314 I'm sure they have Mormon soda rules

Drew 00:00

Listen, it's not web-based software if it's not changing every day. Working at a company that makes software for the internet, um, that's just how it works now

Paul 00:13

Yeah. Yeah, and all software is horrible. So

Drew 00:26

most software is horrible. How are you? It is it has been a minute. It's been a minute. It's been a minute. I'm I'm I'm doing okay. How are you doing? Uh yeah. So let's talk about our little prolonged absence there. This is all on me. Um my work has been crazy. Um I've had to travel like some back to back weeks. Um matter of fact, I gotta go out of town again here in another week. Oh no. Um it's it's it's fine. This is just a really busy time of year uh for for the kind of work that I do. So part of that has been my fault for not scheduling things. Um and well, we're also coming up on the end of summer where Mandy will be back in school and schedules will be a little more predictable. Yeah. So uh you may also see a small dog uh running around down here. We're we're gonna see we're gonna see how this goes. Okay, okay.

Paul 01:20

I'm I'm excited for this.

Drew 01:21

He's a he's a good boy, actually Hold on one second.

Paul 01:27

He's a good boy, but Okay.

Drew 01:31

So the good the good news is is um You can see that there is a there is a dog bed behind.

Paul 01:36

I s I see that. Mm-hmm.

Drew 01:37

Yep. And he will occasionally curl up in that for a little while while while while daddy works or is on the computer. Mm-hmm. So that's good. Uh he also runs upstairs to go to the bathroom instead of just taking a piss on my floor. Good. Also good. Um he still gets his moments where he gets a little mad at us. And we had some people here working at the house Um and he really wanted to help. He really wanted to help. Um But as you know, there are there are jobs that just don't take any dogs. Requires no dogs.

Paul 02:08

Y ye yeah, yeah. Uh uh most jobs I would say require no I mean so some job d some jobs are like dog tolerant. They will they will l allow dogs to be around But there are some job jobs where the number of dogs that should be there is zero. Zero.

Drew 02:26

Um some of those jobs, just so you're aware, include painting, uh redoing trim. Um and refinishing doors. Um no dogs. Absolutely no dogs. But yeah, but young veto seems to think that he should be a part of those things. And when young veto doesn't get his way, he just well Go take a shit on the floor. It's fine. It's fine. I get it. I get it. I've been I've been so mad. I've been so mad in my life that I've wanted to just poop on somebody's floor. I totally understand that behavior. So He is out and about right now. I actually have my cameras up and running here uh somewhere. At least I thought I did. There it is. Okay, so I can I can kind of like see if he's like running around uh the house. Um how have you been?

Paul 03:14

Not too bad, all things considered. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, can't complain. Can't complain.

Drew 03:21

Okay. Well, um let's try to sum up what we've been doing for the past almost month since we last recorded. Okay. Okay. I'll go first. Uh Paul, I did another shooting competition.

Paul 03:36

Excellent. Okay. Yeah. And just just one?

Drew 03:40

Just one.

Paul 03:41

Which which firearm did you take?

Drew 03:43

Uh I took a bunch of different firearms because what I did was a three-gun competition. Three-gun competition. And as the name implies, uh This is a competition where you will use a pistol, a rifle, and a shotgun. Okay. Not all at the same time, because we only have so many hands. Um, but you will use sometimes you will use multiple firearms within the same stage. Okay. So this was a an event that the gun club that I belong to put on. Um they only do a few of these at the club I go to a year. The club I go to, their big thing is they love, love, love to do 22 rifle competitions, which are very fun. Very inexpensive. Um, it's a really good time, requires a a fairly decent amount of skill to do well in one of those, and I've shot those up there. They also do a lot of pistol competitions, and traditionally that hasn't been something that I've enjoyed. I like I like rifle, I like these multiple type of gun competitions. So Uh this was an opportunity to do something that was actually on the Fourth of July. Oh, good. Yep, it was in the morning. And it was a relatively quick match. It was only four stages. Uh now the way that these work is you have to show up, obviously, and um you won't know what the different courses of fire are for each stage. So the way that the the event is organized is Everybody who signs up gets put into squads. There are usually as many squads as there are stages. So like squad one will do the first stage, squad two will do the second stage. And then everybody just kind of shifts, right? If everything goes according to plan. And they will let you know ahead of time, like, hey, this is the expected round counts minimum. That's the key word here. for the thing, like bring this many rifle rounds, bring this many pistol rounds, bring this many shotgun rounds. And then when you get there, then you get a walkthrough of what the course of fire is going to be. Now um I did okay. I I haven't done this kind of competition in and I was doing the math because I think the last time I did one I had only been working with you at IGS for A couple of months when I when I did the last one. So it's been close to twenty years since I did one of these. Um I had done um other competitions in in between there, but an actual three gun competition I hadn't done in a while. And part of the reason I really wanted to do this too is the guy that I shoot with, he's been really wanting to do this, and this was an opportunity for us to do it together, which was also fun. Just to see how we do. Okay, so the way that this works is uh the first stage that we did was just a hundred-yard rifle course. So on at our at our gun range, they had the hundred-yard range set up, and what they had is they had ten targets at a hundred yards. Some of them were big targets. Many, many of them were small targets. Okay. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, Drew, 100 yards, you shoot a mile, that should be pretty easy. You probably have the best gear in the world 'cause you're a crazy person who spends a lot of money on this stuff. Like this should be easy for you.

Paul 07:10

Okay

Drew 07:12

What I need to explain to you right now is that there are different divisions in these competitions. Okay Depending on the size of the event, where it's being held, all this other stuff, there could be a million different divisions that have like really small nuances in them. But there's three main divisions to be aware of. The one that almost everybody shoots in is this division called Unlimited. And what that basically means is anything goes. You want to throw the fucking Hubble telescope on your gun like fucking go nuts, right? Okay. Um you want to shoot a heavier caliber. Fucking go nuts. Like it it's like no holds barred, no limit, no nothing. Then there's practical division. And the only main difference between that and unlimited is you can't use a magnified optic. Okay. Okay. So to put this in perspective, okay, on many of my rifles, especially like my long-range rifles, those are magnified optics. You need to be able to see what you're shooting. Right. But you may have also heard me talk about holographic sites. And the idea behind one of those is You have your your firearm and then on top of it you place a uh a sight that basically is a reflective piece of glass that a laser shines on And the idea behind that is that is nice because when you're looking down the sites, you have a clear site picture. There's a very clear reticle, it's lit up. It generally gives you a really nice field of view. You're not looking through a tiny little aperture on like an iron sight or something. So Typically, when you're shooting practical division, you're using some kind of aftermarket optic, but you're not using the built-in sights of the rifle. Okay. And then that's if you if you choose to do that, that is also a division known as factory division. So that is like you literally took the rifle out of the box, didn't do anything to it, and you're gonna shoot factory So when I was looking at the signups, almost everybody was unlimited was on the was in the unlimited division. There were nine of us signed up for practical division and three for factory. So out of the forty or so people that signed up I chose, and I chose poorly, to personally handicap myself and go into practical division. Okay. Everybody else in my squad was using a magnified optic but me. Now I have been shooting for a while now. I have no problems hitting targets at a hundred yards. with my rifle with a holographic sight, provided that they're a reasonable size target. What I didn't realize is that they had basically had targets there that were the size of your iPhone at a hundred yards. So of the ten targets, basically from left to right there was big target, slightly smaller target, slightly smaller target, really tiny teeny targets, a bonus target, and then a bunch, and then basically the same thing going the other direction.

Paul 10:29

Okay.

Drew 10:30

So I shot the first stage and I did god awful. I think it and and and the way that it worked was there were three shooting positions. So what you had to do is go to position one. Shoot at the ten targets. You could take as many shots as you want, but really you you had to hit every target once. Then you went to the next position. Shoot the ten targets, then go to the third position, shoot the ten targets. So basically out of the thirty shots that I took, I probably had eight hits.

Paul 10:58

Okay.

Drew 10:59

Now that's the that doesn't seem great. Now the other thing to keep in mind too is that you are timed. So not only do you have to hit these targets, you gotta do it fast, which means like you have to be able to move from target to target, move from position to position. And when you actually look at the scores, your score is basically a sum of your time, right? So a lower number is better. So whenever you're figuring out like what did you score on a particular stage, really what it is is how long did it take you? Did you successfully hit the target? If not, it adds time.

Paul 11:42

Makes sense.

Drew 11:43

Okay. So after the first stage, I'm like, well, this is gonna be a long fucking day. So, and plus everybody else that is shooting has a magnified optic, and they're just like hitting target after target. It might like I could have sat there and I could have shot 120 rounds in the first stage, right? Until I hit something. But it would have taken me a long time. It would have wasted ammo. I was just like, fuck it. I'm just gonna move on. Then it was time for the second stage. And the second stage was a lot more fun because now this was a true three gun stage. So the way that it worked was There were all these target stands set up at anywhere from 50 to 15 yards. So very close. Okay And the way that it was set up is some targets were white. Some targets were brown. Some targets were white and brown. And the goal here was is that on the stage there were 10, I'm sorry, 11 targets that you had to engage. And when I say brown targets, what I'm talking about is imagine like a silhouette of a target. What you had to do is in order to successfully engage that target, you had to put two shots into it. Or one shot in the what's called the A side uh or the A area of the target, which is basically dead center So you could either shoot one shot, hit that center, or two and hit the the the other part of the target. If you put any bullet holes in any white target, it was a penalty. Got it. Okay. So the way that they had it set up was you could not see every target from every position. So you had to choose where to start, where to move to, and go through and hit the 11 targets before you moved on to the second part of that stage. That was really fun and I did really really well. I like moved quickly. I shot every target. I didn't have any misses. I didn't have any penalties Then when you got to the second part, you had to basically take your rifle and put it in a trash can so it was safe, right? Okay. Then you decided if you wanted to finish the stage with your pistol and your shotgun or just your pistol. Because then you had to draw your pistol from a holster, and then you had to engage pistol targets with the same rule. So don't hit any white targets, just hit the brown parts of the target. Then finally off to the right were these little metal spinner targets that you could either engage with your shotgun or your pistol. So you could either like set your pistol down, then pick up your shotgun. and start shooting, or you could ch stay with stick with your pistol. I just stuck with my pistol, which in the long run I think was the better move because number one, there were more targets than I had rounds in my shotgun. And I was able to shoot faster with my pistol. So that that stage was really fun. Then the third stage was kind of similar. It was more of a heavy pistol. It was more of a pistol focus. Um And then you had to hit some sporting clays. And then the final stage was we were on the 300-yard range with larger targets. And I actually shot that stage really well with my rifle. I think I only had like six misses. uh without a magnified optic at like 200 some yards. Although now granted the targets were bigger. I could see them better. There were still some there were still some that I had trouble trouble making out. Um and then you had to shoot some aerial clays, which I am absolutely dog shit at. Like I don't like I don't like trap or skeet shooting. I'm not good at it. Um and that's what the stage finished with. So all in all, a really, really, really fun day. Um I didn't finish last, which was the which was the goal. I finished kind of just below the middle of the pack and had I shot a little bit better I could have easily finished in the upper half. So it was it was good. Um and everybody was super cool and super chill. But after we were done, we were on we were on our way home and my buddy and I were like What do we need to buy? What do we need to do? What do we need to do to be better? Okay. Yeah. Now I that sounds like us. Uh huh. Yeah. So um first of all, let's talk about gear, right? Because We have talked about my LARPing, right? We we have talked about my battle belt and all that stuff. And that's what this stuff is made for. Cause you you have to have magazines, you have to have a place to put your expended magazines, like When you're ready to reload your shotgun, like you gotta be able to grab shells and reload and do all this stuff, right? You gotta have a holster for your pistol, so you gotta full tactical full tactical, right? Um In in terms of rifles and stuff, it you know, it's a really interesting hobby. Um I don't think anybody would ever accuse me of not being a snob, right? Um and when it comes to my firearms, that's no exception, right? Like I don't buy cheap stuff. But the beauty of this sport is there's guys there that have probably spent $700 on their setup and they're shooting lights out, right? Because this is truly a sport where yes, having good stuff is nice. But and and again, this is why I choose to do these things. Like the more you do this and the more you get like it's it's very easy for me to go to a range, sit down and shoot. It's a it's a completely different thing to be moving, shooting off different positions, shooting off different target stands. hitting something other than steel, having actual rules about what you can and can't shoot, like all the stuff that has to go through your mind, which by the way, in addition to doing all of this Don't forget, you're running around holding a loaded gun, right? So it's like you need some you need some sense, you need some situational awareness, you need to have some presence of mind that like, oh, I probably shouldn't just turn around and say hi to everybody. while I'm holding this loaded gun, right? Like, frowned upon. Yeah. Yeah. Now Paul, what was the temperature on the 4th of July? It was hot. It was damn good.

Paul 17:33

It was really fucking hot, right? It was really fucking hot. Yeah. You're in full head-to-toe tactical LARPing.

Drew 17:39

I wasn't. I only wore my battle belt, but what I did wear was long sleeve and long sleeves and long pants Because um for those of you watching us on YouTube, uh one thing you'll notice about me is I'm bald and I'm pale. So like what I don't want to be is in the sun. So I slathered up on sunscreen and I wore like my long sleeve like um breathable fabric to be in the day, right? Um, so we drank a lot of water and one guy in our squad was the hero of our squad. What he brought is I don't know if you've ever seen contractors have these those little fans that are powered by the drill batteries.

Paul 18:17

Yes.

Drew 18:18

We ba we basically just all hung around that when we weren't shooting. And it's just like little shit like that that you don't think about on days like that, right? And like, what do we need to buy to train better? And what can we do different with our gear? So uh never to be outdone, right? Um obviously there were things about my setup. Um It's a very poor carpenter that blames his tools, but I do take this as an opportunity to think about buying new guns. So the first thing that I bought, uh YouTube's gonna like strike our video, but uh this is a Galock 17 Um, I have plans for this gun. So traditionally I am not a Glock guy, um, but they're very, very popular for one reason at these competitions. And it isn't the gun, it's the magazine. The magazine. Everybody and their brother makes aftermarket Glock mags. And one thing we learned from this competition is There are stages where you have to pre-stage your loaded magazines. So for example, the pistol that I took that day, I have three magazines for but you weren't allowed to transition between shooting positions with a loaded gun So what you what you were supposed to do is basically take your magazine and set it at the s at the shooting position. So like you finished in one thing, you ejected your magazine. ran over to the next station, took the mag that was supposed to be there. And this is a good example because like the gun I took, the magazines are like $50 a pop. These are like $10 a pop, right? And like Glock is a is a perfectly fine firearm. Like they are reliable. They are really customizable, which is what I'm going to do with this gun. This is a Gen 6 Glock 17, so this is like the brand new series. Um they don't make a ton of parts for this yet, but I'm gonna get a different barrel, different slide. compensator, like this would be a really good gun to turn into like a like competition gun, even though I already have a competition gun, right? And it's just one of those things you need to practice with. So that was like the first thing I bought. And traditionally I haven't liked Glocks. Because of this, this is the the hand guard. It's c you could kind of see it on my camera. Like it's very stippled. It's very rough. Um this is better than the previous generations that was basically like holding a porcupine. This actually doesn't feel too bad. Um so like that's like the first thing. Now the second thing was Oh yeah So this this is a Sig Spear LT. And um a while ago, if you're a frequent listener of the podcast You'll know that I also have another Sig Spear, which is the new Army one that like the a the ammo costs dollar sign Texas.

Paul 21:05

I remember that. Yes. Yep. Yep.

Drew 21:07

This is like the AR-15 version of that.

Paul 21:11

Okay.

Drew 21:11

So this just takes regular 556 ammo. Um this is not the rifle that I shot that day. I actually used my FN Scar that was a short barrel. Which made it very, very maneuverable. It it performed beautifully. It was accurate. Again, this this is not the gun's fault. This is all operator stuff. Operator error, I should say. Um but next time I am gonna shoot the longer barrel and I'm gonna use a magnified optic. Now this optic on this gun is the a Trigicon ACOG. So this is typically what you see on like Military gun, so this is a straight four times magnification with a built-in bullet drop compensator. You can't you wouldn't be able to see it on the camera. But when you're looking through here, there's a crosshair and then there's hashes at basically 200, 300, 400 meters, not yards, meters. Meters. Where like you can you can use it to estimate range because it's designed to be the shape of a man at that distance. So you can use it to you can use it to figure out distance, but it also gives you four times magnification, which for a competition like that is more than enough. And then on top of it is a red dot. So on the stages where I'm engaging closer targets, I can use that and then just drop down that to get the magnifying. So like that, but that would have put me in unlimited division, right?

Paul 22:27

So again, I have plans for this rifle.

Drew 22:31

I will register it as an SBR. What's nice about these is this entire top section here can be detached from the rifle. So if I want to change calibers, I can very easily do that. And the other thing is is this muzzle device on the top is the exact same muzzle device that is on my other spear. So I already have a suppressor that fits this. So again, there's there's a little bit of reusability there. So this is a really, really good rifle to shoot. It is also all sighted in and ready to go. Um But yeah, I mean that kind of stuff I don't get to I don't get to do it that much just because I mean if you go on websites and you search for competitions, you will find something happening somewhere. It's just like how far do you want to drive? Oh, that was cool. Um That's great audio. Yeah. Uh and then yeah, I mean a gun didn't go off, right? So like that's always good. True. Yeah. Uh that's like a SIG joke. Um because SIG makes pistols that just go off if you drop 'em. Um that's Uh watch uh watch other YouTube videos for that. So that was like my big news. And it was a really good time. Um we had a really good time, we learned a lot, and it's just good to practice that stuff. So what have you been doing? I don't know. What do you want to talk about? I mean, I really haven't been doing much. I wanna I want to go immediately to the last topic.

Paul 23:51

Okay, okay. So I want to give you an update on the NAS topic is my NAS, right? Yes, yes, it is. So last episode I was uh mourning the loss of my Synology Naz I would like to report that it is back alive after after some shipping delays. Uh thank you, Washington Logistics Company. Uh I got a new power supply, got it hooked up, turned right back on. It was very grumpy about things. They want to do like a full-on raid scrub. It was like I did something I I did not shut down well Which I get like usually it's on a UPS, like if power goes out, I should have done gracefully. That obviously did not happen when the power supply came on. So it is back on, it is running. I am still unsure what I am going to do. I almost, almost bought a U-green NAS on Prime Day. They had them on sale, but like Just hard hard drives are so fucking expensive right now, Drew.

Drew 24:55

Well, so that's what I was gonna ask you, right? Like I feel like First of all, I'm glad that you were able to recover everything and you know the the rebuild and the swapping of the power supply. I was wondering if you're sort of taking this as a sign of things to come. Because now you also have to think the hard drives are also old, right?

Paul 25:12

Yeah, they well they are 100%. Like these are the original hard drives. I think like when I I did buy like an extra one when I first bought it just to have. But again, the original hard drives, these, it's it's old. It's about a decade old at this point. Lots of arrows on those hard drives. It's still reporting fine, but it's it's a it's gonna happen at some point. Those hard drives will not last forever. So I'm in this I'm in this state where like I want to buy a NAS, but I don't want to pay the money it would require me to get a NAS, or I don't want to compromise on what I would pick. to get the price down lower. Like I'm really thinking that like I want to have two discs of redundancy. Instead of just one. So right now like with my raid set up I can lose one disc and rebuild it. I'm thinking I want two, which means at least like a five or a six bay naz. And those are more expensive than Ford Bay NASA's, then you have to buy five or six hard drives. And I don't like I have In there now I have four eights, which basically gives me about 24, a little under 24 terabytes of usable storage, which I'm using a little bit more than half. So I really don't need like obviously like you know like nerd brain is like well the number has to go up I have to have more storage when I get a new NAS But like really like I probably could do like just continue to buy eights and have like six eights in there and still have the same amount of storage and that would be fine. I would just have more redundancy. So I I don't know. And then there was a very lengthy Claude session that I had where Claude and I went down. It was basically like, okay. Uh what would it look like if I built my own? If I went something with like TrueNaz or uh what is the other one? Uh Unraid. TrueNAS or Unraid um comparing and contrasting the two and and like okay like what kind of NAS cases are out there and like motherboards and all that wonderful stuff and like well I want it to be quiet so like what does my cooling need to be like? And I have gone through all of this stuff and I have bought nothing. Not a damn thing

Drew 27:34

Well, Paul, I got served an ad.

Paul 27:39

Okay. Okay. For let me show you. Okay. That thing's so big. Oh my god.

Drew 27:52

Um so speaking of computer components, first of all, I have no balm to suit with you. I'm gonna tell you to go buy whatever. I don't wanna see you without a Naz. I don't want to see you in a in a in a bad store situation.

Paul 28:05

I need I need an I need a NAS. Yeah.

Drew 28:07

Yeah. Um the reason I got served this ad, Paul, is I have maxed out on capacity in my main AI system.

Paul 28:19

Okay.

Drew 28:20

If I really want to go bigger and I wanna like a if I wanna make this a true four card system, um what what started all this was um My local AI setup has been running great. Good. Good. But I want my EGPU to work? Uh it does, but it's not super fast. But hold that thought for a second. Hold that thought for a second. Um, so I wanted to buy more of those AMD cards because for like token generation on the models I'm using, it's not as fast as CUDA, but it's still good. I'm still getting like really decent tokens for per second. But none of the cases that are like commercially available have enough clearance to add a fourth card

Paul 29:05

Makes sense.

Drew 29:06

A lot of cases, like if you really look at it, modern consumer or gamer like build your own PC cases are towers. And the nicer ones will actually put the PSU at the top, like above everything, and then shift everything down. But the problem is when they shift everything down, that last PCIe slot, unless you're using a single slot card, it's basically unusable, right? There's not enough space.

Paul 29:32

Because the most of them go take a slot and go down, right? Correct.

Drew 29:36

Yeah. Like these these yeah, these AMD cards are really nice 'cause they're thirty two gigs. They're a blower design, so they're two slot. So I'm not asking for all the space in the world for that last slot, but I need a little bit more. Yeah. So what of the again I went and I asked the robots like hey what's a good design for this and the thermal take core W200 actually ticks a lot of boxes because if you look at it, the first thing you're gonna notice is it's on wheels, which is a good sign.

Paul 30:09

All computers should be on wheels, let's let's be honest.

Drew 30:11

Uh I'm kind of I'm getting there with you, right? But the other thing is it's it's a wide. She thinks she big.

Paul 30:20

I mean I was looking in there like you actually could put two entire computer systems into this one case if you were so inclined.

Drew 30:27

So the reason that it's wide is first of all they want to give you a ton of space to mount cooling and and your boy your boy loves good cooling right But they also allow you to put two, not just one, but two power supplies offset. So now you have that entire bay. To build in. Okay, so like I could put the motherboard in there. I could stack radiators for days. I could put full I could put four dual slot GPUs in there. Well those those are aftermarket, but Okay, but this case but this case does something that case manufacturers just don't do anymore, and that's give you five and a quarter inch interfaces on the front. So if you want to add removable drive base, if you want to add a DVD player, if you wanna add, or if you just want to reserve it for fans, like the the choice is yours, okay? But I want you to scroll down that page towards the very bottom, and I want you to look at the section that says versat versatile expandability.

Paul 31:40

Versatile. Hold on, I think I went too far.

Drew 31:44

It's right above the radiator supporting list.

Paul 31:47

Yeah, you heard me right. Okay, okay, okay, yeah, versatile expendability. I'm there, I'm there. Oh, oh, oh, you can you can sta you can you can you can Voltron the fuck out of this case.

Drew 32:00

You can put cases on your you put put cases on your case, but I got a got a hat on a hat, right? So what this is, is this is a lifestyle of cases. So the expandable option here is the W200, uh huh, which is essentially just a a a another case that you can like bolt onto this on the top or the bottom. Now, you brought up my EGPU. A couple shows ago we talked about how I took my 3090 out of my case for both power reasons and space reasons. What I want to do is I want to get a faster interface than the EGPU. It it's it's just not quite fast enough over the current interface because again, I'm not true Thunderbolt, right? It's USB four, it's Linux. Yeah.

Paul 32:49

It still gives good speed, but it's US Thunderbolt five would give you more bandwidth.

Drew 32:54

Right. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. So what they make, Paul, is they make riser cards for GPUs

Paul 33:04

Okay.

Drew 33:04

So what I think I can find here, let's see if I can actually find it. I think that thermal take actually makes it. Um let me just look here real quick. I think it's on the accessories page. Um okay, so they don't make one, so M22 PCI e riser. Is this it? Let's see here. M2 okay, so what they make is they make these devices I can't of course I can't fucking find one right now Basically what they make is they make riser adapters for M2 slots. Okay. Alright, so fuck. I can't find a good example. I should have did this before the show. Sorry, this is shitty audio. But I have technically five PCIe slots on my motherboard. Okay. So if I want to go beyond four GP hues, How do how would you do that, right? Like that's where this whole concept of the EGPU comes from, but that's just one solution. What they make is they make devices that look like an M2 SSD. So it would slot into the M2 slot of your motherboard. But on the other end is a PCIe slot.

Paul 34:34

Because M2 is really just is a PCIe slot, right? Yes. Okay.

Drew 34:39

So what you could do is if I wanted to add like a fifth or a sixth graphics card to my computer My motherboard has I think four M2 slots. I think the only problem and the only reason I haven't bought anything yet is logistically like Where they are on the motherboard, could I feasibly like put one of those risers and have the cable come out and like have it connect to the thing? That's what I don't know. So like my dream scenario would be is I would buy one of these um what was it, the W200? Is that what it was? Yeah, the W200. I would expand to a second power supply because my motherboard does have dual PSU support. I would Slap four of those GPUs in there and then I would have that external riser for an NVIDIA card as like yet more video memory Now, these things aren't cheap. They retail for $549. Amazon has it for just under $500 Oh actually it's a thought for a a case. Actually actually you know what it's interesting on the Thermal Take website, it didn't say this the other day, but it actually says discontinued on Thermal Takes website. Oh it does. Yes it does. It did not say that the other day. Am I on the global site? Maybe that's why. I don't know. But I can still I mean you can still find them. You can still buy them. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the only reason I haven't done it. But I am pointing this out to you. So if you really wanted to go crazy with a NAS setup You could you could you could slap some storage in here because there's like drive bays for days in there.

Paul 36:16

Uh yeah, I mean I will keep that in mind. Yeah, I just I just don't know I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna have to do something But you know, I've made sure that all of my like everything I need in there is backed up to B2. So like I have a backup of my NAS, so like it's if if it catches on fire or blows up, I'm it's not the end of the world. But I'm gonna have to do something. It's just it's just mmm Yeah. Yeah. But we'll see. I don't know how You know, if if you put it if you force me to tell you what I was going to do, I think I'm leaning towards building my own and doing like unraid. Okay. I just but then again it's like okay, like you know me like again, I'm gonna be the same thing as you. I'm gonna wanna make sure it's cool, I'm gonna make sure that it's quiet, like then you have to make sure you have enough spa the case has enough space for all the fans and all the and dealing with all the heat of the drives and

Drew 37:11

You know, I'm like what I will say this. The other advantage of doing it that way too is if you want to run services like Plex or other things, you have a lot more horsepower to do that. Yeah, exactly.

Paul 37:24

Yeah. Yeah. So But I don't know. We'll see. I'm still kind of just futzing around and yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's where it is. It is still alive and it's running right now Yep, still running, still on. So Okay. Let's let's keep it alive a little bit.

Drew 37:44

All right. I want to talk about your new obsession.

Paul 37:47

Okay So, Drew, I mean you you know this because you have you have you have when I've come to your house you have made purchases just for me. I like a good soda. I like a good soda pop. I like the bubbles. I like flavors. I am not afraid of getting into the weird stuff. In fact, what you would buy for me was my my previous accession, which I still have some cans here in the house, is uh Dr. Pepper Strawberries and Cream. Uh they also have like some blackberry stuff. It's good. Like Dr. Pepper and other stuff is it's good. It's good. I like it. So Drew, are you aware of the the dirty soda phenomenon that is that is taking the world by storm? I'm gonna say no Okay. So it all it like like most things, this comes from the Mormons. So Mormons have weird rules about what they can and cannot drink, and they cannot drink hot hot caffeinated beverages or beverages that were brewed hot.

Drew 38:44

So they drink Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. They can't drink hot caffein before.

Paul 38:51

They can't drink hot caffein It beverages They can't drink coffee, they can't drink tea. Okay. Alright. So they drink soda. Alright. So what's uh so and obviously you know with with coffee, the very the the very Coffee is like a delivery mechanism for for sugar, right? People put syrups, people put flavored creamers into their coffee. Hot milk.

Drew 39:13

Yeah.

Paul 39:13

Yes. Well the more people started taking those ingredients, flavored syrups and coffee creamers and adding them to soda. Oh no. Okay. Okay. So and I will say most of the time it's really good. You take a Dr. Pepper and you put some uh coconut syrup in there, coconut like a little bit of coffee creamer. It is really good. So what what has happened is is this is this is this has breached it has escaped Utah. It has escaped. And there are places where you can get uh like dirty sodas. In fact, like uh I think back when I was uh back when I was Bandad. Uh we recommend it for a fundraiser doing like a dirty soda thing because you can just charge a ridiculous amount of money for it and people will do it. Okay, but okay, yes, Drew? Why is it called dirty? What what makes it dirty? I I don't know why they call it dirty. They just call it dirty so because you're putting you're adding things to soda and it looks it starts looking kind of I mean the color does look certain look yeah it looks cloudy, right? It does look cloudy But but this has also kind of like emboldened soda makers, our good old Pepsi and Coca-Cola and friends, to try new flavors. Okay. Just a a can of something. And I have found my absolute new obsession. All right. Pepsi, the fine makers of Mountain Dew. They are silly. You can go to your you go to your Kroger or Meyer or Dine Eagle right now and bonds.

Drew 40:49

It's only gonna be Kroger from now on.

Paul 40:51

Okay. Oh yeah, right. It is called Dirty Mountain Dew. And what it is, it is a combination of a cream soda and Mountain Dew. Stop it.

Drew 41:06

Stop it. Call I'm calling the police. No. I'm calling they exist for this reason.

Paul 41:11

It is f Fan fucking tastic Drew. I love this flavor combination. It it tastes more like a citrusy cream soda than a Mountain Dew with cream soda. So like it it it's it's heavier on the cream soda than it is on the Mountain Dew. But I'm telling you it works. It is so good The last time I bought groceries, like because s soda's expensive now. I mean, I don't know if you how much soda you buy, but it's stupid expensive now. They had like buy two 12 packs and get three free. So in my basement I have five twelve packs of dirty mountain dew just just sitting down there waiting for me to get to 'em Oh, Drew, it's it's it's a ma it's an amazing beverage.

Drew 41:56

It's the classic bold citrus taste of Mountain Dew. Mm-hmm. Leveled, not mixed, leveled. Leveled up, sorry, leveled up with a smooth, creamy twist. Mm-hmm. It's good. So it's so good. So good. Have we peaked as a society?

Paul 42:15

Is it I I think so. The top downhill from me It's all downhill from here.

Drew 42:28

All right. Um so for one bottle of Dirty Mountain Dew, now did you buy cans or bottles?

Paul 42:35

Cans.

Drew 42:35

I buy cans. It's a twelve ounce can.

Paul 42:38

I don't I'm not saying I don't drink a lot of soda people I drink maybe, no, I mean, most days it's exactly one can of soda. If it's a Friday or a Saturday, it may be two, but it's usually just one. It's a hotter one cup of fossil coffee, one soda a day. I'm not I'm not a fiend. But for the past I don't know three weeks Every soda that I've drank has been a dirty Mountain Dew. I wish I was drinking one right. I wish I didn't have to work tomorrow so I can drink a dirty Mountain Dew right now.

Drew 43:10

Why couldn't you just drink it so far? 160 calories, 44 grams of sugar. Worth it. Worth it. I'm not here to yuck your yum, buddy. I just I re like I I am I am soda curious. I am curious about this. I don't think I'm gonna go out of my way to find this unless we have a game night. Yeah Cream soda Mountain Dew.

Paul 43:37

Yeah, I would recommend I wouldn't I I would not recommend this to people who are fans of Mountain Dew. I would recommend this to people who are fans of like cream soda andor ginger ale. It has been it's I like ginger ale. I like ginger ale very much. It is a citrusy cream soda. That's what it is. Huh. Mm-hmm. It's good. It's good. So good. So good. So yeah. How did you even find this? I've I I I do the grocery shopping. I was going through and I saw it and I was like Huh, I try that and then I bought a 12 pack and I've been hooked. So how much of it was on the shi shelf.

Drew 44:19

How many other pe how many other perverts are Oh there was a lot.

Paul 44:22

There's a lot. It was like one of those gigantic like here's a comical amount of 12 packs in the middle of the

Drew 44:28

The Kroger, you know, stacked up just in it in an affront to God itself.

Paul 44:38

Uh it's Mountain Dew, yeah, yeah. Which is why, you know, I only drink one can of soda a day most days. Like it's it's not like I'm not chugging these. It's you know but it's good. It's good.

Drew 44:52

Well, between between your Mountain Dew and the amount of like lead poisoning I probably have from all these guns, like I think we're both blowing our way out at this point.

Paul 45:02

I don't think it's gonna be soda that kills me, but we'll see. Who knows? Who knows?

Drew 45:05

I dust I don't under I I I really wanna go down a rabbit hole later tonight in bed about this whole dirty dirty soda thing. It's a real thing Maybe I'm maybe I'm out of the loop. I just haven't heard of this before.

Paul 45:16

Yeah, yeah. Again, it's it's it was a it was it came from Utah on the Mormons. So All right.

Drew 45:26

So last topic of the night. So have you been trying the iOS 27 beta?

Paul 45:31

I am running the iOS 27 beta. I installed it. Sh uh shortly after our last recording was still in beta one, so now we're on beta three. Uh So okay, so I'll I'll talk general impressions and then I'll talk about Serie I in particular. Right. All right. As far as betas goes, this one is really, really good. Sometimes like you put a beta on your phone, which, you know, don't don't put betas on your phone unless you really want to, then put betas on your phone. It's fine. A lot of times they run very hot. The battery life is bad because they're optimizing and new features and stuff. That is not the case with the uh IOS 27 betas. They have been rock solid. There's been If there's oh yeah.

Drew 46:21

Hey buddy, you wanna be on the podcast? Come here. You wanna be on the podcast? Come here. Come here! Get over here! Vito, come here. Here. Go over here. Go over here.

Paul 46:33

He doesn't wanna. He doesn't wanna. Wants to play.

Drew 46:35

Go go get it.

Paul 46:36

Wants to play.

Drew 46:36

Go get it. Come here. No, he's he's gonna show up on the podcast. Come here, show show Mr. Paul your haircut. Come here. Come here, you fuck. Come here. Get over here. Don't party me. Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Yeah, I know, dirty soda. Can you believe it? Come here! Oh you yeah you've already fucking learned your lesson. I can't requ I can't work under these conditions. Alright, you less I have a gun.

Paul 47:15

He's just standing over there looking at me. It's a it's very stable, it's rock solid, the battery life has been good. There's been only like one kind of persistent bug through the betas, and sometimes the keyboard doesn't show up when you want to, and you have to tap the text field again, but they'll fix it. The the slider on liquid glass is nice. I mean there's not a whole lot of like really earth breaking features in iOS twenty-seven But outside of like the series AI stuff. But as far as betas goes, like I if you're beta curious, I would not the public the public beta should probably be out any day now, because usually that's a beta three thing. Run the beta, it's very stable, it's good. Okay. So let's talk Siri AI. That's the brand new feature. Okay. So first Two things you have to remember before Serie A really works for you. One, there's a wait list. You have to ask to join, and I was on the wait list for probably like eight, nine days before I got access. There is also a new indexing process. So that's there's a background process that drives spotlight, right? Which indexes everything. Well apparently Apple has completely redone that And you really have to index everything for Serie A to be useful. And depending on how much photos or especially, I guess, email is a big one. Because it like it only pulls so many archived email messages a day to to process them and scan them. It even says like, hey, if you leave it on the charger for longer, this will go faster. The indexing can take a very long time and like when I installed beta 3 it had to index some more stuff again. So if you get through the index process, which it basically tells you like, hey, I'm still indexing on the setting screen. And you get on the ser get through this the wait list for Siri AI, then you can access Siri. The new s the new Siri. So there's two ways to do it. One you can just pull down from like the center, you can do the press and hold on the lock button. There's an A Siri app. It all does the same thing. And it is uh okay, I'm this is gonna sound condescending, but it's not. It is a competent on device AI assistant. Keyword on device. On device. Right. It is not very good at it is not great at world knowledge. It it we'll do some world knowledge stuff. But it is very hesitant to go out to the web and summarize new web articles. If it's something in its training data, it'll do it. But so here's here's some of the questions that I asked it is kind of like to see how it was go. All right. I just got back from a trip. So I said, hey, Siri. Oh, don't no, don't, don't do it. Uh I said, uh Ahoy dingus. Yeah. Uh-huh. Ahoy dingus. How much money did I spend on Ubers on my trip to LA? And it nailed it. It found all of my receipts in my email. and summed them all up and then gave me a link to all of the emails that it had found and it totally did it.

Drew 50:25

Uh okay.

Paul 50:26

Question.

Drew 50:28

What email app are you using? Okay.

Paul 50:31

If you're not in the Apple ecosystem, this will not the it uh whether you use Gmail or Google Calendar or whatever, I would recommend also setting it up. So it goes into Apple Mail and Calendar because that's what it looks like. Now there is an API for applications to kind of like like present data to the Siri index and be calculated. But right now in the beta period, obviously not a lot of apps have that yet at all. And who knows how many apps will actually do that. Right. Some de some apps, I mean I'm thinking like the the big ones, they're not gonna want unless there's a huge amount of market pressure, they're not gonna want to do this. Indie apps, probably sure. They don't care. Like, yeah, Apple's great, let's do it. So it has to be on the Apple stuff. So it found and I I I use both. Like I use the Gmail app from time to time, but I also have hooked up to Apple Mail, Apple Calendar. So all of my data is there. I also s I also said, hey, do you know the name of the podcast I record with Drew is? And it's like, oh yeah, absolutely I do. Here it is. And then I and then I asked a follow-up question, how many times have we recorded this year? And it nailed it. Okay. So, uh, you know, it's if you think about it as a better way to search the stuff on your device You will be pleasantly surprised. Oh. Yeah. My dog scrolling around. He's so stubborn.

Drew 52:13

He's so stubborn. Yeah.

Paul 52:15

So like it's Is it groundbreaking? No. But has Apple finally caught up to this the stuff? I think they're getting there. And I've just started to kind of dabble in with some of the uh like developer focused portions of it. So uh yeah, it's if you're I mean if you're curious about this stuff, the beta is solid. It's it's not gonna like brick your phone. It's a good beta. It just you know just note that like hey from the time you install it it'll probably be at least a week before you can really play with the stuff and go at it Hmm. But like if you wanna ask a question about your photos or your messages or your email or your calendar, you know, if you're already using all the Apple stuff It'll find uh, you know, it'll search Apple notes. Like, so for me, like it won't search bear. It won't search to doist. Those are my my notes and to do to do apps.

Drew 53:15

Yeah. Like I I pretty much exclusively use the Gmail app on my phone right now. Um just because I want to be able to snooze things. I want to be able to use all the features of Gmail, right? I would have to think that they would open that up. You don't think?

Paul 53:32

It's There are APIs for you to do that kind of thing. It's just a question of how many third parties, you know, app in people in the Apple ep Apple ecosystem will do it. It also can find like app intense, which is kind of like what drives shortcuts. So you can do automations and stuff. I could ask it to say like, hey make it to do in to-doist and it would do that just fine because those app intents are there. So we'll see what happens when this finally launches in the fall. How many third parties embrace it you know what's out there, but like if you're you know, like I said if your Apple Calendar may or like I said even if you just want to continue to use Gmail Hook up the account to Apple Mail so you have a copy there too, right? So Apple Intelligence can grab it all and do it. Oh that's a good point. I can still connect it but just use it. Uh okay. So I do that back because I like uh well In my exp in the past, like if I'm just want to like see what uh email that is unread, I just hit Apple Mail. But if I want to find an email, I go to Gmail because the search has to this point. How about a good looking dog? Uh has been awful, but yeah. Yeah, he's a he's sharp. Sharp.

Drew 54:48

Hey Vito, sit down. Huh? Sit down. Oh And those always looking at me like, okay, now what? Yeah, he's like fuck that. Alright, I'm getting distracted. I'm sorry. No, but it's uh Yeah, it's Yeah, it's it's it's good. It's it's good. It's good. So do you do you think it'll launch in the fall or before that?

Paul 55:16

So what they said it's gonna it'll be in beta in the fall when it comes out. Uh so we'll we'll see what they end up doing. Uh Honestly, like I don't know what they expect for like moment, it's it's Apple, right? Like the the the capacity they're going to need is going to be huge.

Drew 55:37

Well and well don't forget not every Apple device is eligible. And that's what I was gonna ask you, and I could probably Google this and I'm just too lazy. I have a 16 Pro. Mine won't work, right?

Paul 55:49

No, so if you can do the Apple intelligence stuff today, so I think the 16 Pro does work, you can totally run the new uh Siri AI. Now what there is where the confusion kind of lays into is There are two tiers of on-device models. Okay. The 16 Pro only runs the smaller version of the on-device model So your Apple, your Siri AI experience will rely more on private cloud compute. So the queries going off of your device to the cloud. Okay. There is a larger device that is Available for like the 17 Pros, uh Macs with M chips, iPads with M chips, things like that. The things it was like uh were phones is like twelve gigs of RAM or higher, right? Those those tier that can run the bigger model so more stuff can run. on your device. I don't know where my stuff is running. I have a 17 Pro, so this is just what I've been doing. All of my other test devices are too old. They don't support it at all. So uh that's what I've been rocking. So your yes, your device totally can do it. I just don't know whether your experience will be the same as mine or not, because you'll be in that different tier of on device model.

Drew 57:14

I don't like that. I'm gonna have to go buy a new phone. Well, don't do it now.

Paul 57:18

The 18's coming out yeah, sooner than later. Though I've heard they're gonna be heavier and thicker. So yeah. Just like me.

Drew 57:26

Yeah. All right. Well that's good. I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm too much of a chicken shit to install a beta, so I get it. I get it.

Paul 57:34

I I waited until after I was home from LA before I did it. Yeah. Okay, just pro advice. Don't put a beta on your phone if you're gonna be traveling. Don't I've heard the horror stories. Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah. Just wait till you don't have to be anywhere. You can be home. If it could just if it needs to be hot and angry for a day, you can let it be hot and angry for a day So yeah, it's good. I'm also running the Golden Gate beta on my Mac Mini, but I really haven't played with that too much yet. So outside of just um that's the that's the new uh Golden Gate is the new version of Mac OS, so Mac OS 26. Oh, oh, oh, oh, got it, got it. Yeah. So they named it after the area that the bridge is there. Yeah, so not named after the bridge, it's named after Golden Gate, which is the area that the bridge is at. Yeah. So cool. Oh.

Drew 58:24

Alright, buddy. That's a show. We did. Yeah. Yeah. After all that time, we still know how to do this. We just nailed it.

Paul 58:31

Just about an hour. We're so good at this. So good. DuringTheBest. com, you can find all the show links, you can find transcripts, and hey, thanks for listening.