Ask the Tech Guys Episode 1977 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Ask the Tech guys. I am Micah Sergeant, and we take a look at a fantastic genealogy app for the Mac.

Leo Laporte (00:00:07):
I'm Leo LaPorte. I've gotta run down of some very cool digital note taking tools. And

Mikah Sargent (00:00:12):
We answer a printer question.

Leo Laporte (00:00:15):
It's Oh no. Oh

Mikah Sargent (00:00:16):
Boy. It is all that and more coming up on Ask the Tech guys

Leo Laporte (00:00:21):
Podcasts you love

Mikah Sargent (00:00:23):
From people you trust.

Leo Laporte (00:00:26):
This

Mikah Sargent (00:00:26):
Is TWI tweet.

Leo Laporte (00:00:30):
This is Ask the Tech guys with Micah, Sergeant and Leon LaPorte. Episode 1977, recorded Sunday, June 4th, 2023. Don't forget to walk. Ask The Tech Guys is brought to you by Melissa. More than 10,000 clients worldwide. Rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twitch. And buy electric e-bikes. Skip the plate out gifts this father's day and give the gift of adventure with electric e-bikes. Visit electric e-bikes dot com to learn more and explore the epic models Electric has to offer. And by ACI learning, CIOs and CISOs agree that attracting and retaining talent is critical with an average completion rate of over 80%. Your team deserves the entertaining and cutting edge training that they want. Fill out the form@go.acilearning.com slash twi for more information on a free two week training trial for your team.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:43):
It's time for ask the Tech guys the show where we take your questions live on air and do our best to answer them. That over there, he over there <laugh>. This guy, this guy over here is Leo Laport. Hey,

Leo Laporte (00:01:58):
How are you? And that guy over there, Micah Sergeant.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:01):
Yes. And Leo, what do we do on this show? We, we do a lot, right? I mean, aside from, oh,

Leo Laporte (00:02:06):
This is just a jampacked show. So we've got two contributors. I forgot to ask you John Ashley, who? Those are Sam Bull Salmon? No, no, no. Scott Wilkins. Well me, lemme guess. Scott Wilkinson, home Theater Geek. Yeah. And Johnny Jet Travel Guru Travel. And Gu I am gonna show you notetaking Hardware. Ooh. And this is, you know, both Mike and I are very interested in the idea of using a pencil or a pen to take notes, which is ironic cuz neither of us ever do Right. <Laugh>, because we type it all.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:39):
We're trying to find a solution that actually sticks for our brains.

Leo Laporte (00:02:42):
So I've got three plus devices to show you mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that are designed around pen based notetaking. And I'll give you some information on that. Steve Gibson was very interested in this. He has a, I think he has a remarkable, he wants Oh, okay. Or he was thinking about getting the remarkable. Anyway, that's coming up. Lots of questions. If you want to ask a question, there's three ways to do it. Two that are live now, one is of course, the phone number. (888) 724-2884.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:14):
Nice. Yes. That's also 8 88 7 2 4 8 TT g <laugh>, if you want to remember it that way. But it's quite

Leo Laporte (00:03:20):
A few things. We will stick with that

Mikah Sargent (00:03:22):
One. Yeah, we'll stick with that one. <Laugh>. you could also go on your phone and go to your browser and type in call.twitch.tv. When you do that, it's gonna take you to a page for Zoom, where a pop-up will say, Hey, do you want to join the call? Then you'll be taken into this special waiting area Ooh. Where you too could join the show live to talk to us. Now, it's important that once you get in place, you raise your hand. There's a little button to let you raise your hand letting us know that you have a question. Because we do have some folks who just like to tune into the Zoom and hang out there. So we wanna make sure that you're actually there to ask a question. So just hit that little raise your hand button. We've got quite a few people with their hands raised.

Leo Laporte (00:04:10):
If you call in by the phone, you won't be able to raise your hand. What will happen though is a little strange. You, we just pick it up and then you will be transferred into a room where you'll be able to hear us. And then at some point we'll say hello, what, you know, we'll say your name and come on in. And at that point you need to press star six to unmute. That's the only thing we ask of you is unmute with star six. And that's for the phone callers. The third way of course, email ATG twit tv. That's a little slower. We might get to you in the weeks coming. I have an email in the mailbox here. Ooh, I'm ready.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:42):
Oh yeah, that's great. The mailbox over there too. And I wanted to mention, I forgot that if you don't wanna call us live, but you do wanna use the phone number anytime during the week. You can call and leave a voicemail.

Leo Laporte (00:04:54):
And do we have some from

Mikah Sargent (00:04:56):
I think we might have some, some voicemails We do. Now we've got a voicemail.

Leo Laporte (00:04:59):
John Ashley, producer man says we do. Says

Mikah Sargent (00:05:02):
We do. So we

Leo Laporte (00:05:02):
Do. Tomorrow is a big day. You're gonna get up very early. You're gonna drive to Cupertino cuz this guy here got an invitation.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:11):
Hi, <laugh>. Yes. I was invited to WW d c Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple is expected as always to announce the new versions of its operating systems. Talk about those. This is the chance for developers to kind of see these new features and functionality that are available, and then ask the people who are making the new stuff, how to use it and what they need to do to take advantage of it. But Leo, we're also expected to see quite a bit of hardware, which is always interesting. Well, the big

Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
Of course, as we're not telling you anything you don't already know. The big story is that Apple is expected to reveal for the first time its Nerd Helmet, <laugh> virtual reality, augmented reality glasses. This will be, and we don't know, we know we've heard a lot, we don't know anything, right?

Mikah Sargent (00:06:04):
What's real, what's not.

Leo Laporte (00:06:05):
But this will be, it's expected a developer only edition, not a consumer product. And it won't be available now, it won't be available to the fall, but at the same time, they will also announce X R O S. That's what we think it's gonna be called. Their mixed reality. That's what XR stands for, their mixed reality operating system for these glasses. And that's, again, to get developers going on it, right?

Mikah Sargent (00:06:28):
Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point of this is that Apple wants to make sure that there's software that folks can use on day dot on day one whenever they get these headsets. Eventually, what I found interesting is in the lead up to this we've had germin on Tech News Weekly, mark Goman of Bloomberg on Tech News Weekly a number of times. And one of the things that he heard from people familiar with the matter is that it will automatically be able to run iPad apps outta the box. And so developers can then take that and build on it and make it into more of a system. So you can almost imagine by default having a few iPad windows open right in this virtual or augmented space that's just running it flat. But then for them to be able to build on that and go, okay, now I wanna bring out this ui, I want it to be part of this augmented or virtual space and make it even more interactive.

(00:07:29):
I think that's where I'm curious to see how many developers end up sort of going with what's available right now or taking it to that next level. And which apps need to end up that way. Because we saw this with when Mac Os with the introduction of Apple, Silicon started to be able to run iPad and even in some cases iOS, iPhone apps. There were some developers who added little features that you could do on the Mac to make it still essentially an iPad or iPhone app, but with a little bit more involved. But there are a few apps that I will actually run on my Mac that don't do anything other than what they would do on the iPhone or the iPad, because Apple made it nearly as simple as just clicking a checkbox in the software that developers use to make it available for use on the Mac. So we'll see. Of

Leo Laporte (00:08:21):
Course, the most important announcement is the arrival of the official Nike Ted Lasso merchandise. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (00:08:28):
I've been wa I've totally been waiting for this <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:08:32):
Now that this, the season is over. In fact, it may be the show might be over. Jason Siki says he's not coming back Anyway. And if you, if you don't have Ted Lasso, do you have a show anyway, right. You can now get the the shirts from, is it Reham? What's the name? I've No, Rex's

Mikah Sargent (00:08:49):
Tona Hot Spur. No, that's not the Hot

Leo Laporte (00:08:50):
Spurs. I don't know.

Mikah Sargent (00:08:51):
Anyway, don't watch the

Leo Laporte (00:08:52):
Show. You could tell neither of us.

Mikah Sargent (00:08:54):
Really. I stopped up 61 watching

Leo Laporte (00:08:55):
Show. So this will be exciting. We will cover it Live 10:00 AM Pacific. That's 1:00 PM Eastern Time. 1700 UTC Live Twitter tv. I think what I'm gonna do this time, I've lost my co-host.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:07):
I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (00:09:07):
He's going to be in person and I hope we will hear from you. Yes. You might be able to call in Jason Snell will also be down there. Might be able to give us a some sort of a report.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:16):
I will be on Mac Break weekly on Tuesday after afterward. Yeah. I hope that folks will follow me online as I will be posting stuff both probably in Mastodon and Twitter. But we have lots in, in the works for our own Yeah. Social

Leo Laporte (00:09:34):
Media. And as we cover the keynote, I will pull up anything I see from anybody. You Jason. Jason, yeah. Jason. Yeah. Gruber Paul Throt, snarky Tweets and Response, that kind of thing. And we're gonna do something a little bit different. We're gonna open the stage in our discord for our club members Oh, wonderful. To participate at least via audio. So if you, if you, you know, have strong opinions, if you wanna gasp along with us, that's fine. I'm a little bit inspired by what Alex Lindsay has done with Office Hours. I thought it'd be kind of fun to have our club members in on the show since I'm losing my co-host. So it'll be me and you. Tomorrow 10:00 AM Pacific. I'm, I'm pretty excited. That'll

Mikah Sargent (00:10:12):
Be a great hangout. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:10:13):
Yeah. It should be. And I think we'll continue to hang that afternoon with the State of the Union. That's really excellent. Where a lot of developer details come out. So anyway. That's exciting. That's really gonna be the news of the week, I suspect. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:27):
Did you, there there was some news last week. Did you see Reddit's choice

Leo Laporte (00:10:34):
To Yeah. In fact there's gonna be a big Reddit boycott Okay. In a couple of days. So Reddit like Twitter, but in doing, they did it in a better way Right. Has announced to third party Reddit apps that they're gonna start charging for access, what they call the a p i. Now, you may remember Twitter, just turn it off. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> didn't say anything to anybody and put a number of businesses on the skids. Reddit, at least, I has called the people who make Apollo, Joey. They're quite a few who Reddit third party apps I prefer on iOS and Android. I use Apollo on iOS and Joanne Andrew to use a third party app. The Reddit mobile app isn't great. I do use Reddit on the web, but the reason these companies do this is cuz the third party apps don't show you the ads, frankly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so they want, you know, and it's completely within their rights to do this. And they're doing it right. They've warned people, they've told people ahead of time, but the guy who does Apollo said, I had this phone call, and based on the amount of traffic we generate, it's gonna cost me it's, I think $12,000 per half a million hits or something like that. But he says it's gonna end up costing me around, get this 20 million a year to keep the app up, which means I'm out of business.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:51):
Right. Quite

Leo Laporte (00:11:52):
Literally, when they do this, I have to shut down. Cuz there's, it's a shareware app. It's a, it's not, he's not making a lot of money on it. Right. or he is making some money, but not 20 million, not

Mikah Sargent (00:12:01):
20. Not enough to both pay for that and continue the development. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:04):
So there will be a, a number of Reddit subreddits have already said we're going dark for three days or two days. I can't remember in a few days to protest this, to let Reddit know that we're unhappy about this. Reddit is in the same position Twitter is, which is, yeah. They run the site. Conde Nast owns it. The big magazine publisher

Mikah Sargent (00:12:25):
Con Conde Nast owns Reddit. Yeah. I had no idea. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:28):
They have for some time. And they've done a, you know, they've let 'em alone. They've done a good job of, of letting 'em alone. I think they've done a good job of keeping Reddit. You and I both use Reddit pri you know, as our primary source.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:37):
Yeah. It's a great source for so much information.

Leo Laporte (00:12:40):
Yeah. in fact, people even in when they Google will will say site reddit.com and then Google, because the, it depends on what you're looking for. But if you're looking for the best way to fry an egg, much better to look on Reddit than the, you know, cuz there's some, there's probably a fried egg subreddit where people go back and forth

Mikah Sargent (00:12:56):
<Laugh> Yeah, totally. On

Leo Laporte (00:12:57):
What the best way to fry an egg is

Mikah Sargent (00:12:58):
Answer.

Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
Yep. So I'm, I'm disappointed I understand why they do it, but as I was pointing out, Twitter and Reddit, both, besides the fact that they run the site depend on third us

Mikah Sargent (00:13:10):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:11):
Contributors,

Mikah Sargent (00:13:12):
We're the ones who provide the content.

Leo Laporte (00:13:13):
All the content is provided by unpaid contributors. And so the unpaid contributors are saying, well, hold on there. You're really ignoring us. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> at your peril. So this will be what what will develop, I think.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:30):
Interesting. And I wanted, when I heard about this, I really wanted to ask you, because I think that you are much more of a Reddit user than, oh, probably

Leo Laporte (00:13:37):
I'm devoted Reddit user. Yeah. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:39):
What do you think, what give, let's, let's do pie in the sky, sort of, what are some possible solutions here? A cap on how much Reddit charges? Yeah, that's

Leo Laporte (00:13:50):
Possible.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:50):
What do, what do you think could be a solution

Leo Laporte (00:13:52):
Here? I think Conde may look at the response, unexpected negative response and say okay guys, we changed our minds. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I suspect that will happen. Now what will that mean? I mean, they, they wanna make the money. They have advertising they make on the site. I'm a big Reddit fan. They, I pay for Reddit, so I don't see the ads. Oh, okay. They have a paid plan. So I just, I just don't know what's gonna happen. And I, I would be very sad to lose Apollo and Joey and all the third party apps. So I was just scanning through here to see if I could find a number of subreddits have said, you know, we're, we're shutting down for a few days just to let people know we're going. What they do is they go private. So you can't see any content. And you know what the intent is, is to let normal Reddit users know who aren't following this what's going on, and to get them upset about it. And if that succeeds, I think Conde will have to do something. They'll have to back down or something. But, you know, ironically, I don't remember the dates of the boycott or <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:58):
Yeah. So clearly

Leo Laporte (00:14:59):
Not. I should pay closer attention. I think I'm thinking it was June 5th, third through fifth, something like that, which is what today, right? Oh, it can't be June 3rd through fifth. It would be going on right now. Unless it is, and I'm not even noticing it. So, by the way, I just opened Reddit and found out who won the Formula One race. So I'm mad at myself. I always stay away from Reddit, <laugh> <laugh> on Sundays. But anyway, that's okay. It's not an unexpected result, I guess. So those are the big stories of the week. We'll have a big story. That's, you know, my pride socks don't go all the way up <laugh>. I dunno if that's a little

Mikah Sargent (00:15:38):
Shorter,

Leo Laporte (00:15:38):
Intentional or not. Actually my mom made these.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:42):
Yeah, I figured. I always see your knitted socks and great.

Leo Laporte (00:15:46):
Yeah, I knitted socks.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:47):
I gotta tell you, that's the one thing I cannot, I, I've done a lot of knitting, but the socks, I just have so much trouble with them. They're just really such little, I think, to be needles. Yeah, no, it's, it's very involved. So I'm very impressed with her work.

Leo Laporte (00:16:00):
She's a heck of a sock knitter,

Mikah Sargent (00:16:02):
The heel turn and all

Leo Laporte (00:16:03):
That stuff's for every Christmas.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:05):
That's awesome.

Leo Laporte (00:16:06):
All right. You wanna take some

Mikah Sargent (00:16:07):
Calls? Let's take some calls. I bet that's what folks would love for us to do.

Leo Laporte (00:16:10):
You tell me who

Mikah Sargent (00:16:12):
Honestly, I remember, I think I do remember James being there at the end of the last episode. So why don't we, why don't we talk to James?

Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
Okay. there is is that, it's that James? Yes, James. I am sending you to the breakout room.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:28):
Mo <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):
Does he look like a Christmas tree? <Laugh> joining us now in the Stargate. James

Caller James (00:16:38):
<Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:39):
Welcome James.

Leo Laporte (00:16:40):
Hey James.

Caller James (00:16:42):
Hi. Can you hear me?

Mikah Sargent (00:16:43):
We can hear, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:16:44):
The thank you, Joe. The Reddit can. The Reddit, you hear me? Yes, we hear you. The Reddit boycott. Joe hi tells me hi is the 12th through the 14th, thank you. 12Th through 14th, Joe for updating that for me. I appreciate that.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:57):
James, where are you calling from?

Caller James (00:17:01):
Well, actually it's Jim from Hollywood Hills. That is, ooh. With the huge <laugh>, the huge endeavor on Microsoft Word that is running slower and slower.

Leo Laporte (00:17:12):
Oh, that's right. Now James is writing a book

Mikah Sargent (00:17:15):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:17:16):
About his experience flying. What is it? Flying? Tell me what your book is about. I forgot.

Caller James (00:17:21):
N no, no. I'm an audio engineer. I record the actor's voices for movies and tv.

Leo Laporte (00:17:26):
That's right. He's a sound guy. God.

Caller James (00:17:28):
And we've got a lot of young people coming into the industry and there's things they need to know, not only about sound, but you got a 6:00 AM call, you got out at 5:00 AM your car's got a flat tire. They don't know how to change a flat tire. <Laugh>, they don't know that the o e m lug wrench is too short to break loose the lug nuts that have rusted. That's manual.

Leo Laporte (00:17:52):
You're writing. So the problem is, oh, yes. This is a, this is a large book, <laugh>. Yeah. As you can imagine. I kind of love this. It's like, and and you're writing it in Microsoft Word, but you said Word has gotten too slow. We had made, when you called the radio show, I had made some suggestions for,

Caller James (00:18:05):
And they worked. They worked. They were very helpful. Oh, good. I found some of my own. However, it's only gone from 21 megabytes to 22, but it's running the slower and the slower. Yeah. And I'll get to that in a minute. I wanna let you guys know that until 1127, your cruise chatter on the computer audio was almost completely drowning you out.

Leo Laporte (00:18:32):
Our cruise chatter, the, on 11th

Caller James (00:18:34):
27Th,

Leo Laporte (00:18:34):
Somebody chatter, you're talking back in November

Caller James (00:18:37):
Until no, no, no. The time. Oh. Until 1111

Leo Laporte (00:18:40):
20:00 PM Well, that's, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, yeah. Your initial, sorry

Caller James (00:18:44):
About that. Your initial, your initial audio Yeah. Was your guy's audio was almost completely

Leo Laporte (00:18:49):
Drowned out. Yeah. So you're hearing it at the Zoom return and Yeah. I apologize. Yeah, we'll, we'll

Caller James (00:18:54):
Work on it. So yeah, you need to, to remix that.

Leo Laporte (00:18:57):
Okay. Sound cut. Okay. Easy sound cut. Yes.

Caller James (00:19:00):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:19:01):
Why don't you expect it wasn't that way on the stream, but it wasn't the zoom and that, I apologize. We'll fix

Caller James (00:19:05):
That. Yeah. And when I, when I showed up last time your audio was about six frames ahead of your video. Well, that happens.

Leo Laporte (00:19:14):
It's in

Caller James (00:19:14):
Sync this

Leo Laporte (00:19:14):
Time. Yeah, that happens. That's, yeah, that's, I'm sorry. That's also a flawing streaming. And also, Leo, your tire is flat. Do you know how to change? I do. I do. I do have, I call aaa there you <laugh>. That's how

Caller James (00:19:27):
U unfortunately, they take so long to re to get there that you'll be fired, because when the production mixer is off the set, everything is in trouble silent. Yeah. Can't record anything. Yeah. So I always arrive one tire change early, but I

Leo Laporte (00:19:42):
Have <laugh>. That's smart, actually. That's very good. Yeah. Yeah. How, how long is that? 20 minutes?

Caller James (00:19:48):
I can probably do it on, in under 10.

Leo Laporte (00:19:51):
Wow. So, geezer nerd, who is of course in our Discord, a club member, but also a novelist mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, who says he wrote the Prometheus option, 220,000 words. He did it in Microsoft Word. He said, few experiences, more painful <laugh> that he's using. What I had asked, I had suggested to you, James Scribner, you didn't like Scribner so much?

Caller James (00:20:13):
No. It because his, his is a short story. I'm coming up on 750,000 words, Mary. Wow. Okay. But it, but anyhow, let me I mean, I can talk all day if you like, but I'm sure let's, people will be, let's do,

Leo Laporte (00:20:29):
Yeah, let's do your question. We have a busy day today. Yeah.

Caller James (00:20:31):
Yeah. And it, it, by the way, I was able,

Leo Laporte (00:20:35):
The tire change in a Formula One race averages around two and a half seconds <laugh>. So you would arrive two and a two and a half seconds early.

Caller James (00:20:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I they change

Leo Laporte (00:20:47):
All four at once, that's why.

Caller James (00:20:49):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I, I have a six year old ACEs. It's running seventh generation I seven and the task manager shows the C P U pinned to a hundred all the time. I know what you've said about that. Anyhow, I took my file to a a faster com computer and didn't have, and,

Leo Laporte (00:21:11):
And I presume I'm an up-to-date copy of word, too, right? You used the latest word?

Caller James (00:21:15):
Well, I'm using 2021.

Leo Laporte (00:21:17):
Oh, that's pretty late. Okay. Yeah.

Caller James (00:21:21):
And it did run faster. The only thing that pinned that C P U was things like updating the interactive t o c and the like. So I started to look for a new computer mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, which I will get to in just a minute. It turned out that the most recent slowdown was I'd been so busy doing stuff I'd forgotten to periodically refresh my operating system. So I did an in place you know, reinstall of the windows 10 upgrade. And that solved the recent slowdown problem. But I am looking to buy a new computer now. I have a built-in optical drive, which is very useful to me. And of course, 2020 was the last batch of computers that had it. I went online. I found there's a lot of n o s new old stock factory sealed boxes of 2020 models with the optical drives. I found two that I liked on actually, Walmart has a marketplace. I bought them after checking that model number on the Hewlett Packard website to make sure it had an optical drive when they arrived. They had no optical drives. Oh. They were the same number, you know, and the fast start. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:34):
Nobody makes computers with CD ROMs anymore, mean

Caller James (00:22:37):
Yeah. And the fa the fast start instructions. Why do

Leo Laporte (00:22:40):
You need a CD ramm? Is that to store the You're not, tell me you're not. No, no. You're not editing the book on a cd. Rama <laugh>,

Caller James (00:22:48):
Right? No, no, no,

Leo Laporte (00:22:49):
No, no. Okay.

Caller James (00:22:50):
No, I, I, I conduct seminars and I show clips from DVD movies.

Leo Laporte (00:22:55):
So you need, you do need a DVD player. Yeah. Almost everybody now buys external U S b DVD v D players.

Caller James (00:23:01):
Yeah. I, I, I understand. And I could do that. It's just a nuisance. Yeah. Because you're running

Leo Laporte (00:23:06):
Around. I understand.

Caller James (00:23:08):
Okay. as I say, I'm trying to make this go as fast as I can. And so what I discovered because I found Walmart was very good about taking them back. I'd done a screen cap, a screen cap of the ad just so I could prove that claim to have it. I found another one on Amazon this time. I contacted the seller in advance and I looked at their reviews. Half the people got them with DVDs drives and half didn't have them. The seller offered to give me a free external one. I didn't want that did offer ones on eBay. So I just wanna let people know that even though the Hewlett Packard website for a given model says that the laptop is provisioned a certain way, you may get that model with that model number and it won't match. I dunno if the other manufacturers do that or not.

Leo Laporte (00:24:04):
Okay.

Caller James (00:24:05):
Okay. So and the end, the end of this is in the process of looking for things, I found a guy who, like me, is a physicist and who has the side gig, a sort of hobby of building computers basically from scratch. Custom wise, what he does is he gets the physical heart case you want, rips everything out, including the motherboard, puts the latest motherboard in, in this case it has an I 11th generation I seven. And only charges a very reasonable markup on the cost of the additional components. And he's gonna give me a Blu-ray, d v d c d. Alright. I did check him up. I found out that he's got a couple of dozen patents, his work history lines up with everything he said. I've had extensive email interchanges with him. He, he really does know. And so I'll call in in a couple of weeks when I get it and let you know, Hey, this guy's great, and who, here's who he is, or, it was a scam.

Leo Laporte (00:25:09):
Good. Well, let's hope it's not a scam. <Laugh>.

Caller James (00:25:11):
Yeah, likewise.

Leo Laporte (00:25:13):
Good luck. When's the book gonna f When are you gonna finish this thing?

Caller James (00:25:16):
I I'm actually closing in on the million word first draft and going to send it to my

Leo Laporte (00:25:23):
Printers can only print so thick <laugh>, you know, you

Caller James (00:25:27):
Have to No, no. We're, we're talking now from three volumes going to four volumes. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:25:32):
Well, hey, good luck. And do let us know when the book comes out, will you? Oh,

Caller James (00:25:36):
Oh, absolutely. I

Leo Laporte (00:25:37):
Appreciate it.

Caller James (00:25:37):
And, and thank, thank you for all your help.

Leo Laporte (00:25:40):
Always a pleasure. James. I appreciate you joining us. Good luck. Keep writing.

Caller James (00:25:46):
I'll settle for an absence of bad luck. That's more important. <Laugh>. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:25:49):
Okay. And thank you, by the way, for the tips on our audio. We are taking a note, taking a note on that. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Now I want to show you, this is an F1 tire change. This is actually the record for the fastest f1. They don't, they're not allowed in Formula one to cha add fueler do too much work. But they, this is, so this is just changing four tires all at once. Here comes max for steppen and done. Wow. Okay. Now I'm gonna show you doing that in Microsoft Word. This is what it looks like in Microsoft Word, Kelly. This was do, do not Right. Your million words volume in Wait. And then they're <laugh>. Oh my goodness. Okay. Let's, let's let's move on. Shall <laugh>, whoa. I should probably do an ad at this point.

(00:26:52):
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It's flexible to fit your business needs on-prem in the cloud. A p i if you wanna write your software with this built in, you can. Melissa's global service can a verify addresses for get ready for this 240 countries and territories and counting to ensure only valid billing and shipping addresses. Enter your system, and of course, your data is safe with Melissa, SOC two, HIPAA and GDPR compliant. Your data's always in the best hands. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started with 1000 records, clean for free. Melissa.Com/Twit. That's melissa.com/twit. We thank 'em so much for their support of Ask the Tech guys. Don't forget to use that address too. That's how you support us. Melissa.Com/Twit. Where we go next, Mr. Sergeant? Where should we go next? Well, you know what, why don't we take that voicemail? Let's do a voicemail. We have you know, when you call our number, (888) 724-2884 during the week, unlike the radio show where you just go, eh, eh, eh, we actually will let you leave a message. And we love those voicemail messages. Keep 'em short. You know, less than 30 seconds, ideally first name City, always nice to have, let's hear it.

Caller Lynn (00:30:10):
Hi, my name's Lynn. I'm calling from Thousand Oaks. I have a question. Going into my Yahoo count, which is many years old, I noticed that all of my documents that I've taken care of online are sage in the, that I've had received in my email. How can I protect that? Because obviously Yahoo is not the safest place. So <laugh> under my inbox, there's views under views, there's photos and documents emails to myself, shopping receipts. How can I erase those?

Leo Laporte (00:30:54):
That's a great question. Yeah. That actually is quite a good question. First of all, make sure you have downloaded them all. So check, you know, spot check it. And if you are using an IMAP tool, that's not gonna do it. You need to download them using pop post office presence or post office protocol, cuz that will actually physically download it. And the best way to do that is look at your download folders and move stuff out of there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> move stuff out of there. It may be IMAP will cash it, but that doesn't mean it'll be permanent. Your IMAP app will clean up after a while and, and it'll suddenly disappear. So move it out of the folder that it's in to a, you know, your photos folder or documents folder where it can't touch it. Now, how does she delete it from Yahoo?

(00:31:33):
And I think your concern is absolutely ver 100%. I mean that, whenever you said Yahoo, I thought, oh boy. Well, I mean, first and foremost, if you are planning on keeping the Yahoo email account then this will be something that you need to regularly do. But once you have truly fully 100%, and certainly moved those documents to a different place so that you know you've got them saved, you've got them elsewhere then you can move through them. Because essentially these attachments are, they're attached. They're, they're attached to emails. Exactly. When you delete the email, bye-bye. And it goes away as well, in theory, if Yahoo's doing everything properly, right? Because it's, it's essentially kind of taking a part of that email to show you that's how it's, it's showing these filtered views. Right? But once you go through and delete them, like you would in email, you need to find the folder that Yahoo has that is either the trash folder or the recycling bin or whatever Yahoo happens to call its trash folder. Its deleted folder. And get them out of there as well.

Mikah Sargent (00:32:38):
Because these applications, and in this case online mail applications will have sort of an archive or some location that is kind of where it's held for a while.

Leo Laporte (00:32:47):
Yeah. Most of the time this works just not only for Yahoo Mail, but for everything. There's a select all in the case of Yahoo Mail, you'll see when you open the inbox, for instance, you'll see check boxes next to all the mails, but at the very top, there's a checkbox that's not associated with any mail. If you click that, you notice all the mails get selected at that point, delete. And, and that will move them outta the inbox. But Mike's right, that will then move it either to an archived box or a deleted box, a trashcan. You wanna also empty the trashcan once you've done that. So go through all your folders, select all, delete all, then go to the trashcan exactly as Micah said, and delete what you know, cuz it's protecting you. Right? Yep. Absolutely. Deleted as well.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:26):
Yeah. And good, good instincts there that, you know, those documents. Yeah. Yahoo

Leo Laporte (00:33:30):
Keeps getting kicks getting hacked. You can, if you don't want to use Yahoo anymore, close your account and in theory, it'll delete everything. Yeah. So that's another way to do it. There is an inbox tool. If you hover the mouse over the inbox, here's a picture from business Insider. If you hover the mouse over inbox and the navigation pa plane on the left and click the dropdown arrow, there's a clean your inbox tool that will also do that. But again, remember, it's gonna archive them. And so you wanna make sure if you do archive 'em, you then delete the contents of the archive folder. So there are ways to do this. I think you're right. Not to trust Yahoo. Yeah. In fact, honestly, if you're still using AOL mail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, which has become Microsoft Outlook Mail, I would get them off of there, move it to hot, you know, outlook or or Gmail. And as you know, and I talk about this when we do our fast mail ads mm-hmm. <Affirmative> I a sponsor, I think it's worth, if you really value email, it's worth paying for it.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:37):
Yeah. Especially how it sounds like you're using it. You know, this, this person using it as a way to send themselves documents and save them in a space.

Leo Laporte (00:34:43):
Yeah. Yeah. It might be time to get buy some space on OneDrive or I iCloud if you're using a Macintosh or Dropbox while people use Dropbox. All right. Another one, shall we? Or what should we do? Yeah. I'm putting you in charge. This that's fine today cause my mind is 70. I'm, what

Mikah Sargent (00:35:02):
Is this pointing point to a call. Okay. Yeah. Let's take an actual phone call. Someone who call in eight. Should we do Kate? 8, 8 7 2 4

Leo Laporte (00:35:08):
Oh a call. Eight

Mikah Sargent (00:35:09):
A call. Yeah, a call. Call. All right.

Leo Laporte (00:35:12):
I'm ready for Louis. Should we do Louis? Let's do Louis. All right. Hey, Louie. Or is it Louie? Hi, Louis. Louie <laugh>. Where are you calling from? And and is it Louie or Louis?

Mikah Sargent (00:35:30):
Oh star six. Six six. I like that. I like that. John. John John's. Star. Star.

Leo Laporte (00:35:36):
Okay, here we go. Hi. Is it Louis Lou? How do you like it?

Caller Louis (00:35:41):
How do you it that's, that's my computer, my computer. I called you on Zoom. Trying to go both angles and there <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
All right, good.

Caller Louis (00:36:05):
Speaking of audio you encourage people to use their cell phones, but when they do, it's almost impossible to understand them because they're, it sounds like they're in a, well, they're in their rooms. There's room echo. Now you, Leo, you sound like God because you're right next to the microphone. Yeah. And Micah sounds like Gabriel cause he's close. But the collar's on iPhones or on Apple, I mean on,

Leo Laporte (00:36:36):
Well, you sound great right now. I hear you. Great.

Caller Louis (00:36:38):
S impossible to understand him.

Leo Laporte (00:36:39):
Doesn't he sound great? I think he sounds good. Yeah. All right. I don't know how to fix that. I mean, you know, this is the problem with taking phone calls is phones aren't notoriously high quality. That would've meant that on the radio show at the same time. Yeah. We had the same problem on the radio show often. The how,

Caller Louis (00:36:55):
How does this sound? Do I sound good?

Leo Laporte (00:36:56):
You sound good. So yeah. Talk into the phone. Yes, folks. Yes. What can we do for you,

Caller Louis (00:37:01):
Lou? I'm using the Bluetooth.

Leo Laporte (00:37:03):
Ah, that's why. Well,

Caller Louis (00:37:04):
I've got a, I've got a solution or to help for the lady last week who wanted to, to video her relatives and so forth.

Leo Laporte (00:37:16):
Oh, yeah. That was a good call. Yeah.

Caller Louis (00:37:19):
Yeah. If you go to, if you go to my website, Arizona lou.com, plug, plug, plug. And the left menu bar, go down to technology and click on latest technology.

Leo Laporte (00:37:41):
Wow. You got a very

Caller Louis (00:37:42):
Index.

Leo Laporte (00:37:43):
You got a very deep website. I, you know, I'd never looked beyond. Oh, look, there's the internet, the Carbon monoxide monitor. Okay. Yeah. Carbon Ox.

Caller Louis (00:37:52):
Click on. Yeah. You got me to buy that? Yeah. click on the thing that says Index.

Leo Laporte (00:37:57):
Index. Let's look at all the technol. Holy moly.

Caller Louis (00:38:01):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:38:02):
You're prolific. Click

Caller Louis (00:38:04):
On camera on for comedy

Leo Laporte (00:38:08):
Cam, the HDR CX 4 0 5. You like that? Do you? Yes. Wow. Look at that setup there.

Caller Louis (00:38:16):
Well, th there's couple reasons why I had to pick one. Doesn't apply to the lady yesterday. I had to pick this particular camera because I, I video my full shows. Yeah. And I have to get one hour, an hour and a half in a single file. Ah, and these cameras do that. Yes. But the main thing for her is on one tripod, I have two cameras, as you can

Leo Laporte (00:38:43):
See. Yeah. Look at this. So you get a wide shot and a close up

Caller Louis (00:38:49):
And a close up of, from the back of me. And then at the side, I have a wide angle and close up with audience.

Leo Laporte (00:38:58):
And you're looking at the audience. Cause you wanna know which material works. Right. You wanna know laughing joke. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller Louis (00:39:06):
Well, in my case, it's just a guess. I pointed at people that I think are going to laugh, because once I get on stage, I can't re ream the camera.

Leo Laporte (00:39:17):
So how do you, when you're looking at somebody in the audience as a, as a long time comic, lot of experience, how do you pinpoint somebody you think is gonna laugh? Are they wearing clown shoes?

Caller Louis (00:39:32):
No. People, well, I pick on anybody that meets my criteria. If they have a certain hairstyle or if they're real old, if their brain's over 70. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:39:45):
If your brain's over 70. <Laugh>. We'll talk about that. Tuesday. My brain is 70. It's old. It's old. Yeah.

Caller Louis (00:39:55):
Tuesday. Tuesday I'm doing a, a beach show. I'm, I'm calling from the Hatter Island off the coast of North Carolina.

Leo Laporte (00:40:04):
Oh, I'm jealous. A great place to be in June. How nice. Yeah.

Caller Louis (00:40:07):
Yeah. And ke I'm doing a beach show and I'm going to include my Alzheimer's routine in that show.

Leo Laporte (00:40:14):
Gee, I always forget that. Will you tell me what that is?

Caller Louis (00:40:19):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:40:19):
You know what, my mom, who is, doesn't have Alzheimer's, but she's 90, she's, her short-term memory is fading. She's, she's very happy about that. Cuz she keeps watching succession over and over and it's new every time. Oh my goodness. She jokes. She's a joker. She jokes.

Caller Louis (00:40:35):
Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Anyway, but the you can see some samples if you want to go back to my website and oh, you

Leo Laporte (00:40:47):
Have videos of your show. Wow. I did not realize your website's a lot deeper than I thought, Lou. That's wonderful.

Caller Louis (00:40:54):
Yeah. Well, I spent some time on it, I think. So anyway, go back up to the top of the page and click on Fresh Kit.

Leo Laporte (00:41:03):
And then that's where you'll see some videos of Lou and then

Caller Louis (00:41:07):
Click on videos.

Leo Laporte (00:41:08):
Okay. Well, I don't wanna spoil this for people. I'm gonna click on videos. I'm gonna let them watch on their, at their own. Yeah. We'll include a link in the show. No, no, you

Caller Louis (00:41:15):
Folks. No. This, this won't, this won't spoil much. Click on videos, <laugh> and the second video. Yeah, the second video

Leo Laporte (00:41:23):
There. Alzheimer's, Tempe, improv. Nice.

Caller Louis (00:41:27):
In the first.

Leo Laporte (00:41:28):
And do you, and do you show, you don't show the audience in these I

Caller Louis (00:41:30):
Have shots from all four cameras.

Leo Laporte (00:41:32):
Oh, nice. Yeah, there is the audience. There you go. Nice. So do you get them to sign a release? Go back

Caller Louis (00:41:39):
Up the second video.

Leo Laporte (00:41:40):
Yeah. I'm not gonna play it. Lou. Sorry. Hey Chris. But do you, oh, okay. Yeah, we, it's only a two hour show, <laugh>. But I believe you do you get a release from them before you, before you shoot them? Oh

Caller Louis (00:41:56):
I haven't had any troubles with that.

Leo Laporte (00:41:58):
Yeah. They're not gonna sue you. The,

Caller Louis (00:42:00):
The yeah, the the, the video. How

Leo Laporte (00:42:05):
Old are you Lou? How old? How, what's your chronological age?

Caller Louis (00:42:10):
If I tell you when I was born, can you figure it out?

Leo Laporte (00:42:13):
Sure. Cuz my brain is 70.

Caller Louis (00:42:15):
Okay. I'm so old. I was born in M Mcm, X L I

Leo Laporte (00:42:20):
M boy mcm, which is 1900 X L I, which is 41, 19 41.

Caller Louis (00:42:27):
You are so good. I can't believe

Leo Laporte (00:42:29):
You're a child. You're a child. My mom was born in M MCM. X X X I. I I. Wow. So you're

Caller Louis (00:42:39):
23.

Leo Laporte (00:42:40):
Yeah. You're eight years younger. You're in your eighties though, which is very impressive. Very impressive. Yeah. We missed your 80th birthday a couple of years ago. I'm sorry.

Caller Louis (00:42:49):
Yeah, I do have a question.

Leo Laporte (00:42:52):
Oh, oh, go ahead. You do. And we'll have Scott Wilkinson, right?

Caller Louis (00:42:55):
Yeah. And this is, this is for you Micah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:57):
Okay.

Caller Louis (00:42:59):
I want to ex, ex in Windows. They have batch files. Okay, well I want a file that will execute on startup of my McIntosh Ah,

Leo Laporte (00:43:11):
Ah, yeah. On Windows, if you put it in, oh, I found the in auto exec bat and Doss and in Windows of course there is a effective startup folder. But how do you do it in the map? I

Caller Louis (00:43:21):
Found the login. I found the login folder. There you go. Uhhuh. And I put the file with this terminal. It works in terminal, it opens my opens my local host so I can see what my internet Oh, that's nice.

Leo Laporte (00:43:36):
Looks like, okay. There's a better way to do that.

Caller Louis (00:43:38):
And the login file. Yeah, but the computer opens the text file instead of executing what's in the text file.

Leo Laporte (00:43:48):
Right. So let's, let's tell you how to do it. That's a better way to do it. Do you do have I Yeah, you go into the system preferences. Okay. That's what I was, they now call it, what do they call it now? Control panel. It's in system settings. System settings under users. Right. Uhhuh, <affirmative>, users and accounts or whatever that Users And Groups. Groups. And you go to your user account, right? Yes. go ahead. And so actually they've moved it. So I know this is the problem. In system settings, you click on General. General and then you choose login items. Uhhuh, this is if you're using Ventura. Yes. It changed in Ventura. And then at the top there's a little section that says open it, log in, you'll hit the plus icon and add the app. And then you'll add that file that you created

Mikah Sargent (00:44:30):
There and choose open. And then it will run it at login instead of just opening it as a text document.

Caller Louis (00:44:36):
Oh no, it won't re it'll open it as a text file in BB edit. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:44:44):
Now you have to do one more

Caller Louis (00:44:45):
Run.

Leo Laporte (00:44:46):
You have to do one more thing. It is a plain text file, but you've told mm-hmm. <Affirmative> McIntosh that when they see a do a text file, they should open in BB edit. You need to tell it. You can either do it globally or for that file alone. You need to go in the properties of that file. Yes. Open with

Mikah Sargent (00:45:01):
And then you achieve and

Leo Laporte (00:45:02):
Choose Terminal. Terminal. That's

Mikah Sargent (00:45:04):
Exactly

Leo Laporte (00:45:04):
Right. And you can have that just for that file. Or you can at the bottom you'll see change all. You can then change it for every file. But you need to tell the McIntosh is unlike, unlike Windows and Dos, where in the early days it was the dot extension, the.do c dot txt. And then Windows would have a database of what fi what program do you open with. That's kind of funky, kind of a funky way to do it. Windows doesn't do it that way anymore. Apple pioneered the idea that you have metadata within the file that says what to do. When that file is opened. It's no longer a database of extensions. It's actually in the file. So you can't change it by simply changing the file extension. You actually have to get the file properties. But they make it fairly easy when you go into the properties open with, and you'll choose whatever you want it to open with.

Mikah Sargent (00:45:52):
In fact, I have an episode of Hands on Masks terminal. Huh? It's all about this. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:45:57):
Yeah. You don't have to do it in terminal. Yeah, but say terminal. Right? You do it in the, in the finder to do that. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's actually a good,

Mikah Sargent (00:46:04):
Yeah, it's a great

Caller Louis (00:46:05):
Question. I saw the other, I

Leo Laporte (00:46:06):
So you did this in hands-on Mac.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:08):
I covered how to choose which applications. Nice. Open your files and everything that's involved with that. I have to tell you, this is the reason why it cut me off guard is because you, it's a text file. And so I would think we would save it as, you know, a shell script or some other extension that then would make it automatically run in the login window. So the idea that you are taking just what is a text file do to execute ex

Leo Laporte (00:46:32):
And execute and

Mikah Sargent (00:46:32):
Making and execute.

Leo Laporte (00:46:33):
Yeah. You may actually also have to make it executable.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:36):
Executable, which is,

Leo Laporte (00:46:37):
That is a terminal command. But since you're using the terminal, you probably know how to do that. That's ch mod. And then you can type U plus X if you want in the final name. That's one way. Do it. Hey, thank you Arizona. Luke, good luck with the Alzheimer's routine. I hope it goes over. Well, the nice thing. No, I'm not gonna <laugh>. Nope. See you. See? See He protects me.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:58):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:46:59):
He's my external filter.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:01):
I'm Gabriel. You

Leo Laporte (00:47:02):
Are Gabriel. And I am Pearl God <laugh>, which is a little more than I I asked for. Can we roll in an electric bite before we talk to Scott? Ask The tech guys is brought to you by him. Electric E-Bikes. I wanna show you the coolest thing you've ever seen. I am a huge fan of electric bikes and in particular from bikes. Call from electric e-bikes. Take the e off the front. Electric e-bikes dot com. It's very

Mikah Sargent (00:47:32):
Clever cuz they took the e from the beginning of electric and put it in front of the bikes. So it's electric and then they e

Leo Laporte (00:47:38):
Put it E-bikes. Yeah. There it. Wow. You're strong John Ashley. Actually, it's not as heavy as it looks. This is what a great gift for Father's Day. Does Dad like to bicycle? I love to bicycle, but I have to say here I am here running out to deliver a package on my electric e-bike. Cargo Wow. Bike. So the, they're battery powered battery's in that bar there. You can't really see it, but they're ba they're battery powered. And this thing has torque to spare because it's an electric motor, which is great for pulling heavy loads or children. You could, you can get chi child seats in the back there. Dad can pull the kids along and have a great time riding along. Electric e-bikes create a mode of transportation anybody can ride. Whether it's outdoor adventures or quick trips to the store with quality feature fill models.

(00:48:27):
Finance as low as $73 a month. Your adventures won't cost a fortune. They include a powerful removable battery, bright L C D display. It's very easy to use seven speed gearing. So you still have gears and five levels of pedal assist to power your ride. You want to go faster? You turn it up. Mike and I are gonna ride the foldable e-bike. This fits in your trunk. This would be a great gift for dad. Cuz these days I don't wanna do bike on the streets so much. It's not quite as safe. But I would love to go to a park. The foldable e-bike fits in your trunk unfolds to make a great stable platform. That's what John Ashley was just showing us was the foldable bike. They ship free, they are fully assembled, which is a blessing. That's, we've had e-bikes where you have to spend a lot of time putting 'em together. Not these, they were easily, you know, set up. It's got great disc brakes. The light and the rear light are powered by the battery, which means you never run outta juice. Mike and I are gonna go for a ride on our electric ebis. They're so fun. Aren't they fun?

Mikah Sargent (00:49:27):
Wind in your hair.

Leo Laporte (00:49:28):
Even if dad's never ridden an electric bike or if dad says, ah, I'm not a big biker. Get one for the whole family. There you go. We have, we, everyone in the family has an electric e-bike and we love them. We love them. From the XP light, which is effortlessly fun to the highly capable cargo E-bike, the expedition, that's the one I'm riding. You will love electric e-bikes. They offer a wide range of customizable and adjustable e-bike options to accommodate any lifestyle. I find myself, because I've got this great bike riding much more often, Hills don't stop me. But by the way, you're still getting exercise studies show that e-bike riders get out more often and get more exercise cuz they're not afraid of the hills. It makes it more fun too. 250,000 dedicated electric e-bike riders on the road so far.

(00:50:23):
Skip the plate out gifts. This father's Day. He take, take it from me. He doesn't want a tie. <Laugh>, nobody wears ties anymore. I don't know what you give people for Father's Day. How about this? The gift of adventure with electric e-bikes. Visit electric e-bikes dot com. L e c t r i c e b i k e s not electric, but electric e-bikes dot com. Explore the epic models very affordable too, which I really like. L e c t r i c e b i k e s.com. Electric e-bikes dot com. I'm not kidding. Dad will thank you for years to come cuz he'll be out there riding. He'll feel better, he'll be fitter. And and it's a great way to go out in a family adventure too, and you can fit in your trunk. I love that. Mr. Scott Wilkinson is joining us, our home theater geek host of the Home Theater Geeks podcast in the club Twit. How's that going, by the way, Scott?

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:23):
Hey you guys. It's going great

Leo Laporte (00:51:26):
Fun.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:26):
It's really fun. It's a different format than I had before with an hour long show interviewing somebody, which was fun. But now I spend 10 or 15 minutes just pontificating and I loved it. <Laugh> <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:51:39):
You did one a couple of weeks ago on on how, how, you know, why you're an audio file, not a video file reverse. I mean, my video file not reverse. Yeah. And I thought that was so good and so interesting. You're really doing a great job. We really appreciate it. Thank

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:52):
You. Yes, thank you. Got a lot of great shows coming up too.

Leo Laporte (00:51:55):
It's hard to be an audio file when you're a musician. You've, you've heard the best.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:58):
Exactly. That's one of

Leo Laporte (00:51:59):
My best. It's at this point. Yeah. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:01):
Yeah. I I hear live music all the time and I hear really great live music, recorded music. Just can't replicate that experience. Yeah. It's a different, and it can be a very good experience, don't get me wrong. And I love hearing good recorded reproduced music, but I don't feel the need to spend tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:52:21):
Yeah. So Joe in the IRC saying that he loves home theater geeks.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:27):
Oh, I'm so happy to hear that.

Leo Laporte (00:52:28):
What we do, and we should explain in the it most of the episodes are in the club. Every once in a while we'll put one out in public on the, on the YouTube channel. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> so people can see what they're missing.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:37):
Mm. Indeed. Get a taste and why they want to join the club.

Leo Laporte (00:52:41):
Twitch, join the club. We're using you Scott as bait. I hope you don't mind <laugh>.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:47):
Yeah. There are

Mikah Sargent (00:52:48):
Some of us who dangle out in the water myself

Leo Laporte (00:52:50):
And we use Micah as bait as well. We're all

Mikah Sargent (00:52:52):
Out there dangling in

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:53):
The water. Hey, I'm cool all in the face. That's cool, man.

Leo Laporte (00:52:55):
We're chumming. It's been a while

Mikah Sargent (00:52:57):
Since we talked to you, Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:59):
It, it, it has, it has. What, what's new <laugh> Well, I I wanna just quickly point you to my latest home theater of the month on AV s Forum.

Leo Laporte (00:53:07):
I love these, these are people, these

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:09):
Are really

Leo Laporte (00:53:10):
Great with more money

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:11):
Than actually not in this case. In this case, I, I sometimes I choose really expensive ones. People spend quarter million dollars or a million dollars. Oh yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:53:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:22):
But this one was different. He did, he did spend some money on a contractor to actually add a floor I see. To a living room that had an 18 foot ceiling. So he, he divided it into two stories and that cost a little bit of money. But other than that, he, he didn't have to spend very much to get a really nice home theater into that new room that he had built over the living room. So, so

Leo Laporte (00:53:53):
This is, and of course there's lots of pictures, but one of the things that you do, which I love, is you also explain, let me close this annoying Google account popup <laugh>. You also showed the construction, so you really get to see what goes into this. So this is a loft theater, which I think is kind of cool.

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:11):
Essentially. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, that original living room had 18 foot ceilings,

Leo Laporte (00:54:17):
Cathedral ceilings, doesn't anymore. It

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:20):
Not, doesn't anymore a cathedral. But now he has 220, he has 220 square feet of more, more floor space in his house. I

Leo Laporte (00:54:27):
Think this is so smart. Do people write to you? How do you find out about these?

Scott Wilkinson (00:54:31):
We on AVS Forum we, we basically, and at the end of it, every home theater of the month, I, I invite people to submit their home theaters. Nice. they send them to HT of the month@avsforum.com, I think. Something like that. He

Leo Laporte (00:54:49):
Talks about how he how he sound proofs it, because of course, yes. He's right above the living room. He's got a, he's got a double insulation, an acoustic sound board. It looks like a raised floor there.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:02):
Well, that's for the second row of seats.

Leo Laporte (00:55:04):
Ah, and that's triple insulated as well. So,

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:07):
Exactly. You wanna be able, he was very concerned about is sound isolation. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:55:11):
Yeah. You really wanna be able to turn it up.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:13):
Oh, very clever. To use these inserts for a couple of the windows so that you can open them if you want to. You take those Oh, isn't

Leo Laporte (00:55:22):
That out? Cool.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:24):
That's smart. Yep.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:25):
Exactly right. In fact, when he, when he did this, he, he got, he did it all correctly and by code and with permits and all that stuff. And the city said, oh, you, those windows need to be openable, ah, by

Leo Laporte (00:55:37):
Code.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:37):
Ah, so that you can egress if you need to. Yeah. Oh, I see. Even though it's on the second story, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:55:43):
Yeah. I see. I love, I love his his doormat a long time ago in a galaxy far

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:48):
Away. Isn't that great? Isn't that great? Yeah, that's right. The whole theater is full of movie related decor. Yeah. It's really nice. The picture you're seeing now, those two large, colorful panels are actually acoustic panels. Ah, that, that the company will print anything you want on

Mikah Sargent (00:56:07):
'Em. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. So they

Leo Laporte (00:56:09):
Don't look like that boring gray fabric.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:12):
Exactly. The, the, the egg carton stuff. Yeah. Right. Yeah, no, it's much nicer than that.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:17):
And then I'm just reading about everything being painted black was not enough, so

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:23):
Not even enough

Mikah Sargent (00:56:24):
Decided to add black velvet instead to really absorb the light.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:28):
Wow. Yes. Wow. Yes. He went, he went even farther than I'm going in my new home theater. You guys know, I've, I, I'm actually at the end of this month, we're moving into a new house.

Leo Laporte (00:56:38):
Congratulations.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:40):
Our forever home. Yeah. They're gonna carry me outta that place in a boxing

Leo Laporte (00:56:43):
Time. I say that every time I move, by the way, <laugh>. No, no, no time. It's not proven true yet. <Laugh>. No, no, no, no.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:49):
This is the last move I'm ever gonna make.

Leo Laporte (00:56:52):
Uhhuh. Okay. All right. Okay.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:54):
Mark my words

Leo Laporte (00:56:56):
Young man. Funny. This is it. Well, you're beautiful. Santa Cruz. I can't imagine ever wanting to leave.

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:02):
I don't, yeah. I absolutely don't wanna leave. Anyway, I'm building a, a, a home theater there. Oh, good. And I've painted, I've, I I'm, I'm gonna do an episode of Home Theater Geeks with several episodes of the, the progression of how I'm building the theater.

Leo Laporte (00:57:16):
Do that cuz then it's tax deductible,

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:19):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:57:20):
Fair. Right. Fair,

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:22):
Fair enough. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:57:24):
So you're gonna, I, I'm actually, this is gonna be a great series. Are you gonna talk about the equipment and everything that you're buying?

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:30):
That's right. I'm gonna talk about the equipment. I'm gonna start with the paint that I painted the room, because it's a very special color of neutral gray. It's the same paint that they use in mastering studios. Right, right, right. Where, where they're actually creating the content. They use this color of gray because it reflects light without putting any bias on it. There isn't Is

Leo Laporte (00:57:55):
It percent, 40%? What's

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:57):
My, my paint is 20%, 20% reflective. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:58:02):
So that's interesting. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:06):
It's gonna be very cool. So I'm doing an episode, several episodes on the theater, including the paint, the lighting, the equipment that's going in there. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a Sony 77 inch Q D O lead, the corresponding one to your Samsung.

Leo Laporte (00:58:25):
Love the Q D O lead, don't you?

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:27):
Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. Just so beautiful.

Leo Laporte (00:58:29):
I have to confess though. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I turned off filmmaker mode for just for some <laugh>. Just for some things. It's pretty dim and I like

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:38):
It's less bright. That's

Leo Laporte (00:58:39):
True. Yeah. Less bright. That's another way to say it. <Laugh>. and I love that switch. And and for some things it's so it, it's, it's a film, right? So for instance, when I was watching the formula One race, I, I put it back in a stadium, turn it off mode off because I wanna see it bright and, and see the colors and all of that stuff. Sure, sure. But of course, when I'm watching a film, I put it in filmmaker mode. Right,

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:03):
Right. Because that's how the filmmaker Right. Intended you to see it.

Leo Laporte (00:59:07):
Boy, what's wrong with that filmmaker? It's so dim and dark. I don't understand.

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:10):
Well, you know, I'm gonna do an episode on that too, cuz a lot of movies these days are made and they're, they're very dim. Yeah. They're, that's the way they're shot. And why is that? It's,

Leo Laporte (00:59:20):
Yeah, that

Mikah Sargent (00:59:21):
Reminds me of the, what is that show? The Game of Thrones? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:59:26):
Yeah. That one more episode in the last season was so dark

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:29):
You couldn't, people complained. You couldn't

Leo Laporte (00:59:31):
See what was happening. That's

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:32):
Right. And it's a sa it's a, it's a similar issue to now, the audio, the dialogue in particular being down in level. Oh yeah. I did a, I did an episode of that. I'm not sure if it's posted yet or not, but I did an episode about that. And if it's up, you should, you should check that out. Cause it's a similar issue. It's, it is. Why do they do that?

Leo Laporte (00:59:53):
Yeah. I don't understand. But hey, you know that's the thing I want to tell people sometimes, at least certainly I thought, oh, I can't hear it cuz my hearing's going. No,

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:05):
It's not that. It's, it's not only that <laugh> Well,

Leo Laporte (01:00:07):
My hearing is going, but it's not only that.

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:10):
Yeah, no, no, not at all. Yeah. I mean, you watch a Christopher Nolan movie, can't Hear the Dial. He can't understand what the hell they're saying. And he has said

Leo Laporte (01:00:17):
He

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:17):
Does it that way. I'm doing that on purpose.

Leo Laporte (01:00:19):
It's more natural.

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:22):
Yeah. But you're telling a story. Right? I know you want people to understand what the story is. You know. You know. Come on. Geez.

Leo Laporte (01:00:29):
Yeah. I you know, there was one TV show on the Paramount Network called Fatal Attraction, where the cinematographer or the director said, we don't want it to be too technical or, so they made it all kind of washed out and desaturated

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:46):
Oh, de desaturated.

Leo Laporte (01:00:48):
It really bothered me. It just really didn't look good.

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:51):
Absolutely. I think

Leo Laporte (01:00:52):
Totally agree. I think the key is you don't want the audience thinking about the lighting or sound. You want them <laugh> You want them thinking about your

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:59):
Story. Your story. Yes. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:01:01):
I often say that movies were the original VR that they create. You don't, you're going to darken theater a big screen that fills your vision. Sound that fills your ears. Yep. And great writing and acting that transports you to another time, another place. And when you're in that movie, you are there. Yeah. And I think that's really, that's vr That's the best. VR and it, and they shouldn't do things to take you out of that experience. I think sometimes they

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:31):
Yep. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. I couldn't.

Leo Laporte (01:01:34):
Scott Wilkinson, thank you. Congratulations on the success of Home Theater Geeks. If you're a club TWI member, tune in. When do you do that? Every

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:44):
Well, it they post every Thursday. Thursday at 4:00 PM You

Leo Laporte (01:01:48):
Record a bunch at once. I

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:49):
Record a bunch at once.

Leo Laporte (01:01:50):
We do tell the club members when you're doing the recording, so they can watch you do the, the whole Oh, absolutely.

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:55):
Yeah. And I'd love to have them come in and watch. Yeah. Yeah. But we're recording. In fact, the next recording is this Thursday at 1:00 PM

Leo Laporte (01:02:02):
Very nice. You do three or four at once.

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:05):
Yeah. Although that <laugh> this, this coming Thursday. I asked Anthony, if, if I could do seven or eight Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:02:13):
Get ready

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:15):
Marathon. Get ready for a marathon. Yeah. The reason is we're moving at the end of the month.

Leo Laporte (01:02:19):
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:20):
And you know, it's gonna be crazy around here. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:02:23):
The next time we talk, we talk to Scott every the first Sunday of every month. Next time you talk, you'll be in the new house.

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:30):
I'll be in the new house.

Leo Laporte (01:02:32):
All right. Well give my

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:33):
Best. This would be awesome,

Leo Laporte (01:02:33):
Man. To Joanna, I noticed Joanna took all the pictures in the Home Theater of the Month.

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:37):
Well, she, she edited them.

Leo Laporte (01:02:39):
Edited them all right. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:40):
Nice. She I get in the Home Theater of the month. I, the homeowner sends me their pictures, but they usually need a little help.

Leo Laporte (01:02:47):
Little tweaking, shall we say? Tweaking,

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:50):
Shall we say? Scott Wilkins and Jo Joanna is a maven at Photoshop.

Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
Nice. I'm not surprised. She's very

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:55):
Nice to help me with that.

Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
Yeah. Scott Wilkinson, home theater geek. Thank you Scott. We'll talk to you in a month. Good luck with the move.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:02):
Thank you so

Leo Laporte (01:03:03):
Much. And everybody tune in Thursday, 1:00 PM Pacific, 4:00 PM Eastern and you can watch seven Home Theater geeks. <Laugh> in Aob of Scott talks to the audience, he appreciates the audience. You're part of the show. Absolutely. So absolutely. Please join in. Question about it. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it'll be on our club twit stage. And we'll open the stage tomorrow too for the Apple event. So we'll see you Scott. Bye Scott. Take care.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:26):
Thanks guys.

Leo Laporte (01:03:27):
See ya. We're using that stage. Good luck to move. Love the stage. All right. Now I've got to go to Kate. Chief. Poor Kate's been waiting since the show began. She says she's a grandma of Clan. Is that right? Clan Mullen. Clan Mullen. Hi Kate. I hope she's, hi,

Caller Kate (01:03:47):
I'm,

Leo Laporte (01:03:48):
I hope you have a great Scottish accent.

Caller Kate (01:03:51):
Well, let me explain quickly that I take out my frustrations on my devices <laugh>. And currently my phone is not working. I don't have a working phone number. And this is my daughter Teresa Vaughn. Oh. Mother of Ken Mullen. And Oh, she knows how to do this stuff. So

Leo Laporte (01:04:13):
It's not a clan. It's a kean. Oh, it's a kean. I get it. Well, welcome. It's c

Caller Kate (01:04:19):
I a

Leo Laporte (01:04:20):
N Kean. Yeah. Beautiful name. Well, welcome. It's great to have you. Kate, what can we do for you?

Caller Kate (01:04:26):
Well, it's what I can do for you. Let me put it that way. Lovely. I've, I've was thinking about like, trying to understand YouTube, which is a bewildering thing in itself. And I,

Leo Laporte (01:04:39):
But we don't even understand it's ourselves. So I,

Caller Kate (01:04:42):
Yeah, I don't, yeah, I listen to re Renee Richie and you know, his stuff and it's just, it's complicated. So

Leo Laporte (01:04:51):
I that's why we do the show we want Yeah. To help you understand this stuff cuz it's so important that you do.

Caller Kate (01:04:58):
Well the problem is, I have accessed a new program that solves a huge amount of problems. Okay. as you may recall, I'm into family history

Leo Laporte (01:05:14):
Genealogy. Yes. Yes.

Caller Kate (01:05:16):
The websites like Ancestry, my Heritage have all been purchased by what I call holding companies. You know what I mean

Leo Laporte (01:05:26):
By that? And they raise the prices. It's so expensive now.

Caller Kate (01:05:30):
Not the price they are playing with your data and multiple ways. I won't go into it cuz I, I get on my high horse and I won't shut up <laugh>, but there's a new program called Mac Family Tree, and it's by Sentium Software. I think they're out of Germany. And the thing that this does is it puts your whole tree in iCloud and your iCloud, you can share with anybody around the world via an iOS app or other ways. And they can make changes. And they're, there is not a company that's playing games with you trying to get your money. And it is so bad that my husband has somebody he knew for years who's an attorney here in, well in Ann Arbor. And I am going to talk to him about the things that I saw happening. Oh dear. And ask him, let's

Leo Laporte (01:06:48):
Do a class action lawsuit. Let's take him on, man.

Caller Kate (01:06:52):
I will not do that. I'll not honor them with taking them on. Lemme put it that way. But I wanna know what I, I contacted the Better Business Bureau and I didn't get a satisfactory response. I wanna know what they're doing. And this software, you, it's hosted on a Mac computer and then you back it up to the cloud and invite people. Like we have relatives in Ireland and

Leo Laporte (01:07:28):
I love this idea all

Caller Kate (01:07:30):
Over the place. Yeah. And this provides a secure site where you can post pictures, you can post videos.

Leo Laporte (01:07:40):
Cause then's a collaborative thing, isn't it? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:07:43):
I've actually used this application. It's fantastic. What I love about it too is that it works with open source databases that exist online. So the ones that aren't out there trying to just, well, that's my concern

Leo Laporte (01:07:55):
Because you still have to pay for all the info

Caller Kate (01:07:58):
From No, you don't. Not

Mikah Sargent (01:08:00):
If you don't. No, you exactly. Not if you use the open source database and are

Leo Laporte (01:08:02):
The open databases as good, Kate,

Caller Kate (01:08:05):
Kate family search.org is the Mormon site. Right. However, they, they had Ancestry for a while and you know, they wanna go back to the, to their own thing. You, as long as you are a registered user, you don't pay

Leo Laporte (01:08:23):
Nice. However,

Caller Kate (01:08:25):
Because it's a World Wiki tree, you don't wanna just willy-nilly sink it to your stuff. Right. But you can, what I did is I finally decided, I set up up a site where I only enter things I don't sink. And there's, it's a very deeply complex program that has awesome ways to do things. And you cannot do what you can do on, like family search. You cannot do what you can do on a private program that's not sinking with thing. I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but you

Leo Laporte (01:09:09):
Know, what I like is this shows that really the best answer when companies get greedy is the open market and open source. And somebody will say, Hey, I see an opportunity. How much does this cost? How much does Sentium charge for Mac Family Tree? It's,

Caller Kate (01:09:27):
To be honest with you, I don't remember. And I'll pay them everything. <Laugh>. They,

Leo Laporte (01:09:32):
They have, well, don't pay them everything <laugh>

Caller Kate (01:09:36):
I'll Cause I'm so upset.

Leo Laporte (01:09:39):
Yeah. I don't blame you. Yeah. But I'm glad somebody came along and said, well, here's an opportunity. Let's let's see what we can do here by making something less expensive. So I'm looking it is on the Mac app store as $70. Yeah, that's what I thought. And so it's a $70 one time only. I love that. Right. You know, I'm gonna get this I'm gonna get it from my daughter cuz she's very interested all of a sudden in her family genealogy. And she talks to both of my parents and writes down what they say. And she, she actually texted me yesterday. She said, how do you spell my great-grandmother's last name? Oh, nice. Nice. And so forth. And I got her in touch with my sister, who's been doing the family tree too. There's usually one or two people in a family that care about this stuff. Right. And usually it's the, frankly it's the older people. I know. I understand it because as you get older, you start to think more about your roots and and the people you came from because you know, this is you, you hope that they won't think about you in the years to come. So the thing

Caller Kate (01:10:40):
That I appreciate this, one of the, one of the benefits of this is because it's hosted on a Mac computer, you get the younger generations That's right. Involved

Leo Laporte (01:10:52):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. That's right. And

Caller Kate (01:10:53):
Seeing that. And it is just, and I will tell you, I saw it mentioned in, in a newsletter and one other place and not a single ad anywhere for us.

Leo Laporte (01:11:11):
Well, here we go. We're telling the we're world.

Caller Kate (01:11:15):
It's, it's secure it in, it draws together. Young people are into the computer and who can host the, the, the more complex part of this and pulls together people who wanna just, I've heard people call you and they wanna do something, save it online and it's, that's a problem. But now it's not. Yeah. And it's drawing all these people together. And I it's awesome. And it's drives me wild that I see no advertising for, because this will put Ancestry, my heritage, and all the other garbage out of business.

Leo Laporte (01:12:01):
Well, we will make sure to plug it like crazy

Mikah Sargent (01:12:03):
And if it does make you feel better apple had recently featured it as an app. I think it was for the design of the app. So a lot of people heard about it from Apple. That's good. Yeah. talking about the design of this app as one of the, the, you know, app. So shame

Leo Laporte (01:12:21):
There's something for Windows and Linux. I'm sorry. Oh,

Caller Kate (01:12:24):
Well, yeah. You know, I, I literally am leaving Windows because they I, they wa with Microsoft 365 or whatever they call it, whatever year <laugh>. And they move around at my computer. I, I put a link on the desktop to important files. Yes. And then the, I I used to use Carbonite and my last Carbonite backup, which I thought was from my com, it was all broken links. They're moving it around and I, I don't wanna say anymore because I'm too

Leo Laporte (01:13:13):
Angry. It's frustrating. I know Kate. And I'm glad you're doing this and I'm sure you're doing it for Kean and the generations to come. I think that's really wonderful, Kate. I really appreciate the call and the plug. We'll, we'll, we'll, you know what I didn't know Micah used it. We're gonna start talking. You know what I'll do, I'll, I'll make this my pick of the week on Mac Break week. Nice. We

Caller Kate (01:13:32):
Have a relative coming from Ireland in August and he only can spend four or five days cuz he is touring with his, his son Kean.

Leo Laporte (01:13:44):
Oh, nice.

Caller Kate (01:13:45):
And it's just holy, you know, I just see so much potential, but then I'm very frustrated. So anything improvement is better.

Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
Kate, I very much thank you Kate and we're gonna tell the world for you. Thank you for that suggestion. It was a, it was a great suggestion and

Caller Kate (01:14:06):
Thank you for being there. I've listened to you since you were on Tech tv.

Leo Laporte (01:14:11):
Oh my. And

Caller Kate (01:14:11):
Then I asked you and I got an iPad and looked for help online and I found you again and I listened Nice to all the, the 24 hour year.

Leo Laporte (01:14:27):
Oh, you did the new year. Were you there for our new year's? The 24 hour new of New Year's. Oh yeah. We did that twice before. That was before Micah's time. We did that twice and it nearly killed everybody. So Lisa made me stop. But what was the, that was the most fun. I would do that again. I'd do it. Love you. Do it cuz you're young. It would be fun. Wasn't it fun, Kate? Well, thank you. It's such a pleasure. It

Caller Kate (01:14:46):
Was a pleasure. The infamous tattoo. Lemme put

Leo Laporte (01:14:50):
It there. <Laugh>. I still have it. You know, it turns out that's permanent. Yeah. Who knew? Who knew <laugh> and nobody sees it, but my wife. So it's okay. <Laugh>. I, I don't even see it.

Mikah Sargent (01:14:59):
<Laugh> as a last minute update. Apple named it as the Mac app of the year for 2022. So even bigger than just

Leo Laporte (01:15:06):
Getting now words getting out. It is 24 years old. It's been around for a while. Yep. So I am gonna, I'm, I'm gonna immediately install it. I'm gonna give it to my daughter so she can get to work. Kate, thank you so much. Thanks Kate. I appreciate it,

Caller Kate (01:15:19):
Leo. Thank you. And I just, one comment, Micah, the, the deal about the nail clippers, the civil solution is a bandaid worked every time crew members on whatever always have bandaid and that solves the problem.

Leo Laporte (01:15:41):
I have no idea what you're talking

Mikah Sargent (01:15:42):
About. I'm sure I don't nail Clippers conversation.

Leo Laporte (01:15:45):
I don't want to know now. It

Caller Kate (01:15:47):
Was from your other podcast, clockwise.

Leo Laporte (01:15:51):
Oh.

Mikah Sargent (01:15:51):
Oh, you listened to that too, Kate. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:15:53):
You. Oh, I do. We don't plug that enough. It's a great show. <Laugh>. Thank you. It's a short show. Each of them gets just a few minutes to Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:16:00):
It's never longer than 30 minutes. Every Wednesday we do that

Leo Laporte (01:16:04):
Show. I just don't understand how he does it. <Laugh> <laugh>, Kate, bless you. Thank you Kate. Have a wonderful afternoon. Enjoy this Great June weather. Take care, Kate. Bye-Bye. Bye-bye. Mac Family Tree V version 10. Yeah. Is $70 from the Mac App store. One

Mikah Sargent (01:16:23):
Time

Leo Laporte (01:16:23):
Purchase. Sy s y n i u m. And it's a German company. Software gm. B h I think it's time for me, since Kate likes the iPad to talk a little bit about Notetaking hardware. Shall we do this? Yes. Yes. Do you wanna

Mikah Sargent (01:16:38):
Do that? I'm looking

Leo Laporte (01:16:39):
For, I would like to do that. And then coming up in just a little bit. Johnny Jet, we're gonna go traveling, traveling, traveling time and more of your calls too at 88, 87, 24, 28 84 <laugh> Hike. Right? Is that the wrong way to

Mikah Sargent (01:16:57):
Say it? Hold on. Lemme look at the playbook. <Laugh>. Yeah, that's the right

Leo Laporte (01:17:00):
One. (888) 724-2884. Or call TWI tv. All right. Let walk over. Ah, they're making me work here. Walk over and show you

Leo Laporte (01:17:12):
Some stuff.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:14):
Tech Ito, maybe we, Leo and I can sing the Johnny Cash song.

Leo Laporte (01:17:19):
All righty here. This is, so this is a category Mike and I are both fascinated with and repelled by <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:26):
It's such an odd feeling. We want something to work, but it's just, nothing's really clicked right.

Leo Laporte (01:17:31):
For years. Ipad of course, has offered this, and I've got two sizes of iPad I should mention the day before, an Apple event is not the day to buy any Apple gear. I don't expect them to say anything about the iPad, but don't, don't take this as a time to go out and buy it, especially the iPad Mini, which I really like a lot. But this is what, how many years are now old? This is a, this is a, iPad's been out for ages and ages and has not been updated. That actually might indicate an update soon, I feel like. But let me, let me show you some other devices besides the iPad and then I'll show you some note taking apps on the iPad. Let's start with this. This is what got me kicked off. This is the, the Kindle scribe. Okay. Kindle is the Amazon brand name for their book readers. And this is in fact a book reader. This is the cover that they ship with it, which has a very nice stand so you can, oops, I did it wrong. There we go. So you can stand it up.

(01:18:33):
Let's turn it right side up. There we go. The Kindle, as I've had many, many versions. I've owned pretty much every Kindle they've shipped since day one. The scribe came out almost a year ago, but let me do this right. They even have in the box it says, don't set it up the other way. You might think to set it that way. You set it up with this flat folded under. This scribe, however, has been considerably updated in the, in the in the year that it's been out. In fact, the final update, which came out just a couple of weeks ago, got me to buy it because now I can do a lot more with the scribe. It is a notetaking app, and these are ein the two I'm gonna show right now are ein I have it in I have it in dark mode.

(01:19:22):
Let me put it in light mode just to show you that we can do it. It's a very simple switch there. And as you can see, once you, once you've got it an ink, it looks a lot because of the e e ink screen. It looks a lot like handwriting. I have the, this is the fountain pen mode, which I particularly like, but they have a variety of other ways you can do it. Pen, which is pretty much a straight line fountain pen marker, which is kind of a fat line pencil, which is a very thin line. Although as you see, you can also choose line thicknesses. In fact, if you wanna do calligraphy, putting the fountain pen in calligraphy mode is actually quite nice. They offer two pens. This is the premium pen, which has a button on it. <Laugh> the button can be used for a variety of things.

(01:20:05):
I use it to turn on a race. Oh, nice. Yeah. But it has an erase feature. And that's one of the nice things about about e ink as opposed to say paper. It also has a nice toothy screen and in fact, it's so toothy that it really feels like you're really writing. You see, it's very responsive too. It, it's there's no lag at all. And as a result, it ships with a number of extra nibs because these are gonna wear down over time because of the truthiness. But the truthiness really makes it feel like it's, it's actually paper that you're writing on. You have a variety of, this is the notebook mode. You have a variety of, a huge variety in fact of blank paper that you can use. I mean, this is, this is one that looks like a spreadsheet.

(01:20:53):
There's there's, you know, graph paper and so forth. You can create notebooks, but you also can create folders of notebooks. So you can organize it, you know, pretty much as you choose. You see, there's quite a variety of templates. You can even create your own templates, I believe. So there's no limit in in how this looks. I often will work in my notebook in graph paper mode because the reason, the only reason, frankly, that I use these is because typing doesn't allow me to draw diagrams. Yep. So when I'm working on something and trying to figure out, you know, some, some graphical e elements having the ability to both do text and drawings is great. Now, this is primarily, I should say a book reader. I mean, it is a Kindle and you know, as a result, it's very much focused on reading books.

(01:21:50):
One of the things I would like, for instance, that it doesn't do is allow me to write marginalia. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I can create a post-it note so I can, I can add some handwritten or text to the text that I'm reading. But I, I would really, I would really like for for it to be able to I don't know. I feel like I should be able to write in the margins besides the Post-It note. You can also, as with all Kindles do highlighting of texts. So if, if there's a passage you really like, you can highlight it all. Kindles have a lot of nice features. For instance, you can select a word, you can find that word in the dictionary you can share it. There are lots of ways of sharing clips out. So as a Kindle reader, it's good. It has a backlight, which I, I think is kind of important for me because I read in bed a lot and I don't you know, with the other readers, you actually have to turn on a lamp to shine on it, like a regular book.

(01:22:45):
This, because it has a backlight and it can be warm or cool. And you can even have it as a schedule. So that I know Micah, you're very aware of having too much blue light. Absolutely. When you're going to bed. So this actually has a warmth schedule. I have it changing with sunrise and sunset. You can set the warmth that's very flexible. As with all Kindles, you have some settings for how the text looks. Not a huge number. I wish there were, you know, I often with Kindles, I wish there were more, but you can choose the font. You can choose, you can actually create themes now, which is really nice. You could choose the font and they have a larger variety of fonts than they used to, including an open dyslexic font for people who have trouble reading standard text.

(01:23:29):
They also allow you to make it very large, which is great for people who would normally read large text books. Now every book you buy can be a large textbook. And these Kindles, not all Kindles, but these Kindles ascribe and some of the higher end kindles also have Bluetooth. And you can download an audio book and listen with your Bluetooth headsets. They don't have speakers, but you compare it and listen with your Bluetooth headsets. And one of the things they have that I really like, you get a discount if you buy both the text version and the audio version of the book. And you can listen to the audio version while looking at the text version and it will read along with you. And there's a lot of evidence that for kids who are first learning to read, this is a really great way to get them up to speed fast, is to let them listen to the book and watch as the book is being read, watch the text on the screen.

(01:24:16):
I actually like that too for some books. Especially books with difficult names and so forth. It's nice to see the, it really is nice to see the text. So I will sometimes buy both the text and and the audio book. So this is a very nice Kindle. It's large. You know one of the reasons I focused on the stand is because you don't really wanna hear. Give me the full shot here. It's big. It's, it's all, it's an eight by 10 piece of paper, so hold it. You're not gonna read and hold it. For very long. There are lighter weight kindal oasis, the paper white and others that are easier to hold in the hand. On the other hand, I love being able to see the large screen you can order it with as I have this detachable folio cover that hold has a little holder for the pen, which is nice. I think it's really great. So this is nice. It is not though focused on notetaking. It has note taking capabilities. Let me, let me see if I can do this fold again. Right? So you do it like that. There you go. And the magnets in the cover. No. Oh, I did it wrong. Again, <laugh>, do it like that there. And the magnets in the cover. I'll hold it up. So it does do note taking. It is fairly good note taker.

(01:25:36):
I have mixed feelings about it. I really feel like this says a book reader with some limited note capability. And you can see I have the notes here and so forth. But if all you need is some limited note capability with a and you want the, you know, kind of a great Kindle, this is a good choice. I would get the, the cover for the stand cuz that really makes it a lot easier to hold. It's an awfully big thing, but I like size, especially when you're doing note taking. You don't want a little tiny screen to do note taking. So that's why this is the Kindle scribe. Let me pull up the prices cuz it varies quite a bit depending on how much storage you can get it from 16 to 64 gigs of storage. The 16 gigs of storage for this is $339. That comes with a basic pen. For 30 bucks more you can get the premium pen or you can do what I did. This is the 32 gig version that was $389 and includes the premium pen, $389 plus including the pen. And then another 30 or $40 for the cover. It's expensive.

Mikah Sargent (01:26:41):
Yeah, that's rather pricey, but it's pricey. Is that in line with the remarkable?

Leo Laporte (01:26:45):
Well let's talk about the, there it is, there's the Kindle scribe. I think this is a good note taker for people who want to, or primarily readers who want a Kindle, but then would like to be able to do annotation of the book as they read. Or maybe have a separate notebook. Let's show you something that's a little bit smaller. Well, maybe not. This is about, actually it's a little bit bigger. It's so funny. In my mind, I think of the remarkable as smaller. This is the remarkable, about a hundred bucks less. It does have a pen that's attached magnetically. This can read books if you can import them as PDFs. But this is really a note-taking device primarily. First and foremost, you might say, well, gosh, it looks, and I lent this to Micah, so you chime in if you have some opinions, it looks a lot like the Kindle. It is e Ink, roughly the same size. You can have different papers, you can have different pens. Actually many more choices. Ballpoint, fine liner, marker pencil, mechanical pencil, paintbrush, highlighter and calligraphy pen. I

Mikah Sargent (01:27:43):
Liked all the choices.

Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
Yeah, that's fun. And you can do different line and even choose from black, gray or white. This is not color obviously, but notice you can export it. And I'm gonna talk about exporting for both the Kindle scribe and the remarkable in just a little bit. You can also erase and you can do some shapes, which is something the scribe lacks. So if you, if, and you do selections and stuff. So there are, there are absolutely more, more features in terms of notebooks. You can import eBooks and then it becomes kind of like the Kindle in the terms of reading. You can add a blank note taking page to your document. Cuz people often like to do that.

Mikah Sargent (01:28:28):
This is almost where Amazon shows off its cleverness. If you have, you know, sort of devoted your ebook library to being Kindle books

Leo Laporte (01:28:38):
And alone Amazon owns you. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:28:40):
Because that won't import the Kindle

Leo Laporte (01:28:42):
Books. No, it'll do Eub, which is the open standard and it'll also do P D F. This is definitely a better note-taking platform. I agree with A little bit of reading doesn't have audio. They've just added, and I don't have it because it just came out for an initial 250 bucks. They've added a keyboard to this. Oh. Which is kind of like a typewriter almost. Yeah. It, you know, maybe if you're a writer, this would be a good choice because it's no distractions. You can't, yeah. That's go off and play solitaire. And, and it, and the E Ink is a very stable, easy on the eyes no backlight, which I, I do think is a negative. Let's talk about import export. However, this is where the remarkable shines. If you want to import, say as a lawyer, A P D F or a pleading, annotate it, you can then export it out to the remarkable app, which is available for iPhone, iOS, Android an iPad as well. And that really is a great experience. It it, I'll just show you real quickly. Let me open up the app on my

(01:29:52):
let's see. Here's the remarkable app. And you'll see it looks very much like the remarkable interface. These notes that I took are here. I, it, it does this all automatically. You have a remarkable account. And so it syncs to the cloud. And so what happens is changes. In fact, let me, I wonder how fast the change, I haven't even really thought about this, but changes on the remarkable will eventually, oh, that's not gonna sync up, I don't think. Oops. Let's do a, a pen here.

(01:30:25):
Eventually that will sync over to this. This is the iPad version of the same notepad That's really good with a scribe. You have to go to an Amazon website or you can email it to your Microsoft documents. It's much more limited in the importing and exporting of it. It it, that's almost an afterthought from the point of view. The Amazon scribe. I think the remarkable is ideal if somebody is a note taker, doesn't mind the lack of a backlight and wants to save money. Cause the remarkable is a lot less expensive. Let me pull up the prices on the remarkable. So the remarkable is 2 99. Remember we paid for a 6 32 Kilobit kilo, sorry, 32 gigabyte Amazon Scribe 3 89. So maybe 90 bucks less. You do, and this is a negative. They've added on the remarkable subscription to the cloud. So it's $3 a month.

(01:31:19):
It's fairly inexpensive, but still they charge you for the marker. $79 for the regular marker. And $129 for the Marker Plus, which has an ar, you know, upside down eraser tip. And they do now for almost twice the price offer a keyboard maximum file size on the Kindle is 200 megabytes. I don't think there's a limit on the remarkable. I certainly haven't run across it. It has much better import and export. And it also noticed they say the only tablet that feels like paper, that's not strictly true. Kindle feels like paper too. It also has a very toothy surface. I am gonna show you one other thing that I can maybe suggest, which is if, so I guess the way I'd break it down is separate from Price Kindle Scribe, if you wanna read books, if you just want to take notes, the remarkable two is a much better note taker, especially with its ability to export and import right to the remarkable cloud. But remember, $3 a month, it's probably gonna end up costing the same as a Kendall. But don't discount the iPad. I've put a surface on the iPad. Alex Lindsay recommended. I thought I brought it with me. I guess I didn't. That allows me to write directly on the iPad with my pen. And if you have a good notetaking app, my recommendation is, well, before I say which one do you like?

Mikah Sargent (01:32:43):
Oh golly. You had to ask. I was quite literally thinking, cuz there are a few that I I think are great. What's,

Leo Laporte (01:32:48):
I've used a number of 'em. I like notability. Okay. So I think Notability is the best. Yep. Notability

Mikah Sargent (01:32:52):
Was the one that Rosemary and I just talked about on, on iOS today.

Leo Laporte (01:32:56):
It will do a lot of the same things on an iPad, which is of course much more expensive that the Remarkable. And the scribe will do. Of course you can have a Kindle app on here, so you can even read on the iPad. And I've put a screen protector that gives it the same kind of truthiness with the Apple pencil that you get on the E Ink displays. Remember though, this is not E Ink, this is an actual computer display. It's back lit. It's front lit, it's bright, it does color, which neither of the remarkable nor the scribe do. And if you're using a good notetaking app, such as Notability, and that's the other difference is you don't have to use Notability. There's a, there's a variety of different apps you can use.

Mikah Sargent (01:33:39):
Even just the Notes app that's built in has, right sketching

Leo Laporte (01:33:43):
Abilities. So I can also do many of the same things on this. But what's big difference is I can zoom in and zoom out and I have infinite scroll and things like that. And it's much more responsive. So much more expensive, much more capable. Cuz you have to add the $129 pencil to this. But it I think, and this is an iPad Pro, I I think actually size wise this is the smallest of the four devices I have here. This is an iPad. Ooh. That's my wife. She's sexy. <Laugh>, let me open that up so you don't have to see that. <Laugh>, this screen size is smallest of all but really nice for reading books and lying in bed. And yeah, I have the Kindle app on here and I can put Notability on here and do everything that these other ones do, including, you know, offload sync and so forth. Here's Cory Doctor's new book, red Team Blues. So I can, I can read that just like I would read it on a Kindle. It's just, you know, it's a, it's a back lit display. It's a little bit brighter. It has color, I think in a way the iPad and now this, this is now two years old. I think there's gonna be a new iPad mini coming out pretty soon.

Mikah Sargent (01:34:59):
Yeah. Wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. And the, you mentioned the quick Notes feature. You can take your apple pencil and drag from the corner of, I love

Leo Laporte (01:35:06):
Screen this. Lemme show you that that's a really nice feature. So I'm sitting here, maybe I'm maybe I'm reading my book and I want to you still can Hi. Highlight it the, the way you would on a regular Kindle. But I can also pull up, maybe it doesn't work in the app. You could pull up from the, well maybe it doesn't work in this either. Maybe I've turned it off. There it is. I could pull up from the right corner and I get a notepad that I can use. This becomes an Apple note. In fact, I could turn on the pen.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:32):
Oh, maybe it's not connected to that. It's connected to the other iPad. That's probably why it's not doing anything. Oh. Cause you had it connected to your bigger iPad. Oh, alright. If you thw it on the side, it'll connect to that one Schwa <laugh> that.

Leo Laporte (01:35:42):
Oh, the pencils not

Mikah Sargent (01:35:44):
Connected. Pencil's not connected. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:45):
Oh, I was wondering what you were talking about <laugh>. Oh yes. Now it sees my pencil. Now that's, that was very confusing. Now I can draw. Hello?

Mikah Sargent (01:35:53):
Wait, that, that should have connected

Leo Laporte (01:35:55):
It. Wow. Anyway, I could show you on the let's show you on the big iPad. You get a better, better sense of it. So do you know, is it, do I have to be, can I do it from here?

Mikah Sargent (01:36:06):
You should be able to do it from any app

Leo Laporte (01:36:07):
Anywhere. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, there it is. Oh, now I have to th walk this, flock it under this one. Yeah, I bet I've screwed everything up, haven't I? <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:36:15):
I forgot about the second to think. I think

Leo Laporte (01:36:17):
You gotta remember the th twing. Anyway, there. Go. Now it's working. So yeah, so in theory, I guess I could, if I were in the Kindle app, do the same thing. Let me just check. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:25):
It should work while you're in any app. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:36:28):
So maybe that's the best of all. Note taking worlds. Let's not, you know, let's not forget what we've got you know, in our iPads here, you know, if you already have an iPad, maybe you so let me see if I can th walk it up. <Laugh>. There you go. You're right. Look at that. So, I mean, this is probably a better way to take notes than any of them. Yeah. Cause

Mikah Sargent (01:36:52):
You, you're looking, you just swipe away after you're done.

Leo Laporte (01:36:54):
Yeah. And you can copy and paste and so forth.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:56):
So yeah, you can drag texts from what's in the documents Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:37:01):
Into the notes.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:02):
Yeah. It, it of course depends on how the Kindle is behaving because it's not, it tries to keep people copy text

Leo Laporte (01:37:10):
Stuff. Yeah. Maybe better than iBooks. Little more gla, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So some people really like Iink because it, you can, it's good for a variety of reading environments. I think if you want a backlight, the Remarkables not ideal because the backlight, I tell you what, this is a great way to read and write in bed with a backlight. But if you want the absolute most flexibility in terms of the texts you write, the way you write and the way you export and import the Remarkable is a very good choice. They're all really good for different uses. If you want really good book reading plus some notes, the Kindle scribe, if it's all about note taking in a pencil or now with a keyboard, look at the Remarkable two. If you want something that does it all and does it all pretty capably. And iPad's also a very good choice. All right. I don't know if I've really resolved anything here, but there's, there's what the situation is right now. I think I'm mostly now using the scribe of all things because I'm mostly using it as a reader. I can read on my Ken on my iPads, but I don't know. I like reading on

Mikah Sargent (01:38:15):
Ea. I like reading on, I like a book too. And that's why the Scribe makes the most sense to me because it gets to be secondarily that note taker. But in the same time, I've got my whole library of content with me because what I often do is anytime I get a book, I get the audio book and the actual book at the same time so that I've got both of them and can switch between as I want to.

Leo Laporte (01:38:38):
Yeah. EIN is one of those things where it's not a computer screen.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:44):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:38:45):
But it's for certain situations superior.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:48):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:38:50):
And don't worry, I have not forgotten. And John's really won't let me forget that we have that seven, excuse me, seven color E display <laugh>, which I will be doing in a later show. I will show you how we can use that to show stuff like maybe even a clock or a weather forecast or that kind of thing. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:39:09):
That'll be great.

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
We have Johnny Jet coming up in just a little bit. Before Johnny joins us, I would like to do a little commercial for one of my favorite sponsors. ACI Learning. We love these guys. They sponsored the studio. And you may say, well, how did you meet these guys? Well, we met 'em because since they started in 2013, we've been big fans of it. Pro IT Pro of course was a sponsor for all of those 10 years. We really built that company together. I feel like as a team and recently merged with ACI learning to give you even more capability. This is what I love. They still have all the benefits of IT Pro those great studios, which they run Monday through Friday all day to record new content all the time. The best IT training. But now they've got Audit Pro, they've got Practice Labs, they've got a whole lot more.

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Say you need to do three minutes of this, 20 minutes of that, that kind of thing. And you'll get visual reports so you can show that this is working and your team is progressing. ACI Learning also offers. This is new, a private bootcamp, which will train your team alongside the most passionate and best subject matter experts certified in the latest versions of each certification. So if you're in a hurry to get up to speed, take a look at the private bootcamp. Look, the bottom line is your enterprise needs cohesive, cutting edge training to keep your team compliant and ahead of the pack. Choose an existing course or let a c i learning combined modules for tailored solutions. You can even ask them to custom design a course just for your specific needs. ACI Learning, it's the place to go if you want to get into it, but it's also the place to bring your team if they're already IT professionals, to keep them up to snuff.

(01:43:01):
Aci I learning trains thousands of aspiring tech and cyber professionals annually every year, including providing scholarships. This is really important to me, to people from diverse backgrounds and people transitioning out of military service to civilian careers. Check 'em out. They've got some great programs for you. Join the Always on Tech training solution in a rapidly changing world of technology. A c i learning is in the studio every day to record and share relevant content that impacts your business. Be bold, train smart, learn more about a c i learning's premium training options across audit IT and cybersecurity readiness@go.acilearning.com slash twi. For teams from two to 1000 volume discounts, start at just five seats. Fill out the form@go.acilearning.com slash twi. For more information on the free two week training for your team, you could try it out. Two week trial training. Go dot aci learning.com/twi. Is it time for Johnny Jet? Let's see. Travel Down or Roast Road? You've been everywhere man. Everywhere. He been everywhere. <Laugh>, we are not licensed to play Johnny Cass's, but we can song sing it poorly. I think if we sing it poorly enough there'll be no problem. Exactly. Oh, hello. Johnny Jets

Johnny Jet (01:44:29):
Me singing. How you

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
Doing? <Laugh> johnny jet.com. I've known Johnny Jet for years. He is my travel guru. Decades. Decades. Wow. Wow, wow. If you are going thousand three from Abilene to Albuquerque or anywhere in between Johnny Jet's the guy to talk to. Hello John.

Johnny Jet (01:44:52):
How you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:44:53):
Oh, we're doing great. It's June. It's a beautiful day. I bet you Are you playing some volleyball today?

Johnny Jet (01:44:59):
No, it's not beautiful down here. It's June gloom down in la. It is cold, it's drizzly

Leo Laporte (01:45:05):
And no volleyball for you. It's beautiful up here. Maybe it'll come down your way.

Johnny Jet (01:45:11):
Did you know San Diego and LAX ranked number one and two for the cloudiest days in, in the lower 48 for the month of May.

Leo Laporte (01:45:20):
Wow. I would've thought s f o our own San Francisco International would've been number one. Easy. It gets sucked in all the time. In fact, I frequently, and this is a advice you've often give given check regional airports. I frequently fly out of Oakland instead of San Francisco because there's so many flight delays cuz of clouds and low low clouds. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:45:43):
Yeah. Oakland. Oakland has the good

Leo Laporte (01:45:45):
Weather. Much better weather. Yeah. San Jose,

Johnny Jet (01:45:47):
Jackson and

Leo Laporte (01:45:48):
Burbank. Yeah. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:45:50):
Well, I think Burbank might be under the clouds today too,

Leo Laporte (01:45:52):
So. Wow. Well, we're doing something really dumb in a couple of weeks. You are, aren't you? We're taking the kids down to Disneyland. <Laugh>

Johnny Jet (01:46:00):
What? <Laugh>, sorry. So I wish I could replay

Leo Laporte (01:46:05):
That sound. How busy, why is Disneyland in in the third week of June? You

Johnny Jet (01:46:10):
Know, there is a calendar that will tell you

Leo Laporte (01:46:12):
Yeah, kids

Johnny Jet (01:46:12):
What? Kids? The crowd. The crowd calendar. But it's gonna be busy. I mean, definitely if it's midweek, it will be less crowded. If it's weekend, forget about

Leo Laporte (01:46:20):
It. It's mid-week weekend. We, we got a Disneyland hotel, so you get early entrance to the park. Oh, that's nice. That's key. Well congratulations on the new kids, by the way. No, they're 20 and 21. They're, but anyway I call 'em the kids. Well, it's, it's Michael, our 20 year old and his his best friend Aiden, who's I think 21. Anyway. but this, when you get to Disneyland, everyone's a kid. Oh no, it doesn't exactly. Am I right? Yeah. So I thought, oh, this is, I said, how early do we get it? We get to go in at nine, right? She said, no,

Johnny Jet (01:46:53):
<Laugh>, it's an hour early.

Leo Laporte (01:46:54):
You get to go an hour early. The park opens at like eight 30. Oh no, we are getting up. We, I think we have to go in at seven 30. So then

Mikah Sargent (01:47:02):
You're gotta get up. Like

Leo Laporte (01:47:03):
I don't wanna ride the Pirates of the Caribbean instead.

Johnny Jet (01:47:07):
Star Wars one. I I'm sure you wanna do the Star Wars. We're going

Leo Laporte (01:47:10):
Straight to, to Star Wars. That's exactly what we're doing. We're going straight to Star Wars. Get in

Johnny Jet (01:47:14):
That line

Leo Laporte (01:47:14):
And will there be a line, even if you go an hour early, golly. Unless

Johnny Jet (01:47:19):
You run

Leo Laporte (01:47:21):
<Laugh> <laugh>? Well, unfortunately we're staying at the the, the, the Pier Hotel, which is part of California adventure. Okay. So it has an entrance there. I don't know how far it is from there to the Star Wars. You

Johnny Jet (01:47:35):
Know, I've stayed there. I can't remember. But we always go right to the back of the amusement parks. We give the advice, reopen and go to the back, go

Leo Laporte (01:47:42):
To the back and, and,

Johnny Jet (01:47:43):
And work your way to the

Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
Front. Don't start at the front and work your way back. Start at the back, work your way front, and then you'll meet in the middle about halfway. You'll meet all the people coming in the other way. Definitely.

Johnny Jet (01:47:52):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, no matter where you go, we go to La Zoo, we do the same thing.

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
I, you know, we, I think you gotta go to Disneyland once in a while. You've been to Disneyland?

Mikah Sargent (01:48:00):
Yeah. When as a kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can remember five or six years old.

Leo Laporte (01:48:04):
Oh, you were pretty, pretty young. Yeah. <laugh> all, yeah, we got this. Somebody's saying you have to reserve Star Wars in the app. So we we do have the app. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:11):
Make sure you're using the app

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
And all that stuff. And we got, I don't know, some sort of hot seat tasy.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:16):
Oh, did you get the little bands and all the

Johnny Jet (01:48:18):
Other Skip the line.

Leo Laporte (01:48:18):
Skip the line. But you don't, it's not skipping the line. You're going a shorter line. Yeah. It's still a line. It's still a line. It's

Johnny Jet (01:48:24):
Shorter,

Leo Laporte (01:48:25):
But it's a shorter line.

Johnny Jet (01:48:26):
It's

Leo Laporte (01:48:27):
Definitely shorter. It's the rich folks line. No, no. Not the rich folks. The semi rich folks. Cause the rich folks just say, hi, I'm George Clooney, let me in. Yeah. And they go, right. They just go right to the front. Right to the ride. Yeah. Johnny, what's your travel advice this week?

Johnny Jet (01:48:39):
Well, I have all kinds. So it all depends what you wanna talk about. I have in my notes to talk about how to get save on car rentals. Have we talked about this at all? Ooh,

Mikah Sargent (01:48:47):
I'd love to know how to save on car rentals, because those seem to

Johnny Jet (01:48:50):
Add up. Definitely. So one of my tricks is I always use Costco Travel, and I just, the trick is that you keep looking. So look, I look a week before my trip, even a month before. If I book really far in Inva out and then I book I look three days in advance. The day before I did this a couple months ago, my original two day rental was 1 53 days before it dropped down to a hundred. So I canceled my rental rebooked the day before I looked again. It dropped down to $98 or $88. So I did it again. And you know, I saved a lot of money just by, by make, make sure you don't book a, a non-refundable rate. <Laugh>. Yeah. Don't, don't prepay. Even if it saves you a little bit of money and you know you're gonna be there, don't do it. Book the ones that you can change the last minute. You don't even have to call to cancel. And that way if the, if the price drops, you can cancel it and rebook. I also know friends who love Turo t u o.com. I have not used them yet, but it's basically like Uber for or Airbnb for car

Leo Laporte (01:49:52):
Rentals. You're using somebody else's car,

Johnny Jet (01:49:54):
Right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But that's the way I save money on car rentals. I don't book a lot because I like to take either public transportation or I or I use a, a ride service. This

Leo Laporte (01:50:05):
Has to be a very tough market because for years you recommended what was it? Silver Cars.

Johnny Jet (01:50:11):
Oh, black Lane

Leo Laporte (01:50:12):
And Black Lane.

Johnny Jet (01:50:14):
Oh, black. Well, black Lane's a, sorry. Silver Car is the, is a car rental.

Leo Laporte (01:50:18):
They're car rentals. Audis, they went out of business, right? Or maybe not. I don't want to kill 'em. Surely are they They're still around. I don't see 'em around anymore. You know,

Johnny Jet (01:50:27):
I, I haven't heard about them lately, but yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:50:31):
And then Black Lane? No, that's the one you can outta, that's a car service.

Johnny Jet (01:50:33):
That's a car service. That's

Leo Laporte (01:50:34):
A car service. Yeah. Yeah. I've used Black Lane. I like Black Lane. I've used Silver Car. Yeah. but it seems like it's a tough business and hurts Hertz and Avis and Enterprise seem to own the market pretty much. Right. Budget. Definitely the big guys.

Johnny Jet (01:50:49):
Definitely. And if you, and if you, and if you do it off the airport, you can usually save a lot of money. You don't have to pay so much in taxes. Is

Leo Laporte (01:50:56):
The car shortage over? Because I know they sold their fleets during Covid and then they didn't have cars when we came back. Is it over now? In some

Johnny Jet (01:51:05):
Markets? In some markets it is, but in hotspots and during holidays, you need to book your cars the ti the day you book your flights. Wow. And just keep monitoring it because, you know, Maui at Christmastime or in the summer, it might be difficult to find a car rental. Who's

Leo Laporte (01:51:19):
Your favorite?

Johnny Jet (01:51:21):
I actually use Avis a lot. Avis, I like their, I like

Leo Laporte (01:51:23):
Their, because they're number two and they try harder.

Johnny Jet (01:51:25):
I never have to go to the counter, just use the app and I can pick my car right then and there and don't wait in any lines. I don't like to wait in lines when I travel. So,

Leo Laporte (01:51:34):
So, silver car, I'm just looking. I, the, my the, their reports of their death are premature, but they have pivoted a little bit. They no longer have the airport rentals. Right. They have, you can get rent from an Audi dealer if you can get to an Audi dealer, <laugh> and so, so, but the, they're not at the they used to be, they would come and pick you up at the They used to pick you up. Yeah. Right. Yeah. yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:51:59):
It's too bad.

Leo Laporte (01:52:00):
Yeah. I think that they have had to pivot a little bit because it's, I'm

Johnny Jet (01:52:03):
Sure they can't find workers.

Leo Laporte (01:52:05):
Well, that may be it too. Yeah. Audi owns them a hundred percent now. Mm-Hmm. That's the other side. The other part of that story, well,

Johnny Jet (01:52:11):
There were great cars and, and speaking of airport and parking, that's another tip I had in my notes for you. You know, you really need to reserve it in advance, especially this summer or on holidays. My nephew called me up last weekend in a tizzy. Like, I've been driving around Fort Lauderdale Airport for 30 minutes. I can't find parking anywhere. I'm gonna miss my flight. So I was like, listen, go, go to the airport that you're going to go to their website. Look where they recommend parking or go to their Twitter account. A lot of times they'll actually put it out information saying, Hey, make sure you reserve a spot, because otherwise you might not get one. You can always look at off airport hotels. Lot of them will

Leo Laporte (01:52:50):
Charge you. That's almost, yeah, you could actually we sometimes would do that with book a night at a hotel near the airport. Cause we had an early flight stay there and then you could park your car and they have spaces where you could park for the entire trip. And that works pretty well. You take the hotel shuttle to the airport and, and back when you're done.

Johnny Jet (01:53:08):
Definitely. And they say, they say more people are driving to the airport ever than ever before.

Leo Laporte (01:53:13):
Lots are full, full, full.

Johnny Jet (01:53:15):
And also people are staying longer on trips, so there's not as many open park parking spots once they get there. People are traveling longer because they can work from, they can work remote. So a lot of people take Mondays and Fridays off. So keep that in mind. Don't show up to the airport last minute without a parking spot, either booking in advance. There's also airport parking reservations.com where you can do it. Oh, or go directly to the airport's website or follow them on Twitter. Is

Leo Laporte (01:53:40):
It usually cheaper to stay in the third party off airport parking than in the airport's long-term parking?

Johnny Jet (01:53:47):
It depends. Some, some of these airports actually offer good deals if you book in advance.

Leo Laporte (01:53:51):
Oh, that's good to know. So, okay.

Johnny Jet (01:53:53):
You, you gotta price it around. And if you, if you are gonna wing it, even if you, even if you aren't wing in it, make sure you show up to the airport early. If you're, if you're driving, do you think this

Leo Laporte (01:54:02):
Is gonna be the biggest summer? It's clearly gonna be the biggest summer since Covid, but I think it might be even because there was so much pent up demand. An even bigger travel summer than usual.

Johnny Jet (01:54:13):
You know, I've been looking at the numbers. They go up and down. So the other day there was 2.6 million people passed through airport security. And four years ago it was 2.2 million. But yesterday, or actually they haven't reported it over the weekend, but it was 200,000 off in the other direction. So it goes up and down. I do think it's gonna be busy. I just think people are not traveling like they used to before. It would be on Fridays and Sundays and those would be the busiest day. But the c e o of United said every day is a holiday basically for their flights.

Leo Laporte (01:54:46):
Well the good news is no one should go to Disneyland in June. It's the worst time. Please, if you have plans, cancel those plans.

Johnny Jet (01:54:55):
July. July is worse.

Leo Laporte (01:54:58):
Oh, good. We're only going in the second worst month. <Laugh>.

Johnny Jet (01:55:01):
So

Leo Laporte (01:55:02):
I've been to Disney World when they've closed the park because of so many people. Really? And let me tell you, they don't close the park until you can't move. They, and then they say, well, we better not let anybody else in. It was like, oh my goodness. I knew I gotta, I'm just trying to get to the doll whip here. I just wanna Here, can I just get to the doll whip? The Doll whip

Johnny Jet (01:55:21):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:55:23):
We're gonna go straight to Star Wars. We're gonna run to Star Wars. One more. Go ahead.

Johnny Jet (01:55:27):
Okay. This one, this one is on my mind. I've been reading a lot about it. There's a new scam targeting seniors versus N Y P D put one out where they're watching like elderly people go into an atm, they peek over their shoulders, see what they, see, what their passcode. And then they drop a 20 on the ground and they tap 'em on the shoulder and go, oh, sorry, you dropped some money. And they bend down and grab it. They take their card, switch it with a dummy, and then they just go to town on their their money on, on their savings. And also they did it here in LA the other day. I just, on the next door app that they did it in a parking lot where they found a 9 91 year old man was walking to the store and they put some money on the ground and they said, Hey, you dropped some money. He goes, oh no I didn't. You guys can give it to the homeless man. But what they were gonna do is when he opened up his wallet, they were gonna grab it.

Mikah Sargent (01:56:15):
Oh my God.

Leo Laporte (01:56:15):
So good. Man. He was thinking totally.

Johnny Jet (01:56:19):
I would've been like, oh, didn't

Leo Laporte (01:56:19):
Fall for, I would've too.

Johnny Jet (01:56:22):
So anyway, just wanted to get that PSA out there. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:56:24):
You. If somebody says you dropped a 20, say give it to the homeless man or Micah <laugh> and keep on moving. All

Johnny Jet (01:56:34):
And the same thing like in Europe, if you're going to Europe this summer and someone Oh man, offers to take a picture of you. Oh yeah. Don't do, don't hand over your phone cuz either they're gonna run or they're gonna say, or they're gonna drop their phone. Pretend they broke it and say, you got to owe me some money for that.

Mikah Sargent (01:56:46):
Oh, I thought it was, this was the one where they take a picture of you and then they ask you for money because they just did work for

Johnny Jet (01:56:52):
You. They do that too. They do that too.

Leo Laporte (01:56:54):
You know, I hear all these horror stories and I have never had my pocket picked it. I never had been the it's, I've, nothing's ever, it's always been wonderful, warm, friendly people. So maybe I'm lucky, certainly smart to be prudent, but also don't go there in fear and cower in the corner. A hundred

Johnny Jet (01:57:11):
Percent. I

Leo Laporte (01:57:12):
Have had nothing but wonder. In fact, the only time I ever got scammed was in New Orleans.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:17):
Oh yeah, you told me about

Leo Laporte (01:57:19):
Yeah. A guy comes up, says, I can tell you where you got them shoes. He said, if I could tell you where you got them shoes, will you give me $20? I'll send. Yeah, sure. Where, where did I get them shoes? He's got you got them shoes on your feet. And I gave him $20. Cuz I thought that was pretty clever. And then he shined them and he said, that'll be another 40 <laugh>. So don't, that's ridiculous. <Laugh>. I didn't mind. Cuz it was a, it was an experience. Yes, it was a fun experience. I got it.

Johnny Jet (01:57:45):
That is, and I, and I've been to Europe dozens of times and never had a problem except for once ever. Which I'll tell another story.

Leo Laporte (01:57:50):
Yeah, I've, I mean, I've heard everybody, I've heard lots of anecdotes and stuff.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:54):
Even in, in San Francisco, if the people near the pier say, you wanna hold my snake, I, it's a snake. It's a real snake. They have a snake around their shoulders. Okay. <laugh>, let me be clear. Yes. There is a real live snake around the shoulders. Oh. But then you say, I've seen people. Yeah, I'll hold the snake. They hold the snake. Yeah. And then, well, you held my snake, so now you owe me money. Well, of

Leo Laporte (01:58:12):
Course it's not a free snake. Exactly. It's a rental snake. It's a <laugh>. What the, why would you think that I was a silver snake snake? People just walk around saying, you wanna hold my snake? Yeah. It's always gonna cost you, it's always gonna cost one way or the other.

Mikah Sargent (01:58:25):
I don't, I regret what I just did.

Leo Laporte (01:58:27):
<Laugh> Johnny Jet. If you want more like that, this guy is so great. Johnny jet.com is the website. Subscribe to his free newsletters johnny jet.com/newsletter. He's also got free travel planning there. Lots of great information. He is a YouTube channel. He is on Twitter. Are we getting, we we get you on Masin on yet,

Johnny Jet (01:58:46):
Johnny? I am on there. I just haven't been using it. All

Leo Laporte (01:58:49):
Right. We have our own Masin, on instance, twi.social. You're welcome to join there. It's a ni that's a nice group because we, you know, I I make sure everybody is a listener. Spam

Mikah Sargent (01:58:59):
Frees

Leo Laporte (01:59:00):
Spam free and all of that.

Johnny Jet (01:59:02):
Yeah. Love that. Johnny

Leo Laporte (01:59:03):
Jet.Com/Newsletter. Thank you Johnny.

Johnny Jet (01:59:06):
Thanks. Have a great trip to it. So great to see you. So Cal.

Leo Laporte (01:59:09):
I'll report back. Oh God.

Johnny Jet (01:59:12):
June <laugh> Disneyland. What were you thinking?

Leo Laporte (01:59:15):
It's right after all the schools let out. I thought that'd be a good time to go.

Johnny Jet (01:59:19):
Yeah, he's <laugh>. That's terrible.

Leo Laporte (01:59:23):
Anyway, where's that calendar that you can see what it's like.

Johnny Jet (01:59:27):
Do you know there's a couple. Does Google Disney Crowd calendar

Leo Laporte (01:59:33):
<Laugh>?

Mikah Sargent (01:59:34):
I don't know if he wants to. He's gonna, it's gonna break his heart.

Leo Laporte (01:59:36):
Here it is. Disney Crowd calendar 2023. The best. It's not gonna be

Johnny Jet (01:59:41):
Too bad during the week. Middle, middle of the week is not bad.

Leo Laporte (01:59:44):
Yeah. This is for Disney. I want Walt Disney. Not world.

Johnny Jet (01:59:48):
No. You want

Leo Laporte (01:59:48):
Disneyland. There's a lot of worlds. I don't want world, I want, oh, that's why I say say Disney Land. Yeah. You gotta do the happiest place on earth. Here it is. The 20. This is from there are quite a few Disney tourist blog. Disney Land Tour Guide. Is it, do they get the data from Disney? They must, right?

Johnny Jet (02:00:11):
That I'm not sure. Let's

Leo Laporte (02:00:12):
Just see. When's the best time? Undercover tourist.

Johnny Jet (02:00:14):
Undercover tourist is a good

Leo Laporte (02:00:16):
One. Undercover tourist. Okay, let me go there.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:19):
Undercover

Johnny Jet (02:00:20):
And hit the, hit the calendar. Crowd calendar. They're legit.

Leo Laporte (02:00:27):
They're legit. You know these guys?

Johnny Jet (02:00:29):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:00:30):
You know 'em all don't you?

Johnny Jet (02:00:32):
No, but I it's a

Leo Laporte (02:00:33):
Small, it's a small, oh, here's a Los Angeles crowd calendar. Best time to go to Disneyland in 2023 and 2024.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:41):
It says not for the rest of the

Leo Laporte (02:00:42):
Year. What? No, I'm kidding. No, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm kidding. Okay. best time in summer. The first half of June. No, we're going in the second half of June. Yeah,

Johnny Jet (02:00:52):
That's

Leo Laporte (02:00:53):
The problem. Month of August. Oh, month of August. That's interesting.

Johnny Jet (02:00:56):
Somebody, they say the month of August is good. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:58):
Well, you know, no, it's all relevant. It's comparison. Yeah. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (02:01:02):
Well a lot of kids go back to school the first week of August, which is crazy to me.

Leo Laporte (02:01:05):
Yeah, they say there's two things to ask yourself if you wanna know. Is it a major US holiday? No. Are most kids outta school?

Johnny Jet (02:01:15):
Yes. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (02:01:17):
There is the button for the Disneyland Crowd

Leo Laporte (02:01:20):
Gallery. I'm gonna hit the button. Oh June, 2023. The, oh no, lots of ads. Okay. See I can rent a car, but we're not, we don't have to cuz we're staying right there at the park. June. Ooh,

Mikah Sargent (02:01:35):
They're turning red.

Leo Laporte (02:01:36):
Oh, it's red. Red. Oh no. Red. Red and, and red. Red. What does red mean? Red means the highest crowd. Seven to 10. It's gonna be seven to 10. Okay. Actually, the Friday we're gonna be there is gonna be eight outta 10. So that's pretty good. This

Mikah Sargent (02:01:53):
Is, so you probably wanna do, I

Johnny Jet (02:01:54):
I've been there when it was two outta 10 and it was still crowded.

Leo Laporte (02:01:56):
Yeah, it's crowded all the time. It's always crowded.

Johnny Jet (02:02:00):
You need to make a reservation by the way. So make sure you do that for what A lot of people don't realize that to get

Leo Laporte (02:02:04):
Into the park. Oh, we already bought tickets and everything. We gonna all ask. But you

Johnny Jet (02:02:07):
Need to make a reservation on top of your ticket.

Leo Laporte (02:02:10):
Lisa <laugh>. Thank you Johnny Jet.

Mikah Sargent (02:02:13):
Thanks so much. Johnny

Leo Laporte (02:02:13):
Jet.Com. Bye-Bye. He always makes me want to stay home.

Mikah Sargent (02:02:18):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:02:19):
Stay home. We've done all the ads. I did my segment. Yeah, we've done the two. I think all we've got left is call. Should we go? Wait, let's do one, let's do one. We got one in the mailbox.

Mikah Sargent (02:02:30):
Yeah, that's right. Let

Leo Laporte (02:02:31):
Me reach into our mailbox here. Crash, crash. Bang bang. Boom. Ladies and gentlemen, this is, you did this on purpose. John Ashley <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (02:02:44):
Didn't you hear that laugh? I did hear the

Leo Laporte (02:02:46):
Laugh. That was an evil

Mikah Sargent (02:02:47):
Laugh. I'm scared. Now what? This email's

Leo Laporte (02:02:49):
Gonna be from Thomas, gosh almighty says Tom HP printer. Yes.

Mikah Sargent (02:02:54):
Oh my God. I did it for everyone. <Laugh>, welcome

Leo Laporte (02:02:58):
Audience on my wireless network printing from Windows 10 generally. Okay. Once set up with the HP tool and the printer IP address printing from Chromebook or Android phones much more problematic. By the way, I blame Google because they had Yes. Google Cloud print, which was amazing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and they killed it. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not found on Android using either the Samsung plugin or hps doesn't seem to make a difference. How can I troubleshoot? Pings are always okay. Displaying the printer's webpage is okay. So you can see the printer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you just can't print to

Mikah Sargent (02:03:32):
It on occasion. Here's the problem. <Laugh> th this

Leo Laporte (02:03:41):
Print answer all the printer questions from now on.

Mikah Sargent (02:03:43):
Printers are like, they, they are the, the what's It's the opposite of the lowest common denominator. What is the,

Leo Laporte (02:03:50):
The highest common denominator?

Mikah Sargent (02:03:51):
No, it's the greatest common factor. Thank you. See, we always go to bonito and Bonino knows everything. Esoteric stuff. It's amazing. The greatest common factor. Y This is a device that is trying to never have people calling into HP to ask for help because people put printers in their offices and they need to run 50,000 different things to them to print and their, you know, Steve

Leo Laporte (02:04:12):
Says HP stands for when it comes to printers. Huge pile.

Mikah Sargent (02:04:16):
That's right. Huge pile.

Leo Laporte (02:04:18):
This was because HP put out a release. They were trying to keep you from buying other people's inks. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they updated their printers and brickham Yep. This one model. But all of them just stopped working all of a sudden. Nice. Very nice.

Mikah Sargent (02:04:31):
So because of that, you've got all this, these fancy different networking tools that are running in the background on these printers. And the thing that I would suggest with everybody who has a modern printer that has wifi, has ethernet, has all of the different bits and bowels, is to go into the printer page and go into the networking tab or window or whatever it happens to be and disable the technology that you know, you don't need. Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:04:58):
Smart.

Mikah Sargent (02:04:58):
Because if it's all running and it's all trying to be clever, sometimes they can talk over each other. Mm. Too clever. And that can make too clever. Too clever. Yeah. That can make it so that the, the phone is not communicating properly because you say it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. That tells me that there's something in there that's causing it to occasionally not make that connection. I also, when it comes to printing with things that are connected to my network, I like to have my printer plugged into the ethernet.

Leo Laporte (02:05:25):
This is the problem he's trying to print from a mobile device. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> always challenging Chromebook over wifi, the phone, I guess over wifi as well. And this is why Google created Google Cloud print. Yep. As kind of as a solution. Most printers probably even your hp, if it's more than a month old have Google Cloud print been in but built in. But Google turned it off. So you have to use either a special app provided by the printer manufacturer. He's tried, which

Mikah Sargent (02:05:58):
Wasn't

Leo Laporte (02:05:58):
Working yet, which wasn't working. Then he tried the the operating systems app, the Google Chromebook app, or I, you know, I don't have an answer for you. No.

Mikah Sargent (02:06:06):
And that's, it's just, I don't, it's a

Leo Laporte (02:06:07):
Terrible situation. It's just bad.

Mikah Sargent (02:06:08):
You know, somebody in the chat gave the answer that I would give that I don't like to give because I don't like to tell people that they bought the wrong thing. But yeah, brother <laugh> does a lot better job. The, the, I think

Leo Laporte (02:06:22):
Cannon's

Mikah Sargent (02:06:23):
Better. Cannon does a great job. Again, hp, I, I mean I do have, I've got an HP color printer, but Apple has air print and air print works

Leo Laporte (02:06:33):
Flawless air print does really work well. But he's using an Android, but

Mikah Sargent (02:06:35):
You're using an Android device. So that's why this is one of those difficult things where it could just be the issue between this particular HP printer. But again, my biggest bit of advice is to go in and turn off all of the networking features you don't need and

Leo Laporte (02:06:49):
See if that works. That's, that's a good

Mikah Sargent (02:06:50):
Tip. And then secondarily, check Reddit for this specific HP printer model type, you know, that model and Android into the search and see if folks have come up with a solution. There

Leo Laporte (02:07:03):
You are. Gonna get all the printer questions from now on.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:06):
Sounds good. Cuz I actually still do use printers, so I know you're, you're a big proponent of leaving them in the dust <laugh>. So

Leo Laporte (02:07:14):
What? You didn't, weren't we gonna have the paperless office? I remember that like decades ago. And I guess this didn't happen. Let's go to Las Vegas. Say hello to Kevin. Come on in. Kevin.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:28):
Hi Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:07:29):
Hey Kevin. Welcome to the show.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:33):
Good to be with you. I, this is

Caller Kevin (02:07:34):
Kind a show and tell time from your musician in the desert.

Leo Laporte (02:07:38):
Love that.

Caller Kevin (02:07:40):
I know a few when Scott Wil Wilkinson was on there, I had chance to show him my socks, but you didn't get a chance to see them. So I wanted to show you <laugh>. I know you're a big fan of Sock

Leo Laporte (02:07:52):
Ladies. Gentlemen, the camera is now going under the desk. I've got my finger Ho hovered over the button. Okay. Nope.

Caller Kevin (02:07:59):
No. Where is it? There? They're

Mikah Sargent (02:08:01):
Piano. Is that what we're looking, is

Leo Laporte (02:08:03):
That, are those pianos? Those

Caller Kevin (02:08:12):
Are my piano socks that I would wear in the, in the pit when I was playing with the orchestra. Nice. So that I, I knew I, they're not as colorful as your pride socks, but

Leo Laporte (02:08:22):
I love these. My mom kni them. What are you wearing, Micah? You have like the Royal Russian Royal?

Mikah Sargent (02:08:27):
No, that's a, that's a Lama actually. That's, there's a bee on using the bee. There's a llama on the front. That's because these are very Bombas Bombas have is the B logo. And then they partnered with a hiking company. Ah, that's, they've got the llama. These are hiking socks. But they're so comfortable. These are wool. And I've got three pairs of them and they're so comfortable that I wear them a lot. How

Leo Laporte (02:08:49):
Did this become the socks

Mikah Sargent (02:08:50):
Show? I mean, because we're always, this is like one of the shows where we actually,

Leo Laporte (02:08:54):
You know, in the old days you would show your wackiness physicians who had to wear jackets and dress up would wear show their, and lawyers, we'd show their wackiness with a wacky, wacky tie. But since we don't even wear ties anymore, it's gotten to the socks now.

Mikah Sargent (02:09:09):
In high school I was in debate and people used to be afraid of the kid with the rubber ducky tie. That was me. I would wear a tie that had all these rubber duckies on it. And so it was a bit of an intimidation move. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:09:22):
Kevin, can we do anything for you? Or you just wanted to show us your socks? No, the

Caller Kevin (02:09:25):
Other thing actually the other thing I was interested in is I was watching this week in Google and you were mentioning about AI and some of the modern technology that is taking jobs away from people. And again, another show and tell if I can move this to show you,

Mikah Sargent (02:09:43):
If you show us that Epson printer, we're hanging up

Leo Laporte (02:09:46):
<Laugh>

Caller Kevin (02:09:47):
Ep Epson printer. This is a shot of my grandfather who was an iceman. You can see

Leo Laporte (02:09:56):
Metropolitan Ice. There's this truck. Would they cut the ice out of the lake? Where would they get the ice? Well,

Caller Kevin (02:10:02):
They had added warehouses. They used to go load up the truck and then go deliver it. And they had big tongues that they would use to bring the ice to the ice box. Literally the ice box to people's homes. And so obviously since refrigeration came around, we don't have iceman delivering ice anymore to people. So that's a job that has been 86 plus

Leo Laporte (02:10:26):
AI Didn't kill the Iceman though, I'm afraid. <Laugh> General

Mikah Sargent (02:10:29):
Electric kill the

Leo Laporte (02:10:30):
Iceman

Caller Kevin (02:10:30):
<Laugh>. So, I mean, yeah. And we survived it. We, we've definitely moved on to other jobs have taken its place. My grandmother was a seamstress in a sweatshop.

Leo Laporte (02:10:40):
Again, doing those jobs, have left bunch

Caller Kevin (02:10:42):
Different women all there. Yeah. Working 12, 13 hours a day. Yeah. You know, and now we don't have that anymore, but obviously we have modern technology to make garments.

Leo Laporte (02:10:53):
We still have some. So those are just couple. The, the Petaluma Ice House is still here. You, you probably wouldn't know that that's the Ice House. No. But my wife's father remembers going there to get the ice. Remembers the Ice Man coming around. And the Ice House has been taken over. It's still called the Ice House. It's right across from the Smart Station in the pet alone, big brick building. And it's been taken over by actually our friends who did some of the work in here. They were our, our contractors for this studio. And more importantly, for the old Brick House studio, we should have sold Ice. Maybe we'd still be in the brick house. It just sold ice out the bottom.

Caller Kevin (02:11:32):
One other last thing, I just wanted to give an a plus to apple Music and the classical app. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:11:38):
Good. It's good, isn't it Classical? I'm loving it. I'm loving it,

Caller Kevin (02:11:41):
Musician. I'm telling you. It's, it's amazing. I've told all my musician friends. Gotta get it. What's

Leo Laporte (02:11:48):
Your favorite feature? What do you like about it?

Caller Kevin (02:11:50):
Well, well, the search feature for different musicians, different performers. I did a search for a particular pianist and I stopped counting after about 200 albums that he had. They did great. They had curated on the,

Leo Laporte (02:12:06):
Probably was always there, you know, in Apple Music. But to find it, and here's my favorite feature is you can say, I want finding

Caller Kevin (02:12:13):
It.

Leo Laporte (02:12:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I want Mahler's Fifth. And then it'll show you all the different ways you can, you know, you can hear Daniel Berenbaum, you can hear Von Caron, you can hear all the different versions of Mahler's Fifth. And it really is wonderful to be able to do that. I think that's a nice feature. This is why we needed a classical music app. As you know, I subscribed to PR phonic and I was very disappointed when Apple bought them, killed them, and didn't replace 'em right away. Took 'em a year and a half. But they finally have if you're an Apple Music subscriber, it's just a separate app. Not, it's only on the iPhone and the Android phone. Not on the iPad. Yeah. not on the Mac, but at least it's there. So,

Caller Kevin (02:12:53):
But yeah, it, I swear by it. I, I, I, after just working with it for about a week now, just doing the searches and finding just the fun. I'm not music. It's definitely worth, I'm not one for the subscription model for a lot of things, but this particular one, I'm using the Apple 1 16 99 a month. Oh, nice. For the,

Leo Laporte (02:13:14):
It's worth it. Yeah.

Caller Kevin (02:13:15):
It's def I would say it's definitely worth it. So I, I'm, unless you're happy

Leo Laporte (02:13:19):
With a massive classical fanatic, you're not gonna have every recorder a box recording a box B minor mass. It would be silly. Right. But this way you can, you can compare them. And I think it's really wonderful to be, I like

Mikah Sargent (02:13:31):
The, the category searching that you can do. I am, I don't know why, but I love harps accord so much. And so being able to find a bunch of different editor, editor created playlists for harps accord music was so much fun. So I just could listen to it nonstop and obviously annoy my partner and probably my dogs too, but at least I got to listen to harps. Of course,

Leo Laporte (02:13:52):
Prime Phonic also had these great podcasts introductory podcasts for classical. And I think I noticed Apple's starting to bring those back as well. That's awesome. Which we really do need. And,

Caller Kevin (02:14:02):
And some of the biographical information too that they have on there is actually nice too. Is not only for the composer obviously, but for the performers and the orchestras. There's so, I mean, there's a lot of nice touches that they have and of, of course they'll hopefully they'll do some tweaking here and there to make it a little easier to find stuff. But I think it's pretty good as it is right now. So I'm, like I say, I'm really happy with, I give it a, a solid day

Leo Laporte (02:14:28):
Piano man. Kevin, thank you. Yeah. Great to talk to

Caller Kevin (02:14:32):
You. Thanks Leo. Have a great day. You're waiting for tomorrow to hear what all

Leo Laporte (02:14:35):
The Oh, we all are. I really

Caller Kevin (02:14:37):
Know. I've got my Mac World t-shirt on <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:14:40):
I've always called these Apple events. The, you know, kind of the holidays for, for geeks like the special geek Holidays. And it does feel there's this anticipation. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we might be a little let down. We don't know, but there's this anticipation the day before is always exciting. Thank you

Mikah Sargent (02:14:56):
Kevin. Thanks so much.

Leo Laporte (02:14:58):
Have a great one. Oh, he's gone. He's just a frozen ice man.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:04):
<Laugh> can't, my, my great grandparents, I spent a lot of time with them growing up and they would always call it the ice box. Get you a pump ice box from the ice box. So like ice box is,

Leo Laporte (02:15:15):
It's still in the vernacular.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:17):
I remember asking them, you know, eons ago about why, why they were calling it that. And that's when I learned about how they used to be made.

Leo Laporte (02:15:24):
Apparently. I don't know. But the Bureau of Labor statistics say that in the most recent labor report, 5% of the job losses were from ai. Now, I don't know, you know, what those jobs were or how they know that it was lost to ai. I can't imagine a lot of jobs that right now could be replaced by ai.

Mikah Sargent (02:15:44):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:15:44):
No. AI's just a chatty dope. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but apparently,

Mikah Sargent (02:15:49):
I guess I know a few chatty dopes in the way.

Leo Laporte (02:15:50):
If you, if your job was chatty dope <laugh>, you'd be outta luck. Which means most PR professionals are gone. <Laugh>, sorry. I'm kidding. We're kidding.

Mikah Sargent (02:16:00):
Chatty dopes. I mean, <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:16:02):
Iheart, my old employer, you know, the radio show was owned by iHeart. Rich Durrow still works for iHeart, has banned chat. G P T mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they say, yeah, employees can't use it cuz they're afraid company information will be leaked out. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:16:15):
That it was actually Rosemary who clued me into why folks were banning it. Yeah, yeah. For the sake of not having it be part of the training data and then have exactly secret company information.

Leo Laporte (02:16:24):
Yeah. You might have, you know, oh, I've got this big report I've gotta do, can you summarize it or gimme some slides? And meanwhile that data, they worry is going back into the database. I actually don't think it is. And you can't, yeah, I don't, you can't indicate, I don't want you to record anything that you do for me. But they've, apples does the same thing. They say you can't use chat. G P T Spotify does. Sony has said that Verizon, a lot of companies. I think there's a lot of unnecessary fear Uhhuh of ai to be honest. I don't think chat g pt, I mean maybe not for company data and and privacy, but I don't think chat g PT is coming to take your jobs. I maybe our jobs. Yeah, <laugh> but not your job.

Mikah Sargent (02:17:05):
I agree. I I I feel the same way. Ask

Leo Laporte (02:17:07):
Your printer questions of chat G

Mikah Sargent (02:17:09):
That is what I should have done, <laugh>. In fact, I will tell you the other day I asked it something about a vehicle issue and I got some really great results that helped me at least narrow it down.

Leo Laporte (02:17:18):
Yeah. There's some use to it. Yeah, for sure. And I think,

Mikah Sargent (02:17:20):
Didn't give me the answer. I didn't want the answer exactly, but to narrow it down to a few things I could talk to then an actual mechanic about,

Leo Laporte (02:17:26):
I would say the real valuable use of it is as summarizing documents, summarizing information. I wish it didn't hallucinate and I hate to use the word hallucinate. I wish it didn't, you know, fabricate results. Right. But it's not, it's not designed to not lie. It's

Mikah Sargent (02:17:44):
Exactly, it's not designed from the ground up to not lie. So it will

Leo Laporte (02:17:48):
Lie. It's just a sentence generator. I think we have to wrap it up. I don't wanna wrap it up, but I think we're out of time. We've gotta get ready for this week in tech, our round table, which requires some studio reset. I thank you so much, Micah. Sergeant,

Mikah Sargent (02:18:01):
Thank you Leola Port.

Leo Laporte (02:18:03):
Thank you Leo Laport, thank you to all of our listeners and viewers and callers. Sorry we didn't get to y'all. We'll do more next week. We'll have more time next week. I won't do a segment and we will have fewer of other stuff going on. We're gonna fire all the advertisers and we'll do this show in our cies and that way we should be. No, I guess that's not gonna happen.

Mikah Sargent (02:18:23):
None of what he's saying is true there.

Leo Laporte (02:18:26):
<Laugh>. See, I was hallucinating. That's what it was. I was just putting sentences together so they

Mikah Sargent (02:18:30):
Will be taking your job then. They,

Leo Laporte (02:18:32):
They, they should. I am just a a long,

Mikah Sargent (02:18:35):
70 year

Leo Laporte (02:18:36):
Old boso brain. A 70 year old brain. Thank you everybody for joining us. We'll see you next time. Send us those emails, atg@twit.tv. Leave us the voicemails at 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4 and we'll join you next Sunday. Bra the Techos. Have a great geek week everybody. Bye-Bye. Bye-bye