I'm sure they're doing their best

Drew 00:00

Okay, we we have to talk about these riverside emails. Oh okay, uh what what is what is wrong with the riverside emails? Okay, so Every week when you set this up graciously, because you're you take that on and I love you. I love you so much. I love you so much because

Paul 00:16

What is going on with our cameras? I didn't realize it affected both of you. Look at the like I can I can change the picture in picture. Well there I am.

Drew 00:26

Okay, now we're the same size. I didn't I didn't like I didn't like how d how domineering you were there. Okay, so when I get the email invite from you, okay? Uh what I get, first of all, is a busted ass CSS email. Um I I I wanna I wanna see if I can show this to you. Um can I share my screen? Hold on. Get rid of the porn. Okay. Okay. I'm going to share my screen. Okay. I can just share this email. Okay. Okay, so this is what I get. Okay, so the problem, as you can see, kind of starts here. It's not how emails are supposed to work, right?

Paul 01:14

Hold on, that's hold on, I need to make my web browser bigger to see it. Yeah, sorry. That's Weird, okay.

Drew 01:21

Now now there's there's a button here. It says join session. Okay. Okay, now first of all It puts the it puts the link to the show in in in the details, but but you know what Google thinks this is? What? It thinks it's a map. Really?

Paul 01:37

But it must be like in the location header like metadata or something, and it's like, oh, I got you.

Drew 01:43

Yep. Oh. Yep. So then there's this join session down here. And Ideally, that would just take you to Riverside. fm, Paul Baylor Studio, everything, right? But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You get okay, it opened in a new tab. Hold on, I gotta, I gotta stop. Screen. Uh oh wow, it won't actually let me It won't let me share this one. So what I'm getting is is I get a your connection isn't private. It says cert authority invalid because it's trying to go to What looks like to be a uh non-HTTPS website, always always good. And then when I click advanced and I'm like, yeah, no, it's fine. Paul wouldn't try to hack me. Uh basically my router's like no. You're not you're not you're not allowed to click on this. So uh There we we we gotta we gotta reach out to somebody and be like, hey, can you just do links like normal people? Like I know you want some like tracking here. But can we not? Can we can we fucking not? Can we can we have can we use links like big people?

Paul 02:55

I don't get that email because I made it. So, you know, I made it.

Drew 02:59

You made it, yeah.

Paul 03:00

Yeah.

Drew 03:00

Now, I so like every time so this happened last week, and I'm like, well, surely this is just like a one time thing and they'll get their shit together. Well, it happened again. So now I'm just like, okay, I have a workflow where if I if I'm fast enough, I can copy the link out of the metadata and and open it that way. I did I did by the way. I did actually sign up for a real riverside account So I don't know if he can invite me that way and it like shows up my calendar in Riverside. I don't I don't know. I just don't understand why email is so hard for people.

Paul 03:31

Yeah, yeah. Riverside is uh Tough for sure.

Drew 03:36

Okay, so what okay, so you edited last week's show on it.

Paul 03:39

Yeah, well actually I did the podcast edit the same way I always do. I pulled down the audio files, I pulled it into ferret on my iPad, and I edited everything through there. Uh Okay. So the audio version, the process was unchanged. What was different is uh it produces I what is it called a magic edit? So yeah, so it provide it creates what it calls a magic edit. Uh and that's what I sent to YouTube. But I just I just I didn't watch it. I was just like

Drew 04:19

Meh go. Oh, I haven't I haven't looked at YouTube.

Paul 04:23

Yeah. Yeah, so I uploaded to YouTube just as it is. Uh and then also it creates these magic clips which are TikTok slash YouTube shorts friendly. Oh and okay I like and I did edit those a little bit. Just because I didn't like exactly some of the things and how it had cut. And Uh that worked. Yeah, so like when I went to edit those, it literally Uh there's a screen where you have like essentially it's the transcript of the podcast And you can select things and say remove. You can select things and say include it. And then it pulls that in, syncs it all up. pulls that video in. It tries to be smart. Like if you're talking, you're there for but if I'm reacting to something, it'll try to put me in it. And it does a pretty good job with those. So I pulled a couple of uh I pulled a couple of uh sh those things and put them on the as shorts on our YouTube channel. And I and Oh really? Okay, hold on. I gotta go look. I gotta go look. I may, I mean, I made a TikTok account for the for the podcast as well. I may throw them up there. I haven't gotten to that yet because, you know, I was busy. Uh but yeah, hold on, see if I can find the uh the

Drew 05:52

Okay, sure they're doing their best. Okay, so I'm going to I'm going to our I'm going to our webpage. Okay, yeah. So how do I get to Okay, so I click on our channel, right? Yeah. Videos. Oh, there's our video and there's our shorts. Drew uses Linux for generative AIs. Drew's triple monitor KVM. Oh, look at you. Oh, that's great React content.

Paul 06:14

Yeah. And all the video stuff it did automatically. I just said what words and it like it was like 95% of the way there. I didn't have to do a lot of editing on it. So I was pretty impressed. And yeah. Yeah

Drew 06:28

Oh, wow. Okay, so we're are we gonna have a TikTok channel?

Paul 06:32

Yeah, so I I made a TikTok channel and I have a uh uh a a branch of the code for a website that adds like links to the YouTube channel. Uh but I haven't uploaded the videos at all and I haven't pulled that in because I've been busy. So maybe ah smack the microphone. Maybe I'll maybe I'll post those same two videos on TikTok this weekend too. So yeah.

Drew 06:58

Okay. That's exciting. I like this. Okay, so this is this is kind of cool. Okay. All right. Did you make the AI did you make the AI make me say things yet? I did not.

Paul 07:07

I haven't done any of of of that. So

Drew 07:12

Uh that's kind of exciting, buddy. Uh so not a major change for you really. It's just kind of putting more work on your plates.

Paul 07:20

And yeah, a little bit. Like I didn't spend I buy

Drew 07:24

Here, hold on. Let me hit you with one of these.

Paul 07:26

Oh, there we go. You give me a clap emoji on Riverside. Give you a little clap emoji, yep. Yeah, I probably sp well it was fun. I spent some time playing around with it and seeing what was there and Yeah, it's it's yeah, it did a it but the audio version so the audio version of the podcast and the YouTube version are two different What the fuck? What are you doing over there? Damn it. So mmm. I don't know how this fell off my desk. I have this w which Which what which one which one of your handles are? So I have this little uh this little tin. You know, activity it's a little tag activities for children. Uh and I have I have uh in here I have things like I have a uh it's har gonna be hard to show you without spilling them out. I've got it like a Oh those are all your that's all your USB speed adapters, uh a US speed a microphone adapter, a couple of those, uh a you know headphone. So it's got it's it's full of adapters and it was sitting out on my desk and it just fell off.

Drew 08:31

So yay. Well I'm glad it didn't spill everywhere. The tin the tin did its job. Let's sacrifice Toby. Oh boy. All right. Um, yeah, and listening back to the podcast because I wanted to hear, because yeah, clearly you can tell that I had the wrong audio input mixed for the first time. But uh we're almost three hundred episodes in and we're gonna figure this out eventually. And we're gonna be really good at this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so before we kind of get into the topics du jour, so this is episode two ninety-nine, buddy. 299. I haven't thought about episode 300.

Paul 09:07

Me either.

Drew 09:08

Not even a little. I haven't. And frankly, it's it's not lack of want. I've just been crazy busy. Yeah. Same. Same. Same. It's been a busy but Busy. We are rapidly approaching Christmas break. Andrew's birthday. Yes. Yes. So I'm thinking I'm gonna set up a game now. night. But we should we should think about like if we want to try to dovetail that into some like episode 300 shenanigans. Okay. Okay. Maybe we go back maybe we go back to Roosters. You think they'll let us record at Roosters?

Paul 09:42

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if not the River site does have like uh an in-person, like two people in one location feature for recording. So yeah. Okay. I don't know how that works.

Drew 09:57

It could just be 30 minutes of us eating. I don't know. I don't know. And and we also didn't figure out what we're gonna do for each other for Christmas this year.

Paul 10:06

Yeah, we've been we've been bad. We've been lazy We have. I don't know if it's lazy so much. Yep. Our priorities have been elsewhere. There we go.

Drew 10:14

They sure fucking have. Um yeah, it's just been it's been super crazy. Um work has been work has been a lot these last few weeks. I don't know about you

Paul 10:22

I didn't get all I was in Vegas this week.

Drew 10:26

Oh that's right. That's right. Okay, how was that?

Paul 10:29

The conference was really good. Uh I did not get home until like 1 a. m. this morning. Oh no, I forgot about that. Yeah, it was just late flight. And and okay. I have personally never had this happen before, but we're maybe like an hour out. from Columbus and all the lights turn on and the flight attendant goes on the radio and was like, is is there a medical professional, a doctor, a nurse, a paramedic on the plane? Uh and there was there wasn't. There wasn't. Uh so the flight attends were doing stuff for about fifteen minutes. And the pilot must have gotten the all clear to fucking floor it. And like you could just tell How fast he was going. And like, and you know, Drew, you play flight simulators. Typically, when they're going to do a descent, they don't point the nose down. They just slow down. Yeah, they slow down.

Drew 11:33

Yeah. That's the way it works.

Paul 11:34

Less over less airflow over the wings equals less lift. That is not how we approach Columbus this time. No, okay, yeah. He was pedaled to the metal and you could feel the nose down. And I have never felt such aggressive braking when we hit the runway as well. And like they must have had everything cleared out because like We landed, braked, we were within like well so we did like the last forty five minutes of that flight in about thirty minutes. So we actually got to Columbus early. Yeah. Uh but uh we were stuck on the plane with the paramedics were doing their thing. We hit the ground hard breaking right to the gate of, you know, the the uh whatever that thing that connects the walkway. was yeah, it was right on there and the paramedics were on like right away. Like it was like they they had just cleared the entire like yeah everything. Yeah.

Drew 12:30

Yeah, that happened that happened one time to me. Um we were on our way to Chicago, which is a very quick flight from Columbus. Um a woman had a panic attack a couple rows away from me. Basically, what's eventually going to happen to me I got a sneak peek of what's going to happen to me on a flight. But she was like hyperventilating, had trouble breathing. Um they did the same thing. They put the call on the on the intercom. Uh and they were in like like the the flight crew was basically in constant communication with the cabin. Uh there was somebody on board that was able, it was like a nurse that was able to like talk to her. calm her down, get her to do some like regulated breathing. And it was like, okay, this isn't this is she's uncomfortable. And she was the first person off the plane and they got her medical attention. But we but I mean we were flying to the greater Chicago area. I don't think they could have cleared the airspace for us to do what they did for you. But I I don't think it was probably of the magnitude. Did did you ever find out like what happened?

Paul 13:27

No. I I think she ended up being all right. Uh, but yeah. Okay. I just that that had never I have never experienced that before. It's one of those things you only see in like TVs and movies, and like, huh That's a real thing. And and like, oh, and airplanes can go a heck of a lot faster when they're allowed to.

Drew 13:46

So, you know, it's interesting. I had a I had a physics professor one time who basically She was she was certifiably crazy. Like she would do like she would have us like do the physics stuff, but then she would say, but in reality, like this thing can do this or this airplane can survive this. And she's like Our roads are meant to be driven at 90 miles an hour, not 45. Like, like, you know, your car won't fly off the road. And I'm like, okay, but that doesn't mean we should, you know, like, okay, she was crazy. But uh yeah, she she would always tell us like, you know, and and none of this rubs off on me being a nervous flyer. It's like, you know You basically have to have another plane slammed into your plane to bend a wing. Uh yeah, wing spars are really, really hard to bend.

Paul 14:34

Yeah, yeah. I mean those things are uh just an absolute Amazing feat of engineering. So yeah.

Drew 14:40

Uh yeah. Yeah. Now, okay, so let's talk about your trip. So conference was good. Was that your first time staying at the Venetian?

Paul 14:46

Oh we I said at the plazo, which is part of the Venetian resort. I'm sure we stayed there last year as well Uh second time at this conference. Conference was real good. I learned a bunch. Uh Did you guys do anything fun? Was there like planned fun or No, we didn't do it. We didn't do anything besides like eat. Just get a drink. Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't even do that anymore. Uh that's right. That's right. You don't drink anymore. Yep. Don't drink anymore. Uh and we played some craps. I was up a little bit. Uh there we go. That's that's about it.

Drew 15:18

Did you cut did you come home did you come home in a winter or?

Paul 15:21

Like $70. Okay.

Drew 15:23

That counts. Yeah. That counts. Yeah. Uh okay. But that I mean that you guys didn't do the spear this year or anything like that.

Paul 15:30

Nope, didn't do any shows. We talked about it like if we do it again next year. We're gonna stay the extra night instead of flying out after the conference ends. We're gonna stay the extra night and like and like do something fun and then you know like then you can just wake up in the morning, go right to the airport and I have to yeah. So

Drew 15:50

Yeah, that's what I did when I was there in January last year this year for a conference. Um, I could have tried to fly out that day that night, but with the time change and everything, it's just like Get a get a good night's sleep. Get to the airport.

Paul 16:04

I'm just I'm I'm I'm running on fumes right now. I'm tired.

Drew 16:09

Woof. Okay, well then let's let's let's let's power through this stuff then. All right. So uh last episode, you had talked about how you were doing some USB-C cable testing. So I'm here with a oh you still have it. Okay. It has a permanent spot on my desk, Drew. Sure. Um so I found myself, and this is kind of like a footnote to the Drew's computer corner update of last week. I found myself in cable hell this week. Okay. What happens? All right, but not USB-C cable hell. All right, so in order to tell this story, we need to revisit one of the things that I said that I bought last week that hadn't arrived, but has arrived. Okay. And it is my 8K slash 4K triple monitor KVM switch. With all of them ports. All of them ports. Yep. Yep. So if you click on if you click on that, it's basically it shows the front of the device and then the same device stacked on the back. uh with all the different ports on it.

Paul 17:13

Yep, and your buttons for switching and yep. Yep.

Drew 17:16

Buttons for switching and then the USB ports on the front are basically you could Also switch your mouse and keyboard, your USB sticks, your microphone, like whatever. You could also switch to your other your other PCs. Okay. So, a couple things about this device. Okay, the device itself is fine. I am not in love with the way that it looks. It's the least aggressive looking one of all the ones in this price range. Uh and it it does exactly what it advertises. I hit a button and it flips and and I can flip it. Okay, well it works. It it uh where's my finger? It it works, but but there are some quirks. Okay. Okay. I know you were worried about like the refresh rate. All right. So so Paul What do I use my PC for primarily? Videa games. Video games. Videogames. Yeah. What's important to a PC game?

Paul 18:17

Oh jeez, there's so many things, Drew. Uh there's frames, there's latency, there's temps, but I'm guessing in this particular instance it's it's frames.

Drew 18:26

It's frames. So for those of the circuit. Yeah, so for those of you that aren't aware, your monitor has what's called a refresh rate. And basically that's the number of times uh loosely here, I'm not a scientist, not a lawyer. Loosely translates to how often does the image refresh on your screen a second? So Big number better because what that means is that animations and things appear smoother on your screen. Yep. And when you're playing video games, they're actually if you're playing like a competitive game, there's there are certain advantages conveyed to you to have more frames than the people you're playing against.

Paul 19:08

Yeah. So like if you think I think about it for those who don't know, like The the the game is going to do all of its things like look at your input calculate all your enemy right to a big buffer for for all of the video stuff and send that to the monitor. And especially on the input side, the more often it does that, the more it's actually reading your like reading your stuff, if you're playing a network game, sending the network traffic. So like there are advantages of you know, even if your monitor can't handle it, there is advantages of your computer being able to do

Drew 19:42

More every second to give you. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Yep. 100%. Very well put. Now, um, time was When I when I first started getting into very high refresh rate hardware and monitors, you had to be very careful about what type of cable you hooked your monitor up with. Because for a time, and and and this is years ago, right? Like just like USB C HDMI is a minefield. Yep. There are different versions of the HDMI cable spec, and different HDMI cables have different capabilities in terms of max resolution, a certain refresh rate at certain resolutions. That's all tied to essentially at the end of the day, the cable that connects your monitor, which has its own specifications, and your computer, which has its own specifications. Now, I have drawers and drawers full of HDMI cables. I have no idea, because none of them are printed on there which HDMI spec is what or what they are. But a lot of these cables I've had for years. But the general rule of thumb for me is that I always connect my monitors with DisplayPort. Display port on the you know as opposed to HDMI typically has higher bandwidth. Has other features, you know, just it's a different connection type at the end of the day, but it does the same thing Okay, so before I had my KBM switch, the way that I was doing this is I had two display port cables coming out of my gaming PC and going to one uh going to separate monitors. So on each monitor, my display port would basically be I could I could change my input to display port on both monitors and what show it was on my PC. And then I had HDMI from my development slash AI machine going to HDMI 2 on both monitors. And then I had HDMI 1 going to my Mac Mini. Now, what I had found and what I had talked about last episode was Windows does not like it when you switch monitor input, when when it when you switch monitor inputs. Does not like it at all. Uh best case scenario, it just decides that both of you like I I have different backgrounds showing on different monitors right now. Best case it'd be like, I'm pretty sure that it was this background. It it wasn't. Uh none of that would work. Uh and then Windows would basically fuck itself over trying to figure out which one was monitoring monitor one and monitor two. Monitors would flicker, task bars would change location. It was it was not good, which is part of the reason I was looking at a device like this. Linux, on the other hand, treated it better, but for some reason it would forget my monitor orientation. So like, so like I'm looking, I'm looking right at your camera right now, right? Main monitor is in front of me. It's a horizontal monitor. It's 4K. Monitor to my left, your right, is rotated 90 degrees. So that's like where I have Discord and I've got other stuff up, you know, while I'm playing games, whatever. That's what that monitor's for And like in your display configuration, you can basically say like, hey, this monitor's here and this monitor's here. Yeah. So that way when you're moving the mouse, like it knows where the edges of the screen are. Linux would be like, I'm pretty sure it was over here.

Paul 23:17

Pretty close.

Drew 23:18

Close enough. Yeah. And then like it would fit and then it would determine like, I'm pretty sure this was the primary monitor. No, no, it wasn't. And then like the now the mouse is trapped over here in no man's land and can't get back to the main monitor. Fucking nightmare. Okay. So anyway, that's what I was attempting to fix with this device. Now When you look at this device, on on the front of it, yes, there are three buttons that let you switch from PC one, PC two, and PC three, which is perfect. I have three PCs. I have my Mac mini, my gaming PC, and my development machine. Uh and then on the back, you can see that, you know, these are roughly broken out into quadrants on the back where it's like Okay, here's PC1's uh HDMI input and its first display port input and its its second display port input. Uh and then you know if you want to use other things than just display, you also have to plug in a USB cable. It's like mail to mail. So one plugs into this and one would plug into a USB port on your computer. Okay. Perfect. And then you have the section of the device that's labeled out. And the out has the same dis has the same display configuration as the ins. So it has two display ports out and one HDMI out. Now, the way that I assumed this work was: okay, I'm gonna hook up display port one and display port two from PC one. I'm going to trade out my HDMI cables. from PC2 and change those to display port cables. And then I'm gonna get and then I'm gonna buy two new display port cables and I'm gonna hook that up to the monitor.

Paul 24:58

I'm guessing like you you can't switch. It's just it's the same all the way across.

Drew 25:03

Like well, okay. Everything worked the way that I thought. Okay. So so like my two PCs worked fine. Now my Mac Mini only has HDMI. Okay, there's no mini display port adapter like Apple has gotten rid of that on the Mac Mini. It's just HDMI. Now I'm thinking to myself, okay, I should be able to take the HDMI cable from the Mac Mini, plug it into the input of the HDMI. And the little box should be able to transmit a signal out to both monitors.

Paul 25:42

It doesn't. So so USB 5 disport supports display port. Just so if you could buy a dongle and do USB to display port.

Drew 25:53

Okay. Okay. The inputs map one-to-one. So in other words, what I have to do if I truly want all these PCs to work with this device, I have to connect every single one of these to the primary monitor with HDMI. Oh yeah. And then my secondary displays have to be display port. So basically, like if I look at the device, if I look at the back of the device right now, all four HDMIs are full. All four display port B's are full. And it works exactly as advertised. So that meant that now I had to figure out Which one of my HDMI cables I owned was gonna work with this? So I spent all week ordering and subsequently returning HDMI cables to Jeff Bezos. So what uh the other thing you have to keep in mind here is that cable length matters. Especially when you have a box like this in the middle. Okay. I had I had ordered two uh I think 10-foot HDMI cables. Because uh six foot would be pushing it. Like the just like where this is positioned on my desk, where the server rack is, like six foot would be kind of taut. But what I was noticing is I was getting a lot of monitor flickering, like losing signal, gaining signal, losing signal, gaining signal. And what I had realized was is that anything above 100 hertz. The higher your refresh rate, the more the cable length gets like susceptible. So I the and and it actually says this. Like if you go out to this Amazon listing and you look at like the feedback And you look at some of the questions and answers, it calls it out. And it even says it in like in the instructions, which this is hilarious. In the instructions for this, like, it's like there's a section in there that I think was supposed to be translated as hot tips. Okay. It's it ca it it was warm tip. Well delightful. Delightful. Yeah. Absolutely absolutely sensational. Warm tip. I mean same tip, same. Yeah, exactly. You hope. Um But it uh yeah it it calls that out. So what I what did I end up what I ended up doing after going through several different cable iterations here is I did find some HDMI cables So what I have is I have six foot HDMI cables going to both of my PCs that are quote unquote 8K capable, which just means that like the lower you goes in K's, the higher you can go in refresh rate. So like these 8K cables, which are like some goofy ass brand I don't know. I don't know. I'm not even like, I just know they're not monster cables because that's a fucking sham, right? But They're like shine we or like whatever.

Paul 28:59

Yeah, yeah.

Drew 28:59

Whatever. Whatever. Uh they're working. They're working fine. Um I could go to 144 hertz. uh on all of these but what I have discovered is 120 hertz is kind of the sweet spot. So am I pissed that I'm not getting maximum refresh rate? Hmm maybe I'm gaming at 4k anyway and my average refresh rate's My average uh frames right now are anywhere from 100 to 130, depending on the game. Okay. So am I really losing anything there? Not really. So that's working well. I did have to return a bunch of stuff to Amazon, like I said. The other thing that wasn't apparent to me on this device is all of the inputs when you switch them, there's a little light on top of the device that tells you which one's currently active. They're all three different colors. I don't like that. One's blue. One blue, one red, one one green. I don't like that. I just wish they were all blue. Whatever. Yeah. You know, I'm thinking about just taping over them anyway, so it's fine.

Paul 29:55

There you go. There you go.

Drew 29:57

But uh but this is but this is working. So now I have a way to flip between all of these things. And it's working exactly the way I want it to. It's really fast too. Like the flip over, like the monitor just flashes briefly because it's still like connected to the same inputs. The box is just kind of like handling the transition. The box is also powered, which is interesting. Um it has like a little barrel adapter. I wish it had like USB-C so I could power it with something else, but yeah, but and then it the other nice thing that it came with is it has a little remote, like a little wired remote. So if I really wanted to hide this thing like under my desk or something, I could just like it's it's like a little hockey puck with like three buttons. It's it's Not the worst thing in the world. So yeah, so so so far everything's kind of working good. Everything's kind of working the way I want it to. Good, good, good, good, good. But yeah, I just I just had to like play with a whole bunch of different And like display ports the same way. There's like display point display port two, display port two point one, like which one's which and what are my cables? I don't know. Let's just go buy a bunch. And that's that's what we did.

Paul 30:58

Anytime I buy a new TV I just throw away my old HDMI cable and buy a new one. I can never track like like was this HDMI 2. 1 or 2. 2? I'm just gonna buy a new one.

Drew 31:10

Well here's here's a handy tip. When you buy a gaming monitor, it usually comes with a display port cable and an HDMI cable. The rule is this, use those cables because they were they were certified by the manufacturer for your monitor. So if you want to get the capabilities of your monitor and those cables are an appropriate length, which is usually the X factor, it's like if if those reach, just use them. Don't even go buy anything. Just use what it came with and you'll be fine. Cool. All right. What do you have here for me? Have you not seen this yet, Drew?

Paul 31:47

No, I haven't. Okay. Well then I'm gonna we're gonna don't click on it yet. Don't click on it yet. All right, all right. So the Vidigame Awards, the big one was this week. I have no idea who won I was mostly paying attention vaguely at what was announced at the video game awards because uh they were gonna announce the next expansion for Diablo 4, whatever. As part of that, they showed a video game trailer for a sequel to one of our favorite games, Drew. Okay. This is a cheeser a trailer for control. What is it called? Uh control resident.

Drew 32:31

Resident.

Paul 32:32

It's a another game set in the control universe. Jesse Phelan. Go ahead and yep. Watch that thing, buddy.

Drew 32:40

Okay, I'm gonna watch it right now. Oh, there's Arabic at the bottom. Like isn't the wrong one? Do I have subtitles turned on?

Paul 32:49

There's no subtitles for me.

Drew 32:52

Okay. Oh, that was kind of cool. What the fuck? Do not ingest.

Paul 33:00

I saw that too. It's just great. Oh Huh. Yeah. Yeah. So you get to play as Dylan. You get to leave the oldest house. Hold on, it's still playing.

Drew 33:14

You get into the gameplay stuff.

Paul 33:16

Yeah.

Drew 33:17

Oh wow. Okay, he's got a hammer now. Mm-hmm.

Paul 33:21

Yeah.

Drew 33:22

Oh, melee combat.

Paul 33:24

Yeah, at least what we've they've been shown, it looks like it's melee heavy. Yeah

Drew 33:30

Okay. Alright. That's pretty hype. Yeah. That's pretty hype.

Paul 33:35

The moment when Dylan walked in, then the board is like the sibling has gone rogue slash fishing. I'm just like Europe. Yep. That's the tone I'm looking for. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. When is this? Uh it comes out next year, it says. Okay.

Drew 33:57

Control is a phenomenal game. Everybody should play it.

Paul 34:00

Yeah.

Drew 34:00

I'm thinking about replaying it.

Paul 34:02

After watching that trailer, I was like, yep, we'll have to do that again. And like uh Remedy what Remedy's the developer and so the game's coming out cross-platform, everything except the Switch, like PC Mac. PS5, Xbox, everything. Every play everybody can play it on day one. The visuals and like and the gameplay was like years ahead of its time when it released the first time. I'm just curious to see what they can do on the second second try. Uh yeah, I'm excited to step back into that universe and and uh Yeah.

Drew 34:42

I yeah, I I did not watch any of the video game awards stuff. I just I It just it's just not something that's on my calendar. And I and I know that there's a bunch of games that got announced and stuff, but I I somehow missed this.

Paul 34:57

The only reason it was on my radar at all is because people expected Blizzard to pre-announce or announce like the the next Diablo 4 expansion, which they did. So I j I jumped on, I basically typed like, what was announced at the video game awards? And an IGN link came up first and I clicked it and I just scrolled and scrolled and I was like. Oh. Oh.

Drew 35:23

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Historically, you and I don't always like the same games, but I think control is one that we definitely both unanimously agree is amazing.

Paul 35:32

Amaz again, highly recommended. I'm sure you can probably get it for cheap these days. It's it's a great absolute Banger of a game.

Drew 35:41

Yeah, Steam Steam, like all all major platforms, not just Steam, will have some sort of holiday winter sale thing here in the next probably week. If you've never played it, you should absolutely pick it up. It's phenomenal. It's real good. Phenomenal game. Except the Alden Wake expansion.

Paul 35:55

That's kind of mediocre.

Drew 35:59

I don't I never played. I never played any of the expansions.

Paul 36:02

Okay, so you are it's worth playing Foundation Okay. Which is the other the Alan Wake one is is bad. I don't think I actually ever finished that. Maybe it gets good, but from what I've looked online, people generally like meh. But foundation really moves the story along a little bit. as well. So do I have it?

Drew 36:22

Do I even have it? Hold on a second. That's a good question. Um okay, control. I got it. Yeah. Okay. Control. Okay, so right now on Steam. Uh oh, hold on. I gotta enter my birthday. Yeah, it's a naughty game. Yeah, there's a lot of violence. I was born in 1942. It's only six dollars for the ultimate edition. It's six dollars for the ultimate edition. Um You get the what is in the bundle? The control, foundation, Allen Waite, expansion. And then expeditions and photo mode. Yeah. What do I what do I I think I just have the base game. All right. Well, I'll I mean I'll I'll pay $6 for this.

Paul 37:08

Yeah. So I got the there was uh I think they sold like a really cheap like PS5 Pro upgrade or something. It was like five bucks. Like you have you have the base game, you can spend five bucks, get the PS5 Pro version, which runs way better. Uh and they threw in the DLCs with that. So I replayed it. Uh and I might just go I might I might should go bug my son to see if he's ever I don't think he's played control.

Drew 37:35

Oh Zach. Uh-huh. It's like Like well, is he is he is he home is he home is he home for winter break?

Paul 37:41

Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. He he came home uh Tuesday when I I was still in Vegas. So yeah.

Drew 37:48

Oh cool. Yep. All right, that's nice. Mm-hmm Cool. Thank you for telling me about this. I'm adding it to my wish list right now. Yeah. Excellent one. All right. Since you're um kind of running on fumes, um, Paul, it's time to spend money. Okay So uh our good friends at Google have decided that um your nest thermostats just aren't gonna work anymore.

Paul 38:15

Really?

Drew 38:16

How do you need to hear about this? I don't have a NES thermostat, so. Or no, no, no, I'm sorry, not Nest thermostat, Nest smoke detectors. I also don't have those, but fuck that. So, yeah, so so for those of you that don't know, Nest made these really cool smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. I bought into those at my old house and they were great. They were wired in uh to power. They still had a battery backup. They were really nice. You know, they integrated into my Nest app. I had a Nest Thermostat at the time before Google like enchitted all of it. And I really liked it because They also had like this cool nightlight feature that if you were like walking towards it it would get brighter and as you walked away it would get dimmer.

Paul 38:59

Yeah.

Drew 39:00

Really, really cool stuff. But I started getting email notifications a couple months ago that Google is no longer going to be supporting these thermos these smoke detectors. Now, to be clear, smoke detectors do have an expiration date. They do. Every smoke detector and every carbon monoxide detector that you have has an expiration date But Google is no longer selling this product. They've killed it off. Like a lot of other products. Yep. So I have to buy a whole bunch of new smoke detectors because this house has a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. Uh the people that lived here before bought into them. They just did the battery versions versus wiring them in. So I'm in the market for smoke detectors. And I like the idea of smart smoke detectors. I'm just not sure. Which ones I should get.

Paul 40:00

I haven't ever even looked into them. Uh in the old house we just replaced the smoke detectors with like the same like the same kind of style in this house. We still have the original ones in there. Uh

Drew 40:18

I mean, if you think about it, a smoke detector has one job and you never want to think about it.

Paul 40:23

Exactly. You just want it to yeah, to beep when when fire.

Drew 40:27

Beep when fire or beep beep when CO2, right? By the way, have you ever like read the Reddit post where it's like you might have carbon monoxide the police thing? Oh, where it's like people are like, yeah.

Paul 40:39

Speaking of, speaking of, uh this real quick Okay, so to back to the conference. Uh one of the keynote speakers was this doctor. She actually like Like she works in nanotechnology. She's actually worked on the iPhone team to design like the wires that are in the glass that detect your finger electricity, that kind of stuff. And it was all the whole thing was about like inventors and innovation. And she put up the screen of saying, I've worked for all four of these people. I worked with, and it was like Elon Musk, it was Bezos, it was Zuckerberg, and uh it was Sam Altman from OpenAI. So I've worked with I've met and worked with all four of them. These are the four men that are controlling the entire future of the world, and I wouldn't leave my children alone with any of them.

Drew 41:25

Wow. That's pretty funny. Um yeah, Sam Altman's kind of a weirdo. I mean Elon I mean Elon Musk is a shithead, but Sam Altman is a fucking weirdo Um so anyway, I did a little bit of research and I I ordered these today because what's gonna happen is if I don't replace my smoke detectors. The Nest app is just like, hey, we're gonna make them start beeping until you replace them.

Paul 41:52

Oh fuck.

Drew 41:54

I mean I mean they're fine. They're fine.

Paul 41:58

So what are the smart features So does like does an app enable you get a push notification of fire?

Drew 42:05

I guess I don't know. So I I I did a little research and I landed on these. They're by the brand Kitty, which has made smoke detectors for years. Uh they're two-in-one smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Um now what's interesting is these have internal 10-year batteries. Oh, okay. So basically there they should be good for 10 years. Um there is some sort of self-testing. Um I'm not completely sure what the smart features are. Um it does have notifications. Um let's see. Um Yeah, I don't know. Cutting edge technology. Ten years is right at the time that like you'd replace them anyway, right? They would they would be replaced anyway, right? So I don't know if these have uh smart features. Now uh the emails that I keep getting from Nest, they're like if you want to have like the same quote unquote like protocol. for your smoke detectors so that you could use them in the Nest app or whatever. Like they gave you some recommendations, but of course they're like, you know, I I don't I don't care. I'm just gonna try these. I ordered a four-pack. I think they show up soon. Um, and I'll just have to like take down my old ones, put the new ones up. And then I am taking this as an opportunity to totally get rid of the nest app at this point. Because I will have no use for it anymore. Um, because the Google Home app is what I use to look at veto on camera. It's what I use to look at my energy dashboard. I you you'll remember I was trying to pull my energy usage data a while ago from Google. Yeah. Yeah. Turn turns out that the Google Home app actually has a really nice dashboard for reviewing your history. Yeah. Yeah. So it's gonna give me an opportunity to get rid of that awful app event, you know, finally, since I won't have to worry about the smoke detectors anymore. Um and then I just have to find a way of I think I have to like take them to like a specialized e-waste place to get rid of them. But Uh let that be a warning to you. Uh Google products are awful and you shouldn't buy them. Uh uh Yeah. Even though even though um asterisk to that, I did buy another nest cam to look at veto of Black Friday.

Paul 44:27

They get really invested in something for like three years and either it's gonna stick around forever or it's gonna go right in the garbage and you never know what it's gonna be.

Drew 44:38

And and and you know what? Again, a smoke detector isn't necessarily something that you want to think about or look at or anything, right? But I'll tell you this: the Nest smoke detectors. were really good at blending in. They were small. They were they I thought that they were well designed. Uh they were they worked really well. You know, they they they weren't like they weren't like these huge warts that stuck out of your ceiling. So they were good. I mean they were designed by the dude that designed the iPod. So yeah. Yeah So I don't know who else is in this uh situation, but like all four of mine are expiring over like the course of the next four months. So I have two, I have one that's expiring like now. I have two that are expiring in January, and I have one that's expiring in March. So, and then like throughout like in my back cellar, there's just a regular old boring smoke detector. And you're not supposed to have a carbon monoxide detector near your furnace, by the way.

Paul 45:39

Yeah.

Drew 45:39

Yeah. So you only really need carbon monoxide detectors like in your living spaces. Yep. So just a heads up there. So I will if if yeah, I will probably spend this weekend uh trying to put these up and seeing like how much of a pain in the ass that's gonna be. I mean, theoretically if I can reuse the same screw holes in the drywall, but with anchors, which that's always a crapshoot. And get these hung up, it won't be a big deal.

Paul 46:04

Yeah. That's why we would like we would with like the same brand. We replaced them to the old house, just so you like you literally just screw them out, untach them, put new ones in the same things. Yeah.

Drew 46:15

Yeah. And like the Google one, the the Nest ones are proprietary, right? Like they have like a base plate, like a weird screw in system. So it's like I can't reuse them. Uh so yeah, fuck Google man. Like it's just one more thing that they fucking ruin. So that's the big update for me there. Um okay. Listen, you're tired. We've been doing this for 15 minutes. Let's call it a day. Um, I guess uh we should we should we should make sure we get a link in the show notes to the TikTok that you put up.

Paul 46:46

Oh well, I'll yeah, I'll put those in there. Uh hey, doing their best. com. You can find all the show notes. If you go to the episode from last week, the the YouTube videos embedded on the page, you can find us on YouTube, doing their best. com.

Drew 46:58

Uh yeah, and hey thanks for listening or watching or whatever