HomeTech.fm - Episode 576 - Scream. Trip. Run.

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

On this week's show: Govee is shelf shocked, Linkind launches a fiery new Matter bulb, Bell wants your internet unstoppable with mobile and UPS backups, Ubiquiti patches some serious UniFi holes, Google hints at new Gemini-powered speakers, and Open Home Foundation brings e-paper displays to the smart home world. All that, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is Home Tech Podcast for Friday, May 29th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm T.J. Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, podcast, all about home innovation, home technology, and TV showtime. What are you guys watching these days? I found a funny one last night. I got to bring it out.

What are you guys watching? Yeah, I just finished some. I finished Ghost. That is officially done. I think there was two seasons in that. Ghosts like the... Oh, it's a TV show. Yeah, yeah. I think it's on Paramount Plus.

Not the Patrick Swayze movie. Patrick Swayze, who's that? Nobody gets baby in the corner. No, that's a different... That's a dirty dancing. Get your movies right. It's the same guy. No, no.

I'm crazy. This is five seasons. I don't even know how I missed that. I'm missing up with a different show. You got three more seasons to go, I guess. But I think they got another season improved. I don't know. But it's a good show.

If you haven't watched it, It's honestly a pretty good show. Finish St. Dennis Medical. Love that show. And then Superstore. And then Letterkenny's always on repeat. So that is a show that I will always rewatch. Superstore is an amazing show.

Yeah, I like that one too. Yeah, it's pretty crazy that. I can't think of that. Who's the actor? Jonas Sims. He is in all three of those shows that I mentioned. Oh, I think he gets a little crush there. I guess so.

Yeah, your stalker. Now, his actual name is Ben Feldman. But what shows are you watching, Gavin? Um, currently in the middle of the boys. Ooh. Do they, like, release a new season or something? Because I watched that first couple of seasons, but I haven't been back yet. This is the final season.

Oh, okay. So I, I hear they're going to do, like, a movie or something, too. Stop ruining it from me. I don't know. Oh, my gosh. I'm just talking you. I mean, it's just, this is the internet, Gavin. I don't even pay attention.

I know this. That show is so rough, though. Like, it's, you can watch it, and it's like, it's so cruel. lines and mean. But there's a lot of links between that show and what's going on in society. Oh, yeah, I guess. It's pretty cool. Like, when you see

certain things happen, you're like, yeah. So, you know, I'm not finished it. I have a long list of shows I watch. Another show I've been watching is From. And if you remember, the show lost from many years ago, it kind of reminds me of that. Like From, FROM? From? Yep, just from.

It's just these people end up out of town. They can't escape and various things happen. Weird. Right? And certain things happen and they'll never talk about it again, you know, kind of like in lost. Oh, just like lost. Yeah. Just like lost with the smoky thing, you know.

What the hell was that? I don't know, but let's just pretend it never happened. The statue with four toes or whatever it was. Exactly. You know, another show actually, we binge to watch this is called MIA. You know, from the trailer, you know, description, you know, a girl loses her whole family to like the cartel and then goes on a rampage to get revest. right pretty good show until about halfway through and this girl just seemed way too happy in the show for somebody that just lost her entire family yeah people grieved differently gammon

maybe she did she was grieving and maybe she's happy they're going i don't know but she was way too happy with someone with no money nowhere to live and no family so really selling this one yeah that was that like the show had so much potential but that started to bother me right because i'm like how you partying right now. You know? That's kind of real. Um, another show I watch is called the Trades. It has, um, uh, uh, one of the guys is from trailer park boys if you watch those,

but it's like a blue collar worker type show, very funny, um, very crass, really good watch. And, you know, again, shout out to Letterkenny and, um, like you watch because I've on season three of that now. I've never watched that show. Oh, that's so good. Because I watch Shorzie, it led me back to Letterkenny. So now I'm going through Letterkenny with everything I know from Shorzie.

How do you watch Shorzie and then... I don't know. Yeah, that's such a weird combination. It's weird, but it's just how... I don't know. I just got hooked. I ended up watching the first episode of Shorzzi, and then, like, I think we're season four now.

I just got hooked on it. And then I never knew the guy from Shorzie was from Letterkenny. And then when I found that out, I was like, oh. And I went watch Letter Kenny. And even though it's the same actor, they're not linked. But, you know, it's different stories, but it's funny, you know. So I'm watching that. And then I just started watching another new show called Mating Season.

It's a cartoon. Very crass, but pretty funny. Similar to like Ted. I'm also watching Ted, the show, Ted. Another, not a cartoon. Like Ted Lassau? No, Ted. Like, remember the Teddy Bear, Ted?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got his own TV show now. Wasn't it Mark Wahlberg that did the movie with him many years ago? Yeah, it was Seth McFarlane and Mark Wahlberg. Yeah, so they have their own TV show. show now. There are some really, like, funny parts in it that I just have. The D&D episode I found hilarious, but, you know, so those are just some of the shows I've been watching. A funny fact about Shorzi is that Jared Kiso actually had his tooth surgically removed for Shorzi. Did he save it?

Dedication right there. True dedication. I would assume you save it, but you probably just get like a new tooth put in, I guess, right? Can you put this one back in? No. The funny thing is, is Shurzi was based in Sudbury, I believe it is. And I was, you know, I was looking at the place. And then I was like, ah, you know, Sudbury, I don't think I'd ever visit there, you know. And then I got to the strip club episode. I was like, hey, let's take a road trip to Sudbury.

We got to see this famous club that they have a bar and a strip club. It was, you know. So it was funny. And then not just ending with shows. I just want to throw on a few movies, watch Project Hail Mary. Excellent movie if you guys have to see it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good book.

Excellent movie. I watched a movie called This Is Not a Test. I think it's Canadian movie. I was watching this movie, and the place looks so depressing that they were in. It's like a zombie movie. I was like, this is such a depressing place. And then I had to look up where it was filmed, and it was filmed in Hamilton. Hey, there you go.

It's really depressing. They chose the perfect location for it. And then a fun movie to watch. I watched one called Normal with Bob Odenkirk. He's from Breaking Bad and another movie, Mr. Nobody. It's an action movie that's just a fun watch, right? What was it? What did you say?

It's called Normal, right? And it's just, it's a funny story. It's just, it's an action movie. I recommend it. It's a fun watch. And watch, if you haven't seen Mr. Nobody, those movies are good, too. Mr. Nobody, okay. The same character.

Wow. Well, I don't have that many things to go over here at one TV show. You guys are like, yeah, hold my beer. I should have just giving you, giving you mine. Mine isn't even that good. I mean, I had like four, so I just don't watch TV. You know, it just not my thing. I watch it at dinner time.

That's pretty much it. I have a lot of things lined up, and I lined them up for, um, there's some, in the past there used to be TV lulls, you know, like when, um, you know, nothing new was coming on, nothing was being released. But I find now every week there's something new being released. Like, I don't have that lull, so now my list is getting a little backed out. Yeah, hmm. Let's see, I was going to discuss the movie, the, the Bone Temple one that came out, the 28 years later. Oh, yes. Yeah. And there's going to be a third one. So that one, that one was good. We tend, we have a bunch of like old, not old, horror movies kind of saved up from like Halloween time. And we never finished watching them. And one of them was also another bone movie, Queen of the Bones, Queen of Bones, which was not not. I mean, it was okay.

Was that a movie? It was a, I would qualify it as a drama. It seems like there is going to be a lot more to it. It's got Martin Freeman. He's a pretty famous actor in there. It's some interesting that things have happened in it, but it is not a scary movie at all. So we were like, when is it going to be scary?

And then it just ended. And there's all these like magical things that were happening. Kind of like lost, you know, like what you were talking about. Since you get to the end of it, you're like, wait a minute, what just happened here? Are we done? So I can't recommend that one. But I can't recommend this fun little horror show, I guess, called Widows Bay over on Apple TV.

Yes, that's in my list. Just happened. I put a trailer in there for you guys to watch. And he's got Stephen Rood in it, who is always a favorite. He's a guy from office base with the staple gun, so he recognized him that way. But he's hilarious. Yes, it's not, he's one of the townspeople that is kind of like foiling the mayor here in this town called Widows Bay that is kind of a quirky little town that has a lot of superstition and people think it's haunted, but the mayor's trying to get people to like come to it, you know, and that kind of thing. And of course the town spoke are just like, no, this place is haunted. You can't bring people here. So it's, it's kind of funny. And just the craziest.

The craziest lines just come out of this show. It's quite funny when you're watching it. So check it out. And another horror, actually, I would throw this one in, too, because this one was just different. It's called Sadeco versus Kayako. I don't know how I probably butchered the name, but basically the movie is the spirits from,

remember the ring? Yes. And the spirits from The Grudge, those two horror movies, they brought the spirits together into one horror movie. In the end, they make them fight each other. and stuff. It's, it's, it's, I could, they try to be a serious horror movie, but I was kind of laughing

through some of it too. Um, but that's another one. Fun watch though. I had to be like, it's Japanese. I was probably like 10 or 11 when I watched Ring and that was like the scariest movie of my life. Wow, you're young. It was so terrifying.

I did not go to bed. I was like, did we just watch that? That's, that was my. Yeah, 2002. I'd have been 11. Because our, my horror movies at that time, I couldn't go sleep after was like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. When you were 11?

Yeah, when I was... Not in 2002. Yeah, not in 2008. Still to this day, actually. Yeah. So, yeah, we've watched all those recently. I don't know if you've gone back and watched this, Gavin, or you're too scared to, but... I don't want to ruin them. They're not the same when you watch them over here.

They're definitely ruined at this point. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good movies. What I remember in my head, and the reason why I was scared, you know, and I always look at, like, lakes at night, funny and stuff like that, was Friday the 13th. right? I don't want to ruin that. So I never went back and watched it again. Yeah, we watched all the Friday 13th, all the Freddie movies. This was like last year. We went through all the old series and went through them. And I'm like, half of them,

like, we were like, did they really make this movie? And then you look up and the director's like, yeah, I unknowingly made a porno. Yeah. Well, well, there's so much that we had to leave like on the cutting room for this one. In those movies, a known thing. Like, anytime there was a girl naked, she was going to die. Yep. Right? It was a known thing.

Yep. You know, but you didn't let your daughter watch those movies, did you? No, no, no, no. No, it was just, my wife and I. We were just going through and trying to catch up on, like, the old movies. I think we've seen it, you know, over time or whatever. And we're like, no, let's just watch them all at once. Boy, that was a mistake.

Like, I just, they're just, by the time, you're at, like, what, Friday the 13th, 23 or whatever it is, you're just like, all right, can be in this? So, yeah, don't do that. I wouldn't recommend. Generally, the first couple movies are, okay, maybe one or two. But when they start having three, those old franchise, here's what they did. They're like, three. Guess what we can do?

We can put a D after that and make a 3D movie out of it. And it's awful. So you get like the stick, like waving around in front of the camera. It's like, oh, come on. What are you doing? Plenty of jump scares, but, uh, yeah, it was, I think right now, like, the movies we have, um, they're, they're, they're, they're more, they're scarier and, uh, far more gory than. Yeah, a lot of things are more gory.

And I always find, like, the memory you have watching that movie is so different. And it gets ruined if you rewatch it. Like, I was just browsing the channels the other day and came across weird science. You remember that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, the effects and stuff. It just ruined the memory for me right there, you know. Yeah, speaking of scary things, do you guys ever watch Courage the Cowardly Dog?

I didn't think it's a... I was trying to old for that. This isn't quite in the same genre, I don't think of it. I mean, this is adult swim, so... Oh, no, no, no. I don't think I've seen that thing. That was another terrifying show for my childhood. Yeah, but your childhood's, like, our teenagehood.

Yeah. Our adulthood, pretty much. Yeah, but you would... I mean, I mean, I still watch the doll swim as an adult. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, some good shows on there. I'm trying to remember the name of that. I'm actually having to look this up on with AI because I can't ruin the name of the stupid movie.

Yes. So you're not using Google Search or using AI search? No, no. I use actual AI for this. I burned up some whale water for this. So last year, we watched this movie called Skinnerink. Have you seen this thing? It's a Canadian experimental horror film.

Okay, so this is from Canada. This is the most F-Dub movie I've ever seen my life. Of course, this is from Canada. Oh, my gosh. It, all right, so set in 1995, the film follows two young siblings, Kevin and Kaylee, who wake in the night to find their father gone and the doors, windows, and everyday objects in their house slowly vanishing. And it's terrifying.

Like, you're just watching this show, and there's strange voices, and the home, like, suddenly turns upside down. The kids are walking on the ceiling. Don't watch this one. Skinnamarink. I would say that that is something you want to avoid. because it was freaky and we got about halfway through it. I'm like, um, go ahead and stop watching this one.

Triller looks weird, but added it to my movie list. It's one, it looks like one of those handheld cam type movies. It had a budget, it says here it has a budget of $15,000 and I believe it. Yeah, that looks like $15,000 of budget. What a mind mess of a movie. Like, it really, it'll mess you up. That one do not see. Do not, do not watch that one.

No. Do you remember Blair Witch? project? Yep, yep, I do. The first one. TJ, did you ever watch that one? I don't think so, no. That would have been before time. I'm not a scary movie. I'm not like a scary movie person, so. Not my thing. Nicole's thing, though. She loves all of that. But don't let her watch Skinnamarine. She'll just sit in the corner.

She's probably already watched it, to be honest. Are you saying don't watch it because it's going to scare you, or are you saying don't watch it because it's bad? It's, um, I don't know. It's not it's an unconventional movie I will give them that they really thought outside the box when they made it because it is shot with literally no script that I can tell of and it's just following these little kids playing in their house and weird things happening to them and like yeah and the premise is like some kind of ghost has trapped them in this house for their wives or whatever so it's it's messed up it's just a messed up movie. I'll have to report back on this one. Go Canada. Yeah, go Canada. It won all sorts of awards, and we were like, oh, we got to check this out.

It's on Prime Video, AMC, and Tooby. It's a hard watch because it's also just basically like black and white cameras, you know, the night vision cameras that like are stuck up in this house that you're watching things happen from. And it's hard to make out what they are and there's these weird sounds and everything. So, yeah. It's only got four. actors and a voice,

uh, a narrator. Yeah. It's kind of like that. It sounds like that, uh, what's that movie that was very popular? It was a scary movie,

like monsters come in and destroying you and stuff, but it was all shot like, uh, point of view. It was like some dude with like a camera running, like, throughout the, like,

the whole city and stuff like that. Oh, man. It's terribly made, but reminds me of that with the terrible camera. I can ask AI. Yeah, no, it definitely has terrible camera work in this one.

I mean, there's no camera work in this one. It's just a ring camera stuck up in the corner of a house or something. Shot on an iPhone. I don't think it was shot on an iPhone. You got a better picture out of it. It was shot with wise cameras or blink cameras?

Yeah, yeah, maybe worse. With like Vaseline or something written on the screen. Like, yeah, because it's not a, it's, you don't get a good picture out of it. Like, it's just, oh, it's just a weird, weird movie. I did go see the, the Grogo movie this weekend, though. That was, that was a big push. We had my daughter sit down and made, enforced her to watch all of the, Mandalorian, right? So like, you say, you have to watch all this. And of course, halfway through,

we're like, oh, wait, she's got to watch Book of Boba, too. So she had to watch the Bubba fat when, and then, and then go back to the Mandalorian and finished off. So she watched all that, and she knew all the lore going into the movie. And we went, we went and saw it. It's pretty good, pretty good. That's a great way to keep your daughter busy for many hours to say, hey, we're going to go watch a movie, but you have to watch seven seasons of something first. The idea was, is that, like, if you're good, we can watch these things. And by May, you will have a movie that you can watch that you really want to see with Baby Yoda in it. And the first part of that didn't happen.

It was kind of like a full court press to get, like, all the movies in this last week. At least school's over, and there's nothing else to do. So she finished it off. And, man, I got to tell you, the Mandalorian series is a great series. Especially if you like Western movies. It is straight out of all, every Western genre that they have is pulled into that. And they've done it. They did an amazing job on that series.

I just blown away by some of those. And this new, this movie that they came out with here, I mean, it goes a little bit further, but less of a Western, more of an action film. And then, and then the music, though, the music in this one was really good. I like, I really enjoy the music in this one. So I would recommend. Go check it out. Mandalorian. See, I got two more things in.

Skinnamarink and Mandelorian, Grogu. Mandelorian. Anyway, that's enough about TVs and movies and stuff, though. We have a couple stories tonight, so what do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it. Well, if you're going to use AI to make your images, make sure that you just check what books your AI has been reading. Because if you're Govie, your AI has been reading white supremacy literature.

Why do all the bots always end up racist? Now, we discussed this racist thing the other day. We discovered that racist live in nice places, right? I think that's what we figured out. And the Govee houses are all nicely decorated in everything. And clearly, they're racist. Evidently, there is a picture in a child's bedroom scene. And right below the little fox stuff, a fox animal.

There's a white supremacy book just labeled there right on the shelf. And The Verge notes that it's unclear how the image was published. And it's probably just a design mistake. But, you know, these things happen, I guess. You know, it makes sense because I've been wondering who buys all these ugly govi products. Because, like, they have a lot of ugly products. Now we know. Yeah, I mean, that totally makes sense.

I don't hang out with those people, so I don't ever see these products. Oh, man. That's actually good news for me. Yeah, Govee has removed the image and replaced it with something else. The book appears to be real and resembles the state of white supremacy, racism, governance, and the United States collection of essays. So, so the part that nobody talks about here is there's two of them. Like, they like the book so much they bought it twice. They got to have two of them, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you know, a backup white supremacy book. Yeah. This is an AI-generated thing. I don't know why they came out with, well, everything. I mean, AI is clearly trained on racism. Sure it is, Seth. Sure, it's AI. Yeah, that's what everybody's going to start saying now.

I don't know what happened. It was AI. No, I mean, that's what everybody's saying it now. My daughter's even saying it now. Like, she got a sticker and she's like, oh, that's AI. I'm like, Rosie, literally not everything is AI right now. Like, there's still some art out there. I just don't get it, though.

This photo that they're using, it's an AI photo for their product. Why don't they have real photos of their product? Because they don't. You know, that's what it's come down to is that we're looking at, like, AI. Like, they're better than the mock-up photos we've been seeing on other products where the device looks so big on a door or something like that. But it's getting ridiculous. Like, show us a picture of your actual product, not like some AI-generated one.

No, well, I will say they are. Some of them are AI-generated. They're definitely rendered. I'll give them that. Like, they probably have. have all of this stuff as like all these objects and homes and things are rendered in some kind of 3D space. And they can definitely zoom in and have read that that says, you know, white supremacy in the next to the kid's alarm clock on the bookshelf there. But, you know, whether they did

or not, I'm not sure, or whether it was an Easterag somebody stuck in. I don't know. Well, they said it was sourced from an undisclosed third-party licensed library. Yeah. Why do you have to source these? Do your own photos. You have, yeah. I mean, that's the thing. You sourced all these models, right?

It's a 3D model or whatever. And somebody snuck in a racist book or something. And there it found its way. Oh, we just need a blue book for the kids' bedroom. Let's use. What is the other one? Another art book and then written backwards. Written backwards.

Yeah. So clearly, they didn't look at any of this before they rendered it out. So, well, yeah. Yeah, we'll put a link to the story. You can go look at it. It is pretty crazy that somebody noticed it, though, you know? Because I can't say I've ever looked at the books on the... Really zoom in.

Any kind of images as I come across them. But yeah, you have to zoom in pretty far to even just see white, you know? I can barely see white on there. You get a high-res monitoring, zoom in hand, zooming in hands, and then pops out. The AK monitor for that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, let's move on here to talk about not racist lighting product.

Your favorite social media is, making a light product. Is this, yeah. No, this isn't LinkedIn. I thought it was LinkedIn the first time I saw it. I was like, why is LinkedIn making a light bulb? This is LinkedIn. I don't know how you pronounce this now that you said that.

I don't like it. I hope I ruined it for you. Linkied. Lincoln. Lincoln's new smart light sticks features realistic flame effects. And AIDOT has launched the LinkedIn. How do you pronounce this?

Thanks, DJ. He really messed this all of. Anyway, it's a matter-compatible E-26 stick bulb designed to simulate a flame like Flickr using multiple control zones. It's UV resistance. You can stick it outside. 850 lumens has 160 LEDs inside

and can do 16 million colors. Works over 2.4 gigahertz for your Wi-Fi, matter ecosystems. And, yeah, what is this thing? $39 for the LinkedIn the smart lightstick available for an Amazon. And they say it has a realistic flame. It doesn't look like in the photos,

but they say it has one. You know, you got me looking in the background of all these photos. What else is racist here? Yeah, they have a racist his flower in the background there. What's on that coffee table right there? What do you think that is?

Exactly. One of my neighbors has one of those flickering light bulbs in their front, and it's annoying as hell. It looks like, I'm sorry. Like, we message them all the time, say, can you turn off your light? You know? It's that bright? Well, because it flickers, and then you look out the window thinking there's some

flashing light out there. It looks more like his lights dying, you know? out flickers because it's dying. It looks more like that than a flame, but he loves it. I'm just like, really, so I think it looked like I like the flickering. So you probably hate me, Gavin. I don't think, I don't think it looks authentic though. I mean, it's just, no. It's kind of the nature of LEDs, though, in my opinion. So. But something different. So good for them. Yeah. Something different. From Lingkind. Sure. All right. Let's move on to Canada, a company that's a country that doesn't have a racist bone is a body, I don't think. Yeah. If it's a 50 first state. Bell has introduced an internet backup feature aimed at keeping home connectivity running during outages as a cellular backup and an optional power backup. For wireless backup, Bell compatible systems

will automatically switch home internet over to Bell's mobile network during internet disruption and there's no extra fee. So that's kind of nice, Gavin. Are you a Bell customer you're going to get on to the 5 TV services and do this? I'm a Bell customer, but this will only work if you have both their TV

and their internet packages. And when it does switch over, your TV is not going to work. It's only for your, it's only for basic internet. You're still capped at like 50 gigs, I think, of data for up to three days. It's some, there are so many restrictions around it. I think it just uses your cell phone. I think it just transfers everything over your cell phone. Plus, you need to use their wireless router or whatever.

Well, that's no fun. I thought it was like a free little backup thing that they're in. No, no. It's just going to use your cell phone data so you can't use your phone when you're all. Well, pretty much, I think your phone will tie into the router and then it will just flip over to your phone and do some magic to switch you over if your internet goes down. No, I would not be a job. I'd rather get the Unify 5G add-on, if anything more than this. And then, I mean, them also selling power backup.

Well, I mean, we're celebrating them selling a UPS, basically. It'll probably be overpriced or whatever. Well, Gavin, we were just trying to have a hat. little story here from from Canada and you know yay go bell I well I do have their five internet and I love it like it has never gone down in me at all and I just I just jinxed myself but it's great you know so I can't complain but I've never switched I haven't switched my phones over to them so they give you 50 gigabytes up to per bell line so you have you know a couple lines for up to three days I'll go through that 50 gig so fast well if you have two lines it's

100 gigs, right? Well, I'll just use up 25 gigs just updating my iOS apps. Don't do that then. You ever look back at your bills to see how much data you transferred? I think I did 11 terabytes in December. Not on your cellular, though. No, that was not on my cellular. That would kill me.

Yeah, yeah, you don't want to run all that through a cell plan. It'll be gone in like minutes. Yeah. Well, either way. I mean, that is not a bad, getting 50 gigabytes per line 50 gigabits per line isn't a bad deal. And then it does switch over to your,

like if you run out, it's going to switch over to whatever you have on your plan. Yeah, it's mainly for emergencies. If you look at it like that, for emergencies, 50 gigs fine. You can get out to your work. You could do some work stuff or, you know, check your emails.

You're not going to be streaming. The only bad thing is that I have to figure out a way that if it does switch over, my server doesn't jump on it to. right? Trying to use data. That won't even know really that it's switched over. It'll just keep going and downloading and uploading and then that 50 case has gone in an hour.

What I find crazy, though, is it's taken so long for these ISPs to offer these kind of things. Because now, like, I guess they're just so easy that people can do it themselves. But, like, you know, 10 years ago or so, like, they weren't offering these kind of things to consumers. And it just made no sense to me because they could have made so much more money quite easily, in my opinion. because you're already in charge of the network anyway. Like, why wouldn't you sell, like, a mesh Wi-Fi system or an access point or whatever? And why wouldn't you sell a battery backup and stuff like that? If you're already on the hook for it anyway.

It's like, it's so crazy that it's taken so long for a lot of these ISPs to offer this. And, like, you know, the cellular backup is a relatively new thing for a lot of these companies because now they're all like MV&Os and stuff like that. But it's just, it's so odd to me that it's taken this long for, like, people to be like, yeah, here's a euro. Give me $10 a month for it. I don't know. Like, it makes no sense.

They offer their own pucks. So it looks like Bell and Rogers signs deals with somebody. So Rogers, I don't know who they're probably the flume pucks because that's what I think Spectre views are little round ones, right? You can buy them, but they also charge you a ridiculous amount of money for them. Like, it's like 10 bucks a month per puck, you know? Like, you might as well just buy your own system at that point. It's almost like they don't want to do it.

Yeah. Well, they, and that, so I was reading here the, the UPS runs up to nine hours. So you won't get your three days out of the UPS if you're out of power for three days. Although if you're out of power for three days, you have a little more problem then. My battery backup only lasts like two and a half hours, but that's literally for all of my electronics. So yeah.

It could be a good deal if you're in Canada. Good job Canada. Yay, Canada. You matter. Oh. No way. Ubiquity. We got some ubiquity news.

This week is good, I guess. They released three maximum severity patches, I guess for vulnerabilities that exploited remote execution privileges, I guess. There's a bunch of CVs here, path reversal, enable access to underlying system files,

whoops, and something that can allow a command injection after a tractor gains network access. So yeah, none of these are good. If you have a ubiquity system, you probably want to go update. So this will be for the Unify consoles for network, protect, access, talk, and connect.

I went through an update at all of mine. And if you, you know, if you patch one thing in your house, make sure it's your router, you know, like that's the gateway into your house, if anything. Make sure that's patched. If you don't, you can just wait for the FBI to come reboot. Yeah, they'll reset the password. Yeah, exactly. That's so nice. That's a nice service.

Yeah. Make sure you go on an update. It looks like, oh, wow, they have a little heat map of where these Unified OS endpoints are in America and across Europe. Looks like some in Australia. Let's see a little bit in South America and then South Africa. So, yeah. Not everywhere. Not everywhere.

Almost everywhere. Lots in Ukraine. That's weird. You guys read that story? It's when the ubiquity is supplying Russia there. Yeah. Yeah. Supposed that's been debunked.

Yeah. It was just like one of the restellers or something. He was trying to like short the stock or something while he did it. Yeah. All right. And debunking some of the rumors from last week that we'll never see a Google Home Speaker. the verge is reporting that Google Home,

they may have a couple more speakers on the way. There's a new speaker reference design that will let manufacturers build Gemini-powered smart speakers. So maybe not from Google, but maybe you'll get a Walmart Google speaker soon. That's not what I want, but I do want new Google speakers.

I mean, like at this point, I don't even know why they even have the platform out because they haven't released anything. I mean, they released like what, that little cam that's in the background of this image and they released like a Nest audio speaker. I think is what they're calling it now, but it's just like there's, like, there's nothing that they've released that it's like appealing. And meanwhile, Amazon is releasing like 20 new Alexa

devices every year. Like, check out all these things. What I don't get is, Google people have been saying that for years. I just want this. I just want that. I just want this. And Google never releases or they cancel it or why are we still sticking with Google smart home stuff? Like, I don't know. I don't want to. Get away from it. I try, I tried to switch still Alexa, but Nicole is not liking it. So why? Why does she not like the A lady. I tried to, I tried to figure out,

but. Did she try A plus? Nope, didn't get there. Oh, you gotta try A plus is different. Yeah, but yeah, so Google,

got to release some new speakers so I can buy some new speakers. I mean, I mean, wanted to buy new speakers for like eight years now. On Google. Just, I guess, just kill the division.

Like, you don't do anything with them at this point. Yeah, don't tempt them. They'll do it. I mean, because like the third part speakers can be nice and everything, but I've,

I've bought some of third-party speakers from like Lenovo and a couple other brands and like, you know, They're just low quality. They don't like, but they're also trying to be like super cheap as well, which I'm fine with for the most part. But why don't you just get so on us?

I actually like OEM hardware. Google's not on that anymore. So. That's true. Well, to be, to be fair, my Amazon's, you only get the basic Amazon on it now anyway.

So I've decoupled my A lady from that. And I just have a separate speaker in the rooms now. But she is also smart enough that when you call her out, she lowers the voice. volume of the other speaker in the room to listen to you. So that's pretty cool. That's nice. That's nice for her to do that. Yeah. She's thoughtful like that. Thoughtful. It would be nice if I told her to play a song and she played on the speaker that's in that room too, but no, no, you can't have it all. Maybe you want to go to the bathroom to listen to the song.

Well, no, I say play this song. I expect her to send it out through the speaker that she mutes so that, you know, she can hear me, but no, she'll play it through her speaker. Oh, yeah, yeah. Which I'm just like, why didn't you pass that off too? You know there's another speaker in the room and it's better than you. Just pass the thing off. Well, we'll see if there's any Google. I mean, it sounds like if they're releasing, you know,

this is how you design speakers. It sounds like they may not be designing speakers to this platform anymore. So maybe you can go to Walmart soon and pick up an on Google speaker or something. If anybody does it, definitely will be Google. Yeah, yeah. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 576. Nothing in the mailbag this week,

but we do have a pick of the week, and this one is not a pick of it. This is like that movie. We just don't look at this. This is so bad. Who did this and how? This is a over on TV too high, the Reddit. Someone installed a TV too high above a firework.

As usual, but they did not install it center on the fireplace at all. No, no, it's like all the way over to the right. It's not even aligned with the edge of the fireplace. It's like sticking over to the side of the fireplace. And what makes me laugh about this too is like the cords come down into the fireplace itself. Like what is going on here? Well, there's like a sound bar on the floor. There's also like four. Yeah, there's a sound bar down there. And I think like a, it looks like a Blu-ray or cable box. I really can't tell. Oh my gosh. There's either the second picture. It's even worse. But I really don't understand too. It's like. Like there's four vents on the wall. What are the vents for? I thought those were speakers. I don't think so. It could be. I guess they could surround sound. Oh, man.

As bad as this is, like, they could think that surround sound. It surrounds the fireplace. That's right. Yeah, whoever does it, whoever approved this and whoever did this. Actually, whoever approved this, I think, should be taken out back. Yeah. This is awful. Because this is probably like a homeowner wanted this.

They're like, nope, I want it over here. You know? I get stupid requests all the time. You see, the door to outside is like right there. So they probably did that so they could just tilt it and can watch it from outside. Maybe they can see it from the pool. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

Who cares how it looks on the wall. I can see this from the pool. I know. It cares if it looks nice in the house. Ah, man. Yeah, there's so many questions here, DJ. You're right. Like, what are the vents?

They don't look like Vince. They look like the new tone intercoms that you find throughout the house. This reminds me of. was it a Reddit thread or was it in the Slack channel? I think it was a Reddit thread as well. Somebody found like a hidden trapdoor that have like a TV in it like in their patio. But like they live there for like five years or something. And they're like, I've always wondered what that is.

And I'm like, how do you wonder what that is for so long and you never open it? Are you able to zoom in on that yellow tag that's on top of them? They're all, they're different vents too. The ones on the left aren't different from the ones on the right. White supremacy. I don't know, Gavin. I don't think I'm going to zoom in on any more pictures. I know, you got me zooming in on reflections and stuff now.

Oh, man. The comments are great in this red thread as well. They're always fantastic in the TV too high ones. Too good, too good. All right, well, this one is unique. We'll leave into that. If you have any feedback questions, ideas for show, or picks of the week, give us a shout.

Our email address is feedback at hometech.com. or you can head on over to HOMTech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates. But first we have a open display is going to be making its way over into maybe Home Assistant. What is this about? This sounds interesting.

The open displays are those, oh. E-paper things. Yeah, e-paper displays. So now they're going to be making it easier for you to create one and integrate it into Home Assistant. Oh, I can put graphs on the e-paper. That'll be fun. Yeah.

PowerPoint presentation. presentations, whatever you want. Whatever you want. Yeah. Yeah. It says Seed Studio is already on board with a reference hardware to get started. So that's nice. I like Seed Studio.

Hmm. To go check this out and see what we can, see what we can. Some e-paper stuff we can get. I've been looking at those little, I don't know, small like seven-inch e-paper screen things. There's like a little status board, you know, somewhere. I actually just, I actually just threw one away. It was part of my projects. It was cleaning out the garage this week

And I ran across some stuff I bought I don't know more than about 10 years ago And the reason I know this is because I was kind of like Playing around with it and put my daughter's name on one of them But it was like these You see them now in like grocery stores A tag, e ink tags Yeah

On the shelves and stuff like that Yeah They're trying to like ban some of that stuff though Because they don't want you to be able to change the price Randomly Oh dynamically Yeah Yeah

I bought it because they had a larger one, and it was probably about seven or eight inches. And I was thinking it would be a good thing to hang, to put it on a door for a conference room, like a conference room tag or something like that or in someone maybe a convention or something. I was going to write some software for it. And of course I never did because I didn't like how it looked

and it was something about from like Ali Express or something like that. So I just put it on the shelf. And the ugly image with my daughter's name on it, my name on it, lasted for over 10 years now. It's still on there as I threw it away in the trash can. So it's a pretty amazing product. The e-ink stuff, just once you set it, it stays that way. So we'll be welcome to home assistant.

Welcome addition to home assistant. But yeah, that was my, that was my projects, actually. I was cleaning up the garage this weekend, cleaning off my desk, slowly making, moving stuff around and finding old junk laying around. I took apart a Sonos ZP-100 that TJ sent me. And I wanted to, well, the problem was that with that one you sent, the Ethernet card didn't work anymore.

I guess it's a common problem. But, I mean, the thing is like, what, more than 20? It's got to be like 20 years old, yeah. 20 years old, yeah, yeah. It's very early on in the Sonos. Yeah, I think it was marked with like 2006, so it's got to be 20 years old. That one, the amp inside is good. It was good still, but it's all integrated with the Sonos.

They use like a serious logic chip and a TI DSP processor for it. So all that was like integrated on one thing. And the only thing I could like really use was there's like a 35 volt power supply inside there, like a big old audio power supply. but I was going to pop in a little Bluetooth amp that I had laying around, but this is only 27 volts max, so I can't use it.

So I was like, well, darn. I can't actually use this. I'm trying to think of like something else I could use this Sonos, the case where, because the case is actually impressive. The old Sonos, the ZP 100 case, is like this big block of aluminum, and it's got plenty of room in there for activities.

So I'm just trying to rack my brain on what I could actually use it for, because it is a nice, like, thing to look at. Like, they did make those nice. But if anybody has any ideas, let me know. I was trying to think of, like, some absurd ideas and put, like, I was going to, like, let me buy a weem and put it inside this. And then they could actually have a useful product again.

And I was, like, looking at the weems, I'm like, ah, those are kind of nice. I don't want to take those apart and gut them to put them inside this box. So I kind of put that out. I'm like, I wonder if there's anything else I could do with it. that's maybe unconventional. And I just can't think of anything. Just let me know.

I'll see if I can get it done. But that's pretty much all I got. Just a bunch of cleanup work around here this last week. My job for the weekend, long weekend. Nice. Well, if you want to tear more stuff apart, I got a bunch of outdoor PEO switches that are dead that I can send you. You're going to strip them down and use the enclosure for something.

They're dead PEOE switches? Yeah. They're the fancy ones I sent you a link to. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like a billion dollars each. They're so expensive. It's very nice, though.

You just put a, what was the little flex, the little Unified Flex in that thing? It's 100 bucks. Call it a day. I mean, I think you basically have the same POW power support. So, yeah. Wouldn't be too far off. Yeah, that put a couple of those in. I had to go back last week and wrap up on that job from 2024.

One of the last things I was doing was getting a gate camera that was kind of not working for the past. I don't know. for a while, so long that they had taken out the gate. So there was just a camera sitting there. And I used the same, what was it, the sector thing, antenna and the bridge, building bridge. What do they call those things? The little round. Oh, the pro sector.

Pro sector thing, yeah. I used two of those in the two round ones. One sector and two round ones and pointed it through some trees and got enough signal for a camera. And called it today. That was it. That's all I had to do. So finally got it done. Yay.

I finished something. Time to invoice. Look at you. That's the only time you finish something is when there's pay at the end. There's actually pay. I already already invoice them. So he's just kind of waiting for things to happen. He's all those contractors that already got paid.

He just took another five years to actually complete up. Pretty much. Yep. Yep. Yeah, yeah. I'll be there next Tuesday. All done. Five weeks later.

I don't let anything break between now and then. Next Tuesday. It was like, yeah, I'll be out of town. there's a holiday. I don't think I'm going to get there until May. Here we are. They're all wrapped up. They're happy.

So there we go. TJ, what you've been up to? Oh, man. I've been doing all kinds of projects. While Gavin still hasn't completed his projects, I've installed a whole new floor for my three seasons room, what we call our den. So what's, I've installed a floor and a door.

And Gavin still hasn't fixed his door yet. You've rebuilt your house at least three times. I mean, I might have, I might have like a new deck by the time he actually gets his door fixed. And I got people coming over in a couple weeks. There's plenty of time, DJ. You need a new roof. No, no, the roof's good.

I need a partial new roof. But yeah, so I don't know if anybody else is like this, but whenever I have family coming over, we tend to do our projects that we've been putting off forever. And so we have a couple people coming up from Florida. They're going to help me build a deck. It's Nicole's family. We're going to build like a little floating deck

in the backyard here in a couple weeks. And I was like, you know, we got people coming over. We should paint, you know, the living room in the, in the hallway and stuff where I've cut all these holes in the wall and, you know, ran all new electric and Ethernet cables everywhere and stuff like that. They've been patched for a bit, but they've never been painted again. So I was like, let's do that, you know, why not? So we're getting that done.

You know, Nicole's going around. She's fixing all the drywall and sanding and stuff like that. She's getting really good. I mean, I cannot drywall. I do not have the patience. It's one of those skills that you have to like, you have to like put the mud on, wait for it to try,

come back, sand it, put more mud on. I just like, I don't have time for that. Like, I'm used to like, technology stuff just works instantly,

you know what I mean? If you cut the hole just right, you can put a blank plate on it and call it today. Yeah, but then my house would just be all blank plates. It wouldn't look good at all. And, yeah,

so Nicole's go around and she's fixing it all. We got, we got some paints picked out. We, uh, typically cheap out. out on the paint, but I went to Sherwin Williams this time. I hear they have some nice paint.

So I've been buying my paint for Menards, and it is very low quality and kind of just falls off instantly. So I'm looking forward to trying that out. But the other project that I got done this weekend is I installed some new LVP or vinyl flooring in my three seasons room. So this is a room that I've been slowly fixing up. Like last year we did, we insulated it and I drywalled it and got it all painted. A bit of TV in there.

You didn't much work in there. I went to go do the roof, but the roof there actually does need to be replaced. It's like one of those flat, like rubber roofs. So I'm going to try to do that like this fall. But I was like, we had this like nasty blue carpet in there. So this past weekend, I was like, let's go ahead and just, you know, install the flooring in there. So I went to one of those discount home stores, you know, that always has like building supplies for cheap or whatever they have. It's always around by like Russian people.

So I'm pretty sure it's all like mobsters or something like that. And I'm like beating people up and stealing some lies. I don't know. I don't ask questions. You know what I mean? They have some really good quality stuff there. He fell off a truck. And I went bought flooring.

It was like $200. It's like a 10 by 16 room. So it wasn't that expensive. 200 bucks. I had to buy some new sub floor. And I actually, I bought a Canadian product. So that was pretty cool. Put that in my.

Stolen from Canada. Probably. It wasn't sticky. I was very surprised. I was kind of worried about that. could be covered in maple syrup or something. But I installed that. It's supposed to make the, like,

the LVP I bought has some kind of like backer on there. And they're like, you can install it, you know, on cement. That's fine. But I wanted to add some like insulation value. Because the wintertime, it's a concrete slab. That floor is extremely cold. So we put this on,

raise the flooring up a little bit. Also made the install easy because it's, you know, the floors aren't level and everything like that. And because of the house. is old and kind of just cobbled together. None of the walls are square, but I still made it look nice, you know? I'll put some pictures in there so everybody can see

what it looks like when it's completed. Very nice, very nice. Yeah, the trim boards, that's what trim boards are for. Yeah, yeah, just hid the gaps and everything like that. I just got to go around and paint the baseballs still, but that's not a big deal. I don't know.

I'll get to that at some point. Good job, man. Yeah, it's like I'm pretty good. And then I did buy some new tech. You know, I've always been a sucker for keyboard. Like all my life, I've just really enjoyed keyboards and the clacky, clicky sound that they all make and everything like that.

It's always just so pleasant. I think one of my original keyboards I got was an IBM Model M. If you ever use one of those, they're very clacky. They're very clicky, clacky, they're very loud. And I've always enjoyed them. I've always cheaped out on my mice, though. You know, I've never bought a good mouse. I've always bought pretty much the cheapest mouse.

I'm like, I just needed to click on things. You know, I'm not gaming or, yeah, like a little $15. or mice mouse that Seth is holding up right now from Logitech. Like that's pretty much all I'd buy. I'd buy a wired one, you know, because I'm like, I don't need batteries or anything like that. I'm not taking it anywhere to go.

And so I previously had a glorious, like PC glorious or some of a glorious keyboard. I think it is. A glorious bounce? A glorious. Glorious gaming. They make keyboards and mice and stuff like that. It's mainly like a gaming company.

But I had like one of their cheapy, like, $30 or $40 mice, and it did the job. But I was looking at getting a new mouse because I was like, you know, I want to try getting a new mouse. Last year, I got one of these Apple touchpad things. You know, you ever, I think you said you had one of these stuff. Yeah, yeah.

It's pretty decent. It's Bluetooth and all that stuff. I don't like that it's my main computer mouse, though. Like, there's certain things that it is nice to use it with. But like, like, is my everyday computer mouse. I don't want to use that. I want to use, like, an actual mouse because I'm old. So I bought a Logitechek MX Master 4. This is the Mac edition. And the Mac edition literally just means that it connects via Bluetooth.

So that's, I guess that's a thing. You know, they just, they're like, you don't have to use the dongle. You can use Bluetooth. And it's like, all right, thank you. Glad we had to sell a different mouse just for that one. Gavin, if you're talking, we can't hear you. My Windows one that has connects me of Bluetooth too. Yeah, I really don't understand.

I don't think they actually just, I think what that happens is they just don't give you the don't. Oh, well, I don't think I can. But it's like the same cost anyway, so I really don't know. Honestly, I don't know, Kevin. I have the MX Master 3S for Mac, and I can't tell you if I got a dongle or not. But yeah, you're right, it connects with Bluetooth. Yeah, I just goes to Bluetooth.

I had that one before, and I upgraded to MX4. Ooh. It's pretty nice, though. I've never had a mouse with so many buttons, and really I don't know what to do with the buttons. You know, I have the normal forward and backward, which I always use for, like, you know, browser tabs and stuff like that. but I also have a scroll wheel. I'm using that for my volume right now.

That's kind of cool. I have this little touch pad button. When I touch it, it opens home assistant. I just realize I have the same score wheel. I never even used it. Yeah, yeah. It seems like, you know, it's one of those things like, do I need that?

I don't think I do. My keyboard has a scroll wheel, you know? Just touch that, I guess. But one of the things I did actually enjoy because I always customized my keyboards. You know, I'm always putting like, you know, heavier duty springs or I'm lubing up my switches and stuff like that.

This one, you can adjust some of the sensitivity of things. So, for example, this little touchpad button, you can make that a firm touch, you know, so you can get to press it pretty hard in order for it to open the application. I think that's pretty nice. Firm touch? Yeah. Yeah, so like this little touchpad thing right here. Is it touchpad there?

Yeah. And she shouldn't set the mouth. Yeah, I didn't know there was anything like that. Yeah. Yeah, so that's, that I used to open home assistant. Oh, I use it for, oh, it says gestures. Yeah. So it's some, oh.

I don't use it for gestures. Oh, look at that. It did something. I had no idea. Oh, yeah, there's like all sorts of things you can do with that. You can click it. You can swipe down. You can change how much force it takes, which I, like, I'm really like that.

Oh, you guys are such like newbies to these mice. Yeah. Yeah, I've ever had a mouse this nice gap. I'm sorry. All right, let me give you a little rundown. If you use a logic, like the power of this mouse, and I have mine paired with the Logitech waves keyboard, the power of them is when you're using multiple PCs.

So if you have like three PCs set up, you could switch between channels and you can map any of your buttons to auto switch between the computers for you, because the annoying part with these mice is you have to flip it upside down if you want to manually flip it. So you can map a button so that you can say, when I press this button, it goes to this PC, which is really nice in one of their,

In their latest version of the Logi Options software, they added support for on the keyboards, you could choose the channel. So when you tap the channel on the keyboard, it will also switch over the mice. The only downside is it only works for certain keyboards and certain mice, which I have none of. So that's another thing.

Another cool thing with the MX Master 4 is the haptics. So especially in multi-monitor, you know, when you have multiple monitors, you have it set up. It gives me a little feedback when I cross-over monitors. Or Windows just added the feature with the haptics where, you know, if you're snapping things or, you know, if you're a graphics designer and you try to snap things and stuff like that, you get a little nudge that tells you, hey, you're on the line or stuff like that, which is really cool too, right? The mice is very powerful, though. Like, even just sometimes when you're scrolling a long list, you just hit the scroll wheel once and it just keeps scrolling for you.

You don't have to keep scrolling on with it, too, right? Yeah, there's a lot you could do with this mouse. It's ridiculous. It's pretty nice, honestly, and I like the weight of it. You know, the last mouse I was using, it was pretty light. This one's very solid. And I decided to go crazy and I turned it up to 8,000 DPI for the mouse speed. That is nuts.

I have no idea how anybody does that. 8,000 DPI. Oh, my gosh. It's crazy. It's like if I was using my computer on meth. I assume that's what meth would be like. I've never done math, but. Oh, where do you do this?

I want to try this. Where do you do math? I don't, well, no, I mean, where do you switch the, the DPI of this thing? Oh, you got to go open, you have the Lodgy Options app.

Mm-hmm. All right, so open that, and then go to point scroll and press. And then pointer speed. Yeah, change the day. It's like, whoa. Oh, I got to go all the way up to the eight. Whoa.

Hey, that's, I mean, honestly, it's not too bad. I might actually try to use it. It is. is like I've seen some people use this like wow I am not no let's go back let's go back to 900 I can't get back I can't get my mouse back to that window it's like all over the play oh my god and then if you really want the opposite turn your pointer speed all the way down no I'm not doing that oh my god it's taking forever to go across the screen I actually I actually moved it all the way down and I was like why is it taking so well

Yeah. I don't remember what the setting was before now. I think it's like 2000 is the default. Or 1,000. Actually, I can lower that because, yeah, my mouth sometimes is so fast it gets lost on the screen. Yeah. And then also over there is where you adjust the button-press sensitivity set.

So if you see that option right next to it, you can change it from light, medium, hard, and firm. And it does like make a huge difference. It's crazy. I don't have that on the 3rd. 3S. So maybe that's... Ah, yeah. Oh, I can invert the thumbwheel.

That was... Okay, so actually, this was a problem. Yeah, and change the speed to... When I was using the thumb wheel, because the speed, I was going to use it to switch the windows, and it was slower than I wanted it to be. But now maybe I can go back over to the buttons and switch that to go to the switch between desktops and see,

oh, yeah, that's better. And it's inverted. Oh, much better. Okay. Boom. I was using the gesture for that before, and I didn't quite like it. I've never liked it. But this is the little swipe it. Oh, done. No, there we go.

Yeah, I don't have any reason to use it with multiple computers, but that is a pretty cool aspect of it as well. Yeah, it's kind of cool how you make a software change and actually makes a change to the hardware itself. Back in my day, you'd have to have a dongle for each computer, or move the dongle, I guess. Okay, have the KVM. Oh, yeah, speaking with, I did, I do have one of those GillyNet KVMs things,

and I've been using it. Oh. Yeah. I forgot that I bought it. it's a cleaning my desk, I ran across it. And I was like, oh, I've been meaning to plug this into a computer somewhere. Let me plug it into this Mac Mini ad sitting here. Because sometimes the little remote desktop software that doesn't quite work.

If it goes into like a sleep state or it goes into reboots because of an update. And guess what it always works? The KVM thing that's plugged into it all the time. So I can just get into that, start it up and then back over to the nice Jump Desktop. If you haven't used Jump Desktop on the Mac and Windows, it works across platform. They have a really nice remote desktop app. Can't recommend that one high enough. That's pretty cool.

And then my last technology piece this week, I requested and received from Anchor, this 14-1 docking station. This is, I think it's mainly meant to be used with a laptop, but I'm actually using it with my Mac Mini because it makes a very powerful dock that I can use for pretty much anything, and I can route all my stuff to it.

So I really like my Mac Mini, but it's awful because it doesn't have that many ports. The newest version has, solve that a little bit because they basically just gave you like, what is it, three or six, or maybe five or six USBC ports. Whereas the previous one only had like two USBC ports plus like one USBA or something like that. There's not that many ports on it. And finding a good dock is very difficult.

That's not like a billion dollars. This dog is pretty nice because it has two H-DMI ports and a display port, so I can actually route all my video through it. And it's got, what is it, three USB or two USBA ports and then multiple USBC ports. So this thing has been fantastic. I really like it. And I use it to charge my phone as well. So not probably using it how it's intended, but I am using it with my Mac still. And it's got this nice little scroll wheel on the side as well.

I don't know what I can do with it, but it's there. Scroll on the anger? Yeah, on the dock. Oh, it's got, because it's got a display, obviously. I mean, everything has to display these days. I think I use it for volume. So it can tell me, like, it can tell me how fast stuff is charging and all that stuff. Hmm.

Yeah. I just found that I can make a laser with my mouse. You want to make a laser? One thing I do do is I have my iPhone on Channel 2. So when I switch to Channel 2, I can use my mouse and keyboard with my iPhone in front of me anyway. Oh, that's a good idea. You know, and I type and do whatever there. The iPads, iPhones, they have really, really nice, like, mouse support now.

Especially iPads, keyboard mouse. It really works well. And you can actually, the Jump Desktop app actually can use that to do remote desktop from an iPad or something. And the mouse and keyboard will work as intended as you think it should, which is kind of nice too. So you can run everything from an iPad if you wanted. That's all for my prejudice. What are you got going on? Gavin.

Did you get your door fixed yet? You can mute it. Can't hear you. Can't get that fixed. Well, on that note. So I think we're at like level three drywall or repair support now. It's bad, huh? Yeah, so my neighbor was supposed to come over and show me three times how to repair drywall.

So, but he said, no, I don't feel like doing it. So he called up another buddy of ours who's a master drywaller. And apparently he's supposed to come this week and just do it quickly for me. So it should be done. I will see if he passes it off to anybody, you know, if he passes it off to anybody, you know, sends one of his, the guy's working under him or something like that. We'll see. It will get done eventually, you know.

I have high hopes for it this summer sometime. Um, so yeah, that's the update on that. Keep in mind, I just want to mention Unraid release 727. And again, we've harped on it. A lot of security, important security fixes in this. So just update your Unraid. Just keep it up to date. I actually upgrade it to 730 this week.

Everything looks the same, right on the same. Upgrade was smooth. I mean, it's easier to upgrade when you're already on the latest versions too. So don't slack too far behind because then it's a much bigger jump. But other than that, I've been working on getting my boating license. Got a fun little trip coming up in the fall, but I need my boating license for that. So, you know, I do these online courses and blah, blah, blah.

That's keeping me busy right now. It's tough. You're going to be Captain Gavin now that I think about this. Captain Gavin. All I can say is, if I'm captain, I am not going down with the boat. Every man, woman, for themselves. I'm sorry. If the boat is going down, I will be in the water yelling at you to let you know, right?

The boat's going down. I'm already off, you know, like if you could swim over, to this, this, you know, our safety vote all for it. Get the life jacket on,

the only life jacket. I'll hang around, you know, I'll yell words of encouragement, like, hurry up and shark. You'll do your due diligence and make sure that everybody

is aware, aware of the problem. Yeah, exactly. But I'm going to be the first person the shark attacks anyway, you know, like, I'm the first person

mosquitoes attacks. Are you going into, like, the actual ocean. Where are you heading? I don't care. All I know is that I run faster than my wife. So if we get chased by bears or if we get chased by Jason Forhees or anybody from that lake,

you know, like I can run faster than her. And that was the, you know, I tested that on the weekend. I could still run faster than her. So, you know, it's a good, it's an important thing. Don't be the slowest one in your, in your group when you go camping for a reason. That makes sense, yeah. And when you're running from bears, run downhill and zigzag. That's the other thing, but, you know.

Downhill, that sounds awful. Well, I don't know. I was told to run downhill because they have shorter front legs. It's harder for them to go downhill so you can beat them downhill. But they climb trees too, so don't think you can climb. What kind of bears? Because usually for bears, at least in our area, you're always told to make yourself bigger or make a lot of noise and they, like, run away. Like, polar bears don't, but like other bears do.

I've chased a bear off personally before. My instinct, when I see a bear off personally, is to scream, trip the closest person to me, and run. That's my instinct. So, I mean, I imagine you do scream like a little girl, though, when you see a better. Probably, yeah, I don't care because I'm the fastest, I'm not the slowest one there, you know? That's the important thing to me. I don't care what anybody says, make yourself big.

I'm not sitting there taking my chances by making myself big or crawling into a ball or doing whatever they see. Who says crawl into a ball? Some people say play dead, you know. Like, I'm just like, no, he's going to see me breathing or something. I just take my chances. Yeah. I'll trip someone and say play dead as I run away. Yeah, he's got to chase them off.

That's what I do. Yeah. We have all types of bear. We have white bears, black bears, brown bears, and they have rules for each of them. I can't keep that in my head. I'm screaming and running. Scream trip run. That's it.

Scream trip run. Yeah, that's all I'm doing. Well, so if you don't hear from Gavin, it's because he got scream tripped and run. That's in the first. fall, so we have lots of time to finish other stuff up before I go. Okay, good. Nice. Scream trip run.

Maybe the drive won't be fixed by then. If not, then, you know, I may not come back. Rose will have a chain with like a brick on the boat. He's like, what's that? I don't know. Hey, hey, she's already accepted the fact that I'm a scaredy cat. Like, I don't deny it, you know, we went to escape rooms, haunted escape rooms, and I've pushed her into the room, you know, and they called out to her.

Are you okay? And she's like, yes, he can come in here. Coast clear. Yeah, I've done that number of times. She knows that's, you know, she's always first. It's like the Scooby-Doo escape room, too. I can't believe you. Oh, no, we went to some scary escape rooms.

Made for kids, Gavin. Okay, like, we should do like, I should see if I could set up an interview with some of these guys that designed the escape room. They're fun, yeah. There's some tech in there. The amount of tech in there is ridiculous. Like, some of escape rooms we do walls move and stuff like that.

Like you go into a room and the door will close and then you hear like the walls are moving in the room next to you. And then you solve your puzzle and you go back through the door and it's a whole different room. And it's really weird or there's no floor or something weird happens. You know, one we went in, you go into an elevator and the door closes and then the elevator doesn't move. Like it's just the effects and everything. But then the door open and all of a sudden it was all different, right? You're like, where the hell did all the doors walls go? Like there's some tech they have in there.

That's really cool. Yeah. Sounds fun. Screamtrip run. Screamtrip run. There you go. You can't run and escape run.

That's not how you escape. I cowered into a corner once. I'm not ashamed to say it. It was a scary escape room. Oh, man. There you go. I think that's going to wrap up this. Probably should.

On that, no, I'm going to scream, tripp and run. Scream trip and run. I think it's the name of the show. We want to thank everybody for listening the show. But if you want to send it a very special thanks out to those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over to hometect.fm.fm slash support to learn how you can become a patron for as little as a dollar month. Any pledge over five bucks a month, get your big shout out here on the show.

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