I'm sure they're doing their best

Drew 00:00 Listen

Every everything I touch I ruin.

Paul 00:03 Listen

Uh that's not true. Uh what's wrong, Drew?

Drew 00:09 Listen

I broke Linux. Broke Linux. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. See, here's the thing. If you want to really do stuff with generative AI locally The best and worst advice I could give you is do it in Linux. Okay, okay. A lot of the a lot of the higher order libraries and accelerators and things really seem built for Linux. You really have to go out there and hunt for pre-compiled libraries for stuff for Windows. Okay. Well now if you are on Windows, if you are on Windows, you can download the Windows subsystem for Linux. Weasel. Yeah. That works a little bit. But there's just like I have NVIDIA graphics cards in my Linux computer. Okay.

Paul 01:11 Listen

Well, I've heard yeah, I've yeah. Well, I mean I'm guessing you're not using them from gaming, but I've heard NVIDIA and Linux for gaming is is rough.

Drew 01:18 Listen

Is it rough for In NVIDIA NVIDIA and anything in for Linux is rough. Okay, okay. I I will I will tell you that you can do yourselves a lot of favors if you just use Ubuntu. Because like Ubuntu has All of the drivers in their package repository. You install it and it works. You don't have to compile anything. You don't have to fuck with anything. It just works. On Fedora, which is what I'm using, which is a variant of Red Hat, it's basically what users who used to love CentOS, like me, migrated to after they basically said, Yeah, we're not going to do CentOS anymore. It's a different story. The driver is not part of an official package. So you have to go out and add a separate repository or try to download NVIDIA's drivers. And as someone who's coming from Windows, you would think, oh, I'll just go download the driver from NVIDIA.

Paul 02:11 Listen

No.

Drew 02:12 Listen

Nope. It has no dependencies. Like you download, you download the the uh the driver bundle and try to install it, you know, depending on what window manager you have and what driver ship with your default like you can you could drive yourself crazy doing it. Now there are there are really helpful people out there that have Basically taken the driver and put it on open repositories so it has all the dependencies when you do your package manager and you install. Long story short, uh a new version of the driver came out. And when you're doing generative AI stuff, especially image-related stuff, all those Python libraries like Torch And all that stuff have a hard dependency on the version of the CUDA drivers, the C UDA drivers that you have installed. My Linux desktop very helpfully upgraded by graphics drivers. You're welcome. It literally broke everything. It broke, it broke all my workflows. All of them. And at first I was like, I can fix this. I'll go find new versions of all of this. Well, some of the things have been updated for the new version, some haven't. I'll try to do a driver rollback. And now my computer won't boot.

Paul 03:33 Listen

Oh no.

Drew 03:35 Listen

Yeah, yeah. And I have data on there that I don't want to lose. So I'm gonna have to figure that out. Okay. Uh yeah, it just it like it tries to boot into the window manager. I I know what I have to do. I have to basically boot to a terminal prompt and get in there and basically fiddle. I just I'm just I'm just done with it. Just done with it. Because I met I messed up with it all I messed with it all day yesterday. I messed with it this morning before work. I'm just like, I need a break from this. Like I will Come back with this with fresh eyes. How are you? Not too shabby. Not too shabby.

Paul 04:12 Listen

Can't complain. Can't complain.

Drew 04:14 Listen

Yeah. The other thing that's pissing me off is my 3D printer.

Paul 04:17 Listen

What's wrong with your 3D printer?

Drew 04:20 Listen

It does a really good job with PLA.

Paul 04:24 Listen

Yeah, it's a very forgiving and easy material to print with, which is why that's what I use for like 95% of my prints.

Drew 04:33 Listen

I got cocky. I bought some inland PETG carbon fiber filament. Yeah. And I followed all the instructions. I bought a filament dryer. We talked about that last week. I dried that bitch for 12 hours. Yeah. And I printed spools for filament and they came out wonderful. They came out wonderful, no problem at all. And it's P-E-T-G. So I was at Micro Center earlier this week and I picked up a couple spools of just regular inland PETG, tried to filament, threw it in the printer. I clog my nozzle twice with that stupid shit. Oh no. It just leaves a lot of strings. It leaves a lot of what they call boogers and zits on the print. It's almost like the nozzle is too close to the print and it just kind of like collects it as it goes around. I've tried adjusting, I've tried adjusting temperatures, I've tried adjusting speed. I'm just like, this is stupid. I don't have I don't have time for this. I have a Linux machine to fix. I can't be fucking I can't be fucking with 3D printer filament all the time. I mean I But you mostly do PLA, right?

Paul 05:41 Listen

Do you do any any PETG or I've done some uh PETG prints. Yeah.

Drew 05:46 Listen

What brand did you use?

Paul 05:47 Listen

Uh Inland. Inland. Yeah. Yeah. And it they all come out good so far.

Drew 05:52 Listen

Really? What did you what did you do? Like when you added the filament, what did you do? Did you just use the preset or like what did you do? Yeah.

Paul 05:58 Listen

Yeah, I just used the preset. That's what I did. I don't understand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I double checked to make sure the temps were what they recommended and stuff, and it was all fine. And Yeah.

Drew 06:08 Listen

Okay, so let me ask you a question about that, right? So I'm just gonna open I'm gonna open my program real quick, okay? Okay. Let me make sure I'm not crazy because I need constant validation.

Paul 06:17 Listen

Okay

Drew 06:18 Listen

So I opened Bamboo Studio. Uh-huh. I'm assuming that's the slicer you're using.

Paul 06:22 Listen

Uh it is, it is, because I'm again I'm I'm lazy, so that's what I use. It's perfectly fine.

Drew 06:27 Listen

Yeah. It works great. Especially when you have a bamboo printer. Mm-hmm. Now, I let's say I have a print that I have that I have ready to go here, right? So I open the I open the print and then I go to uh I go to um uh let's see here, where is it? Um hmm. Do I have to? Oh, a new configuration package is available. Sure, I'll do that. Yeah, I I I installed that this morning. Yep. So project filaments, right? I click the little gear and it brings up all my filament presets. Okay. And when I added this, when I added the custom filament, I went to custom filament, I created a new, I chose the brand as inland, I chose the materials PETG, I said P-E-T-Orange is the serial number, and I left everything alone. But if I go in there right now and I edit the preset for my nozzle, there's the line that says recommended nozzle temperature, and it says min and max.

Paul 07:26 Listen

Okay.

Drew 07:27 Listen

Is that what you edit?

Paul 07:29 Listen

Yes, that's what I've been editing. Yes.

Drew 07:31 Listen

Okay. Yes. And then for bed temperatures, you set all your bed temperatures to the recommended as well. I do. Okay. Underneath that though There's there's another temperature setting for the nozzle. If you scroll down. You see that?

Paul 07:46 Listen

Oh, hold on.

Drew 07:48 Listen

You can scroll down in that window.

Paul 07:50 Listen

Why can't I see? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Well, for some reason I can't see my custom filaments, so I'm just making a new one.

Drew 07:56 Listen

I love when that happens.

Paul 07:57 Listen

Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is my favorite. And why why is there no just okay? There's pet G C F. There it is, pet G. Okay, okay, okay. Serial number. PET G test. That's gonna be my serial number. Very fancy. Yep. I'm gonna create. Yep. I have not selected a printer or a preset yet. Fuck you. I'll create based on current filament copy. Fuck. Yeah, sure, whatever. Okay, great. This is great. This is great. Why? Oh, I I did what you asked me to do. You must like to printer or preset I did! I did select that. Okay, hold on. Okay, here we are. Filament created. Okay, now I can go and edit the filament. Okay, custom filaments. Edit. Okay. Okay.

Drew 08:43 Listen

So there's the recommended nozzle temperature, and then under print temperature, there's all the build plate settings. But at the very bottom, there's yet another nozzle temperature setting.

Paul 08:52 Listen

Print temperature coal okay. Scroll down. I see scroll down filament scarf seam volumet. I don't see that.

Drew 09:00 Listen

Are you do you have advanced on or no?

Paul 09:03 Listen

Uh no, hold on. I've never turned it on.

Drew 09:06 Listen

I've never turned- I didn't realize there wasn't a it won't let me turn it on. No, I don't I don't have it on either. I don't have it on either. Okay. But under but under like under the filament, under direct drive standard. Mine says basic information, type, PETG, diameter, velocity. What do you have for diameter, by the way?

Paul 09:23 Listen

Uh the the Oh why can't I see default diameter 1. 75?

Drew 09:30 Listen

That's what I have. Velocity adoption factor one, softening temperature 70. Yeah. Uh filament prime volume. And then there's a break and it says print temperature. And then it has like it has like all that's what I've changed.

Paul 09:43 Listen

It's like the yeah, the print temperature. Right.

Drew 09:46 Listen

Volume break. Yeah, at the very at the very bottom of that though. At the very bottom of Yeah. 255 is what Yeah, now here's the interesting thing, right?

Paul 09:57 Listen

Well I guess no, I would change that to wait what's based on the manufacturer, right? Because there's two, there's the bed temp and there's the nozzle temp. So I would I don't think I had to adjust it for the inland, but

Drew 10:10 Listen

Okay, I did.

Paul 10:11 Listen

Okay.

Drew 10:12 Listen

I've been fucking with that. But here's my thing, right? Here's what I don't understand. Recommended nozzle temperature has a range, min and max.

Paul 10:17 Listen

Yes.

Drew 10:18 Listen

Okay. Nozzle underneath print temperature has the initial layer and other layers. Yes. Yes. Right? If I've what I found while watching the printer is if you don't change the nozzle temp, it prints at 255. So I could set the I could set the min and max at 230, 240, it'll still print at 255. Oh That's and I thought maybe that was the problem. It's not. It's not the problem. There seems to be something else going on here. All right. I'm I'm not crazy. Okay.

Paul 10:47 Listen

Yeah, no, no. No, and now I can't close the window. That's cute. That's cute. God damn yeah.

Drew 10:52 Listen

Great, great up. Great, great up.

Paul 10:54 Listen

I mean when you start getting into the corners of the application, it gets a little it gets a little uh a little weird.

Drew 11:00 Listen

But to your point though, you basically did you dry it ahead of time and everything? Uh the PET G, yeah, I did. Yeah. How how long? Did you do the 12, the eight hours or 12 hours, whatever it said?

Paul 11:09 Listen

I think I did just four hours.

Drew 11:11 Listen

Interesting.

Paul 11:12 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 11:12 Listen

Yeah, that was fine. I mean, my house isn't humid right now, so like I don't know.

Paul 11:18 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 11:18 Listen

Anyway, that's frustrating.

Paul 11:20 Listen

I've only done a couple prints with it. uh a handful of things mostly for things that I wanted for like inside the printer or like inside the AMS like you know some caps to keep the you know certain parts of it for getting all nasty and and gunky and stuff but It's printed. I even got like weird. I got I got uh the inland translucent orange PET G.

Drew 11:45 Listen

With and that it it printed just I bought some I bought some bamboo brand translucent orange I'm gonna try just to make sure that that works because like

Paul 11:54 Listen

Now I've only used PLA, but I've had really good luck with Sun the Sun Lu brand, which I guess is the Pamboo Labs brand, but you actually can buy it.

Drew 12:02 Listen

Where where do you buy it from?

Paul 12:04 Listen

Amazon?

Drew 12:05 Listen

Okay, so if I go to Amazon right now, because like the bamboo filament is always fucking sold out. So Sun Lu.

Paul 12:11 Listen

Mm-hmm.

Drew 12:11 Listen

Yeah. S-U-N-L-U.

Paul 12:14 Listen

Yep. Yep. Every every everyone says that Bamboo actually buys their filament from Sun Lu and just puts it puts them on their own spools and puts the Plus the RFID tag. But from what I understand, it's the exact same. It's what Bamboo uses.

Drew 12:31 Listen

Okay, so that begs the question. So you've bought some of this, right?

Paul 12:35 Listen

Mm-hmm.

Drew 12:36 Listen

Now, when you put it in the printer, did you just pick the bamboo preset?

Paul 12:41 Listen

Uh I just went with generic, I think.

Drew 12:43 Listen

Like generally Because if it's the same filament.

Paul 12:46 Listen

Yeah, I could. I could, yeah.

Drew 12:47 Listen

Okay, so you just did generic then. I think so.

Paul 12:50 Listen

No, actually I think the Sun Lu there is actually uh Sun Lu in Bamboo Studio to pick. Yeah, so I picked Sun Lu and then like PLA.

Drew 12:58 Listen

So okay. It's been shopping more results. Four pack of PLA TPU silk. Ooh. I could get it tomorrow. I've never printed with TPU, have you?

Paul 13:09 Listen

I have not. No. Okay. And like if you buy it from Sunlu's website, you can buy the filament without the spools as well if you want to save a couple bucks. From Sunlu's website? Yeah, I don't think Amazon offers that, but I think Sunlu's website offers.

Drew 13:21 Listen

Okay, because I have printed a lot of spools. Yeah. I've printed a lot of spools recently. You can just, yeah. Okay. Shop other stores directly. Okay, I'm gonna I'll play with this later. I won't okay. That'll be a fun experiment. I wanna I'm gonna try to get some different P L A and C or P E T G because I like printing with P-E T G. And like I said I used the inland PETG carbon fiber stuff. And it was fine. And yeah, I printed I printed uh blank spools with that and it came out great. No stringing, no blobs, no nothing. It was phenomenal, phenomenal. It came out really well. Um, okay. You have a bunch of stuff in here this week.

Paul 13:58 Listen

I do. I do. So the first one, it's gonna be real quick. Uh I became aware of this website from another podcast. I can't remember what it is, but it's like pod, it's a pod duration website. And you put in the RSS feed and it basically scans your podcast. So and I did it for ours and I just have some fun fun numbers too, okay?

Drew 14:17 Listen

Okay.

Paul 14:18 Listen

We we have published 300 hours, 27 minutes, and seven seconds of sweet, sweet content. It's a lot of content. Yep.

Drew 14:29 Listen

I'm surprised we have that much in us.

Paul 14:31 Listen

Yeah. Yeah. To be honest. The average length is 58 minutes and 54 seconds, so just about an hour. Yeah. Love that. The longest episode. Episode 12. I'm sure they do great on the personality assessments, if you remember that one. I do. That was hour and thirty-six minutes The shortest one was 217 at a lean 42 minutes and six seconds. And uh fun facts, our podcast would take up 244 CDs. Or 8,764 floppy disks. There you go.

Drew 15:04 Listen

This is a cool website.

Paul 15:06 Listen

Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 15:06 Listen

Yeah. I saw you put this in here, but I I didn't put anything in. I thought maybe you were going to quiz me.

Paul 15:10 Listen

Yeah, no, no. It's just it's just it's just fun. It's just fun. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. Okay. And the other thing I wanted to mention. So I've been wanting to create transcripts for our podcast and update the website to be able to see those transcripts as well. Okay. But it's I tried writing some code myself once a few months ago, and I really couldn't find anything that was decent for transcription. Well, all of that has changed, Drew. All of that has changed. So literally today over lunch, I spent about 30 minutes with Claude. And So, okay, first of all, I'm started using an app called Mac Whisper, which basically allows you to install a bunch of other like transcription models. I ended up using a parakeet from NVIDIA. Uh it's it does a good job. It's fast. It has speaker support. So I transcript I transcribe like six or seven. Six, seven? Uh the seven.

Drew 16:18 Listen

I'll never do that again. I'll never do that again.

Paul 16:20 Listen

Seven episodes so far. Uh and I had Claude write some code for me. So right now, Drew, if you go to our website I'm there. Okay. And click on most recent episode. Okay.

Drew 16:34 Listen

Monster of the week. Yep.

Paul 16:35 Listen

Yep. So now if you hit the show transcript and hit play, it'll play the it'll play the episode. It'll keep the transcript in sync. You can scroll down, click to another section. It will jump the audio to that part of the transcript. There's also like a view full transcript link that you can see the whole transcript. And if you want to jump to an individual part, you can hit listen. It'll take a look at the case. Who are you? What did you do? I didn't write any of this, Drew. I wrote none of it. None. None. Not a fucking line. I struggled with this for hours on my own. Hours. I could not get it. I gave it the most vague ass prompts. And it just, it just, and not even that true, not even that true. It followed my stupid ass conventions for the the nodes the node app. It recognized that I had a linter. It ran the linter every time. It fixed itself. It did ever it did everything perfectly. This is incredible. Uh-huh. Yeah So the next thing I really want to do is update the search to be able to search transcripts as well, mostly for myself, so I can search for things that we've said. And be able to jump right to the podcast. I've also started uploading the transcript as it now basically in those episodes in the RSS feed, there's a link to the transcript as well. So if your podcast player supports it, that's actually gonna take the longest time. I think I'm gonna have to have uh build use that uh Chrome interface that Claude has and do some like web automation to upload those transcripts because I'm not gonna be able it takes like eight clicks to upload a frickin' transcript. It's awful. Uh and I want to do that by hand. But I'm gonna start transcribing the back catalog, getting them uploaded, and from here on out, I'm just gonna do that when I publish an episode. So, yeah.

Drew 18:31 Listen

This is this is really fucking cool.

Paul 18:34 Listen

Yeah, I'm I I didn't write any of it, Drew. None of it.

Drew 18:37 Listen

Not of How does that make you feel?

Paul 18:41 Listen

You know what? I'm honest I'm honestly okay with it. Like I did look at the code that it wrote. I was happy with it. You know, there was one point where like you did this thing like it didn't work. It's like, oh yeah, because you did the stupid thing, Paul. Okay, I gotcha. I got you I n I do not believe that I would have been able to add this feature with any kind of like quality without like ripping my hair out without this and the fact that I just gotta be in my bonnet and did it like over lunch. was just absolutely oh my lights just turn on and off. I hate when it does that. My my my uh home kit's haunted sometimes my lights in my office just turn off and turn on. I love it. Yeah. It just it just does that. Uh But yeah, it uh it did a really good job. And I was really happy with the the outcome. It you know, it even styled things well. Uh yeah, it it was Yeah, transcript support. Yeah, you can go and just yeah, and hopefully by the time you hear this, the search is updated. So you can search transcripts and hopefully I'll start going through the back catalog and getting them updated. Uploaded and parakeet is so fast. Really? Yeah, on my on my MacBook Pro, it's an M it's an M4 Pro chip. An hour-long uh episode takes about 10 seconds to transcribe.

Drew 20:07 Listen

So how do you How do you so does Mac Whisper is basically just the interface between you and the model?

Paul 20:13 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 20:13 Listen

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's that's like that's like the llama CPP of what you're saying.

Paul 20:18 Listen

Yeah. And then it basically it just recognized like speaker one, speaker two, and I say, no, that's Drew. And this is Paul. And then I export it to like a BTT file. uh which is a pretty standard format for for podcasts and yeah and the and the the code like parses that BTT file. Chunks it up into like something that the the application can understand and with all of the cues and stuff and it just yeah Now sometimes it the parakeet's not perfect, like especially if there's like crosstalk or whatever. Like sometimes it just lumps it together. But it's it's good enough for for this. Like, you know, if if another model comes along, I guess I can like re-retranscribe and re-upload or whatever, but so far it's done a really good job. I'm really happy with the quality of the transcript. Uh And yeah. Yeah. And again, without AI, I never would have had this. Like both like the models getting better for the transcription and Claude being able to write the code for me. Yeah. It's great.

Drew 21:16 Listen

Yeah, I've um I've I've been doing a lot of like little coding. I've I had I had a really busy week at work where I had to prepare like a shitload of demos and Yeah, man. Like with the right skills plugins, it's pretty fucking good. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a believer. I really am a believer.

Paul 21:34 Listen

I am too. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. It's It's amazing stuff. What a time to be alive. Yeah, totally.

Drew 21:40 Listen

Totally. Um, hey, one other piece of follow-up before we move on. Um, I know Zach was home for spring break. I think that's over now, right?

Paul 21:47 Listen

Yeah, he's back at school. Yep.

Drew 21:49 Listen

Uh did you watch him play any Kingdom Come Delivers to?

Paul 21:52 Listen

I did not. Actually up like like a few seconds here and there. Yeah. Okay.

Drew 21:56 Listen

I'm really curious what he thought.

Paul 21:57 Listen

How much he likes it a lot. Yeah, it's good. He really enjoyed it.

Drew 22:02 Listen

He really enjoyed it.

Paul 22:02 Listen

I have some PTO coming up, and I think that may be the game that I sit down with and try to get into. So yeah, yeah, it's pretty good.

Drew 22:09 Listen

It's pretty good. It is a much, much more hardcore Skyrim than Skyrim. Yeah. And like the choices you make really matter, and you could like fuck yourself over in that world really easy. Ask me how I know. Oh. Okay. Uh speaking of follow-up, you got a couple things here.

Paul 22:28 Listen

Yeah. Uh so I think last episode I talked about my new smartlock. Um, I love my I still love my smart lock. It's great. And one of the features I like about it is it has basically facial recognition. So if you're looking at the door lock while you approach it, it recognizes your face. And unlocks the door. Right. Well, I have learned, Drew, that there was actually two pieces to that sensor.

Drew 22:52 Listen

Okay.

Paul 22:53 Listen

There's the infrared sensor. That only turns on when a motion sensor detects motion. Okay. I have learned that my lock hates the fucking wind. Okay. It's been really windy here in in Colombo. But really most of America, but like here it's been really windy. Oh, it was really bad. It was really bad. It was really bad. So if so as things are blowing around, apparently my lock is waking up and starting to look for people. Huh. If that happens enough times, you get a notification that basically says, hey, to save your battery, I had to turn this this off. Okay. Because there's just too much motion going on. And to turn it back on, you actually have to like wake up the touch screen and like tap it, and that turns the sensor back on. Interesting. And it's just I still like the lock, but it just kind of does piss me off that it's can't be smart enough just to, I don't know. Or just have that option to say, fuck it, leave it on all the time. I'll change the battery more frequently. I don't care. Uh huh. But yeah, my smart lock hates the wind. It hates it. Okay. Hates it.

Drew 24:10 Listen

How did uh how did everything go? For those of you that didn't know, we actually had some really bad wind. uh here in Columbus. A couple days of it actually. And uh we had a fair amount of damage up here. I don't know about down there.

Paul 24:22 Listen

Honestly wasn't too bad or down here. Like we never lost power, which I'm really surprised. We have a lot of above ground power lines Uh, you know, coming into where we live. Uh and I mean there was honestly, like the biggest thing that we got was uh Asheville likes to flood uh when it rains a lot. So there was some like there were some times where we were trying to get to the high school or something and you just Like he had to go in a totally roundabout way to avoid all the flooded roads and stuff.

Drew 24:53 Listen

But Yeah, there were um there were a fair amount of trees that were down up here. If you drove just down the street from me, there were people whose gutters got ripped off and I really think it came down to how their house is sighted and you know kind of what it looked like. Um the ground is super saturated here because we had a lot of rain prior to that and really loosened the ground up for some older trees and Like I said, if you had taken a a a drive down the road from me, um you would have seen some serious damage. And it's interesting because I was out running some errands Saturday. And a lot of roads were closed here because they were trying to do cleanup. And they had like basically the big wood chippers and everything basically blocking the road because there's a lot of wood-lined roads and things up here. So uh we were fortunate. We didn't have any damage or anything, but yeah, uh a lot of other people were were good. And then parts of Dublin lost power, but we we didn't. So we were again super thankful for that. So you have some follow-up as well. I do. So uh this is more of a PSA than a I did a thing. Okay. So when I bought my BMW. If you've ever bought a car, dealerships love to sell you on warranties and protection packages and stuff like that. And when I bought my BMW, I didn't have a choice. The dealer put this package on there, and whether I wanted it or not, now I didn't pay for it. I was able to say, look, I didn't ask for this. I don't want to pay for it. And a little bit of haggling on a car that expensive. They were like, okay, it's fine. Because they realized I was driving all the way from Columbus to Cincinnati to buy it. My time's worth money. That's how kind of how they justified it. That was the first car that I had ever had ceramic coated. So are you familiar with what ceramic coating does? Vaguely. Vaguely. Yeah. Have you ever used Raynex on your window? Shield. Yeah, absolutely. So this is like Ranex for your whole car. Okay. It's it is basically a chemical compound that goes over top of your clear coat. And the whole idea is it just makes your car way easier to clean. In addition to things like water beating up and stuff like that, it adds a really, really fine protective layer over everything chemically. That makes it just so you can almost wipe your car off. You don't necessarily, I mean you should wash your car. Don't don't take that to mean you shouldn't wash your car, but you could basically just wet a cloth and wipe your car off. Um it really does make a big difference. And after owning the BMW and having that on there, they could also do a similar treatment to the interior. But I had I had that done on the BMW and it made a big difference. Plus it also makes your car appear more shiny. So I was like, I was like, I want to get that done again. Now the the dealers have the ability to do that. And usually it'll run you anywhere from $1,200 to $2,000 to have it done. Um, I didn't want to pay for that for the car I was buying because frankly it was a lot of money and I didn't necessarily want to put any more money into it. So I thought about it. I picked up the car. You know, it got dirty on the way home, of course. Uh, but I was like, you know, I really want to get the car ceramic coated. So I found a local business. I am going to give them a shout out because they did a phenomenal job. There's a place in Plain City, Ohio, which is actually right next door to Dublin here. Plain City is actually kind of huge. Uh so this is on the Dublin side of Plain City. It's called Performance Auto Spa. I did a lot of research and I did a I did a lot of shopping around about local shops that do ceramic coating. And this one was sort of at the top of the list. What was nice about them is I actually drove over there and um the guy was working and he sort of took me through the shop and When you first walk in there, they have like a little showroom where they have customers' cars that they let them keep there that they've done, like Ferraris, muscle cars, things like that. So it's pretty cool. They also sell products. And what's interesting is I'm a big fan of Adams car care products. And we've talked about them. Yeah. Um We've uh we've talked about them on the podcast before. I'll put a link in the show notes here. Um but normally you have to buy that stuff directly from Adams. You can buy it in their showroom. So that right there is kind of worth the trip for me. Cool. Uh anyway. I was talking to the guy and you know he gave me a quote and of course when you go through like a private shop that specializes in this you have a bunch of different options. There are different tiers. of ceramic coating. There are ones that last for a year. There's ones that can last for seven years. I got a I got a four year one that's really good and it came with like a but like a goodie bag when I was done where they gave you what's called a detailing spray. So like if your car's just a little bit dirty, you kind of spray that on there and then just wipe it off and it's like you washed your car. It's actually pretty cool. While I was there though, uh I also got paint protection film on the front of my car. Okay. Now, if you're an old guy like me, You might remember a time where people put bras on their cars. I do remember that.

Paul 30:16 Listen

Yes.

Drew 30:17 Listen

Yes.

Paul 30:17 Listen

Yes.

Drew 30:18 Listen

Uh I vaguely remember going to Honda dealerships with my parents when I was little. And I think we owned a car that had one. Uh basically what it was is it was a leather or some kind of material. I think it was mostly leather or some kind of hybrid material. that you would basically open your trunk, set this in there, kind of like pull it over your hood, and then you would close it and it, you know, kind of added It it added contrast to your car depending on what color your car was. That's a sporting it. Yeah, but it yeah, but it but it also actually I need to find a picture of that. Let's see here. 1994 Honda Accord. Car bra. Um God, there's gotta be a picture of this, right? Do you have to make it a little bit of a picture? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Hold on, I got one. This this is almost identical to what my parents had. Okay. Um Yeah, car bonnet hood bra for Honda Accord. My mom was a big Honda person. It basically looked like this. So like if you it that's that's on eBay, so hopefully the the listing is still up when you go look at it. But what a time, what a time. Yeah, what a time to be alive, right? Okay, so anyway, that over time that changed. And what you started to see is you started to see less of this, and you started to see the clear bras go on cars. And much like the picture you're looking, if you're looking at the picture that we have here, what it would do is they would basically take a piece of plastic, kind of drape it over part of the hood, not the whole hood, part of the hood, and it was a clear thing. The problem is, is if you if you looked at the car from just the right angle, or the car was dirty, you could see the scene And over time, you know, paint, the the paint under the film would kind of age differently than the paint on the hood.

Paul 32:17 Listen

That's that's what I remember is people taking them off and like the colors being different or like moisture got under there and started peeling the paint back and like yes yeah yeah awful stuff like that yeah yes now

Drew 32:31 Listen

Performance Auto Spa offers paint protective paint protection film. Okay. And uh I was not sold on this, but if you want to call it an upsell, call it an upsell. But the idea is Is that they can cut plastic sheets that they then apply to your car uh that are, number one, mostly there to protect you from rock chips. Because this this film that they have now is self-healing. So if you're driving down the road and you take a stone chip in your in your paint protection film. This is a barrier between it and the clear coat and the paint, and it is designed to basically be self-healing, the the kind of materials that it's made out of. Now, uh, when I was visiting, what what sold me on this was I actually got to go back and like the guy showed me the whole operation. Like in their shop, they basically have two partition sections. The the first section that you walk into is sort of open. It's like where the garage doors are. What they do is they pull the cars in and they do a full detailing wash there first. Then they pull it into the climate controlled section of the shop. And that's where they do the ceramic coating. That's where they do the PPF. Because they w they have to have like certain conditions for it to be right. For some of the ceramic coatings, they actually have to put it under a heat lamp when they're done to help it cure. But I was watching the guy apply it and I was like, okay, these guys know what the fuck they're doing. Um and what they have is they j you know you know how they have plotter printers? Yeah. They basically have that for the PPF. So like they put in your car, year, make and model, and it literally cuts it to size.

Paul 34:15 Listen

That's neat.

Drew 34:16 Listen

So I had them add that to my car. Okay. And what I had them do is one of their more common options, you could get it on your whole car if you wanted to, but it's like outrageously expensive, like 10 grand to do your whole car. Wow. I had them just do the hood and the fenders and the bumper. So when you look at my car, the seam of that paint protection film is like ends where my door opens. Or where my hood beats my like windshield.

Paul 34:44 Listen

So it matches up to like the natural panels of the car.

Drew 34:46 Listen

Yes. And the front of my car, actually all around my car, I have like there's like a carbon fiber type trim. And when the guy was talking me through it, he's like, well, what what kind of PPF do you want me to use on the carbon fiber? And I was like, I don't understand the question. And he said, Well, if we do the regular paint protection film, it's like glossy. We have like a matte we can do on that. So it it keeps like the the it doesn't make the carbon fiber shiny. It kind of keeps it the matte color it is now. It came out really sharp. It was it was definitely money well spent, I think. Okay, nice. So yeah, um if if you live in central Ohio and you're looking for a shop, even if you just want to get your car washed and detailed. Go check these guys out. They're very reasonable. They've they know what they're doing. Um, yeah, it's it they did they did a phenomenal job. Absolutely phenomenal job. You still liking the car? Yeah, yeah, when I can drive it. Actually, my car is um Uh let's see here for pinnacle pinnacle window tint. Actually, that looks actually that's not my car. I was gonna say they have an RS6 on their Instagram, but it's not it's not mine. Okay Yeah. But if you go to their Instagram, you can see all the shit that they do and they have just they do everything. Like they'll do they'll do a Prius and they'll do a l a fucking Lamborghini, right?

Paul 36:16 Listen

Like Okay.

Drew 36:17 Listen

Yeah. And when I was picking my car up, there was a guy that was dropping off one of those new Corvettes. It's like a thousand horsepower. Yeah. Ugh, cyber truck gross. Yeah. Yeah, someone someone else had their RS6 done. This was done this was done last year. Yeah, they haven't they haven't put mine on Instagram yet. They said they were going to. Okay. But yeah, they did, they did a great job. Um Again, getting good and it you could spend as much as you want to spend. I mean, I spent a a couple thousand dollars on this, um, because it's I I got like a top tier ceramic coating and then I the PPF is not cheap. Um but if you value keeping your car nice and after what I spent I feel like I kinda have to. Uh it was worth it. So these guys these guys did a great job, so go definitely go check them out. Seal of approval. Okay. Uh you want to talk about video games.

Paul 37:07 Listen

I do, just a little bit. Okay. So I still okay. So I think everyone who listened to this podcast knows that I've played a lot of Diablo in my life. I played a lot of Diablo for, a lot, a lot of Diablo 4. And like most ongoing live service-y kind of games, they do seasons.

Drew 37:26 Listen

Yep.

Paul 37:27 Listen

All right. So every season there is usually a set of cosmetics that you can unlock. And there's usually a seasonal mechanic, something that they add to the game temporarily, whether it's like new item types or special powers, or and there's like a little bit of story. Okay So the previous season, season 11, was amazing. Okay. The stories are never very long. They're pretty short, right? But The story was good. The mechanic they ended they basically added this way to like, you know, you get a perfect piece of gear, you get it upgraded, and there was a like it's called sanctification. It was just like be able to give it just one more like awesome thing to your gear. It was very, very, very fun. So Diablo 4 is gearing up in the end of April. They're coming out with the second expansion. They're adding the warlock class, a whole new story, a whole new region. They're totally redoing the entire skill tree. Everything's gonna change with this expansion. All right. So they have a season, season 12, that is a shorter season. It's basically a stopgap. Like season 11's over. We need something before the expansion starts and a new season will there. Alright, and this season's just so bad, Drew.

Drew 38:48 Listen

Why? Why? Why?

Paul 38:51 Listen

Okay. So Do you remember like it wasn't called killstreaks, but like basically killstreaks in Diablo 3, right? Like you kill more monsters in a row without stopping, you build up this killstreak.

Drew 39:06 Listen

Yep.

Paul 39:07 Listen

And that so the core mechanic of this season is Killstreaks and the butcher. I'll get into that in a little bit. So At the beginning, okay, so first of all, you get a kill streak going, and it literally puts Killstreak and the number of kills you have in the middle of the fucking screen. The middle. The middle. Right where all the right where all of the good stuff is happening. Just kill streak right in there Yeah and when the season started, as soon as you got a kill streak, you got this like uh like Unreal Unread style kill streak. Yeah, kill streak. They they've they've toned that down a little bit. Uh and the other mechanic is so obviously you play Diablo, you remember the butcher. Okay. I do. Yeah. The butcher is in Diablo 4. Usually what happens is if you're in a dungeon or doing something Like some endgame content. Sometimes the the butcher would randomly spawn and come after you. At lower levels, he can be really tough fight. At higher levels, You just murder the butcher. There are ways to become the butcher. in season twelve. Okay. There is uh you probably haven't played a whole lot. One of one of the core mechanics of Diablo 4, because it's like, you know, there's like an overworld. It's called Helltides. And basically they take a region, the map tur that region turns all red. And the monster density is higher in that region and they're a little bit tougher and you kill things, you can open up special chests. But now there's this shrine. Or you you collect fresh meat. Yes, really, you collect fresh meat. If you have enough fresh meat, you can turn on the shrine and you become the butcher for two minutes And there's also slaughterhouse keys, which basically uh lets you you use one of these keys, you become the butcher, and you wreck one of the towns in Diablo. And it's I I they mean well, but it's just not it's not fun. It's not fun. I'm I I built my character. I want to play my character. I want to use all the stuff that I collected and all the skills that I picked. And being the butcher for a few minutes just, I don't know, it just breaks it up. And so basically I'm here to say, and uh, but I have not stopped playing it, Drew. So I'm here to admit that I am kind of hate playing season twelve. There's a few more cosmetics that I want to grind through and unlock, and then maybe I'll be done till April. But

Drew 41:56 Listen

Well, hold on. Is this the are you playing with the paladin?

Paul 42:02 Listen

Uh this so I played the I played with two different paladins last season. Right. This season I decided like okay, the paladin is paladin's great. It's super fun. But I haven't I haven't given a lot of love in my playthroughs to the barbarian or the druid. So I decided to to do a barbarian this season. And it's a lot of fun. I've I have some pretty good mechanics for the barbarian. Uh okay, okay, this is this is a I'm just this is Paul just venting about Diablo. Okay, go ahead. Okay, so one of the things they another thing they add this season is called bloodied items. And basically they're items that can drop that increase power depending on your kill streak. Perfect, perfectly. Fine mechanic. You can ignore it. Like it's you can't really build a build, you can't really make a build around them because you can't get a killstreak on a boss or like a small group of like elite mobs. You just can't do it. So you really can't make a build around it, but they're fun. If you get one and the other stats are good, great, throw it on, it's fine. But so the season, like a lot of things, you have to you have to do certain objectives to move forward in the season. Right. Okay. And one of them is basically like for every tier of gear, one of the objectives is equip at a full set of that level of gear of bloodied items. And it just means that like you have to hold on to shit because you're like like okay I need I need uh I need a bloodied helm to be able to complete this and I and that but all of my other bloodied gear I'm not using so I just store it in a in a And uh uh stash in my in my you know a tab in my stash and wait till I get that last drop and then change all of my clothes for the season thing to unlock and then put all of my good shit back on. Uh It's it's just not as good. But I am excited for the new expansion. So they're introducing the warlock class. It looks really freaking awesome So hopefully they put all their energy into that expansion and this season was like the B team or C team for this season. You know, just get it out the door and get something to do.

Drew 44:12 Listen

Uh yeah, I saw um I saw that they basically went back and added the warlock to Diablo su.

Paul 44:20 Listen

They did. Yeah. I played a little bit of it. Yeah.

Drew 44:23 Listen

Yeah. I am tempted to do that for the nostalgia. Yeah. I really I remember when Diablo 1 came out, but Diablo 2 was like to me the high point of that series.

Paul 44:35 Listen

So I I played a little bit when that got announced, I reinstalled Diablo 2, uh whatever the rebirth or whatever re whatever the tagline is. And I started playing a warlock. And like The mechanics of Diablo 2 are still really fun, but like the just the annoyingness of like having to stumble around the map to find the place you're trying to do because there's no there's no objective marker, there's no nothing. You just kinda have to like and and the wraps are all kind of randomly generated so you can't remember anything. You have to figure out where shit is on your particular map at that particular time to go through. And that just gets old real quick. I'm I'm an old lazy gamer. I need a fucking nav point. Tell me where to go.

Drew 45:27 Listen

Huh. Yeah. Yeah. Uh before we get off the video game topic, were you a big Quake fan? Yeah, yeah. Dude, Trent Resner made the fucking soundtrack. Hell yeah, I was. So um every year they have what are called Quake Brutalist Jams. Okay I found this when I was down watching somebody on YouTube. And what this is, is it's basically a giant map pack with a hub world where different level designers were basically given a prompt. to design a brutal theme level. Huh. It's amazing what people are getting the mileage out of this engine are. Now, in order to play this, you need a copy of Quake. You can either buy it on Steam for like four bucks, or on the website I linked, there is a complete standalone. That basically has like the entire map pack and the mods all installed to play it. If you're a fan of Quake and you like hard it it first of all, it's hard. Okay, it's it's hard. Some of the maps are very hard. I'm about I'm like maybe twelve maps deep in this thing And even though everybody was given the same prompt, what they did with the level design and the aesthetic of the levels, yeah, you should you should watch the trailer. Okay. You should definitely watch the trailer. It's very, very good. I'm I'm really enjoying it. Okay. Um it took me a little while to get reused to the Quake controls though because compare compared to modern shooters, there's very floaty. And there's a few maps where you have to do some platforming. I don't think Quake is necessarily known for its platforming. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Though those were a source of frustration. But uh this is the third one. Okay. And uh yeah, so basically uh what it uses, and again, you don't have to worry too much about this, but it's basically They have this thing called Iron Whale. Iron Whale, I think it's called. And that is an open source port of the Quake engine. Oh. So again that's why you can download the standalone and play it, or you can download Quake through Steam and then patch it with Ironwell and then install the map pack basically. Uh with all the textures, all the sound effects. They remixed the guns, they added some new stuff. Um nothing crazy, but uh If if you're looking for something where you could play a level in like 20 minutes, dying a few times, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. So I just thought I'd give a shout-out to that because I that's what I've been playing. Okay. Uh last topic of the night. Paul, do you have an HOA?

Paul 48:25 Listen

Yeah, I do. Okay. Fucking annoying. But yeah. Yeah.

Drew 48:31 Listen

I have an HOA. Most people do. Yeah. I don't know if my I need to get my driveway replaced. My driveway is old. Um, it is not, it is time to replace it. You know, the concrete is sort of starting to deteriorate. Okay, that's not not a cheap thing. You know. Um I don't have the I don't have a huge driveway, but I got a pretty decent sized driveway. You can fit four cars in my driveway. Yeah. And um you know I was thinking to myself, you know, self We're a three car family right now and I hate moving my truck around when I want to drive my car. And I don't want to block Mandy in

Paul 49:13 Listen

She could drive stick, but just leave it there.

Drew 49:19 Listen

Yeah. So again, you've seen my house. Right now, you pull into my driveway. It is a two-car garage with room for basically four full cars in my driveway. Yep. What I want to do is I want to first of all get the driveway replaced. So basically rip out the existing driveway. Put down a new form, level it, grade it, drop in new concrete. But what I want to do is where the basketball hoop is that we never use, I basically want to cut over, go out and go up, okay, and basically add a quote unquote fifth. parking spot on the pad. Makes sense, but I'm guessing that has to be approved by the HOA. Well, first of all, just getting the driveway replaced Requires the approval of the HOA. Yeah, same thing. Now I'm not worried about that because again, I'm going with a contractor that specializes in concrete. Um And I don't know if you've ever looked at what it takes to replace concrete, but there are different finishes to concrete. There are different colors of concrete. There are different types of concrete. There is stamp concrete. We've talked about concrete. I've talked about my love of concrete on this show before. Yes, we have. Yep. Yep. So I just want a concrete driveway broom finish with capped edges Very reasonable. Nothing fancy. Nothing fancy. Plus, I also have a walkway from my driveway to my front door. Not replacing that right now because it is a very windy path. Um I don't that that I had lifted and regraded. So I've got a few more years on that. So had a few concrete men and women come to my home. Give me quotes, I have quotes, I have schematics. And I also had them give me quotes and schematics for adding on that pad Paul, what do you think the process is to submit just to have my driveway replaced, not make a change?

Paul 51:14 Listen

I have no idea. I have no idea what the process would be. be yeah i don't i don't know what it is for my hoa and we're talking about getting like a deck or a patio so i'm gonna have to figure that out real soon uh okay so uh here in the Muirfield Association

Drew 51:28 Listen

I have to first download a form. Okay. I have to fill out the form. I have to attach the drawings about what it is going to look like. I have to submit a $20 fee. I have to make a copy of everything and submit it to another organization for the architectural review board for them to review it and then to approve it. Turnaround time is a minimum of 14 days. Um I submitted both. I'm considering both of these things. Do I need to submit different quotes? I said The only difference is I'm making a modification in one and one is a replacement. And they said those are two separate applications. And I said, so I got to pay $40. Submit two applications for something that really only I'm only looking for approval on one of them. And they said yes.

Paul 52:25 Listen

Of course. Of course. Of course.

Drew 52:29 Listen

So that's what I'm dealing with right now. Um and then uh it's just gonna be a huge pain in the ass because Apparently it's gonna take like a week for it to cure. Yeah, so we have to drive away. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And um The other thing too is the way that I wrote up the proposal is I don't like parking my cars on the street, period. So I basically wrote it up as, hey, my house, my driveway is literally the first thing you see when you drive into the neighborhood I don't want to keep my cars parked on the street. I want to make it easy for people to get in and out of the neighborhood. There's not a no parking sign there. I could park there. If I wanted to, I could park there all the time. I don't want to.

Paul 53:13 Listen

I parked on the street before by your house.

Drew 53:15 Listen

Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to do that. Yeah. Um, so really this is I don't want to use the word safety issue, but it's a convenience issue for everybody, not just me if you let me do this. So that's kinda how I'm that's kinda how I'm playing it. Keep my fingers crossed for ya Thanks, buddy. Thanks. And then I gotta get all that scheduled and figured out. So yeah, it's you don't so you don't have like any of that that you have to do or Oh yeah, we do.

Paul 53:42 Listen

Yeah. Anytime If you want to change the color of your house, or you have to submit an application if you're replacing your front door. Yeah. I know some people have added like little bits to their driveway as well. That has to be all approved. Like I said, we're talking about either getting probably like a deck, not a high deck, but like one of those decks that are just like a couple inches off the ground. I think they look really nice. One of those. We're gonna have to go through the process for that. as well. Now a lot sometimes like depending on who you buy, sometimes they they they'll they'll go, we'll deal with that. We know we know what we know we know how to grease the wheels to get this approved.

Drew 54:21 Listen

So when I had my when I had my front door replaced, the front the company deals with mirror fill, they're like, we'll submit everything. And they did. I didn't have to do a thing But for this, I have to like this company is just like, yeah, we show up with the concrete, you do the rest. And I'm like, all right, well.

Paul 54:34 Listen

It depends on who you get, whether they want to deal with that or not. So yeah.

Drew 54:38 Listen

Yep. So anyway, that's the other thing I gotta get figured out here in the next few weeks. So Well, hey, that's a show. That's a show.

Paul 54:47 Listen

Uh yeah, I'll do that thing I usually do. Uh doingtheirbest. com. You can find all the show notes, uh, transcripts for new episodes, and I'll get to the backlog. And uh hey leave a review if you want. And thanks for listening