Coding Blocks - Decorating your Home Office

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

This time we are missing the “ocks”, but we hope you enjoy this off…ice topic chat about personalizing our workspaces. Also, Joe had to put a quarter in the jar, and Outlaw needs a cookie. The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode230 News Thank you for the review Szymon! Want to leave […]

All right, man. It's just you and I. That's right. What are we talking about tonight? Tepsa 230. Did you know that? 230. That's right.

Probably showed up in your podcast player there too. They were only coding blah tonight. Oh. Yeah. So our California friend can't be with us tonight. That's right. Alan is the ox. The ox. Okay. The auxiliary. auxiliary okay i got you yeah all right

well yeah so definitely no no normal interest let's just get into it what are we talking about today we're talking about water coolers water coolers the things around the office okay are we talking at the water cooler or are we talking about water coolers are there still water coolers that's what i want to know well of course only now people have them in in their homes for like the past you know decades sorry i haven't been to office in a long long time well all right so uh first let's just go ahead and get the reviews out of the way just to say thank you. So on Spotify, you know, I was going to say,

I wonder if it's supposed to be like without like the vowel, so it's like Susie Mon, but then maybe I'm mispronounced maybe i'm thinking wrong i i mean i whatever we know we know my kryptonite with proper nouns we're past it i'm thinking it's a it's a dark psychic type what that's just a combination of pokemon oh oh oh yeah okay yeah mega xl pokemon upgrade evolution yeah yeah very nice all right well thanks for the review yep thank you very much all right actually i thought i had something to say about that one more but no no no no i was reading i know there was a previous one from that you guys already gave you already talked about last time sorry yeah you missed the boat on that one yeah no go back some times these uh so rules we never talk about past episodes ever that's right i'm pretty sure i don't do that

because then we'd have to link them we don't want to do that oh you know great show notes on the website uh so uh i you know i said i haven't been in an office in a long time. It's not true at all. In fact, I moved to a new house, and now I have two offices for some reason. Yes. You and Alan, like what? Why? I love it.

I love it. That's insanity. But I had some problems. So I bought a desk, and I was like, you know, I just really want like a simple piece of wood on a couple of legs that isn't going to follow her. So I bought like a cheapie that I found online. It was cheaper than other ones. And I figured like what could go wrong?

Man, that thing was destroyed in the box before they even shifted. Terrible. Like obviously not even shipping damage. Like I don't even know what happened to this thing. So I'm currently fighting with them about taking it back and paying for the shipping or else just having me throw it away or something but none of that matters because maybe they just didn't support it well in the packaging and so like the box is fine but inside the box it was getting banged around a little bit maybe the the top of the desk almost looked like people were playing like tic-tac-toe or something on it it was like this weird like horizontal and vertical lines on the side that was had foam in front of it that was undamaged was this an amazon

purchase no this is some some weird side never heard of and we'll never use again okay yeah okay ebay pretty much it was definitely it was definitely some sort of like facebook marketplace okay it was like one of those drop ship kind of places whatever um so yeah i'll stop pictures online look amazing but yeah it was like a swab or something zw ob if you search for desks you'll see them all over the place don't use them i've never heard of that one in all my standing desk um research yeah good good don't ever get don't well i said standing desk research i'm kind of like assuming maybe i'm that one was not but i did that is how i found them uh and i did go ahead and get a standing desk although i'm not that interested in standing

i just like being able to adjust the height okay sometimes i go a little up so it's a little down plus i like not having to decide what height to get the desk at okay now but this is going to be the desk for work that's going to be this standing desk thing yeah i had some decisions to make uh i have a standing desk now uh and it's great it's fine it's got uh i've got it kind of i haven't hooked finished hooking it all up but i have like you know monitor mounts and uh the mount for our mics for the the podcast our microphones and so yeah i've got all sorts of stuff to attach to it and so you know i already knew where kind of everything goes on it so i just decided to get a new one even though the sizes are very

similar so i really could have gone either way but i got an uplift desk and i assume that you've probably have seen uplift desks before i yep have a uplift if you look at uh if you look for standing desks they're probably the most prominent brand i don know. They were one of the first standing desks. They're very popular, but they are more expensive than most of the other brands. You'll see a ton of competitors and the competitors look almost identical, which is how I got suckered into

this last desk. I was like, I don't really care about standing. It looks basically the same and it's way cheaper. Let me tell you, it was way cheaper in every sense so that thing's gone and what's funny is um the box that came my last disc came with like desktop legs everything supports was smaller than just the box for the actual desktop of the uplift because it had that you know padding and was much thicker it wasn't like a piece of paper yeah i have i have a couple and i love it yeah never i remember you built that

really cool desk i thought that was still the one that we're using mainly so i did build a custom one um but that was like over a decade ago that i built it and i ended up um giving that one to my son and then uh got the uplift and then ended up recently getting a second one um but i mean we've we talked about the treadmill things as part of like the you know um uh resolutions and whatnot you know the year, or maybe it was, I don't think it was for the shopping spree thing. I think, I think we were talking about during resolutions and so, yeah, so I, I had already tried, as I'd previously said before, like I, I was using like just a portable kind of desk top that you could add onto an

existing treadmill, but I decided to go full on, uh, you know, treadmill. Well, I say full on treadmill. I mean, one that's not, I want, I mean, one that is only made for the purpose of being under a desk, if that makes it more clear. And so I, I decided to go with the uplift for that one, but yeah, the fantastic quality, the construction, the build quality is amazing. The shopping experience, you know, you can pick out so many different you know, configuration options, not just like what width and everything, or you know width and depth depth do you want the desk but

also like what color wood do you want do you want holes in the you know for grommets and you know what do you want to fill those holes with uh you know do you want like cup holders or you know yeah um i did have with my first one a horrible experience with the shipment of it because this happened during the pandemic years. So I don't know if your mileage varied on that, but I can say that with my second one, it was smooth selling. Nice. Okay. So I'm going to chalk that madness up to pandemic craziness.

I got a little extras, which at at the time it kind of seemed like, I don't need this. They gave me a mat I wasn't planning on using. I got a free T-shirt, which I gave away to my wife. She's loving that. She's wearing it right now, actually. But yeah, I had a lot of time just picking out a lot of fun, picking out the options and whatnot.

I ended up going with a black bamboo. I kind of went back and forth a few times there's some really nice like natural wood options oh yeah that are just beautiful it was cool it seems like i could just easily replace the top part if i wanted to if i wanted to like make a second desk or you know if i wanted to repurpose something yeah i mean there in fact um now that you live up here, I know of a really good lumber place that does more exotic type of woods. So you can get something crazy if you wanted to. Yeah, nice. It's not too far.

It's in town for us. Oh, that's cool. It's like 10 minutes away from your house. Oh, I want to go there but um the cool thing though about about uplift though that just to not take away from theirs though is that like if you buy it from them they've already pre-drilled everything for you so everything's ready to go um and also too like i mean they might have like i don't know 30 60 they had There's a bunch of different wood options. And you can even get samples of the wood.

So you have to pay for it. But then if I remember correctly, you get reimbursed for that on the return, if I remember right. Or something. It worked out something like that. Or it gets applied, if I remember right. Um, or, or something, it was, it worked out something like that or it gets applied to your purchase or something. I don't remember exactly how that worked out.

Cause I, I only did the sample one time in the, the second one that I bought, I bought to match the first, but, um, yeah, you could like,

and they have like the, the woods. I don't know if you noticed this. I mean, I'm assuming you did, but there's like different families. So like, you know, you could get a sample of like the more, I don't know if you noticed this. I mean, I'm assuming you did, but there's like different families. So like, you know,

you could get a sample of like the more lower end, maybe let's say, you know, like the, the, the, and then there's like, you know,

the more exotic woods that you can get, that you could get the samples for those. And you know, uh, the price is very, obviously, cause the samples are a lot. They won't be very a lot, but, but the cool thing though, is that like, obviously because the samples are a lot, they vary a lot,

but, but the cool thing though, is that like, you can get a really good indication of, uh, you know, what, what is it going to look like?

And a representative example of like, well, how thick might this one be? And things like that. So, yeah, I was really torn. I was interested in the dark rubber wood,

but I didn't realize they had samples. Um, but my wife convinced me that this one would match like our the french are better anyway so it worked out but uh the walnut looked really nice too i was like oh geez i think the most expensive one the most exotic was like a peacock wood yeah um which i've never seen before but it looks crazy now i did get the rubber wood. Yeah, the dark one or the light one? I'm actually trying to see if I can find my... I'm pretty sure it's like a dark... Well, I know it's dark, but

I'm pretty sure it was the rubber wood. Let's see. Trying to find... Yeah. Dark brown rubber wood. So, know i like it uh but i wasn't i didn't have like anything already that was trying to match like you did so i didn't have that problem but yeah and the accessories though too did you get like which you said you got the shirt and the the mat is that did you get like did you get like a standing mat like a like a thick foamy kind of thing to stand on or is it like a balance board kind of thing what do you

mean uh i think we just got the like the kind of a plain mat we looked at the the balance ones because i'm not really planning on saying too much well i've just got to pick one that she thought she might want but i actually managed to catch them on like kind of a spring sale so they uh they kind of had lumped in a few free accessories i don't know if they do that all the time or if you know they never really sales i don't really yeah i don't really believe sales anymore but they did give me a coupon uh where if i spent a little bit extra money i basically got it back so it was like it was a hundred dollar coupon off if i spent a hundred dollars more on what my current total was so i just did it like, so I got a bunch of like free accessories.

I haven't even bothered to hook up yet. So I got like a, a laptop mount and some other stuff. I'm interested in trying, I got like a free desk organizer, which I'm definitely not going to use. I don't want anything. I like,

I like playing. Right. I got some like kind of hook type things. I forget what those are for. Oh yeah. For like hanging headphones or whatever. Oh yeah. Cool.

And then the grommets, I did want to bring up the grommets so grommets if you're not familiar the basically kind of i think of them as like power holes in the back of the desk so you can put like cables through um and you don't have to get them on the uplift discs uh uplift desks it's optional but they have some pretty cool options um so you can get kind of the standard which is like a little plastic piece that you can like put a cable through if you want to like plug something in under the desk for example they also have power ones that have like uh power outlets kind of on top which is convenient if you need to charge a phone or something or you want to plug a laptop in quickly they also had pop-up power ones seemed like you can kind of have a flat and then boop and now it's up and sitting up so it's not always kind of staring at you which i

thought was cool i don't really understand that one though so the one thing that was that was kind of frustrating though you mentioned that those holes that is totally dependent on the size of the desk you get okay yeah some some some desks uh you have to get it with the hole okay so like i didn't want it but for the treadmill desk like i didn't need like you know a big desk i wanted just a small area um and i had to get it but i ended up doing uh a cup holder was one of the options that you could use the hole as a cup holder yeah you know i did not get the cup holder and i kind of wish i had now because for some reason i was thinking about putting this is something about like putting like pencils in it or something and i was like i'm not gonna do that but now like i like i didn't occur to me that i could put a cup in there

well i'm sure it was listed as a cup holder specifically but like yeah i mean literally call it a cup holder but i just like i was so anchored by the thought of it being like office supplies in there i was like i don't have paper clips like what am i gonna write this thing but i can put in a cup and then i don't have to worry about the cat knocking over as much no it totally works out for me um you know because then i can have like a water always at the ready you know while i'm on the on the treadmill so you know uh i think i might i think i might order one and you can you can buy this stuff separately too and swap it out they're also on amazon by the way yeah so you can find them in their products on them so like if you wanted to try i don't remember if they do prime on

there um maybe they do but yeah sometimes it's just more convenient payment option you know yeah but i'm gonna do a couple more now did you know though because i mean uplift is not a new discussion to this show i remember vaguely talking about it years ago and when you got it and stuff do you know how many oh i know we said we would never talk about past episodes ago and when you got it and stuff. Do you know how many? Oh, I know we said we would never talk about past episodes. So, um, you know,

and that was only like a few minutes ago that we said that. So that's a newly established rule, man. That'd be, that's pretty good. Uh, you're off by one. So,

you know, typical developer problem. Uh, it's, uh, 2015, 2015. Okay, okay. Episode 34.

That's right around when all those reports came out. They're like, city is worse than smoking. You're shaving years off your life. All of which I'm sure is true. I don't mean to say it like I'm skeptical or anything. I will say this though. Like, so I don't use it as much for, as a standup desk. Like I originally had intended.

I mean, I do use it for that, but just not as often as I originally intended, but I do use it. The, the motorized ability of it. Yeah. All the time.

Yeah. Same like daily, but not for the reasons you're going to think and this is why i asked you like which where did you put it because i think you had talked about your other quote office was really going to be like for uh like music purposes yes am I love, I love, love, love to raise my desk while I'm playing standing. Yeah. Right. And then that way I can do two things. One, um, I have different like speaker options when I'm, when I'm playing my guitar. So depending on which option I choose to go with for that particular time, one of them would be to use the speakers that are on my desk so I can raise

the desk so that the speakers are at ear level. Ooh. Right. Okay. Or at least the tweet that the tweeters are at ear level while I'm playing. Um, cause these are, you know,

like studio monitors. So it sounds really cool, but also then like, you know like studio monitors so sounds really cool but also then like you know i have the giant monitor purposely to like display a lot of music at one time right and so now that can also raise with me as i stand so i use i use the i use the standing feature all the time but just not for work purposes right like i originally thought i would i originally thought i would use it because i did get the balance board which i do love it it's awesome but it's it's like riding a skateboard kind of thing you know so like i do love that aspect of it but um you know bones brigade for life yo um so uh the but i don't use it for work but i do use that standing board sometimes as i'm playing

yeah i'll stand on it and kind of like balance and rocker you know like literally rock around um they have two of those now they have two uh different choices for like the rocker boards uh one is supposed to be a bit more advanced i think that was the original one is that now like the difficult one there's an easier one oh really yep i mean of course i thought about it i would have bought the difficult one no matter what yeah yeah i just don't say i have some feet problems so for me just standing and not moving is rough but walking around is easier so maybe that would be okay for me but i use it for music too actually as a professional athlete i would go with the more challenging one of course so well i actually like being able to lower my desk too like i got

a little piano like a keyboard that i do like a little piano lessons on and so it's nice to be able to kind of get above it easier so i just lower the desk more than i usually have it so that's nice sometimes if i i play guitar or something i'll and it's in the way like i'll raise it so like the monitor is higher i can still see it i can play music easier and hit record or whatever on the keyboard on the on the like the computer keyboard man just poking around at like all the recent accessories and i swear they've added since i bought just bought my other one yeah i'm seeing all kinds of stuff in there then i'm like oh that would be nice the hammock they've had for a while uh i think i've always thought that was a little bit silly personally um no way so wait which

i only see the one rocker board what am i oh wait maybe it's the motion board is that the easy i think that's what you're referring to i think so they basically like one of them basically says something like this one is easier than the other one. I forget how they phrased it. Huh? Okay. Well maybe that's why I'm not,

I'm not clicking into it to see it, but yeah. Okay. Huh? Interesting. But I just overall, like I was really impressed with just the, like the quality of the hardware and just like stupid stuff.

Like after other desks that I've earned and plus I've been putting together a lot of furniture and stuff after moving and just like stupid stuff like uh after other deaths that i've earned and plus i've been putting together a lot of furniture and stuff after moving and just like little stuff like and seeing how how often there are defects or problems or things don't quite like screw in together and just have this thing just like every screw just fell into place perfectly and like the bags were all labeled well i'm just like oh this is heaven yeah they're they're based out of Texas, if I remember correctly. But yeah, it is extremely well made. And if there are problems, the customer service is good. So they'll help you out there for sure. And also, too, though, one of my favorite things is that there's two things. I don't know which one I would put first but one any company any product that with it where like the

company uh provides support for that given product for a very long time and it's super modular like any one little thing you want to replace you can get like you know five years later i love that thing right like my for example my favorite bicack, 1UP. You can buy parts all day for the 1UP Bicrack. It's amazing. Uplift is the same way. You can buy random little things for your

Uplift desk, but also it doesn't even necessarily have to be from Uplift. You can go to your Ace Hardware and find, oh, I need a bolt that matches onto this thing if you want to because here's the cool thing that rail that holds the desk is like very uh like modular friendly you know which they made it that way to like you know be able to add accessories underneath it but you, you know, for your own purposes, like I've got, um, trip, I think it's trip light, uh,

power strips that just work perfectly. I can just mount the trip light, um, holder onto that rail that, that for the desk, and then it just clips into place and it's a perfect little, you know, way to have like a, a gigantic power strip, um, on your desk that like,

you know, so that everything moves with it. So yeah, I'm a big fan. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. Like,

uh, I originally stopped doing the standing desk so much just because, I have like kind of two desks and one, I have work stuff i have my personal stuff i have a podcast stuff i have music stuff and so there was like so much stuff and like you added like lighting and cameras and other stuff like you know like it would make me kind of nervous to go up and down like i'm sure it's fine i i get like overly nervous about like stuff like that for some reason but uh i don't know i just i just hated the whole idea of like all this stuff moving down i just felt kind of caged in but now they've got two desks you know

i got new options well i mean you don't have to worry about that the uplift desk in terms of like the mechanics of it doing it yeah it can it can do it that's not going to be a problem i mean i i've got an obscene amount of hardware on my desk and it has no problems. And like I said, like even during recordings, like, you know, I mean, I know you've seen me like often, you know, stand during recordings. Yep. When, like I said, Alan was the one who originally pointed us to Uplift back in 2015 when he bought his and he did just the this is a going back to their modularity kind of thing you don't even have to buy the top from them he bought only the the frame the legs the motorized legs and because he wanted to build his own top he had his own specifications

that he wanted to build for that with like cubby holes and whatnot and Heidi pockets and whatnot. But if you recall, when he did that, he shared a video with us of like one of his kids or two of his kids on the desk. And he raised it all the way up while they were on the desk. It's got some power about it. I'm ridiculous, but I know we got a TV mounted and the guy's talking about how you can hang from it. I'm like, please don't. They hung a mirror for us too.

And then same deal. It's like this huge, like double French cleat. Like it was a massive mirror. But he's like, you know, look, you can just hang on. It's fine. You know, if the cat jumps on or whatever, I'm like, dude, like even going upstairs, like a second story house.

I'm like, I don't know about this. we could all fall in right now i don't know wait you hired somebody to hang your tv what yeah oh yeah no it's heavy no okay well oh have you ever seen that reddit there's a reddit called like tv too high something like that. And no, but okay. Yeah. It's just pictures of people who have their TVs too hired for the room.

Uh, so I have one of those. Yeah. So I gotta, I gotta go find this now. Right. It's a TV too high. Yeah.

So I know that like one of my rooms, I've definitely in that situation, but only because I didn't have, unfortunately the way my house was built for what, what's supposed to be like the normal family room to watch TV in, I guess they decided like, Oh, this is where you're definitely going to want your TV,

which is like, I can literally, you could be watching my TV. I could walk in front of it and i would not obstruct your view yeah that's how high the tv is it's it's admittedly too high now they do make like have you seen the mounts where the tv can like come down it'll fold out and down yep so i could upgrade to that but i'm not and like if this reddit is amazing there's someone who's like it's basically on the roof where people have them kind of hanging in a weird way

yeah i see one of them hanging above the bed like it's literally hanging from cables there's one terrible one this is uh the title is of course this monstrosity is on airbnb where it's like you like you'd have to i don't even know how you would watch this tv but it's because there's a fireplace and so the best place in the house to kind of put the main TV just happen to be in this room right happen to be on the wall that has a stupid fireplace that will never use also I'm terrified of gas so I'm never gonna touch this thing that's the way mine is like it's it's above the fire like I said above fireplace but like you said like I said you could get that kind of mount that like comes out and down if you're if you have no intentions of

ever using that fireplace then do that and then that way your tv can be at a reasonable height i just don't like how it looks like i like the feng shui or whatever okay so we do uh the model we have kind of tilts down a little bit so it's not too bad but i don't really i don't i'm not a big tv fan anyway so uh all the better for being uh difficult and painful to watch right well uh so they had something about monitors though did i miss yeah so um when i was looking at uh how i kind of want to hook up to the desk and whatnot i noticed that some people actually will put the monitor mount in the grommet so there's some instructions for that i thought that was kind of cool i want the desk space though um so the go-to mount that we've talked about in this show

made by ergatron which i think alan in recent years have mentioned like a, an Amazon knockoff version of it. I have the knockoff one on one computer. So it comes with, uh, like one of its abilities is to mount it in the grommet hole. Yeah. The one I got a different one, I forget what brand it was, but I really like it.

Uh, and the same, same type deal. Yeah. Just moves really. I think it's probably a knockoff the one you're talking about. I know the one you're talking about. It's got,

um, I don't really know how to describe it I think it's probably a knockoff of the one you're talking about. Another one you're talking about. It's got, um, I don't really know how to describe it, but it's almost like a human arm. It's got the kind of elbow and you can kind of twist it in interesting ways. Um, so you can get to pretty much any height and angle you want. Yeah. Bergatron has treated me well.

I don't see it going anywhere, but, uh, but, uh, yeah, I just thought it was kind of interesting. I,

I have finally gotten completely on board with mounting monitors it's so nice i even thought about mounting it to the wall but of course you can't move it up and down with your desk i definitely i feel a lot more comfortable having everything mounted uh like literally that i have like i said my desk i have way too much stuff on it and i only have two things that aren't mounted and that is an xbox and my the tower for my you know my desktop yep everything else is on a on a mount i i don't i just feel more comfortable about it for some reason especially because of all the rising and you know lowering yeah it just seems safer you know yeah i've got a devil cat who knocks stuff

over all the time so it just feels better to kind of have everything screwed in you know yeah devil cat yeah isn't that every cat oh sorry oh this is a particularly bad one yeah every cat is a devil cat if you don't if it's not your cat yeah there'll be a devil cat to you this one's double cut to everyone yeah that's what i'm saying yeah exactly that's true yeah exactly exactly uh so a couple other things about the office so i'm when i got to get enough of the chair i didn't think about that ahead of time at all i plan on i just haven't done it yet because it like wheeling a chair back and forth between two rooms pretty annoying oh i would assume pretty annoying i gotta get another keyboard too coincidentally now we we've talked

about chairs galore on this and i think like way way way back i'm pretty sure that uh in fact i'm going to search it's another alan no this would have been me oh it was the same episode maybe um or maybe before but but anyway the herman miller chairs um the arion first came up in discussion in 2014. Wow. We are nothing if not consistent with our things. But I don't even remember. We weren't even like putting episode numbers in our show notes for that. So I don't remember, but it's, it's old, probably single digits.

I wouldn't be surprised that, but I still have them like they've lasted they're just built so solid that i'm like i don't know they they cost a little bit more i'm not gonna lie they cost a lot more but but you can well, one like the, the bike rack, like the desk, you can buy parts for those if you had to. And I say that because I was given one by a friend who was like,

well, this one's broken and, you know, it's no good. And I ordered the correct parts to repair it. And I still use it to this day. And it's just fine. And that chair is probably 20 years old.

You know? So. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I know that there's like, we've definitely, like I said, done other reviews of other chairs. Yeah. It's the price tag has always offended me.

Oh, the Herman Mears? Yes. Yeah. But that's my point, though. Like, if you buy it the one time, right, and you never have to buy it again, like, what's the… They have a 12-year warranty on the chair, too. So you could have gotten a warranty replacement on it as well. Yeah, it's not going to…

I don't even know how my friend broke the other one that that he gave to me i i think i don't remember i think he said he bought it used from like an office uh supply like i'm trying to think like know, like when a business goes out of, when a, when a company goes out of business and then like, there'll be companies that'll buy up all the, you know, cabinets and desks and chairs and whatnot. And then they'll sell them off. It was something like that. He bought it. He bought it from something like that. And, um,

I think he said it might've already been broken or something. I don't remember, but yeah, it's been fine. It's great. Maybe I'll just do it. Yeah. I'll just get one. I don't know. It's complicated. Now they have like multiple models and they always have,

and there's, and they're definitely sized. So you have to be aware of that. Um, cause there's like a ABC size. I think it's what, what they do from a right, which is like based on the how

wide do you want the the seat of the chair to be right um and i'm trying to remember there was another chair though that i think alan had brought up the home or whatever whatever. I have a hone now. No. This one, I ended up, my son wanted a new chair and he wanted something nice and we went with this one and actually both of my boys, I think,

ended up getting it like over time. It's going to drive me bonkers, but I will come up with it. And I think you talked to me and I was good. Oh, the autonomous, the ergo chair, the autonomous ergo chair.

Um, those are like much at the time that we originally talked about that chair. It was in, I think like 20, 2018. So back then that chair was $328. Now it's $439. That's not horrible. You know,

uh, considering that that was what, six years ago? They like it, but I don't know how many... I'm trying to think of how many years my boys have had theirs. It's been a couple, but I'll see if I can find out. I think I might do it.

Why not? Treat yourself. If my house sells in Florida, that's a bit of a problem. Then I will do it. I accidentally talked you into a really expensive chair. Yeah. Please do not tell your wife that it was my idea. Yeah.

Just be like, hey, I came up with that it was my idea. Yeah. Um, just, uh, you know, be like, Hey, I came up with this totally on my own. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned like,

um, I'll just getting a second like office set up, you know, it took, took some approval from the marriage console. Yeah. That part, that part's crazy.

Yeah. Oh, but, uh, don't try to search for autonomous. That was a bad idea. Oh yeah. No deviant art. Well, but don't try to search for autonomous. That was a bad idea. Oh yeah. No deviant art.

Well, like all the, I was trying to, I was searching my Gmail, trying to find my original order and like all of these things for like autonomous vehicles and autonomous driving. Oh yeah. I'm like,

Oh, well that was a bad search. Yeah. Well, while you're doing that, I also found out getting a second keyboard because carrying the keyboard in between you know it's too annoying but it's it's really i've got the 8-bit dough like a nintendo themed one remember that um oh yeah that's my main and it is this kind of standard keyboard it's mechanical i put silent switches on it it's um because it's

got bluetooth wireless and uh i think you could probably plug it into but uh it's easy for me switch between computers with like a little dial right on the front so it's really easy to swap back and forth so maybe i won't get a second keyboard but there's something nice about just like having everything ready to go and whatever room i want to go into and the rooms are next to each other so it's not exactly crazy but i don't know i'm gonna go ahead and place my bets now that you will get a second of everything yeah second chair second mouse second keyboard second life oh that's an old game but oh yeah it's still around yeah i already have a touch pad for work so it's a mac and so that kind of brings up my next question is uh for years used the, before I got this Nintendo keyboard, I used the Magic keyboard or I used my laptop keyboard for my MacBook Pros.

And I'm so used to having that fourth button there, that FN key on the left-hand side that kind of makes the other three keys to the right of it a little bit smaller, that I feel like out just i fish out of water on windows style keyboards that don't have this fn key and i don't think i've ever used the fn key for anything but just the sizing differences made it kind of hard to adapt and i messes up my shortcuts can we can we change your pronunciation now because i think you're putting the wrong syllable the emphasis on the wrong syllable i think it's just an effing key oh it's the effing key yeah real is it just switch between like what the function buttons do is that what it does uh no no no because like on your laptop for example it would change the arrow keys to be like page up or page down or scroll left right home home or end things like that oh

yeah i'm not doing that oh really i'm not doing that so i'm trying to decide do i just want to stick with my magic keyboard or you want to get like i was looking at like one of the keycrons hold on now all the ergonomic keyboard conversations we've had and you've gone through like surgeries for that yep and i'm over it surgeries fix it so i'm going back to standard what happens if you get broken again then i'll go back to the microsoft sculpt but the thing is now that i've got this nintendo keyboard i really appreciate just like how nice and cool like standard keyboards are yeah yeah simplicity it just looks fun like i don't know to me it's part of the design aesthetic now that i i just love how all these mechanical keyboards look you know and i don't love how the

apple magic keyboard looks very little oh yeah the problem that i have is that i i think this kinesis keyboard has completely ruined me because there's things about it that I'm not as happy about. So like I changed out the key caps, right? We talked about like the ABS key caps versus the, um, oh gosh, was it a PBS? Yeah. Something like that. I forget. That might be wrong. But, um, you know, the know the different plastics that the key caps can be made out of and you know but because it was like a special keyboard like you it's not it's a non-standard keyboard so it's not like i had every size because like you were saying where like you know keys get um on like quote windows keyboards. Yeah. They'll play around with the sizes of, of like common keys to suit, you know, whatever layout they had.

So like I can't switch out all the keys. So I have a mixture and you can definitely absolutely tell the keys that are ABS keys versus the ones that I switched out to the,'s not pbs that's wrong that's a tv channel um whatever it was but you can you can definitely tell because like the abs keys are like super shiny and worn out like like literally i've worn the the the coloring off of it that's supposed to be part of the mold, but obviously it wasn't. PBT. PBT.

That still sounds wrong. Are you sure? Yeah. I mean, Keychron has an article about ABS versus PBT. Okay. The two most common plastics used for keyboard keycaps. So, all right uh pbt is more durable and wear resistant but it's also got like a texture to it yeah as well so but but the

problem so the reason why i say that i'm spoiled on it is like now that i have this split keyboard, cause I, cause this is the, um, the Kinesis gaming RGB freestyle, I believe is the name of it, or, you know, move the RGB letters to, you know, RGB or Kinesis freestyle, whatever.

I don't know. But I remember it's Kinesis gaming is in the, obviously RGB and freestyle were in there. Okay. Something like that um but it's got the tinting feature on it it's got wrist pads like uh like a not like a hard plastic either it's got like you know soft foamy patty whatever you know things on it but i don't know that i could ever go back to a regular keyboard that isn't two pieces now because it's just so much more comfortable to have these and it's like so much more natural like wherever your shoulders are right like my hands are now just straight out from that yeah if that makes sense and and because the tinting so not only do i have it

tinted to where where each keyboard is like raising up in toward the center like a tent you know but um but also i have them turned a little bit just just like slightly so that each one is kind of like at an angle that's perfect like when my hands there. So like to go back to a regular mechanical keyboard, like Mike RG has sent me some fantastic ones that I'm like, Oh, that's gorgeous. But I'm like, I don't know that I could do it.

Like I'm kind of, I'm kind of forever ruined by this thing. Unless I'm on a laptop. That's the one exception. Yeah. I guess I'm just so used to it, but I mean, I totally understand the ergonomics of it like it's

a very unnatural angle but i've just done so long oh and here's another thing that you would love though too or well probably not now but i do have a trackpad the the apple magic trackpad but i keep that between the two keyboards that's how wide this thing and not only not only is the trackpad between them but the trackpad is is at an angle so it's like picture the two pieces of the keyboard and the track pad is at an is like a diamond yeah in between them and it's done that way so that like if i pivot my arm to the trackpad it's actually my hand is like straight on with it now if that makes sense yeah so i don't know i mean i don't mean to sway you and i know we've talked about keyboards galore like it's definitely one of our topics du jour yeah well maybe i'll do

it i'm gonna look at it the key crons got some nice ones i don't know why i keep looking at key crons but uh that's interesting maybe i will there was a oh man there was a really cool one that i did want to consider i am pretty sure we talked about this one too um it was like cloud nine key cat uh keyboard uh finding it's kind of dumb with the the reason i haven't loved most uh split keyboards is because i cheat on some of we've talked about this before too i cheat on some of the letters i use the wrong hand for it and on the sculpt it wasn't a big deal but i've tried to use split ones before it's been weird but i know i shouldn't be doing that so so if i do go if i do move off of this kinesis this is probably the one that i'm considering the most the cloud nine one of the cloud nine keyboards

no relation to the gaming team yeah yeah they look nice yeah i like something about the simplicity of the straight keyboard so i don't know i think i might just get it well you know what i can get two keyboards yeah you really two new keyboards three keyboards especially for the price of one ergo well here here's the thing though. The Cloud9, they have a split keyboard. It's called the Ergo FS, and it includes the 10-digit keypad. It's the only split keyboard that I've seen that still includes the split keyboard with the arrow keys and all the home, all that key cluster. Yeah. Basically, all of those keys are exactly like you would find them on any other

keyboard. And, and it's, it's just on one hat, one half of the split, you know? Yeah. I just, I don't use those keys anymore. I love the numpad. That's the one thing I do miss about, you know, this Kinesis gaming keyboard is that it doesn't have the numpad. And I don anything that requires fast switch skills. I don't need a wired mouse. I don't even think that – I'm not even sure if that matters, but I just don't need it. Wow. Those are strong words, my friend, because I've got – Yeah, you're still on the camp?

Well, yeah. I mean I went all wireless a long time ago and then decided, no, that dealing with the batteries was too much of a pain. I don't want that hassle. The keyboard has been so good, though. I totally understand for a mouse. I still have a wired mouse for my Windows computer. But the trackpad's really been totally fine. Okay, can you imagine, though, now that's another device to where,

if you did have it connected to multiple computers like I do, now you're like, oh, switch profile. Oh, maybe this one doesn't do it. So now I've got to figure out a way to like from the computer, hey, connect to this. So, I mean, yeah, you have a different use case where I just want to like at a push of a button, all of the devices, like all USB peripherals, for example,

just immediately switch over to the other computer. Yeah. So I, I definitely prefer the wired. Yeah. That was definitely a major consideration for me for, for many years and why I stuck with wired stuff. But now it's,

it's like suddenly a new option. So I think I'm going back. So we're going wireless again. All right. And it sounds like Apple. Yeah. Okay. All the way. All right um if you haven't already left us a review we would greatly appreciate it um i tell you what bring a

tear to alan's eye just you know what two stars three stars whatever leave us a review if you have it we would greatly appreciate it. Don't make Alan cry. I was just joking. That was just. You could leave a five star and just tell him how much you miss him. Oh, yeah. There you go. That would be really nice.

That would be a heartfelt I miss you. And yeah. Don't make it creepy, though. You can't. You got a little bit. Oh, well, OK. Fine. It's like a two out of five.

Yeah. Man, you know, we haven't played Mental Blocks in forever because I don't think the three of us have gotten together since. It feels like it hasn't been since the beginning of the year. I think it has been. Really? I think so. Oh, geez.

All right. Well, so still no more Mental Blocks. Yeah, someday, but I do have another topic because I'm still obsessed with office stuff right now because of the move. So the last house, we kept talking about moving forever and then COVID and then the prices went

nuts and we just kept waiting, moving. So in a way it kind of felt like we never really moved in because it was like, as soon as we moved in, like we were talking about moving out and so i never hung anything and like there's just stuff we didn't really do i didn't really decorate it didn't nest you know either i didn't hang anything either yeah well i'm hoping you're gonna tell us a little bit about uh some of the stuff you got going on because i've been looking at like reddit to see what like what other people do i've looked at like battle stations both for like people's computer setups

and you know you know kind of a view on their office but also like music setups and stuff and just getting inspiration from that so I've been seeing what other people have been doing a lot of it's focused around like the the gear like the computer area and I want to see more of the room so I was just curious like how do you find your inspiration for decoration well i i am probably the wrong person to ask because to me i like my office for example like it's it's just it's just, it's gotta be about like, you know, you or the family or whatnot. It's like, you know, like what, what your interests or y'all's interests are. Because I say that like, you know,

I was obviously joking about not hanging anything because like I, I in my office try to hang everything that I can. Like I want, I want as little wall space as possible. I want it all covered with like things of, you know, that are of interest to me. So different, uh, you know, I have a bunch of different comic books hanging up, a bunch of different albums hanging up. Um, you know, like vinyl size, you know, well, I do have some CD size too, but also like, uh, you know, some advertisement kind of stuff that I thought was, you know, super cool kind of stuff that has always said

with me. So like, you know, skateboards, I have skateboards hanging up. Like it's, it's stuff that are like my interest. Right. So, you know, I, I'm not the kind of person that could walk into like, you know, your generic pier one type of store or whatever and see some random painting of a dock with a dilapidated boat, you know, and you know, the water going off and sunset. And like, I, you know, I'm not saying that those don't, those paintings might not look nice.

I'm not saying anything like that. It's just not me. I can't do that. Everything that I have hanging in my house, I can tell you a story behind it. There's nothing hanging in my house that I can't tell you a story about. Yeah. That's what I was thinking about your office. It feels very you. There's nothing in that room that you could look at that doesn't somehow reflect reflect something about you your history your interests you know something about you yeah and i mean that's that's how i want it to be i want it to be very oh i forgot obviously guitars hanging

on the wall i don't forget those that's right but yeah so i've got some plans for some stuff like that and like i've got the two rooms. And so I think for like the work office, like I'm thinking about kind of going like just nature themes of like some national parks or finding some nice photography of like places that I've really enjoyed seeing and like trying to just get like a nice either print or painting or something of that. And then my music room, of course we've got to have music stuff in it.

Now I had, so, okay. So continuing along with my very opinionated opinion about this and like me not buying like random art that i would find in the store or whatnot um like the photographs that we do have my wife took like so we have like that we're like really blown up and some of them are like kind of like artsy kind of looking like you know people come over they don't realize that no no my wife took

that picture we even have paintings that are like of paint of pictures you know that family have done that were like based on a picture that my wife trying to think of anything generic in the house. And I, yeah, so I, uh, I've got a couple of things. I, like I've done the painting thing with, from the photos and taking a couple of photos that my mom has a home at her house. And I always feel like such a, for some reason, I don't know if I could say that, uh, such a beep. Well, like whenever she tells people about it, cause like, you know, to to me like it's just amateur whatever and so like i i get embarrassed about it so i specifically don't

want things that i took my wife's got a great eye she's done some photography but she also she's got a very different style i really like landscape and like macro and just like nature stuff yeah you could do some of that too like that that's some of the pictures that my wife has done or are you know kind of like that stuff could she take some for me though because i don't want to be the one that took them i mean yeah but i mean surely you have pictures that you've taken of like generic stuff like that like here's here's my thing here's my here's my thought on it you could go okay like i described uh the, you know, going out in the water, dilapidated boat, you know, sunset over the water kind of thing, right?

Surely you have taken photos similar like that in your life, right? That you could pay, you know, send it to a professional service that will, you know, give you a decent size print that you could then frame. And now it's like, you have the same thing. It's just, it's your art, not somebody else's art,

you know? Unless it was like art that was like somebody else's art that you like had a specific want for, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think that makes sense. That does make sense. I don't know. I'll think about it. You know, I mean yeah i think that makes sense that does make sense i don't know i'll think

about it you know i mean reddit is you had you said reddit inspiration like oh man like some of the things that you can find for inspiration on reddit are just amazing yeah incredible and i'm for that stuff i'm talking more about like the arrangement of the room like i like i like things a little bit more sparse like i like to have clean, open space. And so I'm trying to figure out how to do that. Because sometimes, like, no, you're off the stage. I like the idea of having it being clean and open. But sometimes when you have a lot of empty space and empty surfaces or whatever, and you put one thing up, it just looks weird or it looks out of place or it looks foreign.

And I just don't have that kind of design sense. So I want it to look good. And I can kind of tell when things look bad but i don't know how to make it look good so that's why i've been kind of trying to think more about like the forms and like how i want the things laid out so one of my favorite things is like i i like like a chaos i like it to be kind of chaotic you know so yeah so i i you know if you if you saw everything i have hanging like they're they're purposely not all in like you know line by line by line you know row even rows and whatnot intentionally right because i wanted to look a little bit messy and everything and i can definitely look over the years at pictures and see like, you know,

Oh, that's when I first moved in. And then only have like one thing or two things or three things. And then it's like, Oh, now that one got a little bit more, that wall became a little bit before, you know, we have even pictures of like, you know, the family, you know, there's a wall of a that's like that of the family where it's just like, you know, a random collage of photographs hanging on the wall. I don't know.

Yeah. I just like it. Like I said, I'm probably the worst person to ask for this. Well, I did take some inspiration from you. So one thing I decided to do in the music room is I started looking at like – I used to collect tour posters from concerts I went to but so many of them got like you know I treated them poorly I would just like put them up as staples or whatever the corners got ripped up and I just tossed I've thrown away a lot of them but I started looking in online and a lot of the artists like I was a long time a lifetime ago I was in a band with the guy who did a lot of tour posters in Orlando

and he sells some of them occasionally I talked to him every once in a lifetime ago, I was in a band with a guy who did a lot of tour posters in Orlando. And he sells some of them occasionally. I talked to him every once in a while. And so I thought about buying some of those or rebuying some of the ones that I've been to. Then I started looking at tour posters of tours that I didn't go to, but for bands that I just really liked. And some of those posters are super cool.

So it kind of feels a little disingenuous if I get like a Macedon Europe tour or something that I obviously didn't go go to but the picture is so cool so i've been thinking about that a lot yeah there's a there's a place not far from us that uh a vinyl shop that has a bunch of stuff like that nice so um yeah i mean i i hear you on that but i don't know i mean if you like it you like it i don't know that i would let it stop me i mean i didn't go that route because i'm not like that but not just kidding yeah i don't have the uh you've got more heart than i do i did end up buying one tour poster uh off ebay from like a band's early tour i didn't go to i didn't know about at the

time it was like for cleveland or something i just really like the picture i don't care it was russian circles i've talked about many times and another thing i found uh someone on ebay that uh has done like uh kind of inspired um drawings and so like he's done a bunch of them but uh the one i ended up getting was a radiohead album cover for okay computer but he'd gone and redrawn it and kind of like just kind of use it as inspiration moved off. And so it's a little bit more abstract. It's like, it's just like kind of looks cool.

So I went ahead and bought that too. I'm like, screw it. And it fits like with the color things I want to get it like fit with like the space that I kind of thought. And so I'm kind of like picking out like some of my biggest musical inspirations and like really trying to kind of like focus on like the three or four that mean the most to me and i cover a wide wide area and so i'm really excited about that i originally started with limiting it and then

i was like no there's too many great i can't there's too there's too much music that has been like you know meaningful so that's why i just kept expanding and now it's right whatever i don't care anymore yeah i kind of thought if like if i ended up like getting seeing something else i wanted i could like swap it out or whatever but i don't i don't know i'm still thinking about it yeah that's where i'm kind of leaning now and like i will mention sculptures like i've known people that have had kind of stuff like that if you've got bookcases and stuff and i think or if you want to dedicate space to having like a uh display yep like that one like i've known people that have had like whole rooms that look like transformers and models they've painted or made or whatever so i was uh i was

pointing to a display case that's behind me that's what he was referring to when he said like that one but in my display case it's coincidental maybe that you said transformers, or maybe I've just influenced you so much that that was top of mind. Cause I do have transformers there. Well, it's both. So yours of course is like literally in my view, but I also happen to know somebody that had a huge transformer collection.

And so like their whole house was like star scream and like, you're like very large and they would get i forget what they're called but um like very large and very expensive like transformers either either like statues or just actual like transformers and so i was very used to like seeing like that kind of sculpture so like when i think of like sculptures like kind of nerdy sculptures no offense that is immediately where my mind goes every time no offense no offense uh taken yeah no i get it it's it's definitely like a nerdy thing i accept that but um these particular ones though that i have again like you know obviously you know the era that i grew up like i definitely have always been a huge transformers fan so you

know uh i don't i don't think there's anything wrong with that there's a huge transformers fan so you know uh i don't i don't think there's anything wrong with that there's a new transformers one movie coming um and you know i have like some of the comics i mentioned i have the transformers hanging up uh the original ones but also like these particular ones that are super cool i think because the way they're painted they're sculptures but they're painted to look like the cartoon it looks like the cartoon has literally come to life and you could like hold it it's so crazy um you know but i also have like there is one non um transformers in there and that's because uh todd mcfarland is my favorite uh you know of the artists of the comic book artists and so dc he used to he started out drawing for dc and there's a

very famous batman cover that he did where the cape is just crazy wild and in the cover in the cover batman is like holding on to a lady and the cape is like going around all both of them but uh dc ended up making a statue for that uh that cover and they they i don't know why they chose to only make it just batman and didn't include the lady i don't know that but you know obviously they had to you know todd mcfarland just drew it and and you know on flat paper you know no big deal they had to figure okay, well, what would the depth be here? Like, what would the back of the cape look like? Like, it's super cool, though. But, yeah.

Yeah, I've thought about, like, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as being, like, my kind of childhood. But, again, I feel like I'm cribbing off you because, like, you've got kind of, like, that inspiration thing going on. But my niece loves the Ninja Turtles. And I actually had a framed poster from the time i was a kid until actually it's in my niece's like room right now she has it the frame broke years ago it's ripped she kept it like so she still got it so i thought about getting like a teenage mutant turtle i don't think that i don't i don't think that's like copying off me at all like that if that's who you are right that's your interest like there's i see nothing wrong with with with that yeah i think i

think that's what i'm gonna do but just the nature room i'm still up there but i'll consider photography i did have one other story for you specifically oh so i love the band baroness and i was thinking about oh sorry uh not yet don't click it yet okay don't click it yet yeah uh i love the band baroness i'm a huge fan and uh i some of their album covers are i've always thought were really interesting and um a lot of the covers for albums like my favorite albums i wouldn't get um like sometimes there's some nudity some light light nudity or whatever. I was just not, especially with like having young, you know, nieces and nephews and stuff. I just not comfortable having my areas, you know, so I don't want to do that. But I just like the art style so much and I love the music.

So I was looking at their tour posters and some of the other stuff they did. And I actually I had done I'd looked at their stuff years ago and realized that the singer of the band also did all their art, uh, the covers of their albums. So I already had kind of known that. So I started looking into other stuff that he's done. Turns out he does, uh, posters and shirts and just art for a lot of other bands. And so I started looking at some other stuff and I saw this print that, um, it had like these, uh, it had like these, uh,

four skeletons on it. And there's something about the style. And I was like, this just looks like something I'm familiar with. I can see his style. It's definitely, there's like definitely an element of him in it, but there's just something else here.

Can I click it now? Uh, yeah, you can click it now. And so it's there for horsemen, presumably of the apocalypse. Or Metallica. Yeah, exactly. I didn't even know what it was at the time,

but there was just something about the style that reminded me of a lot of the older kind of Metallica art. And I don't know if he's done any of the older. Some of the stuff I'm thinking of is like Wherever I May Roam. If you remember that T-shirt or like there's the sad but true like the two skeletons kind of holding each other uh they're they're the two skulls rather i don't think that was him but there's something about it uh this particular piece that like just kind of harkens back to that era but it also mixes in his style so by the time i was like actually like uh looking in this and reading about i saw it on instagram i'm kind of hemming and hawing and I'm like, you know,

I think I'm going to get this. Like maybe it's a little scary for nieces and nephews, but it's got the Metallica tie in and I just really like it. And I really like his stuff and his band and, uh, it was sold out. Yeah. That's what I said. That particular one isn't,

isn't available. But, um, I think that, uh, the more, let's say known Metallica artists is puss head yeah yes and he's the one that did those two particular ones that i mentioned yeah and in fact in fact metallica did a sculpture

of a puss head drawing and i so badly want it but you know my wife's like i don't want that creepy thing in the house i'm like yeah i get it i can't argue with that so yeah that makes sense yeah they're really cool yeah i remember that now i like even on the shirts and stuff that had it would have his name well yeah so i think he was also an artist for Zorlack Skateboards back in the day. And I know that both Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield were at least somewhat into skateboarding to what degree, I don't know, but I have definitely seen pictures of them with skateboards and actually skateboarding. And Kirk Hammett specifically, there's if you have you ever seen his guitar, it's solid black, but on the fretboard, it has skull, a skull and crossbones on the fretboard right do you know what i'm talking about i think so and it's uh you have it don't you you have a i don't know that i don't know that it would be very hard to get his original one the difference the problem is is that originally when the guitar was made was made by esp when they made that model guitar, the skull and crossbones faced the

quote, right direction, if you had the guitar standing end on end. But in normal playing position, the skull and crossbones would be sideways. In later years, they then turned it, but that's not the original one that Kirk Hammett played. I bring that up because on that original one, he had a puss head sticker on the, the guitar behind the bridge of the guitar. And he,

if I remember right, he called that guitar, his Zorlack guitar. Okay. Because it was a sticker specifically of a, um, from by puss head from a Zorlack skateboard design. Nice.

Very nice. Yeah. I looked up that, um, that two skull picture. I was looking at the Sabbath true, uh, promo that they're selling a shirt that I think I had for $385 on eBay right

now. Can I, can you see me a link and I can go ahead and buy it? Oh, it's actually Etsy. Yeah. Get it out from under your, why is Etsy selling?

I'm just kidding. Stuff, old stuff. I mean, it looks like it's great shape. I'll get it. So I have seen, okay,

so I don't mean to go too deep on Metallica for a moment, but, uh, so colleges will sometimes have like poster sales and whatnot. And, uh, one of my sons went to one and found this super cool Metallica poster of art.

I have never seen anywhere else ever again, but it's a, but it's an official Metallica poster, but yeah, so you can find my point, I guess would be like, if you go to some of those things, you can find some cool stuff I guess would be like, if you go to some of those things, you can find some cool stuff.

Cause there was a, a band poster thing here in town recently. Um, you know, so, so, you know, you were talking about going back and finding like the,

uh, the, the, oh, shoot. The, the, the show posters,

there's a better name for that, but, um, the, the concert posters, right. And name for that but um the the concert posters right and and you can find stuff like that because the original artists were were read you know selling those so yeah you'd be surprised like a lot of times like there's like one person in area so like like in orlando i mentioned uh and this person did uh the guy my friend uh did posters for a lot of the shows that went through like Sapphire Supper Club and some of the downtown venues. Because he worked with those people.

He had relationships with those venues. And so they would hang those posters up and swap them out as new bands came in. So sometimes they had originals. Sometimes they would just do reprints, like re-screen prints. Swap them out. Just put it next to it. Yeah. Yeah.

Paste them right on top. But yeah, and the periodic sales, I imagine it's the same kind of thing so i'd love to get some of those i really don't care if i've been there or not yeah it doesn't matter yeah i mean at this point it's it's what's important to you so near and dear to you all right well uh so there'll be some resources we like, I guess in that section, but, uh, yeah. So now we'll move on to,

it's the tip of the week, tip of the week. I guess I forgot to pre fix that with, you know, it's Alan's favorite portion of the show. I guess his absence. Yeah, exactly.

It threw me off. I'm like, we don't do that. Why? You're the coding. I'm the blah. And it's the oxes of the week sorry it doesn't mean anything i just it just happens to be how i how it came out of my mouth uh but uh so the other day i was driving and i saw something really weird uh the car in front of me

uh like i could see very clearly uh their rear view mirror and like me in it. And it was really bright and it was kind of dark out. And I was confused for a little bit before I realized that I'm looking at a screen. This person had replaced their rear view mirror in their car with basically a monitor. So I got home and I checked it out. And it turns out, out yeah this is the thing mirror dash cams and what it is is uh basically a system it hooks up to a a camera in the back and it's got it like a depending on the one you get you know there are different options but uh

the one i was looking at has a a mirror on the other side of the mirror i'm sorry a camera on the other side of the mirror itself so it's got front rear cameras and then it's got a touch screen uh replacement for your rear view mirror uh so it's got some really nice options like i mean just the touch screen alone you can kind of you know click around you can zoom you can turn it into night mode you can adjust the brightness i just thought it was really cool to see that in a car uh and some of the ones I was looking at have, I'm sure there's like subscription plans involved, but basically 24-7 recording. So if you get in an accident or something, you could have footage. But also, when I say 24-7, it's like while you're parked too. So I don't know what that means for your battery, but it'll actually, you know, it'll be recording if someone backs into your car or something like that or your car gets vandalized.

You can have footage that's been uploaded to the cloud or whatever. I just thought it was really cool. Yeah, I've seen these recently too. Yeah, I'm hoping that they come built in because I don't know. I don't like the whole idea of kind of retrofit. At least me personally because I'm not handy and I screw stuff up all the time. I don't want to be like running cables between cameras and installing that sort of stuff but if my car

already had it i would just love it i already love like backup cameras and stuff like that and so it just kind of seems nice to me to be able to have some of that stuff especially um the people i know that have had dash cams like have really come in handy oh yeah and i think do you know how that works if you have a dash cam and you're involved in an accident it's your fault do you like have to turn over the footage that's a weird angle to go with i i don't know how that would work i would assume that i would assume not unless you got some kind of a subpoena for it because they the other person involved knew that you had it. And they're like, hey, he's conveniently leaving out that.

But I don't know. I don't claim to be a lawyer. The only reason I think is like, is there any reason why every car shouldn't have one of these systems? You know, or like why you should not want it. And the only thing I can think is like it could be a liability in the case that you do something bad or stupid or whatever but i mean i've seen so many cases where it has been helpful but like you i'm like well see i totally could run the wiring and in past lives have done that kind of wiring i'm you know so i'm like i feel comfortable i know what would need to be done i just don't want to to do it. It's like, have you ever, have you ever, are there things in your life where you're like,

okay, I absolutely know how to do this. I've done it, but I've been there and I don't want to do it again. Oh, all the time. I mean, just about everything. So, so that's how I feel about it is like, well, I don't know that I really care enough about having the camera to want to deal with the wiring. And even like the dash cams that you can't have, like I would want to hide the wiring. I would want it like all tidy and neat.

And, you know, you're not going to accidentally trip on it or pull it out or anything like that. Like you wouldn't even know that the wiring is there. That's what I'm saying. Like that's the problem for me that and that's a very like i i will fully own that that is a uh a trait a character flaw in me that i can't have you know good enough it has to be perfect where you can't see the wiring that's that's that's me i own that yeah that's what i mean when i say like i don't want to try i'm not able to do i'm not able to do it up to my standard right i kind of like worry that anyone would be able to like i almost feel like the car has to be like like i want it intended to have been

there you know like i've seen some like clunky dash cams and stuff i just don't want to deal with that and so i do like the idea of having a built-in yeah i don't want it to be in the way that's why i want it every that's why I would personally want everything like to be too perfect, too perfect, too perfect. Because like, otherwise it would just be in the way and then it would become a nuisance to where I would get annoyed with it because I,

in past life, I have had like, you know, a bunch of stuff with wires hanging everywhere and, you know, trying different technology at the time, whatever it but now i'm like no yeah it's almost it's almost like in this case like i don't mind wires for my keyboard and mouse but which is weird because that's the way i spend the bulk of my time. But yet in the car, I'm like, no, I want everything.

I want nothing. I don't want you to be able to see anything. Yeah. And it's not like I drive some super posh car either. So you should, you'd think I'd be like super relaxed about it, but nope. And for me, most of the most things I don't care about something about like the area I'm

like working for, like day job type thing. Like I want no distractions, no wires, everything off of the desk, nothing in my sight. Except for where are the opposites in this regard i'm like no i want the i want the wire i want i want to know that it's always going to work and i don't have to bother with a battery and like for cars though i mostly don't care but uh yeah i don't want my spouse to give me a hard

time all right well 140 dollars yeah it's not bad i'm sure there's a subscription in there if you I don't want my spouse to give me a hard time. All right. Well, $140. Yeah, it's not bad. I'm sure there's a subscription in there if you want that monitoring, but yeah, it's not bad, right? Oh, yeah. I didn't think about that monitoring thing. Do they say what that is? I couldn't see it in the description, but there's no way that it's doing 24-7 recording of video and audio

for two cameras without some sort of fee right yeah this is also where like the the privacy conscious you know person i mean too is like there's an app to go along with this yeah and i'm like what do i want to like download hey do i even want to download this app two do i want that app to then have like video footage and gps coordinates of like everywhere i'm going and what i'm doing like i don't know maybe not but you know hey that's me like you do you that's fine you know uh i think i perfectly accept that i'm weird in that regard well you should, if you're ever going to get a new car, you should probably get one soon because I feel like it's not like this is going to be like, if it's not already too late to get a non-smart car, it will be soon.

Oh, dude, it's way too late. It's been too late. Dang. Okay. Are you kidding? You have smart cars. Do you not know this? Mine's not that smart, I don't think.

It's probably smarter than you realize. Yeah, probably. Dang it. No. um mine's not that smart i don't think that's probably smarter than you realize yeah probably dang it um no but i do have a penchant for older cars anyways though so yeah um yeah all right well for my tip of the week i'm gonna go this whole episode has been off the rails this is what happens when Alan isn't here. We get to just talk about random stuff like, hey, how's your day been? So here's a cautionary tale for you, Joe. I'm ready. This was news to me.

I honestly did not know this. And you're going to think, wow, that was stupid. You didn't know that? When you give blood, there's some do's and don'ts with that right one of them one of them after you donate you're not supposed to do any kind of vigorous exercise did you know that i have heard that sometimes they give you a cookie. Well, what's a cookie got to do with exercise? It's supposed to help you get your blood sugar up.

So. Peppy up. Or they give you orange juice. So they told me this because I was, you know, chatting with them. I gave blood today. Hey, give blood if you haven't. You know, you can save a life. Literally. Yeah. You yeah you can be a hero hey you ever wanted to be superman this is how you can um so i gave blood today and you know i was just talking with the people there and as we were wrapping up they're like you know i was like

yeah it's a beautiful day and i plan i have plans to go riding this evening or cycling this evening. And they're like, you shouldn't go. You should know you're not supposed to do any vigorous exercise after you do this. I'm like, what? I'm like, have you seen this day? I definitely had spring fever today. Absolutely. I think it was like 77 at the time. And I'm like, well, no, of course I got to go outside and take care of the time. And I'm like, well, no, of course I gotta go outside and take care of this weather. And they're like, we really don't recommend that you do that. But I mean,

if you insist, like definitely do not go alone, you know, you know, first don't go, but definitely don't go alone. Turns out they might know what they're talking about because yeah, it was,

it was, that was rough, man. I mean, I'm not gonna lie to you. That was super, super rough. No kidding.

All right. So it turns out that, that, that is really a thing. And, uh, yeah, you know,

maybe listen to, um, when you get blood. So, uh, you have a link here and do you know that there's to, um, when you get blood. So, uh, you have a link here and do you know that there's a section here that says after your donation and it says, enjoy a snack and it's actually got an icon.

And in there, they actually specifically mentioning, they specifically mentioned having cookies or other snacks. They did. They do. Yeah, I get it. But they also additional tips to,

for after notice. two yeah yeah no heavy lifting or vigorous exercise right and and here's the thing like i just thought like when they said that i'm like okay fine like i'm still doing a mountain biking i just won't like you know it won't i won't just hammer it you know i'm not going to try to like get a personal record on this on the trail today you know i'll just go and have a nice leisurely ride have some conversation no big deal man when we got to some of the first hills i was like whoa i this i do not feel normal. Something. This ain't right. Oh, man. That stinks. Yeah.

So, you know. So, the cautionary tale is that you should listen when you're given instructions. Oh, I wish I could. Listen. Yeah. Impossible. All right. Well, impossible.

Later. No. Alright, well, impossible Later No? I'm good with it Alright, well, yeah, talk to you later See ya