Episode: 4364
Title: HPR4364: 24-25 New Years Eve show 6
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4364/hpr4364.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 23:48:20

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4364, for Thursday the 24th of April 2025.
Today's show is entitled, 24-25 New Year's Eve Show 6.
It is hosted by Honki Magu and is about 122 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, the HBR community comes together to say happy New Year and
chat.
At minor, we have not spoken since at least this time last year. How have you been, sir?
Well, I've been getting by. I've had great luck with the generosity of some of the
luck cast podcast people. And, yeah, I've been just pushing on.
Luck or people that you'd wish to expound upon or neither at this point. I don't mean to bribe.
Well, I've had good luck with the people here. Lovecraft,
Mortancy and his beautiful fiance.
L is, if not the most beautiful woman, one of the most beautiful women that I've ever seen.
Now, Lovecraft has a lady with a great spirit and from what I have heard
is beautiful inside and not, but I have not seen a picture of her because she's very modest about
that thing, but she has impressed me. I'm in Boston. She's in Jersey, but she would impress me if
I was on the West Coast. I grew up in a nasty household with a nasty good church going woman.
So seeing someone with genuine faith and genuine care for both people and animals,
impresses the heck out of me. The details don't really matter.
And of course, there's Honky and Minnex, who each in turn has been very supportive and very helpful.
Honky, do you listen to their podcast at all and know you've said in the past,
you don't have much time for them anymore? No, but I think, I think I've just been convinced
to hop in a couple of episodes. That minor listening to you, I think you have a
history that would impress and be genuinely helpful to a lot of people on your technical side.
Well, since my first computer experience was a basic partition on a wine computer
and our storage medium was a SR 33 paper tape. You know, I've started pretty basic, no pun intended.
And then sometime after I left college, I hung around Building 20 at MIT, which was one of the
last temporary buildings left over from the radar project of World War II, which by the way,
I used to live across the street from a machine shop, which I was told originally was built
during the war to provide additional machining capability to the radar project.
But while I was there, I saw the AI PDP1, which was a monster. The only thing more monstrous
with the IBM standard tape drives, which were quite impressive, especially since I also was exposed
to some of the deck tape drives, which were flimsy would be generous. When an IBM tape drive would fall
off the truck, it probably wouldn't get dented much, but you'd probably have to fill in the bottle.
Deck tape drive falls off the truck and you're going to have to sweep up the plastic.
So if what you're saying, I just looked up PDP1, it said it was first produced in 1959. So your
computer history goes back that far. Well, this was long after it had been pulled out of service,
but I had also gone over to the AI lab and they showed me when the 886, I think it was 886,
was a big thing and they had a graphics terminal. With the obligatory scanned
playboy image to demonstrate its capabilities. Sounds about right, credit college canvas.
Well, they had the system that I actually had a login for and it had their version of Ethernet,
which is called ChaosNet, which by the way is still alive and well in living as a module you can
get for your Linux machine to speak to real or emulated ancient hardware. Well, what I was using were
night TVs, which was a graphics terminal, roughly like Hercules graphics, but there were maybe
half a dozen of them coming out of one PDP 11 and that was the display unit and like a Hercules
terminal, you could get two color graphics on it. They did have to change the screen sabres for
reasons of discretion on a co-ed campus, but it was interesting. It was my first exposure to the
internet and it was real internet or ARPANET back then because MIT was only on the ARPANET before
they opened it up to everybody. I've heard of ARPANET and everything and it's heard some of that
stuff. I know a little bit of the history, but my internet history starts in about 90-293.
Well, you need to look for a book called When Wizards Stay Up Late, the original ARPANET
used a bunch of mini computers as what we would call today routers, talking to each other
and each computer would have an interface card that would hook up to whatever
a large computer they were trying to put on this network. But all of the routing was done by
these mini computers, which also had self-healing properties and some of the stuff. If you've ever
seen some of the stuff that's been done with the Voyager project, reloading the operating system
and reconfiguring it over a low bandwidth network, well that stuff started out with the original
ARPANET. Now this predates TCPIP. It was strictly its own network and when they decided to hook up
to other networks like the British one and the low internet and Hawaii and some of the others
in Europe, they had to redesign everything so that other networks could
internet work with the old ARPANET background. The original ARPANET was single 56k-bod
synchronous links. And that was the beginning of real networking in the US and
much of the world. So if you don't mind me asking what was your involvement? What was your part
in being there? Random. Just a visiting random. I found a place that had computers and was
reasonably friendly. I also at one time had access to their model railroad club, which
most of it was run by a large crossover switch. There was a PDP-11 involved, but that was
designed to emulate more crossover switching. Cross-over switching being the
dial telephone standard before touchdown. So you just kind of hung around the lab or did you
take part in the labs there? Well I hung around the student organizations and I was introduced
to the lab and what not as as an interest at computer geek. I also at one time in high school
had had a weekend program at MIT that they called high school studies program and I was exposed
to list way above my capabilities at the time, but I was suggesting that if they wanted man-machine
communication they should possibly look into something that would interpret Norse code.
What about what year was this? Well in my high school years would be
early to mid-70s. Do you remember any of the people that were around at that time?
Any names or anything? Not from that period. Later on I met some of the people that you'll find in
hackers. John McNamara from Digital Equipment. There were other people that I would recognize
by face, but John McNamara also wrote the Digital Equipment book which outlines the history of
Digital Equipment computers up to maybe the Vax, but if you see a book by deck on computer design
he was the author and it was really an interesting environment and they were quite friendly until I
wanted more interest in computers while they were more interested in trains, but they were friendly
to a guy who was well not very socially skilled and I blessed them to this day. Maybe standoffish?
Well I was dealing with a nasty alcoholic household. Also I have Ashberger syndrome which means
which I learned late in my teens or early in my 20s that my body language was completely non-standard.
It took 20 years for me to actually get a name on why my body language was non-standard.
My form of autism just doesn't pick up or use facial expressions and does is really tone
definite non-verbal cues. Do you recognize the facial expressions and non-verbal cues in others
when they're communicating with you? Not as most people expect. Ashberger syndrome which at one
time was called high functioning autism was discovered in the 40s by a German doctor Ashberger
and because it was a German thing and because it's more subtle than other forms of autism it has been
hard. It was not easily detected. It does tend to be more gender biased towards males but it does
appear in females and I had the pleasure of being in contact with a Danish young lady who has a
good series on YouTube about autism in various forms and dealing with with her experiences.
She even served some time in an Australian clinic for the autistic and she's now married and I believe
she's still working in the field. This is interesting to me because we are waiting on the results
of autism testing for my daughter. Well there there are lots of resources on YouTube. There are
organizations which I haven't joined but for adults. There even is a book on it that was available
at my local CVS in their magazine section. It's a magazine type book but it will give you
many pointers for dealing with autism and in adults and children. Yeah we're we're just not sure
she just it's like people's name she just doesn't pick up on you know and you have to explain
what they are to her not give her a name and it's like she just doesn't make that connection and
just there's some other other differences that just you know it wouldn't surprise me. I'm on
the spectrum at all social graces are lost on me much of a time. Also if you want to truly get
an autistic experience not just my ash burgers which is more moderate you should look up the books
about Temple Grandin. She's a PhD and one of her skills is evaluating livestock handling
facilities to point out things that would startle animals being kept or worked through the system.
She also invented a crush to provide compression that would some artistic fine comforting.
They may also find a weighted blanket or sheet to be comforting just just as sort of bounding
and whatever but it sounds like your young lady is a show's signs of something like autism.
Ashburgers Syndrome has been downgraded but then again some of the things in DSM-6 the
shrink manual I have heard the manual was largely put out with redefinitions and whatnot
largely because it was time to reissue the manual and they couldn't collect money on
on issuing the same manual that they had before. They had to update it whether it needed updating
or not and whether the updates were worth a spit. Yeah it wasn't safe there at least on on DSM-10
and I know from DSM-9 to DSM-10 all of the changes I've heard of have been about money.
I may have the numbers wrong but but that's what I had. I need to ask you a question
but I'm gonna sound stupid and ignorant and insensitive if I ask it so can I ask your forgiveness
in advance? Well I was raised by real assholes I don't think you can really really do worse than my
blood family so lay it out there and and again one of the things about the artistic of
my flavor is that we tend to be far more straightforward and unsuttle compared to neuro-typicals
which is everybody else. All that that's positive as a response so my question is then
is does your particular flavor have anything to do with what the hell do you call it?
Fear the marketplace. What is what is that called? Someone help please. Agriphobia? Well
yeah yeah yeah so to have anything is there any agriphobia included with your particular
flavor of spectrum? No there is for a lot of reasons I have developed masking skills to adapt to
a situation and build an identity to fit the environment that I'm in I mean I've I've adapted to
people who are fish collectors motorcycle types one of my friends was a master Mason and
you know in college I was in the German club and I would with physics people and other things
and I would I would build a persona that would fit the environment and in fact it was something
that I had to disable to try to get grounded when I was going through therapy although since my
therapist wasn't taking any inputs I was wasting my time but I again I had spent decades trying to
get through to my parents so dealing with a difficult therapist was was rather familiar. May I ask
what you mean when you say you adapt your environment because this is sounding familiar to me?
I adapt to if I'm dealing with people who are interested in cars I can be very knowledgeable about
cars if I hunting people I have and weapons people of both civilian and military types they
adapt to that history all sorts of things I I can I can emulate different facets of my
personality depending on the environment and that's that's interesting to me because when my
daughter was very young we we always said she was good with people we thought she was good with
people because if it was a quiet environment where people wanted to be heard to be quiet
and I'm talking two three years old she'd just kind of turn into that and you know if it was
more rambunctious environment she'd turn into that but she always seemed to be able to get people
to be happy with her even people who didn't like kids would end up with her sitting on their lap
she she was a bit of a chameleon that way and it always surprised us oh I was raised by a
in a nasty power tripping alcoholic household and I learned you know to keep my head down when
possible also when I left high school I was a five eight and a hundred and thirty seven pounds
because meal times were watering holes where my mother could criticize anything and everything she
found wrong with us and you wanted to get get get your get your meal done eat whatever you
you were given and then get out a dodge or I don't know if you guys can hear me I'm downloading
some stuff so I might be a little choppy but girls are often more easily I don't know how to say
this without sounding insulting they can kind of chameleon themselves into a situation with
children where they don't know they're chameleoning that like I said I know that sounds incredibly
offensive and no no that that's social no one other way to say social adaptability females are
are okay then then females I think naturally are more socially adaptable to children than males
well also being nice girls is rewarded in females while guys are generally encouraged to be
more independent and forward oh yeah yeah yeah and you're ragged on if you're a nice male like I
was a nice guy well I've always tried to be a nice guy and I got eat up for it not physically
but but emotionally and mentally several times I got beat up for trying to be a nice guy several
times as a juvenile and as an adolescent well I was raised quite strictly as a 50s kid during
the 60s which was an interesting time because it it basically cut me off for my peers except for
observation since I was short-haired basically leave it to be ver slacks and and sports shirts and
polish shoes while everybody else was wearing long hair t-shirts and jeans and I found out quick
that you could do your own thing as long as it looked pretty much like the thing of the guy in
front of you and the girl to your left and the girl to your right and the guy behind you and
so it was an interesting time for observation and I was coming from a combative household where
my dad was great with chopped logic I mean my dad knew that he had value because everybody
because he got a paycheck his wife and kids did not get paychecks therefore they didn't have
cash value when they cost him money and we should kiss his shoes for that reason now he was raised
in a very patriarchal family where his father married one sister and dated the other all of
a very long life and he was not necessarily limited to those two ladies but he didn't say so
well there was evidence that some of his fishing trips he was dipping something beside his line
and saying yeah well okay evidence is one thing but well dudes do to say shit like that are not always
well the thing about it is this is something he he had when he when he got his farm it had a
living room and a parlor the parlor was a sign of status for special guests the living room was
for the family and the dining room was pretty formal also there is something that I have read
from southern sources that explains the Clinton affair and stuff like that they south of the
Mason Dixon there is a standard for public face and private affairs and they can be quite separate
and quite isolated a guy who keeps his public face and keeps his family fed and whatnot
in his private life can at least traditionally could do much of what he wanted this explains why
Clinton got into trouble because he was figuring that if he he kept his public face clean what he
actually did in the oval office was nobody's business you know it was part of the perks of power
from a southern standpoint makes makes me think I may want a parlor in my next house well
my grandfather's house is still down there on route seven out of Mason town you can even see it in
in google street view also it hasn't changed much but then again the fact of my grandfather cut
sandstone bricks and basically cited the house with sandstone and cement means that it isn't going
to change very much and he replaced the wooden porch out front with with one it was flagstone and
cement and things are that that house is going to be except for probably the heating system upgrades
from the old coal systems is probably going to be what I remember for the next hundred years
well net miner you said you're in Boston and at some point I asked something about
public faces and agoraphobia and you said there's no agoraphobia and I where I was going with that
what I was going to ask is I need to I need to make a trip to panodoses would you like to
me to pick would you like me to pick you up on the way there or on the way back and we can hang
out for a little bit I'm really not comfortable with face-to-face socially stuff at the current time
I find that a general generous issue you know panodoses you know what panodoses is
no I'm not familiar with that name it's it's a bread factory a bread company they make really
nice rolls would you like me to it next when I go I'm going to go to my mom can we drop some
panodoses rolls off with you please don't worry about it I'm I won't I'm not pressuring no that's
very generous but but I'm well understood well some of the after-taking care of my mother
and she died of Alzheimer's disease a few years ago I don't even remember the date that's part
of probably my PTSD burying painful memories deep I have sort of carved out a rough life for
myself I mean survival situation but I'm not really comfortable in social situations much
anymore all right understood I'm not pressing the issue thank you for explaining it but I don't
I get it cool now there is an ashburgers or autistic program at mass general I used to go to it
myself as an adult but the only support that I got was prescription of issues and a every three
months I would have a half hour with with a MD shrink who who was careful to say that I'm
generous of them I'm interested in keeping your pills go in I'm not interested in actually
treating you since I had to take public transportation you know couple of three hours in there and my
physicians assistant can write the same scripts I I have not been back this is oh and I remember
the program it's the Brechtler program so look up the Brechtler program it's a bit of a step
child of mass general psych outpatient psych division but it may provide some support for younger
autistics sorry would you mind repeating that again that minor I was off on another spot for a second
look up the Brechtler program at mass general it is a sort of a step child of the mass general
outpatient psychiatric facility but it may be useful anyway I found some interesting stuff when
I was at mass general getting my thyroid removed I had inquired about psychiatric services and as
I'm coming out of the medication after having my throat cut professionally to remove my thyroid a
internal psychiatric doctor comes and and looks looks me up and says are you trying are you threatening
are you worried about herming yourself or anything like that and I said no I was just looking for
possibility of while I was here seeing what kind of treatment I could get well she gave me a
personality quiz to fill out which I didn't complete because I was under all kinds of drugs
and I didn't want to have them decide that I may have needed a more more extensive treatment
inpatient since I was since I was already had my throat cut and was in pain and pain medications
who knows what else was going on but I found out that the psych department of mass general
is basically divided into each shrink and west shrink the internal psychiatric people
don't really acknowledge the existence of outpatient care so that was a little weird
can I ask you for one favor though yes well yeah what favor would you like
don't ever let my ex-wife know that there are men who will cut your throat for money well this
one was a was a cancer surgeon and since removing my thyroid and leaving my parathyroid nodes
and trimming around the nerve controlling my vocal cords is why I'm talking to you now
yeah this is only under this is under strict medical control I understand that but
but people do anything for a buck and she's found numerous ways of taking every buck I've ever had
I'm aware of some females are not are willing to go for the gold and and and leave you with with
the leftovers I wouldn't pin it on females males are capable too I I'm going to pin it on
exes could be ex-wife ex-husband ex-boyfriend ex-girlfriend yes whatever it's exes just don't let my ex
know that there are men who are that handy with a knife around people's throats that's all I'm asking
well yeah well the other friend of mine who has since passed on to his great reward
was a marine light kernel and after world war two he went into what you might call private practice
in various countries in Africa I guess he was a great pretty good artillery commander
anyway he was more and I have had the pleasure of meeting a a forest recon marine who was a
Vietnam veteran and had some serious scars over the back of his hands from
the gentle mercies of of southeast Asian communists one of my first
we've got a minute or less less than a minute to our next new year celebration I don't know the
time zone does anyone know the time zone well looking at my clock that would be Atlantic I think
time zone of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and stuff like that yeah that sounds about right I'm
gonna give you a point for Newfoundland and two for Nova Scotia who come up with anything more obscure
Prince Edward Island another two points and that's it 11 o'clock here midnight in those places
happy new years yeah we we tried to do it you know announce every time zone and whatnot but going
from GMT to our local time zones ended up being a horror show well it's not that bad it's every time
your clock says zero zero after the decimal I'm after the full colon but there are some places
that it's weirder than that for those guys I I have some sympathy but not a whole lot of
understanding isn't it a couple that are on the half hour yes there are half hours there are quarter
hours there are hour and a quarter there is some weird ones oh on YouTube they they have a guy
I used to know his name but one of the things he talks about is various kinds of computer issues
programming issues and he says if you're dealing with time and time zones and everything hand the
job off to a good let libraries do not try to do it on your own because there's so much little
fidgeting and wicheting around it that only only a well-thrashed library will will keep you
out of the weeds well yeah that's true because when um or you or you can use zulu time but when
yeah when you rely on the libraries though what was it 2013 2016 somewhere in that time frame
um the guy who was there was one guy taking care of all of that for like a decade and nobody
realized it until all of a sudden he stopped I don't remember why he stopped I don't know
maybe he got tired of it maybe he died maybe he got sick and couldn't log in maybe he forgot
his password I don't remember put the whole friggin internet broke for like two three days and they
had to sort of change not the protocol the protocol was was universal no one could change the
protocol but they had to kind of change the um the support structure at the protocol relied upon
so talking out my ass right now does anyone on on the call anyone on the uh well I think
I think you may be talking about everything looks into a database of you know time zones and
and uh yes yes yes but it was about a specific human being who was maintaining the database I
it was it was too long ago now yeah this sounds very familiar I um I'm drawing a blank on a
tube but I I kind of know what you're talking about comes I'm so old at this point that 10 years
ago is too long to remember a man's name there was a man who was maintaining this this database this
pool of information he maintained it so well for so long that everyone forgot that it was down
to one guy and and when for whatever reason I don't want to say he failed he didn't fail but for
whatever reason that the his task was not performed on a particular day the whole fucking internet
collapsed or at least everything that relied on time did which doesn't leave a whole lot of the
internet yeah also one of the books that I have here is something called an internet travel log
this fellow was hired by the international organization for standards which is the ISO um yes
the ISO is that we are familiar with is actually backwards from the organization for international
standards or whatever they they call it in Geneva he was hired to convert the old the uh European
standard uh for networking and whatnot your your old seven level model and all of their crap
into something that somebody could actually read he even converted it to PDFs and he set up
in Colorado a sun server where people were able to download these standards freely now the way
the ISO worked is that every year they would issue they would have a printer who was friends with
with the organization print out a ton of manuals for their international standards now these
manuals would be since they were official they would have official prices somewhere between the
stratosphere and exosphere because these were this money was the slush fund of the head of the
organization and they did have an email system on there on a microvax that was totally
inadequate but they could say that they had it and this guy as part of his contract was supposed
to give them a report on the the state of networking around the world and he actually went around
the world into Eastern Europe into Japan into Hawaii um Southeast Asia and back then they were still
making connections often against the organizations they were dealing with I mean a lot of the a lot
of people wanted to run TCP IP but they had to encapsulate it in ISO standard packets or whatnot
which was inefficient but the the official authorities were ISO and the stuff that actually worked
was TCP IP it so so people held their nose and and did what they had to do to get the stuff
down the wire but an interesting thing that happened about Christmas time is the ISO started
understanding that people were actually downloading their standards which they are supposed
to distribute as part of the UN you know help developing countries then well after a while they
the experiment of downloading of having their documents downloadable and in a form that people
can actually use is over and you have to shut down that server now this was shutting down a server
which was providing more public service than the entire UN based organization but it was also
a saying that the bureaucrats there decided was to it was an experiment it should be completed and
and you have to shut it down even though everything was supposed to be public and whatnot but
it was bureaucrats and when they get a hair across their ass well you know but this guy went around
he went all over actually finding out where the links were this was early 90s
so they were still making connections both based on commercial connections and academic
connections and various acceptable use policies and whatnot and when it was a very crazy time
but at this time this guy actually could reasonably map out all of the interconnections
of the US, Oceana, Eastern Europe and whatnot it was an incredible thing. Hey Pokey maybe you
were thinking earlier of the NTP protocol said one guy named Harlan Stin was maintaining
taining that for everybody and if it went down it was going to screw up a lot of things.
Was it about sometime between 2012 and 2016 maybe?
The Info World article I was looking at said Tant was written in 2016.
Yeah I thought there was like I thought it did actually fail like momentarily like not for long
but it was enough to screw up anything without like a fallback and I thought it was 2016 seems
kind of late to me I thought it was earlier than that but but after 2010 like post
iPhone pre-stable Android I guess maybe not sure about that one I just remember the two
ones that stuck out to me were NTP and open SSL. NTP sounds more familiar. What's open?
Well NTPD yeah I remember that and I thought that's the one that failed because it relied on
a specific library. What was the other way you said? Open SSL is what provides the security for
web browsing basically. No I don't think that's the one that I don't think that's the one that it was.
I think it was NTPD returned a lot of errors because the network time database the original
the source database somehow failed or the human involved in it maybe somehow stopped or something
I don't know what it was. I don't know I don't I wish I remember what it was. 2012 is sticking out
in my head but that could be very wrong but that's I can't get my brain off of that year for
that particular error. Yeah well what was interesting is for a time my I lost my internet connection
and I had some desktops that were Raspberry Pi's which don't have a clock chip and some of the other
stuff was you know standard PCs which had a clock chips or whatever but without correction the
Raspberry Pi's just went completely ape because they're relying heavily on getting their time
adjusted off of the network off of the the internet. Yeah well the failure that I'm thinking of
can't stop thinking of seems like a really good reason not to have your time your clock chip
relying on the internet. Well the the whole the whole later part of the network time protocol
well first some of it if you have GPS capabilities you can get time from that
and what what the best way to get network time protocol stuff to do is to get to have your local
network time server but have it go out and basically interrogate a bunch of higher level
network time servers and sort of average them so that so that you're not sensitive to a glitch in
any of them and your and your local server then provides a standard time for your
internal network. Yeah but the problem with that is if everybody interrogated multiple network time
servers you just crashed those servers because everybody's checking the servers the whole idea was
that with with the original network time protocol on a model programmer I could be fucking this
up I'm just remembering from the way it was explained to me back in the ought so the early teens
was that it kind of trickled down and everybody had an understanding of the delay between each step
of the trickle so the the I guess the closer you got to the original network time portal like
NIST I think NIST was one of them and Microsoft was another but they had to be a layer down NIST
was I think the the primary the closer you got to NIST the more accurate you were but if every
computer on earth you know pinged NIST for the time every few milliseconds the internet would come
to a standstill so that doesn't work actually what what we were talking about was having a local
computer provide time and it would verify its time against so every network or substantial
network would have would have its its time source internally and that would be checked against
a list of of external time sources higher level time sources maybe not not ultra accurate but
in a round robin fashion you would keep keep your local time server reasonably close to the real time
and it would be the only one that would actually be going out to any of the time servers in the
universe yeah and I just recalled the one that failed was not a time server it was a table of
daylight savings time per or saving not savings at daylight saving time per time zone per area
and when that database failed then no one's local time server knew how to adjust the time
of of Zulu time GST based against the time of year that in the location that's the piece I was
you also may want to look into no I promise I don't want to look into it well there
there have been changes in our daylight savings time in the US you know where we're now daylight
savings time runs into November instead of ending in October and then wonder why the French
decapitated mofos well the good news from our I've heard from our president elect that he would
like to set standard time and make it standard year round thank you I heard that he wanted to
make saving times standard year round but either way as long as they stopped changing the mother
the mofo yeah I hear my state after this time is not changing anymore you they made that decision
at the state level I believe so is what I've heard since it didn't pass on the national level I
think we go through standard time we go into daylight savings time and we stay there because
the state we can always use more light in the evening and don't need as much in the morning I
am a big 10th amendment fan so I support that 100% and you don't want it doesn't sound like you
want to say what state you're in but I 100% support your state's decision in that and I wish my
state would make the same damn decision yeah I'm looking forward to not having that change back
and forth how close are you to Rhode Island out of curiosity in a general sense
why not very far at all let it be really also not very far at all the other side of Massachusetts
I think would be good so I ordered a new computer monitor on December 19th and it's finally showing up
as a pending total on my credit card and it shows a Rhode Island area code couldn't you go pick it up
for me and bring it out in your meata I can pick it up for you not in the meata the meata has not
run in like three years it's it's broken I need to fix it oh that's too bad I thought the answer
was always meata the answer is always meata is always the answer very good it's it's an acronym by
the way meata is always the answer spells meata but you're right how big is the monitor I might be
able to do on a motorcycle 27 inch yeah I'm down where are you what interstates run towards your
area I guess all of them I'm that close to New York and Boston all of them I just won't I cannot
set foot in Ohio that's my only restriction so if you're in Indiana or something like that I
got to go around it'll take longer well hop on i70 head west and I'll catch in about 2500 to
3000 miles that seems further than Ohio and somehow straight through it is there a story about
Ohio are you a one and man there am I what there are you a wanted man in Ohio or oh no no I'm
I am a decidedly unwanted man in Ohio gotcha all right just wonder every kind of leaving his
hanging there no I I lived there for a couple of years and when I escaped I swore to myself I
would never go back was Joel chasing you around the mulberry bush or something it's look if anybody
listens to you random plug your ears because this is a spoiler it's coming up on the next episode
but if you don't listen to your random I'll I'll I'll go into it everybody ready ready when I was there
the people I met and the places that I was it is incredibly intolerably racist and I can't put up
with that mostly and even if I could everyone I knew everyone I met everybody with with from Ohio
not the people from outside of Ohio who were living there temporarily all the native Ohio people
that I ever met this is not everyone in Ohio just the people I met and the people that I met
introduced me to they all did drugs they all cheated on their wives they all cheated on their
husbands they all told you to keep it a secret that they cheated on their wives are on their husbands
and they all said unspeakably racist things all the time like as if no one could hear them saying it
and it was just I got out of Ohio I don't ever want to go back well that's remember I was talking
about the southern culture they they have a public face and then they have the shit that they really do
Ohio does not consider themselves a southern state so I don't know if they can
well they they don't necessarily have to consider themselves to a southern state to
have absorbed the the two-faced attitudes of the southern states the behaviorisms I won't
pin the specific ones on them but I understand what you're saying and I have not experienced
any of that in any of the other states that I've ever visited northern or southern
in Ohio it was really really explicit and out in the open everyone I knew was racist
everyone I knew cheated on their husbands or wives and it was just it was a place I didn't like
being and I don't want to go back to oh hi y'all i'm sorry to say that again please
I said oh hi y'all your mic is very low pirate is that handsome pirate
this is a hand pirate yes pirate your handsomeness is underscored by your low microphone volume
you need to bring your gain up a little I think how's this better thank you I don't think I've
heard your voice in 12 or 13 years uh wow it's been that long oh we were discussing
pokey's old podcast and I believe you were on that at some point yeah probably when you were if
you were and when you were you didn't have the little um mario whistle when you hit your mic uh yeah
that's new I need to figure out how to get rid of that we all wish you would but how you've been
we're gonna try to distract you while you're working everybody ask handsome pirate questions
handsome pirate how you been bro what do you have to well um I transitioned no longer a bro
I uh about to be a chief engineer on a steamship um uh my day job involves satellites I don't know
what else do you know I live in Seattle now moved away from the south steamship satellites is
kind of an agronistic I'm not sure how to process that also in case no one has noticed I'm
losing my voice I've been sick for a couple weeks and today was my first my first day not
feeling incredibly sick um but I am definitely starting to lose my voice and it's such a nice voice
do you do any voice acting anymore or was it that a one shot pokey how's this one shot maybe
maybe a two shot but one shot for sure we can hear you know it was a two shot there was at
least two because there was there was um this thing of ours and there was um oh the sci-fi I did
I did like six words in a sci-fi sequel Cristiana Ellis what was her audio books space casey space
casey two I did like three like between four and six words in space casey two you know I kind
of miss being on podcasts but like just too fucking busy you know yeah same uh I just checked my
mail and uh my snail mail and and I got a lovely love lovecraftian Christmas card grow with it finally
well within the window of the 12 days of Christmas especially since my mother's birthday was
January 6th so I had that burned into my um memory and more tender parts because she would
she would be very upset if she didn't get both her Christmas presents and her birthday presents
since all gift giving was transactional and if you if you showed at her
you would not hear the end of it for years well I'm glad you got it man it was a little late
mounted out we were we were both sick over here so uh you get out in the mail a little bit later
than I would have liked but uh yeah just uh glad you got it hope you enjoy it hanging up on the
mantle yeah um by the way did you say you had had an orphan uh mini PC one of the one of the ones
like you gave me that it was looking for a good home and some memory um I actually didn't have any
extra ones until uh a few days ago um my uh my business partner uh from when I had the computer shop
he uh did get another small batch of them from uh the client that we had that um was doing a
refresh so um I might be able to dig you something up if you if you're in need yeah um one of the
ones that I bought has turned out to be flaky and I'm and I'm just going to take it out of service
and and I really like the i7s or whatever I don't know what is going to be in the new batch whether
it's the same era or newer but but I'm really addicted to those little one liter machines
yeah I've got a I've got a box in my garage and I just got to sort out what what there is um this
is like this just just rolled in on uh I just got it what Friday night from them um but I got to
sort them out see what what's the deal with all the power supplies and stuff like that but yeah
we can uh we can probably figure something out for you well I have the the only sort of desktop
machine that I'm going to keep up is a i5 um small form factor which gives me DVD capabilities and
and is reasonably reasonably sized uh and I'm really addicted to those little one liter boxes
especially if I throw an up memory on them so that so that I can make them into decents
VM servers and and perhaps docker servers yeah I've got I've got a few in the box here so um
might be able to figure something out I'll I'll touch base with you thank you thank you I'm
I mean uh you know I've got I've got some memory for for those second games
hanging around and whatever yeah I'm not sure what these are but um I there at least the
the same model that I had before there might be a couple that are a step up from that but
I'll have to check it out make sure they're all they're all in working condition and stuff
I thank you very much and and uh I really oh I really owe you
and a problem um yeah I mean I just want to see the stuff go to a good home so
and I'm not really sweating it so um it just might take me a little bit to get uh to get to
one and check them out so it might be a a week or so uh that's yeah well my project's tend to
drag on for months so no problem there oh yeah well no problem I just uh I ran into a deer
driving home from work Friday night so it got some issues going on with uh being down a vehicle now
so that was fun okay my brother actually got himself a deer he was delivering beer
into the wiles of Colorado and evidently he came around this
a twisty curve and there was a deer in the way and uh it lost the argument with his instructor
trailer uh well my launcher didn't fare quite as well this this was a uh this deer was running
down the center line at my car so that was a little more of an issue yeah my compact didn't do so
good with the cow elk one night oh yeah well I hope you were all right we were good we were
only up to about 45 miles an hour but the car had less than 2,000 miles on it but fortunately they
put it back together for us oh man that's that sucks that that's terrible getting new car I
I have my uh car I had before this seven days I owned the car and somebody backed up into
me to park and lie to work crushed the whole the whole back of the car it was really bad they had
a big extension van just plowed into it yeah it's it's the out square I'm at you you see I'm dead
on the side of the road almost every day oh yeah this deer he he ran off into the woods I'm
I'm not sure if he made it entire layer what happened but um yeah I was probably only doing
about 30 or so but he kind of hit the car and flew up slash jumped over the rest of the hood and
he was gone well I'm very glad to say I've never run into a deer like last time I was in a car wreck
some woman ran a stop sign and T-bone me so not my car they might fall you know right yeah I mean
you know it's you know still a little time to react and something like that and you know if
you're you know somebody's running the stop sign you don't even you might not even see it coming
yeah my dad was in in a roll over on the main turn pike and he the tow guy said that
that he was familiar with pulling guys out of that particular spot because the road was
cambered wrong reverse cambered turn so if it got slick it would throw cars off the road uh up
and main you said yeah main turn pike 95 in fact is uh my dad's history of traveling up too
much to see my mother uh covers a lot of the extension of the main turn pike to his full length
and then 95 further north yeah it used to be up that way a lot nice area but they had just
haven't been up there in a while used to go to uh used to have a place to stay all the time in
Lewiston yeah we used to get off at Lewiston and go cross country to my dad's cabin
and my grandmother's place was up in Belgrade which is which was famous for its fishing in the
Belgrade lakes area um back in the day I guess they had trains that would go up there were
the rich people from New York and Boston and everywhere would take to vacation and uh you know
take guided bass fishing or whatever tours up there yeah speaking of uh
garg up and main my grandmother grew up in Maine literally next door to the Kennedy
summer house and the stories she told about the Kennedy especially JFK bunch of assholes they were
well my grandmother my my mother's original farm was taken by eminent domain to make
the Mount Blue State Park and they got the Belgrade farm as a replacement
also my mother talked about her and her sister serenading the guys tarring the road going by the
place I think it's route 135 okay here I'm still on what was that I believe pokies AFK yeah I think
he announced that he was going AFK okay I had pasted the link for the blog I was using for my trips
to Thailand I've pasted it in the chat but forgot to tell him that I did that when he was asking me
about Thailand could you email me that link I really need to keep up to date on um well the most
beautiful lady formerly of the east I just entered over to you net speaking of girls so uh this
girl I've been hanging out with is uh her claim to fame is that she rode uh public transit from
uh Vancouver to Tijuana this past summer as in city buses and such like not greyhound and not
amtrak how long did that take nine days that's absolutely precious hey she did it for the adventure
you know but what she'd do it again uh well we're talking about doing a similar thing but Seattle
to New York City so sort of okay that's cool there's a scenic train that goes from Canada to
Mexico through Washington, Oregon and California and then one that goes from California to I think
New York uh the train from California there's a train from LA to Chicago but not all the way
through to New York but like the point is you know doing it by public transit like you know that's
the point thank you're looking at not necessarily strictly public transit but working class transit
I mean it's very it's relatively easy to do by greyhound but like to do it by public transit requires
all kinds of planning yes and great patience while one bus drops you off and then you wait for the
next bus to show up for the next stage it's almost like riding the old-fashioned horse-drawn stuff
yeah some of the for the trip to New York some of the buses will be we get dropped off one day and
we'd catch the next one the next day yeah I'm familiar uh hell even back when I was thinking of
taking uh transport up to my dad's cabin up in Maine uh they had I think one one of the buses
that would go close to his area that is to say under you know five miles only ran like once on
Saturday on Fridays or something yeah I tried to find a way to get to my grandfather's place down
West Virginia but evidently Amtrak doesn't go through West Virginia anymore the only go out to
Pittsburgh and then then I'd have to take a bus down where at in West Virginia that matter
well the the real town is is called Mason Town I would be going into Morgan Town and then looking
for further adventures on Route 7 but then I don't have any contact with any of my relatives in
that area because that dropped off the world when my folks divorced so I was just trying to find
it as a theoretical okay yeah I just looked it up on the map um we're going to be in the West Virginia
once and that was when I went to Ohio I was in southeast Ohio in a town called Gallopolis and we
went over to West Virginia for I can't remember to eat dinner something one time well uh when I was
traveling there was a lot of US 40 and US 50 stuff which has now been replaced by interstates
so things have changed considerably although one of the things that I remember strongly
as a kid was seeing a walking drag line doing stripping within a few miles of my grandfather's farm
this is a drag drag line which is not on caterpillar tracks but is on legs and slowly hobbles
around the area where it's working it's a huge machine and uh yeah they were they were real landmarks
of their day yeah I was doing a quick Google check yeah it looks like Morgan Town is the belt
the closest you're gonna get and then you gotta figure something else out also here's something
interesting about land in West Virginia West Virginia works on a town and country county system
there would be towns and the surrounding countryside would be part of the county if you were in
town you paid both county taxes and town taxes if you're in the county you would pay county taxes
and get to county services and you might get a break compared to your neighbor within city
town limits also in my grandfather's front yard there's a precisely unknown spot
it was a marker put in by the geodetic survey you know uh they put it in his front yard
but somehow nobody came around to actually finish uh recording it you know marking it you
know stamping it or whatever so I always I always uh got a kick out of it because as a kid because
it was a it was a spot that was measured to the to the highest precision available at the back in
the time back in the day but because they didn't finish filling it out it was probably a lost
data point I'm gonna kick off because I've been invited to another chat full of really beautiful
women so I'm gonna do that sounds like a priority to me already have a good a good night good
and uh I'm still on IRC uh still pirate so y'all can find me there right good I have it I
haven't been on IRC for decades I might if I get a VPN and stuff set up uh build a VM for IRC use
since I recall it's been pretty wild west yeah I'm gonna hop out for a couple minutes I'll be back
a little bit yeah well there's a fellow good chat with a beautiful woman without having to use
a computer and I'm very glad for both of them hey pokey was there a reason you kind of ducked out
of the hpr community I'm sorry did you say hey pokey or do you say something else yes all right
I slipped back from my mic a little bit just wondering um if there was a reason you kind of
stepped back from the hpr stuff just life really I um I got involved with hpr for two primary reasons
I I love Linux and I love freedom and when I got involved my job was not about computers I didn't
work with computers a whole lot so when I got home computers was like hobby and Linux was very
intriguing and empowering to that hobby and also the freedom that uh Linux and I don't want to
exclude like BSD I just or or any other free software that I didn't lose but but you get what I'm
saying the freedom the freedom of expression the freedom of speech the free with a capital F
I found really really interesting and intriguing and um when I ducked out it was
right when I changed jobs I had a lot less free time um the job that I had I was a government
contractor and I kicked ass at my job so I had tons and tons of downtime I could just play on
IRC all day long or or an open street map or I couldn't really record hprs at work but I could
plan them out I could think about them I could listen to them I had all kinds of time for
I couldn't find enough podcast I had so much free time at work that there were not enough podcasts
in existence to fill my day I had to listen to audiobooks and I ran out of audiobooks and I had
to listen to that's how much free time I had to a government contractor um I got laid off from
that government job and had to get a job in the real world and I can't it is about 10 years
I get my my current job for 10 years I don't have time that much time for that many podcasts I don't
I just don't I just don't have time for for as many podcasts I used uh but also I don't I work
really computer all day now so the last thing I want to do excuse me sorry my my voice is failing
when I get home from work the last thing I want to do is turn a computer if I do turn a computer
on at home it is still Linux I assure you that much if I do support friends computers they're Linux
I don't support you know my friends want my help with their computers it's still Linux I'm still
running Linux 100% of the time and it's because of the capital F free free software um but right
about the time you know that I 2014 the right about the time that I went from being a government
contractor to going into the private sector the free software community at large um also took
from from my perspective a a really big turn from capital F free to small F free and it became
a cultural thing where everything was supposed to have been free with a small F no no cost associated
everything became communitized not in a way that people were willing to share the community but
where people felt entitled to communitize other people's efforts um and it all just kind of
combined it wants to uh it didn't drive me away from HPR I still love HPR I have a deep deep love
for HPR and I longing to do more with it I just don't have time I don't feel like I have the
the same connection anymore because my my roots in so far as HPR or Hacker Public Radio in
so far as HPR concerned my roots are in capital F freedom freedom of expression freedom to speak
your mind to disagree with people to discuss your disagreements and it seemed like the entire
free software community changed from that to small F free and any um uh it's the word uh
philosophical or not shit I'm dumb I'm old I'm dumb I've had a few that everyone went to you can't
disagree if you don't agree with us a hundred percent you're you're a hundred percent wrong so it's
just okay okay I think you're making some of us uncomfortable I don't think you're
yes well then I'll say goodnight and happy new year see you guys
I'm playing I'm playing I'm playing okay I know you are I know you are I'm agreeing I'm agreeing with you
okay whoa you know I know I understand you're saying I get it was a joke and I was saying
that's the way I've felt for 10 years now kind of the intellectuals looking for the it the
community be not the HPR community I don't HPR's was always a standout HPR from my perspective
and I apologize suffered I don't want to say I get suffered from the loss of me that's horse
shit I just I mean that the the the free software community became the open source community
it became the there just wasn't room for intellectual discourse what I what I loved most was
arguing with people who I love the idea of everybody's opinion is valid unless your opinion
disagrees with my opinion and then I'm going to try to destroy you yeah well and maybe your opinions
not valid but let's hear it out let's let's discuss why it may or may not be valid and and I don't
want to fucking destroy anybody I just want to have love for people I love people like that's I
I don't know yeah and that's what I'm and that's what I'm understanding you're saying is you
know let's hear other people's opinions and if there's disagree with ours maybe we we don't
hang around them but hey I'm not going to try to hurt them because they don't agree with me
well that and I never stopped hanging around with somebody because their opinions differed
from mine either only people I ever stopped hanging around with and only because you mentioned it
the only people I ever stopped hanging around with were people that I found like annoying or
people who I annoyed I didn't want to hang around with people who I bug them and cause them to have
a bad time but at the same time if somebody annoyed me I didn't want to hang around with them
and our opinions could be the same we could we could be a hundred percent agreement but that's
kind of the only reason I ever stopped hanging around with somebody if I disagree if I agree
with somebody great we can build on a conversation we can build on an idea but if I disagree with
somebody well shit how better to strengthen your your argument then steal against steal man steal
sharpened steal like you know I don't know how else to say it but that's not that's has nothing to
do with why I backed away from HPR I backed away from HPR basically because I just didn't have time
for it um just I just ran out of time for podcasts and more addictive shit warmed its way in I
mean it's it's a I'm a weak person wouldn't say that but I understand what you're saying I'm
listening to your current podcast there's a lot of times with where I disagree with some of
the opinions but I have listened to everyone and enjoyed everyone that came out I don't know if
I'm happy to hear that you listen to them or that you disagreed with them that's I you know I
like I like agreement as much as I like disagreement well I'm I'm not beyond listening to other
people's opinions even if I do in the end disagree with them you know the person and who they are
is more important than their individual opinions on individual subjects I'm sure there are things
that you and I would disagree on yeah no doubt I just and as much as I've heard of you like I said
before the only reason I don't really listen to somebody is if they annoy me in it that's you don't
annoy me so I mean for what that's worth it's in like annoyance is more down to like the way
people say things the way literally the way they vocalize things the way they use their their
tongue and their side their mouth and the way or you know what I mean like that's that's the thing
that gets to me or if somebody cranks the music up between what they say and it blows your
eardrums out or if they crank their mic up to loud and their voice gets woolly like it's it's to me
it's it's vocal quality and audio quality is the only thing that really turns me off from a discussion
with somebody whether I agree with them or disagree with them yeah just out of curiosity
may ask what you've been drinking tonight if that's not going to offend another people I've had
I've had two bottles of red wine one of them is they're both red wine blends one of them is called
the other and it's got a picture of a one on the bottle so it might be called the other woman but
I'm not positive and the other one I have no idea what it was I it was something my grab that
just was nearby and had a label that was interesting oh yeah just to it kind of illustrates
what I was saying I personally don't care for wine much at all I I'm a beer drinker but I'm
a quality beer drinker I love some good quality beer what you have brewery not too far from me
an IPA called in the steep from outer range brewing and a goldbrow beer
Steego Goldbrow from Salzburg Austria I don't think I've heard either of those ones before
my my go-to beer is called bone shaker and it's from uh
moat mountain brewery that's a really good one I love that one just dropped a link in the chat
what I started off with tonight and then I moved into some Moscow mules where's bone shaker from
do you know yeah yeah it's um what did you say moat mountain brewery it's moat mountain is um
it's in New Hampshire probably uh it's not North Conway just north of North Conway probably
maybe Jackson New Hampshire or Errol New Hampshire I would guess but moat mountain brewery
oh I'd rather be at interesting actually some of your western listeners might have run across
a mountain of brew called moustrel oh yeah I used to see moustrel all over the place it was
it was a little dark for me on a little thick oh if you don't like dark and thick you might you
might not like bone shaker actually thank you very much because my brothers mentioned moustrel
but you're the first person that I've I've talked with it has experience with it oh I've been
through 150 to 200 different craft breweries in the last six to seven years so I used to live not
too far you know within a few hours of where moustrel came from yes well my brother
being a long haul trucker he has he has a habit of finding every middle of nowhere that
there happens to be in most of the body of the United States the his company avoids the northeast
but Pennsylvania West is on their radar well if he he's ever run 970 from end to end he is driven
right through where I live my my other go to if I don't have to wake up early tomorrow morning is
a brew called double pig's ear and that's made in woodstock new Hampshire woodstock brewery I think
and I just posted that one see now you're scaring me because the worst beer I've ever had was called
pig's eye ice the worst beer I ever had was called the shed I don't know where it's from but it
was horse piss this one I I bought us 12 pack it was about four dollars and I was broke and I got
through two swallows of the first beer couldn't drink any more of it decided to make beer boiled
with it and it ruined the brawler's that's my worst scenario was private stock malt liquor
it was a dollar 65 for a 40 I was like 18 years old and bought it at this liquor store I can get served
that is absolutely wretched and you only had one oh yeah only one of them that was that that was
enough at that age under those circumstances we would have had at least two each maybe three so
some of the other selections they had that one of my friends picked up was cool cult 45 it had a
bluish tint to it it looked like scope wow scary I think they made that for like a week yeah I
can't imagine anyone would ever want to drink the ow is horrific all right now I need to revise
my answer when I said the shed was the worst beer I ever had it's not it was the worst semi-craft
beer I ever had the worst beer I ever had was actually kind of a staple in Boston a beer called
Heffen refer and it came in these little maybe six or eight ounce bottles and you pop the top off
the bottle and there was like a pictogram puzzle underneath the bottle cap but you had to put those
beers in the freezer till they were almost frozen and then shug them because if you ever
tasted them you would wretch those were bet the green monster they were called around here named
after the the Fenway Park wall it's also the green monster they called Heffen refer the green
monster I see pictures of them online it doesn't look good it doesn't look good then the pictures
are accurate actually I don't drink much and I went to a local liquor store and I picked up
great wall vodka and I gave it to my friend and he was a very tolerant guy because I from
is under from my understanding that that great wall stuff was
it would have to be it would have to be it would have to be improved to be horsebiz
hello everyone this is Claudio M and my fiance here just want to wish you a happy new year
from Miami happy new year happy new year happy new year
Claudio and happy new year Claudio's fiance happy new year to you both yes there's another
group of soon-to-be-wed couple there Martin C and L now if you guys are going to drink vodka I
have made a recent discovery that vodka is a waste of time why is it a waste of time because
there is such a thing as grain alcohol ever clear or 151 I guess there's others out there but
that's the one that's available in our area it is like twice more than twice as potent as any vodka
but it is also cleaner and smoother and more tasteless and they put fewer hangovers in the ball
so you use it just like you'd use vodka but you pour half as much or less than half as much
as you would normally pour a vodka and it it doesn't affect the drink quite as much as vodka does
and it doesn't hang you over and it lasts a lot longer and it's way way cheaper ever clear
just for lighting things on fire it's just for fun no no no no no it has more uses than that
I actually use it to clean my tobacco pipes it's that's what you use to clean use grain alcohol
to clean a tobacco pipe that's how I ever discovered the stuff at all but try pouring in a drink
just don't use as much as you would if you were using alcohol like I use it in celtzer I'll just
pour a little splash of it into a great big glass of of celtzer and it's better than vodka I'm
telling you we used it to teach our daughter how dangerous alcohol was when she was about 15
yeah it'll work for that no ever clear I think is 151 proof I use vodka for mules and that's
about it vodka for mules I have no idea what you just said Moscow mules just for ginger beer vodka
a little fresh mint makes a decent drink but don't drink vodka straight anymore oh no don't drink
no yeah hold no don't drink vodka straight don't drink 151 straight Jesus I wasn't saying that
I mean using this fig vodka in my mules of ginger tonight we uh like to make Jamaican mules we
call them with with some rum in them there you go now I used to make instead of a black Russian which
is vodka and colloua I used to like it with bicarity silver and colloua I never count the good name
for it though but I like because the bicarity silver is a little smokier than vodka that would be a
Cuban mule I would call that since the yeast that makes bicarity rum came out of Cuba they escaped
with their rum somewhere in like I think the 60s is the story so Cuban mule is a black Russian but
with bicarity I would I would say yeah anything that was like a Cuban rum based thing would be a
Cuban mule we we like to make in mules where we use rum or you know Russia or Moscow mules where
you use vodka I can't remember we'd come up with a couple others but I'll remember at the moment
all I know is anytime and every time I've ever ordered bicarity and colloua the bartender has
looked at me really funny I prefer my Jamaican rum any rum I don't know I the the bicarity silver
with colloua is good like I said it's like a black Russian but got the rum in it if I'm
going to drink rum straight I don't know sale of jerry's I liked but it's an acquired taste
and apple tin rum I kind of liked that was also good but I haven't had either of those in a
number of years do you ever try cracking yes yes I did try cracking and I kind of liked it
but not it's it's better than sale of jerry's if you're going to drink it casually but once you
acquire a taste cracking kind of falls down compared to sale of jerry's in in in my opinion
apple tin rum is your standard Jamaican rum I've been to the apple tin distillery it's a nice
tour met a guy there he gave us the tour talked to him for a while thought he was about 35 he'd
been working at that place for over 30 years and he was 53 years old wow so sunshine fresh air
you decent rum keeps you looking young well preserved I think is the the term for that
it seemed to be the case with him but they had a bottle there of 50 year old it was five thousand
dollars for the bottle I didn't know no kidding really you missed your shot they distilled it the year
that Jamaica proclaimed their independence there are barrels that are set aside for the hundred
year that's hilarious because the last time I had apple tin rum I think I paid 15 bucks for a bottle of
it yeah the standard stuff they changed the name of it if you can find it's now called Kingston 62
for the year they declared their independence and it's it's not expensive but it's getting
hard to find interesting I'll have a look for it because we in the hamster we got the state liquor
stores and their stock is unbelievable they got the finances of the whole state behind them
to stock these gigantic liquor stores yeah it was an interesting tour up there because
they're getting 98% of the sugars and liquid out of the sugar cane and then they use the sugar
cane to fuel the distilling pots you know for heat they burn it and then they take the gas and
spread it back out on the field so it's just like a nice circle there and it it rains 360 days
out of the year up where they're at so it was I mean it just dumped poured on us the day we were
up there and they're like yeah this is just normal so they've got a nice circular system up there
wow nothing but sunshine and man hours yep but yep had several tastes of the stuff up there I've got
pictures with a bottle I brought back while we were up there and everything it was it was a great
tour and would you say that other one was called what 78 what it's called Kingston 62 it's
what used to be just the Appleton special is probably what you got I think we used to pay about
13 bucks a bottle for it it's got a bit of a butter rum flavor to it I will look for it five
grand for a bottle is actually not bad I'm looking at a picture I took a couple years ago a bottle
of Hennessy for 25,000 euro Hennessy's not that great I mean it's it's good but it's not it's not
that good I was in cognac for a couple of months for work and so I toured the Hennessy distillery and
I looked around and I found the most expensive bottle I could find and it was 25,000 euro that's
a little crazy I will say now I've been saying this to anyone who will listen there is a new
category of bourbons in the last couple of years that are maple bourbons and all of them that I
have tried except for one sucks some of them suck more than others some of them don't suck that
bad and some of them suck real bad but there is one that is really really really good and if you like
bourbon if you like sour mash you'll like this one because it's a sour mash bourbon
and the maple is just a hint it's just barely kissed with maple it's not enough to take the
sour off it's not enough to take the heat of the alcohol off it's just enough to let you kind of
almost feel a maple feeling in your mouth and it's called Vermont ice maple bourbon and it is
so good I'm not entirely sure I could find that here in the southwest but I will definitely keep an eye
out gentlemen you do realize that you're you're effectively creating a new podcast
well it's okay with me creating several old ones yeah I found broad brewers about three episodes
before they ended so can anybody explain to me why I should like bourbon because I find it
overly sweet which bourbons have you tried that you think are sweet any of them that I've
ever tried I guess I can't say specifically um brand name at the moment but I don't I kind of
like a little bite with my whiskies as opposed to a smoother sweeter when you say a little so
as far as whiskey goes the ones when you say bite do you mean like peppery like a ride would you
prefer a ride I do like rise I've probably got three or four bottles of different
rides that I've got around but sometimes I don't want anything quite as harsh as a rye
something a little smoother but not getting towards that not quite distilled out all the way
sweetness kind of I never had a whiskey or a bourbon that I would describe as sweet unless
there was sugar added to it in which case you should stay away from the Vermont ice maple bourbon
that I just described because you would think that was sticky sweet uh but no I I I cannot
convince you to drink any whiskey or bourbon if you like rye oh and maybe that's it my palette
I found is a little odd on these things because if you give me a super high high BU IPA that's got a
pretty decent malt backbone to it my palette will just find it as a nice sweet along with the bitter
yeah and I don't like high IBU beers at all I like really dark beers um especially if they're dark
and not quite as sweet as their darkness would imply I like the dark beers that way
I wonder I've got I brewed a while back what I would call a somewhere between a Vienna and a dark
logger has a pretty good malt backbone but then also is not black dark but has a little more of a
chocolate but brewed with a logger yeast so it's lighter on the palette yeah your way over my head
I know I like them more multi and less hoppy I don't love super over hopped beers
uh have you ever tried like a new Belgium 1554 I've had new Belgium beers I don't think I've had
that one specific yeah fat tires they're big one I think I've had fat tires
don't don't think I love that I think that one was a little too hoppy yeah I'm not a big fat
tire fan it's kind of a little too eager to please on too many places which means it's not great on
any of them yeah I don't love beers that like the label says it's this or it's that like it's
fruity or it's chocolatey or it's vanilla I don't love beers that have to tell you what they are
out up front I kind of just like a multi beer that's well balanced to support the the malt and
like like a viscous beer I think I don't know if that means full body or not but I like a viscous
multi beer that has enough just enough hops and just enough sweet to kind of support the the thickness
and the maltiness of it yeah I'm in a state where there's over 350 breweries now so
have I made it to all of them but would like to try to someday I think I'm on a street where there's
350 breweries every man and his dog has a brewery up this way yeah they've been exploiting
and down here too there's there's got to be 30 or so within like a five mile radius in my house
what general area is that lovecraft south jersey just over the border from Pennsylvania
and this is a good area for making beer if if we're being honest it's south jersey maybe even as far
as like eastern Pennsylvania all the way up to you know northern main the the the white
mountains up here we have very very very good water good groundwater you can take water right
off the tap you know that the town pumps straight out of the ground and it's delicious and anytime
I travel out of this part of the country the water is really really iffy western Vermont lots lots
and lots of New York state Pennsylvania the water is really not good that comes out of the ground I
can't drink their tap water I gotta if I'm traveling I'll filter river water because the water
that comes out of the ground is awful if I go a little further south into the Appalachian
mountains the southern Appalachians it's it's better it's almost as good but the water in the
northeast that comes through I don't know I my guess is it's the granite that we have up here all
the ground is granite and I think that's what does it but the water tastes good the the breweries
up by you are they are they allowed to serve food because jersey has some weird laws about
actual breweries aren't allowed to serve food by law so like if you go to a brewery when I get
some beers you got to order like pizza from a local shop or something like that or what are food
in they can't actually serve beer in a brewery however they make the distinction between breweries
and brew pubs which are allowed to serve food so it's a little little wonky with the laws I think
up here in New Hampshire at least I think they're almost required to serve food because they all
seem to they all seem to be restaurants first and then they build out their breweries so I think
the laws seem to be almost the opposite yeah I wouldn't last time I was up in New Hampshire I
visited a couple and yeah I think you're right I think a lot of them are not sure if they're
required to but a lot of them really do up there they they serve some sort of a food like pizza or
something Massachusetts I think might be the opposite because a lot of the breweries around here
they'll have like food trucks that'll come up to the places but I don't think any of them that I
know of serve serve food directly and that's not to say that they don't I'm just trying to think
of the ones local to me I don't think any of them serve food yeah that's I believe that there is one
over in near MIT that serves food where I'm at it seems to be pretty variable some some have it some
don't some park food trucks outside some don't so I think there's a lot of variety where I'm at but
it's really weird how different the alcohol laws are from state to state like in New Hampshire
if you want beer or wine you can get it at the grocery store if you go to a bar you can buy beer
or wine or hard liquor you can buy whatever you want in your glass but you can't leave with it and
you can't buy bottles to take with you but if you want hard liquor we have the state liquor stores
and they're gigantic stores with any liquor almost any liquor you can think of and if you can't
think of it they can probably order it or you can order it to your doorstep there's rules about
that but then my buddy and I traveled like in Massachusetts they don't have state stores but
they have private liquor stores which are kind of weird and then we went even further when we were
in Pennsylvania you could go into a bar and get a six pack or 12 pack to go you could just walk out
with like a mixed 12 pack of beer like you can't in New Hampshire you can't leave a bar with a bottle
it's that was like it's so weird that such a short distance away the rules are so different
yep Massachusetts it's weird because it will for a long time you weren't able to sell alcohol
in like a grocery store it was only able to sell it at like I want to say some convenience stores
and then just package stores and then later on they switched it up where it was some strange
law like grocery stores like one per chain per area or something like that you were able to
to sell alcohol I know some tried it out and I think they stopped but I know that some of the
convenience stores do sell alcohol but some of them don't that's kind of a mixed thing but mostly
if you want to buy alcohol in Massachusetts you have to go to a liquor store and they're all
probably like you said they're all privately owned liquor stores yeah and mass they're all
capy's liquors oh yeah capy's is great the other weird one when I was in Ohio they sell liquor
at the grocery store but it's only like 30 proof so you see these name brand bottles but they're
all watered down if you want full high-test booze you have to go to like a specific liquor store
that only sells liquor that was also weird huh yeah here in Jersey we don't have an eight there's
no state stores they're all just private liquor stores but some grocery stores some of the
specialty grocery stores do carry alcohol but the vast majority of them don't know convenience store
sell alcohol of any sort yeah it's just a weird mix of I guess how they do do things from state to
state now it was was a Pennsylvania like he was talking about that you can go in to like a
restaurant and pick up a six pack at a restaurant got me when I went to yes does Jersey do the
same thing where you can pick up like a six pack at a restaurant and if a bar I believe the way it
works here is if a bar has a quote unquote package good license you can go in and pick up a six pack
or a 12 pack you're just gonna pay through the nose with it for it okay and then and then you can
leave but the other thing too is like pretty much anywhere here is also BYOB so I can go into
like a mom pop pizza place and bring my own six pack and sit down and drink it in order of
that pizza or something like that so no way it's Jersey oh yeah yeah I mean most people won't do it
but they're you can do it if you want to yeah wow I've only in New Hampshire I've only come across
in my whole life I've only ever come across one place that was bring your own beer and it was
campground that had a like a honky-tonk dance floor on it there's a couple of towns around here too
that are dry towns that have restaurants in them in fact the the town I grew up in is a dry
town that if they ever issue a liquor license they'll lose the park in the town that was the way
it was deeded to the the town by the Quakers or whoever found that the town like 300 years ago
but yeah you can go into any of the restaurants and you know bring your own beer or wine or anything
like that and you know that's just how it works that was another one when I was down in North
Carolina they were private liquor stores the A and B I went to I went to several A and B liquor stores
and those were decent stores and if anyone's ever been to a A and B liquor and just kind of in
your mind like walk around that store mentally picture it in New Hampshire our liquor stores are
at minimum the small New Hampshire liquor stores are four times that size with literally
six to eight times the variety and the big liquor stores here like you have stuff like we you
can walk up the our liquor stores and there's everything there from like cheap ass ten twelve
dollar bottles of liquor and you walk up the aisle you'll see an eighty dollar bottle of liquor next
to a two hundred dollar bar probably not two hundred probably you see eighty maybe up to a
hundred dollar bottle liquor just right on the shelf and if you walk down the back of and they're
huge stores they're they're gigantic stores as big as a as big as a as a dollar general grocery
store mostly and down the back there's more shelves and among those shelves there's locked cabinets
with like stuff that's over a hundred bucks like on up to you know hundreds and hundreds of dollars
of bottle they're they're just they've got everything and it's just when I've like I got used to it
like I thought that's what liquor stores were and when I left New Hampshire and was traveling around
and like I've done a bunch of travel in the past few years by motorcycles so I can't carry a lot
with me so if I need some booze I got to find some place to stop and pick up you know a couple
we call them Pierre I guess the rest of the country calls them airplane bottles but the little
the little bottles and they're the rest of the country does not have liquor stores that are quite
as convenient or customer what's that robust robust is a very good word for it robust there none of
the rest of the country has liquor stores that are anywhere near as robust as what we got a new
ham sure it it was very surprising to me if you've ever seen a specs liquor store which one is
that what states it specs I only know it from Texas no I've never been to Texas okay yes specs
specs is this usually the size of your average grocery store and it is all different kinds of liquor
if you can't find it they will look it up for you and see if they can get it for you and
it is quite the experience to go into yeah that's about what our stores are and the other thing
about our stores is their dirt cheap compared to other states because they the state it's run by
the state so they get their markup on the product but they don't tax it above and beyond that markup
so you know like bar owners and and stuff like that they're not supposed to but they'll do it you
can see them they're always in in line the head of you they got a a shopping cart like loaded
wood stuff and they'll they'll ring out with like you know you'll be sitting there like like
your one bottle for like 15 bucks or 12 bucks by bottle lines like 999 and the guy in front of me rings
out and it's like $2,200 and the lady's like you don't know a bar do you think I was like no of course
we do have one near us that's the size of a Sam's club oh I don't think I've seen one quite
that big Sam's is pretty big yeah this one's huge it it has beer caves and it's just spread out
everywhere so that one we hit about once every two or three months and their prices are decent
enough to make it worth it see that's the one thing that New Hampshire liquor stores don't sell
they don't sell beer they sell hard liquor and they sell wine and that's it and they sell
like a few not a whole lot they'll sell a few non-alcoholic like mixers like they'll sell you know
simple syrups and they'll sell like grenadine or they'll sell tonics but not not a whole lot of them
just a couple they poke I posted a link in chat if you want to take a look at it so you can see
what specs is about yeah I definitely have a look an interesting thing in in my area is they
have a regular liquor store which is pretty full range and then somebody opened a wine and beer
store which doesn't carry anything super hard but the but their selection is designed to be
I would assume upper tier or you have the option of spending a lot of money on your
craft beer or your special wine does anyone know what GABF is?
no no nope not something like so GABF is the great American beer festival which is where
most of the American breweries try to win their awards for the year
and it's located about three hours from me I'm still trying to get tickets in one of these days but
you got you can sample up to 2500 beers while you're there
around here we're one of the the fairgrounds they do a beer fest and I've did it I don't know
about like three four different years and it's the bunch of the breweries and basically the northeast
all all go to this thing and it's you just do tasting from place from booth to booth to booth
then after a while it just gets to be a lot and the hardest part about that is usually
somebody is watching my kids during the time that I'm at this because it starts at like 11 11 or 12
and then it goes for like good four or five hours and then by the time you're done there you like
oh fuck I know I gotta go home and I have to take care of make sure two kids get fed and
they put the bed so I have to act somewhat sober plus I have to make it home in one piece
that's why I like my situation both my mother-in-law and my mother live in the same city
yeah my mother my mother-in-law well my mother now moved down to Florida my mother-in-law is
next town or so that's been a help but at the same time I we got a next time we do it we got a
plan better it's that learning from experience I tried to pace myself the last time we went
and I made it out a little bit better but that's just after a while it that's just a lot of beer
we found a couple of like good good new breweries and good new beers uh from going to that but I
mean it just gets to be a lot of beer after a while I believe we we get those out here too but we
also throw in bacon and bourbon at the same time the three bees just like mom always taught me
absolutely can't go wrong with the three bees now we've had a few of them and it seems we're
good for about two two and a half hours and then we're just done because it's like if I do
anymore I'm going to be so sick right one of our keys is find the style that you want to try
and stick with that if you try to go with everything you will be so sick to your stomach by the end
of the few hours but the hard thing is is there's so many if I like it when a lot of the vendors
decide to bring some of the variety stuff like I want to go try the one that the vendor who has
need or the vendor who's trying out a couple of hours here and there I'm not a big sour guy
but I kind of want to try if somebody is feels proud enough about their sour to bring it to
something to a fest like that I want to at least try it you know I don't want to go waste this
dream logger or the just a long line of of IPAs because IPAs start to get kind of they're fine I
like a good IPA but at the same time you know if everybody seems to do a freaking IPA give me a good
porter or good stout my hops can beat up your hops yeah I was done with that like 10 years ago
yeah if you have hops pokey I will pay you to send them to me because I've got them growing
in the front yard but I need more variety yeah they can know I don't have them personally I just I
don't like the my hops can beat up your hops type of beer while we're on the subject of discussing
like really tasty stuff can I can I change the subject can I veer slightly away from booze or will
I get like crucified for that absolutely not thank goodness because oddly enough the Murphy
and the bunch is the one that is not drinking so I feel a bit out of place here hey Murphy I even
buddy oh pretty good one time to speak yeah I haven't seen you since you were Murphy and J
I still am as a matter of fact it's just I got Murphy on this system so it's all good yeah right on
I I discovered a couple years ago these salamis these cured meats from a place in Vermont
called Vermont salumi is the the name of the place I just posted the link in the chat S-A-L-U-M-I
but this guy is a pig farmer he was raised on a pig farm and as a child his summer vacations were
in Italy and he discovered while he was there that their salamis were better than the ones that
were here that even his own family made so he went back as an adolescent and as an adult
and he apprenticed with Italian salami makers and he learned all their techniques and he came
home with all their bacterial and mold cultures that make good salami and he makes good salami and
there is I've looked I've looked high and low there is nothing in this country like this man's
salamis these are un-effing believable and they're really cheap right now compared to the last
on my bottom which makes me think he cut the size in half I think these are probably like a four
ounce and I think they used to be eight or ten ounce because they're like half the price of what
they used to be but whatever just get the sampler back see what you like or or don't you know if
you don't like meat whatever but if you like meat if you like cured meat if you like salami these
things and if you only do this if you have your own teeth or your own caps if you've got dentures
you're not going to be able to chew this stuff because it's really hard salami compared to what
you get in a grocery store but it is so so so good didn't Hollywood teachers didn't Hollywood
teachers never to trust a pig farmer because they're feeding somebody to the pigs maybe don't like
do deals with them but you could buy it a pig meat that he makes I don't think they ever had a
problem with that no that's kind of this guy's whole thing is is his salami I think I forget
it was a long time ago since I read one of them but I think it said he calls it like whole
pig salami or whole whole muscle salami because he doesn't trim anything off of it he doesn't
trim fat he doesn't drink trim tendons nothing it all goes in there all goes into the grind and
it all gets fed to the bacteria and when you you can kind of see it from the pictures but when you
open the package the whole thing it comes out it's all white it's covered in powder and it almost
looks like it's flour but it's not it's mold and you just have to peel the skin off that has the
mold on it or not you can rinse it off like the first time I ever had it I was so drunk I didn't
know there was skin on it I just chewed through it but I don't know how I've managed that
honestly when you're drunk anything is possible it it really is yeah no but they're they're I can't
say enough good things about this guy's salamis this guy's meats and he does free shipping in the
United States so for a sampler that's like 53 bucks for just the salamis are 49 bucks for
the sliced meats or whatever it's you know with free shipping I mean how you can't really even
at the grocery store you couldn't beat that price what's the name of the guy again Vermont salumi
S-A-L-U-M-I but it's it's all one word Vermont salumi.com but it's in the it's in the chat I just I
posted it in the chat I see it now yeah I found it while it was camping um and I you know I just
because when I go out riding in camp and I just try to grab a salami a dried meat or you know
some cheese or something that won't spoil in the sun and I was just I was blown away about how
good it was I went back in I got some more when I was sober and it was just as good so I was even
more blown away but I've even brought it into work and handed it out to other people at work like
Europeans and stuff like I get this is one old guy from like Eastern Europe he's you know he's
in like his 70s and he he he took a bite of it but his face all screwed up all crooked and his
eyebrows went out but he looked at me he goes this is good this I like yeah balkan on the website
looks like good stuff well it I I assure you it tastes better than it looks even looks like it'll
work for the celiac among us yeah well the uh this reminds me of an old man that was a friend
to my father's and lived down the road from where my father had his cabin he would take hard
pepperoni and I mean this is pepperoni self-defense level hard pepperoni I mean really dry you know
this stuff you could hang up in your cellar and leave it for 10 years and it would probably
be just about as good but anyway he would buy this stuff at the store and on the ride home he would
just slice off chunks of it eating it like it was candy yeah that's about how I treat this I slice
it up and I usually like on the pictures here on the website he's got it slicing the rounds I
usually slice it in half and then into round because a half a one a whole half a one like like it's
very dry it's very difficult I won't say difficult it's a it's a chew you gotta sink your it's
al dente you gotta sink your teeth into it so a half a one is is about right and maybe I'll have it
with a piece of cheese like I'll I'll find try to find a really hard really dry really stinky cheese
you know cut that up and have a piece with it but I I plenty of times I'll eat this on its own
did we sidetrack humor from what you wanted to talk about
no I had no agenda I'm just about to pack it in figure I'd drop in and say hi to everybody before I
bug out of here I wish everyone a happy new year happy new year happy new year
all right catchers all sometime in the future
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