Coding Blocks - The 2022 Shopping Spree

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

It's that time of year where we've got money burning a hole in our pockets. That's right, it's time for the annual shopping spree. Meanwhile, Fiona Allen is being gross, Joe throws shade at Burger King, and Michael has a new character encoding method.

You're listening to Coding Blocks, episode 197. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you like to find your podcasts. You can visit us at codingblocks.net, where you can find our show notes, examples, discussion, more. Send your feedback, questions, and rants to comments at codingblocks.net, and follow us on the Twitters at Coding Blocks. All right, and you can also join our AngelFire community at codingblocks.net and follow us on the Twitters at CodingBlocks. Alright, and you can also join our AngelFire community at codingblocks.angelfire.net or you can just go to codingblocks.net and find all our social links there at the top

of the page. Somebody's going to go to the AngelFire. Join my web ring, please. It's been years. Sign my guestbook. Don't be intimidated by the counter. I've been running for a long time. It takes a while to get up there.

And I'm Michael Outlaw. And I'm Alan Underwood. And I'm old enough to remember when that counter was hard. At GeoCities. This episode is sponsored by Retool. Stop wrestling with ui libraries hacking together data sources and figuring out access controls and instead start shipping apps that move your business

forward uh anybody want to tell us what we're doing this episode not it oh okay well uh it's the annual shopping spree episode so uh every year we give ourselves some fake budget amount that we go after and we start shopping around for things that would be relevant to a developer's life. And that is this episode. Or not relevant to a developer's life. Or not. I was shopping for the wrong things then. I always do this wrong. So sorry. Yeah. And just so you know a little bit for the wrong things then i always do this wrong so sorry yeah

and and just so you know a little bit about how the sausage is made like i think the past couple years we did like thirty five hundred dollars well we started out small by the way we did yeah go ahead the first one i think in the beginning it was like a thousand dollars and it was like oh how about 25 how 25? How about 3,000, 35? You know, whatever. It just kept going up and up. Yeah. So the problem is like we got it with $3,500 and then like outlaw and I are like shopping for things to get to eke out that last dollar.

And so our sections of the show were like three hours long. So we thought we'd scale it back this year. And then I found myself wanting more budget. So, you know. You know how to shop. That's right. That's right. So we squeezed it in there.

So hopefully this will be fun. But before we do that, we did find some reviews that were resurrected from the dead. Oops. So it turns out Audible has a whole other section where they put all the UK reviews because we can't be mixing those in with the US reviews. That'd be crazy. That's right. So you got to go to a whole other tab. And that's a long way away because that's like the link next to it.

And there we found some new reviews. So thank you. And I guess it's a new feature that they added for the UK version, maybe. I don't know. But at any rate, if you haven't left us a review in the UK, now you have no excuses for it. So yeah, we

want to start with Anonymous User because all great reviews start with Anonymous User first. That's right. But then also thank you to RD, not to be confused with R and D cause that would be some division in your company. And then,

uh, let me see. Ian. Machette. I'm going to hope I said that right. I would have said match it, but that's fine. That's probably better.

That's probably better. All right. I will concede. And then, uh, Glenn Jacobson. So thank you all for the new reviews. They were really,

uh, some really good ones to like super heartfelt, uh, you know, things that you all said in there. So I know we super appreciated reading that. Uh, even though it was a little bit late,

it was new to us. It was like finding that extra present on Christmas day morning, right? Like that you didn though it was a little bit late it was new to us it was like finding that extra present on christmas day morning right like that you didn't know was there so yeah really appreciated it only it's in the attic from four years ago it's got dust and cobwebs on it one one of those reviews was from back in february so yeah yeah it's been a minute. Thank you. Sorry. At least now we know how to like click on other links. Right.

Yes. Uh, you know what, you know, what's, uh, happened around February of last year, uh, January.

You know, what's in January to January is in January. So coding box, a game jam coming up. It's almost that time to start talking about it again. Very soon. Actually. Uh, I need to look at when we start talking about it so we can start talking about it. So, Coding Box Game Jam coming up. It's almost that time to start talking about it again. Very soon, actually. I need to look at when we start talking about it so we can start talking about it. So, yeah, be on the lookout. So, I realize we're not

talking about it yet. Sorry, Alan. But I realize we're not talking about it yet. But if we were to talk about it, have there been any ideas floated around about game themes? No, not yet. Are we allowed to talk about that? Yes. So, if you have an idea for a theme now is a good time to go ahead and send it in because we're going to do a couple

rounds voting like last time and i have got some ideas for themes too i'm going to throw in there spice it up so it's going to be very exciting and even if you're not going to take part in the jam you should get in on this steam voting because it's kind of fun cool um we're probably going to have to rent an island or something somewhere so that we can disappear get away from work and actually do the thing right so i think that's that needs to happen all right so i'm just gonna take the battery out of my phone that should be interesting i was wondering to see i was like i wonder who i'm gonna trip up with this comment yeah that'll be fun with the iPhone.

All right. So one thing that this is, this was just a conversation I had with somebody recently that I thought was really interesting. script and he's pushing hard to get into type script and turning on the strongly typed, um, like warnings and alerts and errors that come up if, if you don't have strongly type values in there. And he was kind of frustrated because some people were like, well, I like, I like not having types because it's a whole lot easier to just develop. Right. And he's like, it, he was frustrated by it because he's like, well, why do they not see the value?

And I was like, well, that's not fair. If all you ever have worked in our JavaScript and Python and Ruby, that's just how you do it. Right. Like the way that I can, I can think about it is anytime you've gone to create an endpoint or

something in C sharp or in Java or whatever, you know, you've got the inputs and you have to create classes for those inputs that are coming in. And then you've got the outputs of that call that you have to go create classes for, for the outputs. Right? So it's like, man, I just want to set up an endpoint and I want to be able to send requests to it. And there's all this extra work you have to do. And so I can see why somebody who comes from a loosely typed language is like, man, it just seems like a whole lot of work for not a whole lot of extra stuff that you're getting there. So I can see that side of the argument. But on the flip side, the whole reason why people like strongly typed languages is because you get compiled time checks, right? Like you can catch things before they ever get released. And I know the three of us have worked in lots of JavaScript and many times gotten hit with runtime issues that, that happened because you have a loosely typed

language, right? Like, um, you didn't capitalize or you didn't camel case the variable when it was supposed to be or whatever, right? Like there's all kinds of things that happen. And, and I tried to help with like another thought that I'm always reminded of from back in like my CS days. Like you guys remember when you were being taught about polymorphism and interfaces and you're like, yeah, but why? Right. Like every time they were saying it to you, like, well, you want to use this interface because, you know, dot open will always be the same. And I'm like, who cares? Right. Like I truly don't understand why you're trying to shove this down my throat. I just want to create the class and I'll call it

open in this one. And I'll call it open with a capital O in the other one. Who cares? Right? Like it doesn't matter. I'm the one who knows about the code. It wasn't until I started heavily working in IOC type stuff to where I was like, I get it. I totally get it. Like I can hot swap classes very easily. And now I also get why there's always these factories and factories and all this other kind of stuff. Because if you do it that way, then you really have this loose coupling that you can take advantage of when you're bootstrapping your apps. Right. So, so I just wanted to bring up that conversation to let people know that, Hey, don't, don't think that other people may not be that great at something because they haven't been

exposed to the same things, right? Like, like the, the loose typing is awesome, but it also comes with some trade-offs. The strong typing can be awesome because you get compiled time checks and all that, but it comes with trade-offs, right? Like you write a lot more boilerplate code to make that stuff happen. And so, so these experiences don't make you good or bad or, or better or worse at what you do. It just means that you've worked in different environments where, where you deal with things differently, right? Like a Python developer thinks about things differently than a C Sharp developer. So I don't know. Do you guys have any thoughts on that?

I hate when you're working on front-end stuff and you have to create types for like requests and responses and stuff and naming those things. It just feels so dumb a lot of times to be like, well, this is the get car by color request object and this is the get color by type you know just that's a bad example but you get the point where it's like you just feel like you're creating this stuff arbitrarily and you have to maintain it it's a pain but i do definitely think that strong typing is optimized for the reader of code and loose typing is optimized for the writer and so you know most of the time i think you're probably reading code you know if it's a little solo project who cares but yeah for the most part i i tend to favor stronger typing but uh i also i think what you

said you know like you got to kind of remember your perspective and think that like you know maybe i haven't seen the kinds of things where the people advocating for these types of changes uh you know i'm not aware of the problems that they're facing and so i don't think there is one true way and that's why we see so many different languages that are still popular you know a million years later yeah that's a good point so i had two thoughts that came to mind one is that i think we've talked about this before but that last bit that you were talking about with the Python developer, for example, you remember like we,

uh, there was this study or whatever that for a while back though, I think we had talked about where it was like, whatever the first programming language you learned, then that's going to frame how you solve all the problems for the rest of your career. Right. Totally. And so like, if you started, if you started in a very structured kind of like C type language, like you're going to be, you're going to be structured, especially if it was

like an object oriented language, you're going to think object, all the things, right. Versus if you were in a, a very loosely, uh, um, typed typed language like a JavaScript, for example, then that's how you think. So on the one hand, it does kind of suck because in that situation where the person hasn't seen the problem and doesn't know the benefit of it, you're also kind of of forcing them like, hey, I'm sorry, but I need you to like relearn how to think because you need to think like me because I need to change your world. Right. So so that part, like, I mean, you truly have to feel for that person in that situation because like. They're really. This is going to come out weird, but, you know, if we take that article as, you know, factual,

then, then that means that they would be at a disadvantage in that world in that way. Right. Because they're having to like relearn how to think instead of being in this like loose type situation that they, that they grew up in. Right.

But then also another thought that like, even if you want to be in this like loosely typed world, not everything you're going to like, OK, let's we're picking on JavaScript. Right. But everything that you do in JavaScript isn't just on the JavaScript side of the equation. Right. At some point, it needs to come back and talk to a server. So at some point you're discussing and agreeing on, well, Hey, this is the shape that I'm going to send to you. Or, or maybe you're writing it yourself because you're full tech. So you, you, there is an agreement there. Like this shape is going to exist. This is what I'm calling things. And I'm

expecting you to return back things that are going to be of this type and this shape. And you're going to name them that. So like, I mean, you kind of already are doing some of that so like yeah but but if you're living in just that javascript world or even in just the python world you don't necessarily have to right you can create arbitrary objects and send those back if you're using node.js or python or whatever so so yeah agree if you use okay but so i or Python or whatever. Agreed. I was definitely coming at it from the point of view of you had a Kotlin or something like that or a C Sharp as your server side.

Fine, if you're using Node. Who are those people? Who are these people that use Node? Look, I still love JavaScript, but I guess that's what my point was, is just because if you have somebody that's been doing object-oriented, strongly typed,

or object OO has nothing to do with it, strongly typed languages for a decade, they're going to appreciate the tools that they have there. And they're also going to hate that there's a lot of boilerplate code that you write, just like Jay-Z was saying, with your inputs, your outputs, and having all those things defined. On the flip side, if you have somebody that's been doing loosely typed languages for 10 years, they're probably really good at it. And they faced a lot

of the problems that they've actually run into over the time with those. So being one or the other in one camp or the other doesn't make you good or bad at what you do. It just means that you have a different set of experiences and expectations for what you do there. Right. And I think we've talked about this in the past too. That is why the cross pollination of doing different languages can help you out so that you see the benefits of what each one brings, Right? Like it can be very nice to know what strongly type can do for you. And it can be very nice to work with something that's loosely typed. I forgot the term for that.

Polyglot. Polyglot. How do you pronounce it? Polyglot. Yeah. Polymath. Polyglot. Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, that was, that was mine. And I think we've got another one here. Yeah. I got a question on Twitter. I'm not going to say the name, just in case.

But maybe we'll work on it. I don't know. Let me know. But the question I thought was a really interesting one. How do you break into DevOps or SRE having only a few years experience as, in this case, a backend developer, but just kind of a general developer? How do you get into that space if that's something you're interested in? I always like to do my break-ins with a crowbar. It just kind of a general, um, developer. Like how do you get into that space? Is that something you're interested in? I always like to do my break-ins with a crowbar. It leaves less of a mess.

Oh, wait, sorry. Or if you're in the UK, a pry bar. Yes. And you put it in the boot. So, so, uh, I was curious, uh, as to like how to, how to get into this. Um, I Googled for, okay, Google. Oops. So, so I, I Googled for like SRE job.

I literally searched Google SRE jobs and it came back. There are 83 in my area. You have to unplug Google. Yeah. There, there were 83 in my area, uh, at different companies. And I was specifically looking for the ones at, you know, the company whose name can't be said or else she's going to start talking to me again. But, um, I did find a link based off of the, uh, we were going to sre.google slash books if I remember right.

Something like that was the URL. Yeah. sre.google slash books. And if you go instead, uh, what was it? sre.google slash careers. There's actually information there where you can find jobs at Google that are SRE specific. So I would start there in some of them were actually like interns too. So it didn't have to necessarily be, uh, you know, like for those still in school, for example, there's opportunities there as well. Well, it's kind of a weird thing. I imagine you've been working on like a website.

You've been making a rest at APIs for the last five years, but you really want to get into SRE or DevOps because you think you'd be good at it, but maybe you don't have an experience with a containerization or I don't know, metrics like SLO. Like how do you bridge that gap? How do you get there?

I mean, to me, I think that there's a couple of things. One, you, so we've done a series of episodes on the SRE stuff. We also did the, the books. I can't remember what they are now. The DevOps handbook and, and even the followup to that. The Phoenix project, the DevOps handbook and even the follow-up to that. The Phoenix project, the Unicorn project. Yeah. Like, honestly, I'd say first, and this is sort of a shameless plug, go back and listen

to the one on the DevOps handbook, right? Because there were a number of things in there that were like, hey, if you are a software company, these are the things you should be doing. And here's why. And like Joe, you just mentioned metrics, right? That's a big one. Start learning how to plug metrics into your code. Set up a pipeline.

I know Outlaw, you've done this multiple times. First, because you wanted to, right? To help out the team. And second, because we needed to. And I think just doing those things, baby stepping your way through what you already have access to, right? And you could even do this with something else. So let's say that you don't have time to do it at your job, right? What is what's what is it the to do list? I think there's there's a site that is it's just like the to do list and, you know, 100 different programming languages. You could take something simple like that and set it up either using GitHub with their DevOps type flow. You could do it with Azure DevOps. So you could take something that already

exists and then try and just modify it a little bit, set it up so that, hey, when a commit comes in, it goes through, runs a test, and then maybe does a deploy somewhere. Something like there are ways that you could do this to get some experience doing it and to learn about the things that are important, like the metrics, the pipelines, the continuous builds, the integrations, all that kind of stuff. That would be if you can't do it at work. If you can convince somebody at work that, hey, we need to set up this automation, that's your best way because it's going to add value to the company. You're not going to feel like you're eating up your personal time doing it. But if you can't do that, then I'd say take, take a simpler approach.

Yeah. So my idea was, uh, you know, assuming that you're already working, uh, and, uh, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're probably working at a kind of a smaller, like, or yeah, smaller or less mature tech company, right? That's one that's probably doesn't have like a't have a large scale kind of tech thing going on because if you do, you probably already have teams and people doing this stuff and your step one should be to go talk to them about getting into it. But if you are in a smaller company, I think you need to basically advocate

for it. As a developer, your boss or marketing department isn't going to come to you and say, Hey, we need to come up with some SLOs. It's up to you to fight for this stuff. It's basically tech debt if you don't have it. So you need to take advantage of your current work situation. Convince them that they need to set up metrics, monitoring, alerting. You need to advocate for setting up service-level objectives and alerts.

Start talking about incident response and bad things happening and doing cause analysis and taking the opportunities that you already have at work and just putting some more energy behind them. And, uh, you know, putting the SRE slash dev ups kind of energy into, you know, automating bills, automating deploys, um, improving them, getting better about them. Uh, there's always things you can do to make things better. And then, of course, you take that experience and leverage it and get out of that company. If you want to get into doing it full time, of course. And you kind of need to have a larger, more mature tech company. Or maybe after you start doing that stuff, you enjoy your current role more. I don't know.

But I think that's the way to do it is basically take your current situation and move it in that direction. You'll be helping everyone else on your team. You'll be helping everything. You'll be helping yourself, too. And that's what Outlaw did, by the way. I mean, almost exactly that. He basically, hey, we need to get these builds. We need to automate these

deploys so that we have testing environments. We have all this kind of stuff. And so he took it upon himself to do that. And it did exactly what Jay-Z just said right there, is it improved things for the entire team, not just for the development team. It improved things for the QA team. It improved things for management as well, because they could see things quicker. And if they needed to get a deploy or do a patch somewhere, they had access to it all because it was building the artifacts and all that. So again, it was exactly that situation that Jay-Z just mentioned about, hey, you push up to your managers and say, hey, we need to get this in place. And he took it upon himself to do all that.

And, and it added a lot of, of benefit. You might find if you talk to your coworkers and say, you know what, I want to get more involved with our building deployment process. They're probably going to thank you for it and say, please, we want to do less of that. So please do it. I will, uh, caveat that though, like prepare yourself because as soon as you do it then everybody's going to realize that they didn't know how bad they had it before and how good they have it now and then suddenly that thing becomes a requirement that must be going all the time and you are going to be the one holding the keys to be like yeah you need to get make sure that's a like oh it's down like go fix it why is it right it goes from we don't need automated builds to, our builds take 20 minutes,

and we're only deploying to three environments, and we're trying to get our costs down, and we think we can, yeah. Yeah, it does grow into a nasty beast after that, but it's because people finally see the value. You can talk about it all day. They're not going to get it. You show it to them a little bit,

and then they're like, oh, I need more. Yeah, I mean, this is all coming at it from the point of view of the DevOps though, and less about the SRE. So what I would say is like, if you're trying to do it in the current company where you're at, then I think that, you know, slow roll your way via DevOps first. And then, you know, because SRE is going to be like an evolution of it. Um, you know, where like, you know, metrics, for example, like you're going to be, uh, taking in metrics more often and care about that, you know, versus just trying to like get the thing built. Right. Um, but you know, like I said, if, if, if it was just, if you're hoping to like switch companies, then, I mean, I would literally just

search it and see, you can find opportunities easily in your area, I'm sure. And you don't necessarily have to have experience. If you're already a backend engineer, that means you know how to code. You don't necessarily have to have the experience and exactly what you're wanting to do. If you can go in and take an interview with somebody and show that you have the desire and you've already done a little bit of the research on the kind of stuff that you need to do. If they see that in an interview, there's a lot of people that are like, Hey, I want somebody with some passion who wants to do this. Right. So you know, you don't have to have years of experience doing it.

And that's 10 years or nine years of experience of us doing this show telling you, right? I mean, we've talked about it before ourselves. Like I will take somebody that is driven and, and likes to get results over somebody that's just a genius any day. Like I just,

I want the person that digs in. So. Yeah, I like it. Cool. So we got into the show. We didn't. Yeah, I like it. Cool. We didn't decide how to split it up, did we? No. Who thinks they have the longest section?

Well, I mean, we know Jay-Z probably just did one thing, so maybe we should let him go first. I knew you were going to say that, so I'll have you know that I actually did. It took me a while, but I got, uh, I picked out $2,001 items. So I think it's probably, I think I'm probably the longest.

I have to, I think I have 10 products. I expected him to say like, ah, you're going to say that. So I picked out two things. So I think I can go through mine pretty quick. Okay. So maybe we do Alan first the me and then outlaw you get the after the break sure all right okay okay so i've got i've got my sheet open here so i've broken mine up into five categories this year some of them developer related some of them

just because i'm a developer i like stuff So the first one's the nerdy stuff. And this one actually kind of bothers me, but it just came out. I want it real bad, but I think that they are asking too much money. We need, we need more space here. Hold on. Oh yeah. I have no room. Insert rose. All right. so here's the first one oh man it went off the side i'm gonna have to shrink down this column here so we can see it don't worry about it all right so the first one is the new kinesis advantage keyboard it's the kinesis advantage 360 and here's the thing man like my daily driver is the kinesis Advantage 360. And here's the thing, man, like my daily driver is the Kinesis Advantage. I love that keyboard. It's got the concave keys, all that kind of stuff. Truly love the keyboard.

Took me forever to learn how to type on it. That one was about 320 when we bought it. And that's kind of, that's sort of the threshold of where I think keyboards should be somewhere in that $300 range for super uber nice ones. This 360 is $459. That's a steep chunk of cash for this keyboard. However, it is wireless, it is Bluetooth, and it has backlit keys. And they went with a split design. So it's not one big chunk of plastic anymore. It's separated. So it's two big chunks of plastic. It is two big chunks of plastic. Um, so it's out of stock right now. Um, but I do have a link to, to this on Amazon. So when it comes back in stock, it'll be there again. I think it's really expensive, but man, it looks really nice. It's, it's what I think I want a keyboard to be. So maybe I'll get my hand on it one day.

All right, the next one. And I've talked about this kind of stuff several times. So just like the Kinesis, because I sit at my computer so much, I want things that are ergonomic. And so the next one is the Logitech Ergonomic MX Vertical Wireless Mouse. So this thing's 100 bucks and it's just a really nice looking vertical mouse. I use a vertical mouse when I, when I develop every day, it actually helps relieve stress on my wrist. And since I've been doing that kinesis and even

before that, the sculpt ergonomic and my vertical mouse, I get no wrist pain. I have no RSI or anything. And I used to get it really bad all the time using regular mice or even when i was using the magic touch pad track pad whatever that was called so that looks like an amazing piece of uh machinery there for your sitting at your over 9100 reviews for it and it's like a 4.8 four and a half four and Four and a half, yeah. I mean, that's pretty good. It's expensive for a mouse, but, you know, can't really put a price on your health when you sit at a computer 10, 12 hours a day. But that's not too far off, though, right?

It's not terrible. Isn't the Razer, like... The Razers are expensive. But you can get an Anker Vertical for, like, $30. So it's a premium for the Logitech with the extra buttons and, you know, probably a little bit better build quality and all that. I mean,

the point I was trying to get at though is that like my favorite is the razor death adder. And those, when they came out were like $70. Right. And I mean, they've been out for a long time now. So they're like $40 now,

but it's not too far off from your shark fin. Yes, exactly. Exactly. All right. So my next category is actually just healthy stuff. So, um, I did this a couple of years ago and I think because we sit at desk all the time, we need to be more cognizant of the fact that we eat terrible and we don't get enough exercise and we sit down a lot. So why did that do so bad? So my next stuff is the healthy things. And the first up on the list is a set of exercise bands that I actually own and they are fantastic. So they're called body elastics, warrior resistance band set. Just know this. If you go search on Amazon for resistance bands, there's 9 billion of the same thing with different company names on them.

It's just what Amazon has become, right? Like everybody's white labeling their own things. These are different. So body elastics, they actually make these things and they've got incredible handles on them. They're not little garbage handles that when you pick them up, they feel like they're going to break and all that. Like they're not little garbage handles that when you pick them up they feel like they're going to break and all that like they're incredibly sturdy and the reason I like this particular set which is 110 basically is this one has 282 pounds of resistance so unlike

the ones that come with like 40 pounds of resistance where like you're like okay I got to wrap this thing around myself 1200 times for, for, I feel like it's doing anything. These will make you work. So you can actually, by the way, the picture of,

if you look at Amazon, look at the second picture, it's got a guy hanging with his feet on a chair, like hanging from this thing from the ceiling. These things are intense. Dude, these are incredible. And they come with bands where you can wrap them around trees.

If you want, you can do all kinds of other things. man that that reminds me i need to go find another product that um there there is i don't have this in my list but i'll get it to you guys when this goes up there's actually anchors made for these bands that you can mount in your wall they have like five inch lag bolts that come with them so that they won't tear out and i've got three of them on my wall so that you can actually attach these bands to them and use them to increase the resistance and all that kind of stuff so it's a really good way to get a nice workout and also tear down the wall no no i mean if you tear down the wall you're really strong

oh so so yeah at any rate. So how many bands do I have to use to look like this guy? Oh, yeah. I don't know. I've used them a few times. I need to use them a lot more, but they really are just super quality. A few times. That's funny the way you phrase that.

Yeah, a few times. Well, I won't tell you how many times. That'd just be embarrassing. All right. So the only thing about these, though, that is really annoying is if you've ever had exercise it gives you a nice place to hang all these things. So you're, you don't just have a pile of garbage in your floor, right? So just, you know, nice to, to pretty things up a little bit. Can I use the five inch lag bolts to hang that? And then I'll just pull against it. You might could, you probably could. That's you might save some money that way. All right. So out of the healthy stuff and now into the lazy stuff. So that before is to enable the next part, right? Okay. So the next one, this one is pretty cool. And I'll have, you know,

that the prices I'm putting in here on most of these are the MSRP that they have on these pages. A lot of these, especially about the time that this this episode goes live. These are all on discount. So this next one is called the I guess it's whim. I don't it's W.I.I.M. Mini streamer. Now, I put this one in here. If you're like me and you have a stereo system somewhere that you listen to music a lot or you want to cast things to a lot or whatever, if you don't have it hooked up to a nice home AV receiver, which are many hundreds of dollars, but you have like a speaker set or something that you just want to be able to push music to, this thing is awesome because this allows you to do airplay. It allows you to do Bluetooth.

It allows you to do, what's it, Spotify, Tidal, Kinect, several different things. So if you plug this thing up, if you have a set of powered speakers somewhere, you could plug this thing up to it, just run the output. It's got an optical out and I think an auxiliary out as well. You can run this to a nice set of speakers somewhere and you could just cast to it and play it. So if you're not invested in like a Sonos setup or something, but you have a nice set of speakers that you like to listen to music through, this is a fantastic little device. Like right now it's 79 bucks. It's regular price is 100 so that has also gotten

rave reviews from many many people online so the next one up these right now the the msrp of this thing is 50 bucks and it's the roku streaming stickk. Now I recently just went through a crazy amount of research on the various different streaming things out there. There's Apple TVs, there's Roku's, there's Apple or there's Amazon fire sticks, all that at the end of it all, the best bang for your buck with the most functionality that I could find was

this Roku streaming stick 4k. And in the past, I didn't like any of the sticks because they were underpowered. Like you'd go to navigate the menus and there was always a delay. I just didn't like the way they worked. I have not had that experience at all with this. And the reason why I like this one over most anything else is it uses, um,

a better wifi receiver in it. So if you have Wi-Fi 6 or one of the newer Wi-Fi streaming technologies in your house, this thing can be just a mile away from your router and it'll still pick it up and stream it beautifully. And then the other reason why I like the Roku's over even the Apple's and especially I don't like the Amazons, the fire ones is you can airplay to them. You can cast from Android devices. You can cast from windows devices. You can cast for max. So this is kind of like the all in one. It tries to play well with everything and it may not be as polished as like the Apple UI, but it does a really nice job.

Now note, if you want Dolby Atmos support, you need to go up to the Ultra. No, not true. This one actually has more support than what the Ultra does. No, no, no. I'm looking at it on the link that you put in there. The Roku players, the 4K streaming stick does not support Dolby Atmos. It absolutely does.

Did I put put in the link to the wrong one um so the one yeah going to it there's the unless like you have to go to the the roku ultra so no if you go to the roku site this is this is not a good representation if you go to the roku site and do the streaming players i'll put a link over here in a good representation if you go to the Roku site and do the streaming players I'll put a link over here in a second and if you do a compare there the 4K stick is actually more capable than all the other devices

it actually has Dolby Vision and something else that I don't even think the Ultra has yeah I saw the Dolby Vision was there but not the Atmos here's the link for that yeah there, but not the Atmos. Here's the link for that. Yeah, I want to see the link.

What are you talking about? Unless you're watching a movie, though. Yeah. I mean, and there's a way to compare on here somewhere. Compare, click. So the Roku 4K Stick versus the ultra so if you look here the 4k stick has dolby vision hdr 10 plus 4k and hd and then the audio if you go down it has oh you're right but i'm pretty sure i have Atmos enabled on mine.

I'll have to look. Cause I know I'm using Atmos on mine. Hmm. You might be right, sir. It's interesting. It's a lot cheaper though. Oh,

this is what it is. Cause it was audio and DTS pass through, through HDMI. I think what you're getting here is it's passing it through. And if whatever your, whatever is on the receiving end of that has that feature, then I think it uses it. I think it doesn't decode it is the thing.

Hmm. I'll look and I'll get back on that. You'd be curious to know what they mean by that. Yeah. Yeah. i'll look and i'll get back on that you'd be curious to know what they mean by that yeah yeah because because i actually have an atmo setup where i'm using it in my living room and and it definitely uses it so all right so i'll have to do some research i'll get back on that one the next up that i've got is this thing the ps vr. So this isn't actually out yet. And there are people that are already irritated about this thing. It's $549. And people are like, well, that's more than what the PS5

cost. I want to put this into perspective real quick. This thing has crazy resolution in both eyes. I think it's 2000 by 2000 something. It is, it's a high res per eye. The standalone sets that you buy for PCs that have the same specs as these just for the headset, not including the controllers are $900 to drive those things with your PC. You need a thousand dollar video card. So right there, you're already in $1,900 before you've even bought the controllers for those things, right? This set with the PSVR 2 is the headset. It is wired. So it hooks up through USB to your PS5, but it also comes with two controllers. The controllers that come with it look similar to the ones that come

from Valve. The Valve controllers through Steam are $300 for that headset. So $1,900 plus $300, you're at $2,200 to basically get the same level of quality that they have with this PSVR 2. And this thing's even cooler because it has built-in inside-out tracking, so it's no longer using the same camera thing that the original PSVR used. And on top of that, it's also got haptic feedback in the helmet itself. So like I saw people doing reviews of the thing and they were going through this area with like there were these bees or things buzzing around their heads and you could feel it in the headset it's absolutely crazy so this thing's gonna be a steal tracking i didn't know yeah so yeah so eye tracking so that's going to be important to like at where you are looking on those screens are going to be the parts in focus and it's 120

frames per second so you have 4k screen like inches away from your face per eye is it though no not but it's 2k per eye yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's insane i mean it's not cheap, right? Like $549 isn't cheap, but from what I can tell, this is about the best deal you can get. If you want to get into high end VR stuff and you already have a PS5. Now, now just know though, you spend all that money on this thing and you're still going to look ridiculous to everyone else around you when you're wearing it. It's so much fun, man.

It's so much fun. You're going to be having a blast and everybody's going to be like, Oh my God, you look like such a dork. Yeah. It's so cool. All right. So,

so that's, that's it for my entertaining stuff. The next up is my audio stuff. And I had to do this because through the years I've been asked so many times, like, Hey, what headphones do you recommend? Like, and, and I always to do this because through the years I've been asked so many times like hey what headphones do you recommend like and and I always have conversations with people let's do it so I think outlaws probably heard these so my first up are the headphones that I've recommended more than any other set ever assuming that you want a wired set of headphones and you want closed so that it won't leak sound out and sound won't leak

in the audio technica m50xs without question are about the best value for what you can get and i would hope that come you know black friday or whatever these things are going to go on great sales so they're typically 169 i've seen them go for about 130, 140 sometimes at that price. I don't know that you can get anything that's a better bang for your buck for the quality that you'll get out of them. They're amazing. And I've everybody I've ever suggested them to after they get them, they're like, Oh my God, that's unreal. So that's a closed can there. That's a closed can. Yep. So you won't bother anybody else.

The base. So they've got a V-shaped sound to them. And what that basically means is the base is slightly boosted. The mids are just below neutral, just below, but vocals still sound amazing on them. And then the highs are actually raised up just a little bit. So they're very crisp. Um, so it, so it's got more of what you'd call a bit of an exciting sound, even though they are, they can be very technical. Like if you listen to something that's just a garbage recording, you're going to hear it. Um, now how, how do these compare, uh, to, cause because the we should note these have over 23 000 reviews okay yeah 4.7

so some people had some things to say okay and the things were good for the most part uh how do you think these compare or how maybe you haven't tried them to the uh akg am i saying that right yeah akg's uh k240 studios so i i have not spent a lot of time with the 240 studios um i know with a lot of the akgs they're a little bit lighter in the base um now what you'll get usually out of those akgs are those the open set yes they're open back yep so i i think what you'll get usually out of those AKGs, are those the open set? Yes, they're open back. Yep. So I think what you usually get out of those is a little bit better of a sound stage and it in audio terms that basically means you're sitting there listening to it.

Does it sound like people are performing on stage like they really were or does it just sound like sound going straight in your ears? Right. And, and so it's kind of like that phantom effect are they really there so i think your akg you're going to get a little bit more realistic sound stage out of it but i think with the with the m50s you're going to get a little bit more bass impact and probably a little bit um crisper in the treble um but i haven't spent a lot of time with that set that's literally the pair you're wearing right now. Uh, Jay Z in case you're like,

what are they talking about? Yeah. I like it. Yeah. I mean, I was just curious cause like the, um, cause the AKGs,

which I love, they are like $59. Yeah. And, uh, but just under just shy of 10,000 reviews. And like, I see, I've seen a lot of like, I guess podcasters, like you see a lot of like professional podcasters, like that's the one, that's the ones they go to.

And that's why I was curious from like, uh, you know, if we, if we were to compare that, um, the audio technicas to that, because audio technica is another brand that when you think of like, you know, studio environments and whatnot, and these were, these are actually labeled professional studio monitor headphones. They are studio headphones. Yeah.

One of the other things you get with the M 50 X that you don't get with, you know, other headphones too, is they've got replaceable cables on them. So if you want a shorter cable or if you need a longer one or whatever like that is one of the things that you get with that um same on those akgs because i've actually i've actually replaced and i went after market on it so that i could go with a braided a longer and braided cable yep no i mean it's probably worth doing a shootout on the things at some point. I mean, I have much love for the M50s. As many different sets of headphones as I've ever done over the years, they're still one of my favorite pair that I've ever listened to.

Well, I mean, we're going to totally geek out here for a minute because like, sorry, welcome to headphones.net. Because like I have, I have, I have three sets of headphones on my desk that like I, I go between, right? So, uh, one are those AKG, the K two forties. I love them. They're, they're super comfortable to wear, uh, like for all day use. Uh, these that I have on right now, these are, um, I forget which model, they're AKG 550 Pros. Yeah. So ridiculously comfortable. These are a closed can, but super, super comfortable.

And I changed out the ear pads on these. So Brainwaves, which is a company that we've talked about in the past, they make these perforated, like, leather, super soft ear pads, which I think I've, in a previous shopping spree, have actually, like, mentioned those. So, I replaced the ear pads with those, and it, like, I thought that these headphones stock were amazing, and then I replaced the headphones, and it was like, they became even more amazing. And then, uh, I don't think I replaced the, Oh, I did replace it on my AKGs as well. So I have the same brainwaves on, on, uh, ear pads on it, uh, K two forties. And, but then my other go-to are like, this is where I'm going to get a lot of controversy. Cause like, you know, Michael also likes his base. So, you know let's let's be honest i like to rattle

the house so uh my my old school beats studio monitors are uh studio uh what are they called i think they were just called beat studio i think that's what they were yeah but these are like super super old school ones Like they're probably 15, 20 years old now. I still use them. I love them. Uh, they have like,

this is back when monster made them. So they have, they have the monster logo on them. Um, but yeah. So if I ever want something super heavy, but, uh,

yeah, those, those are my like three go-tos. So that's why I was just curious, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, these are the ones that most of the time when people ask them, like, if you got the money, get these because they are about the best all around that you can

get without going crazy on, on some other, you know, you can spend way more money and get 5% better. So, um, all right. So the next one I have up for this, and this is, this is crazy. So a lot of times I like when I'm listening to my headphones, I like to have them hooked into a headphone amp and a DAC slash amp to be specific. So if I'm running it from my computer, I don't necessarily want to use the sound card that's on the motherboard. I'll use a DAC and these things, I mean, they can get stupid expensive. You can get, you can get them from $20 all the way up to 2000. Like

you can spend a crazy amount of money on these things. There is a DAC slash headphone amp that you can get for about 57 bucks that will drive these headphones and give you tonal controls on them that are just amazing. And if you look at the reviews on this thing, people love them. They said that they've compared them to ones that are four or five times its price and they still prefer this one. So I think it's called the IEMA DAC-A2, and it has bass and treble controls on it. And it will more than power the M50Xs if you happen to go that way. I think it says that it'll drive them all the way up to 200-ohm headphones. So do not go buy this thing if you have a set of 250-ohm or 600-ohm headphones because you're going to not have enough juice to push the things.

Well, I was going to ask like the, uh, Oh man, I can't remember the brand now. The buyer, uh, dynamic dynamic. Yeah. Cause you, cause, cause have you, cause you can't plug those in. You can't power these or those headphones with that. Right. Well, so it depends. So like, for instance, I have the DTs. So like outlaw was talking about, he has a bunch of headphones sitting around. I've probably got 15 pair within arm's reach. Um, I've got the biodynamic DT seven 70 pros right here. And these are 80 ohms. Now there is a set of headphones that did biodynamic makes that are just amazing. The, the DT nine nineties,

um, you can get those things in 32 Ohm, 200 Ohm and 600 Ohm. So you can sort of buy them tailored to what you want. If you go with a 600 Ohm, the whole idea is it takes more power to drive them so they can be more nuanced in the sound, right?

That that's supposed to be what it is because the 32 ohm, everything's coming through because there's no resistance. So that said, if you're going with a higher ohm rated headphone, you're going to have to get a bigger amp or one that provides more power. But this one right here will make your eardrums bleed with most standard headphones that you'd be hooking up to anything that you got already. So, um, that's good on that. I mean, good to know. Yeah. $57 for high quality stuff is amazing. All right. And so this is where I got a little bit silly. Um, but actually what, what made me think about this is I've had so many conversations with like Devin Goble and Andrew Diamond and other people that I think because we're developers, we like to build things.

We like to make stuff. Right. And I think it extends past just making things on a computer. So my next thing up is a power tool set from, I think, is this the, this is the DeWalt. All right. So I want to describe this one real quick. And here's the deal. If you want to buy power tools, man, Black Friday is the best time. So there are several big players in the power tool world. There's DeWalt, Milwaukee.

Obviously, you got Ryobi and several others. I recommend if you're going to do it, spend a little bit more money on either DeWalt, Milwaukee, maybe Makita. And the reason I say is if you go down to something like a Ryobi, you can get these nice kits that have tons of tools in them for pretty cheap, but they don't have features that you'll realize you need at some point. One of the big ones, like if you're looking at this image that I've got here on these drills, they've got belt clips on them or pocket clips. So if you're up on the ladder doing something, you can just clip that thing on your pocket and you're good to go. My Ryobis that I have, I'm up on a ladder and I'm looking for a place to put the thing while I'm trying to reach up and do something else.

So little things like that that you get with these more professional tools is really nice. Now, the reason why I picked this particular kit, and it's not because, like, truth be told, I'd probably go Milwaukee or DeWalt. I'm not sure. I've already got some Milwaukee tools, so I'll probably stay in that ecosystem just so that I don't have, you know, 90 different battery chargers laying around. But this one comes with, if you're looking at a set of tools, you want an impact driver because that's what you want to drive, lag bolts, screws, whatever.

You don't want to use just a drill for doing screws and all that kind of stuff. You want an impact driver. It also comes with a drill. It has an oscillating tool, which is one of these things that just kind of goes back and forth. So you can cut things straight on. They're fantastic. Anytime you need to do something in tight spaces and it comes with a circular saw. Now, the reason I pick what, go ahead. So I was going to comment on that oscillating saw. Uh, I was just talking to my wife about this because in the past when I've had to like cut a section of sheet rock out, like I've done it the hard way. Right. And then I saw a video of a guy using an oscillating saw to cut out a section of sheet rock cause he wanted to redo some wiring and it took him all of like five seconds and he had these super clean lines that he did with it

and i'm like sold done yeah dude they're amazing tools they really are and then and then the circular saw now the reason why i picked this particular kit is if you want to do any amount of woodworking at all, this is a fantastic way to get started. And I'll expand on that in a second. But really, the circular saw and then your drills and your impact gun and even that oscillating tool, you can do a whole lot with that. And I'm going to take it up to the next notch with my last thing here, which is this. It is a rip guide, a rip tool for your circular saw. Yes, that's made by Craig. And what's so awesome about this is and the reason I brought this up, this desk that I

made in front of me that I'm still using to this day, I think I talked about it years ago. I basically made it with a circular saw, this cutting guide, and then an orbital sander and some router bits. That is all I did to build a very sturdy table that I have legs going on this rip saw guide. What it allows you to do is you can attach it to a circular saw and then you can make perfectly straight rip cuts down big sheet goods using this thing. It's $44. Oh, and the toolkit that I talked about,

the four tool toolkit was a 20 volt DeWalt system. That was three 50. This thing's 44 bucks and it'll allow you to do all the rip cuts better than you could do on a table saw. And really the trick that I'll tell you that I use is if you go to Home Depot or Lowe's, go back to the insulation section of the store and they make like inch or two inch thick foam board buy a piece of that it's a four by eight sheet lay any kind of plywood down on top of that and then make your rip cuts directly on it and then that way you're not having to worry about cutting through anything it's just going to cut

into the foam at the bottom of it and you can make your rip cuts on a solid piece of surface so yeah that if you ever wanted to get started with some tool stuff, you don't need a whole lot of things. You just need a floor. You can get on and do these types of things and you can go to town. So that is my list. Well, very cool. Thank you for that short list.

And now I will give you a brief explanation of what an acorn is. Oh yeah? In a nutshell, it's an oak tree. Ah. Yes, indeed. Alright. Well, you know, I tend to do things a little bit differently.

Y'all are so good at hardware stuff, things in the world and, you know, doing research and knowing about things. And I'm terrible at it. In fact, I always just buy the stuff that y'all talk about. So I like to try a slightly different tack on things. And this year is no exception. I thought you were going to ask for the reviews. Okay.

No, no, no exception. I thought you were going to ask for the reviews. Okay. No, no, no reviews. So what I did this time, I Googled what you can buy to make you happy. People say that money can't buy you happiness. Lamborghini can go a long way. It sure could. Have you ever tried Googling for it, though? A Lamborghini? All the time.

What can I buy to make me happy? No, that's pretty interesting. Yeah. I mean, these hypothetical questions don't have to be hypothetical. You can just Google. And people on Reddit and stuff will just tell you. And one of the things I came across that I thought was interesting, and I've got an article here I can link, is how you can buy happiness. And I found a couple articles that are kind of similar.

And basically, it boils down to, yeah. you buy happiness and uh i found a couple articles that are kind of similar and so we'll link them and basically it boils down to yeah and by the way this is you know just a fun take right so you know whatever grain salt but basically uh the idea is that you uh spend money to save you time and that time that you save the only you can go spend on things that you actually you know want to do things that make you happy, spend your time with friends and family or on your hobbies, whatever. So, uh, yeah. Or that, you know, well, and also the argument is, you know, if you, uh,

if you save time on stuff that you don't like, you know, you get someone else to do it for you or you, you know, find other ways to outsource or automate it. The time that you spend on, you know, things that you enjoy or other things that just you care about, uh, is better, right? So if you say, find a way to outsource 10 hours a month of stuff that you don't like, maybe, uh, you know, your work is a little bit more productive. Maybe your sleep is a little bit better. Maybe your family time is, uh, more golden

or, you know, whatever. I don't know. So I got a list of a couple ideas for things that you can buy or things you can spend to try and save you time. And the first one I got here is mattress, even though I thought it was an item. So, you know, I just had to put that in there because people always say, like, when you get older, like, you should get a good mattress. That one's, you know, just one off but uh how about this uh cleaning service hundred dollars three hundred dollars a month if you got an apartment or something you can get much less you know the while you know all these numbers vary especially if you're in different

countries different currencies and stuff all this stuff it kind of has to adopt what happened with the mattress how much was it what was it's a thousand dollars oh this is all these are just basically different ways to spend money like i i didn't really you know pay attention to the whole uh point of the show oh you didn't keep track of the budget got it yeah okay no in fact most of these things you know you can easily spend two thousand dollars on it a year okay so fair you know yeah i don't pay attention to the rules but you didn't research the mattress like you didn't say like – Oh, no.

I mean I did. So what I did is I looked at a couple of different mattresses. It's really hard to tell. They all say they're fantastic. And so what I did is I Googled like how much does it cost to get a good mattress? Like what is the dollar amount that you can say like if I spend this much on the mattress, like it's going to probably be good enough. And if you want to go nuts from there, you you know it's always like an exponential kind of curve right so you know uh there's usually a point in the curve that it kind of makes economical sense and

that would turn out to be about a thousand dollars you'll say if you spend a thousand dollars a mattress probably gonna be pretty good and but you didn't have a brand you didn't have a brand or any particular thing no i mean if you want to click an affiliate link, I guess we can find one for Casper. So I'll tell you that. Casper, they're the best. A thousand bucks. Okay. So yeah.

Or Purple. We'll have two links. Click them both. Cleaning service is roughly about $2,000 a year. You know, it varies wildly and stuff. But man, how much better would your life life if you ever had to scrub another toilet if you want to take that time you want to put it into tech great if you want to take that uh energy that you get from saving that time and uh you know work a little harder at work or you know do a little

bit more research on your next task instead of just doing the way you would normally do it you know that's great. There's subscription services for massages. If you pay like $50 a month, go get you a massage. There's car washes too. It's a little one. You can just take your car wash sometimes. You can get like a subscription service for like $100 a month and then just take it there.

If that's something you care about, get your car detailed, vacuumed, or whatever. This is one of my favorites. Joe's list sounds expensive so far i don't know like like oh yeah like every item is like here's two thousand dollars and like he's going to give us like 20 things where he spent two thousand dollars 20 times yeah like and now you too can be happy and i'm gonna be like yeah i'm also broke from all the things that we spent money on it'll only cost you 40 grand a year after taxes. Right. You'll be good. I mean,

okay, so I'll just jump ahead to the end. The last thing is, I didn't mean to make you jump ahead to the end. No, no,

we don't want to jump ahead. So, I actually hired someone to do my job for me. So, I have all this money and all this time. Yeah,

and I'm not actually doing anything. All I do is just, you know, manage all these various different companies that have automated my entire life away. Yeah. So, I'm kidding. doing anything. All I do is just manage all these various different companies that have automated my entire life away. Yeah.

I'm kidding. That's not on the list, y'all. How about this one? A grocery delivery service. You like grocery shopping? Maybe. If not, I guess I'll see you before. You can get shipped for $10 a month,

and they do do upcharges on items, so it's definitely going to end up probably being a couple thousand dollars a year. You never have to go grocery shopping again. You can always have fresh carrots if you want. If you like fresh carrots. Landscapers. This one's great. Oh, yes.

This is not just the time that you save. You also got to take a shower afterwards. That's where all the time is spent. Yeah. None of that. I've seen pictures where Joe actually had weed eater string line stuck through his skin. Yeah, filthy. Yeah, I moved some mulch this weekend.

It took me almost eight hours somehow. It was a lot of mulch. There's circumstances there. What was your monthly cost on the landscaper here? So I put down $100 a month. I figure that varies wildly you know depending on where you are or whatever like in florida in orlando you can get something to mow your lawn we'd eat whatever for a hundred bucks a month what size yard is that though

quarter quarter quarter of an acre yeah okay and that's the and the house is also on that quarter of an acre so we're talking about like there's three strips of grass. Yeah. Like you run the lawnmower three times in a straight line, you're done. Yeah, but you got to weed eat too. By hand? Weeding sucks. It buzzes your hands.

You know, it stinks. Right? You got to do something with the grass. There's all the dog duty in the yard too. I don't want to deal with that. You know, you go through your shoes faster, you know, and then you got to you got to do something to grass there's all the dog duty in the yard too i don't deal with that you know you go through your shoes faster you know and you got to shop for shoes like i mean it compounds okay uh get a virtual ones assistant this one's never really appealed to me but you know people say uh they love it you can get one 10 to 20 an hour don't ask me how that works you know but allegedly how many hours a month are you going to use?

What am I going to use them for? That's the thing. 10? All right, so 200 a month. I want them to do all the things I don't like doing, which is most things, by the way. I don't like most things. Like, here, go manage my Jira queue while I get back to work. Hey, could you watch that movie for me and tell me what it was?

Yeah. That's the things I want to do. Right? No, no, not me. I need it was. Yeah. That's the things I want to do. Right? No, no, not me. I need a summary. Yeah. So, wouldn't it be nice to be like, hey, can you just make me my, you know, doctor appointments, my dental, my, I don't know, eye appointments. Like, hey, tell you what, you go Google what kind of appointments a person my age should be making every, every year and just do that.

There's a task right there. That's great. I don't want to do that. I like it. Uh, door dash, right? If you don't like cooking,

just get food delivered. How much do you do on that a month? How much on, because door dash isn't cheap, right? Oh, 2000 a month. Easy.

2000. I was going to say that one's gonna get up there yeah that one it definitely uh definitely adds up fast but you can imagine how if you decided like you know i hate cooking i like eating so this is where i'm gonna put some money and uh yeah save you some time uh also uh things like uh you know blue apron factor those things usually cost about seven to ten dollars per meal per person uh so you know you can depend on how little or how much you want to cook there and how much you're willing to eat stuff out of the refrigerator and how much are we saying that one's going to be a month

uh let's see depends on how many people are in your family but let's just say one person uh one person and say you do 10 meals a week, uh, four weeks in a month. Sure. We'll do the most expensive one. That's $400 a month times 12. It's $4,800. No, I'm just,

I'm not even trying to do the yearly right now. I'm just trying to, I'm trying to keep the monthly total going. Oh, 400 a month. Okay. But now to be fair, you were eating before this,

right? Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's not completely sunk cost, right? Like, to your point, that's not terrible. Yeah, so it's hard.

So there's basically my list of different services that you could buy to save you time. And I like the idea is, like, if you really sat down and thought about, how can I save 10 hours a month by getting rid of like some of the worst stuff I hate doing? Like cleaning for me. I hate cleaning. I don't want to do it. I don't want to scrub my shower ever again. What can I do? What can I spend money on to get to reclaim the worst 10 hours of my life and put it into things I like doing the best?

And so, you know, there's, of course, tech stuff like you could create a website portfolio. You could do leak code with that time and you won't be doing those leak code problems, you know, after you've been doing yard work and cleaning the bathroom. So it's kind of nice. You could do game jams, yeah, an extra time. Or you could just hang out with friends and family. You could go to the gym, you could learn an instrument, you could get into yoga or meditation or whatever. And then the time that you do spend at work or studying, uh, it's going to be that much better.

You're going to get more out of it because you know, you're not doing stuff you hate anymore. So I like how, uh, we give Joe a $2,000 bucket. He comes back $17,000 later and like, here you go. Here's my list.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But. Yeah. But I I've got, I've got to be honest with you. I like this approach because there are definitely things that I'm like, I don't want to do. Right.

I mean, landscaping was one of them. When I got this house, I was like, you know what? I'm going to do the landscaping. And then I found out real quick that I did not like landscaping at this house and and it was all about getting my time back it really was yeah so yeah so that's that's it that was my take on this year oh also i should mention

that the year i uh bought all the bitcoin miners right made at least a couple hundred k off that so now i can order blue apron like every day i could doordash did you make a couple hundred k off of that because you resold the graphics cards during the pandemic sold at the peak sold at the peak buy high sell low right yeah yeah all right that's good hey Hey, I like the take. I think you're a little over budget, but I like the take. Just a little bit. You only overshot it 15-ish. I gave y'all some options.

You did. You did. I mean, you can pick and choose some of these and still hit over 2K. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Well, fine then i will tell you this uh my dentist by the way since we were like looking for like things to improve your life my dentist is the best and to prove it he even has a

little plaque so so uh, before I, this is where I thought Joe was going by the way. So I'm going to go ahead and get in there now. So if you haven't already left us a review, uh, we would greatly appreciate it. Uh, like I said,

you know, the, the most recent ones that we read, they, they, uh, really did mean a lot to us to, to,

you know, we're sorry that we, you know, we were so late catching up to it, but we really did appreciate reading those. It always puts a smile on our face when we read those. We get them through emails too, some Twitter. So however it's most convenient for you to leave us the review, we do greatly appreciate them. You can find some helpful links at www.codingblocks.net.

And yeah, what are you guys doing? Like everything is vanishing in the show notes. I'm pasting my list in. Oh, okay. Did you replace mine? I thought I had it. Yeah, all right.

Yeah, you did good. I just thought I already had all of it written. Hey, do you know how to make a tissue dance uh no you put a little boogie in it oh why you get me so gross man my son came home with that when i was like okay that's that's worthy that's gross man you better do better do better you put a little boogie in it. Yeah. This episode is sponsored by Retool. Internal tools, any custom software you build to help your employees operate better, can dramatically impact every part of your business.

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and we're going to play our little game of familyud here and see who gets closest to the answers here. Oh, you know what? I should make a little cheat sheet here to keep track of the scores. There's no need. Yeah, I can tell you who's going to win right now. Last time, I mean, no joke,

Joe, you got to step it up. What was that about last time? I thought I did pretty good. Oh, I mean, no joke, Joe, you got to step it up. What was that about last time? I thought I did pretty good. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah, did it not come across that way? I'm sorry.

Look, I've seen that show before. I've seen Family Feud. Some of the answers, not only that the audience gives, but also the, the families. It's dumb as heck. Yeah, I agree. I'm way better. I'm way better.

Well, you're going to get your chance to redeem yourself tonight, sir. So name famous rivalries between brands and Alan, because it is episode one 97. You get to go first. Famous rivalries between brands, Ford and Chevy,

Ford and Chevy. All right. And that is not on the list. Can you believe it? Joe, this is your chance. You can get an early lead here. Oh, I know it.

I mean, it's got, okay. Sharks versus the Jets. Sharks versus the Jets. West Side Story, come on. Also, Coke and Pepsi. Coke and Pepsi was the number one answer for 38 points that Alan does not get. It does not get. Doggone it.

Followed by McDonald's versus Burger King was 26. No competition. No, that's not even right. Have you ever seen a car at a Burger King? Wow. You've seen McDonald's. The same. king wow you see mcdonald's the same you got some harsh opinions about a burger king there i'm sorry burger king all right are you though i prefer it honestly i don't think you do but i you know every time i go there i'm like why are they still in business and they're still in the car there because he rode his bike. That's true. All right.

All right. Well, the number three answer was Microsoft versus Apple. 23. What is this? 1980? Why so critical, man? You're so harsh. Because we're mad.

Sharks and Jets is such a better answer. Marvel versus DC was number four. Okay. Okay. I mean, also no competition. Batman. I was going to say, is it DC? Okay.

It's not DC. Oh, it's not? All right. Well, here we go. So it's zero. We're one question in and it is zero versus zero. So what was the next question? It's a tight race. Now I got to find it.

Okay. Name a word that rhymes with horse. Morse. Morse. Is that even a word? Morse code. That's Morris, not Morse. Is that even a word? Morse code. That's Morris, not Morse. What?

Isn't it Morris? No. Hey, listen, I know how to pronounce names. I'm famously known for this. I want you to call me out for it and be wrong. I mean, I can think of so many. It's crazy. All right. All right. Hit us. Hit us. Go. Go with it. Of course, that's going to be my first one. It's course.

There's course. Oh, more so. Course is the number three answer. 16 points. Joe takes the lead. He does. I'm telling you, like I'm going to, I'm going to be famous with my Morris code. What is, what is a buff?

I mean, I'm going to off bed and there's not that many force is the number one answer. 24 followed by source at 19. I mean, come on. on okay like how do you push your branch up you force it kid push force that's right that's right and what kind of stuff is it that you're pushing it's source man all right i can't believe that's the top answer that's crazy yeah right it takes Yeah. Right. It takes a turn here at number four with divorce. Ooh. Then endorse then remorse. So, all right.

So one more and we'll see who takes the lead here. It's not looking good. Yeah. I think, I think he's going to get it. All right. Name things people lie about on resumes. Experience.

Experience is the number four answer. Oh, come on. With 15 points. Oh. This is tough. First thing, they used to say how much money they make, but who puts that on a resume, right?

So, I start in these title job title. Number two, answer 24 points. Nice. He smoked me. Yep. So Joe takes it with,

uh, you know, 8 billion points. Yeah. That's how, you know, how flawed it is. I have a chance at winning it then there's something wrong with it.

Okay. What was number one? Oh, shoot. What was? Dang it. I just closed the window. If you don't know, you just make it up. I closed the window, and I had it open in an incognito window,

so I wouldn't get the same results from last time. No, it was not experience. Education was the number one thing. Oh, that makes sense. People lying about their college degree. Yeah. And that's why you should never trust a pig with a secret. Because it's bound to squeal.

Terrible love it. I like it. All right. So I guess it's my turn then. So I didn't necessarily categorize mine as well as Alan did his this time. But I will say, first of all all i'm going to start with this because do you remember a few of these back uh joe was like in typical joe fashion is that an insult i don't think so okay so so you know in a previous one joe's like okay i'm gonna spend the entire 3500

on this workstation that looks like a scorpion. And that's where you sit and it's got like 18 monitors that curve around you and everything. And yeah. So I found a company that has a whole slew of these or called the company's ergo quest and they make zero gravity workstations now none of these are within the price range of our budget for this year so this was just more of like a

an honorable mention some of these are just absolutely crazy though in like some of these actually some of these i question like some of these look like you might want it for a medical kind of purpose for some of them, but not all of them, though. There are definitely some that are like, nope, that just looks like that's that guy's setup. They are insane, though. A couple years ago, I didn't see anything you know the scorpion chair was kind of a novelty at a time there wasn't a lot out there when i looked at

other stuff that was like it i'm really glad to see that there's a lot more of them that actually look a little bit more professional than the scorpion although man if somebody did a bad weld this could be a bad day yeah like three or four monitors falling on you. Like there's one, if you scroll down, the guy has six monitors, you know, hanging over him. And you're just like,

well, to Alan's point, like, I hope that those are securely used a visa amount, right? Like that's, that's why it matters. Yeah.

Oh, this one's only $85. Oh wait, sorry. That's the headrest. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 14, this one's only $85. Oh wait, sorry. That's the headrest. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. 14,000. And it's crazy how many of them they have though too, right? Like it wasn't just like, Oh, Hey, here's the one option.

I mean, there's, there's like two dozen in there. So yeah. Um, all right. So I'm going to start it off with some, uh,

practical kind of things, you know, that you would use around the house or need around the house. And then I'm going to, you know, go from there. So first I'm going to start with like in the in the realm of the honorable mentions. Right. Because we talked about this recently, you know, as it related to previous tip of the week, the Asus SynWiFi ET8. And I had shared a link from Asus on like, hey, if you're having trouble with your IoT devices, give these settings a try. So in the end, that Asus just didn't work out for me. And your mileage may vary, and I'm willing to accept that. It is fully feature-packed. I mean, there's a bunch of

things that you could do with it. But if you are like me and you want your Wi-Fi to just be an appliance that you plug and play and you don't have to really put a lot of thought into it, for me, I don't know what it was with my network, but I just had too many problems with it. So, you know, away it goes. And I went to the new Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro that supports the Wi-Fi 6E standard, and it has been exactly what I wanted. Just plug it in and things work. Now we'll say the one downside to the way Google has their Wi-Fi set up, because it is attached to your Google account and you have to create like a home, a quote home, that you like, you know, say, oh, this device is in that home and you know, whatever. And this device is in my other home. Cause you know how many of us, I like have multiple homes, right? Like everybody at Google must have like 18 homes and that's why they do it this way.

So the annoying thing is, is that if you are upgrading from a previous version of a Google or nest wifi system, oh, there she goes again. Sorry, I don't have any information about that. I know. Isn't that crazy? She didn't have information about it. Um, then you can't, you can't, the crazy thing is, is you can't just like, uh, there's no utility to migrate you from the old system to the new system. And this system is incompatible with the previous two versions. So you have to remove the old system and factory reset it from your account, meaning all your settings are lost and then set this one up, which, so that's the bad thing about it. And also to that end, there was a, a problem that I found that this was like literally the only

problem that I had in setting these things up. Uh, there was a Reddit post that was talking about how you could set up the initial node. And then when you would try to set up the addition, any additional nodes as part of the mesh, as you would set them up, you would get these connection failures. Like you'd initially be able to connect to it and then you'd start to do the configuration and then it would eventually say, Oh, connection failed. And it turns out in one of the versions of iOS and maybe Android has a similar issue on some of the later ones. I don't know, probably not though, since this is, uh, you know, made by Google. Um, but in one of the versions of iOS, Apple introduced this private relay feature. And you have to disable that feature in order to do the setup because otherwise,

when you're going through the setup configuration process and you have to make this Wi-Fi connection to that specific access point to do the configuration. And then it wants to redirect you back to, uh, you know, another wifi network into a different access point. That's where you end up getting the connection filled a thing. So I'll include a link to that, um, Reddit discussion in there, but that turning that off, it was easy to set up. And then, you know, it's been a gravy ever since. So, um, now this is where like Apple, uh, I'm sorry, Apple, I'm sorry, Alan, I was going to call you Apple. Can I call you Apple from now on? You can. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Um, we'll just change your first name to fiona and so uh you

know in the spirit of why is michael always late to the game on everything uh i finally got around to trying out the airpod pros specifically the second generation airpod pros and this is why your conversation about headphones earlier was so interesting. Oh, my. These are special. Like, if you are already in the Apple ecosystem, then there's no reason to not just go ahead and get these. They are so awesome. The noise cancellation on them is great, but also the adaptive transparency feature where you can put the headphones in and it will just like replay whatever is happening outside, you know, without you taking them in. Because they're making they're going to make a like a soundproof kind of seal inside of your ear.

So with the adaptive transparency on, you can still hear and talk to everyone around you. The adaptive transparency is so good that people actually use these as earplugs at live events like concerts because the adaptive transparency will automatically kill anything over 85 decibels. It'll bring the volume down automatically. So you'll still hear it. You just don't go deaf from it. That's interesting. Yeah. So awesome. So it's like, you know, they're, they're, they're $240. Oh, I forgot to mention that that, uh, nest wifi pro for the three pack was $400. So it was, it was like $200 cheaper than that or no. Uh, yeah. A hundred dollars cheaper than the Asus, uh, roughly.

And, um, you know, and you get three access points instead of two, like you get with the, the Asus, but then yeah, two 40 for the Apple air pod pros second generation. And they are just fantastic. The sound quality is so good. Uh, it has the spatial audio features in it. The one thing that would push me over the top to actually go for these that I didn't like about the AirPods in the past is these are actually in here. They have the thing that seals in your ear instead of the ones that just sort of hang in your ears. I can't stand those. These actually

look like they'd be comfortable. Yeah, they, they are so fantastic and just comfortable to wear and it just works so well. Yeah. You know, I've always had a problem with like any wireless set of headphones with a microphone that people never can, I can never use them for like a conversation to like talk to anyone on the phone or anything like that. These, I don't have that problem. Like people don't notice that I'm, I'm using them or at least if they do, they don't complain about it, but it's, it's been fantastic so far. So yeah. Um, you know, I finally got around to it, but Hey, so in the same vein of, Hey, Michael finally got around to something.

So a few years back, Alan had given this, I don't remember if it was a tip of the week, but it was definitely in a, um, shopping spree episode from the past. And I finally got around to like, Hey, let me give you these things to try. Like it's only 18 years late but i'll do it but i kind of took a different approach and so that's why i'm bringing this one back because honestly alan the ones you picked were ugly like i don't know what you were thinking like they were just ugly like they were they were beyond ugly they were fugly so yeah here we go so the office chair wheels right like you picked like a ugly clear one. Like they were, they were nasty, but you were pretty. Yeah. So I got them in black to where they match the chair. They don't, they actually look like they came with the chair. Right. But here's also another advantage to these. So these are the lifelong office chair wheels that Alan has recommended for, you know, like 18 billion years before the dinosaurs were around.

They're thirty seven dollars on Amazon. But another big advantage of them that he never described is that it actually raises the height of the chair up off the floor a little bit like specifically that that whatever that star pattern is that the wheels are connected to um which matters for my vacuum and that's yeah because my vacuum uh like if you have a robot vacuum like they would always get stuck under the default height and this raises it up like maybe half an inch or so just enough to where like the robot can get through each spindle and move on about a stay and well i guess it wouldn't be a spindle but whatever each each arm of the of the star pattern and and moves on and doesn't get stuck and so yeah but also it's super comfortable yeah so to to take this for for those that have no clue what the heck he's talking about the office chair casters that usually come on your office chair, the little plasticky doodads that if you have any carpet or anything, they just get stuck.

They don't go anywhere. And if you roll them on hardwood floors, they'll scratch the mess out of your floor, right? Like it'll just eat it up over time. These are basically like rollerblades. I think that's what they were modeled after. And so they're just very tall, soft rollers that do well on hard surfaces and even do well on carpet. So they protect your floor and they roll smoother.

Yep. So, and they actually roll easier too, I find. I don't know if it's because it has a better quality bearing in it like maybe the other ones didn't even have a bearing but i find that like it's it's easier to move and it could just be like it's less friction you know because it's only one wheel instead of the two and it has a smaller contact point because of the shape of that roller blade wheel style versus the old flat caster. So I don't know. But OK, so also. I think we have talked about this video on the past or maybe we have, but there was a there was a YouTube channel. I know that Alan and I have talked about, uh, off air where the guy is like super good at

like reviewing like video recording equipment and things like that. And he has like really cool setups where like he was talking about like how to make your own like set up to where, um, Oh, you would have like your own teleprompter kind of like style where, you know, the camera's behind the glass, but yet you project your display up on it. And so instead of a tele, a teleprompter, you're using it as your display so that you could look through that. And like, uh, if you were doing a bunch of recordings and whatnot that you could, um, that way you're like more engaged with the, the audience because you're looking at your, your quote screen, but also, you know, you're like more engaged with the, the audience because you're looking at your, your quote screen, but also, you know, you're looking directly at the camera type of thing. That, that was like

one of the examples. And in, in one of the examples, he'd also talked about using like a, like a Home Depot brand. I don't want to say it was like a Husky brand work bench that as a standup desk where it had like a manual crank arm to raise and lower. At any rate, the controversial part though was that he had said that he would never take any time to manage any wiring in his setup. And so he was just like, no, just throw it all behind the desk and be done. And he had this tray for it. And I just, I can't, I can't get on board with that. I can't, I can't give that my seal of approval. So, but what I have done though, is I have moved away from like, in the past, I would have like super clean, tight bundles of wires. Right. But that got to be a problem, you know, depending on like how much desk area you have and like how far your wires are growing. And like, I mean, I got some, some

of these wires that are like, especially because it's a standup desk and it's going from like up high all the way across the desk down low. And I need to accommodate for standing up. So it's like, you know, here's a 25 foot cable or 18 foot cable or whatever. Right. So what I have gone to now is the, uh, wire loom, uh, tubing sleeves. And, uh, these are like $13 for 10 feet. You can get them in different colors. So you can actually like color coordinate your things, which you would say like, well, why now you're getting crazy color coordinate, but I'll tell you why. Cause I like to separate the audio from the power and Oh, by the way, this $13 for the 10 feet, it's also because that's the largest diameter version. So if you needed like a smaller diameter,

you know, I'm just throwing the idea out there much like, you know, Jay-Z's like, here's all the services that you might want kind of thing. Like, you know, the idea is that like using these cable sleeves, it's a lot easier because you can put the cable in at any point along the sleeve and you can pop it back out at any point along the sleeve as you need. And it can, the particular one that I have linked here, cause I got the larger size. You can accommodate a lot of wire in that. You want to know what's great is I think you called out one of my headphones

had like 20 some odd thousand reviews. The, these cable wraps have 43,000 reviews and a 4.7 out of five. Like that's, that's impressive on any object on Amazon and they are worth it. Yeah. Um, so there's that. And then I found this little thing and I'm like, Oh man, this is just too cool. I got i gotta share this so i don't know about you all but i uh like to keep my space tidy okay i mean you know a surgeon is only as good as like his area is clean right that's his tools got nothing to do with there well i mean you gotta keep the the body has to be clean like you're're like suction, you know, right. So, so, uh, you know, as is common in a lot of it stuff, you, I have cans of compressed

air over the years. I'm like, you know, constantly like spraying dust off of things and getting into the, to the keyboard and whatnot. Right. Well, I mean, but it, you know, then the hassle is like, you finally like, okay, I'm going to get in there and clean some stuff out. Oh, that's the end of the can. And that was the last one. Well, I found this little thing that I, you will never need another can of compressed air. So this is like a little broom for your keyboard, uh, made by, I'm not sure if this is supposed to be pronounced, but I, I just say O X O. Um, but it's a company like you would see it like, you know, in like a kitchen, uh, area of a store, like a bed, bath and

beyond type of store or something like that. But it's got on one side, it's a dual side. It's on one side, it's got this little broom that can like sweep your keyboard. And then the other side has this like little wipe cleaner to, you know, clean your screen. How perfect is that? Yeah, it's cute too. Yeah. Microfiber on one side, a brush on the other. Yeah, that's pretty nifty.

I wasn't going to go with the cuteness, but yeah, sure. It's cute. Yeah. Okay. And so that's where the seriousness stops with that little $12 cleaner, by the way. All right. We get nuts from here. Are you ready?

So here's my favorite one. Well, I don't know if I want to say this is my favorite one, but this was definitely awesome. And I know Alan's going to see this, and he's going to be like, oh, I've got to get me one of those. Oh, no. so this is the dgi smartphone gimbal stabilizer for 130 dollars you can never you will never have to take shaky videos again with your phone i love gimbals this thing is awesome dude it's 9500 reviews 4.4 stars review on it like

one of these will be in my life because this thing looks awesome yeah they're so cool to just see people using them too yeah i'm just gonna run around like taking video from now on like everything everybody's gonna be like wait is he a famous tiktoker why is he like shooting video and i'm like nope I just like it. Look. Look how still it is. I can move my hand like all of it. It looks like I'm swatting flies. And look, the camera's staying still. It's going to be great.

This is DJI. It probably has a motorized gimbal in it. That'd be my guess. It does. You can see the battery on it. So, yeah, this this thing's gonna be awesome i mean i've got the big boy version of it for for like a camera and they're they're amazing

they really are cool yeah and it extends oh so it's got like an extension rod for like selfies. Like this thing is awesome. Yeah. So, yeah, that one starts my super fun list. Now, can I have a moment of seriousness now? Can we take a more somber tone here and like get ready? Because you know. Okay. You know, Joe, I don't think you consider yourself a coffee drinker.

Is that correct? I drink a lot of it. Oh, you do? Okay, so maybe Joe would be considered a coffee drinker. But Alan, I get this feeling that Alan would be more particular. I used to be. I haven't had any coffee to drink in about two months. Oh, really? Well, that's neat.

Yeah, I stopped. Yeah. Okay, well, if you ever decided to pick it back up, what you need is an app to control your mug, and you're like, what mug would that possibly be? And so I present to you the Ember Temperature Control Travel Mug. Now, I told you everything from here on was going to like, we were past the serious stuff. So, Oh, it actually went down in price. It's now $190. It was 192 at the time of my writing, but yeah, it, it will, it will, uh, it's got a three hour battery life and you're like, wait, my cup has a battery life?

But don't worry. It charges wirelessly, and it can maintain the temperature, the exact temperature, from 120 to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a lot of Fahrenheit. That is. It's pretty nifty. Man, that is expensive as heck, but it has fantastic reviews. I don't know if this is all the brothers, moms, and dads of the original product, but... Did I mention it has a little touch display on it as well?

No, it's pretty legit, though. It's like a sous vide for your coffee. I mean, it's basically... To look at this thing, it looks like, you're like, oh, it looks like a Yeti kind of type of cup, right? Except, yeah, it's got a digital display on it. It comes with a wireless base to charge it. And, yeah, because, I mean, you wouldn't want to be bothered with a wire on your cup, right? Like, that'd be silly talk, right? I mean, it's interesting. I mean, you wouldn't want to be bothered with a wire on your cup, right? Like that'd be silly talk, right? I mean, it's interesting.

I'll give you that. It's pretty interesting. Three hour battery life. Three hour battery life. So it'll keep your coffee warm for three hours. Right. At a specific temperature. I drink half a pot. I make basically three quarters of a pot every day.

And those first two cups are gone within 30 minutes. And then the other one, whatever. I come back hours later and it's cold and I don't really care. But it just doesn't look like it's enough coffee for me to worry about keeping warm because it'll be gone in five minutes. Yeah, 12 ounce is not a lot. Some people sip. Some people sip. Okay okay let's not hate so so what joe said is if they made a 32 ounce version of this he's all in um maybe 64 but you know i get i get the good coffee with like blueberry

chocolate actually uh i have gotten like i got this uh kind of coffee on uh amazon it's blueberry and it's surprisingly good i got it i was like i'm gonna hate this uh and no it's good so did it did it dethrone your pumpkin spice from starbucks you know i haven't had like i've stopped going to starbucks so much because i just keep making it at home and it's like not seven dollars yeah yeah i mean starbucks got stupid man we talked about this before like when i first started going there it was like two dollars and i don't know 60 cents for my for my venti iced coffee and it got up over four and i was like hold on yeah no no that uh the so my chick-fil-a moved across the street uh into the same plaza as my starbucks and the

starbucks already had a terrible like parking lot situation where people would have to like, people always get in like the wrong side of the road in order to get in the drive-thru, you know, so nobody else took their spot in line and it was already bad. Now Chick-fil-A is in the same plaza. Forget about it. That, that whole shopping the whole parking lot is just, I mean, a disaster. So it's like not safe to even look at it right so in in

fairness if you didn't like uh that particular style because that one is more like you know i was making the comparison to the yeti right where it had like a lid on it and it's you know gonna keep everything sealed and that's how it's, you know, maintain the temperature and that, and that, and that one that I linked to also had a seal, but they do have more of a traditional like coffee cup looking one as well. It's a little cheaper. Uh,

it's available as either a 10 or 14 ounce. So if that 12 ounce wasn't enough for you, you could get, uh, you can get the 14. Yeah. Live like a, you know, be a baller and get the 14 ounce. That's right.

Okay. Now, if I have your attention with that, then you know, I think a lot of Joe's was like all about luxury, right? Because he spent his you know, $2,000 like eight times. So you will need in your life

the Gillette heated razor. I did not know that this was a thing until I found it. Now I'm like, That is awesome. And you can get a Bugatti edition, which I mean, come on, let's face it. Like you want to shave fast, right? That is a little more. Now the non-Bugatti version is a hundred. Well, oh man, now it's a little bit more. It was a hundred dollars when I put it on there. Now I see it's 106. And the Bugatti

version is $170. But I mean, you're saving some money if you don't use Joe's List. So that extra $70 you've got, right? But yeah, this thing, it know comes with a wireless charging base but it it heats your skin up as it's shaving you to help make for a smoother better shave and that just sounds so comfortable and relaxing so you know what's crazy about this is it shows that they won awards for this thing in 2020 and the only thing i can figure is the pandemic screwed everything up so bad that we never heard about it because this is something that you would expect to see on every sports channel ever made because you know men would buy this thing yeah like non-stop like that that does look pretty amazing yeah it's got this little thing on it that looks, honestly, it looks like a Dyson fan on it.

Yeah. That's like generating and dispersing the heat on your skin, you know, as you're shaving. But yeah, I hadn't heard anything about this thing. So it's got like an adjustable, you know, temperature setting on it. But yeah, no, I mean, blades would probably be like 18 billion dollars a pop but you know that's just gillette right yeah i mean razors have gotten crazy but i love that we live in a world now where like a heated razor is an option right like you're like oh you know what i'm gonna treat myself treat myself. Treat yourself. Oh, good God.

Hold on. Did you look, did you not look at what these blades are? They've got them down here. The Gillette labs blades for six of them is $35. I mean, they were going to get you. They, they,

honestly, honestly, the, the non heated version of those blades though is 25 for the six. So like, but usually, no, usually that's like $12 of them, right? It's usually like $2. It's still crazy.

Anyways, yeah, that's pretty cool. Okay. So this one I know Alan is going to like. you like to travel to job sites, then you've probably paid attention to one of Alan's previous shopping spree episodes where you talked about portable monitors and whatnot. So this one, this option, feel free to take it on the go or not. This is on, I found it on Kickstarter and

I'm linking to the Indiegogo site for it called M screen M as in Michael and then screen. And you can get the big 14inch version for $150, right? It's a small widescreen monitor that is intended to be displayed underneath your primary monitor, so in front of your keyboard. And it is your task display where you could like, you know, just have like little status menus or whatnot, you know, little alerts, things of that nature pop up on it. And you can display it either horizontally or vertically. And they actually show, there was a video I was looking at where they were showing it

being attached to a larger monitor. But it's a 1920 by 550 resolution, a 32 by nine aspect ratio, simple HTMI interface that everyone has a billion of them, uh, IPS monitor. And yeah, this thing looks super cool. I was just a little, a small little, like you look at the, the videos, I'm sorry, the, the pictures that people have for that thing, it looks like a super cool little option of like a little, you know, task,

uh, monitoring device. That's pretty nifty. I can't think of how I would ever use it, but it is neat. Like they show people using it both horizontal and vertical. So yeah, you could, you could do some interesting things with this. Yeah, they also show people playing games on it.

That part seems a little crazy. Yeah, I don't think it's got the resolution to make the game thing that much fun, but the other utility for it looks like it'd be pretty neat. Yeah. And it's got a visa amount just so you know, if you're still with me now, we're going to get really fun because for my, for my final one here, I bring you the auto converting Optimus prime. All right.

All right. For $700. Good. I've seen this. God, man. Now, I don't know if you've seen this one though.

So there was an original one, the flagship edition that came out and this is the elite version. The flagship version is selling for $1,000 and the elite is selling for $700. And you're like, but Michael, why wouldn't I want the flagship? I would want the flagship, right? Because it sounds better. It costs more. The thing is that the elite version is actually shorter and also lighter. And it's only like, if I I've seen these two side by side, it's like an inch shorter.

So it's not like it's that big a deal, but because it's shorter and lighter, it transforms and moves faster than the flagship edition does. So, so, you know, you're still, it still has like 27 servos that are moving the thing, but you know, because it's lighter, it can move it faster. But yeah, if you've never seen a video of it transforming, it's super cool. Um, and, and, you know, it has the original, uh, voice, uh, actor. What was his name? Uh,

Peter Colvin. No. Well, I would mess up the name anyways, but whatever his name is, um, uh, I'm not going to know.

Yeah. So it ha it has like his original voice doing the, uh, Autobots rollout, you know, type of type of voice interactions on it and everything. It's super awesome. Now, I will say, too, though, that I believe it is specific to the flagship version that

if you wanted to go with that extra $1,000 for that, the company who, you can buy these directly from Hasbro if you wanted to, but the company that it made them for Hasbro is Roboson. And they didn't come out with it initially, but eventually they introduced the trailer to go along with Optimus prime. So you can attach a trailer to it in truck form and he can pull it around. And true to the comment to the, to the original series,

the trailer also transforms. So just saying now you're like, oh, I got to have that in my life. Just know that you're going to pay as much for the trailer as you do for the truck. Golly, man. You know, I do find it a little bit ridiculous that on the Amazon link, they didn't have the video of this thing transforming. I'm on YouTube right now trying to watch it. If you want to sell this thing, you better show it in all its glory, right? I think they know that if you didn't stumble on this, this isn't going to be like, oh, I think my kid might like this for Christmas.

You're like, oh, I want the auto-converting Optimus Prime. I don't need to see the video i already know so i'll tell you uh so outlaw did you know that you were not the the biggest transformer fan in my life uh yeah i i have friends that are super into transformers and i know from their past experiences with transformers that stuff like this always sells out always they don't need to put a video up it'll just sell out yeah crazy yeah that was another thing nuts um i was reading somewhere about it where they were talking about like something i was reading there there was complaints about the price and everything about like why it was so expensive and one of the answers was because

uh it it's going to be in such demand they're not going to last. Now, I said that was the last one. I kind of lied though because you got to clean out your keyboard. And so you're like, well, why am I cleaning out my keyboard? And I'm here to tell you why you're cleaning out your keyboard.

I know we just had Halloween,een but hear me out what if you had the ability to print your own chocolate candies oh so i bring to you the lucky Bot Food 3D Printer Extruder. And with this, you'd be like, hey, I want to make my own little chocolate bunnies for Easter. Yeah, that's cool. Or chocolate Transformers. Yeah, or a chocolate Optimus Prime. Dude, this is actually pretty cool right here. Yeah, that'd be fun.

Imagine you have a kid's birthday at school or something. You like print a bunch of, you know, whatever kids like. Oh yeah. I mean if you have little ones, like I think this is a gotta have for little ones. It's $170 and there's other versions that I found too. But they were like way more expensive, like starting at like $1,000. So, um, you you know but this food printer that's amazing yeah uh first of all though can we just like talk about the elephant in the room

though because you have to get like a a bunch of chocolate to to put into this thing so i'm thinking like well how does the chocolate last right right? Because you're like, one for me, one for you. One, two for me, two for you. They're never making it into the printer. So, yeah. Hey, did you see the compatible FDM 3D printers? I don't know what any of that means, but I thought it was pretty funny on Amazon. If you scroll down, they have a little chart that shows what other kind of models of printers that they're compatible with.

You can use this stuff together. What's funny to me is that they have the other brands of printers listed, but they've starred out certain letters. We're not saying we're compatible with GE, whatever, Geratech. We're compatible with GE star, star, star tech. We're not going to put their name on here because that would be a problem and it's an image so it's not like there's any like search love happening on that image but yeah yeah so uh last truly last one this time because you now have a clean keyboard and you ate all that chocolate before you even printed

anything with it, you got to work it off. And this thing looks like a fun way to do it. So this is a stealth abs and plank core trainer, where it's this platform that you would sit on a floor, right? And you would lay down in like a plank kind of position with your arms bent, your elbows and your forearms are resting on this platform. And you put your phone in it and there's different games that you can play. And the idea is that like this platform can pivot and turn as you're trying to like control like a hang glider, for example. Oh, that's kind of cool. Right. So you're like getting a workout while not even thinking, realizing that you're getting a workout.

So Alan was like trying to make you work for it with these like resistance bands. You're like, Oh God, it's so heavy. Why is it so heavy? Meanwhile, you could just do it my way. And you're like, Oh God, why am I so heavy?

It's because you ate all that chocolate. I'm not forgetting that. I'm a, you know, playing game anytime soon, but still, I think it's really cool. Yeah.

That's pretty nifty. It's $150, 3,500 reviews, 4.4 star review. Like this thing looks awesome. And they have like a bunch of different versions too. Like, you know, I'm linking to this one particular one, but yeah, they had other versions by the same company. So like in the Amazon page, if you were like visit the stealth fitness store, then, you know, you can see other things. So this one, this looks really cool, but it reminds me of something.

I don't know why, I guess, because the way it looks, you guys are both seeing dodgeball, right? The movie dodgeball. Yeah. Yeah.

If you can dodge wrenching dodgeball. So the thing about that movie that always stood out in my head was ESPN, the Ocho, right? Like that's welcome to espn the ocho dude i don't know i was bored the other night and i'm just channel surfing and i land on something called spike ball on espn 12 or something i don't know what the channel was have you guys ever seen this if no it's one of the all you lost me at channel

surfing like who does that anymore right i mean how do you do that in a streaming world and so yeah i man it was i don't know what happened where i landed this or how i found it but there was a spike ball championship going on and And I swear it was something like ESPN four or something. It was hilarious, but I actually found myself watching it. You have two teams of two trying to smash a ball down into a trampoline. It's the most ridiculous thing, but I mean,

people were like serious about it and I saw it at a store the other day. Nonetheless. So, um, I mean, people were serious about it, and I saw it at a store the other day nonetheless. And there is Spikeball.com where you can learn more if you want to be on ESPN 12. So there you have it. Well, I'm going to get some abs of steel with my stealth game, and I'm not even going to realize I'm playing a game. And you're going to be like, dang, man, you're so ripped. I'm going to be like, right? I was just playing a video game game and you're going to be like, dang, man, you're so ripped. I'm going to be like, right?

I was just playing a video game. Then you're going to beat me at Spikeball. Everybody said that playing video games was bad for my health and look how ripped I am. I'm going to get someone else to play the games for me. Oh. It's another service. I'm going to get my NMR up, my KDA.

That took a turn. All right. Well, there's going to be a bunch of links, uh, in this episode to all of these things. Uh, by the way, I don't think we call this out before,

but a lot of these links will be, um, affiliate links. The vast, vast, vast majority of them will be affiliate links. Um, they'll only not be affiliate links if we weren't able to do that,

but otherwise, uh, they will be. And that's just one of the ways that helps us continue to be able to produce this show. Yeah. If you're not familiar, you don't get charged anything extra for them,

but if you click on it and you buy something while you're there, then we get like a super small percentage. So yeah, you don't get charged anything at all. Yep. It doesn't cost you anything, but it does help out the show a little bit so um you know which is one of those ways that uh you can give back so uh yeah with that

we head into alan's favorite portion of the show it's the tip of the week all right and looks like i'm first and i already forgot what it was oh yeah so um i couldn't try this on Apple device because I don't have Apple device right now. But do one of you have an Apple device handy? I do. Okay. Can you open up like, I don't know, text message or just something we're going to be bringing up the keyboard? Do you want me to? I use this feature all the time.

Do you want me to just say it? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So if you don't already know on this is on both iPhone and iPad, so just any of those operating systems. If you want to move the cursor around, all you have to do is press and hold on the space bar, and then you can basically treat the rest of the screen as just drag your drag your finger wherever and the cursor moves around wherever you need it so it used to be i would start typing and i'd be like oh crap i misspelled a word a couple words back and so i go and i try to tap on that word and get it's a pain in the

butt but yeah now i just uh put my finger on the space bar slide back and forth to get there much faster it's very nice that's very cool i didn't know that yeah it's much easier especially since i have one of those like long phones so it's like it's kind of hard to even one hand it you know it's it's a big boy and so yeah i much prefer doing this than trying to like you know hunt and pick so it's that way on android too yep yeah and that feature has been around for a while i forget like how long ago that that came out i could have sworn this is what when we were putting the show notes together joe and i was like i thought we already discussed that that's what i was referring to as i i thought that we had already discussed this before um as a previous tip of the week. That's very cool. I learned something like it. I will use it a lot now.

Yeah. All the time. So, uh, for my tip of the week and I have an addendum to episode 191 tip of the week. So in episode 191, I had talked about like, Hey, you know, when you want to like properly vacay, um, then you can, uh, in, you know, and I made it specific to iOS cause you know, nobody's using Android, right? Like that. I don't think so. Oh, I'm going to get a lot of hate mail. Um, but you can, you could do this in a similar thing in, in Android too. Obviously I just don't have the settings handy, but you could go to settings, then mail, then accounts, select your work account and turn off mail. And then that way, while you're on vacation, you're like not even getting those emails on your device. So it's not like, you know, it's not in your background. Right. You know, but it dawned on me that one thing that I didn't

discuss that failed to mention was also turn off the slider for calendar. And then that way, when you turn off the slider for calendar, it removes all of the calendar entries for work from your phone. So you aren't getting reminded about like those meetings that you're missing because you're on vacation. None of those alerts are happening. So you're not getting, you're not seeing any unread emails. You're not seeing any notifications about, you know, calendar events that you either missed or that you are, you know, that were just recently invited to that you're not going to go to like all of that stuff. Like it's just out of your face. And that way it helps keep

you in that mindset of, nope, this is my time off and I'm, I'm rebooting. Right. That's a beautiful tip. I like that one. Well, along those same lines, then you're going to like this one because in Slack, you know how in Slack you can go to and say like, hey, set my status as active or away or whatever, right? And you could also pause your notifications. And the defaults are like, you know, pause them for 20 minutes or an hour or whatever. You know, there's like some pre-canned ones, but there's also custom. And you could say like, hey, pause my notifications until this time of day on this particular day. So let's say, for example, that you take off a week and you know you're coming back on a Monday. And let's just pretend that it was December 1st.

I don't know that that's a Monday, but let's just say it was December 1st and you weren't going to be in the office until 9am. You could say, pause my notifications until December 1st at 9am. And so great. So now Slack will automatically be paused and will automatically resume notifying you at that time. But also, it will set your status to vacationing and you get a little palm tree icon next to your name. And everybody will be like, oh, he's not even there. That's awesome. Yeah. So just one more way that Slack is awesome.

Yeah, Slack is really cool. I like that. Yeah. I prefer it for my chat platform. All right. So this tip is more of a in case you didn't know, because I've been doing way too much with trying to set up Kubernetes and various different ways. to a certain degree was that I thought that Docker desktop came with its own Docker registry, because when you did like a Docker images or something like that, or you do a Docker poll, it just shows up in there.

That's totally wrong. So if you didn't know that, don't assume it. And this only came to light because I was trying to set up micro Kates, micro K eights, which is, um, I think it's from canonical or the people who do Ubuntu.

If you try and run that thing, it actually needs a Docker registry in order to pull things in so that the pods that start up in Kubernetes know where to get them from. Well, one of the reasons I was fooled by this is if you run Docker locally and you do a Docker build and you tag something, you'll have that image. It's on your thing. If you do a Docker images command, you'll see it there. Well, if you use mini cube, apparently they have things built into mini cube to be able to sort of use your Docker cache, like it's a registry. And so you would just kind of assume it sort of works like that. Well, when you start stepping outside of mini cube and just Docker, and you go into things like micro K eights, or

maybe even micro K threes or any of those, they probably want a real registry. So just be aware that if you ever do get into a situation where you start getting errors saying that, Hey, my pod could not pull this image. And you're like, I know it's there. I could see it. I did a Docker images and, and I can see it.

It's because that is not a real registry. That is a Docker cache that is local. You can run a registry fairly easily. Um, and I should probably get a link in the show notes for that. Um, but again, it's just something that I didn't know

because I had never had to go outside of that realm with Docker and Minikube to where I realized that I had a gap in my knowledge of what was actually going on there. And then the next two tips, I actually stole from our Slack channel, which if you're not a part of our Slack channel, which if you're not a part of our Slack community, you should be because there's a lot of awesome people

up there sharing awesome things all the time. Uh, coding blocks.net slash Slack. So from, so now this is where I might actually mess up a name, uh, but we'll see. So from Ronald Sagan, maybe is his name. Not sure. Uh, he actually shared in our tips and tools channel that in the new, uh, I think it's called power toys from Microsoft. They have a thing called file locksmith that they put in there. So if you've ever tried, we've all done this at some point, you try and delete a file and, and you'll get this warning that, Hey, you can't delete the

file because it's in use by some other process. And you're like, well, what process, right? It never tells you. So you're just guessing and hunting and, and getting angry before you finally shut off your computer, turn it back on. And it still says it's still locked by another process. So you're like, why? So this thing will actually tell you what that process is in windows. really nice you can then go figure out how you can kill that other process so that you can then delete the file that you want to delete well dave follett who is awesome and is always sharing things up there he's like okay well i see what you do with windows power toys you know installing these cool utilities and all well on linux it's

super simple just slash proc slash process ID. And then you can see what you're using it. So, yeah. At any rate, those are both excellent tips. So thank you, guys, for putting those up there in our Slack channel. And that's all I got. All right. Well, subscribe to us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you like to find your podcasts.

And if you haven't already left us a review, we would greatly appreciate it if you wouldn't mind taking the time to leave us a review. You can find some helpful links at www.codingblocks.net slash review. Hey, and while you're up there at the website, make sure you check out our show notes, examples, discussions, and more. And again, this particular episode, cuttingblocks.net slash episode 197, we'll have all kinds of goodie links everywhere. So you can go buy that $190 coffee cup that you know you're pining for now. So, uh, yeah. And you can send your questions, feedbacks, and rants to our Slack channel at cuttingblocks.net slash Slack.

Maybe you're burning for the coffee cup. As possible. Yes. Yeah. Thirsting for it. Is it a thirst trap? dot net slash slack maybe you're burning for the coffee cup ah it's possible yes yeah yeah thirsting for it is it a thirst trap oh that's good i did there all right and also make sure to follow us on massadon um which uh you know also if you help me set that up that'd be great because it's kind of weird uh coding books or you can go to the website uh cookbox.net and see all the actual ones that we have set up and working at the top of the page