual disaster that was?

17:26SPEAKERLike if you had held on longer or if like X, Y, or Z

17:30SPEAKERhad happened, if it would have been extra, extra bad?

17:33SPEAKERI don't, look, I don't think if I had some sort

17:36SPEAKERof undiagnosed heart condition or something

17:38SPEAKERand it could have been bad, I don't think,

17:43SPEAKERlike, so like, I don't know if you've ever had,

17:45SPEAKERlike when my mom hurt her leg years ago,

17:48SPEAKERshe had one of those TENS units that you put

17:50SPEAKERon to maintain muscle tone and we would,

17:53SPEAKERwe would fuck around with that when she wasn't using it

17:55SPEAKERfor medical purposes and like put it on our legs and stuff

17:58SPEAKERand watch your leg kick out like a, like a, you know,

18:00SPEAKERlike crazy.

18:01SPEAKEROf course, as you do.

18:03SPEAKERYeah, as one does.

18:03SPEAKERIt wasn't, it was like worse than that,

18:06SPEAKERbut not that much worse than that.

18:07SPEAKERSo it's like, I don't think I was like

18:09SPEAKERin Wes Craven's shocker territory

18:11SPEAKERwhere I was gonna start smoking and my eyeballs

18:13SPEAKERwere gonna melt out or anything.

18:14SPEAKERSure.

18:16SPEAKERBut, but it was not, I was, look, at the moment,

18:19SPEAKERand probably I was connected for 35, 40 seconds

18:22SPEAKERat the outside, right?

18:23SPEAKERLike before I managed to yank, like, like worst case,

18:26SPEAKERI could have probably pulled the cables

18:28SPEAKERfrom their connectors if I'd had to,

18:30SPEAKERif I'd had to like really deal with the problem.

18:34SPEAKERBut yeah, it was, it was, it was a bad day.

18:36SPEAKERDid you ever get an apology?

18:38SPEAKERNo, she didn't think she did anything wrong.

18:41SPEAKERShe, they expected me to apologize.

18:42SPEAKERSo I was like, well, fuck that, that's not happening.

18:44SPEAKERYeah, so I was, I was, look,

18:48SPEAKERwhen you're in a university environment

18:49SPEAKERand you yell at the nice old lady that people tolerate

18:53SPEAKERbecause she's been there for a really long time,

18:55SPEAKERnot that they particularly like.

18:56SPEAKERYeah.

18:57SPEAKERYou know, you get, there's gonna be consequences.

18:59SPEAKERI get it, there's a certain amount of inertia

19:01SPEAKERthat kicks in in places like that.

19:04SPEAKERI don't know where to go from that.

19:05SPEAKERNone of my stories are even remotely close

19:07SPEAKERto that level of severity.

19:10SPEAKERWell, you've had some adventures,

19:11SPEAKERlike you did the hotswap bias thing that we talked about.

19:13SPEAKERYeah, we talked about that one.

19:14SPEAKERI mean, I think that's the risky part of that

19:16SPEAKERis that I put my roommate's computer in danger

19:18SPEAKERwhile he was out of town,

19:20SPEAKER'cause he happened to have

19:21SPEAKERthe exact same motherboard model I did.

19:23SPEAKERLook, that's what roommates are for.

19:24SPEAKERSo just, I mean, I know I've told the story,

19:26SPEAKERbut if anybody doesn't remember,

19:27SPEAKERI corrupted my BIOS somehow, I forget how.

19:30SPEAKERI was trying to flash some kind of custom BIOS or something.

19:34SPEAKERAnd the solution, have you ever done it?

19:37SPEAKERI've never pulled a BIOS ROM, I don't think.

19:39SPEAKERI had read about it being possible.

19:42SPEAKERAnd I was like, well, my motherboard will not boot,

19:45SPEAKERso there's, let's, this is the moment.

19:49SPEAKERThe idea is just you booted a known good BIOS,

19:52SPEAKERyou boot a computer, a full computer with a known good BIOS,

19:55SPEAKERpull the BIOS ROM out after the computer's running,

19:58SPEAKERput the bad one in and run the flash again,

20:00SPEAKERand it totally worked.

20:01SPEAKERBoth computers were fine forever after.

20:04SPEAKERThat's amazing.

20:05SPEAKERYeah, gosh.

20:11SPEAKERMy current computer that I'm recording this on right now,

20:13SPEAKERwhich is a 7700K, it started as a 6700K.

20:18SPEAKERI took that chip out and put it in my NAS

20:19SPEAKERa couple of years ago.

20:20SPEAKERBut when I first built it like five years ago,

20:24SPEAKERI don't know what I was thinking.

20:24SPEAKERThere was something like dusty

20:26SPEAKERor there was some fuzz or something on there.

20:28SPEAKERAnd I just pulled my T-shirt out

20:30SPEAKERto like kind of wipe some of the dust off.

20:32SPEAKEROn the CPU?

20:34SPEAKERThis was around the CPU socket

20:35SPEAKERafter I had pulled the little guard off.

20:38SPEAKER- Okay.

20:38SPEAKER- Like a complete idiot, just completely thoughtless.

20:41SPEAKER- Oh, you've got the pins?

20:42SPEAKER- So the pins were exposed.

20:43SPEAKERYou know how the pins are diagonal now?

20:45SPEAKERWhat is that?

20:46SPEAKERA socket 1151?

20:48SPEAKERWhatever the Skylake socket is.

20:50SPEAKERLike the one they've been using for the last like-

20:51SPEAKER- 1151 or 1153, I always get those mixed up.

20:53SPEAKER- Right, but you know how, you know, so God,

20:55SPEAKERlike I would almost do a whole episode

20:57SPEAKERon like CPU sockets over the years.

21:00SPEAKER- Oh yeah, socket seven, that was a good one.

21:02SPEAKER- I kind of hate the one that they're on now.

21:03SPEAKER- I liked when the pins were on the chip

21:05SPEAKERand the socket was an actual socket

21:08SPEAKERwith holes in it, personally.

21:10SPEAKER- Having done both sides of this for a long time

21:14SPEAKERand having built a lot of PCs at maximum PC,

21:16SPEAKERI would much rather destroy a motherboard than a CPU.

21:19SPEAKER- Fair, at least it's cheaper if nothing else.

21:21SPEAKER- It's way cheaper to fix.

21:23SPEAKER- Although the way motherboard pricing is going lately,

21:25SPEAKERI don't know how long that'll be true.

21:27SPEAKER- Oh yeah, and with the number of pins

21:29SPEAKERthey'd have to pack on now, it's like, it's a lot.

21:32SPEAKER- You make a good point, okay, you've won me over.

21:35SPEAKER- Logic wins.

21:35SPEAKER- But you know how it is now, like those sockets at least,

21:38SPEAKERI don't know what AMD is doing these days,

21:39SPEAKERI guess maybe I'll find out in the next year or two,

21:41SPEAKERbut on those Intel sockets, the pins are like diagonal.

21:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

21:46SPEAKER- They're kind of bent or they're, you know,

21:47SPEAKERthere's some tension on them and the contacts obviously

21:49SPEAKERare on the underside of the CPU package.

21:50SPEAKERAnyway, whatever, I use my t-shirt

21:52SPEAKERto try to wipe part of the board off

21:53SPEAKERand the fabric snagged right on those pins

21:55SPEAKERand bent several dozen of them

21:58SPEAKERin a bunch of crazy directions.

22:00SPEAKER- Did you have to do the mechanical pencil trick?

22:02SPEAKER- It was a brand new motherboard, I used a pocket knife.

22:05SPEAKER- Oh really?

22:06SPEAKER- This was a brand new motherboard,

22:07SPEAKERlike, you know, I was in the middle of this fresh new build

22:10SPEAKERfor the first time in like five years,

22:11SPEAKERI was all excited and I was like, oh my God, oh my God,

22:15SPEAKERspent most of the afternoon, like three hours

22:21SPEAKERwith this, like just as close as I could get my face

22:23SPEAKERto the board with this pocket knife,

22:25SPEAKERtrying to manually bend each pin back

22:27SPEAKERinto basically the same angle as the regular ones and said,

22:33SPEAKERwhat else is there to do except finish this build and pray

22:37SPEAKERand got it put together and it booted.

22:39SPEAKERLike it's, I've been running this machine for five years

22:41SPEAKERand it's never been a problem.

22:42SPEAKER- We did, we had one of the first Athlons, I think,

22:47SPEAKERI think it was one of the first Athlons,

22:48SPEAKERwe got it at Max PC for a photo shoot

22:50SPEAKERand they had a new photo intern and she didn't know,

22:55SPEAKERmaybe he, I can't remember, anyway, it doesn't matter,

22:57SPEAKERthey didn't know how, like when you're setting up stuff

23:01SPEAKERfor photos, like what was okay and what was not okay

23:03SPEAKERfor different kinds of hardware.

23:06SPEAKERAnd they put the pins for this prototype Athlon

23:09SPEAKERthat we were putting on the cover of the magazine

23:11SPEAKERin like that sticky contact, like that, you know,

23:16SPEAKERthe like earthquake putty.

23:18SPEAKER- Oh my.

23:19SPEAKER- And so it would prop up right for the photo.

23:22SPEAKER- Oh sure.

23:24SPEAKER- We had to, I had to get like basically tweezers

23:29SPEAKERto pull the goo off of the pins.

23:33SPEAKER- Is this, I'm guessing, a part that had to go back

23:35SPEAKERto AMD at some point?

23:37SPEAKER- Probably, but we needed it for benchmarks before that.

23:40SPEAKERSo like, and like, you don't want to call them,

23:44SPEAKERusually often they would send photo dummies,

23:47SPEAKERlike that had the logo on the top

23:48SPEAKERinstead of all the confidential stuff.

23:50SPEAKERWe always like to do the real chips

23:51SPEAKER'cause I think that's, they're much cooler.

23:55SPEAKERBut yeah, it was, that was a, that was a bad time.

23:58SPEAKERYou know, the mechanical pencil trick could probably,

23:59SPEAKERI don't think it works on the BGA sockets.

24:01SPEAKER- Totally makes sense.

24:02SPEAKERLike you just, I assume you would take the graphite out

24:04SPEAKERand just use the tubing to kind of grip the pins.

24:07SPEAKER- And straighten it up, yeah.

24:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I just didn't have one of those handy.

24:10SPEAKER- They're probably, it's probably too small

24:11SPEAKERfor the diagonal ones.

24:12SPEAKERDiagonal ones are probably too small.

24:13SPEAKER- They're also, I don't think they're round.

24:15SPEAKERI think they're kind of a flat shape, aren't they?

24:17SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, it's probably still,

24:19SPEAKERit's a diameter smaller. - It might still fit, yeah.

24:21SPEAKERThat was a good time.

24:24SPEAKER- You've got way more than I do though.

24:26SPEAKER- I accidentally wiped.

24:28SPEAKERSo one of the recurring themes in my life

24:31SPEAKERis that there's a period of time after which I'm too tired

24:35SPEAKERto do good work and be safe and I should stop working then.

24:39SPEAKERAnd I finally started to realize that point now.

24:43SPEAKERI did not know that when I was in my 20s.

24:45SPEAKERAnd I, we had to update, we had a security update

24:49SPEAKERfor the Windows NT 3.51 servers that ran our mail server.

24:54SPEAKERThis was at UT again.

24:55SPEAKEROur mail server, our like groupware server,

24:58SPEAKERwhich was a Lotus Domino server,

24:59SPEAKERwhich is a whole other topic.

25:01SPEAKERAnd one other thing, I can't remember what the other one was.

25:04SPEAKERThey were all running NT 3.51.

25:05SPEAKERWe had to install the security update

25:06SPEAKERfrom the university IT department wanted us

25:09SPEAKERto install the security update.

25:12SPEAKERAnd I was like, okay, I'll do it.

25:17SPEAKERI scheduled downtime starting at six o'clock

25:19SPEAKERon like a Tuesday afternoon.

25:21SPEAKERAnd I was like, okay, I'll install this.

25:23SPEAKERIt'll take like a half hour and then we'll reinstall.

25:27SPEAKERWhat I didn't know, 'cause I didn't set up these servers

25:29SPEAKERand my boss had moved on to other things.

25:31SPEAKERSo I couldn't ask him and I wasn't really paying

25:33SPEAKERthat much attention is that in the servers,

25:37SPEAKERthe data drive was the C drive and the boot drive

25:39SPEAKERwas the D drive for no apparent reason other than,

25:43SPEAKERmy guess is it happened during a migration.

25:45SPEAKER- I didn't know that was even possible back then.

25:47SPEAKERI didn't know that was possible now for that matter.

25:50SPEAKER- Yeah, you can label the drive,

25:52SPEAKERyou can make the drive whichever one you want.

25:54SPEAKER- I could have sworn that they always locked the boot

25:56SPEAKERto see even.

25:58SPEAKER- Well, anyway, I mean, it's also possible

26:00SPEAKERto use some janky third-party utility that made it happen.

26:03SPEAKER- Yes, very common back then.

26:05SPEAKER- I was like, okay, here's the install process

26:07SPEAKERfor this thing.

26:08SPEAKERYou wipe the drive, you reinstall, you do this, yada yada.

26:14SPEAKERYou know what, that's not actually how it worked.

26:16SPEAKERWhat happened was the patch went bad

26:18SPEAKERand I had to restore the drive from backup

26:22SPEAKERand I restored the wrong drive.

26:25SPEAKERI restored the system image to the wrong drive

26:28SPEAKERto C instead of D and C was the data drive.

26:33SPEAKERSo then I had two system drives.

26:35SPEAKER- And no data.

26:36SPEAKER- And I did this on all three servers

26:38SPEAKERand the backup solution we had was this big tape backup

26:42SPEAKERthat had like a robot arm that would pull the tapes

26:44SPEAKERout of the thing, it was really cool.

26:46SPEAKERBut it was so slow and it had to run over the network,

26:49SPEAKERwhich was a 10 megabit network.

26:51SPEAKERSo even though the hard drives were relatively small,

26:54SPEAKERit took like eight hours per to do the restore.

26:58SPEAKER- Was that something you needed to babysit

26:59SPEAKERor could you just start it and go home?

27:01SPEAKER- Well, I wasn't gonna go home and then come back

27:03SPEAKERat three o'clock in the morning to finish

27:05SPEAKERso that the mail server would be back up

27:06SPEAKERwhen people got to work at six o'clock the next morning.

27:09SPEAKERSo I finished it about 5.55 AM.

27:11SPEAKER- Wow.

27:13SPEAKER- And like just left a note on the other people's desk.

27:16SPEAKERIt was like, I'm home, page me if you need me.

27:18SPEAKERAnd yeah, that was.

27:21SPEAKER- I'm not sure that one's on you.

27:24SPEAKERI'm not sure that like whoever decided to put in

27:27SPEAKERcrucial data on a C drive might be the responsible party.

27:32SPEAKER- Well, so I should have noticed after that,

27:35SPEAKERone of the things that we did was when we had to do

27:36SPEAKERlike after hours maintenance was we made sure

27:39SPEAKERthat the person who was doing that,

27:40SPEAKERthat was the start of their day, not the end of their day.

27:43SPEAKERBecause like the problem is, you know, you're doing

27:47SPEAKERthat kind of work all day and you just get,

27:48SPEAKERyou get dull at the end of the day

27:50SPEAKERand you don't notice obvious stuff, so.

27:52SPEAKER- Sure.

27:53SPEAKER- Anyway, you want another one?

27:57SPEAKERYou want to, you want to hear that you're.

28:00SPEAKER- Looking at this list.

28:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean.

28:04SPEAKER- The next three weeks of the show could be this.

28:08SPEAKER- This is the benefit of working.

28:11SPEAKERI think at one point we figured that we built

28:13SPEAKERbetween us four computers a month probably at max PC.

28:17SPEAKER- Wow, was that specifically for review purposes?

28:20SPEAKERLike you were getting stuff in and you needed to

28:22SPEAKERput it through its paces or was that just for office needs?

28:25SPEAKER- Mostly for review, like it was mostly you would do

28:29SPEAKERlike if you needed to do a bunch of benchmarks,

28:31SPEAKERsometimes it was easier to just build two identical machines

28:34SPEAKERthan it was to run all the machine and run two sets

28:38SPEAKERof benchmarks at the same time on two different cards.

28:40SPEAKERStuff like that.

28:42SPEAKER- Were you guys, this is a total aside,

28:44SPEAKERbut were you guys paying for much of that hardware

28:46SPEAKERout of your budget or did you have enough of a relationship

28:47SPEAKERwith hardware makers at that point that you could just be

28:50SPEAKERlike, hey, send us three more Pentiums.

28:52SPEAKER- So Intel and AMD and Nvidia and ATI and then AMD

28:56SPEAKERwere pretty good about sending as much hardware

28:59SPEAKERas we needed for stuff.

29:02SPEAKERThe, I mean, it was always on loan,

29:04SPEAKERso we would use it and then stuff would go back.

29:08SPEAKERVideo cards after the initial launch window,

29:10SPEAKERwhen they stopped having reference board designs,

29:12SPEAKERwe had to get from vendors usually,

29:13SPEAKERwhich meant that you were in a tricky spot

29:15SPEAKER'cause like sometimes the P and Y one would be

29:19SPEAKERlike 10 megahertz faster than the EVGA one or whatever,

29:21SPEAKERso you always had to adjust clocks accordingly.

29:24SPEAKERBut yeah, for the most part, we had to buy,

29:27SPEAKERthe stuff we had to buy, I mean,

29:31SPEAKERwe had a big hardware budget while we were there,

29:33SPEAKERbut it wasn't like $20,000 a month,

29:36SPEAKERit was like $5,000 a month probably.

29:41SPEAKERAnd that a lot of our contribs came out,

29:43SPEAKERwe would steal from contribs

29:44SPEAKERwhen we didn't have to buy hardware, so.

29:46SPEAKERI mean, steal that for contribs

29:48SPEAKERwhen we didn't have to buy hardware.

29:49SPEAKER- Sure.

29:51SPEAKER- We did this, we wanted to visualize airflow

29:55SPEAKERthrough a case one time and Gordon Ng,

29:58SPEAKERwho's a dear friend and was one of our editors there,

30:01SPEAKERwas like, hey, I have a smoke machine that I have for parties.

30:05SPEAKER- Oh boy.

30:05SPEAKER- We were in the lab, which was a closed room in the office

30:07SPEAKERand Gordon was like, I'll bring it in.

30:11SPEAKERWe built like a cardboard duct

30:13SPEAKERto hook the smoke machine into the PC

30:16SPEAKERand we were testing it for a photo shoot

30:18SPEAKERand we're like, shit, this works, this is awesome.

30:20SPEAKERYou can see the air going in the front,

30:21SPEAKERit was blowing around, it was like swirling,

30:23SPEAKERthere were eddies around the video card and the other cards

30:26SPEAKERand then blows out the back.

30:28SPEAKERThis is super cool, this is gonna totally work.

30:30SPEAKERAnd about that time I was like,

30:31SPEAKERhey, there's a smoke detector in here.

30:32SPEAKERYou think the fog machine triggers a smoke detector?

30:35SPEAKERAnd right at that moment,

30:37SPEAKERevery smoke alarm in the building went off

30:39SPEAKERbecause they were all connected to each other

30:41SPEAKERand we had to evacuate the 400 people

30:43SPEAKERthat worked in the office building

30:45SPEAKERwhile the fire department came.

30:48SPEAKERThe good news is this was much less bad

30:52SPEAKERthan the time right before I started working there

30:54SPEAKERwhere they tried to test a fire safe

30:57SPEAKERby soaking a bunch of those duralyte fire logs in kerosene

31:03SPEAKERand then stacking them up on the asphalt

31:06SPEAKERaround the edges of the fire safe.

31:08SPEAKER- Oh boy.

31:08SPEAKER- And lighting them on fire.

31:10SPEAKERI believe that they caught the asphalt on fire

31:13SPEAKERbut it might've just melted when they did that.

31:15SPEAKER- Wow.

31:16SPEAKER- Yeah, and the fire department had to come

31:18SPEAKERwith fire trucks and water for that one.

31:20SPEAKERFor mine, they just had to show up and be like,

31:23SPEAKERno, we'll turn off the smoke alarms.

31:24SPEAKER- Wow, that fire safe one, holy crap.

31:26SPEAKERSo maybe contact the fire department

31:28SPEAKERbefore you embark on such an undertaking.

31:31SPEAKER- Look, in print publishing, you don't think about before,

31:35SPEAKERis you think like the consequences

31:37SPEAKERare all easily covered up.

31:38SPEAKER- So you always ask forgiveness, not permission.

31:42SPEAKERThat's the way to go.

31:45SPEAKERI almost feel like I should pick one of these

31:47SPEAKERand just ask about it.

31:49SPEAKER- For go for it.

31:49SPEAKER- Oh my God, there's so many here.

31:53SPEAKER- 20 years, Brad.

31:56SPEAKER- I've always wondered about this myself

31:57SPEAKER'cause it seems like an ever present danger.

31:59SPEAKERIt looks like at some point you swapped

32:00SPEAKERthe CPU and PCI express cables out of the PSU inadvertently.

32:08SPEAKER- I'm not sure that this one was me.

32:09SPEAKERI think this one might've been somebody else in our lab.

32:12SPEAKERI remember the fallout from it.

32:14SPEAKERSo when modular PCs were new

32:17SPEAKERand eight pin power connectors were new at the same time,

32:22SPEAKERthey, the PCI express, the power,

32:25SPEAKERthe eight pin power connector for the PCI express

32:27SPEAKERand the eight pin is the same as two of the four pin CPU,

32:33SPEAKERsecondary power connectors.

32:34SPEAKERThe one that usually is upright by the CPU socket.

32:36SPEAKER- Right.

32:38SPEAKERLike pin compatible, like same shape,

32:40SPEAKERsame sort of connector design.

32:42SPEAKER- Same keying on the connector, yeah.

32:43SPEAKER- Seems like an oversight.

32:45SPEAKER- I, look, I think by the time anybody realized

32:48SPEAKERit was going to be a problem, it was probably too late.

32:50SPEAKERSo they're wired differently,

32:52SPEAKERbut they're mechanically compatible.

32:54SPEAKER- Right, right.

32:55SPEAKER- And the upshot is you can plug it one way

32:59SPEAKERand nothing happens.

33:00SPEAKERYou plug it the other way and smoke comes out.

33:01SPEAKERSo yeah, we made smoke come out.

33:07SPEAKERIt was bad.

33:08SPEAKERIt was a prototype video card, I'm sure.

33:09SPEAKERIt was probably a prototype power supply.

33:11SPEAKER- Boy.

33:13SPEAKER- And, and now every, so every time you see one of those,

33:17SPEAKERI don't think we were the only ones who did this,

33:19SPEAKERbut they didn't, the, when,

33:23SPEAKERit was probably a early review unit or something,

33:25SPEAKERbut it didn't have labels.

33:28SPEAKERSo you had to know that the one that was two,

33:31SPEAKERfour pin connectors split was not for video cards.

33:37SPEAKERAnd yeah, we made a mistake.

33:39SPEAKER- That's okay.

33:40SPEAKERThat's maybe forgivable or understandable.

33:42SPEAKER- I mean, look, a lot of these are,

33:44SPEAKERbecause we were dealing with like, like there's one,

33:47SPEAKERI didn't put this on here,

33:48SPEAKERbut we killed a prototype video card once

33:50SPEAKERthat had like debug jumpers on it still,

33:52SPEAKERwhich are like little wires that jump connectors

33:55SPEAKERon the board, where they're figuring out different routes

33:58SPEAKERand stuff through the board and they're testing the board

34:01SPEAKERand plugging it in, I yanked one of those loose

34:03SPEAKERand didn't realize it.

34:04SPEAKER- Oh no.

34:05SPEAKER- Yeah, that was an easy, re-soldering it, fixed it.

34:08SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

34:09SPEAKER- Yeah.

34:10SPEAKER- I thought you meant you burned the car down.

34:11SPEAKER- No.

34:12SPEAKER- Did you know that speaking of,

34:15SPEAKERspeaking of like connector compatible,

34:16SPEAKERbut not wiring compatible,

34:18SPEAKERthat's like you've got modular power supplies,

34:22SPEAKERthe different brands of the modular cables

34:26SPEAKERacross different vendors aren't even compatible.

34:28SPEAKER- There's no spec.

34:29SPEAKER- Right.

34:30SPEAKER- This is what the IEEE does, man.

34:31SPEAKER- Because like I ran out of, God, I forget exactly.

34:33SPEAKERLike I think I have a Seasonic now

34:36SPEAKERand my previous one was a Corsair

34:37SPEAKERand I ran out of the cables for the Seasonic

34:39SPEAKERand I still have all those old, 'cause the Corsair died,

34:41SPEAKERso I have all the cables from it.

34:42SPEAKER- Yeah, just throw them in the trash, they're valueless.

34:44SPEAKER- Totally, I was like, oh, I've got a bunch of old cables

34:47SPEAKERfrom that old power supply that died,

34:48SPEAKERI'll just grab one of those and thank God I went

34:51SPEAKERand just like something popped into my head.

34:53SPEAKERI was like, I should maybe go make sure

34:55SPEAKERthat these cables all are interoperable

34:56SPEAKERbefore I plug anything in.

34:58SPEAKERAnd it was horror story after horror story

35:01SPEAKERof people saying like, do not mix and match cables

35:03SPEAKERfrom different power supply companies,

35:04SPEAKERyou will fry everything.

35:05SPEAKER- Dude, you can't even use them

35:06SPEAKERbetween the same company on different lines.

35:09SPEAKER- Right, and they're not labeled.

35:11SPEAKER- Well, Corsair labels them all now,

35:13SPEAKERit even like my Corsair cables even say like AX 750 only.

35:16SPEAKER- That's great, this is from like five to eight years ago,

35:19SPEAKERbut computers, somebody should be watching over the stuff.

35:24SPEAKER- It's funny, when you talk about how the industry

35:28SPEAKERkind of sucks because adoption of new things

35:30SPEAKERtakes a long time and then you look at like that,

35:33SPEAKERlike that's a place that there could totally be

35:35SPEAKERa standard that says, hey, here's the standard connector

35:37SPEAKERfor Molex, here's the standard connector

35:40SPEAKERfor this amount of current blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

35:42SPEAKERbut they couldn't wait to make a standard

35:44SPEAKERso everybody has their own something.

35:46SPEAKER- What you're saying is those consortiums

35:47SPEAKERare good for something after all.

35:49SPEAKER- Yeah, let's see, what are the sexy ones here?

35:57SPEAKERThe Death Star, the Death Star raid hot swap was a good one.

36:01SPEAKER- What kind of raid are we talking?

36:03SPEAKER- It was a raid zero stripe.

36:05SPEAKER- Is the Death Star the infamous model?

36:07SPEAKER- S75 GXP.

36:09SPEAKER- Is that the most infamous?

36:10SPEAKERLike, I feel like there's a kind of a long history

36:13SPEAKERof infamous hard drive models,

36:14SPEAKERbut I'm not sure if that's the worst one.

36:16SPEAKER- I think it probably had a big class action.

36:20SPEAKERI don't know if it was big.

36:21SPEAKERIt's probably not big by today's standards

36:23SPEAKER'cause there's more hard drives in the world now,

36:25SPEAKERbut yeah, I think the problem it had,

36:31SPEAKERit also was really prevalent

36:32SPEAKER'cause it was the fastest drive you could buy

36:34SPEAKERfor a long time.

36:34SPEAKER- Okay.

36:35SPEAKER- 'Cause it was the first one that uses those glass platters

36:37SPEAKERand it was a ridiculously fast hard drive

36:41SPEAKERfor spinning platters.

36:42SPEAKER- Oh, the Death Star was the actual name of that thing.

36:45SPEAKER- Yes, the Hitachi 75 GXP Desk Star.

36:50SPEAKER- Right.

36:51SPEAKEROh, IBM was involved with that too, right?

36:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I think IBM designed the drive

36:55SPEAKERand then they sold their hard drive division to Hitachi

36:58SPEAKERduring this process 'cause it was, you know,

37:01SPEAKERIBM was getting out of that kind of business.

37:06SPEAKERYou'd hear a clunking sound

37:08SPEAKERand then the drive would never boot back up again.

37:10SPEAKER- Right.

37:11SPEAKER- And I heard the clunking sound one day

37:13SPEAKERand I was like, I have a hot swappable RAID card in here.

37:15SPEAKERI can just plug another drive in.

37:16SPEAKERSo I just left the computer on

37:19SPEAKERand I had drives around 'cause maximum PC

37:22SPEAKERand just popped in a new drive

37:25SPEAKERand copied everything off of the RAID onto the drive

37:28SPEAKERand got almost all the files before it shit the bed.

37:31SPEAKER- Almost?

37:32SPEAKER- Almost.

37:33SPEAKER- Not quite.

37:34SPEAKER- Like there were a few corrupted files and stuff like that,

37:35SPEAKERbut it wasn't a big deal.

37:37SPEAKERThose drives failed, the heads would crash

37:40SPEAKERand then dust would get around

37:42SPEAKERinside the internal parts of the drive

37:43SPEAKERand that would make the heads crash more.

37:45SPEAKERAnd eventually if they ran long enough,

37:47SPEAKERit would like delaminate the magnetic medium

37:54SPEAKERthat held your data

37:56SPEAKERso that it was just spinning disk platters inside the drive.

37:59SPEAKER- Huh, wow.

38:01SPEAKER- Yeah, if you took the drive apart,

38:03SPEAKERyou'd just see a clear piece of glass.

38:05SPEAKER- Wow.

38:05SPEAKER- It was pretty cool.

38:06SPEAKER- Wow.

38:07SPEAKERI went through all those hard drives.

38:08SPEAKERI think I mentioned that on here, right?

38:09SPEAKERThat I fished that giant stack of old hard drives

38:12SPEAKERout of the closet.

38:12SPEAKER- Oh, really?

38:13SPEAKER- And an old motherboard with an IDE port on it

38:15SPEAKERand my old, my 1996 SCSI controller.

38:18SPEAKER- Have you been going through them?

38:19SPEAKER- I did it, I finished, I'm done.

38:21SPEAKER- Is there anything good?

38:21SPEAKER- No, there was nothing.

38:23SPEAKERIt was nothing but old empty windows and stalls

38:25SPEAKERwith like nothing in the user accounts.

38:27SPEAKER(laughing)

38:28SPEAKERApparently I got everything off of those drives

38:31SPEAKERand then didn't dispose of those drives.

38:33SPEAKER- Wow.

38:34SPEAKER- But I bring it up because the,

38:35SPEAKERso there was only one SCSI drive in that stack

38:37SPEAKERand it was about 20 years old.

38:39SPEAKERAnd I had forgotten about this.

38:41SPEAKER- Was it like a 30 gig or something?

38:42SPEAKER- It was an 18 gig.

38:43SPEAKER- Wow.

38:44SPEAKER- It was an 18 gig Seagate Cheetah.

38:46SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a 10,000 RPM drive.

38:48SPEAKERThat's a good ass drive.

38:49SPEAKER- I used, I just booted off an Ubuntu live USB stick

38:54SPEAKERon that old motherboard.

38:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

38:56SPEAKER- I had forgotten about this,

38:57SPEAKERbut that drive had started making

38:59SPEAKERsome really interesting grinding sounds

39:01SPEAKERby the time I finished using it.

39:03SPEAKER- Oh boy.

39:05SPEAKER- And was reminded very abruptly

39:07SPEAKERwhen I booted that thing back up

39:09SPEAKERbecause like 30 seconds after I turned it,

39:11SPEAKERalso I had never shorted the power switch pins

39:15SPEAKERon a motherboard before until this.

39:17SPEAKER- Oh really?

39:18SPEAKER- As an aside here, this isn't totally tangential,

39:20SPEAKERbut what the hell was I doing for the last 20 years?

39:24SPEAKER- Well.

39:25SPEAKER- I have always tried to like,

39:26SPEAKERyou know, that short ass cable

39:28SPEAKERthat actually plugs the power switch to those pins.

39:30SPEAKERLike I've always would like,

39:31SPEAKER'cause my operating procedure, I don't know about you,

39:34SPEAKERI assume a lot of people do this,

39:35SPEAKERis to assemble everything outside the case

39:37SPEAKERand make sure it actually boots

39:38SPEAKERbefore you go to the trouble of mounting it all.

39:40SPEAKERNope. - Nope.

39:41SPEAKER- Really?

39:42SPEAKER- I just chuck it straight in there and let it rip.

39:43SPEAKER- Ironically, I've never had anything not post

39:45SPEAKERor be DOA or anything like that, but.

39:47SPEAKER- It's like Tracy Jordan said,

39:48SPEAKERyou gotta live every week like it's shark week, Brad.

39:50SPEAKER- Okay, sure.

39:51SPEAKER(laughs)

39:53SPEAKERBut I had no idea it was so easy.

39:55SPEAKERLike what the hell was I doing?

39:56SPEAKERLike trying to run cables to bare motherboards all the time

39:59SPEAKERwhen I could just pop a screwdriver on there

40:01SPEAKERfor half a second.

40:01SPEAKER- Well, so we did, we made a bunch of like,

40:05SPEAKERjust dongle with a little momentary switch on the other end.

40:09SPEAKER- That's a good idea.

40:10SPEAKER- So you just dunk that in.

40:11SPEAKERBut now I don't think I've had a board

40:13SPEAKERthat doesn't have a button on it

40:15SPEAKERfor power and reset in years.

40:16SPEAKER- My three boards ago in like our mid 2000s,

40:19SPEAKERI had one of those, but since then,

40:20SPEAKERmaybe it's 'cause I always buy the like,

40:23SPEAKERyeah, let's say that I feel like my feelings

40:25SPEAKERon a good, like acceptable pricing for a motherboard

40:28SPEAKERare let's say 100, $250.

40:31SPEAKER- Yeah, so I think you're probably just under the,

40:34SPEAKER'cause I usually get, well, the last time I got one

40:38SPEAKERthat had a bunch of PCI express lanes.

40:41SPEAKERNo, I had the right USB controller

40:46SPEAKERand it was more expensive.

40:48SPEAKER- I might go a little nicer on the next build,

40:50SPEAKERbut yeah, I usually go for the bang for the buck

40:52SPEAKERkind of bare bones board.

40:53SPEAKER- I figure since I have a motherboard,

40:55SPEAKERusually for four or five years, I splurge.

40:57SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a good point.

40:58SPEAKERAnyway, back to the original point,

41:00SPEAKERI booted that motherboard up with that SCSI drive plugged in

41:03SPEAKERand like within 30 seconds,

41:05SPEAKERmy girlfriend at the complete other end of the apartment

41:08SPEAKERwas like, what are you doing?

41:09SPEAKERLike that sounded really bad.

41:11SPEAKERI wish I had recorded it.

41:13SPEAKER- What, did you have any of the bearings

41:15SPEAKERwere seized up on or anything?

41:16SPEAKER- It might be something like, well, I don't know.

41:18SPEAKERLike it was, I wish, like I said,

41:20SPEAKERI wish I had an example of it

41:21SPEAKERbecause it was like an other worldly sound

41:23SPEAKERof this just like electrical, like sort of mid range tone,

41:27SPEAKERlike grinding, winding kind of sound.

41:29SPEAKER- You can probably just plug it in

41:31SPEAKERand it'll make the sound even if you don't plug it in.

41:32SPEAKER- So that's why I'm getting there.

41:34SPEAKERSo I heard that sound.

41:36SPEAKERI was like, this drive is so dead.

41:37SPEAKERThere is no way I'm getting anything off of this.

41:39SPEAKERIt totally rang up like the booboo saw it

41:42SPEAKERand I was able to get in there and I r-synced all the,

41:44SPEAKERand granted there was nothing worthwhile on there,

41:46SPEAKERbut like I r-synced all the data off of there.

41:49SPEAKERAnd then I was going to like do the kind of right random

41:51SPEAKERgibberish to it to kind of zero it out

41:53SPEAKERbefore I get rid of it.

41:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:55SPEAKER- It got some ways into that process

41:57SPEAKERand kind of seized up like the progress stopped

41:59SPEAKERand I was like, what is going on with this thing?

42:01SPEAKERAnd maybe I should reboot this.

42:02SPEAKERAnd so I control seed that process and rebooted,

42:06SPEAKERdrive no longer recognized.

42:09SPEAKER- That's it.

42:10SPEAKER- I powered the thing off

42:12SPEAKERand like plugged a different molex in or whatever,

42:14SPEAKERjust to see what would happen.

42:17SPEAKERDrive wouldn't have just spin up after that.

42:19SPEAKERLike literally about 20 minutes

42:22SPEAKERbefore the drive died forever,

42:23SPEAKERI got all the data off of it.

42:25SPEAKER- This is like your Jurassic bark.

42:27SPEAKERYou're like that drive was just waiting the last 20 years

42:29SPEAKERfor you to come back to it.

42:30SPEAKER- Totally.

42:31SPEAKER- And it just wanted to see you one more time, Brad.

42:32SPEAKER- Totally, it gave up all its data.

42:35SPEAKERI mean, this would be a better story

42:36SPEAKERif there would actually been anything worth a shit on there,

42:38SPEAKERbut still the idea that I got every bit of data off of it,

42:41SPEAKERliterally about 20 minutes before it died forever.

42:44SPEAKER- That's amazing.

42:45SPEAKER- Was just felt like divine providence sort of.

42:53SPEAKER- So I have the same big box of drives

42:55SPEAKERand I bought an adapter to pull the stuff off of.

42:57SPEAKER- Okay, you did the smart thing, you've treated yourself

43:01SPEAKERas opposed to pulling an old computer out of the closet.

43:04SPEAKER- It was like 15 bucks, the adapter,

43:05SPEAKERI don't think it was really splurging.

43:07SPEAKER- But I just figured I would never need it again.

43:09SPEAKERSo I didn't want an extra thing lying around.

43:11SPEAKER- Yeah, that's probably the,

43:12SPEAKERalso I don't think I could find it right now

43:14SPEAKERif I needed it.

43:15SPEAKER- Sure, did you go through your drives?

43:19SPEAKER- I have not.

43:20SPEAKER- How many do you have?

43:21SPEAKERYou probably have.

43:22SPEAKER- I don't know, 35, 40 pounds.

43:24SPEAKER- It's a lot.

43:25SPEAKERIt's a big box.

43:26SPEAKER- I only have like five, I bet you have more than I do.

43:29SPEAKER- It's a, you know, I don't know,

43:32SPEAKERthe boxes that you get four paint cans in,

43:34SPEAKERlike four gallons of paint, it's one of those full

43:37SPEAKERand it's over top.

43:38SPEAKER- Oh my God, that's a lot of hard drives.

43:40SPEAKER- Okay, we need to talk then about

43:41SPEAKERhow to get rid of hard drives after this.

43:44SPEAKER- I'm gonna send you a YouTube video.

43:45SPEAKERThere's a guy that has an industrial grinder.

43:48SPEAKER- Yeah, there are, I looked it up,

43:49SPEAKERthere are mobile hard drive shredding services

43:51SPEAKERin San Francisco.

43:52SPEAKERYou can literally book time with a truck

43:54SPEAKERwhere they will drive a hard drive shredder to your house.

43:57SPEAKER- Yep, that seems like a lot of work.

43:58SPEAKER- But I don't know what to do.

43:59SPEAKER- Probably expensive too.

44:00SPEAKER- Yeah, the pricing was such that it was like,

44:02SPEAKERask us for a quote.

44:03SPEAKERI was like, if I need a quote,

44:04SPEAKERI probably don't want to do this.

44:05SPEAKER- Yeah, if you have to ask, you're not gonna,

44:07SPEAKERwell, what you need to do is get a bunch of people over.

44:09SPEAKERWe have a hard drive shredding party

44:11SPEAKERand we'll have, this will be the first tech pod meetup,

44:14SPEAKERI guess, so we're gonna rent the hard drive shredding truck.

44:17SPEAKERBring your drives, any drives.

44:18SPEAKER- Anybody in the Bay area out there

44:20SPEAKERhas access to a hard drive shredder.

44:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:22SPEAKER- You can touch.

44:25SPEAKER- I killed a motherboard last year

44:27SPEAKERtrying to make a PCI express.

44:30SPEAKER- That's recent.

44:31SPEAKER- Yeah, so look, I had,

44:36SPEAKERI needed one more slot that was accessible

44:38SPEAKERbecause of the two slot video card in my computer.

44:41SPEAKERSo I bought a PCI extender cable,

44:44SPEAKERwhich is like a ribbon cable that you plug one end

44:46SPEAKERinto your PCI express slot.

44:47SPEAKERThe other end goes into whatever you want to plug in.

44:52SPEAKERAnd instead of getting the one that was 20 bucks

44:56SPEAKERfrom a reputable vendor,

44:58SPEAKERI was on Amazon and was like,

44:59SPEAKERhey, everybody who buys this buys this instead.

45:02SPEAKEREverybody who looks at this buys this instead.

45:03SPEAKERI was like, wow, this one's only five bucks.

45:04SPEAKERI'm gonna get this.

45:05SPEAKERThis is great.

45:06SPEAKERAll it is is a cable in two slots.

45:07SPEAKERThat's a slot in a socket.

45:08SPEAKERThis is no big deal.

45:09SPEAKER- This is just electricity.

45:10SPEAKERWhat could go wrong?

45:11SPEAKER- I plugged it in, turned the computer,

45:13SPEAKERpressed the computer button, nothing.

45:15SPEAKERLike usually when the computer is not quite right,

45:19SPEAKERlike, you know, you get like a fan's moves a little bit

45:22SPEAKERand then it, yeah, nothing.

45:24SPEAKER- When there's literally no motion of any kind

45:26SPEAKERor no lights of whatsoever, you're in trouble.

45:28SPEAKER- Didn't make a hum.

45:29SPEAKER- You're in trouble.

45:31SPEAKER- So I pulled the slot extender.

45:34SPEAKERI'm like, shit, maybe this thing's bad.

45:35SPEAKERSo I pulled it, hit the button again, still nothing.

45:39SPEAKERI take everything out of the computer, nothing.

45:42SPEAKERI take the CPU and RAM out of the computer, nothing.

45:44SPEAKER- Oh boy.

45:46SPEAKER- I take the CPU and put it in another motherboard

45:48SPEAKERin my streaming PC, which is the same motherboard, works.

45:52SPEAKER- Okay.

45:52SPEAKER- Well, at least I didn't torch the CPU.

45:53SPEAKERThat's good.

45:55SPEAKERIt became clear that the motherboard was completely dead.

45:58SPEAKERAnd luckily I was able to get a replacement

46:01SPEAKERthat was exactly the same.

46:02SPEAKERSo it wasn't really.

46:03SPEAKER- That's, man, and that thing went straight in the trash.

46:06SPEAKER- Hashtag blessed, yeah.

46:07SPEAKER- The extender.

46:09SPEAKER- Yeah, you know what?

46:11SPEAKERI found it under my desk the other day

46:13SPEAKER'cause I must have thrown it on the back of the desk.

46:15SPEAKERI wrote a scathing review on Amazon though.

46:18SPEAKER- I sympathize.

46:19SPEAKERI go through that exact thought process every single time.

46:22SPEAKERThere is always the no name,

46:24SPEAKERvery cheap version of the thing you want.

46:26SPEAKER- Well, so there are places that that's a good idea.

46:30SPEAKERLike, I don't know, USB thumb drives probably safe, right?

46:34SPEAKERWell, maybe not.

46:35SPEAKERMaybe they have malware or something on them.

46:36SPEAKER- Or USB flash drives just don't last a long time.

46:39SPEAKERSo they may very well die in six months.

46:42SPEAKER- You know, my experience with FreeNAS

46:44SPEAKERhas given me a completely different feeling

46:46SPEAKERabout how reliable USB flash drives are.

46:48SPEAKER- Yup.

46:50SPEAKER- But yeah, that was a bad time.

46:54SPEAKERI was pretty upset about that one.

46:56SPEAKER- Yeah, that sucks.

46:57SPEAKERThat's a rotten wound.

46:58SPEAKER- Luckily, when I posted,

47:01SPEAKERI hit up one of my friend Discord's or Slack's

47:03SPEAKERor something and was like, hey,

47:04SPEAKERdoes anybody have one of this board

47:08SPEAKERand a friend of mine who works in the industry

47:10SPEAKERis like, yeah, I have one in my gear closet.

47:12SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

47:12SPEAKER- Do you want it?

47:13SPEAKERI was like, yeah, what do you want for it?

47:14SPEAKERAnd he was like, oh, you can just have it.

47:15SPEAKER- Wow.

47:16SPEAKER- I'm not building any more 1123 or whatever.

47:18SPEAKER2011 whatever socket that X99 was.

47:23SPEAKER- Some hot hand-me-down hardware.

47:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

47:27SPEAKER- I guess I could do one more real quick.

47:29SPEAKER- Yeah, hit me, hit me.

47:29SPEAKER- Speaking of hand-me-down hardware,

47:31SPEAKERI had an IDE hard drive,

47:34SPEAKERlike a powered hard drive enclosure.

47:36SPEAKER- Okay.

47:37SPEAKER- This would have been a USB two one.

47:38SPEAKERThis was probably 2005-ish, let's say.

47:41SPEAKER- And this is an enclosure for like a big

47:43SPEAKERthree and a half inch hard drive.

47:44SPEAKER- It's a full on three and a half inch IDE hard drive

47:46SPEAKERwith its, like I said, with its own external power supply.

47:48SPEAKERThe enclosure had its own power supply

47:50SPEAKERand a toggle switch on the back

47:52SPEAKERto turn the drive on and off.

47:53SPEAKER- Nice.

47:54SPEAKER- And it was a USB two.

47:55SPEAKERThis was like before you could really get

47:57SPEAKERlike miniature laptop drives

47:58SPEAKERand like nice tidy enclosures, right?

48:02SPEAKER- Before the USB had enough power to drive those drives,

48:05SPEAKERtook too much power for what USB could do at the time.

48:08SPEAKER- It was a complete no name, no branding on it, no nothing.

48:12SPEAKERIt was given to me by, I think,

48:14SPEAKERmy roommate's boyfriend at the time.

48:16SPEAKERHe was just like, "Oh, I don't need you, here we go."

48:19SPEAKERAnd I thought it, I apparently thought it was a good idea

48:21SPEAKERto take the hard drive that I had,

48:22SPEAKERlike my entire life's worth of like personal data

48:26SPEAKERon up to that point and put that drive in that enclosure.

48:31SPEAKERThis is like everything,

48:33SPEAKERlike every paper I ever wrote in college,

48:36SPEAKERlike tons of photos of all my friends from college,

48:39SPEAKERlike the old band MP3s, everything you can think of,

48:44SPEAKERlike just every file you would ever think about saving.

48:47SPEAKER- Your digital life.

48:48SPEAKER- Yes, and I just also, I left it running all the time.

48:55SPEAKERIt was an external thing that it was plugged into my PC

48:57SPEAKERand I never turned it off.

48:59SPEAKER- Oh no.

49:00SPEAKER- Until one day I smelled something acrid.

49:03SPEAKER- Oh no.

49:04SPEAKER- And noticed that there was some smoke

49:07SPEAKERcoming out of that enclosure.

49:11SPEAKER- No, I never wanna smell that.

49:12SPEAKERThat's such a don't, I don't want this smell.

49:15SPEAKER- It was a terrible idea.

49:16SPEAKERLike it was insane to not have a backup of that stuff.

49:18SPEAKERIt was insane to trust it

49:19SPEAKERto that ridiculous crappy enclosure, whatever, whatever.

49:24SPEAKERIt was all gone, all gone.

49:26SPEAKER- Oh, it wiped the data?

49:27SPEAKER- Like the drive wouldn't boot,

49:28SPEAKERlike it wouldn't or wouldn't,

49:30SPEAKERI can't remember if it would spin up and not be accessible

49:32SPEAKERor maybe it wouldn't even spin up, I forget.

49:34SPEAKER- Oh, Brad, I'm so sorry.

49:35SPEAKER- Well, so it has a happy ending,

49:37SPEAKERbut like you wanna talk about divine providence.

49:40SPEAKER- Okay.

49:41SPEAKER- An incredibly gracious,

49:43SPEAKERI don't even know how this came up,

49:44SPEAKERbut an incredibly gracious old friend from IRC

49:46SPEAKERfrom back in the day.

49:48SPEAKERI had happened to be talking to him.

49:51SPEAKERI think I gave up on that drive for like three years

49:53SPEAKERor something, if I remember.

49:55SPEAKERLike I could check my email to make sure,

49:56SPEAKERbut I literally think that thing sat in a shoebox

49:58SPEAKERfor like years thinking like maybe someday,

50:01SPEAKERlike I actually looked into professional data recovery.

50:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:04SPEAKER- And I was bummed that I lost that stuff

50:06SPEAKERand it was thousands of dollars.

50:09SPEAKERThis old friend that I happened to be talking to

50:11SPEAKERyears later, it turned out,

50:13SPEAKERI hadn't talked to him in a while,

50:14SPEAKERhe had gone into professional data recovery.

50:18SPEAKER- Oh man.

50:19SPEAKER- And he fixed it for me.

50:20SPEAKER- That's amazing.

50:21SPEAKER- He had me send it to him and I need to like,

50:23SPEAKERI still need to track him back down.

50:25SPEAKERI know, I don't feel like I ever properly,

50:27SPEAKERI mean, I lavished praise on him, of course,

50:29SPEAKERbut I should have like bought him a new car or something.

50:32SPEAKERLike I could not believe that he went to that much trouble,

50:34SPEAKERlike, I think what ended up happening was he had to,

50:38SPEAKERit was like the controller chip on the PCB of the drive

50:40SPEAKERwent bad or something like that.

50:42SPEAKER- You can often, we experimented with this

50:44SPEAKERa little bit at maximum PC a couple of times

50:45SPEAKERthinking we could make a story out of it,

50:46SPEAKERbut like, if you can get the same variation

50:49SPEAKERof the controller board, like same bias and everything.

50:52SPEAKER- He literally harvested a part off of an equivalent drive

50:55SPEAKERand soldered it onto this drive to get it working again,

50:58SPEAKERin any case. - Wow.

51:00SPEAKER- And again, if you're out there, you know who you are,

51:03SPEAKERI need to get back in touch with you.

51:04SPEAKERI feel like I've never quite made good for,

51:07SPEAKERthat honestly, that experience has driven every bit

51:09SPEAKERof like my nassing and all that, like backups

51:12SPEAKERon top of backups and stuff, like ever since then,

51:14SPEAKERlike that one experience,

51:16SPEAKERI feel like I dodged such a bullet there.

51:18SPEAKERI was like, I should never have less than three backups again.

51:20SPEAKER- So did you, speaking of things that are backed up,

51:23SPEAKERdid you ever solve the USB, the Xbox 360 USB drive?

51:28SPEAKER- That was like the last one I had totally forgotten

51:30SPEAKERthat I felt like I should bring up.

51:32SPEAKERLike, have I talked that to death?

51:33SPEAKERI guess not on this podcast.

51:34SPEAKER- We've not talked about it all on this podcast,

51:36SPEAKERbut it has been a long running,

51:37SPEAKERit was a long running bit on other podcasts.

51:40SPEAKER- That USB flash drive is still in pieces

51:42SPEAKERin my desk drawer at work to this day.

51:44SPEAKER- Oh man.

51:47SPEAKER- So what happened was people might remember

51:48SPEAKERwhen the Xbox 360 launched,

51:50SPEAKERit had proprietary memory card cartridge type things.

51:53SPEAKER- Up to 32 megabytes.

51:54SPEAKER- Yeah, they were gigantic.

51:56SPEAKERReally put a lot of stuff on there.

51:57SPEAKERAnyway, like at some point they relented and were like,

51:59SPEAKERoh, you know, you can just use any USB flash drive

52:01SPEAKERto put your Xbox 360 saves on.

52:03SPEAKERThis was probably what, four, five years after launch

52:06SPEAKERor something?

52:07SPEAKER- Halfway through the generation probably.

52:09SPEAKER- So I was like, ooh, I'm just gonna go buy

52:10SPEAKERa nice high-end fast SanDisk, click 32 gig

52:13SPEAKERand keep all of my 360 saves on there, period.

52:18SPEAKERAll of them.

52:19SPEAKERI was like, why wouldn't I want all of my saves

52:22SPEAKERwith me at all times?

52:26SPEAKERI used it for some quick look we were recording.

52:29SPEAKERI feel like it was "Street Fighter IV" for some reason

52:32SPEAKERor some "Street Fighter IV" DLC or something, whatever.

52:35SPEAKERI had it in the machine 'cause I was using my save file.

52:39SPEAKERI'm pretty sure what happened.

52:40SPEAKERI've never been able to verify this, but I'm pretty sure,

52:42SPEAKERso like that thing has kind of a lengthy shutdown process.

52:44SPEAKERLike it'll continue writing various things.

52:47SPEAKER- The 360?

52:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

52:48SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know that.

52:50SPEAKER- I'm pretty sure like you would see the access light

52:52SPEAKERon the flash drive continue to be active

52:55SPEAKERfor a few seconds after you turn it off.

52:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

52:57SPEAKER- Like while it was kind of doing garbage collection

52:59SPEAKERor whatever, cleaning stuff up.

53:01SPEAKERI have to assume I yanked that thing out of the system

53:03SPEAKERafter I turned it off,

53:04SPEAKERbut before it was done finalizing everything

53:08SPEAKERand it just became forever after unreadable.

53:11SPEAKER- Wow.

53:11SPEAKER- And all of those complete saves,

53:13SPEAKERlike I think I had some in progress saves,

53:16SPEAKERbut it was really like, oh, my banjo

53:18SPEAKERand kazooie nuts and bolts

53:19SPEAKERthat had everything unlocked save is gone.

53:21SPEAKERMy X is gone, my Y is gone.

53:23SPEAKERThe big one was this was not that long before Mass Effect 3.

53:27SPEAKER- Yeah. I remember this being a Mass Effect 3.

53:30SPEAKER- Yes, my Mass Effect 1 and 2 saves

53:32SPEAKERwith all of my custom decisions

53:33SPEAKERand everything were on that flash drive.

53:36SPEAKERAnd yeah, multiple users of Giant Bomb reached out

53:41SPEAKERand I sent the flash drive off in the mail a couple of times

53:45SPEAKERand had people look at it and disassemble it and stuff.

53:48SPEAKERBut...

53:50SPEAKER- No love.

53:51SPEAKER- The last guy I sent it to really seems to know his shit.

53:54SPEAKERAnd he had taken it apart and said that he had some,

53:56SPEAKERhe had capability to read the NAND chips directly.

53:59SPEAKER- Wow.

54:00SPEAKER- But by that time it had been messed with so many times

54:03SPEAKERthat he said that he could see some of the data on there,

54:05SPEAKERbut a lot of it was too corrupted to actually be recoverable.

54:08SPEAKER- Well, and I mean,

54:08SPEAKERwhat's the file system on the 360 flash drives?

54:12SPEAKER- I don't know what that was using.

54:15SPEAKER- Like, is it something that like,

54:16SPEAKERyou could potentially read files on

54:17SPEAKERor is it something that like,

54:19SPEAKERyou just have to do a bit by bit copy

54:20SPEAKERand put it on a new drive and hope it works

54:22SPEAKERwhen you plug it in?

54:23SPEAKER- That's a good question. I actually don't know.

54:25SPEAKERI'm always curious about low level hardware stuff on.

54:28SPEAKER- Like I said, he said,

54:29SPEAKERI think he said he saw some identifiable data on there.

54:31SPEAKERLike there was, he was able to read some of it,

54:33SPEAKERbut a lot of it was just garbage at that point.

54:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess it isn't encrypted because people can like,

54:38SPEAKERpeople pull like their Fallout or Metal Gear saves

54:42SPEAKERor whatever and move it from-

54:43SPEAKER- It may have been encrypted and people just broke it

54:45SPEAKERor they found some way around that stuff.

54:47SPEAKERI forget.

54:48SPEAKER- Yeah, it's possible.

54:49SPEAKER- Because there are tools you need to make those things work.

54:50SPEAKERAnyway, I never, that one, that one I never got back.

54:52SPEAKERThat was, I burned my one get out of jail card

54:55SPEAKERon that old hard drive.

54:56SPEAKER- On the old hard, I think that was a good trade.

54:58SPEAKER- Yes, yes, if I had to pick, that was the right one.

55:00SPEAKERI ended up downloading somebody else's Mass Effect 2 save

55:04SPEAKERand just using a save editor and just kind of recreating

55:07SPEAKERmy stuff to the best of my ability.

55:09SPEAKERWell, so that worked fine.

55:11SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I did because I switched from Xbox to PC

55:15SPEAKERfor the third one, I think.

55:17SPEAKERAnd yeah, I just recreated a save from the beginning.

55:20SPEAKERIt was a good time.

55:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:23SPEAKER- Well, there you go. There's our tech horror stories.

55:25SPEAKERThat's all, that's based on everything lately.

55:28SPEAKERThat's something, that's all the horror stories

55:30SPEAKERI can deal with right now.

55:31SPEAKER- Secretly, we did this, I suggested this topic

55:34SPEAKERbecause I wanted people to send their own horror stories in.

55:36SPEAKER- Oh man, I would, does that count as an email episode

55:39SPEAKERor do we get to do that separately?

55:40SPEAKER'Cause I would totally sit here

55:41SPEAKERand read other people's horror stories.

55:44SPEAKER- Let's see how they go.

55:46SPEAKER- Okay.

55:47SPEAKER- The email address is techpod@content.town.

55:51SPEAKERIf you email them in, we will take a look at them.

55:54SPEAKERI'm like, this is my favorite thing to do

55:57SPEAKERwith like nerds who've been on front lines

55:58SPEAKERof support and stuff for a long time.

56:00SPEAKERBecause like the capacity for people

56:03SPEAKERfucking things up is, is infinite.

56:06SPEAKER- One at least, yeah.

56:07SPEAKER- Yeah, it's always, it's always really entertaining.

56:10SPEAKERAs always, huge thank you to all of our patrons.

56:14SPEAKER- Say it.

56:15SPEAKER- Patrons? Patrons?

56:17SPEAKER- Long A.

56:18SPEAKER- Patrons.

56:19SPEAKER- It is not a tequila brand, they're patrons.

56:23SPEAKERAnyway, thanks to all of our patrons,

56:25SPEAKERespecially our executive producer level patrons,

56:27SPEAKERKurt Brownridge, Jacob Chappell, Andrew Cotton

56:30SPEAKERand David Allen.

56:31SPEAKERThank you all so much.

56:32SPEAKER- Big thanks.

56:33SPEAKER- If you want to find out how to support the show,

56:35SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.

56:38SPEAKERThat's patreon.com/techpod.

56:41SPEAKER- Finally, we've unified our pronunciation.

56:43SPEAKER- Exactly.

56:44SPEAKER- Talk about standards.

56:46SPEAKER- If, look, I, somebody needs to make a guide

56:51SPEAKERto pronunciation that doesn't involve typing into Google

56:55SPEAKERand watching like a four second YouTube video

56:58SPEAKERfor words and names.

56:59SPEAKER- Yes.

57:00SPEAKER- That is a product I would, I would subscribe to.

57:02SPEAKER- CMOS, right?

57:04SPEAKER- CMOS, yes.

57:06SPEAKER- Is that how you say it?

57:06SPEAKER- ASUS.

57:08SPEAKER- Oh, I can't, I'm sorry.

57:10SPEAKER- They came by and gave us pronunciation lessons

57:12SPEAKERfor that one day.

57:12SPEAKER- Can't, man, I'm sorry.

57:15SPEAKER- But yeah, if you, if you back to Patreon,

57:17SPEAKERyou get access to the TechPod Discord.

57:19SPEAKERDue to popular demand, Brad, I added a new channel.

57:22SPEAKER- Whoa, oh yeah, I saw.

57:24SPEAKER- It's also- - Executive decisions.

57:26SPEAKER- I'm glad, I'm glad that we finally settled

57:28SPEAKERon a name for the video games channel.

57:30SPEAKER- For now.

57:32SPEAKER- I think Destiny and other games is,

57:34SPEAKERis a representative of all of our interests.

57:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I, you know, it's seasonal.

57:38SPEAKER- We added a mechanical keyboard channel the other day

57:40SPEAKERbecause it like, those conversations just once,

57:44SPEAKERonce somebody talks about mechanical keyboards

57:46SPEAKERin the general chat, it was like all day long.

57:48SPEAKER- That's it, forget everything.

57:50SPEAKERPeople love their blues and browns.

57:52SPEAKERTheir cherries and whatever the hell.

57:55SPEAKER- I think I gotta get on that clear train.

57:57SPEAKER- Okay. - I don't know.

57:58SPEAKER- I don't know what you're talking about.

57:59SPEAKER- They're clicky, but not too clicky.

58:01SPEAKER- This is Todd, this is topic for another show.

58:04SPEAKERWhy, why would they name a mechanical design after colors

58:07SPEAKERthat is incredibly counterintuitive?

58:09SPEAKER- Because it's the colors on the tops of the Switch

58:11SPEAKERso you can identify them by low.

58:12SPEAKER- Oh, internally the Switch is that color?

58:15SPEAKEROkay. - No.

58:15SPEAKER- I tell you, I, you don't have to.

58:19SPEAKER- Let me just get those,

58:20SPEAKERlet me get my bag of Switches out here.

58:21SPEAKER- Oh, I believe you, that's fine.

58:22SPEAKER- I'm gonna hold it up to the camera so nobody can see.

58:24SPEAKER- Great.

58:25SPEAKER- These are Cherry MX Red Switches.

58:27SPEAKER- Okay, that's, yep, oh, that is certainly a red Switch.

58:29SPEAKER- See the little duper on top

58:30SPEAKERthat you put the key cap on is red.

58:32SPEAKER- Yep.

58:33SPEAKER- It just tells you where the clicky bit is.

58:35SPEAKER- That channel for the first time

58:38SPEAKERis actually making me a little self-conscious

58:39SPEAKERabout my 10 year old Apple aluminum keyboard.

58:42SPEAKER- Yeah, your embarrassing keyboard.

58:44SPEAKER- It's not embarrassing, it's fine.

58:46SPEAKER- Look, I wish I had one

58:48SPEAKERso that when I had to type something

58:49SPEAKERwhen we're recording a podcast or something,

58:50SPEAKERI can do it without making an incredible amount of noise.

58:52SPEAKER- That's why I use it, it's so quiet.

58:54SPEAKERNobody can hear me typing.

58:55SPEAKER- But the rest of the time,

58:57SPEAKERit's nice to know exactly when your keys actuate,

58:59SPEAKERjust feel that. - Yeah, yes, okay.

59:01SPEAKER- Click, click, click.

59:01SPEAKER- I do like to actuate now that you mention it.

59:04SPEAKER- But yeah, you can find out more about that

59:06SPEAKERat patreon.com/techpod.

59:08SPEAKERAs always, if you can't support the channel,

59:12SPEAKERthat's great, we don't care.

59:13SPEAKERTell your friends, that's how people find out about us.

59:16SPEAKER- We appreciate that, especially if your friend is iTunes.

59:19SPEAKER- Yeah, tell your friend iTunes how awesome we are

59:21SPEAKERor how terrible we are, we don't care.

59:23SPEAKERDo whatever you need. - Sure.

59:25SPEAKERSay what you feel.

59:26SPEAKER- I think, is next week our question episode?

59:28SPEAKERIt is, yeah. - Maybe, no.

59:31SPEAKER- No, we have one more. - Okay.

59:33SPEAKER- So maybe we might do people's,

59:34SPEAKERshare people's tech nightmares next week.

59:36SPEAKERMaybe that'll be the Patreon only episode this month.

59:37SPEAKER- Sure. - I don't know.

59:39SPEAKER- You know what, we can do whatever we want.

59:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it's our podcast, there's no corporate overlord here.

59:44SPEAKER- Well, there are the executive producers.

59:46SPEAKER- I mean, the executive producers, yes,

59:47SPEAKERbut they are so far benevolent.

59:49SPEAKER- Yeah, that's just true.

59:50SPEAKERJust make sure you look busy when they walk by.

59:52SPEAKER- They haven't, nobody's told me to sexy up my look

59:54SPEAKERfor this podcast yet, which I really appreciate.

59:57SPEAKERI haven't had any content creative consultants come in

1:00:00SPEAKERand tell me, "You know, that Jenna Marbles channel

1:00:03SPEAKERis really popular, you should try doing stuff

1:00:04SPEAKERthat's more like them."

1:00:06SPEAKER'Cause that's a real conversation I had with people one day.

1:00:09SPEAKER- Great, great.

1:00:10SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, Jenna Marbles seems fine.

1:00:13SPEAKERI don't have any beef with her.

1:00:14SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

1:00:15SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

1:00:16SPEAKER- Her bit is funny, I like it.

1:00:17SPEAKER- Corporate mandates on the other hand, though.

1:00:20SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm not a fan.

1:00:21SPEAKER- Not a fan.

1:00:22SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:23SPEAKERAnyway, see you all next week.

1:00:24SPEAKERThanks, Brad.

1:00:25SPEAKERBye, everybody.

1:00:26SPEAKER(upbeat music)

1:00:40SPEAKER(upbeat music)