I'm sure they're doing their best

Drew 00:00

Fuck around and have an accidental Drew's computer corner even before the show starts.

Paul 00:05

You have a little technical issues there, Drew?

Drew 00:07

I don't know, man. Um I had for for reasons we'll get into later in the show, I had to disconnect everything in my office.

Paul 00:15

Oh no.

Drew 00:16

And I'm still finding little you forgot to change your USB settings because when I booted up this time I detected them in a different order. Stuff like that. Uh that's that's kind of what that's related to. And it couldn't find my camera.

Paul 00:34

How are you? Eh, I've I've been like sick all week, which has not been fun.

Drew 00:41

Okay. I'm getting sick.

Paul 00:44

I don't know, man. Like It started like on Friday with just that general like tickle in my throat kind of thing and some runny nose. And I was really worried because like my wife and daughter were leaving Saturday to go to Orlando to go to Disney and stuff. So like like put a mask on while they're home. Like I don't want to get you sick. I'll just stay away. And then, you know, they left Saturday afternoon and I was just absolutely miserable. And even now, like, I'm like I'm less full of mucus than I was. Okay. But like, dude, like walking up the stairs just fucking it drains me.

Drew 01:21

Think it was COVID or?

Paul 01:23

It might, it may, it may be, yeah. But It's not it didn't kill me this time, so Yeah.

Drew 01:30

Not today, COVID. Yeah.

Paul 01:34

It was not fun, but yeah.

Drew 01:36

Yeah, all these rapid temperature changes we've been having. uh has played hell with my migraines. I I legitimately think the changes in temperature and pressure are a trigger of my migraines. Because we've had we've had like this cyclical up and down pretty yeah, and that one Sunday where that the severe storms rolled through As they were happening, I could feel my head. You know what I mean? Like I could just I could feel it. So I'm I'm I think I'm a little sensitive to uh to those kind of things. But uh I'm glad you're feeling better. So no family this week then.

Paul 02:19

Well, they're they're back.

Drew 02:21

They're back. Okay. No problems with trouble.

Paul 02:25

Well, I mean, it was okay. I mean, they're on charter buses, and I guess like there would they hit some traffic and they went down this really steep hill and like all the charter buses bottomed out. And one like one of them like like the door got really bent and they were like, I don't know whether we can drive this or not. So there was a little bit of drama there. And that was on the way home, which is like the worst time. Oh, so hold on a second. So they went this was spring break, right? Yes, yes. So I was sick la like last Friday and then left last Saturday. Yeah. So wait a minute. And then they didn't fly. No, they carted buses. So they they left Saturday afternoon. Uh got they went directly to Epcot. Sunday and then after that they went to their hotels and then Monday Magic Kingdom with the parade. Tuesday, Hollywood Studios, Wednesday. Universal Studios, get back on the bus that got back Thursday night.

Drew 03:21

Wow. Okay. On a bus. On a bus.

Paul 03:27

Mm-hmm.

Drew 03:28

That's a good fifteen hours, sixteen hours. Sixteen hours. Yeah. Without stops.

Paul 03:34

And stopped frequently. Yeah.

Drew 03:36

Yeah. Yeah. Those toilets, those those turtlets on those buses, man.

Paul 03:44

Yeah.

Drew 03:45

Yeah. I I had to do a little bit of traveling too. In fact, I've got like so much travel the next couple weeks. Um yeah. My my travel experiences with just, you know, gestures at everything.

Paul 04:00

Oh, yeah. Yeah. The TSA

Drew 04:04

situation and yeah fortunately the times that I've had to go to Columbus to fly it has not been bad and then the airports I traveled to were smaller airports, so they were not as bad. But I had uh co-workers that had to fly through larger airports and they said that yeah it was uh it was cut it was something. Yeah. I mean not to mention the cost of tickets. Like I was originally supposed to book this trip before we just Decided to pick a fight with Iran and I think the the South the ticket on Southwest was like three hundred something dollars. And then the weekend came. Then I went to book it again and yeah, it was like $800. So Yeah. But that's uh that's pretty pretty shitty. Um this week was our this was this week was my wife's spring break. So Okay. We actually didn't go anywhere, except we did stay in a hotel Monday night. And that was out of necessity, not out of want.

Paul 05:26

Okay, so this has to do with the first topic?

Drew 05:28

Yeah. Okay. That I had a lot of stress and a lot of strife around my heating and cooling in my home. And I have a list of stuff that I want to fix. And the first one of those was it was time to get my crawl spaces spray foamed. So that was going to be number one. Rip out all the old fiberglass insulation. And they were going to come in, and what they do is they take uh closed cell foam. And they spray the rim joist, which is kind of like you have your your concrete or your block that your house sits on, and then there's wood that sits on top of that. That's the rim joist, and then like your floor joist connect to that. And then your house is sort of built on top of that. So they were gonna rip out all the old fiberglass insulation and spray, spray foam insulation. Now, over the course of the past couple months, I had a lot of people come out and give me quotes. There was only one company that I contacted that said, you can be here while we do it. Every other company was like No. No. Uh unless unless you have, you know, forced air or a scuba mask. No, you can't be in the house while this is happening. And I was like, what if I bought a respirator? And the one guy looked at me and he's like, legally I can't tell you to do that. But your wife and you and your dog shouldn't be here, even if you have a respirator for your dog. And I'm like, fair. So the only time we were going to be able to do this is if we scheduled over my wife's spring break, which I felt bad about, but I didn't want to wait till the summer. I wanted to get on the calendar. So long story short, that was scheduled for the previous Monday. So I spent all last weekend moving things out of my basement, moving things out of my crawl spaces so that they had access to all the exterior walls of the unfinished part of my basement. And we're able to get into my crawl spaces. Now, I am a man of culture. I have three crawl spaces. More like more like two and a quarter. But there's there's there's one over here in my office, there's one in the unfinished part of my basement, and there's like this little weird diagonal part of my house. You've seen it. It's got those windows, and we have like a chair there that Vito likes to jump on. Uh so those were all the places that needed replace. So I went to Lowe's and I bought a bunch of tape, I bought a bunch of plastic sheeting, and I like I moved as much as I can out of the basement, but there were some things I couldn't move. And I didn't want like my 3D printer to get oversprayed. I didn't want my expensive networking gear to get oversprayed. And I wasn't going to disconnect it all. So I was just like, okay, we're going to push all this as far back as we can. And then I just draped plastic sheeting like. I like hung it from my ceiling so it was like a curtain almost. Yeah. So that was over the weekend. So they showed up Monday and the first guys that showed up, like their whole job was rip out all the old and stuff. So we were kind of there for that. And then the real guy showed up with the truck and It's kind of interesting because they have to like heat up the material. So like they pull the truck up, they pull the trailer up, they fire up these big genera generators that like warm up the material. And it's like a two-part thing. Like they heat up like the base and then they heat up the ad the adhesive. And then when they go to spray it, it sort of goes into this like catalytic catalytic chamber, I think they called it. I don't know. Not a chemist, where it mixes and then it travels down the pre- the hose pressurized and they spray it. And when I Yeah, magic, science, chemistry, whatever. How does that even work? I just work with computers. So when I saw them start to put on like the hazmat suits, I'm like, yeah, we're we're probably not want to be here.

Paul 09:32

Yeah.

Drew 09:32

Yeah. Now Strangely enough, this wasn't my first go-around with spray foam insulation. In fact, at our old house we had it done. And I was home for that. Uh uh, whatever. I mean that was that was a while ago. I'm not dead yet. I mean, maybe it took years off my life. I don't know. But those guys were like a fly by night type thing. They weren't the lowest bitter, but kind of low. And I still find pieces of spray foam on my carts and on some of my board games. And like Stuff like that. They did they did a horrible job, right? If I had known, I would have like taped and masked everything off like I did this time and When I had these people come in and give me quotes, I was like, hey, just so you know, I want someone that's gonna take time to make sure that stuff is masked off. I don't want a bunch of overspray on my walls. I don't want overspray on any shit in my basement. And The company I ended up going with, which was Blue Sky Roofing and Installation, free plug for them, because they were great. Extremely reasonable, extremely personable. Uh small world actually my wife taught their kid taught the guys kids. That didn't translate to a discount. I was a little disappointed, but but yeah, you know what? I was like, small world. Uh and they came in and they hung tarps, they hung everything, and that plus what I did, they did a really good job. Um and then So we leave, we go to the hotel, we check in. We have Vito with us. So this is like a this is like partly we're gonna go get out of the house, but we're also gonna see how Vito does in a hotel.

Paul 11:10

Okay.

Drew 11:10

First of all, Vito Vito did great. Like he was really good at the hotel. He slept good. You know, he didn't like cause me to have any kind of cleaning fees for the hotel. We got to walk him all around. We actually stayed in downtown Dublin. He would he was like the perfect little guy. And we took him around. We took him to like a patio to have dinner. He was he did great. Like no complaints there. Good, good, good. But while I was at the hotel, I'm trying to work and I get a call from the guys that are working and they're like, hey, can you move your truck? out of the driveway because in order to get your last crawl space we need to pull as close as we can to your house because when they originally came in they actually parked on the street and snaked the tube through my basement window. Okay. But in order to reach my very, very last crawl space, they had to come in through the garage. I was like, no problem. Tube wasn't long enough. I was like, no problem. Yeah. Tube wasn't long enough. Something I'm not wholly unfamiliar with. Like I get it. Uh so I I left the hotel. And as I was pulling up to my house, I'm like, I left my truck keys in the hotel. I don't want to drive back. I have a spare set of keys in the house. So the guy's in the driveway and I say, um, I need to go in the house and get my keys. keys. And he's like, do you want me to get them? And I said, I would, but I don't know where they are. I had a pro let me be fair. I had a pretty good idea where they are. Okay. I had a pretty good idea, but I wasn't 100% sure. So I was like, you guys don't have like an extra mask. And he's like, you can use mine, but like I've been in it all day. And I'm like, pass. I was like, what if I just hold my breath? And he goes, He looked at his watch and he goes, just be quick. So so I like did a big and then I ran in my house and I went to where I thought the keys were and I'm like rifling through drawers. I eventually find it. And then I got run out.

Paul 13:12

But you c I could definitely smell the fumes when I was in there.

Drew 13:16

But I didn't like have any symptoms or anything. So I was fine. So then I moved the truck and then like I just left the key in the garage and I was like, if you need to move it again, like here's the key. Just leave it there when you're done. Uh they took care of locking up and everything, and I left uh the basement window open with a screen. I left our patio door open all night. And when we got back the next day, we were supposed to stay out for 24 hours. But I think we ended up being out for like twenty-two. Cause like we got to a point where like we're running out of stuff to do. I have important phone calls for work. Let's just go home. And like there was a little bit of a smell, but in a couple hours after again having the doors and the windows open, like it was It was fine. Uh, they did a really good job. I'm really pleased with the work that they did. I'm hoping that this makes a difference. Now, like I said, this is sort of phase one. Phase two is um I have a Finnish carpenter that uh finish as in like finished woodwork, not like he's from Finland, where they're gonna come and they're going to take the trim off the windows. spray foam those, seal those up a little bit better, baseboard replace. I've got like a whole bunch of other shit done in the house. So long story short, uh really good experience. But that was like the big excitement for me this week.

Paul 14:30

Wow.

Drew 14:34

So you haven't you haven't done anything, huh? You just been kind of hanging out?

Paul 14:38

Yeah, yeah. I I've watched a comical amount of television.

Drew 14:44

So anything new or just buffy or no, I make I mean like

Paul 14:50

Catching up on like new seasons of shows I've I've been watching. Like I caught up on Shrinking. If you haven't watched Shrinking on Apple TV, it's a fucking fantastic show.

Drew 15:00

Give me the give me the give me the elevator pitch on that one.

Paul 15:03

Oh, it's got Harrison Ford in it, and he's amazing. Uh it's basically it's a show about feelings. All the main characters are are therapists in some way, shape, or form. It's an extremely good sh it's it's it's just it's just good. It's just it's a great show. Uh for all mankind, uh Invincible, the new season of that. I've I caught up on all the episodes.

Drew 15:27

of that I don't know whether you're familiar with I I've seen clips of it. I've never watched the show.

Paul 15:34

Yeah. It's uh, you know It's kind of like the boys, like it's a satire of superheroes and stuff. It's just absolutely extreme. It's extremely violent. uh and and graphic and gory, but still kind of funny and silly at the same time. It's good. I think this is the last season.

Drew 15:55

Uh but what is that on? Is that Amazon?

Paul 15:59

Yeah, prime. Okay. Yeah.

Drew 16:01

I haven't watched the boys. I haven't I haven't watched any of that stuff.

Paul 16:05

Yeah.

Drew 16:05

I have not watched I have not watched a lot of TV.

Paul 16:09

Yeah, the boys is okay. I mean, I've watched I'll watch the last season when it comes out here shortly. And yeah. Oh, and uh uh second season of Daredevil Born Again. There's the first three episodes of that is out.

Drew 16:23

So uh I think you tried to convince me to watch that before, right? What is that one?

Paul 16:28

Yeah, because it uh it's on it's on Disney Plus. Okay. Yeah, because it's it's Marvel. Yeah. So they kind of like took all of the original Netflix Marvel shows and kind of said, yeah, they're canon enough. And then they did like a another uh uh go at at Daredevil and uh the guy who plays uh Charlie Cox plays Matt Murdock is really good. Uh it's a good show. It's a good show. Okay. Okay.

Drew 16:57

Did you go see Project Hail Mary?

Paul 17:00

Yes, I did.

Drew 17:01

Yeah, good, right?

Paul 17:02

Yeah, you saw it too? Yeah.

Drew 17:04

Uh no, but I read the book. I've read the book.

Paul 17:06

I haven't seen the movie yet. I I 3D printed the little uh the little figure he prints of of the of the human mark uh or or whatever or grace grace right there he's right there uh that's cool yeah you should go see the movie it's really good

Drew 17:19

I am I am very seriously tempted to take my wife to theater. I think she would like it. I don't know if she would enjoy The Martian, but she would enjoy Project Hill Mary, I think.

Paul 17:27

My wife who did not read the book uh enjoyed the movie as well. So Okay.

Drew 17:32

Uh that was like when that was like when you crashed Her and parabels, yeah. Yes, yes. Oh no, you and Arabelle crashed club. That's right. Uh-huh.

Paul 17:42

How did that go? Uh it was fine, you know. It was like we we told her that we were gonna be there and we just happened like we went out, uh I told Arabelle like, hey, you want to go out to dinner beforehand? And she's like, yeah, and let her pick, and she picked Olive Garden uh because she likes Olive Garden. You know, I I would personally never choose Olive Garden, but it's fine. It's good.

Drew 18:03

It's good. Yeah, you know who loves Olive Garden? Friend of the show, Robert. Friend of the show, Robert's a big Olive Garden guy. Uh I don't know if I could ever go back to Olive Garden. I really don't. There's just so many better restaurants. Not gonna yuck any money, chum. Not gonna yuck any money jump.

Paul 18:20

Yeah, exactly. You know, I said I will personally never pick Olive Garden, but when she wants to go, it's like You're a good dick. You're a you're a you're a good dad. Yeah. You get the chicken parm, it's fine, you know.

Drew 18:31

Yeah. I get I get fed through my uh algorithm. uh like Italian exchange students going to Oliveard.

Paul 18:43

I can imagine. I can imagine it's just like this is awful. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 18:48

Okay, moving on. I have been playing a lot of my stupid flight simulator games.

Paul 18:57

Oh, I did not okay, this I this is going in a direction I did not expect.

Drew 19:02

So in in in the show notes.

Paul 19:04

In in in in your new VR headset?

Drew 19:06

Yeah, my new VR headset. Which by the way, phenomenal. phenomenal. It's great. The only thing I don't like about the VR headset, and I don't know if I ever brought this up before. When you're using the VR headset, everything looks super crisp looks great. Like I'm able to see things. Uh every panel is readable. The text on every instrument is readable without having to like tilt my head in. That was the thing I had to do with the quest. Two two, I think I had. So I had the quest the quest two and it had pretty good resolution. But if I was like sitting back and just sitting in my chair and I wanted to read Like an engine temperature or oil pressure or something. I could see the needle, but I couldn't see the numbers. I'd have to do one of these. This, I just look down and it's like, oh, numbers. Incredible. The only thing I don't like about it though. Is that I would like to stream it for people. Unfortunately, the way the foveated rendering and everything work, it's very blurry. Yeah. At full screen resolution in OBS. In my headset, it looks amazing. But whatever they're doing to preserve computational GPU, whatever It's blurry, it's it's like unwatchable. I tried to stream it. Somebody joined is like, yeah, you're using a PyMax, huh? And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, that's not gonna work for streaming. So best I can do is like record my sessions and then play them back. like uh through like the in-game uh tra they call it like r uh a pre-recorded track. Anyway, so Paul We are big fans of comfortable office chairs, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. I love my office chair. You love your office chair. I don't think that necessarily I would go buy a quote unquote gaming chair.

Paul 20:59

No, no, I don't. Yeah. I'm not a fan of them.

Drew 21:02

Except Uh let me see. Let's see if you can see this, right? So like in my desk right now, this is my current setup. Can you see that? So essentially uh there's one of these on the other side too, but essentially what this is is this is my flight stick base. So like here's the base. This is an interchangeable uh you know basically flight stick, okay? All the different buttons and everything, which I uh I know second nature for the aircraft I fly, which don't fucking at me. But but notice, by the way, I'm fair, like I'm like 99% confident that if I was able to sneak onto an airbase, I could steal an F-16 Like a hundred percent. A hundred percent I could start and fly an F-16. Anyway. Okay. Okay. Notice how it's mounted to my desk. So Yeah.

Paul 21:55

That's some serious that's that's some serious clampage.

Drew 21:57

Yeah, it's it's essentially a clamp with these metal rails that are adjustable, right? Yeah. And you're gonna have to see this on the YouTube channel or on TikTok or whatever, but I have this adjusted so that this lever sort of like locks to the width of my desk. And this is how I set up the play. I just take these up, I plug them in, I lock it in place, and You know, I've got pretty good clearance between my armrest here and this. And again, there's one on the other side. Okay That works. It works. Um, however, it's not the most optimal position for stuff because Uh my chair is very upright and uh oh come on, camera. Okay. It's supposed to do auto tracking, it's not, I don't know, fucking AI. Uh it's not the most optimal position. And I have researched other ways of doing this. And I'm at the point in my life where it might be time to invest in a simrig.

Paul 23:03

So oh oh okay, okay. I mean I I I am f I have I do not know. I have to imagine those are A little bit more expensive than your typical chair. I've seen lots of uh the the the algorithm likes to show me people playing uh racing games and very expensive rigs.

Drew 23:25

Which by the way, at a time, I just wanna I just want to call out you were going to invest in a steering wheel and pedals and stuff, right? Which which I did. Which you did. Yeah. I just put a link in the notes.

Paul 23:36

Okay, okay. I'm going oh hold on. If I can mouse correctly. Oh, it says military edition. Okay, hold on. It's loading. It's loading. Flights. Okay. Okay, that that's that's actually less than what I thought it was going to be.

Drew 23:53

This I think is a happy medium. I'm not building a full pit. And like and uh putting controls all around me and touch screens and things like that. So why don't you tell everybody what this is?

Paul 24:04

This is this is from what is it next week? Okay, okay, that's where I got my that's my my my uh cockpit is from next level as well. This is the fight Flight Simulator Boeing Military Edition. It looks like it uh does it fold up for storage? Is that does that like foot air? No, it doesn't. Okay.

Drew 24:26

No, which is why I haven't bought it yet.

Paul 24:29

Yeah. Because I don't know where I would keep it. Yeah. It's very it's it's nice looking. It's got lots of places. It's got a place you know put your feet. It's got lots of places to mount.

Drew 24:43

It's got straps that you can strap in and just feel fucking strap in, baby. Yep. So let me let me talk you through why this is very nice. Okay. So There's a couple things about this setup that are very, very appealing to me, other than the fact that it is a comfortable seat because this office chair When you're like constantly doing this and whipping yourself around, the fact that my chair also moves throws me off a little bit, right? So this is a stationary chair. Yeah. And if you click on that first picture and get the zoomed in view The thing that I really want to draw your attention to here are all the surfaces that support mounting something.

Paul 25:26

Yeah, it looks like there's quite a few. Yeah.

Drew 25:28

Okay. So the ones that are important to me are the one, not the one in the middle of the chair. Okay. The ones that are important to me are the ones to the left and the right of the chair because that's how I fly. I have one hand on my left, one hand on my right. I could do one hand middle, one hand left for like an F-14 setup, but I primarily fly the F-A-18, the F-16, and the F-4. So I I like having the controls to my left and my right. The other thing that's nice about this is there's also a keyboard tray.

Paul 26:04

Oh yeah, that's that's nice.

Drew 26:06

As m as much as I've set I've taken the time to do all my controls and everything hands on stick. I do still have to interact with the keyboard to like change views, do radio stuff, and like a couple other things that I just do not have buttons for. The other thing that's important is the tray that is sort of in front of the seat on the floor for rudder pedals.

Paul 26:32

But yes, I yeah, there's a picture where they actually have rudder pedals in there.

Drew 26:41

I think the one that they have in the picture. Um, let me, how do I close what I'm looking at? I think the one that they have is one that like kind of comes off the floor and is more of like what you would actually find in aircraft. Those are cool. I don't need to go buy those. I just want one that like I can like basically screw this in into so it doesn't move. And then finally, the other one that gets me excited is there's kind of like a tray right in like that kind of is in the middle of the seat and comes up. One of the things that I found when you're flying these different aircraft in DCS is one of the things you spend a lot of time interacting with in VR. is a lot of aircraft have what looks like a telephone number pad right in front of you.

Paul 27:31

Okay.

Drew 27:31

Yeah. So like you When you need to like adjust your waypoints or do stuff with GPS or update system settings on the aircraft, you're using that. They make Replica panels of those that I could mount to that, and it would be right in the position that I need it to be, so that even if I have my head set on, I could kind of reach out and touch it And it would be like right where it would need to be. Mm-hmm. So I I've looked around and, you know, next level racing again, like you said, I know that you were looking at them. They make really good stuff. I am very seriously considering picking one of these up. The problem I have, and it and it wasn't clear to me until I actually went to Microcenter and looked at it. If you were able to put wheels on this thing so I could wheel it in and out of my office, no-brainer. But I I have space that I could put this in. I just don't want it there all the time.

Paul 28:34

Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 28:36

So that's the thing I struggle with a little bit is I I want to find I want to find something that's a little more mobile. And I think that they do, like I think if you look at Next Level Racing's website, they actually do make some that have wheels, I thought. Am I crazy? So like if I go to products and I go to flight, flight cockpits. Yeah, the Boeing Seat Pro Military Edition. It doesn't have the thing in front for the rudder pedals, but it's on wheels.

Paul 29:07

Oh yeah, look at that.

Drew 29:09

Yeah, so like I don't know why the other one couldn't be. It's it's it's literally the same thing without I don't think it maybe it doesn't have a keyboard tray either. Yeah, it's definitely got less less stuff. It has it has the main things I want. And I think I I think you can buy some of that stuff separately. I think cockpits, accessories, monitor stunts, add-ons. Yeah, there's a bunch of add-ons. Uh seat brackets. Um Combat flight pack. Like there's all oh uh lockable caster wheels. So like they do sell caster wheels. I'd have to buy if I'm if I'm looking at that, I think I need to buy what six or eight. For that one? Uh yeah, the flight simulator military edition, I would need six caster wheels for that one. So anyway, that's something I'm thinking about doing. I I I haven't I haven't done it yet, but that's I think that's I think that's the next thing I need to do to take this to the next level. I really do And I and I I really enjoy uh I really enjoy flying in it. And I've started to play on multiplayer servers now. Which is interesting. Because I mean the AI in the game is pretty good, but actually flying against human pilots has been kind of fun So yeah, yeah, that's that's the next that's the next thing we're gonna do, I think. Do you still do your racing stuff?

Paul 30:38

I haven't done it for a while, but when after I bought it, like I was got really into it. So yeah.

Drew 30:44

Got it. Yeah. It's fine. Have you been playing any games recently?

Paul 30:48

But you've been sick, but I mean uh Diablo 4. I played enough of that this season. And uh I started replaying control.

Drew 30:59

So Oh, getting ready. When does that come out again?

Paul 31:03

They haven't announced the date yet. It's supposed to be this year. Apparently they're everyone is thinking like August because that they're doing some like big they're doing some like show and tell at some uh upcoming gaming convention in May, and everyone's like they're not stupid enough to go up against GTA 6 later.

Drew 31:26

So well, I mean that that got pushed back again, right?

Paul 31:29

Did it really?

Drew 31:30

I thought it did.

Paul 31:31

I don't know. I don't know.

Drew 31:33

Yeah. Um real quick while we're while we're sort of talking about games, um I picked up the latest dying light game on the Steam sale. Did you play any of those?

Paul 31:44

Uh-huh.

Drew 31:45

Um this is technically I think the third game in the series. It's called Dying Light the Beast The first dying light game was phenomenal. It featured like really good parkour, good combat, like really meaty combat. Like Bashing zombies till parts of them fall off type stuff, all in first person. Very meaty, very gritty. Great game. Love that game. Dying Light 2 came out. I was really hyped for it. Um, but 16 hours in, you're still doing the tutorial. I'm like, this ain't it. Yeah. It just they just keep throwing mechanics at you. It was open world, and it was just like, there's too much. There's too much. So I I don't think I have more than 16 or 17 hours in Dying Late 2. It's just a shame. But Dying Light the Beast returns to the original protagonist of the first game. Um It's real good. Real fucking good. When it came out, I didn't buy it because I was a little burnt by Dying Light 2. But I picked this up on the sale, and uh it very, very much is like the first game. Um I don't know if I I mean they make it for all the consoles and stuff too. If you're looking for kind of a fun game that's kind of fun, this one's open world too, but done much, much better. Uh you should give it a shot. All right, last of my topics for the night. Well, I want to talk about coffee.

Paul 33:12

I'm here. I'm here. What what what what what's what's wrong, Drew? What do you need?

Drew 33:18

So when we last talked about my coffee experience, I think I might have mentioned that I am pretty much over that uh super automatic machine that I bought.

Paul 33:30

Okay. Okay.

Drew 33:31

Ended up getting rid of it. Oh, got rid of it completely.

Paul 33:34

Okay.

Drew 33:35

Okay. It was starting to break down too much. It was a nightmare to keep clean. Um, I ran it through a couple cleaning cycles. It didn't help. I'm like As a piece of industrial design, that machine was beautiful. It looked great in my kitchen. As an actual functional coffee maker that I wanted to use every day. No. That would that ain't it. That ain't it.

Paul 33:56

Now, are you still thinking about like some sort of automatic maker? Because I I would have a recommendation.

Drew 34:03

No, for reasons I'll get into in a minute.

Paul 34:05

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Drew 34:07

So after I was done with that, I was in Target one day with my wife shopping. There was a sale on an espresso machine. I'm like, fuck it. Like it's better than a Keurig, but only just

Paul 34:23

Okay.

Drew 34:24

I was like, f I need coffee and I don't want to think about it.

Paul 34:29

Let's just Is it like n espresso?

Drew 34:31

Yeah.

Paul 34:32

Okay. Okay. The little the little the little pods.

Drew 34:34

The little pods, right? The uh Virtue pods. It makes a couple different pods, Mel. It's the Virtue pod. And I had that for the past six, eight months. It's fine. It it's fine. I will say that it's expensive. I'm destroying the planet Whatever. Yeah.

Paul 34:49

And it's like not quite filter coffee, not quite espresso. It's kind of somewhere in between.

Drew 34:53

Somewhere in between. Makes a good cup of coffee. And I don't buy the super expensive ones. I mean, they're all not very cheap, but I just get the regular Starbucks Pikes Place ones. Like that's all I want. I just want a warm cup of brown liquid that makes me not sleepy. That is my requirement for a cup of coffee on a weekday morning.

Paul 35:15

Okay. You and I have very different requirements for our coffee, but that's okay. Yep.

Drew 35:19

I I I and I I get it. A well-brewed cup of coffee is a thing of beauty. I am not disputing that. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy that. But when I only have 30 minutes between a call and I need a cup of coffee, I just want a fucking cup of coffee. Like I just I don't I don't want to fuck around. If I if I had the time in the morning to do that and really the only time I have during the week to do something like that Is the weekend.

Paul 35:50

Yeah. See, I I I love like it only takes me about 10 minutes from start to finish.

Drew 35:55

Yeah, like I'm sure you have a much better workflow than me.

Paul 35:58

The the ritual of it is just it's so good. I don't want to brag my V60 game is getting pretty fucking good. Is it? Okay.

Drew 36:06

And and you know what? I'm happy for you. I I maybe just uh I'm not as good at it. Maybe I need more reps at it. It is what it is. So I was I was getting by on the Nespresso for a while. And then the algorithm ad gods served me something. Okay Uh so one thing that I do like is I like, let me see if I can find it. Yes, perfect, perfect, perfect. One thing that I like, and I got I got very into this during the pandemic was a good pour over. Like chemex, filter, water, grounds. Mm-hmm. Hard to get right. Hard to get right. Yes. Hard to get right. But also hard to fuck up.

Paul 36:55

I've been practicing my V60 stuff, Mike, which is like the cano the the stereotypical, canonical. Uh brewer. Yeah, yeah. I I do love, okay.

Drew 37:07

So I got served this ad.

Paul 37:09

Oh okay. Okay. Yeah. It's a it's a flat by the looks of it, it's a f flat bed Let me see more pictures.

Drew 37:17

Yeah, I have brewers very similar to this. Yeah. So this is the La Crusette pour coffee cone. And what it is, it is a it is a very nice La Crusette. Um It essentially looks like a mug that is it holds a filter. It's got holes in the bottom. Put the grounds in, put your number two filter in there, hot water into a mug. Perfect. If if you want one cup of coffee, this is great. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I was not too unsimilar to what I use every day. Yeah. And it's it's thirty dollars. It is very well made. They make it in a few different colors. I got blue.

Paul 37:57

Is it is it ceramic?

Drew 38:00

Uh it is um it's stoneware, actually.

Paul 38:03

Oh stoneware, okay. Yeah. Okay. I'm just curious because I mean I don't get too new, but generally If you talk to a lot of coffee people, they say plastic is better because simply because of the heat retention. the the the the the more fancy stuff while it looks better it actually sucks a lot it's like you really have to focus on preheating at first and keeping it like boiling hot until right before you put your grounds in and start cooking. Otherwise it just pulls a lot of heat, especially during the bloom, which really impacts the flavor of the thing. So most people say just use plastic.

Drew 38:42

Interesting. Not glass, not stoneware. Plastic. Okay.

Paul 38:48

Because it it it it's very easy to heat up, and then once it's hot, it can it holds its heat. Yeah.

Drew 38:55

So I bought this, I bought a couple mugs, and my workflow for uh the past few months has been uh my my wife has Are you buying go ahead? Are you buying pre-brown coffee? I've done both. Okay, okay. I've done both. I my wife did buy me a really nice coffee grinder. Again, back from the Chemex days. I have a um a Breville. I have that Brevel grinder. I've done both. Um Again, different palettes, different strokes, different folks. Um, I'm not above buying pre-ground stuff or buying a bag of beans and having somebody grind it.

Paul 39:31

Okay.

Drew 39:32

Because the coffee place down the street from me, the Boston Stoker, they do both. Like you can buy pre-ground. You can also buy beans. And you taught me like Look for something two weeks after the roast date, right? Because it's all the carbon dioxide. See, I I know stuff. I know stuff.

Paul 39:50

Buy beans that have a roasted on date, not a best buy date. Right. Because those are lies. Damn lies. Yep.

Drew 39:56

Yep. And I I'll have them grind it and then I'll I'll try to go through it as quick as I can. can. So I I do both. And I have bought like pre-ground store coffee too, just in a hurry. Just whatever. Okay. So I was doing this as my primary workflow. Okay. And this is good if I want one cup of coffee. Because I have to boil the water again. I have to do all the stuff. And again, if I'm pressed for time, that can be difficult. So my workflow then became I I would do this when I first got up. My wife has a really nice electric kettle that she uses for her tea. So that's how I would heat the water up. It gets it well above boiling. I would I would do this and then when I would have time, I would run upstairs and hit the button on my Nespresso for my second cup of coffee.

Paul 40:44

Okay.

Drew 40:45

My espresso machine's kind of gross. I've cleaned it a few times. It's time to move on.

Paul 40:50

Okay.

Drew 40:51

So I made another purchase this week.

Paul 40:55

Okay.

Drew 40:57

I would like to introduce you to my new Drip Coffee Maker.

Paul 41:05

Okay. Oddly enough, this is exactly what I was going to recommend to you.

Drew 41:12

Okay, okay. All right. So this is the Aiden Precision Coffee Maker. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Um, it reminds me a lot of my super automatic because you can do profiles for your different coffee, or if you're just like a regular person. who likes coffee, grounds plus water tank, instant brew, walk away. And it brews three, four, eight, ten cups of coffee. This is also good for when I'm hosting people. Um I again, the ad gods served this up to me one day on Instagram, and I wasn't able to find one. They were sold out a lot of places. Apparently it's very popular.

Paul 41:56

It is. Yeah. Yeah. Um fellow makes good stuff generally. Yeah. Like I have a fellow grinder and kettle. Uh yeah. I thought about buying their scale, but it's comically expensive.

Drew 42:07

Yeah. I did not make the same mistake I made with my super automatic. I did not get white, I got black.

Paul 42:14

Smart.

Drew 42:17

Here's the thing though.

Paul 42:19

Malted chocolate. But I would I would get it.

Drew 42:21

The sesame looks good. The woodland is pretty cool too. But I just went with classic black. Target sells it. So I was able to stag one at Target just out of the blue at the Hilliard Target. They had one left. Yeah, they sell they sell the black ones. I think they might also sell the white ones. Those three other new colors, apparently, you can only get through fellow, I think. I've used this for a couple days now. It's super great. The other thing that's kind of cool about it is if you if you scroll down on that page, you'll notice that there's two different baskets that it comes with.

Paul 42:58

Yeah.

Drew 42:59

So if you're making one to three cups of coffee, you use the same filter like a number two. And if you want to brew like a massive amount, you can use the regular whatever those filters are. Um the the the carafe is gorgeous. It's just stainless steel with a nice like lid that comes off.

Paul 43:18

Yeah. Yeah. Like All their stuff is all their stuff is made out of that material. It's all really nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 43:25

And the cause it has app control, right? So like you can set up your profiles, you can set up timers, you can set up that whole thing. I haven't gone super deep in that yet because I've just been doing regular drip coffee. Um I don't have any beans right now that I want to take the time to set up a profile for, but I'll get there. I just haven't done that yet. But so far, pretty good. Pretty good coffee makers so far. And much, much easier to keep. Clean, honestly.

Paul 43:55

Now, I would recommend. Now there's nothing wrong with your brevo grinder, but getting yourself a fellow grinder? If you like uh the fellow ode, you get yourself a flat burr grinder. You're gonna get a much more, especially if you're doing pour overs, even automatic pour overs, you're gonna get the the the enemy of pour overs is uh fines. So if you're like The the most really the most important thing is consistent grind size that every piece of your ground coffee is the same size. Otherwise you start getting channeling and channeling leads to under extraction. Or actually over and under extraction. It's it's really gross. But yeah, uh I have the original fellow owed. Uh now granted the the grinder is literally as much as your coffee maker. It's another it's another four hundred dollars to get the uh it's even more if you want to get the upgraded burrs, which I wouldn't I wouldn't do for you. Because that's another two hundred dollars for the upgraded burrs.

Drew 44:52

Uh but so if I'm looking at it, it's the Opus Brew Grinder Gen 2. And is it the Gen 2 burrs or the Opus?

Paul 45:00

Well well actually I was looking at the Ode.

Drew 45:04

Okay, so they have the Ode Grinder Gen 2.

Paul 45:08

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, the Opus would be a good upgrade as well. It's just uh The the oh the opus is canonical burrs, which is probably what you have today in that revel, where generally speaking, flat burrs are more give you a more consistent grind.

Drew 45:26

So I'm on I'm on the page, right? So it's the ode brew grinder gen two. And then they have the gen two brew burrs and the upgraded SP SSP MP.

Paul 45:35

Don't upgrade don't upgrade the burrs. Okay Yeah. Unless you're sick like me. Uh the the the the I have actually I bought uh for the original ode, I actually bought upgraded burrs. I remember And put them on there. Yeah. I would just get the I mean the the the the ode. I mean getting it and it is another it's another four hundred dollars. Wow. But it is it is a it is and what It will it'll look exactly like your coffee maker. It's the exact same material and color. It's really nice. Uh-huh.

Drew 46:06

Yeah. Now the little container that it goes in, is it vacuum sealed?

Paul 46:11

Uh no, no. So it it is this is a single dose grinder. It is not meant to store coffee. You weigh the coffee out that you want, you grind it. There's a little bit of cat catch cup. You do it in there, and then it does not keep beans inside.

Drew 46:25

It's a s it's a single does it have a scale built in?

Paul 46:29

Does not.

Drew 46:30

God damn it.

Paul 46:31

Okay. Just buy a cheap kitchen scale that doesn't matter.

Drew 46:35

I have a kitchen scale. I just don't want to go hunt for that every time. See This is the problem. This is the problem. I don't want to have to like Avengers assemble eight things to make a cup of coffee.

Paul 46:46

Well, that's what see I have I have a spot. in one of my cabinets. That's all of my coffee shit and the stuff that I'm currently using is always in the front. Now granted I do have to take a couple trips because I gotta go I gotta get the beans and I gotta get my scale and I gotta get my brewer and my filter and my little my little thing that spritz water on the beans.

Drew 47:05

Oh the fellow I gotta I gotta I gotta come watch you. I gotta come learn from you. I need to I need to like I need to be like your intern. Okay.

Paul 47:14

Yeah.

Drew 47:15

Anyway, you were saying spritz bottles.

Paul 47:16

I would recommend if if you buy, if you do go with the uh the the ode, I would recommend getting a little spritz bottle. And spraying one or two sp sprays of water on your beans before you grind them. Why? It reduces static electricity significantly.

Drew 47:41

Can't ya can't I just use the same stuff you use for your records?

Paul 47:47

Well, it's because like you know when you get in there, it's grinding them, it produces lots of heat. And like I'm sure you've had stuff where you like you just get like coffee like you do a grind and you just have like little bits of coffee everywhere you have to clean up. The water spritz gets rid of that completely.

Drew 48:03

I have never taken a s a cup a sip of my coffee and got an aesthetic discharge.

Paul 48:08

No, it's it's not about the coffee, it's about cleanup. Okay. So if you spr if you with with the burr grinders, as it's grinding, it'll generate lots of static electricity, which means as it's coming through the chute. it'll kind of just go and go everywhere and make and make a make a big old mess. The the spraying the water

Drew 48:32

I need you to isolate the noise you just made. Because I want that for my text notification. Just put that at the end of the show. When you're putting the show together this week, put that at the very end so I can record it. Okay. All right. I can I can make a clip for you and just send you the MP3. Yeah, I want that. I want that for my text notification.

Paul 48:52

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Drew 48:57

Oh, I learned so much from you.

Paul 49:01

But I mean, still like if you're buying if you're buying beans that you like, you've got I mean you have good water, you're fine, you're gonna make a great cup of coffee If you want to start getting batshit crazy like me, uh then we can start talking about like what kind of I've had your water before.

Drew 49:24

Out of my finger.

Paul 49:25

Drinking a glass I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Drew 49:30

So use filtered water.

Paul 49:32

Yeah.

Drew 49:32

Okay, okay, all right. I was like, are you just like drinking out of my sink? Who drinks out of the sink?

Paul 49:37

No, no, no. You've given me a cup before with water in it, which I imagine came from somewhere. Came from the Was it a bottle? Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if you're using filtered water, you're fine.

Drew 49:49

Okay.

Paul 49:50

Like, you know, as long as it's not too hard, you know. Okay. Even like city water.

Drew 49:58

Well, I've got we've got Delaware County water here.

Paul 50:01

Oh, okay.

Drew 50:02

Delco. Eve well but actually I think we have a mishmash. I still I get a bill from the city of Columbus for my water, but I'm pretty sure our water is provided by Delaware. I don't know. I don't know how it works. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. Water towers everywhere. Uh okay, that's all I have to talk about. You didn't have any topics this week.

Paul 50:21

No, I haven't done much. I've just been Sick.

Drew 50:24

So yeah, the next couple weeks are gonna be rough for me too. Spoiler alert. But Yeah. All right. Well then we can we can just wrap it here. I learned so much from you. I learned so much from your coffee wisdom. How's your app?

Paul 50:36

It's going okay. I haven't really done a whole lot with it. I've been the well, obviously I've been sick and then I've been lots of other things going on just in general. So hopefully things start to calm back down. The work is getting bonkers and so who knows? Who knows? Free time is is at a premium sometimes. So all right. Sometimes like you when you get free time, you're just like I just want to sit and I want to play some video games and not think about anything and relax and not do more work.

Drew 51:06

Buddy, I'll tell you, I've I've had a couple days this week where I didn't want to do that. I just want to sit on my couch. I went to bed a couple nights this week at like 7 30 because I was just I was done. I was just completely done. So I'm right there with you.

Paul 51:20

Yep. Plus the hockey season so much on the hockey games. Anywho, I'm gonna get out of here. DoingTheirBest. com. You can find all the show notes, transcripts for new episodes. Uh you tube videos and hey, thanks for listening.