Episode: 4003
Title: HPR4003: My road recording setup
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4003/hpr4003.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 18:29:43

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,03 for Wednesday the 6th of December 2023.
Today's show is entitled, My Road Recording Setup.
It is hosted by some guy on the internet, and is about 20 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, Scoti swirves around the city while recording an episode.
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Q. We are airing it now because we had free
slots that were not filled.
This is a community project that needs listeners to contribute shows in order to survive.
Please consider recording a show for Hacker Public Radio.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I am your host, some guy on the internet.
Alright, today we are going to go for a little drive.
I got my Lavalier mic set up and it is clicked onto my lanyard and I am in my personal vehicle
getting ready to go for a drive.
That is right.
I know I sound excited partially because I am.
I have discovered a new issue today.
While using my wonderful Linux operating system, I jumped into Thunderbird to check my
email as I was getting prepared for a round of things I need to do before noon.
When I discovered in Thunderbird that my wife had, well, made some changes.
Not to my Thunderbird.
She doesn't have access to my logins.
But from her own laptop when she checks our joint email, she checks it through the browser.
I know, terrible.
Who does that, right?
Well, Lanyard, who I jumped into Thunderbird, I noticed that some very important mail that
I should have seen days ago was sitting in the trash bin.
Oh, no, not the trash bin, the junk bin.
Well, obviously this will not do.
I need to check this mail, which took a little extra time because the person that sent the
mail did so by sending a PDF.
So there was no message in the actual email.
I needed to load the PDF.
Well, I first had to take the PDF, load up a VM, send that mail over to a different mail
that I have that will be accessed only through the VM and then open it in the VM.
It took a little while, only to figure out that a very important obligation that we take
care of once every single month was not completed.
And this was a final notice because see, this obligation is supposed to be taken care of
on the first of every single month.
And they normally give you like a five day grace period.
So by the fifth of the month, you would then have problems if you did not take care of
it.
Well, today is the ninth of the month.
We received a notice about maybe two, three days ago, something like that.
Well, obviously I didn't get the notice till today this morning.
So I'm speaking with the misses asking how do you check your email because I know Thunderbird
would not have marked that message as junk.
I had that message not only stored in an address book, but it is also tagged.
You know, I have filters to automatically filter out all messages from this contact and
put them into a safe place.
So that way, if anything was to happen, we would, we would definitely be able to keep
track of that pretty quickly.
So discover now that she is checking her email, you know, my significant other.
She checks her email, our joint email through the browser.
And every time I go to convince her that Thunderbird would be the way to go or or at least try
to set up some filters for her or anything in the browser to kind of, you know, try to
help keep this issue from happening, prize roll in her head and she doesn't want to be bothered
that kind of thing.
Right.
But this issue will now help her to understand she needs to use Thunderbird because set up
filters, get her all set up properly and she's good to go.
She's using windows now.
She used to be using Linux Mint, but when she went to school, she was very, very worried
because the school was telling her that they send the scary messages.
You have to do it our way or you fail basically.
And they wanted everything Microsoft, everything, you know, from email to the office, sweet,
the operating system, everything.
And I was going to argue with her because, you know, I figured, hey, if it's for a school,
if it'll help you relax, it'll be fine.
Just go out and get a new laptop because I'm not putting windows on mine for you to use.
And then you'll be you'll be fine.
You'll have your own laptop with windows on it and you'll be good to go.
So she did.
She went and got a new laptop.
She put windows on it and, you know, she's good to go.
Only to find out that she didn't have to do that because for the class, a lot of the
stuff was done in the browser.
So they had like that online, what do you call it, office suite or whatever.
She could have just stayed on Linux and then all of her work in the browser or she had
to do is use Google Chrome on Mint and she would have been just fine.
But, you know, hey, she got, she got what she wanted to help her relax.
That's all behind us now.
Either way, I'm heading to the store or a, I'm heading to, yeah, roughly the store.
Let's just say the store to go and deal with this issue.
I have to go down there.
I got all the information I needed because we obviously, once I got the email saying
that you have not met your obligations, I thought, well, that's strange.
Not only do we meet our obligations, we do so very early so that there will be no issues.
And I sent proof to this.
Now obviously I sent proof today on the 9th after, after, you know, the person had originally
contacted us like, I think the 7th or something like that via email and, you know, the obligation
was due on the 1st.
So it's going to seem kind of late, but I mean, we did everything we were supposed to
and this is just a set of circumstances.
I'm headed down to the store now to inform them of this situation.
I also have some information that I have to give them at the store.
They will then release my funds to me.
And then I will have to wait for tomorrow to go to the bank, deposit the funds as cash
so that it will be available that day.
And then make other arrangements to manage this obligation because one of the issues
with this particular obligation is most of our other obligations allow us to basically
set up web bill pay and manage them where we have the freedom from our bank account to
schedule payments from our account to our obligations.
And it works fine.
But this particular one, they have gone out of their way to not allow this.
Now these are the options that this one particular obligation offers us, either you A, give
us access to your bank account, your private bank account.
So meaning the obligation wishes to whenever they see fit reach into our private bank account
and simply take whatever they believe is necessary, which I am not going to allow that option
two would be to use credit or debit.
And if you chose to use credit or credit or debit, there would be I think a 3.25% processing
fee or whatever with this particular obligation, the amount is over $1,000.
So a 3.25% of that is just unreasonable, we know we are not going to do that.
So basically we have to go to a store to manage this obligation where the processing fee at
the store is only $3 to manage the obligation from the store.
So that's our third option.
You have to leave the house and go into a establishment to make sure that you're up to
date on this obligation.
From what we could gather from our little conversation with this store, the company for which we
have the obligation rejected our payment.
It was in full, so they got the entire payment and it got in early.
They were paid on June 30th, but it is not due until June, I mean until July 1st figuring
there should not be an issue.
And if there was, again, normally I would catch the issue, normally I would see it, but
my wife just has not got on the ball with using the proper tools and these are some of
the disconnects that happen when you don't get on the same page with using the proper tools.
Hopefully, I can remedy that soon, it may not happen today, but I am going to hammer this
issue day and night until we can get her to a tackless.
So I'm putting up to the location now and about to run in here.
It's a Sunday, so I'm going to just grab the money then now have to wait until Monday
to do anything with it.
And hopefully that email I sent out this morning was received by the person on the other
end.
Hopefully they know now that, you know, hey, we meet our obligations, you understand?
We take care of business around here, I don't know why this has occurred.
The only thing that we could think of would be because you tried to pay before the day
that was set, but that seems strange.
I don't know why that would be an issue, you know what I mean?
I'm going to run in here now, see what's going to happen with this, see how this process
goes, probably get some sort of documentation that's going to also aid us in our proof
that we did the right thing here.
Monday I'm going to also drive down to the obligation place and attempt to, you know, show
proof to avoid all these bunch of late fees and everything else that's coming out from
this situation because we did not do anything wrong here.
We need for them to understand that and then, you know, put this whole thing behind us.
So we're running here real quick, go check it out.
I guess I'll come back and record a second half of however this experience went.
One eternity later.
Okay, so I have returned to my vehicle.
I had to make one additional stop before I did the recording.
I needed to get some more bagels and strawberry cream cheese spread for the bagels.
I didn't feel like running around looking for the strawberry cheesecake yogurt that I like
to have with bagels from time to time in the morning.
It's normally a bit too sweet, but when I have it with a plain bagel and I get the Thomas
bagels from a Sam's Club, it basically a dozen bagels for six bucks, the standard bagel
sizes.
It's a two pound bag.
So that's a good price, especially since in Walmart, I think you only get six bagels
for roughly six dollars.
So you go to Sam's, you get double the amount.
It's good in the morning, from time to time I can have a fairly complex breakfast in
the morning with like eggs and things of that nature, but other times not so much.
Just a plain white bagel and sometimes not even any spread.
Just let me get the coffee and the bagel and I'm good to go, but we ran out of spread
and the misses has been making sounds of being displeased by that, especially since I was
the one who ate all of the spread.
So I had to had to remedy that situation while I'm out because I have been exposed to the
HPR community for this, for the length of time that I've been within the community.
I have begun to transform into a, well, not not begun, I have completed my transformation
into an official weirdo.
As you other weirdos may know, I cannot be out in the sun very long.
But only that, the glamour which I cast over my person to hide the fact that I'm no longer
your average normie, it will begin to shimmer and fade, revealing me as a weirdo to the other
normies.
This may cause a panic amongst them, so I need to return home and stare at a LCD monitor
for about five to 10 hours to regain my strength to maintain my glamour.
I know the moment I get home, I'm going to eat the last bagel from the pack that I have
in there and break open this cream cheese.
Go ahead and go ahead and have a bagel, the moment I get home and some coffee.
Well, man, let me talk about my coffee.
I know we've done some HPR shows in the past on coffee.
I think I've discussed my coffee.
I can't, I can't remember if I have or not.
But, you know, just, I'm just going to give a quick mention to it now.
I do a savage coffee.
I like the instant coffee because I don't have to take a lot of time to make it, right?
You know, instant.
Very good.
Also, I don't do hot drinks, you know, I just prefer to have a cold drink.
Even with my coffee, I need a cold coffee and ice coffee.
So it's easier and quicker for me to make a nice coffee because I can just use cold water
with the instant coffee to make the ice coffee that I want.
And I normally take it pretty bitter, like I drink it straight.
Sometimes I put some cream in it.
Nothing too fancy.
I don't do all the glitter and confetti and whatever else you can get whenever you go
to Starbucks.
I just drink it regular.
All right.
Now, back to the situation at hand, I received my money, but they robbed me of the processing
fee.
Three dollars that I had to pay as a processing fee, I did not receive that, but I do have
my money.
I was going to go to the bank and deposit the money as cash so that it will be in the account
same day.
However, it is Sunday and the bank is closed.
Now, apparently there may be some ATM way of depositing the cash directly into my account,
but after all the hell I've gone through so far, I shall not be choosing that option.
Instead, tomorrow, I'm going to head down to the obligation place with the receipt from
when I paid it, the receipt from the refund that I got today, like just a few minutes ago.
And I'm going to show them, I paid you guys.
I don't know what happened, what went wrong, what policy you have in place where if I pay
you ahead of time, like one day early, you reject my payment if that's what happened.
I don't know what actually happened, that's just the assumption I have at the moment because
I have made this payment numerous times in the past without issue and we do not make
late payments.
So this will be the first, but I will deal with that as well as the constant drum beat
of the misses needs to use Thunderbird so that we can avoid these kinds of mistakes with
her janky web browser email client taking perfectly good emails and throwing them in
the junk, you know, classified them as junk.
This rotum on is pretty loud, I hope it's not too loud, this lavalier mic I'm using.
I'm pretty sure it's got a super high gain on it, so you guys are probably going to get
a ton of gain.
Not to mention the audio format for which I'm using to record, I forgot, would it actually
say, I know it's not like, I think I think I chose Wave because the other option was
like MP3 or something and I'm like, no, we don't want to do that.
I want to try to get the best audio I can with my janky little road setup.
Oh, here we go, we got a bonehead speeding along.
Let's see if he, let's see if he makes it to this red light faster and I will make it
there.
Can you believe that this gentleman just made it to the red light approximately two seconds
before me?
If I had to guess, I would say this gentleman exhausted an unnecessary percentage of his
fuel economy to do that and I'm certain the decision making process that this gentleman
has is why our insurance rates in this area is going up because of things like this.
You have to beat everyone else to the red light so that you can get on your phone and
not pay attention to when the light turns green.
Another thing that we have going on in this area, I don't know if you guys have it in other
areas, but whenever you go to a light or anywhere where you stop, the cars along side of
you like to stop in like these awkward sort of distances, you'll see some cars.
It seems like they want to be stopped beside you or like just slightly behind you, right?
So it's like they can look in your car but you can't see them in the airs or whatever
you know what I mean?
People when they feel like, oh, I might stop at a light or stop sign or whatever and I
might end up beside the car beside me instead of stopping where I'd be at a complete stop
beside another car, I'll stop to where I'm slightly behind that car.
So that's what they do.
I don't know.
This might be some sort of game.
I'm sure if I was on Facebook or Twitter or something like that, I'd know what the game
is.
You know, I'm pretty sure it's probably some challenge, right?
Years ago, I remember they used to do these things called challenges, you know, like eating
tide pods and other suicidal nonsense for internet points.
I don't know if that's the case now with this and truthfully, I need to be up to speed
on it.
But as my daughter will be growing up in this world of absurd idiocy amongst the youth,
I mean, don't get me wrong.
We had our own form of idiocy is just that it wasn't on the internet.
The whole world could not relive your idiocy when I was growing up.
When you were young, you did something stupid and only those that were there at the time
would be able to have a good laugh about that and move on.
It was a memory that you only had if you were there.
So it was the exclusive to those who participated in a witness, the idiocy.
But today we live in a world of digital surveillance, anything that happens today, the youth especially
wishes to capture themselves, you know, they want evidence of their stupidity because
more people will observe it and laugh at them.
But then they get upset when they realize they're not being laughed with, they're being
laughed at and then it becomes a case of now I'm bullied because I thought I was
famous and instead I was like the world's joke, that kind of thing, but I'm rambling
too much now.
I think I've given you enough on this little situation, hopefully the audio quality
is halfway decent.
Maybe I'll do some more road warrior sessions, you know.
I can't do it in the truck though, I just know that ain't going to work.
Yeah.
For one, I need to have my focus about me.
I don't think I'm going to be able to record while doing that.
There'll be tremendous gaps in between it because as I'm, you know, you got to keep your
head on the swivel, all these other policies, I would not recommend trying to do that.
All right, I'm out of here.
This is some guy on the internet.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
Catch you guys in next episode.
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