hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4189.txt

Episode: 4189
Title: HPR4189:  HPR New Years Eve Show 2023 - 24 ep 6
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4189/hpr4189.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:09:57

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This is Hacker Public Radio, episode 4189 for Thursday, the 22nd of August 2024.
Today's show is entitled, HPR New Years, Eve Show 2023-24-06.
It is hosted by Hong Kimagoo and is about 123 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, the HPR community comes together to converse.
One of the things that I just discovered is that Steven Seagal, I guess, is no longer
with us.
Steven Seagal?
When did this happen?
Wouldn't he, like, a chef's deputy or something like that?
Yeah, he was, and I just ran across something on YouTube about it.
But if you also, if you look at him in some of his later materials, you'd see that he
didn't look good.
I mean, he's always been fairly, fairly heavy, but the last of it, he was, he was bulking
up a lot, you know, looked like a heart attack ready waiting to happen.
Yeah, I mean, he got a little comfortable there toward the end.
When did that, when did he pass away net recently or today, huh?
I heard nine months ago so that that would be in the spring, in the spring update, January
1st, 2024.
This story seems to be false.
Steven Seagal, death, hoax, spreads on Facebook.
Not true.
Uh, it is, uh, it's not, it wouldn't be surprising, surprising.
Nickel.
I just went ahead and grabbed a Wikipedia article on, uh, Steven Seagal.
Ben's all the part of it.
One guy just comes back and is still, still talking openly in it.
Pete.
Wasn't there another death hoax a while ago about, uh, Bill Nye, the science guy, and
people were saying it might have been his ex-wife saying he was dead, but he really wasn't.
Honestly, I've heard so many of them, and a lot of it, uh, was directed back before
a chance from what I've heard.
The different hoax is about celebrity deaths and things of that nature.
Um, was that guy on, uh, this Saturday night, uh, live show or whatever, or, or, uh, one
of those comedian guys, uh, Jimmy Kimmel or somebody was, uh, they had a hoax about
one of them being dead and I just have to make wish somebody a happy new year.
Uh, the old fashioned way with a phone call, uh, see if this person's available, uh,
I'll be back in a few.
I can move the total close to your feet since you're not over on Cal State.
You ready?
Yeah, when he ended up local, you don't know Pete J. I'm not entirely sure what's going on
there.
Yeah, I don't know what he was saying about his feet.
So, a love graph, what's your, uh, what's your setup that you use for the, uh, the
notes?
Oh, we, we're talking about you, but I use a special format this time or, I mean, I'm
cool with whatever anybody wants to do.
I could, I could be flexible.
Right.
I mean, just for now, like conversations, like, uh, what, how do you, uh, typically do the
notes like any, any specific tools you use when you, uh, do the notes?
No, not, not really.
But I mean, I'm not, I'm not really taking any notes right now.
I'm, uh, you know, I'll, I'll go back through and listen to everything, you know, and, uh,
just, you know, do the research at that point, jot, jot everything down and just come up
with something.
Um, I did, I did make a quick note about, uh, the device bored and see what's talking
about.
But, um, now I just really find it.
I just really enjoyed it.
I just kind of like doing, doing the research and checking everything out.
It's, I don't know.
I find it kind of rewarding.
I don't know.
Maybe that's weird, but I, yeah, and I just enjoyed looking to stuff up and delving
into it.
Same here.
I deep, I really enjoy it.
The, uh, the thing that I like the most about it is just the discoverability of it.
So as you're listening to the show and everything and all of a sudden, you find out of all
this cool stuff that everybody else is into, it, it really broadens your horizon.
I took a bunch of the older, um, the older show notes and stuff and I haven't finished
with the script yet, but I was rewriting a script to, uh, recom, just redo all of that
into a markdown links.
And I was creating, um, I don't know if you looked in the pad.
I had that, uh, was that that A through Z thing that was in there as like a mock up of,
or what it, what it supposed to look like when it's done, but that was just a mock up
of it.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I kind of, I looked at it briefly, but sort of busy last couple of days and stuff.
But yeah, it's certainly as you stumble across these, these links and stuff like that.
It's certainly like a huge rabbit hole.
You can, you can go down and then if I'm yourself, oh, well, I got to, I got to circle
back to that because I want to check that out some more, you know, just, just, you know,
learn, learn some more from my own, you know, my own self.
And yeah, it's just, it is, it is a lot of fun though.
I really enjoy it.
What sort of pad do you use, uh, like VS code or anything like that when you're getting
your notes?
I actually last year, I was just using, uh, uh, the ether pad that, uh, honky head up.
Oh, you were doing them all in ether pad, like no, no actual program.
No, yeah, just just ether pad.
I was just dumping the links in there and, you know, for them out and up a little bit.
Oh, this sounds tough.
I didn't mind.
I mean, I was, I was listening to it.
I had plenty of, plenty of free time.
So, um, you know, that was, it was no biggie.
But I was, yeah, I was listening to stuff and just going back and I, we, I think we
knocked it out pretty, pretty quick last year.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, much quicker than the, um, because the, the delay that happened on the, not, uh, 2023,
but the 2022 delay, uh, was like a six to nine month delay or something before all of
them were, uh, completed and uploaded and, uh, we knocked it out, I think before February.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Definitely.
I think we've done before that.
And then, uh, I think honky was, what was posted on our schedule and the come, uh, like
every, every other Wednesday or something like that for a while, it worked out good,
though.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Definitely.
I, uh, I do mind and Vem, the, uh, the etherpad is great, but it didn't have a dark
mode.
So that light mode was tough on the eyes.
And Vem gives me the, um, the flexibility with, you know, being able to, uh, load in custom
sessions to handle Markdown.
Nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The colors and, uh, etherpad are a little, a little to be desired.
But, um, yeah.
So I still, still, I still wasn't a bad deal.
I think, uh, just knocked it out little, you know, little here and there.
And, yeah, we got it, we got it done.
Hopefully we'll have a good, uh, a good turnout this year.
I'm going to quite a bit of audio.
It seems like there's a number of, number of folks in here.
So hopefully, uh, keep things going for a while.
Oh, yeah.
I was, I was on twice earlier and, um, he was, he was there.
He's, uh, he's a trooper.
I don't know if he was here when things kicked off.
Um, but he was, uh, here, I guess I got on first time today.
Maybe around 11 a.m or so.
And he was here.
Yeah.
He's going to be on for like a full 24 hours.
By the time they ready to stop the recording, he's going to be cooked.
Yeah, he's probably going to crash her like 10 or 12 hours.
Any good audio books lately?
Not, not really.
Um, I've got a few, a few that, uh, I've got queued up.
Um, uh, I don't know if you ever heard, uh, I think it was honky from the logcast.
He was talking about, um, Scott Sigler.
Uh, and he, he got me into some of his stuff along with a mordancy of, uh, a little bit.
I still, um, I still got a few of his, his I wanted to listen to.
But I really, uh, I really liked him.
He had some pretty cool sci-fi, uh, stuff.
And just, uh, the way, the way he writes is pretty, uh, pretty intriguing.
I was going on Claudio.
I don't think he's got his mic on yet.
But it's a little bit over here.
But I just wanted to wish you all a, uh, very happy new year.
Uh, from UTC minus five over here in Miami, Florida.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
It sounded like a good time going on over there.
Yeah, audio book wise.
I haven't gotten anything new.
Um, I think I settled, uh, I've been in the horror genre mostly.
And, uh, I've been just settling on Stephen King for a little while,
because I, I've burnt through so many other titles.
I just needed something to keep, uh, passing the time with.
But, uh, in between that, it's been, uh, that and the other company graphic audio,
this stuff that they produce, I've been using them.
Yeah.
A couple of those, uh, uh, Scott, Scott singular titles, uh, are, are done by them.
I like how they, they put in the sound effects and really, uh, set the stage for things.
Yeah.
And for me, that's way better than the movie, because I, I still got access to my hands and everything else.
So I can, uh, I can get out and get some work done and still be called up on, uh,
whatever entertainment that I want them, because I drive for a living, you know,
obviously the audio books and podcasts are part of life for me.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
If you're driving for a little short, I, um, I've got about a 45 minute commute each way to work.
So, um, I primarily do podcasts in the car.
I just, I don't know every, every now and then, uh,
I'll switch it up and get into some audio books.
There's a number of series I want to, I want to hop on, uh, in the fantasy genre.
It's just things that I never had, never had time to read.
It just be easier to handle through audio book format.
Um, so maybe that'll be one of my goals in 2024 to do more, more audio books.
Yeah.
I've been, um, I get a lot of mind for free or, uh, I don't actually obtain them,
but I listen to a lot of them through the, um, the public library system,
through that one drive in a hoopla.
So I get to, they give a certain amount that you can borrow at a time.
And there's also, um, was the other on Libra Vox or something like that.
Uh, where you can, uh, get a bunch of, uh, community based, uh, audio books online.
Yep.
Yeah.
I'm familiar with them.
Uh, listen to a few, a few of them.
Um, yeah, they have some pretty, uh, pretty interesting stuff.
They're just a ton of podcasts.
I'd kind of, I've been surfing around for a few different podcasts as well.
Um, mostly in the gaming area.
Uh, it stumbled across one that was interesting.
It's, I think the guys who produce it are Australian.
It's called, um, filthy casuals.
And it's, they, they just talk about gaming news and, uh, different games.
They come out, they play them and give a little, uh, a little chat about it.
It's mostly the personality and everything.
They have a very good vibe and a dynamic going on.
It's real nice.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Have you ever tried any, uh, fiction podcasts?
Um, not so much.
Not, not podcasts.
Yeah.
Uh, listen to, uh, to a couple, uh, Wolf 359.
It's kind of a pretty interesting.
Um, the black tapes was, uh, kind of cool.
Uh, there's another one called that Tannis, which I really liked.
But, um, you know, it's, you know, it could be hit or miss, though.
But I think it's an interesting, interesting format.
Um, if you're in the audio books and, you know, sci-fi, fantasy stuff, that, that might be something that might be appealing to some folks.
Yeah.
I'm looking for a Wolf 359 now.
And is that, uh, kind of, evil genius productions?
Uh, I'm not sure who puts it out, but, probably, um, I can't imagine there'd be more than one Wolf 359.
Let me add, let me double check my phone.
Let me just drop the link for the one that I found just now.
Part of the reason, uh, I don't do as much fiction.
It's hard for me to imagine certain things, especially when it comes to magic and things of that nature.
My brain really just draws a blank surface.
Not something I've actually seen before I, I really can't grasp it.
And then it creates these huge gaps and, uh, important elements of the story that I can't fill in.
So it just leads to more confusion later on in the story.
But what I am going to be looking for, um, fairly soon is probably a D&D, um, podcast, eventually.
Uh, that is that Wolf 359, yes, that is, uh, that is it.
And, uh, it is also, the podcast is done.
So it, it is a, not an ongoing story anymore.
I think it is finished.
Well, I don't mind that at all.
As long as it's a good story, I'll definitely go back and grab it.
So you're looking for a Dungeons and Dragons, like a actual gameplay podcast or something just that discusses, uh, Dungeons and Dragons.
Um, both because, um, we got me into it.
Kla too was talking about it.
Uh, once that he and a couple of guys were playing and he just discussed it for a little bit.
And, um, I thought, okay, I never actually played Dungeons and Dragons, but I heard a lot about it.
And I searched on YouTube one day for it.
If I was, um, I don't know if you heard of them.
They call it Viva Ledert League, those guys.
And they have a Dungeons and Dragons series that they do.
And of course, they do a little additional production behind it.
They have like green screening and stuff where they act out certain parts from the game that they're doing.
And it was incredibly entertaining.
So I was thinking, man, if they actually have that like a podcast version where they're actually playing and, you know, acting out in the podcast or, uh, for those like myself who have not actually played.
So we don't fully understand all the rules, a podcast that you could listen to and kind of better understand the game.
But without without running the too, too much politics behind it, because some of the stuff I've heard sounds a little bit like, uh,
a little too inside baseball or something like they kept arguing about what's true, uh, I guess D&D or something.
Yeah, everyone's that.
Uh, listen to critical role.
That's, uh, that's been around for a long time.
And the, uh, they've actually spun off the podcast into a, um,
Adam.
I think Amazon carries it.
I think it's getting ready to start the season.
It's called the legend of Vox Machina.
Which is one of the early campaigns that, uh, the critical role people went through.
I believe it's where that came from.
Is that a podcast?
The, the critical role guy.
Critical role as an R O L E is a, is a podcast.
The, the animated, um, show is called Legends of Vox Machina.
But that, that, the, the, the setting that that takes place in, I think, is from the early campaigns that the critical role people went through.
Yeah, Chris, silly boy.
And there's, there's the ongoing, the ongoing campaign that's currently happening now.
I'm, I'm not sure if they're going to be able to continue with the animation all the way through the different, the different, uh,
you know, seasons to get up to where they are now, but they have, I think they've been around for like over 10 years.
So there's quite a bit of source material to work with.
But the, the animation is, is, is pretty good.
And I'm pretty sure season three is going to start shortly.
I have seen season one of the Vox Machina on, um, that's the one with the, the guy with a magic guitar or something like that.
Uh, yeah, the, the little gnome, the little gnome guy.
Yeah, like a pervert or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, he's, he's, he's definitely, uh, yes, a Scanlon is his name, I think, in the show.
Yeah, he's a little, uh, little, uh, a little bit pervy, but, um, he had some comic relief.
Yeah, I watched that and it, don't get me wrong.
It was entertaining, but one of the things that I don't like about shows these days, and I don't, I don't like to spread this criticism too wide,
I'm just growing everything.
If you do that, that way, but I feel like whenever shows, uh, start to lose on the creativity side, you know, when they run out of things to think about or if they just want to cheap it up, they just automatically go toward the sexual angle.
And for me, that just really cheapens the content.
Okay, that's definitely a valid criticism.
I think, I think they're doing it more for humor than anything else, but, um, it's definitely not for, for children.
I mean, there is some, some lewd content for, for sure throughout, you know, both the seasons, and I'm sure the third one will be, uh, will be no exception.
Right, and in a, in a setting like this, where it's like a role-playing game or an adventure that's taking place or whatever, and you got multiple characters acting it out, that I don't mind so much.
But I mean, as far as if you're watching any kind of a show or something like that, and you can just tell like there's some serious gaps that they didn't either want to fill in or they were just, again, running up against budget constraints or whatever the case is.
It's like, okay, there's sprinkle a few sex scenes in and we'll call it good.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, if it doesn't, if it doesn't add to moving the story forward, yeah, I can, I can do without it, you know.
There's one audio book that really got me a little frustrated about it.
Um, that I finished not too long ago called a hero's road.
Um, it's from graphic art. Well, graphic audio also produces it as well.
They're rendition of it.
And great story.
So much to give.
But there's the way they blend in those particular scenes that they have.
It's, it's new in the way that they're doing it.
But still just doesn't really, didn't really vibe.
And I think most of it's just me because I'm kind of burnt out on it.
So I'm, you know, I'm like, I have my own ideas about it, but um, yeah.
Yeah, I can understand that.
Yeah, it's like, I mean, played Dungeons & Dragons for years, you know, from being a kid.
And, you know, it never came up that anybody's character needed to have sex with anybody or whatever.
It's just, yeah, we can do it out, out all that.
And you see, that's, that's the brilliant thing about it.
When you, when you have, say, for instance, a game of D&D, my understanding is the adventure,
everything that you're going through and what you're trying to accomplish ultimately
may not even be that important.
It's the, the, I guess, the brotherhood and camaraderie and everything else just kind of blended all into the adventure.
You know, the snowball effect of fun starting from the beginning of the game where it's just a random group of characters
just sprawling through different towns and villages, going through all these different battles and dialogue,
creating just this unbelievable story at the end.
That's what makes it good.
And you don't, you don't have to achieve in that, but other content just, I guess, can't compete with that.
Yeah, I always, I really always loved like the, you know, the world building,
especially if we're playing like a, you know, a homebrewed campaign.
It wasn't something out, you know, off the shelf where somebody, you know, it wouldn't be familiar.
And I love making the maps and then, you know, mapping out dungeons and, you know, meeting people and like, you know,
actually creating a, a contact or somebody you know in town and, you know, he could be, you know,
a resource later on, even if he came back to that town months or years later or whatever,
just really enjoyed that whole, the whole world building process and being part of that.
It was something that I always really enjoyed.
I was hoping to be able to play a game.
Club 2 invited me before the play, but I knew I was never, you know, even if I managed to get in one game,
that'd be like the only game I could actually play before I'm back on the road.
And it wouldn't be fair to anybody else to do that.
So I just couldn't actually get involved in it.
But I would like to listen to more content of it.
So I got that critical role saved in here.
I'm going to go start from the beginning of that and start binging like crazy.
Also, I got the wolf 359 loaded up over here.
I'm going to download that one on, or I'm going to try to get it on rhythm box.
So I can just pull down multiple of those.
Yeah, I mean, like I said, critical role.
Quite a bit of stuff to keep you busy.
Hey, Nat, welcome back.
Hey, Nat, you going for 24 hours?
Yeah, it's not.
He's going to get a second wind.
I have one of the things I've been doing with my daughter.
She's still very young and also it's not like it's a complex game or whatever.
But while she plays with her toys and stuff, you know, Christmas just passed.
So she got a whole new shipment of toys in here.
So we're going to be, I've had them laid out on the table kind of creating almost like a map or whatever.
And talking through her through the experience, kind of setting up like a little mini campaign, whatever.
And having her sort of visualized the type of things that are happening.
And currently she's excited about dinosaurs and things of that nature.
So we've been playing around with that.
Have a big, big container of dinosaurs that we set out with trees and rocks and crafts like that on the table.
And then she'll have like another toy or whatever there.
And I'll talk her through how the attack is going to happen.
You know, these, the herbivores or whatever want to eat the trees, but there are fewer trees in their area.
And most of the trees are over there with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
And that kind of thing.
That's awesome.
I remember my dinosaur phase.
I think it's something to all kids.
I don't think I know anybody who was not in the dinosaurs as a kid.
It's just such a fun, fun stage.
That's cool.
That you're making to make it a little less than out of it for her.
Yeah, because it's so easy for them to just get caught up on the tablet and things of that nature.
And I don't like her being exposed to too many of those different shows and things.
You know, don't get me wrong.
I know from time to time she just need a little downtime and kick back and watch her tablet.
But even for like television shows, I don't watch a lot of TV.
And I don't want to push that on her where I use my restrictions on her.
Where now she can't watch a lot of TV.
But still, I figure using your imagination, getting out of the walk, go pick up a stick.
Look at that pine cone over there.
Look, here's some moss.
Let's go find some liking.
It doesn't look cool.
You know, that kind of thing versus just laying down, looking at the screen.
Oh, yeah, I mean, I can remember when I was a kid, you know, growing up in the 80s and stuff like that with, you know, some of the, some of the toys, you know, got a, you know, a chemistry set one year, had all these experiments you could do with it and had a microscope and, you know, getting with that.
You could grow your own little brine shrimp and then put them under the slides and see what they look like.
You know, just, you know, it's a lot more using your mind rather than just like, I feel like somebody kids now are just stuck like staring at a device or, you know, something they just, you know, there's no practical side to things anymore.
No, and his thing, I understand that they're growing up in the information age, right?
They take technologies everywhere and you're going to have to adapt to it.
Yes, we do understand that much of it, but don't be consumed by it.
You know, I mean, and especially one of the things I really don't want her to do, don't feel like you have to enjoy things the same way everyone else is, right?
You don't feel like you have to put your life on the internet just because everyone else is, you know, basically live streaming their everything and getting all caught up in these different scandals online.
Don't feel like you have to do that. You can exist and live in the moment.
Yeah, I mean, like personally, like I have like next to no social media presence. I just, I don't have the time where, you know, the patients to get caught up in that.
I don't want to know what my friends are doing or eating for breakfast or what they had for lunch. I just, I just don't care.
And it's, I don't just feel like it's so much information overload for some people. It's just, you know, it's beyond where I want to be with, you know, information.
Currently, I kind of have to do it because I mean, I want to make sure that I'm aware of whatever stupidities floating around that, you know, you see about, I'm pretty sure most of the people whose kids got caught up in it.
None of their parents would have ever have thought, hey, my kid will be eating tide pods one day, right? Like nobody thinks that thing will happen, but, you know, it happens.
So I kind of want to be aware of whatever trend or whatever is going on. So that way I could kind of offer the counterweight to it at home versus just let let my kid get consumed by it and not have any sort of clue of what's going on. That kind of thing.
But, um, yeah, it is pretty depressing when you do learn about all the stupidity that happens online that people just get consumed by.
Yeah, well, I don't have any children. So, um, but yeah, I mean, who would think it would have come to, you know, the eating tide pods and all the other stuff. It's just, I don't know, it's, it's a little bit scary when you think about the future, but, um, yeah.
Yeah, one of one of the things, um, as far as interactions and things of that nature, I wanted, I want to teach her a lot of how's the PC works, how not to be afraid of it. Obviously choosing freedom over the other things and basically don't allow yourself to get caught up in the you must have.
Macbook with, with iPhone blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing, right? Like you, you can have anything you want so long as you know how to use it and definitely understand the benefit of owning your data.
All right, just, just don't rely on free storage forever dot com.
Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, there's so many kids that I feel now are, you know, they're not going to ruin a DVD or a CD that just, you know, oh, just stream it and say, yeah, there's a huge benefit to owning something versus hoping that it's going to be there next time.
You want to stream it from somewhere, you know, what happens when that thing goes away. Now you've got nothing.
Yeah, and one of the big thing about it, like for the media, I figured like this, they'll get over if it's like a movie or something that they wanted to watch and suddenly, you know, for whatever reason, it's no longer available to them on that streaming platform or whatever, they'll get over that.
But if you end up putting, like say, for instance, a lot of your childhood photos into this thing and, you know, now all of a sudden the licensing agreement changed for that and you're locked out or in some cases, like, for instance, Google where
their internal algorithm flags you for something terrible and then they just kicked you off of Google. And now because you rely on Gmail for 2FA and everything else, since you got kicked off, now you're locked out of everything else, that kind of thing.
I find it to be just terrible that that kind of thing can happen, you know, that we're so tied into these different networks and there's really, there's really no way out of it for a lot of it.
Yes, it's a good, it's a good point. I mean, nobody, you know, I feel that like so many people just don't think about some of these things where, you know, they follow it all the way through. They just figure it's always, it's always going to be there.
And they're always going to have, you know, have the safety net and that that's not really the case, you know, might not happen tomorrow or next week, but at some point, you know, something may give and now you're, you're stuck and it's too late to worry about it then.
And for the young people, especially, I think that for them not caring right now, by the time they do reach an age where there are going to care, there's no clue what, what the technology industry and the entertainment industry, how all of that stuff's going to evolve, because I mean, I give it like 20 years ago, we could not really fathom the phones we have today just 20 years ago.
So there's no telling what they're going to have in about another 15 to 20 years. I mean, you start off and think about it. We're walking around with your phone on your wrist as well as the phone in your pocket, as well as the phone in your ears.
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's everywhere and I feel like, you know, I'm seeing kids under 10 walking around with iPhones. It's like, everybody's got it. And then you out to like a restaurant or something and you got the family at the table and everyone's no one's talking to each other. Everyone's just buried in their phone doing whatever it is they're doing, but they're all together, but then they're all somewhere else.
Nobody's like, I know it's just it's just interesting how, you know, these things that are supposed to, you know, could bring people together have them so far apart when they're physically right right there with each other. It's just really, really crazy.
That's why we need to that's why we need more D&D. We need to we need to give more people getting together on weekends and just having, you know, two year campaigns.
Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, even the people I know that still play D&D, most of them don't really do it in person. Most of them use like Roll 20 or one of those systems like that to did the play over the, over the internet, which I mean has its has its benefits.
But yeah, I mean, I've always preferred playing in person. I like getting together and hanging out with my friends and actually seeing them and, you know, chatting with them, you know, before we start playing or after we play after we're done playing, you know, and just, you know, having some kind of, you know, relationship.
That in and lugs, I've never been to a lug, but I've looked some up to try and figure out how to get to one and currently, even if there was one in my area, trying, trying to get a schedule to meet up would be very tough.
I need to find a new line of work if I'm going to be able to coordinate with other people in their schedules.
Yeah, I mean, I live in a pretty densely populated state and I've looked around for some, you know, some, like, lugs or some, like, maker spaces and like, there really isn't a whole heck of a lot around.
Now, because I mean, we think about it, those of us that are into that kind of thing, there's already few of us online in comparison to just all the others that frequent the technological space.
I seriously doubt that of all of us that can actually meet in the same place, there will be many.
Yeah, I mean, we have there's, there's like two places near me that are, I don't want to say like hacker spaces, but they're like co up kind of workshops where you can like pay membership fee.
And then you have access to their, to some of their tools and stuff like that, but a lot of them are like not specifically at geared towards technology, some of them are like metal working and like wood shop tools and things like that.
Yeah, I don't know, it's just, yeah, it's just doesn't, it doesn't seem to be a thing. I think there's, there's one county library here that has from what I've been able to decipher online.
They have a 3D printer and you could go there and 3D print something for, for like a fee, but it's like, you know, it's, it's, it's not like a club or any kind of group or there's going to be other people hanging out there.
Yeah, it's just a resource of the library.
Our library, I looked into it a while back, will allow you to schedule ahead of time, like you got to get registered and all of that kind of stuff to do it.
But you can host like community type classes and things of that nature and what I was looking to do at that time, I have an old box. It's in storage right now.
Basically, I wanted to just bring it in there, just clean hard drive, couple of USB drives and a, in a cheap little monitor, plug it in and say, here's how you bring life to the old PC.
And you know, you got a boom to co-boom to and a few other things and just kind of plug a man, let people see that, hey, you can't break this, right?
Like you can do whatever you want on it, and no matter what you've done, when you're tired of it, like say, for instance, if you've changed too many things and now you don't know how to get back to default, just plug this little USB right back in there, wipe it and start all over again, right?
Like, so you really can't break it and you don't have to go out and buy a new PC, use what you have, benefit for longer.
Oh, absolutely, you could bring, you could read a lot of life into some of these older, you know, these older machines that people are willing to just throw away because they think everything is just so disposable now.
Yeah, and the public library gives you a good format for it.
But again, the timing, back when I attempted this, this was before COVID, there were lots of other programs going on at the same time, they had what do you call it?
The reading events that they do for like the kids and things of that nature, because everyone had to schedule time in that scene, like room or whatever, it's like a conference room or whatever that you were renting to do these things in, and you had to schedule time to get in for it.
Yeah, that's the problem you're competing with other people for some of these things.
Yeah, I might have to look back up at my library. I mean, I live right near a huge annex for the county library system.
I know they have had some different things. I know they have 3D printer, but like, let's see if, you know, what they're doing now, you know, post post COVID and see if anything has really has really changed.
I want to go and check it out again. I don't know. I remember right after COVID hit, they shut it all down. So a lot of that got closed up and it was a while before they opened it back up.
And I think it was even limited, like they had also some restrictions on it to where nobody wanted to do it again.
But I know that the kids, the preschool reading things that they do are open again, because we got the invites to go to another one. I took my daughter to a couple of them, and she basically had a fit in there. So we had to leave early.
But I know that they do those, but for the older adults and I guess older kids or whatever, I don't know if any of those are back open yet.
Yeah, definitely be something to research and kind of see, you know, put something out there and put some, put some feelers out and see if you can get, you know, somebody interested in something you want to, you want to do if you can find a, find a good time to get out there and showcase something.
Yeah, that that's kind of what I wanted to do. I wanted to do that. And I don't know what their rules are on recording it.
I was going to do any like video on it really just kind of like audio keep just have a microphone going. So as people ask questions and things of that nature and just wrap it all up as a podcast at the end of the day.
But give for whoever shows up because I don't imagine a lot of people are going to show up unless I give it a clickbait kind of name.
Can you imagine getting clickbaited by the public library?
Yeah, that would be pretty funny actually, but yeah, I mean, I know that, you know, the library here, I mean, some of some of the things they do, they, you know, they both wrote up on on their website and I'll put some signing up.
You know, in in the actual library.
But I imagine they, they probably have some social media presence or something where they may try and promote your event and, you know, I'm sure you can promote it yourself.
But yeah, who knows? I mean, it's, it's worth a shot if it doesn't seem like it's overly successful. Then, you know, you know, you don't have to try it again, but at least you gave it a shot and tried to, you know, try to do something.
Once all this is over, I try to put some more effort into it.
Thinking about it does make me want to get back in there. I had to go dig that box out of storage again. Lord knows where it is.
Yeah, I'm with you. I'm not a big, a big laptop guy, like having a desktop and like the flexibility and just being able to do different different things with them.
Yeah, just never really was a huge notebook guy. Let's some traveling or something like that. But yeah, I've got three custom built desktops right here on my desk.
But, you know, that I've built and like having the, you know, the customization and being able to put in a system.
But I wanted it. Yeah, I have two. One that's my, my main machine and back when I was doing only gaming.
That's, you know, it was its primary job and what I do is the moment I'm done, like say, after X amount of years, hardware gets a bit old.
I take the hardware from that one and put it into the other one, which is the server. So my NAS would get all of the old gaming hardware and my gaming machine.
We get all new hardware. Hey, yeah, cycle it down. I mean, if it's still working, put it to use somewhere.
Yeah. Now, one of the things that it has done for me, I have to keep, you know, basically handcuffing myself to keep me from messing around with it.
I want my NAS to just be the NAS. I don't want it to, I don't want to fool around with it too much and then ruin my data because I got to experimenting real late one day and just screwed it up.
But, you know, it has all these extra cores and things. I just feel like I can get away with it so much more.
But it's the house for so much data. I don't want to play around with it.
It's cool. Yeah. I've been thinking about putting one together myself for a while now, but it's one of these things that's perpetually planning for it.
So, what have you got to run in for years? For the NAS? Yeah.
I know it's all AMD. I'm thinking it's, what is it? I don't know what the, I know it's like a, it's my old gaming hardware.
So, it's like a four core something AMD, um, old graphics card was a nine, was a nine 80 Ti 32 gigs of, well, I think it was a DDR3 back then when I put that one together.
So, DDR3 RAM, not real impressive by today's standards, but for a NAS does the job.
Okay. That's cool. That's good to know. I've, I've got a third generation i7 that's starting to get a little long into two here and looking for something that something that that might be able to be used for.
Yeah. I typically hold on to my systems for roughly about 10 years. And when I updated from that system to the one I'm in now, I mean, I just kind of didn't even know what to really do with everything that I have.
It's, it's there and I can use it, but because of what, what I have changed, I don't do as much gaming anymore. So a lot of it's not even being used right now. So in my current gaming rig, my primary desktop.
It is the, I think it's the Ryzen 9 3900 X or something like that. That's the, uh, the 12 core 12 core 24 thread C CPU. I got the, it has, I think I got 80 gigs of RAM in it right now. Yeah. I think it's 80 gigs of RAM in it. And, um, my GPU is the 6950 RTX 6950.
Okay. That's not bad. Yeah. And once, once this gets to the, you know, roughly the 10 year mark and I move it over to the, to the server, I'm going to, I'm probably not going to buy any more gaming hardware to rebuild into the case.
Because I'm thinking by then the steam deck's going to be more than enough for what I want. And I play a lot of indie games anyways. And they're not like the heavy titles. So it makes me feel kind of foolish to have all of that in there. And I'm playing, I'm playing like 2D games and crap.
Yeah. I'm not really into a whole lot of like the, you know, first person shooters or something going to need like a real heavy graphics card for. I've got, um, I've, I've got a 1080 and it's still any game I want to play. It still runs fine on that. So, um, I'm pretty happy with just sticking with that.
Not to mention that, you know, up until recently, you know, buying into graphics card was all over the place with the prices and scalpers and all that stuff. And I think there are things are starting to normalize quite a bit now. But I just, it wasn't something I needed. So I wasn't really that all that into buying it.
Yeah. Same here. The only reason I really went for the new graphics card was to play around with like the machine learning and some of their so called AI, you know, the large language models and things of that nature. That's the only reason why I went with it. But even then, AMD just the software wasn't ready yet on AMD side, which made me really regret going with AMD. I should have went with, um, Nvidia for that.
But I mean, I'm still happy with the purchase. That's interesting. Have, have you had any, uh, any luck playing around with any of that stuff for any of the machine learning or just couldn't get off the ground?
Not yet. Every time, like what I've been playing with first, right, I started with, um, was it mimic mimic three, the, um, text to speech, uh, thing that they have where you could, you could run that and transcribe any audio into
uh, text, right. And I figured this is very simple, very easy. It shouldn't take a lot, but everything was made for again into, uh, not until, uh, what do you call it Nvidia, all the software and what they, what they had for AMD just the documentation was shoddy as hell.
When you finally found somebody who claimed to have gotten their working, they did it in windows. So I was just so well here in Linux and it, you know,
it was just even now thinking about it makes still makes me a little bit disappointed. You spend a ton of money on a graphics card and then you can't do anything with it.
Uh, yeah. It's just, it's something that really interests me, but I don't have a lot of exposure to it or anything like that. So I was just kind of kind of seeing that, seeing what you had learned about it.
But yeah, definitely, definitely interesting technology, but I guess we'll stay tuned and see what develops down the, down the plate with it.
I'm probably going to probably later on this week, I'll take another stab at it again, see where it's come since then, but my hopes aren't very high.
They even with the driver situation because some of the, some of the, uh, documentation that I found for packaging the software with the AMD, uh, I guess drivers or whatever that was necessary.
You had to use and the conda and a few other things to get the pro, the appropriate ones, but then when you go through some of the, uh, they would have like the stable documentation in the experimental one, which conflicted because the stable one would say, hey, just do this and then you'll get it running.
Then when you check the experimental or the, the nightly documentation or whatever it is, then they would actually tell you, uh, all of this works, asterick and asterick would be except for AMD.
So you'd be, it was very disappointing. There's always an asterick. Uh, that's, that's got to be really frustrating, man. I feel for you. Hopefully, uh, hopefully they'll be, you know, something better coming down, coming down the road.
Yeah, I imagine now things should be better at least I'm hopeful for it. And one of the things that made me even more frustrated was I thought that AMD would definitely be on top with them having, um, open source drivers and things that nature.
But it should, you know, I figured, especially when it comes for, uh, AI and machine learning, all of that kind of stuff, people would want to choose the more open platform. And that's what they've built on.
But in video, I mean, you got to hand it to them. They not only tailored their hardware to that market, but they stayed on top of the software.
As the new hardware drops, they already have packages ready to go. So you could get running whatever you want. Day one, you know, they may buy hardware install hardware, software is already waiting for you.
Get up and going. That wasn't important. It wasn't as efficient day one, but as time goes by, they made it better.
Okay, that's, uh, that's interesting. Did not. I didn't really know that, but okay, that that does make sense that when you, you know, when you kind of explain it like that.
Yeah. And people give them, people give them a lot of, a lot of flag for, you know, being binary blobs and not open and, uh, you don't want to run this on your system because you don't know what it's doing and blah, blah, blah.
I get that. But when you really want to actually do any of it, when you want to actually participate, I mean, really, there's only one option, right?
I'm sure there's one guy on the internet somewhere who has gotten his AMD system to work, but, uh, we just can't seem to replicate that.
Yeah, it's like, like you're saying, if, you know, if you want to participate, there may be some compromises that you need to, you need to make if you want to, you know, play the game.
But I'm hoping that I'm hoping it's better now. I'm going to, um, I got to, no, I think, but I got to update my steam. I can't realize how I'll update my steam.
Um, I've been keeping an eye on the steam deck and I saw that they drop that newer, or, or I guess it's a refresh, they give it like a better screen and things like that.
Um, one, one of the things that have me a little nervous about it is, um, looking at such a small screen, it might cause a lot of eye fatigue or something like that.
So I didn't know if I wanted to buy it. And then I'd never play with it because, uh, that's what happened with the, um, with the Nintendo's version.
I have the Nintendo one of their little switch. There you go.
Yeah, what's the, what's the price looking like on the steam deck? That's, that seemed a little pricey when I first came out.
It's still roughly the same price. I think it's still like 500 bucks or something like that. And, and he's the thing for that, I don't mind because it's not like, um, those other systems,
like, say, a PlayStation or Xbox where you're going to have to, um, buy their little internet cards in order to get on the internet and, and then, um, you know, play within the ecosystem is basically a PC and a Linux PC on top of which.
So even if you're not using it to play playing games six or seven years from now, you can still just use it as a PC.
It can be a little server, right? You can use it to deploy whatever you want on the fly.
Sure, yeah, there, there's functionality be, you know, beyond what it, you know, beyond what a regular video game system is going to offer you.
And yeah, 500 bucks isn't, and it's not end of the world pricing.
Um, and hopefully, you know, you know, maybe it'll come down a little bit, but yeah, I can handle that 500 bucks.
Might be something I might check out in the future. Just got to get more free time.
It's been so busy with between work and everything.
Um, really haven't had enough time to, you know, get into some of some of my hobbies, especially things are going to require, you know, considerable amount of time.
The thing that's been killing me with video games these days, don't give me, I love having a game that I can play when I need it.
So when I, when I need to play a game, having something like grim down that I can just jump in, I know how to play it.
I don't have to figure anything out. I can just have dumb fun for, you know, an hour or so and, and be good with that.
But most of the time when I have time on a PC, I like creating shows for HPR and part of what gets me to create a show for HPR is basically anything interesting.
So I, um, I've been doing a little bit more bash scripting recently. So that's been pretty interesting.
So I, I find a way to make a show out of that and that that has been consuming my, my fun sectors.
That's probably so many hours in the day.
Yeah. And even when I'm out and about, there's a lot of cool things that I think about.
And I've made a couple of episodes where I talk with friends about certain things or whatever.
And then we, you know, we throw an episode about that out on the, uh, on the platform.
So it's, it's been small things like that that I think about doing.
And that's kind of where the fun has led to now. So the gaming side of it is still fun.
It's just that I don't, I don't seek it out as much anymore.
Yeah. The, I mean, the gaming is always good, but I mean, I work with a couple of people who are like,
if they're not working or sleeping, they're, they're, they're gaming.
One of these guys, he just, he just got into, um, he just got Baldur's Gate three a couple of weeks ago.
And he's already got like 75 hours into it or some crazy, crazy amount of time.
And he's just, he's always talking about it at work. And it's just like it's, it's, he's so consumed by it.
Um, yeah, it's just, it's just crazy. I mean, it sounds, it sounds like a great game.
And obviously it's, it's definitely Dungeons and Dragons oriented and stuff.
So I just, I just still had the, the, the time commitment to get into, to get into that.
Yeah. And you know, I kind of envy that there was a time when I could do that.
But no, no, I can't anymore. So I kind of envy that.
But I mean, even if I had the time today, don't get Mariah still, wouldn't it?
There's, there's, it feels like there's always something that has to be done.
So I'm just not thinking about what needed to be done.
I better go check my agenda to make sure I'm not slipping up too much.
Yeah. I mean, this guy's, you know, he's, you know, he lives, he still lives at home and stuff like that.
So he's not challenged with, you know, you know, having his own house or anything like that.
So he's got, he's got way more free time than I do.
Right. Well, I mean, hey, and I don't knock anybody for having, having that kind of fun still.
Because like, like I mentioned, if I could get away with it, I probably would too.
So I'm, you know, I'm not going to knock it, but so many other responsibilities.
Yep. Being an adult is rough sometimes.
So aside from the video games or a podcast or something, like what will you do for entertainment wise?
You know, any other activities or consumable media?
You know, TV movies, that's really, really got it.
I do, I do a fair bit of reading, like actual physical books.
That's about it, really. How about yourself?
Not much on the physical books side, because most of the books I do have, they're, they're a little bit too large.
And I can't put any more in the house, basically.
So they have to be ebooks.
And the prices are so much better.
I get them from humble bundle.
And I'm kind of addicted to doing that.
Half of the books I've bought from humble bundle.
I know I'll never get through, but I have to do it because the prices are so good.
And maybe one day I'll be able to read them all.
But I like, I like anything about technology, basically.
It's, it's the, the thought of knowing I could learn more that lures me to doing it.
I don't do so much of the fiction stuff.
I like, I'll read your refrigerator manual.
But I won't read anything about elves and, and, you know, spirits and things that don't really understand, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I read a fair bit of, bit of history and stuff like that.
And I guess it's sort of technology adjacent.
I've a couple of years ago, I got into a metal detecting, which I've been, I've been enjoying that.
Just digging some stuff up.
I found some, I found some pretty interesting stuff.
I found a, a metal, a little army man in my, in my backyard.
And found a bunch of coins and different stuff like that going around the different places, metal detecting.
So that, that was a, that's actually pretty enjoyable.
And it actually gets me out, moving around, doing stuff and, you know, from not sitting in the house all day.
So it's kind of fun.
I chose photography for that.
I can in T5 and just run around with a few lenses, taking photos.
I love nature photos, squirrels are my favorite.
They're just good medicine, right?
Like you ever want to feel better.
You just go photograph some squirrels and that I'm telling you, you couldn't, you couldn't spend money on the type of joy that could bring you.
No matter how short and fleeting it is, it's still just the best.
And there's no side effects to it, right?
You know, so no negative things on the label.
So, um, photography is really good for that.
And one of the things that it has led me to was a little bit of botany trying to discover what sort of plants and things are in my area.
And I, I fell in love with moss and liking that kind of stuff.
I still try to discover more plants and their, uh, their Latin names.
I'm not very good at it, but I like trying to do it.
That and, uh, ecosystems became pretty fun as well as I was learning.
Trying to understand how ecosystems work, like how everything tie in.
And, um, what I stumbled across was, I guess, people who build terrariums and, uh,
for variums and things of that nature palliariums and how they, how they basically take what's outside,
bring it into this tiny container, make it bioactive and do it in a way to where the waste from one animal feeds another
and creates a complete ecosystem inside of a box.
Like all of that is very fascinating.
Oh, that's, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, we, there's funniest worlds around here.
I, um, I had a, um, a friend stop over and, um, he, uh, was looking at one of the, uh,
one of the, the trees outside.
And he's like, oh, I got to check this out.
And he had some app on his phone that was able, he, you took a picture of the, I guess,
the leaves on the tree and the app would try and decipher and tell you what,
what kind of tree it was.
I was like, oh, that's, that's actually pretty neat.
I never really thought that there would be something like that.
But he was, he was checking it out and stuff.
If you're, um, I, uh, I don't know if he was on earlier, but, uh,
Minix from, uh, the love cast, I think he's into building terrariums and stuff like that.
He, uh, he's talked about that a couple of times on the, on the show.
Um, but, uh, yeah, if you ever get a chance on, uh, first or third Fridays,
you might want to pop over to the, uh, the Linux love cast and, uh, chat with him a little bit about that.
He seemed pretty knowledgeable.
And from not mistaken, I think it was him that, um, he did the show about, uh,
I think a fish tank or something like that.
He has a, uh, an aquarium that, uh, that he set up and he was discussing the balance of life within the aquarium.
And I, I have looked into those apps.
I just, uh, from my own, uh, I guess sanity.
I don't get those apps that allows you to identify plants on the fly on the phone just because they want access to everything.
But I, I do want the ability to identify more Google lens.
We'll do that.
What's Google lens?
It's an application and then you can take a picture of something or if you already have a picture,
you can say, what's in this picture?
Uh, I've, I've used it a lot while I'm in Thailand to identify different plants and fruits and bugs and things like that.
Oh, sweet.
Thank you.
So I can, I can just bring it back home, jump on my next cloud, bring those photos over to the PC and then from the PC gain access to that information.
Um, I, I think when you go to Google images, you can upload the picture on Google images to identify it.
Uh, I think you can also use that to see if somebody is cat fishing or scamming with a photo to identify them on the internet.
But I'm using the actual Android app on my phone, Google lens.
Yeah, just popped into the website just now, uh, lens.google, which I'm hoping that's the real site and not, not something else.
It looks like a real thing.
I'll, I'll do a who is look up on it domain.
It might be the actual Google thing.
But, um, yeah, I, I just don't want the app on my, like I'm, I'm detaching as much as possible from my phone.
Like say, for instance, I can't carry a DSLR camera with me everywhere I go.
So, you know, from time to time, I'm going to have to take a photo with the phone.
And in that case, when I, when I return home, I want to just offload the photos onto my PC and, you know, strip out some exit data, that kind of thing and do an update, you know, and upload and try to discover more this information.
Yes, yes, lens.google.com is a Google that's a, that's a, adjacent to the phone app.
Sweet. Okay. So let me go ahead and say that. I'm going to put that in my note pad as well for the show notes.
Thank you for that information.
There was a tree here that had these black fruit growing on them that turned red that it could not identify.
It thinks that something else, but I was told that the tree only grows on this mountain, on this peak in patia.
And it is not edible, but nobody knew what it was called just that it only grew there and nowhere else in the world.
And it's an edible fruit or is just a fruit that they grew on it.
A fruit, that's the only place that grew and it was you could not eat it.
That was good. That was good.
I mean, they could have just been telling me that because the people that live there want to eat them all, or it could actually have been poisonous.
I have no idea.
I was asking more to see if he was updating his blog still with a chart that is on.
Yes. And instead of doing vacation day one and vacation day two, I'm trying to list either like another spa day, another day at the spa or patia or chat am trying to list.
I'm trying to make the titles more descriptive.
Okay. I'll check it out.
Wait, so did you move to Thailand?
No, no. I came here last year to meet my best friend and person and proposed to her when I was here.
Last year I stayed for two months and this year I'm my plane ticket is for three months, but they've changed visa rules.
So I'm trying to figure out how to stay the full 89 days, but I've been here almost a month and plan to stay for two more.
I heard they're pretty strict about that kind of thing over there.
They are, but two years ago it would it for a tourist visa, you can stay for 90 days.
So it used to be for Australia, Canada and the United States and some European countries you could come here and just get your passport stamped and as long as you didn't stay past 90 days, you were fine.
Last year they changed it to 45 days and you had to get an extension.
So I did that last year, but you can only get one extension this year, right before I came they changed it to 30 days and you can only get one stamp.
So you can only stay a total of 60 days on one stay.
I have to fly assuming immigration told me the correct information.
I have to fly out of Thailand for a day and then I can fly back and get a new stamp and that restarts the 30 days.
Now, do you speak the native language there? I'm guessing it would be time.
I'm guessing it would be time.
God know, I know like 10 words.
Because I imagine like if I just showed up in Thailand like like five minutes from now, if I just popped up in Thailand, would I know where to go, what to eat, who to talk to?
Like does anybody speak English and you know, how do I live there?
And I imagine you being there for this amount of time, like I think like, okay, he must obviously speak the language.
Absolutely not.
I use Google Translate when necessary.
Pretty easy to order food.
They have apps.
I used an encrypted chat application called line line or line messenger.
It is a Japanese in the in encrypted program and in Asia, they have delivery services similar to Uber and Uber eats called line man.
And you have to have a line application to use line man.
You can get rides, motorcycle rides, taxis, grocery deliveries and food deliveries through the account.
So I can have stuff delivered to me.
I can order a ride.
It's a little difficult without knowing the language, trying to get a taxi and go someplace.
But I have figured out how to use the public rail system and other things on mostly on my own without speaking the language.
Part of the thing I think that will bother me the most is well, not really being left alone, but kind of feeling like somebody's always watching you.
Because I imagine if I showed up there, obviously there's not going to be very many people around that looks like me.
So I'm going to get a few look, you know, stairs and things that nature.
So just kind of wanting to sit back and just feel like I can disappear for a little bit somewhere.
I feel like that'd be kind of impossible there unless you're inside.
If you're a foreigner, both of those were, have lots of tourists.
I think I only heard maybe one or two people speaking English.
Most of it was European languages and maybe some Russian Russian.
And I think I heard Dutch and maybe one of some of the Norwegian countries, you know, Swedish or Finland, Finnish.
Occasionally some of the kids will stare at me.
Last year, last year, I still had my beard.
So I think all the kids thought I was Santa Claus.
Actually I heard some of the kids say Santa.
But for the most part, unless it's small children, most adults don't pay me any attention.
I think sometimes they can tell.
I'm a tourist because I can't read, can't read any of the language.
Does that make sense?
I don't know if it's me or did you cut out?
I think you were cutting out.
I caught a few words and you paused for a while.
And then I heard, does that make sense toward the end?
When did I start cutting out or trying to say stuff again?
There was a significant portion of that that got taken out.
I heard that there were two places where they speak the language and then you paused for a while.
It might be to me.
I'm not sure if it's me or you.
You did cut out for a little bit more and say right after you were talking about kids think in your Santa Claus.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
So this past weekend, we traveled to two different places.
We were on the river Quai and we went up in the mountains to see these waterfalls.
So there's several kilometers of hiking up and down in the mountain to get to all these waterfalls.
And there were some foreigners there.
But most of them spoke other languages than English.
And yesterday we were at a hot springs mineral spa.
And there were lots of foreigners.
As far as regular areas.
But almost everybody is super nice in Thailand.
I think I've even felt some like I hate foreigner vibes from people.
But they still are pleasant with me.
Well, I think everybody treats Americans like that at some point where I get tired of us and want us to go.
But the nice thing we are about it.
Nope.
I don't even just just.
I think there used to be a general dislike of foreigners in Thailand from like maybe 25, 30 years ago.
Kind of what I've gotten the impression of from people.
But Thai people as a culture and as a nation from my own personal experience.
And from what tons of other people have said to me in person and that I've seen on the internet.
Is that Thailand is one of the nicest places.
The people are some of the nicest people on the planet.
And I'd have to agree with that.
Everybody seems warm and welcoming to me.
Even though some of them seem to like like I can almost feel them roll their eyes when they look at me.
Foreigner.
It is still the I don't I don't feel like I've been mistreated at all.
Maybe take an advantage of by like one took took driver this year.
A taxi driver that said is meter ahead to charge me more and drove the wrong way.
And last year fruit fruit vendor who overcharged me blatantly over charge me.
Is the sum of my negative experience here.
I mean, that's it.
And as a foreigner, I would expect more than that.
Yeah, I was about to say.
I don't know much about island and the little that I have saw in like a documentary years ago.
From what they were talking about is I think like a bunch of English countries or whatever.
Which is countries in general from outside of Thailand.
People came in and bought a bunch of land and businesses.
And they basically ruined the economy to wear non non-tiling citizens or not.
Yeah, non-tiling citizens owned a significant portion of the businesses and things.
And they ruined the economy for the people that live there.
So they went through like a major change to reverse that and put all these sort of rules in place to where
if you're not a Thai born citizen or whatever, they made it almost incredibly difficult for you to actually own land and own a business there.
Yeah, and Ellen, I get married.
I'm not even going to attempt anything.
I think even getting a bank account is going to be difficult until her and I are married.
And once her and I are married, I can just get a Thai passport.
It'll I just apply for one.
But without us being married, it seems to be next to impossible.
I was trying to get a one year non-immigrant tourist visa.
Which seems pretty straightforward when you look online as the requirements and stuff.
But it has been near impossible to actually get one here.
Okay, so that does line up with a lot of what I heard back when I was looking into it that,
yeah, they crack down on a lot to try and make it to where a lot of the opportunity can be there for actual Thai citizens
so that they don't get taken advantage of by a bunch of outside money.
Yes, but but it does look like Chinese people from China are buying up a lot of land and businesses,
especially a lot of apartment buildings and condos and hotels and things like that.
Yeah, somebody's always going to find a way to game the system.
And depending on if they're greasing the right, how's the weather there now during this time of year?
It's the cool season, so I think it's like 94 degrees today.
That's cool. Did you say 94 and cool in the same sentence?
It's the same sentence.
Yes, I'm sorry, it's 93.
All right, well, let me go ahead and make sure I take that off.
The considerations list do not go to Thailand. Got it.
Got it. There are areas in Thailand that are more moderate temperatures.
Like 70 that stay in between 70 and 80 degrees year round.
Most of our trek through the mountain, Saturday, Saturday, Friday, Saturday, Saturday was, you know, was breezy, was cool
because we were near the water.
So that kind of dropped the temperature of the air a bit.
It felt like it was in the low 70s all day.
Yeah, I got this problem where when it gets above 80 degrees, I don't even want to see another human.
So I just couldn't do it there.
We were in Cha Am, C-H-A-A-M, Cha Am, the previous weekend.
And I don't know what the temperature was, but it was fairly windy.
So I'd say like 10, 20 mile per hour winds blowing near the ocean, near the sea, this near the sea of Thailand.
And it felt a wonderful, I thought it was great.
It felt like a perfect temperature, like a nice autumn night in America in Ohio.
It's not very humid.
I think it's in May and September where they have tons of rain.
And then other than that, it's, I don't think it's rained at all since I've been here.
No, do you have to get any kind of like immunization or anything like that before you go over there?
I got immunization just because, well, you have to be careful eating the food in all of Asia and South and Central America
because of the water.
There's large rates of hepatitis A and B.
So I did get vaccinated for hepatitis A and B.
I have lifetime vaccinations for those.
I got lifetime vaccinations for rabies, which you can just be careful and not get bit by anything.
Or get rabies vaccines.
They're expensive.
I opted for three rounds of rabies vaccines because there's rabies in Thailand.
The monkeys, the dogs and the bats have it, have cases of rabies.
And there's no medication if you get bit by something with rabies in Thailand.
You're done for, I think.
There's, you can't get shots for it afterwards.
Now, is like Thailand rabies one of those things where if you get it a good luck trying to return to the US or?
Correct. That would also be another problem.
If they think you have rabies, you might not be able to fly.
Oh, oh, yeah, I'd imagine I'd just spend the money then.
You know, we won't less thing to worry about.
Everybody else I know that has built a Thailand doesn't care about the rabies.
Yeah, I learned a long time ago.
I'm not like everybody else.
I'm the reason they have to print out the statistics, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I didn't care.
Can you hear me now?
There you go now.
Last year, I sold no monkeys and no bats.
There's tons of street dogs.
So not quite feral, but not quite owned by anybody.
Lots of dogs everywhere in Thailand.
This year, I did see bats and monkeys quite a few of them this weekend.
You know, that that kind of I'm always curious about that kind of thing.
Because you know how here in the US or whatever, because depending on where you live,
is the most we see like squirrels and ducks that kind of thing or geese as the sort of wild life in most areas,
especially if you live in a city or something like that.
So I can only imagine if you live in a populated area where it's not squirrels or ducks or geese,
but you're saying monkeys and bats and what else have?
Dogs.
Okay, and dogs and tons of just like and here's the thing that kind of scares me, right?
I don't even like being around people who have certain breeds of dogs here in the US,
just because not just because the dog has a bad rep,
but the disgusting people who own them don't ever get held accountable for the behavior of the animal.
So it's just you know, it's a terrible situation for both parties,
but you know, never mind that.
I can just imagine where you're just walking down the street and there's a pack of wild dogs
and you got a coin flip.
Is today the day I get mulled or will they just kind of pass by?
And as it ate and a half million dogs in Thailand,
300,000 of which are abandoned.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute now.
I thought you were talking about that.
Wait, hold on.
What?
Do they not have neutering laws or anything like that?
Does nobody get an animal snipped, nothing like that?
Last year weren't we were further out.
This year I'm right in the center of Bangkok.
Last year we were kind of out in a suburb kind of.
So I would walk down the street to 7-Eleven at night and you know,
get something to snack on.
And the dogs are out and prowling and they kind of like take over the parking lots
for all the shops down the road.
So there was like a group of, I don't know, maybe six dogs that were all gathered around
the entrance of the 7-Eleven.
And then another group of dogs that kept trying to come in the middle of the night
and take over that spot.
And so sometimes I wouldn't feel safe leaving the 7-Eleven.
I would just stand at the door and wait for the dogs to move to one direction
so I could sneak off.
Yeah, see that's a deal breaker for me.
Strange pack of wild dogs, coin flip on the rabies.
Yeah, I'm just, you know, kind of, kind of thing.
And I'd imagine that there'd be some sort of thing that a program that the state
or I don't know, do they do prophecies, parishes or something like that.
However, they segment the nation there that they'd have programs
to, I guess, capture and help reduce the population, you know what I mean?
We were at Ayutia, which used to be the capital.
And Ellen, her family donated to some dog group.
I assume it was something similar to the Humane Society,
where they were collecting donations.
But it was all in Thai.
I just knew it was something about dogs.
And it was some program for rescuing or spaying the nutrient or something.
Yeah, because especially if you definitely want to, you know,
make sure that there's a balance between the wildlife.
But then when you mix in the disease rabies into that balance
and how it can be communicated from these animals,
and there's no way to really keep the numbers down,
because I'm not sure if they have a predator to help balance that population.
Like that, you know, it just, it really seems like there should be a program.
You know, somebody that comes out with a truck and take care of as much as possible.
I think outside the cities, there's enough wild animals that will eat the dogs.
When we were in the mountain, I saw no dogs.
And one of the signs, there was a trail and there was a warning not to go down the trail
because of tigers.
All right, is that where the, was it called the, the bangle tiger?
Yeah, I think so.
Have you ever seen the tiger like up close?
Like, you know, I wouldn't say like close enough to touch,
but you know, where you could identify the fur and everything on it.
You know, so you kind of get some detail.
Not in the wild.
I've seen tigers up close.
That would be kind of interesting,
because I don't only imagine like if if you do see the tiger,
there's two things that I have to worry about there.
One, the tigers are allowing you to see it,
because it's coming after you.
So that's going to be like, you know, yes, I see the tiger,
but it's a bad thing that I'm seeing the tiger.
And two, if you don't see the tiger, that's even worse,
because now it's coming after you and you don't see it.
You know that kind of thing.
Yeah, large, large cats.
You never turn your back on them in the wild or in captivity.
And so is it, is it like,
be playing a seriously deadly game of red light green light with a tiger?
I'm not worried about out running a tiger.
I just have to outrun you.
Well, that's always been my model.
You know, whoever's close to me prepared to take one for the team.
I heard a story about five college kids that were in a boat going down the river.
I don't, I think it might have been in India,
but they were the motor one out on the boat.
And the tiger jumped in the water, grabbed somebody from the boat
and took him back to shore, mauled him, grabbed a second person from the boat,
and then went back for a third person before the boat drifted far enough away
that the tiger didn't want to swim that far.
But three-fifths of the group were eaten by a tiger.
No, I, I imagine, I'd imagine it had like an ore or a paddle or something.
But even then it'd be scary, Vandy.
You gotta imagine there's a tiger.
You already frustrated, especially if you don't see it approaching it first.
So the first guy that got taken didn't see it at all,
but afterward now everybody's got eyes on,
and then depending on what kind of boat they're on.
It, it was like a third-world country boat with the little motor on it that broke.
Oh, yes, so you're basically just screwed out there, right?
You're arguing with the guy who's, who knows the tiger's coming for him
and you're like, whatever you do, don't panic too much
because then you'll flip the boat and all of us will be in the water.
So you gotta ask him to be reasonable about being targeted by the tiger.
Like calm down, bro.
You'll get, it's all taken if, you see, I'd be the worst guy to be there
because I'd still be making jokes even though we're about to die.
So I tell him, look, when he gets close, just splash some water on him.
He'll go away cast on like water.
After he's swimming through the water to get you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, wait, wait, take his clothes.
Then take this bottle of water and splash it on him. He'll leave.
Most of the people I know think lions and tigers are the same size
and tigers are substantially larger.
Well, I can't remember the last time I've actually seen either of them up close
so I couldn't tell you.
I just know I'd be killed by either.
So, you know, I don't want to be able to identify him
where there's not some sort of maximum security barrier between us.
The St. Louis Zoo has a wonderful Wildcat enclosure
where it's a big circle and people walk from the outside to the center.
Where there's glass where you can see in.
But you are on walkways and you walk over top of the Wildcats.
And it's captivating.
Oh, no, thanks. No.
Here's the thing.
Not a small bridge like a huge concrete like drive cars on bridge.
No, I still wouldn't do it.
Like I said, I'm not like everybody else.
See, that bridge has showed no sign of weakness for however long it's been.
The day I go across it is the day it collapses and I end up in the tank.
So, no thanks.
And I can only imagine what are the rules when you're about to be mauled by a tiger.
Right?
So, if you say, for instance,
ask forgiveness for your sins immediately.
You know, well, yeah, imagine that's one of them.
Right?
But you know how like on a boat when a boat's about to sink,
they say women and children first.
What are the rules when you're about to be mauled by a wild animal?
Like, all right, men over here on the left,
you know, to line up short the tall tiger pick which one and don't hit the tiger,
he's endangered.
So, you can't fight him back or there'll be charges if you survive.
If the tiger attacks do anything possible to defend yourself
and yell and scream with as much confidence to try and scare the tiger.
I can only imagine like in my personal situation where I can just imagine
I'll be there fighting for my life to get away from the tiger
and be thankful if I do make it out with just, you know, a missing arm or something like that.
But somebody catches the video of it and then I get ripped to shreds to go be like,
oh my god, you ran right past that lady.
You ran right past that lady.
Why didn't you try to help her, right?
Like, look, there's a tiger, okay.
We didn't really have time to sort out all the social standards
and who gets eaten first.
I just kind of needed to survive.
Or heaven's for all, man, you know, it'd be very terrible, especially like,
because you know, a video is going to crucify you.
So, they'd see you like just darting past like four children.
So, even though you're getting too safety or trying to survive,
you're not sure where the tiger is.
You just heard it roaring in the back.
But the video catches you like just walking, like running by children.
Like, and everybody's just tearing you to shreds online.
Like that guy didn't even try to save even one of those kids.
Yep.
But look, I didn't get the memo, okay.
They didn't tell us any event of being mauled by a tiger
to secure your mask first and then help people with theirs, all right?
They just didn't have that.
How was I supposed to know?
I was running to find some more qualified assist.
Yeah, right.
I was looking for the admin.
Give me a break.
The tiger had a QR code on them and I left my phone outside of the tank.
So, I needed to go get it so I could scan the tiger.
We went to two elephant sanctuaries last year.
And one was a little scary.
The second one was much better and had an overall feel that the elephants were much,
were treated much better and actually seemed to be a part of the village we were at.
A more symbiotic, symbiotic arrangement.
So, what kind of hobbies do people have over there?
Because we were talking about terrariums and all kinds of stuff earlier.
I imagine people might have the same kind of things there.
Do you go to shops and stuff where people are putting together different things like that,
terrariums and such and they sell exotic fish and plants and stuff for you to buy and use.
Maybe you can't take it outside the country.
There are a bunch of exotic pet stores here.
I haven't gone into any of them, but I've seen a handful of them.
I really have not seen anybody with hobbies here.
I freaked people out because I was sitting and making jewelry.
And people were just astounded by the fact that I could make something.
You cut out, I didn't hear your question.
What kind of, were you doing a standard crafts where you were like saying drunk, drunk,
and strung through shells and things of that nature where you're talking about like actual,
you know, complex crafting, where you like blowing glass
to create something and a drink it for the bracelet or something.
Wirework, wire beads and wire.
What kind of wire do you use?
And I'm thinking about like something that you're wearing on your body right?
Like, you're talking about like bracelets and things of that nature.
Is it me who did to cut out I think it might be me my client might be me my client. I
Watch I walked across the room to get some of my stuff. Are you on the jitsy?
No, I'm on I'm just on a mumble
Yes
Wire bracelets necklaces
All-make pendants and things like that. I've been trying to find
Cord I've problems finding cord for jewelry in the US that is exactly what I'm looking for
I've found quite a bit here. I'm gonna have a lot of stuff in my suitcase when I come home
Partially because one suitcase broke so I'm probably only gonna come home with one instead of the two suitcases
And then a bunch of stuff I've bought but I'll take a picture of some of the stuff
I've made while I was here. I make a skull bracelets the beads are from
Used to be from Tibet now. They're from Nepal
By Buddhist monk Buddhist monks and nuns carved them and
It's kind of a trademark that I something I'm known for making for over 30 years now you you gave it in
Did you say a skull?
Yes, so they're hand carved by yak but out of yak bone by Buddhist monks and nuns from Tibet who live in Nepal now
And they come in a rosary with 108 beads or a mala and it is
It's subculture in Tibetan Buddhism and then I make them into bracelets and that was that was the first
Jewelry that I made when I was about 14 years old was a skull bracelet and
I've made them for people ever since then and I make quite a bit of them
I'd a span of about 15 years where I where I didn't make them
Had ones that that I was wearing
But didn't make any new ones. I just kind of shut off from crafting for a while
They kind of reminds me of something almost like a bracelet or whatever but to have beads around it
And I'll pass it all at the end and it's basically made just for I guess to keep your hands busy
I guess and
It was a neat little thing. I bought one and I still have it is just I
Typically because my hands are on the wheel most of the time
I don't I'm barely mess with it
But you know when I'm walking around especially if I'm waiting around for something waiting
Pass around bill of laden or anything like that. I'll mess around with it crafting is pretty cool
I like it, but I'm not very good at or actually I haven't I haven't much experience with it
So I'm not very good at it. And I wonder like do you choose different material based on whether or not it's biodegradable or
Whether or not it's going to be durable and last for a while or just if it looks good that kind of thing
Durability would be one of my first things
I intentionally did not do things that were bad for the environment for most of my crafting career
Including screen printing t-shirts
So glues and epoxies and resins and stuff. I did not use
I'm going to start using resins
Because a lot of them are non toxic now where they claim to be non toxic
Durability
Elastic cord all the elastic cord is garbage that I have found it dry rots it breaks. It's not durable. It doesn't hold up
So most of what I use I try to make good the high quality products. I heard a lot about
Like hemp fibers and things of that nature that is durable in the last for a while and it's also biodegradable
But again, I've never crafted with any of it, but that's just what I've heard about it
That is statement and there's also the hemp in general is very rough and it's scratchy
But people of and it's also not the most appealing color
There are pigment dyed hemp fibers. So you get nice like light colors to it
You know that pastel colors and like soft reds and blues and stuff
I used to use that. I don't anymore. I use imitation sinew
Which is kind of like a nylon fiber
When you burn it in melts like so you can seal knots and stuff and
It's usually waxed or I buy bees wax and wax it
But I I sent a picture of some of the
skull
bracelets I've made why I'm here in Thailand probably have about 20 of them I've made yeah, I'm taking a look at it
Yeah, a lot of the times when we're driving it's for several hours
So I'll just sit and I'll do a bunch of these it look really good. I don't I don't I don't
I'm not always motivated to to make them I feel like I have to be in a really
Happy and good place to be productive making things so sometimes I just don't make anything for long periods of time
But I'm even at the most stressful here in Thailand. I'm just having a wonderful time
I'm I'm I'm here with the person I want to be with and
Just makes me so happy. Well, yeah, that would be the
Terrials and what you can but enjoy the company of the significant other
Absolutely, so what's the ultimate goal long run? Are you moving to Thailand or is S.O. moving to other country?
We are almost a year into
Our fiance visa for her to move to the U.S
She has mixed feelings
She switches back and forth between wanting to leave Thailand for good and wanting to split time and
Between Thailand and the U.S and going back to trying to get me to move here
Depending on what you do for work and that kind of thing
The the the split sounds more interesting like it'd be really cool if you could do like a year here a year there
Or or half a year here half a year there depending on the seasons that kind of thing
It'd be really cool if you could do something like that
But because of the restrictions that Thailand put on outsiders
I imagine that won't be a thing for quite some time. I know though. So we should
Within the next because it took several months to fill out all the paperwork
We got our case number with U.S CIS the United States customs and immigration service in
September or October and we're using lawyers and they think that her interview won't be until
Sometime at the end of 2024 to the middle of 2025
And they just still drag and things out because of COVID. I'm familiar with US immigration and my goodness before COVID
You could get some of these these things processed and they're like up to six months
Especially if you're paying for an attorney to help manage the process
Six months and you're good to go for like a permanent residency and things of that nature
Ever since COVID hit it's almost like they just have this permanent excuse to drag everything out for two to three years like it it makes me sick
Well, well
Open them back up
Once the embassy has started opening back up my understanding is that they caught up with the backlog and started processing rather quickly like
Six months turn around time and now there's a backlog because everybody's applying again that wasn't applying
And the backlog is growing and I I think it's just there's not enough people to handle the workload
I think a
Another factor is that during the Trump administration they made it more difficult
And shut down some of the visa types to get to the United States from
Asian from poor countries Asian countries and South and Central America
specifically that I do believe and
One of the things that that bothers me, right and I don't want to I I fear
The the potential of being dragged into the political boundaries here
But I'll make this statement before trying to quickly, you know claw my way away from it again
I feel like when you have a situation where people want to enter your country and follow the laws
You should definitely make that a more
More appealing thing for them to do right something that they all want to do follow the law and and do it the right way
Because it is beneficial and it and it kind of reminds me like that piracy thing
You know the people who purchase your content through the streaming services or whatever have a worse
Experience than those who would just pirate it
So you want to purchase
the paying customers to have a you know more smooth
Beneficial experience and that way they're less likely to pirate same thing with a nation people who want to come in through the front door and
And get visas and things of that nature make it smooth and fairly easy
Versus this this nonsense because we have too much technology
Too much tracking and in everything else to where this backlog should be as bad as it is
I agree and from what I have been exposed to having friends from different countries
In the US and seeing their experience is that everything from
After Reagan on
Every administration and presidency has made some portion of immigration more complex more difficult
removed it or
And made up more expensive every single administration. I believe it because it hasn't gotten better ever
It has it has only
Became more of a problem and everybody kind of points to fingers at who caused the biggest problem
But it has only become more of a problem. I think any political
Question of who caused the problem no matter what the situation. I think can be traced back to just lobbyists
Agreed but there I think they're like the they're like to eat the substrate of the political world and
back to
Crafting
If you want to learn how to do anything that I know how to do
Anybody I'm self-taught
Anybody I have taught has been able to do what I do and better very quickly if they practice
I'm interested in a bond with my kids sort of way
So whatever whatever methods that you have that you that you could offer a point to as long as it's kind of like kid friendly
That kind of thing because if it deals with soldering irons or anything where you got to kind of deal with fire or electricity
I'm going to pass for now, but I want it to be as a kid. I
Did do some
Metal work for a small amount of time. I
Never felt the need to invest in the materials for metal work and they've always been more of a
What could I have done a thousand years ago and how do I do that today?
Yes, yes, that sounds good right there. So some of the like beating on the like wire filament strings and stuff
Where you have crimps so little metal beads that you can squeeze and they collapse
That would probably be about
the most
Technologically advanced feature that would be hard to replicate if society collapsed part of what I want to do is as I
continuously steer her away from
A lot of the digital nonsense she may get involved with we can always have some sort of bonding time with something if it's not a
Photography or exploring trails and looking at mushrooms and different plants and things that nature
Crafting would be a good one. We can actually sit down and make something cool and experience
You know, just have an experience together. I don't want us to go out and buy things
I want us to make things because that experience will make whatever it is that we have so much better
I agree. There's a few things people could buy me that I would like more than something that they made that had
Thought put into it about me. That's what I want to take her for the future because especially as time goes by and like now
I imagine the whole what do you want for Christmas kind of thing for me personally nothing
Just just don't bother because I'll just have something. I don't have to figure out what to do with so
Don't don't buy anything, but what you could do is if you're in the area that's hanging out or let's do there
So let's do that that experience will be worth it, and I know that as she gets older especially when she has the teen ages, right?
Probably won't have time for the old band. So I better get all the experiences I can while she's young
Absolutely one of the things I was looking at as well. We were talking about D in the early
I was talking with a lovecraft about it. I was thinking about going and getting a box like a box of like some fairly sturdy cardboard and maybe like
some fold like maybe some
Green cloth or whatever to to pretend like it's a glass grass and making our own like map if you will
So we just kind of build out a map that we could deploy for a look for games and then
Just sit down and
Use the good old imagination that is up until she gets more of a until she gets a little more stable for
Crafting right now. She doesn't have the attention span to sit down to craft anything
You can make it and she'll run around with it, but she's definitely not gonna sit still and actually create anything right now
Except for finger painting. She does like to do a little bit of finger painting
So I guess that's one thing, but I don't want paint all over the couch and carpet and everything else
So I'm gonna stay away from that. Yeah, and I think it's good to encourage the kids and adults
When they're frustrated. I get really frustrated when I can't do something perfect
But just to reinforce the the idea that
You just have to practice that if you keep practicing you will keep improving. Yeah, I used to be that way
Too much of a perfectionist to wear my ability to make something perfect hurt my
Performance and what I was actually trying to accomplish would I ultimately ended up doing was
Basically learning how to turn my mistakes into well more creativity, right?
So taking that that line that went out, you know that that coloring or painting that went outside of the lines
If for instance if we were using a color coloring book or whatever for a metaphor here
Well, just finding a way to make that into the background
So now that that green that went outside of the line that can be a bush or a shrub in the background now
You know just you know adding more creativity to where it's no longer a mistake
It's now it's what it what do you call it in software? It's not a bug. It's a feature that kind of thing
Yeah, my
Metal sniffing class that I took me I messed it up
I I agreed with her that I messed up, but I was trying to put the spin on it that it was a feature
But but it was really a bug. We all agreed and there's nothing wrong with that
That's what makes it unique if we were all drawing perfect perfect circles all of the time
I mean seriously, it would not be interesting
So I think that all of the little inconsistencies and in our creativity makes it art
I had some stuff that I used to make out of wire
And one of the things that when I teach people to work with wire
I'll show them how to make that
People accused me of having them machined that they were being stamped out by a machine because they were just so close to be an
Identical every single time and that would be insult that kind of reputation
Whereas like, you know, I'm telling you know, I actually made that and like are you sure you sure you didn't just have this printed out or whatever
You know, it was very easy to prove that I made made it because I could make another one that looked exactly like it
In one to two minutes
That's a really good quality right there
And see, that's a practice hand as well when you can do it like that
One of the things I want to get back into as well
I used to know how to tie different knots
I used to work on a boat yard at well a marina years ago
And when you first start working on a marina
They make you do a bunch of grinding work
And when you're new
So I got stuck with all the crap jobs
Using the gel planers scraping off the bottom paint on the keel of boats and stuff like that scraping off barnacles and crap
And they finally didn't let me start working with any fiberglass till I was like two years in
It was terrible
But it was fun too, but I learned a lot about boats and how dangerous it used to be on a boat
Like they used to still have um
What's that crap called it? They use that cloth that doesn't catch fire
That they they um
They said you can't use anymore because it caused cancer and all of that
I'm trying to think what your name was
It's a species
There you go
They still had a bunch of those in there in there because uh
The wood heaters and crap like that that they had in there
In the uh boats
So when certain ships would come in
We used to have to go through all of this
These hoops to get rid of this best descend there and all of that crap
But one of the things I learned from those guys
There were a couple of guys who um
They lived in their own boats that so they lived out on the hook
When they couldn't afford the dock for you or whatever
And how resourceful they were
Right like seriously they could take anything and benefit from it
And it was amazing. I I envied that
And I guess a lot of it came from you have to use whatever you have
Or you won't have anything
Not to mention they used to give me flak all the time because I
They know how to tie all you can uh
One of them I remember had a cool name like a bowler or not
Or something like that
I can't remember what it's called now but they used to use something
They tied like up to like 20 different knots
And all I knew was that one little rinky thing
Those were some good days when you weren't
Itching to death from all the fiberglass
And the winters oh my god that was another reason why I left that job
The winters when you had to deal with wet sanding during the winter
People were getting their boats out during the winter to have them serviced
Before the next season come around
So you had to do a lot of that wet sanding during that time
And the the win coming off of the water used to just oh
That that made it clear I couldn't do that for a living
One of the other things that tough I don't know if my uh
Client froze or not was anybody talking during that time
Where when it got quiet
No he was just quiet
Okay because I know sometime mumble will crash for me or on my end
And it'll sound quiet and I'll just end up talking over people
So I wanted to make sure I wasn't being rude
But one of the things that I learned as well from working on that marina
The appreciation for different wood types
You know marine wood versus uh I guess regular wood
Whatever it was so they used to have um
Mahogany and teak and some of the other darker was that they were used
And they would make certain things out of like the lighter woods like pine and things that nature
But if it was on a boat most of the time it was going to be like a darker hardwood
That and people with boats had uh you know what
Boats kind of remind me of like the naming
That you find in in open source like everything has a terrible name
So and you know with people who buy boats
They name them just these
Terrible dad joke names the same things
I gotta go had a catamaran called a catman do
And even the name catamaran for a boat take like that does just
I don't know it really does remind me of open source
Like what's a four-up D?
Yeah the origin of catamaran is it's early temal for tide wood
There you go
For what tide wood like tied together
Yeah tied together so I imagine it's two planks or two bits of tree
tied together with two separators
Recruit catamaran
They spelled it K-A-W-T-U-M-A-R-A-M
So a solid difference spelling but the same pronunciation
Now this may sound a little ridiculous me asking you that
But I'm asking you this
But is that an Australian thing or like is that a word uh
Australian in origin or uh you know
No it's well we have catamaran boats as well or yachts
Both but they're usually yachts small yachts
But now it's from no it's a tamal word from a tamal um
I don't know where the tamals are originally from this is from the 17th century
So whatever country the tamals are around at the time
That's that's the origin according to where am I
That's not a Google Google search
That's cool to know
It's interesting some of these strange words
You suddenly think one of the one who come up with that word
So some of them have a good explanation like this one
Some of them just don't it's just some
So I'll add up a word like four up D
Yeah and a lot a lot of um things are play on letters
So it's a word that's had a few letters changed around or whatever
It's logical that anagram
Something like that
Now that morning see that uh is that called a spiral cross
That is really cool
It looks like it takes a little bit
That's imperfect that the ones that uh when I'm making
When I am making those they each one is perfect
It shaped exactly the same
And it looks much nicer than that
But I've made actual crosses
I've made rosaries for people where I
Twist the wire into a cross um
I made an awk for somebody one time
It was one of the things I said I can't do that
And they go well it's the same thing you're doing here
But just with this change and I was like oh yeah
That would be the one thing I need to change
Um um I don't think what I've made has a name
Um I have actually I made those
And I saw other people make those separate from me making them
Um in the 80s
Um when I first started making juries like one of several shapes that uh I made
Um I don't think it has a name
It doesn't have a name that I know of
I just it's cross cross shaped um
And then I use them as a link between beads
So some beads between those um I don't know
Is that is that a good explanation or
Yeah because it serves almost like um what do you call it
Things that dangle on a bracelet you know I'm talking about
The uh the charm like whatever charm or whatever
Like a charm yeah it's not a charm it's actually a link in the bracelet
Right but it's a fancy link
Yeah yeah yeah it is I used to also make like figure 8 shape ones
They had a little spiral on each side um clover shape
Um different things like that
I it's not doing a lot of the spirals because
I would run my hand through my hair and get it stuck in my hair
I was I was I was gonna ask about that because I was wondering
Does it get caught on clothing?
Does it scratch or cut?
And it looks like it's copper
So I don't I don't I don't think you're getting
Get any discoloring or anything but would it irritate on the skin
Don't like say the summer when you're sweating a lot or anything like that
Something like that um the the skull
Breastlets I have on are um you can see kind of inside
Where it'd be hard to clean where it goes inside the beads
Get they'll start to turn green and black from the oxidation of the copper
Yeah, but I I think it yeah I think it makes a nice antique look
I'll take a picture real quick
Now what do you meant what do you recommend for uh
Maintenance thing because I imagine like you mentioned as as you know skin
And build up from skin rubs off onto it
How do you maintenance something like this are we talking steam or we're talking about just a little
water with pressure or uh do you do you oil it afterward or anything like that
I just uh you soap and water in the in the shower when I'm showering
Or they don't take them off um
Well, that's my kind of that's my kind of jewelry right there
If you want to shine it up a little extra maybe some
Nothing that says nothing that says please rob me
Yeah, oh and with that hair on the wrist right there
I can just I can just feel the snagging like from time to time getting little pinches
When it would have if I catch it on the hair in the wrong way in the wrong
Um, I made those and the the one that doesn't have the skull beads on each wrist
Um, I made those in like in 1986
They're like one of the first things I
Awesome things I made and they they break all the they've they've broken over and over again throughout the years
And I just fix what's broken
This makes out strange, but I am kind of interested in that rope the white one or the red one the white one
So we were at a temple here in in Thailand near
L my s o significant other uh her mom's house uh there's a temple and uh the monk there
blessed me and gave me that bracelet the it's just like cotton string um it's about
I think I counted it. I think it's like 38 strands and it's kind of like unwound
Uh floss, you know floss that they make the friendship bracelets out of yeah
I'm looking at it because it doesn't look like regular rope that you just like buy some machined rope
It looks like like really handmade so I'm wondering the story behind it
Yeah, yeah, so the monk ties one knot on one side like
With the uh, I don't know 30 plus individual strands and it looks like he twisted it just spun it into a spiral
And then made a
Not a square knot, but a granny knot to close it around my wrist and blessed me
Now that would be worth it. I would go for that uh and and he told me to move to Thailand and not to take
L away because she does a lot at the temple she does volunteer work and uh donate part of her salary
um and which goes towards uh during covid went towards buying bodybags for the dead
Because the monks were the only ones that touched the dead bodies and then also the
The monk at the temple I got the bracelet uh, she donates money and he does he
personally does things to help uh
The elderly in different areas in Thailand that uh have been abandoned
And uh the white one is on the looks like the right wrist and the red one is on the left wrist
Correct. Now is there any story behind the red one? It didn't look like it's the same quality as the white one
Uh, the red one I got at the khali temple in patia patia last year when I was here
I can see the on the uh on the left wrist as well looks like significantly more hair removed there from the beads
Um, I think it's on the grass on the yard it likes matted down
Oh yeah
It fluffs up I haven't had a significant problem with uh my hair is being pulled out by these bracelets
Just the ones with the spirals that maybe why I don't wear them anymore
I haven't made any in and probably a couple decades the little spiral piece that I took a picture of
Yeah, keep getting a little pinch every now and again when it snatches a hair out
It if you're looking for crafts to to make
Uh, so probably some place you don't want to hear about uh is to go to Pinterest and Instagram
There's a lot of um things people have made and in addition to that uh tutorials where people just post tutorials for free on how to make stuff
Well, maybe not Instagram, but I'd probably check out Pinterest. I think actually uh
Bumblebee was telling me about that a while back Pinterest need the closest thing to it or I guess the closest place
I've ever been to to uh discover crafts was uh the Michaels or like a hobby lobby and to be honest with you
I get overwhelmed by the possibility of what can be made so I just walk around wide-eyed
It's the and and to me that's still to corporatize
Um when I was younger we had a hard core
hippie bead shop in Columbus, Ohio and the owner was one of the four people who were like
True hippies that they were the ones that started earth day
It's hard to find a good shop like that nowadays though because it it they can't really compete
Yeah, yeah, I actually I actually bought bulk like friendship bracelets and stuff like that for my
Goddaughter so she would have presents for people like it uh
She did homeschool stuff so it church events and stuff with other kids that she went to
um parties and stuff so she could hand out stuff to everybody and uh
You couldn't buy the materials to make five bracelets um for the same price you could buy a hundred up them from China
And they were flawlessly made. I mean they're they're like near perfect
um
There there aren't a lot of art stuff
That that goes on in Columbus, Ohio
um where you can find stuff that people have made
um
But most people
Charge too little and don't make it living out of it or charge a fair price and nobody buys it
I'm wondering if like do they do like craft shows things that nature like a trade or whatever where when it comes together
And brings everything that they've made and then kind of you know where you can have conversation and and it's more about the environment and the energy of the place
Versus I have a shop buy stuff and leave
So in in Columbus there was uh most of the stuff I've seen in Thailand is not handmade. It's all
Mass bought from somewhere else
Um, which is exactly what I combine the United States and I'm not interested in it in general
um
There's a uh two women in Columbus who
Columbus, Ohio who run something called the mystic market
Um, and it's a pop-up art event where just all sorts of different artists uh
Creators have their products and people can stop and talk to them
There's one lady who has I don't know
Wicken slash Roodoo type stuff that she does and she has like scented candle
then um
Some people doing tarot card readings and just like every possible niche you could think of um and they they have them
At least once a month all year long in Columbus, Ohio it different locations and stuff
The thing about that that kind of bothers me about it is I understand everybody's gonna make a living
So I don't I don't knock anybody for making a living doing it
But when that becomes your only reason for doing it it kind of it takes away from
Everything it was meant to be so not not really the jewellery side of it
But for instance those who have special talents and things the mystics and and uh anyone who would be a
A sage or a shaman or anything like that if you're out here for the sole purpose of becoming the
The next you know Jeff Bezos of the
You know that that's the line of work
It cheapens it a lot it really just takes away
um to fit the event um, I would say is far away from
um
This is my only source of living and more
This is what I'm doing because I love is the feel that I got um from that specific group in Columbus
um
There's several different
Events in Columbus, Ohio
Like they have the rib fest and a different art shows and stuff that happen
And a monthly monthly
uh
Event called the gallery hop which is the first statter day of every every month where
All the galleries down high street downtown
um
Are open late and then there's also other vendors out on the street selling stuff that they make
um
That specifically kind of waxes and wanes between
Profit and I love what I'm doing. If that makes sense. Yeah, because because you know
None of the none of the artists seem to be able to organize things and stuff and those two women
um seem to be really good at organizing
And coordinating the events each month and you know posting stuff on the social medias to draw people in and stuff like that
Everybody else seems to be more like an artist and um
Not about the money or at least not good about money. So it's an event like a
A meeting greet kind of thing as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The first time I went um
um, I came out and just uh
Uh talk to everybody about their art and looked at stuff and I didn't really buy anything
I have a couple other times
Did you trade it any secrets? Did you trade in secrets with them? Uh, good any secrets
I don't think anybody revealed anything to me, but I'm always I'm
I'm just as open source in my crafting as I am in my computer life
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