The Tech Guy Episode 1911 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

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Mikah Sargent (00:00:12):
This is The Tech Guy episode 1,911 recorded Saturday, July 16th, 2022. Enjoy this episode of The Tech Guy is brought to you by userway.org. Userway is the world's number one accessibility solution. And it's committed to enabling the fundamental human rights of digital accessibility for everyone. When you're ready to make your site compliance, deciding which solution to use is an easy choice to make, go to UserWay.org/twit for 30% off UserWay's AI powered accessibility solution. And by Cisco Meraki with employees working in different locations, providing a unified work experience seems as easy as hurting cats. How do you reign in so many moving parts? The Meraki cloud managed network learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work by visiting meraki.cisco.com/twit. And by CacheFly. Deliver your video on the network with the best throughput and global reach, making your content infinitely. Scalable go live in hours. Not days, learn more at cachefly.com.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:31):
Hello friends. How are you today? And it's time for The Tech Guy radio show. This is a different voice than you're used to probably at least is the main voice. Yes, I Mikah Sargent am filling in for Leo Laporte as he is on a cruise, the twit cruise I am here with you today to talk TV, the internet, home theater all sorts of, of devices and things with chips in them, as we say, of course that's, that's not it. It's not just devices with chips in them. It's, it's AI, it's AR it's augmented reality. But we like to take your questions or in this case, I like to take your questions and you can call in (888) 827-5536. That's 88 88, ask Leo. Hmm. Although you'll be asking Mikah today and there, you will be able to ask all of the tech questions you have as Leo often does.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:27):
I wanna kick things off with a little conversation here about a new bit of news from B M W. Have you heard the one about the company, the car company that is looking to charge its users for things they already own? Yes, it is BMW BMW said, look, we, we, we make these cars right? And we put heated seats into them. We put, you know, the, the little bits and bobs that have the extra buttons you can press to do all sorts of things. And why not make a little bit of extra money on those things that we have in there? Yeah. BMW is going to be charging $18 a month, $18 a month for you to use heated seats. It's like car NFTs, except at least in this case, you actually do get something real and you get heat in your, you know, <laugh> in your seat.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:26):
So this is an ongoing kind of conversation that, that there's an article from the verge that really goes into depth about kind of how the automotive industry is doing this in general, how they are kind of looking for ways to make more money. And this is one of those ways, these micro transactions, as they're called where you may own the device, the product in this case, the vehicle, but the company wants to continue to make money off of you over time. It's why apple that has, has sort of traditionally been a device cuz company, you know, they, they sell iPhones, they sell max, they sell these hardware devices and they make money off of that. But more and more, we see the importance of Apple's services, business taking hold. That is the part of the business where you are paying every month.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:18):
So apple TV plus is an example of this the idea that you pay for more storage for your iPhone, those kinds of, of service transactions that continue to bring some money to the company every month so that they can show the folks out there, the investors that they are sort of viable in the long term, that even if the iPhone falls away, that there's still that. So going back to cars now, you know, you've got BMW that is, has a long story history. It's a very, you know, popular car brand. And people love their BMWs. And I know spend lots of money on repairs of their BMWs, but with that comes this question of, okay, so what are we gonna do if we want to get people to spend money regularly? And, you know, the way that it kind of used to work is you would bundle in services like XM radio, where yes the XM radio service was making most of the money off of that, but the car companies would get a little money kind of on the front end for offering the subscription service in the vehicle and, you know, providing the hardware there.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:26):
So BMW is like, Hey, let's let's find a way for us to make money directly. And this is the thing it's not just it's not just the heated seats where you pay every month for a thing that is already built into your car. <Laugh> might I add, you know, it's not like you're paying a monthly subscription and they come and install it and you're leasing those little heated coils. No, no, no, no. These are already in your car, but BMW is also they've got a service that is going to allow, let's see what it is. Heated steering wheels from $12 a month. Now this one, I think makes a little bit more sense recording footage from your car's cameras. So in your car, you've these BMWs are equipped with cameras. Sure. Charge for that, because it's probably a cloud storage service.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:15):
So it's gonna go into the cloud and you gotta pay for that upkeep. That makes sense. But then there's also the ability to play engine cars in your in engine sounds rather in your car for a one time fee of $117. Yes. BMW says just, you know, this isn't a subscription service. You just pay it once and then it's there. But this has me thinking about all the different ways that people discover how to hack these kinds of things, how to sort of circumvent this, because there's a difference between, you know, I've got at home a a, a water service. So every once in a while, the service comes by and drops off a couple of big old, I think they're five gallon jugs of water, right? And I don't own the dispenser that's inside of my home. I lease it.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:11):
It's like two bucks a month or something every month pay two bucks for that. And I pay, you know, 10 bucks for the water. They come and they bring the water. That makes sense. I don't already have the water dispenser, so I'm paying for that. But if you buy the car and the car already has the heated seats inside, and now you're charging me every month to use them, that that just doesn't make sense to me. And I think that's how a lot of people are feeling about this. And I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see some OB D two ports. Those are those onboard diagnostic ports on cars that you typically, you go to a dealer and they plug something in there. They can update the firmware on the car. They can check why the car's engine light is on that kind of thing.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:56):
If we see some OB D two hacks with this, where people aren't being forced to pay for a thing they already own, it's just, it's really disappointing to see this play out in, in the automotive space, because this isn't the only area. You know, I have a, a, a long history of smart tech purchasing and, and research. And this is pretty popular in in that space where you will get a device and it can do a thing, but then you have to pay extra for it to do that thing. It's different from these apps. These, you know, these games that we have, where it makes sense that this is a, is a long term investment. This is, you know, the, the app, when you're paying the subscription price, you are investing in the developer that is creating that app and making sure that the app continues to, to be made over time.

Mikah Sargent (00:08:54):
That's a whole different kind of thing. And it, it, what it looks to me is that these automotive folks are going, you know, I'm kind of jealous <laugh> that these other companies are able to do these prolonged transactions and keep making money. And so let's figure out a way for us to do that, but they've done it in a way that makes no sense. And I think that's part of the reason why this is not in the United States yet. This feature is not yet in the us. It is in, in the UK. I think it's in New Zealand. If I remember correctly, it's in quite a few other places, but they have not brought it to the us. Oh, and I forgot to mention automatic high beams and adaptive cruise control were also some of those subscription features. I don't think we should put somewhat considered safety features.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:49):
<Laugh> behind a pay wall that doesn't make any sense. That's not okay. But as I think some of the folks in the chat are saying, I shouldn't be surprised this is business as usual. This is how these things typically go. And people just you know, they, they, they are looking for new ways to make money. They're looking for ways to continue to charge. And I think that we're gonna continue to see kind of a step away from the idea that you make a one time purchase. And then that is the extent of the conversation that you have with that company. I mean, you know, don't ask me your questions about printers, but printers are one of those examples where they don't make money off of the device itself. They make money off of those ink cartridges that you have to keep buying from them that are locked down, locked tight, and are only available through that. So I am not surprised to see this, but I still am disappointed. <Laugh> BMW. Look, I'm disappointed in any case. Thank you for being here today. 88 88, ask Leo 8 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Stay tuned. Adele. I love you. Thank you for joining us today on The Tech Guy. I am mic Sargent Phil again for Leo LePort today. And it is time to go to the phone with Kim sheer. Kim, can you sing that song? You

Kim Schaffer (00:11:24):
Are you a singer? Not well, I can sing it, but nobody wants to hear that.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:28):
Okay. So you and I should get together and sing. You do some karaoke or something. I'm not, I do

Kim Schaffer (00:11:32):
Not have same voice of a, an angel. No <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:11:35):
But you are our phone angel and that's what matters.

Kim Schaffer (00:11:38):
Hello from the other side of the building.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:41):
Hello to you, Kim. And thank you for being here with me today. You know, I feel a little bit more comfy, cuz I know that you're there,

Kim Schaffer (00:11:49):
I'm like a safety blanket. You are, you're like a

Mikah Sargent (00:11:52):
Safety blanket to make sure that none of the meanies get through as we take calls again, I just wanna remind everyone, 88, 88 ask Leo, but Kim who should we talk to on the phone today?

Kim Schaffer (00:12:04):
Let's talk to Brandon in Eagleville. You're gonna help him with his Chrome bookmarks.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:10):
Oh right. Let's let's do it. Brandon in Eagleville. Hello, Brandon,

Caller 1 (00:12:19):
My call.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:20):
Yeah. Happy to have you here. My

Caller 1 (00:12:22):
Call. Yeah. And I just, before I get to my question, I just wanna say you're doing a great job and I'm just so happy that Leo, you know, kind of picked you to go into this role cause I enjoy you on iOS today and oh, and I think it's just a, a great job. So congratulations.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:37):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Brandon. So yeah, I would love to help you out here today. What's your question for us?

Caller 1 (00:12:44):
So I I've been using Chrome for probably more than 10 years. Like a lot of people. And over that time, I've accumulated quite a bit of bookmarks. I'd say there's probably hundreds in there. And you know, organizing them now has been quite a chore. So I was wondering if you had any suggestions. I know there's probably you know, like extensions that can do this, but I know, you know, Leo in the past said, you gotta be careful of them. I'm looking for a way to one go through. And if there was some way you could check to see if all those bookmarks were still valid, because if they're not, you know, a hacker might have taken over a website, you go there and you potentially get exposed to a virus or malware and then two, can it also look and see if I have duplicated bookmarks and kind of help me try to clean them up.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:31):
Ah, okay. So you're looking for a way to clean up your bookmarks that is safe as well. Let's, let's take a look in the chat. We've got some links in from scooter X who has some thoughts because yeah, that is one of the concerns, right? Is you get a an addon, you get a Chrome extension and then it ends up doing something that you don't want done to your computer. That can be a bit an issue. Cuz what I'm seeing in terms of support from Chrome itself is go through and find the ones that are duplicates on your own. But no, we don't wanna do that. Obviously we'd like to, to have a way to, to do this. So there are some methods for using tools that can help you. One example is that you export your Chrome bookmarks and then you either import that into Google sheets or Excel, if you have it and then use a formula which you can look it up duplicate detection formula for Google sheets, just Google that or duplicate detection formula for Excel.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:40):
And it can help you find the, you know, repeat URLs or the repeat titles. I know though that, that doesn't go as far as you want in terms of finding ones that are super in depth that you know, that have issues or don't have issues. And there are a couple of different bookmark extensions that life hacker, for example recommended. Okay, there's one that's called super sort. And now that's funny. The first thing they say is careful with this one and it's not what you're thinking. It's not because there's something wrong with it. It's called super sorter because it is, or rather they, they give that, that warning because it is going to be your tool for managing your bookmarks and it immediately starts working. Once you let it says, once you let super sort of do the magic it starts to clean things up and tidy them and it will automatically delete duplicates.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:36):
It will empty bookmark folders that don't have anything in them. And it is a very powerful tool. So that's super sort, there's another one that's called spruce marks and spruce marks is a little bit, it, it doesn't take over it, it leaves you in charge, but it also can help you find those duplicates and those ones I think can be, you know, again, when you're looking through and trying to find ones that you want to make sure you can trust, I totally understand why you'd have that concern, but those, those two seem good. And of course we will include some links in the show notes, which you can find@techguylabs.com. And there are

Caller 1 (00:16:18):
Actually, that's great. Thank you so much for your help and have great rest of your show.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:21):
You as well. Thank you so much. All right. So that was our first call. Let us go to, ah, let's go to Kelvin. Who is calling in from San Diego? Hello Kelvin.

Caller 1 (00:16:40):
Hey Mikah. How are you doing man?

Mikah Sargent (00:16:41):
Oh, I'm doing well. How are you today?

Caller 1 (00:16:44):
Good. It's the best day of my life yesterday. I'm not here no more. <Laugh> mom's not here yet. It's the best day of today.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:52):
Yeah, absolutely. And what is it that you say about your name? It's there, there are no zeros. I can't remember how it goes. There's

Caller 1 (00:16:57):
No negative in the Greek hell. That's

Mikah Sargent (00:16:59):
Right. There's

Caller 1 (00:16:59):
No, there's no negative here.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:01):
I love that. I love that. <Laugh> ah, how you doing Calvin? I

Caller 1 (00:17:05):
Have a go

Mikah Sargent (00:17:06):
Ahead. I was just asking how you're doing.

Caller 1 (00:17:09):
I'm doing alright. Doing alright. Been one of the big order that came in and trying to get that out and getting ready for this tonight. I'm gonna be interviewed on the radio tonight.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:21):
Oh, fantastic.

Caller 1 (00:17:22):
Why I'm calling in to see like how, how does this work and, and do I sound good because I have you plugged into my mixer. I'm using my podcast, Mike and into my phone. Well only issue I have is that there's a lag between you and I. Okay. So it's causing so any, any ideas?

Mikah Sargent (00:17:44):
Hmm. So what you're saying is in the phone, when you are monitoring yourself with your headphones or whatever you happen to have where is the lag coming in? What, how does it like, how, how can you tell that there's a lag rather?

Caller 1 (00:17:59):
Well, I, I think this is the first time where I've used a mic, like a microphone like a actual podcast microphone. Got it into a phone. And you know how, when you're talking to the microphone, you can hear yourself in the headset. Yes. And so I can hear myself, but you're not louder than myself. So I, I think I had to turn my speaker system down. What you say?

Mikah Sargent (00:18:22):
That would be a good idea. I think too. If you're using, are you, are you plugging directly into the phone or are you going through a mixer? And then the mix of mix, the phone mix. Okay. That's good. Yeah. Mixer. Yeah. So you want the headphones plugged into the mixer. You want the microphone plugged into the mixer and then the phone of course is also part of that process, as long as everything's going from your end out, then you know, that it's working. But you know, I'm, I'm not sure about the lag per se. But we are coming up to a break that we need to take mic Sargent in for Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy, more questions soon after Scott Wilkinson stay on the line. Kel. All right, Kelvin. So you mentioned speakers. I, I, I missed that part. So are you listening through speakers or are you listening through headphones?

Caller 1 (00:19:32):
No, I'm, I'm using my both headphones. So I have 'em plugged into cuz they fit right really nicely on my hearing aids and I can get 'em right into the microphone on my hearing aids. And so I have them plugged into my mixer and then I have the microphone plugged in the mixer and then the iPhone is plugged into the channel three, which is the TT R

Mikah Sargent (00:19:58):
Oh gotcha.

Caller 1 (00:19:59):
Or, yeah, so I was like better be wired rather than Bluetooth. Cause I found that that's even worse, but I think what I think I figured it out. I turned down my, my volume to the headset and then turned you up so I could hear you better. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so my question is, do I sound okay to you?

Mikah Sargent (00:20:22):
Yeah. You sound great to me. And of course you are, you are going in through a call. So a call is always going to be compressed. No matter, no matter what. And of course, depending on the technology that you're using, if you are using one of those services that is doing voiceover IP of course is gonna be a little bit better a VO call. But yeah, as long as you're calling in on a, you know, a line like that, it's gonna be a little bit compressed, but yeah, you sound good. I think the only thing that I notice is there's a little bit of noise cancellation gating that takes place as you are talking and stop talking. But I think if you're having a regular conversation, that's back and forth, that's not gonna be something they're gonna pick up on.

Caller 1 (00:21:00):
Okay. Okay. All right. So I good to know anything, cause I tell you, I don't want call and get into the radio and me and mid any of you of this show and be like, oh no. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:21:13):
Yeah, I totally understand. No, I think you sound great. I think I think it's gonna, it's gonna go well and Kel break a lake today. Congratulations on your radio interview.

Caller 1 (00:21:23):
Yes. Awesome man. I really appreciate it. And you're doing a great job. I I'm excited that you're here. Oh, thank you so much. I'm getting the opportunity to do this. Cause experience always comes was more strength. So

Mikah Sargent (00:21:33):
Thank you so much, Kelvin. Thank

Caller 1 (00:21:35):
You. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so all right. You have a good one,

Mikah Sargent (00:21:37):
Man. You as well byebye.

Caller 1 (00:21:39):
All right. All

Mikah Sargent (00:21:45):
Hello, Scotty.

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:47):
Hello Mikah. How you doing

Mikah Sargent (00:21:49):
Man? Ooh, I'm alright. I'm alright. I it's going okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:21:53):
<Laugh> first time. First time on the big ball. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:21:56):
First time. Exactly. First time on the big ball and you know, moving all the, the sliders and making sure everything's getting covered. So

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:04):
I, I gotta tell you, I, I was so excited. It's among the most fun I've ever had when, when I subbed for Leo.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:12):
Do oh yeah. Have you, have you done radio outside of outside of that?

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:17):
Not very much, no, but way back when, when he was in the cottage mm-hmm <affirmative> he would take a vacation and he actually asked me to sub for him and I did it. I don't know a dozen times since then. Nice. And it's so much fun. It's very exciting. You, you, I will tell you this, the time will fly so fast.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:41):
I was gonna say, I've already noticing that. Yeah. It's it's like, wait, you're already this far into it.

Scott Wilkinson (00:22:46):
Yep. Yep. It's gonna just zip on by really fast.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:50):
That is one of the things I love is I, you know, I used to work in a, a newsroom and we would have breaking news happen and the newsroom energy just changes in those moments. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> this has that sort of feel of having all these different parts and pieces that need to get adjusted and moved around, which I, I very much enjoy.

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:09):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you're doing a great job, man.

Mikah Sargent (00:23:11):
Thank you. That's very kind, really

Scott Wilkinson (00:23:13):
Great. Really great.

Mikah Sargent (00:23:15):
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Mikah Sargent (00:25:08):
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Mikah Sargent (00:26:10):
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Scott Wilkinson (00:27:04):
Hey Mikah. Welcome to the big, the big ball.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:08):
<Laugh> thank you so much. Yeah, it's it's been a blast thus far and as, as we were talking about a little bit before the show it's just zooming right on by, so mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I'm trying to take it all in that's for sure.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:19):
Please do. Yes. Yes. Experience bring it all in it's it's a wonderful experience. I, I value my opportunity to do that when Leo was out and now you get to do it and I'm so happy for

Mikah Sargent (00:27:30):
You. Thank you so much, Scott. So it looks like you've been kind of busy over on AVS forum.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:36):
I have, I have, I last week we did our latest podcast this time with Andrew Jones who long time listeners will recognize as one of the world's preeminent speaker designers. He worked for a bunch of companies starting with KEF in England and then infinity pioneer, T a D and ELAC most, most recently, although he recently moved from there to mofi, which is short for mobile fidelity. And you go, wait a second. Mobile fidelity is a record label. They make audio file LPs. So what is a speaker designer doing it at a, at a record label? Well, they happen to have an electronics division and they make turntables of course, because they also make vinyl records. So they decided they wanted to make some speakers too. And so they hired Andrew Jones to help them develop their speaker business.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:43):
Now, we couldn't really talk about the speakers that he's making, cuz they haven't been revealed yet. And it's kind of under wrap. So we didn't talk about that. But what we did talk about was his general philosophy of speaker design. And one of the things that, that I found very interesting is that he really likes what are called concentric drivers. And what that means is you put a, a tweeter at the center of a midrange driver. And what that does is it allows a wider range of frequencies to come from the same location oh, in the speaker, which, which gives it a, a character and an advantage really over multi driver speakers, which most are that have the, the tweeter in one place and the mid-range in another place. And that causes some problems and the, with the coincident driver fixes. So it was a fascinating discussion.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:43):
Andrew's a great guy. I've, I've known him for many years and he's, he's done very interesting things all the way from a hundred thousand dollars repair speakers cost, no object. He could do anything. He wanted down to a hundred dollars repair speakers at pioneer. And he was, he became very famous for ringing an amazing sound out of a hundred dollars pair speakers from pioneer. So it's a fascinating discussion and I encourage people to go check it out cuz he's, he's a very interesting guy. It's got a lot of cool things to say. So that's up there on AVS forum.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:22):
Yeah. I'm kind of curious now to hear about cuz I would think I, I would immediately wonder if putting a tweeter in the middle of the, of the other type of speaker would result in distortion or something like that, where you get two different sound waves competing.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:36):
Yep, yep. And he talks about that. Cool. He absolutely does that. How, how to solve that problem. Awesome. cuz it is a problem. So yeah. Check it out. The other thing on AVS forum that I just posted yesterday is I've now started to do a monthly feature on AVS forum called home theater of the month. As you can imagine, AVS forum, which is a community of audio, video enthusiasts. A lot of them build their own home theater and some of them go to great lengths. And so we like to feature some of these home theaters that, that people have spent so much time and so much money on. And I'm really happy to be back doing that because I really find the, the process fascinating and how these people solve various problems. Really, really interesting. So David McKay is the owner of this particular theater.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:40):
He waited 25 years before he could afford to build a home theater as he was building his, his forever home in Florida. He he's a stock trader stock and bond trader and he made enough money to move to Florida and build a whole home and build a whole home theater. And he, he really did a great job. It's, it's a beautiful theater with surround speakers and overhead speakers. So it's an Atmos system you know, this immersive audio that I'm sure you've heard me talk about before and with a, with a really nice projector JVC projector under 138 inch screen, which as most of these theaters are, is a acoustically transparent screen with the speakers and the subwoofers behind the screen, as it is in a commercial cinema. Now this theater was not cheap <laugh> I asked him how much it was to, to actually build it and equip it with all the equipment that's in there.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:47):
He said, well, it's, I'm not really sure cause it was all wrapped into building the whole house. But he figured maybe $125,000. So not all of my home theater, the months are going to be, you know, that super expensive because who can very few people can afford that relatively. He can cuz he's he worked for 25 years to specifically to be able to afford that. So there will be others that I will feature that are still great, but that like people built themselves with their own hands mm-hmm <affirmative> in this case, he, he contracted out most of the work.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:22):
Oh I was wondering cuz this is very intense stuff. I mean yeah. Adding in insulation and drywalling and going all in with the wiring and everything. It's

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:32):
Gorgeous. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's gorgeous. It's a beautiful, beautiful theater. And you know, he, he, like I said, he contracted most of it out. You could do it for less if you, you know, if you do it yourself now, the, the coolest part of this theater, I mean, one of the coolest parts he's got the ceiling, right. Did you see that? We just got, oh my gosh, it's a two layer ceiling. It, I mean, it's one layer, but when the lights are on in the room, it looks like a blue sky with puffy white clouds. Really, really nice, but you turn the lights out and it becomes a starry night sky. It's like what

Mikah Sargent (00:34:13):
That is. And they're so amazing. The idea that when the lights are not on like during the day, it can charge with the UV lights that, that he has set up. Right. That's so smart.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:23):
Right? The, the stars in the starry night version are, are painted with phosphorous and paint wow. Or ascent paint so that they absorb light during the day or when the lights are on. And then when you turn the lights out, then they glow in the, you know, it's not distracting for a movie, but it's just a wonderful, wonderful ambience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The other really cool thing about this theater it's parked right in the middle of his garage, it's basically a room and a room within a room in his garage and he can drive his cars around it.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:58):
Yeah. I saw the the, the little layout guides. I can't think of what those are called, but where it shows the cars can be kind of anywhere around the outside of it. And that that room inside is, is right there. That's and that way too, it can be as loud as you want it to be kind of separated

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:14):
From the home. Exactly. So exactly. So, and he took a lot of care in making sure that the sound isolation was very good. So it, you know, you could be playing it at 120 decibels in there. I don't recommend that, but you could, and you would probably not hear anything outside the theater. Wow.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:33):
And what what kind of projector is inside of this

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:36):
To it's a JVC DLA RS 500 it's I don't know, a couple years old now. But it's a 4k projector. Oh. And I'm sure it looks fantastic.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:48):
I'm sure it does. Well, it's time to take a break, but thank you so much. Scott Wilkinson will be back right after this.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:54):
You bet. There its nice. I was a little early.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:16):
All

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:17):
Right. I remember when my job was fun.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:19):
<Laugh> like when you were writing about this cool theater.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:22):
Exactly. That was actually really fun.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:25):
Yeah. That's neat. That the projector, I guess, is that it up between the, these two speakers or whatever's going, is this say

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:35):
On a sec? Where, where am I? I'm on a zoom. Oh no. Yeah. Zoom. Yeah. You can see the projector up there near the roof. The two lighter panels on either side of it are acoustic panels. Ah,

Mikah Sargent (00:36:50):
So there, those are like acoustically transparent. There are speakers inside. Something like that.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:54):
No, no they're actually probably dead absorbers or confusers got it. Yeah. The, the surround speakers that you can, the next picture, you can see one of the rear surround speakers with its cover removed. If you scroll down just a little bit mm-hmm <affirmative> oh right there. You can. Yeah. There, you can see one of the rear surrounds right next to the wet bar. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:37:15):
Yeah. You wouldn't wanna be popping popcorn during the show. No,

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:19):
But no. So, but you got that lovely microwave there. You can pop up a bunch of popcorn. There's also a little Sub-Zero mini fridge in that, in that wet bar for all your cold

Mikah Sargent (00:37:31):
Beverages. That's really nice. That is very nice.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:34):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He did a great job. He

Mikah Sargent (00:37:36):
Really did. For

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:37):
Sure. I know I am too. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:37:39):
<Laugh>

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:41):
I just got a submission and by the way, if any of you out there have a, a true dedicated home theater, which is what this column's about, whether or not you built it yourself or had it built, paid to have it built you can send an email to HT of the month@avsforum.com and you know, say, Hey, I got a theater. I'd love for it to be considered, send me a few picks. I monitor that email and we are looking for submissions. We already have a bunch actually. I I'll probably be busy well into next year with these. But there was one that just came in as my kind of home theater, totally blacked out. I mean the whole room is just painted essentially black.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:29):
Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:30):
And that's my kind of home theater. I, I mean these, these ones with a lot of design and Rosewood or mahogany or whatever are very nice, but

Mikah Sargent (00:38:40):
Not your style or not what you style because you're wondering the best picture that you could possibly get. Right. And you exactly right. It's all black. Yeah. That makes

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:49):
Correct. Correct. And so that, that's what my home theater at, in my previous home in Burbank was, was about. And now that we have a new house we're moving to, we will, we will have sort of a dedicated theater, not a, not a complete room, but I do have a, an area that's, that's gonna be dedicated to home theater and I'm gonna paint at dark gray. You know, my wife has complete control over the entire house except my office and the, the, the viewing room, everything else, she can do whatever she wants, fine with me. But I'm gonna paint that area. What's called MUN cell gray. It's a, it's a very neutral gray. It has no hue to it. It's a specific paint color mm-hmm <affirmative> and that, and if, and a mat, not a glossy. So it absorbs light. It does not reflect much light at all the the room I had in Burbank, it was 9% reflective. Wow. When you turn, when you turn the lights out in there, it's a black hole.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:01):
All right. Which

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:02):
Is what you want.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:03):
Will you be sticking around for the top of the show? You bet. Yeah. Happy to thank you, Scott. And actually you might S ride for a second too, cuz there's a question that you might wanna help. Oh

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:10):
Yeah. Cool man.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:12):
Ah, hello and welcome back to The Tech Guy. You may be going, whose voice is that? Well, it's mic Sargent's voice. Who is Subin for Leo today. Leo Laporte is taking a cruise. And so I mic Sargent am tech guy also, as they say here to answer your calls live on the radio 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 88 88. Ask Leo. Our next call comes from Kenny in Cottontown, Tennessee who wants to know about, well let's find out. Hello, Kenny. Oh Mikah. There we go. There's Kenny. Hi Kenny. How are you?

Caller 2 (00:40:55):
Oh, I'm doing good. You know, it's a little bit of a sidebar. I saw you kind of jamming along with Adele on the live stream. I just got done listening to Adele. Go easy on me on Rick D's weekly, top 40 on a radio station online in Canada, which was actually one of my two questions, but the I'll go ahead and get started with the first one, which is the explain a 4k D blueberry disc on an external Blueray drive on the Mac studios. You know, I just bought me a Mac studio not too long ago. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and I can play regular Blueray disc just fine. It's not, that's not the problem. It's the 4k UDS. And I was calling to see if you kind of know if there's a way around it through a Mac. I know that with windows PC you can use like cyber link power, D V D as a matter of fact, I just downloaded the ultra HD Blueray advisor to see if maybe if I could play it through parallels on windows 11. And unfortunately I'm missing a lot of themes, including H B VC 10 AVC Kodak mm-hmm <affirmative> HD C P 2.2 advance protected GPU. And of course I have the optical disc drive, but I was just kind of calling to see if you knew any workarounds of playing, not regular Blueray, but 4k UHD Blueray on a Mac.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:21):
Yeah. So we still have Scott here and you know, our home theater geek knows quite a bit about this kind of thing. I I'm curious Scott the big thing here is, is there what's, what's the risk, I guess not risk per se, but what's the downside. If there is of playing this kind of content on a PC or a Mac versus playing it on you know, a big TV with the external hardware, is there any difference between the two?

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:49):
I, I, I wouldn't think so. I must admit I don't have a lot of experience with playing Blueray and ultra HD Blueray on a computer. My first question that came to mind was well, does, does that drive itself support ultra HD Blueray I don't know.

Caller 2 (00:43:08):
Well, I can tell you my external drive real quick is an Arcon premium aluminum, external USB 3.0, that's the one that I'm using. It's also a super drive.

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:20):
Okay. But does it, do you know, do the specs include that it can actually play a UHD Blueray

Caller 2 (00:43:31):
Let me, I can pull it up real quick. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:43:33):
It's 

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:34):
That's the question. Cause

Caller 2 (00:43:35):
You can read UHD it. It says it can read it, but it can, it won't be able to write it. That's the big, okay,

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:41):
Well that doesn't matter. You just wanna play a commercial UHD Blueray and if it says it can read it, then it can read it. So then the question becomes, how do you get it now? What are you watching it on? What's a

Caller 2 (00:43:55):
Display. Well, I'm watching it on an external monitor is basically what I'm what

Mikah Sargent (00:44:00):
Model

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:00):
4K monitor.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:01):
Yeah. Is it a 4k D monitor?

Caller 2 (00:44:04):
Yes.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:04):
Okay. Okay. So I'm seeing some, some folks who are saying that VLC might come into play here, VLC mm-hmm <affirmative> is a very popular app VLC, I think it's vlc.org. And essentially because it's open source, it has a lot of let me see video land project.

Scott Wilkinson (00:44:26):
Yeah, it's got a, it's got a lot of con contributors helping it along.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:31):
Yeah. Video land.org. And I, so I've used VLC for years. Anytime I have a problem with a file, that's a video file that I can't open on my computer. I will use VLC to, to get access to it. But what VLC is also good at is being able to kind of go around some of the built in confusion that might exist on the operating system to be able to play those files in the original way that they were intended to be played. So yeah, if you have a drive that truly can support the, you know, UHD play back, then you should be able to do this. There's no difference between a Mac, but I am gonna include a link in the show notes@techilabs.com from apple and apple has kind of a guide to go through to make sure that HDR content is playing correctly on your Mac. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> that everything's working out as you need it to, because it could just be a matter of, of settings. And honestly, this is one of those things where I'm sure Scott's very familiar with sometimes it comes down to the cable if it's HD. And that was my next question. Yeah. <Laugh> how are you plugging it in?

Caller 2 (00:45:36):
That might be, that might be another way that I may need to go and get me another cable. Cause I do have plenty of those flying around, but I do have one real quick question and I'll we can do one more the air G geo blocking in terms of Canada radio I, I mentioned I do listen to internet radio and I noticed that on tune in that some of the marque Canada radio stations, like say Virgin radio out of Calgary, have some sort of restriction on 'em where you can't play 'em unless there's a little trick there that's like a VPN mm-hmm <affirmative>, which kind of tricks or spoofs the location. Now mm-hmm <affirmative> I did read an article. This is probably going back to 2014, that it may have to do with music licensing. Is that the main reason why, like the big ones that are on, like, let's say a Rogers or a bell media that you can't listen to them on, let's say tune in or apple music.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:32):
I mean, this is that that's the problem is that all of these while on the front of it, it looks like you're just paying apple music subscription fee. And that apple music is handling all this. But what the real case is is that on the other side of this, there are lots of people in suits like mine and probably ones that cost a lot more <laugh> who are all making these deals happen. And these deals expire all the time and they change all the time. Yeah. And the regions change all the time and the moments, I mean, just the other day, I had a, a friend of mine who was, who tweeted and said, you can actually go into apple music on your Mac and you can create a playlist, a smart playlist, which is a playlist that automatically sorts that shows music that is no longer available because those deals have changed.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:16):
So honestly Kenny, I can't, I, I can't answer that question because I don't know what it is, but you are right on the track in terms of it is probably that it is probably some sort of region restriction. And honestly, that's one of the reasons why, when we've talked about VPNs on our network we've had, you know, sponsors express VPN. One of the things we talk about that is a benefit of a VPN is the ability to you know, up here in different places as you might need to, for whatever reason you might need to mm-hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> but can, thank

Caller 2 (00:47:52):
You. I thank you that for a Leo question, but thanks for taking my call. I really appreciate it. And I'll keep in mind on the VLC part of it. It may try that.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:00):
Yeah. Yeah. Let me know how VLC goes for you. That's at video land.org, video, land.org.

Caller 2 (00:48:08):
You having a good show.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:09):
Thank you so much. All right. It time for

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:32):
There. And there zonk, you know, that whole that whole region thing gets, gets me in Netflix and, and all this video streamers mm-hmm <affirmative> when stuff appears and then disappears

Mikah Sargent (00:48:46):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:47):
Yes. You know, be again, S the licensing deal

Mikah Sargent (00:48:50):
I had that happened right in the middle. I, one of the greatest shows on television is, in my opinion, is the Australian version of survivor survivor. That really reality TV show Australia has its own version. And it is so good. And my partner and I were watching it for a season, like two or three seasons. And I remember it was Valentine's day, and we were three quarters of the way through the final episode of the

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:19):
Season. Oh my God.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:20):
And literally in the middle of the episode, it turned to be what it turned to be like 6:00 PM. And the thing popped up and it said this video is not available. And I thought, I, of course, you know, immediately went to processing and I'm like, this is not this is not an internet issue because this was right at a specific time. I bet this is, and then I went on Twitter and started to see people complaining about it. And then I reached out to the support and they're like, yeah, we don't have the rights to this anymore. And I'm like, you

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:46):
Can't do it in the middle of an episode. Yeah. It's like what? I hate that I really, really hate that. And there's nothing we can do about it.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:55):
Nope. It's not fair because

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:57):
It's, it's it's yeah. It's not fair.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:59):
Especially with this, the show, like, like I said, let me at least finish the episode. I feel like that should be in the contract. That if someone's in the middle of it, yeah. They've already downloaded it to the buffer on their set top box. Let them finish the episode.

Scott Wilkinson (00:50:13):
Yeah. For God's sake. So frustrating. Oh man.

Mikah Sargent (00:50:18):
All right. If I've got my chart, correct. This is your this is your time, right?

Scott Wilkinson (00:50:22):
This is my top of the hour.

Mikah Sargent (00:50:24):
Yay. All right. Well, I will, you

Scott Wilkinson (00:50:26):
Get to, you get to take a break. I get to go get some coffee. I will pull up, go get some clock for you. And then it's all. Okay. Oh, thank you. That's very nice having that clock is so helpful. Yes it is. And you, you have it in your view, right. While you're, while you're I do doing your thing. Good. Yeah. That's really, when I was in your chair, that was super helpful to know how much time I had left. Cuz otherwise you don't, you lose track of time. You're just talking to somebody on the phone and you're having a good time. And all of a sudden you hear the music come up and you're in the middle of a thought and you go, oh, okay. <Laugh> exactly so good. We'll go get some coffee, man. Thank you very much. All right. Hey everybody.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:06):
So nice to see you. I think Mike is doing a fantastic job here and let's see, Tim Elliott, have you heard the latest from mobile fidelity? People are up in arms that they've been mastering vinyl from digital sources? No, I hadn't heard that. Although I, I have heard that in general that, that, that is often the case and it may be unavoidable because a, there aren't very many people recording audio in analog anymore. There are a few but not many. So, and even if they did, they, they end up mastering to digital. Now a company like mobile fidelity, I would think would stay in the analog domain all the way across because they, they, they know they're gonna end up on vinyl, which is an analog format. And so if they're recording from, if they're recording the music in the studio, I would expect them to record on analog, keep it in analog through the mastering process, mixing and mastering process, and then cut the vinyl in in the final stage.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:23):
I, now that I have a connection into mobile fidelity <laugh> with Andrew Jones. He's not with the record label he's with Mo mofi electronics, but I'm sure he can get me into contact with somebody at the record label. One of the things he said in the PO in my podcast that I didn't mention on the air is that mobile fidelity just opened a vinyl pressing plant. I don't remember where it is, it's in the us somewhere. And that's great news because there was a big vinyl pressing plant in LA that burned down a couple of years ago. I think it was called Apollo which left only a, like one or two pressing plants in the world. One of them was in Japan. So now mobile fidelity has its own pressing plan. And so, you know, that actually I just had this idea of maybe getting somebody from mobile fidelity in, on the record, on the record label side to come on and be on my podcast.

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:27):
And I could ask him this very question. Now I don't wanna be too confrontational about it, but it it's a valid concern. On the other hand, I will say playing devil's advocate that even if you have a digital source, when you convert it to analog to actually cut the record, cut the vinyl there are things you can do to restore analog warmth, which is really what people want. Now it's, <laugh> ironically it's less accurate. Digital is extremely accurate and analog is less so, but people like it, so okay. If people like it, then they should be able to buy it. Right. And so there are ways to go from digital to analog in such a way that you add back in that <inaudible> that analog warmth which is actually believe it or not a type of distortion. But it's a good type of distortion. It's a pleasant type of distortion.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:50):
So I, I, I will look into that though, as you cuz that's a very good question. Let's see, Richard DC, I got one more triple driver ear in ear headphones on for about 50 bucks on Amazon prime day. Is that a good deal? You bet it is. Wow. That's a great deal. I think the triple drivers last time I checked the list price was might have been 80 or a hundred bucks, something like that, but they are by bar none. My favorite one more wired headphones in your headphones. And that's saying a lot. I did a on tech hive. I did a comparative review of the dual driver, triple driver and quad driver, one more headphones. And I liked the triple drivers the best I gave them a five out of five. So you, you got some great, great in your headphones there they're, they're phenomenal.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:50):
They're just so good. And 50 bucks. Geez. That's that is a good deal. You, you did get there, bud. Let's see. Is it come, do you know about the Panton color system? Yes, indeed. I do. Panton colors are a standardized set of colors that you can get a chip chart. You know, one of those things that you can fan out and it gives you all these different colors. There's hundreds of 'em maybe thousands. What I was talking about earlier was a slightly different, not Pantone but it's called boy, I just used the word a minute ago and now I'm having a senior moment MUN cell. They do a similar chip chart, but with shades of gray and that's what I'm gonna be using to paint my room.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:53):
Yes, our Chandra, those of you who, who know I've moved to Santa Cruz, my wife and I moved to Santa Cruz, California. We're loving it here. Everybody greets everybody else with another day in paradise. <Laugh> so we're and we agree it's a wonderful place. And we found a house we've been renting, but we found a house escrow closes next week. Ooh, very exciting. Now we have some remodeling to do so we're not gonna move in right away. But we got, we got it for a price that will allow us to do that remodeling Tedy ideas for, for my own AV cave. Yeah. Well, I've mentioned that before. It's painting the entire thing, a Mon cell gray dark Mon cell gray, ideally black. But that could get a little disorienting, so I I'm happy with 9% reflectivity. And that way the, all the attention is on the picture on the screen, which is exactly what I want redacted. Yep. We did find a new home. We're real happy about it. It's very, it's exactly in the location we want. It's very close to our friends and that's it.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:08):
Scott Wilkinson. Thank you so much for being here.

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:10):
My pleasure, Mikah, have a great time.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:12):
Thank you so much.

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:14):
All right. See you later.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:16):
Well, hello, friends. And welcome back to The Tech Guy for hour two. I am your host today. Mikah Sargent subbing in for Leo LePort who is on a car. I am here to answer your tech questions. If you've got them, you send them to 8 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 that's 88 88. Ask Leo and Mikah where you will hopefully get your question answered on the air. With that it is time to kick things off with the next round of questions. And our first one comes from, let's go with Thomas in Carlsbad, California

Caller 3 (00:59:00):
Taking my

Mikah Sargent (00:59:00):
Call. There we go. There's Thomas. Sorry about that. Could you, could you repeat yourself?

Caller 3 (00:59:06):
Excuse me.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:07):
Are you there? There, are you okay? I can hear you now. <Laugh> sorry about that. How are you doing Thomas?

Caller 3 (00:59:13):
Very good. Thanks for taking my call.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:15):
Yeah. Happy to have you here. So what can I help you with?

Caller 3 (00:59:18):
So I am on the wink. I am using the wink hub and they've had an outage since July 1st. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, I'm using, I'm using Z wave sensors throughout the house. I'm looking for another hub to replace that. And do you have any recommendations and are you at all familiar with the wink?

Mikah Sargent (00:59:37):
Yeah, so I actually, I have a win hub as well. I was a big fan of wink in the beginning and I, I understand why you have one because the promise of having this one device, this smart home hub that had all the different kinds of basically languages that these devices used to communicate with one another and with your router. And so the promise of wink was that it would be there to provide a way to control all of the devices in your home. Be it Z wave zigb, Bluetooth, wifi, all the different things. And so a lot of people hopped on board. Well then wink went along and said, you know what? This is just like, we were talking about BMW at the start of the show. Wink realized that they wanted to make money. They needed rather to make money over time, instead of being a device that you could have at the very beginning and you just pay for it once and you're done.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:32):
And that is where wink started to charge a subscription service. And then shortly after that all but stopped working. And as you said since July, you've not been able to do it very familiar with wink and that system. And this is the problem there. Haven't been a whole lot of people to come in and fill that space because it's, it's, it's one of those things where no one is finding a way to be able to do it with financial certainty. And so what you end up having to do is find some sort of device that already offers Z-Wave integration. And there are a few, there are a few third party devices out there that will do it, but I haven't heard good things about any of them. Thomas, I don't know if you have have you looked into, you know, are there are a few brands that you've thought about going after, because even, you know, I was thinking about Amazon's echo devices that have built in hubs, but those work with Zigby, those don't work with Z wave Z wave is one of those technologies that that is was a, was more popular among builders.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:54):
The folks who create the houses rather than the folks who then buy afterwards the devices that will actually you know, go into their home. But yeah I know this is, this is probably not the answer that you wanted but I have not heard of hubs, modern hubs that have the technology that you're looking after that I've heard good things about that's the big thing. There are some in the maker space, meaning these are little chips that you can install as part of like a raspberry pie setup, a little computer setup but there aren't a whole lot that I'm seeing that are kind of set and forget that I have heard good things about because Z wave is kind of slowly but surely trickling out. It is, it is one of the older technologies that's available.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:50):
I am seeing a few folks recommend what's called the homey. This is H O M E Y the homey pro and it is a Z wave hub and says it'll, you know, control stuff from your Android device or your iPhone. It has ZigBee, it has Z wave. It has wifi, it has Bluetooth. It also offers infrared connectivity so that you can, you know, control a, a fan or other light switch or whatever it might be that, that uses in front technology. But I gotta say, Thomas, my concern for you is that you go with homey and then homey closes down and then what do you do? You're, you're sort of stuck at the, at the start of it again.

Caller 3 (01:03:35):
Yeah, understood. I've been looking at hub habitats, smart things and and nothing seems as simplistic as the as the wink hub mm-hmm <affirmative> and that's,

Mikah Sargent (01:03:47):
That's, that's the biggest bummer, right? I mean, that, that's, what's really upsetting to me. I think one thing that you can that we can kind of hope for is that at the end of this year, we're going to see the introduction of a new take on smart homes with what's called matter and matter is supposed to be the, be all end all solution to the, the smart home, this thing where finally all of our devices will communicate with one another. And the good thing about it is it's built on protocols that are built into a lot of different devices that we already have. And so there is a chance that whatever Z-Wave devices you have in your home will work with matter through the DNCE through the different devices that you have, in which case you may be able to sort of move things forward and step outside of having to have that specific hub.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:34):
But in the meantime I did just see an article from the verge pop up in our chat room, all included in the show notes at tech guy labs.com, where wink is saying, we may be down, but we're not out just yet. Again, can't really count on that though. Right? Cause that's what they said before. And they still, they still ended up not working. I wish, I wish I had a better answer for you there, but it just seems like Z-Wave is, is kind of one of the, the technologies that I don't see a lot of manufacturers supporting at this time. It's ZigBee, Bluetooth, wifi, and thread can cover the big protocols. Unfortunately,

Caller 3 (01:05:14):
Thank you for your time, Mike. I appreciate the

Mikah Sargent (01:05:16):
Input. Thank you, Thomas. And good luck with that. All right. Let's see. Our next call comes from Larry in Manhattan beach, California. Hello, Larry.

Caller 4 (01:05:30):
Hey, hi. Congratulations on your first day at work.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:34):
Ah, <laugh> thank you so much, Larry. I appreciate that. I am, I'm enjoying it so

Caller 4 (01:05:37):
Far job. You're doing a great job. So I'm a recovering windows user.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:43):
Oh, congratulations on making that change

Caller 4 (01:05:46):
So well. So I, I, I, I work for a, a, a company that's a, a tech reseller. I won a couple of MacBook and my old windows laptop died. And so I'm struggling my way through the apple world. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I keep getting these messages from iCloud that my iCloud is getting full and I, I don't know how to do it. I don't really want to use iCloud for storing all my routine stuff. All my documents are in, you know, all, all the documents that I use. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> are in a Google drive. My primary email is a private email provider on EarthLink that I pay for. And my, all my photos are backed up in Google photos and I'm afraid to, I, I don't know how to, how to sort of turn off the syncing to iCloud and get rid of the storage that's there. And I'm afraid it's gonna, it's gonna sink back to my device and delete everything I have. And, and so <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:06:45):
Well, okay, you're

Caller 4 (01:06:46):
The Mac guys. So this is a really appropriate call for you.

Mikah Sargent (01:06:49):
Yes, it is. And I will be happy to help you. We're gonna have to do it off air, but for folks who are out there asking as well don't worry, we'll include a link in the show notes that has a bunch of information about iCloud and kind of how you can do things that are specific to your Mac. So yes, please stay tuned. Larry. I will help you off the air, but we will take a quick break here. Mic Sargent in for Leo LePort The Tech Guy more calls after this.

Mikah Sargent (01:07:23):
Yeah. So I understand your concern. You don't want to turn off iCloud in a certain way. That's going to result in you not being able to get your, you know, keep your photos or whatever it happens to be. So the good news is the Mac has its own kind of separate settings. And what it sounds like is happening is the Mac is pretty <laugh> Mac has itself is pretty forward about trying to make sure that you are syncing all of your stuff and that you are sort of keeping things in the cloud and that you're not keeping them locally, that kind of thing. So there are a few settings that the Mac might be using that are causing that issue and the best, the, the quickest thing you can do to kind of see what's going on is you click the apple logo at the top of the screen and you choose about this Mac.

Mikah Sargent (01:08:15):
And then when that pops up, there are, there are some tabs up at the top overview displays, storage support, and resources under storage. You click on that and then it's gonna take a while to load the storage space that's there on the screen. And when it does once it does, then it's gonna give you some suggestions for ways to manage your storage better. And I'm guessing that Mac O S has kind of moved. You shifted you into using a lot of those storage saving mechanisms where it will store your iCloud photo library online. It will, here we go. So the recommendations include store and iCloud, which is when yeah, I see that. Yeah, you store your documents and things like that. You would want that to be turned off as opposed to being turned on, especially since you use Google drive as your kind of storage solution optimized storage, that one's a way to kind of remove photos.

Mikah Sargent (01:09:13):
And I mean, rather videos and TV shows and stuff that are there. That's not one you really need to worry about. In fact, the other two are not the issue. It's that store and iCloud thing. That's the big deal where it could be uploading those photos. Well, rather your files in general to the cloud. And if it isn't that then there's also the chance that your photos library is being stored in iCloud. And the thing is if you didn't have those storage issues before, do you have an iPhone or, or an Android phone?

Caller 4 (01:09:47):
No, I don't. So I have an Android phone. I've got a, a windows PC that I used to work and I've got an iPad and a MacBook air and a MacBook pro.

Mikah Sargent (01:09:57):
Okay. And on your iPad, have you taken photos on that in the past or video?

Caller 4 (01:10:01):
No.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:02):
Okay. So yeah, you should not have any issue with this storage space. The only other thing I can think of is iCloud backups, where your iPad is being backed up to the cloud so that you would be able to re you know, get, get stuff from there. That's something that you would need to do on your, that you find out on your iPad in your iPad settings you launch the settings app, you tap on your name at the top of the settings app, and then you choose iCloud. And from there, you will see an option that says iCloud backup. And if that is turned on, then it's possible <laugh> that, that is what's clogging up your storage space. But frankly, I think that it is a good idea. If you don't have an iPad backup anywhere else, it is a good idea to be backing up your iPad somewhere so that if you need access to that, that you can, but that might be, what's taken up the storage space there.

Caller 4 (01:11:01):
Okay. So I'm looking at I guess we're running outta time here, but I'm looking at on, on the, on the MacBook air it's backing up desktops and documents, photos, and, ah, not sure where it would get photos from because

Mikah Sargent (01:11:16):
You don't have any.

Caller 4 (01:11:17):
Yeah, cuz I only take photos with my Android and they, they automatically back up to, to Google photos.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:25):
Yeah. Well I, I gotta, I gotta let you go, but I go to tech guy labs.com and I'll have some support documents that can help walk you through how to turn that off so that you don't have that staying

Caller 4 (01:11:34):
There. Okay. Thank you so much. And congratulations again. Thank

Mikah Sargent (01:11:37):
You so much. You have a good day. You're

Caller 4 (01:11:38):
Welcome. Okay, bye.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:40):
All right. Let's take a quick break. So I can tell you about our sponsor, Cisco Meraki. I love that name. Cisco Meraki, Cisco Mara. These are the experts in cloud- networking for hybrid work. Everybody's doing it. So you might as well make sure you're doing it right. Whether your employees are working from home. They're working at a cabin in the mountains or on a lounge chair at the beach or on an exercise ball in the middle of a studio. A cloud managed network provides the same exceptional work experience, no matter where they are. You may as well roll out the welcome mats because folks hybrid work it's here to stay hybrid. Work works best in the cloud and has its perks for both employees and leaders. Workers can move faster and deliver better results with a cloud managed network while leaders can automate distributed operations, build more sustainable workspaces and proactively protect the network.

Mikah Sargent (01:12:32):
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Mikah Sargent (01:13:39):
Even when the device and employee are in a remote location. Turn any space into a place of productivity and empower your organization with the same exceptional experience, no matter where they work with Meraki and the Cisco suite of technology, learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work, visit mara.cisco.com/twi Meraki, cisco.com/twi. Thanks so much to Mara for sponsoring this week's episode of The Tech Guy. Let's get back to it. Ah, you just, you get me professor Laura professor Laura just gets me. Music is wonderful. Hey folks, I am Mike a Sargent and I am in today for Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy, I'm the other tech guy, tech guy, too tech guy also we've we've done a bunch of different names. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536. Where you call in with your tech questions. Joining us now for a tech question is Gary from Costa Mesa, California. Hello, Gary. Gary, are you there? Oh, I pressed the button. Oh, for some reason I pressed the button and it didn't take now you're there Gary. Hi Gary.

Caller 5 (01:15:05):
Oh, you're calling Gary and Costa Mesa.

Mikah Sargent (01:15:08):
I am calling Gary now calling Gary in Costa Mesa, California. Hello, Gary.

Caller 5 (01:15:12):
Okay. Well with the delay there, I missed wish Gary. All right, great. I was just one angel there that following up with your discussion with Scott about the coaxial speakers Uhhuh in 1950, my dad bought the latest HiFi audio equipment available then, and it was a craftsman craftsman radio and, and separate amplifier and a TV all as a chassis was gonna build a cabinet around him someday, but never did anyhow that had a university brand speaker. That was a coaxial like we were talking about. And I'm pretty sure the range of it was from the lowest possible base to the highest

Mikah Sargent (01:16:02):
Wow.

Caller 5 (01:16:03):
High at that time. So that's 1950. So this one that Scott was talking about, this designer that Scott was talking about is was maybe not even born then <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:16:17):
Yeah,

Caller 5 (01:16:18):
Barely. And so that's ideas been around for a long time and I was telling her too, and I got your address that I think I still have the instruction, sheets, installation, drawings, wiring diagrams. So could diagrams and all for those, for that equipment. And I'm just trying to find the best place to, to get rid of it. Not throw it away when I die. So I got her address your address.

Mikah Sargent (01:16:47):
Oh, good. Well, yeah, we, I, I know that Leo will be a very good steward of, of those documents and probably end up in the, the history cabinet back here.

Caller 5 (01:16:57):
I've offered things to him before and he says, oh, I'm so full of stuff. <Laugh> I really can't take so much, but I'm sure he'll like this.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:05):
I was gonna say, don't worry, we'll find a bookshelf where it can be on display.

Caller 5 (01:17:09):
No that you being his sidekick and you can scroll it away somewhere.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:12):
Absolutely. I'm happy to, I'm honored to, in fact, I appreciate that.

Caller 5 (01:17:17):
All right. So I know he is interested in cars too, so I have a lot of car information to send in as well.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:23):
Sounds good. Sounds good. Well, Gary, thank you.

Caller 5 (01:17:26):
Okay. You're welcome right now. I don't have any tech questions, but I do listen to you guys all the time. So I come up to date, but to me, all of these things you guys talk about are modern inconveniences and they're more trouble

Mikah Sargent (01:17:39):
Than the worth.

Caller 5 (01:17:40):
I try to not use them.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:41):
<Laugh> I don't, you know what? This is the thing about working in tech for so long is that when you find somebody who says that it's a very refreshing take and it's one that I, I have to say, I don't blame you because we spend, I mean, I have a job because people struggle with their technology. So clearly it is such a frustration and that there are so many things that can go wrong. And so I don't blame you for doing your best to avoid it as much as you possibly can, until you do end up needing it for whatever it happens to be. In which case that's why we're

Caller 5 (01:18:12):
Here. No, the, yeah, Neil refers to that sometimes is, is the nuisance of trouble. The things that don't work. Right. And my analysis of why that is, is that computer engineers are wonderfully capable at designing things. That'll do all kinds of unusual, impossible things on the computer, but they're not mechanical engineers and they're not ergonomic engineers. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> that they design, it's hard to use, difficult to hang onto, easy to lose. <Laugh> hard to use and easy to lose. How about that?

Mikah Sargent (01:18:48):
That I like that. I'm gonna write that down. <Laugh> yeah. Hard to use and easy to lose.

Caller 5 (01:18:53):
Yeah. And so they need to get these big companies that are selling these things and treating us customers as Guinea pigs. Mm-Hmm

Mikah Sargent (01:19:02):
<Affirmative> absolutely. Yeah. That's a big thing where you've got different companies that are basically giving out beta devices, having you purchase devices that are still in beta and have you used them and tell them how they work or don't work when really that should be something they do before it ever gets to us.

Caller 5 (01:19:17):
In the old days when us mechanical people design things, we try 'em and build 'em and build several prototypes and test them and use 'em ourselves. These guys, I think don't even use some of these things. They seem so awkward to use. Anyhow, that's my complaint. <Laugh> get air here.

Mikah Sargent (01:19:37):
Yes. Look, this is, this is a time to air your grievances if you have them. So I appreciate you for taking the time to do that and I will be on the lookout for your package as well, Gary, to make sure that gets added to the history documents. Thank you so much for calling in. Yeah.

Caller 5 (01:19:51):
One comment about your phone number there. Oh yeah. Is that you saying that it's 8 88 ask Leo, but there's one more digit in there.

Mikah Sargent (01:20:01):
It's 88, 88 ask Leo.

Caller 5 (01:20:04):
Yeah, but I had 88, 5 27. I had 88, 8, 5 27 here that I got somewhere and she didn't know where that came from and I didn't, but then I went to another phone that had numbers in it and it was 8 27, but somehow it's not, wasn't clear when you said it twice earlier before I called

Mikah Sargent (01:20:27):
Well, I will make sure that we will, we do a little pause between the 88 so that folks are aware 88, 88. Ask Leo. Thank you so much, Carrie. We appreciate it. All righty. Let's see. Who is next on the line? We've got Joe from Dalton, Georgia. Hello, Joe

Caller 6 (01:20:51):
Mikah. The blind phone man from Dalton, Georgia. Hi, have you in this afternoon?

Mikah Sargent (01:20:56):
<Laugh> oh, so good to be here. Thank you.

Caller 6 (01:20:59):
Hey, I got a weird thing that happened with me in windows 11. But I wanted to see if you'd ever run across this. I was doing a disc cleanup and I cuz I like to, to make sure that I got all the space cuz I have a, what is it? A service pro seven. It's only got a 1 28 to gig drive and it, it can fill up fast if one's not careful.

Mikah Sargent (01:21:23):
Okay. Okay.

Caller 6 (01:21:25):
So, but I had a really weird thing. Have you ever, you know how this cleanup, it says you can free up to this much space

Mikah Sargent (01:21:31):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative>

Caller 6 (01:21:33):
Well, you know, usually it's a reasonable number, you know, you can free up to 4.3 gigs or something like that because it, when you download a, a new window's installation it'll offer to let you get rid of the old ones, those stuff like that. Well, for some reason I put an insider build ISO on my system and I ran the thing and it said, when I ran disc cleanup, it says you can free up to 818 gigabytes

Mikah Sargent (01:21:58):
<Laugh> wow.

Caller 6 (01:22:02):
Huh. And it was, you know, I was like, I don't know what this is all about. And it claimed that this, and this is weird. This is an insider build. And it was a, it, a previous windows installation, 818 gigabytes. It was really strange cuz I don't have that much space. And then I got to thinking that was suspiciously, like the size of my files in one drive

Mikah Sargent (01:22:24):
Uhhuh. Okay.

Caller 6 (01:22:27):
But I went ahead and you know, I said, well, let me just click on the option and see what happens anyway. So nothing appeared to happen, but it was just a very strange thing. And I wonder if you'd ever run across that.

Mikah Sargent (01:22:39):
So I've got some thoughts, but we do need to take a quick break. This is The Tech Guy radio show, eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo to call and we will be back with your call shortly.

Mikah Sargent (01:22:56):
So it sounds to me like what happened is what had happened was the system, because it's so essentially when you created, whenever you, you know, got this ISO and you sort of ran this new bit of, of software, it is considering itself its own personal computer. If, if you can imagine it that it's it's, you know, it it's, it's now in charge. It is the captain now and it looks over to the left and it sees the install that you had before with your windows account, logged in with your drive, logged in with all that stuff going on. And it says, Ew, all that stuff over there. That's the, that's the old stuff. And I can get rid of all of that because now you've got this new system installed. So I think it was getting confused about what it thought was old versus what it thought was new. Because once you, you know, were trying to use this new system, then it looks at everything else that's already been there and says, Hey, we can get rid of that because you've wanted to update to the new new instead of have the old, old on there as well.

Caller 6 (01:24:01):
Yeah. Well I ran the, I mounted the ISO and ran the setup from the ISO, but I said get rid of everything. So, oh, it's kind of strange. You can Mount the ISO and then run setup from it and it does something and it, it does give you the option of erasing everything and it seemed to have done that. Although it did keep a couple of it did keep one of the third party drivers on there, but that's N you know, I actually wanted that. So I was okay with it, but,

Mikah Sargent (01:24:26):
Oh, I was gonna say so to confirm you wanted those to be erased, cuz if <laugh>, I would've been scared to hit that button

Caller 6 (01:24:31):
Even had a previous installation.

Mikah Sargent (01:24:33):
I see, I see

Caller 6 (01:24:35):
That's wild. Isn't it?

Mikah Sargent (01:24:36):
That very strange. And honestly, you know, I, I guess with the insider builds those on the, what is it? The insider track <laugh> as they used to be called now, what are they? The rings are the tracks now I don't remember, but I know that that, that can sometimes lead to some weirdness, but the fact that it was sort of grabbing from your cloud storage as well, looking at that as well, I think is the most wild part of it.

Caller 6 (01:25:00):
Yeah. That's the only thing. I, I mean, it's suspiciously close to the size of what's in there. That's <laugh> anyway, but I've succeeded in blowing windows Eleven's mind before. Cause I, because I backed up, I, I was able to use some Linux tools. I, I wish there was I don't know if the wind, if windows has anything similar to carbon copy clone, but I love those. What is it? Carbon copy clone. There's one more. That's similar to it. On the Mac now my mind's gone blank

Mikah Sargent (01:25:30):
Mind too. Oh, super duper.

Caller 6 (01:25:31):
Super duper. Yes. They're they're in some ways they're similar, but I love those utilities when I had 'em back. But anyway, I've used some Linux tools to image the hard drive. Oh, nice. Imaged. And I imaged it with windows 10 and then I imaged it with windows 11. And so I had been running the windows ten one for a while and I said, let me restore my windows 11 image that I have, that's already set up and everything. Oh goodness. They, they, it did not something about my settings, the identification settings or whatever it was, it complained about my authentication settings or something like that. And it kept wanting to look at my face and it said, oh, here you are. And then it said, no, I gotta look at your face again. Oh, here you are. No, I gotta look at your face again. Oh no. And it was in a funny, weird loop of some sort and God guessing that windows 11, because it was the same device, same serial number, I guess it, maybe it didn't like that, that it was all of a sudden it went from 10 to 11. I don't know if that's, ah,

Mikah Sargent (01:26:34):
Could be, could be.

Caller 6 (01:26:36):
I I've, I'm doing things probably that a lot of people don't think about doing every day. So,

Mikah Sargent (01:26:40):
Well, I'm glad that you're out there testing the system. You've we've gotta have people, you know, boots on the ground out there, making sure that windows is working, it's straight up fly. Right. As as my granddad was, want to say

Caller 6 (01:26:52):
<Laugh> yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yep. And being blind, it kind of adds some wrinkles into things cuz I'm using speech and stuff like that and right. So windows 11, you know, they've actually added some voices to narrator. Those really nice sounding ones that the, that they put on there.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:10):
Oh like AI ones

Caller 6 (01:27:12):
The aria I think is one of them. Nice. You, you get 'em an edge in office insider, but they put 'em in narrator. They'll only work with narrator, but they're kind of neat to listen to, if you wanna listen to something for a long time, they sound great.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:26):
All right. Well thank you for calling in and I hope that gets all ironed out, Joe, but appreciate you joining us.

Caller 6 (01:27:33):
Oh, nothing major. But anyway, I just thought I'd run it by you. Well, you have a good one and doing a great job.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:39):
Thank you so much. Bye-Bye

Caller 6 (01:27:41):
Bye.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:44):
Johnny jet is here, man. And so is mic Sargent. Hi Johnny. Oh, sorry. I forgot

Johnny Jet (01:27:52):
To you up

Mikah Sargent (01:27:53):
There you are.

Johnny Jet (01:27:54):
That's all right. I, I, I missed last week. I was flying all day.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:57):
Yeah, that's right.

Johnny Jet (01:27:59):
So I missed last week's segment and but I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm you've been doing a great job.

Mikah Sargent (01:28:05):
Oh, thank you. That's very kind. And you're back in your, your home studio.

Johnny Jet (01:28:09):
Oh, back home. After 49 days of traveling.

Mikah Sargent (01:28:12):
Wow. 49 days. My goodness. Yeah. Are you tired? Are you energized? How are you feeling?

Johnny Jet (01:28:17):
I, I was tired. Yeah. I traveling with two little kids and you know, we went to all different places and we, we got in, we pulled up to the house and I asked my son what the, his favorite part of the whole trip was. And he was like coming home. Aww.

Mikah Sargent (01:28:30):
Aw. And that's a good feeling, right?

Johnny Jet (01:28:32):
Yeah. I was happy, but I was surprised. I thought I was gonna say some, one of the fun parks we went to, but

Mikah Sargent (01:28:38):
Coming how anyway,

Johnny Jet (01:28:39):
It's out, you know, it's rough out there trying to travel. You know, it's not like it used to be, airports are a mess, especially in Canada and Europe, us too, but not as bad. But if there's bad weather, then there's, it's gonna be bad no matter where you are. So and last week I flew Toronto to Dallas, to LA because I have elite status on America and I get free check bags. My wife had to check four bags cuz she was moving out of her apartment. And yeah, I mean we had no problems. It was smooth travel. So it's really hit or miss whoever. So if you're going out, I really advise people to try and travel midweek to Tuesday, Wednesday or on a Saturday like we did. And you know, either depending on the airport show up early for Toronto, you actually don't want to show up early because oh, that that's when all the flights are going out, especially to the us and the lines are huge for immigration that's unless you have global entry or nexus, which I've talked about before with Leo nexus is for it's it's $50 for five years.

Johnny Jet (01:29:42):
It includes global entry and TSA pre-check. And what global global entry does is gets you to cut the line for immigrations when you ride back to the us and nexus is the same thing, but for Canada. So it really saves so much time. Literally we showed up to the airport two and a half hours early and we were too early because we have wow, but everyone in your party has to have these these memberships and you have to be approved. You have to, you have interviews, which is not easy to get these days, but once you do it, I just wrote a post by the way, I put it in the show notes or the chat room and I'll tweet it out on how to beat the madness at Toronto's Pearson international airport. And I, those are some of the tips, but also this is the time to try and upgrade or, or use your miles for first class BEC like I did because you, you know, the line to check in is so long, but first class there's no one there.

Mikah Sargent (01:30:34):
What do you say to, okay, so I, I wanna let's, let's talk to someone who's listening who is this is, they're finally at a place in their life where they can travel. They haven't been traveling before, but they can travel now. And so they don't have lots of points. They don't have, you know, all that kind of stuff. What's what's advice for new travelers or people who want to kind of become travelers like you where you spent 49 days somewhere else. What are your tips to those, those folks who maybe don't have the, the veteran experience as a work?

Johnny Jet (01:31:05):
Gotcha. Well, first of all, if you are, if you have good credit, get a credit card that gives you rewards as long as you can pay it off in full every month. I mean, there's no questions asked you have to pay it off. Otherwise, do not get an airline or hotel or any kind of travel rewards credit card, otherwise cuz they charge such a high APR. But if you can, it's a great way to subsidize your travel cuz they give you, you know, usually a huge bonus for signing up. This is in the us. Unfortunately, Canada doesn't have these and other parts of the world. The us is golden in terms of this way to redeem points or earn, earn points. You earn more points these days by credit cards spend or signing up for 'em than you do flying. Wow. Unlike the old days.

Johnny Jet (01:31:48):
And also, I mean, if you're trying to find cheap deals, you know, set a fair alert way in advance. I already booked my, my tickets for Christmas. I did that a month or two ago. So set a fair alert, find out what those Faires are for wherever you're going. And if you don't really care where you're going, then sign up to a newsletter like Scott's cheap flights because he finds some incredible deals. He does have a premium version. I think it's $49 a year, but there's also a free version. And if you see a really good deal, jump on it and you have 24 hours to act. If the flight is too or from the us or within the D O T makes it no matter which airline it is, you have 24 hours as long as it's seven days or later to act. So if you, you know, you find a really good deal, you book it and then you ask your travel companions.

Johnny Jet (01:32:32):
Hey, can you make it? They can't and cancel it with within 24 hours. And you're good to go. And American airlines, by the way, lets you put it on hold for free. You don't need to put a credit card down. The other ones do make you put a credit card down. So keep that in mind. And if you are traveling right now, I talked about it last week or not last week, couple weeks ago with Leo, try not to check bags because that's really one of the major problems right now is baggage. You I'm sure you've seen the horror photos from heat throw Amsterdam. I mean Iceland air is flying baggage handlers in on all their flights to Amsterdam, just so their, their customers make sure they get their bags, heat throw Delta this week, flew a plane from heat throw with no passengers, just a thousand bags back to Detroit to try and sort it out and get 'em back to their owners.

Johnny Jet (01:33:17):
Even though the people weren't it from Detroit. So that's how much of a mess it is right now. So try not to check bags. If you are gonna check a bag, drop an air tag in there they're, you know, they're $29 or $27 and I use mine. You know, it, it works. And I, and I know a lot of I've read a lot of stories where people are like, you know what? The airline says, my bag's not here, but I know it is cuz I can track it. So you just show it to the staff and then go look for it.

Mikah Sargent (01:33:42):
Do you think, how did that, how do you think they've they're feeling about that? Cause I've, I've seen that a lot too, is it? Cuz I think one of the things that you do really well is that you bring humanity to the folks who work on that side of things. And you've done that before where you say, let's not forget that these people are human too. And I think that people probably are like, oh they're on the other side. They're happy to lose the luggage. And so when they see that, that map of where the, but I would like to believe that they go, oh, it actually is here. Now we can find it.

Johnny Jet (01:34:11):
Definitely. I think they, I think they're happy for it. You know, you, no matter what you're in, what business you're in or what you're doing, where, where you're traveling always be kind. Honestly you have to be kind. If you're a jerk, they're not gonna do anything for you. But if you're kind, they'll go the extra step. And that's why I always bring chocolates on the plane. I bring 'em for the gate agents, the flight attendants and myself and and it really goes a long way cuz you just being polite and nice. But, and, and you know what I think if you, you know, tell the people nicely, say by the way I, I, I dropped an air tag in there and the bag is actually right behind you just turn around and they'll be like, okay,

Mikah Sargent (01:34:48):
<Laugh> yeah. Happy to, happy to see that. Well, that's good. That's good. Anything else you want to talk

Johnny Jet (01:34:54):
About? How much time we got?

Mikah Sargent (01:34:55):
We got two minutes. Oh good. So a little under two minutes. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:34:58):
My new favorite travel app, I was testing out this week. It's called flighty. The website's flighty app.com. It's only for iPhone, but it's five ninety nine a month or $49 a year. They do give you one tr one test for free. You don't need to put a credit card down, which I like, but if you're flying and you really want to know all the details you put in your flight information and it, they will to tell you, wow, they'll tell you when the flight path is loaded. They'll tell you when the gate is assigned, they'll tell you when pushback is and you can go really details. Like you know how much the time will be in the air, how much will be on the taxi on either, you know, departure or arrival?

Mikah Sargent (01:35:34):
How are they getting this information? It's out there somewhere.

Johnny Jet (01:35:37):
Yeah, it's out there and you know what? They tested it in beta for, with over a hundred pilots and crew members for a year and a half and then COVID hit and then they worked even harder on it. And I, I really love it. This is, but although it does give you a little of anxiety because I was watching you know, I was getting alert saying that my plane changed from an a three 19 to a actually from an a 3 21 to an a three 19, a three 20 one's much larger with 21st class seats when an a three 19 only has eight first class seats. Oh wow. And I book and I booked first class cuz I used my miles and points. My months ago I actually paid cheaper than people were paying for coach. I paid, I paid 20,000 miles for first class. I looked a week before the same seats, but in coach were 50,000 miles. First class was not available. Wow. So I thought, man, they put, they changed the plane, the aircraft. That means I'm gonna get bumped because I booked the last two rows. And usually if a plane changes equipment and there's not enough, first class eats, you know, the people in row five, like we were, would be in row five and coach. Wow. So it kind of, it kind of stinks. But anyway, it turns out that they switched it back to a, a 3 21

Mikah Sargent (01:36:44):
Flighty app.com. Thank you so much, Johnny jet. We appreciate your time.

Johnny Jet (01:36:48):
Thank you.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:07):
There it is. Ah, yes. Thanks. Yeah, you're doing

Johnny Jet (01:37:10):
A great job, man. You must be sweating bullets. Cause I wouldn't just a little bit, just a little bit. I, I, I, I I'm sweating for you man.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:16):
<Laugh> thank you. I appreciate that. That. And thank you for telling me about this app, cuz I do a show here on the network called iOS today where we cover iOS apps and this is cool. Gonna be on the next show for sure. This is really cool.

Johnny Jet (01:37:26):
Yeah. I'm glad.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:28):
Thank you. Check

Johnny Jet (01:37:28):
It out. Don't forget to say Johnny jet do com. Oh you

Mikah Sargent (01:37:31):
Know I will.

Johnny Jet (01:37:32):
Don't you worry?

Mikah Sargent (01:37:33):
<Laugh> don't

Johnny Jet (01:37:33):
You worry. I'm just messing with you.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:35):
<Laugh> thank you Johnny.

Johnny Jet (01:37:36):
All right buddy. Take care. Good

Mikah Sargent (01:37:37):
Luck. Thanks. Have a good day. See you

Johnny Jet (01:37:39):
Later. Bye-Bye

Mikah Sargent (01:37:41):
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Mikah Sargent (01:38:35):
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Mikah Sargent (01:39:31):
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Mikah Sargent (01:40:48):
Hello and welcome back. Oh man, I just wanna listen to this song. To honest to The Tech Guy radio show, the radio show heard round the world. I am your host Mikah Sargent filling in for Leo Laporte, who is Taketa Cruz. If you would like to call in and ask a question for the radio show. Well you can by calling 88, 88, ask Leo or 8 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. If you're watching me, then you probably see me look off to the right that's because the number is clearly printed out there. I have not yet memorized it as I am not, I haven't been in this chair for very long, but or I guess it's not really a chair. It's an exercise ball. That is quite bouncy. Anyway. this is the place where we answer all of your questions or in this case, I try to answer all of your questions regarding tech. And we've got a question in from Mike who is in Rancho Mirage, California, Mike, you are on the air.

Caller 7 (01:41:56):
Hi. we have a Lenovo think pad that runs windows 10 has eight megabytes of Ram and it runs painfully slowly. So I'm wondering about adding Ram to it if that's gonna be helpful.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:15):
Okay. Okay. So this is a windows 10 Lenovo think pad. And you are still running. Okay. Windows 10. May yeah, maybe <laugh> I would, I would need to know a little bit more about the machine that you have. Do you have it with you?

Caller 7 (01:42:37):
Yes.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:37):
Okay. Cuz if we could learn, if I could learn what model number it is, which Lenovo ThinkPad you have that might give me a little bit more information about 

Caller 7 (01:42:49):
E E 5 95

Mikah Sargent (01:42:51):
E 5 95. Let's take a look. What we've got here. There we go. And,

Caller 7 (01:42:57):
And it runs really slowly. I mean you have to wait 30 seconds for something to open and it's really bothersome.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:06):
Yeah. So what I am hearing from the chat and one of the things that I would suggest is looking at of course, yes, eight gigabytes of Ram is not a whole lot and upgrading the Ram might help, but a bigger help would be upgrading the built in storage. So it is likely that you are running a hard drive inside of that thing. Given the age of the think pad and solid state storage is going to blow things away. It's gonna be a lot faster, especially when you're talking about opening things. If you're having trouble opening files, that is because those little spinning hard drive plates are taken forever to do what they need to do to be able to access the files that you want with the solid state drive. It's essentially right there ready for the computer to grab.

Mikah Sargent (01:44:02):
So I, I almost think that it's a better investment to spend your money on getting a new solid state drive for your think pad that you can then upgrade instead of going Ram. And then if you needed to, after that, sure, let's go for a Ram upgrade. But I just, I don't, I don't, I don't think that you're gonna be happy getting a Ram upgrade and not a hard drive upgrade because you're still gonna have those issues. If those files not opening as quickly as you want them to Ram most of the time when it's, when you see those changes is when you are doing different tasks on your computer and you are, you know, working in Photoshop or a photo image application, and you are hoping for it to move a little bit faster, that kind of thing. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, it's not as, it's not as much tied to how quickly a file opens or how quickly even the operating system itself, you know, windows is kind of going between different tasks that is often tied to the hard drive and yes as somebody's pointing. So

Caller 7 (01:45:09):
This is, this is something that, that is user changeable as easily as the Ram cards. I, I hope

Mikah Sargent (01:45:16):
So. Not as easy to change, but what I will do for you is I will include Mike, sorry. I was couldn't remember if it was Mike or Joe Mike is I will include a link in the show notes to some guides on upgrading the hard drive that is@techguylabs.com. That will get you to the episode page for this episode. And this is 1911. And that way you can learn how complicated it is. It's just a little bit more complicated because essentially what you have to do is set the new hard drive kind of outside of the machine first and do an install and then you're gonna need to take the hard drive out of the inside and then put the solid state drive in. So there's just a little bit more than just kind of turning it off, unscrewing it, popping in some new Ram and moving on if that makes sense.

Caller 7 (01:46:12):
Right. Okay. So two other questions. If, if one does decide to upgrade Ram, do you have to be symmetrical in the two slots or can you have you know, a an eight and one and a four in the other say for

Mikah Sargent (01:46:28):
Instance, I see what you're saying. So you, if you just wanted to kind of go instead of four, if you, if you had two fours in there right now, and you were trying to go to eight versus going four and one, and just buying an eight into that, I honestly don't know on a Lenovo, I will be honest with you. There in almost every case symmetrical Ram is kind of the, the way to go. And I really don't know on a think path. That is a good question.

Caller 7 (01:46:57):
All right. And finally, could McAfee have something to do with this?

Mikah Sargent (01:47:03):
You know, <laugh> Mike McAfee has something to do with everything. No, this is the thing, there's a chance, right? There's a chance that it is playing a small role in causing some slow down in your computer because it's doing scans it's checking for files and, and checking to see if any of those files have viruses, that kind of thing. It's essentially always running in the background. And so in that case, yes, and I will parrot Leo aport in saying that for most people, in most cases, they don't need to have a third party virus software because windows has first party virus software that will do a fine job of keeping you protected online. A lot of times those third party applications like McAfee are just bloatware. And I have to tell you, Mike, as you said, that I've never seen the chat room light up so quickly with so many messages of everyone saying, remove McAfee, uninstall, McAfee, get rid of McAfee, kick McAfee, delete ma. So everyone in the chat room who's uses windows regularly is also saying that you should probably uninstall McAfee and start there and just use windows defender. And then after that, I think the solid state drive is gonna be a really good investment for you. Keep that machine going a little bit longer and Ram last but not least. And yeah, I, as far as I can see, there's, there's, it's very rare that anyone is you know, putting one size of Ram in one side and a different size of Ram in the other.

Caller 7 (01:48:45):
Okay, great. Well, appreciate that.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:48):
Yeah, no problem. Thank you for calling in. We appreciate it.

Caller 7 (01:48:51):
Okay. Thanks.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:54):
All right. Our next call comes from Darrell and Saratoga. New York. Hello.

Caller 8 (01:49:04):
Hi Mikah.

Mikah Sargent (01:49:05):
Hi. And am I pronouncing your name correctly?

Caller 8 (01:49:07):
Yes you are. And I just wanna say you're a great, great addition to the show. I love the balance of the iOS and we love watching you dance. So it's like our favorite thing is to watch you move and add a, a nice human spirit to the show, a great compliment and a great balance. Thank you.

Mikah Sargent (01:49:24):
You're gonna make me cry on air. Let's not do this. That's very sweet of you. Thank you.

Caller 8 (01:49:30):
We're a fast fan. So I'm over the years I have been doing some writing mostly in windows doc, and with inserts of P G mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I wanna put these together in a simple format to use an ebook. Yeah. And I understand this, there are certain formats for eBooks that are gonna be acceptable to put out into the world for sale. So if, if you could resource some easy formats for me, I appreciate it.

Mikah Sargent (01:50:03):
Yeah. we're gonna take a quick break, but don't worry. You stay on the line. I will have some answers for you, Leo Laportes The Tech Guy, mic Sargent subbing in

Mikah Sargent (01:50:26):
That snuck up on us. Yeah, so of course, yes, there are lots of different file types. Amazon has its own called AZ w which is going to be kind of the, the one that is locked into Amazon. And in fact, I think if you want to publish to the Kindle store, you will have to use that format or translated into that format. But the one that you should be using is called dot E PB that's EUB EUB format EUB is a is, is a far more open type of document or excuse me, I ebook form that is going to be able to be used across lots of different publishing platforms. And the cool thing about EUB is that it is translatable into all the other kinds of formats. So with EUB you get the ability to easily translate into.mobi and AZ w or AZ w three, which is Amazon's, those are Amazon's two versions. So I think that your best bet is to do EUB and then everyone in the chat room is going, and please also make a PDF version, because that is what a lot of folks will do is if there's somebody out there who doesn't have a, a book reading format a software that can, you know, do a book reading format, it's nice to have a PDF as a, a sort of back an option to use instead in, in place.

Caller 8 (01:51:57):
That's great, great foundation for you. And I really appreciate it. I've been searching a lot of places for what is the most popular and best, and that, and that's a really great reply. I wanna thank you very much. Carry on.

Mikah Sargent (01:52:07):
Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate you calling in and thank you for watching and also thank you for the compliments on the dance moves. I appreciate it. <Laugh>

Caller 8 (01:52:14):
No worries. Take care though.

Mikah Sargent (01:52:16):
Bye-Bye all right. Couldn't remember. Oh yeah, this is the top of the hour break. Isn't it? Wow. Right. The time does just fly by my God.

Mikah Sargent (01:52:40):
Yeah. I I'm really curious about that, honestly. Publishing, I think it's such a cool idea. Thank you, Mike B. That's very sweet. But yes, EUB is definitely the format for most cases. And in fact, I think, let me see, I think pages all. Thank you, Kim. I think pages will, how does Leo do this? How does he get to, I guess he's using that computer so he could just use the keyboard down here. Cause I feel like I have to move this. Can we oil this before next Saturday? John or whatever grease it, oil it cuz it's squeaker than yeah, I'm just gonna keep doing this if I don't need some free Foley for nevermind. Let me start a new document here. Now I've kind of curious about doing a book. Yeah. So of course pages has a built in, oh, I might even pages might be installed by default and then I can show everybody on the screen. Yeah, it does. Okay. So yeah, if we wanna show people I'll choose books and we'll go with this book called a contemporary novel. Hopefully our friend is still out there watching. And then let me just make this full screen here. What's our book gonna be called the waking tech guy.

Mikah Sargent (01:54:19):
Why is it making me there we go. Not by Ernest and pair, but instead by, I didn't realize I had caps lock on like a Sargent. All right. So here's our book. And when we export,

Mikah Sargent (01:54:43):
You can see there's export to UB as one of the options right here, PDF of course is included, but watch as we go into the UB and see, obviously we wanna call this the waking tech guy and the use the first page as the cover of the book and then layout. So reflowable layout EUB file with content that reflows based on device and orientation. So it's really good for doing a whole bunch of different sizes versus fixed. So this is if you were doing illustrations, especially if you have a super illustrated book, you obviously don't want it kind of trying to redo things. Or if you know that the format of the book is very important and it's, it's not just kind of text and stuff like that. Then you might wanna fix layout including advanced options for where this book might be in this case. Mm. I think this would be business and personal finance. No, there we go. Professional and technical. I like that. One more English of course, is the language table of contents and embed the fonts. We'll do that. And then we'll call it the waking tech guy and we'll store it on the desktop export that there.

Mikah Sargent (01:56:04):
And now when we go back, oh, and also there's an option right here to publish directly to apple books. So that's one way to make it kind of happen fast if you wanted to. I'll delete that now. I bet if I write, click and choose open with, yes, it's gonna open it with books instead of pages, and then we'll get out of that. And now there's the waking tech guy and all 10 pages of my book. Oh. Would anyone like to hear me read Latin for the next three minutes? Etam sit, am EST, donk. You know, one thing that's kind of interesting is that V and Latin is pronounced woo. It's pronounced like it's a w. And so there's that very popular Vinny VDI, Viki that people know of. I came, I saw I conquered. And what people don't know is that it's actually pronounced wienie Wheatie Wiki instead of Vinny Vidi Viki.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:11):
Yes. And so I remember my Latin teacher in high school she was amazing. And one of the things that she would do is she would really get into pronunciation. So she would just like take her whole body and she'd be like the it's pronounced w like that. And so whatever she taught us that she's like, it's Winnie, witty weaky and yeah, I'll never forget her, her teachings. Those were, that was just one of, of many. I came, I saw, I conquered very, she was amazing. She was such a good teacher. And she, she taught us Christmas carols 10 T 10 T Tinton NAB nuo deto, no Wata tra. And that is jingle bells, 10 T 10 T means ring the bell tin tin NAB is I think the bell is ringing new audit Dele.

Mikah Sargent (01:58:14):
No, wigga, HETA trill jingle bell jingle all the way. Oh, what fun? It is ride in a one horse open sleigh as well as several others, there were, we, we sang songs. We wrote stories. We did all sorts of stuff. And you could not tell that woman that Latin was a dead language, because then she would, again, proceed to contort her body. As she explained that Latin is never dead because it is alive in so many languages. It exists as the foundation of so many languages. So yeah, I will never forget. Ms. Briggs, Mrs. Briggs, I should say she was awesome. I should say she is awesome. I, as far as I know, she is, she's no longer a Latin teacher because she retire, I should say Latin teacher as she retired my junior year of high school, but she was just amazing.

Mikah Sargent (01:59:15):
And it's true that Latin is alive in the languages that we have today. I, you see so much of it and I'm so thankful for having that class because of those classes, because I get like the roots of words. Sometimes I can figure out what the rest of it means because of my basis in Latin. They did never, they didn't put her in the Bri. I will tell you her favorite thing was diet Dr. Pepper. And so whenever she retired, each of us, each of her students brought her a case of DDP as she called it. And so there was a case of diet Dr. Pepper stacked to the ceiling of the classroom for her.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:11):
Hello friends. How are you today? Yes, that is my tagline. Hello friends. Leo Laporte says, Hey, Hey, Hey, how are you today? I Mica Sargent say, hello, friends. How are you today? I am Mica Sargent tech guy also subbing in today for Leo Laporte and next week on Saturday, because Leo is on a cruise with his drones and his a hundred of his closest friends. But don't worry because I am here with you and am excited to take your questions and hopefully answer them too. Not just take them. If you have questions. Well, I've got a number for you. 88 88, ask Leo also 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Calling that number in the us is toll free outside of the us. You'll wanna use something like Skype to call, but when you do, you'll get through in theory to talk to me and I will talk to you.

Mikah Sargent (02:01:02):
There's some rhyming that's going on in there. <Laugh> thank you for joining us here on The Tech Guy. I am having lots of fun here, filling in for Leo Laporte and you know, doing, doing voices from time to time doing accents, that kind of thing. Let's see. Who's out there asking for questions, asking for answers to questions, not asking for questions. I'm the one asking for questions. We got let's see, we got Rick from Glendale, California. We're gonna bring on the line right now, Glen. Rick you're on the air.

Caller 9 (02:01:37):
Thank you, Michael. Hello friend. I've got one. And if you had time, two very short phone questions. My first one is I've got a Google pixel four a and I have concluded that he does not like one of my friends and the reason, the reason for that is I've assigned a couple of close friends, custom ring tone. So they call, I know it's them. And it worked for quite a while with this one friend. And then suddenly it refused to use the customer ring tone. I assigned it started to play random things. I'm glad it makes noise. So I know he is calling, but it like would play the first line from a podcast and each week always the same podcast. So lemme tell you what I've done to try and troubleshoot this Uhhuh. I went through my phone. I found that podcast. I deleted it. So that wasn't it. I reassigned my that friend a different ring tone that made no difference. I deleted the contact from my friend and reinstalled him as it were with a change. So instead of Mr. John Smith, I put him in his Dr. John Smith. It still will not play the customer ring tone. And like I said, I've tried a different couple of songs on it. It doesn't like him. Have you ever seen anything like that before?

Mikah Sargent (02:02:38):
So I have not seen anything like that, but what I'm wondering is if there is a Google contacts, backup situation that's happening here, where your, so your Google contacts are of course stored as part of your Google account, right? And at some point you went in and you said, Dr. John, who was Mr. John as this contact with that specific audio and, and what have you. And I'm wondering if there isn't somewhere a an online version of this, where Mr. John still exists with that other number, maybe it's 8, 8, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. And so when that number calls, it's still pulling information from that old contact that you had before, that has that custom ring tone tied to it. I know you said you created a new one but I'm wondering if there is still a version of that somewhere. What I would suggest doing is of course, writing down all of the information that you have about Dr.

Mikah Sargent (02:03:38):
John, and that way you have it physically, and then deleting both versions of Dr. John the, the old one, if it's still there and the new one that's there now, and then restarting your phone and looking then again into your contacts app and seeing if magically, any version of Dr. John pops up, and if it does pop up, then you know that somewhere there's just this annoying sort of hitch in the system that is keeping your contact stored online. And then what I would do from there is log into your Google account on a computer somewhere go to contacts.google.com and look for Dr. John or Mr. John or whomever, and remove it there, see if it's gone. That way, if it's, you know, again, if it's, if it's a backup situation, that's kind of keeping the ghost of Dr. John in your system, that could be what's going on. But any other thoughts, cuz I know you said you did some troubleshooting with that and I wanna make sure we're, we're covering all those bases.

Caller 9 (02:04:45):
No, no. I have not tried that at all. As far as maybe a backup contact list and honestly ignorance on my part. I haven't even tried restarting the phone, which, you know, I'm a windows guy and I should have started with that, but Hey,

Mikah Sargent (02:04:56):
I'll try that. We don't blame ourselves for not thinking of everything. That's why you're calling. I'm happy to help. So don't worry about that. You know what I, I say this to everybody there's no reason to, you know, put oneself down over tech troubles because it put all that, put all that negativity on the tech until the tech it needs to do better. That's how I feel. What's your other question? I,

Caller 9 (02:05:18):
I, I, I, I had a second really quick question. Does anybody out there rate and review cell phones for their ability to be used as a phone? <Laugh> okay. I know we're all using 'em as computers, which is great. My, my pixel four a actually works fine as a computer, but it's really lousy as far as phone calls, even to the point where I thought, man, do I wanna pay to put a landline back in? And again, cost is not an issue. I am an Android guy, but I've actually toyed with the idea of buying like, you know, an iPhone you know, 13 max or whatever, just to get something that would work as a phone. Does anybody review phones for their quality as a telephone?

Mikah Sargent (02:05:54):
I am blown away because I thought, okay, surely somebody out there would. And so I went to try to do some Google F and I'm thinking, what do I actually type in here? The best phone phone, the best phone, smart, the best phone for phoning, <laugh> the best call phone. That's actually kind of a hard thing to search for. And it is a good question because different phones have different microphones inside of them and different technology that is actually looking at the audio that's coming into the microphone and trying to sort between the voice versus what's background noise. And then also some different phones are doing some magic to try and handle the compression that takes place whenever you place a call. So that can be kind of difficult. Now, Mike be in the chat does have a a link from smartphones revealed.

Mikah Sargent (02:06:50):
This looks like one of those sites that is just there to get clicks from Google. It has top 30 phones with the best call quality, but again, it's it's then just a list of, of phones. It doesn't really have more information about it. So I don't, I don't know quite about that. I would, you know what, maybe this is my next venture <laugh> you've given me such a good idea here because yeah, some people still do use phones for placing calls. Oh, and here we go, we got a better, much better link. The way that you have to do it is by putting on a suit and tie and doing a search for the best business smartphones. If you do that, then it shows you some stuff for handsets for work and productivity. And we've got one from tech radar and one of the options talks about a few of the phones. So we'll include a link to that in the show notes. That's tech guy labs.com. And it seems like there's at least one person out there. Rick that is looking at phones for their phone quality.

Caller 9 (02:07:58):
Hey, thank you, Mikah. And a big, thank you to Leo also for, I don't know how many months it's been now, but putting the full transcripts of the show that is hugely helpful. Isn't it go back if I miss something and to be able to find it. So just whoever's responsible for that. I wanna say a big, thank you.

Mikah Sargent (02:08:13):
Yeah, that's that's our social media team and also Lisa who Lisa LePort who made that possible. So yes, I'm so glad those are there too for accessibility reasons first and foremost. And secondly, yeah, it's very easy to, to find things as you need them. So, Rick, thank you for calling in. Thank you for your kind words and I hope you find the phone you want with the best call quality available. We appreciate it.

Caller 9 (02:08:37):
Thanks so much, Michael. Thanks

Mikah Sargent (02:08:42):
All well, we don't have much time left before. We're gonna take another break. So I guess I'll just say, well, it's almost okay. Yeah. I can say eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo's the phone number you call to get in touch with me? Have a, have a question and an answer. Bye. Is he gonna, sorry.

Speaker 15 (02:09:07):
No, I mean, that's why I just pressing. I was like, ah, he'll

Mikah Sargent (02:09:11):
Hear it. I have to, I have to admit, I didn't know that you were in con I didn't, I didn't know that you were in control of making those sounds happen. I just thought they automatically happened. So you've been like doing it as I'm saying goodbye and I'm going, this is amazing. Oh, it's fading out. I think, I think they're making me come in, but I don't want to, it's like a heat wave baby. Can I say baby on the radio? <Laugh> anyway, I am Mike, a Sargent tech guy also subbing in today for Leo LePort who is on a car. If you have tech questions, I will try to have tech answers. You call 88 88, ask Leo that's (888) 827-5536. That's the phone number you call to get your question on the Rao as it were. And hopefully I'll be able to answer it for you. Let us go to the phones with max from Lakeworth Florida. Lakeworth Florida. Hello, max.

Caller 9 (02:10:30):
Hello, chapter mic.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:32):
Hello? Hello. How are you?

Caller 10 (02:10:35):
I just promoted you to the, you're doing such an outstanding job.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:40):
Oh, thank you so much, max. I recognize your voice. I, if I remember correctly, yeah, you are always a T when you come on to the show.

Caller 10 (02:10:53):
Well, I'm sure you're not missing too much about Leo. He's having a great time.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:58):
Yes. I've I've seen so many photos. He seems to be enjoying himself for sure.

Caller 10 (02:11:03):
Well, well he deserve a vacation anyway.

Mikah Sargent (02:11:06):
Indeed. I agree. I'm glad he's taking a break.

Caller 10 (02:11:10):
Well, I'm very glad that you are there for us and I've been really enjoying your program today. I think you should also do it on Sundays too. I don't know why you don't wanna do it on Sunday.

Mikah Sargent (02:11:21):
<Laugh> it's well, you know how you said Leo needs a vacation. I also have to have some days off during the week, cuz otherwise I would get burnt out

Caller 10 (02:11:30):
Youre a you don't need

Mikah Sargent (02:11:33):
You're right. Come an hour of sleep a night. That's all I really need to, to keep going.

Caller 10 (02:11:39):
That's that is I Dell XBS machine, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> and recently I keep getting this video DX driver exception errors, and there was no problem before I've been coming for like of four years. I'm gonna get a new laptop anyway. Okay. But all of a sudden I'm getting these driver Colonel exception for the DX, the direct X Microsoft direct X system. And I had to keep repairing the damn thing and it keeps coming back. So I don't know whether there is some sort of inherent problem because seems to be happening after the last update that I, I did.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:31):
Yeah. I'm seeing

Caller 10 (02:12:32):
That. I just some way to throw this away, cause I'm all tired of keep going through all the steps. Right. Make sure all the drivers of the date and this and that end up repairing the the, you know, the direct X drivers mm-hmm <affirmative> so do you know anything about this? Have you heard about this issue coming up with those updates? I'm just curious.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:54):
Yeah. So I'm actually seeing a lot of people talking about this this problem with direct X. So yeah. You're not alone for sure.

Caller 10 (02:13:02):
Yeah. All of sudden happening. It never happened to me before four years that all of a sudden happening.

Mikah Sargent (02:13:06):
So yeah, it sounds like it is,

Caller 10 (02:13:08):
Was your assessment.

Mikah Sargent (02:13:09):
My, as my, my initial assessment here is that this is absolutely tied to an update at some point that you have some sort of issue that has cropped up after you've, you know, done and updated it install. Yeah. but the problem that I'm seeing here is there are lots of people complaining about this issue, but there aren't a whole lot of people who have provided a response, an answer to this issue and it's yeah. I mean, it seems like what, what needs to happen here is another patch dues day with another update. Yeah. That solves for the problem. Yeah. I, I have one bit of advice that I can give you that may or may not work, but it is worth looking into there is an application I use on my Mac by MACPA that's M a C P w.com. And you're probably going, why is he talking about software on a Mac? Well, don't worry.

Caller 10 (02:14:10):
I'm on a turn here.

Mikah Sargent (02:14:11):
Yeah. MACPA creates an application called clean my PC and this software can be used to do some kind of maintenance tasks and some kind of behind the scenes registry cleanup, and some adjustments and concerns there that will be able to kind of sort of tidy things up if that makes sense. There is.

Caller 10 (02:14:42):
Okay, well that's great, but I can't write it down. So we be enough to put in the, the show notes.

Mikah Sargent (02:14:49):
Yes, it will absolutely be in the show notes at tech labs.com. It will have the link directly to clean my PC. And yeah, I'm just wondering, I think you should give that a download and just give that a run and see how that works for you. I will,

Caller 10 (02:15:03):
I will because the, the causes are multiple multitudes. Yes. For example, outdated the graphic drivers, which are already installed and installed the hardware error, possibly some hardware failure, which are around all the utility and Microsoft provide to check for the hardware. Then you do file integrity, checks, everything passes. And then, then I end up with this corrupted you know you know, the, the drawback, the Microsoft ex system. So, but anyway, I'll definitely give your suggestion a try a download and see what happens. Thanks very much for, for that information. Yeah, absolutely. Take run about traveling. Cause you were talking to Johnny jet, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm I just, so I just got back from Canada. I went from Palm beach to Montreal, to true New Jersey and to par to Montreal and then back. So lemme just briefly give you my experience as John Johnny and Leo download the airline app.

Caller 10 (02:16:15):
I'm a part of the United mileage plus. So I get a lot of miles on it and I travel business class most of the time. So that app, that United has pretty much takes of everything for you, including scanning your passport, the COVID vaccination card, collecting seats and all that all the way. So definitely take advantage of that, do everything you can. So you travel ready. So you go to the airport, you are done, baby, just channel checking your luggage. I do have log I check Uhhuh. And then you, you today you are going security and on the plane and all that. Yeah. The funny thing is this, I know Johnny keeps saying, do not check luggage. Do you know what happening right now with that advice?

Mikah Sargent (02:17:08):
What's that

Caller 10 (02:17:09):
My plan got delayed every time because we have these people coming in with these so-called carry on luggage. Right.

Mikah Sargent (02:17:17):
And it's not carry on, it's too big to fit. And so it takes forever to load on the plane,

Caller 10 (02:17:23):
Push it. Yeah. Push it on the, you know, over overhead in a compartment, won't sit and there's a fight happens because people stop getting moved around and all of them, the plane planes get delayed. So I understand people don't want to check in their luggage. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but you have to be reasonable here.

Mikah Sargent (02:17:44):
I am right there with you. I think. 

Caller 10 (02:17:46):
And it's getting really frustrating because my freaking plane delayed every time because all these even I'm traveling business class. Right, right. You see bringing this huge socalled logic,

Mikah Sargent (02:17:59):
Max, I gotta let you go. But I do appreciate you taking the time. I appreciate you sharing your opinions there on luggage and we'll talk to you soon.

Caller 10 (02:18:11):
Have

Mikah Sargent (02:18:15):
Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy, Mikah subbing in max is always a talker. We we appreciate his energy on The Tech Guy. There are times when I will be doing some stuff on Sundays and I happen to turn on the live stream and max has called in and there's always a quote or two worth worth sharing. I was on bill handle Chumley a couple of Tuesdays ago I was on bill handle. Talking about all sorts of stuff. Electric cars. No, no hydrogen cars. <Laugh> thank you. Sushi dub. <Laugh> it's time for The Tech Guy. The radio show heard around the world. I am your host today. Mikah Sargent sub in for Leo Laporte. If you have tech questions, I have tech answers, 88 88. Ask Leo as the number you call 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Dickie D disco. Dick de Bartolo is up next, but before we get there, we will take a call or two. Let's see, who's coming up next. It's James from Dallas, Texas. Hello, James.

Caller 11 (02:20:07):
How you doing?

Mikah Sargent (02:20:08):
Oh, I'm doing well today, James. How are you?

Caller 11 (02:20:11):
I'm I'm I'm good. You're doing well for studying for Leo. So I'll just give you some cred there. It's nice to talk to you. Thanks

Mikah Sargent (02:20:18):
So much. It's good to talk to you too.

Caller 11 (02:20:21):
My, my question, I, I volunteered made and I hope I didn't bid off, buy it off more than I could chew, but my, my buddy, this friend runs a basically out of Africa mm-hmm <affirmative> and he has bought their staff 30 iPads. Okay. So they can go around and do whatever. And he bought them in the us and he asked me if I would set them up. I'm like, yeah, sure. At first I didn't even realize it was 30 iPads. I thought it was like five, which would've been still, he asked for 30 bet, which is no big deal. You know, and I, yeah, I'll probably just do like one database or one and I could back 'em up and, and set 'em all up really straight forward. Yeah. But then he told me, well, James, I need, I need them locked down. So they can't watch movies and they can't do this and they can't do that. I'm like, mm-hmm, <affirmative> okay. And I'm thinking, okay, I've only done like the family share. And like my, my work, we use like MDM to manage the thing. So I'm wondering for 30 iPads, should I use like family share, which would then require multiple, let's say apple ID.

Mikah Sargent (02:21:31):
No.

Caller 11 (02:21:32):
Or should go down a path of an MDM, which I have zero experience, man.

Mikah Sargent (02:21:37):
I've got it. I've got, I've got your answer for you right down the center of that. Yeah. So there's a solution for you. That is, it is MDM for people who are listening, going, what is he talking about there, mobile device management. And a lot of times these are third party apps that third party apps and services that will help you manage your devices. But what's awesome is apple has solved this problem for us with a tool called apple configurator. And it is a really handy tool that I actually use from my devices at times where if there are things that I want EV cuz I, because of the nature of my job, I get new devices all the time and I want to have them set up exactly the same way. And what apple configurator lets you do is essentially create like a profile of exactly how you want the system to be set up.

Mikah Sargent (02:22:26):
And then you can make that possible for every single one of those devices. So what you'll end up doing is plugging in each iPad, setting it up with apple configurator and apple configurator has all the options for, I don't want them to be able to access this. I don't want them to be able to do this. I wanna make sure that software updates get installed automatically that this has a passcode that it already has the network wifi. I mean it does everything. And of course as per usual, I will include links in the show notes, tech guy, labs.com to the apple configurator page that has all the information you need. It's a free app to download on your Mac and also on the iPhone. That is for doing Mac management specifically. So that one is probably not necessary, but apple configurator for the Mac is what you can use to be able to okay. Make those adjustments on there.

Caller 11 (02:23:20):
Yeah. I've used, I've used apple configurator once before, when, before my real job, my day job <laugh> before they use an MDM, you, they would send you the profile and you would have to load it using the configurator. So I've used that before. So yeah, it

Mikah Sargent (02:23:35):
Gets pretty powerful. Yeah, it is. Okay. But, but since it's just apple directly, what's nice about that is that then you, aren't having to worry about a third party platform to, to do all of that mobile device

Caller 11 (02:23:46):
Mail. Right. So there's a car. Yeah. And there's a cost associated with it. If I just did it, like I think it's Jan F or something like that, you know, they want a couple bucks a month per device and being a nonprofit administrator. It's like, we don't have an unlimited budget just to spend a thousand dollars a year or plus that exactly. To manage devices like that and, and being remote as well. Cause my, my friend doesn't live in Africa. He lives in Dallas with me or, and, and so, you know, that remote is also the, the, the kicker there. So with, with using apple configurator, can the, the, the ministers or people that are using these iPads, could they still use their apple ID, their own apple ID? Or do we need to use the same apple ID, which is against Apple's terms and conditions

Mikah Sargent (02:24:28):
Where found out that's the magic of this is that there are options for both. So the like, okay, there options for everything could be done by the terms and conditions, but that it'll still allow because essentially this is what small businesses are using to make this happen. So when they give somebody the, the phone or the Mac or the iPad or whatever it happens to be, they still are logging in with their own stuff. It's just that the profile that is sort of behind the scenes is saying, you can't do this, or you can do that. So, yeah. It's okay. It's all built in apple configurator again, super magical. And also I it's an app that I recommend everybody download anyway, because it can help you troubleshoot some problems with just your device. If you have them, I've been able to use it before to do some restores doors.

Caller 11 (02:25:13):
Yeah. You know what that's, maybe that's what I had to use it for was to, to, to do a restore on an I old iPad or something, but I have used it before, so I am somewhat familiar in my Mac environment that I now have. So yeah. So okay. Yeah, no, that's great. That's I, you know, I, you know, the research I've done everything. There was a, an MBM cost money. And as I was trying to,

Mikah Sargent (02:25:36):
This is about, you know, this sounds like people trying to help people. And oftentimes when you're trying to help people, you don't have a lot of money in the first place. Unfortunately.

Caller 11 (02:25:44):
Exactly, exactly. They got the 30 pads, I think a donor stepped up and donated the, the money to buy 30 iPads. And I volunteered my time. In fact, I get to the luxury to take, I'm taking them to Africa. Oh. In in October. Yes. And I get to train them on how to use, we, we got Microsoft, believe it or not is really has a really good nonprofit license program mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so he got licenses at no cost. So we're gonna use teams instead of like zoom and, and whatnot teams and SharePoint, so they can share files and, and do teams calls and, and chat. And then also, you know, the teams phone calls, and it's just gonna be a, a wonderful, wonderful environment.

Mikah Sargent (02:26:30):
That's amazing. James, I want you to reach out to me my first name, M I K a h@twi.tv. And let me know if you, if you run into issues, I mean, if you have any trouble with this. Okay. Let me know. I'd like to, to help out with that.

Caller 11 (02:26:46):
Okay, perfect. Thank you. I, I really appreciate I'm listening to Leo for years, and this was the first time I've called. Cause I, when I started the research as like, you know what I think to Mikah would know, cuz he's the iOS guy.

Mikah Sargent (02:26:57):
I am, I am, well, I am honored that this is the time when you chose to call in. And I think it's amazing what you and your friend are doing and yeah. If you need any help with the apple configurator or anything like that, reach out to me there where we've got more time than we do here.

Caller 11 (02:27:10):
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. Thank you so much and have wonderful rest of your weekend.

Mikah Sargent (02:27:15):
You as well byebye.

Caller 11 (02:27:17):
All right. Thank you. Bye.

Mikah Sargent (02:27:20):
All right. I don't think we've got enough time for any more calls today, but I still have a minute, but I do have a minute left, which is fine. Oh, okay. Well, we'll give it a try. Frank calling in from Camarillo, California. Hello, Frank.

Caller 12 (02:27:38):
Hello.

Mikah Sargent (02:27:40):
Hi there. How can I help?

Caller 12 (02:27:42):
Well, I reset something in my computer. Okay. So that I do not my browsers will not work.

Mikah Sargent (02:27:52):
Oh, okay. What do you mean when you say your browsers will not work? You, you type in a website and when you hit enter, it says I can't go to that website

Caller 12 (02:28:00):
Website. Yeah. Well, let's see. So I've got a tab and it says Microsoft edge, not responding.

Mikah Sargent (02:28:07):
Oh, not responding. Okay.

Caller 12 (02:28:09):
Well let's see. Yeah. Not responding.

Mikah Sargent (02:28:12):
And is that the only browser that you have on your computer is Microsoft edge

Caller 12 (02:28:19):
Currently? Yes.

Mikah Sargent (02:28:21):
Okay. well Frank, we are gonna take a break on air, but I'm still gonna help you out. So just stay on the line. Mic Sargent subbing in for Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy. All right. So Frank let's, let's go down to, well, what version of windows do you have on, do you know if you have windows 10 or windows 11?

Caller 12 (02:29:01):
10.

Mikah Sargent (02:29:02):
Okay. Let's see about opening up Microsoft edge again kind of fresh start. So if you find win or if you find Microsoft edge in your, your task bar at the bottom of the screen is where yours is. I believe. Then there's an option to close all windows. And basically what we're gonna try to do here is kind of start fresh with a new window. And 

Caller 12 (02:29:34):
I'm, I'm gonna go to the, to the type type here for search to search.

Mikah Sargent (02:29:40):
No, no. So what do we wanna do is go down all the way to the bottom of the screen where you, do you have different icons on the bottom of your screen?

Caller 12 (02:29:48):
I do. I have, I have yes. Edges there.

Mikah Sargent (02:29:50):
Okay. So right. Click on edge and tell me what pops up whenever you write, click on it

Caller 12 (02:30:02):
New window new in private window, Microsoft edge or unplug. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (02:30:08):
You can, yeah. So close is what you wanna do now. I, I do wanna clarify cuz someone in the chat is saying that you said that you've tried different browsers and none of them are working. Is that true?

Caller 12 (02:30:20):
I believe that is the case.

Mikah Sargent (02:30:22):
Correct. Okay. Okay. That was a clarification that I missed. So, Hmm. Then this does sound like a bigger thing than just that one, someone John, how come you were saying DNS? How did you know it was D yeah. That's a good, that's a good question. Yeah. So do you have other apps on your windows machine? Outside of Google Chrome, an example would be like Netflix or Hulu or one of those other apps that you may have downloaded from the windows store?

Caller 12 (02:30:55):
Yeah. This, this computer has probably does not have anything on it at all. It's a fairly new computer, so.

Mikah Sargent (02:31:06):
Okay. So

Caller 12 (02:31:07):
I think when I say fairly new, I mean fairly recently refreshed.

Mikah Sargent (02:31:14):
Got it, got it. So you don't have much on it at all and it's still not working? No. So what about, okay, so one other thing we can do hit the windows key on your keyboard and you should see a search field pop up automatically. Yeah. Type in network.

Caller 12 (02:31:37):
So can I, okay. I see where you're going

Mikah Sargent (02:31:39):
Uhhuh <affirmative> we're gonna go into the, the network settings. And do you know if you are, are ethernet or wifi connected? 

Caller 12 (02:31:49):
I am on this one. Wifi.

Mikah Sargent (02:31:50):
Okay. and then I'm just curious what your settings say for wifi in in, in the settings menu. What is,

Caller 12 (02:31:59):
So I go to you mean network status?

Mikah Sargent (02:32:03):
Yeah, exactly. Network status.

Caller 12 (02:32:05):
You're connected to the internet. Okay. Have wifi spectrum set E five.

Mikah Sargent (02:32:16):
Okay. So yeah, you are connected. Yeah, the, the one thing that I'm saying suggested in the chat room, and maybe you've already tried this, have you tried turning off the wifi on your computer and then turning the wifi back on again on your computer? Not at the router level, but on your computer itself?

Caller 12 (02:32:33):
No.

Mikah Sargent (02:32:33):
Okay. So that is something that you can try first and foremost, and then we've got a link to a support document that we're gonna include in the show notes. That's at tech guy labs.com a link in the show notes that will give you some other thoughts on what you might do to see if you can do that. Of course we'll have to access it from a different device given that the browser is not working for you, but unfortunately I have to, I have to run. I'm so sorry, Frank, that I wasn't able to help you more. But thank you for your time.

Caller 12 (02:33:01):
Thank you. Take care. Thank you.

Mikah Sargent (02:33:07):
And we are back from the break in it's time for Dicky DeBartolo. Hello? Hi, Dickie de how are you today? Oh, let me get you. Let me get your volume turned up. There we go. Now we can hear Dickie D oh great. Yeah, no, Leo, you look great. You look like you lost 30 years on that cruise. Yes, my hair got, I dye my hair. Oh, it's I got a good tan <laugh>. Oh, good to see you, Dick. You know, I've been listening for a while. You you're doing an amazing job. Thank you. I mean, I'm gonna have to tell Leah you were terrible, but just understand, know yeah. You, yeah. You know how this works? Yeah, we gotta, we gotta do what we gotta do. Ah, so joining. No, you're doing an amazing job. It's great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Dickie de joins us every week to talk about what I think are some pretty fun gadgets and gizmos. He is the gizmo wizard, which is why you can go to GWiz dot E or gwiz.biz which will show you all sorts of fun stuff. And Dickey de you're here to tell us about something, something exciting what's going on. Yeah. Well, you know what

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:16):
I do. You have a Roku

Mikah Sargent (02:34:18):
Box? I do not, but a lot of my friends do a lot of my friends. Love Roku.

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:23):
Okay. It's yes. I have one and at pep com, we talked about this event last week. It's like 40 manufacturers there and with a pro a new product and usually a salesperson and maybe the guy who invented it. So Roku has what they call the Roku ultra 2022. And I said to the guy, you didn't take the headphone Jack out of the remote. Did you? Because that's one of my favorites things,

Mikah Sargent (02:34:50):
Best thing. That is one of the best things that it has. Yes. They didn't get rid of it. Did they?

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:55):
No. He said we'd made two changes to the remote, but the headphone jacket still there, we put a microphone in the remote. So you can talk to your Roku box through the microphone.

Mikah Sargent (02:35:05):
Do you say, Hey, Roku changed the channel or

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:07):
Yes. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Got it. And Hey Roku, where are you? If you lose the remote

Mikah Sargent (02:35:15):
<Laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:15):
That's nice. And I said, well, if you lose the remote, how's the microphone. He said, well, if the remote is so buried, that the microphone in it can hear you so that it can start beeping. We also have a button on the main unit near your TV and you hit that button and that will get the remote to start beeping. And the, the other change on the remote is that it's a rechargeable remote. So no batteries. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (02:35:41):
That's nice.

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:42):
Yeah. He said, it'll run about two months. I mean, it actually, it's gonna depend on how often you use your remote. But it adds a lot of things and it was a little awesome. When I first plugged it in, actually after this long interview, I suddenly got a box and they said here, try this out yourself. So they added Doby vision Doby at most Bluetooth, apple airplay.

Mikah Sargent (02:36:07):
Oh, it's got airplay. Does it

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:09):
Air? That's what it said. H D R 10 plus. So anyway, suddenly I don't know what's happening. And then a little thing comes up and it says you have to make some adjustments to your TV. <Laugh> I'm suddenly, wait, what are you're in my TV

Mikah Sargent (02:36:27):
Now? How are you here? Sure. <Laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:30):
Evidently my TV is not set up for HDR 10 plus I don't even high dynamic range. But so anyway, those are a lot of the changes and it's a hundred bucks, but I was just checking on Amazon. That's

Mikah Sargent (02:36:47):
A really good price.

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:49):
78 bucks, really on Amazon, 78, 50,

Mikah Sargent (02:36:52):
Honestly, even at a hundred dollars, that's a good price, apple. That's the one that I use on apple TV and the apple TV 4k is regularly more expensive than that. So I, this is a really good price for something that offers Doby, vision, Doby, Atmos, and that HDR 10 plus two minus seven the algebra they make us do for these things these days. I

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:13):
Swear. Yes. Ex exactly. And, and there's one other quick thing. I didn't realize that Roku made speakers with the boxes built into them. So if you have a small TV, you know, people with big TVs are gonna put in mammoth systems, but if you have a small TV and you're interested, you can just check out the, the Roku website because they make speakers with the Roku box built in, and then you can add onto them with wireless speakers. You can then add more speakers and wireless subwoofer. So they're doing a lot over there.

Mikah Sargent (02:37:48):
So you're currently just blasting the audio over in Disneyland with your new setup on

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:53):
<Laugh>. Well, I didn't get the speakers. I, I I'm, I'm just using the Roku box and that little headphones they'd even give you a set of headphones. Oh, nice. But of course, every everybody's gonna have their own headphones that they prefer to use.

Mikah Sargent (02:38:06):
Yes, absolutely. Again, I think that's one of the best features because if you look at third party methods for doing that, that gets really expensive to have a set of headphones that work wirelessly with the TV. I think that was one of Roku's most brilliant things was building that, those headphones into the, the remote.

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:24):
Absolutely. And when you live in an apartment, you know, people say, well, what are you talking about? You just have a little boxier, you know, I, and I go to bed very late. I go to bed around two between two 30 and 3:00 AM. And I go to bed no, every night and I go to bed watching train videos.

Mikah Sargent (02:38:42):
Okay. So

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:44):
It's what kind of headphones? No, I'm kidding. <Laugh> no, I, I wish I was learning, but I'm just watching. I, I watch some, if you go to YouTube and type in cab view, train videos. Oh.

Mikah Sargent (02:38:57):
So it's like, you're running the train.

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:59):
That is exactly right. Okay. That is exactly. Now, have you,

Mikah Sargent (02:39:03):
Are you a train? Have you done that before? Have you ever piloted, what is it called? Do you pilot a train? What do you do on a

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:09):
Train? Oh, you know, years and years ago, probably 15 years ago when tech TV was out in San Francisco I, you could pay $150 to a railroad museum and every give you an hour training on a diesel engine. Oh wow. And, and you get to drive it around it's it was a, an abandoned Navy yard. And I got to drive a diesel train around the yard. Yes. And I've trains in my backyard, so, oh yeah. So this is the kind you you're great. Yeah. I, I, if you happen to be watching the video version, you are like in the front of the locomotive and they have a lot of them in Switzerland and you go through mountains, it's a perfect way to fall asleep.

Mikah Sargent (02:39:50):
This almost makes you, instead of the train conductor, you're the train itself almost

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:56):
Yet. That is exactly right. That is exactly right. The one problem with technology is now that railroads have welded rails Uhhuh there's I have to use a separate thing, so I can get the clickity click <laugh> of old <laugh> of old time. Tra you know, wheels crossing every 50,

Mikah Sargent (02:40:14):
That ASMR you need

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:16):
<Laugh>. Yes, yes, exactly.

Mikah Sargent (02:40:18):
I could imagine doing this in VR would be really,

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:21):
So that would be great. Yeah. It's hard to fall asleep at

Mikah Sargent (02:40:23):
Those things. I imagine that's not as comfortable. You'd get a little warm inside of there, but yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I gotta say though, the I'm used to your, your gadget PPI a little bit, you know, kooky and this one's kind of yeah. So maybe you could buy some stickers to put on it or something. <Laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:40):
Exactly. Well, you're doing the show next Saturday, right?

Mikah Sargent (02:40:43):
I am, yes.

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:44):
Okay. I'll, I'll find kooky for Saturday.

Mikah Sargent (02:40:47):
Excellent. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. Okay, buddy. Well folks, you can also head over to the, what the heck is it contest by going to, again, giw.biz or giw.me to participate and try to figure out what the heck this is this week I'm thinking it is a little place to store negative film footage from disposable cameras that you can't get processed in stores anymore. So, wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I'm feeling. Wow.

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:24):
I can't say right or wrong, but I can't say wow.

Mikah Sargent (02:41:27):
<Laugh> I, this is the one part where I have not studied up enough to know how all of this works, but I do know that you can try to guess what that is and you can make up a silly answer. You can get the right answer in depending on what happens. You can get an autographed copy of mad magazine. Is that correct? Exactly.

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:46):
We give 18 18 issues, six for the right answer, 12 for the kooky wrong

Mikah Sargent (02:41:51):
Answers. Awesome. Well, Dickey D thank you for joining us. I do appreciate you being here with us. It's

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:57):
Super, super buddy. I, I'm thrilled.

Mikah Sargent (02:42:00):
I'm looking forward to next week. Can't wait for the kooky. <Laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:04):
Take care,

Mikah Sargent (02:42:05):
Take care. All right, folks. We are just about to the end of this episode of The Tech Guy. Wow. It has been a ride. Let me tell you The Tech Guy radio show. Thank you for letting me be here with you today. And we will see you next time. Have a great geek week.

Leo Laporte (02:42:28):
Well, that's it for the tech eye show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget twit T w I T. It stands for this week at tech, and you'll find it@twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. Security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all@twi.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.