So... Alright - Tracing Calls and Pumping Gas

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Geoff talks about the old film trope of call tracing, 2026 intentions, Gas Station Simulator, and somehow no sports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So today, today, today, I want to talk to talk about, I don't know, a few things, I guess. We're now a few days into 2026. Today I'm recording this on January 13th. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I don't think it's an episode. Initially, I thought it was going to be maybe five to eight minutes. episode. I don't even know if it's that much, but went down a rabbit hole this morning about call tracing and how it used to work versus how it works now. Pretty dry material, but I'll go over

it briefly, I think. Also got some sports going on. I could probably talk about that, as well as plans for 2026, things that we want to do in 2026. Let's get into it, shall we? my goal in 2026, not a New Year's resolution because those are doomed to fail, at least when I make them they are. But my goal for 2026 is to, if possible, if possible, that's the big if, exercise every day of the year in some meaningful way. Like yesterday was a little tough because I had some food poisoning the night before and I was up all night throwing up and I felt pretty kind of weak and wimpy all day yesterday. I ate a little bit in the evening and then I mustered up enough energy to go for about a 45-minute walk, which counts, anything over 30 minutes I'm counting. So I felt pretty good about that. I kept the streak alive. I have exercised by walking or bike riding every day this year. I need to get back into weight training,

weightlifting at some point, but I wrenched my shoulder something terribly a couple of weeks ago and I'm still just kind of tender with it, and I'm not in a hurry to do it again. I'm sure it comes as no surprise to those of you who get exercise regularly, but man, it's hard to deny that you feel great, largely great after getting exercise, especially if I do it in the morning, I'm feeling good the rest of the day. If I get it in the evening, like yesterday when I went for a late-night walk, that's nice too, but I find that the energy boost from exercise in the morning,

it's weird. It like exhausts you, but then you go and you take a shower and you get cleaned up. And somewhere in that process, you just are flooded with energy and then you realize that exercise matters. That's why you got to trick yourself into doing fun stuff like going for bike rides

or listening to podcasts while you walk. How are your New Year's goals or resolutions going? Are you off to a strong start? Are you barely hanging on? Are you somewhere in the middle? Or did I just remind you that you made a New Year's resolution two weeks ago that you had forgotten about?

It's not too late. We're still in January. You still have most of the year ahead of you. Send me an email, Eric at jestboss.com. Let me know how that's going. So, and this is apropos of nothing, really. I wasn't watching an old movie and saw a scene

that reminded me of this or anything of that nature. I was just, I don't know, I was just puttering around the house. And I got to thinking about how in the movies, a popular trope was always when a person was kidnapped. They were waiting to hear from the kidnapper. They would always have the family around a phone and then off to the side. There'd be a couple of police and chairs next to a device with big headphones. There'd be FBI agents or whoever walking around. And then when the kidnapper would call in, they would tell the person to keep them on the phone as long as possible. We're going to

run a trace. We need 30 seconds or we need 60 seconds. Usually it's somewhere in there 30 or 60 seconds. I feel like 30 more common. And then the person has to talk to the kidnapper who clearly knows that they're going to be tracing the call and is watching a clock and then hangs up just before they're able to get, like at 28 seconds, just before they're able to get the 30 second trace. And I've always accepted that my entire life, never really thought much about it. Obviously now that would not happen. Everything is digital. There's no need to trace anything. Well, I mean, there's still a trace, but it would be pretty instant.

it would be a lot hard. The difficulty there would be really just getting warrants and getting people on the phone. But all of that aside, if you had all of the permissions you needed and you needed to get a trace on a phone, it would be pretty fucking quick.

And if you didn't get it immediately, you could get it whenever because the data is there. It's not going anywhere. It's not lost, right? Everything is recorded and captured. But in the old days, it did work differently.

So I looked into it. talked about it a little bit this morning when I was streaming gas station simulator which we'll talk about that in a minute because that's a fucking game right there but I don't want to sidetrack myself yet. Anyway, we were talking about it this morning

a little bit and how it was a popular movie trope and that it probably never really worked like that and people were explaining how it actually does work in chat and then I went and I watched a really helpful video. It's the Connections Museum on YouTube and they have a two-part video called how does call tracing work? It's about 35 minutes, all said and done, I believe, if you watch

the two parts, but it is a quick watch and it is fascinating. I watched out while eating megas tacos this morning at a coffee shop. It explains and walks you through the very manual process of tracing a call back in the olden days before everything was digital, before we had caller ID. I'm not talking about end-user caller ID, but before caller ID as a constant. was instituted into CLEX and phone companies in the 80s, well, 70s, I think, and then in the 80s. So really, by the early to mid-80s, the idea of physically tracing a phone call was probably obsolete, maybe in some smaller phone companies around the U.S. and certainly in other parts of the world that hadn't been gobbled up by the AT&Ts yet.

It was still possible. But let's say up until the late 70s, if you wanted to trace the kids, you know, you wanted to trace the kidnappers call to find out where they're calling from. There really didn't need to be a dude sitting there with headphones and a machine. He might have been recording the call, potentially. What really happens is you call up the switch, and then they physically track the path of the call through frames and selectors and switches and all of these devices that are very big and loud and complicated.

And essentially, if you go through enough exchanges, you'll get to the end. And then if it's like a long distance call or from somewhere outside of that region, then you basically have then to call the next switchboard and say, hey, can you trace the call from this point down your while? And then potentially multiple until you get to the end. It was a very tedious process. And back in those days, once the call was broken, it was gone.

There was no line to trace, right? It was just a physical connection that was made. And I think it may have worked differently in some countries where if one phone stays on, the line is technically open and they can still trace it. There are ways to do it. But it's a very long, complicated physical process that never, never could have been done

in 30 seconds to a minute. Obviously a movie trobe. I'm sure everybody knows. Nobody's actually tracing calls that quickly without warrants, et cetera. etc. But if you want to see the actual physical process on how it's done, that Connections Museum literally walks you through tracing a phone call through a switchboard. And it is a complicated procedure that actually requires paperwork at some point. And it's pretty fascinating, though.

But definitely not something that I can explain easily or eloquently in this podcast. So I will just say that my curiosity has been sated by watching that film. I knew that that's not how phone calls were traced anymore given current technological advancements and where we are as a society, but it's interesting to see the actual mechanics of how it was done in the olden days. And I still couldn't get a bead on how long it would actually take a professional to do it. But it seems like it's many minutes, probably. And if you have to jump to a new switchboard and, you know, follow a long distance call, God knows how long it could have taken.

I wonder how often it was actually used to affect in the old days. And that'd be interesting. If you have any information on that, if you know of any successful call traces from back in the old days, any stories about it or any famous ones where it actually worked,

I'd love to read about it, and I'd love to hear how the process actually was pulled off in a real way and not in a, you know, Sunday night movie kind of way. Let me look over my so-all-right notes. Let's see. What do we have here?

Ah, here we go. What are they actually doing when tracing a call? Like, what's with the little machine? Well, that was my note, I guess. And that is the, that's not the only note. I have one other, which is, what is the average best weather day of the year across the world? And I was not able to come up with a decent answer for that.

However, I'm going to go, fine. Let me back into my research here. Yeah, apparently nailing it down to America is even too hard because we're just too goddamn big. But that led me down a different path, which was who has the best weather year round in the world? Where is the best, if you just said, I want to live in the spot on the planet Earth that has the best year round weather. Now, your idea of best weather and my idea of best weather may be two entirely different things. but we'll go with the global average idea of best weather. And apparently, the fifth best consistent weather in the world is Sydney, Australia.

Congratulations, all you Australians out there. If you're in or near Sydney, and a lot of you are, it's a big-ass city, you are enjoyers of some of the best weather on earth. Even in the hottest months of the year, which is January, the average highs are only about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I have been there when it was much hotter, so I guess there are always exceptions to the rules. Number four, Medellin, Columbia. Year-round average temperature of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

Number three, Cape Town South Africa. It offers a Mediterranean climate. It's got warm summers, cool, wet winters, and the hottest month of the year is February. And number two. Oh, interesting. I didn't, it's a U.S. city. I didn't know that we would make it. But we did. And it is, this will make Eric happy.

This is San Diego, California. Pacific City boasts an average temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit and more than 260 days of sunshine a year. It is warm. It is dry. There are mild winters. And that makes it the second best location on Earth for sustained weather. But that doesn't matter because it's too expensive to live in San Diego. And it's not the best weather. It's only the second best weather. We're all going to move en masse. You and I, The whole So All right community, we are going to move to the Canary Islands in Spain. It's on the Atlantic Ocean.

It is the best climate on planet Earth, thanks to the Gulf Stream and trade winds. There are mild temperatures. There is low humidity year-round. Summers are warm, but they do not get too hot. And winters are always comfortably cool. It is an ideal location for both holidays and for summer activities. This is the Canary Islands, your best climate on Earth. and there is one picture and it looks pretty.

Can't say that I've ever been there. What's more expensive to live in? Canary Islands or San Diego. Whoa, San Diego is significantly more expensive than the Canary Islands. Housing, groceries, and overall expenses in San Diego being drastically higher due to his status is the top U.S. city. Get fucked. San Diego.

That's it. We are definitely moving to the Canary Islands. it's much more livable compared to the Spanish mainland. Houses are significantly cheaper. Apartments start around 1,100 a month, and groceries and dining out on the island are very budget-friendly. Dinner is about 25 bucks a person.

I was expecting the Canary Islands to be incredibly expensive and hard to get to. They probably are hard to get to, for me at least. But shit, I'm all out of excuses not to move to the Canary Islands and have the best weather on Earth all the time. I guess as long as they have an internet connection, I can still do this podcast and regulation,

so it doesn't matter. Sorry, Detroit. It's like it's Spain for me now. Okay. Got a bunch of movies I'm in the process of watching, but I'm in danger of doing too many movie reviews, especially after the whole, should I or shouldn't I do the movie review thing? Curfuffle, I don't want to beat you guys over the head

with more movie reviews, but I am in the process of watching the 1977 Japanese horror film House. I'm about halfway through it. I have had to take it in a few chunks because it is fucking weird and not exactly weird in a fun way. Also, I watched this movie Cutters Way.

I don't know if I talked about that yet, but for some reason, it was tied to so alright. I'm also watching the Elliot Gould, Raymond Chandler film from the 70s, I think from 73. And I need to watch this movie called Let's Scare Jessica to death, which I'd never heard of and is supposed to be a pretty wild horror movie

from, I guess, the 70s. Anyway, I'll get back to all that. But not too soon. Not too soon. I don't want to beat you guys over the head with movies. Thinking of things to do in 2026, I was wondering if I was going to have the standard end-of-year close-out and then renewal of excitement and energy and push towards new ideas into the new year in 2026, like has historically happened. Because I was pretty burned out at the end of this year. I didn't feel like I had a... I don't have a bad holiday by any stretch of the imagination,

but I didn't feel like I rested a ton, if that makes sense. But it is 2026, and we are barely two weeks into the new year, and I cannot stop thinking about momentum and wanting to get some new stuff off the ground. I've talked in the past a little bit about the old Jeff line of clothing. I guess that's a question, at least partially for you. I was going through the designs the other day, and... I'll be honest, there's hundreds and hundreds, and I was pretty overwhelmed by it all, and they all looked good and fun and exciting to remake, but I'm going to take this in a small chunk.

I'll create an online store and probably put four or five items up for sale at the start just to get a sense of demand and how much effort it's going to take from me to organize and run this thing. I don't want to get it over my head or make any promises I can't keep. So probably do like three to five designs out the gate and then kind of see how it goes. So what designs would you be interested in? This is the part that's partially for you. I've decided for sure I want to do the kind lady design again, which is the little hand-drawn hobo code, kitty cat. I'll probably do a shirt of that. And then, you know, like I said, three or four other designs. If there's any that you always wanted or that you particularly liked, you'd like another stab at,

send me an email at Eric at jeffsboss.com and let me know if there's a couple of clear favorites, I'll just go with those. I'd love your feedback. if you have the time. Thank you. Also, I've been noticing this desire to organize and sift through my cards and continue to try to whittle them down. And essentially what I've done over the past six months is whittle cards down to my personal collection and then cards that I have that are valuable and then a pile of cards that I want to get rid of that I can't seem to get rid of. And if you want them, please come take them. I'll give them to you just a billion common cards that I don't need. Anyway, these cards that I have that I don't particularly want, but that have value,

there's a lot of those. Not a ton of value. This card may be worth a dollar. This other card over here may be worth $3. Maybe this card's worth $8 to $15. Some value, but not a lot. And I flirted with selling on eBay a few years ago, just to see what the process was like. And if I enjoyed it, and it wasn't bad. I didn't mind it. And it wasn't too hard to figure out. But I must say I'm getting sick of carrying the weight of all these cards around. And I can only sift in sort so much before I'm left with other work to be done. And that work is probably to start trying to move this stuff out of my house and sell it online. So I don't know.

It's a whole other can of worms opening up and selling cards through eBay or whatever. But I think I got it. I think just to at least clear out some of the inventory. So I'll probably be communicating more of that as time goes on. But we will see. I'd like to ideally do both of those things in 2026. But they both, I'm looking. at him and it's like two Pandora's boxes next to each other and well we will see we'll keep it simple

right keep it simple we're going to be just fine everything's going to be fine we're going to be good we have to have faith that things are going to work out i'm going to continue to get exercise every fucking day and i'm going to get into some kind of shape in my 50s so that i am set up for success as i get older and i age gracefully and slowly and maintain my youth and we're going to figure out the baseball card stuff, we're going to figure out the Jeff merch, we're going to keep this so all right train on the tracks,

and we're going to pour every ounce of our essence into the regulation company. And that's going to be a good year. It's going to be a great fucking year. I really feel like it is. I'm very excited about it. I sound like I'm trying to convince myself, but I assure you I'm not.

I'm more just realizing in the moment how excited I am for every, everything that is in front of us. And we have a lot in front of us, man, especially on the regulation. Fuck Face Off, season two is coming. Some more travel is coming. A whole ton of new ideas on the books. The bit barrel gets heavier by the day. It is pregnant with ideas to unleash in 2026. I'm very excited about the whole thing. And maybe what I'm most excited about in the world is gas station Simulator. Have you played gas station simulator?

It's an Xbox game. I assume it's on Steam and PlayStation as well. I'm playing it on the Xbox. You essentially take over a disheveled, closed up gas station on Route 66 in the desert in the middle of nowhere

and you slowly bring it back to life. First off, you're just selling cans of Pepsi and a little bit of gas to wayward travelers and before you know it, You're changing tires. You're buffing out scratches on people's cars. You're putting in a second ice cream cooler because you're moving so many ice cream cones.

And you got employees. It is so much fun. I actually, I hired my first employee this morning and I was so fucking excited to do it. Let me tell you. Because between trying to run the mechanic shop, trying to pump gas because in my town, you pump the gas, not the customer, and run the register inside. while also emptying out the trash from time to time. Trying to spruce up the place.

There's this neighborhood kid who keeps tagging my building over and over again, so I got to keep painting over that. Floor's got to be swept. Bathrooms got to be kept clean. And honestly, the whole area is kind of a dump. So you're trying to find like seconds in the day when you can eke out a little bit of time to clean up some old tires in the back or whatever, you know?

And then you got to, oh, fuck, I'm almost out of gas. Got to call and place another order for gas in. Then the gas guy comes up. Then you got to go help him pump the gas. out into the big tank. And then, oh, you got a new, new order of Pringles and sodas in, got to run around to the back and let them in the warehouse and then physically unload the truck yourself. It is a lot of work to be a one-man operation running a gas station and service station in Route 66 out in the desert. And I got my first employee. Hopefully I'm going to be able to

hire my second employee soon. And then I think I'll be able to take a step back and see the forest through the trees and maybe do a little bit of organized and maybe do a little bit of beautifying, maybe do a little bit of expanding, maybe clean up the parking lot a little bit, add some more space for some new customers to come in. Who knows? Maybe increase our tool capabilities in the service shop so that we can maybe do more than just change tires. Maybe we can start working on engines soon. Very, very into this game. I've only played it two days now. I started it yesterday morning. Having to physically stop myself from playing it anymore, I kind of just want to play it on stream and have that be the whole story, you know, have the stream get to see

the entirety of the, of the lifespan of this gas station, the highs and the lows and then hopefully more highs. God damn, it is an addictive little game. I don't know. At what point in my life, I switched over, wanted to shoot Nazis or space aliens all day long to wanting to pump gas, power wash a fire truck, and run a suit. sushi restaurant. But at some point in my life, I flipped from wanting to do fantastical shit in video games to wanting to do everyday normal shit in video games. And I have really made a hell of a transition into it. Maybe it's a sign of maturation. I don't know. But if you are at all interested in doing things in a video game that you could easily do in the real world if you chose

to do so. Maybe consider gas station simulator. You might be surprised. Just got some antlers to hang up in the station. And I got to say, I thought it would add some charm to it. It makes it kind of look like a murder gas station. I'm a little creeped out by it. I'm not sure we're going to keep them or not. But that's a problem for tomorrow, Jeff, I guess. Did we talk about everything I said we would talk about? I honestly can't remember. I'm going to assume we did. I'm going to assume we probably killed it. And you're like, wow, what a complete episode. Jeff talked about every single thing he said he would. He didn't leave anything on the table.

He didn't forget anything so that 15 minutes after he stops recording, he's already out of the house going about his next task. And then goes, God damn it, you idiot. That didn't happen. That's not going to happen because we thought of it all and we talked about it all. And now you just need a song of the episode and you'll be on your way. I'll be on my way. It'll be like this whole day never happens.

How about the, this is just a fun one. How about the Mates of State cover of these days? You know the song I'm talking about, Nico? Listen to, it's a great song, listen to it. But also listen to Mates of State cover it. It's a lot of fun. And do not forget to listen to the Regulation Podcast. Do not forget to come back here next week and listen to this podcast again.

Do not forget that I stream on Twitch most mornings from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. And I have a YouTube archive that has all of them saved in archival form, as the name implies, in case you don't get up early in the morning or in case you have shit to do early in the morning that is not hanging out with me. Also, my wife has a podcast called Clutch My Pearls. It's about books and book talk. And it is fun and funny as well. And I think you should listen to any or all of the things I just dumped on your plate, not trying to overload you. I'll take what I can get. Have a great week. I'll see you right here next time. All right. Thank you.