Hello everybody this is Shane R. Monroe you’re in the passenger seat with me passenger seats radio. It What is it the 12? Yeah, February 12 2020 you’re on my 13 mile commute home. Welcome to the show and look at that Travis is in there like swimwear 20 seconds into the show and he is there awesome. Sup man? Yes indeed do so. Yeah, I have no stops to make I’m on a straight trip home and hopefully traffic will not totally suck but man, it’s been a long week already. The second here, let me get out of the parking garage. Alright, so I’m continuing to I’m continuing to work my way through Season One of big mouth and I got to Hey, look at this. Michael Caine, the great British actor Brian holson. Wow got a flood of people. In here so I have bill Yetiz here look at this weekend like a full a full house today I love it. So, last night I continued my trek through the amazing Netflix animated show big mouth I got Travis and I think he’s a good way through the first season he’ll tell you how great it is. I just I love it this is I think I’ve actually finished the first season last night I think I did I finished the first season last night 10 episodes great stuff great stuff if you know if you don’t know anything about the show. You listen to us listen to yesterday’s show that I talked plenty about it. And I’ve been trying to bring my my friends and co workers into big mouth. Big Mouth great show. Alright, so let me let me pull up my keep list. I don’t know what the hell we’re sitting here at this intersection for. This has become this has become like San Francisco here. There’s whole aisle right here at night. Avenue and Jackson Street. Right here this entire place has become a homeless tent city. I am literally looking I’ve got pictures I’ve literally looking at huge massive amounts of tents, homeless people. It’s huge, huge. And it just seems to be getting bigger and bigger every day. Crazy stuff and this is why nobody’s driving everyone just walking around the road like nobody’s whatever. Obviously these guys got nowhere to go and nothing to do so yeah. I mean, see what’s up my keep list here. Okay, so those of you who are longtime listeners, hey, oh, Bruce Miller, Jen. Yeah, see what you say? Yeah, just wrapped up. Episode Five halfway through episode six. Yeah, good stuff, Travis. I’m glad you’re liking I love things. Great show anyway, So those of you listen, longtime listener to the show know that when I got my car, I got a year of satellite radio within Sirius XM Satellite Radio. And you guys know me I’m not I’m not really a subscription guy. And I’m big howard stern fan, right? And so I believe that the year I got was all premium. So I got Howard. But let’s be honest, if you’re going to listen to Howard in your car, you’re far better off just downloading the commercial free versions from somewhere else. I mean, listen, I got the app. I mean, I’ve got the app, I got a subscription. Who cares if I listen to the commercial free versions, right? So you start feeling like you’re a little bit of a legitimate side. And the year came and went. And of course, eventually my radio expired right because that’s what happens to subscriptions. If you don’t continue to pay them they turn them off. And quite frankly, the only time I use serious about this is this is my use case for Sirius XM. Somebody else is in the car. Right? If I’m in the car alone, I’m listening to Howard. I’m listening to a podcast I’m listening to, you know, something else. I’ve listened to audio books in here. Most for the most part, I listen to Howard. I’m you guys know, I’m like two years behind on my howard stern listening. Because he puts out about four hours of content a day, three days a week, and I’m consume about 35 to 40 minutes. Well, actually, I guess that’s an hour and a half a day, five days a week. So I’m pretty far behind. So the subscription comes and goes. And one of my friends Javier, of course, he’s on the channel a lot. He said, you know, just wait, they’re gonna offer you a great deal. Right? So the longer you’re not a subscriber, the more and more they’re desperate to get you back on the teat, right. So I’m, listen, I’m not missing anything, right? I don’t, I don’t have anybody in my car very often. So it’s like a Every now and then, I’ll listen to some 80s on eight or seven days on seven or something and my wife’s in the car. Hey, retro, Sean What’s up? She’ll she hasn’t she, she’ll listen to Howard. But like, that’s only when we like go to Vegas. And I have like four and a half hours of driving to do. She’ll put up with then she’ll put headphones on or whatever, and players switch. But in reality, she’s listening because she chuckles at the right time, and I know it’s not her game. So she doesn’t like to admit that she likes Howard Stern, but just like everybody else, right? she’ll let she’ll listen and she’ll dig it if the contents right. And so, so we could still listen to that. So listen, when I’m driving, and she wants to take the sexy, sexy car instead of her car or whatever. It’s nice to have serious on the backside. But listen, I’m not gonna pay 25 bucks a month for the privilege of being able to leave listen to not even music I want to hear. Right. So So if I were to bring up Hang on a second I can do it. I forgot I’m not. So if I bring up serious right now, my subscription was updated. All right. So here’s what my here’s what my hotkeys are 67 six, which right now is playing the medeco Monday. No I don’t even know if I know that song. I know this song. This was in the movie vamp. Alright 70s on seven I got talking going on. See what am I gonna get here? So we’ll have seriously Take me in your eyes with the Doobie Brothers that’s all right let’s go to 80s on eight. The fix one thing leads to another perfect I listened to that. And then we move on to the Beatles is my next one. And the Beatles are hitting Miss because I only like I only like certain Beatle songs from certain areas. And revolution one is not it. Then I have vivid radio Which I’ve got on my slider, so my wife doesn’t hear it. This is an adult radio station where they bring on porn stars, they talk about sex and shit. And then finally, number nine is 90s on nine. And this happens to be Smashing Pumpkins 1979, which is actually a good song. So essentially, I sit here and play, I sit here and play wheel of serious, so it kind of sucks. Now I understand that they recently offered something called like my radio or something, where essentially you program it like Pandora. Right? So I do enjoy hopping on here from time and time again, 25 bucks a month not going to happen. So by the way, that’s 25 bucks a month if you want the Howard Stern package and the sports package and all that other stuff, which to me sort of like having series that howard stern is just why would you do that even though I don’t listen to him live. I’d like the option of listening to him live. In fact, when I’ve run out of shows on my memory card, I’ve had to flip over to Sirius and have listened to him live but for the most Part. I’m not listening to Howard live. So the first deal comes in from Sirius XM. Hey, we’ve got your next 30 days of listening and right here on Sirius XM. And so the deal comes in. And it’s like for only 11 911 99 a month you can have our best package. Of course their best package doesn’t have howard stern or NFL or whatever, but it’s their best package, right? So you sitting going okay, 1195 a month and it what do I get with that? Okay, get all the music channels, I get the comedy channels, I think I get this vivid porn Channel. May maybe. So you click through, right. And so this is how you fuck with them. You click through and you say, you know, confirm your radios? Yes. You say yep, that’s my radio, that’s my car. And then you get to the final checkout page where they that’s when they screw you. Because it’s 1195 a month but then they throw on six dollars in royalty free music fee. Like Wait, wait, what? So the package is 1199 a month, but you’re also spending an extra $6 and 50 cents for fees for royalty free music fees, right? And so I’m like nope, close the browser I’m out. So it sounds great at 12 bucks when you’re talking about 19 bucks not as good so then you wait and you wait and you wait and then all the sudden another deal comes trickling in. But it’s the same deal. You got shit still 1195 but maybe that royalty free music nonsense. I can get rid of it. Meanwhile, Javier. Javier is is saying hey, I’m getting it for five bucks a month and I’m like, dude, how do you do that? He’s like, I just think they tried it. They call or they reach out to me to try to re subscribe and I tell them I’m not interested in eventually come down to five bucks. Like well, should I do $5 a month? I don’t know. 1195 which is actually nice. dollars a month. And so the next time the deal comes through, it is again 1195. Right? And it’s like, so I say no. And it’s like, Well, why don’t you chat with us and tell us why you won’t take us up on this great deal. So I chat with them, right. I’m like, dudes, you’re trying to tell me that 50% of the price is hidden behind fees. I’m like, What is that? I said, I got a guy who’s who for the last three years in a row has renewed his series subscription for $5 a month. Your fees are more than $5 per month. What’s that about? Well, we don’t know how he’s getting that because that’s not available. So the best we can do for you is the 1195. And like, Yeah, can you waive the royalty free music fee? I might be interested in 1195 a month. So why don’t you make it 695 a month and then tack your fee on top of that, and then I’ll pay the 1195. Who can do the same? Well, I’m good to go man. Thanks. I don’t need you. You do realize that I’ve got I’ve got 17 terabytes of music sitting at home. I can stream it wherever I want. I don’t I don’t. I don’t need you. So I’m sorry, we can’t make it. We can’t make you a good offer service again. Well, you know, I can pick a better offer. So this has been going on for a year, trying to get serious to make me a better offer. So finally, finally, finally, it’s been over a year so I must be the magic number a year later. The greatest serious deal of all time is in your mailbox right now. This is our absolute number one best number one positive super good time Coca Cola us a deal ever. Yeah, this is written by Indians or something right? Or Cambodians. Anyway, so I open it up, right? It’s like 499 will get you our best package. And I’m like, yeah, yeah. Then you put six bucks on top of that make it 11 bucks. Although I did tell them Guys that for 11 bucks a month I consider it. So I go in and I go through the click, click, click, click click, I get to the end where they stay tack on the $6 per month royalty free music or royalty fees for music, right? I get in there, and it’s like, what is it’s $1 39 and royalty fees or something like that. But wait, well wait a minute. So you’re saying for six bucks a month I can have Sirius XM Radio. Hey, Alex isn’t? I’m like, well, six bucks a month. Well, shit. I’m in for six bucks a month. I don’t need how six bucks a month. I got that. So I’m still waiting. So of course I create my privacy.com burner card, right? I make sure it can only be billed monthly for $6 and 42 cents or whatever it was. And and I set a lifetime limit to 12 times six dollars and 49 cents, because that offers only good for 12 months and then they’re going to charge you the regular fee of 2195 plus royalty free music on top of that, right. So now, thanks to my privacy com card, which by the way, I’m not a compensated endorser, I just love the product so very much. Now there’s no way they can screw me they’re going to get their $6 and 49 cents per month for the next 12 months. I’m going to get dirt cheap satellite radio, and then at the end when they start trying to charge me 21 bucks privacy will be like Oh, and I get a notice in my email saying that serious tried to charge my my debit card 20 you know, $27 or whatever it is. And I’m good. Then they send me some hate notices in the mail. They send me hate notices in the mail that say they say oh, you know you agreed and like no shit dude. I didn’t agree to shit. So then they stopped saying the notices and then in a few months are going to Send me another 499 deal. Travis also seconds privacy calm. And I’m going to tell you why privacy calm is so fucking great, because this is actually a bullet point on my keep list right now. I didn’t realize I had a great segue here but I do so long story short, too long didn’t read. I am back on the Sirius XM gravy train with my 60s on 670s on 780s on eight and 90s on nine. And of course, the porn channel for instant instant gratification. So, a Travis’s wedding was at the beginning of January. And as you remember, for those of you who listen to the show, we decided to book a hotel down near near Apache Junction where Travis is waiting was because Travis is going to start fact checking me in a minute. So we stayed at a rather underwhelming Best Western. If you remember I bitched about it on the show. They didn’t have an elevator going up to the second You expect you to take the stairs like some Neanderthal? I mean, I don’t know how they get away with that. I mean, even from a handicapped person perspective, how do they do that? But anyway, because I purchased online, as I always do, I generated a privacy.com burner card for the amount of the hotel reservation. Right. And I believe I can’t remember what it was, but it was over it was over 100 bucks at night. So it was like $257 or something like that for the two nights that we stayed or do we only stay we only stayed one night didn’t let me see that we must have stayed I don’t know. But whatever anyway, is not germane to the story. So I booked the room with a privacy calm burner card. And so the secret to this is you always limit the amount so that you’re out of pocket as little as possible. So let me explain for those of you do not understand how privacy calm works. Let me go over real quick because I think it’s important every I swear to Everybody in the planet needs to be using this service or something just like it and this is to protect you. This isn’t to you know, I’m not a compensated endorser here, when you make so what these are privacy calm ties to your bank account, so you have to trust them with your bank account, which for some people, they’re, they’re out right there. And it’s like, Listen, if you want a service, you’re going to have to trust them with access to your money. All right, that’s just the way it is. So let’s get that off the table. Let’s say you’re okay with that. That’s one point of failure, folks. If this if this organization is the problem, then you’re screwed, but you got to put a shield up somewhere, you got to trust your shield holder. So once you do that, you can generate a Visa card anytime you feel like and now you can do this through an app on your phone. You can do this from a Chrome browser extension, right? You can do this from pretty much any device you want. Okay? You go in and you say generate a new card, you can name the card and you can set a spending limit. So you can say, Go in. So you can set a spending limit of $257. And then you hit Create card, it gives you a, a card number, and expiration date and a three digit CVV code, right? You’re done. I mean, that’s it. You then use that online with your own credentials, your name, your you know, your name, your address, your phone number, right. It’s all tied to you. And you’re done. They accept it, and you’re good. Nobody if that card number gets leaked, if it gets if it gets in a data breach. That card tops off at 257 bucks. You can’t be charged again. Ever. You’re done. You’ve reached the limit. It’s awesome. It’s been it’s like being able to create them debit card gift cards at the drop of That. Now that’s not the only thing you can do. You can set more granular controls on it. You can make it a single use card, one time use, and it’s dead. You don’t have to go and turn it off, right? So let’s say for example, and this is a, this is a great a great segue here is, let’s say you’ve got an Oculus quest, or an Oculus Rift and you want to give somebody a game on the Oculus game store, right? They don’t take gift cards, they don’t take. You can’t buy somebody a rewards card for the Oculus Rift. So if I want to send somebody a game, I can’t write if I want to send somebody again. So what you could do is buy them a Visa gift card and mail it to them or send it to them or give it to them, right. But not all prepaid cards and gift cards. work, everyone This is a little known fact people don’t know this. But when you buy a prepaid debit card, there are certain things, certain services, certain companies that will not accept a prepaid debit card. There are certain companies that will not accept a reloadable gift card. I don’t know what there is on the back end, but when it comes to you think it’s got a visa number, it’s got an expiration date and it’s got a code, I should be able to use it anywhere that a Visa card would be accepted. You would be wrong, right? Hold big complicated thing. Now, how you flip the switches on your privacy calm Burke hard, sort of sets what type of card it is. Okay, so if you set it to a one time use card that becomes a disposable Visa card, and there are companies including Oculus that will turn that card away. Even though it looks like a legitimate card, they will turn it away. So you could then go back into the card, flip the switch, make it not a single use card. But making a total amount on the card $50 for that game, that’s it. That’s all you get. And that’s it. That’s all you can spend on that card period. You can also set a per transaction limit per month, per year, right? So you have complete control over the card that you generate. And you can flip it off in a second. You don’t have to call your bank. You don’t have to do anything weird, right? Anytime your card is used in an unauthorized manner, you get notified and they get declined, right. It’s fantastic. And it’ll handle returns and everything too, right? So if you buy something on one of these virtual cards, like let’s say you buy something at Best Buy com, use the virtual card to pay for it. You walk in, you show them your ID, you get the item, you then take the item back, they can reverse the charges. The card is still there, but you don’t cancel it of course. And you can kill the cards anytime you want. So there’s no there’s no good reason to ever use the same Visa card number twice. How fucking great is that and it’s all protected. You know, it’s amazing. Listen, I use privacy calm every single time I make a purchase. I do have, like my utilities company, right? My utilities company has their own privacy com card. So for some reason, they tried to screw me over and double charged me for the month or something like that. I have a limit. That’s $75 per monthly charge I told you guys about about the YMCA. They tried to charge me five days before my billing cycle was due. Right and privacy calm said No can do. And they actually called me to say listen now your card didn’t go through. Yeah, guess what? Because you tried to charge me five days early asshole. It’s been five days now. Go ahead and charge I bet it works just fine. Okay, thank you, sir. Right. Yeah, called you out, asshole. So you’ve got that sort of protection. subscriptions for $1 you get a month of game pass. After that we’re gonna charge you 15 bucks a month. Right? You make a privacy calm card my son’s trying to call me is trying to do a show here. What do you want? Hang on. man wants a piece of me. I’m trying to do a show here. Anyway, so Yeah, perfect for subscriptions. Try a month of Hulu for free. We need your credit card though. Because after a month, we’re going to charge you 14 bucks a month. Yeah, yeah, here you go. Here’s a credit card. That’s $1 on it, asshole. Let’s see charged 1499 next month. It’s amazing. There’s 1,000,001 uses for privacy calm. A million in one uses. I love it. Anyway, back to the story at hand. Let me see if my son wants that. So Important you’re going to be pissed no pun intended somebody peed on your computer. Great. Just great. So glad that my fucking electronics can be a goddamn dog pissing contest. Now I am pissed. Alright, well, it’s you don’t have to wait for the next show to hear about that I’m alright anyway. So let’s go back to the story. So I charged best western.com I used a burner card and I paid $257 one total fee. That’s what I use for that when I use the total on that. I get an email day before yesterday, from privacy calm saying they declined $187 purchase on my best western.com card by some place called St Rocos hospital. This What? st Rocos hospice, what the fuck is that? So first off, I’m sitting there going Thank you, thank you privacy calm. You just saved me 187 bucks, because, you know, yeah. And so now I go up and look up St. Rocco’s hospice. It’s some place in the UK it’s some sort of charity house or or something, I don’t know, but I’m looking at it going. So wait a minute. Best Western is the only person that had that card number. Best Western is the only person the only company I use that card with. They either had a data breach that they didn’t tell anybody about. Right? Or one of their employees took the card, right? Who knows? Somehow that ended up in god damn frickin the UK at some charitable organization. What is that? That would have cost me 187 bucks. So, you asked for medical steel, I give you the privacy.com. So, once again, I urge you Now listen, privacy calm is not the only game in town. If you bank it chase chase lets you do virtual burn cards on the fly. I think Bank of America has that. Wells Fargo does not. A lot of them do not. But there are other services like privacy calm that will allow you to link a bank account and you can generate these burner cards on the fly. Whatever you do, protect yourself this online ship do Best Western you can’t trust those assholes. Best Western you can’t even trust and they never saw the card. They never had. They never had it. They never had my my security code or my expert expiration date, but they didn’t even have a physical card for somebody to steal. They somebody stole it out of their goddamn database man. So Suffice to say, once again, privacy calm owns and I got to continue to recommend the service for anybody who does anything online. Thank you. St. Rocco’s hospice, get out of here. Alrighty then, what’s next on the agenda? So I do believe that I was I told you guys that shield Nvidia Shield TV finally released their standalone skew, their standalone version of the brand new shield TV, remote control. For a lot of people, one of the biggest things they disliked about the shield TV was the remote control. I kind of liked it. There was there were two versions. By the way, a lot of people don’t know there are two versions of the shield TV remote control. One of them used a rechargeable battery on USB, a USB, micro USB charger, and I’ll be honest with you, that battery went dead pretty quick. So having to keep it on the charger a lot was not a pleasant thing. But I was I had no problem with the design. I liked it. Most people did not. Then they came out in a second generation version of that remote, which was the same form factor that people didn’t like. And yeah, I know my cars complain. But it used car two or three, five batteries or whatever, right? So you can you can put a little dongle in there or little key like an ejector key for your phone. And it could if you let the little drawer out and you could replace the batteries and those were supposed to last for a year. As long as you don’t have a cat or a dog sitting on it or standing on it or you know, monkeying with it all the time. Your battery probably lasts a long time. But anyway, so for the 2019 edition of the shield TV. They released a brand new remote. This one is a standard remote. It’s sort of a triangular shape in your hand It feels really good, it’s got really nice buttons, it’s backlit the backlighting is motion controls so the light doesn’t come on until you actually touch it or pick it up. It’s got a remote remote finder chirp where you can push a button on the on the shield and the unit itself and it’ll chirp and let you find your remote it runs on double A batteries it checks every single box of what anybody might want. But unfortunately you had to buy a brand new shield TV to use it and video of course promised we’re going to release them as a standalone later in the year or early next year you know that sort of thing very abstract and you’ll be able to buy it it’ll work with the existing with the older you know 2015 2017 she’ll TVs so I’ve been waiting patiently cuz I got shields all over the damn house and I want I want new remotes for all of them. Right? So I was ready to go. Didn’t come didn’t come promised by January 2020. end of January came and wait and no promises made gifts exchanged. Still no remote. Well, I got on. So I was checking it every day that was part of my nightly duties on my now peed on Chromebook was to hop on and refresh the page and see if the remotes available. Well, somebody had an article on Android police or whatever they said the remotes are now available. So I’m like running up there. And of course there are no remotes. It’s like there’s nothing It doesn’t say a stuck it just says they’re not out yet. I’m going you can’t teasing motherfuckers right. And yes, Travis is a clock tease because it’s funny as hell. Those of you watching big mouth will get it. And so then I was watching every day because I figured, okay, well he got he got a press release that I didn’t get and so it’s going to be in the next day or two. A whole week went by And nothing I’m checking it every day on my peed on Chromebook. And sure enough one day I reload it and back there they are. Add To Cart. I’m like back get two of them. Boom, boom, boom check out using privacy calm Carter course. Bo, your order has been received. So I’m like texting everybody I know. Right? I’m Javier I posted in my chat channel. I posted everywhere I put it on Twitter. I’m like, hey, the remotes are here. Get him get him get him less than an hour after I bought my out of stock, bang, bang bang. And that’s what Travis just said the remote is still out of stock. So my guess is they put them up every few days and they’re done inside of an hour. So you have to just be goddamn lucky. So of course, you know, your order being accepted and actually getting the units in your hand two different things right. So even though my order was accepted, it took a couple of days before I even got an email saying that my order had really been accepted. Right. You know, your order is confirmed. So now it’s confirmed I gotta wait and they finally showed up so I now have two brand new in the box ready to roll out shield TV remotes. I’m very thrilled that I managed to get my hands on him. Yeah, I don’t know those emails don’t work. I have a feeling by the time you get the email, you’d be out of stock. So listen, listen, I can sacrifice if you want one Travis I will sell you one at the exact price I paid for it. I haven’t even taken them out of the box yet. They’re still sealed. So if you want one, consider yourself taking care of Travis. I take care of my friends. So if you want one, I will I will sell you one at costs. So that would be amazing. That would be fantastic. So anyway, I’m very excited and those like I said, those of you who are you know waiting around for those things. They’re worth it dude, they’re they’re fantastic remotes. I can’t recommend them enough and and they can. They can be used for volume control using infrared blaster today. That’s very cool. Y’all figure out what it all costs me dude, I’ll pull up the invoice and I’ll find I’ll split it in half and you can have one for the whatever it was I paid for it. Make it easy. I think I had to pay tax because you know Nvidia has a shack here somewhere in Arizona so of course I’m gonna charge us tax like assholes shipping or whatever, but I’ll make I’ll make sure you get a get a hold of one dude. The great remotes. I love them. Love them. Hey, speaking of getting screwed over and mail order. The Commodore 64 Maxi, not the mini the full size working keyboard better joystick version of the C 64. Many was released to Kickstarter, Kickstarter backers, and to the folks over in Europe. When I say Europe I’m talking about the UK and Germany. All these guys have got the C 64 Maxi but no expected release date in the United States and nobody can tell me why. All I know is there’s a better version of the competition. 64 console with a working keyboard that has Vic 20 emulation that has a better joystick and I can’t have one. You know, that makes me batshit crazy that I can’t have one. So you know, I try all the tricks. I go to amazon.co.uk I go to Amazon dot d and turn it into English. Right? You get it? Yep, they’ve got them in stock. You put them in the car you go to checkout, they tell you to log in they say no, no can do. This item cannot ship to the United States. So I had I joined the official discord of the Commodore 64 million maxy not a lot of traffic going on there, folks. I don’t think c 64 aficionados are into discord apparently. But I was talking about how I like to get my hands on one that I’m developing this I got this website that lets you generate config files. But let’s be honest, I can’t test it because it uses more configuration values then I can use on my 64 minutes. So I’m just kind of guessing, based on the documentation, how am I supposed to build these config files? And somebody wrote to me and said that they don’t work. So I said, I gave them access to my development version. That doesn’t work. I’m like, well, man, how am I supposed to test this thing if I can’t get my hands on one? So I wrote to the creators, retro UK or whatever the name of the company is? retro games UK. I told them listen, I’m doing a valuable service for your customers by letting you make configurations online. I’m not asking for something for free. I am asking you to sell me a 64 Maxi so that I can continue to service your customer base. I get back like this can statement. I’m sorry. There’s no particular time or selling to the United States. We appreciate your interest. Okay. Thanks. Bye. Thank you, motherfucker. I wasn’t even asking for a freebie. I just want to buy one You know, $429 or whatever it is, right? So I’ve been lounging around then somebody writes me in Discord. One of the guys in discord says, Hey, are you still looking for a maxi? And I’m like, yeah. And he’s like, he’s like, I’m not using the one I got, I got it as a gift. And I’m not using it. If you want it, I’ll send it to you, depending on how much it costs to mail, and I said, Really, you just just give it to me? He’s like, Yeah, I’d rather go to somebody who’d really appreciate it. Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. Well, listen them. Don’t go out of pocket, though, with this mailing thing. Just go to the post office and get it weighed. And let me know what the shipping is. I mean, if the shipping is 3040 bucks, I mean, kind of slowly soil is the deal a little bit, but damn, you know, it’s 2030 bucks. I mean, that’s how much I pay if I bought it over there and had it shipped. So yeah, I’m still interested. So he said, Yeah, I can’t get to the post office until next week. I’m like, that’s cool. No big deal. Let me know what the cost is. I’ll pay pal you or whatever. Venmo or whatever the current app is everyone’s using to pay everybody with. And, yeah, so anyway, so a week goes by, I didn’t hear from my send out, I send them out, you know, a little dm and I’m like, Hey, you know, no, no hurry, no hurry, just checking in, you know, get a chance to go to the post office. Let me know what that value is. I got crickets back. So I think that that ship came and went. So that kind of stuff and, you know, listen, the guy was gonna hook me up. I mean, I’m not gonna say anything bad about it, like, whatever. That’s cool. Thank you for considering me. So, again, I’ve seen they’re lying around in the channel. It’s been a couple weeks and I get a DM from another person that channels saying, hey, still looking for a maxium gun? Yeah, I’ve heard this story before. He’s like there’s a there’s a store that will ship to the US that has some in stock. I’m like, Oh, well put them on the screen. So he sends me Lincoln is to some shop express.co.uk or something. Apparently, it’s a pretty big mail order thing over there. And I’m like, wow, 160 bucks. Wow, that’s a markup on that guy. So I think it was 129 or something. American dollars. It was like 109 hundred nine pounds. Yeah, do the conversion on that. But it’s got free shipping right? No tax. And I’m like, okay, so hundred and 59 bucks It was 129 retails, that’s a $30 markup figure, it’s going to be at least 20 bucks shipping. I’m paying 10 bucks, extra hundred 60 bucks, dude. And so I’m sitting there reading reading this looking at this site on my peed on Chromebook. And, and I’m sitting on the couch my new couch with my lovely wife and she’s like what you’re looking at and I’m like, I’m looking at this Commodore 64 Maxie thing. It’s like the next generation of what I do. God, but she’s like, you’re gonna get one of my god at that price? I don’t think so. So how much is it? I’m like 160 bucks. Yes, just kidding. I’m like really? Just I can’t just just can’t it. You love that stuff skin? I’m like, wow. All right, let’s, let’s see what shipping is gonna say that point time I didn’t realize was free shipping. I was going to be $200 for a Commodore 64 I was going to lose my mind. But it turns out free shipping. And if I want expedited handling, I can pay $3 on like expedited handling means that if I don’t pay the $3 I’m going to hold on to my order for a week. It’s like Fine, I’ll pay the three bucks. So it was $62 and 89 cents or something. So I’ve got it on order the dispatches already been sent, and I am due to get it on the 18th so I’m very excited about that. I finally get my hands on that Commodore 64 Maxie and that’s very exciting. Hey, speaking of which, those of you who have this thing I know Allison A few others, Chris, you guys have these Commodore 64 minis, there is a Hacking Team that’s promising to release a hardware lis mod that will allow you to put up to 150 games on the carousel that’s built in to the C 64. Because right now listen, you can play custom ROMs on their custom games, but you got to plug in a USB and you’ve got to you got to go through a special menu and there’s no fog. Sorry, it just looks like it’s really kind of, you know, shoveled in there kind of sucks. I mean it worse but it kind of sucks. And you can’t, you know, you can put a configuration file in there but you have to put an extra file or whatever, it’s pain in the ass. Well, this group claims that they’ve got a working modification that does not require a j tag or cracking open the box or doing anything crazy to it. It’s software only sell I’m sure they’re sitting on until the right time. They don’t want to get patched out or anything but I don’t know why they patch it out for whatever reason. But anyway, that’s coming, apparently. And I, I follow the guys on Twitter. So hopefully when that comes out, I’ll be able to tell you how great that is. And hopefully it works on both the Maxi and the Mini. Yeah. So let’s see what else I got going on. I’m getting ready to get off the freeway here. Okay. Shield TV remote check. Yeah, so it was interesting. There was a there’s a guy on man a second. Check my messages here. My wife texted me to now not true. Where’s that going? This? Oh, yeah, yeah. So there’s this guy on Twitter. He talks about a lot of retro stuff, a lot of retro toys, retro commercials, retro video games, and he was talking about it. He just got a bunch of like Battlestar Galactica action figures at some yard sale or flea market or something. And he was talking about, I don’t know, he got like Adama Apollo or whatever. And I was like, did you store a muffit? Because muffets where it’s at everyone wanted. Everyone wanted the muffit action figure when I was a kid. And he’s like, he’s like, No, they didn’t have one. And I wrote back and I’m like, Yeah, I meant I had one for the longest time. But its tail got broken off. Right? He says, Yeah, like that’s part of the problem with the muffit action figure is the tail is so fragile. It’s very rare even on eBay to find one that the tail hasn’t been broken off. And I don’t know what ended up happening to mine, my original one because I had one from the 80s, maybe late 70s. And it had a tail and it had a tail all the way until I lost the thing. I have no idea where it ended up. And some years later, I managed to get like a reprint of it. So the original one was brown like muffit from the actual Battlestar Galactica was brown. They remade one the second run or they change toy companies or whatever. And they made it and it was pretty close to the original, except for was essentially orange was like this brownish orange was very garish color. But it’s still a muffin. He still had his tail. And so I picked that up at some pop culture shop or I think maybe it was even at classic Gaming Expo one year, there was some booth that had a bunch of retro toys. They had a muffit it was orange, and I got him. But it did remind me of an interesting story. When God how old would I have been? So let me think about this. Let me do the math. We were on Columbia street in Wenatchee. That would have put me see so second part of sixth grade. I started. I started a year early 11 so it was like 11 that would have made it 1980. So this would have been 1980 I had to do the math, you hear the wheels turning in my head. So in 1980 I had, listen, we were poor, right? You guys know I had a very poor upbringing. My wife, my wife, wow, that was that a Freudian slip my mother. My mother was single mom. We had just left my alcoholic stepdad in Idaho, we had retreated to annachi and moved in with my grandmother, in this little itty bitty tiny place on Columbia Street. And no money. I don’t even know how I got this muffin. I think I got him at a yard sale now. And now that I’m talking about it, it’s starting to fire the neurons a little bit. I think I got them at a yard sale for a couple of bucks and he had the tail and everything. He was basically brand new. And so I had a hodgepodge of action figures that I played with as a kid right. I had a muffit I had I didn’t have any other Battlestar Galactica ones. I think I had like Star Wars ones, you know, the ones that nobody wanted. So you can pick those up for cheap. You know, you have Luke Skywalker I had, you know, bounty hunter number four, whatever. I had the ones that nobody wanted. But let’s action figures or action figures. And if you got a good enough imagination, and a good pilot dirt you can do a lot of damage with some with a good collection of action figures, right. So I had an uncle that lived next door and he ran a automotive repair facility out of a garage on his property. And the guy was foul mouth as hell. I mean, not a single word came out of that guy’s mouth that could not somehow be considered a curse word, right? But he sort of took a shine to me even though I wasn’t the most likable kid. You know. Listen, a lot of people thought I was gay when I was 11 years old, I was a feminist. My mother kept my hair all feathered out. I looked like a chick. And I wasn’t a guy’s guy didn’t have a dad around. So you know, I was raised by two women. I didn’t really have a chance. I can’t believe I turned out to be hetero. But anyway, despite the fact that he was a man’s man, he had the toolbox and he had the he was wearing the greasy overalls and the jumpsuit or whatever. And he was a guy’s guy. I think so he was my he was my grandmother’s brother. called him Uncle fic. He was my grandmother’s brother. And I don’t know how that worked out uncle Vic, but anyway, Zoo my mother’s uncle, right? Yeah, so just naturally my greatest that might my great uncle. Somebody got the math on this one. Anyway, he he I don’t think he liked me playing with action figures. You know, he’s a real man. You’re a real man. You’re working on cars not playing with toys, dolls, right? Favorite dogs but This rare act of kindness. He’s sort of like he I think he felt sorry for my mom and me. Maybe he thought my mom was high. She was a good looking woman when she was younger folks, so I would not be surprised if he had some sort of weird Ozark and lust factor over my mother. I know some of my friends did at the time. But that’s neither here nor there. But he he built muffit a doghouse. And we’re not talking about a couple of pieces of wood. He built like a full blown legitimate better than you could buy at the store. Dog and the first of all, he didn’t realize that he wasn’t a dog. He was a daggit. Right to try to explain to Uncle Vic the mechanic of mechanics that this was a space. This was a robot made to look like a futuristic dog that was killed in the attack on Caroline. Right, Caroline. I don’t think you would followed that, so yeah, yes, he’s a dog uncle Vic was like Yeah, well your dog does have a dog house and so he built me this doc house dudes and it was fucking awesome. It even had like a removable top. So it not only had like a doggie door where you could make muffit go inside, but you have to take you can take the top off so that you could, you know, put blankets and shit in there from off to sleep on. And it was really interesting as some random fleamarket post on Twitter sort of fired up all of these thoughts about muffit and this dog house and Uncle Vic and all this stuff and I thought you know what, that’s the sort of, you know, feature story that would be fun, a good, loving heartwarming story that you would expect to hear on passenger c radio. So I had that on my list of things to talk about. So muffit the dog muffets dog house is now checked off. I’m running close to time here I’m at 43rd and cactus Which means I’ve got maybe seven minutes depending on how the lights fashion out. So let’s so the last thing I wanted to talk about recently as in the last six months or so, I decided that I was tired of Google Chrome being a big fat pig on my computer. Get a drink here. I love Chrome. I love I love the integration of Google services. I liked it. It syncs all over the place. I liked it. Every page renders right on it. I liked it. There’s no limit to the extensions I can get. Because depending on what browser you get, right, like the original version of opera, I was a huge opera fan. They use their own rendering engine called presto, it was fast as fuck. You could not find a faster browser that opera, unfortunately, because people were writing for Internet Explorer. And Netscape at the time, opera would often get dumbing down or shitty pages or not at all rendered pages. We always important Internet Explorer and Safari and Netscape. It’s like, Dude, that page will run you asshole. So you had to like spoof other browsers when you were using opera. But it was a great browser. Well, opera finally turned tail put its tail between its legs, and adopted, like so many other browsers adopted the WebKit, chromium based rendering engine. So now I could technically leave Google Chrome and go to opera and still get all the extensions and all the good stuff. But you know, what, if you’re gonna run the chrome engine, why don’t just run Chrome browser Chrome is a big fat pig. And a lot of people don’t like the fact that it’s all tied to Google and sending tracking shit to Google. Listen, I more as we’ve talked about, Google already knows how many fucking pubic hairs are on my cock right now. Right? So I’m okay with them knowing what I’m browsing for the most part, you know, I’m saying, not a big deal. But it was to the point to where I mean, my machine, my fucking computer was actually visibly slowing down because of Chrome. And it’s like, all right, maybe it’s time to dust off off opera and have a look. So opera was great. I mean, so in the last like, six months, I’ve been using opera. Of course, I can’t put it on my peed on Chromebook. I’m stuck using Chrome there. The chrome behaves a lot differently on Chrome OS, and it doesn’t windows folks. And you don’t really have any choice. So you’re kind of stuck with it. But I put abroad at work I put hopper on my phone, I put opera on all the computers that I use, I took away I made it my default browser because that’s the only way you really truly adopt something is by making your default and I was good with it. Although couple little niggles one, the menu is on the wrong side, you on Chrome, the little three dots on the upper right and you click that open, you get access to everything that’s on the left hand side and Opera and for some reason I never quite a climatized to it. Then there was the problem where if I took a tab out of the browser and tried to drag it onto my other screen, nine times out of 10, opera would crash. And it’s like, what the fuck? So I just stopped doing it. Then I started realizing, why should I stop doing my workflow because the fucking browsers crashing? That’s bullshit. Chrome didn’t do that. So then the straw that broke the camel’s back is I started noticing. I have a bunch of weird directories on my computer. And the directories are named scoped underscore dir and some random number. I’m like, What the fuck is this looks like a virus thing right? Right. Why do I have this scope underscore dir all over my computer? What are these? So I decided to finally figure it out. And it turns out that it is a bug inside of opera. Where if you download a file, and you double, if you don’t put it in your downloads folder, and you put it somewhere else, and you double click it, it makes it when it downloads it, it puts into scope directory, and it runs from inside the scope directory after it makes a copy of it into your original download area. The fuck comes up with this stuff. And apparently this is like a three year old bug that opera just isn’t interested in fixing, right? It’s like wow. So I started looking for a replacement for opera. And I think Chris’s brother Tim was using the brave browser and I’ve read some reviews about its privacy type thing. Fastest version of the chrome engine, blah, blah, blah. So I downloaded it, and I’m currently under evaluation. So I’ve been using it for about a week. So far all the nonsense that opera was doing is gone. And yeah, it is fast as fuck. And it blocks trackers and everything else. I’ll talk more about. I’m almost home I want to get home. So anyway, so I’m using the brave browser now and I will give you more information when I have time. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the show. This is Shane R., Monroe patency radio. We’ll see you next time. Take care, buddy.
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