Hello, folks, this is Shane urban, rural, you’re in the passenger seat with me. It’s passenger seat radio. It is Tuesday, May 16 2023. And yeah, you’re actually on my 13 mile commute to work. As it turns out, I actually have to go into the office today. So, so today the Office requires us to come in and we’re having some sort of a, some sort of a strategic planning meeting, you know, normally at mid level management, you don’t really have to involve yourself and stuff like that. But sometimes it’s nice to be invited to the party. Hey, it’s Michael Caine, the great British actor has joined the chat. That’s awesome. Welcome, sir. You’re one of the two or three people I mentioned. Yeah, so into the office, I go, I had to put on pants, you know, that sort of thing. Same old, same old problem, get used to working from home. And then when you got to go in, it’s like a complete deviation, your lifestyle. Any Hill, no big deal. And we’re very, we’re very blessed to be able to have the opportunity to work remotely, so I’m not going to complain if I have to come in. So anywho what’s been going on? Life has just been life. Otherwise, I would have probably hopped on here sooner. My hot tub, one of the pumps took a dump. And this isn’t the first time this pump has had taken a dump. So it wasn’t one of the critical pumps, but you have to drain it to get the pump out. Blah, blah, blah, it needed to be repacked or whatever they do with pumps. So I have had no hot tub in a week, I’m ready to have my heart set back. That’s another reason why I probably haven’t had a show. Because typically speaking, if, if my family’s at home, the only time I’ll do his show is in Huntsville. Otherwise I’m at work. You know, I’m working during the day. So I don’t hop on my workstation to do his show. Sometimes I’ll do something at lunchtime. Right, but who’s pinging me? I don’t know. Sometimes, but yeah, the hot tub seems to be the opportune place. But anyway, so hot tubs been down. We are in the countdown to the end of the school year, which is a complete nightmare in my home because my son has his finals and his last things he asked to do. And of course, this has been literally the worst year for my wife as a teacher the worst. And, you know, every year it’s been getting a little bit worse. And what do I mean by that? What’s first of all, my wife loves teaching. She can’t imagine herself doing anything else. And she loves teaching high school, which in my opinion would be fuck that right? I wouldn’t last two seconds as a high school teacher of any subject. I’d kill them. One at a time. Slow. But sure. But yeah, so but she loves it. She loves this. She loves math. She loves teaching math. And most of the time she loves the kids, which is crazy. But where teachers and if you know any teachers, they’ll tell you, where teachers have problems, or administration and parents. Now, sometimes you get one or the other. And sometimes you end up having problems with both. And what the problem with having both is when parents are unreasonable and parents are assholes and parents are. They’re not being good people. You have an administration, they can insulate you, they can buffer you that can assist you in defusing the situation. Unfortunately, if you have poor admin along with bad parents, you basically just want to, you know, put your head in the noose and kick the chair out because there is no respite for you. You don’t have anything, there’s nobody to help you. So it kind of sucks. So, the last couple of years, my wife has had excellent administration, which is great. But she’s also had worse than normal parents. I’m talking about parents that believe nothing that they’re told about their student, nothing. These and this isn’t one of those situations where, you know, there’s an unreasonableness with the teacher. You know, when you have a student that is gone all the time, doesn’t do any doesn’t do their homework doesn’t study fucks around in class, and they start to fail, right? So they sit down Home failure notices. I mean, you know, it’s digital now but they sent home failure notices the parents know ahead of time that their kids are fucking up. But they don’t believe their kids are fucking up. They believe they’re the problem is always the teacher, teachers the problem teachers the problem teachers the problem, and the kids not send tell the kids Oh, the teacher is fine. It’s just me fucking around in class. You know, I’m not doing any of my homework. And so, it when you get a situation where you have a kid like that, first off, the teacher begins to resent the kid, even if the kid isn’t the main source of the problem, they start to resent the children too. And that sucks. Teachers don’t like that. I mean, but there are parents going on right now that essentially demand that their kid be allowed to retake tests and to turn in homework that’s been out for four or five months. What can we do to get her grade to a beer in a? Well, that’s kind of too late. You’ll be lucky if she passes now. I mean, that’s what we’re boiled down to these people, these people are so terrible, they be raised my wife and email. They’d be raised her on the phone, right? And they’re just they’re terrible people. And that’s not it, though. They they’ve contacted the administration, and the administration says, you know, the teacher is acting within 100% accordance, so go fuck yourself basic. I mean, that’s not what they say. But that’s the idea. You know, the teacher has done nothing wrong, the teachers acting ethically, ethically, there is no problems here. And all and all they do is ignore and ignore anything that isn’t getting my wife in trouble, or getting the school in trouble or somehow absolving their daughter of any wrongdoing, you know, and now they’re showing up at the school itself, until these people have jobs, they’re showing up during the school day, to to meet with the administration to bitch at the school. And now they’re talking about, you know, now they’re even saying, but we’ll get a lawyer. I’m like, what? Your kid is a fuckup. And your kids are fucked up. And you’re the one trying to call a lawyer. What the fuck is wrong with you? Anyway, so it’s been an unusually difficult end of the year. What’s more, is they want her the parents want her to three, take the class next year. And my wife’s like, there’s no fucking way. Right? There’s no fucking way I’m taking this good again. And so now they’re having to alter teacher schedules and other schedules to accommodate this one students, shitty parents. Unbelievable. And I can tell you right now, that if you’re watching the news at all, if you’re if you keep track of teaching as a profession at all, they’re leaving. They’re tired of the abuse, they’re tired of the bullshit. We did not sign up to raise your children. We did not sign up to be berated by you. You know, I mean, you can go to read it and find these teachers subs, where they’ll just unload. I mean, they have to do it anonymously, because they don’t want to, you know, be fired. But it’s ridiculous. You know, half the math department. You know it my wife school is talking about retirement. What I’m starting, I gotta get out of here. So get your 30 you’ve been teaching for only 10 years, what are you going to do? I don’t know anything but this, right. You know, it’s just they want out, they want out. This is not what they wanted to do, you know? So anyway, so, you know, Happy wife, happy life, all that good stuff. So my wife has been miserable. I mean, we talk a little bit about this, or previously on the show, she had an SVT heart incident. Right? And that is directly caused by stress, right? So she is out of her fucking mind. You know, when she starts talking about, I’m gonna quit. I’m not going to resign my contract. I need the hell out of this profession. What else can I do? That’s all she’s ever wanted to do. And for her to be at the breaking point, you know, it’s got to be pretty bad. Anyway. So yeah, no, it’s not. That’s not a good it’s not a good thing at all. And my son, of course, you know, he’s, he’s finishing up his junior year. And you know, the higher you get, the more stuff you have to do. But but let’s get out of school for a minute. My son is now an employed member of society. That’s right. I remember being a teenager I couldn’t wait to work, right. I mean, that was, there’s so many. There’s so many milestones, at least. Back when I was a kid. There were a lot of milestones around around your teenage years, dating, getting a car, your first kiss and maybe other stuff. But your first job making money, be supporting yourself freedom, excessive ability, you know, a license begets a car, a car begets access a car gives you the ability to go to work, and work get you more money and more money gives you the opportunity to do more stuff. That’s not the way it works anymore. I mean, it’s, it’s pretty bad. A lot of teenagers don’t drive, they don’t get licenses they have, you know, they have no interest in working. And, you know, their, their parents are, you know, in the, in the mindset of, well, you know, I don’t you know, I want my kid to be able to focus on his studies, or I want them to have an easier life than I had or whatever. It’s just, it’s mind boggling. But we told we told Brian, that when he turned 16, he was getting a license and he was getting a job. That’s what you do. I am not going to have a 30 year old unemployed. You know, Mama’s boy, no driving, no future, no life, no potential, you know, my kids are going to are going to get get shit done. So he got his license, which was great. But getting a job these days, man, I don’t know, if you’ve got kids, or if you’ve been actually trying to find like, sounds sad, like entry level jobs. It’s very, it’s very different than when we were kids, you know, when I was 16, about 15 and a half actually, because you’d work at 15 and a half. But you’re you’re pounding the pavement right? You are walking into every single place that had a you know, help one at sign. Every fast food place every any place movie theaters, any place that possibly would hire somebody that was that age, you were there pounding on the door, saying I’d like a job can I work? What can I you know, what can I do you have any openings. Nowadays, that’s not how it works. You end up having to go through a website or a conglomerate website, or worse yet, an aggregate website. You can’t even walk in, you want to walk in and shake the managers hand show him that you’re not a fucking retard. Sorry, not politically correct. But you know, that’s part of the deal. It’s a sales pitch. You walk in, you shake the manager’s hand, you say, I’m looking for a job. I’m doing excellent in school. I’m reliable. I’m dependable and hardworking. You know, and you could you can get a lot out of a person by their initial effect and how they appear to you. Not anymore. Not anymore. You submit a resume, resume, but an application, I guess, right? So you submit an application. And it gets into a system which goes into another system, which goes into another system, and I have no fucking clue where it ends up. Right? I don’t know. And basically, it appears to end nowhere, right? Because, you know, he spent he’s been like six months looking for a job. Any job I’m not He’s not holding out for management. Right? He’s not looking for, you know, I need benefits. Now. He’s looking for any job. He just couldn’t find one. So, finally, he he got in with Little Caesars of all people Pizza pizza, right. And so he is now gainfully employed as as pizza guy. So he’s quickly learning, you know, he was interested in working, right. He wanted to work. He didn’t want to work as much as I wanted to work. But he knows he needs money, right? He knows he needs his own cash supply. So it’d be That’s why working was important. The first day he came back from his gig a five hour job. He’s like, Man, I hate working. And then you realize I have to work 20 hours a week. Yeah, it’s just it just cracks me up. You know? It’s, it’s funny watching it from the other side. I mean, it’s, it’s really funny. And you know, it’s like, I hope it’s not busy at night. I’m like, why would you not want it to be busy? Can you imagine sitting around a little caesars with nobody there doing nothing? It may be refilling sauce things and doing that for five hours? God no, I want to be moving. I want to be I loved working. I loved working the busy shifts that like McDonald’s or Arby’s or Burger King. I love the busy times, man. You’re clocking you’re busting your ass. And next thing you know, it’s time to go home. It was the you know, the Sunday nights at Arby’s when nobody was there. And it’s like, what are we doing that I’ve already wiped this counter down like 900 times. Can your wife tried to get a job at a private school? Yes, she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to work at a private school. She doesn’t want to work there. You know, she’s, she’s not, you know, prim and proper. Right? So she’s got the tattoos. She’s got The piercings, you know, she’s got, she’s got the attitude. And you know, so there’s it, she doesn’t really want to work at a private school. She doesn’t. That’s what I told her. I said, you know, Megan, so these parents are paying, you know, and it’s not, they’re not feeling obliged to come in and fuck with you. But you know, and she, you know, she’s, she can teach college. But, again, she wants to teach this course she wants to teach these, this math, she wants to teach this level of education. So, I don’t know, at some point in time, you know, I told her, I said, Listen, I’ll back whenever you want to do. But, you know, these are your options. I mean, you’ve got extraordinary amounts of education. And there are a few different things you can do. But that’s, that’s not a lot. I mean, there’s a few different things you can do, you’re gonna have to pick one. I don’t like that or like that, well, then you’re stuck teaching high school math, honey. That’s where it boils down to. So anyway, Brian is now busting his ass. And I gotta tell you, I’m, I’m very pleased with him. I’m pleased with the way he has turned out just in general. You know, our other kids, we had various, you know, with my two daughters, we had various issues. Obviously, if you’re a longtime listener of the show, you know all about it, because I brought him here. But, you know, with, with Brian, most of his troubled times when he was when he was young, like in, you know, baby toddler, early, early years. But but you know, he’s, he’s just really good kid. I mean, he’s, he’s proven to be a very useful mammal. So I’m hoping it continues, you know, we only have a couple more years left, where we have any influence on him at all. So let’s see. So that’s sort of the family update. Yes, I got an I got an interesting side story. My so we have a cat named shimmy. The white cat small white cat. We’ve had this cat for like, 12 years. I don’t even know the number. I’m gonna have to look up pictures or something to find out when we got her but she was a stray. Not feral, right? But somewhere above stray house cat below feral, right? So she’s always been a little bit unusual. She absolutely does not like other animals, right? She doesn’t want the other cat near. She’s what the dogs near and about, I don’t know, maybe six or seven years ago. She started like, hunkering down in locations where animals couldn’t get to her right. So with the dogs, they they’re not allowed in my office area. We’ve got a little gate up so the dogs can get my office area. But we didn’t have any other cats. So it was so shimmy would hang out back in my office all the time. We had a litter box back there and everything. But it got to the point to where she wouldn’t leave an area and then she would just pee and poop. Wherever she was at at the time. You know, I think she peed on $100 keyboard. She peed all over Brian’s switch case. It was it was not good. So we had to sort of come up with a way of dealing with her anxiety around other animals. So what you do is either rehome her to somebody else, which, you know, that’s like a last resort sort of thing. We’re not We’re not those people. When the going gets tough. Give them away. Right. But yeah, so we built her a room actually, my moving right. So we we encase the garage, we made a room for my daughter Corsini a nice big bedroom. And then on the other side of that bedroom, where the the door of the garage would be, is my giant movie now that has all my DVDs, my blu rays, physical media. It’s it’s my blockbuster. It’s my blockbuster rentals, you know? And so that’s like the old thing but that room is right off the living room. Right. So we decided to convert that into a cat Hutch if you will, a cat house is a cat house. But but we put we literally bought a screen door from the front door, you know, for your for your house, and we put it over the entry to the movie duck. So that allows us to keep the other animals out, keep her inside and it allows her to see out allows us allows her to hear us and allows us to hear her. So you know when we talk about you know locking a cat up in her own room because she won’t deal with other animals. It’s as they say on Star Trek, it’s a very it did very nice gilded cage, right? And she’s, she’s just been fine with it. She doesn’t care. She’s She sits up on her throne. She eats, she drinks she poops, she sleeps, bang. And we go in, we brush her, you know, we go in and see her blah, blah, blah. But when she comes out, she turns into a freak right every now and then we’ll let her out to see if maybe age has mellowed her out a little bit. But every time we let her out, she’s a fucking mess. So she goes right back in. And, you know, c’est la vie. But she’s, I think she’s always had some sort of a urinary thing. she pees a lot. She drinks a lot. But the doctors don’t really find anything. We take her in there like he’s okay. Well, sometime in the last week or so maybe two weeks. She’s been howling at her door. So she stands by the door and house. And she does how normally to like if her waters empty or her foods empty, or she demands attention. She’ll sit there. That sort of bed. So you go in your feed or your pattern, you give her water or whatever, and she’s fine. He’s fine. But lately, recently, she’s been standing by the door, staring out rearing and scratching at the door like she wants out. And so we’re like, Yeah, that’s really that’s really weird. So we feed her we water. Brian did her litter box this last week and said there’s like no poop in here and saying, fuck cats, the cats that don’t poop or not eating cats that don’t eat into dead, right. I mean, that’s, it’s crude. But that’s pretty much what it boils down to. When an animal stops eating, and they cannot be cajoled back into eating again, they die. And you know, I’ve had we’ve had numerous animals that that’s the case, whatever their affliction is, stops them from eating, and they they whisked away and dying. And of course, you know, my son is God bless him. He is the consummate caring human being right. I’ll give you a quick side story, and I’ll finish the cat thing. So he calls me his he walks to school, it’s like 1.1 miles, he walks to school. And you’ll see signs on light posts and stuff about missing animals, or, you know, I found your dog I found a dog is the yours blah, blah, blah. So he’s walking to see when he calls me I’m in the hot tub and morning hot tub did before work. And he’s like, Dad, there’s these two dogs running around? I’m like, Are they attacking you? or something’s like No, no, but I’m afraid they’re gonna get hurt running around. And I say, you know, so we sat we had the question, you know, do they look like? They look like wild dogs? Do they look domesticated? Tell me what they look like, blah, blah, blah. And, and he’s like, Man, I just don’t want anything to hurt him. Can you call somebody in? Like, who the fuck am I gonna call at 630 in the morning. And he’s like, just just call somebody. Okay, I don’t want him to get hurt. He’s like, all concerned and shit. I love it. And so I actually did end up calling somebody about, I think it was eight o’clock that they opened animal, you know, animal control in Glendale. And I actually had to leave a message for him. I mean, they weren’t, their phone was ringing through to voicemail. So I just left, I went to their website and reach our website. So I went on the website, and I described and let everybody you know, I let them know that, you know, we saw these dogs. Here’s the location, here’s what they look like. They’re traveling together. They’re probably they probably got loose, we’re concerned about them, blah, blah, blah. And so I wrote Brian back and I said, See, I told you I called somebody I promise I called somebody you know. And then about a week later, signs showed up for the two dogs that he’s pretty sure the ones that he saw. And so he’s like, You need to call him dad and let them know that I saw their dogs. I’m like, Yeah, but that was like a week ago. And I don’t even know if Animal Control picked him up or what? And he’s like, can you just reach out and tell him I saw their dog so they know they were at least alive at that point. And I’m like, I’m frustrated and proud at the same time that my son is some some somewhat of a humanitarian. And so I actually texted the number I didn’t want to call because it was frickin six o’clock in the morning. I texted, said, Hey, my son walks you know, by your sign. He’s pretty sure he saw your dogs I call the animal control. Here’s the number and call. I don’t know if they pick them up. But I hope you find them good luck. And they like nine o’clock or 10 o’clock or something they wrote back and said thank you we appreciate you appreciate the info. Never never heard back so I don’t know if they found their dogs or not. But anyway, so back to the cat. It’s I’m running out of time. The so brains like there’s something really wrong with the cat. And I’m like, he’s like she she’s not up on her cat tree. She’s like sleeping behind a board next to the door. She’s like, there’s there’s something really wrong with her. And it’s like, so I finally did we just let her out. We let her to run around. And it was really weird. She was walking around, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t upset about anything. She was just walking around kind of aimlessly. And so my son’s like debt. Are you going to take her to the vet? You know, he’s trying to chastise me and then taking her to the vet. And I’m like, Yes, I’ll take her to the vet. So there’s a vet, literally a block from my house. I mean, maybe even less than a block. And we use we have we have a regular place. There’s very few places that see exotics, right. Because we had ferrets, we have rats, we have animals that typical vets don’t see. So we have a regular vet all pets Animal Hospital. And we really liked Dr. Marsh, the guy that ran the place. But recently his daughter took over he stopped work emulous the guy’s got to retire. Eventually. He was old when we start first started seeing him. But the place has become not as pleasant as it used to be right? His daughter took it over and the end is fine. I mean, I don’t want bad taco, because we probably had stuff take rats up there. But it’s like, listen there, it’s a good distance away. And it’s not the same people running the show is not the same. So it’s like, well, listen, I’ve got to work in the daytime, if I’m gonna, if I’m going to take the cat somewhere, it needs to be someplace close. So I decided to try this, you know, cactus, cactus pet care facility that’s right into the house. And so you know, new new pet owner registration, blah, blah, blah, all this standard shit. But yeah, so that they could see me the dad called which, you know, all pets wouldn’t have been able to see me and I’m worried about the cat. Now my son’s got me all filled with anxiety about it. And so we take the cat and the I mean, she gives the exam and everything. And she’s like, I think your cats blind. And you say, Look, watch this. And so she she does like a she called it a sec. It’s like a fight or flight test. I can’t remember what she called it. She pulls out the little eye thing that they look into her eyeball. See our pupils are dilating. She She can’t see. And all of her weird behavior suddenly kind of made sense, right? I mean, she, she’s not eating this, she can’t get to her food, she can’t see she can’t find it. She’s she’s not on her cat bed, because she can’t seem to get up there. And I felt really, really bad about the cat. And I said, So what’s that? We know, what do we do with this? And she says, she says, Well, look, let’s get some blood. Let’s take her blood pressure. Because the veins, the vessels behind her eyes are all like super engorged. And that’s often a sign of blood pressure situation. And I said, Well, you know, will she regain her sight? And she goes, it depends on I mean, it doesn’t look like there’s been a ton of damage back there. So she might if we can figure out what the root cause of it is and eliminate it. So the blood pressure turned out to be the red herring. No blood pressure problems. So she’s like, let’s get the blood work back. And we’ll see if it is thyroid, kidneys, whatever. Right? So Eric, that’s where we’re at. We’re in a holding pattern with again, so I don’t know, if you know, listen, she said, listen, the cat cats can live blind, fine. They have to adjust and you have to do some extra stuff for him. But overall, a blind cat’s not a dead cat. And I’m like, Okay, well, I guess that makes sense. So but we don’t know, like, What the I mean, but it seemed to come on quickly. I mean, she was fine. And then she wasn’t. So I’ll be curious to see what happens. I’ll keep you up to date. Because maybe it doesn’t affect you now. And maybe you’ll have some animal in the future that has a problem, you know, that sort of thing. So anywho so the cat thing. We’ll figure out what’s going on with that. Eventually. Yeah, so the other thing to talk about, which I’m not, I’m almost ready to talk about in detail, but I’m not quite there yet. As you guys know, I’m a big steam deck fan. And so now there is a new competitor called the steam deck killer, which is a Zeus Republican gamers. Brand is coming out with something called the ally which is a handheld Windows based PC. It’s a lot more expensive than the steam deck, right? The steam deck you can get in for 399 Get in, I’m not saying that’s optimal, you’re gonna want to increase the harddrive, you’re gonna probably want a dock. But you’re gonna need the dock with the rally or the ally. Two. Point is, is that 399 Get you a steam deck. And right now the only ally you can even preorder is 700 bucks. So listen, of course, something that costs double, is going to be better, right? I mean, from a hardware point of view, if you think about it, you know, if it costs double, you would expect it to be twice as good as the steam DAC, which apparently it’s not based on early reviews. But listen, they all got pre production units. I’m one of those guys that say, let’s wait until the units fallen into the hands of the guerrilla warfare YouTubers. Forget about these fuckers like line Linux text tips and tech tips and all these other guys. These guys didn’t pay for it. They have advertisers on the line they have I mean, they’ve got a reason to embellish, right? They have a reason to the you know, they don’t have a reason to condone it because they didn’t pay for it. Right? You pay 100 bucks and it disappoints you. That’s a much bigger hit than if you got it for free. And it disappoints, you know what I’m saying? With apologies to Starship Troopers something given has no value, right? So the channel has been doing pretty good. And so I decided to re invest right steam deck has a lot of people covering it. Well, Ally does too now. But I like to think of myself as a little more guerrilla warfare style, I’m going to I’m going to do the tests that nobody else is going to do. I’m going to test things that nobody else is going to test. I’m going to do real world comparisons instead of guesswork, you know, so I’m, I’m excited to get my hands on one, it shouldn’t ship June 3, two, and I’m gonna give it the run through I’m gonna go I’m gonna do I’m gonna do a review of it as it is. I’m going to do comparisons with steam deck, I am going to I’m going to figure out where the bones are buried in this thing, because quite frankly, the big one of the biggest selling points of the deck is that it does not have Windows on it. I love that. I love not having the overhead, the maintenance, the updates, the forced advertising the required Microsoft accounts, constantly being bitched out to upgrade my edge, you know, I don’t like windows. I like what I can run on it. I don’t like Windows. And that was one of the greatest things about STEAM deck is you powered on. It’s basically right there. There’s a lot of questions about the ally that I have. And, you know, these people that are that are doing early reviews and previews and things like that. I don’t I don’t feel that we’re getting we’re getting the true story or at least not the story that I’m looking for. So I’ll be the one hopefully taking a peek at this and giving you guys some insight, so that’d be nice to not do Steenbeck videos for a while. But we’ll say Alright, listen, I am at work I need to get in there. My thing starts in 15 minutes. I still gotta get up the building. This is Shane R Monroe Patterson radio. We’ll see you next time. Take care
Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2023-05-16
