I'm sure they're doing their best

Paul 00:00

Good evening, Drew. How are you doing? Whoa. Whoa, whoa. I'm a little too close there.

Drew 00:07

Oh no, it's probably better. It sounds like you're in the toilet. I'm definitely not in the toilet. Are you on a new headset? No, no, no. Are you not at all? Are you accidentally using your Apple Laptop mic.

Paul 00:25

Uh oh shit I am. Hold on, hold on, hold on. How do I change that? Hold on, stop.

Drew 00:33

Uh-oh. Paul B is on the call, but Paul B is not making noise. Okay. I I really hope you stitched both of those episodes together. I I I I I I I yeah.

Paul 00:54

So apparently, apparently with lips in, if I hit end call It's fucking over. Well, what it I mean, were the instructions unclear? Like you cannot like rejoin the call, and I could not like change my mic midstream, so Meh, podcasting. Wow. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh well. Everything. How are you? Everything's fun. How are you?

Drew 01:23

Yeah, everything's great. Everything's great now. Uh-huh. You know, I'm okay, buddy. I'm okay. It's you know, work's a lot right now, and I've got other stuff that's driving me crazy. How about you? What's going on with you? Uh

Paul 01:38

Yeah, like the same works free busy. Uh yeah, like last week we Zachary, my son who's in college, had his first real like Oh no, I'm sick.

Drew 01:53

Yeah. Do you wanna do you wanna talk about that? Because you you briefly mentioned it after we finished recording last week. Do you want to talk about it?

Paul 02:00

Yeah, I mean, I'll just briefly like So obviously he's on immunosuppressants. Sometimes he gets sick and it just hits him harder. So like two weekends ago, well actually not even that. It was like Yeah, no, yeah. So that it was two weekends ago. We brought him home. He wasn't feeling great. Uh he stayed with us on Monday. Uh we took him to the doctor. They diagnosed him with strep, got him some meds And uh we took him back to college, but uh he just kept feeling worse and worse and worse. So uh I I went up and got him on like Wednesday. I don't know, but the time is meaningless. Uh brought him home, got him to the doctor. Or we yeah, we got up that we no No, Jennifer got he was feeling sick. Jennifer got him that evening, brought him home. I took him to the doctor uh where they diagnosed him with like having like, in addition to everything else, he had like uh ear infections. So got new medicines for that, and then I took him back to school, and then he came home again that weekend Cause being sick by yourself sucks. Uh, but he's he's he's doing better, so yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's just Well, I'm good.

Drew 03:18

I'm good. And and like you said, it was kind of like his, oh man, I'm an adult and I need to take care of myself. So I have I have a very I have a very similar story, but it's way wimpier. Okay. So When I when I showed up freshman year, um the first semester, so basically through the fall and into the winter I didn't have a job and I didn't have any money. I lived off my meal plan. You know, all my friends, you know, either had jobs or had money that, you know, their parents had given them or, you know, had basically had an allowance, right? Um my parents didn't do that and there's a lot of reasons why and I was too proud to ask. So I had I had no money

Paul 04:03

Okay.

Drew 04:05

Um I had worked in a grocery store in high school and I had a little money saved up, but it was like emergency money. I wasn't about to tap into it uh when I was on campus. Anyway I uh that first semester, I got chapped lips. Like real bad. And I was just like Well, I don't have any money and I can't go buy chapstick. Now, this is 1998. Chapstick is like 85 cents. Yeah. Right. I have no money. And my lips just got worse and worse and worse till that basically they were like slowing off. And eventually I sheepishly asked my roommate, Can I borrow a couple bucks? And he's like, I thought you'd never ask, dude. I was really worried about your money. So I I went through the same thing. It was just like, well, someone will notice and it'll You know, someone will give me chapstick and it'll be fine because that's how it's always been. Like my mom would go to the grocery store and come home with chapstick or whatever, or the drugstore. But it that's that's when it kind of hit me. It's like Hey, you need money for stuff. And that's like when I went out and and got a job and was able to like, you know, sustain myself after that. So same thing. It's tough out there, man.

Paul 05:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah It it it it is. Yeah, it's no fun being sick by yourself too. So yeah, yeah, I get it.

Drew 05:31

Well, okay, so let's talk about getting sick for a minute. So we're both we're both elder statesmen. Old men. Yep. How many times a year do you get sick? Like I can't work sick.

Paul 05:44

Uh really anymore, just about once a year. Yeah, about the same. Though I I don't think I've really been Yeah, I probably missed a day or two. Yeah.

Drew 05:55

Yeah.

Paul 05:56

Yeah.

Drew 05:57

I think the fact that we work at home now, it's easier to just like go lay down for a couple hours and then come back to work, right? It sure is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul 06:04

Yeah.

Drew 06:06

Um when you get sick though, like how how much do you shut down?

Paul 06:11

Oh, I'm a mess.

Drew 06:12

I'm I'm I'm just

Paul 06:14

I'm useless is what I am. Just completely useless.

Drew 06:17

Yeah. I I need to lay on a couch or I need to be by myself and I just need to sleep it off. And Mandy knows that and she's super good about it and she'll check on me, but she knows that like there's really nothing that she can do, you know?

Paul 06:29

Yeah, yeah.

Drew 06:30

And Mandy, Mandy, on the other hand, never gets sick. I don't know how Jennifer is, but like Mandy never gets sick

Paul 06:36

Uh my wife usually she also usually also gets sick once a year. Uh and it uh almost like every year it gets so bad where like she loses her voice. And being a teacher Uh, you know, she needs her voice. So Yeah. Yeah, so that happens about once a year for her too.

Drew 06:58

Yeah, like I mean Mandy will get a sinus infection every once in a while or she'll lose her voice or have the sniffles, but she's not like hard down for the count. You know what I mean? Not like me, like I'm a big baby. Now I will say, and she's gonna hate that I talk about this Uh back in September, she we think it was a touch of food poisoning. And my wife never vomits. But for about six straight hours on a Saturday night, oh no. It was coming out of both ends of her. And she didn't know what to do. Like she was legitimately concerned. I'm like, babe. It's just something you ate, you're gonna work it out. And like, but that never happens to her. And I feel like as an adult, unless I drink too much, I don't really throw up anymore. Okay. Yeah. I mean uh you know, that time that I had that touch of appendicitis, I was dry heaving and nothing was happening, but I don't really throw up that much anymore.

Paul 07:51

Yeah, I I don't like throwing up.

Drew 07:53

It's no, I don't think anybody likes it. Well, I mean everybody has a kink, right?

Paul 07:57

Yeah, I mean somebody does. Oh

Drew 08:01

All right. Uh I did click the link for the next topic.

Paul 08:05

Okay, okay. No, it's it okay. So uh I probab so okay I've heard about this thing on many podcasts. This is not something I discovered on my own. I've had it probably for like three months now, but I'm finally ready to talk about it. So I bought a terminal, and that is spelled T-R-M-N-L. No vowels. It's very Web 2. 0. The website is like useterminal. com. There'll be a link in the show notes. And what this thing is, it's a little internet connected e-ink display. Okay. And it is very nerdy. Very nerdy. Alright. So okay, so What the idea is so basically you buy this thing, they have this website, they have a whole bunch of plugins that they've created. They have user-defined plugins. If you pay for the developer mode, you can make your own plugins. And like there's quite a bit of stuff on here. So like there's uh what kind of plugins exist? There are There's everything you can think of. You can get uh a poem every day. You could see your GitHub contribu contributions You can see their like uh the status of like pull requests in GitHub. You can connect it to calendar, you can connect it to to-do apps, you can connect it to Reddit if you want to watch a particular subreddit. So many different things. And then there are other developer designed Uh things that you can also plug in. So basically, what you do is you like to pick the plugins you want, you configure them, and then you control what shows up on your display. Now, granted, this is just an e-ink display, it is not backlit. It's just it there's not there's there is a button on the back, but it's basically useless. Essentially this thing is connects to the internet and uh like I think by default like every 15 minutes it reaches back out, figures out what it needs to display, and displays it. Uh the company is very open. If you don't want to use their service, you can run your own version of the website. You could they give instructions for how to build your own if you don't want to buy it from them, but you do want to do this Uh it's it's it's very it it it and and really it's all it is. It's not a touch screen, it's not interactive, it's just an e-ink display. The battery lasts like forever, and obviously The more frequently you update it, the more the battery takes because it has to wake up and connect to the internet. But the battery lasts like I think I've charged it once in three months. It's just absolutely ridiculous. Uh and so you know when I was considering buy it, I looked at all the plugins that were available. I'm like, oh great, like it integrates with Todoist. That's my to-do app of choice. It integrates with Parcel. That's the app I use to track deliveries. And oh look, it's got a whole bunch of different calendar integrations, including like You know, like Office 365 or Exchange. So if I like my work stuff, you can connect it to a Google Calendar, whatever you wanted. I was like, great, I'm gonna order one of these. Uh But when I got it and I tried to set up the Outlook uh you know camera integration Uh it wanted to pull in the calendar in a way that my work doesn't allow. It wanted one of those like public like ICS calendar feeds, whatever. And we have those disabled. And I was like, okay, that's fair. I get it. You know, people just don't want those links flowing around and people getting access to your calendar. But that doesn't scare me Drew, I can write code. So I'm told. So I'm told. So What I it took me a while to to to really sit down and get this done. And I and I finished it and it's working, which is why I want to talk about it. So If you give if you give terminal and an additional $20, you can basically enable developer mode on your account, which allows you to build your own plugins. And essentially what it is, is you can The the plugins can poll pull like files on the internet, or you can basically do what they call a webhook, which essentially is like, I'm gonna make an HTTP call and I'm gonna give you a payload of of JSON data, right? And then from there, they use a template template templating language called Liquid. And they have their own like special like design systems so things look well if you want to do a table. They have like different layouts. So they have they have this whole system for like, here, you send me the JSON and then you can build what you want it to look like in in HTML in this liquid kind of templating language and get it all done. Now there are some constraints. There's a limit for how many times you can send them data. There's a limit for how many times you can refresh your screen. And they only accept two kilobytes of data in that in that uh when I send it to them. Payload. Payloads. Which is Big, but not super big. Right? And you can actually be thrifty. Yeah. You gotta be thrifty. You gotta be thrifty. And you actually can ticket that up to like five kilobytes if you give them like $15 more dollars or five more dollars a month or something. I'm like no no no no I I can get this thing down under two kilobytes no problem. What I really wanted to do was write a little just like a command line app with no user interface. And I started going down that way, and actually I vibecoded like 99% of this app. But unfortunately, so Apple provides this framework called EventKit. And you can use Event Kit to access Calendars and reminders. Ah. So what I did is I went to Apple Calendar and I hooked up my Outlook calendar that way. Uh-oh. Oh no, my chunks.

Drew 14:09

Oh no, my chunks. Yep. Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny. It took a long time for LibSyn to launch for me today.

Paul 14:18

Uh-huh. Yeah.

Drew 14:20

Uh suggest Drew Furgewell recheck their system resources and reload the page. Oh no. Oh no. Paul? Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Podcasting, everybody. Everybody should have a podcast. Welcome to my podcast. Uh-oh. Paul B disconnected. I didn't refresh my page. I chickened out. Uh-oh. Critical chunks. Man, Libsid's having a hard time tonight. Isn't this cool we're just kind of talking about a podcast on a podcast? It's very meta. Uh-oh. Paul B's on the Paul B's on the call. And we're recording again. There we go.

Paul 15:07

Yay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Podcasting. It did take a long time to reconnect though, man. I'm just uh I Recording though this is gonna be an absolute hot mess, but I'll figure it out. Okay.

Drew 15:20

I'm sure you're gonna do fine. I totally refreshed my page and everything worked fine.

Paul 15:24

So I hooked up my work calendar into Apple Calendar and I started playing around with event kit. Now, Apple is really big on user permissions to like you have to say like, hey, I want to access your calendar. Do you allow it? Well, that just doesn't work in a console map. You have to have a user interface for it to prop up the permissions dialogue. So I'm like, okay, screw it. Uh so what I did, so then I had I had another idea, Drew, another idea. Shortcuts. Apple shortcuts So I build an application. I put just one, it's like like like old school like Visual Basic 4 like demo. I I put a button on this thing. I have when you click the button, it pulls from my calendar, it formats it into JSON. And then it sends it up to terminal. And then I took that functionality and I put it into what they call uh an app intent. Which allows it to be called from Apple Shortcuts. So then I set up automations in Apple Shortcuts that every hour It calls this app intent, which grabs my work calendar, formats it in JSON, posts it to uh the terminal services. Uh and then I spent it it's a little ugly still, uh, but it's it's definitely working and it's great. My calendar gets it gets up to date on my terminal, and uh it's running on my Mac Mini. That's uh sitting underneath my desk here and I don't have to think about it. It's worked consistently every time, flawlessly, since I set up those automations to to run every hour. And it's great. So like I've got like three little screens on my terminal and they change every 15 minutes. The first one is my work calendar. And then the second one has it's it's what they call a mashup that has multiple plugins on it. So on the left side is all of my tasks I have to do today from Todoist. The right side is the weather and my location. And then the third one shows me uh when the next Columbus Blue Jackets game is and who they are playing, and then my deliveries that I should expect today. Which I always there What are you using for what are you using for the delivery I use an app called parcel and it's got a I'll find it uh parcel it yeah it's parcel dot app It's not a free app. It's still pretty cheap. How does it know?

Drew 17:55

Does he give it access to like Amazon?

Paul 17:57

So it's got Amazon integration where it just basically sucks in your Amazon orders. And then and then if you launch it and it detects like a tracking number in the clipboard, it's like, oh, you want to add this, don't you? And and I do. I'll put a link in the show notes for that. So there's a terminal plugin. I mean there's a parcel plugin for terminal that I set up You know, gave it my credentials and it logs in and it updates. And uh I'm extremely happy with it. You know, it's not a very big display. It's maybe like I don't know, I I have to look at the the specs. Maybe it's like six or seven inches diagonal It's clearly a 3D printed case. Uh you know, it's it it's but it's fine. I mean it's not like the the like rough, jagged 3D print. It's it's a nice 3D printer. But it definitely looks it could be injection molded. It it definitely feels 3D printed. But it's great. I just have it sitting here on my desk and I can just look down as it changes throughout the day and see what my next my next you know what I have to do for that day and what's going on. And it's great. Now make it these l these little things are not cheap. I don't know. It's not that bad. You know, if you go through and Yeah, so there's they're gonna sell a bigger one called the Terminal X, which is bigger. That's not out yet. You can pre-order it. But the little one, the original terminal is $140. Uh if you want to enable developer mode, it is uh twenty dollars, but you can also uh spend another just if you spend twenty-five dollars, they give you what's called the Clarity kit, which includes a battery upgrade, so it's got a bigger battery, the developer edition, and it comes with a USB-C cable. Meh, whatever.

Drew 19:48

Yeah, I was gonna say there seems to be a lot of options here.

Paul 19:51

Yeah. I got it in the uh uh they don't have my color anymore. I got it in the gray, which I think is currently sold out. Yeah.

Drew 20:00

Sold out, yeah.

Paul 20:01

I like the look of the sage on it. Yeah, it's not bad too. That's also sold out. I think they're really kind of like selling the original terminals and then they're gonna go to the terminal X, which is a bigger display. But honestly, the bigger display wouldn't fit where I had it. It would cover part of my monitor. So uh you know, and it's e-ink. It's not a super high-resolution e-ink display, but it's perfectly fine. I can read it sitting here uh in my chair, I can read all the stuff. Uh it's not backlit, it's not a touch screen, it's just a dumb e-ink display that asks the terminal services, hey, give me some or I don't even think it's It gets HTML. I think the HTML is rendered on the server into like a bitmap, and that's what gets sent to the device.

Drew 20:47

Yeah, I played with some e-ink displays and like Raspberry Pis and Arduinos, and that's that's literally what you're doing. Like you render an image and then you send it to the display.

Paul 21:01

You know how e-ink works when you're changing a lot of the display, how sometimes it can flicker. Uh-huh.

Drew 21:06

It used to take or late, it has like latency.

Paul 21:09

Yeah. So it used to take like The screen changes had a very like big flash. It took a long time. They dramatically improved that. You know, it's it still does kind of flash when it changes because it has to redraw, but it's much less noticeable. It's much quicker. Uh like I said, and like if you don't want to buy one from them, you can build your own. They have instructions for how to do it. So I see that. Yeah, and they can they what they say is like, hey If we go out of business, like here's how to host it yourself. So go no. Okay. So yeah, I mean, I would not recommend this to uh I mean if you just stuck to the plugins that are built in, it's fine. But this really does feel like a div it's meant it's meant for nerds. It's meant for people who want to get in there and do weird shit with it. And oh 100%. Yeah. Uh and whoa, that was a big thunk in my house. This is a weird episode.

Drew 22:09

Yeah, I was gonna say I heard that.

Paul 22:11

We're doing so good tonight, man. We're doing so good. Oh, what's I'm I mean I may not even edit this. I may just just let it ride, bro.

Drew 22:20

Just let it ride.

Paul 22:21

Who cares? Nobody listens. Nobody listens. Just us. Uh, so yeah, that's my adventures with terminal. I I really like it. It's it's good, it's fun. It's fun. I had fun f you know, having that problem, writing something to solve my problem and and watching it work. It's you know It's it's it's great. Like it works. My I can see my calendar. Woo! I did that. I made that happen. Me. I wrote that code. I made the ugly UI. I did that. I did that. Oh

Drew 22:55

No, this is cool. I think there's other companies that do something similar and also have color displays. I like the idea of E, though.

Paul 23:10

And like the battery lasts forever. And obviously, if you want it to last longer. You can change, you can say like, hey, like only refresh the disc display every 30 minutes or an hour. Uh you can even do things where like I I'm not doing this now, but like if you wanted to have like a like Maybe I don't want to see my calendar on the weekends. I can totally do that and hide that particular screen on the weekends. So, or do something else depending on the day of the week. So it's it's a really robust But nerdy user interface? Very nerdy. Very, yeah. So, you know, if you're a nerd and you don't mind, you know Reading some documentation and getting your hands a little dirty. It's it's fun. It was good. I enjoyed it. I I always enjoyed that. Well, cool, buddy. I'm happy for you.

Drew 23:56

And you you keep it in your office.

Paul 23:58

It's sitting uh basically underneath my monitor, sitting on my desk. So Yeah. Huh? Oh no, my chunks. Again. Again? Man, Libson is Libson is going through it tonight. Critical error recording chart.

Drew 24:19

We're just gonna have to see what happens. We're just gonna have to see what happens.

Paul 24:22

I have a backup recording, so worst case scenario, there's that. So Alright.

Drew 24:28

Alright, so moving right along, um, some good announcements out of Steam this week.

Paul 24:34

So uh A while ago, how many years ago was it when they came out with their the original Steam Steam Deck? Well no, before that they had the they had a Steam Machine as well before or something. Yes, I had one.

Drew 24:49

And it was basically a little it was a little device that had an HDMI port that basically you streamed your computer.

Paul 24:55

Yeah. Or if the game if the game you had actually ran Linux, it could run on the device and they had a really controversial controller. And that was all before they had Proton, which is their like Windows compatibility. It's not emulation, it's translation The Windows translation layer, which makes the Steam Deck work today, right? The reason Steam Deck works so well, even though it's not running Windows, is this Proton compatibility layer. And there had been rumors for a long time that Steam was going to take what they've done and uh make another attempt at a Steam Machine or a console-like device. And they announced it yesterday. There's no price yet. But yeah.

Drew 25:40

Well, hold on. We gotta go a little bit deeper than that because they made three announcements. Oh, that's true. Yes, they did. Yes, they did. All right. So the thing you're talking about is the steam machine.

Paul 25:53

Steam machine. Or and as the internet calls it. The Game Cube. Ibe Cube. Yep. Which I just absolutely I love that so much. I love it.

Drew 26:05

Yeah, so apparently it's gonna be based on AMD's Zen four architecture, which is technically one generation behind, so we're on Zen five now. Um sixteen gigs of RAM. Uh and AMD is doing some kind of custom GPU for it with eight gigs of RAM. Um look, are you is this gonna run Cyberpunk? Yes, well, absolutely. It runs on the Steam Deck, so yes, it will. Well Are you gonna be able to plug it into your TV and play it at 4K?

Paul 26:36

They say yes with FSR. Right. So probably not so upscaled. So but They're saying most games 4K 60 frames with FSR is what they're saying.

Drew 26:52

Yeah, and they've clearly put some thought into this, and I gotta tell ya I adore the four factors. I will probably end up buying one of these.

Paul 27:03

Yeah, I I I I have heard so uh I think Ars Technica just came out with like what they've been hearing about the cost. And I think it's gonna be if that's if it's true, it's gonna be too much. There's they're saying it's gonna start at a thousand dollars. I think that's too much. I think if this thing is five or six hundred dollars, it's gonna sell like gangbusters. You know?

Drew 27:32

Well, I don't know. I mean, how much was your Asus Rogue X Ally X Xbox X? Okay. True question mark? Oh it says it still says Paul B is disconnected. Paul B disconnected. Oh man, I got a real bad feeling about this.

Paul 28:01

So close. Uh-oh. So close. So close.

Drew 28:10

Uh oh. I think it's recording. Oh man. Oh my God. Hello. Hmm. Okay. Oh man. How what do we even do here? Okay, I have to take a picture and send this to Paul. Okay, this is like riveting shit. This is absolutely riveting podcasting. Live chat. Huh. Hey. Hi. Uh hello. Hello. Okay. Well, we should pause because at this point At this point, I'm gonna speculate that you've been st you've been furiously stitching together the shattered remains of this podcast. I haven't even begun to think about it. Okay. So so uh listeners. I have I have a folder just full of MP3 files and hope. So so listeners, if if this podcast to this point has seemed a little disjointed Poor Libson tonight. And and and I should and I should clarify, this is the first time in the history of this podcast in almost 300 episodes. that we have had to span multiple evenings recording.

Paul 29:52

Yes, yes, yes, because of tech technical difficulties. And and and we just spent the last ten minutes or so trying to get into a call together. Uh yeah.

Drew 30:08

Yeah. I mean what happens. Yeah. We're professional IT people, which means we're mostly janitors. So what I did is I actually like registered a libsin account because I don't have a libsen account. Every time I join Every time I join your call, I'm joining it it lets me join as guest. Now I logged in and I got the same Nginx little like error message that you got.

Paul 30:31

Yeah, yeah. I've seen those before. Yeah.

Drew 30:33

Yeah, same, same. But uh it did it did finally let me in. But when I when I was when I was clicking the link from my email, it was just sitting there spinning

Paul 30:43

Yeah.

Drew 30:44

And I just started brute forcing it. I was like, this seems like an API issue. So I just started hitting the button until it's funny button.

Paul 30:51

Yeah, so Alright, we're back. We're back. Where did we leave off? We were talking about the we were talking something steam related. I don't know if we were still on the controller or the steam. No, we're talking about the steam machine because we're it was uh Oops, all heatsink. Right.

Drew 31:09

I think that was like the last thing we talked about. But um okay, so let's pick off where we left off and I'll try to make this brief because, you know. Of all the things they announce though, I'm super excited for the VR headset.

Paul 31:25

I was gonna ask if that was up your alley. Okay. Obviously I'm not a big VR person because it makes my tummy sick.

Drew 31:34

Okay. I love VR flight simulators, whether it's my expensive, you know by each jet military sim one or just regular old Microsoft Flight Simulator, playing those games in VR is great. Because you can you can view the instrument panels, you can free tilt your head and look around. I've tried those other accessories that

Paul 32:09

All right, can can you hear me? Hmm. Hm. Oh no? Oh oh okay. All right, hold on.

Drew 32:23

All right. Paul. Paul. Right. Any any luck? Oh no. Nick can't hear Paul. Oh no. Oh no.

Paul 32:36

Three. Nope. Nope.

Drew 32:38

Oh no. Hopefully Paul can hear me Can you okay that's the heat death of the podcast? Oh no. Discord and my mic hate each other. Humming through on your local recording. I think we think we're gonna have to send a strongly worded email to I've I mean we we've seen chunk uploading errors before, but it's never been this bad.

Paul 33:15

Test. Can you hear me? Fuck, fuck. Oh, what the hell, Discord? Oh no input device loop check check can you hear me now

Drew 33:38

Okay, there he is.

Paul 33:39

No fuck.

Drew 33:41

Fuck. Uh oh. Uh oh

Paul 33:46

Got that going to loot back audio, me recording. I've got Discord open.

Drew 33:53

Oh my god, we're professionals.

Paul 33:56

I think my input device default loop back. Alright, let's just close. Still nothing. Okay. Yeah, I know you're very upset with me, audio hijack. You're very upset with me. You're very upset with me. That's not the sister sittings window. Voice and video. Check. Check. Okay. Chat worked. Chat worked

Drew 34:21

Alright, once more with feeling.

Paul 34:25

Okay.

Drew 34:26

No, fuck me. Ah, wait.

Paul 34:29

I heard you.

Drew 34:29

You heard me. Wait, it's cutting off. It's cutting off and gating.

Paul 34:35

Yeah, hold on.

Drew 34:36

Fuck me. It's like you you say something, but it's only capturing like the very middle of what you're saying.

Paul 34:45

Is that any better?

Drew 34:47

Oh, and a hundred percent better.

Paul 34:48

Okay, there we go. Alright, I just I changed Discord to say instead of custom to voice isolation. And fuck it, it works. Dude, uh Yeah. I don't even want to have to tell you what I'm I'm currently doing to get this fucking thing to work. I have to use not one but not not one but okay, so for some reason for some reason Is this the show? Are we recording? Yes, I'm recording. I don't know if the audio quality is is gonna be Crap, but that's okay. I don't care. You sound kind of echoey, but people are just gonna live with it. Oh Discord and my USB XOR interface do not like each other. Never have. So to get this to work at all So I I have I have a an another Rogue Amoeba tool called Lootback, which creates virtual audio devices.

Drew 35:47

Yep, I'm familiar.

Paul 35:49

Okay. So I'm telling Disc, if I tell Discord to listen listen to my interface directly, it will not work. Period. Nothing. No audio. Zilch. So I tell it to, hey, listen to my lootback interfa the lootback interface. Then I run an audio hijack session that says, take my mic. And put it into the loop back audio. And while you're at it, record it and also record Discord.

Drew 36:14

So uh I don't I don't throw a word I don't throw around this word a lot, Paul, but You're a hero. You're reviews, read free jet, you're a hero, you're a hero. I'm a hero. I'm a hero. Oh okay, listen Let's be done talking about the Steam Machine stuff. We we we we we have to get through this podcast. We have to get through at this point. Okay. So this so this this is a shit show. It it is a shit show. 300 episodes in and we we finally get hit pretty hard with some bugs, right? But we're we're doing it. Okay, but here's the question though. Is this worse than the time That I that I was driving home from Florida. No, it's not it's not. No, no, no. It sounds much better than that. So All right. Okay. Okay. Alright. So just a couple more topics and then we can end this curse. We can we can free ourselves of this curse. How do you feel about this iPod sock?

Paul 37:12

Uh So when I first saw this, the first time I saw this On my social media feeds. I think it was it was either on Blue Sky or Mastodon. I'm like, oh look, someone's making a joke. Apple is making a sock for their iPhone like they did for the iPods. Ha ha ha. And then I saw it again. I'm like, oh, someone's retreating that same joke. Then I saw another one and the link was to like an Apple press release. And I was like, oh no. Oh no, this is real. This is this is a real thing. Uh yeah Apple Okay, so they announced this iPhone pocket, which is A bag, a knit bag for your iPhone that you can wear. It went on sale today and Drew, it sold out in two hours. Oh. Did you buy one? I tried to buy one. No luck, I assume.

Drew 38:14

Nope. The color the color the colors I wanted were sold out. I Love this. So here's the deal. When we went when we went to Europe this where when we went to Europe this year, I had one of those like shoulder bags. Not a fanny pack. I I'm I'm a little too advanced for a fanny pack. I had one of those shoulder slings, right? I love that fucking thing. Okay. I you know, uh I am a thicker gentleman who can't always get his phone in his pocket if his jeans are too tight.

Paul 38:44

Uh-oh. Hold on. Hold on. What what? I'm not recording your side of the vi audio.

Drew 38:50

Oh. Okay. Well, let's back up. Let's back up.

Paul 38:55

Okay, hold on, hold on. Uh, I think I can do this live. Hold on, recorder. I can just put a recorder. I can put it. No, wait. No, I am. I am. I am. I am. I'm gonna leave the scent. Hold on. Off.

Drew 39:12

Okay, you are you it was recording?

Paul 39:14

Yes. Yes, I am recording your side. I I'm good. No, I'm good. I'm good.

Drew 39:26

Yep. So I I w so when I was in Europe I I had that, right? And I I liked wearing it. And being a thicker gentleman, sometimes it's hard for me to get my phone in my pocket depending on if I'm wearing like dress pants or Tighter tighter pants, right? Okay. I I love this idea. I love this idea. And uh the short one is the one that I wanted.

Paul 39:48

Okay.

Drew 39:49

Um yeah, I I wanted black. I I I would have taken black, I would have taken brown, I would have taken sapphire. Um yellow orange and yellow look pretty cool. I I would have also done orange, but yeah, it it's completely sold out. And I didn't know about that. this by the way until people started mocking it on like much like you on social media I was getting TikToks of people like roasting Apple fans for buying this. Yeah. Paul, I love this. I I I want one of these things.

Paul 40:19

I I'm glad it has an audience. I to me I look at this stuff. And granted they worked with I don't know like some famous designer. Uh actually, fun fact, the designer they worked with is the designer that made Steve Jobs black turtlenecks.

Drew 40:37

Black turtleneck, yep. Uh yeah, is is what is it? Is he isi miyaki or something? Yeah, yeah, something like that.

Paul 40:43

Yeah. Uh and Yeah, I mean this is definitely not for me. To me, I look at this and like this is the exact kind of shit that Apple does that people like go like, oh, these Apple fanboys will buy anything.

Drew 41:00

I mean it's I it's not for me. I would want this.

Paul 41:03

Okay.

Drew 41:04

And I and I'll and and I gotta tell you, and I gotta tell you, right? I don't know if I talked about my To me bag that I bought. But Toomi sells accessories very much like this, where you could just buy a little carrier for your phone. And like the play here isn't just that you can wear this on your person. But you could loop it over your bag, for example. So you could like take this sock and you could you could wrap it around. There's a picture of it on the website. Like you could wrap it around your bag. And just basically have that be your carrier. Now am I gonna do that on the subway where someone can just reach in and steal my phone? No. But if I'm in a meeting with clients or, you know, on an airplane or something, having my fo having access to my phone like that makes way more sense to me. And and I gotta be honest, like I really like the look of it. I like the way that the weave kind of looks and that it looks like it's a little stretchy. Uh yeah, I I mean fine, make fun of me. I'm that Apple guy that will I mean I won't defend everything Apple does, but uh I I fell in love with this when I saw it. And like I said, I think the short one is the one for me. Yeah, I don't and you're right, it's sold out. It's completely sold out. Every color is sold out right now. Yeah. When I looked earlier today, I think I could still get purple or pink. Everything else was sold out. What about long? Yeah, even the long ones, which are almost what, a hundred dollars, uh eighty dollars more than the short are completely sold out. Wow. Yeah.

Paul 42:35

Huh?

Drew 42:35

Yeah, it's crazy.

Paul 42:36

Huh? It's crazy. Well, I'm sorry you did not get one, Drew.

Drew 42:40

Yeah. I I I will continue. I will I will persevere. But uh yeah, so this is this isn't for you, huh?

Paul 42:48

No, no, no, not at all. No, I have no need for this. I have pockets that work.

Drew 42:54

So Well, yeah, I mean I guess

Paul 42:59

I mean, like the the funniest take I did see is uh, you know, all these companies will do anything but put pockets on women's clothing.

Drew 43:08

So Yeah

Paul 43:11

Yeah, it's not for me. It's not for me. I think the whole thing's kind of silly. I think the price is a little outrageous, but apparently I was wrong because these suckers sold. So

Drew 43:22

Yeah, they 100% did. They 100% did. Yeah. Um, okay, so moving right along, because you we don't know how much longer we're gonna be able to do this. Um I discovered uh man, I lost the website. Hold on a second. Uh fuck Hold on. Where did it go? I fucking had the website open and I lost it. No. So, okay, here's the long story short. There will be a link in the show notes, but essentially, uh there were a gate there was a series of games in the early 2000 called No One Lives Forever.

Paul 44:03

Are you familiar? I doesn't sound f familiar. No one is forever game.

Drew 44:11

Yep.

Paul 44:13

I vaguely remember the box title, but I have no the box cover, but I have no idea what the gameplay is.

Drew 44:21

Yes. So essentially okay, I found it. So it is the No One Lives Forever, The Revival Is Real website. So basically, here's the deal. These were games that came out. Um and it it it was sort of during the the the shooter boom. Uh it was like a it was almost like a mix between GoldenEye and Maybe w maybe one of the more recent Wolfensteins. Let's put it that way. The graphics were pretty good for their time. They weren't terrible. Uh and it starred uh a female protagonist and you were like this like sixties spy. It was very Austin Powersy, except it wasn't quite as like full of innuendo and all that other shit. But they were they were really fun games. Like I loved the first one. And shortly after moving to Ohio when I bought my first desktop Mac, I actually bought a port of No One Lives Forever 2. for my Mac to play. And then there was a there was a third game in the series called Contract Jack. Now this is one of those games where no one really knows who owns the rights. Oh that kind of that that typical. Games. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're all familiar with the website Gog or Good Old Games, which I think they just go by Gog now. Yeah. That's they they do they're doing the Lord's work because they find older games. And they make them work with modern systems. So I have I have a really expensive, extensive library, not expensive because those games aren't very much money. A very extensive library in Gog of classic games that I played growing up. And the No One Lives Forever series is one of their most requested, but they can't legally do it because they don't know who to ask. Like Microsoft Microsoft's in there. There's a bunch of other people that sort of have a piece of this thing. So it's just been sort of languishing. So what people basically figured out is okay, well if if nobody owns it Then everybody owns it. And they they basically just said fuck it and are actively encouraging people to pirate the game.

Paul 46:30

Okay. Okay.

Drew 46:31

So there there is a website you can go to that has that that basically is keeping the game alive. So not only do they provide a way for you to download it, but it's been modernized for Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs. Nice. So it it it has like widescreen support, like the fan support of this game has been great. Um I started replaying the first one today. It it seems really sketchy when you download it because it's like a giant exe. Got it. Okay But uh no, it's it's legit. So I I was I was replaying the first game and just absolutely it's so funny. There's so many good one-liners in it. Uh so if you're interested in that or you even know what I'm talking about or you want to download it, there'll be a link in in the show notes to go and get it. So I'm I'm really super happy that uh Someone finally got their shit together. And they have like all these they have like all these backup mirrors in case like people like take it down or whatever. So yeah. That's awesome. And Yep. And then the last thing I want to mention is if we were still recording this on a Thursday, I would have said it was happening this weekend, but it's literally happening right now. Uh I think we've talked about the game Escape from Tarkov on this power on this podcast before and how I've gotten into it. They have officially announced their 1. 0 release. This is a game that has been in beta for 10 years. Uh it is built on an ancient, like an ancient version of Unity. It's it's so rickety. Uh but they're they're releasing 1. 0 tomorrow. And not only are they releasing 1. 0, they're also releasing on Steam.

Paul 48:04

Oh yeah, because they have their own their own like like distribution. Distribution.

Drew 48:10

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Now It's it functions the same way of the way I bought it, you know, by basically sending my money to Russia, which you know, say what you want about that. Yeah. Um it'll still have a launcher and everything, but you'll be able to buy it from Steam. It's currently on sale as we're recording. I think once it officially launches, the sale will end. They're just trying to encourage some more pre-orders. Uh this game has taken over my life. I think it's a great game. Uh I love that there's a dedicated PvE mode because the game, at least in its beta form, had a lot of cheaters. Like I could deal with some bad deaths in a PvP game. But when the game's already very punishing, cheaters just amp that up to eleven. So the fact that there's a dedicated PvE mode is great. Uh I've been playing this with my friends Jeremiah and a few other people. I'm always looking for more people who want to play. So Uh I will probably end up streaming when the game officially launches 1. 0, which I think happens at midnight Eastern tonight, if my time if my date time math is correct. Uh so I at some point this weekend, uh which will already have come and gone when this podcast comes out, I will be streaming the one point zero release as we sort of Uh because like the other thing too is that as part of the 1. 0 release, they're they're releasing like a branching story, like an overarching story and plot to the game. Previously The game was sort of told in drips and drabs from atmospheric clues in the game, and then there's these series of traders that you interact with that give you missions that increase your standing. They were all sort of loosely interconnected, but now there is an actual story arc that has, according to the developer, multiple endings depending on how much you do. So in order to do that though, you have to reset your progress to zero. Oh, okay. Now in the in the PvP mode, they force you to do that. So several times a year, they hard reset all the PvP players to zero. Because at some point, once you have enough money and gear, it's sort of trivial. So what they do is in order to keep the player base sort of like on the same level in PvP, they force what's called a wipe. They reset everybody to zero and you start over. PVE has always been optional, but if you want to take advantage of the story, you have to reset. And I gotta tell you, I think I have several hundred hours into the game. And I don't mind resetting, even though I have incredible gear, my character levels really high. I'm super excited for 1. 0. I hope it lives up to the hype. Uh there's a lot of speculation because they've been keeping it close to the like they've They've told us a lot of the stuff that's going to be coming, but they've held back on a lot of stuff too, so I'm really anxious to see sort of sort of what happens. So 1. 0. Thank you.

Paul 50:49

Actually, I I would ask if you're aware, but I see it's on your wish list. You're aware of the uh the the the new parody Escape from Duck Off.

Drew 50:57

Yeah, and it's good. It's actually it's actually good. Yep. Okay. I haven't had time to buy it and play it. Uh even the developers of Escape from Tarkov are like, yeah, this fucking rips. Like Yeah, like they were playing it and it's actually pretty good. So Escape from Duck Off. We'll put it we'll put a link in there after that too.

Paul 51:18

It's basically, yeah, it's a sick with single player, right? Like platform environment. But it yeah, but it's it's all ducks. As soon as this game has controller support, I'm gonna be playing it.

Drew 51:29

Yeah, no, it's it's legit. Like my friend Jeremiah picked it up because he's also like the game has also taken over his life. Here's the thing. If you're a certain type of autistic person like I am, Escape from Tarkov just fucking hits different. There's no game that has a sauce like Tarkov. None. Like Ark Raiders just came out, which is in the same genre, and that looks really fun, but I have no desire to play it. Like Tarkov to me just fills that need. And honest to God, hey Paul. You know you know what season it is and I don't give a fuck? What uh Call of Duty season. Oh yeah. It's Call of Duty season and I don't give a shit. Between this and Battlefield 6, like those are the games I'm playing right now.

Paul 52:13

Okay, okay

Drew 52:14

Yeah, so that'll be fun. If you if you follow me on Twitch at all, be sure to check me out as we sort of start over and starting out in that game is rough, but yeah, it's gonna be a good time. Okay, so this has been the most cursed podcast that has ever existed.

Paul 52:30

Yes, yeah, that was That was rough.

Drew 52:33

I'll I'll I I may be opening a support ticket with lipsin and be like, what the f Yes, something something's going on Something's going on.

Paul 52:41

I've only had to reach out to support once and it was a good experience.

Drew 52:45

So hopefully it'll be there again. But yeah. Hopefully they like Yeah. Hopefully they give you some money back because there's two straight days of this. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul 52:54

There was one point where like their RSS feeds just weren't working, and I'm like Uh I can't publish my podcast. RSS feed down. I think it's you, but like you're like, did I do something wrong? And they're like, oh no, no, no. I'm guessing it was DNS. Probably. It usually is. It usually is. When I break something real good, it's DNS. So uh get us out of here. Yeah. I'm so sorry for whatever qual state this audio podcast was in. I did my best. Uh a spoiler alert. That's the name of the podcast. Yeah, doing their best. com. You can find all the show notes there. And hey, if you gave it this far, thanks for listening. Yes, thank you so much.