hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2247.txt

Episode: 2247
Title: HPR2247: 2016-2017 HPR New Year show 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2247/hpr2247.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 23:54:55

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This is HPR episode 2,247 entitled HPR New Year Show 1.
It is hosted by Marius Kost and is about 265 minutes long and can in an explicit flag.
The summary is Haka Public Radio New Year's Eve Show Episode 1.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Is it bad that it's a stream that's sickable?
No, that means you can't go forward and back because it's a live stream.
Good enough, it seems to be working.
I always have a hard time with when I look up for Google things.
When I put in something like Dash Dumb Stream, Dash Dumb File,
I always sit there confused and staring at it going,
am I supposed to put the name of the stream in that section
and then Dash the name of the file,
or am I actually supposed to type out the Dumb Stream Dumb File?
Yeah, exactly.
I'll put a multi countdown thing into the chat.
One tip actually, if you're recording on one of the mumbles is to set it to UTC.
Set that PC to UTC because then you'll be able to sync up the days and times
when you're copying and pasting it.
The show notes from the chat as people just tend to put it into the chat
and not into the etherpad, but I do both.
That's very smart.
We'll put a link to the multi countdown up on the HBO website as well.
Five minutes and 15 seconds until the next one goes.
All right, now I'm hoping that you know the answer to this,
but how come it's 26 hours?
Ah, I'm very glad you asked.
I was trying to explain this to my wayplast,
and I just said they're going, all right,
I really don't have a solid answer to this.
I tried googling it and I didn't find anything but off the bat.
Okay, imagine if you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, yeah.
And you are dealing with people.
And there's a two hour time difference between you and the next island.
Yeah.
But there's like a 12 hour difference between you and the other islands,
you know, the U.S. on the other side, yeah.
So somebody decides, well, I'm going to put an international deadline right through
between you and your neighboring island.
You know, it's only a two hour flight away.
So that makes business very inconvenient because they're free on a Monday.
And they're off on the Sunday and the other people are off on a Saturday.
So it reduces the business week by from five down to four, actually.
So instead of having a two day, two days off,
there's four days where you don't get to do business.
So these people said, right, enough of this,
we will now be just two hours to the right of those guys over there.
And those guys over there happen to be on the 24, you know, 12 hours away from GMT.
So that's why it's 26 hours.
It just makes business sense.
That makes sense.
There you go.
This whole idea of time is a bit silly.
So we should all be using epoch based on when RMS was born.
What is that?
Yeah, RMS puck.
You know, when you think about it, it's just an arbitrary day and time anyway.
All right, so.
So the Chapman Islands are about to go in two minutes, 45 seconds.
For all of you who don't know, it's a New Zealand island.
It's an archipelago in the Pacific Island, about 250 kilometers or 400 miles east of New Zealand.
It consists of about 10 islands within 40 kilometer radius, 25 miles.
The largest of which is Chapman Island and Pitt Island.
The archipelago Regou, Mr. Sun, is the indigenous more whoops.
That's where he loses it.
Let me do some text to speech on this.
And the indigenous people are at the Chapman Island.
They're members of something, something tribe and also settle on the island.
So officially part of New Zealand since 1842.
And it includes the country's easternmost point of the 44s.
I wonder what text to speech come out on this if I passed it in.
I'll first enable it and then see if it comes through.
Nope, I heard no text to speech.
But my error.
Where's the text to speech playing through your headset?
No, it should be playing in a mobile, but it's not playing for me.
If you want to have a go at reading out the names without butchering them, feel free.
Nope, I'm good.
The timezone is C-H-A-D-T.
No idea why it's 15 minutes off.
That seems a bit arbitrary to me, but fair enough.
And they're going 30 seconds.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Happy New Year, Chapman Islands in New Zealand.
I feel like it's going over to about C.
She's watching the film about the C.
And Russian is what?
Okay, I'll have a look in a minute.
Okay, the next one's in 44 minutes.
You do what you need to do and go back to bed.
I'm going to go continue assembling a Raspberry Pi project, which you may or may not hear about here in HPR.
Cool, what's the project?
I got five Raspberry Pi's and I'm just going to stack them up together and see if I can use them for something and work.
I got them to be a work.
We want to maybe hook up some set up boxes so you can remotely control set up boxes from wherever you are.
But I might also use them for streaming or just for playing with Ansible, which is going to be our deployment solution stuff.
Very cool.
Yeah, don't really know, don't really know.
So I'm actually doing all the cool stuff in there.
So at the minute, I want to focus on doing that.
Sorry, go on.
I'm sorry, I'll just say I'll just say I'll be in here for a few more minutes.
I've just reinstalled operating systems on half my machines.
So I got one.
I've just installed Debbie and I'm so wants to get that finished.
I'll probably try to go back to bed.
Yeah, I don't worry about it.
And remember, this is HPR like if we don't we have should have enough recordings with everything that I'm doing.
And yeah, you've got a recording running.
So yeah, let's see what happens if it fails and destroyed.
Well, people should have been on the stream and listening.
Hey, 51 50s awake.
Yay!
We're doomed now.
We're doomed now.
Go back to bed 50.
It's way too early.
Are you up feeding the cows?
I saw his lips laid up but nothing come out.
That's not a good start.
That's fairly typical for 51 50s audio.
Ooh, it's hurts.
It hurts.
Right, refill a coffee, continue on the project.
Talk to you later, honky.
Have fun.
50 you there.
We still can't hear you, sir.
Can you hear me now?
Hey, there we are.
Good morning, sir.
How are you?
Pretty good.
What I had to do was go into a pulse audio and push everything over to the USB headset.
Which is what I have to do every time when I record.
Well, just glad to have you here.
What time is it there for you or?
Yeah, about 420 now.
Have a recording.
I won't vouch for it because I have to reset my ISP at least once a day.
That's all right.
I appreciate it.
You know, I'll help.
Ken's got a couple of recordings going.
I have a member recording and I'm using M-Player to record off the stream as well.
Well, just glad to see you in here.
I'm not being for too much longer.
I'm trying to set up.
I got everything kind of set up and then I have one laptop I've been wanting to.
Well, I basically reinstalled all my operating systems on what's the one, two, three machines.
And so I got the last machine I'm trying to install Debian on.
And then once I get that finished, I might just hop back in bed.
Oh, I'm the same way.
I'm working on probably, you know, I was going to get the bed.
Oh, well, I'll get the bed early.
Oh, well, I'll get the bed at midnight.
Oh, well, I'll get the bed at 2 a.m.
So, you know, I am working on about an hour and a half sleep.
The sleep machine did work fairly well.
So, at least I have that.
But, you know, I'm going to see who jumps in because I guess we're working on between the international daylight.
And I'm trying to find a new Zealand right now, a couple hours in the future.
So, you know, I hope some people jump in and take care of it.
But, you know, I'm too old to be up to 4 o'clock in the morning doing this.
I'm with you.
At the same time, you know, if there's nothing first thing, it's 26 hours.
So, if we can get even like, I don't know, it doesn't matter.
If we get anything, then it should be a huge success in my opinion.
So, well, we're back on a weekend.
This is something that's been discussed before we started on a weekend.
And, you know, it was, then participation was down.
And it was pretty good last year, not as good as some years.
But, it was pointed out, you know, it's a work that for most people.
But, as fate would have it, we're back on Saturday this year.
Yeah, you should go to bed, get some sleep.
50 will, I'm awake here and we'll be partnering about the house.
Making sure the people are okay.
We'll keep the streams up and then later on when you come back,
the US comes online, then I can more or less chill for a while.
I don't want to put it on all you can.
Sure, no, but it's ridiculous.
You guys been in.
There's no requirement for anyone to be on the stream.
If people want to drop in, I have it on here in the living room.
I'll hear it.
I'll go in and say hello to people.
We'll have a chat and then we'll go about their business.
Yeah, it is a facility for people.
There's no requirement for everybody to be on 24-7.
If you want to be, that's absolutely fine, but no requirement.
Well, I think that given our experience last year, you know, going on 26 hours,
I get a little bunch drunk.
There you go.
We're as well make use of the fact that, you know,
here we're just partnering about today.
We have nothing planned.
We have everything in for this evening's festivities.
So we'll be doing family stuff or whatever.
And if people drop in, I'll probably hear them and go and have a chat.
And if they don't, then that's fine.
Well, I'm just glad to hear somebody came in because I second well,
you know, and Ken, I owe you like 100 shows because it's been floating around in my head.
It's so long and not done.
And keep meaning to do it.
Yeah, I owe you a show about the hit firewall that was already talking to people about that.
I still need to do that.
Anyway, time, time.
And I, you know, I kept thinking if nobody was here, you know,
let's start talking.
Yeah, I've got a couple of pretty well scripted, you know,
I'll just go do those two.
Yeah, but don't do them here on the HPR, the HPR show is for chatting and for chilling.
I still have 260 shows that I need.
And the HPR website has a call for shows up.
So where we do need actual shows.
And then mountain shows being sent in has dropped off considerably in the last period of time.
Normally, we would have a lot more shows in the queue by now.
It's very empty.
So don't be wasting shows on this, this HPR new year show, yeah.
Okay, I'll take that to ours.
I mean, have a conversation about whatever you want to have a conversation about.
But if you had planned to do a show about something, don't do it here.
You want to do it, drop into another channel and record it.
Pick up, yeah, pick up your recorder and just.
Yeah, I see in the chat.
Yep, or guaranteed that he will continue talking forever.
No, the picture I'm looking at my browser and, you know, we're going full on Richard Hughes here.
Is law enforcement trade in on 45 and 40 caliber.
Okay, this is the step out of the conversation.
See it.
Exactly.
It's not time to try to get rid of it.
Even T Smith, the Western LE model is 45 and 40s.
Soldiers on classic firearms around Christmas.
And thought it was a good price to jump around.
Buds firearms has a similar price a little bit more for magazines.
So sort of on the edge, I am not a big fan of polymer guns, which is what they are.
But, you know, $300 for an effective fifth weapon.
Yeah, save me for myself.
Not that I hear in the last tilt that Richard Hughes was trying to build a gun out of.
Well, with his 3d printer, it's all like he was trying to build at least print out parts for it.
Well, he's doing the big 10 rails.
I don't know if he's at the point.
He's trying to build his own lowers.
You see the AR-15, they are the world's most modular gun.
And the part that counts for the government as a gun is this lower section with sort of the pistol grip handle, the trigger, you know, all that stuff.
And the rest is not registered.
So, you know, I'm not sure I would be very comfortable with having that whole lower section being, you know, either, you know, plastic from some manufacturer or printed.
But that's the part the government counts as a gun.
So, you know, people are talking about, oh, yeah, I can, you know, I can print that part.
And then have an AR-15 that the government has no idea about.
But that's not really what Richard's talked about.
He's talked about, well, like this guy and I'm looking at Smith and Wesson.
It's got rails on the bottom so you could add a flashlight or a laser sight or their company.
I, one of the gutter podcasters, videocasters or whatever on YouTube talked about the other day that would be a training thing.
You know, you could put on there and it would say, yeah, you're pulling the trigger right or whatever.
You know, it would help you be a better shooter with the trails, you know, with the rails on there.
So, that's what Rich is really talking about the last mini PC show.
Well, you talk about the mini PC show. I heard him talk a couple of things on tilt.
I know he was on the last mini PC shows, but I don't remember. I didn't catch that part.
Yeah, he's been on the last couple. I think he's complaining because he kind of drops off the mini PC early.
So, I didn't know that the mini PC started later than tilt, but I think that must be what's happening.
He's trying to do the best to both worlds.
Hey, good for him. He might be working with the mini PC stuff, but I think that shows good fit for him.
Oh, yeah, he's good on it.
Speaking of which, I only have one of my mini PCs back up, and that's my dedicated file sharing Raspberry Pi original B.
I still have several ones. Well, that and the PC do we know too.
A PC do we know too is always set up as just basically IRC.
And it pretty much just only goes up when the load cast is on, but I got it turned on now.
Well, since it'll be next week before we talk about load cast projects that I've been working on in the meantime,
I have a surveillance camera from that gear that is entirely web based.
You know, I can't even get to it local.
So, that's kind of neat because, you know, whatever it sees is going up on the web.
So, somebody breaks into my house and takes all computers. They're not going to be, they're not going to get rid of the evidence.
But this is a complete web based blob on my system, which I don't need.
And so, you know, I've got my B of Sets box set up.
And I've got another network range set up on a USB hardwired ethernet.
The trouble is that with the fault, yeah, I can being back and forth between it and through that work, you know,
everything else is on. And this is not what I want to be doing.
But I can't reach the internet with it.
So, you know, what I want to have is two separate networks, the internet of things, only being able to talk to the network and not being able to see any of my local clients.
And I've got just the opposite that they can see my local clients, but they can't see the internet.
And this is something supposed to be pretty much transparent setting up a PF sense.
So, and I did do my due diligence, Google Food, trying to figure it out.
Finally, put something on the forums, which hasn't been responded to in a week.
So, I'm hoping, you know, something I'm going to mention on Linux floodcast, hopefully somebody be able to help me out a little bit on the logcast getting this configured.
Because this is, you know, this camera is completely only available through a Android app.
There's no point on having it on my local network.
Now, the other thing that I've been trying to do is, since I've had the PF sense set up, I took my cheaper backup router and set it up as an access point.
And since I did that, I have not had, well, I've had less stable success, you know, connecting Chromecast and whatever, you know, these won't show up.
And then I'll go in, reboot the router, it says an access point and it'll pick them up and go from there.
But I mean, even Chromecast Normal, I'm not sure it's ready for prime time, it's okay for techs.
We know we have to deal with these things, but I get enough errors, you know, not connecting whatever that, you know, the tech phobic people, they're going to hit one problem with that.
And then check it in a drawer and never use it again.
So, you know, Google and everybody who is tying into it, rolling these up their game.
When I first got an HBO through the Chromecast, you know, they were way behind Hulu and Netflix and, you know, if you wanted to get on HBO,
you probably took two, maybe three tries to connect.
They've done better recently, especially since, oh, about the time Westworld came out, it was miserable last spring with Game of Thrones.
And I thought, you know, Game of Thrones is over and they were saying, oh, it's going to be full year before you get a more Game of Thrones.
I was going to say, well, yeah, well, cancel my HBO services and then they came out with the Westworld and I was like, oh, man, I'm that's over.
I'm looking at the young Pope as, you know, the next thing interesting.
So it's like, yeah, it's not worth canceling and coming back.
So they get you with stuff and there's the old archives stuff like the, well, I like the tutors and the Jefferson, all that stuff is on HBO.
So I'll probably leave it running just to get to that stuff.
Hey, 50.
Yeah.
Look quick. Hey, Fee.
You say good morning.
Good morning.
Oh, you weren't talking to me.
Did you hear?
I did.
Say, you say, good morning, Ken Fallon.
Good morning, 50 with 50.
Good morning, Sam and good morning.
So I got a little morning.
I think I got to step away for a little while.
Okay, well, you know how long when did I am?
I could probably just talk about nothing for a while.
Good morning.
Sorry, it took so long.
I have to come in from the living room.
I'm listening with a 10 second delay.
Good morning to you.
What's your name?
What's your name?
No, no, no.
You tell them what your name is.
What's your name is?
My name is Jonah.
Hi, Jonah.
My name is Ken.
Fiona.
Fiona.
Well, that's a nice name.
Thank you.
And how old are you, Fiona?
Honey, how old are you?
Four.
Four.
Wow.
That's very old.
I've been new here.
Happy new year to you too.
You're up very early.
She always is.
All right.
I'm going to step away for a little while.
Roger.
Good night.
Good morning.
Yeah.
That too.
I'm going back to putting my pies together.
Yes.
Another project came up.
While I was talking about that.
But, you know, I had an off-low router before it put the PSN box in.
And never really had any problem.
But, uh, I had, uh,
I'm going to leave configuration on it.
Uh, just in case wheels came off, PSN.
Uh, I've got the other one.
I don't want this case to be cheaper, cheaper model.
Uh, discount motor router.
And never had trouble.
I, you know, I friend the network with it before.
But since the PSN box.
It actually has a, uh,
a couple Wi-Fi nicks.
But it must be the difference between, uh, Linux.
And, uh,
uh,
you know, it's BSD.
Maybe the BSD does not recognize the Wi-Fi drivers.
Or maybe something P.F.
Since doesn't recognize Wi-Fi.
I have not investigated it fully.
You know, but I had to plug in.
You know, configure something as an access point.
And I configure this cheaper router.
Just, you know, it's one-click deal.
Uh, just to make an access point non-erouter.
But, you know, I keep having this problem I go in.
And on my Android devices.
Uh, try to throw over something like YouTube or whoever.
To the Chromecast.
And looking, you know, devices in there.
Uh, whichever was a problem before.
And I know, I know it's in the access point.
Because I go, you know, if I go in and I reboot the, uh,
access point router.
Uh, then once it's rebooted.
Then, uh, all, all my Chromecasts are there.
You know, of available.
Usually.
Sometimes I gotta do it twice.
But, yes, I'm not happy with that.
And so my next project was, okay, I'm gonna take one of my single board computers
and set it up as an access point.
Not as easy as you would think.
Because in Linux, the bridge command.
I mean, there's an easy way to set up a bridge between
wired Ethernet and WLAN.
But, uh, it's really set up between the one network to another network.
Not between your network and a bunch of individual wireless devices.
Because for all of the wireless devices, you have to numerate them individually
by MAC address.
Uh, there are ways around it.
There, you know, there are distros and software to put on there to make it
storage near access point device.
Uh, but so far, I've not had any luck with that, that direction.
I'm still working on, however, tonight.
Uh, I was also looking for, you know, I mentioned I wanted this isolated guest network.
I've only had one, you know, it's off the PSN box on a USB to Ethernet port.
Because the original box only had the Ethernet port and Ethernet port out.
Uh, two wired Ethernet ports.
So I, uh, you know, I added a third Ethernet port on USB.
And this was going to be for my guest devices that I didn't know.
I wanted access to the Internet, but not talk to the rest of the network.
And put this camera on there.
But there's going to be more things, uh, at the very least my smart TVs.
They have no reason to be on the, uh, local network.
But they do need Ethernet to, uh, update.
So, you know, and things like security cameras, whatever.
Yeah, they pretty much have to be on the local network.
So, you know, I won't have that many Ethernet things.
I don't think.
But which ones I do, I do want to segregate off my network.
Um, so as it happens, there's a new egg special on a 24 port, uh, switch rack mount.
I only imagine I'll ever have 24 segregated off my network items.
But you might, you might as well go as big as you can instead of, uh, having disappointment later.
So, I was looking at that.
And the various discounts and rebates and said, well, bought with this.
You could have a, uh, Sonic wall access point.
And Tom Lawrence has talked about those.
And I can testify saying that for customers, uh, you know, uh,
that is like the Cadillac of access points.
You know, I've been wanting one for a while.
And there was a really good combo deal on new egg, which, you know, wiped, wiped out my, uh,
gift code or whatever.
You know, I couldn't use it at the same time.
But, and it threw in a, uh, TP link, uh, power over ethernet injector.
So, uh, TP link, uh, power over ethernet injector.
Yeah, what's that?
What's a power over ethernet injector?
It always injects power over ethernet.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
And if, if you want a one wire solution to remote, uh, system, it will, you know,
you know, instead of plugging the wall power, it'll throw either five or 12 volts over the ethernet cable.
Of course, you know, then you don't have, uh, once they duplicity, that's not right.
But, you know, it's going to take some of the wires and use them for power.
So, you do not have the throughput that you would normally have.
Yeah.
So, it goes down to 10 megabits per second.
Or can you still do it on 100 megabits per second?
I think you still do 101 way.
Yeah.
What is that, is that DC that goes across there?
Presumably it's DC.
Yeah.
Have you had any issues with those interference wise?
And how far can you stretch it?
None of the past.
I've done some stuff like that.
Well, my wireless bridge, I had it set up like that back in the old house before the whole thing burned down.
You know, I had power over easing it to the seed.
What I had was when they came out and looked at the house, they said, no, you got to meet trees around.
And the way we get you set up, because it was line of sight wireless, they said, no, no, no.
You know, let's go out to the outbuilding here.
That's where I want you to put it in.
And then after that's going to be my, you know, getting it from there to my house is going to be my problem.
And what they problem.
But, you know, I put a patchpad on the attic and it would, you know,
and a wireless bridge and that whole thing was powered by power over easing it.
So power over easing it to the shed?
No, power over easing it to the antenna in the attic of my house.
Okay.
And then, you know, I said, you know, I had the providers antenna on the top of the shed.
And then they're coming into the land side of a router.
And then on the land side of a router, a patch panel pointing at the house.
I never understood what you didn't run a cable.
You're a farmer after all. It's your land.
Yeah, well, it worked well enough without doing that.
I mean, that's, you know, but the.
Oh, that's the come office. We all heard that it's down.
It's crap. It's terrible shows.
Well, that wasn't because the link in between.
That was the, you know, provider for that point.
You know, at one, you know, it started out.
Five year hurts.
Wi-Fi for two or three years.
And then it went to my.
We'll see my fights on my fights.
What I've got now.
Sellers type service.
Yeah.
I don't think of it, but, you know, it went to it went to a faster service.
But that, you know, that was the original downlink.
It was not the link between the buildings.
So the issue was the downlink and not the link between the buildings.
Okay. Okay. Fair enough.
Why Max? That's one. Thank you.
That's the money. Yeah. Yeah.
It's why Max now.
How's that working out for you?
Well, it was good.
But these days, I'm having to reset it at least once a day.
It'll either be slow or it will be, you know, no ping at all.
And this is something I've been trying to work out with.
Well, I called them on the other day to, to tech support.
And I don't think they've got local tech support anymore.
They, you know, they're hiring some fire gun, hired guns,
who really don't know the network or whatever to do tech support.
But, well, they were like, yeah, the next time it goes down,
don't fix it. Just call us so we can see what's going on.
And that was a week ago.
It's like, you know, it's two, two o'clock in the morning.
I don't, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to mess with it at that time.
So, you know, you know, sometimes when it's during the day,
and I can, I've got times to down and deal with it, I will.
But I know it's okay.
I mean, the last time when they first set it up, it was okay for,
well, it was okay for about three months.
And then it started having problems.
And it turned out I am equidistant between two,
well, they, you know, they have the transmitters,
so many degrees separated in a 360 degree range.
And I was right between two of them.
And it's just like you're in an office building.
And you have multiple access points.
And, you know, you have credentials on more than one.
And you're right between two with, you know, this, you know, you're,
you know, hunt for the strongest signal,
and it keeps going back and forth.
Yeah, that's a bit of a problem.
So, no way to lock it to a particular transmitter.
That's what they finally did.
And like I said, it's been okay for a year and a half.
And then it started.
You know, got work was, I'd have to reset it once a week, twice a week.
And got downwards two, three times a day.
Yeah, it could be a problem could be they may have changed something.
And that setting has gone again on or there is a actual fold to one of the transmitters that you're on.
And now you're stuck on that one because you can't switch to the yellow one or the other.
Yeah, that's exactly where I'm thinking.
One hand doesn't know the, you know, what's been done hasn't looked to notes.
And done, done an update and completely wiped out those settings.
And then, you know, here I am again.
You are.
And really, I'm a checked out, but I'm not quite to the two year point on the contract.
Well, my last contract was, you know, you got to be with us for two years.
And there's another provider that actually does 4G, which is a little bit faster than YMAX.
I mean, my provider on the wireless won't give me more than 3K down.
And there's a new provider in town that will give me 6K for about 20 bucks more month.
And they're transmitters on top of the grain elevator less than a mile away.
So I'm, I'm literally in the shadow of, you know, where their transmitter is.
So I'm, I'm thinking going to, you know, try and, try them out.
Okay.
Found her.
And the thing is, oh, I missed a call in the day because the last day in the year they would be answering the phone.
Maybe they look stupid. They're, they're running a deal.
You know, no payments till 2018. It just occurred to me last week.
Well, yeah, I might as well go ahead and get both of them now.
And then, you know, if I'm stuck with the old one for a while, I can do.
I've got to be a synth box. I can do load balancing between the two.
Yeah, no harm to think about 4G though.
Well, that's the same as any Wi-Fi, any wireless communication system.
There's more people that are on the less you're going to have over subscription is the thing that exists.
Oh, yeah. And the other thing is the connection I'm on now is unlimited without fraudling.
So, yeah, I don't think I'm hitting that, but I, you know, I did, I did set up some monitoring on the PF Synth box to see what I actually use a month.
The point is this. Ah, yes.
Sorry, I'm reading just a comment from Dave.
He's talking about, I think I've got the times and the chat wrong.
Oh, well, there you go. I fail again.
Yeah, I'm sorry. The point I wanted to say was that you want to look at the terms and conditions to make sure that that don't pay until 2018.
Yeah, I think that doesn't commit you to two-year contract or something.
Well, I was mainly thinking, you know, is that, you know, just deferred payment, you know, they said free till 2018.
Yeah, exactly. You know, is that free? They're not going to charge me for the next year or is that mean, you know, come January 2018.
They're going to charge me for the whole year 2017.
I bet that that will.
It sounds very disambiguous.
So I always gets me worried.
But still, if even, even then, if you're up to pay double the following year, if you calculate, if it's a two-year contract or something, or if it's, if it's deferred payment, then there's no point.
If it's like shared over two years, it still might be worth your while having this as a backup, just something.
Basically, do some mats, I guess.
Well, I mean, I would like to, you know, check it out versus what I have now, you know, neither one of them is horribly expensive.
I think when paying now is 55 bucks a month and the other would be at the, at the six gig rate would be 75, you know, I don't know if the load balancing worked.
I might be in there.
Well, maybe it's worth it to keep both.
But what I have, what I get, what I'm paying for, I can, you know, I'm a stream video all day long.
Yeah, you won't be able to do that on the, on this planned, we kept servicing.
Yeah, you know, I said off the look where I'm actually using, see if I'm using 150 gig a month.
If I am, it's probably better to stay where I am and be kicking it than, you know, go, go to a higher rate and then, you know, get cut off.
Yeah, unless the start charge, you know, for megabyte over, which will be very nasty.
Yeah, only recently got by over there working.
You know, I've been here in the house for, oh, nearly two years now and not put up and over there in ten of it.
Yeah, I want to build the whole fence you rigged on a pivot where you crank it up and down.
So for an over the top area, I hit CD type of thing.
Well, I can, I can get here probably 30 channels, 10 of which I would actually want to watch over there.
10 cells you want to watch. Wow.
Well, I got an end off of Amazon that, you know, I actually had a motor that would rotate it.
You know, very, very light. I was like, yeah, I can just stick that up on a pipe.
But the start out, I want to see, okay, how many, how many channels I can get if I just stick this up in my attic?
Why would you need to rotate it? Different transmitters, different stations on different transmitters, isn't it?
Yeah, they're not quite, they're not quite all aligned. I mean, I can get NBC and CBS and I can't, I can't get ABC so far.
If I went high enough above the trees, I, I could get all of them. But then I, you know, all, all those channels now they have, you know, they have four or five affiliates and some other things and stuff.
It's just madness. Why don't they all transmit from the one thing?
No, I don't know that that's been back to the 50s, I guess, you know, they weren't all perfectly aligned.
I mean, I'm on the edge, Roy, you know, the county seat, 10 miles farther west, you know, people could not pick up the channels that I can.
Fair enough.
And I grew up, there were four channels or, you know, they're the three that worked in PBS.
We used to have one and then people put up very tall areas to get the where I lived if you put up tall enough earlier, you could still get the broadcast from the BBC from Northern Ireland.
So they would make it down that far.
Now back then, did you guys have like the BBC tax you had to pay?
Now we, the Republic of Ireland never had to pay that.
Well, we just listened to their signals and, you know, we didn't have to pay that, but we did have to pay our own television license tax.
And on the BBC, their channels don't have advertisements, but on the Irish channels they do. So they are not now that there's, you know, commercial channels, they're wondering why they're not getting a share of that license fee.
So the license fee is now being spread over all TV channels and all the radio stations as well.
It's quite, it's, it's a quite a significant amount of money actually.
It's a few hundred quid, I think, for the, for the fee for the channels that you get.
Admittedly, there's no advertising on so yeah, fair enough.
It is another, but I find it an interesting way of paying for things.
I think it is something that we were into the feeling that everything has to be paid for by a monthly subscription, but would it also not be an option to tax internet usage?
And then like radio royalties, you pay the royalties to the service that you're using would be another way to fund the artistic endeavors or the arts.
So regard, say you wanted to watch, I don't know, some show on NBC or on the BBC or whatever, you just watch it.
If you have a channel, if you have your cable provider, it provides this feel of the cable provider, then fine, you just get it there.
If the, if it's available in Netflix, you just get it there.
You don't pay a subscription to Netflix, you don't pay a subscription to your cable provider, but they all get fed out of this pool of money that is coming from the general taxation in the nation.
It's just another way of thinking about it.
Yeah, it's completely alien over here on this side, but I'm surprised to hear you say that, you know, BBC or whatever doesn't have ads because if I watch those shows, they're not like 60 minutes.
So what's going on?
They have other shows in between.
They still have like promotions for their own stuff, so you'll have, but it's limited to about five minutes.
They'll tend to be about 45 minutes long, usually, or sorry, 54 minutes long or so.
It's kind of like the, well, also grew up, but my teenage 20 years watching locally, Dr. Who on PBS, and they, you know, they wouldn't do the 30 minute episodes.
They would do the whole storyline.
So sometimes it would be an hour, sometimes it would be two and a half hours.
Okay, I just now need to edit the community news shop and post it, or that'll be hanging over me.
Should you not be in bed here 50 and 50? I'm a bit concerned because I strongly suspect you'll stay awake for this 24 hours.
Yeah, I'd often been sometime. I'm pretty good right now, but yeah, I'd like to see a few more people jump in here, so it's not just you.
Yeah, truncate silence will take care of all that. Oh, we missed New Zealand 50. Happy New Year New Zealand 10 minutes ago.
Oh, if I had said nothing, people would have told the truncate silence worked. Okay, let's edit that out. Happy New Year, New Zealand.
And the next one is small regions of Russia already, 49 minutes.
Okay, I was looking at the schedule, but didn't see didn't say.
Well, if you go to time and do the one we had posted didn't didn't show anything for a while, so.
I'm not sure I'm not sure for off or whatever, but so if it is, do's either in class two, where the hell are you?
Yeah, good point. I'm going to fix all these times because they're all run.
And it's very rewarding to everybody. It may be controversial, but when I get my trifecta of reproduction, cold cowboy guns, I will be doing an episode on.
Right, I have a cold 73 reproduction, of course.
A peacemaker, a busily competition, cold, and hopefully coming if they ever get it to me, a model 72 open frame, cold that was actually made for as a cartridge gun, not a percussion to cartridge conversion.
Just to fill in, but once I get all three of those, because I.
Well, once I got the peacemaker, I started watching videos on YouTube, like Hickok 45, and fell in love with the, you know, the old cowboy guns.
Absolutely, no, no problem, what you're doing shows on that, not that there was, there's guaranteed to be people who are interested in it.
I do have problems with the, my problems, as I've explained to you before 50 on 50 is, I have no issue with guns. I have issue with the politics surrounding them and the inaccuracies that both sides tend to use.
I have no issue with those discussions, if I may, you feel free to have those discussions yourself.
Well, not so much, but I mean, you know, these all three of these guns are, you know, I would say it would be more non threatening to people because, you know, in the old cowboy movies, you have to reload, and you've got to hide behind the fiberglass boulder.
Yeah, no, it's the guns that I actually have no issue with any of this, so feel free to do shows, welcome.
How do I get rid of the colors?
But some of those classic kind of John Wayne type guns, very interested in hearing those shows.
And as I've said before, whatever my position on gun control is, I'm happy more than happy when I ever make it out as far as Kansas again to drop in and fire off some guns.
Oh, yeah, you're welcome anytime, I was going to say that.
And like I said, the sickness, probably once I get down to Colts, I will, you know, look at the Skullfield S-Wethan and, you know, the Remingtons, and once I get those, then the conversion Colts, the 1851 and 1860 Colts.
Probably in smaller caliber than 45 long Colts.
And these are all reproductions, aren't they?
Yeah, all Italian companies.
Seriously?
Yeah, there's a couple of them out there.
My Colts peacemaker, it's made by Pietta, and unfortunately that's the only one that they do, but it has a modern blade interruptor on the trigger.
In other words, the only way you go off, you've got the hammer pulled back because the hammer hits a blade that only emerges when you pull the trigger, and then it hits a firing pin to shoot the gun.
So if you drop the gun on the hammer, which is the normal way it would fall, it's not going to go off.
So you can load six safely in that gun, whereas all the rest of them, the only cartridge gun that they reproduce is the 1873 peacemaker.
And I've got that in four and a half inches, which is the quick draw cowboy gun.
Not that I'm doing quick draw.
The only people do that in cowboy action, it's like wax slugs with primers putting the end of them, so you don't shoot your leg off.
And it's like a distance of four feet or whatever, you know, and it's, you know, whoever's got the quickest draw.
Do you still need to pull the trigger and everything?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's like it's like the normal primer, but it's just pushing an empty wax, hollow wax slug at the target.
Not that that's what something I'm going to do or anything, you know, but I mean the gun is for recreation totally.
But yeah, I do have it loaded up in the nightstand with ammo that would be productive if I had to have it.
And this is where I now go edit some hate fair shows.
Next, chunk it silence is your friend.
We're actually quite short of shows, so we could do with some people recording some shows.
Oh, yeah, I didn't want to mention that today.
I got a bunch of them in my head that I haven't done, so I got to get about.
But the other one I have so far is a business called which was named after 1894 target competition in business England.
And it is a modification of the cold 73 peacemaker, but it's got a wider hammer, wider trigger to make it easier to shoot.
And a grip to kind of curls farmer forward.
So I don't know if that is to change the balance of the gun farther back, I assume so.
And I've got that in seven and a half inch.
And it is, you know, I can definitely tell a difference shooting that.
You know, the, the four and a half inch cold 73 is a lot more fun to fire than the, the, the, the busily by like them both.
But the busily strike a fire like the original coat.
So to carry it, you know, you got to carry it, you know, just five out of six cylinders.
Well, I look forward to the shows.
I am pursuing, you know, a cowboy style holster dot like I'm going to walk around like that.
But, you know, with, with the peacemaker on the right and the cross draw for the busily on the left or for the 72.
Yeah, I'm going to be completely ridiculous.
Or if I walk out near my lake, I'm going to fall into it and drown.
I'll have two guys on my hip and the shoulder holster for the other one.
Yeah, and get struck by lightning because all the metal that's you're carrying around.
Exactly.
It's how we would want to do a gun.
Okay, I'm going to go grab another cup of coffee.
I strongly suggest you go to bed 50.
Oh, I'm coming up on a roll now.
We'll see.
Oh, dear.
If I get to spend the west and west automatic, you know, I'll have the inside my belt holster on that, you know, which will.
Yeah, I can't keep my pants up now because my hips aren't wide enough.
So I don't know how that would work.
You need braces, sir.
Yeah.
Okay, back in a bit.
Sure.
So I'm going to reiterate the project.
So I'd like a little help on.
If there's any PF cent screws out there.
I want to set up a RG 45 network pork as a dedicated key.
You can see the internet, but I cannot see the other hosts on my network.
We're plugging that into a hub so I can do multiple ones on that.
So if anybody has any insight on that, I'd like a little input.
Not happy with the performance of my router confirmed to an access point behind my BS hits box.
And well, I guess that will be taken care of by my.
It was a link wall or whatever I missed that earlier.
You know, really good AP.
But it should not be such a huge hassle in Linux where, you know, in Linux, you normally set up.
If you set up bridge mode, then everything on the wireless end, you have to specify the MAC address for connectors, ways around it.
But I'm not seeing any really simple instructions out there on the internet.
So if somebody knows a really easy way to do that, I'm, you know, I'm not trying to do firewall, because I'm doing that.
I'm doing that because it's spot.
Just see a board computer.
And tie the internet port into either the built-in wireless or USB wireless and just make it a bridge access point.
I can use a little help of that.
Just because I feel like I don't know how to do that.
Hello, Regie. Happy new year.
Hello, Ken. Can you hear me?
I kind of did sir.
How do I sound?
You sound fine.
Thank you. I heard you in 5150 talking.
Then I got back on. I was trying to get everything set up.
I didn't hear nothing.
No one was talking.
That's good reason. How you doing?
Not doing too bad in yourself.
I'm fine. I'm here in the state of Georgia in the United States.
I got up at five o'clock and I said, oh, I'm missing the Hacker Public Radio party.
I heard you in 5150 talking.
And then I went quiet and decided to join.
Excellent.
Yeah, I had to work some stuff that I hadn't been on since last year this time.
Okay.
Well, we got 16 minutes to our next time zone.
Russia and Australia are going to the meantime I'm processing the Hacker Community News Show.
I heard you miss New Zealand.
And we're laughing about it.
No, we didn't. We don't get silence. We'll fix everything. Don't you worry.
Yeah, you can.
You could always go back and fix the tape.
No, anybody who knows me and everything.
Not gonna bother.
So how has your year been?
All right.
I'm down here near Air Force Base in Middle Georgia.
Robin's Air Force Base.
Everybody is either active duty or retired.
I've been retired.
All I do is listen to podcasts and watch Netflix and Hulu all day.
Well, now you should be recording shows for HPR.
I, I, I should as much as I listen to you guys and everything and everybody else's podcast.
I should throw in and I always hear you.
You guys always we need, we need podcasts.
We do.
We really, really do.
It's not a joke.
I think they, the, you just go to the upload page.
You've got to call it on the main page where we're actually quite low at the minute.
Well, maybe that'll be my new year's resolution.
Yeah.
Cop out a couple.
Very good.
Well, just do an introduction.
And if you've been listening to HPR for so long, then it would just seem rude not to introduce yourself.
What you think?
Well, yeah.
I know about you at 5150.
I don't know if anybody knows about me, but I've been involved with computers since about 1978.
I was a junior in college at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.
Came home for a summer break and my dad was talking about getting a TRS 80 computer.
Model one, I think it was.
And came back a few weeks later and he had it all set up on the desk and the din.
And that's where my computing started.
Then in 1980, when I would activate the Army, radio shut came out with a color computer.
And so on a whim, I just threw down the credit card or whatever it bought one.
You couldn't do much with it.
I only had 4K or RAM.
I had to hook it to your TV.
You got one free game.
I think I got checkers or chests or something that you had that was in a cartridge.
You could plug into the side.
And from then on, I've just converted it, increased the RAM, got an external monitor for it over the years.
I don't know if people remember color computing magazine back in the early 80s and the late 80s.
I don't remember seeing this on this side of the water either.
I'm trying to remember.
I don't think it was called a color computer in the UK.
It was something similar.
Like I said, it was from Radio Shack in Tandy.
But I think they had a different name for it, but it was the same thing.
And three years, they had color computer one, two, and three.
He didn't.
A couple of different magazines.
And you could order stuff, you know, modems, external modems, and monitors.
A couple of green screen monitors.
And what was the gold color monitor?
What did they call those?
They weren't the green screen.
They were that gold color.
You remember the name?
Oh, yeah.
I remember them.
I remember what the names were now.
Yeah.
And then eventually I had a hard one.
Because of the Hercules ones.
Well, the Hercules ones had green screens.
And they were like, they were like portrait, actually.
Not landscape.
But go on.
Sorry, I interrupted you.
A couple of the five and a half inch hard drives that, you know, you could pull the floppy out.
And they were single sided.
If you want it to use double sided, you had to use a whole punch and pull it out and flip it over and push it back in.
And then that was up to about 1990s.
I just kind of dropped out of computing.
Didn't want to get it.
Did the IBMs or anything?
And then about 96 or 97, my brother and I gave me an Apple Quadro or something.
I could remember exactly what it was.
It wasn't any good.
And about that time I bought a couple of Toshiba windows, eight windows, 95 laptops.
And I was online and saw something about Linux.
What was this?
About 98, 99.
Right, early enough to the game.
And then about 1000 I saw where you could order a nopics disk.
I think nopics was in Germany then.
It took like two months to get this disk.
And I got a nopics disk back then and tried to set up my old Toshiba laptops.
And that's how I got into Linux about 2000.
I had a working Toshiba Linux box.
And so I just been playing with it on and off over the years.
And then when Ubuntu started up, that's when I officially jumped in.
And that was back in 2006, 2004, something like that.
And I had a couple of desktop laptops that I put OpenSusa on.
It was OpenSusa 10, 10.1.
I had it working fabulous.
And that's how I got into Linux.
I never went back about four years ago.
So I had to go back to school, tech school.
I wasn't doing nothing.
I was retired from the Army.
And with the tech school for some computer security courses.
And so I had to load Linux on my computer.
Not Linux, but Windows 7 on my computers.
Because that's what they used at the tech school.
Very good.
So I had a partition with Linux and Windows 7.
Took the school courses for about a year.
And when I quit school, the Windows 7 partitions came off and back to Linux.
So I had to go back to Linux 7.2 right now.
That I have very much customized.
Now, that whole thing could be just put out and put into a show.
Yeah, you know that, don't you?
Yeah, I know.
Oh, I got into Linux show.
It doesn't count if you do it on the HPR New Year show.
This is just a chat between you and me.
Yeah, this is where I say, hey, you know, you should record that for our show.
I just might do that.
I just might be.
Oh, if you do that today, I will post it right now.
No, no.
I think I'll do that.
I have to go back into my files on my hard drive and see what I got about computer 8.
Get all the facts written down so I can explain exactly what I did from 1978 to the present.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Did you know the archive.org has got a lot of magazines from back then online.
Yeah, yeah.
I love the bike magazines.
I thought I could never afford, but I was a kid, but yeah.
For some reason, my audio of the community news show is wrong.
And I sound like a chipmunk for an hour and 29 minutes.
Anyway, it is what it is.
You don't sound too bad.
It sounds okay now, but the show that's due out next Monday is.
I'm talking like really high.
What do you remember?
Oh, anyway, no one listens to my shows.
Anyway, so fine.
I listened to it.
I got all my Android, so I got HDR.
They all come through.
I just have to decide to listen and that.
I'm interested to know how you base your decisions on what you're going to listen to.
Without naming any names, obviously, if it's Ken Fallon deleted.
Is it just based on the topic or do you listen to the intro?
Do you go to show notes or when I see I have a new HBR download,
I just click it and see what it's about.
And if I'm interested in that subject, I'll look at it.
If not, I don't like to come and go look now, see what's on.
HBR, like you have one.
All you need to know when uploading the show was 2195.
Yep.
And then 2194 to load down on what's up in the Taiwan Strait.
I'm not particularly interested in that about the US and China and Taiwan arguing over ocean rights and naval rights.
Actually, the show is about, it doesn't mention the US at all really.
It's about China and Taiwan and that they're the same country.
Yeah, yeah.
They both think they're China.
It's very good.
And then, let me see, I'm 2193, a clean puss with no swearing.
It just depends.
If I look at the title, I see I'm not interested in that subject.
Well, that's 5150, not here enough.
What did that come across as a stream?
I don't know.
I saw it when I was, I saw it in my, um, probably the same.
Yeah, on the mumble chart in Chemical Cross, he's not hearing anything.
Yeah, I saw it in my cool down menu on Android.
Oh, you're listening Android there?
Yeah.
I went last year when I guys had it going on.
I went into the Google Play Store and bought Plumbo.
It was a donate.
And so I think I gave him a couple of bucks.
And so it's been on there since last year.
And so that's how I used it last year.
I also have a VLC playlist with the audio version.
I click and listen to VLC, hacker public radio, XSPS playlist file.
That would be another show now.
That would be your second show, how you listen to HDR because that's also interesting.
Oh, you got me.
I guess I'm going to have to do this for my New Year's resolution.
The first one in here.
I'm going to have to do hacker public radio.
I think I said the same thing last year.
But in order you live now, I can send some people around.
Hey, you often done the show.
Hey, remember, this is a military tale.
Where do you think I'm going to get the people from?
Yeah.
But yeah, that's it.
It's been a long haul for computing.
I just have good times with it.
I see here in my desk in my office.
When I get up, the computer's on.
I have a Firefox or Chrome open.
And turn TV on.
I flick the Netflix or ACORN TV.
Watch my British crime dramas.
I'm a British crime drama junkie.
And so that's what I did.
That would be another show recommended viewing on Netflix.
It could even be a series.
Yeah, it could be.
See how my brain is working.
Yeah, you're good.
You're a good ambassador for hacker public radio.
Now you got me.
Oh, I really.
Maybe I'll listen to three podcasts.
How I how most people start helping out.
I suck them in.
Yeah, that's it.
But it's a fact.
If we don't continue to get shows.
Then we don't.
We don't continue as a project.
And I much rather spend my time posting shows.
Then I would beg in people to give shows.
Because that's just pretty negative, man.
Pretty negative.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm going to get off here for a while.
I don't go cook me some egg drops soup for breakfast.
Would you like to join me in welcoming in small regions of Russia
and much of Australia?
Yes.
Because of more than 34.
They'll be popping into 2017.
Those must be those in Russia.
What is that though?
Chain of islands that Russia has?
Or what?
Or is it the proper coast of Russia?
Soviet Union?
Or whatever it's called?
The Putin Republic.
So Andre in DUIRA.
Ander is a port town, administered by Russia.
Located north of the Ander River at the tip of the southern
something, something of something, something.
Population is 14,000 right there at the very top.
Hey, guys.
I don't know what the glitch was, but I was on my tower.
And look.
So these are the cities that are coming in now.
If you can hear that, I don't know if you can.
Hold on one second.
Did you hear any of that?
Very low volume.
Sort of like in the background robotic voice.
Well, they've all just come in.
Happy New Year to you guys.
Small regions of Russia.
Oh, sorry.
No, it was a small regions of Russia.
And in 59 minutes, we're going to have Australia.
Go ahead.
Happy New Year, small regions of Russia.
I'm actually surprised because I thought the Russians had just
done a consolidation and all their time zones down to one big one.
Been long before and I'll be running again.
Well, there's a lot of movement over here for just one time zone.
In the West.
Yeah, it could be.
What did you do to your audio 50, 150?
You were sounding pretty good earlier in the hour.
Now you're kind of low key.
I don't know what happened to you.
Well, I moved from the tower over to a laptop for some reason.
You know, it wasn't working over there.
And I moved the USB plug for the wireless headset over to the other computer.
Okay.
Well, you're hearing that.
But it's your audio quality has changed.
It sounds like you have sort of a different microphone or something.
You're speaking on the laptop microphone?
Well, the USB headset.
So it's the same microphone and everything.
Okay.
It's sort of muted, sort of like a background sounding.
But you can understand.
You can hear you.
I'm just saying your audio is just different than earlier in the hour.
That's all.
You sound good.
Yeah.
Well, I can boost the gate a little bit.
Yeah, that sounds fine over here.
Are you going to stay on 50, 150 like you did last year?
I've been telling you not to go to bed.
Yeah.
The last year you were on, it seemed like 25 hours.
There were a couple of times you got off.
And I'd get back on.
I'd be muted just sitting here listening.
And then I'd hear you.
And then you'd come in and out.
But you were coughing earlier.
A little bit now.
I don't want you to cough up alone or anything.
If you need to go to sleep, go to sleep.
Then come on back.
And I may well do that.
I'm going to be in and out all day too.
I'm going to watch a couple of football games this afternoon.
American football.
I should iterate.
My old problem is I hate to miss anything.
Yeah, but the thing is there are sometimes especially in the early hours,
there's nobody on.
I just happened to be on and I signed it to check to see if I can hear anything.
That's the only reason I'm talking now.
Yeah.
Like I said, maybe we'd head off some more people.
And you know, kids as dead air is fine.
But yeah, I remember the first time we did this.
Yeah, I was thinking.
It was Poke's idea.
And I thought it was pretty good idea.
And I thought, well, you know, oh, man.
Good parts of it's going to be mean, just Pokey.
But, you know, a lot of people jumped in.
Yeah, you know, that's how it works.
Those guys come in and out.
I just think all the Linux podcasts, guys, you know,
the Linux Logcast guys, the TLLTS guys,
if they pop in and out, maybe we can have a party.
I mean, there's a lot of us that talk to each other for each other's benefit.
You know, and there's people outside that, you know,
it's not exactly like we're all just eating each other's dog food.
But, you know, there's other people outside who benefit from it.
But, you know, this is the one time of the year we all get together and talk to everybody.
Yeah, that's why I jumped in last year.
I said, I've been listening to all these guys for a couple of years now.
And so, maybe I'll join them.
And so, that's why I took the plunge last year and jumped in.
You know, most of the time, I just, I listened to the shows.
A lot of times, I listen to you guys live,
but I just sit in the background, the swing, or the tilt skies.
I listen to their show Wednesdays when they start recording.
Just sitting in the background, never saying nothing.
There's a lot of us out there like that.
And then, you know, finally, you say, hey, maybe I ought to be more active.
That's what I did last year.
Now, Kim's got me up to three podcasts I need to submit this year.
I hope he doesn't make a liar out of me.
Well, I'm adding them to the show notes like no pressure.
Okay.
I've got to get on.
I think Monday morning, I'm going to get all my notes together.
And I'm going to give you three shows.
You do that, sir, because I desperately need them.
They might not be that long.
But, you know, I'll do them just like you asked me to introduce myself.
And I'll do the color computer one.
I'll do how I got in the Linux.
And what was the third one?
Oh, what podcast and stuff I listened to.
Yeah, exactly.
And you know, from listening to the look cast, you know,
we do not want to style ourselves as, you know, we're the host.
You know, we are, is a log and we are part of the log.
And anybody wants to come in and be part of the log.
It is warm welcome.
Yeah.
The thing that listening to you guys live, always forget when you guys are live.
Is it the second Friday, third Friday or something?
First Friday?
First and third.
Well, I always forget those days.
You should have a shared calendar for all the podcasts when they're going live.
The reminders come up in our phones and stuff.
That would be a good idea.
Yeah, that is.
That's a website.
I had an idea a long time ago.
And never finished was like a TV schedule for podcasts.
You know, you go on there.
You know, this, this is the podcast that are on tonight.
Yeah, very good idea.
I like it.
Yeah.
You need help.
It gives high 50.
How about you do a show about that?
Let me just add that to the list.
Oh, I've got so many.
50 doing a show.
Yeah, but that one is actually kind of important because it would be a good
to get more people on to your networks, as well, especially for the live ones.
But you know, somebody's going to say, well, that's what a podcast client is for.
I mean, I've been wanting to do one on Connegeys for a year.
You may know what that is, Ken.
That's your European.
Since I'm a guy here in Georgia, USA, what is Connegeys?
Apparently, in the California region, in mainly Spain, though it does extend into regions
of France and Belgium.
There has been a tradition for 300 years that nobody understands where it came from.
But when you do a major scene for Christmas, you have to have a peasant guy in, you know,
off in the edge doing number two.
Okay.
Spell that for me.
I know the catalogue region, but spell what you were saying.
Connegeys, can you spell that?
C-A-G-A-N-E-R.
So I did one of those, you know, house of pronounced things on the Internet.
It would be, you know, for us to be Connegear, but, you know, as best I can understand is Connegeys in Europe.
Sorry about so, I was away.
Uh, and the kind of on, uh, regions of Europe, they have Connegeys, your Connegeys,
which in all the nativity scenes, you have to have a little peasant squatting down and doing number two in the background.
Okay, sure enough, never heard of that.
And I've been wanting to a podcast.
Oh, yeah, the, uh, I guess Barcelona is the center of the whole thing.
And, you know, there is a mall in Barcelona.
There's a two story guy, you know, you know, bending over the year, putting the star on the Christmas tree,
and his pants around his knees, and he's doing number two.
Oh, okay.
Meanwhile, I will, uh, in a non-related nose, I'm going to go do something else for a minute.
So I'll be back shortly.
Okay.
But I, I mean, the savers are the, there's this thing.
They have these logs with a face painted on one end,
and a couple like sticks stuck in, like it was an animal.
And going towards Christmas, they will gradually replace these with bigger and bigger logs,
and they put a blanket on the back end of it.
And, uh, Christmas Eve, the kids take sticks, and they beat on this log.
And then the next morning, all their presents are under the blanket.
Now, answer this for me, 50, 50.
Since you're a good old farmer from Kansas, how do you know about these European traditions?
I always want, you know, one of the things about Christmas, uh, YouTube.
Well, YouTube, Christmas traditions, and the guys kept coming back.
No, there's these people who, uh, you know, beat on logs,
and, uh, you know, it's like they couldn't get away from, from the, uh, from the first one.
I think it's like, uh, campushumor.com.
The same people do the, uh, what's his name?
Ruins, everything.
I don't know, you got me lost there.
Yeah, Adam Ruins, everything.
The same, the same, the same people did this one.
I love pottering about the house days.
There are awesome when you get to do stuff.
And stuff is not breaking.
Yeah.
Okay, 51.
I got it.
Comment here.
It's, it's a figurine depicted in the act of defecation appearing in the two of these things in Catalonia.
Naven areas with Catalan culture.
And I see if it's little statues, guys squatting.
Oh, okay.
I would like to bring everybody's attention that I had nothing to do with this conversation.
Leave it.
I was just saying I didn't know anything about it.
Well, apparently, you know, they've gone into the tourist culture because, you know, it used to be peasant guys, peasant girls.
But now it's, you know, big, big into, you know, celebrities, Hollywood characters, you know, fictional characters, you know, like Darth, you know, Darth Vader doing his business.
I mean, to what, I want to get this spook, spook.
And I guess, I don't know, after, after the death of Liberty, Neem Lloyd, is it, are they not making them anymore?
Because you, you know, go on eBay, it's like $300 for a spook.
Okay.
I'm looking now at the traditional versus modern portrayals.
And I see a picture of shells and shells of different statues, small statues of this thing.
I'd like to see myself explaining when I come through customs what these things are.
And, you know, the main place to get them is like Connigay.com or Conniger.com phonetically.
You know, but you pay about as much more for shipping, at least to the US, as the figurine.
They're very, very well painted in high quality, but yeah, that's kind of an intense hobby to get into.
You've made a career study of this, haven't you?
Yes, this last year.
Well, I, I set on a gift for my, for my buddy of one that is an American politician,
and I don't have much regard for that he spoke, he voted for once, that, you know, I just gave him to this Christmas.
Yeah, I, I'm looking at your website now.
This is, this is a strange thing.
They even have a Yoda, an R2D2.
What a Pope Francis, Marilyn Madreau.
Spider-Man, Darth Vader.
Well, my three are Batman, the Joker, and the Joker is totally Jack Nicholson.
And Yoda, the cool thing about Yoda, he is proportional and height to the others.
How tall are these things?
I don't, they stink, they even got a Mario Brothers, Angry Bird, Twitter, Zelda.
About an inch and a half.
Can we take away from this riveting conversation to have my daughter say hello for one?
Yes, please.
Yeah, please.
Hi.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Well, actually it's not happy New Year, it's only happy New Year in one, two, well, some parts of Russia and New Zealand, New Zealand.
So you can say hello to Klatu.
Klatu, he's not online, he's probably outside drinking champagne.
Or drinking coffee, knowing Klatu, doesn't drink.
I'm drinking coffee.
Happy New Year.
What's your name?
My name is Shaneid.
Me.
Okay. Happy New Year then.
I'm Reggie from Warner Robbins, Georgia, United States.
Let's have a look.
It's W-A-R-N-E-R-R-O-B-I-N-S, Georgia.
About 16 miles south of Macon, Georgia on the Interstate 75, Robbins Air Force Base.
Yep.
Found it.
Yep.
Our claim to fame is our little league team for baseball won the Little League World Series a couple of times.
And also the girls, also one.
So, are you in service, R-A-J?
There it is.
I, in America, didn't the Air Force in 1975 went to the Air Force Academy Print School, broke a leg, got a medical discharge from the Air Force, took a year off, and applied for Army ROTC scholarship, got accepted for our Army ROTC scholarship, and went to the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.
Citadel is the Military College of South Carolina.
Cadet were the ones that started the Civil War.
Well, I thank you for your service.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My dad was no sex in the Air Force Reserve.
What was he in the Air Force Reserve?
No sex, Colonel.
Bird Colonel.
Okay.
Yep.
Rob's Air Force Base was the Air Force Reserve headquarters.
I'm not, I think a couple of years back, they changed that, but for like 50 years, it was the Air Force Reserve headquarters.
Right now, Rob and they do air material.
They work on aircraft.
So air material, logistics center, aircraft come in from all over the world.
Air Force and Army sometimes, and they need fixing.
They fix them and ship them out.
Yeah, my dad, he was in, was just the whole time.
His last posting was in Taker and Oklahoma.
And similar thing, they had, oh, not 3D printers, but machine shops.
And they would come in like the A7 way past, you know, the contractor, whatever.
And they'd say, yeah, we need the jet nozzle for inside the engine.
And the contractor would come back, yeah, ridiculous price.
And so they'd say fine, and they would start making them on the, you know, using the CNC machines to make them themselves.
And then they'd come back with the contractor.
Well, okay.
Yeah, we can do it for this.
Yep.
Tinker and Robbins.
I can't think of the base in Utah where the three air material places through the Air Force that they worked on aircraft.
My dad was in the Air Force for 30 years, and we were stationed down in Altus Air Force Base, which is south of...
Tinker is located in Oklahoma City.
We were in Altus, which is close to the Texas border.
That was about 1967, 1968.
We lived there.
Yep, I'd been in the Tinker three times.
I think I flew in the Tinker once when I was in the Army.
Yeah, for those who don't know, you know, in the Air Force, you had, you know, all kinds of ratings.
In the words they were pilots, they could fly, but you got up so high that were not enough slots for all the people who, you know, who had pilot ratings.
So they would, you know, they'd be behind a desk.
And my dad is a mobilization of human tea.
You know, if the ball ever dropped, you know, all these people who were rated pilots, they would have gone right into combat slots.
And then my dad would have gone into, you know, replacing them.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
I was in aviation when I was in the Army.
I was artillery officer.
And after my artillery training, I went to flight school.
And I was, I was a one five C.
I was aviation guy, but I served in an artillery battalion.
Whenever they needed a slot or something, I'd go and do my time in aviation down at the first of the 75th in Savannah, Georgia.
And you served something, you do some of your basic flying.
And then I went back to my main branch artillery.
Now aviation in the Army is a full-time branch.
You know, this was 35, 40 years ago when I did it.
But now it's a full-time branch, you know, that's all you do is fly.
Well, see, out of active duty by first dad's assignment in reserves was recovery squadron.
And this is when in Wichita, you know, you had the tankers base there.
But at the time, it would, you know, very, very dark.
You know, if there was to be a nuclear strike, it was assumed that the airfields that the bombers took off from would not be there when they came back.
And his job, and he was in supply, he was in supply the whole time, he was in their force.
But the cover squadrons were to go out to the little regional airports and set up for the atomic, the bombers to return and rearm.
Now eventually that capacity actually got folded into the maintenance squadrons for the bombers.
And the words instead of having separate units that would bug out, you know, as soon as they got the bombers and the tankers off, they would bug out themselves and go out to go out to other airports.
Yeah, my dad was a missile maintenance guy.
When we were down in Alta, he was with a Houndog missile squadron.
Remember, I don't know if you go back to the 60s.
If you go back and see the B-52s, if you see a missile hanging off the side, off the wing, they normally had two of them.
Those were the missiles my dad was a maintenance guy for. They were nuclear missiles.
And then after we left Alta's in 68, we went to mine on airport space and spent four years up there with the, they had B-52s with Houndogs and they have missiles in the ground also.
Now they have B-52s and missiles in the ground. They don't have Houndog missiles anymore.
They phased us up 1974, 75, 73, something like that.
Yeah, I remember, I don't know the details, but I remember those Houndog missiles.
That was his specialty for like 10, 15 years before that, he was a maintenance guy on other missiles.
And then he retired in 75, 30 years and became a civilian contract worker at Robbins.
He became one of those guys at Citic Desk and Shuffle Papers.
Oh, I mean, it's amazing. We're still flying buffs. This is an airframe that was designed in the wedding days of World War II.
B-52, I think I would put in the category one of the best planes ever made.
Oh, yeah. I think they're right behind the B-17. I mean, you see these battle pictures of the B-17 shot to all kinds of crap.
And they still came back.
But the thing about the B-52 is they have upgraded it and upgraded it and upgraded it over the years.
A guy from the 1950s era, 60s era wouldn't even recognize the inside of a 2016 B-52 right now.
Well, I'd like to see the Dale Brown fantasy from the novels B-52 of the V-tail and all that stuff.
Yeah, that would be good. I think we got one or two down here in our aviation museum at Robbins.
We have about 20 years ago, I think the community decided that they wanted a big aviation museum to pull the tourists in off of Interstate 75 that runs North and South from,
take almost New York to float through Florida. And so they built this amazing museum.
It's one of the best museums in the Air Force and they have all kinds of aircraft.
Well, that was an opportunity a few years ago to actually climb inside, not fly, but climb inside a B-17.
And the movies just seems like, you know, there's all kinds of room and it's like, no, you're wearing that sucker.
You climb out and there's no room to move around.
Well, I think we drove Ken off.
He said he'd be back. He's got some stuff to do around the house.
It's mid-after, it's early afternoon for him. It's 735 here.
So I just happened to wake up at 503 AM and said, oh, the Hacker Public Radio Party is starting.
So that's why I got on. I've been on longer than I thought it'd be.
Yeah, I think I've jumped in at the beginning of every one, but yeah, I just want to see if it's going to be self-standing before jump off.
It should be. Like I said, it's early times here on the East Coast people just waking up.
I don't know about the weather where you are, but down here it's been raining for the last couple of days.
And it's 36 degrees Fahrenheit. It was almost 80 degrees last week.
So our temperatures swing has been crazy for the last month.
You get up one morning, you have to turn heat on, you get up the next morning, you might need the air conditioner.
If your didn't seem like Christmas, I think Christmas Day was 80 degrees.
And sunny is all good out. I knew Santa Claus didn't fly in that type of weather down here.
Well, I won't say I'm sorry for you because it's like 32 degrees now. It was that much below zero a couple of weeks ago.
Did you guys get any snow yet? Oh, yeah, we got some snow.
Yeah, I got a weather app on my cell phone. I have all the cities where family was stationed or I was stationed.
I checked it a week ago for my knot and they were 13 below. So I had no reason to complain.
Yeah, I think we got as low as at least 20 below.
Yeah, my knot in North Dakota is not a fun place to be in the wintertime.
But I mean, you know, yesterday got up to like 50.
Yeah, you know, everybody argues about global warming or whatever. All I know is in my lifetime I've seen a great fluctuation of the weather.
I'm not a scientist. And so I don't comment on that. I know it can be politically incorrect to talk about global warming.
But I just know that my 59 years, I've seen all kinds of weather. And it's just strange the way it is now.
Well, I'm not going to let him take away my old trucks, but yet it seemed like going to college, you know, a lot of days, training across snow and cold and whatever.
And then once I got out, it was, you know, not so much like that.
Well, I know when I, when I lived in my knot in North Dakota, I was 12, 13, 14, and 15.
It got down to 100 below windshield one time. That's the coldest I've ever seen it.
And our snowy winners were great. We climb on the roof and jump off the roof into the snow banks.
We even built a mound of snow. I think my dad got the driveway cleared one time.
And so the guy had no place to put the snow. So he stood it beside the garage.
And so we built up a ski path. We could do our little ski jumps off this little mound of snow. Now we had, like I said, I've seen all kinds of weather.
Been in hurricanes. I've been in the desert towards 100 plus. I've been in North Dakota. It was really, really cold.
I've been down south. There are rains and blows. And it's just been strange weather. I don't know.
Like I'm looking at their forecast now on the weather channel. It says it's 47 now, but on the weather channel.
But according to my weather app on my Linux box, it says it's 36 with 100% chance of rain.
Well, I'm sure back in the days when you know, made our own decisions. It's, uh, is a wonderment we didn't kill ourselves.
We still got time. After seeing a lot of stuff the last few years, I wonder if it's the end of days.
I'm not a very religious guy, but the US sure is going through some stuff the last few years.
Just think of all the bad stuff that happens in the news. I think we got it.
We see everything that goes on, you know, uh, 500 years ago, we went on known in America.
What was happening in Europe? That may be an exaggeration, but your views with Donald was going on in the Middle East.
I think it's just, you know, they talk about every spirit when it falls. And you know, now we see that.
It's a perception thing. Yep. With the internet, we see everything. It happens. We see it.
Everybody has a voice now. You go on Twitter, you go on Facebook or whatever. And it's instantaneous.
It's out there. People see it. And that can change your perception. Do you know about it? Yes. If you don't, whatever.
Well, I think I'm going to take a break since we haven't talked in about two minutes.
I think I'm going to go silent for a little bit. And if I hear anybody talking, maybe I'll jump in.
Okay, this is Reg Anderson. I'm out.
Well, that was probably my fault because I would take a nature break and then grab a beer.
Okay. Everyone come.
I was contemplating that, but if I'm going to be on around midnight Eastern time, I don't think I can start drinking it.
I counted as I haven't stopped from last night.
I normally don't end those because I have some. I have a couple of medical issues.
And I have to go take blood tests every couple of weeks.
And I go to the VA clinic down here. And so I take my blood test one day and the next day I get a call from the pharmacist
who takes care of all our blood test notifications.
And I have to answer questions that she gives me concerning my blood test.
And one of the questions is, did you have the alcohol or tobacco between your blood tests?
And so since I can't lie very well, I try not to indulge.
But a couple of days ago, I had a blood test.
And yesterday I got a call from the pharmacist. She said, well, Mr. Anderson, your I and R levels for your war friend are kind of low.
Did you have any alcohol or tobacco?
I said, ah, doctor, I can't lie.
The Christmas I had a few ounces of starch and two cigars.
And so she said, ah, that's why I had R levels low.
So I had to hold off the alcohol.
But I did buy me a bottle of Jim Dean for Christmas. And I've been sipping on it for a few days.
Yeah, I am on the blood vessels myself.
And they haven't gone into that point. But you have to ask, you know, hell yes, I had a beer.
Yeah, it doesn't come a factor unless your levels go too low or too high.
I've been on it for about four years now.
They, I can't get into it normally when you're on these things. You take a blood test once a month.
But I've never gotten to once a month cycle, but occasionally I mind fluctuates between being too low and too high.
And they always ask you about how much vitamin K did you eat per week?
And so I can only eat like three servings of vitamin K, which is consistent broccoli.
Brussels sprouts, asparagus, those type of vegetables.
And so that I have to deal with that too.
So I just have to sometimes I can and sometimes I can't have alcohol.
And so over Christmas was my first time on about a year and a half.
Wow, I have never, you know, they've never written to me, you know, don't eat these vegetables.
Or, you know, anything, you know, I tell them.
Yeah, I have, you know, two to four drinks on an eye, which is probably under exaggerated most of the time.
You know, they've never gotten to me about that.
And the thing is, you know, I've talked about I'm on the bike app and the main thing being is, you know, if you're thinking about it,
and you've got the whole basket or thing, you can't help do that.
Full sleep.
And soon, as soon as you do, you quit sleeping and it works you back up.
And yeah, I have to admit, I need a little chemical help through that.
I, I, you know, I, I'm thinking, you know, maybe the alcohol is probably more natural than our products.
I don't know, but, you know, either way, self-medicating, I guess.
But, you know, that's, that's what I'm doing for right now.
What kind of blood types are you taking? You taking warfronts?
Now I'm taking, I'm taking a specific, let me go look, it's, they have me a warfront and then they threw me over to the ones that cost more.
Well, I tried to get on that one.
The one they, the Zialis and I can't think, the one they had the commercial with Arnold Palmer and Chris Bosch and the race car driver guy.
I asked them about that a year or two ago and they said the VA doesn't pay for that.
So, you have to stick with warfront if you're going to be in the VA system.
They shouldn't say they don't pay for that medication. They, they don't pay for the blood test that you go off for warfront or something.
Yeah, that's it. You know, warfront itself was cheap, but yeah, it was a weekly blood test.
They thought it was cheaper to, you know, to do the more expensive.
They got me on protection now. It was the, oh, the other one was out there and my interest didn't pay for a bit of it.
He was like going to be five or five or make or five or a dollar a month and it was like, yeah, I can afford that, but I can think of things.
I would rather spend five hundred dollars a month on.
Yeah, but that's just going, you don't have to tap the tab regular blood test, right?
It's one of them and it's like from the first year you get it on free.
I don't, I don't worry about that. The VA pays all my medical stuff.
I'm one of the VA medical success stories. I'm not into that horror story stuff you always see on the news.
I've been in the system since 1992 and I've had the best VA medical care that anybody could have.
So I've always stuck with them. I've had a chance to go private insurance and never have.
And so I just stick with it. You know, I get my appointments when I want to. I see my doctors. They all know me when I go to the local clinic.
And so I just stay with them.
Well, I was in the heart hospital locally in the last couple of weeks.
And they were like, the good news is, you know, you've matured deductible for the years. Bad news is, yeah, the years over two weeks.
Yeah, I know how that goes. When my parents were still alive and they came out with a new thing from Medicare, you know.
I remember going through the same with my mom and dad trying to get my end up with their supplemental insurance to their Medicare.
And you had these windows and gaps in there. You had to decide if what plan would cover the gaps and all this other stuff.
And I just told them, I'm so glad I don't have to do that. You know, they just send the bill to Uncle Sam and that's it.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that, but that's about 13 years in my future.
Yeah, well, I went through it with my mom and dad when they were alive.
And I remember going online and trying to figure out all this stuff. It was sort of like the Obamacare.
When that came online, my sister was telling me what all she had to do to jump through hoops to try to get her a new medical insurance policy.
I just shook my head. Well, that's how I was from my parents when they changed the rules from Medicare.
And I remember I even, I found a couple of insurance policies for them and everything.
But I remember they had at the local hospital, they had seminars or seniors could come in and they even had computers set up where they, you could talk to employees of the hospital.
Sitting at a computer and they would help you try to pick out a decent insurance policy that helped cover the gaps.
And so we ended up, I ended up taking them to a couple of seminars.
We finally got a couple of good plans. You know, they only had to pay like $20 a month for it.
And it worked out, it worked out for them. But I'm just so glad I don't even deal with it.
When I go to the DA, I sign in, they got one of those little check-in machines.
You tap your name and your birthday, it shows you your appointments and that's it.
I think about two weeks ago I got a thing from the DA says, this is what we paid for in 2016 for you.
And so you just put that in your little file and that's it. You don't have to worry about it.
Well, yeah, since everything changed, I thought I'd been kind of lucky it hasn't been a huge difference in premium.
It's just like, okay, this is what you owe. Send us a check for this.
Yeah, I don't know if I could even afford an insurance now under Obamacare.
2012, I got, I got sent first to April and I checked into the local hospital and they sent me to the VA hospital
doubt in Dublin, Georgia. So it's a big, big hospital.
And they thought I had gastritis. I could smell food. I'd smell coffee.
I'd just throw up. You know, I'd just be sitting around, sitting at the desk and I'd throw up.
I'd take a shower and I'd throw up. So they thought I had gastritis.
And I was in the hospital for about a week down there and they were trying to figure out what's making them throw up.
And then all of a sudden, my gastritis turned into blood clots.
They took me in to take a shower one day and I fell out three times while taking the shower.
And so they quit worrying about my gastritis and they were so worried about my blood clots.
And so that's how I got on warfront. And I've been on warfront ever since.
I spent 50 days down in the Dublin hospital because of blood clots. And that is no fun.
Yeah, my dad always talked about warfront just like rat poison. You know, it's rat poison.
That's what it is. That's what it is in rat poison. I had to clean out my outdoor shed a couple of months ago.
You go to Walmart or Kmart or whatever and you look up the rat poison and that's what it is.
Blood thinners, the rats bleed to death if they eat it.
Now that you got me talking to all about this and you said, did you get you a beer?
I'm thinking about going in and pouring me a shot of, shot of Jim Bean.
Yeah, I got me a Steelers herb. And Jim Bean was one of my favorite things in this world.
So do not let me, uh, uh, sway you or bother you.
Yep. I'm heading to the kitchen right now.
Yeah, I just swayed you folks. You know, you see me show up early in the morning on, uh, social media or whatever or IRC.
About half the time or more. It's because I ain't gotten to bed yet, not because I got up early in the morning.
Well, that's the one thing I like about being retired.
I go to bed when I want to and I get up when I want to and there's been plenty of days.
I don't get dressed still in my pajamas or my sweatpants and I only go out to get the meal occasionally.
My neighbors have to come in and check on me and say, oh, you're pulling that hermit act again.
And so my neighbors have persuaded me to open the front drapes in my front room.
And if the drapes are open, they know I'm alive.
And if they haven't seen the drapes open a couple of days, they come and check on me.
You know, it does sound familiar. I need to call my neighbor and definitely still around this week, uh, because I haven't done so.
You know, ever since I had the episode in the hospital, you know, he said, no, once a week ain't good enough. We didn't do it twice a week.
Yep. I know how that is, as well.
I just got to deal with, I said, I'm 59 this year, turned 59 in October. I'll be 60, come out, October, 2017.
So, and I've been retired since 91. So you just have to deal with it. That's all.
And I interrupt this broadcast to bring you news of the fact that Australia is now in 2017, much of Australia. Happy New Year, Australia.
Happy New Year, Australia.
So, we're all those guys, you know, we didn't have caught two and well, of course, he's in New Zealand and studs and beer 64 and crayon and the rest of it.
What the hell are you guys?
Well, there was no promotion stunts, so they may not know about it.
We're a few promotions. Um, the tilts guys did had promotions at the end of the air podcast for the last month or so.
And I think this last Wednesday, they discussed it again.
I'm trying to think, hmm, I'm trying to look up what the, what's the, the Linux podcast from Australia that I listened to.
System AU, yeah.
That's the one yet.
Yeah, I've just noticed this. I love those guys.
I have, I have to go to the family, so I'll be back in a bit, yep. Talk to you later, guys.
All right.
Don't forget to welcome in the rest of Australia in a half an hour.
Oh, half hour, okay.
Yeah, that was beyond half hour, because I'm looking 70 am on my clock.
It's 80159 here in Georgia.
Yeah, you listen to the system AU guys, 5150.
Not generally.
I do try to catch up on clock two.
I haven't heard clock two in a while, but the reason I said the system AU guys, when the Linux outlaw guys quit their podcast, Dan and them.
System AU guys seem to be the replacement for them. They're, they're funny and crazy, irreverent.
They drink while they're doing their podcast. They play music. They just general overall good, good podcast.
If you like a good Linux laugh about podcasts, they give you the news, they give you updates on the Linux community and distro watch and everything, but they say they have a good old time.
Yeah, Australian stuff.
I've recently picked on well over here.
We have on motor trend.
We have the roadkill guys and apparently there's a compliment to them in Australia.
Let me look that up.
Yeah, I'm still looking at it. This is my see card, card mods or massive card mods, something like that for Australia.
Well, I have to check it out.
I got all kinds of Linux podcasts I'd listen to on and off, but I haven't heard that one.
Okay, car mods, Australia.
Car mods, Australia.
Yeah, they recently did a deal over here, you know, between roadkill and car mods, Australia.
And, you know, they need to parse the middle nine on Napa.
And this, you guys, you know, fig and free bird walked in to Napa and freak you guys out.
And then the guys were also fans of the car mods Australia right behind them.
All those guys walked in and they're like shit in their stuff.
I've never heard of them. I just looked them up.
Car mods, Australia, CMA website, but I don't mind cars anymore because I don't travel anymore.
I'm my own body. I go to the doctor and I go to the grocery store, occasionally out now and then.
Mostly I just sit in my office and be online or watch Netflix and acorn TV and Amazon video or hoot blue.
Yeah, I got started. Well, really, when we were read for the HPR book review down and out in the magic kingdom and start reading, you know, stuff about the theme parks and got an ingestion scarred and.
The daily woo.
Okay, I just clicked on a site. I see you've ever heard of mighty my G.H.T.Y. car mods.
Yeah, I have.
Apparently they're coming to or have been on Discovery Turbo Australian and New Zealand TV premieres to Discovery Turbo.
So I'm Discovery Channel. I don't think I get that on my Discovery Channel.
Like I said, I'm not in I'm not in the cars anymore. I used to be, but those days are far gone.
Yeah, I think mighty car mods. That's probably what I was thinking of.
Mighty car mods Australia talk about dream cars future mod projects and red carpet arrives at the YouTube fast Sydney 2015.
That's a whole post there, but yeah, two guys do car modifications in Australia.
Yeah, you learn something every day.
Okay, I learned about your Cagnature or whatever earlier.
I had to, I had to pin that to my Firefox browser.
I got to send that out to a couple of friends I know.
Still don't believe you are into that.
Oh, I'm always glad that's Kate folks.
I've learned something since I've been off for two hours.
Car mods and little figurines with guys taking a squat.
You know, door to door Geek is going to be on today.
Oh, no, probably not because his wedding anniversary always coincides with new years.
Happy wife, happy life.
Yeah, so you know, that's what he's always said.
He is never on the New Year's show.
Well, 50.
He got me going back.
I got to go pour me two more fingers of Jim Bean.
This rate, I might not make it to midnight.
Well, I'm never going to complain about Jim Bean.
You know, like I said, I hadn't been in a liquor store in a long time.
So I went in liquor store and I basically told him a lie.
I said, hey, I got a friend who like smoked flavored whiskies.
And they.
Not so much whiskies like smoked beers, but this time of year, you know, I like to go half and half with Yukon Jack.
And a dog and shake a little bit of nutmeg and ginger and cinnamon in there.
Well, like I said, I asked them about smoked flavored whiskies and the lady took me to the aisle.
Excuse me.
It showed me one.
It was like $40.
And I said, nah, I think that's a little bit too much.
She didn't like to show me the Jim Bean and the other cheaper models.
And so I got me a bottle of Jim Bean for like $14.
I wasn't about to drop $40 on some alcohol that I'm not supposed to be drinking.
Maybe only drink once every two years.
Well, you might notice me coughing a little bit this evening and saw something on Facebook the other day.
It was like, yeah, you take a mason jar and you break up a bunch of peppermint candy and put it in there.
And then on top of that, you put a tablespoon of honey and a couple squirts of lemon.
And then you fish the whole thing up with 101 proof while turkey.
And you wait for the whole thing to melt.
And that's going to be your homemade cough syrup.
And so I started on that, you know, because, you know, yeah, this time of year I can pick up some pretty cheap candy canes.
But, you know, if I can eat that doesn't suppress cough, that sounds pretty tasty.
I can't handle the candy canes.
In my alcohol, I have to drink it either on the rocks or straight or with a little soda water.
I can't handle sweet alcohol.
I'll be throwing up and being in the bathroom all day.
I can't do that.
When I went to the liquor store to get me something, I saw Jim Beam had some Jim Beam Honey alcohol.
So I bought a miniature bottle of Jim Beam Honey.
That tasted pretty good.
It wasn't overly sweet.
It wasn't strong.
You could drink it straight out of the bottle if you wanted to.
But I think I drank that Christmas drink.
It was only like four or five ounces.
But I got a big bottle of the regular old Jim Beam.
That's what I can drink.
So I can't handle nothing sweet.
No, I like it a little sweet, but, you know, beams my brand.
I go over a little toward dry weather these days rather than the bourbon.
But yeah, I'm looking at all these things.
It's chocolate and flavor or maple or whatever.
It's like, no, no, just something with the straight stuff.
If I want that, I can add it to myself.
But yeah, it's not so bad this year's last year.
But, you know, bunch of stuff adulterated and weird.
You mentioned you were as apprailed to what we're talking about.
Now, you mentioned that you caught were coughing.
Fifty-one-fifty.
You're always coughing.
Every time I hear you on somebody's podcast, you always have an episode
where you're coughing or hacking up a lung or something.
Well, I'm hoping now that I've got this breathing machine
that will fix it somewhat.
Well, I don't know that.
I have a BPAT machine.
For some reason, the VA likes to give everybody a BPAT machine.
Do you use a full mask or do you have the nasal pillows?
No, I decided that the full mask could be more comfortable.
So I've got the mouth and the nasal stuff.
Not the whole huge face mask, but something in between.
I've been using one since about a year and a half now.
But it came with a facial mask that covers from your nose to the chin.
And after a month or so, I said, I can't use this thing.
And so I called them.
I said, hey, you got something else.
And they said, they have these nasal pillow things that fit up into your nose.
So I switched to that.
I use that.
But the thing about this BPATs, I can only use them like two or three hours at the most.
And then I end up taking them off.
And then after about 30 minutes, I put them back on.
I don't like nothing on my face.
And especially when I'm sleeping, my nose is always itching.
Something is interfering with my face.
And so I have to move stuff around, scratch.
And they can be uncomfortable, especially if you don't like stuff on your face while you're sleeping.
Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one.
Because yeah, you want to scratch around the edge and then all the night long.
And then you got to pull off your face and scratch inside.
And yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, I heard Joel on Tulks one.
And he was talking about it in a couple of podcasts.
I think this last podcast, he was talking about how you, if you need one, you should get one.
Remember when Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia died?
I think it was earlier this year or last year?
Yeah, I didn't know he had anything to do with this, though.
Yeah, he used to sleep machine.
He used to be fat.
When he died, he was down in Texas.
And he was lying on his bed.
And next to his bed, he had the D-Pap machine, but he wasn't using it when he went to sleep.
And that's the thing, you know, if you don't know, you need to get a sleep study.
If you're a big guy, like I am, when I got out of the army, I gave like 50 pounds.
Because I refuse to run anymore.
And so if you need one, you need to get one.
And I didn't know I snored, but they sent me to a sleep study.
And they said, you need a B-Pap machine.
But like I said past, it seems like the VA wants everybody into the VA system to have a B-Pap machine.
So they got a special clinic in the VA down here in Dublin, Georgia for B-Pap machines.
Well, that's it.
I've got it.
I have fallen asleep too many times on the couch watching TV, you know.
Last night, I knew I needed to get up early and didn't.
But, you know, what time I did, I think it worked out pretty well.
You know, it's just, you lay there and you can't help the thickness thing on your face.
And you think about thinking about it.
And then every time you want to fall asleep, you wake back up because you don't breathe.
And just torture for all night, but, you know, been self-medicating too long.
And, you know, being in a state when I go to sleep, you know, I'm ready to go to sleep.
Of course, you know, a lot of times, yeah, I'll grab a stiff drink before I go to sleep,
especially this time of year, if a dog, you know, a dog is great.
And, you know, you toss some stuff in there and you ready to go to sleep.
So, that's what I've been doing.
Yep, I know what you mean.
I must make a clarification.
I've been saying D-Pap is CPAP.
See, alcohol is already affecting me.
It's a CPAP, Charlie Papua, Alpha Papua machines.
If anybody is listening, doesn't understand what we're talking about.
So, sleep apnea machine.
If you don't use one, you go to sleep and you stop breathing while you're sleeping.
It's not consistent stop breathing.
It's on and off.
You'll breathe and then you'll stop breathing.
And then after a certain amount of time, you'll start breathing again.
So, if you have a sleep apnea, a CPAP machine pumps air through your nostril
or through your mouth at a consistent rate to stop you from that inconsistent breathing.
Keeps you breathing.
If you snore a lot, you might have sleep apnea.
And that is one of the main pointers to people with sleep apnea if you snore.
So, you can take a sleep study, go to your doctor and tell him you need a sleep study.
And sometimes you can go to the hospital and take a sleep study where they hook you up to a breathing machine
and put something on your finger to measure your heart rate.
Or you can do one at home where they send you a heart rate machine that you put on your finger and you sleep.
And it measures how much breathing and stopping and breathing that you do for the night.
And then if you need one, you get a machine.
And they come in with different type of breathing apparatus.
You can get a face mask that fits over your nose and your chin and your mouth.
Or they have nasal pillows which are sort of little plasticy type things with two holes.
And you put one up to each nostril and you have to breathe through your nose.
The sleep mask that I was describing is good for people who breathe through their mouths.
And so that works.
But that is the occurrence if you don't like stuff on your face.
Well, see, I didn't know they told me you're breathing through your mouth.
We need a strap.
And I said, well, I think it'd be more comfortable just to have a whole face mask.
And they got me.
But yeah, I am on BIPAP where the difference is they change the pressure between
input and input and backput, you know, breathe in.
It's a higher pressure.
And then they they can sense that and they change it to a lower pressure for breathe out.
And when I was in the hospital, it was pretty much like a respirator.
You know, once you got used to it, you don't have to do anything.
You weren't breathing at all.
You're waiting for, you're letting for machine to do it.
And when they got, you know, they got me the machine at home with it isn't like that.
But tonight, yeah, I did not get to sleep as early as I should have.
But, you know, what I did was pretty good sleep, I think, with the machine.
And looking forward to it going forward.
I've been kind of stubborn getting used to it.
Like the other thing is, I was not used to the maintenance.
Get all this breathing tubing and they expect you to disconnect it all.
And put it in a tub with soapy water and clean it out every single day.
And put it back in and you put it back in and you can hear the water circulating through it.
And it's like weird.
And yeah, I did that the other night and took it apart again and tried to blow it out for blow dryer.
And time I got all that.
You know, I was, you know, four in the morning and I was fully awake.
I said screw that.
I'm going to go do projects or whatever.
Well, you're vigilant.
I remember when I first got mine and they showed you what you got to do and all this stuff.
If you wear the mask, you're supposed to wet your face before you put the mask on to get rid of the oils on your face.
You can do all that.
I don't do all that.
I mean, the two being in the mask and the nasal pillows maybe once a week.
Stick them in some soapy water, pull them out.
So I just let them hang dry.
And then you have to fill the, you're supposed to use what is it?
What type of water can you buy?
What's the water with not?
No.
Yeah, you have to use the still water to fill the thing.
I did that for about the first two months and then I, I just fill up a bottle of regular water and use regular water.
You can be too vigilant if you don't watch out.
Just the main thing is just that when you go to sleep, put the mask on and the nasal pillows or whatever and use it as long as you can.
Like I said, I can't use it for six hours straight.
I, since I was in the army, I was never, I have never been able to sleep six hours straight.
I, I'm one of those kind of people that watch the clock.
I wake up after an hour or two hours and see what time it is and then I'll go back to sleep.
But I, I can't sleep six continuous hours on the last time, totally passed out from a night of drinking and I haven't done that year.
So my, my regular sleep patterns is I'll, I'll sleep for a couple hours.
I have the mask or the pillows on and then, you know, it just gets to a point where I can't stand something on my face anymore.
And so I hang it up on the hook, go back to sleep and then I wake up again and put it back on and sleep the rest of the night.
You know, I get up in the morning and I hang it back up, but I don't bother cleaning the mask and the hose and all that stuff.
But once a week, because it can be too much, you know.
Yeah, it seems a little extreme to me.
But, yeah.
I don't know. My machine, it has, it has a home option.
You press it, it has a, it has a touch screen and you can go through all these different options and you, you can control how much pressure it sends through.
It heats up the water.
It tests the connection between your nose or your mouth on the machine.
You have to breathe a certain period of time. It says all that it fits and all this other stuff.
It also has a, it supposedly takes a digital reading of your sleeping for a certain amount of time and it stores it on a SD card.
But mine is not hooked up for that. It has that option.
So mine, that I have, that I use now that I got from the VA doesn't do that.
It has the option, but I don't ever see any, any data for how I slept that night.
Yeah, I've got an SD card slot as well on mine. It's a Phillips.
I'm looking at mine right now. It's a, it's a RASMID RASMED.
It comes with a reservoir for water. It has a push dial and a turn dial. It has my options and it gives you supposedly a sleep report.
It tells you the usage hours, the mass seals, the humidity level, and then supposedly it prints a report that you can track your sleep at a certain website.
I'd say the thing is, if you got one, use it. I have noticed that if I go to sleep without using the sleep app machine, I will wake up and I have a headache.
And so I know that I have stopped breathing while I was sleeping when I didn't use the machine and I have the headache.
When I go to bed, I'm vigilant. I put it on because I got it on a hook on the, on the bed post.
And I just put it on, turn the machine on, go to sleep. And like I said, I, it'll come off sometime during the night.
Probably after about two hours, I just can't stand that pressure in my nose anymore.
And I just pull it off, you know, I'm not consciously awake, it just comes off. And then I wake up again, I put it back on.
Yeah, once I go to sleep, but you know, it doesn't bother me at all.
Well, changing the subject, how is your farming been this year?
Well, good thing about probably with the health problems, I turn it over to, you know, a, a, most subcontractorist, that's the right word.
A, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a
a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a. a, a, a wreck out of your leg, and everything that was found here of her.
If you're supposed to come in at 8.30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, whatever time it is down here, that's what Kentolus, 8.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
Yes, we're pretty going forward. We have not done a lot of organization like we have done in the previous years.
Well, what are you guys growing? When I lived in North Dakota, their main thing was winter wheat. What do you guys grow down in Kansas?
Winter wheat, grain sorghum, feed sorghum, soy beans.
Sounds good. Make a profit.
Try to, you know, a lot of people try to do corn, but you know, that's one of the hardest things to do to make corn on.
Try to make corn for eating or fuel.
Mainly not for, you know, for feed consumption, not for home consumption.
Feed the animals. Exactly. Where exactly you live in Kansas?
Tell you what, if you take a note and you try and you, if you create a line between Wichita and Dodd City, and you split that in half to make it exactly center, walk outside no way that you.
Okay, I'm looking it up. Wichita, I don't see Dodd City. You see Wichita, I see Topeca to the Northeast and Lawrence in Kansas City.
I've never been to Wichita, I've been to Kansas City a couple of times because I had temporary duty at Fort Leavenworth a couple of times in my military career.
Never made it down to Wichita or Topeca, Dodd City. You did say Dodd City, didn't you?
Yeah, pretty much equal distance between the Wichita and Dodd City.
Okay, I'm looking it up now.
Or, if somebody wanted to put in their map, Kero Kansas was a sea.
Okay, we've got a Kero, Georgia down here, it's down in almost South Georgia.
Well, my mother was born in Kero, Georgia.
I think the way this came out is, you know, every few miles along the layout lines they had to create a junction.
And the people there, you know, they knew international times from books, but they didn't know how to, you know, they didn't know how to pronounce them.
So in 1930, they, you know, C-A-I-R-O, you know, that was Kero, not Kero.
Okay, I see it. I'm looking at it now.
If you see a great, you know, on Google Maps, it might say grain farms or, or, that's our rear farms.
Okay.
You guys haven't hit oil boom like North Dakota, have you?
But I lived in my not Air Force space back in the 60s and early 70s.
They were known for their winter week.
Now, I think my not is more known for its oil production.
I haven't so far. I know, I know, neighbors who have, you know, 30 years ago.
Yeah, the same guy who claims he's like to do an oil lease, you know, says, oh, yeah, you've got all kinds of oil under your land somewhere.
You know, but nobody releases it.
Well, I have a couple of friends that retired to North Dakota.
And they said a lot of those weak farmers up there, they sold their property.
And they made out big time when the oil companies came in.
They got really weak and just turned it over to the oil companies.
And they made out big time.
A couple of guys I knew, they moved to Florida, a couple of others with the Arizona.
And they've been retired for about five, six years now.
Well, I tell you, the guy's made it around here is the ones who, you know, sold off their lands for game leases.
Yeah, that's big time now, you know.
I always turn on the TV now and you always see these guys going on exotic trips.
I haven't seen any of the Kansas, I've mostly seen them going to Montana or South Dakota.
Oh, there's plenty here, but my dad always preferred to sell them to, you know, friends and people he knew.
So that's what we're going here.
Yeah, I guess that when I went to Kansas back in, I think summer 82 or 83, I had to go to Leavenworth.
And that's all I saw was Leavenworth.
I remember we got out of the Kansas City airport and we were driving to Leavenworth, Kansas.
And my first impression was, God, I don't want to be there anymore.
It was just the overwhelming sight seeing that federal prison in the foreground looking at it.
And it was at night time with all these different lights on.
And so that's my impression of Kansas.
Like I said, I'd never been there before, except for Leavenworth, Kansas.
Yeah, I had an uncle when they had a big house on the hill in Leavenworth.
But yeah, they could open the invitation anybody hearing me.
If you want to come out to Kansas, choose a visit.
You know, you're welcome to contact me and come along.
Now, I do have some neighbors who are not very in the impression of high-powered rifles around them.
If you want a deer, that's another thing.
And you want a hunt high-powered.
That's another thing we might want to discuss when you get here.
But other than that, you want to come out and hunt?
I'd be glad for the company.
My neighbor across the street is big hunter.
And he's trying to get me to come out to go deer hunting with him here in Middle Georgia.
I haven't taken him up on offer, but he's always out.
In fact, the last couple of days he's been...
He's got a place up in North Georgia where he goes deer hunting or whatever he shoots.
And he goes with his sons.
And they had the four-wheel vehicles, the tree stands and all this.
In fact, last year he even offered me some deer sausage he had made.
Some deer meat, but you know, I'm not too much into exotic stuff.
Down here in Georgia, if you're a veteran, you can get a free deer and fishing license.
You don't have to pay. You just have to verify that you are a veteran.
And you can get a license for furry.
So I had the application one time.
I was going with him to fish, but I never did make it.
But I did fill out the application and I do have me a fishing veteran's fishing license.
Well, my guy said, for me, I don't know if I...
I might say something to somebody, but you know, they showed up a whole bunch more stuff this year.
And it was like hamburger and sausage and jerky and whatnot.
And I was, you know, someone more appreciative this year.
When I was a kid and we lived in North Dakota, my dad knew a lot of guys that would go hunting.
And I remember one time one of the guys in his squadron brought back some fessant and gave my dad a fessant.
If my mom gave it to my mom, she said, what the hell am I supposed to do with this?
She was a good old southern girl from South Georgia and she wasn't dealing with no fessant.
She knew how to cook chicken, but she didn't know nothing about no fessant.
Somehow he found a recipe and he cooked fessant.
But my sister and I, we weren't into all that, you know, the deer meat and everything.
It seemed to taste too gamey for us.
You know, we wanted our food, we wanted it from the grocery store or the base commissary.
You know, if it didn't come from there, we would need it.
So I don't think we even tasted the fessant that his buddy gave it.
Well, I remember my mom making, you know, using chicken bake for red scroll and that was great.
And the best thing we ever had was, you know, I don't care what, but, you know, it was Bob White quail.
You know, that was legitimately hunting.
But when I was in college, we, you know, there are these two barbers in town and did just regular barber towns.
But, you know, they, they were into the local game club and they always had once a year, you know, just everything.
You know, they did a bear and they would have squirrel and they would have muskrat.
Well, about muskrat, but, you know, beaver, whatever, the whole thing.
And then they would have, you know, the ladies would do whole thing of vegetable stuff and then the whole thing of, you know, desserts.
And it'd be like five bucks, you know, to get in there and, you know, meeting a few friends, always did that every year.
And it was just incredible.
Well, like I said, I'm not in all of that.
I mean, if it didn't come from Kroger or Publix, I'd rarely eat it.
Now, I'm a processed food type of guy.
But, you mentioned red-tail squirrels.
I was going to the post office two days ago and I was driving to neighborhood and right across the street, I saw a white squirrel.
Have you ever seen a white squirrel?
No, I've had great ones around here and I've had the red ones, which, you know, just the other day I was picking up a bale for feed cattle.
It was like, yeah, I'd need to put a, you know, a 22 and a gun rack and take one of those out sometimes.
Yeah, I got plenty of gray squirrels every morning. They wake me up around five o'clock.
When the sun comes up, they run it across the roof.
And I hear them.
But I never saw a white squirrel until the other day I'm driving through this neighborhood in Warner Robins going to the post office.
And bounding across is this white squirrel. I was absolutely surprised.
So, when I got home, I looked up on Google, I just typed in white squirrel.
And apparently, there are about three or four places in the US that are overrun with white squirrels.
For some reason, somebody has bred white squirrels and let them go.
And they can be purely albino white squirrels with the pinkish eyes or they can be white squirrels with brown eyes or whatever.
But it just surprised me so much. I was driving.
And I see this white thing running across the street and it was a squirrel. I couldn't believe it.
So, these are like, uh, domestic aid squirrels, you know, left, left, wild.
Well, not exactly. When I typed in white squirrel, in fact, that's what I'm doing right now.
There's like three or four places in the US. I think one of the places called Brevard that are overrun teaming with white squirrels.
Some people have, they were naturally occurring albino squirrels.
And then some people captured them and they were supposedly eastern gray squirrels.
And this place called Brevard, North Carolina, and Marion, Missouri, only Illinois, and Canton, Tennessee, and Exeter, or Terrell, Canada.
And that's where the main population of these white squirrels are.
Sometimes people have caught them and bred them to be white squirrels.
Most of the time, they're just the Asian of the eastern gray squirrel, but they're albinos.
And like I said, I had never seen a white squirrel. Like I said, I was driving down this street heading to the post office.
And I see this white thing come from the right side of the road running into the middle of the road and running to the left, running up to a house.
And it was a squirrel. I was just, I was just so surprised.
I started with my mouth open. I just stopped the car in the middle of the street and thought, God, was that a white squirrel?
Yeah, I've had a similar thing running across the road and, you know, oh, but that looks like a domesticated rabbit, not a natural rabbit.
Well, like I said, you learn something every day on Hacker Public Radio.
I had a white rabbit in my backyard about 15 years ago. He just showed up.
He was probably somebody's pet, and he used to live under my outdoor shack I have.
I used to keep my lawn more and other stuff out there, and it had a hole in the bottom of the floor.
And he would be out there running around in the backyard. I used to call him Buddy Row.
And he stayed around for like six months. I don't know what the hell he was eating or where he got any kind of water or what.
But, you know, every day you go out there in the backyard, Buddy Row would just be sitting there. He'd look at you.
He could eat anything and everything. And then after six months, I never saw him again.
I don't know if a hawk or a eagle or something grabbed him and ate him for dinner or he just moved on to a new location.
But I had a white rabbit in my backyard for like six months.
Well, about 20 years ago, you know, we would have the breeding cattle of, you know, we were planning to eat up close in the yard, you know, Fino.
And the name of God, a God sheep and, you know, for free because somebody couldn't take care of it.
And about three months later, it showed up with our, you know, with our stuff up into the house.
And that was fine. Didn't, didn't matter anything until we started to do a roundup trying to get stuff collected.
And we thought, well, we would, you know, round up this sheep and sit it back where it need to be.
And this sheep was not very, you know, not very conducive to being rounded up.
So, you know, I mean, I was in the pen with him and he ran right straight at me and I was climbing the panels, get the hell out of the road.
Before I got gourd by this SOB.
And finally we got him, so I created off another pen and then I think he took off.
Before we to deliver him to the owner, you know, he took off right away.
He never had any encounters with sheep. The only crazy encounter I've had with an animal was like, I was real small.
I think we were visiting from Egland Air Force Base, early 1960s. I was like three or four.
I think it was one of my mom's relatives. They lived on a farm and a rooster started chasing me.
In my memory, roosters like three or four feet tall. In reality, I know a rooster is no more than, in reality, I know a rooster is only like 12, 18 inches at the most.
But in my memories, this rooster was like three feet tall and he was chasing me.
And I could remember just running, trying to get away from this rooster.
You know, it's funny now, but when I was, when I was that kid, that's one of my first memories I remember.
It was, it's, it's funny it's hell now, but then I was scared, witness.
My earliest memory, and I must have been cold for some reason, was that, you know, giant ice mixture was eating me.
And what was eating you? Ice mixture, you know, big, big pile of ice. I was laying there and covered with ice, and it was eating me.
Now what? Now what? You have to explain that. Just playing an ice mixture was eating you. I don't understand. You got to tell me more.
Well, I must have been cold when I was a kid.
Well, that'll do it for you when you're small. I see. Hunky McGoo is in the channel in DRW. Y'all got anything to say?
Not at the moment. My first memories weren't anything special between, you know, like being chased by a bird or an ice monster eating me.
My mind were just something on the lines of where I was growing up.
Well, that's good. I remember one time around 1976 I had come home for Christmas vacation.
And it was raining, cats and dogs outside, and I went out the front door. I don't know where I was going.
And sitting on this pine tree limb right in front of my front door was an owl, an owl, Oscar Windows Lima, Oscar Whiskey Lima.
And he was just sitting there. I guess he got tired of flying in the rain, and he just decided to break in Middle Georgia.
And he was just sitting there on the limb, and I sat there for five minutes looking at this owl, and then he decided to go away.
So that was another encounter within a wild animal.
I think most of my earlier memories at the first place I lived at, at least that, well, that I can remember living at, was it was a place up in Jersey.
And we used to have this giant patch of like blackberries and raspberries behind the house.
And so we'd go pick in this stuff. And then let's see, my parents had a second floor balcony to that house.
We used to make our own ice cream. Now, whether we actually used any of the berries in the ice cream, I don't remember.
I was probably asking them about that at some point, but we used to, I know they used to get like bags of ice, and then they tossed the bags of ice from that second floor balcony down to the bottom to break the ice up to make the ice cream.
Oh, what kind of animal was it?
What?
Well, you're talking about the ice cream and the ice. Did you see an animal that you can remember?
I see an animal. No, I'm just saying that's my earliest memories and necessarily animal wise.
Okay. How old were you?
Two.
Oh, you go way back. I was talking to my brother and all the other day, and we were trying to remember our earliest memories.
I have about five of them from Eggland Air Force Base 4 that I remember seeing President Kennedy came to visit an Air Force Base in Florida.
I don't know if it was before or during or after the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he visited Eggland Air Force Base, and I remember sitting on my dad's shoulders looking at him.
And I was telling my brother, my brother and law the other day, when John Glenn died, I remember sitting in front of the TV set when John Glenn was going to take off for his first flight.
Yeah, I remember maybe when the first Apollo mission just sat down on the moon, but they're in that.
Yeah, that's before me.
Well, in 69, I was 12, and I was living in Maynott, North Dakota.
We were running outside during that time, and one of the memories I have was, I don't know if you knew it, but at time the Apollo missions were going on, the Soviet Union had sent satellites to the moon.
And they were orbiting the moon at that time, and this was a clear night in North Dakota.
Stars were out the lower, no clouds and everything, and the moon was right in the middle of the sky, it had a halo around it, and we could see that satellite.
You could see that satellite circling the moon with the naked eye. You didn't need to tell us, because I had a telescope, and it wasn't anything else but that Soviet satellite.
I could see it clearly in my head today, that time period.
Oh, yeah, at that time, and I killed a lot of people doing it, but they had an arm, so the space station up there.
All right, you could give me some fake news, 5150, or you really believe this or what?
Well, I thought so, and it was a spake, not actual. I've seen all the articles on it.
I know they sent satellites, but I don't know if they had an arm space station, okay?
Well, I mean, they had satellites, and supposedly they had nukes that they could drop, but I mean, no, but, you know, they, they Colonel, they killed a lot of cosmonauts sitting them up there.
So, I'm not sure how, you know, afraid we should be should have been concerned about what they could have dropped on us.
Yeah, well, if you're in that type of thing, I have now in my picture folder on my computers.
You know, everybody's in the John Glenn and Alan Shepherd was the first American in space.
I have, I have those guys, but I also have Yuri Gagarin, if anybody knows who's the first man in space.
And he hasn't been with us for about 40, 45 years. He died in an aircraft crash.
Yuri Gagarin, even though it wasn't politically correct, was one of my heroes when I was a kid. First man in space.
So, you were talking earlier about how you met JFK. Has anybody else met anybody like famous before?
Well, I can't say I'd met him. I saw him. We were on the flight line when Air Force One landed.
And he was coming to England Air Force Base for a visit. Like he, you know, he used to go around.
And I don't know any other details. I have looked it up to see like in 1962, if he was making a presidential trip for,
for just whatever presidents do, but for he was at England Air Force Base. I remember my mom and dad talking about it.
But for some reason, that is one memory that sticks in my mind.
See, that counts for meeting somebody famous. I mean, you saw him in real person. It wasn't on TV or a picture. So, I'll count it.
Well, I'll count it then if you can.
Have you heard about anybody else famous?
Not that I can think of. When I was in college, we had the CIA director was a graduation speaker.
The only reason he was our graduation speaker was because he was a classmate of Jimmy Carter, who was the president in 1980.
At the day of the Academy.
You remember his name?
Yeah, I don't think I've ever met anybody famous before. And I'm just not going to the right places. What about you 50?
You ever meet anybody famous or not, will they?
Oh, a number of times I've met with Bob Dole.
Why did you meet with Bob Dole the number time?
If you live in Kansas, you live in Bob Dole.
There's got to be a better way to say that.
No, seriously, if you have ever met in Bob Dole in Kansas, you will have met Bob Dole.
Please just hand out the grocery stores on them.
Pretty much any kind of conservative gathering you can count on Bob Dole.
Well, it wasn't Bob Dole in the news a month ago or so, something to do at Trump.
I would not be surprised.
Well, the reason I met Stan Sfield Turner, who was the director of the CIA, was he was a classmate of Jimmy Carter's when they were at the Naval Academy, who was a classmate of the president of the Citadel, who was Admiral James B. Stockdale.
Admiral Stockdale from the Vietnam War, he was POW, and he got the Congressional Medal of Honor when he was in Vietnam as a POW.
Yeah, I don't sound familiar.
Ross Pro was running me, wasn't he?
Yeah, he wasn't a very good running mate during the debate.
He was a very intelligent man, but when he was Ross Pro's running mate, he did not do himself any justice.
Well, neither did Pro.
I mean, he threw up some really good examples of that when it came to debates.
He didn't have anything extra.
Well, at least Ross Pro could actually remember during the debates, Admiral Stockdale could not articulate very well.
He's about like the way my brain is right now.
Sometimes I can come up with the word, and a lot of times I can't come up with the word to say so.
He was best on the downside of his life and career.
Yeah, I remember that it was sort of like, yeah, he could come up for good argument, give it enough time, but he wasn't.
Yeah, I've found out over the years since I got out of the Army that my brain used to work like a database.
You know, he could ask me something and I could go through it and I could tell you the answer.
But the last couple of years now, you could ask me something and I can see it, but I can't articulate it.
That's sadly my brain most of the time. I can't tell you how many text messages and emails I've had to completely reword because I have not been able to articulate myself correctly or remember how one word is spelled.
Yep, that's the way I am.
Even since I've been on since about six o'clock this morning, Eastern time, I've come across that a couple of times. I'm trying to say something and I can see it in my brain, but I can't tell you what I've seen.
Anybody who has listened to me talk has probably realized at some point that there are times when I will just keep talking until I finally get my message across.
I get in a nice big ramble because I cannot fully articulate or concisely articulate what it is I want to say.
Yep, it just comes with old age, I guess, I don't know.
I guess it's my medical condition. I could throw that in there. I could say, well, you're almost 60 years old and your brain deteriorates.
But sometimes you wonder, you know, you get to the point late at night, you wonder, am I going to be one of these people who, as I get older, I'm going to be drooling or I get in dementia or Alzheimer or whatever.
I'm really in a couple, I'm only 36.
Oh, you're a young man. You're a very, very young man. When I was 36, I thought I was going to live forever.
Guys, certainly like to think at 52, I've got a few years left.
52, you're a good old guy right now. 52, you've got 20, 30 more years to go. I'm on the downhill slope right now.
I'm wondering how old I can be. You start thinking about those things when you get to our age.
Oh, don't even start thinking like that. I mean, think like you're a young man because you start thinking like you're old and you start acting like you're old.
Body starts coming about like you're old. No, don't do that step.
Yeah, I'm laughing what you said, but in the last few years, it's been some tough years medically.
I'm not a young man anymore. I wish I was 22 just starting in the military. I could run five miles and drink all night, stay awake all day, have a good old time.
The old body now, I'm a fat old man and every day is a good day if I wake up.
I'll tell you one thing that gives me hope is a woman who works for me. Her grandmother just died at 101 years old. That gives me hope.
I'm not sure I want to make it to 101 years old, but that definitely gives me hope that I can probably go a long ways.
I'm not sure how well she took care of herself. I know she probably wasn't, you know, jogging every day or, you know, didn't she was in pretty good shape.
She was, she wasn't 100% lucid, but she was pretty darn good and, you know, at 101, what, what more can you really ask for?
Well, yeah, that's good. 101, I had a great aunt who was 105. She lived in Denver, Colorado. She died about three years ago at 105.
I never met her. My sister, my mother, went out a few times to see her in her later years at 105 and she said she was quick as a whip.
My thing is, I don't want to be 105 and I'm drooling in a cup. I want to be lucid. I want to be alive. I want to be interactive. I want to be able to, when I'm 105 on New Year's Eve to be able to talk to you guys and everything.
I don't want to be sleeping in a bed and sitting in a corner, staring in space.
I don't think anybody wants to end up like that at all, no matter what the age is.
Yep, you know, that's the thing. So we have all our memories and everything that I, you know, all the things that I could lose.
I don't mind losing an arm or a hand or a foot or a leg. I don't want to lose my brain. That would, you know, just kill me.
Yeah, except that point, you're not really a living. I mean, it's the quality of life is definitely not there.
I know people argue the quality of life of people who they consider vegetables, but, you know, if you, if you really can't think you may be a functioning machine, but that's really about it.
You're not doing anything or you're basically just sitting there, converting, you know, oxygen to CO2 or whatever.
Yep, I'm getting a good, you hit it on the head. That's, that's my philosophy in life.
If just being alive is not living, surviving is just not living.
If you can't interact with your social area, your outside contacts, if you can't interact, you're not alive, and that's not living to me.
You said it in your words right there, you know. I watched, I watched, I watched Walking Dead. I don't watch it anymore.
And just surviving being alive day to day is not living.
So that's why I like to, you know, I don't work in a technical field. I work in a retail field, and I don't get to play with as much of the computer type crap that, you know, I like to talk about.
That's why I do things like this, because I like to, I like to keep my mind active. I like to keep pushing my hobbies forward.
Whether, you know, I can, whether it's, it's, you know, a job, it's obviously not a job for me.
So it's something I want to do for fun. I want to keep doing stuff like that. So I feel like I'm alive. I feel like I'm a person on me.
You know, I'm not just somebody who shows up to work every day, does their things, you know, cooks dinner for their family and goes home.
I just, there's, there's still more of me there.
Yeah, but I agree 100%. Well, changing the subject a little bit, well, tell us about yourself, honking with you. I, I know you from some various podcasts. I've seen you online.
But I don't know anything about you. Can you tell us about yourself?
Give me two seconds. I want to, I got a mumble recording going and if mumble goes for too long, the recording starts to degradation.
I have several other recordings going, but I just want to take a quick pause in the recording.
Okay.
The reason I asked is can got me set for three podcasts coming up. He asked me how I got into computers, how I got into Linux and what type of podcasts I listen to.
So maybe we can generate some interest and get some more people in the chat room here on mumble. I'm on Pumble with my Android phone.
And I must add, it's 923 Eastern time. We missed the 9 a.m. Happy New Year for whoever is.
I should say east of Australia. We did a, we did a 830 shout out for Australia, but I have no idea who is at the 9 a.m. Cut off mark Eastern time for Happy New Year.
I think it's more of Australia. Unfortunately, I got the, what the jump on my, on my phone, but I got something to convert to UTC because the whole, if you go in, do you, you can bring up the, there's a page we're doing for the show notes.
And then bring that up. You can check to see what the, what the countries are and stuff.
I don't remember which, which, I guess I got to do a conversion for UTC. It comes in 930.
Yeah, I think is that on the etherpad?
Yeah, I, I tool him on Pumble. I got like three computers set up downstairs, but my wife's out and it's me and my youngest son.
He's having some breakfast. So I have a plumble open. I have an chat open and I can bounce out of this and go into Chrome web web browser to check out the etherpad.
And I use, I use team viewer to go into the computer, to remote into the computer that I have one of the number recordings on.
Okay. Yeah. I had to look in, I had to look it up. I forgot about etherpad. I have to look it up and see what's in there.
Let me see. Okay. Because I haven't checked it since early this morning.
Okay. Oh, there's a lot of stuff in there. Yeah. Can this update a big time?
Oh, North Korea is next at 1830, at 1530.
Playing, I'm who, John Lynn, Napa, I doubt if they're listening.
Who knows? There's somebody American working there that I'll listen to us.
Yeah, but he can he get a connection? That's the question.
Don't know.
Shouldn't say he, it might be a she.
Fair enough.
Well, answer this question for me. On etherpad it has North Korea at 1530, Saturday.
Why does it jump back to Saturday, 1500 with China Philippines and 10 more?
Not sure. Let me take a look.
It might just be out of sequence, but everything else was in sequence.
I was wondering, I don't know, after a couple of glasses of Jack Daniels or Jim Beam,
you're focused in the wander.
I am not sure.
Well, tell us about yourself.
Sorry, I got to leave because I have a little man in my arms who seems to be very fussy.
All right. So how far back do you want to go? What do you want to know?
Do you want to know my early days of computing? Do you want to know how I got into
Linux? Me in general? What do you want to know?
Well, whatever. I hear the little man in your arms. Just give us a general description.
What are you doing now? What are you up to? How did you start?
Just give us something to talk about. Have something on the podcast in a couple of weeks.
We can put it on HPR.
Well, let's see. I am at home at the moment. My wife is out with my daughter,
and I am home with my little one-year-old son, Oliver.
Let's see. I pretty much grown up in the Northeast.
I was actually born in Illinois, but only I spent a year there,
so I don't remember anything about it.
But I spent, like I was talking earlier, around two years old.
I moved to one of the first houses in Jersey, and then I lived in one other after that.
And then I moved here to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where I've kind of bounced around to different places
in Massachusetts, and now kind of landed in a place called Yarmouth.
Back 20 years ago, I started as a 16-year-old clerk at a local grocery store chain called Stop and Shop.
It's also the same company that owns in other regions of Giant.
I've been doing it for 20 years. I've been working in produce,
and I've worked my way up to being a department head produce manager.
I've stuck with it because it's a union corporation. It's a union shop.
And I mean, up until a couple of years ago, we weren't even paying for our healthcare.
We had free healthcare, and even now with healthcare, we're only paying 25 dollars a week,
which you can't really beat that.
I've spent enough time with the company that I make decent money,
and the healthcare is so cheap that it seems very difficult to find another job that has that.
And with a family of four, it's hard to give that up.
So I've stuck with the job, kind of hate the job, but at the same time,
like I said, it's one of those things I kind of have to do,
which is also why I was saying earlier that I like doing things like this,
because it keeps more of my hobby-slash passion.
Since I was younger, I started off with the old DOS machine
that I used to play with. A lot of fun. I used to go on to local BBSs,
and download files, upload files, there were little games,
do whatever their chatting type stuff was.
I remember with one of my first paychecks from my job,
I bought my first dial-up internet, and I've always just been very interested in computers.
I've never had money to run any big, powerful machines, so I've always...
I think that was one of the big appeals for Linux,
was right around the time that XP was really starting to push the whole product key,
because I believe there was always a product key before.
But back in the day, we used to have one copy of Windows 3.1,
that my father owned, and he would put it on all of our machines in the house,
and then we'd use that for, if my father helped out somebody else working on their machine,
he would put it on their computers too, and it wouldn't matter.
But with XP, they really started to push the whole licensing.
It'd make it so that the machine wouldn't even boot up after,
what is it, 12 days, 7 days, without a proper key,
or then you couldn't do anything with it, it would boot up and you couldn't do anything with it.
It was also around the time I was trying to help out other people's computers,
and not having a product key for their computers,
it made things difficult to change or upgrade,
so when I was...
go back a little bit further, I've always been trying to get out of this job,
so I was trying to get out of my job,
so I went and tried the A plus certification exam, and I failed it.
And even looking back at some of the things that I think I've...
the questions I've failed on were just stupid, I think it's just kind of...
I don't test well.
I see a question, and one of these type of tests,
they like to word things in such a plain way that, you know,
unless you really know what that answer is,
what if the math that you don't get it until you look at it later and go,
oh, wait a minute, that makes perfect sense.
But I failed it, so I went to...
there's a local community college here, so I went to the local community college,
and they had a whole track that's basically designed towards the A plus certification,
some general Windows classes, some general IT type classes,
and then they had two classes that were just completely specific to the A plus certification.
It was one for software, one class for software, one class for the hardware.
And I really enjoyed taking those classes, that was a lot of fun,
because back when I was in school and high school,
I took basically every computer class that my high school offered,
and it was all...
it was all general stuff.
Like I learned, back in the classes I learned in high school,
I learned a little bit about spreadsheets and stuff,
but I did retain any of it,
and when I took the classes at the college,
and I learned like they went over,
so good depth, one of the classes did,
went over good depth of Microsoft Office,
so they went into, you know, a lot of the general stuff were word and Excel.
I retained a lot of that stuff from Excel,
and I'm really glad that I did,
because that stuff is, you know,
learning spreadsheets is...
and there's a lot of powerful things you can do with a spreadsheet.
So, I forgot where I was.
So, I wind up taking these classes,
and during the classes,
during the hardware section,
I, the guy ran the class in several machines,
and we broke up into groups,
and we built the machines from the ground up.
He bought, like, off of a new egg,
like one of those kits,
where you can build it from the ground up,
like you put the CPU on the motherboard,
you attach the motherboard to the case,
you connect the power supply,
you show us how to use a multimeter to,
or a multimeter height,
and which ones, which...
So, to check, you know,
whether the power supply is working,
how to screw it in,
how to get everything connected properly,
how to put the, you know,
your media, your CDADVD drives in,
get them plugged in and working,
all things I've done before.
So, I had a lot of fun doing that,
and once you were done with that,
you were to do two things.
You were to install, I think, windows on it,
and then you were...
he had several versions of Ubuntu,
because he found like a Ubuntu,
a magazine, or something like that.
This was back in
Ubuntu 7.
7.04, maybe?
6.07, I believe.
And so, you know,
we all put...
he had a Ubuntu,
he had regular Ubuntu,
Ubuntu,
want to say, Ubuntu,
and then a one called free-spire.
And so,
I took the class,
and I learned how to...
my first experiences with Linux,
and, you know, we took...
we did the whole installing it on the machine,
setting up a dual boot,
and I thought that was really cool.
And so, I took home a copy of free-spire,
and started playing with that,
and free-spire
had a copy of open office
pre-installed on it,
and that version of open office
of the...
right around this time,
office was starting their own
there's the...
there's a...
DOC,
there wouldn't know along with the DOC files,
they went to a DOCX file,
right around the time.
So, the version of open office
that I downloaded onto windows
was not able to open a DOCX file,
but the version that was installed
on free-spire
and so I stuck with that,
and I played around with that
for quite some time,
and I just...
after a while, I had the dual boot going,
but I found myself not going back
to windows anymore,
so I went, you know,
whole hug into...
until Linux,
I ran free-spire for a while,
but then started going into...
I think Ubuntu,
and then I went into...
all up until
the GNOME Unity switch,
and my biggest gripe
with Unity
was GNOME,
I felt like I had control over,
like I could change
where stuff was on the screen,
and with Unity,
everything seemed locked down,
like I couldn't move
where the bars were and stuff,
I think that's one of all the reasons
why I like a Lightman,
you know, status bars,
and configure things,
how you want it to be configured,
is very, very simple,
so I've always been a huge
Enlightenment person,
so I just rambled on for quite a while,
so I guess
you have any comments or questions
to send me?
Well, that's good.
That's a good introduction.
I'm about like you.
I'm going to go...
I've gone through all those phases.
You do what you got to do
for your family.
Don't let anybody say
otherwise for you.
You're doing what you got to do,
and so you do it.
I, like you,
I went back to school,
after I got out of the Army,
and 2012,
the year, the VA
here in the US,
had a thing called the Veterans
Program,
where veterans could go back to school
without using the
VA Program
that everybody knows about for going to school,
and you could go back
and retrain for
stuff. They would pay you
like $1,500 a month,
up to 12 months,
and so I went back to school
to my local community college,
and I
signed up for computers,
but the problem I had was
they were all invested
into Windows.
Windows 7, and I was a Linux guy.
I had to put
a Windows partition
on my computer,
so I could go to school,
but I was into the Linux Mint
and OpenSusa,
and I didn't use Ubuntu too much.
Like you, I didn't like
the Unity Toolbar,
and I couldn't control it.
I'm a freak
when it comes to
customizing your Linux thing.
If I'm going to sit in front
of my computer all day,
I wanted to look and act
just like I wanted.
I don't like default setups
or anything.
I like all the buzz
bells and whistles
of your setup.
I like my stuff to look like I'm
looked the way I wanted to.
I went back, I learned
all about the Windows 7,
I took the certification exams,
but after 12 months
I realized I did...
Well, I wasn't interested
in Windows, so I took a couple of classes
on the Linux Academy
and the Linux Foundation,
and I wasn't looking
for a job or anything.
I just, you know, increasing my knowledge,
I took the exams, I passed,
and I've been
Linux since about year 2000.
You know, I'm not one
of those guys that
you can talk to
and ask me
about everything Linux,
but I know how to go on the Google
and I can type it in,
and I can tell you an answer.
I'm the guy that people come to,
you know, if something's wrong
with their Windows computers,
because nobody where I live
uses some Linux,
but my career arc
or life arc
is about like yours, you know.
You just get in the Linux,
you do what you like to do,
and you do what you have to do.
So, that's my thing.
I remember I started out
with Linux with a NOPEX
CD back in 2000,
2001, 2002.
I had a couple of Toshiba
laptops,
and I think there was a guy
online that had a website.
I can't remember his name.
He used to be on tech TV
called Chris Something.
I can't remember his last name.
And one of his websites
had a Linux sub-director
and I used to read that every day.
I used to come in my RSS feeder,
reader feeder,
and I used to read about Linux,
and I had known about Linux
in 1996,
1997, 1998.
And I used to read about this,
and I said, yeah, that's something I like.
I hated Windows 95,
I hated Windows 3.1,
and all of Windows 98,
and so I started reading
this Linux feed every day.
And they had this thing
on there one time
where you could send
off for a Linux
NOPEX CD
from Germany.
And so I ordered that
about two months later.
I got a Linux NOPEX CD
from Germany,
tried to put it on my
Toshiba laptops,
didn't work at first
because I didn't know much about those.
You had to go into bios
and change to read the CD,
and I fixed that,
and I ran NOPEX CD,
I ran a live NOPEX CD,
and that's how I got in the Linux.
And after that, I said,
well, what Linux distro do I want to use?
And I think the first
distro I had
was on a new Dell 2006
computer,
a 5 Linux
Dell 510 desktop computer.
I got
from Dell,
and I went to
Linux,
and I think it was
10 or 10.1,
and I put it on
my Dell,
and brand new Dell 510,
which had
Windows 98 on it,
ended up
clearing out, wiping out
the backup partition
that Dell had on there
for Windows 98,
I think it was 98,
that's what it was.
And so I couldn't go back
to Windows XP,
but I had this
very customized
OpenSusa 10.1 or 10
I had on there,
and it worked great.
I could do all the
the cube stuff, I could flip it
and everything,
and everything worked for me,
and so that's how I got in the
Linux.
And so I went to
Linux Mint,
and I found that with Linux Mint,
I could customize it
the way I wanted to.
I like
I like Compense,
I like blurry,
I like all the
Trans-Susa 10.1
and so I went
to Linux Mint,
I found that with Linux Mint,
I could customize it the way I wanted to.
I like all the
Trans-Susa Toolbars
and all that other stuff.
If I said to myself,
if I was going to sit in front of
a computer for 20 hours a day
or 10 hours a day,
I wanted to look the way I wanted to.
So I went to Linux Mint,
and I've been using Linux Mint since then.
Right now I'm on Linux Mint 17.2.
The only reason
I haven't gone up to the
Linux Mint 18 versions is
because I use a certain
portion of Compense
and Emeral
where I have certain
toolbars that I like,
and they don't transfer
to Linux Mint 18 or 18.1
or 18.2
whatever they're on right now.
So I'm stuck on
a LTS version
of Linux Mint 17.2
Mata.
It works,
it does everything I do.
It's good
until I think
2019-2020
and then I have to start
finding a new
Linux distro. Every time
a new Linux distro drops
I download it,
I install it on a
USB key
and try it
and see if I can
use all the customizations
that I have on my
current Linux Mint
and it doesn't work
so I stick with 17.2
because it works,
looks the way I like it
and I just don't want to change.
One of those kind of people
you know, everybody says,
well you should
update to the newest version,
but I'm one of them guys
that says if it works,
don't change.
Again, about
Ubuntu Mata.
I didn't hear all that.
Have you tried looking at
Ubuntu Mata?
Yep, that's what I'm on now.
17.2 Ubuntu Mata.
So you see you might call
the top-est type stuff
and what I can tell
Ubuntu Mata
is on the top-est
on the top-est.
Yep, the version of my line
right now, 17.2 Mata.
The next Mint
is the last gen
that uses
emerald, in particular emerald.
I have certain themes
on emerald that I like
and the version 18
that came out a couple of years ago
in 18.1
and the newest version,
you can't use the versions
I have.
When you boot that into
18.1
it is now
or you install it
straight to your hard drive,
all my themes
come up as the basic
old-looking
late 1990s Linux stuff.
And that looks ugly
and I like my stuff
but look the way I like it.
So I always go back
to Linux Mata 17.2.
Very cool.
Now, did you
take all the classes for the certifications?
Did you wind up passing all
like the A plus certifications
and which certifications did you take?
I took the A plus certification.
They offered that
when we graduated.
I took that and I passed that.
But I wasn't interested in windows
and stuff like that.
That was their focus.
They wanted you
at the tech school I went to.
They wanted you to go into a job
with the Linux
that used windows
all the time.
I wasn't a windows guy.
I was a Linux guy.
And so when I graduated
I told them hello and goodbye.
I took the certifications exam
in Atlanta.
Sometimes August
2012 I passed it
because they taught
the test.
And so I passed that
and you go online
Linux Foundation
and the Linux Academy
they do certifications
for Linux.
I took a couple of courses
with that.
I knew a lot of
over the years.
I've been involved
with computers since about 1998.
Officially,
I've been using computers since 1978
when my dad had a computer.
And I knew
I just knew a lot of stuff
about Linux and computers.
And so I took the Linux certifications
and I passed those.
But you know, I'm an old
retired guy.
I'm not going to go out
into society
and use it working for a job.
It's just general knowledge for me.
I'm just a guy who likes stuff.
You know?
If you've got knowledge,
you can use it
or I'll learn about it.
But that's how I got into Linux.
That's how I use Linux today.
Yeah, when I finished the
schooling, I really
should have went for the courses
while I was still all first
of my mind and stuff.
But with those certification courses,
I mean, for the A-plus,
it's too test you have to take
and they're like $154 per test.
And you know,
that's I got to come up
with to take these tests
that I didn't have just lying around
to get these.
Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
It is expensive.
But like I said, that was included
in our tuition.
And we could take that
certification if we wanted to or not.
And so I just took it
for a lot. I was never going to use it.
In my neighborhood,
everybody knows me as the computer guy
after all with their windows computer.
I'll attempt to fix it.
I always tell them I don't have
Linux. I mean,
I don't have windows on any computers
in my house.
I don't use windows.
But I know so many people
that still use windows
that they always ask me,
can you fix this? Can you fix that?
And so I attempt
but I don't make a guarantee.
I haven't touched the windows
machine so long that
I don't I don't think I could
properly fix it anymore.
Plus a lot of it.
It seems like so much
in the windows world is so
illogical. I mean,
you know, I'm used to
like a simple
apt-get update
and I have it actually update.
I look at some of the windows machines
I go to their update center
and it just sits there and hangs
or it'll give me like
three updates and then I'll
check it again and give me another three updates.
So I'm just used to drop
into command line.
So do apt-get update.
So do apt-get upgrade.
And it does everything for me.
And it'll show me everything.
And it makes sense.
You know, I have such a hard time
when I'm working on somebody else's
machine and I'm going,
you know, it'll say something's
not great.
I forgot how to do updates
and windows.
Well, what finally
made me after I got out of school
the final time in 13
I had a windows 7 partition
and I had a Linux Mint partition.
And the only reason I had
the windows 7 partition was
because I was in school.
But I got rid of it
one day I went to
the windows update
down into systems
toolbar.
And I tried to update
windows 7.
And it just took
days and days and days
to get that current version of windows
for whatever that first Tuesday
was for that month.
And apparently
I could not update my windows 7 computer.
So I just killed
and wiped that windows 7 partition.
When windows 8
came out,
you know, they had that
free update that any
windows 7 user could use.
And so I tried that.
But the thing was you had
had an up to date
windows 7 computer.
And apparently
that problem stuck around
so long that windows
Microsoft had
to come out with some kind of
tech info that
you had to apply to your computer
to get through that windows 7 update.
There was something
that was making everybody's
computer stick at windows 7
and you could go into
the windows update
and click it and try to
apply these updates.
And it would take days and days and days.
It was some kind of bug.
And after that I just said to heck with it.
When windows 10 came out,
they said if you got windows 7
or windows 8 on your computer,
you can update the windows 10.
And I hadn't been using windows
for about two years.
I think it was last year.
I remember around July was the time
was the last time you could
update to windows 10 for free.
So just on a dark
I tried to update to windows 10.
I reinstalled windows 7
on a back that I had
to a partition.
And it was still there.
I had that crazy update
for windows 7 that never would
complete. I did
upload to a certain point
all the updates and then it would
just stop and then it would
want to take hours
and hours and hours to get through.
I did find on google
that there was a patch
that you had to
download from Microsoft
for windows 7 computers
that would fix that constant
updating.
I tried it a couple of times.
It never did work.
I just wiped all my windows 7
backups and never tried windows 10
again. I think last year
around July when they finished,
when they were saying this is
the last time you could
update the windows 10 for free.
My sister had a windows 7
computer and she wanted me
to update it to windows 10.
She did it on her own
but she wanted something else
done so she brought it down
for me to look at.
And that was the last time
I used a windows computer
was trying to transfer
some files for her.
But like I said,
I don't have windows 10
anymore.
Never tried it.
Never tried windows 10.
If people ask me,
I say what the first thing I
asked them is what kind of
computer operating system you
have. They say windows 10.
I don't know anything about windows 10
but I'll look at it.
I'll see if I can work on it
and fix whatever problem you
have. About six months ago,
I inserted a
Ubuntu USB key
downloaded all his documents
files, his music,
and pictures, and videos
and everything.
I told him I said I can't do
anything. I went through all the
procedures and reset
his windows computer
and I think I went to the
Microsoft website and
downloaded windows 10
for him, put in a product key
that he had for windows 7
and put in a new install
for windows 10 for him
and then I put back in all his
documents folder.
But that's the last time
I've ever used windows
or windows 10.
It's just not on my
horizon anymore.
I just don't even think about windows anymore.
We're able to just take
a windows 7 product key
and put it into windows 10.
It didn't require you to install windows 7
and then do like an upgraded
to windows 10.
No, the thing with windows 10
was there is a back door
with windows 10. If you have a windows 7
or windows 8 product
key because you had
previous versions of windows
you could do a clean
metal install
a windows 10. So basically
you want to take the whole
windows 10.
You can download windows 10
OS
install it
and when it came to
the certification or activation
you put in the windows 7 key
that you had
on this windows computer
and I had the windows 7
certification
activation key
and it continues on
finishes downloading updates
and you have a version of windows 10.
That's actually
kind of cool.
I want to say good
more into Mr. Naywise.
Good morning, gentlemen. How are you doing?
Great to be on the show again.
Hey, Naywise, I've listened to you a few
of your podcasts.
Yeah, it's been a while since I recorded
something. I have fully recorded
a couple of shows in 2016.
Pick it up in 2017.
Thanks for recognizing me, I guess.
I'm an avid
HPR listener and I sometimes
come to rebute when I
get the urge to record
mostly on the car.
As for tradition, I always try to
be there on the new year's eve
to listen to what everybody is talking about
and chip in.
We appreciate it. That's for sure.
We were talking about windows
update fails. Have you ever had
any windows update fails
where it just kind of sits
on windows?
Yeah, it's always a tricky one.
I only have one windows machine
in the house anymore.
I have a windows 10
Surface Pro 4.
I have done one windows 10
update on my Surface Pro 3
and I know enough
about windows 10 updates to
not do them on PCs
that do not belong to me
if I don't have to do it professionally
as those are the patients
that kind of die on your operating table
sometimes, sometimes.
Mostly windows,
I had like a windows 8
machine here this week
very old clunker.
It was a hard
driver's rattling all over the place
so it was probably running
about 57 Russian Trojans
and you know the windows 10
updates button popped up
but it was full of pictures and
they didn't have time to take
the windows out
on it.
Well, night wise up.
Glad you're on.
Like I said, I've listened to
some of your podcasts
in the past.
You're one of those guys
that uses everything.
You use windows,
you use Mac,
you use Linux,
and anything else that can pop up.
And I like hearing from a guy
who has windows,
or whatever.
And you'd be recording.
You're a good kind of guy
for HBR.
Yeah, I kind of like
I spent quite a few hours
a day in the car
and I've been podcasting since
I think 2005 or something
and I started out doing my
first season of the podcast
also entirely in the car
on the iRiver
with a lapel with a bell
in lapel mic.
I've always been, you know,
it's my favorite studio.
I just sit down
and do my thing.
I'm a cross-platform guy.
That's correct.
I have three machines in the house.
I work on.
I've got the Surface Pro 4
Windows 10 machine.
I've got an XPS 13 running
Ubuntu.
I'm doing Plex
and all kinds of media stuff
and two Raspberry Pi's
and a Chromebook.
So I'm kind of all over the place.
I have an iOS tablet
and an Android phone.
So there, I think I've got
everything covered except
I don't know.
It's too warm or something.
Yeah, Niklas.
I used a lot of your podcast
to try to get me.
I've tried to put Plex
on my current
Lenovo laptop.
It works occasionally.
Correctly the way I want it to.
But basically I just
I download and see what's new once.
And I really don't use Plex.
If I have stuff
that I want to watch on my TV
I just plug in an HD
in my cables since all I do
is sit in my office
and I have a big
36 inch sharp LCD TV
next to my computer
and I just swap the files
that way.
I have a Roku
with all my apps on it
and I have a push button
wireless connector
for my Roku
and the Plex and the Chromecast
and everything else and so
I don't use Plex that much.
But like I said,
I'd listen to all your podcasts
in the past.
I haven't done so
very much this year.
I see occasionally you pop
up on HPR and I try to listen to
some of your posts.
Thanks.
I guess I use Plex a lot.
We live in Belgium,
as you know.
So we don't get all of
the Netflix content that we want
to talk about here.
So I've been a cable cutter
since I think
2013.
We chucked our cable box
out the window
and we only have internet.
So we have two TVs in the house
with Chromecast connected.
I've got a Linux server running Plex.
It has all of my media on it
that I've archived.
I also have an application
running called Sonar
which kind of
downloads my show automatically.
Any new shows I want to follow
are downloaded automatically.
Pushed into Plex.
My wife can use her tablet
to select whatever she wants
to select and play it
on a TV using the Chromecast.
This system has to be
100% wife and girlfriend safe
and it is.
So I'm pretty happy with that.
And everything we don't have on Plex.
I kind of catch on Netflix.
Well, well,
nice to see you.
You sound pretty good.
Can you describe what kind of setup
you're using right now?
The talk on HBR?
The setup I'm using right now
is Plumble,
which is an Android client
on my Galaxy S6.
And I have a Bluetooth headset
hanging around my neck
and the Bluetooth headset
to roll that verve rider.
So I'm talking over Bluetooth.
Doing a push to talk
on my Galaxy S6
using Plumble
and my Wi-Fi connection.
You sound real good.
You're very clear.
I don't know how I sound.
I'll play sound all right.
I'm using Plumble also.
I got it last year.
I do the guy a couple of dollars
since it was a donation type
application.
And that's what I'm using.
Push to talk. I also have HBR
up on a Firefox browser.
And I can also listen to it
with VLC.
But you sound very good.
Very, very good.
Professional setup.
Well, I am very happy
with the headset I bought.
I wanted to have some earbuds
that did not
have a cable attached to it.
So because what I would do
is put them in my pocket
and they would end up in the washer dryer.
So I wanted something without wires.
But I thought if I'm going to just
have two earbuds with a cable in between
I'm going to put them in my pocket
and they're going to end up in the washer dryer
and they'll be dead.
So I went for this.
Well, it's kind of a bracelet
around your neck, I guess,
with two earbuds hanging side-by-side.
One is pretty close to my throat,
which probably gives me
the warmth of sound
that you get
that you don't get with the lapel mic,
which is kind of in front of your chest.
So it sounds really good.
It's a nice headset.
It costs about, I think, 80 euros.
It works throughout the house.
I guess I can leave my phone in the kitchen
and sit upstairs and use it.
And I'm pretty pleased with it.
I'm also very happy
that it sounds this good.
Because me and my buddy,
Katy Murray, have been recording
a nightwise comm episode
using plumble
while I was driving in the car.
So over a 4G connection
using plumble
while driving from where I live
in the east of Belgium
and we even had conversations
while I was
in highway tunnels
with River
and we still had a very good
sounding podcast to show for.
Can you tell me that?
I'm going to type it
in the Google right now.
I'm looking for a Bluetooth type.
I'm just using a regular Amazon
headset
with a microphone
pushed to talk
and all that for my plumble connection.
And I've been looking for a
nice Bluetooth.
What do you got right there?
What are the names like
and look it up?
That would be the
Motorola Verve Rider
that is a Victor Echo
Romeo,
India Delta Echo Romeo.
I got Motorola
tell me the last
after that.
That would be the Verve Rider
V-E-R-V-E-R-I-D-E-R.
Okay, got it.
I'm looking at it right now.
Yeah, that's what I need.
I'm looking for, since everybody
switching over to the Bluetooth
or taking out
their connections
for regular
headphones and going to
USB or micro
and trying to see what it is.
Okay, I see Verve Life.
$99.99
US
Verve Collar
where Bluetooth earbuds
Okay, yeah.
I might have to switch over to that.
Okay, so it sounds very good,
very warm,
everything. You don't have any trouble
losing them or anything.
They do come with the strap.
So that's what I need.
Something that I won't lose.
Yeah, they look pretty good.
I'm not trying. They say they're in stock.
So I might order them right now.
Thank you.
That is not a problem.
They come with a collar.
So they are bracelet
or a collar that's around your neck
and that's why I bought them.
You also have the Verve Writer Plus
which are which are
which are waterproof.
But they are freaking orange.
So I also used them at work and stuff.
So freaking orange was not an option.
Yeah, that's exactly what I need.
I don't go out too much
except for doctor in the grocery store.
But I'm in the house
if I'm not in my office.
I see the orange that you're talking about.
What can you tell me about the PowerPack
Slim 2400 Charger?
Work 3999.
It says it's free.
I wouldn't know.
I didn't get that one
where I ordered it.
It came without the charger.
But it's basically a charger that charges it up.
I just use a micro USB connector
and I use my phone's charger.
You get about six hours of battery life.
I haven't tested that in duration.
But I have used it for almost an entire day.
So I'm pretty happy with it.
Yeah, I see.
It says it's up to 150 feet of range.
It works on Siri and Google now.
And mentioning Siri,
do you use it for your iOS device?
I got to be honest.
I got it for Christmas.
So I haven't paired it with my iOS device as yet.
So I'm as soon as I can try that out.
I'll give it a try now.
I'm kind of a versed to voice command related stuff.
I don't like stuff like Siri or Google now.
Although it's handy to voice command.
I have something like I don't know.
I don't like my tech listening to me waiting me for to give a command.
So I haven't tried it with that with Siri yet.
Yeah, well, I know what you mean about your device listening to you in the background.
What kind of iOS device do you have?
Do you have the newest Apple cellphone?
No, I have the iPad Mini 4 and it's the LTE version.
That's basically my entertainment system.
I use it when I'm on the road.
I make my maps on it.
It's going to be my portable library.
Okay, that was just wondering.
If you tried the new Apple AirPods at all, I'm Android.
Yeah, I got an old blue Bravo Luna uniform plus phone.
So from about 2015, it has Android 5.1 on it.
I'm not up to the current Android because it's a cheap phone.
I bought it for Amazon for $110 about two years ago and haven't bought any new phones.
I'm not one of those guys that buy new Android phones all the time.
So I'm not up to Plex with Android 7.0 or anything.
I can't go to Android 6.0.
I see with blue devices, they do have a couple of devices that have Android 6 on them.
But I use my phone.
I try to keep it updated and I'm not one of them.
I try to keep up to date every day on the minute all the time, kind of people.
My phone is used. I use my apps and I talk to talk on the phone occasionally.
That's kind of same with me.
My phone is my lifeline for my company and I also work as a subcontractor.
So my phone is extremely important to me.
I am on a Galaxy S6, not the latest and greatest, but I am pretty pleased with it at stable.
I was on the OnePlus 1 when it just came out, had some early bugs with it.
And I can tell you if your phone is not reliable and you have a business, you go nuts.
So going for the experimental on my phone side and going with all these crazy mods
or going to the latest and greatest Android all the time is something that I'm not really looking for
because my phone has to just be rock solid stable.
So it's also not the latest and greatest, but the S6 is proving to be a very reliable workhorse for me.
So I'm very pleased with that.
Although I'm not going to iOS for my phone.
I want the level of control that I have to do crazy stuff from time to time
or just chuck over some files or run a client-like sync thing or stuff like that.
Yeah, I've been trying to check on Amazon and see what kind of phones I can get
that I can check out.
I've been looking at the Nexus 6 and Nexus 5.
I see your Samsung Galaxy S6.
Can you put a SynodGin mod on that or anything?
You know, the old SynodGin mod.
Now they're going to whether it's a lineage OS.
Can you put the old SynodGin mod on there?
I think so, but I guess I'll have to root it.
As I said, once again, this is my work from.
So the one I rely on for my business.
So I'm not doing anything experimental on that.
I've just got the playing Android OS on there that comes with the S6.
And I have a different launcher on there to get rid of the nasty touchwiz interface.
And that's it.
So I'm not rooting it.
I'm not robbing it with anything different.
So I'm not really sure whether or not you can put something else on here.
Like I said, I had the blue plus a body year ago.
I updated it and had a good update.
I ended up downloading the Nova launcher, putting on there.
I like my stuff customized the way I like it.
I don't like anything involved with it.
Put it on there about two months ago.
I did get a blue update because I don't know if you guys read the news,
but blue was apparently sending stuff through back channels to China.
And so they had to issue an update on blue phones.
Bravo Luna uniform phones to cut out that back channel update.
But I'm still stuck on 5.1 Android.
I can have to see what I'm on for the moment.
Well, the ending information you can pump out, I'll take.
Like I said, I go to Amazon every day and I check their unlock phones and see.
I'm not one of those guys that wants to pay three, four, five hundred dollars for a phone.
And I can put that on the computer and that's what I'll do with that money.
If I can get a phone for two hundred dollars or less, I'll use it.
It might not be up to date, Android.
But if I can customize it and make it look the way I want and work the way I want,
then I'll buy it.
Like I said, I bought this blue plus for a hundred and ten dollars from Amazon a year and a half ago.
It works great. I keep it up to date.
I get all the updates through Google play updates.
I think the only thing I put on here that I use all the time that's not in the play store is the mix explorer file explorer.
I don't use the traditional file explorer.
It's like M-I-X-P-L-O-R-E-R Explorer file explorer that I got on X-D-A.
It works great.
Just to check my galaxy is on Android 6-0-1 and I use the Apex launcher.
I saw that the other day I was looking and I saw those for the galaxy and the others.
Like I said, I'm just looking for a newer file and a hundred and ten hundred and fifty dollars, two hundred dollars.
I can get a new file every year and I just want to get at least Android 6 on a phone.
Like I said, I'm not up to the latest and greatest. I don't need Android 7.
But if I can find an unlocked phone for T-Mobile that is the telco that I use,
if I can find an Android 6 phone that's in my price range and I'll get it.
Yeah, I totally understand. As for high end phones, I just have mostly the high end phones for the battery
because when I'm out and about these things are my lifeline, but I totally...
I'm looking at the OnePlus 3 that is kind of a good price range and a very sober yet up-to-date version of Android.
Yeah, the reason I got this Blue X 2, well, Blue Plus X, a couple of years ago,
was they had a 4,200 or 4,000 battery in it because I could go for like two days without charging this battery.
That's what I love about this phone. It might not be the latest and greatest Android,
but it's got this big old battery in it and it's a very thin phone and it works great.
You know, everything was working fine until a couple of months ago when they said they had that back door information going to China
and they issued an update real quick and so I'm still using it. It works. It uses all the apps I got.
I have a great many apps. It's not a big RAM-type phone,
but I have a 32GB SD card in it, micro SD card in it, and it does what I need to do.
Basically, that's all what you can expect from technology.
Say, guys, it's been great chatting to you, but over here in GMT Plus 1 it's turning on 430 in the afternoon.
We are slowly going to get ready for our New Year's Eve with friends,
so I'm going to let you guys slide and wish everybody at HPR a very, very happy 2017.
Okay, Nightwise. See you around, Reg.
Okay, Nightwise. Nightwise, thank you for coming in. For some how I've become the default host of this right now,
I had not planned on doing this. I only started on the HPR New Year's last year,
and I was interjected a couple of times last year, but seems like I'm the host right now.
So thank you for all you do. I like your podcast. Keep it up, do what you can, and we'll see you later. Thank you.
Roger, Roger, have a great one. Bye, guys.
All right, since no one else is talking, I think I'll jump in and say hi to everyone.
My name is Dan, or go by GearW in the IRC.
First time calling Anna one of these New Year's shows, I hope my level sound good.
I had forgotten I didn't have mumble on this computer, so this morning I installed it, tried to get everything set up,
so I hope this sounds okay. So anyway, I am going to be up front here and start out by saying
I have never contributed an HPR episode to talking here on this, but I am in the process of recording a couple things.
So hopefully we'll be on a more regular basis, but I've listened to HPR for a long time.
I really enjoy everybody's perspective on things and getting different views and content, you know,
from episode to episode, and I just think it's a great thing.
So a little bit about me, I'll just keep talking here to someone else, jumps in, so feel free any time.
But just a little bit about me, I got into Linux, so 93 or 94 when I was in college,
just kind of an alternative to Windows, always kind of like the underdog, stuff like that.
So I tried it out, really enjoyed it. Back in those days, it was kind of one adventure after another.
It's like, hey, I got it installed for the first time on my computer.
Hey, I just got audio working or the X Windows server set up.
And, you know, each one of those was a great accomplishment.
And just making Linux back then do some of the things that we could do with Windows or other operating systems
was kind of cool and awesome. So a little bit after college, I went to work for a large insurance firm.
But then after that, or while it was in that job, I contributed to an open source project to do a Linux software stack for handhelds,
PDAs, which were popular at the time, right around the year 2000.
And that led to a job down here in Texas, where I now live doing that for a company down here.
Currently, I do web-based software for businesses at a company, but I still use Linux wherever I can.
Unfortunately, we're more of a Windows shop nowadays, but I still use my Linux where I can not regard so.
Anyway, that's just a little bit about me.
I don't know, is anyone else on here right now?
I didn't really have anything planned.
Hey there, is it, Reg?
Anybody heard that? I'm using a plumber client with push-to-talk, and I don't know if I was talking when I was talking about Linux and not-ex.
Did you hear that, DRW? Damn, did you hear that?
No, not until you just started talking and get here.
What I was saying was, I had gotten into Linux back in the late 1990s through a guy called Chris Perillo.
Yeah, he was on a tech TV show.
Oh yeah, I remember him from like screen savers every now and then.
Yeah, and stuff.
Call for help with Leo Laporte.
But he also had a website that he ran called Locker Nome.
And Locker Nome had a subdirectory that you could go to that had Linux on it.
And I was, I was a guy that said, what is this Linux thing?
Because I hated Windows 95 and I hated Linux 98.
I had Linux 95 on my Toshiba laptops.
And I started getting into Windows 3.1.
I remember you could do all these modifications to Windows 3.1 that you could get and make it work like Windows 95.
Back then, this was like 1990, 1994, 1995.
But I got, I went on this Locker Nome website and whoever was running the subdirectory for Linux said you could go to the NOPEX website and ask for a free live NOPEX CD.
And I think NOPEX was one of the first distros that had a live CD.
So I went to the NOPEX website and ordered a live CD.
And like I said, this was 99, 2000, 2001.
I can't remember the exact year.
And about two months later, I got me a NOPEX CD and tried to run it on my Toshiba laptops.
Well, I didn't know anything about the BIOS stuff that you had to do and play around with getting the BIOS computer to look at the CD first before it looked at the hard drive for an operating system.
And so finally, I learned that you had to tune the BIOS to look at the CD first before it looked at the hard drive.
And I had NOPEX on my computer and that's how I got into Linux.
Cool.
Yeah, it was always, you know, when I first started to, I really, you know, kind of saw it as an adventure.
You know, just learning new things, something doesn't work, you know, you do research, you try to, you know, find a way to actually get it to work for you.
And that was always fun.
I think some of the times I learned the most was when I really screwed things up or didn't do things right the way I should have.
And now I guess I'm a little bit lazy here.
I just kind of want things to work.
I don't want so much adventure.
But, you know, the distros have progressed so far since back in the days.
And yeah, NOPEX was really cool because, yeah, you could just put the disk in and move it up.
And you didn't have to try to install stuff or whatever.
It made it easy for a lot of people, I think, to get into Linux at that time.
The first distro I had was some early version of Slack where I had read about Linux.
It's kind of, you know, an upstart new thing and all of that.
And so I was in college at the time.
And I saved up enough money to get a book.
I don't even remember what it was called.
Linux Unleashed or something like that.
And it came with the disk, the CDE in the back cover that had that version of Slackware.
So that's where I got my first version.
You were an adventurer.
I was about, I was about like you.
I remember my NOPEX live CDE.
I went to the local library here in Middle Georgia.
It's not one of the biggest libraries in the world, you know.
It's one of those little Middle Georgia USA libraries.
They had a couple of Red Hat books.
And they had some CDs in there.
But that wasn't going to work on my Toshiba laptops.
Didn't have very much RAM.
In fact, I think the hard drives on my Toshiba laptops were only 10 gigabytes at the most.
And they didn't work.
But I read about Linux.
Like I said, I went to the lockdown website for Linux and started reading about it and got all into it.
And I got my NOPEX live CDE.
I loaded it all on my Toshiba laptops.
It worked.
It worked.
Once I finally figured out the BIOS stuff.
But there wasn't much I could do with it.
Because, you know, back then everybody had proprietary stuff for the connecting to the internet, for their modems.
And so there wasn't really much you could do.
And I was kind of harder to start it out with the laptop I would think.
Back then things weren't quite as convenient.
I was looking up.
I started out on this regular desktop PC.
So there was a lot less hardware type conflicts or support issues with Linux.
Well, yeah.
With my Toshiba I did.
Like I said, I had an Apple Quadro.
And that was back in the days when Apple was really down and out.
And there wasn't really much you could do with a Quadro unless you use...
I think it was OS 7 I had on there, OS 8.
And that wasn't very good.
Those were the black days of Apple.
And so I didn't even attempt it on that.
But when I finally got into it, I think about 2006 I bought a Dell E510 desktop computer.
And it had a Windows XP Recovery Partition on it.
When they sent it to me, they didn't even send me the recovery disk.
You had to use the Windows XP Recovery Partition.
And the first thing I did was I loaded Ubuntu 6.10 or 6.104 on it.
And one of the things was, you know, back then when you did the install with Linux,
they didn't... they did not warn you upfront that you could be wiping out other information on your computer.
And I inadvertently wiped out that Windows XP Recovery Partition, my Dell computer.
And so I had OpenSUSA 10 or 10.1 and it worked great.
I had all the geek stuff work and I had the cube going and everything.
You had to download... I had an ATI card in it and you had to download this specific software from ATI to run the cube.
But I could not go back to Windows XP.
And so I ended up calling Dell to send me some recovery CDs.
And I used OpenSUSA for about two months.
And then I got my Windows XP CDs and put Windows XP back on the computer.
But I did use OpenSUSA.
And then I found that Ubuntu had this nice new distro out that you could order live CD.
And I put Ubuntu 6.104 on my computer.
And this was back in the days before where I lived.
I had Cox cable. They did not have broadband.
So I was still using the old telephone slow poke update system.
And so when you got an update for Linux, it would take a day to download the newest updates.
Because you had the external modem and it would start downloading and somebody would call into your telephone line
and interrupt and you'd lose the connection and you had to restart.
And those were some awkward days trying to get Linux on a computer that did not have broadband.
So yeah. I did the same thing too that you did on Sony laptop I had where I wiped out the restore partition.
And I even got to the point where I still needed Windows.
I was wanting to do old boot.
And so I contacted Sony and they couldn't even provide me a disk.
We are offered to pay and everything like that.
And I'm like, sorry, we just don't have which was kind of bad I thought.
But I think one of my favorite things back in the day when I was first starting out was
configuring the X Windows system where you had to go in and manually edit the xorg.comp file.
Or it was xf86 free.
I think it was called back then.
And this was, I had the desktop like I said.
And you had the old school monitor, which was the vacuum tube, you know, like televisions back in the day.
And there was, I forget either the horizontal sync or the vertical sync section where you had to set the frequency range that the monitor worked at.
And there is this big warning that above it was like, make sure you use the right values for your monitor.
If you put it in the wrong values, this can result in, you know, the breaking or failure of your monitor or something like that.
So it's always like, I remember going in and like triple checking things as much as I could.
And double checking in and then it's like, save the file, hold your breath, and then try to start up X and see if it works or if your monitor was going to blow up or not.
I'm glad we're past that now with LCDs.
But like I said, it was an adventure kind of scary one in that example.
Yeah, I remember that it was, it was, it was a bad time for Linux. I remember with that Dell.
I lucked out when I had open susa 10 or 10.1. It just worked.
It was one of those, it worked out of the box. And then I could fine tune it the way I like.
But I remember going to that, to that screen where you expected to see the Linux desktop and all you get is the text and it says you have to configure your monitor.
And I'm sitting there, I'm looking at the, the blinking screen and text and I'm going, oh God, I messed up because I had white, my, I had wiped the, the Windows XP recovery.
There was no way I could go online. Right. Find out, find out any information about how I sign in.
Eventually I did, I fixed it. I did like you, like you were talking about. I tuned it to get the monitor to work and I finally signed in to the, to the X award.
And the, the desktop loaded. Once I was on the desktop, I was good to go. But, you know, I played back and forth between open susa 10.1 and Windows XP for a year or two.
And then when, when I finally got into Ubuntu, when you could order those live CDs from Ubuntu, I think it was 6.04 or 6.10.
That's when I said, yep, this is for me. I don't, I hated, I hated Windows XP because it was so, the colors work and icons were so cartoonish.
I hated the way that, that blue top tool bar looked on Windows XP and that bar and the, and the, and the, I'm trying to think the minimize window bar and the restore window on the right hand side, that minus that square and the X, they just look so ugly.
And so I was one of those guys that I, I love to customize my computer so much. And so I did some research and I found window blinds. I don't know if you ever remember a company called window blinds.
The name kind of sounds vaguely familiar, but I never used it or anything.
Well, Windows Blinds was a customization company that you could customize windows to make it look the way you use. So, I dropped $20 to them and I got the Windows Blinds customization software and I put it on my computer.
And you could rate Windows looked the way you wanted it. Like I said, I hated that cartoonish blue tool bar that they had in Windows XP.
Yeah, they had to call that the Fisher Price interface or something like that.
Yep, yep, that was it, that was it. And I went from there, but then when a Bootsy came out, I loaded up and Bootsy, I had a Bootsy partition and I said, this is what I want.
So, if I needed a Windows program, I would sign into Windows, but I used the Bootsy most of the time. And then I got up to like a Bootsy 8.
I had another Dell laptop and I used it until I got to a Bootsy 10. And then I think a Bootsy 10 was when they had the Unity Toolbar.
And I hated the Unity Toolbar because I customized Linux the way I wanted it to look.
You know, I wanted those kind of people that doesn't like the regular default setups on computers.
I said, if I'm going to send a computer in front of a computer 8 to 10 hours a day, I wanted to look and work the way I want to.
So, I hated Ubuntu Unity. I used it and then I remember Linux Mint came out, I think about Linux Mint 12.
And I switched over to Linux Mint Mate 12 and I had my setup. And so, I've been using Linux Mint Mate on all my computers since, whenever that was, I guess it was 2012, 2010 or whatever.
And in fact, that's what I have on my computer right now. I have Linux Mint Mate 172, but it's customized to the Macs.
Right.
So, I'm not up to Linux Mint Mate 18 or 18.1, whatever they're up to now because Emeral and Comp is the way I like to use it is not compatible with those distros.
But I'm on a LTS version. It's still good until 2019, 2020. So, I'll keep it until then.
But every time when Ubuntu comes out with a new distro or Mate or any of the other guys, I always download them and I put them on a USB stick and see.
But none of them seem to work with what I want for a visual appearance works for me.
Right. That makes sense. I've always been a big KDE fan. I remember I think it was the betas of 1.0 when I first downloaded the source and built it and got it running on my computer.
I used now the KDE neon distribution, which is based on Ubuntu. But it's kind of cool because it's based on the LTS Ubuntu base with the kernel and graphics subsystem and all of that.
But then it has the latest and greatest version of neon or KDE built on top of that. And basically the day a new version of KDE comes out. It's available for the distro.
So, I really like it. It's a very nice minimalistic distro, I think. And I know KDE is not always the most loved out there. But like I said, I've been using it for a long time and I know how to go in and tweak the things exactly like I want them to be tweaked like you, you know, get it to be what I'm comfortable with and what I want to use.
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