Coding Blocks - Developer Shopping Spree

Episode Date: November 5, 2018

With the holiday season soon approaching, we address the most important requirements list of all ... our wish lists as Joe has to disclose a cheese powder incident, Michael hopes his Bitcoin gains some value, and Allen researches his purchases to the extreme.

You're listening to Coding Blocks, episode 93. Subscribe to us and leave us a review on iTunes, Stitcher, and more using your favorite podcast app. And visit us at CodingBlocks.net where you can find show notes, examples, discussion, and a lot more. Send your feedback, questions, and rants to comments at CodingBlocks.net. Follow us on Twitter at CodingBlocks or head to www.CodingBlocks.net and find all our social links there at the top of the page. With that, I'm Alan Underwood. I'm Joe Zach. And I'm Michael Outlaw.

Now, you know, this is our first episode back where the three of us were all together. We had some fun with the previous one, so I'm thinking maybe we should redo these introductions. Everybody should have to introduce themselves as somebody else that they haven't already introduced themselves as.

Uh, okay. I'm ready. Okay. I guess I'm first because I haven't tried to do Allen's yet, I guess. So no offense. Watch out.

Okay. Uh, so I'm going to do, I'll go second. Yeah, there we go. I'll go say, uh,

I'm Alan Underwood. I'm going to do... I'll go second. Yeah, there we go. I'll go second. I'm Alan Underwood. I'm Jerzak. And I'm Michael Outlaw. Hey, can I get your number? Wow. Well, that went to a dark place. That's what you sound like to me. i don't think i like that one any better we should probably redo that i can't do that no no no that's staying in there that's recorded

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All right. And as we like to do, let's go ahead and get in some quick. We don't really have any news this time. It's really just a thank you for the reviews. So in iTunes, I've got Can't Tick, B-Ball Daniel 3, and Kitchener 16253. Yep. And on Stitcher, we have Aflac, the Pigeon, and the Pigeon Fighter. So thank you for taking the time to leave those. Super duper appreciate it. And I really, you know, when you hear that one

though, you really want to say it in like a Gilbert Gottfried kind of voice. Aflac! Aflac! Very nice. All right. though you really want to say it in like a gilbert godfrey kind of voice aflac aflac very nice all right well so i guess that's it for the news so we're going to jump right in and uh guess what good news it's uh that time of year again when we do an episode where we have a little fun because you know black friday is coming up the holidays are coming up here in the u.s and things go on sale we like to spend a little bit of money and so we're having a little bit of fun this time what we did is we each took a three thousand dollar u.s budget and figured out what kind of stuff we would buy with it wait u.s oh man i messed up oh yep so you won already apparently right so uh i guess uh it looks like i'm uh going first yep you're up you're up first all right and i had really big shoes to fill because last time last year rewind

if you haven't listened to it and go back and stop right now listen to that one from a year ago yeah you got to listen to that one first before you go to this one yeah there's a certain cheese dust incident that we have to address it's the cheese dust the elephant in the room and uh yeah i mean i just don't i couldn't come up with anything as good so i i don't have anything funny or interesting to say this time well hold on i do want to know did your bit miner rig make you any money absolutely not i don't think anybody made any money i mean come on have you seen the current rates for bitcoin of course he made some money he had to make some money bitcoin's been doing so amazing this year right it started off not so hot and then it turned into

amazing and then not so hot some more yep unfortunately i experienced a little bit of leakage in my wine cooler and turned my carpets orange. Nice. Nice. And that's why you moved for your third time within a year. So I had to move. So anything that I made via the Bitcoin miners went into carpet repair and moving. So that was that.

Nice. So this year, I just wanted to be very normal and not weird and uh just like last year it says basically if i if i really had three thousand dollars i would just buy the most expensive macbook pro i could afford and so i i did go and look at macbook pros and actually you can spend a lot of money on macbook pros i don't think anyone's surprised um i think it went over to like six hundred six i'm sorry six thousand six hundred dollars if you got the 4TB hard drive but that's good too. Who's getting a 4TB solid state drive? Yeah that's a little ridiculous.

I think if you added that to the cart they would call you and be like I'm sorry we actually don't have that. It doesn't exist. Hold on. Let's back up real quick. I bet there's some kind of enterprise-y video editing stuff. Yes.

I'm going to guess that they've sold at least one. Yeah, they've sold a few. But tell me this, though. Outside of it just being pricey, would you still just get the MacBook Pro? If you had three, would you just go buy that thing, or are you out of love with it? Yeah, I mean, I think I would. That was actually really tough because we've talked a lot about the new MacBook Pros. I hate the smart bar. I don't like the touchpad. I don't like the touch pad.

I don't like the keyboards. Um, so, you know, it's really tough, but I do still really like the ecosystem. In fact, I actually, I switched off of a iPhone a couple of years ago too.

So it's like gotten even easier for me to switch to anything, but I don't really have a good laptop replacement, something else that I would want instead. And so it's like just barely MacBook Pro over just about any other laptop. Even though you hate the keyboard, you don't like the touch bar. You don't. Like basically nothing about it is appealing to you except for the fact that it has the ecosystem and a good OS. Yeah, I just really like Mac OS.

The OS X, it's just been really comfortable for me i like to use it just kind of feels natural when i sit down and like the keyboard shortcuts like i try to use my wife's laptop sometimes and it just feels totally weird and foreign to me because i've spent so many years now like you know using that and so when i switch to like a big full factor keyboard i'm in windows mode when i go to laptop i'm instantly in Mac mode. I did look at what I could get for around $3,000, but the one I would want is $3,800, which is just ridiculous.

$3,900. What were you getting for $3,900? We'll have a link to that in the show notes so you can see what a $3,899 laptop could look like. I thought it would be fun to take another spin and just look at what I could get for making a desktop with that same amount of money.

Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. I think you got to answer Outlaw's question here, though. The basic specs on this, it looks like it's just the Hexacore i7 with 512 gig SSD. Yeah. That's it? Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, dude. That's ridiculous.

That's almost four grand. Did you buy, does that include Apple care or something? Like really? No, like 12 years. Uh, I did get the 32 gigabytes of Ram.

That was big upgrade. I needed to get the better processor. Yeah, dude, this is just the hexa core man. And it's, it's 16 gigs of Ram, five,

12 gig SSD. Yeah, man, this is not, wait, hold on. Oh, wait, no, no, no, no the hexa core, man. And it's 16 gigs of RAM, 512 gig SSD. Yeah, man. This is not. Wait, hold on. Oh, wait, no, no, no, no. I'm not seeing it. So, okay, hold on. Let me go through the configuration here.

He upgraded to the 2.9 gigahertz hexa core. Yep. Yeah. It's from the year 2018. I mean, that should be around 3 gigahertz. Another $400 for 32 gigs of RAM. Yep. And then you must have added one terabyte of storage SSD.

Yeah. No, that's exactly what you did. That's what you did. So the 2.9 gigahertz Hexacore, 32 gigs of RAM, and a one terabyte SSD, that's $3,900. Well, it should only be the 512, so I need to revise that price in the show notes. Yeah, so the price would have been $3499 for that configuration. With the 512 gig. But that's still good. That's a lot of money,

man. There ain't no doubt. I would totally skip out on the 2.6 versus the 2.9. I don't think anyone's going to tell the difference from that. So I would save that. The one that hurts, though, is that you want the 32 gigs of RAM. So that hurts. So that's a $400 upgrade. But even if you did take that out, though, is that you want the 32 gigs of RAM. So that hurts that that's a $400 upgrade.

But even if you did take that out, you're still starting at $2,800 to start with. It ain't cheap, man. And, like, I've had this laptop for, like, four or five years, and I'll probably have it another couple years. So I feel like, you know what, $1,000 over the course of a couple years, like, ugh. I mean, it's expensive to upgrade that processor but yeah i mean it's good too so i'm not spending this money on a laptop because that would be crazy it's so hard somebody else's money i could justify it right uh all right so we'll let you get back to the regularly scheduled program here. We had to take that sideways road, though.

Yeah. Joe, you were limited to $3,000, not $3,900. Yeah. So enough about what I didn't spend. I didn't buy a MacBook Pro, and I didn't buy 518 bags of cheese dust. Sorry, 518 pounds of cheese powder. Sorry, 518 pounds of cheese powder. Pounds? 500 pounds?

Half a ton of cheese dust shows up. I wonder if they would ship that prime. Oh, man. Two-day free delivery. Those are actually – in order to get that price, I had to order it by the crate. Really? Yeah. So they were shipping it on pallets.

All right. Fair enough. All right. Yeah. So they were shipping on pallets. All right. Fair enough. All right. Good. Yeah. Quite a few pallets. So, uh,

yeah, so that's enough about what I'm not buying. Here's what I am buying. Um, so I will go cheapest, more, most expensive, um,

going with the, uh, what's the rant? No power supply. Uh, $99. I found one. It's supposed to be super duper quiet.

Well, with 850 Watts, I had to get modular cause I don one that's supposed to be super duper quiet. I went with 850 watts. I had to get modular because I don't like to have all those cables floating around if I'm not using them. And it was not much extra to get the modular. Dude, the modular is the way to go. It's the only way to go. It's amazing. Yeah, it's nice. And even to get the ultra quiet versus the normal quiet was like an extra $10 or something.

It was nothing. You're planning on using all 850 watts though? That's a lot of power. You need the headroom. You need it. Yeah, well, it was like $30 extra. Alan, who overdoes everything, is like, you need the headroom. I don't want to be stressing it.

I did look up and I figured I would need about $650 based on the stuff I had here. But I was like, 850, I need to charge my phone too. Oh, yeah. 200 watts of power. Yeah. It's almost a megawatt. Why is my phone exploding every time I plug it in?

That's awesome. Yeah, it's only $99. So, hey. Next one up is just a water cooler. That's awesome. Yeah. It's only $99. So, Hey, uh, next one up is just a water cooler. Uh, one 39 99.

I I'm a little disappointed though. Like I feel like whenever someone says water cooler, I like imagine an aquarium, you know, you look, this thing is just a couple of tubes and go whoop dee doo dah. Yeah. The one thing to know about those water coolers though,

is they're a little bit louder. So you paid to get the quieter fan on your power supply, but now you're going to pay for that on the water cooler. Those are a little bit louder. Oh, yeah. Disclaimer. I don't know what I'm doing. So you're doing a PC build on what you think should go in there. Well, I mean, you're calling it a water cooler, but I typically hear these referred to as liquid coolers. Liquid coolers for your processor. Yeah, liquid CPU cooler.

Instead of a fan-based CPU cooler, it's a liquid-based CPU cooler. But I think in fairness, though, you're just kind of skimming over some of the details. You need to at least say what the model is here because there are so many models of these things. Yeah, this is the Corsair Hydro Series H1151i Pro RGB. And I got this because the site that I used to build the computer recommended it. The cooler I have on my current computer is not... It's basically just like... It looks like a big motor, like a Harley Davidson motor.

But apparently, it's for cooling. I don't really know. I'm not a hardware guy. I've got to figure this out. So, don't buy this computer. You just have a have a fan it's a fan base kind of the radiator type right or the no what do they call it with it where the it's just got the the heat sink on it and yeah the heat sinks in the fans yeah i guess that is the radiator yeah yeah yeah it looks pretty cool though all right and uh the next uh most expensive thing is a Samsung 970 Pro.

I went with the 512 gigabyte SSD. Solid-state drive is given. Now, I did cheap out here. 512 was not enough to have a desktop. It's just ridiculous. You're going to fill that thing up in no time. But that's where I'm kind of saying, well, you know what? I'm not buying a monitor or a keyboard or a desk or a chair or any of this other stuff.

I got some hard drives sitting around. Like, who doesn't? And this is your first computer. You got extra hard drives. So, use this for your operating system. Use whatever else hard drives you got laying around for the stuff that's not as important. So, just find some random parts and plug them into your computer. So, I think it's worth stating here

did you throw out the price on this one yet 197.99 okay so the cool part about this is and i remember a time outlaw when you and i were looking at one to one terabyte ssds in the old form factor the form factor and these things were 400 bucks right this one is an mvme m.2 512 gig that is blazingly fast for under 200 bucks it's pretty awesome so yeah yeah i was really surprised at the price i still have it in my mind that uh those hard drives are so expensive i was really surprised to see like kind of the top of the line um you know consumer model being so cheap for 512. Yeah, man. That's a killer buy. Yeah, because the terabyte version of that is still $400. For that one.

But you're also talking about something that's got crazy warranty on the read-writes on the thing. It's a five-year warranty on it, yeah. And it's got, what, a 3.5 gigabit per second read and a three gig write on it. It's fast. I want to say it's like 3,500 read write. Yeah. Yeah. It's stupid fast.

In megabytes it is. Is it megabytes? Well, I said 3,500. 3,500. Yeah. Yeah. So it's crazy fast. Like it blows away even what we were talking about.

It was $400 a couple of years ago. Yeah. So. And it's funny. You get two of the 512s. It's the same price as one terabyte. There used to be a time there when you could go cheaper by getting smaller and smaller and just throw more of the one in there, but not the case anymore for these guys.

But you know what would be cool is if you took two of those things that you have right there and then raid those together. Oh, my goodness, man. You're talking about five gig reads. It's insane. All right. Moving on. I'm done drooling.

I could actually uh do an npm install in like less than three hours that'd be nice right so many files all right so next up is uh whatever this thing is rgb that was my ram really i'm just kidding i went with a core corsair vengeance and i really uh I was tempted to go up to a higher RAM speed. I ended up going with 3,000, and I got 32 gigabytes for $319. I was tempted to go higher, but from what I read, everyone said you'd be better putting off that money into the processor. So that's what I did. I went with a slower speed.

I mean, 3, 3000 is still up there. I didn't go down to 2400 because the price difference between 2400 and 3000 really just didn't seem that big. Now, if you went from 3000 to like, I think 3300 or whatever was next jump, then it was more significant. There's actually a lot of YouTube videos where people compare the same system spec'd out with different speed rams for like gaming and that kind of stuff. And there's usually less than one frame per second in 120 frame rate game between the two right so the the frequency of it really it can matter but it's usually not as big of a bottleneck as other things yep so save some money there i was pretty happy with that uh next up is motherboard which is not very exciting um i did go ahead and get one that had six USB 3 ports because it wasn't much more than the four.

So that was $400 for that. Nothing too exciting. I don't really know if motherboards are exciting now. I see that there's a lot of fancy features, but it's all stuff that scares me. I'm like, I don't know that I want you trying to prioritize my network traffic smartly. Like, just send the stupid things. So I usually turn stuff I got off. I'm not too,

I'm, I'm a fuddy duddy. I don't want your hyper terminal. Blah, blah, blah. I just want the normal stuff. Okay.

So what he's not telling you though, is this is the Asus prime X two 99 deluxe, uh, motherboard here. And this is, has Aurora sync capabilities in it. So I don't know if you've been noticing your blinged out theme here joe rgb everything but yeah your motherboard here

has the uh what would you call that at the header it's got some led lights and then there's that other heat weird heat sink that i never know what it's officially called but it's on them it's on like most motherboards you know the one i'm about? You're talking about the one that goes over the top of all the connections? No. This one would be below any cards, but there's always like – look at the picture of it. You'll see it. It's right there in the bottom right of the corner. I don't know what that one's called.

I don't know what chips that's. Those are usually the bridge, right? I don't know what that's covering.. I don't know what chips that's. Those are usually the bridge, right? I don't know what that's covering. Yeah, so he's got that there, the LEDs there as well. So you can colorize that. Plus he picked out the water cooler that he picked out, the liquid cooling solution that he picked out, plus the memory, which were both Corsair RGB series.

So you have two different color spectrums going on you know because there are two different controllers right because the corsair is going to have its own and then aurora is going to have its its own thing yeah man i don't i'm not going to turn any of those lights on yes you are allowed to ever be on you bought it you're going to it's on And this one has the industry-leading 8-channel HD audio enhanced by Asus exclusive Realtek. So you've also got a higher-end chipset for the audio on this thing. If I can't turn those LEDs off, I'm going back to the MacBook. Oh, man. He really doesn't know what he's buying here.

Nope. All right. So here's what should be on tip of the week. If you're thinking about building a computer and you just don't understand hardware at all, what you do is you come up with a list and then you take it to two people who do know hardware and you throw it at them and you see what they say and you make adjustments. You forgot step one. Start a podcast.

Right. Start a podcast. Two other guys. There you go. All right. So what's up next on this beast now this is the thing that i kind of probably spent the most time reading about um because you really care about this one right yeah and i am in the market for another video card and so i ended up going with the gtx 1080 ti which is an older gen and it's price comparable to the 2080 uh so that was a little hard for me to kind of take going with the 1080 ti over the 2080 when it was like a very small price difference but

there was a price difference and what people were saying is that the 1080 ti is like they're basically equal and a little bit preferred for the ti just because it's been such, it's been around so long and it's been a stable car. So it's like, you know, these guys are kind of comparable and one's been out for like six years and running strong. It's been out for a year. I missed it.

Which one was he comparing the 20, 80, the new one. Okay. Yeah. I was saying go with the 10, 80 TI because if it's comparable stats to the 20, 80,

like go with, you know, but isn't the 20, 80 like two grand or something or $2,800? Isn't it outrageous? It shouldn't be that much more than this one. It was probably $899, right? I mean, because you can get the 1080 Ti up to like $950 or $1,000 easily,

depending on which one you get. In fact, I was just looking at if you got an EVGA, depending on how much RAM is built on it, then you can get them ridiculously priced, even as a 1080 Ti. Yeah, I went with one that had like 11 gigabytes. It was basically the one that the computer building website told me to do. Let me see here what the 1080 was. Yeah, I want to say...

I guess the 2080 isn't as bad as I thought it was. Yeah, they're not terrible. They're still 800 bucks. They're not cheap. Yeah, there's an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 for $800, but then you can get the 2080 Ti for $1,300. Yeah, the Tis are going to run you a pretty penny right now. But, yeah, I mean, the thing is it's the same thing when they went from the –

No, what's the other card? That's the one I was thinking of. Not the 980. I can't even think. At any rate, yes, the ti is is comparable to the next version's non-ti so yeah you'd spend an extra 100 bucks 150 bucks on the 2080 but it is a newer architecture so they'll probably get more out of it over time either way it's not bad yeah so i went with trident true and i saved a little bit of money on it titan and finally i was thinking of

sorry joe i was thinking of. Sorry, Joe. I was thinking of the Titan. The Titan is the like ridiculously expensive one. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That would be nice, but no, that's not in budget. So I think now I'm basically up to, I don't know, math. 1,800.

1,800. 1,800-ish, yeah. Yeah. Wait. Something like that. 1,200. Math. 1800. 1800ish, yeah. Wait. Something like that. 1200. 1300. Left is what I mean to say. I spent that all on the processor.

I ended up going with the Intel Core i9, the 7949X Skylake. This is the one that's got 14 cores at 3.1. I thought I went with a 16-core one. So let me adjust my notes below. Sorry, never mind.

I suck at this. Yeah, so it's a 14-core, 3.1 gigahertz processor. I can't really tell you much about Skylake versus whatever, but it's more expensive. So I was like, all right, see you later, Coffee Lake or whatever. Well, it's got to be better then. Right. I mean, yeah, that's a beast of a processor. It's a lot of cores.

Yeah. Whatever that means. And that one was what, $1,130? Yeah. That's where my money went. At DreamHack last year, Intel had a booth where they had one machine running a Core i9. And they had, I think it was like three or four stations doing VR off of the one system. That's amazing. Like it was, the build of it, like it was a beautiful build too because they had it like uh the have you ever seen where you have the liquid cool but the pipes are clear so you can see the

fluid and then you color the fluid right so they had specific colored fluid depending on whether or not it was going to the cpu versus one of the video cards right it was just a gorgeous build you know of course it had a glass uh you know probably like a tempered glass um but cover on it so you could see through it obviously but yeah one one machine and it was powering like three or four vr stations and and we did the vr we actually sat there and did the vr and it was smooth it was ridiculously smooth yeah you you wouldn't have you would have thought you were on your own computer, you know, by yourself.

That's amazing. So yeah, that's good because I'm in my dream scenario here. I'm running dot net core. I got the node run in the front end. I got the last search in there and that's eating on my Ram and then I'm SQL servers in the next somewhere. So,

but you know, there are my resources. You know, the cool part here is, and I mean, it's, it's not like this is difficult to do, but in that $ thousand dollars you've got something that just trounces any laptop that you

could buy even even that six thousand dollar laptop that you'd buy that would be a macbook pro this would just walk all over it all day granted it's not portable but but this setup's ridiculous right here yeah 14 cores the 3.1 versus the MacBook. I went with the expensive one. Six. It was the 6x2x2.9 gigahertz. So 6 versus 14, 3.1 versus 2.9. I'm surprised you just didn't use Nick Craver's Stack Overflow build and just go from that.

Because that would have gotten you in a very similar price point and it has a lot of very similar parts oh nice oh and the um the uh the laptop is 400 more expensive now you do get a monitor and keyboard and trackpad and uh smart bar for that so you know there's that i'm about to pay you 400 to not have the smart bar right or the touch bar i wish then you have to get the 13 inch which i don't want to do that because then I'll try to put my leg up when I'm typing. It's going to fall right through the hole. Yeah, nobody wants 13-inch. So that was me.

So I came out just under $3,000 by using a combination of Newegg and Amazon to get whatever the cheapest price was. Now, the links in the show notes are all going to be Amazon because if you click on those links, if you go check this stuff out and you end up buying other stuff, you don't even have to buy the stuff that you click the link on. But if you just click those links, then you'll be supporting the show because there's some affiliate dollars that kind of get thrown back to us. So if you like what you see and you like the show, go click around.

Yeah, and in fairness, this is a nice build that he's got together there the only thing did you check to see if that processor was compatible with the motherboard that you chose yes okay all right well yeah he used some site oh that's right you built it that's right okay all good i'd tell you what the site was but then it would spoil my tip of the week yeah you can't do that then all right so do you have any notes here uh nothing we didn't cover already. Just talking about the difference between MacBook Pro and also how much cheese dust you can get. I couldn't figure out how big the crates of the cheese dust were. I kind of wanted to know how many garages it was.

That's awesome. 518 pounds of cheese dust. That's awesome. Yeah. UPS guy is going to hate you. Oh, man. You know what would be hilarious, though, is if it tore in the truck as he's trying to pull it out. Cheese dust is just all over him.

Yeah. You know? Now you want to talk about him hating you? Right. Oh, yeah. You just gave him reason. You want to know what Brown can do for you? Orange is the new Brown.

That's right. All right, so who's up next? They'll probably kill you. You going next or me? I don't care. All right, hit it. You got it. Okay.

Now I care. All right. All right. So let me – by the way, did you notice any similarities between Joe's picks this year versus my picks last year? There was a lot of RGB in there. A lot of bling and – yeah. Because I had similar stuff, like same RAM except I had the previous year model RAM. But SSD and liquid cooler and all that good stuff.

I found it funny that he didn't realize he was buying the blinged out versions right yeah me too that's why i was like my man he came around yeah it's gonna be lit up like a christmas tree i need to turn that off what i was like finally somebody my people my people he paid extra for it he's like wait wait he's gonna be putting duct tape all over the side of his computer to hide the lights. Okay. So similar to last year, I decided to kind of categorize some things, right? So first up is in the way of automation things, right?

Like I've been very interested in automating things so uh the sonos one is first on my list i like it so the latest version of the sonos one last year they introduced it supports alexa then this year that same sonos one now has added support for AirPlay, specifically AirPlay 2. And the rumors and everything suggests that Sonos is going to release support for Google Assistant by the end of the year. So if that one, if they do come through with that, that'll be like the trifecta. Having support for all three in one. And it really is a great little speaker. So the Sonos One, it's $200.

I love the sound of them. I love the flexibility, the convenience of it. I think they sound great. So there's that. Dude, while you're going into this, I just saw these at Costco the other day, a two-pack for $270. Yes, but was it the Sonos One or was it the Play One? It's the Play. Yeah.

Ah, that's a good catch. Okay. So here's the thing. The Play One is the original version, so there's no support for any assistant on it, right? But here's the cool thing. If you do buy, you could deck out your entire house in the originals, right? And all you need is one Sonos Play 1. Okay.

And it can be your virtual assistant and it can sync with all of the others in the house. Okay. Very nice. Good to know. Good to know. So yeah, very cool. All right, so next up on my list is, for those who lose things, I found this to be super convenient, the Tile Mate. Now, if you're familiar with these, the original version of the tiles is basically like a key, something you would put on your key chain.

And if you, you know, it pairs to your phone and if you lose it, you're from your phone, you could ring it and it'll make a noise or whatever. But the cool thing is, is like anyone else who's also a tile owner is giving feedback to like where your device is. Right. So it's basically like community based, finding your thing, whatever you, whatever you put the tile on and they make different versions. So you could put it in,

like they make like a slim version that you might put in a wallet or a backpack or a purse, or you might put it on your luggage or, you know, for me, it's my keys. That's really cool. Never heard of this one.

The cool thing about this though, is that this is the new 2018 version that has the replaceable battery. That was always the rub about the originals was that you couldn't replace the battery. And so the deal was that it was, it was quoted to be good for roughly a year. And then after the year you could, um, contact them and at a reduced price, you could buy a replacement. And I was like, that's just lame. And then to add to the lameness of that first version, it technically had a replaceable battery in it.

It had a 2032 watch battery. And if you've ever bought a watch battery, you know the 2032s that I'm talking about, right? They're about the size of a nickel. I guess they're technically bigger than a watch battery, but you know what I'm talking about there. So it was really lame because it was like, wow, you only failed to put a door on it, and you could have saved everybody this hassle. Well, they've fixed that problem, and so now they do. So this is the four-pack for $60. I like it.

All right. Next up in my world of making my life easier is the TP link Casa smart wifi plugs. So these little things work with, uh, Alexa and, uh, Google assistant. So you can plug it in and you can set a schedule on it, or you can set up your assistant to like,

you know, Hey, turn the light on or turn the coffee pot on or whatever. Right. And obviously you can control it remotely whether you're on the same wifi or not. And with Christmas coming up, these are super convenient to have

your Christmas tree lights on because then you can have your Christmas tree lights cut on, on a schedule. And even better is if you pay attention, if you watch for it, you might be able to catch these on sale because, uh, last year from term, like how we're, I think last year, if you, depending on what you bought,, some stores were giving these things away. Or either that or it was $5. It was something ridiculous. It was a super good deal on them last year. I don't know if they'll have the same deal, but if you're lucky, they will.

Now, all of this should kind of go hand in hand with my next one. Wait, wait, wait. You didn't say the price on this one. Oh, I'm sorry. That one was $44.99, so $45. hand with my next one wait you didn't say the price on this one oh i'm sorry that one that one was uh 44.90 44.99 so 45 bucks uh and i think i put the two pack in there yes yes you could get you could get one but it's like i think the one was by itself uh like 30 bucks maybe or something like that like uh i didn't i don't have the link in there for the one. Do I?

No, I don't. It's like $27 for the, for a single. So buy both versus, you know, 45 for the two. So I'm like, you might as well just go ahead and get the two, but you know, your mileage may vary. Even if you got one, it's still a very cool little thing. You know, it's very handy to go to like automate whatever you want. Um, okay, now none of this would be worth having if you didn't have some assistant to control it all. So I'm putting the Google Home Mini as the must-have assistant in your world. And I say must-have,

like this is coming in at $49, okay? But really that's a lie because Google is practically giving these things away, right? There was a promotion going on with those Tilemates where if you bought the Tilemate, you got the Google Mini for free. So I think that's Google's answer to Amazon is they're just trying to flood the market with them, but they're super good. I like them. I don't know your opinions on them. I have not used the Google Home one, but I have to imagine after having used Siri, Alexa, and sorry, I said that out loud because everybody's machines just went off. After using all of them, the only one that ever consistently seems to return something useful

is the Google one. Yeah. Well, yeah. And if you haven't already heard, mine's gone off in the background during this recording. So Easter egg. All right. Now, this next one is, my opinion i'm gonna call it controversial

although it's really not in like a bad way you can't put the link in there fast enough man like i got an itchy button figure clicky thing yeah on here this one is gonna come in at a hundred dollars 99.99 and this is the phillips Hue white and color ambience smart light bulb starter kit. Oh, the entryway to your network. Got it. So the reason why I say the controversial part is like, man, $100. For two light bulbs? For two light bulbs, right? But I really love the idea of having rooms that are like your bedroom. If you had these lighting up your bedroom, right, then it could simulate the rising sun.

So you just wake up naturally, right? Or at night, the colors could automatically start blue shifting or whatever. So it's like easier on your eyes, things like that. Making your life better and healthier, your sleep health, better sleep, which is better health, whatnot.

But I hate the price. But yes, but here's the thing. Okay. So I'm going to put in an alternative that is not on my list, but here's just like an example alternative. And this is the TP link. Casa smart wifi, LED light bulb.

I have that one. Now, it's like, what did I forget? I think it was like $39, I think is the link that I have here. Yeah, 40 bucks, 40 bucks. So it's 40 bucks for a single bulb. It doesn't need the hub that the Philips hue needs. But on the flip side, if you went with the Phillips hue, number one, it works with everything. It works with, it works with home kit. It works with Alexa. It works with Google assistant. This TP link is only going to work with Amazon and Google, but you're also limited into your bulbs, right? Whereas Philips Hue, that series, they have light bulbs for everything that you might

need. You know, like those special little decorative, annoying light bulbs, right? The candelabras. Yeah. Okay. Say that 10 times fast. They've got those. They've got LED strips.

If you wanted that, they've got the BR-30 floodlight styles. Every kind of light bulb that you might want, Philips Hue has covered. That's the reason why I picked that one. Just take out a second mortgage on your house and go buy you a bunch of candelabra ones to stick in your chandelier.

You're probably not. Honestly, it's not something you would stick in every room. It's just going to be a few random places. But yeah, some rooms, you know, where you spend the bulk of your time is where you would probably focus that effort on first, right? I like it. All right. So that is in my, like, world of automation and, you know, making life easier kind of category. But kind of similar related to making life easier is, but not automated, is the Google Wi-Fi system, the 3-pack.

We've talked about these before. You have this one? Yep. Cool. Love them. I think they're awesome. I love the fact that I can just see it remotely from my phone. I don't even have to be at home and I can see what's going on at the house.

Wait, you already have this? Yeah. You want another one? You didn't buy the things that you have? No. Oh. You don't like your Google Wi-Fi? I love it, but I wouldn't buy it with somebody else's fake money that i'm not

actually using to buy things what i don't understand this episode wait wait wait did you buy do you have this or not yeah i have the google wi-fi wait you paid but so does outlaw so why did outlaw buy something on for the show this is what he said he would buy it you know yeah no i think this i didn't would buy anything I already had. Oh, no. I definitely did because this is something that we haven't shared before, right? Yeah. It makes sense.

Well, now this is awkward. Yeah. Now I'm all confused, but I think I understand again. All right. Sorry, listeners. I did it again. Well, okay. Oops. I mean, point is that it's, I think, a cool little Wi-Fi system, mesh networking for your house system.

I know that, like, Alan looked at this one. You, I think, settled on the Eereo. You're going to mess up my list, sir. I'm getting ahead of myself. I do apologize, sir. Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself. I do apologize, dear sir. We will get there. Okay, now, Joe, since you got to be all smarty pants about it, since I already have one, check this out. Hey, wait, wait, wait.

The price on this for the three pack yeah the three pack is is 256 bucks yep and that covers 4,500 square feet yep so a pretty good size house yeah and you can buy those obviously individually if you wanted but to expand further yep cool now here's where it's gonna get super cool so if you were to go and search around, you could find products like this one, which is the Amarotech outlet wall mount holder for the Google Home Mini. That's cool. All right. Where you can wrap up your Google Home into this little thing and plug it straight into the outlet. And now it just looks like this device is hanging on the wall.

And especially if, depending on where you have your Google Home Mini set up, this could be completely out of the way. Like a kitchen. This is a perfect type thing for a kitchen, right? Like hang it on the wall. You don't have some wires running around on the table. There's no wires anywhere. Everything's nice and clean.

And you can get it in whatever color. Well, they only have it in white or black. So I guess if you had the coral. That'd be pink too. Oh, well, no, this thing you're saying. Yeah, if you had the coral version of the Google Home, then you'd probably want to get the white version of this holder. But still, awesome little thing.

And this thing is only $899, right? So if you did go out and buy some stamps and you got like four Google Minis from the post office with it, well, then for $8.99 times four and now you can hang those on the wall. Pretty cool. So obviously if you're going to have one of those, you're going to want one of these, which is – let me put the link in here for you guys. Hey, hey, real quick before you say this oh okay the google mini is much prettier than the echo dot agreed so you think so joe oh yeah for sure yeah it's much prettier it's more attractive all right go ahead okay so if you're going to hang that then you're also going to want to hang your Google Wi-Fi with the Amortek Google Wi-Fi wall mount three pack. See what I did there because the other

Google Wi-Fi system was a three pack. And now similarly, you could plug in your Google Wi-Fi in onto your kitchen wall and also have no wires hanging out of it either. I like it. It's not as pretty as the other Google Home thing, but again, there's no wires. That's nice. Well, that's because the Wi-Fi unit itself is a little bit bulkier. What are you laughing about over there? Hold on. Let me make sure I'm looking at the right thing.

I might be looking at the item before. Yeah, man. I'm looking at this wall mount holder. This is ridiculous. What. This is ridiculous. What? This is ridiculous. All right. You pull it up on your computer using the link in the show notes.

All right. You see a picture there that looks kind of like an earring hanging from an outlet, right? So, that looks kind of funny, you know. But it's not much bigger than the outlet, right? It's like, you know, maybe a couple inches, right? That looks pretty good. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, click on the second picture. That looks all looks all right now let's go to the third picture what the heck man this thing is the size of a bathtub oh yeah they did they did have some bad uh photoshopping this is terrible photoshopping what the heck man it's bigger than, it is. It's like a frying pan hanging from the wall. If you go to the next one, it's the size of a queen-sized bed. You keep going down, it's like the size of the couch and the size of the chair. Oh my gosh. Actually, it looks like a tanning bed in the

living room. Yeah, man. It's huge. Oh, that's hilarious. Photoshop it. Is this Barbie furniture like what's going on here well i will say i will say that as a honorable mention for the display of the google home mini i i do like did consider this one here which is the otterbox den series base for the google home mini which makes your google home mini look like a mickey mouse head that would be very popular with the young ones yeah that's really and it's not expensive it's not crazy yeah it's like 20 bucks yeah

that's pretty cool i don't really want anyone playing with it though well they wouldn't. But now when you talk to it, it's like, you know. You got kids. You know they would. Well, yeah. I mean, that's why you got to put it up high. Right.

Yeah. You could look at Mickey. We know how this works. You could talk to Mickey, but you don't touch Mickey. Okay. So now we're getting into the, I think last year I classified that this section is like the, the, for the build stuff, right? Like there was the, you know, for the love of the game and things like that, but this, this is for the build. So I have been on the hunt for a new monitor. Um, backstory here,

I had the LG 34 inch ultra wide screen, loved that thing, but ended up having to ship it off because some problems I had with it and, uh, dude with the warranty that I had, which LG was awesome about, uh, loved how awesome they were about it. Um, actually they shipped me, they did ship me a replacement and then it was the replacement still that got worse and they didn't have an alternate to ship me back. So they just gave me the cash back. So basically I got that – the use of that monitor for free because they gave me full – they paid me back in full. I thought that was amazing on their part. The crazy part is you had the business one that had the extended warranty.

Yep, three-year business warranty on it. And yeah, they, they, um, I had it for about two and a half years and because they didn't have a replacement to ship me, they just said,

well, we'll cut you a check for the full dollar amount of the original purchase price. That's customer service right there. Yes. So super proud or happy with them on that. So what I've truly been looking for though, I couldn't find. So what I've truly been looking for, though, I couldn't find.

So what I really, really super want is something in the 40-ish inch range, 4K, curved. The curved is the part. Yeah.

So if you can find that, and it's a reasonable price, then let me know. Because, man, I tell you, like my Google food must be horrible because like you go searching around like a new egg or an Amazon or whatever. And you start doing power searches like trying to find it. I come up with nothing when you start combining those three things. Right. There is a 38 uh i mean it's it's close to your 40 but it's a 38 and it's curved lg 4k yeah 38 wk 95 c i think i saw that one but it ain't cheap

yeah yeah there you go yeah um look at it specifically for monitors or tv same deal or i mean i don't care if they call it a tv i'm going to use it as a monitor so does that answer is that a good answer he doesn't care yeah he wants something to use as a monitor curved um because i feel like at 40 inches it needs to curved. I feel like that's too big to not have a curved monitor. But what I did find that was really appealing is basically the next generation of what I had, which is the 34-inch LG 21 to 9 ratio curved ult ultra wide at $550. That's a good price, man. Yeah. And it, it's a real good price. That's why I was like, oh man, I wasn't looking for that same one.

Cause I want, instead of the ultra wide, I wanted the normal kind of, you know, 16 by nine, uh, aspect ratio. But I'm like, man, the only real difference between this and the previous one that you had, though, is this does not have Thunderbolt. So yeah, I don't care. Yeah.

Honestly, Thunderbolt has been such a pain in the butt, at least with, with the monitor stuff that I don't think I'd care either. Yeah. This one had HDMI and I was like, that's fine by me. Yeah.

Display for HDMI. That's good enough. Yeah. That's beautiful. And the price, man, by me. Yeah, DisplayPort HDMI. That's good enough. Yeah, that's beautiful. And the price, man. God, we paid more than that for ours. That's the thing. Yeah, and this is curved. I paid for the previous one.

I want to say that was like $750. Yep. So this is $200 cheaper and curved. All right. Now that we're going to build a computer here, Joe never mentioned where he was going to put all of his stuff, I don't think. But I have been eyeballing this guy. I think that this case is just gorgeous. So this is the Corsair Crystal 570X RGB Mid-Tower.

Tempered glass on three sides. And it comes with RGB fans already in it. You can get it in a variety of colors, but I like the white metal showing through the tinted glass. I think that just looks so cool. And then it's got like black accents on it. Right.

So in my mind, like I look at it, I'm like, Oh, it's my storm trooper build, you know? But yeah, I think it's a cool looking case.

That's going to take me at one 80. And tons of places for storing SSDs hidden out of the way. Yep. Really nice. Yep. Yeah. It's a pretty case. And you'll be a C those SED SSDs.

Uh, cause typically you wouldn't typically they would be behind the motherboard, right? Yeah. Yeah. But not on this guy, you'll be able to see it. So if we're going to talk about SSDs, then I guess I got to follow Joe here because I too picked the Samsung nine 70 pro five 12, which should tell you just how amazing it is that two of us have already picked it. 512 being the smaller of the two sizes it's available in. We already covered all the specs, but yeah, it's an amazing drive. So that's $198. But here's where I differ from Joe. So yes, I'm going to pick that for my operating system because you have to,

but you gotta, you gotta load your steam library somewhere and you want it to be fast too, but you need more space. And so for that, I'm going with the Samsung eight 60 Evo one terabyte for $167. God, that's so cheap. And this,

by the way, was the one that we were talking about that essentially the equivalent of this three years ago was $400. Yes. Well, not exactly. This is not the pro version, though. Oh, no, no. I actually bought this one that I spent. Well, actually, I think it got on sale.

No, I bought the Evo. I didn't get the Pro. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, yeah, because I actually did some comparison. Now, this drive, you know, I picked the one terabyte. You could get it as small as a 250.

You could also get it as large as a four terabyte. That's awesome. Yeah, dude. Four terabytes. So I figured, well, okay, if all I'm going to put on here is my Steam library, then I can go without the Pro version, right? Now, here's the cool thing about this on the 860. Samsung increased the warranty on it. Nice.

So it now has the same five-year at? The pro version has. The difference is that it's not as guaranteed for as many writes as the pro level is. Okay, so that's the difference. Like if you're going to be heavy on the write side of whatever you're doing, then maybe you'd want to consider the pro. But if you're going to be heavy on the read side,

which, face it, 90% of us are going to be in that category. but if you're going to be heavy on the read side, which face it, that's 90% of us are going to be in that category, right? You're going to install your steam library and then it's just read, read, read, read, read.

But you know, the crazy part is though, I know that a lot it's made about these warranties, but when you think about what you buy in a laptop, they're not putting pro SSDs in those things. And how many times have you had an SSD go bad on you in any laptop? Almost never. I think you might've actually had one. yeah,

but, but yeah, I've had it, but yeah, even then there are like tools out there where you can try to like, try to recover it and get it to like, to try to get the drive controller to recognize that, Hey,

that cell has gone bad and whatever. Right. And maybe you have some luck with it but yep yeah so that that is my data drive i love it that's awesome so then we've talked about this before but it has never made the shopping list so I'm officially adding it to the shopping list forever. It will hold its place as my favorite mouse, the Razer Death Adder Chroma. It is, it is like, got to be one of the most popular mice out there, uh, on, on Amazon. This is going to come in at $54 and 49 cents. This isn't even the latest version of it. You could get, in fact, I want to say there was another version. Yeah, it says there's a newer version of it. It's $50.

Yeah, it's actually $5 cheaper than this one. But, yeah, this one, yeah. I just, oh, yeah, the DeathAdder Elite. Yeah, that one was a higher dpi optical sensor so this is like a 10,000 dpi now and the death adder elite is a 16,000 but um the reviews though this one has more reviews and so that's why I'm like sticking with the original right um I want to say it was like close to 2,700 is this the one that's hooked up to your computer over there that if you bump it like it goes nine miles across your screen? Well, at the moment, I have it connected to this machine that I'm using here.

But yes, it is that one. But that's because so with the Razer software, you can configure like how fast you want it to respond. And on, I, in my opinion, if you're going to have, uh, you know, a lot of screen real estate, you know, you have a large monitor, like a 34 inch screen, like you haven't got all day to be dragging a bone anchor of a mouse icon across the screen. Right. So like, if you move it, it needs to respond. So yeah, I have the, I have the, uh, settings turned up. Crazy high. If you move that mouse an inch, that thing's already shot across the screen five times. Like it's actually looped back around and come to the other side. Yeah, it's like on a scale of one to ten, like where ten is the fastest, right?

So, you know, Alan might have his set to like a five and I have mine set on crack. It's that high. It's high. It's on crack. Like I can't move the thing to like click a button because by the time I've actually put my finger on the thing, it's that high it's high it's on crack like i can't even i can't move the thing to like click a button because by the time i've actually put my finger on the thing it's moved again and i'm like all right i give so so then i was like well you know here's something that i guarantee you nobody's ever going to think about but i'm going to put it in here because i just

think they're so great and so useful. So this is the transcend or hope I'm saying that right. Transcend a 64 gig flash drive. Now this thing that I specifically love about this particular model though, these are the really small ones, but it's a solid metal case. Have you ever had those cases where it's got like a plastic bit on it for you

to grab? Like the sand desk ones are bad about that, where you'll have like a plastic thing on the end until you rip that off. And now you can't get it out anymore. And you're like, oh, my God, how do I get the thumb drive out? And then you like short it. When you try, you won't have that problem with this. This is a solid piece of metal for the enclosure. And you can get it from 8 gig to 64 gig.

64 gig being 24 bucks. That's ridiculous, by the way. 64 gigs and the thing the size of your thumb? Oh, dude, it's like the size of your thumbnail. It is ridiculously tiny. And

stupid high reviews on Amazon. We're talking about like over 1100 reviews, mostly five star 4.3 rating and it's USB 3.1. Yeah. And just keep in mind, Apple would charge you at least a hundred dollars for this additional 64 gigs of RAM. So yeah. Yeah. So, so I bring it up because yes, you're going to think it was stupid that I brought up

a flash drive, but it's more not that it's a flash drive, but specifically the enclosure of the flash drive because, oh yeah, I forgot. Here's a very key thing. Do you ever have those flash drives where it's so bulky, the enclosure is so bulky, you can't put anything else next to

it? Yeah, it takes up all the USB ports on your on your yeah yeah not the case with this thing this thing is super slim the size of the usb port you could put an array of them side by side rate them all together and put whatever you want on it i think i think your excitement is warranted for this one This is a nice looking little device. Yeah. Okay. So then, because I am the last of my kind on the show here, who still has a love affair for all things Apple, except their MacBooks. Right. If you have one of the newer iPhones like the 8 or the XS that support wireless charging, this is the LCQI certified wireless charging stand. Now,

it can work with other phones as well, Galaxies and Notes and whatnot. But specifically, I bring this up because if you have the iPhone X or the XS that has the face ID, this one acts as a vertical stand for your phone to where you could just set it off next to your keyboard. And if you ever find yourself needing to open up your authenticator app to get that code from your authenticator then you can just look at your phone while it's still on the charger and it's it's positioned perfectly to where the face id can unlock the phone without you having to touch it or take it off the cradle very nice and that's why i specifically call it out as an iPhone 10 or XS or iPhone 8 or 8 Plus. This one also has a lot of good reviews.

Yes. Yeah, it's almost 500 reviews, and it's got like, what, a 4.4 star rating? Yeah. Now, there is some controversy, though. I don't know if you've been following up on this. I'm going to assume Joe hasn't, so he doesn't follow up on the hardware, as he said before. But because there's a little bit of controversy about whether or not wireless charging is bad for your devices at all. Because the theory is that if you wire charge, then the device takes all of its power off of the wire, excess is going to charge the battery versus if you are charging wirelessly, then the battery is powering the device while it's trying to charge the

battery. Interesting. And so it degrades the life of the battery. That said, I mean, the thing is, is that we've said this before. I think about the,

the face ID feature. It works amazingly well. It feature. It works amazingly well. It works surprisingly well. But if you come from Touch ID, then it was kind of a nuisance because with Touch ID, like, okay, I use the Google Authenticator app. So everywhere, any place that will allow me to use two-factor authentication, I like to use two-factor authentication. And it was super convenient with the Touch ID because I didn't have to pick up my phone to get my authenticator code. I could just have my phone sitting next to my keyboard. I could just tap it, put my finger on it to unlock it, and get the authenticator app and never had to like pick up the phone. Right. And so when I first got the 10, there was this awkward period of time

there where I'm like, you couldn't leave it. Uh, you know, well, I had a vertical charger stand, or just a stand, not a charger, but a stand. I couldn't leave it there. Um, well, it wouldn't charge. So I didn't want to leave it there. And the 10 won't recognize your face unless the phone is vertical. It won't read it horizontal. Now, I do remember hearing something about like there was a feature update coming out eventually that would solve that problem. But, I mean, if you think about it, you know, the algorithm trying to figure out

like, hey, where's your face, right? Well, it's looking for your eyeballs like here, left and right, not up and down. So I can kind of forgive. I can kind of understand why on a first iteration of trying to do a face ID unlock. But... You ever go, you get a notification, like a text or something on your phone, and you're like, oh, what's that? And you start to look at like who the text is from, but then the Face ID kicks in and takes you

to the home screen. You're like, oh, I was trying to look at the text. No. And actually, that's the cooler thing about the Face ID versus Touch ID. So that's one of the benefits about it. Because with Touch ID, Touch ID had this... Okay, so there was this kind of premise on iOS in general that everything's locked until you unlock it. So even your everything's locked until you unlock it.

So even your notifications are private until you unlock the phone. But more often than not, when you would do your Touch ID, you would press it hard enough that you would just go straight to the home, or at least I would. I would go straight to the home screen, and then it'd be like, oh, wait, what was it? So I'd have to swipe down to get to my notification center, right? Not true with Touch ID though. You could just tap the screen and look at it. And when the act of looking at it, when it unlocks it, you'll see all your notifications and it's not until you swipe up to dismiss the lock screen. Do you actually get to the home screen? So they got smart about it basically. Well, I think it's just a, you could maybe call it smarts or you could just maybe call it a difference of

the, the, uh, IO, you know what the, the input interface being used, right? Because the button being the same thing as the thumb reader or your finger

reader, you know, you're more likely to like press it a little bit too hard. You were escaping it when you did it, right? Yeah, exactly. Um,

so yeah, so I like, I like this wireless charger. I don't care what the controversy is. Also, while you're decorating your desk, I don't know if you've heard, but Alan is a fan of some headphones. I do maybe kind of like some headphones. So, if you are like Alan and even myself, you probably have a collection of them. And so what better way to organize them under your desk

than with the Brainwaves Truss, the all metal under desk dual headphone hanger. And this thing is great. It's just a solid piece of metal. Hold your headphones, keeps them out of your way, but it's got a lip on it so that the headphones can't accidentally slip off. And it's because it is metal. It doesn't matter how heavy those headphones are. It isn't bending because I've had the kind where it was like a, like a rubbery kind of mount or, you know, uh, material and, you know,

you hang something like some beats on it. Forget about that. Thing doesn't stand a chance, but this thing, it holds them beautifully. Yeah. Wait, you have this too.

What the heck, man? Oh, Hey, there were no rules that said we couldn't buy what we already had or tell you. Yeah. I know. I should buy what we have now.

Hey, no, no, no. We've already covered your stuff. We've already covered your stuff. You built a computer. Yeah. I did get a computer. Yes. All right.

So then I thought, you know, we're all caffeine drinkers, right? I stopped. But yeah, used to be. Well, yeah, I guess technically I did cut out caffeine too. But, you know, we still have our vices. And so even though I did cut out the caffeine, I just went to decaf coffee, right? So I thought, well, you know, to make the programmer experience, you know, that much better, right, you need something to store your coffee in. So I introduced to you the Coffee Gator stainless steel container to keep your coffee fresh.

This thing has almost 2,000 reviews, Alan. That's awesome. 4.7 on the reviews. So this is $29, but it's, it's a little, it comes with a little scoop. You can measure out your coffee as you're making it.

$29. I better get a scoop. Yeah, you better. It's a pretty little trash can for your coffee beans. Yep. And it comes with like a little filter, you know, so you can, uh, you can, yep and it comes with like a little filter you

know so you can uh you can uh and and like a little date ring so it you know depending on whether or not you're storing like uh ground coffee or the whole beans you'll know like when when did you buy those when you put in there but uh it's trying it lets the co2 escape uh i guess there's some technology there going on that I don't know enough about coffee, but apparently that's a thing. Apparently CO2 is bad for your coffee, and shame on you for not already knowing that. That's right. It's harmful CO2. I didn't know about that.

There's some that's not harmful. There's some that's not harmful. Yeah, I mean, the good CO2 is okay, but the harmful stuff. That's right. Now, the real harmful part here is that you're putting decaf in this thing. That's just vulgar. Well, you know, like, I know, right? But I cut out the caffeine, so, like, what am I going to do?

I was like, well, I don't want to cut it. I still enjoy having some coffee every now and then, right? So, I don't want to cut it out entirely. But at the same time, I don't want the caffeine. So, yeah. What's a guy to do? I like it. It's pretty.

I'm going to let it go. Yep. Okay. Okay. So, now here's where I'm going off the rails. Because at this point, we... The coffee canister wasn going off the rails. Because at this point, we- When the coffee canister wasn't off the rails, now we're going off the rails. If you're paying attention.

Right. Okay. Got it. So we are about $2,000 into this so far. And it was like, well, dang. The goal was to spend three grand, right? And I'm like, man, I bought a coffee canister. What else have I got to buy?

So, super duper on my want list for the holiday season, I thought, you know what? All right, I'm going to put it on there. Now, you know that I love all things Apple. So, you shouldn't be surprised when you see the Apple Watch Series 4 44mm on there. Now, so obviously I picked the 44mm because, you know, larger wrist, you should get the larger size is, I guess, their thinking. So, plus, at least in past versions, the larger one also had larger battery capacity. And I picked, now that's funny, the link doesn't go to it, but the one I picked is GPS plus cellular. Oh, that one's 529.

Yep. So that takes me up to 529. So now I am $492 short of the goal. But here's the thing about this, though. You can buy a band and you'll be right up to that. I could. I could. Hey, man, don't knock it.

You know what, though? I have an Apple Watch, and it's the smartest thing that Apple has ever made. It is so amazing because if you ever thought about leaving the Apple ecosystem, you're like, but I love my watch. I can't. I guess I'm stuck. It's a good thing it's useful because that is one of the ugliest devices known to man. See, I really don't think it's that ugly. I mean, there are.

Is it attractive? It's a watch i don't think it's like there there are utilitarian watches that you don't really like think that i don't think of in terms of like you know if it's pretty or ugly or whatnot right and that's how i view the apple watch yes there are like you know the the well rolex is one but what's the uh not c master omega omega uh oh there's the one with the t you can't remember the name of it i don't know um but yeah i mean there are there are some watches that are just gorgeous right that are more about the appearance the in the aesthetic than they are the utility and when i look i view the apple. And when I look, I view the Apple

watches board mount utilitarian, but here's the great thing though. And this is why I'm picking the cellular version is that, um, if you cycle or run, right, then you can use this with your apps without having to have your phones nearby. Right. That's really nice. So what that means though, for me, for site, from a cycling point of view, I can take my watch and I can leave my Garmin, uh, compute bike computer. I don't need it anymore. And instead I can use Strava or cycle meter or the Apple, uh, you know, um, activity app just straight from the phone and i don't or from the watch and i don't even have to have my phone with me right so you know because you know you think about how much these stupid iphone uh tens are now right you're like really you're gonna you're gonna take a

twelve hundred dollar phone mountain biking you know would you take a twelve hundred dollar computer mountain biking right you want to fall off that thing with it in your pocket and smash it so yeah so i'm a fan and and they've got more complications on the watch face now so you can see a lot more things going on now on the series four so yeah so then i'm stuck with 492 dollars so 492 dollars, I could buy $492 of Bitcoin and pray that by the time Apple's next event comes out next month where they release the new iPads, that my Bitcoin purchase has gone up enough to allow me to buy a new iPad with that. I like that. But I doubt it's going to work out that way. Not going to happen, but that's a good idea.

Just being honest with myself and the way the trend has gone, I don't think it's going to happen. But my hope, my want would be, if I could, the 12.9-inch Pro. I was really thinking about that for like if you got the Pro and then like maybe a mic stand, like a floor-standing mic stand, but with an iPad holder on it. And then that way, if you're playing guitar, you could use, um, uh, there's a site that I like to use, uh, for, that has a lot of the music on it called, um, ultimate guitar. And they have a, uh, app as well. And, um, you could read the music right there, you know, within the app. But the reason why I want the 12.9 is because it would be the larger size screen right so it'd be easier to read while you're playing because you're it's going to be at a distance away from

you is what i'm getting at you know so that's why you want the large because really that's the only reason why i'd want the 12.9 otherwise i would probably just want the ip iPad mini in which case the iPad mini, my $492 more than covers me to buy that. And I've still got plenty of money left over for cheese powder. Well, you've already got an iPad mini. It's your iPhone X or 10, right? So it's basically the same thing.

Uh, yeah, but I mean the 10 isn't as physically big as the, as the, well, the plus size phones and now the Macs. Hey, I know what else you could spend your $492 on. Elasticsearch and Azure for like a month. That'll get you there.

Yeah. Well, I mean, if nobody's using my app, it'll last me a long time. Or if everybody uses my app, then it'll last me an hour. Right, exactly. Cool. or if everybody uses my app then it'll last me an hour right exactly cool hey you know azure search is it's the only one that's got a free tier out of any of the cloud providers any of the search engines so that's really sweet to go really how much how much can you do for free uh i think it's like 10 000 documents uh three indexes i don't know if it's like per index i don't i'm not real clear on exactly what the uh the distinctions are but it's pretty healthy like all qit runs

under the free plan now that's why that's what the joke was about that's awesome cool yeah yeah you don't want to do the standard i think is the one i was on which is like 200 bucks a month yeah don't do that it wasn't cheap so is that yours yep so yeah i'm gonna finish it up with spending uh 492 in bitcoin with the prayer that i can turn it around in a month to buy an ipad and um because the rumor is that the next ipads are going to be uh announced here within the month excellent all right so i guess well by within our month by the time anyone's listening this may have already been released i don't know all right so let's kick them off here some of mine are a little bit of repeats of what outlaw had a little bit oh wait

do we want to go over um oh oh we need a break don't we yeah we do need a break, don't we? Yeah. We do need a break. Yes, let's do the break. Oh, yeah, I guess the break. Now we're doing the break. Yes. So now I think we're going to take a break. This is what happens when the three of us aren't together for a while. We're out of sync, man. This past month has been hectic and insane.

So, all right. Yeah. So as we always do, we beg for reviews because we truly do appreciate them. Many of you have asked, Hey, well, how do we give back? Right? Like if you want to give back, just head up to codingblocks.net slash review, choose one of those two places and, you know, write us some kind words. You know, um, we get tons of stuff all the time saying that we've helped people change their lives or change their careers. And it feels awesome to do that. It really does make it a joy to come back and do this more. So if that's your thing, go up there, leave us a review, and we'll greatly appreciate it.

Yeah. And in that same vein, we would greatly appreciate it if you would help spread the word by sharing us with a friend. Most definitely. That would go a the word by sharing us with a friend. Most definitely. That would go a long way to making us happy. They say that's the number one way that podcasts grow. Yeah. Word of mouth. Yep.

Yep. I don't doubt it. So help us. We want to grow. Yes. All right. And so with that, let's head into my favorite portion of the show.

Survey says, all right. So it's been a few episodes. It's been a minute, but back in, I believe episode 89, we asked what's your preferred password manager. And your choices are one password, last pass, key pass plus Dropbox, robo form, key chain, or I just use the same three passwords everywhere or whatever is built into the browser. Okay. Uh, any, many,

many, many Joe goes first. Oh man. Uh, I really have a hard time with this one, but I think that it's going to be, uh, last pass 30%. Hmm. LastPass 30%

So I too am going to go with LastPass and I'm going to say 1% because we're playing by Price is Right rules and the only reason I'm only choosing this one because we've recommended it in the past, and I'm hoping that some people have taken that advice.

But otherwise, I really don't know. I mean, there's some good choices on there, and there's some really bad choices on there. All right. I like your strategy. And survey says Alan won. Yeah, baby. Yeah, that was a smart strategy on your point. Last pass was the winner with almost 26% of the vote.

Nice. 26%, man. All right. What was next? Surprisingly. Three same passwords. Key pass plus Dropbox. Okay.

Wow. Okay. Wow. Okay. I can see that. Really? Because I thought that that would be more of an inconvenience. I still do that. I use it for my work stuff. Yeah, same here.

Why wouldn't you just use LastPass for your work stuff? I don't want to mix my personal with my work. Oh, come on, man. This isn't like peanut butter and chocolate. It's okay. I don't know. I just don't like it. That makes no sense. I know. It doesn't. Yeah. just don't like it. That makes no sense. I know.

It doesn't. I don't like it. Hey, but you do it too, right? Yep. Same reason. I like it. Okay. Well, what was third? One password? You're really not going to like the third one. Oh, come on.

Not the same three passwords. I just use the same three passwords everywhere. So what? Are we talking 20%? Yeah, you pretty much nailed it. People, stop it. Stop it now. LastPass is really convenient, and it works on your phone. So most apps you pop open,

it'll actually pop up and say, oh, hey, just fingerprint authenticate, and it'll pop in those passwords for you so you don't have to type them. It's actually easier than remembering your passwords. Yeah, and seriously, if you don't know why using the same three passwords is bad, hackers will get into a system somewhere and then they'll try that password on every other system out there. So it's not necessarily that they'll crack your password. You might have the best password on the planet, right?

Monkey one, two, three. Yeah, that's obviously a really good one. But if somehow somebody breaches the system and your password is stored in plain text somewhere, which isn't out of the question, the hackers have access to all that stuff. They're going to take that and use it everywhere. Stop using the same password. Oh, by the way. Well,

Hmm. I guess you're playing text part. Cause what I, where I thought you were going with that was the rainbow table. So if they have computed rainbow tables, the rainbow tables will be like, they've already hashed it and whatever algorithm of choice. And so if your password was monkey one, two, three, then they could see what monkey one,

two, three looks like hashed in different ways. And now all they got to do is look for that same pattern in whatever database they get. And now they know, Oh, the password is just one monkey. Everybody that has it. Yeah. So you can do that too too, which, by the way, I don't think we've ever done an episode on doing things properly with this. Salt and hash your passwords. If you're storing anything of customer. Yeah, if you're doing the development. Salt and hash it and do it properly, and at least you know what to look up now to do it properly.

But please do not use the same passwords anywhere if possible. Yeah. And with iOS 12, they've made the integration even better for the password management because now you can use something like a LastPass for your password management. And if you go into like a website in Safari or any app that asks you for logon credentials, the keyboard pops up. But above the keyboard, you know, there's like a series of buttons that are usually like suggestions for like autofill kind of suggestions, where it'll say passwords. And you can click the passwords button and then it'll take you over to whatever your preferred

password manager is, which, you know, obviously I'm biased to LastPass. So it'll take me over to LastPass. And because it's Face ID, as soon as it just pops up, it's like, oh, authenticate, and you're in. Very nice. And you didn't even have to touch or do anything. It's just boom, there. And it's already pre-filtered your saved passwords to wherever the app or site is. Very nice. Hey, to Joe's point, using LastPass is so easy. And even the free version is awesome, right? You can use the free version in the browser on your phone or on your computer or whatever. We've talked about this in the past. I want to tangent too much here. But you've always been an Apple fan of their phones because they're sort of like a security

first type company, right? That's the reason why I stick with them so much. Yeah. And I get that, right? Because I mean, on Android, I mean, even the HTC phones a year or two ago, like it was found that they were storing the fingerprint signatures in the open. And it was like, really, you're going to screw up that much. I don't know if you guys saw anything about the Pixel 3 that just came out from Google. They have a dedicated chip, security chip that was made specifically for the phone to secure things on it, which I think is awesome that companies are starting to take this more seriously, right? I mean, that's what, that's, iPhone's had that for a while now too. It's called the secure enclave. It's awesome. I mean, yeah,

I mean, that's where like, I mean, it's not that I don't like what's going on in the Android world, but if anybody were to make me switch, it would be a Google. It wouldn't be the other ones because of like the HTC examples that you get, you know?

Um, so yeah, I would definitely go Google before i would go one of those other ones but historically and i mean just unbiased just looking at the raw numbers of it right there have been more vulnerabilities from an android point of view than there are from an ios point of view that's not to say that iOS doesn't have its vulnerabilities. Part of that could be the fact that the Android ecosystem is so much larger that there's just more to go attack.

But then it's also a more fragmented system, so it might be easier to go attack older versions, but you know, with, with iOS, I've just found it to be like easier to, uh, you know, the adoption rate of going up to the next iOS. It's like so painless now in iOS 12, it'll, it can automatically install your, uh, OS updates for you. You can actually set the setting and be like, yeah, if there's an iOS update, just install it. Don't even wait for me. Just do it. Very nice.

Hey, just real quick, I wanted to throw out there too. If you are looking at username and password situation, you might even want to look at third parties. If you're working with some sort of framework, and chances are today you are, there's probably already something built in that you can just use. Because even trying to pick which algorithms to use

and stuff, it gets really weird. and you start thinking about password resets and emails and stuff like if you could just find the library that takes care of all that it's so easy to mess up so the the less of that stuff you hand code and hand roll the better by far yeah yeah definitely find something that has some good reviews on it right something that's trusted tried and true. And it's probably something built into your framework. There's like a third party, like what's the, I forget the one that a lot of JavaScript apps are using now. Dang it.

But there's ways to do that. So don't roll your own if you can help it. Just don't. Just don't. Just to finish up my previous thought, though, I will say that I do wish that one thing that Apple would take away from Google is I love the fact that years ago, Google broke apart the operating system updates away from the individual apps within the operating system to where your phone app could update independently of a major operating system, right? Right. Oh, my God. I wish iOS would do that. Yeah. Sandbox would be better.

Which you know they're doing. They've got those things. Sandbox. They must. I mean, I figure their only reason is that they just don't want to... They want it to be like, well, these features are going to all roll out together. And it's like, man, you've got to come up with a better way, man. Because the way Android releases their updates is so much better.

It's so much nicer. It is good, yeah. So yeah so yeah maybe once the kids are out of the house and maybe i'll be less worried about security or whatever and then i'll be like okay but until then all right so for this episode's survey we ask who's your favorite virtual assistant? Is it Alexa, the OG of assistants? Or Google Assistant, because accuracy matters? Or Siri, who needs accuracy with looks this good? Or Cortana. Hipsterific. I only like things that no one else likes. That's excellent. You think there's any bias showing through there?

Maybe a touch. No, come on. Not a lot. No. All right. I just told you how much I love all things Apple. Why would there be any bias? Yeah. It can't be. All right. I just told you how much I love all things Apple. Why would I ever be any biased? Yeah.

Can't be. All right. Did you say which one's your favorite or which one's your least hated? Yeah, that's probably not a terrible approach either, but we should say favorite. We should say favorite. Yeah, keep positive. All right. So here, starting off on mine. So Outlaw talked about monitors, and I, too, I still have my LG,

which, ironically, I bought the consumer version. Yeah. And mine's been going strong for four years now, a long time. Dang it. Yeah, I've had no problems with it, and it's amazing. I still use it today. As a matter of fact, I have an Apple Thunderbolt 27-inch that went out recently, and I'm still using my 34 lg so

it's like well at least the smaller i'll take that 27 off your hands and i'll figure it out well i'm about to take it apart no no no just bring it over here right so the first one that i've got here is and it's pasting way too far across this whole thing is the l LG 43 inch UHD. So it's a 4k. And what I like about this thing is it's IPS, super fast response time on it. And it's 4k. And here's what I found. I love my ultra wide,

but I would really like, so one of the things that I was excited about with LG, when I first bought it was you could split screen the thing. The problem is split screen that with a computer and something else. And all your computers are like, what's this weird wonky resolution, right? And so it's kind of a pain if you split screen it,

because now you have to go into your graphic settings and choose some really odd resolution. And it's kind of annoying. So I never use that feature. If you had a 4K and you want to do that, they're all 1080p. You have four quadrants of 1080p, which everything works well with. I can top that even better. Oh, yeah?

Because that split screen functionality for that widescreen, LG widescreen, required the LG software to do it. And if you would think that on the- If you wanted to share the mouse and the keyboard. Okay. But if you wanted to, you think about a ultra-wide monitor like that, and you really want it in thirds, right? So you want a left third, a center third, and a right third, and especially within the same device, right? So you want a left third, a center third and right third. And especially like within the same device, right? So like you're coding and you want, you just want things to be thirded up like that. Right. But you can't, you'd have to like manually do that. There's no keystroke.

That's going to be like, Oh yeah, this is the center third, middle third or whatever. But because this one is the 16 by nine aspect ratio, you can, because it's quads line up, it's, it's corners line up to, you know, the, that quad,

you could use the window keys to just be like window left down or window left up or window left, right. To get into like any one of the corners to the corner. So now from a keystroke pattern, you can just be like, boom, you're in that corner.

So you're talking about split screening from the point of multiple inputs into it. And I'm talking about split screening it from the same point, from the point of the same computer. I just want, I, I want all the real estate taken up and I don't want to see like what's behind it. I like all my windows, like butted up next to one another, you know? Yeah. It's don't get me wrong. I love the 34, but I think that, that a bigger 4k, I will say like, there's a lot of 28 inch 4k monitors on the market.

That's ridiculous because what you're going to be doing is setting your zoom factor on windows just so you can even see the thing. And, and that to me is pointless. Like the only reason why, I mean, this one was one of the ones that I looked at. The only reason why I didn't pick it is because it wasn't curved.

I was like, man, at that size, I think it really needs to be curved. Hey, so check this out. This particular monitor has an eight millisecond response time, which the reason why monitors are typically a big deal for using with a computer is because you need that fast response time, especially on the greater grays and all that, if you're going to do gaming or anything else. Right. So to your question earlier, Joe, I thought it was awesome that you asked this. Well, what is it a TV or monitor or whatever? So I've also looked at potentially buying a TV to use as a monitor because ultimately they typically have more features, HDR being one of them, right? Like if you're into gaming and you want just the prettiest stuff out right now, like HDR adds more colors and depth and all that. So this one, I didn't include it in the price because this is sort of an alternative right here,

but you can get the LG. Now the best ones on the market are OLEDs, but those are just insanely priced. Like I couldn't in goodwill go after something like that. This one's $697. And this is a 55-inch IPS. So you're going to be sitting in front of it and you'll still be able to see your colors aren't going to shift and all that because it's got the right type panel on it. And the latency on this one is only 12.8 milliseconds. And this comes with HDR. You can use it with, it's got the true four to four by four by four, um, pull down. So it'll work well with a computer and all that. So this is an excellent option. If you want something a

little bit bigger, that's going to have some decent speakers built in, not great, but it also has the features of a TV, right? So, yeah, but 55 though 55 though man that's not sitting on your desk like you're gonna have that kind of you're gonna want some distance between you and that thing at least five inches and that's why you want this is so awkward now that's why you want like the curved though i i agree the curve would work out well for especially for something that large. You'd probably want that. I couldn't find one curved like what I wanted, so I thought, well, maybe if I stayed within that 28-inch range, right? And I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this company name right, but BenQ? Yeah, BenQ.

Yep. Let me send you this link real quick. I have a projector from them, actually. Check out. I'm going to set this link over here. Look to the right of your very first one. Got it. This thing has almost 1,600 reviews, man.

But it's a 28-inch 4K. 28 4K. Yeah. Just doesn't do it for me. One millisecond response time. That's a gaming response time is what it is. Yeah, man. It is wicked. So I was like, well, maybe if I don't go really big, I just go really awesome to make up for it.

So, yeah. But the irony there, too, is that's a gaming monitor. But a 4K, you're typically not going to try and push 4K pixels when you're gaming because it's going to drop your frames. Well, I mean, if you can you would with his 1080 ti you'd probably be able that's why you got the titan after all yeah yeah so yeah i mean the the monitors are a frustrating thing really but you mentioned like having the features on the tv like the hdr and things like that like i don't want to turn that crap off so typically you would but like if if you have an Xbox One X that can actually do HDR gaming. Sure. I mean, dude.

Turn it off. Do you want it to look good? No. Turn it on. No, you turn that on. I can't. That soap opera effect. That's different.

With the TVs. Yeah. So HDR means more colors and more depth. That's all that is. I know. But it adds to it it's adds to the soap opera effect. No, no, no. The soap opera effect is the frame interpolation where it tries to smooth everything out. HDR is nothing more than more color. It's literally just more detail. That's all it is. Well, maybe I turned them both off and I didn't need to, because I always turn that crap off.

Turn HDR back on. I don't need the smoothing. I don't need to because I always turn that crap off. Turn HDR back on. I don't need the smoothing. I don't need that. No, the smoothing is only – yeah, that's weird. It's so frustrating too because depending on brand, it varies by name. So you're like, oh, what do you call it? Yeah, no, totally. All right, so check this out.

The next thing I have up – so I think last year I even talked about a fatigue mat that you stand on. So I know Joe and I both have standing desks, right? Do you have a pad that you stand on, Joe? Yep. Okay. I don't know about you, but mine gets uncomfortable because you're not used to standing on a flat floor all the time. And if you do, your feet start hurting, right? I wear shoes.

Huh? I wear shoes. I do too, but I end up moving around a lot just because my feet get uncomfortable, right? Dude, I'd never even knew this thing existed. They have this non-fatigue mat that has like these contours built into it so that you have a more natural standing position as if you were walking. And so if you shift around all your weights, not right on the top of your arches all the time, you're actually shifting the weight to the front of your feet and your heels and all that kind of stuff. So dude,

a thousand 366 reviews, a 4.8 out of five stars. Now it's not cheap. It's 99 bucks. But if you're actually going to be standing at your desk all the time, it'd be nice not to be uncomfortable. So I thought this was really cool. And it's just, I don't know,

it's genius to me. I think like, this is where like the negative Nancy in me comes out, you know, the Debbie Downer. Cause I'm like, great. Now I can trip myself while I'm standing at my desk. It will improve your coordination because now you'll have to dodge things. I'll catch myself. That's right. So, So that one was really cool. And that's sort of going back to the health thing. Wow. It's even like height specific.

It's awesome. Depending on which one you get. Right? It's amazing. If you're 5'4 or shorter, you have to get this other version of it. It's beautiful, man. That's the kind of stuff that I wish that I thought about. Because I'll stand there and think, man, my feet hurt.

And then I'll be dancing around, right. And it's just one of those things that it seems so simple, but yet obviously effective. So going along the same, the health line of things is an under desk treadmill. And so what made me think about this was our buddy, Ryan, Ryan monster. We've mentioned a couple of times, He actually got one of these things and he uses it all the time. Like we'll be on a call and you'll see the dude like walking, you know, his head bobbing while he's talking to you or whatever. And this, this particular one, now here's the thing. None of them are cheap, right? This thing's $700. But I'll say this, typically you'll pay $700 for a treadmill that just sat in the middle of the room and you won't use,

right? No, come on. That's not true. It's a coat rack. It makes for a really good coat rack, right? This one would sort of be in your way,

right? So you're going to get on it and use it. That's, that's at least my thought here. But now how does this work with the other thing though? Which other thing? The standing thing, the anti fatigue mat-fatigue mat.

So my fatigue mat, I move all the time. Like, I'll move it out of the way when I'm sitting down, and then I flip it down when I stand up. So, you know, same type thing. You kick it out of the way when you're not using it. So this one's got really good reviews, which is not common for an under-desk treadmill. It's 4.6 out of 5 stars. It's got 91 reviews, and that's pretty good. Now, it's a 4.6 out of five stars. It's got 91 reviews and that's pretty good. So now I can really trip myself exactly while I'm standing at my desk.

Yeah. And part of this is just coming from, I'm tired of being fat. So, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, it's constantly on my mind that I need to start doing more exercise. I really want to get a standing desk.

Dude, they're, they are awesome. I will say. All right. So I have some power problems, so I haven't fixed mine and plug mine back in yet. But man, I've really been missing it. I feel so much more tired during the day when I'm sitting. The sitting, sitting stinks. And I don't know about you guys, but my posture just gets worse and worse as the day drags on. I'm like leaned over more towards the monitor or whatever. So you know how they say that's the smoking of the new gen of the next generation. And it totally is. So the next thing I have up, and this is interesting. I've got a set of these. I don't

have this particular set. This one looks really good, but, um, workout bands, exercise bands. So I used to love working out all the time. And one of the things is I have three kids, I have a three-year-old and I have two nine-year-olds. And so it's hard to actually go work out because I can't do anything with my three-year-old, right? Like they won't let you turn them loose in the gym, which would be really fun and interesting to watch, but they won't let it happen. And so you could do it. Yeah, maybe for a minute. They won't let you do.

Right. Come on, man. You can't let the man keep you down. So these things, I don't know if you've ever used exercise bands, but they're awesome. Especially if like one of the things about going to the gym is if you're trying to do any heavy lifting,

you typically have to have somebody spotting you, right? Well, when you're doing that, you also run the risk of injury. One of the nice things about exercise bands are you can get as good a workout typically using these things with just the resistance. And your chance of injury is much lower because you're not slinging around a lot of, you know, just a ton of weight. Until that band breaks and pops you in the eye.

I'm glad you said that because these are anti-snap exercise. Some safety goggles come with it. Yeah, man. So, I don't know. These are pretty exciting. Why am I so negative about all of yours? That's fine. I'm going to trip. I'm going to lose an eye.

Yeah, that's fine. I'm trying to hurt people. Bummer, man. Come on. The cool part about these bands, too, is these, you can actually clip multiple bands onto one set of handles to up the resistance. So if you feel like you can do more curling or whatever, you can do this. And I think this is 140 some odd pounds. 142.

142 pounds. And it goes all the way up to 400 pounds, by the way. So you could get one that. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not just 400 pounds it's 404 pounds not found 404 pounds wait no mine came up when i clicked it you're you're not getting the joke here alan oh very nice http status record there we go 404 not found 404 pounds not found so yeah and i mean the 404 pound set is 120 bucks i mean found. So, yeah. And I mean, the 404-pound set is $120.

I mean, dude, like seriously, you can get a great workout with it. And when I use mine, I actually do if I use them more. All right. So, all right. So, now moving into I think I'm done with the health stuff at least for a minute. So, this next one I'm going to recommend. And there's some caveats to it. So, next one I'm going to recommend and, and there's some caveats to it.

I see. You're like already over $1,500. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I spent some money fast. Yeah, you did. Yeah,

you did. Well, two of them were just in the treadmill and in the monitor that took you up to like, that's 1400 bucks right there. Okay. Yeah. So,

all right. So this next one is a webcam. And so I work remotely and and i and we do this podcast and we like to record video here's the thing i i tend to unfortunately i think i'm a little bit like outlaw here i don't know about you joe but like when i go looking for something i live in review world for the next 12 days. Right. Like it's so frustrating. It is annoying because I'll find something that's good enough.

And I'm like, but there might be something that's a little bit better. This one might be like, this one might be like 98% good for me. Right. But there might be one out there that's 98.2. Exactly. Not 99,

98.2. I got to find that one. And then after I do find it, like, I think I can do better. It might be something better. I can do better. Dude, that.2. I got to find that one. And then after I do find it, like, I think I can do better. There might be something better. I can do better. Dude, that's me.

So trust me when I tell you. I have reviewed and read. I have reviewed. I've read so many things about these. This particular webcam, what does it for me, it's the Logitech C930E webcam. It's just a 1080p. I say just 1080p because 4k is all the rage nowadays. The reason why this one is so good to me is because this one does the video encoding at the hardware itself. So your processor on your computer is not having to encode that video as it's coming across. That may not sound like a big thing, but if you do a lot of stuff and I have visual studio open 12 times on my computer with a hundred Chrome tabs and whatever

else, it's nice to know that that thing is not contending for my CPU when I'm doing my video calls. Right. And the, okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Well, the quality is also excellent, right? Like that's the other thing, right? Like it's even got a nice little, uh, software piece of control panel that you can download. I can set auto focus off. I can say, just focus on this one spot. So it's not constantly zooming in and out as I move around and wave my hands and stuff. I can set the lighting to a thing. I can set my zooms. I can set my panning. So it's like, I have all this control over this piece of software and it works on Mac and windows and, and it does the encoding at the hardware. And you prefer this over the built-in camera that you have? Cause I know you have a built-in camera on your. So on the

Thunderbolt I did, and I was using that. And then the thing was, it was one of those things like, I don't know, there are times like, you know, I'll have kids over doing something or whatever. And my wife's like, get them off the camera. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm not going to rearrange my monitor to do that. And it is nice to be able to plug that thing up and use it whenever I want. So,. So the other thing too, is I tried to use the Thunderbolt camera on, on my windows machine and it just did terrible. And so it was like,

man, you know what? This thing's like $67. I'll just get it. And it works great. So question number two is, can you use it without installing the Logitech driver? You can,

you can, it works totally fine. But with the Logitech software? You can. You can. It works totally fine. But with the Logitech software itself, you have a ton of control over it, like the brightness, the warmth. What is it? The 4700, 4800K on the warmth to get the picture right. It's just being able to fine tune the stuff really. Um, the, I will say there are other cameras out there that will do 4k, but everything I saw on them was this thing's going to eat up CPU because it's trying to encode all that. And 4k is a lot of data coming across the pipe, right?

And, and it looks pretty, but I don't really have a need for it. So $67. Highly, highly recommend this one. All right. We all know my love affair for keyboards. Actually, all things hardware, pretty much. And so our buddy Will, we had sit on one of our episodes, right? And we need to get him back. Yes. But so I still have my Sculpt, my Scul my sculpt ergonomic microsoft keyboard been using it for

years i love it joe you use the same thing right yep love it right oh yeah there's only one there's there's only two keyboards that might ever pull me away from that and one of them is this one right here it's the kinesis advantage 2 and it is the weirdest looking thing on the planet. It's a keyboard with like a base on it, but the keys go concave into the thing, right? Like they actually dip down into it. And so the way your hands sit on this, like everything, you don't really even have to move your hands like you do on a regular keyboard. Everything's within reach of your fingers right where they are. I've known two people who've who've

owned this thing and both of them just say they love it like they swear by it they have no wrist pain they have nothing like that there is a massive learning curve for using this because your thumbs are no longer dummy spacebar hitters they have functions now right like there's multiple keys right there at your thumbs that allow you to use those for more. Um, this is a big ticket item. It's $319, but I kind of compare it to like, if you're a carpenter, you're going to go buy some nice tools, right? We sit in front of a computer all day. I'm going to spend a little bit of money on my tools. I've had my sculpt ergonomic for at least four years now it works great i have no reason to believe that thing wouldn't as well so and and these things too if you're into mechanical

keyboards i believe these come with the cherry mx yeah you can get the one that you linked to was or at least the way it opened up for me was the brown but you can get red oh on it as well yeah you don't want the loud ones you want the quiet clickety ones but they are mechanical keyboards so it's super nice but yeah man this is also a windows or a mac thing so if this is something that you're interested in and you have any of that rsi or as jo knows, if you have carpal tunnel, it's a big deal and it's, it's painful. So, you know,

switching to something like this can, can change your coding life for the better. Oh man. I just saw where the energy was unnatural. Yeah, man. Isn't it? And that's your right thumb.

You hit with your thumb. Same with delete. Yeah. Everybody I've heard says that there is a major learning curve. I think Will even said it took him a couple weeks. And it's right next to the space bar, the right thumb space. Like your space bar is only going to be your right thumb now. But I will say, as the fact that we use these things all day long,

get something that's comfortable and is going to work for you. So that was one that I like. Now, on to some of my true loves. I got to say, I'll stick with my DOS keyboard. Thank you. I may actually be buying one of these things soon. All right. So we know I love headphones.

So another one of my buddies, Nick, has – so let me set the stage for you. We, again, we get on calls all the time, right? And if we all know better than most that audio is, is surprisingly hard on computers. I don't know why it's such a pain in the butt to get a headset working properly, but they almost never do. So this guy had initially just used the, the inboard mic and it sounded terrible, right? Then he switched to a Logitech gaming mic. And every time he would talk, he would blow your eardrums out because everybody's gain would be at one level and his was 10 times that, right? And we all know what we're talking about because every time he'd get on there,, we'd be yanking our headphones out and all that kind of stuff.

He picked up this SteelSeries Arctis 7, and this thing is so cool. It's $150, $149, but these things are amazing. He let me try them out. So first off, they're super comfortable. They have this intermediate headband that goes over the top of your head. That's very, very comfortable. You don't even really feel it there. It's wireless, which is nice.

It's a gaming set of headphones. So it's actually made for having surround sound when you're doing PC. And if you're doing PC gaming, you can also, when you're gaming, you can turn the chat volume up and turn the game volume down using their software, which is really nice. If you ever have people that are using crappy microphones or something, it's kind of hard to hear them. You can turn them up, turn down your game volume. So really nice, right? And then on top of it, you can use it with your PlayStation four. And I think you can use it with anything else you can just plug into directly, but it's not made for those. The other super cool thing about this is the microphone is a boom mic that you can pull out and push it back in. So when you're not using it,

it just disappears, right? When you want to use it, you pull this thing out, it activates it, and it sounds so good. Like, and even when, so I tested this out with some music and they sound phenomenal. Like there are great sounding set of headphones. So 150 bucks, like usually the headphones I recommend to people that are saying, I want some just high end audio. I usually go for the audio tech net audio technica and fifties. These are pretty good. And they give you a lot of functionality that you get on top of it for about the same price. So hard not to recommend.

And as a matter of fact, Mad Viking God, Aaron, Aaron Clausen, who was on one of our Docker community talks, he also got these and he loves them. So, you know, not just coming from me, you can reach out to Aaron on our Slack channel and he'll tell you all about them too. And this is with its own like proprietary wireless connectivity. This isn't Bluetooth. Correct. This is using 2.4 gigahertz,

I think band or something like that. Was it, was that point being like, you're not going to use this with your phone too. No, you're probably not going to use this for your phone. I think this was using, yeah,

2.4 gigahertz connection. So I don't it's bluetooth i'm pretty sure it's not yeah it's not they do have a set that is bluetooth but you're going to spend double the price so uh all right so the next one i have up go ahead i heard. Oh, no. I made a noise by accident. But yeah, I mean, they look cool. It's basically like that. What do you call it? It's basically, I think of it as like a suspension bridge because I've got a set of headphones like that.

They're AKGs. They're comfortable, right? That you were using before. And it's like there's one band that sits on your head, but it's kind of like acting as a spring to the other one that's actually doing the weightlifting of the headphones. They kind of disappear like that. It's so comfortable. Except on mine, that bridge is taller than this.

This one looks to be much narrower, but that's maybe just the way they angled it in the promotion shots or something. I don't know. All right. So my next up, this is a headphone. Actually, Joe, I think I recommended to you years and years ago. Oh, whoa. You're getting double headphones? Yeah.

All right. So the one was for gaming and for talking, right? This one's more for, hey, you want a cheap set that you want to take to the office because things have a tendency to grow legs in your office. And you don't want to lose anything like that. Right. These are the Monoprice 8323, except these are updated. So the version that Joe has and that I actually have is a wired version. Right.

This version comes Bluetooth and it has a built in microphone. And here's the thing. They sound great. Like straight up sound amazing. So, they're almost like a baby brother to the Audio Technicas. Not as good a build quality. I mean, you're talking about $150 compared to $34. But, dude, these things sound amazing.

And they're Bluetooth for $34. And they must have gone up. They've gone up in price only because of the Bluetooth. No, wait. No, mine says. Oh, they're $37.76. They were $33 something last night. So that's awesome, right?

That's what they do up here. So get them while you can. Get them while you can. That is the takeaway. But yeah, I mean, these things are amazing, at least the sound quality on them. I cannot speak to the microphone quality because I haven't tried it. But I mean, dude, these,

they're a good set. Well, when it comes to anyone reviewing headphones, I mean like Alan is definitely the guy for that. I might've done a few too many. What were you going to say, Joe? Oh,

I still use mine. They're really nice. Yeah. For the price. I don't think you can beat them. Really is really what it boils down to. Yeah. I want to,

I want to find a stupid set of headphones, USB, that works with the USB switch. It seems like every pair I have just doesn't work. So I'm still back to plugging that one, plugging between this computer and that computer. That's one of the few things I have to mess with. Yeah, that's annoying. All right. So that was, what was the Audio-Technica that you were comparing it to? The M50s. So Audio-Technica M50X is basically the new one out. Because the one that, for me, that came out where it said similar items was the M20X. So you're

paying a difference of, you know, that one was $50 for that pair, but both have like really good reviews. I don't, did you mention this, this MonoPrize pair that you have, it for that pair, but both have like really good reviews. I don't, did you mention this, this mono price pair that you have? It has over 2100 reviews. Yeah, it's got a lot, but the, here's the thing.

The thing that's annoying about that page is it's mixed. So if you look, it's one of these Amazon pages where they have like 20 different products on the page. So the reviews aren't just for that one set of headphones. It's kind of annoying. Um, Oh yeah,

you're right. Yeah, I did. I did notice that because like the specific ones that you had here, I don't know if you said this part, aren't just for that one set of headphones it's kind of annoying um oh yeah you're right yeah i did i did notice that because like the specific ones that you had here i don't know if you said this part or the hi-fi dj style yeah but if you were to go to the uh active noise canceling champagne it's a totally different looking it's a completely different set of headphones yeah now here's what i'll tell you i i have listened to people when the market does that. It's, it is annoying on marketplace does that. So I will say this, like the audio technical M twenties, I've listened to those. I've listened to the M thirties and the M forties. I honestly, the M forties are probably the closest to the 83 23 is the M fifties. Like

the 83 23 is do really well. They hit well beyond their price point. So they're better sounding than M twenties, uh, in my opinion. So, um, you know, now that brings up the sister accessory here. So the only, the only complaint typically about those headphones is the comfort. So if you're going to wear them for a super long time, they're not super comfortable. You know, you only spent 34 bucks or now 37 on them. Get you some nice velour ear pads for them. So I've got here ear pads there. They have velour faux leather and memory foam in them. And, and everybody loves these things. And I've actually worn ear pads like these before and they're just amazing. Like they just, they sort of melt into your head.

Coincidentally, I just had this exact same link already open. Oh really? Yeah. When you were clicking through from the other one. Yeah. I was just looking at other stuff and I'm like, Oh yeah. Cause this is the brainwaves again.

It's from the same company that I mentioned for the, uh, the trust. Yep. And here's the thing. If you buy these, these are 27 bucks. And typically,

I mean, if you get a set of these, they're going to last you for five, six, seven years, right? So if you're going to get the cheaper set of headphones with the Bluetooth and the microphone, make them comfortable, right? If you're going to wear them a lot, put something nice on them. You're not going to put cheap wheels on or cheap tires on your Beamer. You prefer the Velour though? If they're done right.

So Beyerdynamic typically puts Velour pads on theirs. man. It is so good. You would think they get hot. They actually stay cooler than typically leather or, or, or the, the fake leather. So yeah, man, the velour ones and with the memory foam, they just sort of like gel into your head. They're so good. So've always i've always not preferred those i've always preferred the leather or faux leather it depends on what's good to you like the leather can get hot i know with my m50s they could get a little bit warm which was a little annoying yeah because then you have like these you know wet rings of sweat that have just like sat there you're like great this is comfortable right and you can't like just wipe it down and you know said now it's kind of like but those shouldn't be too bad those shouldn't be too bad now ironically i also too had the headphone anchor thing now i think i didn't go with the brainwaves i don't remember why but this is the original anchor in which i think you have this yes okay this is the one i was referring to. So you were saying that there was a – oh, so the thing isn't as solid as the metal ones.

No, because basically the material – okay, so the one that he has here is made by Elevation Labs. It's called the Anchor, the original underdesk headphone stand mount. It's $ bucks on amazon yep but it's made from it's not even like a strong plastic it's more rubbery feeling so you can literally like like just it's attached to your desk but you can you can easily just like poke at it and push it and move it around and everything so if you put it it works out okay when you have a pair of headphones on each side. But as soon as you take one set off to listen to it, now it'll tilt down because – and especially if that other one that's sitting there is a heavy set, right?

Then it would get annoying and it would fall off. And that's why I went away from this. I ripped it off and went with the brainwaves trust. Okay. So I'll leave the link there and we'll put something like, no, use mics, use mics instead.

I've actually got like brainwaves. They make some really cool stuff. I mean, you, you found the ear pads. I didn't even know they made that, but they've got several other versions of, um,

headphone mounts too, that are really cool that, um, I've tried over the years and it's just some really neat stuff. They make quality product. Yes. Yeah, definitely. All right.

So going along the same type thing. So that's organization, right? Like one of the things that you come to realize when you work from home or remotely or even at office, like it's so easy for stuff to just pile up on your desk, right? I know, Joe, you complain about sometimes sometimes you go crazy when stuff starts getting everywhere. I'm the same way. There's just a breaking point where I'm like, I can't take it anymore, right? So this next one is this thing that I found, and I've actually been meaning to buy it.

It's a charging station for multiple devices. So I don't know about you guys, but usually there's like a stack of stuff laying on a counter with 20 cords hanging out doing stuff, right? And it bugs me. I can't stand it. iPads, tablets, phones, everything. So this is a nice little organized, like stacked thing to where you can put your devices on there. It comes with, I think, six, six USB, like really short USB cables already with it. It's $32 and it's a nice place to organize and charge your stuff, you know, maybe at night or whenever you're done. So you don't just have a whole nest of stuff laying around. And it's even got like a little mount for your, for your Apple watch. So, or any kind of watch you want to put up there. Um, the other thing that I liked about this one

is nowadays, if you, if you pay any attention to the charging, like everything's got different charging requirements, like some phones require like one amp, some require two, whatever. This thing has a smart charging port on it. That's a super fast one, the QC three charging port. So if you have an Android devices that, that can charge like all the way in like 30 minutes or something, it's got that on it. And then it's also got, so all the rest of the ports are 2.4 amps. So it's good enough to charge an iPad and that kind of stuff.

So really nice little device. I don't know if you've heard, but our friend Joe has an 850-watt car spy to charge his. To charge his phone. He can charge up to 100% in like three seconds. He doesn't need this thing. Now, just to clarify, it does come with the six USB cables, but it's three pairs. Right.

You get two USB-C, two micro USB, and two lightning. Yeah. Yeah, lightning. But here's the cool part is if you go to that page and you scroll down they give you 50 off other cables so if you need to buy more of a particular type you can get like uh they've got nine inch cables and you can choose whether you need lightning or mini usb or whatever so dirt cheap and and it'll help you to keep everything nice and tidy. For the long...

Scroll down. It says special offers. I found the link for the long lightning cables. I'm like, well, I want the short lightning cables if I'm going to buy this thing, but I found it. It was there at the top. And man, I got to tell you, dude, that's seven bucks for a four-pack of lightning cables that's cheap

right but you get them for 50 off if you buy it with this product so it's three dollars and 49 cents right but i mean seven bucks to begin with is already a decent price for a lightning cable and now you're gonna pay like 350 for it yeah yeah so this one's kind of exciting because i really do like to declutter some of my stuff. Right. So that's a nice. There's kind of two sides to it. Like I use these little kind of nub things that you can kind of put cables in and it's like a weight.

Yep. And that's nice, but it doesn't help you where you plug it in. So if you've got three devices, you know, going through this, like, yeah, okay. So the device area isn't so terrible, but you've got three plugs plugged into something somewhere. And that's pretty nasty. I've got that same exact thing that you just held up right there. It's nice for holding

the cables in place, but as soon as you need to charge more than one thing, they're all just laid on top of each other. It's just a mess. I like that. For the organizer and you, you should too. Here's where I said you were going to mess up my tip earlier.

So I too am a big fan of mesh network. So that Google three pack that you had earlier, the wifi stuff. So there's a couple of reasons why I went with the one that I did, which is the Netgear Orbi set. So I just have the two pack and the two pack will cover up basically the same thing, 5,000 square feet. I think the Google one was 4,500 square feet. So there were, there were a couple of differences for me. One, Google already has all my information. I didn't want to give them anymore. Um, it was, Oh, come on now. They're going to get it. They're going to get it anyways. Cause I have an Android phone and they're spying on me um and you use chrome and i use chrome although i have been switching way more to firefox of late uh the other thing too is

the google set of pucks they do 1.2 gigabits per second and this goes back to the whole review thing well i wonder if i get faster for my money and so then it was literally, you know, days of researching and the Netgear Orbi, this one, the RBK 50 has three gigabit throughput, throughput, which for me probably doesn't matter, but it's there. Right. So that was one thing. And then there was another thing. And you'll remember outlawed. There's something that you bought at one point. It was called Disney circle circle. so check this out this is really cool and this just happened in a recent firmware update on the orbi so you could buy the disney circle on amazon i don't remember it was like 90 bucks or something like that yeah

something like that okay i'll look it up but it was basically a way for you to to make sure that your kids weren't seeing anything bad on the internet, right? Well, it's more than that. Okay. That's understated. You can fill us in. Yeah. So the Disney Circle is $99, but better than family control. Because you could do blocking adult content with the Google Wi-Fi.

That's built into the Google Wi-Fi. What this does is allows you to set up limits, like time limits. So you can say like, hey, you're spending too much time in front of a screen. So I'm going to group, I'm going to consolidate all of your various devices. So your tablets, phones or whatever, your Xbox, your computer, and you get an hour to play video games throughout the day. Or you can be on social media for an hour, right? Or whatever. You can categorize all these things, but you could also say like, hey, this education site like Khan Academy, unlimited time. You get to use that as often as you want, right? Or maybe emails, right? That doesn't count against your screen. Emails do not count

against your screen time, things like that. So it allows you granular control over how much time does your son or daughter spend in front of a screen. So going along with that, one of the latest firmware updates includes that for free. It's part of the firmware. So you don't have to pay another $99 for that device and you'll have access to all the same stuff. Some other cool features of the thing that I really like is it's so some of the, when it's first came out,

it was a hub and spoke type thing. So you had the central router and then all the satellite parts were just, you could only go one out from it. Well, it's turned into a true mesh over time. So now you can actually have that. And then you could create satellites out from it and it'll spread the internet out. That's really good. Another thing there's, there's a couple of things that I really like too, is you get a free dynamic DNS set up with this router. So I can set up a DNS to my house so that if I ever need to access my network from outside, I have a domain name I can hit and go straight to mine because

I have a dynamic IP address with my service. You know, it makes it nice for that. And that's free, which is something that you typically pay three, four bucks a month with, with some other service. Right. Um, and then the other thing I really like about it too, is you can even set up VPN access from your phone or something else to where you can VPN directly into your network, which I'm sure a lot of other things like this allow that, but it is really nice to be able to just say, Hey, use, use the open VPN software. And now you can get into it. There's a ton of other features. But, dude, I think I've restarted this thing twice in two years, right? I mean, that's saying a lot.

I mean, we all remember the days of routers where it was like, Internet's down. All the time. Are you still doing it? It gets to where you have to do it like once a day. No, no, ever since I got to Google, it's been fantastic. But like the old Netgears or something, it's like, there's something that's like after you have them for one year, it's been fantastic. But like the old neck gears and something, it's like, there's something that's like, well, if you had them for one year, it's like once a month, then it's once a week. And then eventually it's the once a day until

you buy another neck gear and repeat. Yeah. It's absolutely ridiculous. This thing, I just, I don't even think about it. Right. I just use it and it's awesome. So yeah, man, 293 bucks covers, covers a pretty decent size house house, so highly, highly recommend it. I don't think that you're really going to go wrong with either of the devices that we mentioned. Another one that— Yeah, they're both very similar in terms of customer reviews. Did you see that? Yeah, they're almost identical.

So the Orbi has 4,639 reviews, which that's an incredible amount of reviews on Amazon. And still good. 4.3 stars. Right. Right? And the Google Wi-Fi edges it out just barely at 4,702 reviews with a 4.4 review. Yeah. I mean, they're so close.

It's really – they're good devices. I mean, that's about all I can say. Now, this one was an alternate as well. I didn't know that you were going to have the Google one. But a lot of people like Ubiquiti Networks products, right? They make really good stuff, and it's typically security-focused type things. So there is another alternative to it, and it's the Amplify HD. And it covers 10,000 square feet and it's 340 bucks.

And this one also has fantastic reviews. So, you know, if you've got options is basically what it boils down to. If you've been one of those people that has dealt with the nightmares of restarting routers all the time, or it doesn't reach to every spot of your house, look into one of these mesh options. It'll change your life. I will say, because I definitely looked at these as well when I was shopping around for the Google or for the new Wi-Fi router. The one thing that won me out on the Google, and I don't remember if this is the same case for the Orbi, but definitely this ruled out the Ubiquiti Amplify setup, was that with the Google Wi-Fi, you could wire in each additional hub. So if your house was already wired for Ethernet, but you want to extend the wireless network into place, then to me,

that was ideal, right? Because if you had the choice to wire that area in, but you wanted it to be the same network, then why wouldn't you do that, right? If you don't have it wired, then you don't care. But the Amplify, you couldn't do that. Each extension is basically just plugging into the outlet, and then that's it. It's just picking up the… Does the Orbi allow you to wire in the satellites?

You can hardwire the satellites, and also it's got gigabit ports on the satellites as well so that you can hook up other stuff too. Yeah. The, the, the Google has one additional port on it, but yeah,

I wasn't, I did cared less about being a plug more stuff in, but yeah, that is a good call. Just from the central piece. Yeah. All right. So the next thing up that I had that I,

this one seems like it might be a little bit out of place, but Oh my God, do I love this thing? So it's a document scanner. And why does that matter? Dude, we all get bills and those things just stack up and you just have tons of garbage left over,

right? Like receipts, bills, whatever. And you don't know. I didn't use electronic. Yeah. Really?

You don't just do everything electronic? No. I still get stuff. Why wouldn't you just get everything, like sign up for e-bills, man? I do have a lot of e-bills, but I still get a ton of garbage, right? Well, it's garbage, so you don't need to scan it. And even receipts, like for coding blocks, right? Like when I have a receipt, I'll scan it in and it'll go into some software and I can say, yeah, it's been done, whatever.

All right. So if you don't have this problem, it probably doesn't matter for me. Like this particular device, I got 99 problems. This ain't one, but I actually had a box that we just burned stuff in now. Um, but yeah, this thing's awesome. Like it'll scam receipts. It has OCR on it. So if you have for your OCD for my OCD, um, but yeah, now I can actually go in, I can find any bills. I can find any like warranty things. That's, that's another one, right? Like when you have some warranty paperwork that you bought some device from best buy and you had warranty papers for that, right? Like I can go find that stuff now. Cause I know exactly what

folder it's in and I can go to it easily and I'll have to keep that stuff laying around. And this thing's awesome, man. I scan stuff every day with this. I've had it for several years. It's amazing. And the software that comes with it is great too. So, um, the OCR is nice. You can search for it. So it's like warranty refrigerator. Exactly. Dude, I can't tell you how many times I've used that stuff. Um, as a matter of fact, the refrigerator is one that happened to me recently and it was like, wait a second, I know I bought an extended warranty on this because I didn't

trust it. And sure enough, I was able to go find it. So you picked the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i and not the S1300i Deluxe? You always get the Deluxe, son. Deluxe! You know, that's the weird

part is it probably didn't exist when I bought this thing. I will say, there were several of them out there. The reason why I chose this one over some of the other ones, because there's some really cool portable ones now. But this one will actually do duplex scanning, so it'll scan

both sides as it comes in, which to me is nice. i don't want to have to flip papers around i want to scan it once it'd be done so i just hope you you caught my uh my reference there you don't remember that i'm going to put this link here i'm going to be sure for us to share this in the show notes as well but yeah you don't remember the Coke commercial deluxe 24 seven. No, it's deluxe 24 seven. Yeah, son. I do not,

but I'm going to have to look it up later. I just put it in there. It's hilarious. All right. So now I'm getting down to the very last little bit. I didn't have a whole lot left to spend. I think I was a little right around 300 bucks. So we've mentioned this one on the show before,

and I've used it several times and I, I just have to recommend it again. It's the Android or iOS app called algorithms. Yeah. Go get it. Like if you're a software developer, it's awesome.

And to get the fully unlocked experiences, three bucks, like go get it. Now, wait a minute. You're using this as a companion as you code. You're saying you find it like that good or no, I'll just sit there. Like if I'm just sitting there and I'm not doing anything, if I'm, you know, riding in the car or something, I'm like, Oh, I want to learn something. Right. And like the, the stuff that we talked about with the bubble swords and the binary searches and all that, they have awesome, like visual explanations of what's happening every step of the way. Right. And you'll just hit say

next, and it'll show you the next piece that happens. It's such a well done application. And for three bucks, the amount of learning that you can get out of that thing, it's just, it's nuts. So highly, highly recommend it. I have links for both that on Android as well as on iOS. So those will both be in the show notes. Oh, that's new because last time we talked about it, this wasn't available for iOS. Oh, was it not? It's the same app. Yeah, it's on both.

Yeah, last time this was only an Android app. If I recall, maybe I'm remembering it wrong. I don't know. But I went out of my way to go find it. It's free on iOS. So the free part is free on both Android and iOS. But if you want to unlock all the content in it, it's one of those freemium type things, right? Like once you get in there, you'll have to pay $2.99 if you want the rest of everything.

But highly, highly recommend it. So if you want to see more than the singleton,'ll have to pay $2.99 if you want if you want the rest of everything uh but highly highly recommend it so if you want to see more than the singleton you have to pay singleton's all they care about you gotta pay to see the factory pattern all right and so my final thing well i guess algorithms not patterns sorry well they have all kinds of stuff i don't have my phone over here otherwise i'd pull up so that's okay i got mine i'm gonna look at it but it's something just like informational you can just kind of read and they'll have some nice visualizations for it. Yeah. One thing you'll like outlaw, I was

poking around in there the other day and it tells you how TLS works. All the way through it, right? This is what's happening when it initiates a connection and all that kind of stuff. I don't like the implication there, sir. You like security. You're saying I don't already know? Yeah.

It's just, it's just so good. And it looks like they add to it all the time, which is awesome. Well, I just installed it. So, I'm going to be giving this thing a check. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. And so, my last, very last thing is, and I'd be remiss if I didn't put something in here about chairs because we all hate and love chairs, right? You buy a cheap one. They suck. They creak. They are annoying.

They fall apart after a year. And you're like, man, why don't I just spend a little bit more? And then you spend a whole bunch and then you're not happy with it. And you're like, why did I spend so much on this thing I hate, right? So it's never a good thing. And for whatever reason, 300-ish seems to be the sweet spot of not too cheap and not too expensive. So this one I've been blasted to death from Facebook ads on this particular chair and I've looked up reviews on it and it, it seems to be really good. I haven't personally sat in this

one yet, but if you're on the hunt for a chair and you don't want something with a mesh bottom, which by the way, I'm interested in getting rid of the mesh bottom. Now I'm kind of over it. Um, really? Why? I just, I don't like it as much. I don't know. I, I, I can't explain it. I just kind of over it. Um, this one has the mesh back, which I really do like the way that feels, but I want something a little bit more supportive on my behind. So this particular one's called the Ergo Chair 2 by Autonomous. It's their second version. It's got 678 reviews on their site with a 4.3. And I mean, if you read through them, you know, some people say that it, it's, it doesn't feel as expensive as, you

know, like their Herman Miller or whatever, but it also costs a third of it. So, and for the person that likes different colors, you can get it in evergreen, which looks really cool. You can get it in, you know, blue, red. So it's something that you can style to your, to your particular liking, but it's also supposed to be super adjustable to be comfortable for your particular body. So that concludes my list. And I, I just went slightly over budget.

I'm at $3,004. It did this, uh, autonomous ergo chair too. It reminds me of the CEO chair from Silicon Valley. Yeah. Does anyone else remember that? Oh yeah.

I have a memory for details that I just don't like. So come Valley was hilarious to me. I just started, I've been rewatching it and like, they just like stole the chair for them. Okay. Yeah. I don't,

I don't recall it, but yeah. So I mean, maybe it's something I pick up in the future I don't recall it, but yeah. So I mean, maybe it's something I pick up in the future. Not sure. Um, but yeah, we'll have the link up there with shipping.

It's 328 bucks. Hmm. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. Not bad. So that, that was it. Yeah.

You have one more thing. So, well, yeah. One thing that I forgot to mention earlier though too because i was like oh somebody might you know bring this up because i mentioned those tp link uh smart plugs right and i don't know when amazon released these but it just came out like you know apparently sometime soon recent basics no the amazon smart plug

but and i did consider that but i was like well then you're locked into just the one system so if you wanted it to work with you know any like if you wanted to use it through your google assistant too then that's why i put the preference towards the uh the. Well, you know what, though? The TP link's cheaper, too. Oh, yeah. It's $25 for the Amazon one here. I'll give you a link real quick next to the one more thing. And then you're tied into the Amazon ecosystem. Yeah.

And, you know, I mean, maybe if you are already heavily into it, you're not going to care, right? Right. I will say, now, I mean, I haven't read any of the reviews, so it's not fair. maybe if you are already heavily into it, you're not going to care. Right. Right. I will say the, uh, now, I mean, I haven't read any of the reviews, so it's not fair,

but the reviews are polarizing. It's either all fives or all ones. Like, well, I figured I'll include it as like an alternative, but you know, in case if anybody was like, Hey,

wait a minute, you know, like I didn't, I, it's not that I overlooked it. It's just, you know, I didn't pick it. Interesting that I overlooked it. It's just, you know, I didn't pick it.

Interesting. Very cool. So, yeah, that, uh, what we got? Resources we like. This is. Shopping, Amazon. Yeah, no doubt. What you got here?

It looks like this is, uh. Yeah, this is just one of the tools I used to build a computer. It was really convenient. It made sure that, like, you didn't pick things that were incompatible and would kind of yell at you if you did. So, it was just kind of the tools I used to build a computer. It was really convenient. It made sure that you didn't pick things that were incompatible and would kind of yell at you if you did. So it was just kind of a nice design. It's called CCLonline.com. Actually, if you just Google for design computer online, there's a bunch of them.

Most of them want to sell you the computer afterwards. So the recommendations they make are probably things that they have agreements with or whatever. So you've got to kind of take it with a grain of salt. But it was still a really nice tool for someone who knows nothing about hardware and what a TZF socket or whatever it was. 226, I don't know. And then is one of the filters like, hey, I want to bling it out. Is that like, how do I start from there?

You turn bling on. They actually have a bunch of templates. So if you're a video editor or a gamer or whatever, you can kind of start with a build if you want to and pretty much all the sites have that too very nice like i need my computer to look as tacky as possible so it needs to have like all of the neon you can do that no problem oh you know one thing i was actually going to put on my list but because i already went four dollars over budget i didn't and i was even thinking about swapping out the treadmill thing is this may seem really stupid and unconnected but i feel like as developers we already don't get enough rest i mean i know that we all sit up late at night looking at stuff and reading about things and learning about stuff that

we want to play with or do whatever get a comfortable mattress oh yeah like this is that's why you got to get that casper mattress use code coding blocks to get a fit yeah we don't have a casper mattress uh affiliate right so so it's funny but listen up casper in all seriousness like man i've been through more than any kind of number of mattresses I'd like to admit. And I've actually found some that are good. So if anybody is interested or would like to hear like which ones I've found that I like or don't like, or I know outlaw you've gone some, I don't know about you, Joe, but you know, leave us a comment and you know, maybe we'll get a thread started on that. But I seriously, if you're sleeping on something and your back's killing you or anything like that, man, fix your life. Get a decent mattress.

The gadget geek in me wants the sleep number where it can automatically change its settings based on how you're sleeping in real time. I can't pay three grand for an air mattress and I can't do it. Well, I don't know about the air part, but yeah, that's why I don't have one. Yeah. Uh, but, but yeah, I mean, definitely if, if it's something you're interested in, hit us up. I don't want to talk about it cause I already went over budget, but yeah, I think it's really important. I think a lot of people just try and skimp on that cause they're like, ah, it's, you know, it's a bed, but it can change how you feel during the day. I also wanted to add too, kind of circling

back to that thing with the Disney Circle device. Part of the beauty of having that too is that you can give your kids rewards. So if you give them chores or something, or if you're like, Hey, I tell you what, if you go practice your violin or your piano or whatever, you know, if you do that for X amount of time, I'll give you X amount of time back on the screen. Right. Nice. And so, um, you know, you can encourage them to do things that don't use screen time. They don't put them in front of another screen, uh,

so that they can earn it. But, you know, in, in there's the system baked into it. So, you know, that's very cool.

If you have, if, if you have kids, then you might care about it and it can just work with like any device. Like as soon as the devices pops up on the network, it's like, Oh, Hey,

there's a new device on your network. Who do you want to associate this to? Or how do you want to associate it? My kids will hate me. Oh, yeah, that's the funny thing. Actually, too. Oh, man. The funny thing. I think it's actually in, it might actually be in the, yes, in the Amazon page. If you go to the Amazon page for the Disney Circle here, let me give you guys a link real quick. And the Amazon page, if you go to the Amazon, um, page for the Disney circle here, let me give you guys a link real quick and I'll put this next to, or underneath the one more thing.

Um, there's like one of the images that comes up as some kid, but a drawing on their door is like, if you like circle, don't come in here. Cause like the parents love it, but the kids hate it. Oh,

that's hilarious. It's like one of the top reviews too it's hilarious oh that's i just wonder like how how that poor kid is they're gonna see that drawing there for the rest of their lives i love that all right so now it is on to my favorite oh wait one last thing One last thing. Doggone it. All right. This one's super fast. If I hadn't had all that money wrapped up in all the other cool stuff, I probably would have just gotten a Surface Book 2. All right. Moving on. Ha! All right.

Bombshell. Yeah. So, on to my favorite part of the show. It's the tip of the week. And with that, Jay-Z, you lead. I'm going first. So, since I didn't realize we were recommending products we've actually used,

I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about something I just got. And I don't usually get toys. I don't really like digital stuff. I only like software. I don't like hardware. I don't like accessories. I don't even want alarm clocks in my house. I like to keep it simple and don't like accessories. I don't even want alarm clocks in my house.

I'll keep it simple and have a boss computer. But I did buy a toy that I'm very excited about that I think you guys might enjoy. Super jacked. I bought a thermal camera. Wait, what are you using this thing for? So, lots of reasons. But one of them is that I have kind of a funky setup with my air conditioner. And I had some little kind of things that look like little doors to the attic. And I could feel warm air coming out of them.

And I wanted to fix them up. But I kind of thought, like, well, you know, how much progress am I making? If I add insulation or I put some tape or something, is it actually making a difference? And is this just me being crazy thinking it's warm or is it actually significant? Like is this any worse than say a window to the outside or the attic door in the house? Like is this actually significant? So we talked about this for a while. And you can actually do all sorts of other stuff too. You can like walk around your house and like look for leaks or like if um if your windows have bad seals anything like

that and so this is a 500 camera um which for me is like you know i don't usually buy stuff so this is a big deal there is a 600 model or 700 model that has wi-fi built in no thanks uh i can live without that for 200 bucks. But it is actually fantastic. And with the holes, actually, I found out, I had already plugged one before we decided to buy the camera. But I went to the other one and I found out on a hot day, not even like nothing like the summer. This is like fall now, right? We're deep into, you know, the fall months when we're recording this. But I was able to see that there was 115 degrees coming out of this little door, which was way hotter than the windows

or the doors to the outside because it was hot attic air. So I was since able to plug it in and put insulation in and actually kind of look at it as I was doing it to make sure I was addressing all the worst parts of it. And I ring like the little plastic, like electrical box with insulation and whatnot. And I was able to get that down to 80, which is actually less than my attic door.

So that was really nice, man. It's just really cool. I have wanted to get one of these, but yeah, I mean, kind of like what Alan was getting at. It's like it's limited use,

but the, the value that it would have, it's awesome at what it does. Now I am curious. So like what made you decide to go? Cause this is like a standalone unit, but there are, you know,

like a, a cheaper alternative, same company, but for $199, you can get it to where, uh, it's an attachment to your phone for either Android or iOS. So the OnePlus phone and the same company were around $300 for the attachments to the phone.

And I didn't like the idea that you kind of have to, like, pick which phone you're going to use. And, like, some of them actually kind of, like, were designed to, like, snap into the bottom. So it's like if you got a phone that had, like, say, the power on the side, like old flip phones used to have or something, then all of a sudden you've got a, you know, you could do it with an adapter or a dongle or something, but I didn't want to be walking around with like two hands, like you're getting up in your attic or whatever,

like trying to kind of juggle these two things that aren't really quite connected or, you know, bring your attic and your phone in the attic and you drop it or something. It's a, just a problem. So I like the idea of just having one thing. It like looks like a camera.

It's small. It fits in your pocket. They have the ones that look like guns too, which are also around the same price point. But I like the idea of just being able to kind of put it in a pocket like no big deal. It just looks like a camera. Yeah, I put a link to the adapter version that I was talking about. But the gun version that you're talking about, which is the one that you're going to see like home inspectors are going to use that one. That's like three grand.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. The professional ones get crazy. But they like the really super good ones are really good. Like if you're say like up and I don't know, skyscraper inspector, you can go and they'll have like really good resolution. So you can see things like fine detail. So you can see like little cracks and stuff. But also, I think they're better at like seeing like further distances so like you can go point it at a three-story building you know and see if there's

like a a leak or something up there and that's not something i'm going to be able to see very well with this thing so this is definitely a consumer grade but it's been super helpful already like i went around the windows and stuff you got to kind of figure out how to use it like you would think you'd be able to kind of look at the windows from the inside of the house out and see if there's hot air coming in that didn't work out so well for me but going on the outside of the windows and seeing the cool air leaking out was actually really useful for me so wait so you can see it from the inside and the thing with the attic was just amazing to me to see it was like oh like i could see there's 115 degrees right here. And that day, I think it was like 85 degrees out.

And in Florida, even the summers get up to 100 degrees. So, I can't imagine what that would have been like on a hot day, which is in the middle of summer. Did you notice a big difference when you plugged them up? Yeah. Now, I can kind of put my head up there and it doesn't feel warm. It doesn't feel like crazy attic in there. But now, I'm going around. It's crazy.

You can see the studs in the wall and, you know, everything. The corners of the house are all like much hotter than anything else. I'm like, well, I wonder if I could go in there like sneak some insulation in. The insulation made a big difference. You got spray foam everywhere. You own stock in it now. Yeah. Well, that, man, you can rent those machines.

But we got some spray foam done and that was not cheap. But I was able to see after the fact. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera before because i would love to compare it i just like the idea of knowing like if i pay 1500 for someone to come in and spray foam in my attic like does it actually make a difference that's that's excellent man but you said you could i just want to make sure i understood this right you said you couldn't see the difference around your windows from the inside you had to go outside. Yeah. So I don't know if that's just a fluke or how I was doing it.

There's a, there's a bunch of different settings you can kind of mess with, but like for me, I wasn't seeing the hot air leaking in for my windows, but I was able to see the cool air leaking out. So it was just easier. I mean, like you can kind of position in different ways and see it,

but it was just easier for me to see the cool air leaking out than was to see the heat coming in. So I don't know how thermodynamics works um definitely rusty on that kind of stuff it was just kind of interesting to see that for like the attic i could see like the hot air coming in but for the windows and the doors it seemed like i was more able to see the cool air going out that's a nice geek out thing i kind of want one now and i have absolutely no reason to use it but I want it.

Yeah, it's pretty nice. And I'm going to be adding insulation around all. We got two attic doors so I'm going to definitely be putting insulation around them because I'm surprised to see just how high that is. That's excellent. Hey, can I borrow your camera? Yeah. Yeah, you got to come get it. If you can catch him, you can get that and kick him in the shins all at the same time

that's right that's right good luck and i am unbroken all right so my tip is actually this comes back from the previous episode where i had recommended like learning like microservice type things using azure functions because they're dirt cheap, right? Well, I learned about something even cooler from our friends at the MS Dev Show. They had a podcast episode recently talking about IoT Edge. Never heard of it, didn't know what it was. If I had heard of it, I wouldn't have had any idea what it meant because it just sounds like stuff for little devices. And what it is, is it allows you to run certain portions of the Azure infrastructure internally on premise. So if you want to do Azure functions, if you want to try it out for free internally or not even just try it out for free,

set up your applications to where you can make it to where it would be easier to port into the Azure ecosystem online into the cloud. This is a great way to do it. So the Azure IOT edge, I'll have a link to it, but one of the cool things is it's not just as your functions. They also have the ability to where you can do streaming analytics. You can do ML and AI. So machine learning,

artificial intelligence type stuff, just really, really cool stuff that you can do all on premise without ever having to connect to the cloud. And the reason why they've done this, by the way, is you might've heard of this thing called GDPR, right? There's lots of data that you're not allowed to get across lines in certain situations. And so there's some data that you just can't put in the cloud for whatever reason. And then there's some things that maybe your IoT device, and this is why it's called the IoT Edge, is maybe it's not connected to the internet, right? Maybe it's only connected to a local network or something like that.

So it's a really cool way to be able to play with these things and learn and actually make useful pieces out of it. Very cool, man. All right. So I'm up and I've got two for you. The first one is we've talked about this before, that desire where I want to debug some CSS, but it depends. I need it to, I need to freeze the CSS, but it depends. I need it to, I need to freeze the page in order for something to happen. And in the past we talked about like how, you know, like one of the alternatives that was mentioned was, well, you could just click, right click on any DOM element and you could say like, Hey, freeze this or, uh, you know, put it in a hover state or something like that.

And that's great. As long as the DOM element exists on the DOM. But if the framework you're using or, you know, whatever you've written, if you're writing DOM elements, you know, on the fly based on something, then that might not be an applicable workaround for you. And so in the case of like picture, like the use case that I'm thinking of is maybe you have a floating menu. So like when you hover over an icon, boom, this div pops up and shows you a menu, right? And it literally doesn't even exist in the DOM until you hover over that, right? And that's the thing I want to freeze. I want to freeze the page so that it stays exactly like that. And then I can go over and start poking around in the dev tools. And the problem you're going to find, right, is if you try and go to another window, you're going to mouse away from it and then your popover

disappears. As soon as you mouse off of that div, then boom, it goes away. Right. So I got frustrated and I was like, you know, I wonder if there's an answer to this yet. And it turns out there was already an answer for it back in 2013 that I just somehow never found until now. So I'll blame that on my Google foo, but, um, somebody posted here, this really cool answer, open up your dev tools, set it to the sources tab. You don't have to open up any particular source. Just set it to the sources tab. Then go simulate whatever it is you're trying to do,

like hovering over that icon to pop up the menu, and just hit F8 to pause everything. That's beautiful. Then you can simply go back over to your dev tools and inspect whatever you wanted to inspect. And if you're looking to see like, hey, what CSS class got assigned to this div or like why did this whatever, why did this not look right or whatever, now you can actually investigate and inspect it. I'm actually going to up vote this.

Right. That's a great idea. Isn't it? Oh, that's cool. I didn't know Stack Overflow did that. I saw yours in real time. Yep. There we go.

And somebody else just did it. Is that you, Joe? So, yeah. So that's, I loved that answer. I was like, man, where has this been in my life? And last but not least, I can't believe we've never mentioned this before. And I'm actually going to just do a quick double check on it. But let me see here.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. So in the way of like, you notice there was a theme among the items that I picked, right? We're around automation, right? How have we never talked about if this, then that. Oh, yeah. So if you aren't already aware, you should go to IFTTT.com or download the app by the same name from your app store, be it Google or iOS or whatever. I'm sorry, Android or iOS. And install it, you can set up applets to automate all the things in your life that you want to automate. I don't know why we haven't talked about this one already.

Like, how did we miss this? Well, and it's funny you mention this because I was just reading about GitHub Actions earlier today. Have you seen that? No. It's their new workflow stuff that they just rolled out it's supposed to be kind of like if this then that but like for github so you can like set up your pipeline and do all sorts of other cool stuff remember they had that robot there for a while they would hook up so if someone break the build it would kind of do something whatever but oh this is for uh this is this is

like automating your build process kind of like that type of thing yeah but they they were saying i was reading an article about it that's like that's where it starts but it's actually could be used for all sorts of different stuff i mean it sounded exactly like if this and that to me i've only played around with if this and that a little bit but it looked and sounded like from what i read like it was just like that but github very cool yep so now if this than that we'll have an official place in our history books since it has only taking a taking us 93 episodes to think oh yeah we should probably mention this thing dude in five years this is like our five year anniversary yeah that's amazing yeah oh yeah i guess it is yeah we should really do

more stuff with if this than that like drag a trello card over do something and kicks off a task and does all sorts of things makes me a coffee decaf decaf coffee no no drags a Trello card, kick him in the shins. That's excellent. All right. Well, with that, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, and more using your favorite podcast app. And if you haven't already, like Alan mentioned earlier, we would really appreciate you spreading the word or leaving a review to share with everybody.

You can find some helpful links at www.codingblocks.net slash review. Yep. And while you're up there, you can check out all our show notes, examples, discussions, and more. And if you go to codingblocks.slack.com, then you can send your feedback questions to Anne Rance to that channel. There are really smart people in there that will help you out. And make sure to follow us on Twitter if that's your bag or Facebook or wherever else you feel like it. And if you go to CodingBox.net, you can find all of our social links there at the top of the page.