I'm sure they're doing their best

Drew 00:00 Listen

How's it going, Drew? Oh, buddy. Oh buddy. Oh buddy. I don't want this to be the Drew episode. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't want it. I don I don't want it, okay, listen. Hey, hey, hey. If you're one of our seven listeners, you know how mentally ill I am. You know this. Right? A lot of the things that I have to talk about tonight are things that we have previously been talked about. But these past two weeks, Paul, these past two weeks since we last recorded have been Okay. Substitual. Tell me where it hurts, Drew. I don't know, man. Where do you want to start? I don't this this is the Drew show. Do it. I don't want it to be the Drew show. Go go for it. Where do you want to start? Paul, in these unprecedented times, what's the worst possible thing do you think that I could spend money on right now? Your computer? I'll accept that. No. Okay. So for once, for once, the things that I spent money on in the past two weeks was not a firearm. Okay, okay. But I'm gonna show you. Okay. I I don't know how else to do this. Okay. Okay, okay. I'm just gonna rip the band-aid off.

Paul 01:34 Listen

Okay, okay

Drew 01:36 Listen

So if you are even remotely adjacent to computers, you know that because of everything AI right now, computer computer components. are under a crunch. And like RAM was the like video cards had gotten steadily more expensive than RAM. Now it's hard drives.

Paul 01:59 Listen

Yes, yes. I've I I I've I briefly entertained, I should build a new NAS. And then I looked at hard drive prices and with the ones I could find, I'm like, nope.

Drew 02:12 Listen

Like regular mechanical hard drives, even. are insane right now.

Paul 02:17 Listen

Really expensive right now. Yeah. And hard to find too, yeah.

Drew 02:19 Listen

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I need to find the webpage before we talk about this. Um What did you do? What did you what did you what did you build? Technically. Technically. Technically. I didn't build anything.

Paul 02:37 Listen

Okay. I'm embarrassed. Okay. Oh shit Oh shit, Drew. Shit Oh, okay, okay. Uh Drew has uh for the people listening on the audio podcast, Drew has just pasted a microcenter link into the show notes. That's not very uncommon, but this one's a little different. This is this page goes to the Power Spec AI100 workstation. It contains an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9960X 4. 2 GHz processor uh uh motherboard, a hundred and twenty-eight gigabytes of RAM, a G Force RTX fifty ninety. Two terabytes of storage and all the other stuff. This is this is an AI workstation, and not to bury the lead. The sticker price is $9,999. 99. Okay.

Drew 03:48 Listen

I did not pay that much. Okay, good. The price of this has actually gone up this week.

Paul 03:53 Listen

I would imagine, yeah.

Drew 03:55 Listen

It was just shy of $9,000 when I bought it.

Paul 03:59 Listen

Okay.

Drew 03:59 Listen

Because I bought this a week ago. And in and in the time since I have bought it, it has gone up. Okay, so with that out of the way, we need to talk about what is actually in this computer. So for those of you that don't know, Power spec is Micro Center's house brand of computers. Right. And when people come to me and say well regarded too. They are. They're extremely well regarded for one very, very simple reason. It's all off the it's all off-the-shelf parts.

Paul 04:29 Listen

So Microsoft just buys the stuff off their own shelves, assembles it.

Drew 04:33 Listen

Pretty much.

Paul 04:33 Listen

Or or pulls it out of the warehouse and puts them together.

Drew 04:36 Listen

Now a lot of times, right, when like if you look at the power spec computers on Microsoft. A lot of times, you know, they run the range from not too pricey to what you're looking at right here. It really all just depends on like what video card you have, what processor comes in it. Um pretty much everything buying a computer. But again, the big really cool thing about this is that it's all consumer stuff. There's there's no proprietary stuff in this thing at all. It's not like Alienware where there's like a weird ass daughter board or something or a goofy power supply that is incompatible with every other motherboard. It's literally stuff off the shelf at Micro Center. So it's it's great for two reasons. One, they're priced exceptionally competitively. And I know that's a wild thing to say on a $10,000 computer, but you give me a little bit of rope here. Okay. And this is bait, it's it's it's brilliant because Micro Center is basically encouraging you to tinker.

Paul 05:42 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 05:42 Listen

Right? You can go to Micro Center and pick up one of these things. And then six months later, if you want to upgrade the video card, like you're set You walk into Micro Center, hey, I bought this power spec. They can pull it up. The nice, friendly, helpful people there will tell you, like, here's what I think would work good in your computer. It's secretly brilliant because it's it it helps you kind of ease your way into the hobby if you've never built computers. Now Previously, in my home, I have a lot of spare hardware. And I and I think we had talked about a couple weeks ago, I had cobbled together basically an AI workstation. Where I have an NVIDIA 3090, which is a two-generation old card, but still very, very capable, especially for AI workloads. It's 24 gig card. I had an older like first generation Ryzen 3000 Pro processor with 64 gigs of RAM. bunch of old uh SSD hard drives that I threw it together and for a few weeks I was just kind of limping by doing you know, local LLM stuff and doing image generation things and and everything like that. And I was having a lot of fun And I think that again, we had talked about what it would look like to upgrade my computer and looking at Microsoft. Yeah, yeah. Uh they don't have the even setting price aside, they don't have the stuff in stock. They don't. So I was just kind of leafing through the Micro Center website when I came across this computer. Here's the thing. This is a Ryzen Thread Ripper 9960, so it's the current generation Thread Ripper. Okay. It also comes with the Asus Pro TRX Sage Wi-Fi motherboard, which is a thousand dollars by itself.

Paul 07:35 Listen

That's a beefy motherboard then. Yep. Now how many cores is that? 24. 24. Okay. That's a lot of cores.

Drew 07:44 Listen

Now, now again, why why was I originally looking at Threadripper? Well, I again was toying with the idea of putting multiple video cards in my computer. And the only platform right now that really lets you leverage that is the Threadripper platform. So if you've never tinkered with computers and y you know, you'd be forgiven for being a normal, well-adjusted person who doesn't think about this kind of shit. Your motherboard has the concept of what are called PCIe lanes, and it's directly correlated to the processor you have. And essentially, what it is, is it is a budget of bandwidth. Most motherboards allow you to slot in a really powerful video card in your first PCIe slot. It runs at full speed and it takes advantage of the memory bandwidth, the memory bus, and delivers everything. Which is why if you're building a computer, one of the common questions people ask is, do I have to put the graphics card in the first available slot? And the answer is almost universally yes. Because that's where it's designed to go. Every other slot on the motherboard runs slower. Okay. So when I was originally looking at upgrading my my workstation, I was gonna get a Threadripper motherboard and throw in the video card I had. And then at some point down the line Invest in a second accelerator card with more memory to host bigger models, do more stuff. So ThreadRipper is the only platform that does that. And again, Micro Center's been sold out, New Egg's been sold out, like I mean stuff is crazy expensive, but it's not stopping the enthusiast crowd from from buying it. And and we're running out. Like we're literally running out of sand because we don't have we don't have this stuff. So I found this and I was looking at it and it literally has the thread ripper and the motherboard that I wanted Now, by that by itself, if I were to buy that combination, even in a bundle at Micro Center, you're pushing four grand. Okay. Now Did I need to spend money on this computer to get that component tree? I first saw this and I said, there's no way I'm gonna spend this money. But, but It has a 5090 in it. Yeah. Again, that is right now a $4,000 video card. So components alone, components alone, we're at motherboard memory. processor, the video card, we're pushing eight thousand dollars for those components if I were to buy them separate.

Paul 10:19 Listen

And you haven't even dealt with RAM and storage yet.

Drew 10:22 Listen

No, no, no. That includes RAM.

Paul 10:24 Listen

Oh, that okay.

Drew 10:26 Listen

But before I even get to storage, Paul, if I were to go buy those components off the shelf. There's other stuff I need. Yeah. Like what?

Paul 10:37 Listen

Well, storage, a power supply.

Drew 10:40 Listen

For Forget about all that. Forget about all that. Power supply. Power supply. Glad you brought that up. The power supply that was in my computer was 800 watts. Yeah. That ain't gonna do it. That ain't gonna do it, dog. This this computer. Comes with a 1600 watt power supply. Woo buddy Now I'm gonna jump ahead and say that AEP likes to send you those emails about how much energy you use per week. I've seen a significant increase in my energy consumption. Yeah, I bet. I bet it's noticeable. Yep. What else would I need if I were to buy all this separate Paul? What am I crazy about, Paul? Cooling. Cooling! This isn't this doesn't come with a heatsink or a fan.

Paul 11:28 Listen

Is it to have uh all the one cooler in there?

Drew 11:30 Listen

Yes, it already has one. So again, that's another three or four hundred dollars that you gotta get under two terabyte hard drive. I didn't need a hard drive. But I'm already in for so much. Why not? And it came with a it came with a nice case. But so I started like really started breaking it out. And I'm like, I don't need the 5090. But I was thinking about getting a second video card. This is a thread ripper board. I could run my 3090 and my 5090 with the 1600-watt power supply that this comes with. Dot dot dot. So I went and bought it and I I I basically took it out of this case and threw it in the existing rack mount one that I have.

Paul 12:16 Listen

I was gonna ask, like, did you did you take it out of the case and rack mount it? Because I know you've got a rack for that stuff. Okay.

Drew 12:22 Listen

Okay, so you did rack mount it. It it all fits. I'm not gonna say it's the most thermally proficient Way to do this because at full at full tilt I can get the graphics cards to basically hit 90c, which is crazy. Okay. And it gets toasty in this office. I have crammed fans into this case, Paul, at every conceivable place a fan can go. And These AI workloads just fucking peg the system. Absolutely peg the system. Yeah. So you might be thinking to yourself, Drew. How deep are you in the AI chain that you think you need something like this? Yeah. How deep how deep are you, Drew? I'm pretty fucking deep. I'm pretty fucking deep. I really like the image and content generation stuff. Uh, and it and part of the reason that I decided to do this too is I was doing some research and You can buy those black well accelerator cards that are basically designed for this workload. But here's the thing: they're not as fast as the 5090. The clock speed of the 5090 is faster than those black wall cars. They have a lot of memory, which is fine, but if you're doing things where you want memory and speed, the 5090 is actually the better play. And the fact that I'm throwing in my 3090 in there means that I can run one video card dedicated to a language model and one dedicated to something else. And that has led to some very, very interesting use cases. So I want to call your attention to something here because this is where I've been spending my time now. Because this is my home server and it does a lot of stuff for me. It it hosts all my development environment. It hosts Plex. It hosts my AI stuff. It hopes my hosts my local LLM. Um, but I've been playing with this thing called open web UI. Have you heard of this? I have not. All right, let me drop a link in the chat here.

Paul 14:28 Listen

Saying a self-hosted AI platform.

Drew 14:31 Listen

Yeah. So basically here's what this is. Is this a front-end system. Okay, where you can tell it to connect to any LLM you want to, including ones you self-host. And much like open claw or other things, you can you can give it skills, you can give it tasks, you can give it access to stuff. So, like in my current environment right now, at all times on this computer, I have uh what is called local LM running. Have you heard of local LM? I have not. Okay, so local LM is probably the easiest way to get a LLM running on your computer. Okay. It's open. I don't know if it's open source, but it's free. Uh and when you look at this, you think, oh, this is just a fancy UI for loading models and stuff. But when this is running, it fully exposes an open AI compliant API.

Paul 15:26 Listen

Oh, okay.

Drew 15:27 Listen

So you can use the front-end application if you want to, or you can run it as a service. And it basically puts OpenAI API endpoints in place on your computer. So now you can go back to like something like Open Web UI or OpenClaw if you're that kind of person and basically say, hey, instead of going to OpenAI or Gemini or wherever or Claude or whatever, go here. So that's what I point everything at. So then I can run like Comfy or some other image generation thing on my other video card. And give that a skill, and I can send it pictures and say, tell me what's in this picture. And then go generate me the same picture, but make this change. And I could do all that from my phone. That's cool. Is this useful? Is it fun? Fuck it. Yeah, fuck it. Fuck yeah. It's really fucking fun. It's really fucking fun. It's really fucking fun.

Paul 16:29 Listen

Um I mean I'm just using like anthropic models and I'm having a blast all the frickin' time.

Drew 16:36 Listen

Well, well, well, so here's the thing though. The next step of my journey here is there are some models that are pretty good at coding. They're not as good as Claude. I've I've I've tested. Claude is still sort of king, and I started paying for Claude. Uh power. Yeah. I I love it. I've I've I've got a 180 on a lot of the shit. I'm pretty gay for AI right now. And yeah, so that was like my big Drew's computer corner update. Did I get new hardware? Yes. Did I build it myself? No. No. I still had to transplant it. Still counts. It still counts. So that that was like the big sort of thing. And like I know that's a big number.

Paul 17:22 Listen

And like I said, I'm actually kind of that's a lot.

Drew 17:25 Listen

I again I didn't pay I didn't pay Because like that number with tax would be pushing 11. And I didn't pay that much, right? Yeah. So it's actually gone up. You caught it right before the price went up. Yeah. Yeah. And again, had I bought all the parts myself, I probably would have paid as much. And the fact that like the cooler was mounted, the hard drive was already in the motherboard. The power supply is rated for what I want to do. Like it was kind of like I started thinking about it. I thought to myself, self, this is kind of a no-brainer. Right? A whole lot of money, Drew. I can't I can't afford not to.

Paul 18:03 Listen

Right? Sure. Sure, absolutely.

Drew 18:10 Listen

But what if I told you uh oh what if I told you that wasn't the most expensive thing I bought last week

Paul 18:20 Listen

Oh Drew, what else did you do?

Drew 18:23 Listen

I need to tell you a story.

Paul 18:26 Listen

What happened? Did you buy a new car?

Drew 18:43 Listen

I need the I need the I need the pa I need to pause for a second. I need to pause for a second. Okay, okay, okay. I love my wife so much. My my big beautiful wife. I love her so much. She's so patient with me. She understands my my particular mental miss. We've been married for a long time. She gets me. So I can't go into specifics for reasons, but let's just say that I had a very, very profitable year at the company that I work for. And I had an opportunity to let's say take advantage of some equity that I had. Not a not a lot. I didn't I didn't go crazy. Um I I could have gone really crazy. But I had an opportunity to take advantage of some things. And I've been driving my BMW M4 competition convertible for almost three years now. Which is a lot for me. I mean, if anybody knows me, they know that I tend to go through cars pretty quickly. I like having new cars. Uh I like having I like I I like that. I actually like the process of buying a car. And that's why I wasn't able to record yesterday. Uh because I had a really bad day yesterday for reasons that I'll get to in a minute. But The other big piece of news is that I now own a different car. Okay. Now, we like to joke all the time that we have about seven consistent listeners to this program. I want you to pause the podcast episode. I want you to think to yourself, Drew, or not, what car do you think Drew bought? I'll give you a hint. It's a car we've talked about on this podcast before.

Paul 20:20 Listen

Oh boy, I'd have to dig deep into the notes to figure that stuff out. Okay. Um let me I know we talked a lot about a lot of cars. Yep.

Drew 20:31 Listen

Yep. So Okay. Alright, alright, alright. Hold on. I'm just gonna put a link in here. I gotta like actually get the link. It is a car that was in the running for when I was looking at cars last time.

Paul 20:49 Listen

Okay. Oh wow, Drew. Okay. Okay. Yep. That's a nice looking car.

Drew 20:58 Listen

Yep. So it is the Audi RS6 Avant Performance. So three years ago, when I was in the market for a new car, this was a car that I was considering. At the time, however, the price was just out of my reach. Could I have done it? Probably, but it was it was out of my reach at the time. And so I ended up going with the M. And I was very, very happy with that car. I have absolutely no regrets about buying the M. It was my first convertible. It was a BMW M car. It was a great car. Was it a daily driver? That's debatable. I think some people say it would be, but it really wasn't. And again, it was great for when Mandy and I were together, but if we wanted to take friends out to dinner or I needed to go to Micro Center and buy a huge $10,000 computer. It wasn't going to fit in the trunk of my employer. Yeah. So I had been kicking around the idea of buying a new car this year. And there's actually a lot of things going on at my house right now. Like we're gearing up for some pretty heavy home improvement projects for this year. And I have been budgeting a certain amount of dollars for like getting my driveway replaced. getting some uh stuff you know fixed in the house and getting a new air conditioner, which is also something we have to consider this year, because ours is like pretty old and it's it's gonna be time. If not this year, probably next year. and uh getting some painting done that I don't have a ladder big enough to reach and just just a bunch of other little ticky tack shit, right? Landscaping is a is a constant drain on our finances here, right? So I have been like looking at the balance sheet, looking at what I made this year. My income tax return was the big kind of question mark uh because Again, I I don't want to get specific here, uh, because I don't think I'm technically allowed to. Right. But let's let's just say that like my income tax situation this year, even before the equity stuff that I could talk about. um was gonna be interesting. And I was really scared. I was very scared this year about what my potential tax obligation was going to be. And I I had to submit a bunch of stuff that basically set my withholding rate for a lot of the things that I'm talking about. I and I'm being I'm being intentionally vague because I think technically I have to be. So just just bear with me here. Long story short, I was way overpaid on taxes this year. Oh, okay. Like, like grossly overpaid. And that's inclusive of the consulting work that I do. Like I still do that and I still get paid to do that. That is a huge thing that I have to keep track of because again, like we were talking about a few episodes ago, the money you make from that isn't taxed. So at the end of the year, you have to declare it as income and then you have to figure out like, what do I withhold at? What do I owe? That's why I just I literally just throw papers at an accountant and say, figure it the fuck out. I'm not gonna deal with it. So long story short, I was way overpaid, which was a relief. But now of flush so making it rain. Yep So I started looking at, you know, conceivably what my BMW was worth. Uh depreciation is hits really hard on performance cars. Hits very hard. Uh, but having it paid off helps. And, you know, I gotta, it was still worth a pretty decent chunk of change. Uh so I was doing a little bit of research and I was like, man, I I really want to see if I could maybe pick up this car. And when I started looking at the numbers and the models that were out there and everything, I was like, this is pretty doable. But that wasn't the only car that I was looking at.

Paul 24:50 Listen

Okay, so quick question. Yep. Before we go on the next car, what color did you get? Are you looking at build-in price? Yeah, I'm just going through the colors right now. I I can say there is no bad color for this car. Okay. Which one do you like? I like the mm I like like the the the the gray. Which one The darker one. So there's light one's fine too. Like the the light I don't know what it's called.

Drew 25:21 Listen

Nar Nardo gray is sort of Audi signature color for their RS performance car, right? And then they have the Daytona Girl uh gray pearl effect. Yes, which is that better. Which is an interesting thing because the pearl effect, depending on where you're standing, it looks like it's a different color. Oh. So like it shifts depending on how much light hits it. The car that I got was Nardo Gray. Okay. Okay. So let's let's walk through let's walk through my configuration. So I have Nardo Gray.

Paul 25:51 Listen

Okay.

Drew 25:51 Listen

Uh leave the wheels like they're like they're the default Okay. I have the balcona perforated leather with the black red uh stitching. Nice. Okay. That's that looks great. Okay. So now get out now go down to packages. Okay. Driver assistance.

Paul 26:10 Listen

Of course.

Drew 26:12 Listen

Matte carbon package, which is going to change the appearance.

Paul 26:15 Listen

Okay. Waiting for that to load here. Oh yeah, that got okay, I like that. It gets rid of some of the the shiny. Uh-huh. Yep.

Drew 26:24 Listen

Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm. Ex executive executive package.

Paul 26:30 Listen

Yep. Yep.

Drew 26:31 Listen

Okay. And that's all from there. And then under individual options, I got the RS Sport Exhaust System. Okay. And red brake calipers. Not ceramic brakes, just the red brake calipers.

Paul 26:44 Listen

Okay.

Drew 26:45 Listen

And that is my configuration.

Paul 26:48 Listen

Okay. Okay. I like the little bit of red poking through on the top. Yeah. On the wheels.

Drew 26:53 Listen

That's nice. So those those wheels, those wheels are really Nice. I really love the design of them. I'm not a huge fan of low profile tires for a bunch of reasons, but they fucking work, man. They fucking that why that Yespoke design is sharp. Is sharp. So that that is that is literally the car that I just picked up today. Okay. Ooh, got today. Got it today. Now, let's let's go let's go into Drew's storytime because I've been I've been on the hunt for one of these cars for about a month now. Okay. So uh there aren't any here in the local Columbus area that are available Audi doesn't sell a lot of these cars. Uh and if you look at the price tag, you might understand why. Yeah, they're it's it's it's costly. It's a costly car. Um but you know, this is a car that Real enthusiast like because there's really nothing like a fast wagon. Now, my very first car that I ever owned was a wagon.

Paul 27:59 Listen

I I owned two wagons in the past.

Drew 28:02 Listen

I had I had a Subaru Impreza Sport Wagon. Both of mine were Ford's, but I still have a soft spot for a wagon. I love that little Subaru. Yeah. They're not very common. They're not very common. And this is the kind of car, by the way, that if if you know, you know. You know what this is. And in fact, funny story. So man so I I got this car this morning, drove it home, and we went out to dinner tonight. And as we were walking back to the car, there was a guy walking around the car. And and like as I was walking close to it, I hit the button on my key fob and it blaked that he like jumped up and he's like, sorry man, this is like my dream car. I was just checking it out. I was like, my too, man. Don't let your dreams be dreams. He's like, when did you get it? I'm like, today. It's like literally today. He's like, no shit. I'm like, yeah. So like and then like as we were driving home, like it it turned it turns a lot of heads. Not that the M didn't, right? But you look at the M and you're like, okay, it's a BMW M car, it's a convertible. Okay. This this is this is on a different planet. This is completely on a different planet. Not just in terms of the styling, which I love. I love the styling. The performance is insane. It's absolutely insane. Like 600 and some horsepower, 600 and some foot pounds of torque. It's insanity. It is insanity. And it it just looks like a station wagon, right? Yeah. So anyway, so here's what happened. Uh this car that I bought, I bought from an Audi dealership up near Cleveland, kind of between Cleveland and Akron. Uh Audi, Cuyahoga Falls, fantastic dealership to work with. During the greater Ohio area, you need an Audi, like free commercial for them. They were really good to work with. But that wasn't the first car that I went to look at. Okay. So long story short, there was a there was a car in Pittsburgh that was almost spec identical to this, but it didn't have the black carbon package. I talked to the I talked to the salesman on the phone. You know, I found it via the Audi website. Talk to the salesman on the phone. Is the car available? Yeah, car's still available. Uh, okay, you're in Pittsburgh, I'm in Columbus, that's three hours away. How much of this can we like get done on the phone? And then I can come to I can come to Pittsburgh. We could hash out the final details, sign some paperwork, and everybody's happy. So we agreed to terms on like the price of the car. We agreed on terms in theory about what my trade was going to be worth pending like an actual inspection when I got there. So like I, you know, they obviously wanted to give me way less. And and by the way, like the secret to buying an expensive car like this. is to trade in because the nice thing about trading in your car with equity is not only does it make what you owe on the new car less, you only pay tax on the difference. So that that actually makes a pretty big fucking difference. So like if you can come up with half of the amount of this car in equity, which is essentially kind of what I did. You're only paying tax on the difference. And it's seven or eight percent. That's that's a lot. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. So anyway. Came to terms on what that was gonna be. So he's like, you know, send me a picture of your registration. Because it was gonna be an out of state deal. I had to go get a cashier's check. I had to like call my insurance agent and get a temporary uh insurance card for the VIN of the car that I was gonna buy. Like everything was ready to go. Okay. So Friday, I adjusted my work schedule. I got up super early and I got on the road. My goal was to be in the dealership in Pittsburgh. First thing Friday morning. So I did. And I get there, the car's in the delivery bay. Everything looks good. They're just finishing like detailing it. And I'm like, okay, cool. Let's go get some stuff done. So we go up to his desk and the first thing you have to do is you have to create an account with Audi. Because cars these days, turns out, uh all have apps. You uh you have you ha you have to have an account. They they all get over-the-era updates, they all communicate via the interwebs. They're very they're very connected devices. Cars are some of the most connected telemetry and Depending on what car model you buy, like spyware on wheels type stuff, right? So we do all that. And then it was time to go talk to the finance person. But the finance person was with somebody else. So then my salesman said, why don't we go down and I'll start walking you through the car, we'll get your phone paired up. I'll start walking you through stuff. And when Jen, the finance lady, is ready to go, we'll come back upstairs and we'll we'll do all that. And then you can be on your way. And I'm like, Looking great. Right? Yeah. So we go down and we try and like I I create my Audi account on his computer. I download the Audi app to my phone. I log in. Everything's looking good. So the first thing you have to do is when you start up the car, it's like Who's the driver? You need to log in. Like, do you want to log in with a username and password? Do you want to do a QR code? Whatever. Paul, for 45 minutes, we sat there. The car would not log in. Huh. Yep. And what do I do for a living, Paul? Yeah. I do IT stuff.

Paul 33:17 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 33:17 Listen

So I start. I start thinking to myself, okay, well, obviously whatever web service this fucking thing's trying to call, it's not working.

Paul 33:24 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 33:24 Listen

Well, I noticed that this delivery bay is like underground. And I'm thinking, why don't we go somewhere? Yeah, let's let's let's pull the car outside and see if we can get it to work outside. Didn't make a difference. Uh let's join Wi-Fi and make sure that I can like use the QR code on Wi-Fi. No. We tried resetting the infotainment system in the car, would not connect at all. So I looked at him and I said I'm gonna give you 30 minutes to like figure out why this car doesn't work, and then I'm out of here. I was like rapidly losing my patience, right? Yeah. So I go back upstairs. My poor salesman is like trying to figure this out. Um He's trying to do it by himself and I felt really bad. Like I kind of wanted to like tell him like hey hey the service department's like right over there. Like you could probably go you could go ask them for help. Like I'm not gonna think anything less of you. I just want this to fucking work.

Paul 34:18 Listen

Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 34:19 Listen

So the car wouldn't log in. So long story short, I went back upstairs and Jen, the finance lady, is like, You ready to sign some papers? And I'm like, Well, Jen, uh I don't think I don't think the car works. And she goes, What do you mean? And I was like I don't know how else to say that statement. Like the car doesn't log in, it doesn't communicate with Ality. And she's like, oh dear, let me go figure out what's going on. So that sort of set off like a chain of events. An hour goes by. Meanwhile, I'm working. I'm taking conference calls. I'm doing everything. Like I told him like I could do things in between like my work because It was a Friday and one of the benefits of my job is that I can work from a bunch of different places. So I'm I'm working, I'm I'm paying attention to them, I'm doing the things they need me to do, I'm going back and get So I had a little bit of a lull. I went downstairs and now the sales manager's there. The service guy looks at it and says, I can't fix this because it's not a problem with the car, it's a problem with Audi. And I was like, I think you need to try again. Because I mean I can log in on the Audi app and I was like, I know a thing or two about computers and like web services and how like cellular services work. How do I know there's a lot of problem with the car? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. It's fine. Like it'll be fine. It just probably has to figure itself out. It's been sitting indoors for six months. And I'm like, guys, I'm not gonna drive this car off the lot and then it's gonna be my problem. Right. Especially especially especially for that much money, right?

Paul 35:39 Listen

Yeah, yeah.

Drew 35:40 Listen

And then, you know, then I started noticing that like the car's outside now, right? So it's in the sunlight. They clearly hadn't detailed it. And like it was like there were smudges on the windows, and I'm I'm pointing that out. And at one point, the sales manager comes out with like one of those diagnostic tools that you plug into the car. Yeah. And like he's plugging it in, and I'm sitting there and I'm like standing next to my BMW. I'm looking at my BMW and I'm looking at this car and I'm like, hey guys, can we stop for a second and and like actually say out loud what's happening right now? You're plugging a diagnostic tool into a car that has less than a hundred miles on it to figure out why it won't work. I'm sorry guys, I'm leaving. Yeah. Like so like there's something wrong with this car. There's something wrong with this car. Okay. Yeah. And they're like, well, listen, we understand you drove all the way here. We feel bad. We're willing to discount the car even further. And I'm like, first of all, the number you gave me, my time's worth way more than that. Like, sorry. And second of all, like I don't care how much you discount it, like I don't think this car works. And and by the way, like this this MMI system, which is like the name of the infotainment system, kind of a big deal. Like you need that to work for this car to like do stuff. Yeah. So like I'm not gonna buy it and have it brick itself. So thanks, but no thanks. So they were disappointed. I was disappointed. I drove home.

Paul 36:52 Listen

For all you know, there's an issue with like the the cellular system in the car and it can't talk.

Drew 36:56 Listen

Yeah. Yeah. Could could be the antenna, could be, could be something they have to rip the whole dash out to fix. I'm like, no, not not on a brand new car. No, I'm not I'm not doing it. No. And the fact that like no one really knew what the problem was was like a big red flag to me too. So I left. I was disappointed. Disappointed because I really wanted it. But this is one of those things, and I made an Instagram story about this. It's like the number one rule of buying a new car is no matter how emotional you are about it, like don't be afraid to walk away. Right. Like if if if if the vibes are off, as the kids say, don't fucking do it. Because I've I've been guilty of that in the past. I bought a Volkswagen Jetta GLI. That didn't feel right, but I was like, you know what? I'm sure it'll be fine. It's under warranty. Spoiler alert, even if the car is under warranty, think about the time. You have to invest, take it to and from a dealer or a shop or whatever to get it resolved. You buy a new car, it should fucking work. Yeah. It should just fucking work. Now, as this is all unfolding, and I'm like packing up my shit, my phone rings. Okay. And it was a salesman at Audi Cuyahoga Falls, which is where I bought the car that I bought today. And funny enough, part of the reason that I drove to Pittsburgh. is the car that they were getting was at the port, but they didn't know when they were going to get it.

Paul 38:18 Listen

Okay.

Drew 38:19 Listen

Dude literally calls me while I'm going through it with this other dealership and says, hey, by the way, it just got dropped off. And I'm like, okay, here's the deal. I'm getting ready to leave this place empty-handed. What do you need? What do you need from me to get this ready? Because I want this car. I told him yours is a little more expensive. So like here's what I would I and I understand it has an option that the black op the black carbon thing was the only option that was different. So it made it a few thousand dollars more. I'm like, I don't really want that. So if you could like kind of help me out, here's what they're giving me in trade. I had the deal sheet from Audi Pittsburgh that I sent them, like verifying that I wasn't like making this up. And they're like, they're like, if you're good with this, we're good with this. We'll get the car ready. I just need you to fill out like an application, send me some like some screenshots of stuff. And like the only thing that was holding me back is I had this cashier's check. Have you ever done a cashiers check before?

Paul 39:21 Listen

Yeah, yeah. It's a pain in the ass because you have to make it out to the person you're giving it to.

Drew 39:25 Listen

Right. So it's not like it's not like I could take that. Yeah, it's not transferable. So like I had to get up early today Go to the bank and deployed go not just go to the bank, go to the bank where I got it and redeposit it. And then like I was able to use a personal check for the for the down payment and stuff today for this. But like it was just a huge pain in the ass. And then I had to drive another two hours up to basically Akron uh to get this done. But um but this dealer was way better to work with. Now funny enough, okay, so funny funny anecdote to the story, right? Go to get in the car and it doesn't it doesn't log in. Oh you're like, oh no. But but but these people were like, have you ever owned an Audi before? And I was like, yeah. And I was like, how long ago was it? And I said, well, God, it was like early 2010s, I think. I had an Audi S4. And they're like, okay, would you be okay with setting up a new account with a different email address? Okay, so so th something was wrong with your account. I I was like, I'm willing to try. So I have like my consulting email address. I have like another outlook. com address and like Do I care where Audi sends me email? No. Not really? So I was like, okay, let's try it. So he he basically unlinked the car from the account, like my my original like regular email account. I created a new account with a new password. Car logged in. How about that? Now, I felt bad, right? Because Could we have done that at the Pittsburgh dealership? Maybe. Did that thought did that thought ever I mean it didn't enter my mind because I didn't think it would matter. Yeah. But it never entered their mind.

Paul 41:13 Listen

You also would think that like they would have some sort of diagnostic system they can go in and figure out what's going wrong or something. But like the fact that they were able to, like, hey, like maybe they've seen this before And they're like, which by means they sell more cars. Uh maybe. And and they're like, hey, try this. That's great.

Drew 41:32 Listen

Yeah. So it did it did log in. We were able to get like my phone paired. And then they were able to like They have like a dedicated like concierge person that literally walks you through the entire car, which is pretty rad. And BMW did that too, to be fair. I think a lot of these a lot of these higher end cars do that. But So they walked me through the entire car and we got it. And uh I drove it home this evening. Um it's great. I'm super happy. Um it is like way more comfortable than the BMW, especially for longer road trips. Uh it gets terrible gas mile. Terrible gas pack. Well it's a it it actually it actually has what's called a gas guzzler tax

Paul 42:11 Listen

Oh, because it's it doesn't meet like the EPA regulations.

Drew 42:14 Listen

Yeah, it's got a big it's got a big twin turbo V8 in it. Yeah. So it gets like it gets like 17 highways. Okay.

Paul 42:22 Listen

Okay.

Drew 42:23 Listen

Yeah.

Paul 42:24 Listen

And here and here's the other thing that's not great.

Drew 42:26 Listen

That's not great.

Paul 42:28 Listen

Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So 17, 17 miles per gallon on the good stuff. Yeah.

Drew 42:34 Listen

Yeah. Uh now now anecdote to the story. So part of the reason that I was also a little bit accelerated in doing this is this is the last year you can get this car with a V8. So Audi Audi has basically said that their cars going forward are going to be hybrids or battery only. Now BMW already did this. So like the BMW M5 Touring, which is like the main Sort of competitor to this model went the hybrid route. It's bonkers powerful because it's a hybrid power system. But it's like $30,000 more than this, harder to get, and like a thousand pounds heavier.

Paul 43:14 Listen

Yeah. Batteries are batteries are heavy.

Drew 43:17 Listen

Yeah. Now it's got some cool tech, right? But this is the last year you can get this in a V8. And because it has the performance exhaust system, it sounds, it sounds breathtaking. It sounds breathtaking. And uh what they did with the RS6 uh performance because like this is the RS6 Avant performance which is That's not necessarily different. Like every every one of these you buy is now the performance trim. They made the car lighter by removing some of the sound deadening so you could hear more of the engine and more of the exhaust. So it's like And the car has different drive modes. Like when it's nice and toned down and tampered down, it's got an air suspension that's fully adjustable. Like it's nice and comfortable like a big luxury car. You hit just like the M4, like you hit one button, the car completely transforms. You can actually feel the car lower down. So we he we demoed that when we were when we were walking through it today. And like literally what it does It's got an air suspension, right? So when you whenever you whenever you tell it to raise or lower, like it literally goes vrp vrp. And like you can like see it. Because I was like looking at a spot on the wall, you could literally see the car go up and down. Like it's nuts. It's it's absolutely nuts how much technology is in this car. Uh so I'm I'm really happy. I'm glad that it was able to work out and that um you know it's it's it's I was I was having this conversation with my dad. It's like we didn't grow up with all the money in the world. Um, and we were pretty frugal. And while, you know, I have a lot of expensive hobbies and I spend money on stuff, like Uh it's not like I'm not gonna financially recover from this, right? Like I do l I I I know that I'm talking about buying a tent and and uh god I sound like such a fucking tool right now. I know I just talked about buying a $10,000 computer and I just bought a super awesome performance sports car. I'm I'm blessed, right? Like there's I I'm I'm completely fucking blessed. Like I have We could debate whether or not I am a smart person. I am a clever person. I don't know if I'm a smart person. Okay. I don't know what I did in a previous life to deserve the things that I have, the things that I can afford, the things that I can do. And I don't want this to come off like I'm some elitist guy who buys Expensive shit just for buying the hell of it, right? Like I yeah, I still have a retirement fund. Like I I'm not gonna lose my house. Like I I am so fortunate to be where I'm at and what I'm doing to be able to do this stuff. So How's your week been, Paul?

Paul 45:51 Listen

Oh my week has not been nearly as eventful as yours, that's for sure.

Drew 45:56 Listen

Okay, talk to me. Talk to me about stuff that you did in the fucking 10 minutes we have left on this podcast.

Paul 46:03 Listen

I'll go through it quick. So my arrow signal. Definitely save my work day on Friday. Alright, what happened? Uh so uh last weekend a nice person from my Bradband company knocked on my door and said, like, hey, next week We're gonna be like, there's a bunch of houses over there. We're gonna be pulling some more cable. Uh-oh. And you may notice some internet disruptions like Wednesday through Friday. Because it won't be very long, but they could be frequent. Well, I didn't hit I didn't have anything happen Wednesday or Thursday. Friday was a rough day. And the arrow signal totally works. The only issue is I wish it was a little faster. I mean it it takes it takes about 10 seconds for it to realize the internet is out and switch over. Which if you're on a like a video call, that's a that's a that's a pretty that's a pretty long ass 10 seconds. Yeah. But it does work. It does slip over automatically. I used maybe like half a gig that day of of data. Because like the the disruption was real short. It would go out and be back in a couple of minutes. So I was going back and forth and it worked great.

Drew 47:17 Listen

Okay. So it did it did exactly what you needed it to do.

Paul 47:20 Listen

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was able to continue working. Great, great $50 investment. It totally does the thing. Okay. Okay.

Drew 47:28 Listen

I'm I'm happy for you. But like you said, but so like was there something you you weren't able to do because of the speed. Like were you able to get on a video call? I was I can do video calls.

Paul 47:37 Listen

Yeah. Yeah. It was was it wasn't great, but like and again it was a little choppy because like you would draw it for 10 seconds and come back on and There was one point where it was just happening so frequently, I just gave up. I'm like, I I'm like, it was like 3. 30. I'm like, I'm I'm just I'm just done. I'm done. I'm I'm out, like I'm not dealing with this anymore. Oh it's all over. I'm gonna go watch TV. Yeah. Uh Also, Drew, I'm here to admit that I have been unfaithful.

Drew 48:05 Listen

I don't know, I don't I don't know I don't I don't know I don't know I don't understand I don't I I look I looked at the dock, right? I looked at our doc. I don't understand this

Paul 48:12 Listen

No. I I'm I'm playing board games with the people with work.

Drew 48:17 Listen

You're you're playing you're playing what?

Paul 48:19 Listen

Instead of playing board games with you, Drew, I'm playing board games with other people.

Drew 48:23 Listen

I mean, that's fine. Nobody loves me. It's fine.

Paul 48:25 Listen

No. I know. Uh we started playing Earthborn Rangers. I don't know what that is. Okay. So it is a It's it's a first of all, it's a card game. It's a card game. Okay. But it is a narrative story game that you play over multiple sessions. So it's a legacy. It's a leg yes, it's 100%. In fact, at this point, I don't even know what the point of the game is or how to win. And I think that's on purpose.

Drew 48:56 Listen

Oh, wait a minute. Is this like that game? Oh, it was like the secret island or something? Is it like that? Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't think I don't know. Oh, hold on.

Paul 49:07 Listen

This game came out about like I think two years ago and the other Kickstarter, like there was another Kickstarter. I've had this game for a while just sitting there.

Drew 49:14 Listen

Okay.

Paul 49:14 Listen

Uh finally got it to the table. Uh So like basically it's when it's it's has a little bit of a deck building component like your first session, you're building your ranger. And the idea is like, hey, you're it's this Basically, it's like the opposite of Fallout. It's like after the apocalypse, but everything's great now. Earth is healed.

Drew 49:35 Listen

Okay.

Paul 49:37 Listen

And you're this ranger, and you're just trying to help civilization. And you start the first session by building this deck with like you have cards that represent your personality, your background, and your specialty. Uh, so you have this deck of 30 cards that's customized just for you and how you're gonna play. And uh the game is played like uh uh a session is supposed to be like one day And you basically go into your out of cards, you choose to camp, or something happens. And When you read the rules, the game doesn't look like much on the surface. Okay. But when you start playing it You start seeing these like interactions that start happening. So like anytime you do a test, anytime you choose to do something, right? Whether it's like The idea is like, okay, like you're trying to travel, so you have to traverse this this area. So you may do a traversal test to get progress tokens. You may have obstacles in your way. You may have animals. So you're doing these tests to basically cure clear cards or like do missions.

Drew 50:46 Listen

Okay.

Paul 50:47 Listen

But every time you do a test, you'd basically draw a card. It's like, hey, do you get plus one, minus one, minus two to this test?

Drew 50:53 Listen

You know, a little bit of randomness. Very DD like.

Paul 50:55 Listen

Yeah, but each of the cards has one of three symbols on it. It's like a blue, a red, and an orange. Every card on the table may have one of those symbols on it as well. Okay. So after you do your challenge, you start working through this and you look for cards that have that same symbol and it would do an action. So like a good example is uh there's these basic they're like Sika bucks. They're deer. Okay. There's also does. If there are two bucks together and they get triggered, they fight each other because they're territorial.

Drew 51:31 Listen

Okay.

Paul 51:32 Listen

So they may hurt each other. If there's a prey and a predator, the predator may attack the prey and hurt them. Uh there's uh other things. And like literally what happened was So sometimes your your game, your day can end kind of abruptly. And what happened was is like we started out in like the main station and we and just through luck of a draw, we met this uh basically she's an annoying girl who asks questions. She likes just to father you around. Okay. So you either have to basically you have to spend time with her to answer her questions to get her to go away. So we sound her, we've met we met her once and we and we we dealt with her and went away. And then we started traveling, and we're like, oh, okay, we're at this lake, and we're trying to help this fisherman find a fishing spot. And we find this weird city under the water, and we're diving out into it. And so we and then we go across the river to find this guy, this fisherman, another a better fishing spot, and we find that girl again. Oh neat. And also and also while we were there, there as we traveled This huge hawk started circling over above us, right? So there's this hawk and this girl. And literally what happened was this thing triggered And what ended up happening is that Hawk went down and beat the shit out of that annoying girl. Okay. And and just knocked her ass out. And then basically like, oh, if she gets cleared with damage or harm, right? So she gets knocked out. Read this passage. It's like, yeah, now you have to tend her wounds. The day is over. Oh, nice But it is the the way that like like like I said, mechanically it's very simple. It doesn't look like much, but you start getting this like organic, like The the way the cards interact with each other was just something I have never seen before. This kind of like organic like storytelling that's happening. just based off of just just the way that the cards are interacting and it really like feel the it starts to flick really feel alive. Yeah, it's a So how many how many people can play it? Four? I'm playing it with three right now. Okay. You can drop in and out too. And like they have uh We just have the I just have the base game. There's an expansion that adds another story. There's an expansion that adds like some new cut character customizations. And there's like a car doubler pack. So if you want to like if two people want to have the same background, you can buy this pack and do that. Yeah, so I'm it's also funny, like this g this game is designed to be eco-friendly. Like one of the gimmicks is you could literally bury the game in in the ground and it would like decompose. So of course the first thing I did is sleeved all the cards.

Drew 54:28 Listen

So, okay, so I'm looking I'm looking at the link, right? And it's like Earthburn Core Set Second Printings, $100. Okay. And then there's Legacy of the Ancestors. What is that?

Paul 54:39 Listen

Is that a which is which of the it's a whole nother so there's one story in the box. That's another story with the zone set of cards.

Drew 54:47 Listen

And locations and and then there's expansions.

Paul 54:51 Listen

Mm-hmm.

Drew 54:52 Listen

So what's the difference between a story and expansion then?

Paul 54:55 Listen

So like the story is like a whole new like if I finish this whole story and want to do more, we can buy that legacy of the ancestors and play a whole nother story. There's also like an expansion that adds a a new background and specialty. And then there's an expansion that basically is like more of the same cards. Okay.

Drew 55:13 Listen

So if you want, you know, if you want to have Oh, deluxe deluxe wooden tokens say less. Yep. Interesting. So It's good. So I know you're playing with people that you actually like and not me, and that's fine. But here's a question for you. You know the group that we play games with. Do you think they would be into this? I think so.

Paul 55:36 Listen

Okay. Yeah, yeah. The problem is like there's five of us and that's a weird number. And there's no there's no way to get above four on this, right? Not that I know of. Board Game Geek also says like they think like the best player count is actually two for this game. Okay. But interesting.

Drew 56:00 Listen

Huh. So how far how far are you into it?

Paul 56:03 Listen

Just one day. Oh you have one you played one time.

Drew 56:06 Listen

Yeah.

Paul 56:06 Listen

Yeah. So ba we we In a play session, you probably could get through two days, but like the first one is like there's a prologue where like you build your deck and it's teaching some of the base mechanics. So we did that, and then we did a day. And we really milked that day, man. We were we we tried we tried to get as much in as we possibly could, man, until that damn fucking eagle just beat the shit out of her, that that annoying girl. So we probably can get like two days in a session. But again, like at this point, like we have some like the first mission you get, not to spoil, is is like, hey Find this person because he's got a bunch of biscuits. Kale and biscuits. And then find people to give the biscuits to Okay. So it encouraged you to like travel and start like searching and trying to get people. So we met a couple of people, gave them biscuits. We also used oh oddly enough, so we were in this one area. And like depending on where you travel, you get different cards because there's different like ecosystems. We're like along a lake, and we got these like basically like there was these weird, nasty crab creatures, and uh dens they were in. Well one of the things you could do if you had food, you could put food in the lair to try to lure the crabs back into their lair so you didn't have to deal with them. So I was putting biscuits in a cave, uh which is not a euphemism. Uh it's just yeah, it was uh again it it's really I mean if you watch like video review shut up and sit down love this game like no pun included love this game uh Huh. Yeah, it's it's it's neat. It's neat. It's the way that the car started to interact was I was not expecting as much like you start it like the way the cards interact, you just naturally start telling a story about what is going on in this world, and it is extremely neat.

Drew 58:04 Listen

Okay. It sounds interesting. I mean, I do love a good deck builder.

Paul 58:09 Listen

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Huh. And as you go, you can get rewards so you can find new stuff and then When you camp in between, you can like change up your deck and put stuff, you know. Uh yeah, yeah, it's pretty neat. Pretty neat game.

Drew 58:22 Listen

Earthborne Rangers, check it out. Okay. I'm I'm intrigued. I kind of want to see the components. I'm looking at some of the pictures here and they do look kind of cool.

Paul 58:30 Listen

I just spent some time uh 3D printing some upgraded component, more plastic for this equ-friendly game. So yeah. Because I have a 3D printer now. I made this personality.

Drew 58:41 Listen

Yeah, exactly. I made this. It's a knife. Is that a box cutter? No, I don't know. Oh, it's an actual knife. Oh. Yeah, so like it it's uh I mean people are people are so fucking creative. Like it there's little there's no spring in this, but it's like a little piece of plastic in there. Where like when you press it, it comes out and then you press down and it goes, it retracts, and like it doesn't go anywhere, right? Very creative. Yeah, very creative. I don't know. I haven't done anything like useful. That's not true. That's not true. I actually printed a couple um bullet boxes for some of my different ammo. So that's been kind of cool. Well, buddy, what else? That's it. Well, I say we wrap it up. That was a show, huh? That was a show. I was I was proud of you. I was proud of I was proud of you. I was so I was so mad yesterday, man.

Paul 59:30 Listen

I I can imagine Such a bad especially after that drive. Yeah. You know, like the anticipation going there and it just like yeah, fizzles out at the end. Yeah.

Drew 59:39 Listen

Oh that's why I was like, hey, let's do this tomorrow because I have content. Story.

Paul 59:46 Listen

Hey, but it all worked out. You got you got it you got the car today.

Drew 59:49 Listen

So I did get us out of here.

Paul 59:51 Listen

All right. Doing the best. com. You can find all the show notes, link to the video version if you want to see these things and Drew's great facial expressions.

Drew 59:59 Listen

And uh hey Thanks for listening