Hello everybody, this is Shane R. Monroe and you’re in the passenger’s seat with me passenger seat radio. It’s September 9 2021. And I am out running a quick errand, actually running down to Best Buy on my lunch hour to pick up the new Star Trek movies one through four and 4k. On blu ray, I’m very excited to get a hold of that for some reason Amazon’s not shipping them. Oddly enough, Best Buy has them in stock ready for pickup. So I figured I’d take you on a 1015 minute car ride with me talk a little bit about what I’ve been up to. I know it’s been a little while since we’ve had a show. But life has been extraordinarily busy lately. Hey, now Michael Caine, the great British actor is on board with us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get to you get to catch a live show, even if it’s short. Hey, now Alex J. Lopez, friend of the show. Listen, so let me tell you what’s been going on the last couple of days. So I finally decided after like 22 years, I’ve decided to finally finish out my back yard, which as a friend of mine pointed out was starting to look strangely like the parking lot behind the titty twister. On from dusk till dawn, for those of you who know that reference, you’ll be cracking up right now. And he’s not wrong. Over the years, the the the backyard of my home has become increasingly horrible, whether it’s demolition crap laying around, or the weeds grow out of control. But you know, I recently put a hot tub in back there, which I’ve been doing the show from. And I’ve had this sudden urge to improve my backyard to make it more palatable to hang out. So I painted the back of the house, I did all this extra work. And so now I decided, it’s time to go ahead and finish out the landscaping. Well not finish out, but at least get a good start. And so the game plan originally was to put in like a grass dog run outside the back door, blah, blah, blah. But times have changed. And we decided that for now, if we could just rock the whole backyard rocket. And then we can do stuff later. We can go in and put in plants if we want to. Or we can put in, you know, paver stones as little walkways, whatever. The dogs don’t give a rat’s ass where they pee and poop, they certainly don’t do it anymore on the grass than they do anywhere else. So we decided to just go ahead and rock the whole thing. So I got my son involved, he likes to be involved with stuff. And so I took him out back and we did a complete diagram in the backyard. We measured all walls and areas. And we came up with because that’s what you need to know if you’re gonna get rocks, right, you need to know what your square footage is. So that translates into two inches deep of X amount of rocks, x tons of rocks. So we did the whole thing we did this last weekend on Saturday, and we came up with the square footage. I was trying to call me but they can, they can piss off. And so we came up with the square footage. It’s about 2800 square feet. So for those of you who have ever done one of these sorts of projects, you probably know that that clocks in in about 28 tons of rock. Yeah, that’s that sounds like a lot and it is so so we went down there we we we went to a local, like a gravel and rock landscaping thing. And so we went there because they have a showroom, right? And so there are you know, you can go in and see what kind of rock you want. Now we did rock the front yard remember, years and years and years ago, so one thought was to match the rock. Or I told my son I and my wife didn’t care asked my wife first. Of course my son doesn’t know that he knows now probably but I said listen, what do you want me to rock back there and says I don’t care. I’m like, Okay, well, I don’t care either. So let’s give Brian a say. I mean this is his inheritance after all. So he he had a very clear idea what he wanted. And so we went to the gravel yard, and we went through all the different samples. And so the sample so here’s the thing. So we went out there we looked around a little bit. Then we went in and got a pamphlet and the pamphlet showed how much the rock cost per ton and what they actually had on hand versus what they had to special order. So it was really cool seeing Brian he’s like 14 right? So he’s trying he’s getting all involved in this it was kind of cool. And he’s like well let’s not get something that special orders we can get it sooner I’m like I’m good with that. So we have like 15 to choose from. So we located all 15 eliminated them one by one. We don’t want half inch, we want one inch. We don’t like anything that’s too red, right? Through this whole deal was really cool as I father son bonding shit, and and so it was cool. And so we came up with the right rock and we went in and we ordered the amount of the the cost of the rock was about 1500 bucks for 28 tons. And we said, Hey, can we get this sent over in two batches? Right? And they’re like, Yeah, no problem, no problem. And so they went to run the card in their machine was down or something, right? Of course, of course, their machine was down. And they’re like, Well, you know, we’ll go ahead and we’re gonna run this. We’re gonna run this again later, because this was on Saturday, right? So we may not get the machine up until Tuesday. And you see, you might see the charge come in on Tuesday, but we got your order, and you’re good. Okay. So, I said, so let’s have one delivered Wednesday, which was yesterday. And let’s have the rest delivered a week from that Friday. So that gives us about nine days to get the 14 tonnes down before we had the next 14 tonnes delivered. Plus there’s some cleanup and stuff we still have to do back there, even though some of the yard was ready to be rocked. Some of it is not. So we figured that gives us enough time to prep in between. So I’m like Okay, so what so they said, Well, on Tuesdays, the guy will call you and make arrangements for your delivery on Wednesday. I’m like, okay, that’s cool. So the charge hadn’t gone through yet either. So I’m like starting to get a little itchy. So Tuesday comes, it gets up to five o’clock, and nobody has called me. Nor has the charge gone through yet. So now I’m starting to wigged out a little bit wondering what’s going on. So 530 ish comes around. And I’m like, I can’t believe I should have called them before they close because they closed at five I should have called him I should have called them. So out of nowhere, like 535 I get this text message from the company saying your order got processed, you know, you were billed 14 $198 or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And so, I’m like, okay, so am I getting the shit tomorrow? Or what? What’s the deal here? Does that mean that they’re going to make forced me to reschedule because they didn’t go through? What what’s what’s the deal? Well, so I text back fingering, somebody just sent that thing. I don’t think it looked. It didn’t look automated. So it’s like maybe if I if I text them, they’ll write back and I said, Hey, listen, great. I’m glad I got charged. But nobody’s called me nobody called to arrange the no one called me to arrange the, the delivery. And so about three minutes after I sent that, I get a call. And I’m like, and they’re like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So your delivery is scheduled for tomorrow between 5am and 6am. And I’m like, okay, that seemed a little on the early side, but I get it want to beat the heat, whatever. My wife wakes up at five anyway, so I’m practically awake between five and six anyway. So I’m like, okay, and she said, the guy Oh, give me a call when he’s on his way. Okay, so I brought my chair, I had brought the phone back to the bedroom with me. So at 5am I’d get up, turn my ringer on, right. Maybe get a quick shower, and be ready for when the guy shows up. So the next morning, my wife, my wife wakes me up at like, 425 in the morning. Okay, we got like, What? What’s going on? And she goes, she goes, there’s a truck outside. I think I hear a truck outside. I’m like, I look up at the clock on the Sealand one. Given it’s for it’s for it’s even 430 yet. I can’t be here. And she goes, did they call and I’m like, Well, I don’t know the ringer is off. I was gonna turn on a five. So I pick up my phone. And the call his call came in at like 4:05am to let me know he was on his way. And he was 10 minutes out. It’s like, wait, wait, wait, what? So So now I’m like, I’m still trying to wake up, right? And so I dial the phone number back and get ahold of the guy and I’m like, Hey, hey, you’re supposed to be here till you know, between five and six. I said, I’ll be right out. I said, Well, let me get my let me move my car so you can put the stuff in the driveway. And he’s like, Well, some of it’s already in the street. I’m like, Wait, what? He says yeah, I couldn’t get ahold of you. So I was gonna put it in the street. And I’m like, give me two minutes. Let me get some clothes on me right out there. I’ll be right out there and move my car. So I didn’t want it in the street. I wanted it on my driveway. And one because it’s closer in two because the city of Glendale is notoriously Gestapo and ever since they put up that turning your neighbor website. Anytime there’s any violation going on in the neighborhood, especially if it’s me, being somebody turns my ass and probably because I call the cops on when they’re playing mariachi music at 1am. But whatever. You know, tit for tat, right. So the last thing I wanted was a whole bunch of rocks. sitting in front of my house because you’re technically not allowed to do that so anyway um yeah so now I run outside and it was kind of hard for me to tell there’s a big old pile of rocks sitting in front of my house I’m like God dammit. And so I go and I get my my keys I go and I move my car out of the way and the guy’s talking about how it’s not his fault and blah blah blah and if I wanted on my if I wanted on my my driveway, I have to sign this waiver saying that they’re not responsible if they crack the sidewalk or have a sinkhole appears under my driveway. All this crazy shit means he’s talking about how how he has another job and he’s gonna be late. Meanwhile, the guy doesn’t shut the fuck up. I mean, you’re already they brought me in at 4am this morning and blah blah, I’m like, dude, I don’t care about your play, just drop my fucking rocks in my in my yard in my driveway. So finally we get the rocks dropped off right? And so I mean, it’s not even five o’clock yet. By the time the rocks are there in my driveway, and he’s gone. So So now I’m left with a dilemma of do I do I move the rock or do I hope that nobody turns me in. I was planning that night last night to get to work. But you know, not really not being sure how much rock is there, how long it’s going to take blah, blah blah whether I need to get the wheelbarrow around the other pile of rocks they just got dropped all this crap I didn’t know for sure what I should do. So I got up, I had something to eat and I looked at my work calendar, my work calendar was pretty clear. And it’s like I rather not get a citation from the city. So I’ll just call in I’ll take a day off and I’ll move the rock and so at least onto my property if nothing else, which would have been a huge waste of time to move you know, a ton and a half a rock for 40 feet or 30 feet to get it off the street. As it turned out I can get my wheelbarrow around the pile so instead of moving it from the street, to my driveway and then to the backyard I just move that pile to the backyard. So I was about seven o’clock in the morning I called him and said listen Something came up I need to take the day off here’s my stand in here’s who’s covering the meetings etc. So I went out there shovel in hand, seven o’clock in the morning somewhere in Phoenix and I started moving rock and I moved rock until almost 3pm yesterday so from seven in the morning till three in the afternoon I was one rock moving son of a bitch and so yeah and of course I had to lay down landscape fabric and do all that other stuff so it’s not like I was literally hauling rock and I did take like 40 minutes off at lunchtime to to run in get something from the store but I needed something I needed suntan lotion because I realized I hadn’t put any on that day right? I hadn’t put anything on in the morning and it’s like yeah I burned pretty easy should probably not do that. me go ahead and bring my items out to me. I am in slot one next Jonas So next I am blue ish close enough wow all right should be out when your item in three minutes awesome. I do like curbside pickup What can I tell you so anyway, so that’s what I that that has been my major project over this last week has been getting the rocks on order prepping the backyard getting the landscape fabric and the stakes and and doing all that good stuff. And then yesterday, of course, was just all rock moving all the time. And I gotta I gotta tell you something. And listen, it was it peaked out at 106 degrees here yesterday. And so that’s that happened about 1pm hit 106 but it was it was in the low hundreds most of the time that I was there working. But I gotta tell you, I was kind of pleased in one respect. Because you know, I’m a 50 year old dude. And you know, out schlepping rocks in the heat. I mean, we’re talking I moved yesterday and I can’t be sure of course because the pile is sort of non discriminant but are indiscriminate I should say, I probably moved. I probably moved seven tons of rock yesterday. And then my son came home this is so great. So I told my kid because my kids always looking he’s always looking to earn right. God bless his soul. He doesn’t believe he’s entitled to everything. He knows that if you want stuff he needs to work for it and we’ve I think we’ve done a decent job of of imparting value. To work right and this is not easy work either. And so we agreed early on when we started the project he’s like well Am I going to get to help and most importantly will I get paid for did you go yeah hang on 997 56 Okay, all right thank you. You too so I felt I felt really good that you know, he was he was basically saying, you know, will there be a paid paid means of contributing to the project? And I’m like yeah, of course you know, listen them I’m going to be doing a lot of the work myself but you you’re more than that. I’m more than happy to pay you to join in the fun Listen, I can hire somebody I can hire a contractor or as I was told I needed to drive by Home Depot and pick some Mexicans up to help me with the job. I could have done that and paid them but hey, listen, let’s keep the money in the family shally Let’s give my son a good work ethic and so far so good. not entitled to shit and in fact get this get this he actually feels guilty about his weekly allowance so he has chores around the house and you know and we have we have him do things that we don’t want to do so we’re willing to pay for that. And you know, if he doesn’t do the work he doesn’t get paid Of course so it’s not like you get money whether you work or not, he still has to do the work. So he actually said hey, listen, I don’t I don’t think that you’re I think you’re paying me too much for my my weekly allowance. It doesn’t take me that long. It’s not that hard to work, and I think you’re paying me too much money for my allowance. And I’m like, Well, shit, dude. Listen, I’m all about I’m all about helping out to making sure you stay ethical. So we reduced his allowance and so I told him I said, Listen, this is hard work. This is back breaking work. I said I’ll pay you 15 bucks an hour to come out and schlep rocks and work this this backyard rocking project with me. And he was thrilled Listen, he he’d be making 15 at McDonald’s right? And so he gets to stay at home we have the TV on we have a good time while we’re doing it so he comes home yesterday all so first off I sent him pictures when he was coming home from school so we got off early. He was out at like 1230 or 1245 and I sent him pictures I said I said I am shaking and baking out here and he’s like no no, you’re costing me money you’re costing me money I’m like dude, relax, there’s 28 tons of this shit to spread around. Trust me there will there will be no there’ll be no shortage of work effort for you. So he gets home from school he sits down he has a snack or whatever. And so he ends up coming out at 210 or 215 something like that. I remember looking at the clock because you know he’s on the clock punching the timecard right. So we keep track of you know what his hours are. So by 330 he was done I mean he was like I think I’ve done for the night and I’m like that’s cool. I said I’ll probably go out later cuz I’ve now I’ve had a couple hours to rest and he was coming down and it’s like, I may go back out. It’s like he’s like I would but I am just I am so tired I had to walk back and forth from school today. And I’m like wait a minute wait wait wait wait so so and I went out and helped him so like when he started working I was still working and he was trying to give me that you know the bit about how he had to walk to and from school and that’s why he’s tired I’m like oh so the five hours I was doing this ahead of time does not count you know you know you’re walking to and from school is more than five hours of what we just did for the last hour and a half no that’s not what I meant. You know Finally we give each other shit but it kind of occurred to me though you know we’re in lockdown you know we’re kind of in lockdown but I mean I don’t go anywhere I’m sort of reclusive. You know, I go out to the store a couple times a week, whatever. But you know, I don’t I don’t do I don’t go hiking up the mountains. I don’t go hiking through the Grand Canyon. I don’t go on 40 mile bike rides I don’t do I mean I do my workouts I do my art trainer. I’ve added some some dumbbell work and some core work to my daily ritual but but for the most part, you know, I’m not a super active guys. So the only time that I ever get to really see how I fare from a physical standpoint, is for a huge physical labor project like this to come around. Or if my dog happens to escape the yard and I’ve got to chase him down two and a half miles on foot in the sun. Let me tell you that little dog and haul ass I’m sure you remember the Thanksgiving a couple years ago and the dog got loose in my mother in law’s complex I had to run his ass down. And boy, that dog did not stop anyway. So it’s it’s kind of nice that you know my my healthy 14 year old son dies after an hour. hour and a half and I was doing it for like six seven hours and I was good to go so I thought that was kind of nice every now and then to cross check how your fitness is doing and frankly this morning I woke up a little sore but you know we’re most people like Oh did you wake up and your back was killing saying no i i feel okay i mean listen I feel it I feel a little worn I mean certainly last night I went to sleep like on the drop of a hat but it’s uh yeah, I’m okay so I thought it was kind of nice to be able to you know every now and then sort of prove that what you’re doing is working out you know, hey listen, I wanted to drop a couple pounds so this rock project is good, good workout for me and I can avoid the art trainer for a few days. So that’s what I’ll be doing the rest of the week at night is I’ll be finishing up the the rock that we have the 14 tons that we have and it’s looking really good I mean, the backyard really did start looking like the titty Twister parking lot and so it’s nice it’s starting to look really nice I’m putting down the high grade lawn fabric I didn’t cheap out. I didn’t go for the Super shitty, you know, find Corinthian leather version I went with the contractor grade stuff, which I mean I can tell as I’m laying this shit down that this is like miles better than the stuff I’d put in the front yard so I got the good stuff to put down in the back so hopefully, weed control will not be a problem in the future. But yeah, I’ve only got a couple of minutes before I get back to the house. trying to think if I’ve got any topics that are worth just jumping on real quick. Oh, I recently released a video for the GB operator. This is kind of cool. I sort of got a head start on it which was neat. I early ordered the thing from a while ago and it finally shipped I think I was one of the first people to get my hands on one and essentially what this little guy so that’s always good right if you can get a YouTube video up first, you’re in good shape I mean that’s kind of the idea is you if you have a new toy tech toy, you want to be on the front lines of getting that influencer video out right influencers that’s a dumb name. So anyway, so I put it through its paces, I made a nice hour long video. Part of that is actually a Gameboy Advance tribute video that I shot several months ago. And I was originally going to release it for the 20th anniversary of the GTA and I was going to have some live segments I was going to have me playing some games on the GVA. But you know, getting the camera set up to do that and to take good quality, off screen video, especially if something like that’s really really difficult. And so I made the sort of unboxing video I call it my visual brochure. So I made one of those and I was pretty proud of it. I thought it turned out really, really well. I covered a lot of great aspects of the GPA. But I had it in the cane I didn’t want to release it by itself. It wasn’t a standalone video, but I didn’t really want to, I just couldn’t get myself motivated to do the other piece of it. And so since this GB operator works on Gameboy, gameboy color and Gameboy Advance, it seemed like between the actual review of the hardware and the playing of the games, right, I could throw a real in the middle there that was essentially Hey, listen this place Gameboy Advance games, let’s talk about the Gameboy Advance and why I like it so much. And so I threw that in the middle. So it’s a three part video. So it’s like 25 minutes, 25 minutes. And then the rest is actual gameplay video. And I think it turned out pretty well. And so essentially what this does, for those of you who haven’t seen the video or have no clue what I’m talking about, it is a USB device that you plug into your computer that turns your computer into a Gameboy. And when I say that, essentially you use real cartridges, you plug real cartridges into this little guy, and you launch the software and it will automatically dump the cartridge and play it inside of an emulator. Its whole goal is to be a super easy turnkey way of playing real legal physical cartridges of all three types on your computer, and it doesn’t really really well. I mean, it’s just like playing with a console. It’s not where you’ve got to open the emulator and then you know, put these settings in. Hey, listen, I understand that if you’ve got a really well laid out Gameboy emulation solution This doesn’t. This isn’t as great for you unless you want to dump your own cartridges. But it also does save stuff too. So if you’ve got like a Pokemon read cartridge or something like that, and you want to pull the save file off and then continue playing it in an emulator. You’re playing it on your, your phone under an emulator or whatever, you can do that. And then you can move the Save back up. So it’s a save READ WRITE device. And the emulator. If as you’re playing on the emulator, when you’re done playing, it will upload your save. So you plug the cartridge and you can read, it pulls your saved down, you play where you were playing. And then when you’re done, you close the emulator and says, Hey, let me write that save backup for you. And so then you can continue your progress on a real Gameboy. So it’s kind of cool. It’s a neat little device. They’re taking orders again for it, they were out of stock, they’re taking orders again, for it, shipping, I think in a couple weeks, so you might want to check it out. But yeah, watch the video, see what you think. I mean, it’s obviously not for everybody. But it’s a really neat piece of kit. And it does, it does its job very, very well. Even though it’s still kind of beta in terms of the emulator and the software. I’ve been in close contact with the company. By the way, I paid full price, I did not get it for free. So this is not a compensated endorsement. But I did write to the company and let them know that I had a video coming. And I liked their product. And here’s a couple things that I found that maybe you want to look at. And they were really receptive. I mean you got to love that and they got a nice presence on Twitter. So I’ve been sort of helping them plug a little bit of there and of course plugging my video too. So it’s been pretty cool. Alright, well that’s all I got for now, folks, I gotta get out of here, get back in and go to work. I need to eat something first and then go back to work. This is Shane Arman road passie radio. We’ll see you next time. Take care, everybody.
Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2021-09-09
